Browsing by Subject "English"
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- ItemOpen AccessAn analysis and criticism of the English series of the South African "individual intelligence scale" (Provisional Tests-1925)(1930) Rees-Davies, Gladys MatildaIn December, 1924, at the Annual Congress Meeting of the Suid Afrikaanse Onderwysers Unie a paper was read by Dr. H. Cruse on "Intelligence Tests and their applications to the Schools". As a result of this paper it was decided to appoint a Committee to attempt to standardize tests for pupils in South African schools, since no set of tests from any one country can be adequately adopted in any other country in view of the vast differences existing in racial and climatic conditions.
- ItemOpen AccessAny human heart: life-writing in modern fiction & verse(2013) Wilson, Jean MoorcroftThis course is by Dr Jean Moorcroft Wilson, biographer, publisher and lecturer at Birkbeck College, University of London. For lovers of literature and students who want an overview of the lives and writing of Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, Wiliam Boys and Yevgeny Yevtuschenko. For lovers of literature and students who want an overview of the lives and writing of Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, Wiliam Boys and Yevgeny Yevtuschenko.
- ItemOpen AccessChesterton, modernism, and the representation of reality(2011) Waldburger, Christopher; Parsons, CóilínThis dissertation seeks to demonstrate and propose a resolution to modernism in the form of the thought and literature of GK Chesterton. Chesterton, whilst constantly touted as either a harmless kind of literary clown or as a Christian crypto-fascist, has largely been ignored within all serious academic discourse. Therefore, the work of this dissertation takes place in three, interconnected and inter-weaved, stages. Firstly, the core of modernism – its problems, inconsistencies, and political ramifications - is elucidated; secondly, the central ideas of Chesterton's work are explored; and, finally, the way in which Chesterton's work presents a viable resolution to modernism's problems, is explained. In this explanation, I propose an academic return to Chesterton as a serious and coherent counter-voice to the literature of canonical high modernism. At the heart of this thesis is the presupposition that the primal energy of modernism stems from the crisis of representation - the doubt that any reality, other than that which is subjective, can ever be known or represented. I suggest that this turn towards subjectivity exposed the modern world firstly to a kind of negative liberalism that tends to dehumanise politics, and secondly to an authoritarianism that enlarges the subjective to grand proportions in a bid to include absolutely everything into its ambit. Chesterton's thought counters such scepticism with his faith in the coherence and goodness of Being, and the organic participation of Mind and language within that Being. In his opposition to scepticism, Chesterton proposes an allegorical view of literature that has at its heart a belief in the priestly nature of writing and its ability to transfigure language into an allegory of reality. Not only is this a mere counter, but I argue that it becomes an attempt to reposition modernism itself within a scheme of Being, so as to re-configure its sceptical nature as a necessary pre- which offers a kind of sacred humanism as the new centre for a liberalism that is neither totalitarian nor relativist, but rather democratic in its proposal of an objective reality accessible to all people. In Chesterton’s vista, the artist is reduced from modernist master to servant of reality. My thesis works along the theoretical lines proposed by figures such as Erich Auerbach and Pericles Lewis in their analysis of mimesis and modernism in the Western canon, as well as, in particular, Lewis's theorising of the political nature of the modernist novel, in its bid to intervene upon the liberal crisis of subjectivity and thus pre-empt an organic totalitarianism. Overarching such theoretical underpinnings, however, is an analysis of Chesterton's deployment of Thomas Aquinas, and the way in which Chesterton approaches Thomism as the philosophical means by which he attempts to unite the literal graphics of writing with metaphysical reality. In so doing, this dissertation argues that Chesterton charts a way beyond both modernism and anti-modernism toward a new kind of literary sublimity that is able to incarnate objective reality.
- ItemOpen AccessCode-Switching among Bilingual Speakers of Cape Muslim Afrikaans and South African English in the Bo-Kaap, Cape Town(2020) Cozien, Christine; Mesthrie, RajendThe Bo-Kaap is traditionally a Cape Muslim Afrikaans-speaking community, and sociohistorically it is particularly relevant to the development of Afrikaans at the Cape (Davids 2011, Mahida 1993). The Cape Muslim Afrikaans spoken in the Bo-Kaap is a sub-variety of Standard Afrikaans (Kotzé 1989, Davids 2011) and is distinguishable by its retained lexis (Mesthrie and Bhatt 2008) from languages historically spoken by slaves at the Cape, such as Malay, Arabic, Gujarati, and Konkani. Over time a number of socio-cultural, geographic, and historical factors have introduced the use of South African English alongside Cape Muslim Afrikaans in this speech community. The goal of this study was to provide insight into the nature of bilingual talk in the Bo-Kaap community, and to make a useful contribution to the growing body of codeswitching1 (hereafter CS) research generally. Based on natural language data collected during group interviews with members of the community, the study explored the language contact situation in the Bo-Kaap today, taking the viewpoint that what is occurring presently may be considered CS Three aspects of the CS documented were analysed and quantified. Specifically, the study investigated language interaction phenomena (Myers-Scotton 1995, Deuchar et al 2007) triggers (Clyne 1987) and directionality (Muysken 1997, Deuchar et al 2017, Çetinoglu 2017). A quantitative approach was taken to the data analysis. The interview audio files were downloaded and transcribed in ELAN. (Max Planck Institute). The annotations2 produced in ELAN were organised in a spreadsheet for analysis, resulting in a data set comprised of 356 annotations. The full data set was divided into subsets and tagged for language interaction phenomena, triggers, and directionality. These data sets were then sorted and quantified to identify trends in these three areas of interest. The study found Intra-sentential switches to be the most common type of language interaction phenomenon in the CS of this speech community, being present in 79% of the sampled annotations. Results from other CS studies echo this finding in other speech communities (Al Heeti et al 2016, Koban 2012, Falk 2013). The most common trigger for Intra-word switching in this corpus was in the head of the past tense Verb Phrase. Out of 27 occurrences of Intra-word switching, 16 were of this nature. In all of those an English verb head was housed within an Afrikaans past tense structure. No exceptions were observed in the data set, a strong indicator of the relationship status of the two languages involved. Cape Muslim Afrikaans almost certainly playing the role of the Matrix language, with South African English embedded. In terms of directionality, switching from Cape Muslim Afrikaans into South African English was by far the most common, at 85%. This further supports what the findings on triggers suggest about the hierarchy between these two languages.
- ItemOpen AccessDigital Literacies for Pre-Service High School English Teachers(2015-06-01) Campbell, EduardThis series of lectures serves as a course component for the Senior Phase and FET English Method course at the University of Cape Town, which forms part of the Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) professional teacher education qualification. It consists of 5 lectures presented at strategic times throughout the year. The purpose of the course is to provide pre-service English teachers with an opportunity to critically discuss the integration of Digital Literacies into the high school English curriculum. The course component has a dual teaching outcome: 1. Addressing the digital divide within the English Method classroom and providing an opportunity for the pre-service teachers to engage in Digital Literacies practices themselves; 2. Creating awareness of the digital divide within the high school classroom and discussing various methods that enable learners to engage in effective Digital Literacy practices. The course is built on discussions where the class could voice their varying perspectives, anxieties and experiences, especially after their teaching practicals. In this way, knowledge is built collaboratively. Although rudimentary theory is incorporated in the curriculum, the class focuses mostly on the practical aspects of Digital Literacies within the specific context of the high school English Classroom. Numerous methods for Digital Literacies integration, whether for the students’ own use or for their learners’, are scrutinized and critically evaluated.
- ItemOpen AccessEmily Brontë : the mind of a visionary(2004) Melnick, Alan; Marx, LesleyThis dissertation is an investigation of the visionary and philosophical aspects of Emily Brontë's works. The first five chapters deal with the visionary process such as visions, spirit guides, dreams, imagination, encounters with the darker side of the self and a union with the divine. There is considerable evidence of these mystical avenues in both her poetry and in Wuthering Heights which have been explored. It is shown how Emily Brontë's mysticism is a direct result of personal experiences which augment her reputation as one of the leading mystics in the world of literature. There are however tensions in her works, such as the cynicism of her own intellect in accepting the visionary experiences as authentic and periods of suffering when her faith is tested. These tensions have been considered within the context of her mystical encounters and philosophy. The remaining four chapters deal with the philosophy of Emily Brontë per se. Her beliefs in respect of heaven and hell, mercy and justice, power and survival, and pantheism are considered in depth. It is argued that she is an unorthodox thinker who does not believe in an eternal hell and that she has drawn inspiration for this idea from Frederick Maurice and Ralph Waldo Emerson. It is also shown how issues of power have been of interest to her from a young age and how this needs to be integrated within her philosophy. To the writer power needs to be tempered by compassion if it is to be of use to society or the individual. Her pantheistic spirit is also investigated and related to the mystical ideas.
- ItemOpen AccessEnglish proficiency testing and the prediction of academic achievement(1998) Gamaroff, Raphael; Makoni, SinfreeThe study investigates the ability of English proficiency tests (1) to measure levels of English proficiency among learners who have English as the medium of teaching and learning, and (2) to predict long-term academic achievement (Grade 7 to Grade 12). The tests are "discrete-point" tests, namely, error recognition and grammar tests (both multiple-choice tests), and "integrative" tests, namely, cloze tests, essay tests and dictation tests. The sample of subjects consists of two groups: (1) those taking English as a First Language subject and those taking English as a Second Language subject. These groups are given the familiar labels of Ll and L2. The main interest lies in the L2 group. The main educational context is a high school in the North West Province of South Africa.
- ItemOpen AccessExploring the novels of Zakes Mda(2012) Fincham, GailLecture series presented by Associate Professor Gail Fincham, Department of English, University of Cape Town. This lecture series, focusing on the novels of famous South African author Zakes Mda, will be of interest to students of African literature and lovers of literature more generally.
- ItemOpen AccessFantasy and politics in South African literature : a comparative study of the use of the fantastic in selected works of Christopher Hope, Ivan Vladislavic and Andre Brink(2001) Wood, FelicityThis thesis investigates the way in which Christopher Hope, Ivan Vladislavic and Andre Brink make use of the fantastic to respond to and explore historical and contemporary South African realities. In the Introduction, the imaginatively and aesthetically restricted nature of much English-language South African fiction during the apartheid era is examined. Many South African writers in English still seem unable to transcend these limitations. There is therefore a need for freer, more imaginatively charged literary approaches, such as the fantastic. In the first chapter, reasons for many South African writers' and critics' antipathy to this mode are touched upon. Various definitions of the fantastic are discussed and the role that this mode, particularly in its carnivalesque aspects, can play in South African literature is considered. In the second chapter, we see how, through his use of satire and black comedy, Christopher Hope emphasises the warped absurdities of life under apartheid. Authority is subverted and controls are eluded, as Hope suggests the possibility of creative, liberated ways of apprehending reality through his use of the carnivalesque. The playful nature of Ivan Vladislavic's fantastical engagement with 1980s and 19905 South Africa is manifested in the sense of Barthian jouissance his fiction evokes, his Nonsense elements and his teasing postmodern games with potential meanings. Sometimes his work suffers when intellectual concerns take precedence over their fictional realisation. More significantly, however, Vladislavic's fiction depicts carnivalesque freedoms that take place in spite of the various factors that appear to work against them. Through fantastical re-imaginings of South Africa's past, Andre Brink seeks to reclaim the latter, offering visions of healing and reconciliation. But Brink is too self-consciously programmatic in his approach, and he is unable to bring his fantastic elements to life. In conclusion, there are undoubtedly various difficulties associated with the fantastic and certain social, cultural and material factors presenting obstacles to the development of this mode in South African literature. Nonetheless, there is an ongoing need for the fantastic, with its special ability to investigate and illuminate aspects of this country's reality and to expand South Africans' still circumscribed imaginative horizons.
- ItemOpen AccessThe Havoc of choice(2014) Koinange, Wanjiru; Coovadia, ImraanKavata knows one thing to be true: when it comes to politics, there is no such thing as holy ground. So when she starts a family of her own, she does everything possible to distance herself from her unscrupulous father, and strives to raise her children as honestly and modestly as she possibly can. When her father, Honorable Muli, retires from government claiming that he would like to spend more time with his grandchildren, Kavata indulges him. She allows him to weasel his way back into her life hopeful that her children might have the relationship with her father that she never had. By the time she realizes what Honorable Muli is really up to, it is too late. He has already persuaded Ngugi, Kavata’s husband, to contest the upcoming election for the same seat that he himself held for sixteen years. It’s election time and for a fleeting moment, Kenyans can once again taste sweet power as they make their choices at the polls. In the days leading to the election, Kavata is forced to make a different, more drastic kind of decision; one with repercussions much greater than she could have imagined. The Havoc of Choice is a story about family, politics and journeying through a fractured country in a delicate time. Based on events around the historical election of 2007, the book follows the lives of Kavata and her family at a time when their country was going through one hundred days of violence, shortly after the poll results were announced.
- ItemOpen AccessHeritage, letters, and public history : Dorothea Fairbridge and loyal unionist cultural initiatives in South Africa, circa 1890-1930'(2002) Merrington, Peter James; Driver, Dorothy; Hall, Martin; Brink, AndreThe study of the life and work of the 'nation building' author Dorothea Fairbridge is framed by the concept of the inventing of heritage for the Union of South Africa, circa 1910. The thesis begins with a historicizing of the concept of heritage, which is shown to have enjoyed a complex and wide range of social and cultural implications during the period roughly 1880 to 1930. This heritage paradigm or heritage discourse is reflected in the narrative dynamics of the contemporary novel, and samples including Fairbridge's fiction are discussed. The heritage paradigm is then applied in a survey of the Fairbridge family and its contribution to public culture. This paradigm is turned to the idea of the inventing of heritage for the Union, with a study of the rise of a 'Cape vernacular' architectural style and related topics, at the time of Union. The 'Van der Stel controversy' of 1909 plays a central role in Fairbridge's literary and historical work. The place of Van der Stel's farm, Vergelegen, as a cultural centre at the time of Union, is discussed, along with Fairbridge's classic studies of old Cape architecture and history. The exportation of the Cape vernacular building style as a national architectural idiom for South Africa at large is explored in a case study of the Tongaat-Hulett sugar estate in Kwazulu-Natal. The role of genteel anglophone Englishwomen in defining Cape identity at the time of Union is explored, and Fairbridge's Guild of Loyal Women is shown to have been the origins of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Questions of archivism, memory, history and memorialism are linked. The significance for literary production, of British immigration schemes, is discussed. The idea of national identity is then pursued in terms of the period genre of the 'new pageantry' where national and ethnic identity are performed. This is compared with mural painting in public buildings, and a case study is made of the 1908 Quebec Tercentenary pageant and the 1910 South African Union pageant. The study of Fairbridge and her milieu closes with a reconstruction of the cultural matrix with which the 'Cape-to-Cairo' idea was sustained for three decades, including an examination of the concept of the Cape as 'Mediterranean'. Thus, Fairbridge's contribution to South African public culture and identity is traced through her thirteen books and in the context of heritage, Africana, archives, colonial book production, architecture, gendered interests and activities, public performances, cultural geography and travel writing.
- ItemOpen AccessThe liberal ideology and some English South African novelists(1980) Watson, Stephen; Glenn, Ian EThis thesis has been written in an attempt to answer a question which came to mind when I first began reading white English south African literature. The question itself was quite simple: why is this literature like it is, and, more particularly, why is it a body of work whose quality is generally so mediocre? There is a general critical consensus that it is mediocre, and all the more so when it is judged in the light of standards set by modern European and American literature.
- ItemOpen AccessLove and law in Verona: Romeo and Juliet(2013) Finn, StephenShakespeare's profound knowledge of Italy has generally been downplayed. This audio lecture discusses the historical, geographical and political aspects of this knowledge in the famous play 'Romeo and Juliet'. This resource is useful for high school and university students who would like a refreshing take on one of Shakespeare's most famous works.
- ItemOpen AccessThe monsters we deserve: vampires in selected literature & film(2013) Tiffin, JessicaVampires have been a staple of horror literature for decades, but recently have emerged strongly in popular culture and are represented in a range of different ways. This audio lecture series by Dr Jessica Tiffin, Student Development Officer, Faculty of Humanities Undergraduate Office, University of Cape Town explores the figure of the vampire in Western culture, from its folkloric roots to modern literature and film.
- ItemOpen AccessThe mother-daughter conflict in selected works by Doris Lessing(1985) Hunter, Eva Shireen; Cartwright, JohnThe central characters in Doris Lessing's novels are usually women struggling to shape for themselves a new and authentic identity in a changing world. In this study it is argued that this quest involves the Lessing character in a conflict less with any man than with another woman. This woman is the mother. The younger woman's task is to resist the compulsion to become like her mother and so lead a narrow, entirely domesticated life. The theme of the mother-daughter conflict is given its first extensive examination in this study. Three of Lessing's works are analysed in detail, while brief reference is made to nearly all of her novels and some African short stories. The three works selected, The Grass is Singing (1950), "To Room Nineteen" (1963), and The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four, and Five (1980), mark the beginning, an approximate mid-point, and the conclusion of the theme under discussion. They are also works that have not, as yet, enjoyed the exhaustive critical attention given to the Children of Violence series and The Golden Notebook.
- ItemOpen AccessMultimodal Pedagogy for English Teachers Lecture Series(2017-03-01) Campbell, EdRecent research has tended to emphasise the digital proficiency of university students. Nevertheless, studies have shown that, in countries with stark economic divides, it is problematic to assume that all students are “digital natives” (Prensky, 2001:1). There is a danger that students who are “digital strangers” may be disadvantaged because they are unable to utilise technology effectively in their academic work (Czerniewicz & Brown, 2013:1). It is therefore important that the engagement with digital technologies should be integrated into classrooms in higher education contexts. The concept of the digital stranger extends to teacher education. Providing space for engagement with ‘the digital’ by pre-service teachers is complex due to the dual purpose for its integration: (1) professional teachers are expected to integrate digital resources in their classrooms, while (2) they have to enable their learners to engage with digital technologies in ways that will be expected of them in the 21st Century. Engaging with digital technologies has therefore become crucial to teachers’ professional development. The shift from ‘digital literacies’ to ‘multimodal pedagogy’ The resources you are about to view were used in the 4th year of an on-going project aimed at integrating ‘digital literacies’ into English teacher education. Typically, this integration would consist of 4 to 6 contact sessions forming a course component within an English teaching method course (part of the Postgraduate Certificate in Education professional qualification), culminating in the students completing a digital classroom resource, or a digital story video. During the classes, we started suspecting that the strong focus on ‘the digital’ could be counter-intuitive, because foregrounding it too much de-contextualises it; in the 21st Century, ‘the digital’ has become entangled within an array of other practices, some of which are not necessarily digital per se. We have also realised that calling a course component ‘digital literacies’, might have caused upfront resistance, resulting in lessons focusing on the alleviation of anxieties, rather than fostering creativity, which has been our core intention since the project’s inception. We therefore redesigned ‘digital literacies’, resulting in a brand new ‘multimodal pedagogy’ curriculum: a way of integrating the digital in literacy teacher education that focuses much more on its intertwinement with multiple other practices - a more realistic depiction of digital technology use in teaching, foregrounding creativity and effective communication through a meta-awareness of modal affordances in the classroom, as opposed to just ‘using digital technologies’.
- ItemOpen AccessThe myth of masculinity in Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy(2015) Middleton, Sarah; Strand, EricThis thesis sees Cormac McCarthy’s Border Trilogy as a celebration of the nostalgia and romance characteristic of the Western and the attendant mythologies of masculinity that the genre implies. My argument runs counter to readings of McCarthy’s texts that view them as revising or querying the mythologies of American culture, such as the argument laid out by John Cant. The initiation process undertaken by the two protagonists in the trilogy is compared to the story of Iron John by Robert Bly. The narratives of both are seen as reactions against feminism, and as being involved in the process of remythifying a male coming-of-age story. In relation to this I will discuss John Grady Cole’s role as an embodiment of the mythical cowboy hero. My analysis then interrogates the dearth of female characters in the Border Trilogy, and uncovers some problematic roles for the females that do feature in the books. I go on to identify certain films that have resonances with McCarthy’s fiction. These occur both thematically in their approach to the ‘damsel in distress’ motif, as seen in The Searchers and Cities of the Plain, and with the representations of Mexico seen in The Wild Bunch and the Border Trilogy. Although it is tempting to read the Border Trilogy as a mythoclastic work, it relies on certain Western conventions and finally celebrates rather than queries the mythologies of American culture, and specifically the mythologies of masculinity.
- ItemOpen AccessNegotiating the ambivalent construction of 'coloured' identity, in relation to the work of Malika Ndlovu and the Cape Town-based Black Women's Writers Collective, WEAVE(2001) Tobin, Fiona; McCormick, KayThis dissertation focuses on the work of writers for whom the nature of 'Coloured' identity is a problematic issue. ('Coloured' is the Apartheid term used to describe people of mixed descent living in South Africa). I base my analysis of their writings around 'Coloured' identity in postcolonial theory, in order to examine constructions of self and other. Chapter one introduces the reader to the Black woman writer, Malika Ndlovu and the collective Women's Education and Artistic Voice Expression (WEAVE), of which Malika Ndlovu is a founder member. Chapter two uses a postcolonial lens to discuss constructions of identity. This chapter looks at the ways in which postcolonial theorists oppose Europe and the West as the centre, and the Third World as the periphery to that centre. I contextualise the manner in which Ndlovu and WEAVE reject and subvert ideas of self and other in accordance with postcolonial theory. This chapter also deals, with Ndlovu's rejection of feminism in so far as it is a Western construct, speaking on behalf of all women. It concludes with the claim that postcolonial theory sheds light on a unique dimension in South African history, namely the ways in which colonialism and Apartheid created the category 'Coloured' for those who did not fit into the polarised Black and White division (which can be found in all colonised countries). Chapter three gives a brief history of the developments of and resistance to concepts of 'Coloured' identity. In chapter four, I examine the relationship Malika Ndlovu has to the label 'Coloured' which was designated to her at birth; her rejection of such a label, and her chosen African identity. Chapter five examines WEAVE's collective writings. This chapter explores the ways in which the writers' work falls within the ambit of postcolonial literature, looking specifically at how they respond to colonial and Apartheid discourses. A brief concluding chapter summarises the main points and observations emerging from this paper, and indicates to evidence of the writers' ambivalence towards 'Coloured' identity.
- ItemOpen AccessThe new Suffolk hymnbook : a novel(2000) Williams, BenSing, cries Jonah, softly, under his breath, as if the word were his last. To sing would be to release the sum of his afflications to the sky.
- ItemOpen AccessPolitics Tests and Quizzes - Comprehensions(2014-12-01) Tonkin, CaitlinA series of comprehension questions (6 in total), which aim to test the reading and writing ability of students.