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Thesis (MA (African Languages))--University of Stellenbosch, 2009. / The purpose of this study is to examine message production and image restoration in the narratives of isiXhosa-speaking farming communities. According to Gergen (1994), narrative forms – such as the stability narrative, progressive narrative and regressive narrative – are linguistic tools that have important social functions to fulfil. Gergen (1994) further indicates that self-narratives are social processes in which individuals are realised on the personal perspective or experience. The self-narratives used and analysed in this study portray the contemporary, truth-based elements of a well-formed narrative. Narrative accounts are also embedded within social action; they render events socially visible and typically establish expectations for future events because the events of daily life are immersed in narrative. The study starts by laying the foundation for the reasons why human beings tell stories and why stories are so important in people’s daily lives, since most people begin their encounters with stories at childhood. Possibly because of this intimate and long-standing acquaintance with stories from childhood, stories also serve as critical means by which human beings make themselves intelligible within the social world. This study further examines the motivations and conditions for account-giving in isiXhosa. Accounts are similar to narratives and can be retained at the level of private reflections for others to read, to be educated and to learn from and to refer to from time to time. Gergen (1994) considers self-narratives as forms of social accounting or public discourse. In this sense, narratives are conversational resources, their construction open to continuous alteration as interaction progresses. The study elaborates on this phenomenon, especially in the narrative accounts of the various isiXhosa stories that were collected and analysed. What emerges from the analyses is that the individual characters whose stories are told are portrayed as moving through their experience, dealing with some conflict or problem in their lives and, at the same time, searching for a resolution. It also emerges from the collection of these various isiXhosa narratives that they sharpen our understanding of the major stressful situations in each person’s mind and how the individual reasons about the difficulties encountered in life. The narratives prove, in this regard, to be a cultural resource that serves social purposes, such as self-identification, self-justification, self criticism and social solidification. In this sense then, for an account to be true, it has to be goal-orientated and relate to people’s day-to-day lives. The study finds that the social-interactive aspects of account-giving involve severe reproach forms, including personal attacks and derogatory aspects, which elicit defensive reactions resulting in negative interpersonal and emotional consequences.

The economic activities of multinational corporations (MNCs) in the extractive industries of developing countries produce a myriad of immediate negative social, economic and environmental impacts on communities hosting their operations. Consequently, stakeholders have increasingly called for (greater) accountability of these corporations for the impacts of their operations on stakeholders and the wider society. The extent to which these MNCs are accountable for their operations' negative environmental impacts in the developing countries is underexplored as prior studies have primarily focused on corporate social responsibility rather than accountability of these corporations. However, accountability apparently means different things to different parties, and especially in a non-Western context. This thesis primarily seeks to explore the concept of accountability in a developing country context and how it is understood and practised within the Nigerian oil industry. More specifically, it seeks to understand the extent to which oil MNCs in Nigeria discharge accountability in the context of gas flaring and oil spills environmental pollution emanating from their operations. The study utilises a mixed methods approach to generate data to provide understanding on stakeholders' conceptions of accountability, the nature of accounts constructed by the MNCs on gas flaring and oil spills environmental incidents, and the plausible corporate sense-making embedded within those accounts. The empirical data produce both general and nuanced conceptions of accountability between the MNCs and stakeholders. An account-giving heuristic highlights four broad and further nuanced accounts the corporations provide on these negative environmental incidents which are largely in conflict with stakeholders' narratives. Moreover, the sense-making analysis of the MNCs' accounts suggests that those accounts apparently serve corporate self-interest rather than the discharge of accountability. However, organisational, institutional, relational, and national contextual factors apparently encourage the un-accountability of the MNCs. Accountability in the Nigerian oil industry will remain elusive without critical institutional and regulatory reforms.

Thesis (MA (African Languages))--University of Stellenbosch, 2009. / This study explores the theoretical work in the articulation of the motivations and conditions for account-giving in isiZulu. In this context, accounts are similar to narratives and can be retained at the level of private reflections or written diary entries or for others to read and refer to from time to time. The account-giving process, according to Waldron (1997), is like a “life in motion” in which individual characters are portrayed as moving through their experiences, dealing with conflicts or problems in their lives and, at the same time, searching for resolutions. It is the quest to understand the major stresses in each individual’s mind that is at the core of this study. The why-questions that are the result of the daily experiences of destitution, depression, death, disability, etc. are also addressed here. Narrative accounts form the basis of moral and social events and, as such, stories have two elements through which they are explored. They are explored from the point of view of, firstly, the way in which they are told and, secondly, the way in which they are lived within a social context. These stories follow a historically or culturally based format and, to this effect, Gergen (1994) suggests narrative criteria that constitute a historically contingent narrative form. Narrative forms are linguistic tools that have important social functions to fulfil satisfactorily, such as stability narrative, progressive narrative and regressive narrative. According to Gergen (1994), self-narratives are social processes in which individuals are realised on the personal perspective or experience and, as such, their emotions are viewed as constitutive features of relationship. The self-narratives used and analysed in this study portray the contemporary culture-based elements or segments of a well-formed narrative.

Thesis (MA (African Languages))--University of Stellenbosch, 2009. / The aim of this study is to explore and encourage the use of accounts in the sense that events occur in our societies that compel those who are victims of those circumstances to give account of their experiences. The theme of this study is based on statements about events such as abuse, cheating, death and being HIV positive and on answers to such events. In respect of the theory of image restoration, Benoit (1995) discusses why people should give account of their wrongdoings and narrate such events. He states that language and communication practitioners as well as the great philosophers in communities have an interest in how image restoration works in our communities. This research focuses on the Benoit theory. People give account in everyday life of their wrongdoings or of accusations of wrongdoing, since this helps to restore their reputations. The focus of this study is on the use of accounts in Xhosa culture as a strategy in the narration of life stories. According to Benoit (1995), accounts are excuses and justifications that are responses to offence or failure events such as requests for an account of the violation of a norm, of the rebuke of another person and of the expression of surprise or disgust at certain behaviours. This study illustrates how to give account of your own experience. In this regard, Gergen (1994) states that the term “self-narrative” refers to an individual’s account of the relationship of self-relevant events across time, while White and Epston (1990) state that people give meaning to their lives and relationships by narrating stories about their experience of life.