3. Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) - All submissions
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Item Linguistic landscape and the local : a comparative study of texts, visible in the streets of two culturally diverse urban neighbourhoods in Marseille and Pretoria.(2014-07-25) Kelleher, WilliamThe thesis concerns the linguistic landscape (LL) of two neighbourhoods, one in Pretoria, South Africa, and the other in Marseille, France. This is a longitudinal study whose data was collected over two years of site visits. LL are explored in terms of both space and place. In terms of place, they are seen to be constitutive of a sense of place, allowing insights into memory, aspiration, and familial and cultural networks. Spatially, they are seen to realise a politics where design and distribution of LL are markers of power and modality. Analysis takes its point of departure in geosemiotics. Artefacts of LL are interpreted as sites of encounter of four cycles of discourse: the interaction order, habitus, semiotics of place and visual semiotics. The focus is on understanding LL artefacts, their production and reception, as a nexus of practice. Methodologically, walking - as a creative practice, and as an actualisation of the place and space of the neighbourhood - is chosen for photographing LL, for observing interactions and for meeting participants to the research. In examining habitus, the discourses, literacy and narratives of the people who live, work and pass through the site are compared. Deep social and economic similarities are noted between the two sites. Exploration of the semiotics of place brings to light regularities in the features of formal and informal LL, the nature of participation with and subversion of these texts, but also disparities among producers and receivers in terms of literacy, access, the socio-cultural and the socio-economic. Visual semiotic analysis continues these findings and it is noted that global and local discourses of identification, aspiration and self-stylisation circulate transversally in the sites. LL are taken to realise a politics of space when multimodal analysis of composition and modality is extended to the streetscape, as LL ensemble. A key facet of the research is the interpretation of informal LL. Their inclusion challenges existing LL methodologies by flagging the necessity to ground quantitative findings ethnographically.Item An ethnography of adults living with aphasia in Khayelitsha.(2010-11-09) Legg, Carol FrancesThis thesis is concerned with the experience of aphasia in Khayelitsha, a township on the outskirts of Cape Town characterised by poverty, violence, limited resources and a culture and language that differs from the setting of most speech and language services in South Africa. It is based on three years of intermittent fieldwork that entailed participant observation of the everyday life of five adults living with aphasia and interviews with participants, kin and healthcare workers in various settings. Grounded in sociocultural theory, this thesis has aimed to provide an ethnographic account of cultural frameworks of interpretation of communication impairment following stroke and of the daily reality of life for adults living with aphasia in this setting. An exploration of causal notions in this setting provided interesting commentary on social and cultural processes and how people, caught up in these processes, search for meaning and for cure. Participants entertained plural notions of causation of aphasia and explored numerous therapeutic avenues. The wide variation in causal notions included biomedical causes, social and behavioural determinants, and the influences of supernatural powers, such as witches and ancestors. Similarly participants experienced aphasia through multiple healing systems, including traditional, biomedical and religious therapy options. All however seemed to be ambiguous sources of help. Whilst encounters with the health system presented serious challenges to participants, traditional and religious avenues for help were obscured by a burgeoning and not always ethical open market offering miracle cures. An articulation of the circumstances of this group of adults provided further commentary on the influence of the social context on aphasia. In a context where sociopolitical processes have had a disintegrating effect on social cohesion, questions of support, care and security were of primary concern. Prejudices towards the elderly and women were more acutely felt and vulnerability, isolation, insecurity and fluidity of circumstance emerged as overarching themes. The central argument in this thesis is that the genesis of these experiences can be found in contextual factors in Khayelitsha, such as poverty, inequality, urbanisation and changing cultural paradigms. These emerging themes highlight the disjunctions between the medical alignment of the discipline of speech language therapy in South Africa and the capacity for socially-engaged practice. They also highlight the socio-cultural complexity of the experience of aphasia, specifically the influences of culture and poverty. There is thus theoretical and clinical relevance in using anthropological objectives to explore the world of the adult living with aphasia and the interface between context and service provision. Interventions and healthcare communications that will make a meaningful difference to adults with aphasia in a setting such as Khayelitsha are proposed.Item A narrative exploration of educational experiences on deaf identity.(2009-01-08T08:27:30Z) McIlroy, Guy WilliamThis study explores from the perspective of deaf persons, how the identity of deaf persons is shaped by their educational experiences. Previous studies on identity by Erickson (1984) and Leigh (2001) on deaf persons have located identity within either the medical model, as a discourse of assimilation, or within the reactive social model, as a discourse of human rights. It is argued that the ‘first wave of deaf identity politics’ (Wrigley, 1996) of the medical and social model binary are sites of oppression and resistance. This binary provides both an insufficient and a static explanation of deaf identity as a victim is increasingly at odds with the lives of deaf persons in a post-modern ontology. Subsequently, this study engages in exploring the post-modern driven ‘second wave of identity politics’ and proposes a bi-cultural Dialogue model that recognises and explores, through cross-cultural exploration, the complexity and fluid construction of a DeaF identity. Later, the contributions of Bat-Chava (2000); Glickman (1993) and Ohna (2006) towards deaf identity are discussed within the post-modern educational framework. This ethnographic study explores the identity development of nine deaf participants through their narratives. The inclusion of the researcher as a DeaF participant in this study provides an auto-ethnographic gateway into exploring the lives of deaf/Deaf/bi-bi DeaF persons. The themes of ‘significant moments’; ‘connections at home and school’ and ‘deaf identity development’ were investigated. This study investigated the educational experiences of both deaf learners who attended regular mainstream schools and also deaf learners who attended schools for the Deaf. The findings suggest that deaf identity is not a static concept, but a complex ongoing quest for belonging and acceptance of being deaf through ‘finding ones voice’ in a hearing dominant society. This study challenges educators, parents and researchers through using dialogue and narrative tools to broaden their understanding of deaf identity and the dignity associated with being a deaf person.