Humour represents an ideal site for understanding how everyday social dynamics influence ideology and the social structure (Sue & Golash-Boza, 2013:4). This research is an examination of how gender is expressed in Shona humour. Particular emphasis is paid to how women are presented in Shona humorous narratives. Though 'what a person does in a jest is usually not accorded the same weight of responsibility as what he does seriously, humour provides a means to test the openness, accessibility, and riskiness of sensitive issues' (Lang & Lee, 2010:47). This study examines how women in particular, are reflected in Shona humour. Humour provides a 'safe' climate for expressing 'system-justifying' beliefs, (Ford et al. 2013), and this study is an exploration of the Shona beliefs about women and the reinforcement of gender norms as expressed in Shona humour. The study derives impetus from the fact that while images of women have been studied in literary and lexicographic works in Shona in particular, aspects of humour and how it presents women remain largely under-studied, as humour studies as a discipline, despite its long history the world over, is still at its infancy in Zimbabwe. From a corpus of jokes that were circulated on the social media, particularly Facebook and WhatsApp, the study examines how women are presented in Shona humour. The research made use of the Superiority Theory of humour, Incongruity and Feminism to argue that Shona humour expresses oppressive and unjust gender relations. While the humorous Shona narratives demonstrate a complex portrayal of women, generally, Shona humour expresses, ratifies and reinforces repressive norms and restrictive stereotypes about women. Women are presented as immoral, malicious and intellectually, socially and emotionally inferior to men. The study therefore argues that humour facilitates the process of promoting gender stereotypes as well as fostering gender discrimination in Shona.

Bibliography: leaves 211-225.

Includes abstract. / Includes bibliographical references. / Translation has been a practice that has assisted many languages the world over to develop to become languages of power. The purpose of this project was to elicit some translation challenges that translators face when translating from English into Xitsonga. It is not easy to translate a document in which the domain has not been explored because the translator has to juggle with terminology which does not exist in the indigenous language. In this project, I have made an attempt to use different theories that can guide us when we encounter a lemma which does not exist in the target language. The challenges that are faced by one indigenous language in South Africa in language development through translation are the same as for most other indigenous languages.

Bibliography: pages 133-141. / This study seeks to investigate Language variation in the Botswana speech community and its impact on children's education. The study is premised on the assumption that the learner's non-standard language from the home environment is not accommodated in the learning environment. The language used in the classroom is the standard language. This study deals with aspects such as language change, language contact, language interference as well as standardisation and the differences that exist in the spoken and written Setswana. Sociolinguistic factors such as language use are also dealt with. The problem of the use of non-standard varieties, as compared to the use of standard forms in the broad educational field is investigated.

Lexical change is a natural phenomenon for all of the world’s languages. This change can be viewed in terms of language contact, technological innovation and the adoption of new lifestyles. Whereas in the past isiXhosa, a Nguni language spoken in South Africa, borrowed words from both English and Afrikaans, contemporary speakers rely more on the English lexicon, with some previous adoptions from Afrikaans being replaced by those from English. This study focusses specifically on contemporary borrowed, or loanword nouns in isiXhosa which are brought into the noun class system of the language via a number of different noun class prefixes. The focus of this study is to understand whether there are any features or properties, whether morphological or semantic, that predispose loanword nouns to fall into a particular noun class. In this thesis I therefore analyse a corpus of new data from conversations and interviews I conducted with contemporary isiXhosa-speakers, as well as from written translation activities. After providing a general background to the semantic content of isiXhosa noun classes, I analyse the new data and try to make some conclusions as to which noun class prefix is the most productive for loanwords, as well as to argue the existence of a significant amount of variation in terms of prefixes used. The study concludes that most loanword nouns are assigned to Noun Class 9, but some speakers also use Noun Classes 1a, 5 and 7 as alternatives for Class 9 under certain morphological and semantic conditions. Even Noun Class 3 was found to contain a number of loanword nouns, suggesting that speakers are able to manipulate the grammar of isiXhosa, and particularly its noun class system, to accommodate words from other languages.

Bibliography: leaves 147-150.

\ / Advertisements in African languages are generally confined to radio, and in that medium are factual, dialogic and direct. When used in television advertising, however, South Africa’s indigenous languages play a less informative role, being employed rather to index a concretised African essence, African identity, urban style, or a particular reified postapartheid togetherness and cultural mobility. In this dissertation I analyse six television advertisements, all using African languages or language varieties, broadcast over the years starting 2010 through to 2014. I reflect on how and why the African language is used and to what extent African languages are no longer seen by television advertisers as carriers of information but as exploitable symbols of trustworthiness, multiculturalism, belonging and innovation. Methodology includes interviews with agencies, sociolinguistic analyses of the varieties used, detail on brands and products represented by the language and a small pilot study with viewers to ascertain their responses to the six selected advertisements.

Bibliography: leaves 181-195.

In this dissertation I critically analyse the lyrics of the top 10 songs (sung in an indigenous African language) aired on uMhlobo weNene (the national broadcast station for the Xhosa language) during 2016. Before the analysis of the songs I discuss various academic works on pop lyrics generally – ranging from a discussion of the production of aesthetic difference, lyrics in global and local settings, the changing lexicon of pop lyrics over the years, the purpose of lyrics to teenagers and the issue of translation and code switching in the lyrics of bilingual popular songs. In the main body of the thesis I apply a thematic and detailed linguistic analysis of the top 10 songs after which I provide an analysis of interviews conducted with Xhosa-speaking teenagers with regard to their linguistic preferences as applicable to contemporary lyrics. The conclusion includes a summary of the dominant themes of the lyrics studied and a focus on what the grammar of the songs (e.g. the predominance of the first person pronoun in all of the lyrics) can tell us about the increasingly individualistic nature of contemporary lyrics sung in African languages.

This research topic came about during my honours research project. The honours project studied strategies that are used by second language learners in acquiring vocabulary. One of the strategies that were used was direct translation. Upon further research into the subject, it was we discovered that no work has been done on the use of translation as a teaching method in isiXhosa. This study attempts to bridge the information gap in the area of second language learning and teaching in African languages. The current study followed two classes at University of Cape Town where isiXhosa literature is taught as a second language. Given that the students do not speak any isiXhosa at entry level, they rely heavily on their first language for making sense of the second language. In the case of literature, where terminology is not carefully selected to accommodate second language learners, students rely heavily on translation. This study therefore investigates the role and process of translation as a teaching method. The lack of research in this area made it very difficult to follow a particular theoretical framework, therefore the study followed a mixture of qualitative and quantitative approaches. Students were given activities that would require translation in order for the task to be completed. This forms part of their normal learning process. These activities were analysed. The second part consisted of a questionnaire that surveyed the student's views regarding the use of translation. Findings based on the qualitative data analysis revealed heavy relianace on translation as a learning strategy. Students also indicated that prior knowledge of vocabulary as well as an understanding of morphology were both very beneficial.