M.A. / To what extent can and does the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere become involved in the teaching of Afrikaans as a first language in the secondary school? According to the Transvaal Education Department syllabus it must be irrevocably accepted that most of the teaching of Afrikaans as a first language is presented by the left hemisphere. Latent abilities to understand in the present day scholar can only be developed to their full potential if the right hemisphere of the brain is stimulated and is allowed full extension. As a result of the fact that the right hemisphere is specialized for holistic processing its capacity can be increased by tasks which develop positive emotional images and activities. By way of introduction the origin of left and right hemispheric studies is given. Joseph Bogen feels that the community overvalues the domination of the left hemisphere to the detriment of the right hemisphere. A few theories and methods dealing with the laterality of thought have been closely examined and the working of a few principles of Suggestopedia are briefly discussed...

M.A. (Applied Linguistics) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

M.Ed. (Education) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

D.Litt. et Phil. / This thesis constitutes an investigation into the complexity of Afrikaans legal language and explores the challenges of plain language in South Africa. It argues that language is a powerful tool, which can either be used for inclusion or exclusion. The requirement for the use of plain language as stipulated in the National Credit Act and the Consumer Protection Act is intended to improve the quality and accessibility of consumer-related documents, with vulnerable consumers in mind. South African businesses, organisations and suppliers are required to make their consumer documents available in plain and understandable language. This requirement has far-reaching implications for both the consumer industry and the language industry. Although the definition of plain language in the National Credit Act 34 of 2005 and the Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008 is comprehensive and theoretically sound, its practical implementation remains a challenge. Some empirical work has been done on the comprehensibility of institutional and other documents in South Africa, but these studies are mainly limited to health texts and the focus is primarily on English. In light of the language distribution and the fact that less than 10% of South Africans speak English as a home language, coupled with alarming educational attainment rates, it does not automatically follow that consumer documents that are written in plain English will be accessible to all consumers. In the framework of plain language legislation in South Africa, there is now a pressing need to extend plain language research to the other official languages as well, and to find ways to incorporate South Africa’s language distribution into a plain language policy. This study is in Afrikaans, about Afrikaans and for Afrikaans. Morever, in the absence of guidelines for methods or standards of assessing whether a consumer-related document satisfies the requirements for plain and understandable language, plain language practitioners are working in a vacuum, without any indication of the assessment criteria that will be applied to measure compliance.

The parlous state in which the English language finds itself in South Africa, both in its written and speech forms, is the cause ot grave concern to most English-speaking citizens, and to many Afrikaans-speaking people as well. This is the case not only in the commercial world and the civll service, but also in the schools and universities, and in fact in most walks of life. Although we are conscious of this state of affairs, and can quote many examples of the poor quality of English used, we have no measuring device through which we can assess exactly how bad the language used by any given group of people is. It is not possible to compare the performance in English of a certain school with standard English and to express the result as a percentage score. The aim of this investigation was to find out how well, or how badly, South African school children spell, and to compare the performances of English- and Afrikaansspeaking pupils. It was felt that the results would provide some concrete evidence and fairly accurate data which could be used to assess the standard of English spelling in our schools, and to pinpoint some of the major weaknesses. The writer hoped, thus, that the investigation might be of some practical usefulness to teachers of English spelling, and as spelling is basic to the written word and to some extent to the spoken word, it might make some small contribution to the drive towards better English in South African schools.

The limited amount of normative information regarding speech motor development in the clinically important age range four to seven years served as motivation for this study. The main aim of the study was to collect normative information regarding sensorimotor speech control skills of pre-school children. The method of the study was designed and the results interpreted within the framework of the four-level model of speech production of Van der Merwe (1997). Basic qualitative and quantitative data were gathered for a variety of aspects of speech motor development in Afrikaans-speaking children aged 4;0 to 6;7 years in the following areas: 1) non-speech oral movements, 2) non-speech diadochokinesis, 3) speech diadochokinesis, 4) cluster production, 5) word syllable structure in spontaneous speech, 6) acoustic data regarding first-vowel duration and variability of first-vowel duration in repeated utterances of the same word, 7) acoustic voice onset time data, 8) acoustic data regarding first-syllable duration in words of increasing length. Results indicated that associated movements and accuracy errors occurred in some non-speech oral movement and non-speech diadochokinesis tasks. Normative, diadochokinetic rate data were gathered. Perceptual analysis indicated difficulty with glottal and three-place diadochokinesis tasks. Subjects produced 84% of initial clusters in isolation correctly and 79% of final clusters. Schwa-vowel insertions occurred in clusters in isolation, but not in spontaneously produced words. Subjects produced 163 different word syllable structures in spontaneous speech, with 18 structures occurring in all subjects’ data. Six-year-olds generally displayed the shortest first-vowel duration. Individual, non-age related trends occurred for variability of first-vowel duration. Mean voice onset times in voiced stop contexts ranged from -97ms to +12ms, with overall instances of mean voicing lead occurring in 27% of the four-year olds’ productions, 4% of the five-year-olds’ productions and 80% of the six-year-olds’ productions. Mean voice onset times in voiceless stop contexts ranged from +11ms to +37ms. Subjects adapted first-syllable duration to word length by decreasing it as the word length increased. Results indicated that a wide range of normal speech motor performance is possible for children this age, and that individuals can display different performance levels for different speech parameters. This emphasizes the complexity of speech motor development and the need to assess a variety of speech motor parameters. It is essential that quantitative (objective) analysis of children’s speech motor performance be supplemented with qualitative (descriptive) analysis. The study contributed knowledge to the understanding of certain aspects of speech motor development and to the speech production process in general. / Dissertation (MComm Path)--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology / Unrestricted

The purpose of this qualitative case study is to determine the extent to which an Afrikaans language textbook series acted as a change agent in terms of racial representation on the eve of democracy in South Africa. Data sources for the content analysis are press reports, parliamentary records and interviews with the publisher, the authors and leading academics. The contextualisation includes an explanation of how the authors of the Ruimland series were the first to intentionally break away from the apartheid perspective. The literature study comprises an explication of the master symbol model which serves as theoretical framework for this study. Influential issues in the literature on textbooks, representation, language and identity are also described. The main focus is on the three master symbols relevant to the study, which are presented as indicators of racial stereotyping, viz. the exclusivity and isolation of the in-group, appropriation and generalising and simplifying. These indicators are utilised as measurable norms in the analysis of racial representation. Counter-indicators obtained from the data are used to increase the reliability of the analysis. Traces of stereotyping regarding all the indicators and counter-indicators were found in the data. The findings show that master symbols are evident in the data, but that the series also incorporates counter-symbols directed toward a post-apartheid society. The concluding chapters suggests that the series could have been an early signal of a paradigm shift in Afrikaner ranks toward democracy in South Africa. / Dissertation (MEd (Educational Psychology))--University of Pretoria, 2006. / Educational Psychology / unrestricted

This study seeks to report on the investigation into the need to use code switching as one of the language teaching strategies in the teaching and learning of Afrikaans as Additional Language in the FET band, in predominantly Xhosa-speaking environments in the Eastern Cape. The study was conducted in twelve secondary schools of the Transkei where Afrikaans is taught as an additional language. The sample of the study comprised the educators, the learners and the school managers of the twelve researched schools. The research was a case study of the selected schools. The participants were studied in their own environment and the data was collected by means of both the interviews and structured questionnaires. South Africa is a multilingual and multicultural country. This state of affairs calls for a serious re-evaluation of the existing teaching methodologies. Children acquire language skills in and outside the classroom in two different ways in multilingual societies. While children acquire proficiency in languages outside the classroom in a natural way, in the classroom they are constrained by rigid purist rules that compel them to learn languages in artificial ways. This manner of language acquisition in the predominantly Xhosa-speaking environments of the Eastern Cape, often goes hand in hand with code switching from source language to target language and vice versa. These children can be described as compound informal bilinguals (polyglots) as far as the indigenous languages are concerned since they acquire the indigenous languages from early childhood in natural settings. In the context of formal acquisition of European languages and Afrikaans in schools, they can be categorised as coordinate bilinguals. The linguistic disparities between classroom and natural acquisition practices were revealed in this investigation. In the classroom, code switching has two contradictory sides. On one hand code switching provides the teacher with ease of expression, confidence and satisfaction that the learners understand the lesson. Notwithstanding the dynamic attributes of code switching in the classroom, the learners are faced with the dilemma of having to avoid code switching as much as possible in the examinations since there is no room for code switching in the examinations. This investigation showed that despite the fact that non-mother tongue teaching is supposed to take place through the medium of the target language, both the teachers and the learners admitted that they code switch during Afrikaans classes and they perceive code switching as the best way to facilitate understanding. The findings of this study revealed that code switching was a natural and inevitable strategy in teaching an additional language. However, it also surfaced that some teachers resorted to using code switching because of their own lack of proficiency in the target language. Informed by the above findings, the study recommended that code switching be considered as one of the strategies to be used in the teaching and learning of Afrikaans as additional language. It was also recommended that learners be credited if they used code switching in the examinations since all respondents admitted that code switching was every-day practice in the classroom. This, however is to be done with extreme caution and with the sole purpose of assisting the learners achieve full mastery of the target language at the end of their learning career. Since this kind of exercise needs highly-skilled personnel, it was recommended that practising teachers be retrained and resource materials be expanded to all schools that offer Afrikaans as additional language. Although the arguments presented in this investigation do not reject the reality of the impeding effect code switching might have on the learning of an additional language, the study maintains that for purposes of mutual understanding, code switching is an enabling factor that impacts positively on the teaching-learning situation.

M.A. (Linguistics) / Unlike in the natural sciences, the study fields of the social sciences are closely related and large areas overlap - with regard to the use of terminology as well. However there are also differences, and in an institution such as the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) which comprises a heterogeneous community of subject specialists, not only the different subjects fields are represented, but also the different schools of thought (universities). In order to conduct human sciences research, the subject specialists should communicate with one another within these subject fields, but also across the borders of the different human sciences disciplines. The aim of this study was to standardize selected human sciences terminology used in the HSRC in order to provide a source of such terminology to be used mainly by HSRC personnel, and to enhance communication in this way. A theoretical review of the fields of standardization and sUbject lexicography was given. The former field was subdivided into linguistic standardization, technical language standardization and organizational standardization, and a clear organizational standardization process was distinguished on the basis of the steps of collecting, submitting, processing and distributing terminology. The field of subject lexicography concerned technical dictionaries and terminology lists, and the issue of computerizing terminology was also dealt with. The organizational standardization process with respect to HSRC terminology was explained and problematic terms identified in the study were discussed. The terminology involved in the study had been collected over a number of years by the language practitioners at the Centre for Language Services eCLS) of the HSRC, recorded on cards and later entered into the computer. In the study the terminology was submitted to the various sUbject specialists in the HSRC for their comment and approval, and their comments were subsequently researched and discussed by the CLS. The next step in the standardization process involves the processing of the comments so that the terminology can be distributed in the form of a publication or by means of a computerized database. The use of standardized terminology in the HSRC can contribute greatly towards improving communication between subject specialists and if the computerized information is transferred to the National Term Bank of the National Terminology Services as planned, the standardized HSRC terminology can be of use outside the HSRC as well.

M.A. (Afrikaans) / Language is the heartbeat of broadcasting, and is regarded primarily as a means of communication that is used for different purposes in different situations. The register of broadcasting language embodies and perpetuates standard language, and fits the specific situation or circumstance in terms of formal, informal and stylistically neutral language. It could be said that the various forms of Afrikaans cannot be regarded as right or wrong, but should be measured against the norms for the situation in which, and the purpose for which, it is used. All the varieties of Afrikaans are of equal value and each register has its rightful place, measured against the standards of functionality with regard to situation and purpose. The Komitee vir Taaladvies (KTA), as the official normative body for the Afrikaans of the SABC, does not act as a competitive linguistic standardiser, but is definitely in an authoritative position in the speech community when it comes to pronouncements on the standardisation of language. The KTA's approach to the usage corpus is that each item should provoke the least resistance from viewers and listeners. The KTA's objective is to promote communication by applying standardisation of language and using standard Afrikaans as the model. The KTA, the Language Bureau and the staff of the Language Bureau apply the generally recognised norms for standardising the formal broadcasting register of Afrikaans that promotes communication in Afrikaans. A lay phonetic system was developed for SAUKT and received favourably by the Language Bureau and the KTA. The system is easily understood since it is modelled on written Afrikaans.