M.A. (Afrikaans) / Guided by contemporary Afrikaans media, with specific reference to print 'media and television, this study aims to look at certain possible changes to one of the varieties of Afrikaans, known as Standard Afrikaans. Furthermore, it takes a historic and future glance at respectively the origin as well as possible restandardisation of this variety. While language manuals are consulted in the first instance, recent internet and newspaper articles reflect the current attitude of various coloured academics, journalists and writers toward a possible new standard that includes those varieties of Afrikaans that used to be stigmatized. Willemse (2011) suggests that a purposeful process of inclusion and expansion of Standard Afrikaans is necessary for the sake of the legitimisation by the greater majority of Afrikaans speakers. This study makes various suggestions to enrich this variety, without necessarily changing its level of formality. While the dissertation does not over-emphasise the sociopolitical influences on Standard Afrikaans, it does become obvious that politics and skin colour played a significant role in the establishment of written Afrikaans - especially Standard Afrikaans. In the past, the voice of coloured Afrikaans speakers was mostly absent in the standardisation process. Today, however, there are talks of closer cooperation between all of the relevant parties in the possible restandardisation process of Afrikaans. One of the most prominent role players in the standardisation, with specific reference to the possible future restandardisation of Afrikaans, is the media. This study, in other words, wants to look at the role contemporary Afrikaans can play in the restandardisation of Afrikaans by harmonizing different varieties.

This paper explores the discourses of emigration in a South African daily newspaper from 1988 to 2001, and discusses the implications of these discourses on the way in which emigration is constructed within South African society In this paper, Potter and Wetherell 's (1987) approach to discourse analysis is utilized. It makes use of interpretative repertoires, to explore the functions and consequences of the discourses. The discursive framework thereby reveals the different subject positions related to nationalism, race and class. It is argued that economics and notions of culture and social class, do more than provide a useful medium through which the phenomenon of emigration can be understood. They also support the affirmations of certain groups of people above others, by claiming that emigration is unpatriotic and disloyal. This paper concludes by identifying the negative connotations of media discourses in the construction of emigration and acknowledges that many alternate constructions are silenced in this matter.

The Maintenance and Revival of isiXhosa print media in South Africa has been left to conglomerate media companies that do not have editorial policies that address their development. These companies are preserving isiXhosa the language they invest in isiXhosa print media to make money of the language. The development of the language is not catered for they are in the business of copies of magazines and newspapers. However, they should not be faulted for this area of indigenous language print media has long been neglected by black business men. From the history of African language print media it shows that this media is sustainably profitable if one is to look at purely the side of media. Ilanga lase Natal is testament to that it is now 116 years the paper has been in print it change ownership several times but that did not prompt the paper to cease existing. This is what unfortunately has happened to isiXhosa newspapers that were famous and influential in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It seems that once they got into the exchange of ownership conflict would ensue this is probably because they were very influential politically and everybody was interested in controlling its audience. Now isiXhosa finds itself to be at the mercy of media companies that are English and Afrikaans language oriented and inclined whose policies only recognize the two languages. In this situation isiXhosa finds itself to be and becomes an artificial minority language in these institutions. This is not to say that if maybe a BEE consortium was to invest in the isiXhosa language print media they were not going to be profit and sales oriented. However, they would be inclined in paying attention to the development of language rather language preservation. The reference to BEE business men in the paper should be understood in relation to the state abandonment and spectacular stagnation of isiXhosa print media and therefor the language of isiXhosa. / NG (2020)

Thesis (MA (African Languages))--Stellenbosch University, 2008. / This study invesitgates a selection of hard news articles in isiZulu that were published in the newspaper Ilanga within the framework of genre theory. The study invokes in particular the orbital structure approach to the organisation of the structure of hard news articles advanced by White (1997) in analysing the isiZulu articles. Hard news reports are typically associated with eruptive violence, reversals of fortune and socially significant breaches of the moral order. Hard news reports are distinguished in terms of two types, namely those reports which are primarily grounded in a material event such as an accident, natural disaster, riot, or terrorist attack, and those reports grounded in a communicative event such as a speech, interview, or press release. The research in this study presents an analysis of four articles in isiZulu of each of these two types. The analysis of the isiZulu articles presents support for White’s view that both types of hard news reports exhibit the same generic structure, a mode of textual organisation unique to mass media which gives hard news its textual distinctiveness. Both types hard news reports achieve their informational and rhetorical objectives through a non-linear, orbital structure in which dependent ‘satelites’ elaborate, explain, contextualize and appraise a textually dominant nucleus.

M.Ed. / Please refer to full text to view abstract

This treatise is a study of media-related articles in the South African press February 1996 to April 1999. Through a discourse analysis approach, the treatise identifies two main discourses relating to normative press models: the watchdog discourse and the nation-building discourse. It is argued that the watchdog discourse largely resembles classical libertarian press ideals, while the nation-building discourse resembles social responsibility ideals. The analysis contains numerous examples of the tensions between the government and the newspaper industry in terms of normative press models. Finally, the treatise challenges the assumed tensions that exist between nation-building and watchdog discourses, and suggests communitarianism as an ideology which upholds the crucial interests of both the press and the government. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Durban, 2001.

The International, as the weekly newspaper of the International Socialist League, articulated from 1915 to 1919 an ideology which stood opposed both to organised labour and nationalist movements in South Africa. This situation reflected significant historical struggles during this period, which constitutes essential background to the discourse of the International. The International's writers opposed the institution of trade unionism in the labour movement because it was fragmented on the lines of skill and race. They opposed both the National Party and the South African Native National Congress because they advocated racial (and national) rather than working class interests. Instead, these writers, according to their international socialist paradigm, advocated a working class united irrespective of race and skill at the level of industry. To analyse these ideological positions, discourse analysis provides a fruitful method for locating its dynamics in relation to other positions and extra-ideological (contextual) practices: The International's writers g~nerated a socialist position against racism by engaging in an ideological struggle in discourse. They articulated their anti-racist position from international socialism's critique of the 'languages' of both militarism and trade unionism in the discourse of labour. Within the discourse of militarism, the working class was signified as divided between hostile nations. These writers applied this as a metaphor to the division of the local labour movement and criticised the latter accordingly. In their view, just as workers were divided between the nations (nationalism), so they were divided within the nation (racism) in South Africa. One context cohered with the other, and both agreed with imperatives of international capitalism. This was fundamentally opposed to the principles of international socialism which characterised the International's discourse. Within the dominant discourse oflabour, workers were signified as divided between different trade unions on the basis of skills. Furthermore, in the South African context, trade unions organised only white workers, and ignored the far larger proportion of black labour. In this context, the International advocated industrial unionism, and criticised the narrow base of the white trade unions for fragmenting and weakening the working class in South African. The International's writers were thus led by the discourse of international socialism to a new discourse, whereby not white workers alone, but a racially-united working class movement would be the key to a socialist future in South Africa. Their struggle entailed a bid in and over discourse to rearticulate the sign of the 'native worker' within their own discourse as the dominant discourse type. Underpinning their struggle was a fundamental opposition to capitalist class relations.

This thesis reports on the bonds that unify imagined communities (Anderson 1983) that are created in 40 letters prominently displayed on the opinions pages of the Daily Sun, a popular tabloid, and The Times, a daily offshoot of the mainstream national Sunday Times. An APPRAISAL analysis of these letters reveals how the imagined communities attempt to align their audiences around distinctive couplings of interpersonal and ideational meaning. Such couplings represent the bonds around which community identities are co-constructed through affiliation and are evidence of the shared feelings that unite the communities of readership. Inferences drawn from this APPRAISAL information allow for a comparison of the natures of the two communities in terms of how they view their agency and group cohesion. Central to the analysis and interpretation of the data is the letters’ evaluative prosody, traced in order to determine the polarity of readers’ stances over four weeks. Asymmetrical prosodies are construed as pointing to the validity of ‘linguistic ventriloquism’, a term whose definition is refined and used as a diagnostic for whether the newspapers use their readers’ letters to promote their own stances on controversial matters. Principal findings show that both communities affiliate around the value of education, and dissatisfaction with the country’s political leaders, however The Times’ readers are more individualistic than the Daily Sun’s community members, who are concerned with the wellbeing of the group. The analysis highlights limitations to the application of the APPRAISAL framework, the value of subjectivity in the analytical process, and adds a new dimension to South African media studies, as it provides linguistic insights into the construction of imagined communities of newspaper readership.