Magister Artium - MA / The purpose of this study was two-fold: firstly, to do a multimodal analysis of the multilingual signage, advertisements and graffiti present on different surfaces in the main business hub of a multicultural community called Wesbank, situated in the Eastern Metropole of the city of Cape Town. Signage of this nature, taken together, constitute the 'linguistic landscape' (Gorter, 2006) of a particular space.

abstract: This dissertation explored the literacy practices that developed around comics when two secondary teachers (one AP Science and one AP English) used comics in their classroom instruction for the first time. It also explored the ways the teachers and their students positioned comics within their specific classroom contexts. Historically, comics are a marginalized medium in educational circles—widely considered non-academic despite the recognition by scholars for their sophistication as a multimodal medium. Scholars, librarians, teachers, and comics authors have made the case for the inclusion of comics in educational contexts citing their ability to support the literacy development of struggling readers, engage reluctant readers, promote lifelong reading, and convey information visually. However, the roles comics can play in educational contexts are still under researched, and many gaps exist in the literature including a lack of real world contexts and clearly reported instructional strategies. This study aimed to fill these gaps by reporting the literacy practices that students and teachers develop around comics, as well as contextualizing these practices in the classroom contexts and students’ and teachers’ experiences. Drawing from a social semiotic view of multimodality and the view of literacy as a social practice, I conducted a qualitative case study using ethnographic methods for data collection which I analyzed using an interpretive framework for qualitative data analysis and constant comparative analysis. I found three literacy practices developed around comics in these contexts—Q&A, writing about comics, and drawing comics. I also found that teachers and students positioned comics in four primary ways within these contexts—as a tool, as entertainment, as a medium, and as a traditional form of literature. Based on my findings, I developed three assertions: 1) there is a disconnect between teachers’ goals for using comics in their instruction and the literacy practice that developed around the comics they selected; 2) there is a disconnect between the ways in which teachers position comics and the ways in which students position comics; and 3) traditional views of literature and literacy continue to dominate classrooms when multimodal texts are selected and utilized during instruction. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Learning, Literacies and Technologies 2018

Magister Artium - MA / The purpose of this study was two-fold: firstly, to do a multimodal analysis of the multilingual signage, advertisements and graffiti present on different surfaces in the main business hub of a multicultural community called Wesbank, situated in the Eastern Metropole of the city of Cape Town. Signage of this nature, taken together, constitute the „linguistic landscape‟ (Gorter, 2006) of a particular space. My analysis of the signage included interviews with a number of the producers of these signs which reveal why their signs are constructed in particular ways with particular languages. Secondly, I interviewed 20 mature women from the community in order to determine their level of understanding of these signs as well as whether the linguistic landscape of the township had an impact on their levels of literacy. The existing literacy levels of the women being surveyed as well as those of the producers of the signs were also taken into account. My main analytical tools were Multimodal Discourse Analysis (Kress, 2003), applied to the signage, and a Critical Discourse style of Analysis (Willig, 1999; Pienaar and Becker, 2007), applied to the focus group and individual analysis. Basic quantitative analysis was also applied to the quantifiable questionnaire data. The overriding motivation for the study was to determine the strategies used by the women to make sense of their linguistic landscape and to examine whether there was any transportation of literacy from the signage to these women so that they could function more effectively and agentively in their own environment. This study formed part of a larger NRF-funded research project entitled Township women’s discourses and literacy resources, led by my supervisor, Prof. C. Dyers. The study revealed the interesting finding that the majority of the vendors in Wesbank, especially in terms of house shops, hairdressers and fruit and vegetable stalls, are foreigners from other parts of Africa, who rely on English as a lingua franca to advertise their wares. The signage makers had clearly put some thought into the language skills of their multilingual target market in this township, and did their best to communicate with their potential customers through the complete visual image of their signs. The overall quality of the codes displayed on the signage also revealed much about the literacy levels in the township as well as language as a local practice (Pennycook 2010). While English predominated on the signs, at times one also found the addition of Afrikaans (especially in the case of religious signage) and isiXhosa (as in one very prominent advertisement by a dentist). The study further established that the female respondents in my study, as a result of their different literacy levels, made use of both images and codes on an item of signage to interpret the message conveyed successfully. Signage without accompanying images were often ignored, or interpreted with the help of others or by using one comprehensible word to work out the rest of the sign. As has been shown by another study in the larger research project, these women displayed creativity in making sense of their linguistic landscape. The study further revealed that, as a result of frequent exposure to some words and expressions in the linguistic landscape, some of the women had become familiar with these terms and had thereby expanded their degree of text literacy. In this way, the study has contributed to our understanding of the notion of portable literacy as explored by Dyers and Slemming (2011, forthcoming).

Magister Artium - MA / The purpose of this study was two-fold: firstly, to do a multimodal analysis of the multilingual signage, advertisements and graffiti present on different surfaces in the main business hub of a multicultural community called Wesbank, situated in the Eastern Metropole of the city of Cape Town. Signage of this nature, taken together, constitute the „linguistic landscape‟ (Gorter, 2006) of a particular space. My analysis of the signage included interviews with a number of the producers of these signs which reveal why their signs are constructed in particular ways with particular languages. Secondly, I interviewed 20 mature women from the community in order to determine their level of understanding of these signs as well as whether the linguistic landscape of the township had an impact on their levels of literacy. The existing literacy levels of the women being surveyed as well as those of the producers of the signs were also taken into account.My main analytical tools were Multimodal Discourse Analysis (Kress, 2003),applied to the signage, and a Critical Discourse style of Analysis (Willig, 1999;Pienaar and Becker, 2007), applied to the focus group and individual analysis.Basic quantitative analysis was also applied to the quantifiable questionnaire data.The overriding motivation for the study was to determine the strategies used by the women to make sense of their linguistic landscape and to examine whether there was any transportation of literacy from the signage to these women so that they could function more effectively and agentively in their own environment. This study formed part of a larger NRF-funded research project entitled Township women’s discourses and literacy resources, led by my supervisor, Prof. C. Dyers.The study revealed the interesting finding that the majority of the vendors in Wesbank, especially in terms of house shops, hairdressers and fruit and vegetable stalls, are foreigners from other parts of Africa, who rely on English as a lingua franca to advertise their wares. The signage makers had clearly put some thought into the language skills of their multilingual target market in this township, and did their best to communicate with their potential customers through the complete visual image of their signs. The overall quality of the codes displayed on the signage also revealed much about the literacy levels in the township as well as language as a local practice (Pennycook 2010). While English predominated on the signs, at times one also found the addition of Afrikaans (especially in the case of religious signage) and isiXhosa (as in one very prominent advertisement by a dentist).The study further established that the female respondents in my study, as a result of their different literacy levels, made use of both images and codes on an item of signage to interpret the message conveyed successfully. Signage without accompanying images were often ignored, or interpreted with the help of others or by using one comprehensible word to work out the rest of the sign. As has been shown by another study in the larger research project, these women displayed creativity in making sense of their linguistic landscape. The study further revealed that, as a result of frequent exposure to some words and expressions in the linguistic landscape, some of the women had become familiar with these terms and had thereby expanded their degree of text literacy. In this way, the study has contributed to our understanding of the notion of portable literacy as explored by Dyers and Slemming (2011, forthcoming).

No description available.

Magister Educationis - MEd / Literacy development in South African higher education is increasingly challenged by several issues in dialogue and language of tuition. Despite the widening of access to South African universities, research shows that a large majority of entry-level university students are still failing in their chosen programme of studies. Almost all universities in the democratic South Africa incorporate academic development programs in first-year modules as an awareness raising attempt to scaffold novice students into the vocabulary of their various disciplines. However, these development programs sometimes fail to address the language needs of some of the students who have had more than seven years of schooling in their first languages (IsiXhosa and Afrikaans). My study seeks to explore how additional language IsiXhosa and Afrikaans students understand and construct written knowledge in one literacy development course using English medium of instruction. I further explore lecturers’ and tutors’ perspectives of the demand of sounding a scholarly voice in academic writing by entry-level students in their new roles as scholars in the University of the Western Cape (UWC).Literature indicated gaps when it comes to students’ and lectures’ perceptions on the construction of voice in academic writing in a language that the students are not comfortable in.