Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics Plus
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Aiming beyond the written, to the writer and writing: The writing consultation as a mentoring process for life-long writing
Full text linkThis article critically reflects on how writing centres can address the notion that their primary role is to deal with students struggling with their writing. This critical reflection focuses on the following question: how can writing centres challenge the view that they exist primarily to assist students struggling with or lacking the academic writing skills required at university level? This question is answered from a theoretical framework of writing consultancy as a process of identity change. Presenting the writing consultation as a mentoring process for life-long writing, the article describes the author’s experiences of students who viewed the writing centre as a place for students who lack good writing skills. The article further examines some steps that may be taken to de-stigmatise writing centres, and promote them as places of identity change and empowerment. The article envisages that when the writing consultation is viewed as a mentoring process, writing centres may appeal to the greater university population, even students who are competent writers who would normally never see the need to consult writing centres
The ‘rise and fall’ of a genre: The generic and rhetorical renditions of a Runyankore-Rukiga editorial
Full text linkThis article explores the discursive practice of editorial writing in Runyankore-Rukiga print media. It also explicates the generic structure of Runyankore-Rukiga editorial text and the rhetorical devices that the editorial writers have invoked to comment on issues that affect society across different times of history. Using genre analysis, the article analyses a diachronic corpus of editorial texts across Ugandan local newspapers from 1955 to 2010. The article demonstrates that while the construction of a Runyankore-Rukiga editorial appears to conform to the architectural structure of an English editorial (Ansary and Babaii 2005), it does not adhere to its rhetorical moves and the attendant argumentation principles that govern the construction of an editorial text. During the early years (1960s) and throughout the 1970s of Runyankore newspaper writing, the editorial text was a significant genre often appearing on the front page and largely characterized by rhetorical moves consisting in religious and biblical propositions. The editorialists have occasionally employed proverbs to premise or reinforce their arguments, but also to bring humour to the text. The contemporary editorial text also exemplifies use of conversational language, a discursive style that appears to identify with and endear it to putative readers. While the genre has been in constant flux, Runyankore-Rukiga print media outlets have discontinued editorial writing because of commercial reasons and apprehension concerning the consequences of articulating issues that disfavour policies and undertakings of a coercive government. The article reiterates the significance of editorial writing in newspaper discourse and advocates continued articulation of other non-political issues that do not necessarily endanger print media praxis
Are dialects markers of ethnic identity? The case of Setswana dialects and ethnic groups
Full text linkMany studies on dialects present language in neat, organised groupings that highlight similar language habits and linguistic features of people who belong to the same social, linguistic or regional group. In that way, social and regional groups are identified by the dialects that they speak, and vice versa. However, given the fluid and mobile nature of languages, dialects, and people, it is time that this relationship between language and identity was reviewed, and its complexity exemplified. The fluidity and dynamism of language makes it difficult to attach any linguistic features to any group of people or location. Using examples from Botswana, this paper argues that the relationship between Setswana dialects and Botswana ethnic and regional groups is non-representational and non-exclusive. Thus, the paper makes a distinction between Setswana ethnic groups and Setswana dialects, and challenges current perceptions of Setswana dialects which are based on ethnicity. The argument of the paper is based on historical claims, and translanguaging and levelling theories
Validating the performance standards set for language assessments of academic readiness: The case of Stellenbosch University
Full text linkTwenty-five years into the post-apartheid period, South African universities still struggle to produce the number of graduates required for the country’s socio-economic development. The reason most often cited for this challenge is the mismatch that seems to exist between the knowledge that learners leave high school with, and the kind that academic education requires them to possess for success. This gap, also known as the “articulation gapâ€, has been attributed to, amongst others, the levels of academic language ability among arriving students. The school-leaving English examination, and a pre-university test of academic literacy are the commonly used measures to determine these levels. The aim of this article is to investigate whether predetermined standards of performance on these assessments relate positively with academic performance. In order to determine this, Pearson Correlations and an Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) were carried out on the scores obtained for these assessments by a total of 836 first-year students enrolled at Stellenbosch University. The results show that the performance standards set for the standardised test of academic literacy associate positively with first-year academic performance, while the scores on the levels of performance set for the school-leaving English examination do not
In-between access and transformation: Analysing a university writing centre’s academic support programme for education students as third space
Full text linkThis paper reports on ongoing research into how an embedded academic support programme, based in a South African university’s writing centre, shapes the academic literacy practices of first-year B.Ed. students. This paper focuses specifically on the peer tutors who implement the programme. Our data collection and analysis methods are informed by socio-cultural theories of literacy and the notion of ‘discursive third space’. The tutors’ discursive reconstructions of the intervention programme are understood to reveal the dynamics of how the intervention functions as third space. Peer tutors were selected purposefully for the study; they needed to have had at least one year of experience tutoring and mentoring in the intervention programme, and five peer tutors agreed to take part. Data was collected using an audio-recorded focus-group interview, and the transcription analysed; data was coded into meaning units within which key themes, patterns, and categories informed by the study’s theoretical frameworks were identified in a recursive process. The analysis reveals that the tutors use the intervention programme as a third space in which they draw on the students’ varied “funds of knowledge and Discourse†(Moje, Ciechanowski, Kramer, Ellis, Carillo and Collazo 2004), with three main results evident. Firstly, because the students’ learning is scaffolded, and their skills in navigating between different spaces, Discourses, and funds improved, their epistemological access to dominant Discourses around academic literacy and course content increases. Secondly, the tutorial third space offers potential for reshaping dominant Discourses, and so for decolonial transformation. Thirdly, however, the strain of working in-between competing funds of knowledge can be inhibiting rather than generative, resulting in “post-colonial splitting†(Bhabha 1994). If we are to engage meaningfully with the academic-support access paradox, the insights that the tutorial third space generates have to be taken seriously
From African languages to an African perspective on language: The work and research of Prof. Marianna W. Visser
Full text linkThis paper discusses the contribution of Prof. Marianna W. Visser to African linguistics. I present the academic and professional trajectory of Prof. Visser and her research achievements, focusing on publications in three branches of language science: formal linguistics (morpho-syntax and semantics), applied linguistics (language policy and multilingual education), and text-linguistics (appraisal theory and discourse analysis). These three areas and their respective themes are subsequently reflected in the selection of articles included in the volume, which this article also introduces
The syntax of relative clause constructions in Runyankore-Rukiga: A typological perspective
Full text linkThis paper discusses the morphosyntactic properties of relative clause constructions in the Runyankore-Rukiga language cluster (Bantu, JE13/14, Uganda). Relative clauses in this paper are categorized into nominal and clausal relatives on the basis of their exhibited morphosyntactic properties. The nominal relative clause category comprises elements which have been previously regarded as adjectives (Morris and Kirwan 1972; Taylor 1985) which include some color terms among other lexical items. The second category, namely clausal relatives, is subcategorized into subject and object clausal relatives. The subject clausal relative is realized within the subject nominal prefix by differential tone marking while the object clausal relative is an obligatory agreement-bearing complementizer which stands alone in agreement with the object antecedent. This paper describes the properties and use of the object relative marker as it has previously been regarded as a demonstrative or a pronoun. The paper offers an alternative position to the status of the object relative clause marker, proposing that it is not a pronoun equivalent to the English Wh-relative pronoun, and that it is not a demonstrative per se, but rather an agreement-bearing complementizer that heads a CP. The paper further asserts that the augment is not a relative clause marker as it is stated in Morris and Kirwan (1972) and Taylor (1985) but expresses a restrictive relative clause when present. As part of syntax, the paper discusses agreement properties in relative clause constructions and reports that a clausal relative takes the agreement of the head of the relative clause, but this is not always the case since anti-agreement cases are reported. Data for the analysis comes from authentic written materials and elicited constructions
Exploring the gap between what we say and what we do: Writing centres, ‘safety’, and ‘risk’ in higher education
Full text linkWriting centres are a well-established aspect of student academic support in many universities around the world. As much as there is significant commonality in their espoused ways of working, and theoretical and ontological underpinnings, writing centres work in a diverse range of national and institutional contexts. At times, the pressures from their contexts – both ideological and practical – can work to shape the day-to-day nature of writing centre work that moves away from, rather than towards, their espoused ways of working. This gap between “theory†and “practice†in writing centres is the focus of this paper. The paper argues that acknowledging and characterising the nature of this gap in different writing centre contexts is vital, and needs to be taken on honestly and critically. This may better enable writing centres to act more consciously as a “critical conscience†in university spaces increasingly vulnerable to narrow, uncritical notions of ‘safe’ spaces for student development and growth