Faculty of Humanities (ETDs)
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Item An integrated literature review investigating how significant elements of drama therapy, namely role method and narradrama, can support the congruent identity formation of teenagers influenced by contemporary social media(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Maddams, Amy Charlotte; Hill, MoniqueSocial media, which is widely used by teenagers world-wide, can have both a positive and/or negative impact on their developing self-identities. Extensive research has been conducted on the impact of social media on the mental health of teenagers but has failed to address the impact on their developing identities. This research aims to fill that gap by ascertaining how Drama Therapy informed Role Method and Narradrama can support the congruent identity formation of teenagers impacted by social media usage. It also aims to identify tools for drama therapists to use when addressing these issues. An integrative literature review was conducted in which diverse perspectives from existing literature were reviewed, critiqued, and integrated. Grounded theory was then applied to identify and categorise themes that emerged from the literature. There was strong evidence to support the use of Narradrama to help teenagers reauthor their problem-saturated stories and strengthen their congruent identity formation. Role Method was also shown to greatly benefit congruent identity formation through the expansion of an individual’s role repertoire. The results demonstrated that both Narradrama and Role Method provide appropriate tools for drama therapists to use to address the issue of congruent identity formation and are well placed to support the congruent identity development of teenagers who have been impacted by social media usage.Item Tsotsitaal and cultural identity : A sociolinguistic study of young black South African women who speak tsotsitaal.(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Mmako, Maipato Caroline; Theledi, KgomotsoThis study aimed to explore whether young black women identify with tsotsitaal as an integral aspect of their culture and personal identity. It covered background information, rationale, research questions, and objectives. Additionally, it delved into the origins of tsotsitaal and its significance in the lives of young people in township settings. A review of relevant literature highlighted a gap in understanding the role of women who speak tsotsitaal, prompting further investigation. Using a qualitative research approach, the study employed a questionnaire for data collection. The sample consisted of 20 young women aged 18 to 30 from Diepkloof (Soweto) and Katlehong (Vosloorus), with equal representation from both areas. Findings indicated that young black women indeed identify with tsotsitaal as part of their cultural identity, and some speak it independently of male influence. Moreover, the study revealed that speaking tsotsitaal is not necessarily associated with lack of education; rather, it is seen as a mode of expression and cultural belonging. Based on these findings, suggestions were made for future research to broaden its scope and conduct in-depth interviews with focus groups to better understand the role of tsotsitaal in shaping the identity of young women in townships. Despite its small sample size, the study provides valuable insights for researchers interested in further exploring this topic.Item YouTube: Video Commercialization, Value Creation and Identity(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2021-12) Dlamini, Gabby Sipho; White, HyltonSocial media has been blamed for promoting unrealistic flashy lifestyles and an increase in influencer brand marketing. The outcome of this is said to put extreme pressure on individuals to maintain a certain lifestyle to the detriment of their self, promoting a performance of life rather than real life experiences, resulting in the breakdown of social bonds. Yet social media platforms such YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and many others are growing at considerable rates, despite all the critiques. The thesis overall questions how YouTube vloggers turn the intangible value of activities in everyday life into monetary income by attracting online audiences to their vlogs. The research is located as part of transformations taking place in late capitalism, that used to characterise the organisation of labour and, therefore, society in nineteenth and twentieth-century iterations of modern capitalist society; and the changing concepts of “private” and “public” that are described as part of the technological development and integration into our everyday lives. This thesis traces the changing structures and relationships between YouTube, YouTubers and viewers as the economy of YouTube has continued to grow. Whilst influencer brand marketing and social media reach are popularly viewed as detrimental to the individual and society, this thesis argues against this general view. Instead, I argue that in the wake of influencer marketing and the financial economies, embedded within YouTube and other social media, new ways of being and belonging are being negotiated. This thesis, using ethnographic data, focuses on these new ways of being and belonging by explaining how ideas of value, suspicion, affect, and digital footprint are factors in creating online community ties and online identities that continue inside and outside of the online space.Item Identities and Language Learners: A Case Study of English Language Learners in Saudi Arabia(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-08) Satardien, Sameer; Fouche, Illse; Mendelowitz, BelindaThis study has been conducted in order to ascertain the ways in which learning English may impact the identities of Saudi Arabian learners. Few studies have concentrated on identity in English language learning by Arabic-speaking students and learners living in an Arabic-speaking country. The study addressed this gap by considering how Arabic-speaking native learners learning English view and construct their identities. It employed Norton‟s (2000, 2013) sociocultural view of identity as fluid and evolving over time. The study also used Taylor‟s (2010) quadripolar model of selves. The research is based on a qualitative case study approach. The data were gathered via two online interviews and two narrative texts from three male participants and two narrative writing texts from two female participants. Data triangulation was ensured to attain trustworthiness. The data provided interesting results, showing that my participants presented shifting and bicultural identities. Furthermore, the study showed how some of my participants fell into Taylor‟s (2010) model and shifted between selves. It indicated that my participants‟ identities were not static, but instead evolved based on the situations they found themselves in. The study also revealed my participants‟ positive and negative experiences when learning English; and how they stayed motivated owing to their high level of investment and agency in learning English. The limitations of the study were the short time period for data collection as well as the constraints of the Covid-19 lock-down. I also had to conduct all interviews on Zoom and correspond with my participants via WhatsApp. In addition, owing to restrictions placed by the participants‟ school, I could not conduct any video interviews, or record the interviews. The chief recommendation derived from the study is that teachers should foster an inclusive learning environment in which students feel free to express their identities and interests. In addition, gender dynamics in a classroom should be considered, as should the dimension of affect in language learning in a Saudi Arabian context. This area of research would benefit from further research exploring and ascertaining whether online affinity groups could be included in curricula in a Saudi Arabian English-learning context.Item Adolescents’ identity development through literature: A study of pedagogy and canon in the Grade 11 English FAL poetry classroom(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-10) Mavhiza, Grace; Nkealah, NaomiThe aim of this study was to analyse the effect of pedagogy and canon on adolescents’ identity development in the Grade 11 English First Additional Language (FAL) poetry classroom. Despite the well-documented benefits of poetry (Femer, 2003; Pushpa & Savaedi, 2014; Antika, 2017), this study identified the problem that poetry is not realising its potential as a subject in the schools in relation to the identity development of adolescents. The school is a place where adolescents spend much of their time and there are many factors which shape adolescents’ identities within the school context. This qualitative study focused on pedagogy and canon among these many factors. The study was designed as a dual case study and set up within the interpretivism paradigm which allowed different interpretations of the data about the effect of pedagogy and canon on adolescents’ development. The complexity of the study meant a dual focused theoretical framework. Thus, the study used a combination of the theories of identity development by Erik Erikson (1963; 1968) and critical pedagogy by Paulo Freire (1970). Purposive sampling was used to identify the cases for this study. The two schools selected happen to be within Ekurhuleni District. In one school the teacher applied traditional pedagogy while in the other school the teacher employed the modern pedagogy which included multimodality, multiliteracies and new literacies. Qualitative data was collected using three tools, namely, participant observation, questionnaire, and reflective journals. Descriptive and thematic analyses of data were conducted, and the results show that there are limitations and affordances of both the traditional and modern pedagogies. In relation to the impact of the poetry pedagogy and canon on adolescents’ identity development in the Grade 11 English FAL poetry classroom, key findings reveal that traditional pedagogy takes away adolescents’ opportunities to explore their personal identities. In addition, the modern pedagogy is preferable among the Grade 11 English FAL poetry adolescents who participated in this study. The study concluded that the current Grade 11 English FAL poetry canon is alienated from the lives of adolescents who participated in this research. Learners yearn for new poetry which speaks to their daily experiences.Item Liminal Identity of Japanese expatriates/migrants in post Apartheid South Africa: How has “honorary whiteness” been (re)produced and influenced their subjectivity?(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-06) Ban, Yukako; Dey, SayanIn post-Apartheid South Africa, racial segregation persists. Japanese migrants were granted "honorary white" status during Apartheid, while the Chinese were classified as non-white. This research explores the experiences of Japanese migrants in post-Apartheid South Africa to unravel the complex racial structure. Occupying a liminal racial and ethnic position, the Japanese benefit from class and nationality privileges, providing access to positions of power. The study sheds light on their navigation of liminal spaces and their understanding of race, ethnicity, and nationality in the social structure of post-Apartheid South Africa. The findings uncover prevalent neo-racism and a sense of racial in-betweenness, with Japanese migrants perceiving themselves as "in-between" black and white or as racially neutral. Their liminal position allows access to diverse social groups based on behaviour and contextual factors. This liminality holds the potential to challenge existing social structures through varied interpretations and interactions.Item The Politics of Cancel Culture: Origins, Identity, and Prognostications of Cancel Culture in South Africa(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-03) Dunlop, John Anthony Blackadder; Omar, AyeshaIn this Research essay, I identify five socio-political developments, trends, and or features which characterize the relationship between Cancel Culture and South Africa. Firstly, because of Cancel Culture’s origins and notoriety, the concept was moulded in the United States and, therefore, a modern liberal device. Secondly, because of its roots Cancel Culture is also founded upon ideas around identity and woke politics. Thirdly, South Africa’s employment of Cancel Culture is justified within the country’s common and most troublesome socio-political struggles, which include issues with racism, decolonization, sexual assault, and gender-based violence. Fourthly, South African Cancel Culture, is ideologically and politically non-partisan, as there doesn’t seem to be an overload of opposition, claim and dismissal for the concept. Lastly, South Africa’s right-wing conservatives and far-right factions are not as hyper-critical of Cancel Culture, and their discontent and critiques of the socio-political phenomenon are not well published when compared to the Western World. This essay argues and predicts that: firstly, Cancel Culture will not take an extensive period before it becomes a household name, and more cases or examples will follow. Secondly, Cancel Culture’s social media presence will escalate, which will allow for further development and evolution of the concept. Thirdly, Cancel Culture will become a prominent fixture and component among South Africa’s various Universities. There will be an upsurge in self-censorship and political correctness amongst South African citizens to prevent attempted cancellations. South African liberals and far-left advocates will continue to be Cancel Culture’s principal protagonists and perpetuators. Following that, right-wing, conservative, and far-right South Africans will aim to retort and resist the rise of Cancel Culture. I contend that parallel to the United States, Cancel Culture will continue to be an ineffective feature of South Africa’s contemporary socio-political environment. Lastly, because of Cancel Culture’s online presence and notoriety, the concept will have a dramatic increase in academic enquiry, research, and literature.Item Strikes and eventful identities: South Africa’s public sector strikes, 2007 and 2010(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-06) Ceruti, Claire Helen Mary; Kenny, BridgetThis is a study of rupture and its deflection in public striker identities over two politically charged strikes in 2007 and 2010. The thesis reconstructs each strike as a series of possibilities, taking a dynamic and temporal view attuned to the development of contradictions in a way sensitive to what else might realistically have developed out of these given ‘moments’ or conjunctures of forces. The data was gathered longitudinally in each strike and across the two strikes, which were three years apart, via interviews, observation and analysis of toyi-toyis and particularly photos, which were used to track slogans and their development. The thesis uncovers eventful identities beneath the rehabilitation or reconstitution, twice, of the strained Tripartite Alliance amongst the ruling party, the ANC, the main trade union federation (Cosatu) and the South African Communist Party; it also uncovers peculiarly relational classed imagery suggestive of exploitation even in simple strike-ready identities, entwining and subtly altering people’s more common everyday consumption-based models of class. The thesis traces strikers’ identities against the histories of each strike to find identities in punctuated dialogue with larger forces, thereby restoring the role of this kind of contradiction in processes of identity destabilisation as well as in eventfulness. The thesis finds that strikers’ identities were deformed in relation to the alliance by successive shocks over the course of the two strikes. The strikes did not rupture, but did puncture, the practice of the alliance. Despite a variety of deflections, faint reinterpellations percolated through these experiences. In the first strike, in 2007, the shock to identification with government, experienced by the strikers as well as the union officials, intensified as the strike continued and drove one aspect of a ‘power flip’ which I noted in the development of strikers’ discourse over the strike in a shift from entreating government, to asserting mutual dependence, to reversing the dependency - wanting to turn on its head the actually existing practice of the alliance by demanding a government that listens to workers – and at the same time conceiving the centrality of the strikers’ own work in relation to these powers. At the end of the first strike, the shock to identities with government was truncated by pragmatism and diverted and to the political kingdom, in the person of Zuma. But that deflection built up expectation for the restored alliance, and the second strike burst forth from disappointed expectations (a second shock to identities with government) to put Zuma to the test. This strike expressed mainly the political dimension of the power flip. The end of the strike incurred a third shock: a divergence in the strategic views of union officials from those of strikers, which occurred partly because the union leaders who had re-established loyalties and, they believed, influence within the alliance (partly because of the first strike). The de-identifications towards the end of this strike were deflected in more complicated ways. Although it appeared from a distance that the alliance had worked again to let off steam and iron over damage, that view overlooked how strikers’ identifications had taken damage in the double test of the ANC; at least some were in a liminal state I call identity damage, not having re-identified themselves but forced to imagine life outside the ANC. So the thesis overall illustrates the development of these eventful identities, which may survive the failure of an event to develop (a near event). The thesis thus, first, returns contradiction (and agency) to the study of eventfulness (rupture), as well as, through a finer view of deflection, examining why eventfulness often fails to develop; second, it foregrounds subjectivity in contradictory circumstances to stretch studies of classed identities and identity processes into an under-examined arena (strikes); and thereby, third, it adds an under-examined dimension -strikers’ subjectivities - to study of the cohesion/disintegration of the alliance and the unravelling of ANC hegemony to show that the alliance’s mechanisms of maintenance were also ‘storing up’ contradiction and damage to its future integrity. The concepts of misidentification and identity damage were developed to present identity processes in contradictory situations as punctuated and to refine understanding of rupture at the subjective level.Item Towards the development of a screening tool for Anorexia Nervosa in men(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2022) Reeves, Megan Moya; Laher, SumayaAnorexia Nervosa (AN) in men is still not wholly understood and is often misdiagnosed. The primary aim of this tri-phasal exploratory, mixed methods study was to propose content domains and items that may be used to inform the development of future quantitative tests to screen for AN in men. It has been reported that there is currently no quantitative instrument available, which has been specifically designed to measure anorexic symptomatology in men (Darcy et al., 2012; Murray et al., 2012). The quantitative content domains and test items developed in this study may be used in future self-report screening measures to help improve the accurate recognition of AN symptoms in men. These items will help to counter the effects of gender biases evident in current AN screening tools and biases held by clinicians and psychiatrists that are reported when screening for AN in men. These test items and content domains were developed in the third phase of this study and were derived from the findings of the first two phases. In phase one, a comprehensive thematic list of symptoms reportedly experienced by men diagnosed with AN was developed from an integrative literature review of peer-reviewed journal articles published between July 2000 to July 2013 on PsychINFO, SA ePublications, and Google Scholar. The data from phase one were supplemented by a thematic analysis of 14 interviews with South African clinical psychologists and psychiatrists, conducted under phase two, which deconstructed their beliefs regarding AN in men. Ultimately, the study’s three phases cumulatively showed how the symptoms reportedly experienced by men differed to those of women, deconstructed the beliefs held by a sample of South African clinical psychologists and psychiatrists, recommended a gender sensitive and identity based conceptualisation of AN that served to explicate theory, and finally proposed original test items that may be used in future research to develop a test to more validly and reliably screen for AN symptomatology in men.