Browsing by Department "School of Languages and Literatures"

Now showing 1 - 20 of 98
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    A commentary on book 6 of Achilles Tatius Leucippe and Clitophon
    (2022) Bentel, Berenice; Chandler, Clive
    Achilles Tatius' novel, Leucippe and Clitophon (2nd c. CE), is a product of the literary experimentation in prose fiction during the Greek intellectual renaissance under the Roman Empire known as the Second Sophistic. For all appearances, the story follows the usual narrative course of the ancient Greek erotic adventure novels: boy meets girl, love occurs at first sight, and Fate attempts to keep them apart, triggering an odyssey of bizarre escapades and daring exploits that reaches its inevitable happy conclusion with their reunion and marriage. Achilles Tatius, however, takes each of these tropes far beyond their usual scope, displaying a ludic (and at times ludicrous) panache for defying the genre. This thesis provides the first extensive literary and philological commentary devoted exclusively to the Sixth Book of the novel. I examine both Achilles' unconventional approach to genre and storytelling, and his play on prevailing theories of psychology, physiology, and philosophy to enrich and enliven his narrative.
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    A critical analysis of the strategies of terminology creation in the context of a multilingual Namibia: the case of ruManyo
    (2023) Mukoya, Angelika Mate; Possa-Mogoera, Rethabile
    This study examines the strategies used to develop terms in the language ruManyo. The study focuses on existing strategies used by language practitioners to construct analogous key-concept terms in ruManyo for application in various fields. The sample was taken through purposive sampling, and the investigation was carried out in Namibia's Kavango East region, in domains such as education, radio, agriculture, law, hospital, bank, and church. The data for this report was collected using a case study, which included document analysis, participant observations and interviews with ruManyo language practitioners. The findings of the study indicate that ruManyo language practitioners lack the skills and information needed to build appropriate terminology solutions for specific domains. Furthermore, it appears that linguistic competence is not guiding word-generation efforts in certain disciplines. The study re-evaluated the evolution of multilingual word-generation techniques, and discovered that specific domains necessitate specific tactics, based on the context in which terms are employed. Based on the findings of this study, the recommendation is to design unambiguous wordinvention strategies for specific domains that are consistent with the terminology development guidelines for indigenous African languages. Due to the deficiencies in African indigenous language terminologies highlighted in this study, the researcher proposes the creation of a manual for ruManyo, detailing each method for application in different domains.
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    A Secretary's Wife
    (2022) Owen, Catherine; Coovadia, Imraan
    A Secretary's Wife is a work of historical fiction that draws from real events and people who emerge from the journals and letters of Lady Anne Barnard while she was in the Cape for the period 1797–1802. Lady Anne Lindsay marries a younger man without title or fortune. When he lands a position as secretary to the governor of the Cape, she is determined to go with him. They make the journey on a crowded ship to Cape Town and, on arrival, find the Cape expensive and turbulent. Narrow-minded people complain incessantly, slavery and hangings are rife, and shortages of wood, flour and other commodities are commonplace. Life improves after they are offered accommodation in the abandoned old Government House at the castle. They set up a home and try to understand the culture, the people around them and each other. Barnard begins to thrive leaving Anne to her own devices. At the same time, she come to terms with being barren within the context of her society. The use of a country cottage called Paradise helps the Barnards reconnect, but when Lady Anne suspects Barnard's infidelity with a slave woman and, due to ill health, the governor leaves the Cape, life can never be the same again. In writing this work, I have attempted to reimagine Lady Anne Barnard's life, in particular the personal aspects to which she may have made fleeting references, otherwise it is entirely fictional.
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    A Soft Landing
    (2021) Mushwana, Wisani; Boswell, Barbara-Anne
    For Andzani, home has always been a trigger for unpleasant memories, it has become the site for anxiety. After completing his Accounting Degree at the University of Cape Town and securing employment after, Andzani minimizes his visits back home to evade those memories home allows to seep through and confront him. He fears what this remembering will do to him, undo in him. Then one morning he receives a phone call from his uncle, Sontaga, to come fetch his mother, Violet, and take her to a mental institution because her mental health is deteriorating. As if given a last chance, on this trip, long-repressed memories flood his head and dull his days in order to force him to pay attention to them, digest them. In Dorothy L. Pennington conceptualisation of memory as a helix, she states that “the past is an indispensable part of the present which participates in it, enlightens it, and gives it meaning.” Taking this assertion as a point of departure, ‘A Soft Landing' is a novel that explores the implications of a past not decisively dealt with. The novel explores how the past gives meaning to present identities and how new identity formations are negotiated within the eye of the past participating in the present.
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    Abjection in the novels of Marlene Van Niekerk
    (2013) Crous, Matthys Lourens; Higgins, John
    In this thesis, three of Marlene van Niekerk's novels, translated from Afrikaans into English, are examined, with the focus on the representation of abjection in the texts under discussion.The theoretical point of departure of this study is Julia Kristeva's essay Powers of horror (1982), which addresses, in particular, the notion of abjection and how certain abject elements play a pivotal role in people's everyday lives. From a psychoanalytic perspective, abjection is viewed as a revolt against the mother and foregrounds particularly the influence of the maternal body over the subject. In this instance, the subject desires liberation from the hold of the maternal and seeks to subject the mother to abjection. Bodily fluids seeping out of the body, diseases, viruses, dirt and death (and in particular the corpse) are all elements that are encompassed in the concept of abjection. Manifestations of abjection in the form of the abject mother, abject spaces, abject bodies and the link between abjection and filth are comparatively analysed in the three texts. The thesis concludes by showing that Van Niekerk deliberately inscribes elements of the abject into her texts so as to transgress and deconstruct the norms associated with a patriarchal and racist society in South Africa. Van Niekerk also undermines the norms that underpin such a society: religious indoctrination, gender oppression and Othering. By writing her novel Triomf (1999) in a demotic register, Van Niekerk furthermore questions the prevalent assumptions about what is deemed proper language for writing a novel. Writing, for her, thus serves the purposes of abjecting, of rejecting the impositions of the symbolic order. Following the publication of her first collection of short stories, Die Vrou wat haar verkyker vergeet het [The woman who forgot her binoculars] in 1992, there was general consensus that the baroque nature of the language resulted in reader resistance to the text. This explains why she decided to write her first novel in the crude and obscene language of a low-class family, the Benades of Triomf.
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    African historical religions and Africana spirituality in the Caribbean literature: an analysis of Afro-Caribbean philosophical archetypes in contemporary Caribbean literature using Ifá philosophy as a signifying system
    (2019) De La Cruz, Garcia Katia; Corwin, Jay; Martínez-Ruíz, Bárbaro
    This research analyses the presence of Afro-Caribbean philosophical archetypes in Caribbean literature as fundamental elements in the identity formation and racial dynamics of African descendants in the Caribbean. The main focus is on the spiritual component of African historical religions and Africana spirituality. The spiritual component, considering its level of transcendence in the human being, is essential in the formation of the identity since it allows the creation of moral archetypes that can be recognized in literary creations. The research uses Ifá philosophy, Yoruba mythology, and Africana religions, as signifying systems. The research considers the religious foundations of the Ewe-Fon, Kongo and especially, Yoruba traditions, with a focus on the Yoruba Oracle as Literary Corpus as well as the basis for the analysis of the following novels: Of Love and other Demons by Gabriel García Márquez, Changó, the biggest badass by Manuel Zapata Olivella, Ecué Yamba Ó by Alejo Carpentier, The red of his shadow by Mayra Montero and Gabriela, clove and cinnamon by Jorge Amado. This project establishes that the moral philosophy, implicit in the divinatory system of the Yoruba people, known as Ifá, can be traced through the literary structures of Caribbean literature and can be used as a reference for transnational identity in the Caribbean.
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    'Akuchanywa apha please' No peeing here please: The language of signage in Cape Town
    (2010) Dowling, Tessa
    This article examines the language used on both formal and informal signage in Cape Town. Using the theory of geosemiotics with examples of actual signage, I discuss the semantic vulnerability of language when a sign is used outside its intended context; the sociolinguistic implications of poor translations; the phenomenon of monolingual and bilingual signage as opposed to trilingual signage; the symbolic hegemony of English and Afrikaans over Xhosa; and the lessons that can be learnt from language used on informal township signs and advertisements.
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    The alignment between curriculum objectives and assessment of IsiXhosa at Grade 12 level
    (2015) Poni, Zukiswa; Smouse, Mantoa
    In the new South Africa (after 1994), the education system required an extensive overhaul to ensure that the inequalities of the past do not continue to dominate the education system. As a result, a number of debates took place and in 1998 a new educational model that is competency based was introduced (Taylor & Vinjevold, 1999). The main aim of this change was to ensure that the curriculum would integrate academic and vocational skills. The other aims was to ensure that the new education system represent a complete opposite of the apartheid education system. Language, being central to education, is one of the areas that were totally overhauled. It is therefore the aim of this study, to investigate whether the expectations of the National Curriculum Statement (NCS), articulated through curriculum objectives and expected outcomes, are fulfilled at grade 12 level, with a particular focus on isiXhosa language as a Home language. This study aims to investigate the alignment between curriculum objectives and assessment through an interrogation of the curriculum aims and assessment tools.
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    An analysis of the lyrics of the top 10 African language pop songs on Umhlobo Wenene in 2016
    (2019) Gobodwana, Anele; Dowling, Tessa; Deyi, Somikazi
    In this dissertation I critically analyse the lyrics of the top 10 songs (sung in an indigenous African language) aired on uMhlobo weNene (the national broadcast station for the Xhosa language) during 2016. Before the analysis of the songs I discuss various academic works on pop lyrics generally – ranging from a discussion of the production of aesthetic difference, lyrics in global and local settings, the changing lexicon of pop lyrics over the years, the purpose of lyrics to teenagers and the issue of translation and code switching in the lyrics of bilingual popular songs. In the main body of the thesis I apply a thematic and detailed linguistic analysis of the top 10 songs after which I provide an analysis of interviews conducted with Xhosa-speaking teenagers with regard to their linguistic preferences as applicable to contemporary lyrics. The conclusion includes a summary of the dominant themes of the lyrics studied and a focus on what the grammar of the songs (e.g. the predominance of the first person pronoun in all of the lyrics) can tell us about the increasingly individualistic nature of contemporary lyrics sung in African languages.
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    An examination of how loanwords in a corpus of spoken and written contemporary isiXhosa are incorporated into the noun class system of isiXhosa
    (2019) Futuse, Liziwe; Dowling, Tessa; Deyi, Somikazi
    Lexical change is a natural phenomenon for all of the world’s languages. This change can be viewed in terms of language contact, technological innovation and the adoption of new lifestyles. Whereas in the past isiXhosa, a Nguni language spoken in South Africa, borrowed words from both English and Afrikaans, contemporary speakers rely more on the English lexicon, with some previous adoptions from Afrikaans being replaced by those from English. This study focusses specifically on contemporary borrowed, or loanword nouns in isiXhosa which are brought into the noun class system of the language via a number of different noun class prefixes. The focus of this study is to understand whether there are any features or properties, whether morphological or semantic, that predispose loanword nouns to fall into a particular noun class. In this thesis I therefore analyse a corpus of new data from conversations and interviews I conducted with contemporary isiXhosa-speakers, as well as from written translation activities. After providing a general background to the semantic content of isiXhosa noun classes, I analyse the new data and try to make some conclusions as to which noun class prefix is the most productive for loanwords, as well as to argue the existence of a significant amount of variation in terms of prefixes used. The study concludes that most loanword nouns are assigned to Noun Class 9, but some speakers also use Noun Classes 1a, 5 and 7 as alternatives for Class 9 under certain morphological and semantic conditions. Even Noun Class 3 was found to contain a number of loanword nouns, suggesting that speakers are able to manipulate the grammar of isiXhosa, and particularly its noun class system, to accommodate words from other languages.
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    Analysis of language policy implementation in basic education
    (2021) Maponopono, Naledi; Deyi, Somikazi
    The South African society is plagued with a “complex and fascinating landscape of multilingualism that comprises of eleven official languages post the apartheid era” (Pluddeman et al, 2004: 13-14). The apartheid era saw only “English and Afrikaans recognised as languages of official status across the nation even though indigenous languages existed in the country” (Cakata & Segalo, 2017). The post-apartheid era which commenced in 1994 have been years in which extensive political negotiation and transition have been occurring which have encompassed establishing constitutional rights for indigenous languages in the South African dispensation. This included the choice for “indigenous languages to uses as languages of learning and teaching (LoLT) and being offered as subjects at schools” (Pluddeman et al, 2004: 13, 14). The aim of this study is to focus on language policy implementation practices in basic education with particular reference to a primary school in Western Cape, City of Cape Town as a case study. It seeks to observe the language practices within the school in order to assess the various patterns of implementation and contribute to scholarly debate pertaining to policy implementation across disciplines. The study will analyse the language policy planning in South Africa at large using Ruiz's (1984) three orientations to language planning: language as a problem, language as a resource and language as a right. It seeks to observe the language practices within the school in order to assess the various patterns of implementation and contribute to scholarly debate pertaining to policy implementation across disciplines. The findings of this study aim to assist language planners in developing a language policy framework in basic education which includes strong monitoring and evaluation systems to alleviate problems at the implementation stage of language policies.
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    An analysis of the causes and consequences of conflict and violence in A.C. Jordan's The Wrath of the Ancestors and R.L. Peteni's Hill of Fools
    (2017) Yola, Ziyanda; Possa-Mosothoane, Rethabile
    South Africa is one of the countries with high rates of violence in the world. The beginning of high rates of conflict and violence in South Africa can be traced as far back as the 17th century. During this era seven wars were fought in this country. The apartheid that was later experienced in South Africa also contributed to South Africa's high rates of violence. Violence is still a prominent issue in this country. In 2012 violence occurred in Lonmin Platinum mine in Marikana and in 2015 foreign nationals also experienced violence in South Africa. Morovere, the rates of violence against women and children remain high even after all the awareness and efforts to reduce it. This thesis deals with the causes of conflict and violence in South Africa particularly and in Africa in general. This is done by analyzing The wrath of the ancestors by A.C Jordan and Hill of fools by R.L Peteni as a case study. The two selected novels are going to be analysed using quantitative research methodology. The study maintains that literature is a reflection of reality and therefore the conflict and violence in the two novels is treated as a true reflection of conflict and violence in South Africa.
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    And ever shall be? A model for teaching French as a foreign language in South African tertiary institutions
    (2008) Everson, Vanessa Marguerite; Wardle, David
    The assumption underpinning the thesis is that the current teaching of French at South African universities caters imperfectly for learner needs and fails to reflect pedagogical practice and learning theories appropriate to the twenty-first century. Firstly, so as to contextualise that teaching, the Western European legacy of secondand foreign-language teaching is examined briefly from earliest times to the latter part of the twentieth century. Particular attention is given to changes in practice and learning theories over time with the aim of understanding the roots of the teaching of French while detecting possible lasting influences on that teaching. Secondly, current practice (curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment) at fourteen South African universities offering undergraduate courses in French is analysed critically against the backdrop of more recent learning theories; these are found to have little resonance in current practice. The analysis informs the model which is then proposed for the teaching of tertiary-level French at South African institutions. The starting point for the model is the acknowledgement that in South Africa French is a foreign language and must be taught as such. Consideration is given to the learning environment, as well as to ideology and constraints which exert influence on the teaching of French. With the proposed model a certain concept of language, society and learning/teaching strategies is advocated, while the roles of the learner, teacher, didactic material, and the mother tongue are clearly positioned within that concept. The model proposes a pedagogy and curriculum, which are learner-centred, taskarticulated and outcomes-based and which are anchored in constructivism and democratising ideology. Finally, reasons are given as to why the adoption of such a model would add value to the teaching of French at South African universities.
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    Art as craft and politics : the literature of Mongane Wally Serote
    (2000) Mashigoane, Mncedisi Siseko; Visser, N W; Brink, Andre
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    Bad luck chicken
    (2023) Baker, Naomi; Coovadia, Imraan
    He is standing holding a handwritten sign with her name, his flannel shirt tight around the shoulders and unbuttoned at the neck, his blond hair flattened by an invisible cap. Tia wishes she had gone to the bathroom beforehand, brushed her hair, put eye drops in, perhaps lined her lashes with mascara. She can only guess what she looks like after two long-haul flights and eight hours in a fluorescent terminal in Abu Dhabi. Tia knows his name already. Caleb. It is in the slim volunteer packet, which she has read again and again, as if memorizing the words will make her more certain about her decision to travel across the world. It is odd—he is holding her name like he owns her, but he does not know who she is. He glances at the people and their bags hopefully. She could walk right past him. Perhaps she should. Already, through the haze of her fatigue, she feels a jolt of attraction, a sense of a storyline unspooling between them, an inevitability she could avoid by walking past him.
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    Bantu and Nilotic children' s singing games : a comparative study of their value communication
    (2009) Weche, Michael Oyoo; Nyamende, Abner
    This study is based on the premise that Luo and Luhya children's singing games are creative works that subtly reflect the aesthetics of the two communities. The aim is to critically examine how the performance of the singing games and their texts reflect the aspirations, norms and values of the macro cultures of the two Nilotic and Bantu communities respectively. The sampled singing games include those done in the traditional setting, sung in vernacular and those that are taken from the urban or cosmopolitan settings.
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    Battle narrative in Virgil and Ovid
    (2015) Christie, Camilla Rose; Chandler, Clive
    The intent of this thesis is to examine the stylistics of Latin epic narrative as used to narrate and describe extended battle sequences, and to explore the way in which Latin authors working during the Augustan Era engaged with Homeric techniques of oral narrative while composing written epic. A total of six extended battle sequences from the Aeneid of Virgil and the Metamorphoses of Ovid are examined and analysed with regard to their use of word order, simile, catalogue, and other such stylistic features. The overall aim is to consider Ovid’s literary debt to his immediate epic predecessor Virgil, together with the debt of both poets to Ancient Greek epic narrative, in such a way as to explore the various techniques of generic allusivity practised by both poets on a stylistic level. The first chapter provides a brief overview of Homeric technique, defines the distinction between primary and secondary epic, and serves as an introduction to Virgilian and Ovidian concerns. The second chapter contains analysis of Virgil’s Aeneid. Battle sequences from Book 2, Book 9, and Book 10 are examined and discussed from a stylistic perspective, and the extent to which Virgil has drawn on and reformulated Homeric epic technique is established. Book 2 is examined for the manner in which it engages with and reconstructs Homeric ideals of heroism. Book 9, constituting as it does the first instance within the second half of the Aeneid of Homeric battle narrative, is analysed as a transitional episode, and its motifs of literary and cultural inheritance discussed. Book 10 provides an extended example of Homeric battle narrative. The third chapter engages with Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Extracts of notably epic tone from Book 5, Book 8, Book 12 are discussed in such a way as to highlight their literary allusivity, and in particular their contrast with the Virgilian model of adapting epic technique. Book 5 is examined as an introductory example of extended Ovidian battle narrative. The analysis of Book 8 demonstrates how epic narrative may be enriched by the intrusion of alternate poetic genres. Book 12 is contrasted with Book 2 of the Aeneid, and the manner in which it, too, engages with Homeric ideals of heroism, is discussed. The thesis concludes that while both poets utilised and expanded upon specific stylistic elements of Greek epic narrative, they did so in a notably different fashion. Ovid contrasts sharply with his predecessor Virgil and often incorporates elements of alternate genres in order to establish his own allusive technique.
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    Benjamin Farrington: Cape Town and the Shaping of a Public Intellectual
    (2010) Atkinson, John
    Benjamin Farrington, an Irish Protestant, joined the University of Cape Town, Classics Department in 1920, and wrote articles for De Burger to win Afrikaner support for Sinn Fein and the Irish Republic. He was credited with initiating a conference in Paris in 1922, to launch the Irish World Organisation. Disillusioned by its stillbirth he effectively shut down the Irish Republican Association of South Africa and its newspaper, The Republic, which he had founded and edited. Prominent in the circle of Ruth Schechter, whom he later married, he engaged with the likes of Hogben and Bodmer. Disengaged from active politics by mid-1922, he emerged as a public intellectual in Marxist and Leninist/Trotskyist groupings. Inspired by Karl Marx's thesis on the Epicurean theory of atomism, he campaigned against determinism, and in particular against fundamentalist and superstitious attacks on experimental science. Thus in the classical context he presented Socrates' mix of disembodied mathematics, ethics and theology as a major block to Greek physical science long before Christianity. Farrington's scientific humanism is evidenced in his translations of the Africana texts of Ten Rhyne and Grevenbroek, and in his work on Vesalius. At UCT he advanced Classics from primarily language study to the broader study of history, science and culture. He could be labelled a public intellectual by virtue of his lectures to groups in the community, articles and reviews in the press, and publications for a general readership. But he took his model rather from Epicurus.
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    Bin collection day and other stressful events
    (2023) Tennant, Megan; Coovadia, Imraan
    Elizabeth is six when the ANC wins the first democratic elections in South Africa. While most of the country celebrates freedom, the only difference she notices is the growing intensity of her fears. Fear remains a faithful companion to Elizabeth as she grows up. She fears the rubbish trucks in her childhood, the Valentine's Dance in high school, and the remote possibility of passing out in a gutter somewhere in her first year of university. The short stories in this collection feature a similar (and often contradictory) version of the protagonist, from Elizabeth's childhood in eastern Johannesburg to her early adult years in an uptight Cape Town neighbourhood. Each story deals with a dilemma unique to each life stage and should be read in isolation. But its neighbours in the collection reveal the recurring tensions that influence an identity. In Elizabeth's case, these include the role of her religion, her repressed racism, and the bizarre benefits of gross inequality. All of these contribute to her urge, as a white girl in post-apartheid South Africa, to peer across from her and check if she should be somewhere, or someone, else.
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    Blikhoek
    (2009) Botha, Fourie
    This study examines aspects of the creative writing process and some literary statements in Joan Hambidge's novel Kladboek (2008). The possible guidance for beginner-poets present in the metafictional Kladboek is examined with reference to Fourie Botha's collection of poetry titled Blikhoek (included), which came about during work done for a Creative Writing Masters degree from the University of Cape Town