Hasil untuk "African languages and literature"

Kenneth Meyer

Temitope M. Ajayi

This study investigates the forms and pragmatic functions of “impossibility” slangy expressions in Yoruba informal interactions, within the framework of Mey’s pragmatic acts (2001). Data comprised ten informal interactions randomly sampled from thirty interactions observed among the Yoruba in different contexts. Findings revealed “impossibility” slangy expressions in Yoruba trifurcate into function‑oriented, structure‑function‑oriented, and danger‑oriented types. They are deployed to express rejection, rejection with warning, caution, discountenance and disapproval, rebuke with dare, challenge and threat in Yoruba informal interactions. Participants in Yoruba informal interactions make recourse to facial expression (physical act), and contextual elements: shared cultural knowledge (SCK), shared experiential knowledge (SEK), voice (VCE), inference (INF) and relevance (REF) to deconstruct the pragmatic imports of impossibility expressions.

Henry Tourneux

The so-called “Kotoko” group is located mainly in the far north of Cameroon, and marginally in Chad and Nigeria. It is composed of small fortified kingdoms built primarily in the West of the Lower Chari and the Lower Logone. Its fragmented geographical location in a flood zone has been conducive to the dialectalization of the language. Politically, these small units were torn between the Kanem-Borno Kingdom and the Baguirmi Kingdom. In the literature, the political units of Kotoko are sometimes referred to as sultanates, chiefdoms, kingdoms or principalities. This article systematically examines the names that the languages of the Kotoko group use to designate the sovereign. Contemporary scientific works attribute the origin of the Kotoko ruler’s name to Kanuri mây. However, this etymology does not explain all the present Kotoko forms. A detour through Ancient Kanuri *magi brings us back to Chadic languages other than Kotoko and raises the question of who borrowed from whom. Was it Kotoko who borrowed from Kanuri, or was it Kanuri who borrowed from Chadic before returning the loan to Kotoko? The name of the sovereign in Logone-Birni seems to give arguments in favour of the latter hypothesis.

Gisett Elizabeth Lara

Este artículo reflexiona acerca de las relaciones existentes entre espacio y gé­nero, a través de la representación de la favela en la novela Becos da memoria (2006), de Conceição Evaristo. Mediante la Geografía Feminista es posible comprender que, unido a otras determinantes como clase y etnia, el género condiciona los vínculos de los seres humanos, constituyendo otros espacios, diferentes a los considerados por la geografía androcéntrica. En la narra­tiva, a partir del conflicto se originan formas de organización comunitaria lideradas por una mujer negra dotada de sabiduría. En razón de lo anterior, este trabajo pretende indagar sobre los movimientos afrodescendientes en naciones mestizas, incorporando los aportes del Feminismo Comunitario –organización de mujeres indígenas de América Latina– en comparación a la descolonización del territorio (cuerpo femenino y naturaleza) puesto que, la propuesta de Evaristo, al configurar un nuevo espacio social, que devuelve el poder político a las mujeres en las comunidades, propone un territorio de resistencia a la opresión colonialista en América Latina. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- A outra geografia da favela em Becos da memória, de Conceição Evaristo Este artigo reflete sobre as relações entre espaço e gênero, através da re­presentação da favela no romance Becos da memória (2006), de Conceição Evaristo. Por meio da Geografia Feminista, é possível entender que, junta­mente com outros determinantes como classe e etnia, o gênero condiciona os vínculos dos seres humanos, constituindo outros espaços, diferentes daqueles considerados pela geografia androcêntrica. Na narrativa, a partir do conflito, emergem formas de organização comunitária lideradas por uma mulher negra dotada de sabedoria. Diante do exposto, este trabalho tem como objetivo investigar os movimentos afrodescendentes nas nações mestiças, incorporando as contribuições do feminismo comunitário – or­ganização de mulheres indígenas na América Latina – em comparação com a descolonização do território (corpo e natureza femininos), uma vez que a proposta de Evaristo configura um novo espaço social que restaura o poder político das mulheres nas comunidades, propondo um território de resistência à opressão colonialista na América Latina. --- Original em espanhol.

Hein Willemse

Arthur Fula's debut novel Jôhannie giet die beeld (Lit: Johannesburg moulds the graven image) was well received in the beginning of 1954 but has in recent years been largely forgotten. The novel was promoted as the first "by a Bantu in Afrikaans", a designation that differentiated him, a third language speaker, from the typical Afrikaans writer who was ordinarily a  white, first language speaker. The novel registers, in the tradition of the ˜'Jim-comes-to Jo'burg novels', the migration of black characters to the urban areas with the persistent struggle between indigenous traditions and the presence of an unknown, even threatening Western modernity. In his second novel Met erbarming, O Here (With Compassion, Oh Lord, 1957) Fula made peace with the permanency of urban black Africans and their aspirations. This essay introduces the emergence of the autodidact Fula's authorship amidst a period of profound change and adaptation in South Africa during the 1950s, tracing his personal history, the circumstances of his writing and choice of language, and the reception of his debut novel.

Henriëtte Roos

Mariëtte van Graan

Ghost characters are a characteristic of the novels of Etienne van Heerden, but little research has been done concerning the nature and function of these ghost characters. In this article I discuss Van Heerden’s use of ghost characters diachronically with reference to the novels Ancestral voices (1986), Leap year (1993) and The long silence of Mario Salviati (2000). In order to clarify the nature of these ghosts, I use the so-called science of the paranormal as a framework. The ghosts in the three novels will be classified accordingly, and then discussed within the context of the novels in which they appear. In this way, I shall show how the ghost characters in these novels can be read as a constantly changing embodiment of Afrikaner identity (a central theme in Van Heerden’s oeuvre). Van Heerden’s Afrikaner changes with the times: in Ancestral voices the ghost characters form a collective that represents a fragmented image of the stereotypical, archaic male Afrikaner identity; in Leap year a liminal character is written in a liminal time to embody a liminal Afrikaner identity; and in The long silence of Mario Salviati Van Heerden moves away from the exclusive Afrikaner identity to a broader South African identity by using ghost characters from very different backgrounds and origins. In conclusion I shall compare these identities and the historical contexts of these novels in order to show the function of Van Heerden’s ghost characters as constant rewritings of South African identities.

Kathleen Gyssels

Geboren in 1928 in Martinique, socioloog en historicus, dichter en filosoof, dramaturg en auteur Édouard Glissant te Parijs overleed op 3 februari 2011 na een gevulde carrière als postkoloniaal denker. In de eerste fase van zijn militant bestaan heeft hij de onafhankelijkheid van Martinique en Guadeloupe verdedigd, wat hem ertoe dwong het eiland te verlaten en zich in Parijs te vestigen. Daar heeft hij het belangrijkste deel van zijn veelvuldig oeuvre bij elkaar geschreven. Ongetwijfeld was hij reeds vanaf zijn debuut, de roman La Lézarde (1958) een légende vivante want deze eigenaardige, eigenzinnige roman kreeg meteen de Prix Renaudot, ondanks zijn moeilijk toegankelijke taal en structuur. Glissant profileerde zich meteen als een antirealistische auteur die een specificiteit in stijl, taal en thematiek wou onderstrepen.

Marie Spruyt

The main character, Helena Verbloem, goes on a journey of discovery: to find her stolen shells, and to determine what role chance and contingency plays in man’s search for meaning and order. On both these journeys she is accompanied by her colleague Sof Benadé and to a certain extent her employer, Theo Verwey. Sof introduces her to a world of duality, where good and evil exist but where one has a choice, in spite of disappointments that characterize daily life. Verwey dies before she can really get to know him, but he leaves her with the knowledge of the nature of language, that it is as subject to contingency as everything else. By analysing the text from a theosophical and Kabbalistic viewpoint Helena’s journeys of discovery and self-discovery are revealed. It is shown that although she still believes that one’s life is not determined by a Higher Order but through small contingencies, she no longer needs to be obsessed with the many losses she suffered, including that of her treasured shells, or the intellectual struggle to understand the origin of life and the role of human cognition in the suffering of humankind. This helps her to heal her relationships with the living and the dead, and in the process also herself.

van der Walt, Christa

As a result of transnational mobility of students and attempts to widen access to higher education, university campuses have become increasingly multilingual. Responses to this phenomenon have ranged from resistance (sticking to a local and established language) to wide-ranging attempts to become English-medium institutions. The fact that student populations can differ from one semester and one year to the next means that it becomes difficult to plan language-in-education strategies and practices. In the context of South African higher education, this paper argues that lecturers who teach multilingual classes cannot depend on policy makers to create circumstances in which deep learning will take place. It becomes necessary to think in terms of micro-planning (Baldauf 2006), or perhaps rather classroom strategies, to create spaces for multilingual learning.

Kofi Yakpo

C Van der Walt, M Madiba, B Lepota

Preface to Special Edition of Per Linguam

Tony Ullyatt

This article offers a critical overview of the personae Douglas Livingstone (1932-1996) adopts in two editions (1975b; 1983) of “A rosary of bone”. Following a tripartite structure, it deals with the love poems, the translations, and the Giovanni Jacopopoems respectively, arguing that the collection breaks new ground as Livingstone here begins to explore new voices and techniques with which to write about his thematic preoccupations.Such personae permit the poet more acerbic, satirical, or even angry stances, with voices not to be found in the earlier volumes of his work.

Tony Waters

Review Essay Romeo Dallaire. 2003. Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda. Toronto: Random House Canada. 584 pp. William Easterly. 2006. White Man’s Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good. New York: Penguin Press. 448 pp. Alan Kuperman. 2001. The Limits to Humanitarian Intervention. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. 176 pp. Samantha Power. 2002. A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide. New York: Basic Books. 656 pp. David Rieff. 2005. At the Point of a Gun: Democratic Dreams and Armed Intervention. New York: Simon & Schuster. 288 pp. Marie Beatrice Umutesi. 2004. Surviving the Slaughter: The Ordeal of a Rwandan Refugee in Zaire. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. 284 pp.

P. van der Merwe

“Welcome to Hard Times” (1960), E.L. Doctorow’s first novel, differs from the rest of his oeuvre because it is not set in a metropolitan context like New York. References to historical events that contain an apparent “mixture” of “factual” and fictional elements that are typical of Doctorow’s oeuvre are less prominent than in his other fiction, though definitely not absent. An analysis of the pioneer setting, the town Hard Times, reveals that other settings (including metropolitan ones like New York) are not merely representations of specific contexts, but portrayals with allegorical elements. Criticism of Doctorow’s fiction does not sufficiently point out the rationale of Doctorow’s fiction in relation to his first novel: it is not just the basic level that contains the true topicality but also the underlying causal and thematic relationships. This article sets out to explore “Welcome to Hard Times” as a case in point. The objective of this article is therefore also to show that an analysis of this novel provides a valuable basis for understanding the allegorical character of his fiction. Angus Fletcher’s theoretical analysis, “Allegory: the theory of a symbolic mode” (1964), serves as a useful starting point for the analysis of the allegorical value of space and the town Hard Times as a microcosmic or symbolic society, as well as the “daemonic agents” in the town and the role of causality.

E. Truter

Resistance and perseverance: The life of Rachel Isabella (Tibbie) Steyn during the Anglo-Boer War Rachel Isabella (Tibbie) Fraser was born in 1865 in Philippolis as daughter of the Rev. Colin McKenzie Fraser (Jr) and Isabella Paterson of Scotland, and granddaughter of a Scottish immigrant, the Rev. C.A. Fraser Tibbie was trained as a teacher in Bloemfontein at the “Dames-instituut” (Eunice) after which she married advocate Marthinus Theunis Steyn, a prominent Free Stater. When Theunis was elected State President of the Orange Free State in 1896, Tibbie distinguished herself as hostess of the Presidency. Tibbie experienced the vicissitudes of the Anglo-Boer War, fleeing before the victorious British army from one northeastern Free State town to the other. She was captured at the end of July 1900 and was regarded at the “first woman in her position to be taken prisoner”. Tibbie was interned in Bloemfontein and became an example of the adamant resistance of the Afrikaner woman against British domination. She was elected as “one of the worst of a number of irreconcilable women " to be deported from South Africa. The order was, however, rescinded at the last moment, after Kitchener had failed to produce conclusive evidence of any misdemeanours. She tended to her husband during his serious illness in Europe and once back in South Africa, achieved honour in uplifting Afrikaners after the war.

Tomomi Tokuori

This paper, based on the results of a quantitative and qualitative survey, investigates the role that networks play in the construction sector in Burkina Faso and Senegal. The aim of this study is to uncover the effects of the economy of affection among African owned-enterprises through a comparative study of networks. The results indicate that the networks embedded in the economy of affection have both costs and benefits to actors in the construction sector in Burkina Faso as well as Senegal. Moreover, the degree of those costs is likely to vary according to socio-cultural attributes. Through its informal institutions, the economy of affection facilitates business transactions and fosters networking. At the same time, it encourages relatives and friends to become dependent on the entrepreneurs and limits their chance of succeeding. They become, if not parasites, at least a burden that entrepreneurs have to cope with. These extra expenses may be compared with the legally imposed social expenditures that modern corporations in Japan and Western countries have to carry.

A. Kotze, M. Verhoef

The text editor as invisible writer: Scrutinising the theory and the profession The aim of this article is to determine how the growing demand for properly trained language practitioners in South Africa can be met. In spite of the fact that research has established that language editing in South Africa is done in a “haphazard” manner, this article proposes that text editing should be regarded as an inseparable part of language and text practice. The autors of this article attempt to establish a uniform theoretical assumption that will be valid for all aspects of language practice. The preliminary finding is that the classical communication model as refined by Jakobson (1971) is valid for all facets of language and text practice – in other words, for translation studies, the science of texts, and text editing. Furthermore, the autors of this article aim to provide an indication of the degree to which text editors remain “invisible” in spite of the fact that they bear the final responsibility for the quality, clarity of expression and final appearance of completed texts. Although it is therefore accepted that text editing is a profession in its own right, very little has been done to date to professionalise this career in the true sense of the word.

G. A. Jooste

The theme of alienation in the novels of Karel Schoeman The state of alienation is one of the overriding themes in Karel Schoeman's oeuvre. This article, “The theme of alienation in the novels of Karel Schoeman”, deals with one of the manifestations of this theme, namely the dilemma of alienation. The world presented in Karel Schoeman's oeuvre is characterized by dichotomy, e.g. the known as opposed to the unknown - a phenomenon which causes uncertainty. This article examines the way in which an epistemological dichotomy is expressed as a kind of dilemma in the novels of Karel Schoeman. The dilemma is presented to discourage a simple escape by means of choice. In this position between alternative worlds or views, the Schoeman character faces limited options: to make a choice of sorts and win or risk sacrificing something of value; to accept this precarious position and confirm his life as one of passive silence; to conquer the impasse, e.g. by sidestepping the choice and creating an alternative world as in a dream or a work of art.

J. J. Snyman, H. P.P. Lötto

The film Jesus of Montreal consists of an overlayering of stories presenting in a postmodern way the story (S1) of a group of actors’ attempt at an interpretation (S2) of an old story, the story of Jesus’ life and death (S3). In line with a typical postmodern approach the borders between these parallel narratives are blurred, the various texts become intertexts, the contents of the ‘original’ text are realized in the lives of the actors apparently without their realizing it. In this contribution the dialectics of Arcand’s postmodern procedure is followed up along two lines: firstly, the strategy of the overlayering of three narratives is uncovered In a second phase, the dialectics of appearance and truth in the overlayering of narratives is discussed.