‘The Small Man with the Big Weapon’: An Examination of Representations of the Great White Hunter in South African English-Language Poetry

2019 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 84-99
Author(s):  
Fiona Zerbst
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
English Language ◽  
Language Poetry

The putative addressee in the persuasion of diplomatic discourse: China’s communication efforts through South African English-language newspapers

2021 ◽  
pp. 175048132110020
Author(s):  
Liping Tang
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
English Language ◽  
World Order ◽  
Xi Jinping ◽  
Discursive Strategy ◽  
Contemporary Chinese

This article explores the putative addressee in the persuasion of diplomatic discourse by adopting White’s recent proposals as to putative reader/addressee positioning to specifically examine China’s communication efforts through South African English-language newspapers in the Xi Jinping era. Likemindedness is found to be predominantly construed, meticulously balanced with relative frequent construal of uncommittedness and very rare construal of un-likemindedness. And a set of 12 interrelated discourses are identified as fundamental ideological tenets in legitimating China’s African engagement and its vision of world order. Findings show that the classical political discursive strategy of Us/Them polarization is typically deployed. The analysis and discussion illustrates how White’s proposed framework can be systematically applied to offer new lines of analysis of persuasion and shed some light on understanding contemporary Chinese diplomatic discourse.

“When in Doubt, Leave Out”:1 The Country Editor Who Declined to Publish a Long Letter from Olive Schreiner

2021 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 41-58
Author(s):  
Paul Walters ◽  
Jeremy Fogg
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
English Language ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Olive Schreiner ◽  
The South ◽  
Editorial Policies ◽  
South African War

The authors deal with six unpublished communications from Olive Schreiner to James Butler, Editor of the Cradock newspaper The Midland News and Karroo farmer between March 1893 and October 1905, as well as a reply from Butler to Schreiner. These documents are housed in the Cory Library for Historical Research at Rhodes University. Transcriptions by J. Fogg are appended. The heart of the article deals with Butler’s refusal to publish Schreiner’s “letter to the Women of Somerset East” which she had sent as a contribution to the protest meeting held in Somerset East on 12 October 1900 to mark the first anniversary of the declaration of the South African War. Keywords: Unpublished Schreiner Letters, South African War, Women’s Meeting Somerset East 12 October 1900, editorial policies, Cecil  Rhodes’s control of the South African English language Press.

Teaching the History of English

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rajend Mesthrie
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Middle English ◽  
English Language ◽  
Applied Linguistics ◽  
World Englishes ◽  
Standard Language ◽  
Student Preparation ◽  
English Departments ◽  
History Of

This chapter addresses how the history of English as a linguistic topic has been taught in one South African university. The author focuses on the traditional Old–Middle–Modern English trichotomy as well as colonial and postcolonial synchronic varieties. Subsequent to a curricular shift from historical to applied linguistics in English departments, students taking History of the English Language (HEL) come to the course with little or no background in Old and Middle English. The author offers practical examples of how he accommodated this change in student preparation. Additionally, he addresses how the postcolonial era and globalisation have “revitalised the story of English.” Pidgins, Creoles, and World Englishes problematise the earlier genealogy of the Standard Language, making a linear history less easy to uphold. The author’s discussion of his complementary “Pidgins, Creoles, and New Englishes” course includes helpful pointers to instructors teaching these varieties within a HEL course.

Open Voicing

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Gregerson
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
16Th Century ◽  
Considerable Importance ◽  
Language Poetry ◽  
Poetic Voice

In the transit from Petrarch to the Petrarchan adaptations of Thomas Wyatt we see the birth of a rhetorical proposition that will come to be of considerable importance for English-language poetry in the 16th century and beyond. Experimenting with poetic voice as a symptom of character. Wyatt conjures the figment of an individuated speaking persona, one who is biased, irritable, and rhetorically unstable. Shakespeare will confer upon this project an emotional capaciousness that alters it forever, but the commitment to a radical instability of voice began with Wyatt.

An analysis of critical ‘voices’ and ‘styles’ in transpreters’ translations of complainants’ narratives

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 142-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monwabisi K. Ralarala
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Police Officers ◽  
Justice System ◽  
English Language ◽  
Criminal Investigation ◽  
Oral Narrative ◽  
Administration Of Justice ◽  
Police Records ◽  
And Function ◽  
Role And Function

Police officers (hereafter referred to as transpreters) have a fundamental role and function as both ‘interpreters’ and ‘translators’ in the process of the administration of justice. This role and function hinges, oftentimes, on how the two agents, that is, the transpreters and the complainants, relate to each other. What is it that they represent? What do they stand to gain? What mechanisms are at play that they exploit to reach their various goals and desires? In discharging these roles and functions, transpreters in particular become actively engaged in the activities of listening to, visualising, then retelling and rewriting the complainants’ isiXhosa oral narrative text into the English language. All these laborious and tedious activities are conducted to compile sworn statements that become essential in the leading of a criminal investigation, as well as in compiling the evidence that is ultimately used in court. In this context, the ‘voices’ that inform the ‘styles’ in and through which the original narratives are reconstructed (as translations) into police records remain critical as part of the legal discourse in the South African criminal justice system. These ‘voices’ and ‘styles’ signal the extent to which sworn statements are mediated and manipulated.

Compulsory African language learning at a South African university

2017 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie Rudwick
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Language Policy ◽  
South African ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
English Language ◽  
African Language ◽  
The South ◽  
Language Management ◽  
Higher Education System ◽  
Vernacular Language

Abstract While many universities in the world are making provisions to include the English language in their institutional structure, the South African University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) is opposing the hegemony of English in its institution. The University has launched a language policy and planning (LPP) strategy that makes provisions first to incorporate the vernacular language Zulu as language of learning and teaching, and second, to promote it as a subject. In this vein, the institution recently made an unprecedented decision for the South African higher education system. Since the first semester of 2014, a specific Zulu language module is a mandatory subject for undergraduate students who have no proficiency in the language. Although considered a watershed moment among many African language promoters, the mandatory ruling is fiercely discussed and debated in the institution and beyond. Theoretically grounded in Language Management Theory (LMT) and empirically based on semi-ethnographic fieldwork, this article examines the interplay between macro and micro language dynamics at UKZN in the context of the mandatory Zulu module. In juxtaposing interview discourses of language policy stakeholders with those of Zulu lecturers, the study reveals a stark discrepancy between macro and micro language management at this university. The article argues that this mismatch between the language policy intents and actual practices on the ground is symptomatic for South Africa’s language policy in education being shaped more by ideological interests than by pedagogical regards.

Where does a New English dictionary stop? On the making of the Dictionary of South African Indian English

English Today ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-43
Author(s):  
Rajend Mesthrie
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
English Language ◽  
The United States ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Indian English ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Language And Culture ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Australian English

This paper reflects on the recently published Dictionary of South African Indian English (Mesthrie, 2010, henceforth DSAIE) in terms of the decisions that have to be made over content in a New English variety. ‘New English’ is used in the commonly accepted sense of a variety that has arisen as a second language in a multilingual context, mainly under British colonialism, but which has gained an identity of its own on account of its characteristic linguistic features which differ from those of the erstwhile target language, viz. educated British English. Dictionaries of English outside of England and the United States of America are no longer novel: well-known efforts include the Macquarie Dictionary of Australian English (Butler et al., 2009) and The Dictionary of South African English on Historical Principles (Silva et al., 1996). In the same vein Hobson-Jobson (Yule & Burnell, 1886) recorded the lexis of colonial India, concentrating more on the vocabulary of the British there, though usage characteristic of Indians is also cited. Post-colonial India is still served by lexicographers of British origins: Hanklyn-Janklin (Hankin, 1994) and Sahibs, Nabobs and Boxwallahs (Lewis, 1991) are both true to the Hobson-Jobson tradition in feel and style, whilst being fairly up-to-date. I am unaware of any systematic dictionary work treating of the more colloquial words of Indian English, this 30 years on from Braj Kachru's (1983) article ‘Toward a Dictionary’. The popular guidebook series Lonely Planet has stolen a march on the lexicographers in producing a vibrant, popular book Indian English: Language and Culture (2008), with an emphasis on vocabulary amidst other culture lessons. The new internet era has also provided online dictionaries, the most sophisticated in my experience being the Dictionary of Singlish and Singapore English launched in 2004 (www.singlishdictionary.com).

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