Lectures in transition : a study of communicative practices in the humanities in a South African university
Doctoral Thesis
2009
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University of Cape Town
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The lecture is usually seen as an anachronism, out of step with contemporary trends in student learning and communication. However it remains a defining space in higher education, particularly in the first year experience. This study is a re-description of the lecture; it explores the tensions and silences that underlie what lectures do and mean in the lives of participants (both students with diverse language and educational histories, and their lecturers) in the humanities in a time of intense sociopolitical transition in a space envisaged as a contact zone, characterized by asymmetrical relations of power. It asks how participants engage with the communicative practices in and around lectures. Conceptually the study is rooted in the academic literacies field within the New Literacy Studies with its interest in the politics of student access to valued textual practices. The study draws from the following complementary traditions: a) theories of dialogic co-presence (Bakhtin, Goffman) that foreground how all communication is oriented to ‘the other’; b) social semiotics (Kress and van Leeuwen) with its emphasis on participants’ ‘interest’ – what social agents do, and how they make do, with available resources for meaning that include image, gaze and gesture, as well as spoken and written language; c) ritualization theory (Bell, McLaren), and how bodies mediate in practices.
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Includes abstract.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 217-226).
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Thesen, L. 2009. Lectures in transition : a study of communicative practices in the humanities in a South African university. University of Cape Town.