Vrouetaal in drie Afrikaanse tydskrifte: Die Boervrou (1919-1931), Die Huisgenoot (1932-1948) en Sarie (Marais) (1949-1989)

Abstract

This study is based on three main hypotheses: a) The discourse between a women's magazine and its reader can be regarded as a specialized type of woman-to-woman communication and can therefore be placed within the paradigm of women's language. b) Because language is a social semiotic, changes in the social position of women will be reflected in the lexicogrammatical features of the women's magazine. c) Changes in the social position of women will mainly be reflected in the realm of interpersonal meaning and consequently one can expect movement in those lexicogrammatical features that are associated with interpersonal meaning. The research traces the historical development of this discourse type in three Afrikaans magazines: Die Boerevrou (1919-1931), the women's section of Die Huisgenoot (1932-1948) and Sarie(Marais) (1949-1989). The focus is on three core sections of the women's magazine: the discourse between female and male characters in love stories, and the discourse between magazine-speaker and reader-listener in general articles and in advertisements. Theoretically, the research links up with the functional model of Halliday. The method is mainly quantitative and based on the Interactional Process of Analysis (IPA) of Bales (1970) as interpreted by Preisler (1986), as well as on the work of Fowler et al. (1979). Three sets of specific hypotheses have been defined. The first is based on the stereotypes of women's language, the second on IPA categories and the markers of tentativity, and the third on the markers of control as described by Fowler et al. (1979). When relevant, the behavior of additional variables that have shown themselves to be sensitive to time, or which have been previously researched in other material, e.g. Stoops (1972), was also described quantitatively. For the advertisements changes in the context of the situation were also described in qualitative terms. The results have proved the central assumption of the study to be correct, namely that the discourse of women's magazines would be sensitive to the defined variables. The most important findings were the following: In all the examined volumes, with the exception of 1970/71, a significant difference between the linguistic behavior of male and female characters in the magazine stories was found. This difference is however not always equal and does not always concern the same variables. In both the magazine articles and the advertisements there is a movement away from an explicit task-oriented role towards a more socio-emotional role. In the articles, it entails a massive shift from task-oriented functions towards the function ''Dramatizing" (Bales 1970), whereas the shift in the advertisements is not as large and towards "Friendly" (Bales 1970}. The study has shown that a quantitative instrument that has been developed for the description of group interaction on a synchronic level can also be successfully applied to a historical study on written language. It is hoped that it has also demonstrated the value of functionally defined variables and contrastive material for stylistic analysis.