This study documents and analyses the first established record of taxi hand signs
and their respective destinations in South Africa. It demonstrates how taxi hand
signification developed into a useful language over time, out of a desperate need
for transport amongst black, multi-cultural and multi-lingual people living in
South Africa. Its central objective is to recognise taxi hand signs as metaphors for
processes of history in pre- and post-apartheid South Africa. This is a study that
crosses disciplinary boundaries and marries fine art, anthropology and philosophy
in exploring new meanings and understandings of taxi hand signs. In this way, it
demonstrates the extent to which art informs other disciplines in extraordinary
ways, adding to the value of inter-disciplinary research.
The research indicates that taxi signs are part of an evolving, well-functioning,
gestural language for sighted commuters. It goes further to probe the question of
how blind commuters might have access to the signs, thereby enhancing their
independence and movement. The study responds to this question through the
design of a new, tactile shape-language of taxi hand signs for blind people.
Qualitative research techniques were employed throughout the three phases of the
research, namely: preliminary research, research design, and social and fine art
responses. The methodologies utilised in the phases were sampling, semistructured
interviews and participant observation. These were each employed at
specific times to meet specific needs of different phases. I, along with some coresearchers,
applied these in taxi ranks, taxi associations and on the streets of
Gauteng. The methods used attest to the fact that when new knowledge was
sought with key informants in the taxi industry, the different methodologies could
be used to verify and corroborate the informants’ information, which in turn
become the keystones of knowledge distribution in the thesis. With limited
documentation on the emergence of taxi hand signs in the industry, the informants
furnished unexplored background information, which I have interpreted in my
artworks, films, books, stamps, maps and the blind shape-language.
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The anthropological research also probed the function of signification through
literary criticism. This involved an investigation of the components of the process
of signification into its constituent parts in order to conceptualise and
contextualise taxi hand signing and its particular relations and narrative content
within the greater field of gestural signification.
The response of art and artists to anthropological, historical and current
approaches was also explored, again to provide context to my art that evolved out
of the research. These involved conceptual and graphic art interpretations probing
movement, time, space and signification, which led to an art exhibition at the Wits
Art Museum (henceforth referred to as WAM) from 12 June to 14 July 2013.
Taxi hand signs are continually evolving as new destinations and narratives arise.
Together with the art responses document, this thesis records and promotes the
established body of the current taxi hand signs, destinations and narratives, for
both sighted and blind people, by providing written, visual and sensory evidence
of a cultural phenomenon that was previously uncharted.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:wits/oai:wiredspace.wits.ac.za:10539/14982 |
| Date | 23 July 2014 |
| Creators | Woolf, Susan Eve |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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