This dissertation explores how written discourses of Drum editors' and readers' letters
linguistically construct social identities of the Drum audience, and how this identity
construction is intimately linked with socio-historical, socio-cultural and socio-political
contexts in which Drum appears in 1951 and 2001. Basically, this study is a contrastive
analysis of the audience construction at two significant dates in the life of a South African
publication, Drum magazine: March 1951, when the magazine was first published, and 7 June
2001, fifty years later when the magazine is read in a vastly changed socio-politico-cultural
context.
Data collection was based on the "Readers' Page" in two copies of Drum, one published in
March 1951 and the other in 7 June 2001. In each copy of the magazine, the focus is on the
editor's letter which asks for the readers' contributions and gives recommendations on the
types of letters he is hoping to attract, and one reader's letter from each of the same chosen
copies of Drum which the editor publishes. The cover pages of both copies of Drum are used
to investigate whether they foreground or reinforce the images of Drum readers. Another set
of data comes from an unstructured interview of the current Drum magazine editor.
Findings in this study indicate that the ideal Drum audience in 1951 is the African middle
class scholar who is a good writer, whereas in 2001, good quality writing is compromised for
an advertising community of consumers. In addition, the black educated, urban Drum
audience in 1951 see themselves as having power to resist the education system which is
characterised by racial segregation. In 2001, the young people regard the attainment of higher
education in institutions of higher learning as valuable for black economic empowerment.
Educators/therefore, need to teach learners the skills of reading a text critically, so that the
learners are able to identify ways in which language choices channel their interpretation, and
also the ways in which texts are linked to their socio-historical contexts. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Durban, 2002.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:ukzn/oai:http://researchspace.ukzn.ac.za:10413/4788 |
| Date | January 2002 |
| Creators | Msibi, Phindile Muriel. |
| Contributors | Geslin, Nicole., Kamwangamalu, Nkonko M. |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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