Academic Literacy and the Languages of Change
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Academic Literacy and the Languages of Change Edited by Lucia Thesen and Ermien van Pletzen
continuum LONDON
NEW YORK
Continuum The Tower Building 11 York Road London SEl 7NX
80 Maiden Lane Suite 704 New York NY 10038
© Lucia Thesen and Ermien van Pletzen 2006 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: 0-8264-8775-0 (hardback)
Typeset by YHT Ltd, London Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall
For Stella, who is in our midst (1957-2005) '...to conceive of other worlds and other intentions is actually theoretical. My students themselves made whole the circle where theory and practice inform each other, and I learnt to recognize my own theory, and how it both gave rise to and was itself a product of my own practice. ... my teaching was my political contribution to change.' From: Stella Clark (1996), 'Finding theory in practice', Educational Action Research, 4 (1).
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contents
List of Figuress
ix
Acknowledgements
x
Prefacee by Professor Njabulo S. Ndebelee
xi
Introduction: The politics of place in academic literacy work Lucia Thesen and Ermien van Pletzen 1
\
Discourses of English and literacy in a Western Cape township school Rochelle Kappp
30
2
'Use your own words' - impossible exhortations Stella Clark
53
3
'I want to write about the Dalai Lama ...': Literacies in transition Bongi Bangeni and Rochelle Kappp
67
4
Intertextual analysis: a research tool for uncovering the writer's emerging meanings Moragh Paxton 84
5
A body of reading: making 'visible' the reading experiences of first-year medical students Ermien van Pletzen
104
6
Change as additive: harnessing students' multimodal semiotic resources in an Engineering curriculum Arlene Archerr 130
7
Who owns this image? Word, image and authority in the lecture Lucia Thesen
151
Contents
8
Identity, power and discourse: the socio-political selfrepresentations of successful 'black' students Gideon Nomdo
Index
VIII
180 207
List of Figures
Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure
5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 6.1 6.2 7.1 7.2
Anatomy of a failed reader: student's picture Psychosocial and Anatomy: student's picture Picturing while reading: student's picture A student's mind-map The Goat poster The Efolweni Village poster The lecturer asks: 'Who owns this image?' 'Who owns this image?' Multimodal transcription from the lecture
119 120 120 123 1134-5 1136-7 159 1164-5
IX
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the following people who entered our project at the right time. Students of the University of Cape Town who inspired this research. Martin Hall believed we had something to say, and got us started. Anne Herrington, Charlie Moran, Peter Appelbaum and Jenny ClarenceFincham helped us refine our early ideas, while Gunther Kress encouraged us to nurture our differences. Carolyn McKinney scrutinized an earlier draft of the book, and Kathy Luckett, Laura Czerniewicz, Ian Scott and Nan Yeld commented on the editors' introduction. Liziwe Grootboom, Veronica Twynam and David Worth assisted us with many administrative tasks. The Spencer Foundation's generous funding and support made this book possible. In particular, Lauren Jones Young encouraged us with her warm interest in the project. Jennifer Lovel and Joanna Taylor of Continuum eased our way by guiding our manuscript through the phases of publication. As editors, we would like to thank the University of Cape Town for sabbatical leave and the UCT-Harvard Mandela Scholarship for quality time spent by Ermien at the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University. This book has been approved for publication by a peer review process.
X
Preface
Language is a fundamental component of society. Language is the carrier of society's perceptions, its attitudes and its goals, for through it the speakers absorb entrenched attitudes. Through language we create and express our visions, wield power, suppress or liberate souls. In exploring the authority and agency of language, this book focuses on the centrality of language in bringing about change. Change challenges all of us in our complex, globalized world. In South African higher education we encounter these challenges in every aspect of what we do as we struggle to overcome past inequities and injustices. Despite many structural and policy changes the academy is only slowly becoming aware of how deeply our personal histories, our social, political, racial, ethnic and national backgrounds, shape our understandings and impact our academic and intellectual pursuits. This book, in exploring the 'languages' of change in the education environment, not only highlights significant academic achievements of the Language Development Group at the University of Cape Town, but also focuses our attention on the role of language in bringing about change in the institution. The research described in this book exemplifies the potential for utilizing context-specific studies to complement and extend 'international' theories. Building on the tradition of the New Literacy Studies, the authors site their research among students and learners for whom English is not their mother tongue. These students are required to perform and are assessed by an institution with a complex history of colonialism and opposition to Apartheid, an institution that is seen to be an elite island in a developing country which, despite having extremes of poverty and illiteracy, is itself seen as an island of economic privilege in Africa. The authors question the nature of the academic literacy required of these students, and in so doing also raise seminal questions about the educational programmes and the policies of the institution itself. In engaging closely with the students' experiences of the curriculum and the academy as an institution, the authors reflect on ways in which both could be made more accessible to the diverse student body. They make the case for an educational environment in which the
XI
Preface
needs and experiences of the student body shape the educational programmes. In so doing they contribute to the call for systemic change across the university and a continuing interrogation of the processes that result in the exclusion of many young South Africans from the academic environment. It is exciting to see how the research of the Language Development Group, soundly based as it is in international literacy theory, but deeply cognizant of the complexities of the South African multilingual environment, has led them to theorize around some of the most complex issues of transformation facing higher education in the country. Teasing out the interrelationships of language, learning and identity gives insight into power relationships in the institution, and shows how the values and experiences of students can be masked and even negated. As the authors point out, this results in the institution being deprived of 'a vast reservoir of diverse knowledge and experiences'. This book challenges both the institution and the hegemonic academic system which privileges selected cultural and language groups. It points to the student as a source of knowledge and a means of taking the dialogue of transformation to a new level. However, the difficulty of undertaking this journey of discovery in our multilingual, multicultural society cannot be ignored. I am optimistic that transformation of our academic systems can be achieved, and know that this must involve sharing and dialogue at levels that we have not yet even contemplated. The authors of this book state that their aim is to 'renew our ways of talking to each other' about literacy-based academic practice. I believe that it is dialogue such as this that will lead to change and that institutions of higher learning need to encourage such scholarly explorations of our human experiences and interactions. Professor Njabulo S. Ndebele Vice-Chancellor University of Cape Town
XII
Introduction: The politics of place in academic literacy work Lucia Thesen and Ermien van Pletzen
This is a book about language and an institution, about students creating and recreating texts, and about individuals and a South African university evolving identities at a time of intense change and contestation. We start with a few moments gleaned from classrooms, student texts, interviews and conversations in which people recognize that linguistic resources have moved from one place to another, and that there is a change in valuation that accompanies these shifts. Consider these moments, and what they signify. In an Earth Science course, two female students asked to use their own words to explain the concept of stratigraphy in an essay find that their domestic metaphors of layered cakes run aground against the complexities of scientific language. In another course, a young woman from a workingclass 'coloured'1 family, a yoga teacher who has done some travelling and who is now slightly older than the other students in her Social Sciences class, asks the question, 'Who in the institution decides what you can or cannot bring into your writing?'. Three 'black' students in Economics try out a stylistic device that they know from traditional African poetry and story-telling, and manage to incorporate it successfully in their first-year essays. Elsewhere students in Engineering and Medicine grapple with the impact of Southern African sociocultural realities like poverty and ritual on their disciplines of study, and in a Humanities lecture hall filled with first-year students from widely different life worlds, a young 'white' male lecturer analyses a photograph of Xhosa initiates watching a game of cricket in rural South Africa. Finally, the world of international funding creates new spaces, one outside the formal curriculum for two senior 'black' students being groomed as future academics to debate their individual viewpoints of what it means to be 'black' in South Africa today, and the other a space for a group of academic literacy professionals, the writers of this book, to develop themselves as researchers. These moments have been chosen from chapters in the book, and signal contributors' interest in the richly generative relationships 1
Academic literacy and the languages of change
existing between texts, identities and institutions. The research in this book is strongly situated, aiming to give an insight into different forms of reading and writing in one institutional setting, and to raise questions about academic literacy work and the politics of place. The places that locate these texts are multiple: geographical, socioeconomic, disciplinary, institutional and conceptual. The book presents recent research in the Language Development Group at the University of Cape Town, funded by the US-based Spencer Foundation. The project researches students' literacy practices (with provenance in home, school and university) and how these function as both resources and barriers to learning in higher education. In taking up this challenge, we chose as our unifying theme 'Languages of Change', a theme that expresses our interest in the role of language as an index of change. The use of the word 'languages' in the plural form signals the many meanings of the term, including language as in which language, in the richly multilingual environment we work in; language as in semiotic system; language as in 'discourse' (ways of knowing), and as in 'metalanguage', i.e. as in ways of talking about something - in our case, engagement within a changing institution, mediated by this research to a wider readership. A metalanguage provides opportunities to renew our ways of talking to each other, wherever we are situated. This chapter begins by locating the work of the Language Development Group in changing socio-political and policy contexts, and makes links between our practice and these contexts. The next section outlines the theoretical tradition known as the New Literacy Studies, and its relationship to our work. While this approach has been productive, we demonstrate that our location leads us to question some of the assumptions in this tradition, and to see that some theoretical constructs have developed different inflections here. Much of the theory we use has its origins in the Anglophone, 'mainstream' traditions that still dominate the global politics of academic knowledge in the field of academic literacy studies, and translates in a postcolonial, post-Apartheid South Africa in interesting ways. This is illustrated in a discussion of two important concepts in the field - 'English as a second language' and 'multimodality'. We touch briefly on some of the constraints on our theorization before concluding with an overview of the themes and chapters in the book. Before proceeding, we must acknowledge the limits of this account. It is not possible to write a chapter like this without leaving major gaps in the narrative. As editors, we are writing from a very particular perspective as individuals, in a small unit, in a relatively elite South African university at the foot of the African continent. We 2
Introduction: the politics of place
look closely at our practice, and attempt to theorize from where we stand. It is neither broadly representative nor comprehensive. Nor should it be. Changes and continuities in higher education The history of the Language Development Group is firmly positioned in wider circles of context - the changing character of higher education and the profound historical shifts in the South African political landscape in the past two decades. This section briefly surveys the higher education sector, beginning with a summary of the broad policy shifts since the early 1990s, and then pointing to major changes and continuities in the field. Higher education has changed dramatically from the Apartheid inheritance characterized by inequality legislated along racial, ethnic and regional lines. This fragmentation was underscored by governance arrangements, through which eight different government departments were responsible for institutions divided along ethnic lines, the most notorious being the inefficient and under-funded Department of Education and Training (DET) responsible for the education of 'Africans Language policy further entrenched divisions, as Afrikaans and English were the only recognized official media of instruction in a richly multilingual country, and each was assigned to specific institutions. Class differences were entrenched in the sharp vertical distinction between universities and vocationally-oriented technikons. There is general agreement (Council on Higher Education 2004: 230-33) that the policy break from the old Apartheid inheritance of a deeply divided and divisive, isolated system has been achieved in three periods. These changes can be read through the lens of the discursive tensions2 between a 'popular democratic' discourse, with its roots in the liberation movement of the 1970s and 1980s, and an 'economic rationalist' discourse, oriented towards skills development and training for the requirements of economic growth and globalization. The first period is characterized by symbolic policy-making (1990-1994), with the intention of severing links with the past, and signalling a different future as the African National Congress prepared to govern. This immediately opened up the higher education system as institutions rushed to position themselves. The discursive tensions between 'popular democratic' and 'economic rationalist' discourses were often subsumed by the imperative of doing symbolic work in the interests of building consensus for national unity. The second period, roughly coinciding with the Mandela years, focused on framework 3
Academic literacy and the languages of change
development (1994-1998), in which an overarching policy framework was put in place. The discursive tensions settled as the 'economic rationalist' position was entrenched in a focus on the development of 'higher skills to meet the needs of economic development and global competitiveness' while the 'popular democratic' position was expressed in a 'declared commitment to a programme of redress' (Council on Higher Education 2004: 232). In the third period, the implementation phase since 1999 that coincides with the period of Mbeki's presidency, the equity thrust has become secondary to economic development imperatives. In an assessment of the current situation, a decade after the democratic elections of 1994, Jansen (2004) identifies both changes and continuities in higher education. Some of the changes noted (such as a shift from collegial governance to managerialism, and an increase in transnational trade in enrolments in higher education) can be strongly related to the combined effects of globalization and the end of Apartheid. One of the most striking changes has been a major shift in student distribution patterns, which show a marked increase in enrolments of 'African' students in the system between 1990 and 1999. However, these figures cloud the issue of socio-economic redress. Jansen notes that 'the problem ... will not be race ... [it] will be the background class and regional character' (p. 301) as urban universities attempt to become more inclusive of diversity, while rural universities remain marginalized in class and racial terms. Among the trends he identifies is the change in patterns of student political activism. Schools and universities have played an important role in political organization since the 1970s, with the Soweto uprising of 1976 the most visible expression of this. Since 1994, student politics has taken on a different character, often supporting the new managerialism. This has left something of a vacuum for many educationally disadvantaged students, for whom political activity provided a sponsoring discourse3 that offered a reference point as a holding community in an otherwise alienating environment. Importantly for this book, Jansen also identifies the continuities areas in which there has been little change in the sector. First, the profile of academic staff perpetuates the past. Identifying and keeping leading academics of colour in the system continues to be a major challenge, as institutions often fail to offer satisfying work experiences against the attractions of the private sector and government. Second, knowledge production through research is still carried out largely by 'white' males. Third, institutional cultures have to a large extent remained the same. Institutions 'still bear the racial birthmarks in terms of dominant traditions, symbols and patterns of behaviour that 4
Introduction: the politics of place
remain distinctive despite the broader changes sweeping the higher education landscape' (Jansen 2004: 311). The history of the Language Development Group should be read against this background. The major factors are i) the ongoing tension between equity and economic development priorities, which impacts on the Group's emphasis on redress and social justice, particularly at a time when the economic development position has gained strength; and ii) the continuities in institutional culture that persist, and constrain our work in important ways. We return to the second point later in this chapter.
The Language Development Group: a brief history Our history of the Group begins in the mid 1980s. Since the enforcing of Apartheid legislation on admissions in the 1950s, the University of Cape Town, like other English-speaking, liberal, 'white' universities, had carved out small spaces to admit 'black' and 'coloured' students on merit. However, these numbers were no more than a trickle: in 1986, there were only 350 'African' students out of 12,500 at the University (Scott et al. 2005). There was recognition that unless ways were found of testing student potential (rather than their performance in schoolbased assessments influenced by the poverty of the Apartheid schooling experience for disenfranchized South Africans) very few students would ever qualify for entrance to the University on the basis of their school-leaving results. To bridge this gap, the University supported a programme of alternative testing, the Alternative Admissions Research Project.4 This initiative developed ways of assessing student potential for university-based study, and importantly, linked admission to appropriate curriculum development and support. In its efforts to create curriculum space to support students admitted through the testing-for-potential route, the Academic Support Programme (the unit established in the early 1980s to shape the University's response to educational disadvantage) introduced several programmes across disciplines in the first-year environment, including an English for Academic Purposes (EAP) course in the Humanities. For 'black' students, language was the most visible available marker of the disparity between schooling and the University. Most students spoke English as an additional language, were from working-class homes, and had attended structurally under-resourced Department of Education and Training schools. There was a mismatch between available teaching approaches and students' needs and experiences. Our curriculum was initially informed by materials from Britain used on academic skills courses for 'overseas' students who were typically 5
Academic literacy and the languages of change
speakers of English as a foreign language (EFL). The first task was to adapt these materials to the local context of inequality and struggle, since the inherited approach that focused on surface aspects of the English language system embedded in assimilationist English as a Second (ESL) or Foreign Language (EFL) pedagogies did not meet the needs of the South African context. We worked towards integration of skills and content, and developed materials and approaches with a critical edge that acknowledged that academic language is, in Bourdieu and Passeron's terms, 'never anyone's mother tongue, even for the privileged classes' (1990: 115). Teaching was premised on a fairly homogeneous view of the typical student: 'black' and 'coloured', working-class, invested in the liberation struggle - in a sense, both hero and victim. The key signifier used to characterize students was 'disadvantaged'. While the term provided an opportunity to talk about 'the system' and how it created inequalities, there was also a shadow to this work (Angelil-Carter and Thesen 1993). Courses such as EAP, however empowering in confronting the mysterious practices of text-based literacy, also perpetuate deficit models of student competence in the institution. By locating the problem in the students, we were letting the university off the hook and reinforcing what Rose calls 'the myth of transience' (1985: 355), the belief that the problem of inequality and its manifestation in language was temporary, and that the existence of a course like EAP would bracket 'the problem', until things reverted to 'normal'. The shadow can be seen in the way some students parodied the acronym EAP and changed it to 'English for African People'. These issues were picked up in the Academic Support community nationally, where we debated the politics and relevance of language-based access curricula. The critique (that these language-based courses at the University of Cape Town and elsewhere perpetuated notions of disadvantage) was widespread, and contributed to some universities opting for a focus on curriculum and staff development rather than student disadvantage. The 'student versus staff development' question was vigorously debated, as can be seen in the proceedings of the annual Academic Support Programme Conferences, and the journal Academic Development, based at the University of the Western Cape. These debates, which began in the mid 1980s, have surfaced only relatively recently in international research on academic literacies (see, for example, Lea and Street 1998). With a few exceptions, most of the writing in the national academic development community is not easily available. There are many factors that have contributed to this silence. One is the isolation of South African academics in the Apartheid years. Another is the pressures of working in a 6
Introduction: the politics of place
university while the national liberation struggle intensified around it. For many in the language development community, priorities were directed outwards, and the competing demands of being a conventional academic, and sometimes an activist or social worker, could not easily be reconciled. In addition, the language in education field was not yet able to offer satisfactory theorization of language and broader social issues that would help to explain the politics of access. Janks' influential paper (2000) on access and curriculum is an example of theorization that was probably forged in this period, but only appeared later. Breaking with the past
In the early 1990s, political changes culminated in the democratic elections of 1994. The national discourse of this period could be described by the term coined by Archbishop Desmond Tutu: the 'rainbow nation'. In this period, referred to earlier as the 'symbolic policy-making' phase, the discourse of struggle shifted almost immediately to accommodate the need to build a unified national identity, expressed in the rainbow metaphor. This metaphor was also heavily critiqued by some (for example, Alexander 2002) for its erasure of the massive historical material inequalities that still shape life in South Africa. Chisholm (2004), in an assessment of the post-1994 decade in the education field, has referred to this historical moment as the 'negotiated transition of elite-pacting' (p. 13). At the University of Cape Town, there were important responses to these national changes. The Academic Support Programme was renamed the Academic Development Programme, in recognition of the imperative to focus on systemic change across the university, rather than on designing fragile bridges for 'non-traditional' students. The notion of development was applied less to students than to the multiple sites of students, staff, curriculum and institutional policy. In the discourse of the Academic Development Programme, student 'diversity', rather than 'disadvantage', became an important signifier for the expansion of our work into mainstream curricula. It was this focus on systemic change, assisted by strong institutional backing, that led to permanent staff posts for members of the Language Development Group, and enabled our work to expand rapidly beyond a generic course for students with English as an additional language in the firstyear environment in the Humanities. This expansion was accompanied by a new strategic focus on writing-across-the-curriculum, which recognized the centrality of writing in learning for all students across all disciplines and professions, and (at least in theory) located 7
Academic literacy and the languages of change
issues of writing and academic expression in the heartland of the University. An important event was the establishment of the Writing Centre in 1994. After 1994, there was every expectation that numbers of educationally disadvantaged working-class students in the University would increase, thus erasing Apartheid inequities. The numbers of 'black' students (used inclusively) indeed rose substantially in the decade of the 1990s. For instance, according to Jansen (2004) there was a 100 per cent increase in numbers of 'African' students in historically 'white' English- medium universities between 1994 and 1999. However, the present trend is that the Apartheid legacy that conflated race and class has increasingly begun to break down. As a result, while the overall number of 'black' (used inclusively) students at the University of Cape Town has risen,5 the number of working-class students is dwindling. Even by the late 1990s, numbers of former DET students had begun to fall (these would be 'African' students). Figures obtained for the years 2000 to 2002 for the intake of first-time undergraduate and postgraduate students at the University of Cape Town show a marked decline in the number of former DET students: from 15.5 per cent of the 2000 intake, to 12.9 per cent in 2001 and 10.6 per cent in 2002.6 We must add, however, that some caution should accompany the use of figures like these in a country where all social institutions, including education, have been in a process of rapid restructuring and change. While there is a widespread sense that working-class 'African' students are a shrinking minority on campus, it has become much more difficult to quantify shifts in the class profile of the student population as the country moves away from Apartheid's oppressive classification system. The country's range of racially segregated education departments used to function as strong indicators of students' class positions in Apartheid and early post-Apartheid South Africa; but since 1994 many schools have been established that were never classified within the former racialized school system. Rapid changes in the characters of some schools, and student mobility between different kinds of schools in an attempt to obtain better quality schooling, add to the challenge of quantifying these shifts. For these reasons the class positions of students cannot be 'read off their last school of attendance to the same extent as before. University administrations are hard pressed under these circumstances to devise systems that successfully discern, admit and support students with disadvantaged schooling backgrounds.7 Despite the decrease in numbers of students from former DET schools, the EAP course (renamed 'Language in the Humanities') continued to be an important focus for the Group. It was a base for research (see, for example, the self-published collections of articles 8
Introduction: the politics of place
edited by Angelil-Carter 1993 and Angelil-Carter et al 1994). It also provided opportunities for training, becoming robust and flexible enough to provide an important induction experience for young academics of colour with an interest in language and learning, and for new staff in the Language Development Group (Clark 1998). The new millennium presents new challenges and opportunities. In the period since 1999, coinciding with the consolidation of the 'economic rationalist' discourse in higher education policy, the University now represents itself as 'Worldclass in Africa'. This expresses its straddling position, pulling in two directions at once, towards a global community while at the same time retaining its strong grounding in local realities. The new context has impacted on the Language Development Group in several ways. For one, it is now housed in the Centre for Higher Education Development, a large faculty-like structure with a wide range of responsibilities related to the development and implementation of national higher education policy, and with an interest in the emerging international field of Higher Education Studies. The commitment to equity through student access and social redress no longer seems to be as much of a priority for either the government or the institution.8 This reflects the general post-Apartheid trend that'... even as the stated intent of post-Apartheid's education policy-makers has been to reconcile .the interests of competing and unequal social classes and races, those of a deracialised middle class have come to predominate' (Chisholm 2004: 7). A major function of the Centre for Higher Education Development at the University of Cape Town remains the development and implementation of teaching and learning initiatives; however, it is increasingly under pressure to provide practical support and advice to the institution on the implementation of national policy in higher education, for instance on aspects of the quality assurance of teaching and learning. The tension between the 'popular democratic' and 'economic rationalist' discourses was evident in the Centre a few years ago in discussions about whether it was still appropriate to think of ourselves as 'poachers' (with a moral responsibility to break the boundaries of the University fenced in by Apartheid structures of privilege), as we had done in the 1980s and early 1990s, or as 'gamekeepers' - upholders of national and institutional policy post-1999. The Group retains its earlier critical stance developed in opposition to Apartheid policy and governance, and continues to hold this vital critical lens in place. This means honing a critical perspective on national policy and its uptake in the university, and continuing to interrogate processes that result in physical and epistemological exclusion of students. 9
Academic literacy and the languages of change
The future: a different kind of struggle Our main interest continues to be in students and their engagements with texts, although to be a student in South Africa now has a very different meaning than it did in the past. As Soudien (2004) points out, young South Africans face a new set of challenges: ... from having to face the daily depredations of apartheid, they are now having to come to terms with their positions as young (and mostly black) South Africans in the new democratic order. Their preoccupations have had to shift from the hard and racialised realities of the early nineties to the equally hard but alluring world of the globalisation era. The struggle for them now is how they can build a 'normal' life for themselves, (p. 58)
This formulation in which 'the struggle' now involves building a 'normal' life is a major shift from the heroes and victims that underlay our earlier conceptions of students under Apartheid, and it will require us to keep examining our categories and understandings in the future. This is well expressed in Ndebele's (2004) formulation of the critical stance needed in South African national life: ... there will be times when the battle is not between the new and the new, but between the new and lingering forms of the old that have become embedded not only in others, but also in myself ... Declared doubts are always empowering. They create grounds for new opportunities and solutions. They breed critical self-confidence, (p. 15)
What do these 'lingering forms of the old' and 'declared doubts' mean for us as academic literacy researchers and practitioners? Theresa Lillis, whose research into academic literacies and access in the UK context has been instructive, has identified a tension in the way people use the term 'academic literacy'.9 Some understand it to be a description of 'the kinds of things students need to do in order to do academic work as currently configured'. For others, it is a 'critical project which is the responsibility of all with an investment in what the university may become'. While these distinctions are not always clear-cut (see the dilemmas described by Bangeni and Kapp in this volume), we align ourselves with the latter formulation - a critical project that is ongoing and complex, open to emerging forms and practices, in the certainty that power will take new forms. At the same time, we acknowledge how the areas that Jansen identifies in which there has been little change, particularly in the institutional culture of the University, continue to constrain our thinking and acting. Many of the curriculum sites described here are 10
Introduction: the politics of place
not in the mainstream of the University, but in specially created curriculum spaces for educationally disadvantaged (usually 'black') students. This pushes us to ask ourselves how far we have travelled from the mid 1980s, when special curricula were fought for to enable students with potential to enrol at the University, and to have a good chance of succeeding. The persistence of these courses continues to provide opportunities for talented students to gain epistemological access to the University, but the shadow is still there, perpetuating the notion that only 'black' students are disadvantaged, or that change is somehow linked to 'black' people rather than to 'white' people. It also points to the extent of the Apartheid legacy, and to the difficulties in altering patterns of thinking about institutional provision in a University with a strong liberal tradition. In the next section, we ask what kinds of theoretical resources can help us engage with what the University may become.
In dialogue with the New Literacy Studies For us, theory has been towed by the shifting demands of our teaching practice, with its changing students and contexts, as outlined in the historical account above. An important feature of the theorization of the Language Development Group is the foregrounding of context. It is not simply a matter of background - the setting against which action takes place. It is the source of the action. This emphasis on socially situated approaches to reading and writing draws us to the field broadly referred to as the New Literacy Studies, which has provided fertile ground for the range of activities that has characterized our work in the last decade. The term has its roots in the seminal work of Gee (1990) and Street (1984, 1993) and has been amplified more recently in collections such as Barton, Hamilton and Ivanic (2000), and, locally, Prinsloo and Breier (1996). Early writing in this field (for example, Scribner and Cole 1981 and Heath 1983) set out from different disciplinary backgrounds to challenge commonsense views that literacy seemed to produce certain irreversible psychological transformations, associated with positive traits such as logical thinking and the ability to decontextualize and objectify experience. Gee and Street have referred to these as 'great divide' theories of literacy because they posit a fundamental cognitive gap between literate and non-literate individuals, and, by inference, communities. The New Literacy Studies stands in opposition to the dominance of this binary distinction and its ongoing consequences in policy and popular perception and practice. It argues instead for a multiple view of literacy (or literacies) as 'a set of social practices that stand in ideological relationship among themselves' 11
Academic literacy and the languages of change
(Scollon 2001: 118). This 'ideological' view of literacy, as Street (1984) calls it, in opposition to a decontextualized 'autonomous' view, argues that becoming literate does produce complex changes in individual trajectories and identities, but the differences among literacy practices and their associated competencies, seen as struggles and contradictions, are best understood in socio-political terms, rather than as matters of cognition. The field has grown substantially, and has made a major impact on academic literacy practice in South Africa. It has enabled practitioners to reconceptualize their academic literacy curricula and deepen their understandings of the complex embedding of writing in discourses in and out of formal education. Gee's construct of primary and secondary discourses (1996), to which several contributors to this volume refer, has been widely used to untangle and illuminate students' writing practices. Gee's work (for example Gee 2004) continues to provide a resource for theorization, particularly with regard to understanding emerging student identities in the light of young peoples' alienation from the academic experience, in contrast to much more satisfying and challenging literacy encounters outside of formal education. This sheds light on the identity shifts associated with the 'hard but alluring world of the globalisation era' that Soudien refers to, quoted earlier in this Introduction. While the New Literacy Studies has been extremely generative in some ways, there are inevitably areas of tension or weakness in its theory building. One problem is its lack of impact on educational policy regarding language and literacy, where the view that language can be treated as a decontextualized technology still prevails, and proves very hard to dislodge. Moss (2001) offers an explanation. She attributes lack of impact on policy to the democratic impulse behind the New Literacy Studies. In its commitment to uncovering multiple literacy practices, and celebrating their diversity, it erases crucial differences between sites. As she says, 'home into school will not go' (2001: 148), because standardized codes of communication evolved in institutions of schooling have a special character which function by setting the institutions apart from the ordinary. She argues that more research needs to be done on schooled literacy per se. As the field matures, it may be more able to explain the movement between sites. In this regard, Kapp's article in this book makes an important contribution to understanding the gaps and continuities between 'township' schools and university-based literacy practices. An important difference in emphasis within the broad movement of the New Literacy Studies occurs between researchers with an anthropological lens who have an interest in uncovering literacy 12
Introduction: the politics of place
practices and the belief structures (both collective and individual) that sustain them, and those who use a more textual analysis derived from linguistics and the textually oriented disciplines. For example, Street (2003) warns researchers against a type of 'mode determinism that would resurrect the autonomous model' (p. 12). In methodological terms, this involves reading practices off texts and modes rather than establishing what they mean to their users. Thesen (1997) makes a similar point with regard to a study of 'black' first-year students in the Humanities, arguing that while there is a commitment to the specifics of context in New Literacy Studies work, the effect of much textuallyoriented research is to diminish the agency and local meanings of text makers. The focus of this book is on texts, but all authors look closely at the practices in which they are embedded, and the meanings that they hold. Baynham and Prinsloo (2001) describe the New Literacy Studies as a '... network of inter-related theoretical interests, differently emphasised and inflected in the work of different researchers, but nevertheless permitting the continuation of an ongoing theoretical conversation' (p. 84). Their metaphor of a network of complementary research and theoretical traditions provides the theoretical links for our project. The New Literacy Studies' emphasis on socio-political understandings of multiple literacy practices means that local practice will always be essential in theory building, and the process of trying out these ideas does not just permit, as in the quote above, but necessitates, an 'ongoing conversation'. Theory in place An important contour in the 'Languages of Change' project concerns the nature of our theoretical resources, and the extent to which these bear the marks of this context. Theory provides metaphors that originate in specific places, but come to meaning in different ways, in other places, depending on where they are read. A powerful example is Gough (2000) who draws attention to how Gee's (1990) construct of secondary discourses has defaulted to schooled literacy practices in English, thus perpetuating the dominance of this privileged practice (see Paxton and Archer in this volume for a fuller representation of Gough). One productive theoretical resource that we wish to explore briefly is Blommaert's concept of 'placed resources'. He argues for a sociolinguistics of globalization, recognizing that 'developments at the "top" of the world system have effects at the "bottom" '(2002: 2). He writes that it is important to follow the flow of linguistic resources across contexts, in order to trace shifts in the valuation of semiotic 13
Academic literacy and the languages of change
resources, and gives examples in which a semiotic resource has high value - is 'expensive' - in one context, but in another, used by the same person, in the same language, is marked as 'cheap' in value. He suggests that it is worthwhile to note the points at which a society comes down on an individual's potential to decide and to act - to produce voice so as to be heard and read. The more we look at this point the more the differences and inequalities will appear, and explanations of these will force sociolinguists to come to terms with theories of society. (2002: 6)
In this book, authors explore points of meaning potential, to see how society (the university/discipline/privileged voice) 'comes down on' students' meaning making. Authors also attempt to examine the gains and losses in meaning in these moments. The flows of meaning that are the subject of this book work from margins to centre on several levels. Students' meanings are often on the socio-economic margins in an increasingly unequal society, and they are reminded (often painfully) of this when they enter the University of Cape Town, when their texts are rendered 'cheap'. We, as professionals working in language development, are on the margins of the University, a position that we sometimes welcome as it sharpens the critical lens. As -South African academics, we are also on the margins of global theorization about academic literacies. At a symposium in Belgium at which the Group made a collective presentation on this research project, delegates asked us why we relied so heavily on 'international' theoretical expertise. The answer is not simple, and may begin with the global politics of publishing which creates and sustains metaphors, models and traditions of thought. It is instructive to look briefly at how our location positions us, depending on where our work is read. Like the University, with its mission to be 'Worldclass in Africa', the Group also looks in two directions, caught between the way we are seen at home, in a relatively well resourced and elite university, and the way we are seen internationally. To readers outside of Africa, and in Anglophone settings where the New Literacy Studies originates, we sometimes become an exotic 'Other'. This is reflected in comments when colleagues outside of Africa sometimes say about our students' writing or about our curriculum interventions, 'fascinating data, but... what about standards?'. This illustrates that place clearly does make a difference to one's theoretical speaking and reading positions. These differences should be generative, as in the implied invitation built into the New Literacy Studies to complement, extend and challenge through local applications. It is not clear though 14
Introduction: the politics of place
whether this is a colouring-in exercise, where the conceptual outlines are solid, or whether there is some redrawing involved. In the next two sections, we trace how two important concepts in the New Literacy Studies orientation, 'English as a Second Language' and 'multimodality', have developed local meanings. English as second or additional language? The theory originating in Anglophone first-world countries for teaching English as a second language does not translate easily to teaching environments where bilingual or multilingual learners are in the majority and English is an additional language for most. The term 'English as an additional language', rather than 'English as a second language', reflects the complexities of such environments. For many learners in South Africa, English is a third or fourth, rather than a second language. The country's Language-in-Education Policy (Department of Education 1997: 5) strongly advocates the use of additive bilingual models in schooling, arguing that 'the underlying principle is to maintain home language(s) while providing access to and effective acquisition of additional language(s)'. However, the majority of learners (81.3 per cent of high school learners in 2001) receive their instruction through the medium of English, although only a small minority have English as a home language (only 7.5 per cent of high school learners in 2001 - Bot and Pillay 2004: 22). At the same time, many of these students would be studying English as a second language subject. For reasons such as these, the term 'English as an additional language', which does not suggest a clear ranking of languages, better captures the various roles that English plays in learners' lives and schooling. The long history of language and ethnic division, economic and social oppression, and stark inequalities of power from which South African society has only recently begun to emerge, has made the area of language and learning an extremely difficult terrain in which to manoeuvre. The separate and combined impact of the colonial and Apartheid eras makes it far from straightforward to identify the main colonizing language in education or to address the effects of the structures and struggles that came into being around language colonization. The polarities and crassness of language in education policies during Apartheid (as epitomized in the Bantu Education Act of 1953) and the toll taken on children's lives during the National Party's attempts to tighten the grip of Afrikaans on all schooling during the early to mid 1970s have to some extent masked the powerful and often contradictory roles played by both former official languages (English 15
Academic literacy and the languages of change
and Afrikaans). If one looks at an institution like the University of Cape Town, part of the picture shows a proud history of resistance to oppressive Apartheid policies. Another part shows areas of collusion with Apartheid structures, strong marks of colonial influence, and a medium of instruction that still powerfully privileges a small section of the population. A particularly ironic complication is that apart from in many ways remaining a problematic educational space for 'African' students, the institution is linguistically particularly inaccessible to 'coloured' working-class and rural people, who form a large part of the Western Cape's population, and who traditionally speak Afrikaans. In the country at large, both English and Afrikaans, in various ways and places, retain their power in education. Mda (2004) points to the stark discrepancies continuing in the use of South African languages in education, despite the introduction of new policies and legislation which has accompanied the process of democratization. As she says, 'On paper, all languages are equal and are to be treated equally. In real life, the two former official languages, English and Afrikaans, are still held in high esteem by all who aspire to be successful socially and economically' (p. 182) and for this reason 'there are few incentives for non-African-language speakers to learn African languages and for African learners to exercise their rights pertaining to their languages' (p. 183). Developments in schooling since 1994 have further complicated the linguistic terrain that theories of teaching and learning in English as an additional language have to countenance in South Africa. Vinjevold (1999) describes the 'rapid diversification of formerly linguistically homogenous schools' mainly as a result of '[t]he movement of African pupils to previously "white", "coloured" and Indian schools' after the scrapping of Apartheid legislation (p. 218). Research furthermore shows that many parents of African children favour English as their children's language of instruction from an early age (Vinjevold 1999: 220), a trend that works against implementing the progressive language in education policies of the democratic government which promote multilingualism in education, respect for all languages, and the use of more than one language of learning and teaching in schools. Bot and Pillay (2004) state that whereas in 1999 an African language was the medium of instruction at 56 per cent of primary schools, in 2001 the figure was only 30 per cent (p. 23). Research at the University of Cape Town on African students' language attitudes has likewise revealed deep ambivalences about the possibility of receiving some instruction through their African home languages, since many see English as a language of upward social mobility and economic success (Bangeni 2001). Another particularly far-reaching language factor 16
Introduction: the politics of place
reported on by Blommaert (1999) and Makoni (quoted in Vinjevold 1999: 219) is that in some African communities children do not have an obvious home language, but use a mixture of codes which functions as a single language. The diversity of South African languages, coupled with the largescale instabilities and discrepancies of a society in the making, means that theories and materials originating from very different social worlds where English is spoken by a vast majority of the population do not necessarily translate to our conditions of learning and teaching. At the same time, these conditions make the need for strong theoretical positions and innovative teaching and learning practices in the area of English as an additional language all the more urgent. Just one instance of the kinds of inequality that continue to plague the country's educational processes can be found in a recently drawn up document, Towards a Language Plan for the University of Cape Town: 20052010' (University of Cape Town, 2003), which reports that at present there is a particular problem with 'throughput of students for whom English is a second/foreign language. In several programmes/degrees, the discrepancy in throughput rate between English first-language and second-language students is currently over 20 per cent' (2003: 2). Academic literacy practitioners and post-Apartheid language in education policy-makers have been drawn to Cummins' (1984, 1996) progressive language work in Canadian schools, his promotion of additive bilingualism in general, and more particularly his conceptualization of the type of language proficiency necessary for learning in 'context-reduced' situations in higher education (for Cummins' influence on language development work at the University of Cape Town, see Angelil-Carter and Paxton, 1993). South African researchers like Macdonald (1990) and Kapp (2004) have drawn on Cummins to describe the ways in which children at former DET schools suffer disruptions in their acquisition of 'cognitive academic language proficiency' because of a switch (or continuous switches) between learning in their home languages and having to use English as a language of learning. However, a society still divided by deep material and social inequity, and struggling to reconcile progressive policy with wide-ranging and inequitable educational practice, is bound to yield developmental paths different from those underpinning Cummins' work (see, for example, Kapp 2002). The environment in which we work has given particular critical and theoretical inflections to how we think, speak and write about students' experiences of English as an additional language in higher education, and most of the chapters in this book reflect aspects of this experience. Regrettably, our book does not contain a chapter which deals 17
Academic literacy and the languages of change
specifically with multilingual teaching and learning. However, issues related to this field are woven into our descriptions, analyses and discussions of many different socio-cultural spaces and institutional sites. In Gee's words, the nature of our work has consistently led us into 'more than language' (1996: 127). The absence of such a chapter also represents some of the pressing past imperatives of language development work in our particular institutional environment. Our main task over the years has been to facilitate students' access to and proficiency in the institution's medium of instruction (English). But alongside this need, members of the group have undertaken research and produced materials in support of multilingual initiatives in teaching and learning (see Bangeni 2001, Kapp 1998 and Bangeni and Mashigoane 2002). Several chapters in the present collection examine the roles which students' primary languages play, or could play, both in students' learning and in the shaping of the future institution. In the light of the Language Plan produced recently for the University, the area of multilingualism promises to become a productive node for theory-growing.
Multimodalily: which frontier of literacy? The second concept we discuss is multimodality. We have chosen this as it demonstrates the difference between the way it is generally looked at in the New Literacy Studies tradition, as related to the 'new' ICTs (information and communication technologies), spawning terms like 'new literacies' and concomitant 'new identities', and the uptake of the term in South African academic literacy work. Here it is associated strongly with a wide range of forms of embodied competence that are a resource for meaning, with a complex relationship to the technologies of writing and computing. Research on multimodality has added rich insights into the New Literacy Studies, and also led to some debates about methodologies (anthropological versus textual approaches referred to earlier). In applications to pedagogy, the work of the multiliteracies pedagogy project (New London Group 1996, Cope and Kalantzis 2000) has been generative. This group of applied linguists from Britain, the United States and Australia has argued that there is a semiotic shift from the verbal to the visual, from page to screen (Snyder 1998), resulting in a complex, integrated electronic interface through which meaning is increasingly made. The variety of multimodal text forms associated with new technologies, and the rapid rate of change that accompanies these forms, has major implications for education. As Halliday has pointed out, the frontier of literacy has shifted:'... being literate means 18
Introduction: the politics of place
being able to verbalise the texts generated by both [visual and verbal] semiotic systems' (1996: 359), which increasingly complement each other and open up new resources for meaning-making. This process of dissolving semiotic boundaries is an expression of larger sociopolitical forces, in which global flows of capital and information intensify diversity within national boundaries, and at the same time weaken national boundaries (Kress and van Leeuwen 1996). These factors play out in complex ways in South Africa - a developing country with 'two worlds in one', with rich and poor sharply juxtaposed. The well-documented 'digital divide' (Castells 1998) has profound implications for students entering the university. Young, middleclass people, who have read books (in English) in print-rich environments from early on, are now likely to have an added head start, in that they are also likely to have had easy access to computers and the Internet. Thus, computer literacy interacts with academic literacy and the English language in complex ways to compound existing barriers to entering the discourses of academia. In response, practitioners have done research on finding appropriate ways of assisting students from under-resourced schools to integrate the new technologies into the academic repertoire (a local example is Walton and Archer 2003). An interesting example of the power of local ethnographies to explore what computers signify in classroom practices is found in Prinsloo (2005). Drawing on data from township schools, he shows how generalizations like 'the digital divide' break down when local practices are examined. In poorly resourced schools, computers become an index of social status, functioning as a scarce resource, linked to practices of punishment and reward, rather than offering seamless opportunities for enhancing computer literacy, and by implication, access to a global community. There is another very generative and important aspect to this 'frontier of literacy' which has been written about by colleagues at the University of the Witwatersrand, who have led a local movement which focuses on the semiotic potential of a range of modes, including language. Stein writes that it is important to recognize 'the limits of language as a channel for expressing the full arc of human experience. Language often fails us' (2000: 334). Given the political and economic load on the written English language, referred to elsewhere in this Introduction, disenfranchized South Africans have long relied on other means and modes such as their bodies and voices to read and express complex meanings in a society where racial identity has signified so much. In projects that attempt to make visible the meaningmaking resources that marginalized South Africans have developed on 19
Academic literacy and the languages of change
the fringes of a globalizing world, Stein (2003), Archer (2004), Alborough (2004) and others have done fascinating work to show the agency of children and young adults as text designers. This research is not just looking back into the past at predominantly rural, 'traditional' practices. The 'hard but alluring world of the globalisation era' that Soudien writes about has produced new genres, such as Kwaito music.10 It has also breathed new life into old forms, as is so eloquently seen in the flowering of opera in South Africa, strikingly so at the University of Cape Town Opera School at the College of Music (see Antje Krog's 2003 account, pp. 221-26). There are hints of these contemporary practices in many of the papers in this collection. This work suggests that the prevailing emphasis on screen-based literacy practices needs to be complemented by a focus on another frontier, the frontier of embodied capital (Bourdieu 1986, Carrington and Luke 1997) that has the potential to renew the old forms in profound ways. In applications of Bourdieu's concept of embodied capital as an aspect of habitus (history brought into the present in the individual) in the field of education, the emphasis has tended to be on language as the key competency. However, for students marginal to the (mainly English) text-based practices of schooling, there is a rich reserve of knowledge and competence that is often held in the body, in the ability to express meaning through voice, performance and image-making, and to use these modes for both production and critique. Nomdo's article in this book illustrates this richly, and speaks back to Bourdieu to show how individuals think of their own capital in making their way through the University. There are examples of this in all aspects of South African life. However, beyond the few 'creative' spaces like Music, Creative Writing and Drama, the University remains relatively impermeable to these changes, particularly in its genres of assessment. For the most part, these remain firmly anchored in writing, and writing-based courses remain stumbling blocks for artists, singers, actors, architects and engineers. Several chapters in this collection refer to these embodied, rather than alphabetic, literacy practices. One of the implications of this emerging frontier of multimodal, embodied literacy forms is that the academic literacy community is looking outside of its base in language-focused pedagogies to recognize that teaching and learning that focuses only on language, at the cost of other modes, is missing out on a major source of meaning. At the same time, however, for those interested in this field, we are aware that this does not mean that language should be downplayed. We know that we will return to the issue of language, but in more generative ways, after placing it alongside other modes in the repertoire.
20
Introduction: the politics of place
Themes and chapters While all of us engage with the New Literacy Studies, it is important to preserve the differences among the contributors to this collection. First, our diverse identities in class, race and gender terms, as well as age, religion, workplace experience and the many other factors that shape who we are, incline us to this work in different ways. We also need to acknowledge how difference is constructed in the representation of our research. As stated in an earlier footnote, all racial terminology used in this book is presented in quotation marks to indicate contributors' resistance to practices of racial classification and our belief that these categories are at least to some degree social constructs. However, as editors we wish to acknowledge that such a blanket statement may veil differences and nuances in individuals' ways of thinking about race and ethnicity, as well as their own racial and ethnic associations and identifications. On the one hand, this may be the case for the group of contributors, whose racial and ethnic identities and orientations differ from one another in ways not captured by stated categories like 'white', 'black', 'African' or 'coloured'. More importantly, our research subjects, the students we refer to in this volume, may not have chosen to refer to themselves using these categories in quotation marks, or using any racial categories at all. Inevitably, our methodological decisions have implications for the ways we position ourselves and represent others. We also work in different disciplinary sites, and this affects our identities, and those of the students we encounter, in important ways. A critical stance on knowledge is for instance core in the Humanities, but it is not an overt value in the discourse of Science. The chapters in this book are organized around different kinds of space in the curriculum, each with inherent constraints and possibilities. The first chapter starts the exploration of literacy practices in a former DET school in a township previously designated for 'African' people, located outside central Cape Town. After this a set of three chapters looks at writing in higher education - the regulated genre of the academic essay, with its restrictions on voice in different disciplines. The next three engage with what tend to be hidden spaces in higher education that involve complex decoding, but are generally not assessed - the activity of reading, the design of visual posters, and participation in lectures. The final chapter is about an important mentorship space for successful 'black' students alongside the formal degree process. All of us have drawn from Applied Language Studies and textual analysis, particularly critical discourse analysis, so the contributions all look closely at hybrid texts in the making. Although 21
Academic literacy and the languages of change
we have all found the New Literacy Studies productive as a starting point, we have all interpreted this in different ways, and grafted new theoretical resources on to the old, in a dialogue. Each chapter is fundamentally concerned with student agency, and with change, though the political implications of these changes may be different for each of us. In Chapter 1 Rochelle Kapp sets the scene for our collection by focusing on how English is taught in a township school. The chapter illustrates the continuities and discontinuities between school and university discourse practices, an area revisited by all the other chapters. Through a detailed account of two senior teachers' constructions of 'English' and 'literacy' in the classroom, she shows how teachers see their students on the one hand as 'border-crossers' with futures outside the township, and on the other hand attempt to ensure that students maintain their Xhosa identities. The chapter presents the reality of schooling for a vast majority of 'African' students who receive their instruction across the curriculum through the medium of English, while at the same time studying English as a second language. While only a very small number of students would reach the University of Cape Town from a school such as the one this chapter describes, it initiates a productive discussion of the complex interrelationships of language, learning and identity that take root in the school classroom and continue to ramify at university. The next set of three individual chapters focus on writing. Student writing in the disciplines of higher education, especially writing for assessment, is a space in which the conflicts, negotiations and interferences between students' primary discourses and the demands of academic discourse play themselves out most starkly. It is traditionally a space of little flexibility and marked inequalities of power, where students grapple with predetermined forms of language in order to encode the meanings and values of specific disciplines. It is an area of academic literacy practice in which course designers' and markers' instructions, feedback, and, possibly most importantly, grading, frequently mask the student's voice, values, life world and alternate discourses. This area of academic literacy practice, with its strictures on change, is the focus of the chapters that begin this book. The first chapter on writing by Stella Clark (Chapter 2) closely examines the difficulties involved in requiring students to write in their 'own words' in the apparently objective genres of Science. She traces student voice in the clash of genres that results when students are asked to combine elements of the friendly letter with a scientific field report, how the personal pronoun T is either active or submerged. Attempts to create transitions to scientific discourses may flounder if 22
Introduction: the politics of place
generic constraints are not taken into account. Her conclusions point clearly to the need for teachers of university Science to help students find 'situated meanings' through 'embodied experiences', rather than through empty exhortations to use their 'own words'. In Chapter 3, Bongi Bangeni and Rochelle Kapp show some of the complexities involved in acknowledging students' prior literacies in essay writing in the Humanities. They trace the path of one student, 'Suraya', and richly illustrate her dilemmas and powerful critiques, expressed in interviews but not in her essays. She, like many others, gives up her own beliefs and desires in favour of the dominant discourse. They also look at their own doubts about their mediating roles in shaping students' instrumental choices. They ask serious questions about the implications of these capitulations for change. Moragh Paxton also looks at generic constraints and creativity in writing, but in the discipline of Economics, in Chapter 4. She explores the writing development of a small group of students in a course taken during their first year at university. Her close intertextual analysis of the influence of prior literacy practices such as the rhetorical patterns of Zulu oral poetry taught in schools, as well as current practices based on their readings of the media in the 'new South Africa', is illuminating, and gives substance to the concept of 'interim literacies'. She makes the point that changes of form are inevitable, but are slow to be acknowledged. The next group of chapters moves into less clearly defined territory, into the relatively hidden spaces beyond the reach of assessment, where there is little explicit pedagogy, but where important academic work takes place. Chapter 5, by Ermien van Pletzen, raises the issue of reading, a process of decoding meaning during which medical students have their life worlds affirmed, or more commonly denied, in their encounters with authoritative texts in a high-stakes reconfigured interdisciplinary Health Sciences curriculum. Through careful analysis of students' comments and responses, she illuminates how reading plays a fundamental role in maintaining the 'hidden curriculum' to the exclusion of students on the margins. By denying their 'life worlds in transit' the institution misses out on a 'vast reservoir of diverse knowledge and experiences' and thus impoverishes the learning space and the potential for change. Arlene Archer in Chapter 6 looks at how students express complex meanings in the design of posters in an access course in Engineering. Using multimodal semiotic analysis, she identifies the semiotic resources that students use to make posters in a relatively informal 'low-stakes' activity in which they identify and explore 'symbolic objects'. She shows how these resources are carried across (and sometimes lost) in the design of a formal poster for 23
Academic literacy and the languages of change
assessment purposes at the end of the course. Arguing strongly for change as the norm and as additive, her chapter shows how these mixed mode texts should be read in productive ways. Lucia Thesen engages in Chapter 7 with the neglected but ubiquitous event of the lecture, and how it can be read as multimodal text. She does a micro analysis of the flow of meaning between the lecturer's embodied voice, a complex photographic image of Xhosa initiates watching a game of cricket, and the 'ideological becoming' evident as students engage in radically different ways with the lecturer and subject matter. The analysis shows the complexities involved in the production of authority in these spaces, and how these echo wider South African discourses. The collection ends fittingly with a powerful analysis of students' agency. In Chapter 8 Gideon Nomdo stands back to look at the selfrepresentations of successful 'black' students, contrasting the paths of two young South Africans involved in a US-based mentorship programme. Working on the edge of the formal pedagogical space, he shows, through detailed analysis of interviews, essays, reflective reports and curricula vitae, how race and class categories that were conflated under Apartheid conditions become dissociated in presentday South Africa. He finds that the students' experiences are both similar and different, as a result of the way different forms of capital are recognized in different discursive settings. His paper demonstrates that for students' capital to be recognized, the institution as a whole has to be involved in a project about a culture of change. In all the chapters in this book, we have regarded this as our project: to trace the specificities and varieties of students' developmental paths as they cross their multiple sociolinguistic worlds. An important aim of our research and teaching has been to improve routes of access to the academy's array of discourses, while acknowledging the maze of paths that students travel by to get to the institution. While our project is progressive in identifying and analysing restraints on change, as well as .some spaces conducive to change in the use of academic literacies at the University of Cape Town, a truly transformative project would have to involve mainstream revaluations and recastings of how we all - students, teachers, researchers and administrative staff - signify our meanings at a university in Africa. References Alborough, C. (2004), 'Designing social identities: a case study of a primary school theatrical performance by Zulu children in an English ex-model C school'. Unpublished Masters Dissertation, University of Cape Town. 24
Introduction: the politics of place
Alexander, N. (2002), An Ordinary Country: Issues in the Transition from Apartheid to Democracy in South Africa. Scottsville: University of Natal Press. Angelil-Carter, S. (ed.) (1993), Language in Academic Development at U.C.T. Cape Town: University of Cape Town. Angelil-Carter, S. (ed.) (1998), .Access to Success: Literacy in Academic Contexts. Cape Town: University of Cape Town Press. Angelil-Carter, S., Bond, D., Paxton, M. and Thesen, L. (eds) (1994), Languag in Academic Development at U.C.T. Cape Town: University of Cape Town. Angelil-Carter, S. and Paxton, M. (1993), 'Overview of a developing theoretical framework for language work in academic development at the University of Cape Town', in S. Angelil-Carter (ed.) (1993), Language in Academic Development at U.C.T. Cape Town: University of Cape Town, pp. 4-10. Angelil-Carter, S. and Thesen, L. (1993), 'English for Academic Purposes within the institution: the shape of a shadow', in S. Angelil-Carter (ed.) (1993), Language in Academic Development at U.C.T. Cape Town: University of Cape Town, pp. 11-26. Archer, A. (2004), 'Access to academic practices in an Engineering curriculum: drawing on students' representational resources through a rmiltimodal pedagogy'. Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Cape Town. Bangeni, A. (2001), 'Language attitudes, genre and cultural capital: a case study of EAL students' access to a foundation course in the Humanities at UCT'. Unpublished Masters Dissertation, University of Cape Town. Bangeni, A. and Mashigoane, M. (2002), 'Multilingual interventions and the redistribution of cultural capital as a means to access'. Paper presented at Sociolinguistics Symposium 14, Ghent. Barton, D., Hamilton, M. and Ivanic, R. (2000), Situated Literacies. London: Routledge. Baynham, M. and Prinsloo, M. (2001), 'New directions in literacy research', Language and Education, 15, (2 and 3), 83-104. Blommaert, J. (1999), 'Language in education in post-colonial Africa: trends and problems'. Paper presented at the international conference 'Language in education in post-colonial societies', Hong Kong. Blommaert, J. (2002), 'Writing in the margins: notes on the sociolinguistics of globalisation', Working Papers on Language, Identity and Power, No. 13, Ghent. http://bank.rug.ac.be/LPI/ Bot, M. and Pillay, M. (2004), 'Schooling provision in South Africa, 19902002', Educsource, 43, May 2004, 13-26. Bourdieu, P. (1986), 'Forms of capital', in J. G. Richardson (ed.), Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education. New York: Greenwood Press. Bourdieu, P. and Passeron, J.-C. (1990), Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture. Newbury Park: Sage Publications. Carrington, V. and Luke, A. (1997), 'Literacy and Bourdieu's sociological theory: a refraining', Language and Education, 11, (2), 96-112. Castells, M. (1998), The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture. Volume 2: The Power of Identity. Oxford: Blackwell.
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Chisholm, L. (ed.) (2004), Changing Class: Educational and Social Change in Post-Apartheid South Africa. Cape Town: HSRC Press and Zed Books. Clark, S. (1998), 'Tutor development: finding a language for teaching', in S. Angelil-Carter (ed.), Access to Success: Literacy in Academic Contexts. Cape Town: University of Cape Town Press, pp. 120-33. Cope, B. and Kalantzis, M. (eds) (2000), Multiliteracies: Literacy, Learning and the Design of Social Futures. London: Routledge. Council on Higher Education (CHE) (2004), South African Higher Education in the First Decade of Democracy. Pretoria: CHE. Cummins, J. (1984), Bilingualism and Special Education: Issues in Assessment and Pedagogy. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Cummins, J. (1996), Negotiating Identities: Education for Empowerment in a Diverse Society. Ontario: California Association for Bilingual Education. Department of Education (1997), 'Language-in-Education Policy', Government Gazette No. 18546, 19 December, 5-7. Gee, J. P. (1990), Social Linguistics and Literacies: Ideology in Discourses. London: Palmer Press. Gee, J. P. (1996), Social Linguistics and Literacies: Ideology in Discourses (2nd edn). London: Palmer Press. Gee, J. P. (2004), 'New times and new literacies: themes for a changing world', in A. F. Ball and S. W. Freedman (eds), Bakhtinian Perspectives on Language, Literacy and Learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 279-306. Gough, D. (2000), 'Discourse and students' experience of higher education', in B. Leibowitz and Y. Mohamed (eds), Routes to Writing in Southern Africa. Cape Town: Silk Road Publishers, pp. 43-58. Halliday, M. A. K. (1996), 'Literacy and linguistics: a functional perspective', in R. Hasan and G. Williams (eds), Literacy in Society. Harlow: Addison Wesley Longman, pp. 339-76. Heath, S. B. (1983), Ways with Words. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Herrington, A. and Curtis, M. (2000), Persons in Process: Four Stories of Writing and Personal Development in College. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. Janks, H. (2000), 'Domination, access, diversity and design: a synthesis model for critical literacy education', Educational Review, 52, (2), 175-86. Jansen, J. D. (2004), 'Changes and continuities in South Africa's higher education system, 1994 to 2004', in L. Chisholm (ed.), Changing Class: Education and Social Change in Post-Apartheid South Africa. Cape Town and London: HSRC Press and Zed Books, pp. 293-314. Kapp, R. (1998), 'Language, culture and politics: the case for multilingualism in tutorials', in S. Angelil-Carter (ed.), Access to Success: Literacy in Academic Contexts. Cape Town: University of Cape Town Press, pp. 21-34. Kapp, R. (2002), 'The politics of English: a study of classroom discourses in a township school'. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Cape Town. Kapp, R. (2004), 'Reading on the line: an analysis of literacy practices in ESL classes in a South African township school', Language and Education, 18, (3), 246-63.
26
Introduction: the politics of place
Kress, G. and van Leevwen, T. (1996), Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. London: Routledge. Krog, A. (2003), A Change of Tongue. Johannesburg: Random House. Lea, M. and Street, B. (1998), 'Student writing in higher education: an academic literacies approach', Studies in Higher Education, 23, (2), 157-72. Macdonald, C. (1990), English Language Skills Evaluation. A Final Report of the Threshold Project. Pretoria: HSRC. Mda, T. (2004), 'Multilingualism and education', in L. Chisholm (ed.), Changing Class: Educational and Social Change in Post-Apartheid South Africa. Cape Town and London: HSRC Press and Zed Books, pp. 177-94. Moss, G. (2001), 'On literacy and the social organisation of knowledge inside and outside of school', in Language and Education, 15, (2 and 3), 146-61. Ndebele, N. (2004), 'An approach to viable futures', in E. Pieterse and F. Meintjies (eds), Voices of the Transition: The Politics, Poetics and Practices of Social Change in South Africa. Johannesburg: Heinemann, pp. 14-17. New London Group (1996), 'A pedagogy of multiliteracies: designing social futures', Harvard Educational Review, 66, (1), 60-92. Nuttall, S. (2004), 'Styling the self: the Y generation in Rosebank, Johannesburg', Public Culture, 16, (3), 430-52. Prinsloo, M. (2005), 'The new literacies as placed resources'. Paper presented at AILA conference, Madison, WI, August 2005. Prinsloo, M. and Breier, M. (1996), The Social Uses of Literacy: Theory and Practice in Contemporary South Africa. Johannesburg: SACHED and John Benjamins Publishing Company. Rose, M. (1985), 'The language of exclusion: writing instruction at the university', College English, 47, (4), 341-59. Scollon, R. (2001), Mediated Discourse: the Nexus of Practice. London: Routledge. Scott, L, Yeld, N., McMillan, J. and Hall, M. (2005), 'Equity and excellence in higher education: the case of the University of Cape Town', in W. G. Bowden, M. A. Kurzweil and E. M. Tobin (eds), Equity and Excellence in Higher Education. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, pp. 261-84. Scribner, S. and Cole, M. (1981), The Psychology of Literacy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Snyder, E. (1998), Page to Screen: Taking Literacy into the Electronic Era. London and New York: Routledge. Soudien, C. (2004), 'Fighting for a normal life: becoming a young adult in the new South Africa', in E. Pieterse and F. Meintjies (eds), Voices of the Transition: The Politics, Poetics and Practices of Social Change in South Africa. Johannesburg: Heinemann Publishers, pp. 53-9. Stein, P. (2000), 'Rethinking resources: multimodal pedagogies in the ESL classroom', TESOL Quarterly, 34, (2), 333-6. Stein, P. (2003), 'Rights, representations and resources: multimodal communication in South African classrooms'. Unpublished PhD thesis, Institute of Education, University of London.
27
Academic literacy and the languages of change
Street, B. (1984), Literacy in Theory and Practice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Street, B. (ed.) (1993), Cross-cultural Approaches to Literacy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Street, B. (2003), Theory and practice of literacy under challenge'. Keynote address to Multiliteracies and the Contact Zone Conference, Ghent. Taylor, N. and Vinjevold, P. (eds.) (1999), Getting Learning Right: Report of the President's Education Initiative Research Project. Johannesburg: The Joint Education Trust. Thesen, L. (1997), 'Voices, discourse and transition: in search of new categories in EAP', TESOL Quarterly, 31, (3), 487-511. University of Cape Town (2003), Towards a language plan for the University of Cape Town, 2005-2010'. University of Cape Town (2005), 'Principal's Circular, 07 2005'. Vinjevold, P. (1999), 'Language issues in South African classrooms', in N. Taylor and P. Vinjevold (eds), Getting Learning Right: Report of the President's Education Initiative Research Project. Johannesburg: The Joint Education Trust. Walton, M. and Archer, A. (2003), The web and "information literacy": scaffolding the use of web sources in a project-based curriculum', British Journal of Educational Technology, 35, (2). Yeld, N. and Haeck, W. (1997), 'Educational histories and academic potential: can tests deliver?', Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 22, 5-16.
Notes 1.
2.
3.
28
It is impossible to contextualize fully the imbrications of South African educational backgrounds without using terms dating from Apartheid days of racial classification, for example 'African', 'coloured', 'Indian'. To signify our belief that these categories are to some degree, at least, artificially constructed, we use quotation marks. For complex historical reasons we have used the term 'black' instead of 'African' in most cases. However, in a few cases the word 'black' is used inclusively to signify 'African', 'coloured' and 'Indian' people together. In the Introduction we clearly state inclusivity in the following way: 'black' (used inclusively). Transformation in higher education is also frequently discussed in relation to the tensions and tradeoffs between equity and excellence (see, for example, Scott et al. 2005). We note, as they do, that 'excellence' is more usefully replaced by the term 'economic development' when juxtaposed with 'equity'. The term was first introduced to us by Anne Herrington, in a seminar on work in progress towards her co-authored book
Introduction: the politics of place
4.
'5.
6. 7. 8.
9. 10.
Persons in Process: Four Stories of Writing and Personal Development in College (Herrington and Curtis 2000). In this text, drawing on others, they refer to 'sponsoring institutions' such as the church, politics, etc., which can enable alienated students to establish an authoritative foothold in the University, a position from which to develop a critical stance on the difficult reading and writing challenges they have to engage with. The Alternative Admissions Research Project (AARP) continues to play a role in identifying potential for university studies in an increasingly complex national higher education sector. See, for example, Yeld and Haeck (1997) for a discussion of the focus and contribution of this programme. In 2003, 48 per cent of all students registered at the University were 'black' (used inclusively). 26.8 per cent of all students were 'African' (University of Cape Town, Principal's Circular 2005: 126). We are grateful to Alvin Visser of the Alternative Admissions Research Project at the University of Cape Town for obtaining these figures. We are indebted to Jane Hendry, the Chief Information Officer of the Institutional Planning Department at the University of Cape Town, for this discussion. There are, however, signs that this may be changing. An indicator is the increase in enrolments in the Language in the Humanities course, as the faculty seeks to attract more students against the trend of falling student numbers in the Humanities. Internal debates about new funding formulae that will address historical inequalities are also taking place in the University. Theresa Lillis made this distinction at the International Literacies Conference in Cape Town in November 2001. Kwaito music is a new post-1994 genre emblematic of the newfound freedom of expression of black township youth. It draws on prior traditions, 'mixing up the protest dancing and chanting known as toyi toyi with slow-motion house, local pop ("bubble gum") and a dash of hip-hop' (Nuttall 2004: 433), resulting in a vibrant, edgy genre that uses lyrics in township slang.
29
1
Discourses of English and literacy in a Western Cape township school Rochelle Kapp
Introduction South Africa has emerged from a long history where the majority of its citizens were oppressed on the basis of racial and ethnic classification. Under the system of Apartheid, language was conflated with ethnicity and used as a tool to separate and divide people, physically and socially (through geographic separation), and mentally, by instilling constructions of inferiority and superiority. In the new South Africa, with its emphasis on equity, unity and nation-building, language has been reconceptualized in official policy from a problem to a 'right' and a 'resource' for learning and development (Pan South African Language Board 1999, Heugh 1995 and 2002). A policy of multilingualism has been adopted which recognizes 11 official languages and enshrines the language rights of the individual in the bill of rights of its 1996 constitution. In line with these constitutional provisions, the 'Language-inEducation' policy (Department of Education 1997a) advocates teaching through the medium of the home language while learning additional languages as subjects, or else teaching through the medium of two languages. The policy reflects the strong influence of the work of Canadian linguist Jim Cummins on South African thinking about learning and teaching in English Second Language (ESL) contexts. It draws on Cummins' (1984) theory of additive bilingualism to account for educational failure in South Africa. The argument is that an early switch to English, combined with poor teaching, has resulted in students' developing basic interpersonal skills (BICS) in English, but not the cognitive academic language proficiency (CALP) skills needed to deal with advanced levels of (context-reduced) literacy in either the home language or English (Heugh et al. 1995). 30
Discourses of English and literacy in a Western Cope township school
The policy and consequent curriculum development therefore assume that for those for whom English is a second language (ESL) the subject will be taught as an additional language at a relatively basic level. In practice, African language speakers have opted for English medium instruction in large numbers (see statistics in the Introduction of this volume). For the majority who are being educated in relatively poorly resourced former Department of Education and Training (DET) schools designed for 'African' students under Apartheid (according to Van der Berg 2004, 93 per cent of matriculants in 2003), this means that English is the medium of instruction across the curriculum, but that students are taking English language and literature classes at a second-language level. Thus, a central irony of the contemporary South African educational system is that, after emerging from a long history where language was used as a tool of oppression, working-class 'African' students (in former DET schools) have once more been placed at a disadvantage in terms of meaningful access to education. Because the final matriculation (school-leaving) examination system makes it possible to pass English Second Language with only basic, functional literacy and low-level processing skills, the ESL pass rate is usually over 90 per cent. The key role that language (and in particular English) plays in influencing the kind of cognitive development that takes place across the curriculum is consequently obfuscated. That students from such backgrounds are failing the overall examination in large numbers and not qualifying for university entrance is obscured by government propaganda which each year foregrounds the improvement in the pass rate, despite widely acknowledged grade inflation. In addition, Van der Berg (2004) analyses 1999 and 2000 data and shows that: There are large inequalities in results between the different provinces, and massive differentials between the poorest schools (with an average pass rate of 44 per cent) and the richest schools (97 per cent) and the predominantly African (43 per cent) and predominantly 'white' schools (97 per cent). To put this into historical context, in 1994 - the last year for which racial data were collected - the African pass rate was 49 per cent as against 97 per cent for whites, (p. 3)
According to Van der Berg (2004), in 2003 only 11 per cent of students from former DET schools qualified for university entrance. What these statistics do not tell us is how English is being used in the classroom and why there is such a huge investment in the language in a context where the use of African languages is a constitutional right. From the perspective of our work in language development in 31
Academic literacy and the languages of change
the tertiary context, it is imperative that we attempt to work out the continuities and discontinuities between school and university discourse practices, particularly in this period of rapid change in South Africa. Elsewhere (Kapp 2000) I begin to answer the why question by drawing on my ethnographic study of a typical former DET school to analyse students' ambivalent attitudes to English and Xhosa. I show that students associate English with social mobility, and see it as a means to transcend the poverty and violence of the township. English is the ticket into a 'white' urban South Africa and into the international world, particularly the United States of America. Xhosa is associated with preservation of tradition and demonstration of solidarity with township discourses. However, these views are not voiced openly, and to be seen to be investing in English through using the language outside the classroom is to risk humiliation and derision for 'forgetting' one's 'culture' and aspiring to be 'white'. In this chapter, I draw on the same study in order to present two senior teachers' classroom constructions of English and literacy. I illustrate how teachers' notions of appropriate English literacy are inextricably bound to their constructions of their students as border-crossers with futures outside of the township, as well as their concern that students should maintain a Xhosa identity. In their statements about English, students and teachers conceptualize the language as a neutral 'working tool' (Ndebele 1987: 233) to achieve instrumental ends. Xhosa signifies proximity to an authentic (true) identity. Nevertheless, in everyday practices English carries value-laden connotations of progress, modernity, knowledge and empowerment that have a long history in this country and that are now firmly entrenched in notions of literacy and education and in individuals' conceptions of who they are.
Discourses of English In this paper, I use post-structuralist notions of 'discourse' to describe the meanings and values that English connotes in teachers' statements and literacy practices. The teachers' ways of valuing, thinking and talking about English (Gee 1990 and Pennycook 1998) are strongly connected to socially situated attitudes and notions of the value of English literacy. However, although discourses delimit subject positions (as Kress 1989 and Pennycook 1998 argue), individuals can and do act as agents in challenging the constraints of discourse. The classrooms in my study do not only exist in relation to wider contexts. They are '... a social domain, not merely a reflection of the larger 32
Discourses of English and literacy in a Western Cope township school
society beyond the classroom walls but also a place where social relations are played out' (Pennycook 2000: 94). A range of critical theorists have shown that institutional discourse practices in post-colonial contexts still carry the imprint of colonial discourses and power relations. Pennycook (1994 and 1998) and Phillipson (1992) have both produced book-length studies which argue that the teaching of English under British colonialism went beyond the instrumental goals of facilitating communication and economic development and sought to assimilate, as part of the project of building a passive, middle-class elite who would aspire to 'English' norms and values. Successful learning of English was a primary goal in colonial education systems and being educated became synonymous with the ability to speak, read and write in English (see also Ngugi 1986 and Ndebele 1987). Pennycook (1998) uses Bakhtin's notion that every utterance is laden with the history of past utterances, as well as Foucault's notion of the constitutive nature of discourse, in order to argue that there are 'intimate relations between the language and the discourses of colonialism' (p. 4). He does not argue that language has an intrinsic character, but that as a result of colonialism, certain discourses have come to 'adhere to English' [his emphasis] - to construct how we define and relate to the language (Pennycook 1998: 5).1 One such discourse associates English with civilization, scientific advance, knowledge, wealth and modernization. He argues that it is important to consider 'how using English implies certain relationships to certain discourses': The global position of English means that it is situated in many contexts that are specific to that globalization: to use English implies relationships to local conditions of social and economic prestige, to certain forms of culture and knowledge, and also to global relations of capitalism and particular global discourses of democracy, economics, the environment, popular culture, modernity, development, education and so on. The particular position of English suggests that these relationships, both local and global, will be very different from those between other languages and discourses. (1994: 34)
Writers like Pennycook have shown that because English has assumed hegemonic status, its continued dominance in postcolonial contexts has come to seem natural, inevitable and beneficial for all. As a product of colonialism, the discipline and profession of English language teaching (ELT) is a thriving industry which reflects and constructs these discourses. Pennycook (1998) writes: 33
Academic literacy and the languages of change
ELT is a product of colonialism not just because it is colonialism that produced the initial conditions for the global spread of English but because it was colonialism that produced many of the ways of thinking and behaving that are still part of Western cultures. European/Western culture not only produced colonialism but was also produced by it; ELT not only rode on the back of colonialism to the distant corners of the Empire but was also in turn produced by that voyage, (p. 19)
In the English classroom, students are not only socialized into becoming literate in the language, but also into institutional and wider societal discourses (Gee 1990: xvii), including those that have come to 'adhere' to English as a result of colonialism, and those that are the product of more contemporary (global and local) politics and culture. Kress (1989), Gee (1990) and Street (1995) have been at the forefront of reconceptualizing our notion of literacy in a theoretical approach known as New Literacy Studies (see Introduction to this volume). They contest the notion of literacy as a set of neutral, technical skills. According to Gee (1990), [t]here is no such thing as 'reading' or 'writing', only reading or writing something (a text of a certain type) in a certain way with certain values, while at least appearing to think and feel in certain ways. We read and write only within a Discourse, never outside all of them. (p. xviii; his emphasis)
This social analysis of literacy is central to the approach to classroom discourse in this paper. Gee (1990) and Street (1995) argue that the particular form of literacy that is associated with Western schooling is generally conflated with literacy per se and as such it has become the yardstick by which society measures literacy, most visibly by measuring literacy levels by the number of years an individual attends school (see also Barton 1994). So one can see that literacy has become synonymous with Western-style schooling, and schooling has in turn become synonymous with access to English. The process of knowledge construction and society's concept of development and progress is narrowly defined in Western, English terms. Despite an official policy of multilingualism, it seems that in the 'new' South Africa public rhetoric about an African renaissance and the rediscovery of an African identity exists alongside linguistic and social practices that are English and Western in character, reflecting many of the colonial discourses of English described by critical theorists. English has retained (some would say increased) its status as the language of the powerful in politics, business, the legal profession and the media (Young 1995). This is a pattern that has been replicated 34
Discourses of English and literacy in a Western Cape township school
all over Africa. As Ndebele (1987) argues, the choice of retaining a colonial language is hardly a choice at all. It reflects continued postcolonial dependency on the metropole and plays a large part in sustaining unequal power relationships. Alexander uses Alexandre and Bourdieu to argue that the class structure in neocolonial states is sustained by the linguistic policy so that only a small middle-class elite who have access to the colonial language have the necessary cultural and symbolic capital to participate meaningfully in the major institutions of the society (Alexander 1999; see also Tollefson 1991). In common with other countries colonized by Britain, English acquired a high status among 'black' people in South Africa from an early stage. Alexander (1989) quotes Abdurahman, leader of the African People's Organization who, in 1912, advocates English, a language he claims has inherent 'superiority' in comparison to the 'vulgar patois' - Afrikaans: Now this problem of language concerns our people and I think it should be the aim of all our members to seek to cultivate the English tongue wherever and whenever practicable or possible. Why so large a proportion of our people, who, to my knowledge, have facility in English fall into the habit of talking to one another in Cape Dutch, I cannot understand. Such a habit is not conducive to progressive thought and it should be discouraged, (p. 30)
As in many other colonized countries, English, the language of 'progressive thought', was seen as a vehicle to communicate the violent atrocities of the South African government to the outside world, including the former colonizers, Britain. However, while South Africa's relationship to English has much in common with other postcolonial countries, there are also distinct differences that are the result of its unique history. Hirson (1979) has explored how, from an early stage in the struggle against Apartheid, English came to be equated with education, modernization and high culture, in opposition to the imposition of Afrikaans and the use of language as a tool for ethnic division under Apartheid. When the Nationalist Party came to power in 1948, mothertongue instruction (for 'African' students) was extended to cover the entire period of primary school. In reaction, attempts to extend the periods of mother-tongue instruction at various points were always met with by resistance from African-language speakers (Hartshorne 1999). English and Afrikaans were compulsory subjects at high school, and one of the two had to be used as a language of learning and teaching. The plan to entrench Afrikaans even further through dual medium English/Afrikaans instruction after grade six was one of the 35
Academic literacy and the languages of change
key factors which sparked the Soweto uprising in 1976. Nationalist Party attempts to strengthen Afrikaans and impose mother-tongue education had the ironic effect of strengthening English. Even the Black Consciousness movement, which was attempting to recover a 'black' identity in defence against 'white' political, economic, cultural and psychological domination, came to view English as a language of potential unity and resistance to the policy of separate development (Alexander 1989). The large ceuvre of creative writing in English, produced during the 'struggle' years, attests to the appropriation of the language by antiApartheid writers, as well as the ambivalence of this relatively educated (and therefore elite) stratum of society. Through creative codemixing and code-switching English is simultaneously indigenized and rejected for its role in colonizing consciousness. African languages signal belonging to township life and attachment to tradition, whereas English signifies education and communication across Apartheidimposed boundaries. Despite the widespread historical and contemporary rejection of African languages as languages of teaching and learning, they are still the dominant media of informal communication in South Africa's working-class townships.
Mziwethu2 Senior Secondary The research represented in this paper was conducted between 1997 and 1999 at a former DET school in a township previously designated for 'African' people, located 15 km outside of central Cape Town. The township has one of the highest unemployment rates, estimated at around 60 per cent as compared to a national estimated average of 45 per cent. According to the 1996 Census, 1-2 per cent of households i the township had no income at all. It is regarded as one of the most dangerous areas of Cape Town. Indeed, during my research period gang and vigilante violence (adjacent to the school), vandalism and theft of school property disrupted the academic programme on numerous occasions. Established in 1965, Mziwethu is the oldest senior secondary school in the area and is fairly typical of former DET schools in that it is characterized by overcrowding (approximately 1600 students in 30 classrooms), a shortage of teachers, dilapidated buildings, a shortage of school textbooks and generally poor facilities. The main home language at the school is Xhosa. As in most former DET schools, English is taught as a second language, but students use it as a medium of instruction across the curriculum. The English teachers are all firstlanguage speakers of Xhosa. 36
Discourses of English and literacy in a Western Cape township school
Data collection The data for this paper are derived from a range of sources from within and outside the classrooms of Mziwethu from 1997 to 1999. These include observation of 42 grade 11 and 12 classes (in English, Biology and History); many hours of participant observation outside the classroom; documentary information on syllabi and policy; students' writing; and semi-structured interviews with two teachers, five current students, and three ex-students of the school whom I have taught at the University of Cape Town. In the larger study, I use data from a second school for comparative purposes. In order to develop thick description and explanation (Kumaravadivelu 1999) in the larger study, English classroom discourse practices are viewed in the context of (1) students' and teachers' attitudes to English in relation to Xhosa, the predominant home language; (2) language practices across the curriculum; (3) school culture and local social conditions and (4) regional and national policy-making and language debates. This larger contextual focus is necessarily contracted here. The emphasis is on constant comparison within and between contexts. Canagarajah (1999) writes that while traditional ethnography has claimed to treat the words of the informants from the community as sacrosanct, critical ethnography analyses the words in relation to the larger historical processes and social contradictions, searching for the hidden forces that structure life. (p. 48)
Central to the critical approach I have taken is the explanation of silence and contradictions. I try to distinguish 'between how people think they ought to behave, how they say they behave, and how they are observed to behave' (Le Page and Tabouret-Keller 1985: 207). Also central to critical ethnography is a consideration of the effects of the researcher's presence and the politics of observation, particularly in a context where this is not conventional. Limitations of space preclude a detailed discussion of this very complex interaction, but in brief the situation is as follows: my research was conducted at a time when there was no culture of classroom observation in former DET schools, and during a time when teacher morale was low as teachers were subject to intense public criticism (by the new Government) for low productivity and falling pass rates. These factors contributed to a great deal of self-consciousness about my presence (detailed in Kapp 2002), but also to a situation where teachers were keen for me to witness the terrible conditions in which they worked. In this sense, I was seen as someone with (political and institutional) credibility who 37
Academic literacy and the languages of change
could make public their hidden reality and potentially facilitate access to resources. In the context of tense racial politics in the Western Cape, and of the violence in the township, teachers and students frequently expressed surprise and pleasure that a 'coloured' woman was prepared to enter the township on a regular basis. 7
1 want everyone to be free to express whatever one feels' Both Mrs Mabandla and Mr Bathaka, the senior English teachers at Mziwethu, are very conscious of the fact that the dawning of a new era in South Africa offers their students far greater mobility than they have ever had. Both very hardworking teachers, they are committed to doing what they can to provide quality education and ensure that their students are in a position to take advantage of the new opportunities, notwithstanding their impoverished surroundings. They are sceptical that the high status of English will change, and feel strongly that English should remain the language of learning and teaching because students' post-school opportunities would otherwise be limited. For both of them the introduction of a communicative language teaching syllabus (Western Cape Education Department 1995), which emphasizes performance and the skill of using language appropriately, signified a move towards fostering freedom of expression. According to Mrs Mabandla: '... right from day one I encourage them to try and speak the language, and I allow them to make mistakes ... I want everyone to be free to express whatever one feels ...' (Interview). This 'freedom' represents a departure from the past. Mrs Mabandla is reacting to her own confining, rule-based experiences of learning English, where children were constructed as 'empty vessels' (Mrs Mabandla, Fieldnotes, August 1998), which resulted in an inability to 'express myself without first thinking through all the rules': ... when I was at school or when I started my teaching you know students would obtain A's in English in written language and when it came to expressing oneself it would be difficult because a person has never had a chance of speaking the language. (Interview)
For her, communicative language teaching is about fostering oral fluency: So I find that those who do very well who express themselves very clearly and very confidently, they do as well in their written work. They seem to understand the work more and their interpretative skills are very good. So I find that it really helps now that they are 38
Discourses of English and literacy in a Western Cape township school
free, they speak and their communicative skills have improved. So has their writing. (Interview)
Mrs Mabandla's emphasis on oral communication is also a reflection of her image of the culture, power relations and literacy practices of tertiary institutions3 and the workplace: I always tell them that when you go to UCT, UWC [University of the Western Cape] or Pentech. [Peninsula Technikon] or whatever tertiary institution of your choice, you won't have lecturers who know your mother tongue and who will be able to communicate things in your language. And now, because you were not trained to speak the language, you were not given that opportunity to practise speaking the language, it will be difficult for you to even ask questions you don't understand because you fear you are going to make mistakes. So this is the place to make mistakes, so you know trying to look into the future that it is not just to pass your exam. It is for you to be able to express and communicate and argue your point out there in the wider world. (Interview)
For Mr Bathaka, the old 'structural' (grammar-based) syllabus is associated with the Apartheid past and the notion that 'African' students ought to be trained as functionaries to perform menial jobs. The recently introduced communicative language teaching approach is congruent with the new South African discourse of empowerment. Children need no longer be silent. Thus he asserts that: Children should be taught to communicate. But before that it was not like that, it was that the person should be able to seek job, should be able to ask the owner of the firm for a job ... but there has been some positive shifts in terms of objectives. I always differed with the fact that I'm teaching my kids to be able to communicate. It underscores my job. Well to be able to communicate does it only mean that they should be able to say what they want and so on. It has to go beyond that. They should be able to make a living out of what I'm teaching them. Whatever that means ... so the original stream of teaching was functional. You had to stream your kids towards a particular direction ... (Interview)
Both he and Mrs Mabandla invest time in facilitating students' participation in extra-mural events outside of the township in order to increase students' post-school opportunities. Mr Bathaka is also the choirmaster of the school's award-winning choir. In class, he would frequently invite students to be 'critical' or to 'come with an argument'. In a language lesson, he described argument as 'a verbal war, a cha, cha, cha. It's when people are actually giving each other' (from the colloquial, 'giving each other a piece of their minds') (September 39
Academic literacy and the languages of change
1998). Similarly to Mrs Mabandla, the concept of arguing is equated with being outspoken, asserting oneself. Mr Bathaka also foregrounds the importance of creativity and lamented having to teach large classes because of the limits placed on creativity (Fieldnotes, August 1998; Interview). He believes that English should be 'relevant' and enjoyable: At the beginning of the year, I make them do little assignments and to talk a lot such that I'm sure at some stage they thought that, well English is fun, you see. You send them on rounds and they come back and they get a lot of information and they've achieved something. You will see them satisfied that look we have done this work, come up with statistics'. (Interview)
The teachers' classrooms were almost entirely oral and students were seldom assigned written work because Mrs Mabandla and Mr Bathaka do not think of writing as a special or particularly significant form of literacy. Mr Bathaka organized for his students to participate in publicspeaking contests because he believed 'that speaking is as important a component of the language as the written component' (Interview). Like Mrs Mabandla, he believes that the acquisition of verbal fluency will facilitate writing ability. The notion that writing could be used as an exploratory tool to aid cognition is present in the syllabus, but absent both in the English classrooms at the school and in the 'content' classes I observed. Most writing takes place in the context of assessment. Writing in class mainly serves the function of an aid to memory. This view accords with the official assessment policy and practices (of the externally-set matriculation examination) in which the 'oral' mark counts a third of the total mark, and writing is confined to short answers or 'transact!onal', workplace-orientated genres, such as the curriculum vitae, which may be rote learnt.
'We are trying to be very polite and educated.. / Mr Bathaka and Mrs Mabandla both conflate learning English with being educated. In a literature class, Mrs Mabandla asks the class how they know that one of the protagonists is educated. She and the students concur that the character's fluency in English identifies her as such (August 1998). In a class on euphemism, Mr Bathaka tells his class that'... we are trying to be very polite and educated ne [invariant tag question borrowed from Black South African English]? We are trying to move away from being rude and crude' (September 1998). This statement seems to indicate that he has conflated language etiquette with euphemism. Implied in this notion is also a value 40
Discourses of English and literacy in o Western Cope township school
judgement that associates politeness and euphemism with being educated, and rudeness with being uneducated. On a number of occasions he uses a soft tone and upper-class accent for the answers he regards as appropriately euphemistic and a loud, brash one for those considered inappropriate. He also frequently uses British examples to explain euphemism, seemingly associating 'Englishness' with being 'polite and educated'.
'If I just hear a click, that is minus five marks' In contrast to students' other classes, where students and teachers regularly code-switched between English and Xhosa, both teachers' conception of their classes as a space for 'free' expression is offset by their requirement that students speak English only. In Mrs Mabandla's classes, students are often reprimanded or punished (by having to stay behind after class or by having marks deducted) if they speak Xhosa in class or in communication with her: Whoever comes to my class has got to speak English even if it is an SRC [students' representative council] member coming to deliver a message. They will look through the window and see if I'm there and they will go or they will pass on and they will come later on. And if they speak in Xhosa, my students will howl at them 'we don't understand you, what are you talking about' ... And you know my classes are known for that, I'm labelled by other classes ... (Interview)
According to Mrs Mabandla, students accept her 'English only' policy because of the 'incentive' of the oral mark, which requires informal as well as formal participation: Another thing that helps in my classes is that on the first day I expose them to the syllabus ... [I tell them] if you don't participate in oral then you lose out on the hundred [oral marks] because it cannot be given to you, so that is another incentive, so if I ask a question, or you want an answer, you want to borrow a pen from your desk-mate, it has to be English all the time ... (Interview)
In a grade 12 literature class (12c), this sounded much more like a threat than an incentive. Mrs Mabandla told students that they could gain five marks through active participation but: '... minus five marks for speaking any other language but English. If I just hear a click [indicating Xhosa pronunciation] that is minus five marks'. Later, when the students do not participate actively in groups, she complains: 'Why are you so quiet, I want a conversation to take place', before adding, 'otherwise there's no plus five [oral marks]' (August 41
Academic literacy and the languages of change
1998). Here it is quite apparent that Mrs Mabandla manipulates the students' fears and anxiety about\their marks and the matriculation examination to gain cooperation for her method. On the other hand, Mrs Mabandla's students said that they understood the logic behind her policy because they had often been taught English through the medium of Xhosa in their junior classes. According to Mark, a grade 12 student: There was no force that maybe ^you had to speak English, no, no, and it makes some other people shy to speak English. The thing is when you speak and some others laugh you tend to tell yourself that no, I'll never speak it again. (Interview)
Mr Bathaka has more trouble getting students to confine their speech to English, partly because he has more trouble with discipline in general, and probably because he, like the students' Biology and History teachers, often slips into Xhosa to admonish students. Students use Xhosa to each other, in what Tsui (1996: 96) calls 'private turns', before answering his questions in English. They also use it to mock wrong answers. Although the teachers are committed to providing students with appropriate competence in English to enable them to enter into a previously unattainable world outside the townships, they nevertheless stress the need for students to maintain their Xhosa identities. Over time I learnt that Mrs Mabandla's 'English only' policy was more nuanced than it would appear at first glance. She used Xhosa to explain figures of speech and she frequently used the language to signal shared culture with students. Mr Bathaka's concern about students' lack of interest in the Xhosa language and traditions leads him to check on their Xhosa knowledge base in grammar lessons and when he is teaching English proverbs: Whilst I was teaching, I would be interested in knowing how is their base, that is, their mother tongue. Although I don't do it quite often, but I would do it just to check them if they still follow their own language which is actually I think, what I found quite shocking. They'll be doing it far better with other languages than they're doing with isiXhosa. (Interview)
Because Mrs Mabandla and Mr Bathaka welcomed students' views, they elicited far more participation in their English classes than was evident in students' 'content' classes, where teachers often spoke more Xhosa than English. 42
Discourses of English and literacy in a Western Cape township school
'All they really need to do for second language is to summarize7 Teachers' concerns about the need for their students to understand and maintain traditional values were also reflected in the ideological framing of their literature lessons. Below I describe and analyse a typical literature lesson from one of Mrs Mabandla's grade 11 classes (lla, October 1997) in order to illustrate the gap between teachers' notions of freedom of expression in the English classroom and the containment evident in classroom discourse practices. Discussions in the English classroom generally took the conventional form of the initiation-response-feedback pattern documented around the world, but with the addition of a 'chorus' effect (previously described by Simons 1986 and Chick 1996 in their studies of classroom interaction in DET schools). The teachers elicited information through many questions. In this class, a Literature class on Bessie Head's short story 'Property' (in Cooper 1995), Mrs Mabandla asked 73 questions in the space of 35 minutes. The questions may be classified into five types: two-choice (34); 'wh' (12); open (7); injunctions to the class or t individuals to speak which take the form of questions (13) and 'echoic', clarification and confirmation questions (7) (Kearsley 1976, quoted in Long and Sato 1983: 274). Twenty-two of Mrs Mabandla's 34 two-choice questions are answered in 'chorus' by the whole class. These tended to be self-evident confirmations which could be answered without reference to the text. The participation of the 'chorus' creates the impression of lively interaction, whereas only a small group of students participate actively as individuals and obtain individual attention and feedback. These are the students who speak English well and who form a small group at the front of the very large classes of 40 and above. In the class on 'Property' there are two turns which are significant because of their length and because they consist of 'telling' rather than 'questioning'. These are transcribed below, and the transcription conventions used are set out at the end of the chapter. The turns revolve around the subject of bride-price and arranged marriages, and constitute Mrs Mabandla's contribution to background - 'just a brief understanding'. The first turn addresses the subject of lobola (bride price): 80. Mrs M: okay, lobola, okay, okay, it's called lobola (•) Alright um, but now, from my own experience, lobola had to be paid because those days when it started, people thought that if a man pays lobola, then that man is going to look after their daughter very well. He's going to value her because he has given something towards 43
Academic literacy and the languages of change
her. It's like if somebody gives you a-a pair of shoes, you're not going to look a very well after that pair of shoes as you'd look after a pair of shoes that you bought yourself where you have gone to-to do a casual [a part-time job] (•) over weekends, sacrificed everything, you work over weekends, you work over the holidays and then you get that bit of money and you buy yourself something. You are going to value that more than what you have been given by somebody else. So those days they wanted to secure, so there was a-a spice of truth in what um-um Siyabonga was saying about the happiness of their daughter, because he would um look after their daughter very well because at least he has paid something towards her. But er then again if people did not pay lobola, they would take her today and tomorrow they would chuck her out and take another one. But one cow is not child's play. You cannot keep paying on cows to all these families every day so that was also a reason to want her and keep her, and perhaps live happily ever after. But anyway, just a brief understanding of the whole concept. Okay, let's look at the story...
This is followed by a brief interchange with the 'chorus' at a characteristic basic, incontrovertible level: 80. ... Now this, this young woman, they could not have a relationship with the young man, did they? 81. Students: No. 82. Mrs M: Did they know each other? 83. Students: No. 84. Mrs M: They could not go out together, did they? 85. Students: No.
Here, as in the rest of the lesson, the participation of the chorus, cued by rising intonation and tag questions, creates the illusion of coconstruction of knowledge and active participation. Then follows the second contribution: 86. Mrs M: So, that is what happened in the olden days. They would look for a girl where they are not ah very poor. Where at least there are cows and beans in that particular home, in terms of cattle and sheep and things like that. So they would look at a home like that and that daughter would then get married into their family. So, this daughter knows about wealth. Okay. She does not come from a poor home. Not meaning that girls that come from poor homes did not marry, but they would target certain homes where they are well off, so that if something goes wrong here then the young wife can go home and get more cows and oxen to come and plough the fields, and so on, and so, so they will arrange them then like that. But now when we look at this one here, we find that the man, this particular man was different from other men. Okay, 44
Discourses of English and literacy in a Western Cape township school
could you perhaps er try to remember, how different was he in the way that he treated his wife?...
There is little reference to the text in both these extracts. Mrs Mabandla cites bride-price as a practice which works in the interests of women: '... because he would um look after that daughter very well because at least he has paid ...'. In fact, the example she uses (the value placed on a pair of shoes) reinforces the idea that Head is critiquing, namely that under the system of bride-price, women are regarded as bought goods or property (the title of the story). Her assertion that people believed that their daughters would be protected if lobola were paid is contradicted by the evidence from the story (which she articulates near the end of the lesson) that the family wanted their daughter to be beaten so that they could demand another beast from the man. Mrs Mabandla's benign interpretation in effect contradicts the story, although she does not say so. The story represents abuse as a commonplace male behaviour pattern. Head's protagonist is different from other men because he does not beat his wife. This is the opposite of the epistemological framework with which the students have been presented. Through the provision of 'background' context, Mrs Mabandla supplies the ideological framing for the learners' understanding of bride-price and for the consequent interpretation of the story. The discourses of instruction and morality become inseparable (Bernstein 1990). Mrs Mabandla's authority as spokesperson on the subject is reinforced through phrases like 'from my own experience' and the frequent repetition of 'the olden days', 'those days when it started' and 'those days'. By casting the story and the experience therein in the past4 and as part of her life experience (which indeed it is), she effectively limits students' participation at this point (although she does skilfully incorporate earlier points made by two students). The author is never mentioned and Mrs Mabandla implies that the experience described in the story is part of a common heritage by frequently using the phrase 'our culture' and 'our language' and the Xhosa word lobola. In fact, the setting of the story is Botswana and not South Africa, and the ethnicity of the characters is not mentioned in the text. Mrs Mabandla's references to 'our culture' and 'in those days' have the effect of equating the text with reality rather than regarding it as a representation or individual construction, with a specific context. The dominance of 'wh' and 'two-choice' questions means that classroom discussion is confined to a literal level. Mrs Mabandla's questions rely on memory and cultural background and focus on content rather than on understanding of context, language and point of view. The language of the text is seldom analysed because in Mrs 45
Academic literacy and the languages of change
Mabandla's view 'all they really need to do for second language [examinations] is to summarize' (Fieldnotes, August 1998). The imprecision in engagement with the language of texts and the vagueness about historical contexts (which were also evident in Mr Bathaka's literature classes) contrast with a focus on factual detail. This focus does indeed accord with the requirements of the matriculation literature examination, which treats literature as a literal form of everyday communication and requires single-word, denotative answers rather than engagement with the metaphoric layer of the text or its context. In most of the English classes I observed, meta-talk about the language system and about how texts are constructed was absent or vague. Rather than teaching 'generalizable and transferable language features', the teachers valued 'situation-specific everyday explanations' (Ludwig and Hershell 1995: 105) that are judged relevant. Students were being taught a set of discourse practices: what the teachers regarded as 'commonsense' and appropriate was given weight. Students were left with a strong sense of what is socially and culturally acceptable behaviour, but without the metalinguistic tools to explore and critique other texts. Learning to 'scope' A tradition of ELT, viz. communicative language teaching, has been appropriated by the teachers to fit into their conception of appropriate English for a new South Africa where their students now have possibilities of access to dominant institutions and free expression.5 But students' opportunities to speak are heavily circumscribed both by classroom practice, class size and, as I show elsewhere (Kapp 2000), by student power relations within the class and in the township. Through Mr Bathaka and Mrs Mabandla's emphasis on the importance of student opinion and participation, some students do 'acquire' conversational fluency in English and confidence, but the literacy they 'learn' is functional, situation-specific and, as with their 'content' subjects, likely to be transient. Students thus have little or no opportunity to reflect and process at a cognitively demanding level in English in either oral or written form. The same applies to their Xhosa classes. The discourse practices of the English classroom are incompatible with the need to use the language at cognitively demanding levels (Cummins 1996) in other subjects. In order to compensate for students' lack of proficiency in English, senior 'content' classes take place mainly in Xhosa and teachers use code-mixing and code-switching to convey their subject matter 46
Discourses of English and literacy in a Western Cape township school
orally. But they circumscribe the information that their students need to be able to reproduce in English in order to pass the examinations in a process that is commonly called 'scope' in township schools. 'Scope' is achieved through summaries, worksheets and revision of past examination papers. In 'content' subjects, like History and Biology, this literacy practice precludes any need to engage with the readings themselves, or engage in writing where they would have to explore concepts and develop argument. Ironically, the English teachers' methods have the opposite of their intended effect: the very fact of learning the language in a functional manner contributes to constraining students' futures, to reinforcing 'the instrumentalization of people as units of labour' (Ndebele 1987: 14). The school to university transition With hindsight, Mpho, an ex-student of Mrs Mabandla's who subsequently studied at the University of Cape Town, is able to analyse the consequences of this kind of literacy practice. Asked about the difference between studying English as a subject at school and at university, he replies: The problem is that people who were teaching us English they were just looking for facts. Here we have argument ... in English schools people are used to writing a lot of composition and all that stuff, so it is easy for them just to put something in, but for us it is difficult. We hated even to write English essays. You just write it and just correct it as well by yourself. So now we are at university and we have to write academic work and we are not used to it, so it is difficult really to expound. (Interview)
Mpho accurately identifies that his difficulty relates to the level and content of analysis. His verbal fluency in English is excellent, and he was excited by the more analytical mode of tertiary study. Nevertheless, he had considerable difficulty with the university Literature syllabus, failing or just passing many of his essays. His essays bore the hallmark of keen intelligence but lacked cohesion and tended to avoid close analysis of texts. The fact that literature is viewed as an act of communication rather than as an imagined text in schools is evident not only in the examination papers, but in the way in which first-year university former DET students tend to treat literary texts as 'reality' or else as moral tales. It is also evident in their tendency to summarize rather than analyse the language of literary texts. Students do not have the conceptual framework or the vocabulary required for the task. Other articles in this volume undertake nuanced and contextualized 47
Academic literacy and the languages of change
analyses of students' transition into specific disciplinary contexts and I cannot do justice to the complexity of that process here. However, in general, it is possible to say that in terms of literacy practices, the legacy of DET education is evident in students' struggles to move from rote-learning mode, their difficulties in engaging in close analysis of texts and in analysing and synthesizing multiple points of view. A more complex problem (also discussed by a number of articles) is the difficulty of finding a space to articulate 'difference' within academic discourse. The multilingual resources and indigenous knowledge that students from working-class, 'African' backgrounds bring with them into the academy are often overwhelmed by the authority of the (Western, Anglo-centric) disciplinary discourses of the academy. Conclusion As I have shown, English in South Africa has a long history as a symbol of progress and resistance to Afrikaner oppression. In the past, African language speakers were deprived of adequate education and access to English. For those in the still-impoverished townships, English has come to hold out the possibility of freedom, mobility and empowerment in a 'new' South Africa where the policy of multilingualism is at odds with the everyday reality that English is the language of power. In Ndebele's (1987: 219) terms, the role that English has assumed is one of historically predetermined 'pragmatism'. The English teachers at the school do not create the status of English - their constructions reflect and reinforce the powerful role English plays within the curriculum and the broader society. Their classroom practices are constrained by the poor working conditions and the political demand that their students pass the matriculation examination. Nevertheless, their practices reinforce the notion that English is unquestionably beneficial. From their perspective, for their students to take up the opportunities offered by the new context, they need to be able to express themselves and learn to behave appropriately - to be 'polite and educated' in English. This does not mean that people have been assimilated (as claimed by the Pan South African Language Board, 1999). They are responding to the prevailing dominant discourses. Maintenance of Xhosa is still viewed as essential, but as a symbolic signifier of tradition and custom within the confines of the township. Besides highlighting the need for intensive development work and policy review in schools, from the perspective of academic development work, my study confirms the need identified by a range of 48
Discourses of English and literacy in a Western Cape township school
academic literacy studies (see Thesen 1997, Angelil-Carter (ed.) 1998 and articles in this volume) to take students' prior literacies and discourses into account when they enter the academy. We need to develop metalanguages which make the new discourses and their literacy requirements explicit. We need to provide adequate opportunities for students to be scaffolded into the languages of their disciplines through opportunities for practice and feedback in English and, where appropriate, in their home languages. However, we also have to find ways to help students explore the relationship between the discourses of their home environments and those of the academy, thereby enriching both environments. The students in my classes at the University of Cape Town have made me conscious that this study was located in an urban context, relatively well-resourced compared to many rural communities to the north and east of the University. As many of the articles in this volume indicate, 'African' students are now also entering the University from schools which have diverse racial, linguistic and class profiles. In a rapidly changing educational landscape, much more research is needed to help us understand the range of school contexts from which our students emerge. Moreover, academics need to engage with these schools at the level of the curriculum. Universities can no longer afford to be ivory towers which exist in splendid isolation from the larger community.
Acknowledgements The financial assistance of the National Research Foundation (NRF), South Africa, towards this research is hereby acknowledged. I am also grateful for feedback from Anne Herrington, Lucia Thesen, Kelwyn Sole and Ermien van Pletzen and the anonymous reviewers of an earlier version. Opinions expressed and conclusions arrived at are those of the author and are not necessarily to be attributed to this organization or individuals. References Alexander, N. (1989), Language Policy and National Unity in South Africa/ Azania. Cape Town: Buchu Books. Alexander, N. (1999), 'An African renaissance without African languages', Social Dynamics, 25, (1), 1-12. Angelil-Carter, S. (ed.) (1998), Access to Success: Academic Literacyin Higher Education. Cape Town: University of Cape Town Press. Barton, D. (1994), Literacy. Oxford: Blackwell. 49
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Bernstein, B. B. (1990), The Structuring of Pedagogic Discourse Volume IV: Class, Codes and Control. London and New York: Routledge. Canagarajah, A. S. (1999), Resisting Linguistic Imperialism in English Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Census (1996), Pretoria: Central Statistics Bureau. Chick, J. K. (1996), 'Safe talk: collusion in apartheid education', in H. Coleman (ed.), Society and the Language Classroom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 21—39. Christie, P. (1999), 'OBE and unfolding policy trajectories: lessons to be learned', in J. Jansen and P. Christie (eds), Changing Curriculum: Studies on Outcomes-based Education in South Africa. Cape Town: Juta, pp. 279-92. Cooper, B. (ed.) (1995), Nations. Cape Town: Maskew Miller/Longman. Cummins, J. (1984), Bilingualism and Special Education: Aspects of Theory, Research and Practice. London: Longman. Cummins, J. (1996), Negotiating Identities: Education for Empowerment in a Diverse Society. Ontario: California Association for Bilingual Education. Department of Education (1997a), 'Language-in-Education Policy', Government Gazette No. 18546, 19 December, pp. 5-7. Department of Education (I997b), 'Curriculum 2005', Government Gazette No. 1805, 6 June, 5-45. Department of Education (2001), 'Draft Revised Curriculum Statement'. Report to the Minister of Education. Eilersen, G. (1995), Bessie Head: Thunder Behind Her Ears. Cape Town: David Phillip. Gee, J. (1990), Social Linguistics and Literacies: Ideology in Discourses. London: Palmer Press. Hartshorne, K. (1999), The Making of Education Policy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Heugh, K. (1995), 'Disabling and enabling: implications of language policy trends in South Africa', in R. Mesthrie (ed.), Language and Social History: Studies in South African Sociolinguistics. Cape Town: David Phillip, pp. 329-50. Heugh, K. (2002), 'Recovering multilingualism: recent language-policy developments', in R. Mesthrie (ed.), Language in South Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 449-75. Heugh, K., Siegriihn, A. and Pliiddemann, P. (eds) (1995), Multilingual Education for South Africa. Johannesburg: Heinemann. Hirson, B. (1979), Year of Fire, Year of Ash - The Soweto Revolt: Roots of Revolution? London: Zed Press. Jansen, J. (1998), 'Curriculum reform in South Africa: a critical analysis of outcomes-based education', Cambridge Journal of Education, 28, (3), 321-31. Kapp, R. (2000), ' "With English you can go everywhere". An analysis of the role and status of English at a former DET school', Journal of Education, 25, 227-59. Kapp, R. (2002), 'The politics of English. A study of classroom discourses in a township school'. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Cape Town.
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Kress, G. R. (1989), Linguistic Processes in Sociocultural Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kumaravadivelu, B. (1999), 'Critical classroom discourse analysis', TESOL Quarterly, 33, (3), 453-84. Le Page, K. and Tabouret-Keller, A. (1985), Acts of Identity: Creole-based Approaches to Language and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Long, M. and Sato, C. (1983), 'Classroom foreigner talk discourse: forms and functions of teachers' questions', in H. Seliger and M. Long (eds), Classroom Oriented Research in SLA. Rowley, MA: Newbury House, pp. 268-86. Ludwig, C. and Hershell, P. (1995), 'School community literacy practices: analysis of classroom and home talk using systemic functional linguistic theory', in P. Freebody, C. Ludwig and S. Gunn (eds), Everyday Practices in and out of Schools in Low Economic Urban Communities, Vol. 2. Canberra City: Department of Education and Training, pp. 3-162. Ndebele, N. (1987), 'The English language and social change in South Africa', English Academy Review, 4, 1-16. Ngugi wa Thiong'o (1986), Decolonizing the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature. London: James Currey. Pan South African Language Board (PANSALB) (1999), 'PANSALB's position on the promotion of multilingualism in South Africa: a draft discussion document', Government Gazette No. 20098, 28 May, 53-64. Pennycook, A. (1994), The Cultural Politics of English as an International Language. London: Longman. Pennycook, A. (1998), English and the Discourses of Colonialism. London: Routledge. Pennycook, A. (2000), The social politics and the cultural politics of language classrooms', in J. Hall and W. Eggington (eds), The Sociopolitics of English Language Teaching. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, pp. 89-103. Phillipson, R. (1992), Linguistic Imperialism. Oxford: Blackwell. Simons, R. (1986), 'Classroom communication and schooling: a case study of teaching and learning in a secondary school in Soweto'. Unpublished Masters Dissertation, University of Cape Town. Street, B. V. (1995), Social Literacies. London: Longman. Thesen, L. (1997), 'Voices, discourse and transition: in search of new categories in EAF, TESOL Quarterly, 31, (3), 487-511. Tollefson, J. (1991), Planning Language, Planning Inequality. London and New York: Longman. Tsui, A. (1996), 'Reticence and anxiety in second-language learning', in K. Bailey and D. Nunan (eds), Voices from the Language Classroom: Qualitative Research in Second Language Education. Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, pp. 145-67. Van der Berg, S. (2004), 'School education and transformation', in Institute for Justice and Reconciliation Audit, Taking Power in the •.Economy. www.transformationaudit.co.za. Western Cape Education Department (WCED) (1995), 'Interim syllabus for English Second Language: standard 8 to standard 10'. Cape Town.
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Young, D. (1995), The role and status of the first language in education in a multilingual society', in K. Heugh, A. Siegruhn and P. Pliiddemann (eds), Multilingual Education for South Africa. Johannesburg: Heinemann, pp. 63-70.
Transcription conventions (•) italics [] numbers ...
brief pause that is noticeable, but too short to measure italics indicate a Xhosa or South African colloquial expression or transcription of a sound transcriber's clarifying explanation, commentary or explanation of non-verbal gesture numbers are used to designate turns words omitted
Notes 1. Pennycook (1994) is somewhat contradictory in this respect in that he also uses Ndebele (1987) to proclaim that English is 'guilty'. 2. The names of teachers, students and the school are all pseudonyms. 3. Mrs Mabandla was educated at a teachers' training college, Mr Bathaka has a university degree. 4. It is not clear when the story was written; but, according to Eilersen (1995), Bessie Head's biographer, it was ready for publication in 1969 (p. 158). 5. At present, the government is in the process of implementing a system of major curriculum change in the form of outcomes-based education. The language curriculum emphasizes the need to focus explicitly on the language system and on critical analysis of a range of genres. There is also an emphasis on language across the curriculum in all the curriculum statements. However, the assumption is still made that students will learn through the medium of their home languages. Thus, English will continue to be taught as a second language. Moreover, the reduction of the study of language and literature in the new curriculum (Department of Education 1997b and Department of Education 2001) to behaviourist outcomes (see Jansen 1998 and Christie 1999) has the potential to introduce new categories of depoliticized, static technologies to be learnt and reproduced, and thus further entrench narrow vocationalism.
52
2
'Use your own words' impossible exhortations Ste//a Clark
Learning, and proof of learning, for students and lecturers in the natural sciences at university is largely centred on scientific 'knowledge,' which usually means scientific concepts and theories and the generation, management and analysis of data related to them. As a 'language development' specialist who works across many scientific disciplines, I have noticed that language as a factor in the learning process is seldom mentioned by university teachers of science, except in two cases. First, there is a prevalent notion that ability to 'say it in his/her own words' demonstrates a student's mastery of the work, and secondly, students who fail examinations and assignments are sometimes characterized as being unable to think or write or speak 'scientifically'. I will come back to the assumptions and implications of the latter position, but will immediately examine the former. This belief (that complete comprehension can only be demonstrated by saying something 'in your own words') seems so commonsensical and widespread as to defy further exploration. It is based on the assumption that language is a 'transparent' medium that exists separately from the meaning it conveys, and that any two (or more) ways of saying something can be equivalent. This idea has found great success in the Plain English Campaign, founded in 1979 in Britain; the American equivalent is the Plain Language network. The purpose of both is making sure that the general public can read and act on government information and legislation, where it is clearly important for people who are not trained in the law or familiar with 'officialese' to understand the laws that affect their lives. For example, there are 'translations' into Plain English of the Clean Air Act and numerous ISO Quality Standards.1 Many science teachers, however, have rejected the idea that science can be taught without any specific scientific language (see for instance Martin and Veel 1998: 31), operating instead on Lemke's (1990) principle that teaching scientific language is, in fact, part of teaching science. Nevertheless, the practice of requiring 53
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students to discuss scientific matters 'in your own words' appears with surprising frequency. A typical formulation, taken from a final examination paper for a first-year biology course, is: 'State the Law that Mendel formulated from this experiment, and explain it in your own words'. In the light of a clearly articulated opposing system of thought (discussed later in this chapter), the apparently obvious expectation that doing, writing and understanding science 'in your own words' is possible and even necessary seems to warrant a closer look. In this paper I will explore what happens when students are assigned tasks on the basis of this belief. Consider the following assignment set for a first-year Earth Science class at university: ... you must prepare a letter to a family member or friend who has not had any scientific training, in which you explain the basic concepts of stratigraphy. Your letter should contain examples of the stratigraphy of the Cape Peninsula, a typical archeological site in Southern Africa, and age dating techniques. All of these should be linked in a logical way...
Assigning students writing tasks that draw on knowledge of a variety of different genres is part of a respectable pedagogy which argues that students need to gain experience in and mastery over the different types of texts they will have to produce in their professional lives. At first glance, this task seems to belong to this 'genre pedagogy' school of teaching. However, the 'friendly letter', despite its pride of place in school language curricula, especially those focusing on communicative competence, is not a 'genre of power' (Luke 1996) in any professional or academic setting. Real letters, however, have played an interesting part in scientific endeavour through several centuries: distances and difficulties resulted, in some cases, in letters being 'the mechanism of discovery' (Henig 2000: 147) for scientists. The correspondence between Gregor Mendel and Karl von Nageli (Henig 2000) reported, challenged and explored the variation in the appearance of successive generations of peas; letters between Galileo and his successor at the University of Pisa, Benedetto Castelli (Finocchiaro 1989: 27), 'although unpublished ... began circulating widely' and were eventually to be used as evidence against Galileo in the Roman Inquisition. When the atom was 'split' by scientists at Cambridge University, Ernest Rutherford reported the breakthrough in a letter to Niels Bohr, who replied: 'Progress in the field of the nuclear constitution is at the moment really so rapid, that one wonders what the next post will bring' (Cathcart 2004: 241). These letters are characterized by a high degree of scientific content, including calculations and technical terminology. The developing role of letters as publications 54
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(in the sense of making the news public) is obvious in the following famous incident. In 1858, Charles Darwin's letter to Asa Gray (an American botanist) was read aloud at a meeting of the Linnaean Society in a bid to establish that Darwin had formulated his theory of evolution before Alfred Wallace published his. More recently, letters to fellow scientists have been institutionalized in publications such as Physical Review Letters, Chemical Communications and the 'Communications' sections of other prestigious journals. These communications are, by definition, brief but dense, and signal scientists' desires to share 'breaking news' with other interested scientists and to stake out and claim new territory before anyone else, but without giving away too much information to competitors. The 'friendly letter' task assigned to the Earth Science students does not, however, fall into this category. Prescribing the genre of the 'friendly' letter, with its invariant characteristics of casualness and easy intimacy, supposedly resting on shared experiences and understandings, severely limits the linguistic resources that students can properly draw on to complete the task, although one might suppose that, of all genres, the 'friendly letter' would be most easily adapted to new purposes, especially using Bakhtin's notion of genre as 'a sociohistorical as well as a formal entity' (Todorov 1984: 80). This does not appear to have happened. Bakhtin's definition suggests that the 'friendly letter' is not an absolute type, but a development whose characteristics can be explained in terms of functions previously or currently present in social practice. The 'friendly letter', as taught at school, has apparently come adrift from these functions and practices. The 'sociohistorical' impulses that shaped the 'friendly letter' as a genre have probably, for many people, now found expression in social practices that have created transformed genres, for instance, the e-mail message and the telephone call. If, as Todorov (1984) says, genre has a 'historical dimension', then the 'friendly letter' itself is, for the overwhelming majority of students, a genre that has been frozen in the past. Its rigid rules belong to a school-based Discourse rather than the social practice of everyday life - 'Dear Mabel, I am fine, how are you?' introduces a manufactured friendliness to be read by a person with an unfriendly degree of power over the writer, and for the express purpose of being evaluated. The difficulty of producing the right note of fake authenticity required by this genre is compounded when the subject matter ('stratigraphy') is decidedly at odds with the 'friendly' masquerade, and a further requirement of 'linked in a logical way' is added to strain the bounds of credibility even for artificial 'friendliness'. A university lecturer in South Africa can assume a fair degree of 55
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common understanding in a first-year class, since students are admitted to university on the basis of achievement in a set of examinations standardized across the country. It is, therefore, no surprise that in the responses to this question, the students all display their familiarity with the genre of the 'friendly letter' as taught at schools. They all begin with the address and date in the upper right-hand corner of the page, and employ the conventional and characteristically inauthentic salutations and introductory remarks, the latter ranging from the cursory 'Hi, I just wanted to tell you about stratigraphy' (#1) to the highly developed I find it a great pleasure to refer to you at this point in time, dear friend. How are you doing since the last time we saw each other? I hope you have recovered from that bad cold you caught. Let me tell you that I had a very bad trip from home to Cape Town due to the weather. It was ice cold, windy and rainy as well. As a result the roads were slippery. But the good news is that we arrived safely. Now I am back at school where learning is very interesting. I would like to share with you one of the most stunning lectures I attended last week. (#9)
All the rest fall somewhere in between these two extremes, with some inspired attempts to reconcile the competing generic ('friendly letter') requirements with the other stated requirement (to explain the scientific concept of stratigraphy), for example: 'Well, I have this fascinating information I must share with you, the reason being everybody should know a bit of something'. (#2) The assignment shown above requires students to address their explanations to someone who is specifically not a scientist; I read this as synonymous with 'use non-scientific language' or 'use your own words'. It is, apparently, based on the language-related belief discussed above that using 'your own words' is a demonstration of comprehension. This would mean that this assignment is intended as a test of how well students understand stratigraphy, a scientific concept almost exclusively associated with the Earth Sciences. The 'friendly letter' frame should presumably keep student writing within the domain of non-scientific language. But in speaking about stratigraphy, students cannot simply say anything - they are severely constrained by the subject matter as well as the way in which they have previously heard such matter being discussed. Where will students get these words of their own in some unique formulation? In Bakhtin's view, this is an illusion: '... utterances are not produced merely out of all the possibilities that language makes available; they are rather formed in accordance with many genres which determine the way that people 56
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speak in different circumstances' (Dentith 1995: 39). Indeed, further examination of the 'friendly letters' produced by the students reveals that, as soon as the obvious structural requirements of that genre are met, all the students abandon the perfunctory 'friendly letter' tone, with its illusion of 'own words', which, despite their appearance of personal feeling and intimacy, are in fact echoes of the myriad 'friendly letters' they have read and written within this genre and Discourse convention throughout their years at school. In every student response, the 'friendly' ethos is abruptly replaced by a very different kind of writing, also not original, but which assumes the linguistic character of a science textbook. Two typical examples (in their original uncorrected form) follow: The stratification, that is the deposition of layers of sediments follows two simple principles namely; sediments are essentially deposited on the horizontal beds and each layer of sedimentary rocks (sediments gradually change to sedimentary rocks) is younger than the one beneath it and older than the one above it. Thus, the top layer will be the youngest of all [...] Thus due to these principles, when the Cape Peninsula is observed, the layers of sediments enable us to view a kind of vertical time line, that is a partial or complete record of the time elapsed from the deposition of the lowest bed to the deposition of the uppermost bed. (#13) Stratigraphy is the science of description, correlation and classification of strata in sedimentary environments of the strata. In the Cape Peninsula the stratigraphic sequence (a set of deposited beds that reflect the changing conditions of sedimentary environments that define the geologic history of a region) consists of three commonest layers of sediment known as Malmesbury Group, Cape Granite and Graff Water Formation. These strata occurred horizontally on deposition but through geologic time, have changed form and position due to natural, chemical and physical factors such as tectonical stress and or weathering. The relative age of the layers can be predicted using the relative method of the principle of superposition, which states that each layer of sedimentary rock in a tectonically undisturbed sequence, is younger than the one beneath it and older than the one above it. (# 9)
Both of the above examples are entirely typical of the 'body' of all the students' 'friendly letters' and resemble textbooks far more than any informal written communication. The most striking feature is the sudden disappearance of the agent that appears very obviously in the 'friendly' introduction in sentences such as 'I hope you are fine just like me' (#4) and 'I did some research and found out the following interesting information' (#8). Now, in contrast, passive constructions 57
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abound, as in 'sediments are essentially deposited ...' ( + 13). This is a common formulation reflecting the unknown or irrelevant agent, and it is appropriately impersonal in this case, when who or what deposited the layers of sediment is not germane to the discussion of stratigraphic principles. Although it is also entirely at odds with the expectations of any reader of a 'friendly letter', it can be explained in this particular case. However, the deliberate and inappropriate suppression of the agent is interestingly revealed in phrases like: '... when the Cape Peninsula is observed ...' ( + 13) and 'The relative age of the layers can be predicted ...' (#9). Here the person speaking/writing is actually the agent, but chooses to hide him/herself. The more appropriate formulations of these two ideas in a 'friendly letter' (where the addressee is supposed to be a known and familiar person), or any utterance/text attempting to recreate informal and non-scientific language, would surely have been 'when I observed the Cape Peninsula' and 'We can predict the relative age of the layers ...', respectively. Although on one level, T, as used in the salutations and subsequently dropped in the letters, is just a tag that signals informality and everyday usage, its disappearance, which coincides with the sudden adoption of a very different linguistic character, seems worth another look. Bakhtin's dialogic concept of language allows T to be seen somewhat differently. The heart of Bakhtin's dialogism is that there is no word spoken (or in this case written) without its being addressed to someone. The 'self who speaks or writes the word is not a unitary, selfsufficient construct, but stands always in relation to the other whom it addresses. T has no firm referent, in the sense that ordinary nouns can be said to have firm referents; T is a 'shifter' (Holquist 2002: 23) that changes its meaning according to who is speaking/writing and to whom. When someone says T, they temporarily occupy it and fill it with their own meaning, which simultaneously arranges the rest of the world in relation to themselves. This is clear in the T constructed for the salutations - T is simultaneously the student who obeys the instruction to write a 'friendly letter', and the temporary construction who will offer a friend (that constructed 'other') non-scientific information about a scientific concept. Despite the absurdity this generates, every student in this sample creates and temporarily occupies the 'friendly I'. Setting up such an T, or many such Ts, is part of every person's linguistic repertoire. Why does T disappear, then, when the subject changes? The absence of T in the main body of almost all the letters suggests, then, the difficulty, if not the impossibility, of creating, even temporarily, an T who can make generalized statements in nonscientific language about stratigraphy. There are, however, three cases where the first person pronoun 58
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(T or 'we') does intrude into the more textbook-like language, and this seems, at first, to be a resurgence of the 'friendly F created in the introductions, rather than a new T who can define stratigraphy in his/ her 'own words' for the benefit of non-scientists. I have highlighted these instances in each case: • Earlier this year I went to a class field trip to a cave known as the Peers Cave. There are traces that were found in that cave . . . (#2) • ... we observed geological processes which occurred there. And once we visited one of the archaeological sites in Southern Africa. That is Peers Cave, where we discovered some remains of artefacts that were used by modern Homo sapiens. (#5) • As we discussed among friends we came to a conclusion that all these things found at Peers Cave can be age dated, that is with the use of radiometric dating, the age of rocks present in the cave can be known .. In each of these cases we can see that the first-person usage relates only to activities actually carried out by the writers on their field trip ('discussed', 'discovered', 'went'). This sounds like the T of the salutations, relating easily understood direct experiences to a putative 'friend'. The second example quoted above (#5) manages to stick to the active voice for three consecutive sentences ('we observed', 'we visited' and 'we discovered'), but the vocabulary to describe just what was visited, observed and discovered is distinctly marked by its origins in scientific language. The terms 'geological processes', 'archaeological sites', 'artefacts' and 'Homo sapiens' bring with them all the echoes and resonances of the special interests and methods of the Earth Sciences. The other two examples shown (#2 and #13) are not as densely laden with scientific terminology, but the active voice T, the agent who sees and does, is quickly submerged in the passive voice usually associated with generalized and abstract formulations. This could be read as gauche pastiche, representative of students fumbling for meaning in two ungenerous genres. It is possible, though, to read these as instances of a different T, someone who has had a real experience (going on the field trip) which has allowed them to begin talking about Earth Science in a different way. Although an authoritative scientific 'voice' has failed to emerge from the standard, impersonal language of the traditional textbook, the creation of a 'transitional I' suggests that a different kind of task would perhaps offer better opportunities for students to 'master a semiotic domain' and become a member of an 'affinity group' (Gee 2001: 1). 59
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Other immediately identifiable examples of 'scientific language' (as characterized by Halliday and Martin 1993) in the student responses reflect the 'given' language rather than 'their own words'. One of these is the use of nominalizations to replace verbs, for example student text #13 quoted above uses 'deposition' instead of 'are deposited'. Another is the lexical density of nominal groups, for example 'the science of description, correlation and classification of strata in sedimentary environments of the strata' (student text #9 quoted above). Features of academic, though not specifically scientific, language are also present in words that signal significant moves in an argument, like 'that is', 'thus' and 'is due to', and can be seen to satisfy the requirement in the task that they 'link these in a logical way'. The bodies of the letters resemble nothing so much as another genre strongly associated with high school, the textbook, and, in fact, there are many echoes of the actual textbooks whence the definitions of stratigraphy originated. The similarity between the two fragments that follow (the first from a student text and the second from the textbook prescribed for the course) is absolutely clear: ... sediments are essentially deposited on the horizontal beds and each layer of sedimentary rocks (sediments gradually change to sedimentary rocks) is younger than the one beneath it and older than the one above it ... (#13) ... sediments are deposited as essentially horizontal beds. ... Each layer of sedimentary rock in a tectonically undisturbed sequence is younger than the one beneath it and older than the one above i t . . . (Press and Siever 1997: 219) The fact that the students have not copied or quoted exactly from the textbook suggests that they are trying to respond to the 'non-scientific' requirement. The precise ways in which this particular example differs from the textbook's formulation might give us an idea as to what constitutes 'own words' for these students. The word 'essentially' is moved to another position in the sentence, so that it now modifies the word 'deposited' (where it does not contribute any additional meaning) rather than 'horizontal'. The nominal group 'in a tectonically undisturbed sequence' which appears in the textbook has been removed by the student writer, and replaced with a much less lexically dense sentence (between brackets) that contributes an entirely different piece of information from the original textbook phrase. Stratigraphic analysis is only possible in a 'tectonically undisturbed sequence' where the layers remain as they were originally laid down, so the removal of this phrase results in the loss of a crucial feature, and limitation, of stratigraphy. Interestingly, the student's previous relocation of 'essentially' 60
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compounds this weakness in the newly rewritten definition, because stratigraphy only works because of the necessarily horizontal nature of the sedimentary layers. Taken together, the effect of these changes is certainly to make the text sound less 'scientific', but they have also made it less 'true' or, at least, less complete. There are only two examples of students making a deliberate attempt to depart from this 'scientific' language in the body of the letters. In both cases the writers have obviously tried to obey the instruction to discuss stratigraphy in non-scientific language, and have used language that is clearly meant to be unscientific. Stratification is the layering of sedimentary rock. It is like a layer cake. The top layer was laid down last and therefore it is the youngest. (#8) To explain these different aspects of stratigraphy we'll compare it to a layered cake. The law of original horizontality states that beds deposited in water are nearly or are horizontal. Superposition states that the layers of sediment get younger from bottom to top. The principal of cross-cutting relationships states that the disruption pattern is older than the actual disruption eg the cake has to be made before it can be baked. In invoking this domestic metaphor, these students have tried to mirror the scientific meaning in their 'own' words, but have come up against the problem discussed by Bakhtin: Not only have words always already been used and carry within themselves the traces of preceding usage, but 'things' themselves have been touched, at least in one of their previous states, by other discourses that one cannot fail to encounter. (Todorov 1984: 63) In these terms there is no 'own language' - whatever we say or write has been borrowed from other people and other contexts. Bakhtin's idea itself has been echoed by others, for instance, Gee (1996) reminds us that 'the individual is the meeting point of many, sometimes conflicting, socially and historically defined Discourses' (p. 132). That the home-based Discourse signalled by the reference to baking was indeed a 'clashing' one is confirmed by the fact that the layer-cake metaphor for stratigraphy did not meet with the marker's approval in either of the above cases, earning only squiggly underlinings and question marks rather than ticks. In the case of the Earth Science 'friendly letters', the two studentwriters of the texts that compare geological strata to layer cakes have tried, as instructed, to avoid the language they have learnt to associate with science, and have, instead, written in language saturated with a 61
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very different history. There is, of course, not just one undifferentiated 'non-scientific discourse', so in being 'unscientific' the students have a choice of previously acquired Discourses to draw on, and both students have chosen that of baking. It is probably not accidental that both of these students are female, and constructed female addressees. A familiar, home-related discourse is suggested by the task's instructions (to write to a family member or friend) and this has been picked up by these students in their references to a domestic world. Because 'the word comes to its user already marked by its history, bearing the traces of its previous uses, which any speaker or writer must either continue, deflect, or contest' (Dentith 1995: 37), and these writers have not contested or qualified their use of the layer-cake image, it trails with it the ethos of the kitchen. It might be argued that cooking is a legitimate analogy for science (in the sense that it involves certain expertise, measurement, special equipment and use of an approved method) but on the whole, this aspect of the domestic arts has not been widely claimed by the scientific establishment. Rather, the very un-scientific nature of kitchen work evokes an unflattering comparison with 'science', so, for instance, mindless following of recipes forms the basis for Dave Pushkin's (2000) scathing characterization of bad science teaching as 'cookbook chemistry'. The student responses to the 'friendly letter' assignment display either a very strong reliance on formulations drawn from the textbooks and lecture notes, or an importing of words, images and formulations from another Discourse. Neither can satisfy the demand for 'own words', but nor should they necessarily be taken as evidence that students do not understand the concept of stratigraphy. Gee (2001) concedes that it is always possible to 'repeat details, facts, or messages from a domain without really being able to understand or produce meanings in the domain in a creative way' and this appears to be what these first-year students have done in their faithful reproduction of the 'friendly letter' as learnt at school, as well as the quasitextbook language that then replaces it. Bahktin (1986: 63) points out that 'not all genres are equally conducive to reflecting the individuality of the speaker in the language of the utterance, that is, to an individual style', and indeed the 'friendly letter' and the 'science textbook' are two genres that seem, for these students, to present no possibilities for demonstration of understanding. The simultaneous consideration of these two points creates a subtle tension: yes, these students appear not to have been able to 'produce meaning' in the domain of the Earth Sciences, but then again, is it fair to expect them to do so within the limitations of the genres suggested to them by the task ('friendly letter') and their previously mastered Discourses (home and school)? 62
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The analysis of this student writing in this way also raises the issue of creativity in scientific disciplines. Although the development of scientific thought and theory has been marked by astonishing leaps of creative and original thought, 'creativity' and 'originality', as commonly understood, are not usually understood as key features of scientific work. Francis Bacon believed that the value of the scientific method was that it 'enabled "conventional minds" to do science' (Tobias 1990: 32), and Isaac Newton, in a letter to fellow scientist Robert Hooke, wrote, 'If I have seen further (than you and Descartes) it is by standing upon the shoulders of Giants' (Gleick 2003: 100). It is clear, then, that when university teachers require students to write 'creatively' within a new scientific discipline, the task should take into account the nature of the Discourse students are trying to gain fluency in, the influence of students' previous learning on their understanding of any genre used, and the necessity for students to practise using and understanding the 'design grammar' of the particular semiotic domain they are entering. These suggestions are grounded in the belief mentioned in the first paragraph of this chapter: scientists use language in particular ways which must be learnt along with the 'content'. This belief is premised on the understanding that the language of science is intrinsically connected to the practice of science, so that the language used specifically by disciplines (for example, Chemistry), or a set of disciplines (for example, the Life Sciences), is functional and necessary, rather than merely ritualistic or capriciously exclusionary. An illustration of this interdependence is given in Halliday (1993), who discusses the characteristics of 'scientific English' in the light of their historical development to fulfil the requirements of the physical sciences. For example, he traces the roots of one highly characteristic feature of scientific thought and writing, nominalization, the process by which verbs are turned into nouns. Halliday's analysis demonstrates that, in order for Newton to construct an argument in his treatise on 'optiks', he had to turn the phenomenon that light bends as it moves from one medium to another of different density into a noun, 'refraction', so that he could proceed to examine the causes and effects of this refraction without having to keep restating what happened. Lemke (1990: 1) crystallizes this central tenet in his frequently quoted formulation, 'Learning science means learning to talk science'. According to this set of beliefs, language is part of a larger entity. Gee (1996: 127) calls this a Discourse and defines it as a 'saying (writing)doing-being-valuing-believing' combination. A student needs to enter the Discourse of science or of a particular scientific discipline in order to understand and participate in its practices; conversely, the features 63
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of the Discourse reveal the beliefs, practices and values of the Discourse and those who are insiders to it. Gee (2001) points out that In order to understand any word, symbol, image or artifact (or combination thereof) in a domain, a person must be able to situate the meaning of the word, symbol, image or artifact ... within ... embodied experiences of action, interaction or dialogue in or about the domain, (p. 1)
Bakhtin (1999) cautions that 'to use a genre freely and creatively is not the same as to create a genre from the beginning; genres must be fully mastered in order to be manipulated freely' (p. 80). Both of these perspectives emphasize the importance of learning and practising what already exists in the domain. This is part of the creation, especially for students who have previously not been exposed to the complications and subtleties of certain domains, of what Gee (2001) calls 'a resource precursor trajectory' (p. 7). It should also not be conceived of as dull drudgery - 'situating meaning is always a productive (generative) and creative act' (Gee 2001: 3). The job of teaching must then entail the provision of opportunities for students to have 'embodied experiences' in the domain (such as going on a field trip and discussing the observations for geology students), and to become fully conversant with the genres valued and used in that domain without imposing contradictory constraints on them. Squeezing students between an 'own words' requirement (explicitly, or implicitly by prescribing a genre like the 'friendly letter') and the need to master the social practices of their new Discourses seems likely to guarantee failure. Success in gaining entry to a new, scientific Discourse might be better facilitated by a recognition of the inadequacy of 'own words' to discuss relatively unfamiliar concepts. This might result in tasks that would, for instance, make explicit the Discourses to be drawn on, and require students to write in genres that allow them to create meaning. Although a genre familiar from previous contexts might seem to offer an easy transition into writing in a new Discourse, the example of the 'friendly letter about stratigraphy' demonstrates that this is not the case for every genre. The 'friendly letter' cannot help students to generate meaning precisely because of its history in students' writing at school, where the paradox of its seeming easiness belies its rigidly formulaic nature. The irony is that this exercise made it appear that students could not discuss stratigraphy in non-scientific terms (as required) and nor could they even complete the 'easy' task of writing a coherent 'friendly letter'. Overall, this analysis suggests that teachers of 64
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university science might serve their students better by recognizing the Discourse webs that hold or 'mark' all words, and helping them to find 'situated meanings' rather than naively idealized 'own words'. References Bakhtin, M. (1999), Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, edited by C. Emerson and M. Holquist, translated by V. W. McGee. Austin, TX: University of Texas. Cathcart, B. (2004), The Fly in the Cathedral: How a Group of Cambridge Scientists Won the International Race to Split the Atom. London: Viking Books. Dentith, S. (1995), Bakhtinian Thought: An Introductory Reader. London: Routledge. Finocchiaro, M. (1989), The Galileo Affair: A Documentary History. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Gee, J. (1996), Social Linguistics and Literacies: Ideology in Discourses (2nd edn). London: Taylor and Francis. Gee, J. (2001), 'Learning in semiotic domains: A social and situated account'. Unpublished paper delivered to the Science Academy at the University of the Witwatersrand. Gleick, J. (2003), Isaac Newton. London: Fourth Estate. Halliday, M. A. K. (1993), 'On the language of Physical Science,' in M. A. K. Halliday and J. R. Martin, Writing Science: Literacy and Discursive Power. London: Falmer Press, pp. 54-68. Hasan, R. and Williams, A. (eds) (1996), Literacy in Society. London: Longman. Henig, R. M. (2000), A Monk and Two Peas: The Story of Gregor Mendel and the Discovery of Genetics. London: Phoenix. Holquist, M. (2002), Dialogism: Bakhtin and his World (2nd edn). London: Routledge. Lemke, J. (1990), Talking Science: Language, Learning and Values. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Corporation. Luke, A. (1996), 'Genres of power? Literacy education and the production of capital', in R. Hasan and G. Williams (eds), Literacy in Society. London: Longman, pp. 309-38. Martin, J. R. and Veel, R. (1998), Reading Science: Critical and Functional Perspectives on Discourses of Science. London: Routledge. Press, F. and Siever, R. (1997), Understanding Earth (2nd edn). New York: W. H. Freeman and Company. Pushkin, D. (2000), 'Cookbook classrooms: cognitive capitulation', in J. Weaver, P. Appelbaum and M. Morris (eds), (Post)Modern Science (Education): Propositions and Alternative Paths. New York: Peter Lang Publishing. Tobi Corporation. Todorov, T. (1984), Mikhail Bakhtin: The Dialogical Principle, translated by W. Godzich. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 65
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Weaver, J., Appelbaum, P. and Morris, M. (eds), (Post)Modern Science (Education): Propositions and Alternative Paths. New York: Peter Lang Publishing.
Notes 1. See, for instance, the Plain English website,
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1 want to write about the Dalai Lama .. /: Literacies in transition1 Bong/ Bangeni and Rochelle Kapp
Introduction The title of this chapter is taken from a quotation by Suraya, a first-year university student who experienced a considerable clash between her own values and the discourses of the Humanities faculty she had joined. This chapter uses data from a case study of 20 first-year university students to explore how Suraya and her fellow students negotiate their way into the literacy practices of their new environment. The students were all registered for an academic literacy course called Language in the Humanities (LITH) at the University of Cape Town in 2002 and were taught by the authors of this chapter. They were required to take the course in the first semester of their first year on the basis of their performance on an academic literacy test. English is an additional language for 15 of the students. Except for one student, they are all first-generation university students who come from printimpoverished home and school backgrounds, often characterized by teacher-centred, predominantly oral classroom cultures where literacy practices serve the externally-set matriculation examinations. A number of students had worked, taken other courses, or 'stayed at home' before enrolling at the University of Cape Town. Our study explores students' unfolding understandings of academic literacy and how they position themselves in relation to academic discourse in their first year of study. We track students' development through interviews in the first and second semesters, through their writing development in our course in the first semester, and their other courses in the second. Our data reflect considerable ambivalence in the way students perceive the new discourses as they simultaneously attempt to assimilate new practices and values while maintaining allegiance to their home discourses. Their early writing clearly reflects this conflict. However, a dominant trend is that by the 67
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end of the first year, most students have decided that it is easier to forgo their own positions in favour of mimicking the dominant discourse. This trajectory poses serious questions about how institutions make it possible for students from working-class communities to learn/ acquire the rules of academic discourse and to engage with the challenges posed to their primary discourses, rather than forgoing their positions for instrumental reasons.
Transition to university and implications for writing Theorists have increasingly conceptualized academic disciplines as 'discourse communities' (see, for example, Bizzell 1982, Swales 1990 and Clark 1992). This notion highlights the fact that disciplines have characteristic discourses - patterns of language use that are inextricably linked to the way in which knowledge is constructed. As Kress (1989) argues, Discourses define, describe and delimit what it is possible to say and not to say with respect to the area of concern. A discourse provides a set of possible statements about a given area, and organizes and gives structure to the manner in which a topic, object, process is to be talked about, (p. 7)
In this reading, the discourses of the discipline are never neutral, since they encapsulate the values, attitudes and processes of knowledge construction that are judged socially acceptable by the discipline. When students enter into the academy, they have to learn new ways of talking, reading and writing that are embedded within the ideological framework of the disciplines (Gee 1990: xviii). While debate is central to the discourses that constitute the Humanities, the ideological framework of the debate is circumscribed by subject positions that have become accepted within it and are not always made explicit. First-year students have further levels of prescription because their texts are pre-selected and often pre-digested through textbook summaries, with the assumption that it is easier for students to grasp concepts if complexity and diversity are reduced. Entering into the discourse entails entering into new subjectivities (Herrington and Curtis 2000). Acquiring the new discourse is particularly difficult when the values and practices are substantially different from one's primary socialization. While it is possible to challenge the available subject positions, it is difficult to do so while one is still an apprentice. The LITH course attempts to take into account the social nature of entering the discourse by creating the space for students to explore 68
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who they are in relation to the discourse through writing. The course is divided into modules which are centred around key concepts, with a focus on issues related to identity. This focus enables us to engage in conceptual and language development which articulates with students' other courses. However, it also signals our assumption that when students enter the faculty from outside the dominant (Englishspeaking, 'white', middle-class) culture of the University, they have to negotiate a gap which is not only cognitive and linguistic in character, but also social and affective: because they have to grapple with new ways of constructing knowledge, often based on norms and values radically different from their own. The course emphasis on debate and comparing different points of view is important given the students' background of rote-learning. It allows students to see that to enter the discourse they have to join a debate where they are required to understand and engage with multiple perspectives. In this respect, we attempt to move beyond the view (advocated by theorists like Berkenkotter and Huckin 1995) that acquisition of academic literacy is a process of acculturation. We believe that if students are to become critical members of, and contributors to, the discourse, rather than instrumental reproducers, they have to be allowed the time and space to engage with the messy process of exploring (through talking, reading and writing) who they are (and who they are becoming) in relation to the authoritative voices in the field. Our study describes how students experience the process of entering into the debate as they grapple with new ways of writing and new ways of understanding, while trying to retain a sense of who they are. We use Clark and Ivanic's (1997) theory on writer identity to trace students' shifting representation of self - the conflict between what Clark and Ivanic (1997) refer to as 'their former selves and their becoming-selves' (p. 134). They identify three aspects of writer identity, which they categorize as the discoursal self, the authorial self and the autobiographical self. The discoursal self refers to the discourse choices that writers draw on in the writing process, which reflects an awareness of the discipline for which they are writing. The authorial self has to do with the extent to which writers feel they can take ownership of their writing; it refers to a 'writer's presence in the text' (p. 137). Since writers bring their life history to their writing, the autobiographical self includes the writer's personal history. According to Clark and Ivanic (1997), ... it is to do with the way in which writing is affected by the writer's life history up to the moment of writing ... A person's life history includes his/her opportunities and experiences, and the 69
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people he/she has encountered, which are shaped - enabled and constrained — by socio-economic factors and differences in status, (p. 140)
Although these categories overlap, they provide a useful framework for tracing students' writing development and, in particular, their changing relationship to academic discourse. We think that exploring students' perceptions of themselves as writers, as well as understanding the strategies they use to become literate in their disciplines, is crucial for our understanding of how to mediate their transition to university in a way that facilitates fluency in the register of the discourse, as well as an ability to engage critically with its ideological framework.
Methodology For comparative purposes, we collected data from our whole class comprising a reflection paper, three essays per student (from our course), and background biographical questionnaires. For the 20 students who volunteered to participate in our study over the course of their undergraduate years, we also have at least one second semester essay and transcriptions of two interviews. The interviews, conducted in the first and second semester, sought to explore students' school experiences, their perceptions of themselves as writers, their methods of attempting to establish authority in their essays, and the challenges they encounter in working with the genre of the academic essay and in their pursuit of academic literacy in general. This chapter focuses on the first-year experience. However, the study intends to track the students throughout their undergraduate years. Although we draw on a range of data to discuss students' literacy practices, we focus primarily on the discourse practices of one student, Suraya. We have selected her both because the development that her writing process follows is fairly typical of our sample, and because, as an older student, she is (atypically) better able to articulate the challenges she encounters in the process of learning how to write academically. Suraya is a 27-year-old student who grew up in Cape Town. She comes from a working-class, 'coloured', Afrikaans-speaking family, but she was educated through the medium of English. She had previously attempted to study Law at the University of the Western Cape, but dropped out and travelled extensively before becoming a yoga teacher. She chose to study Psychology at the University of Cape Town on the assumption that it would reflect the values of yoga: 'I chose Psychology 70
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because I thought since I did yoga it was going to be rational. I wanted something that will rationalize healing holistically' (Interview 1).
At the beginning: 'this argument thing.. / In her first interview in May 2002, Suraya describes an aversion to academic writing, which she calls 'this argument thing': I don't enjoy [academic] writing because I can't get what's in my head on paper ... they [academics] are very linear, there's not much freedom in what you can put across ... I enjoy free writing without thinking and to me it's slightly important in writing because it's real, that's how people are.
This comment also reflects her feeling that the university environment is removed from her reality. Earlier in the interview she says: '... I didn't come here for higher education, but for something real. I want the real meaning of life ... I was career orientated and [I wanted] to broaden my education in terms of the real meaning of life, but for now nothing is real...' Suraya's aversion to academic writing was echoed in many other students' comments. Most students had not previously written essays that required analysis or argument construction. The experience of writing was mainly confined to composition: 'at school we wrote boring essays like "My December Holidays"' (Dudu, Interview 1). Even though some students had written essays for 'content' subjects like History or Geography, these essays were copied from books: 'The school essays were just like retyping and plagiarizing was not the issue, so I didn't have to read. You could just plagiarize and type it' (Garth, Interview 1). Students describe academic writing as limiting, instead preferring essays that enable them to draw on their own experience. Students like Dudu enjoyed the fact that our course encouraged students to draw on their own experience in coming to grips with difficult concepts, but resented having to engage with the discourse in writing: 'I prefer to say things out loud when we argue about these things [referring to class debates], it is hard when we have to write about them' (Interview 1). This difficulty with engaging with multiple perspectives rather than relying entirely on own views and experience is evident in most of the students' early essays on 'Language and Identity'. In this essay, written at the end of week 4, students are required to write a 300-400 word essay in response to the statement: 'The language one chooses to speak reflects one's identity. Argue for or against'. By this time students would have had debates in class, as well as readings on the topic. 71
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At a very basic level, we attempt to teach them to develop a logical argument which engages with the readings. Suraya's essay reflects her struggle with a new genre, the academic essay: Language, identity, out of context are two English terms quite simple in meaning, however, 'Language carries culture and culture carries ... we come to perceive ourselves and our place in the world'. From Ngugi wa Thiongo (1986), Decolonising the mind. London: James Curry / Heinemann, puts an entirely new aura on the meaning of these two complexed words. I've been confronted with a very diverse and complexed issue, the association of language as the centre point of your identity. The common denominator of all these writers is their grounded belief that language, culture and identity are inseparable, however their belief goes further to where the English language in this context is seen as the language which stunted their true identity. Ngugi illustrates this metaphorically when he writes, 'The stories, with mostly animals as the main characters, we all told in Gikuyu ... a confrontation often forcing them to search for forms of co-operation' Ngugi wa Thiongo: 1986 Chapter 3 3rd paragraph Decolonising the mind. Living in a multilingual society, Language forms a fraction of your multi dimensional identity and judging from the articles the writers emotional status supports my argument on how complexed identity truly is, therefore I can say that all of them have valid points although I have to disagree that language, culture and identity forms the greater part of the complexed homo sapien equation. ('Language and Identity' essay, paragraphs 1 and 2 and conclusion quoted verbatim, including the ellipsis marks.) To us as markers, Suraya's essay reflected an awareness of what academic writing entails: a movement away from everyday, 'simple' definitions; acknowledging, summarizing, interpreting and comparing different perspectives in relation to her own perspective or interpretation. However, academic writing requires that the writer shows explicitly how the sources that she draws on function in relation to the rest of her argument. Suraya's writing does not reflect an awareness of this skill. Her use of ellipsis suggests that she quotes without fully understanding how the quotations support or elaborate on her main point. She juxtaposes notions of 'simple' and 'complexed', substituting these for actual engagement and analysis. She also fails to define concepts like 'identity' that are central to her argument. Most striking 72
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is her use of vocabulary. Terms such as 'aura', 'centre point' and 'emotional status' all reflect Suraya's identity as a yoga teacher. In Suraya's conclusion she writes: 'I can say that all of them have valid points'. This deference to authority suggested to us that she did not have the confidence to take a position. However, when Bongi talked to her about this, it became apparent that her identity as a yoga teacher requires her to adopt a holistic view, hence her struggle to focus her writing in relation to the essay question: 'I have a holistic background which was affirmed by studying yoga where there has not been a good or bad or right or wrong, there's always an in between which you have to view'. In Suraya's case, the holistic notion of entering into dialogue with multiple perspectives has resonance with the discourses of the Social Sciences. However, the notion of rejecting some positions clashes with a core value for her: 'university teaches you to argue and always there has to be a winner, you know' (Interview 2). A similar clash of discourses was experienced by Sizwe who drew on the authority of his traditional African religion to explain that language and identity are inseparable because one's identity is communicated to one via the ancestors. Without reference to any secondary sources, he argued that it is impossible to ever change identity because that would result in severing communication with the ancestors. What is significant about our students' early essays is that, despite the fact that they have emerged from backgrounds that encourage rote-learning, in the majority of the first essays there is a strong presence of 'voice'. Here we are referring to authorial self - voice as content - the extent to which writers 'express their own ideas and beliefs' in their writing (Clark and Ivanic 1997: 152). Some students assert an authorial presence very successfully. For example, Sisanda chose to express parts of her essay in her primary language, Zulu, in order to illustrate how 'Zuluness' is her primary means of identifying, even at the University. In her 'Language and Identity' essay she writes: If who I am is learnt by socialisation (obviously with my society) then the language I choose to speak (which in my case is Zulu) reinforces my identity. It also tells the other person who I really am, no matter where I am or what I do I still remain umZulu as I want to be recognised as that only and nothing else. When meeting African people I simply greet them ngoSawubona (hello) in the dining hall when I choose my meal ngicela lokho (I ask for that) ngibonge (thank you) after getting it. Most people in the staff speak Xhosa. It shows respect to them when I address them in my own language and reinforces to them that I am one of them and feel comfortable around them when I speak Zulu and we love it when we speak to each other and our relationship becomes close.2 73
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However, with other students, the process of integrating 'voice' in discourse will take longer. Vuyani, for example, starts his 'Language and Identity' essay by claiming that the theorists he has to draw on 'have not actually said much on the topic'. The major part of his essay is based on personal experience - he claims authority for his personal experience, with little reference to the other voices in the debate. Vuyani's autobiographical self emerges strongly in this essay. In one of the paragraphs he states that if he had the opportunity he would write his essay in Xhosa, making reference to his schooling, which did not afford him a good grounding in English. He writes: 'If we did not have to write essays in English I would be writing mine in Xhosa right now'. Vuyani concludes: In my conclusion I still strongly believe that the language you choose to speak cannot reveal your identity. It would take decades and decades for me to change this point of view; I can even publish a book about it. The other languages you choose to speak have nothing to do with your identity.
It would be easy to dismiss these as the clumsy first efforts of the novice writer unable to find an appropriate modulating register. Indeed, this is partly the case in these extracts from Vuyani's essays. However, taken as a whole, the identities constructed in our students' first essays also provide us with evidence that they are struggling with who they are, as well as with their writing. Students are writing about a subject in which they are strongly invested (language and identity) in an environment that they feel necessitates that they preserve their identities in order not to be subsumed by the dominant culture at the University. Herrington and Curtis (2000) sum up the difficulties experienced by students when they have to write in new academic disciplines: When we attempt to learn a new discourse, particularly as writers, we are entering a subjectivity, and how we experience that subjectivity depends on how it fits with our private/personal sense of identity and values. When the fit seems quite natural, we may take on a particular orientation without critical awareness that we are doing so. At the other extreme, if we are asked to take on an orientation that violates our basic sense of self, then we may feel assaulted, (p. 35)
We encouraged Suraya, Sizwe and Vuyani to revise their essays on the basis that they did not fulfil the criteria of an argument in the Social Sciences. Although both of us were sympathetic to our students' ideological positions and their strong assertion of 'voice', we also realized that our contract was to induct them into the discourse of the 74
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Social Sciences. For us (and our colleagues in 'mainstream' disciplines) this means that students cannot argue in isolation. They have to engage critically with the voices in the established debate, even if they disagree with them. Affirming students' ideological positions outside of the academic debate may have the long-term effect of marginalization. As Clark and Ivanic (1997) point out, we need to make writers aware 'that their discoursal choices construct an image of themselves and that they need to take control over this as much as they can; not so that they can deceive their readers but so that they do not betray themselves' (p. 231). Although we believe strongly that it is our duty to equip students to be able to write convincingly in the genre of the Social Science essay, this position still begs the question as to whether, and how, firstyear students can create the space to extend the terms of the academic conversation. In an informal interview after she had read a draft of this article, Suraya says: The difficult thing about academia is having to take on someone else's ideologies or ways of thinking - that is not me'. When Sizwe revised his essay after a conversation with Rochelle, he argued the opposite position from his first draft (that language and identity are completely separable), martialling the secondary sources to produce a convincing argument. Although he obtained a good mark for the essay, Rochelle felt that she had let him and herself down, by helping him to an instrumental solution rather than one in which he was invested. The middle of the first semester:'... confusion about cultural issues and unnecessary boundaries' The second essay, which was a response to the different theories and perspectives on culture, specifically required students to analyse their experience of their transitions. The essay topic read: 'Identify and analyse the notion of culture which you find most relevant to your experience of the transition to the UCT environment. Draw on your readings and classroom discussions of the different perspectives of the concept of culture'. The essay was written mid-way through the term and came after students had been exposed to a range of readings, mainly by 'black' writers, reflecting on cross-cultural contact. The course was framed by texts from Thornton (1988) and Ramphele (1995) which used the South African context to show why and how cultural boundaries are constructed. Even though the second essay required students to draw on personal experience, there was a marked shift away from the authorial 75
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and autobiographical representations of self in the first essay. The majority of students rely on the readings to express their views in this essay. The attempt to imitate the discourse circumscribes the space to express their own ideas and this has repercussions for authorial 'voice'. Suraya writes about her personal transition, but attempts to use the theoretical framework of the course (the notion of boundaries) to make sense of it. Unlike the first essay, she develops a strong position, using the concept of cultural boundaries to signal her personal alienation from both students and staff in her new environment. The extract below is from the second paragraph of a 1000-word essay: My past life experiences with all its victories and strifes has brought fusion to the fore, at least in my existence. However the transition to the University of Cape Town has only brought confusion about cultural issues and unnecessary boundaries. Issues such as language, race, gender, identity, has put me in the midst of my confusion, like Achebe (1975: 67) writes, The crossroads have certain dangerous potency, dangerous because man might perish there [wrestling with multiple-headed spirits, but also he might be lucky and return to his people with the boon of prophetic vision!]' Not only does the intellectual Tied Pipers' of the university have their educative boundaries, where their system indirectly tells you what you can and cannot study, speak or write, they disguise their groupings and boundaries with dualistic vocabulary, such as 'academic discourse', are opposed to freedom of writing and speech. But it does not stop there, the mice of the University goes around using derogative terms such as 'black, white, brown, yellow'. Diesel, Gucci clothing, Christian, Jewish, Muslim religion. All forms part of the imaginary boundaries that Thornton points out in his book.
Here Suraya is attempting to write in the discourse at the moment that she is expressing her alienation from it. She uses authorities such as Achebe (1975) and Thornton (1988) to illustrate her argument, in some instances using them in the wrong context or failing to show how they fit into her argument. In the first paragraph she includes the quotation about the 'dangerous potency of the crossroads' but does not really indicate how it ties in with what she is saying in the paragraph. Suraya's awkward use of the quotations could be explained by her sense of conflict at this time. She felt angry at being confined and 'indirectly' told what to do in a context that is supposedly open to multiple interpretations, but is 'opposed to freedom of writing and speech'. In her interview she explains the disjuncture ('confusion') she feels between the progressive ideas about equity and unity ('fusion') that she has been exposed to at the University (which accord with her 76
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yoga identity), and the reality of class and racial boundaries. Upon arriving at the University she was struck by the unfriendliness of the environment: ... the barriers felt very familiar. People group themselves in clusters where if you dress in a certain manner then you belong to a certain group. That is the Capetonian thing people are in cliques you have to go to a certain club to belong to a certain group. I expected it would be different since we are all a bunch of students who are here for a similar goal but it's still group oriented, it depends on who you know and who you hang out with and where ... UCT is like the intellectual creme de la creme, it is a cut above the rest intellectually. The first years driving RPPs [smart cars: authors' clarification] ... I wondered what is going in this university and if I was going to meet normal people. (Interview 1)
In the interview, she vacillates between confidence and insecurity: she claims that as a mature student, she has 'already gone through what my course mates are experiencing, encountering different cultures and all that' and, I can fit myself in any form of group, that's the kind of person I am. I basically fit myself anywhere, I am 27 years old and I see how things go and I just learn to be part of the group. We all go through our phases but I fit in everywhere. (Interview 1)
However, later, in the same interview, she also says: 'I do not think that I am fitting in, I did not expect to feel like this here' and 'I don't think I fit into university life even though I would like to. It is very different [UCT]. I have been travelling for six years and all of a sudden I feel confined'. It is interesting to note that while Suraya experienced academic discourse as limiting and removed from her reality, for some students, engagement with the discourse of the Social Sciences, and the 'culture' module particularly, was liberating, allowing them to see how boundaries of race, class and gender have been used to limit and control them. For example, Noloyiso writes about the policing of tradition by the 'elders' in her rural community: 'They created boundaries by saying "you are this kind of a person in this kind of culture" and they used to tell us what must be done. If you ask why, they tell you that "it is our religion". Sometimes they say "you will die" and in that way they try to stop us from mixing our cultures with other cultures'. In her interview, Noloyiso talks about how 'free' she feels at the University of Cape Town. The readings and class discussion provided her with the resources and the language in which to question her 'taken for granted experiences' of boundaries at home, and to express 77
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this. Another example of this is Garth, the elected class representative, a 'coloured' student who was extremely popular in class and seemed to connect easily across boundaries of gender, race and disability (there were two blind students in the class). Both in class and in his first interview, Garth revealed that he had been taught to despise 'black' ['African']3 people by his 'white' grandmother who had raised him in his rural village: 'I remember that my grandmother used to say blacks stink, they never wash and you are not supposed to eat [food that comes] out of their hands'. In his essay Garth writes: Coming to UCT represented a lot of things that I was socialised against ... I am proud to say that unlike Ramphele (1995) who 'stretches across the boundaries', I can freely cross the boundaries of another culture and find commonness within that culture with which I can communicate ... Culture does indeed change, because it is not organic but social, which means it can be unlearned and redefined. Culture changes and its boundaries are crossed daily, by people who are brave enough to find out more about the 'other' (DOH101F, Course Reader, 2002) and who are willing to accept differences and also acknowledge the sameness that is found within the other culture.
The end of the first semester: 'I write to a certain degree to meet the criteria demanded by you people' The third essay for the course was on gender. Students were required to respond to a quotation from one of their readings and then position themselves in the nature/nurture debate. In this essay students mimic the discourse even more strongly, to the point of plagiarizing. This trajectory is also evident in previous studies (see Angelil-Carter 2000 and Paxton 2003). Despite encouragement to reflect on their own experience, students' authorial 'voices' are absent. Instead there is a heavy reliance on the theory of the gender debate. A majority of the essays tend to use the theories in 'cut and paste' fashion, without constructing an analytical argument. However, there is an improvement in structure compared to the first essay and students are palpably attempting to write in the dominant discourse, making the appropriate discourse moves through definition, comparison and description. The essays reflect proficiency in the superficial genre conventions. Even though (by now) they have a meta-awareness of the rules of the academic essay, students are not yet fully aware of 'the deep rules of the culture that shape the entire process of student writing' (Ballard and Clanchy 1988: 8). 78
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The following extract is from Suraya's gender essay: The sex and gender debate has been an antagonistic topic in society. The theory has been researched and is still being put to the empirical test by psychologists, feminists and scholars. What is the fundamental difference between these two terms? This essay will be dealing with the differences and comparisons of controversial issues surrounding sex and gender debate.
There appears to be less of a personal register. The emotional stance that prevails in the early essays is replaced by a tone that suggests an attempt at formality and distance. She states her intent, foregrounding the central terms of the debate, something that she neglected to do in her first essays. She still uses words such as 'antagonistic' which serve a similar function to 'complexed' in the first essay, where she avoids elaborating on the central concepts. Like Suraya, by the time they reach the 'Gender' essay, most students have worked out the constraints of the genre as a result of the feedback on their essays. Yandisa's view is typical: I do not enjoy writing because I can't write what I want here, and sometimes I can't express myself properly. I write to a certain degree to meet the criteria demanded by you people. I would [enjoy writing] if I were to do it the same way I did at school. (Interview 1)
Second semester: bringing 'the relevant theories ... into perspective' By the end of the first semester, students are aware of the literacy practices valued by the institution: 'Do not plagiarize'; 'You must have a coherent argument' and 'Make sure you have a clear introduction and premises for your argument' (Interviews 1 and 2). There is an improvement in the cohesion of the writing, an attempt to construct a clear argument is evident and there is an attempt to reference, albeit incorrectly. The second semester essays reflect a change in literacy practices the narrative style of writing is less evident in these essays. Students are learning to write in the dominant discourse. The extract below is taken from one of the essays that Suraya wrote in the second semester: Before embarking on the essence of this essay, the relevant theories of the above theorists should be brought into perspective. Travisano (1970) gave us insight into what he deems 'two separate kinds of transformation within one's universe of discourse [student did not close quotation marks]. In layman's terms a conversion would be one of radical change within one's prescribed universe of 79
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discourse. The other kind of transformation according to Travisano (1970) with less dramatic measures is that which can be described as an alternation. Another perspective of the conversion theory would be that of Snow and Machalek (1983). They put the latter to the empirical test, and concluded that converts are 'social types with identifiable formal properties' (Snow and Machalek 1983: 262). Applying Snow and Machalek (1983) theory to Malcolm X universe of discourse, I have to argue that Malcolm X underwent two conversions.
The structure of the introduction and the vocabulary indicate that she is aware of the discourse conventions. The style of writing here is markedly different from her essays in the first semester. The tone is more formal and the referencing more appropriate. Her sentences are longer and characterized by a greater degree of nominalization. Her use of the term 'layman' is significant in that it suggests that she sees herself as a member of the discourse community. She is aware that the discourse needs to be defined, and in so doing constructs an academic persona that anticipates and takes into account the expectations of her audience. It is interesting to note that she still draws on other discourses, for example her use of the term 'essence', which forms part of her yoga discourse. What can also be said about Suraya's writing is that the 'authorial voice', which was evident in her earlier essays, is absent, instead replaced by a formal register which draws on the theory to construct an argument. Resisting the dominant discourse?: 'I want to write about the Dalai Lama without being penalized' By the end of the first year, although Suraya has learnt to play the game and write in the discourse she still feels intensely frustrated. In her second interview, she asks: 'Who in the institution decides what you can or cannot bring into your writing? I want to write about the Dalai Lama without being penalized'. Here Suraya is referring to an incident where she wrote a lengthy paragraph on the Dalai Lama and his religious beliefs along with the discourse of that particular context. She was heavily penalized for failing to show how that fitted in with the rest of her text. By the time they reach their second semester, most other students have decided that adhering to the dominant discourses is in their best interests. They do not have many options because they are not sufficiently familiar with the 'rules' of their disciplines to 'play around with them' (Thesen 1994) or to adjust the rules in their favour. This tension is summed up by Andrew, who in informal discussion at the 80
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end of the year talked about how he often makes strategic choices to align himself with viewpoints with which he may not agree, partly for 'fear of being judged' and partly because the essay topics sometimes provide no space for alternative viewpoints: 'the structure is determining you' (Andrew).
Conclusion:'... now things are quite different but I will get there somehow' We have traced Suraya's entry into academia in order to illustrate a clash of discourses that many of our students experience when they enter academia. Students resist the new literacy practices both because of their difficulties with the reading and writing they are required to do, and because (for some) the new discourses represent an ideology with which they are at odds. However, by the end of their first year, all the students are conforming, (in some cases) quite cynically and strategically surrendering their 'authorial' and 'autobiographical' voices. In the process of learning to write in the new discourse, students rely on each other, on the feedback from their tutors and on subtle reminders from their tutors to guide them: 'somehow they make you aware of what you can't do' (Yandisa, Interview 2). Babalwa's response to whether she thinks she is a good writer is typical: 'In the first semester there was a lot of spoon-feeding, now things are quite different but I will get there somehow'. The data reveals that students' motivation for wanting to 'learn' how to engage with academic writing is mostly instrumental, connected to getting a good mark and passing the course. In an attempt to achieve this, they set aside their primary discourses and mimic the discourse of the institution. Students invariably separate out their notions of who they are and what they value from academic discourse. They are writing to do well and become upwardly mobile. In both interviews, we asked students whether they had changed since they first arrived at the University. The answer was typically: 'no, I've grown'. For Suraya, the conflict continues to deepen, so that by the second year she drops Psychology for Media Studies, which feels more 'relevant', and is still questioning her place in the institution: 'Is this really about learning, this having to learn to write in the dominant discourse? Does one really learn?' (Informal discussion, July 2003). As researchers and teachers, the question that we are asking ourselves at this stage is whether students will see a real value in reinvesting their authorial selves in their writing as time goes on, when they become more fluent in the discourse. 81
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The project poses serious questions about how we move beyond a socialization view of literacy in the academy. As Lillis (2001) points out, 'the teaching of essayist literacy may enable students from communities historically excluded to participate in HE [higher education], but at the same time it inevitably involves socialization into dominant practices' (p. 158). Our study challenges the assumption that acknowledging and integrating students' prior discourses is an easy process. Students themselves have complex motivations and pressures within and beyond the academy that are not easily visible to us as academics. Their interactions with academics and peers within and outside the classroom shape the choices they make about how to invest in academic discourse. Nevertheless, we cannot lose sight of the goal of helping to create space for students' primary discourses, while getting them to engage with the new discourses they encounter. These rural and working-class students come from contexts about which Social Science academics theorize a great deal. In order to facilitate growth in our disciplinary knowledge, dialogue between the established discourses and those which have been marginalized has to be facilitated. It should be possible for Suraya to explore through writing just how the Dalai Lama relates to her 'becoming-self and to feel that she is learning through that process. Acknowledgements We wish to thank Sinfree Makoni, Lucia Thesen and Ermien van Pletzen for their valuable comments on an earlier draft of this paper. This material is based upon work supported by the National Research Foundation. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and therefore the NRF does not accept any liability in regard thereto. References Achebe, C. (1975), Morning Yet on Creation Day. London: Heinemann. Angelil-Carter, S. (2000), Stolen Language? Plagiarism in Writing. New York: Longman. Ballard, B. and Clanchy, J. (1988), 'Literacy in the university. An anthropological approach', in G. Taylor, V. Beasley, H. Bock and J. Clanchy (eds), Literacy by Degrees. Milton Keynes: The Open University, pp. 7-23. Berkenkotter, C. and Huckin, T. (1995), Genre Knowledge in Disciplinary Communication. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Bizzell, P. (1982), 'College composition: initiation into the academic discourse community', Curriculum Inquiry, 12, (1), 191-207. 82
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Clark, R. (1992), 'Principles and practice of CLA in the classroom', in N. Fairclough (ed.), Critical Language Awareness. London: Longman, pp. 134-65. Clark, R. and Ivanic, R. (1997), The Politics of Writing. London: Routledge. Gee, J. (1990), Social Linguistics and Literacies: Ideologies in Discourses. London: Palmer Press. Herrington, A. and Curtis, M. (2000), Persons in Process: Four Stories of Writing and Personal Development in College. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. Kress, G. R. (1989), Linguistic Processes in Sociocultural Practices. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lillis, T. M. (2001), Student Writing: Access, Regulation, Desire. London and New York: Routledge. Paxton, M. (2003), 'Developing academic literacy in Economics in a South African university', Literacy and Numeracy Studies, 12, (2), 1-14. Ramphele, M. (1995), A Life. Cape Town: David Phillip. Swales, J. M. (1990), Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thesen, L. (1994), 'Voices in discourse: re-thinking shared meaning in academic writing'. Unpublished Masters' Thesis, University of Cape Town. Thornton, R. (1988), 'Culture: a contemporary definition', in E. Boonzaier and J. Sharp (eds), South African Keywords. Cape Town: David Phillip, pp. 17-28.
Notes 1.
2. 3.
A shorter version of this article was published in 'Identity and Creativity in Language Education', A. Coetzee (ed.), Proceedings of thee 21st World Congress of the World Federation of Modern Language Associations, 2-5 July 2003. CD-ROM publication. ISBN 0-620-31884-8: 47-51. Zulu and Xhosa are both Nguni languages, and are mutually comprehensible. In post-Apartheid South Africa, 'African' people are generally referred to as 'black'. The terms 'coloured' and 'Indian', previously contested by anti-Apartheid activists, have largely been retained.
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Intertextual analysis: a research tool for uncovering the writer's emerging meanings Moragh Paxton
Intertextual analysis has gained popularity as a linguistic tool for analysing the writer's 'voice'. Theorists such as Kamberelis and Scott (1992) have studied children's writing and found that the intertextual links point to particular social formations and political ideologies. Ivanic (1997) has used intertextual analysis to illustrate that writing is an act of identity. Other writers (Angelil-Carter 2000, Pennycook 1993 and Scollon 1995) have tracked intertextuality in students' academic writing to demonstrate the fine line between plagiarism and taking on the voices of the academy. But, as yet, very little research has used intertextual analysis to probe the writer's developing meanings and to understand more about learning and acquisition processes.1 This chapter will draw on the findings of an ethnographic study of student writing to illustrate how linguistic and intertextual analysis of student writing, supplemented by student interviews, can provide us with insights into the ways in which students build on prior discourses to acquire new discourses. The chapter will begin by describing the theoretical and methodological insights used to frame the research, before going on to illustrate some of the data from the research project. The data will show, first, the ways in which students learned to rework discourse strategies from prior discourses so that they blend more easily into the Economics discourses and, secondly, how students drew on prior experiences and associations to make sense of new concepts. This analysis highlights the gaps and mismatches between student interpretations and the expectations of teaching staff and shows how these gaps sometimes call for changes to the dominant discourse and to traditional teaching methodologies. In the closing paragraphs I describe some of these changes. 84
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Theoretical and methodological framework In order to understand the difficulties that diverse students encounter in trying to gain linguistic and epistemological access to the new discourses of the University it seems important to understand more about the linguistic and cultural resources that they bring with them and how they use these to make sense of the new discourses. Thus my research focused on an analysis of the first and final coursework essays in a first-year Economics course at the University of Cape Town to explore the shifts and changes that take place over the first academic year. Eight students from different socio-economic backgrounds2 volunteered as subjects for the case study and were interviewed regularly after each essay so that they could act as 'expert witnesses' to assist in the analysis of their writing. These interviews also contributed to biographical sketches of the students which provided important contextual data for the study. In analysing the student essays I have used the framework Fairclough (1989) developed for analysing the relationship between a linguistic text and wider social processes. In addition to a description of text, Fairclough calls for an interpretation of the social processes that give rise to the production of the text as well as of the social historical conditions within which participants are situated. This forms his three-part model for discourse analysis and it falls under the broader description of critical discourse analysis (CDA).3 My approach differs from standard critical discourse analysis (CDA) research in that my interest is not in the changing language of social institutions, such as the media, or in demystifying and critiquing hegemonic texts in order to uncover hidden power relations. This does not imply a lack of interest in power relations, but I believe that CDA needs to move beyond a strong focus on ideology critique to study the texts that illustrate the productive uses of power and discourse in new and changing contexts. Luke (2002) argues that CDA needs a new expanded research agenda, ... one that engages with new textual configurations, one that dereifies concepts of culture, and explores new definitions not only of discourse, but as well of language as necessarily blended, multiglossic, and transcultural. (p. 108) I have used CDA to analyse students' hybrid interim literacies in order to uncover acquisition processes and to illustrate both the barriers and resources that contribute to learning. This kind of research can illustrate and even assist in changing dominant discourses in response to student needs. 85
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I use the term intertextuality very broadly to refer to all the ways in which a specific text relates to other texts and voices. Fairclough (1992) subdivides intertextuality into 'manifest intertextuality' and 'interdiscursivity'. In what he calls 'manifest' intertextuality the other texts are explicitly present whereas in 'interdiscursivity' 'the echo in the new text is not of another specific text but of a recognizable abstract text type or set of conventions: a pattern or template of language use rather than a sample of it' (Ivanic 1997: 48). The term 'voices' is used in the Bakhtinian sense of a discoursal repertoire which is inevitably social and ideological. 'Voices' are a set of discourses that the writer brings to the act of writing; they are part of his/her social and historical formation and they weave their way intertextually through the writing. I have found that Gee's notions of 'situated meaning' and 'cultural models' provide a useful structure for investigating the ways in which students draw on past experiences and associations to assist them in constructing meaning in the new Economics discourse. Gee (1999: 44) says that words have situated meanings for individual speakers related to the specific contexts and to the images and patterns that speakers associate with them from their past experience. These situated meanings are linked to a cultural or discourse model or schema which Gee (1999) describes as 'an explanatory theory or "story line" connected to a word and rooted in the practices of the socio-cultural group to which the person belongs' (p. 44). Following Bakhtin, I consider a writer's 'own voice' as his or her unique combination of these discoursal resources. Bakhtin (1986) says that writers make these voices their own by assimilating, reworking and reaccentuating them (p. 89). This notion of 'transformation' or remaking captures the ways students work to reshape their past 'voices' in the light of their current 'interests' (Kress 2002). Kress's notion of the sign-maker's 'interest' allows us to see the writers as agents in the process of remaking, but it is important to remember that they are always operating within fields of power (Kress 2000). As Wells (1992) indicates, real learning takes place when a student's transformed understanding is a 'personal reconstruction accommodated within the student's emerging identity' (p. 48). The ability to express understanding in one's own words sometimes shows there has been an appropriation of meaning. Therefore it may be an important stage in the process of becoming literate in a new discourse. Gee defines literacy as 'mastery, or fluent control ... over a secondary discourse' (1996: 141). However, in Gee's terms very few of my students would be regarded as having 'mastered' academic discourse, therefore I prefer to use the term 'interim literacies'4 to refer to student literacies which reflect a transition process from school and home to 86
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academic literacy. The term 'interim literacies' could be seen in relation to the broader idea of multiliteracies, which refers to both the growing multiplicity of communication channels and media and to the increasing significance of cultural and linguistic diversity. A multiliteracies pedagogy considers language and other modes of meaning as 'dynamic representational resources, constantly being remade by their users as they work to achieve their various cultural purposes' (Cope and Kalantzis 2000: 5). My own notion of interim literacy is specifically linked to the use of written language which is analysed as a dynamic resource, constantly being adapted and transformed by its users who bring with them a diverse range of cultural and linguistic resources. The process of adapting discourse strategies drawn from oral and narrative discourses I was particularly interested in the variety of spoken discourses and genres from a more oral tradition that filter into the texts of the students and reveal something of their social and historical roots. For instance, students relied on familiar genres such as the recount or narrative genre familiar to them from the African story-telling tradition rather than using the evaluative genre which was more appropriate for this essay. Students also used discourse strategies reminiscent of oral and narrative discourses to create moving, flowing prose. Halliday (1996) says that spoken language, organized as it is around clauses and processes, 'creates a world of movement and flux, or rather a world that is moving and flowing, continuous, elastic, and indeterminate', whereas written language is centred around nominal groups and tends to create 'a world of things and structures, discontinuous, rigid, and determinate' (p. 352). Syntactic features of this 'flow' which I have identified in these essays are: • use of co-ordinating conjunctions • question and answer forms. Many of the students string together lengthy sentences using coordinate clauses joined by conjunctions like and and but, which may be an indication that they are writing as they speak: Lets give the country a chance and hope that the rate of crime will go down and people will get jobs and the state will continue selling 87
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properties to individuals, so that people will be given a chance to buy firms and invest their money. (Sibongile) The market economy is very much characterized by private freedom whereby everyone in the country is free to make his or her decisions toward the owners of his assets and also in market economy there is very much limited government intervention, but in market economy the government does own property whereas the most is privately owned. (Ayanda)
Perhaps even more interesting are the indications that some of the features in the student writing may be drawn from oral literary language (secondary discourse5) rather than everyday spoken discourses (primary discourse6). Gough (2000) reminds us that there is a tendency to regard Western essayist discourse as the only secondary discourse, but that in fact all communities have secondary discourses and the secondary discourses of African language would include discourses of the oral tradition such as praise poetry and story-telling. Gough (2000) has noted that the practice of using co-ordinating conjunctions is a feature of the intsomi, a genre of the African oral folk tale. He has described this device as 'clause-chaining' (pp. 48-9). Gough provides the following extract from an intsomi, the Xhosa version of Cinderella. As the extract shows, the intsomi has a clear stanzaic structure. Discourse markers (hayi ke, hayi okunene], given in italics, mark the beginning of the stanza. Clause chaining, given in bold, and marked in this extract by the verb beginning with wa-, is used to link clauses within a stanza. The beginning of a new stanza is marked by a break in the clause-chaining pattern: a) hayi ke uhambile ke umntana nenqwelo yakhe wayifihla ke lo mntana inqwelo etyholweni wafika apha emdanisweni wangena ngamandla Translation: a) No then the child left in her carriage, she hid the carriage in the bush she arrived at the dance she entered openly
In their research at the University of the Western Cape, Gough and Bock (2001) found that clause chaining occurred in students' first language (Xhosa) as well as their English language essays, which seemed to them to be an indication that this was a practice that was used by the students regardless of whether they were writing in a first or a second language. 88
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Other findings from my data and my interviews with students show that some of the practices of Xhosa first-language teaching in schools are in fact encouraging the development of secondary discourses. One of my Xhosa-speaking colleagues, Bongi Bangeni, has explained that Xhosa praise poems, which students study in Xhosa first-language classes, construct an argument by using the question and answer form as a rhetorical device. Repetitive questioning and answering takes place orally in class when students are studying poetry - the Xhosa teacher initiates a choral response by asking the question. Two students, Vuyani and Sibongile, both African language speakers, repeatedly used non-embedded question-and-answer sequences in their first essays, and when asked about this they told me that the way they were using questions and answers in their writing was a discourse style borrowed from the literary genres of their home languages. Sibongile uses the question-and-answer style to develop a discussion in her text: What about those poor consumers who don't have any money, are their needs satisfied? They are poor and they need goods that will cost less and maybe those goods wont be produced 'cause many rich people do not want them. Is this market system pure [fair]? Now the government should look at this and make a plan for those people.
In her interview, Sibongile indicated that she had learned to write imibuzo buciko, rhetorical questions, when she was studying Xhosa poetry at school and that the teacher had encouraged them to transfer this discourse style to their own writing. The same question-and-answer style can be found in Zulu poetry, for instance in the three parallel couplets below, which have been taken from Zwide's praise poem (Cope 1968: 128): Ezindleleni ufana nayiphi na? Ufana nevudlayo; Emithini lapha ufana nayiphi na? Ufana nomnyamathi; Ezinyokeni lapha ufana nayiphi na? Unfana nenyandezulu. Translation: Amongst the roads which one does he resemble? He is like the one which cuts straight across; Amongst the trees which one does he resemble? He is like the hardy essenwood tree; 89
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Amongst the snakes which one does he resemble? He is like the large green one which represents the ancestors.
Vuyani, another student, said he had learned the question-and-answer technique from reading Zulu stories and transferred it to his own writing: When we're writing an essay in Zulu, to make it more interesting you ask a question and then you answer it ... it is the way to emphasise...
Below are some examples of the way in which Vuyani has used question forms in his Economics essay: The people or labor were owned by state. How? There was this document which they called it pass. Why does SA prefer the mixed economy? Because more money is being produced... The question which is remaining now is that 'is SA economy undergone a transition since 1990 to a market oriented economy?' I would say yes. Why. First of all...
The examples illustrate the way the students' 'interests' are reflected in their writing and how, in the process of transferring the traditional rhetorical form, they attempt to transform it so that it is appropriate for the new situation. However, as some of the extracts show, it is still not a seamless blending of discourses. By the stage of the final essay of the year in which students had to investigate South African Breweries as a case study of a monopoly, there are still a few signs that they are drawing on spoken and oral narrative discourses. For instance, the question-and-answer style (umbuzo buciko) is picked up again by some students in the monopoly essay, but this time it seems to have been more successfully adapted as it is carried to the new genre. This is illustrated by Thabo who has drawn on information from The Economist and used the umbizo buciko quite eloquently as a rhetorical technique to tell the story of the black market in beer trading: So one may ask where does illegal retailers get their stock from because SAB cannot sell directly to illegal retailers? (The Economist Ltd, London 2000) Illegal retailers buy their stock indirectly from SAB via wholesalers ... (Thabo)
Vuyani has used the rhetorical question to introduce his essay: 90
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How does SAB choose profit maximising output? What we know that most of the monopolist firm produce where marginal revenue is equal to marginal cost, this is profit maximising rule. (Vuyani)
The marker compliments him on his effective use of the question-andanswer form with a comment in the margin saying, 'Nice opening question/topic sentence. The reader knows what the paragraph is about'. Vuyani continues to use rhetorical questions quite appropriately throughout the essay, showing that he is importing the older literary form and then re-articulating and contextualizing it in his academic writing as he moves through his first year of study. The sentence structure has improved and he seems to have learned effective ways of using it as a rhetorical device. As I have noted earlier, this remaking of text to reflect the individual's 'interests' is crucial because it represents a conscious personal reconstruction and an appropriation of meaning. I use the word 'conscious' because Vuyani and Sibongile have the metalanguage to talk about what they are doing with rhetorical questions, while the emphasis on 'interest' indicates that the students have real agency as they work with their past discourses (Kress 2000 and 2002). The excerpts show that the students' past discourses have eventually been successfully integrated into the new discourse; Vuyani's development of the question form from his first to his final assignment suggests support for my argument that students use their more familiar discourses as a link to the new discourse and to facilitate acquisition. It is also important to recognize that these students carry a different tradition into the Economics profession and that the discursive hybridity which I have illustrated here may have the potential to be a source of change in the target discourse. The discourse of Economics is not simply fixed and unchanging; in fact, the pedagogic discourse of the Economics textbook is changing rapidly in South Africa as textbook writers respond to the needs and interests of a changing student population. Situated meanings and cultural models: drawing on associations and personal experience to make sense of new concepts As I indicated, I have used intertextuality as a tool for analysing conceptualization and acquisition of Economics discourse. Understanding something of the situated meanings of the words and phrases students use helps us to understand the ways in which they are constructing meaning in their essays. I am particularly interested in whether these 91
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situated meanings and models support the learning process and have found that my interviews with the students have been valuable in giving me access to the students' developing models or schema. In this chapter it is impossible to explore this comprehensively but a few examples illustrate some of the ways in which students' situated meanings and cultural models affect acquisition. Through the snatches of different social languages we find in these early student texts, connections are being made to previous encounters, to other people, ideas, texts, institutions and discourses outside of the immediate academic situation. When a student uses a word or a phrase that appears 'inappropriate' to an academic or an economist, it may be that she has drawn on an association that gives her access to a new concept. Therefore these traces of home and school discourses embedded in students' writing play an important role in assisting them to bridge the gaps, to conceptualize and construct new discourses. This is the process Kress (2000 and 2002) describes as 'transformation' or 'remaking'. He says that changes in discourse 'arise as a result of the interested actions of individuals' (2000: 153) and because our 'interests' are not really matched by the existing semiotic resources, we choose the most apt forms to represent our meanings and transform them. There were instances where students drew on mental models they had created to access new concepts. Nomsa provides an interesting example when she claims that 'consumers are the boss of the market', a phrase which tutors and markers would recognize as useful as part of her learning process, but too informal to be appropriate in an essay. Nomsa's phrase probably originated from a tutor's attempt to explain a new concept. The term 'consumer sovereignty' in the market economy means that consumers have sovereignty because they have the power to determine the types and quantities of goods and services which will be produced. This concept would be somewhat unfamiliar to the students, but in a tutorial that I attended, the tutor simplified it for them by referring to consumers as 'sovereign' or 'king'. Thabo used this simplification of the terminology in his essay and referred to the consumer as king when he wrote, 'In the market system, we can see that consumers are the king ...'. In her sentence, Nomsa has revealed her 'on the spot' image of the consumer as 'boss', an image which she has assembled to help her understand this concept. Thus, in a sense the tutor has created a mental model to assist the students. As I have indicated, this drawing on situated meanings and cultural models is an important step in the learning process. It is important to remember that five of the case study students, including Nomsa, are speakers of English as an additional language. 92
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There seems to be potential for research which traces the meanings of concepts in African languages. This would enable the development of African language glossaries and it would scaffold the learning of new and difficult concepts. Students always say that they prefer to use the English economic terms because they are more familiar with them but these comments would refer to concepts they have already acquired. Nomsa's words for 'consumer sovereignty' illustrate the translation and interpretation methods students might use to access new concepts. Understanding more about these may assist the teaching of Economics. Sometimes the forms and associations students draw on may assist learning as in the example above. However, the analysis also showed that because student writing is concerned with the processes of meaning-making and contestation around meaning, there were occasions when students drew on different experiences and their 'cultural models' served to complicate rather than to assist the process of acquisition. During the first semester of the course, students were introduced to economic systems and to the theoretical constructs of the command and market economies. They were taught that these are theoretical constructs, that there are no pure market or pure command economies but rather that most countries have mixed economies. It was pointed out that the South African economy under Apartheid had a number of features of a theoretical command economy. For instance, the Apartheid government, through social engineering such as the Group Areas Act, ensured that most of the land in the country remained in the hands of people classified as 'white'. People classified as 'non-white' could own land, but only in areas of the country reserved specifically for them. This meant effectively that 'non-white' people were prevented from owning businesses outside the areas reserved for them. The movement of labour was controlled by the application of the pass laws and the government controlled who had access to certain jobs. Although individuals owned most of the factors of production, the state owned some big parastatals such as Iscor (iron and steel corporation), Eskom (electrical power utility) and Armscor (weapons manufacturer). These points were made in lectures but the Apartheid history was not covered in any detail because the lecturer had assumed that this would have been covered at school, not realizing that history is no longer a popular subject choice in high school. The first essays on the transition from a more command orientated economy to a more market orientated economy reveal the way different life experiences hook into theories in different ways. I moderated all the essays and found that students were struggling to explain the Apartheid economy. From the moderation process I gained the 93
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impression that students from different backgrounds were bringing different mental models to the understanding of the Apartheid economy, which led to a distinct polarization. Most of the 'black' students claimed categorically that during the Apartheid years the government had owned 'all the factors of production' and that 'South Africa was a command economy', when in fact most property, land and labour were in private hands under the Nationalist government. 'White' students, on the other hand, seemed to be avoiding a discussion of the Apartheid economy. Despite what was taught in lectures and what they read, students would have developed their own theories (cultural models) about the Apartheid economy from experience and from the stories passed down to them by their parents and grandparents. 'Black' students are more likely to be aware that, when 'black' people were growing up in townships and rural areas in the 1980s, these communities did not own their own property or businesses or have freedom of movement, because the Apartheid government had legislated against this. Extracts from the students' essays illustrate this belief: SA had been practising a command system where all property rights were taken by the government. (Nomsa) South Africa was under apartheid for long time where white [s] were only favourites... Many of the businesses were owned by state, how? There was this document which they called it pass. People were arrested if they didn't pay for their lives ... This was pure communism. (Vuyani) The government then owned all factors of production and own[ed] more firms like Iscor ... and many blacks were not given chance to own a firm or a farm, if a black person has a business the government will close i t . . . (Sibongile) ... in fact South Africa was a command economy ... (Thabo) almost everything in South Africa was owned by the government ... (Ayaiida) [my emphases]
The underlined sections indicate the way students reshape what they have been taught and reveal the strong sentiments they have about the injustices of the Apartheid era. They show their commitment to their statements by the categorical use of the past tense and intensifiers such as 'all'. Vuyani's interview helped to explain this tendency to simplify. He said that he had matched the theoretical characteristics of a command economy (the model) to what he knew of South Africa during 94
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Apartheid (his life world). As I mentioned, very few students had studied history at school and they may be relying on stories they have heard from parents and grandparents. Vuyani indicates that he found these stories of Apartheid very similar to the theoretical model for a command economy, therefore he simply collapsed the 'real' and the hypothetical. The teaching and the textbook, which had emphasized that there were no pure command economies in the 'real' world, were ignored or forgotten in the face of experiences and reports which matched the hypothetical model. Economics educators (Papps and Henderson 1977, Meyer and Land 2003 and Thomas 1989) have indicated that students have difficulties using theoretical models. Economists design models to abstract from reality in order to make theorizing and predicting simpler, but this means that application of the model in the 'real' world is never as simple and clear-cut as the original model. Thomas (1989) observes that students will always organize their experiences in order to make sense of them. In this case Vuyani has organized his experiences of Apartheid to fit the model for a command economy. Thomas (1989) warns that students' experiences may not contribute to Economics understanding and that this may prove to be 'the greatest challenge for Economics teachers' because it will involve facilitating a 'reformulation of concepts in operational terms' (p. 54). In contrast, many of the 'white' students simply avoided a discussion of the economy in the Apartheid era and moved straight on to discuss the transition to the market economy. Philip, the only 'white' student in the case study, did not even mention the issue of property rights and factors of production during the Apartheid years. He began his essay with a lengthy one-page definition of 'the market' and 'the market economy' then made the following sweeping statement: South Africa has definitely undergone a transition since 1990. Apartheid together with the old government made it difficult for the SA economy to thrive and become part of the world economy.
When asked to explain what he meant by this, he said he thought South Africa had been isolated because of the racist government during Apartheid. However, he was hesitant to discuss the ways in which the racist government had used aspects of the command economy to control ownership of property by 'black' people. Philip's essay was fairly typical of the essays written by 'white' students, perhaps because they were uneasy or embarrassed about discussing the Apartheid economy or because they too had not studied history and their parents had not told them stories of the Apartheid days.
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Situated meanings relating to the case study of South African Breweries The final essay called for an analysis of South African Breweries as a monopoly power. The topic was worded as follows: Refer to your research and explain why South African Breweries can be described as a monopolist. Describe the company showing how it has established itself as a monopolist and kept competitors out of the market. Use a diagram to explain how SAB chooses its profit maximising output and price. In concluding your essay consider the advantages and disadvantages of monopoly power exercised by SAB for South African beer drinkers.
In the responses to this essay question, there are signs that students bring particular situated meanings and cultural models to the case study of South African Breweries (SAB) which may have distracted them from focusing on the economic analysis of the company as a monopoly. South African Breweries is the second or third largest brewery in the world, but in South Africa it has become more than just a brewery. The company has acquired a particular aura because of its sponsorship of soccer and rugby and its abundant advertising campaigns. When students see South Africans celebrating their sporting triumphs on television, South African Breweries advertising is always somewhere in the background (or even the foreground). From the images and messages conveyed by the media, South African Breweries has recreated itself as an icon of South Africanness, a symbol of the national identity, as one student, Sherry, indicates in the following extract: SAB also has been responsible in helping or serving the community at large. One of SAB's mottoes is to look after the community or society at large. It (SAB) has helped in some urgent and social needs like education and sport in the form of sponsorships. We all know that sport and beer have been synonymous in the uniting of our country (http://www.SAB.co.za).
It is interesting that in the final essay, the student writing shows a significant intertextual shift to the discourses found in the new social environment of the University. Students revealed their changing interests in the way they drew on the discourses of television advertising and the Internet. The choice of South African Breweries as the case study led to extensive intertextual borrowing in their essays. For instance, situated meanings associated with the company lead Sibongile into a lengthy digression in the middle of her essay. She illustrates her discussion of how South African Breweries uses advertising to 96
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keep competitors out of the market by a very vivid description of the scenario played out in one of her favourite television advertisements. She then goes on to recite lines from yet another South African Breweries television advertisement (both of these intertextual borrowings are underlined in the extract below). SAB is also keeping the competitors out of the market by doing effective advertising, they make sure that they target everyone from soccer lover to rugby lovers. Like if there are no beers then the soccer match will not start and that beer can bring people closer, even strangers and that if you want to welcome a stranger in your house you should give it a beer. There is one advert that seem to be working very well to beer drinkers which say 'one nation one soul, one beer one goo ...' [goal] soccer lovers love that one and kids too. I must say that SAB know how to advertise and good in targeting consumers they really know how to advertise and keep the competitors out of the market. (Sibongile)
The Economics lecturer commented that the student showed immaturity in not 'understanding the academic approach'. However, Sibongile's vivid description of the television advertisements does demonstrate that she has learned an important academic practice, that of supporting claims with evidence. Here she uses the advertisements and the ditties to provide evidence of the popular advertising that helps to keep competitors out of the monopoly market. Sibongile was proud of her advertising knowledge and in my interview with her she interrupted our discussion of distributive inefficiency to say 'Ask me about the soccer', and then proceeded to explain these extracts from her essay, telling me that she was an avid soccer fan. When she recites these lines in her Economics essay she is revealing her 'interest' in quite overt, possibly 'immature' ways; but, given time and good feedback, she may learn to use her illustrations more concisely. There are also numerous illustrations of where students' situated meanings associated with South African Breweries lead them to misinterpret one part of the monopoly essay question so that instead of describing the advantages and disadvantages of the monopoly power exercised by SAB for South African beer drinkers, they describe the advantages and disadvantages of beer drinking and draw intertextually on their own experience and situated meanings of beer drinking. Therefore they listed advantages such as the sponsorship of sport, bursaries for disadvantaged students, 'black' empowerment and community initiatives, none of which are necessarily contingent on South African Breweries being a monopoly and, mostly, they failed to link 97
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these issues to the company's monopoly power. For instance, Ayanda says: SAB is also giving back to society by granting awards to community builders by providing sponsorship to sport events so that society will realise that sport is important more than crime and crime doesn't pay...
In discussing the disadvantages they strayed from the question again by discussing problems of alcoholism, the health risk or the fact that drinking and driving is dangerous, which again has nothing to do with South African Breweries' monopoly power: The only disadvantages that SAB do to SA beer drinkers is that SAB doesn't have warnings on their product to show that drinking too much may end up doing something bad to a person, like a person can lose his/her minds if drinking too much ... (Thabo) The disadvantage that the beer drinkers or consumers are getting is that beer can destroy many families and marriages and SAB is not putting or matching that when they are advertising beer. Many people become alcoholics and then they loose their jobs and families that's why there are a lot of street kids its because of beer. SAB should say these things when they are advertising their beer. Look at the cigarette industry they issue warnings about smoking, how it kills and that pregnant woman should not smoke. SAB must do the same thing and stop being unethical. (Sibongile) There is some dreadful things cause by SAB's products crime, domestic violence, rape, dead, car [accidents], loss of jobs, brain damage, health problems, family crisis and self control. This is because of consumer surplus and price ... (Vuyani)
The lecturer pointed out to me that the students did not seem to have recognized the need for economic analysis. She complained that students were 'relying on own knowledge, interpretations and opinions' and that the 'personal approach', where students identified with their own life experiences, is regarded as simply not appropriate in Economics. In seeking an explanation for students' difficulties with this question I have followed Kumaravadivelu's (1999) advice when he says it is important that we try to 'understand possible mismatches between intentions and interpretations of classroom aims and events' (p. 473). I believe the task may have been misinterpreted because of the way in which it was worded. Task design is a complex process and tasks are often open to multiple interpretation. There is a tension between ensuring that the task is presented in simple, accessible 98
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language and simplifying to such an extent that it may send students off on the wrong track. In this case, in an attempt to simplify the wording of the question, the lecturer may have steered too far from typical economic discourse and given the students the impression that we were drawing on their personal experiences rather than economic theory. The inclusion of the phrase 'beer drinkers' and the situated meanings students have developed around beer and South African Breweries seem to have distracted them from paying closer attention to the wording of the question. As Nelson (1990) suggests, when students are not sure of how to deal with a particular question they tend to draw on their own resources in order to define tasks for themselves and fall back on practices and assumptions they may have developed in school classrooms or at home. My interview with Sibongile confirmed this. She spoke of how much easier this part of the essay had been for her: '... when you talk about the "advantages and disadvantages" then it becomes easy because when I talk about advantages I use my knowledge I don't use my notes, I use my general knowledge ... how people are'. The reference in the task to 'beer drinkers' was apparently read as an invitation to write about general knowledge or 'howpeople are'; it was seen as an opportunity to draw on their own cultural models (for example, South African Breweries causes drunkenness and all related social ills), which were different from the required models in the Economics department. In contrast to the language used in the essay topic, the textbook uses such complex economic terms as 'efficiency', 'welfare' and 'economies of scale' and it refers to the 'costs' and 'benefits' of monopolies. In the following year when a similar essay, a case study of Microsoft as a monopoly firm, was set and the wording was changed to 'costs and benefits of monopoly power for consumers', these problems seem to have been largely avoided. However, it may be that students have too many emotive associations with South African Breweries in the South African context and the teachers needed to mediate this interference quite carefully. Some of these examples illustrate that situated meanings and cultural models may be both a resource and a stumbling block. Nevertheless, as I have indicated earlier, situated meanings serve the students' 'interests'; they allow them to situate their learning of the Apartheid economy or South African Breweries as a monopoly in a world that is meaningful for them. Feedback on an early draft might allow them to refine these meanings.
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Conclusion This chapter has attempted to illustrate the potential of intertextual analysis for uncovering students' acquisition processes. Excerpts from the data have shown the ways in which students build on their prior discourses and practices to learn new concepts and new ways of writing. There are examples that point to the importance of prior discourses and practices for scaffolding acquisition of the new. Vuyani builds on his practice of using rhetorical questions, refining it so that his questions are more effective in his final Economics essay. Vuyani's adaptation of the rhetorical question seems to illustrate an important stage in the interim literacy, one that could perhaps be regarded as a 'change moment'. Vuyani has adapted his prior discourse strategy and woven it into the new discourse so that it is regarded by the lecturer as quite innovative. In this case one would not say that he had been 'colonized' (Kress 1985: 10) by the dominant discourse; there is something unique and fresh about his adaptation which seems to have the potential to contribute to challenge and change. There are also examples that show how prior experiences and models may lead to gaps and misconceptions. But, as I have indicated, students' situated meanings are an important part of their learning processes, and therefore we need to think about 'refining and adding to' their existing models and practices rather than eliminating them and replacing them (Pardoe 2000: 151). This means that linguistic and intertextual analysis of this kind is crucial. It can provide us with insights into students' developing schemata so that we can understand the misfits and find ways to bridge the gaps between students' models and practices and institutional expectations. Addressing the needs of students from such a wide diversity of backgrounds and world views is a challenge to educators as it calls for new approaches to teaching and materials writing. My research has revealed a number of instances where tutors and lecturers made assumptions about what students knew and found their assumptions were wrong. This has led to changes in teaching approaches, for instance, in teaching economic systems the lecturer has had to revise the curriculum because he can no longer assume that students have homogeneous, in-depth understandings of the way the economy was structured during Apartheid. Lecturers need to get to know their students and to understand the resources that they can draw on so that they are better able to reach their students. Translation of economic concepts into African languages is in the very early stages but, as I have indicated, textbook writers are moving away from the complex abstract writing traditionally associated with 100
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imported first-year Economics textbooks from the United States and the United Kingdom. Writers are looking for ways of using South African illustrations and acknowledging South Africa's rich multilingual resources. There is no doubt that students are contributing to a changing discourse and allowing us to see dominant discourses, such as the discourse of Economics, as not simply fixed and immutable but as permeable and situated in history.
References Angelil-Carter, S. (2000), Stolen Language? Plagiarism in Writing. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited and Longman. Bakhtin, M. M. (1986), The problem of speech genres', in C. Emerson and M. Holquist (eds), Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, translated by V. W. McGee. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Cope, A. T. (1968), Izibongo: Zulu Praise Poems. London: Oxford University Press. Cope, B. and Kalantzis, M. (eds) (2000), Multiliteracies: Literacy Learning and the Design of Social Futures. London and New York: Routledge. Fairclough, N. (1989), Language and Power. London: Longman. Fairclough, N. (1992), Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity Press. Gee, J. (1996), Social Linguistics and Literacies: Ideology in Discourses (2nd edn). London: Routledge Palmer. Gee, J. (1999), An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory and Method. London and New York: Routledge. Gough, D. (2000), 'Discourse and students' experience of Higher Education', in B. Leibowitz and Y. Mohamed (eds), Routes to Writing in South Africa. Cape Town: Silk Road International Publishers, pp. 43-58. Gough, D. and Bock, Z. (2001), 'Alternative perspectives on orality, literacy and education: a view from South Africa', Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 22, (2), 95-111. Halliday, M. A. K. (1996), 'Literacy and linguistics: a functional perspective', in R. Hasan and G. Williams (eds), Literacy in Society. London and New York: Longman, pp. 339-76. Ivanic, R. (1997), Writing and Identity: The Discoursal Construction of Identity in Academic Writing. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Kamberelis, G. and Scott, K. D. (1992), 'Other people's voices', Linguistics and Education, 4, (3-4), 359-403. Kress, G. (1985), Linguistic Processes and Sociocultural Practices. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kress, G. (2000), 'Design and transformation: new theories of meaning', in B. Cope and M. Kalantzis (eds), Multiliteracies: Literacy Learning and the Design of Social Futures. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 153-61. Kress, G. (2002), 'From Saussure to Critical Sociolinguistics: the turn towards a
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social view of language', in M. Wetherell, S. Taylor and S. Yates (eds), Discourse Theory and Practice. London: Sage, pp. 29-38. Kumaravadivelu, B. (1999), 'Critical classroom Discourse Analysis', TESOL Quarterly, 33, (3), 453-84. Luke, A. (2002), 'Beyond science and ideology critique: developments in Critical Discourse Analysis', in M. McGroarty (ed.), Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 22, 96-110. Meyer, J. H. F. and Land, R. (2003), 'Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge (1): linkages to ways of thinking and practising within the disciplines', in C. Rust (ed.), Improving Student Learning: Theory and Practice 10 Years On. Oxford: OSCLD, pp. 14-31. Nelson, J. (1990), This was an easy assignment: examining how students interpret academic writing tasks', Research in the Teaching of English, 24, (4), 362-96. Papps, I. and Henderson, W. (1977), Models and Economics Theory. Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders. Pardoe, S. (2000), 'Respect and the pursuit of "symmetry" in researching literacy and student writing', in D. Barton, M. Hamilton and R. Ivanic (eds), Situated Literacies. London: Routledge, pp. 149-66. Pennycook, A. (1993), 'Plagiarism: a research report', Hongkong Papers in Linguistics and Language Teaching, 16, 123-4. Scollon, R. (1995), 'Plagiarism and ideology: identity in intercultural discourse', Language in Society, 24, 1—28. Thomas, L. (1989), 'The core of Economics: a psychological viewpoint', in G. B. J. Atkinson (ed.), Teaching Economics. Oxford: Heinemann Educational Books, pp. 47-71. Wells, G. (1992), The centrality of talk in education', in K. Norman (ed.), Thinking Voices: The Work of the National Oracy Project. London: Hodder and Stoughton, pp. 283-310.
Notes 1.
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Gee (1996: 138) draws an important distinction between learning and acquisition. He argues that acquisition is the process of acquiring something without formal teaching (often subconsciously) through exposure to models and in practice with social groups. Learning, on the other hand, involves conscious knowledge gained through teaching, explanation and analysis. My case studies included five 'African' students who had been to former Department of Education and Training (DET) schools (many of which were rural) and spoke English as an additional language. The other three students regarded English as their home language. One was an 'African' student who had been to an elite private school, one a 'coloured' student from a school formerly
Inferfexfua/ analysis
reserved for 'white' children (Model C), and one a 'white' student from a Model C school. CDA is described by Luke (2002) as 'a repertoire of political epistemic stances: principled reading positions and practices' used to critically analyse language and image in a changing social world. I am indebted to a reviewer of Literacy and Numeracy Studies for generously sharing this term with me. Gee (1996) makes the distinction between primary and secondary discourses. He says that secondary discourses are those acquired from social institutions outside the home, for example the church, the school or the office. Primary discourses are the home discourses and they are acquired early in life and form the base from which later discourses are acquired.
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A body of reading: making Visible7 the reading experiences of first-year medical students Ermien van Pletzen
Ask adults skilled in reading how they read, and their answers would most likely be vague and circumstantial. For many, the act of reading would seem automatic, performed somewhere below the level of conscious awareness or effort, obscured by the actual facts, thoughts or emotions called up through reading. If they were to try and articulate the processes of reading themselves, they would probably start their description at a point where meaning has already started resonating in the mind. Explanations of how the resonance of meaning comes into being would probably remain unspoken or would be accounted for as a process of decoding signs which has been made automatic by practice and experience. Now give these same adults a short passage that they are unlikely to make sense of, for instance a highly generalized description of a simple procedure, one that is completely devoid of words that would enable them to identify the procedure. Tell them that they should summarize the passage from memory after three minutes. Such a passage was developed by Bransford and McCarrell (1974; quoted in Weaver 1994) on 'doing the laundry'. Here is a short extract, to give an idea of the level of abstraction: 'It is important not to overdo things. That is, it is better to do too few things at once than too many. In the short run this may not seem important but complications can easily arise ...' (p. 23). I performed such an exercise during a training session with a group of educators who are facilitators of a first-year university course. Under the conditions described above, the reading process, usually taken for granted and mostly hidden in people's commonsense conceptions of reading, suddenly became all too visible in readers' 104
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expressions of effort, anxiety and frustration. A passage that continually skids away from context and interpretability, and that comes linked to a seemingly impossible task at the end, caused the hidden process to surface repeatedly. In speaking about the experience, participants had no difficulty in describing mental activities and states of mind. Most of them tried to latch on to significant-seeming words or phrases; potential contexts and frameworks were tested out and rejected; some readers became overwhelmed by anxiety and decided to 'sit it out'; others tried to identify and memorize, with greater or lesser success, important-looking bits of the text without understanding what they referred to or meant. What was further striking was that participants acknowledged that as educators they had not realized that these were the processes and emotions that their students might go through while reading. The exercise, then, makes visible a dimension of reading that is usually hidden, but that is nonetheless shot through with a complex welter of cognitive, psychological and social processes and activities aimed at making meaning, as well as affective responses influencing these. Reading theorists of the past 40 years working in psychocognitive and sociolinguistic traditions have formulated explanations and developed models representing what happens in this 'hidden' dimension of reading. They take as a basic premise that reading involves far more than decoding finite signs on paper. Some of their positions are that reading is a complex guessing game following sets of cues (Goodman 1967); that reading is a process of making informed predictions (Smith 1971); that reading activates schemata, which could be individually or socially constituted, in the reader's brain (Anderson 1984); that reading involves complex transactions between readers and texts (Rosenblatt 1978); that instead of merely grasping the meaning of texts, readers bring creative and imaginative meaning to texts (Block 1995); and, partly as a result of all of the above, that reading is powerfully charged with affect. I shall come back to several of these constructivist views of reading in my theoretical section and when I look at specific data. The fact that the moment individuals start reading quietly to themselves their meaning-making activities and emotions for the most part slip beyond detection has serious implications in the field of education for both educators and learners. At the later stages of learners' schooling, and also in higher education, interventions at the level of writing are not uncommon in the classroom and in support programmes. Learners' performance of reading, however, is usually left both unprobed and unaided. Moreover, there is often much vagueness (on both sides) about what exactly particular reading tasks should 105
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achieve. Educators often assume that learners will manage to access the content of reading materials or understand the other reasons for which reading materials might have been set, while learners often misjudge educators' objectives and have difficulties understanding how they should approach a text, or what use they are expected to make of it. For each party it is the relative invisibility of the reading process that makes it hard to understand and address the other party's objectives or frustrations. The invisibility of reading has implications not only for individual learners and educators. It can be argued that the combination of reading's importance to learning and its very invisibility creates a serious faultline in more general educational structures like the curriculum. David Rose (2004) argues that reading is largely an invisible part of the school curriculum which lies at the heart of many Australian indigenous learners' failure in education. According to Rose, much of the sequencing and pacing of the curriculum is based on progressively higher expectations of students' independent reading abilities. Students encounter difficulties in trying to learn formal knowledge from reading, because, according to him, they have not had the opportunity to acquire the 'linguistic orientations' that some middle-class (what he calls 'elite') students acquire in highly literate home environments (pp. 91-2). Reading, therefore, becomes part of the 'hidden curriculum' that may screen some students, and especially students from non-mainstream, non-middle-class English backgrounds, out of education. Rose's thinking is applicable to many aspects of education in South Africa. In many South African schools, especially underresourced ones, content is 'handed over' to students through model answers, summaries and classnotes, with the result that independent reading abilities are left relatively undeveloped (see for instance Kapp 2000: 247). The fact that the majority of South African learners have to read and learn in English as an additional language increases the obstructive power of the invisible hurdles and hidden pitfalls that the curriculum poses to learners. As a result, many students who manage to make it into higher education in South Africa do so without having fully developed the ability to learn independently from reading. This chapter will probe the reading practices and attitudes of a group of first-year medical students. My aim is to 'make visible' some cognitive and affective processes that characterized students' interaction with the body of reading which is an important resource for learning in their university's transformative medical curriculum. I was hoping that such a focus on reading practices and affective responses associated with reading would open a window into some of the 106
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learning difficulties experienced by students, but also into the larger landscape of the curriculum, and how these students' experiences relate to this larger landscape.
Theoretical framework Kenneth Goodman (1994) refers to a revolution which took place in reading theory when theorists moved away from the 'pre-Copernican' instrumentalist conception of reading as mainly a process of decoding the text's message during which the reader remains 'passive' and the text is seen as 'controlling the reader' (p. 1094). As mentioned before, constructivist theorists of the past four decades or so have shifted to a very different perspective of reading as a meaning-making process which involves the reader cognitively, psychologically and socially in transactions with texts. Louise Rosenblatt, who gave currency to the image of reading as transaction (Rosenblatt 1978, 1994), describes the process as follows: Every reading act is an event, or a transaction involving a particular reader and a particular pattern of signs, a text, and occurring at a particular time in a particular context. Instead of two fixed entities acting on one another, the reader and the text are two aspects of a total dynamic situation. The 'meaning' does not reside ready-made 'in' the text or 'in' the reader but happens or comes into being during the transaction between reader and text. (Rosenblatt 1994: 1063)
Fundamental to constructivist theories of reading is that learning to read is regarded as a natural developmental process in language, like developing an understanding of the world (what Freire and Macedo (1987) call 'reading the world') and learning to talk (see Block 1995). As mentioned above, readers' ability to construct meaning through reading is seen as arising from their prior knowledge of language systems and their experience of the world. Rosenblatt (1994) provides a vivid formulation of the 'reservoir' of knowledge that meaning-making flows from: The residue of the individual's past transactions in particular natural and social contexts constitutes what can be termed a linguistic-experiential reservoir ... this inner capital is all that each of us has to draw on in speaking, listening, writing, or reading. We 'make sense' of a new situation or transaction and make new meanings by applying, reorganizing, revising, or extending public and private elements selected from our personal linguisticexperiential reservoirs, (p. 1061) 107
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Since individual experience unfolds over and through time, 'inner capital' should not be thought of as constant, but as changing and evolving. Likewise, the contextual nature of the individual's 'transactions' with the world implies that 'inner capital' is not only, or even mainly, cognitive, but that complexes of sensory, affective and cognitive experience continuously flow into and are somehow deposited in the individual's constantly changing 'linguistic-experiential reservoir'. For Block (1995), a reading theorist influenced profoundly by Rosenblatt, the process of constructing new meanings through reading is a process of thinking and understanding. He emphasizes the agency of readers, who according to him construct meaning and achieve understanding by bringing their own prior knowledge and purposes for reading into interaction with texts. Block holds that 'Comprehension is the production of new knowledge and is an act of thought' (p. 153), and also that 'all reading is premised on having questions for which answers will be sought. Comprehension is achieving answers to those questions' (p. 166). Rosenblatt and Block's sense of a 'reservoir' of prior knowledge that readers draw on to construct meaning can be expanded in terms of Gee's notion of the Discourses within which individuals perform literacy acts. Gee (1996) says that all literacy acts are essentially embedded in socio-cultural contexts, and he expands on the ways in which particular socio-cultural groupings or spaces (like a family or social community, an academic discipline like law, institutions like school or the university) possess their own Discourse. This means that to be a legitimate and acknowledged participant in a particular Discourse, the individual does not only have to use the 'right' language, but must also use or demonstrate the 'right' combinations of 'words, acts, values, beliefs, attitudes, and social identities, as well as gestures, glances, body positions, and clothes' (p. 127). Gee defines the Discourses that we learn after childhood and outside our immediate home environment and primary socialization as secondary Discourses. Unlike primary Discourses, which we acquire effortlessly and unconsciously, mainly as young children, these have to be learnt consciously. I would argue that the sum of the Discourses that an individual has acquired or learnt is similar to what Rosenblatt calls the individual's 'inner capital'. Gee's importance for this chapter is that he views 'school' or 'university' or the 'academic discipline' as spaces that control sets of Discourses to which the individual could be a relative insider or outsider. Thus, he argues, many mainstream middle-class children acquire aspects of the secondary Discourses of school as part of their home Discourses. For instance, various literacy practices acquired at 108
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their early home base, or even a particular language like English, may be closely related to the secondary school-based Discourses which they encounter later on. While these children would be relative insiders to the Discourses of school, other children, typically non-mainstream, non-middle-class children, may be relative, or complete, outsiders to school Discourses. In the process of trying to learn largely alien secondary Discourses, these children would at some stage or other probably have to confront and undergo difficult shifts of identity away from their home environments' combinations of saying and doing things. As Gee puts it, 'true acquisition of many mainstream Discourses involves, at least while being in them, active complicity with values that conflict with one's home- and community-based Discourses' (p. 147). This acknowledgement of conflict suggests that, as in the case of Rosenblatt and Block, affect is central to Gee's conception of literacies in practice. Another valuable aspect of Gee's thinking is that he describes different routes by which individuals could gain access to Discourses, and speculates about the consequences of travelling these routes. While primary Discourses are acquired largely unconsciously and relatively effortlessly, secondary Discourses generally have to be learnt laboriously, and such learnt Discourses are never mastered as entirely as primary Discourses (pp. 137-8). However, he goes on to show that the process of consciously learning secondary Discourses and the position of being slightly 'outside' secondary Discourses could lead to the development of a powerful metaknowledge which could give 'insights into the workings of these Discourses ... that more mainstream members' might not develop (pp. 139-40). Important in terms of this book's interest in the transformation of academic literacy practices is Gee's belief that individuals gaining access to a secondary Discourse from an 'outsider' position may challenge and alter that Discourse in a way that may transform the Discourse. So, for example, says Gee, '[t]he non-mainstream law student who manages to pull off recognizable and acceptable law school Discourse practices, but infuses them with aspects of her other Discourses, is a source of challenge and change' (p. 136). A powerful implication arises when one links together the thinking of constructivist reading theorists like Rosenblatt and Block, New Literacies views of literacy acts as social practices, as represented by Gee, and Rose's positioning of reading at the heart of the 'hidden curriculum'. This is that making visible the crucial role that prior knowledge and affect play in the reading process could lead to the development of teaching and learning practices that, down the line, could have the far-reaching effect of importing new social and disciplinary Discourses, metalanguages and kinds of knowledge into the 109
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curriculum. As a result, the curriculum would become more explicit about its criteria. The theorists referred to share an implicit understanding that academic literacy activities do not only or even primarily happen at the level of language or grammar. Instead, they focus attention on teaching and learning practices which would activate students' 'internal capital', their prior knowledge, which in turn would lead to extending their mastery of Discourses and metaknowledges. Of particular importance for the argument of this chapter is the emphasis placed on the reader's active role as meaning-maker, which leaves room for resistance to mere acculturation and creates the possibility of continuous transformation of the curriculum. The new medical curriculum at the University of Cape Town In 2002 the Faculty of Health Sciences launched a new curriculum fundamentally reorienting health care training at the University of Cape Town. The new curriculum embraces new content, in that it focuses on physical, mental and social well-being, thus integrating a biomedical model of health care with psychosocial models of health and well-being. This holistic view of health care is mainly derived from the system of Primary Health Care. To give an impression of the principles underlying this view of health in the new curriculum, I include two statements from a declaration on Primary Health Care formulated at a major international conference which was jointly sponsored by the World Health Organization and UNICEF in 1978 at Alma-Ata in Kazakhstan. (These are both statements that students in the Faculty of Health Sciences work with extensively in their first year of study.) Drawing on the World Health Organization's definition of health, the Alma-Ata declaration reaffirmed that health is 'a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity' (quoted in Dennill 1998: 4) and that essential care should in the first place be located in communities, should be affordable and easily accessible, and should form 'an integral part both of the country's health system ... and of the overall social and economic development of the community' (quoted in Dennill 1998: 5). Of importance here is that the individual's well-being is consistently defined in both psychosocial and biomedical terms, and that the individual's health is positioned within a rich network of communal and social institutions and practices. Also new are the pedagogies through which this curriculum is delivered, namely problem-based and experiential learning. For this 110
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chapter, I limit myself to an analysis of students' reading practices in a first semester problem-based learning course that all medical students take, called the 'Life Cycle' course. To sketch the background to the student responses which I recorded and analyse in this chapter, I need to mention some features of this course and its problem-based learning pedagogy. However, I must emphasize that my chapter focuses on students' general reading practices and how these reflect their learning processes and levels of participation in the curriculum. It does not in any way set out to critique the new curriculum, the 'Life Cycle' course or the pedagogical model followed. In the old curriculum, students did most of their learning by going to Basic Health Sciences lectures and practicals, and following these up by consulting textbooks and lecture notes. Students in the new curriculum meet regularly in small groups of about ten for the 'Life Cycle' course, which draws on biomedical and psychosocial disciplines for its materials. The problem-based learning process starts with the facilitator introducing a case study that embeds individual health issues in the context of families, communities and social environments. The successive cases (introduced over a period of one semester) take students through human beings' life cycle from conception to death. For each case, students get the opportunity to pool their prior knowledge and learning of the biomedical and psychosocial situations and conditions implied in the case. Students try next to clarify concepts and identify areas that they reckon they need to learn about from the case, and draw up learning objectives. Towards the end of their first session on a case, they receive a resource pack comprising a selection of relevant readings, which they need to use during selfdirected study time to fill in the areas of learning that they have identified. The course design team provides students with a list of learning objectives, which students have to consolidate with their own learning objectives during further report and discussion sessions. All of these developments in the new curriculum clearly add up to a major change in the mode of delivery.
The importance of reading in the new curriculum Reading, be it of the narrative case or the resource pack, is an important part of problem-based pedagogy. Students' reading and interpretation of the world(s) presented in the case affect the extent to which they can draw on their own experience of the world, as well as their ability to identify areas in need of investigation. When it comes to the resource packs, the prescribed readings of necessity span a range of academic disciplines and a number of genres. On the Basic Health Sciences side, 111
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readings come mostly from science textbooks. On the psychosocial side, readings are particularly wide-ranging in terms of discipline, genre and intended audience, for instance extracts from first-year Psychology textbooks, articles from academic publications in the Social Sciences, manuals for nurses or other caregivers, health organizations' serial publications, and extracts from health policy documents. Students have to navigate their way across this textual spread in their independent study time, acquiring the knowledge and critical abilities necessary for participating in problem-based activities and eventually for passing their course assessments, which come in the form of tests. Their reading and learning are to an extent supported by the group work which they do with peers before and after their individual self-directed study time. But the level of support that students could get in these groups would not be specifically aimed at reading and would to some extent depend on whether they manage to participate in group discussions.
The students and data My chapter is based on the responses and participation of 16 first-year students who attended language support sessions with me during the second half of 2003. They were following an Intervention Programme after experiencing difficulties of various kinds in the 'Life Cycle' course during the first semester of their medical degree. For the next year they would attend a range of classes designed to identify and iron out these difficulties. The students on the Intervention Programme were all 'black' students who spoke English as an additional language but who struck me as fluent and articulate speakers of English. Some of them were from rural areas, and six of them matriculated from underresourced former DET schools (segregated schools for 'African' pupils'). However, I want to stress that these were all promising students who had made it through the selection process, several of them against the odds of South Africa's unequal distribution of material and social goods, to gain access to the medical programme (in South Africa students start their medical studies directly after school; there is no pre-medical university requirement). While my research draws on the reading experiences of a relatively small group of students, their views and my analysis are available to the design teams of the 'Life Cycle' course and the general first-year curriculum, who are free to feed relevant insights into their continual review processes. In this way the Intervention Programme students' responses to reading could become a powerful mechanism for reviewing the content and delivery of particular areas of the new curriculum, thus benefiting future students. 112
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My data consist of fieldnotes on class discussions related to reading practices, and five weeks into the second semester I administered a questionnaire asking students to respond in writing to questions on their reading experiences during their first semester at university. I also collected various writing and mapping exercises related to reading tasks. Students' expectations of the MBChB degree: 'heavy books' and the 'body of a dead person' In our class discussions, it became clear that students had initially been taken somewhat by surprise by the centrality of reading in their medical studies. When I asked whether they could remember what they had expected of their medical studies before they arrived at university, they listed 'Biology', difficult terminology, the 'workload', 'heavy books', 'confront[ing] the body of a dead person' and 'lectures from 8 to 5' (Fieldnotes, 22 August 2003). These expectations are all embodied physically: the subject matter is concrete (albeit complex) and the 'work' required physical, such as that needed for carrying books or a workload, for braving dissection or sitting through long hours of lectures. Their explanations dwell on external aspects of studying, which contrast with the kind of internalization that emerges when they refer to the realities of studying during the first semester: they spoke of having to study 'the psychosocial' and 'feelings', and of encountering indirect ways of learning (like having to learn from resource packs and group work). Reading loomed large among the realities of their experience during the first semester: when asked to represent the time that they thought they spent on different study activities, they identified reading, group work and lectures as the main categories, and arrived, through negotiation, at 60 per cent for reading, 25 per cent for group work and 15 per cent for attending lectures. My point here is that students had not expected to spend such a large proportion of their time reading; they had also not realized the particular demands that reading would make of them cognitively and emotionally; nor could they foresee the obstacles they would have to negotiate in their reading in order to become successful learners in the 'Life Cycle' course. When one of the students mentioned 'heavy books' as one of his expectations, I suspect that his image was meant to represent the vast body of knowledge he had expected to encounter, that is, weighty yet concrete information about the human body and its conditions of health and illness, and not the process of reading itself. Students seemed to expect difficulties to show themselves as external 113
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challenges, to be conquered through visible exertion; however, what they ended up having to face were internal and largely invisible challenges, such as the unfamiliar and unspoken codes of new disciplines of study, and the highly individual and potentially undermining processes of making sense of texts across unfamiliar disciplines and genres. Instead of 'the body of a dead person', their medical studies had confronted them with a formidable 'body' of reading which they needed to be able to dissect and reconfigure in order to learn. In the rest of my chapter I shall track students' conceptions of reading, as well as their experiences and affective responses, in an attempt to find ways of scaffolding the complex reading demands of the heavily text-based first-year medical curriculum. At the same time, the chapter will argue that this group of students' views and experiences constitute legitimate critiques which could generate valuable further discussion of the curriculum and the concept of diversity in medical education.
Students' conceptions of reading It becomes clear from the data that by far the majority of students thought of reading as a simple vehicle delivering the 'knowledge' or 'content' buried in the reading. For instance, in response to a question which asks them about the purposes and objectives of their academic reading a student wrote: 'To get knowledge and understand everything as required by the course' (Questionnaire, question 2, student 3). Students' conception of reading as a process of establishing the 'knowledge' or 'content' fixed in the text seems to support their experience of reading Anatomy texts. However, when it came to reading psychosocial texts, this view of reading let them down. In our first session of the semester, a student identified what she called the 'psychosocial thing' as a general stumbling block that she encountered during the first semester, while at least five others commented on more specific aspects of the psychosocial content of the course, for instance, that they found the readings on social and cultural issues contradictory and confusing. One student said that she found it particularly difficult to engage with psychosocial issues in English, since she felt that thinking about society and culture was very closely bound up with one's own language (Fieldnotes, 17 July 2003).
Students' prior knowledge and the reading process Using Rosenblatt's notion of prior knowledge as a 'linguistic-experiential reservoir' and Gee's notion of disciplinary Discourses, one could 114
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argue that as far as their Anatomy readings were concerned, the prior knowledge which students had gained through learning Biology and Physical Science Discourses at school seems to be fairly compatible with what they were encountering at university. Four students, for instance, associate reading Anatomy texts with a clear sense of purpose, but express frustration or difficulty with reading psychosocial texts. Here is one of the responses: 'For anatomy I read, draw a diagram of what I have been reading and fill in the information. For social and cultural issues I sort of cram my work because I have no brain for them' (Questionnaire, question 4, student 15). This response presents reading Anatomy texts as an activity yielding its product effortlessly, delivered in three confident parallel main clauses: 'I read, draw ... and fill in'. The product itself is concrete and definite, a diagram with 'the information' filled in [my emphasis]. However, psychosocial texts do not yield definite content or reading products in the same systematic way, and the student seems to rely on haphazard memory, hoping to capture at least some of the content without having to understand it. Only two of ten students who differentiate between reading Anatomy and psychosocial texts describe an approach specifically developed for psychosocial texts which renders these texts more understandable, that of linking texts to their own prior social and cultural knowledge and experience: When studying Anatomy, I prefer to have drawing and flow diagrams indicating processes and in that way it's easier for me to remember, because I've got a picture of what I'm talking about. When studying broad sections like social and cultural issues I always put in my experience and prior knowledge, it makes it easier for me to know and understand the situation at hand. (Questionnaire, question 4, student 11) — Yes I use different techniques for each. - for anatomy, I usually read and also write the contents in my scribbler with my own words to reinforce my understanding. For psychosocial texts I normally just read slowly over material. I also use examples of my family and community to understand sociology. (Questionnaire, question 4, student 14)
To sum up: the prior knowledge derived from studying science at school does not support students in reading psychosocial texts. While it to some extent supports students' reading of Anatomy texts, it limits their ability to achieve the kind of applied and integrated learning required by the new curriculum. But I want to go on to argue that what is sometimes constructed as the students' 'lack' or 'failure' in reading could be traced to the structures of the curriculum itself, in that the 115
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kinds of prior knowledge that are recognized and valued in the curriculum are not fully visible to either students or educators. Nor is it an uncomplicated task for designers of the curriculum and educators delivering it to theorize and make these kinds of knowledge visible. It is a process that they could best undertake on a continuous and developmental basis, critically reflecting on and responding to students' experiences and performance in the curriculum. One of my aims in this chapter is to contribute to this process by considering to what extent students' prior knowledge helps, hinders or partially limits their reading performance in the new curriculum. In order to do this, it is necessary to build up a sense of the types of 'inner capital' they possess or lack, as well as whether and how such 'capital' is recognized and valued in the reading that they have to do in the curriculum. If one looks at students' socio-cultural experience of language, a vast and complicated area of prior knowledges emerges which I have space to touch on only very briefly in this chapter. The complexity in this area partly arises from, the diversity of languages spoken in South Africa, but, more importantly, from inequalities and inconsistencies in South African schooling, as well as a myriad of other social complexities and complications which persist as a result of the ways in which the diverse population had been regulated during Apartheid. In our first class session I asked students to recount the history of their own language acquisition and schooling to one another as a form of introduction. Their histories revealed much instability in the languages that they studied as first and additional languages during their school careers. Students reported frequent switches between studying English as a first language and studying various other official languages as first language as they moved from primary to secondary levels, or from under-resourced former DET schools to racially more integrated government or private schools, or vice versa (some students reported moving from studying one African language as first language to another at various times). There were as many different configurations of language switches as there were students in class. Several students mentioned poor standards of English teaching, for instance one laughingly reported that one of her peers had 'learnt English in Xhosa', an experience that several other students recognized as familiar (Fieldnotes, 17 July 2003). As a result of their socio-cultural contexts, all the students were strongly bilingual or multilingual. Most of them identified a particular African language, or Afrikaans in one case, as their mother tongue. Apart from this, almost all of them could communicate in other African languages as well. A few of them identified themselves as from fully bilingual African language homes, where two African languages 116
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were spoken equally. Apart from one student, who said that he was from a bilingual home where English and an African language were spoken equally, they all spoke English as an additional language. To begin with, I want to stress some of the gains of these rich sociolinguistic histories. As bilingual or multilingual speakers who have had to negotiate several, frequently widely different, sociocultural spaces, these students have developed a repertoire of socio-cultural Discourses at varying degrees of fluency. They also displayed various forms of metaknowledge which enabled them to reflect on Discourse practices across different socio-cultural spaces. Students, for instance, commented on markedly different forms of language used by elders, or by different social classes or gender groups within one language group. Within higher education, however, these complex histories and bodies of knowledge often converted into loss. As speakers of English as an additional language, most students experienced a variety of difficulties with language systems in English, for instance, with English orthography, vocabulary or syntax. A more fundamental difficulty is that while students were fairly fluent and articulate speakers of English, many of them had difficulties with the forms of language knowledge necessary for fulfilling the decontextualized and often hidden cognitive tasks characterizing higher education, what Cummins (1996: 51-7) calls Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP). Examples of these would be the language proficiency required for performing activities like classification, comparison or indicating causality. This is hardly surprising given the social complexities and inconsistencies of their language schooling. A common experience which has very specific repercussions for students in higher education is that a significant number of 'black' pupils move from underresourced to more resourced schools — frequently historically 'white', 'coloured' or 'Indian' schools - for only their final years of schooling. This means that quite a few students arrive at the University with deceptively good Basic Interpersonal Communicative Skills (BIGS) (Cummins 1996: 51-7) and what could roughly be described as 'white' middle-class English accents, but with a history of great instability in the language(s) that they studied as their first language, an irregular mixture of learning experiences and half-learnt Discourses, and largely unconsolidated CALP skills spread over a variety of languages. The students participating in my research were to a large extent 'survivors' who looked as if they needed some time to consolidate and further develop their cognitive academic language proficiency. However, what is disturbing is that it does not look from the data as if their considerable knowledge of a variety of socio-cultural languages and 117
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environments had much assisted their performance in a curriculum that, ironically, firmly bases its biomedical knowledge in psychosocial environments. I would like to argue that this is the case because students' knowledge in these areas remained largely unknown to educators and therefore undervalued and unexploited in the curriculum. These are also areas of knowledge where the strongest affective experiences and attitudes are generated, another domain of reading research that is relatively uncharted (Ruddell and Unrau 1994, Mathewson 1994). Students' affective responses to reading Frustrated and demoralized responses to reading occur frequently in my data. In an attempt to move beyond responses articulated primarily through language, and the students' additional language at that, one of the questions of my questionnaire asks them to represent their own reading process visually, using diagrams, pictures or mind-maps. I invited them to include any feelings, thoughts or attitudes, and to be as creative as they wished. One student's drawing evokes the conventions of scientific textbook illustration to produce what amounts to a powerful representation of the 'anatomy of a failed reader' (Figure 5.1). I take the 'Then' of the drawing to refer to the student's experience of reading in the first semester 'Life Cycle' course and the 'Now' to the state of demoralization experienced once the student had found himself in the Intervention Programme, as suggested by the label explaining the figure's grimly set mouth: 'keep quiet, don't read and don't participate anywhere' (Questionnaire, question 5, student 15). As in the case of the expectations of studying medicine discussed earlier, the 'Then' picture captures reading as an embodied activity in its expressions of physical exertion (albeit in immobilized form): strained eyes, an aching neck and painful shoulders. The mind is poised between being 'willing' to study and wishing to 'procrastinate'. The 'Now' picture, against this, focuses on an internalized sense of failure which paralyses the will to read: prompted by thoughts of failure, the eyes turn sleepy and the mouth refuses to read or participate in any other way. The drawing potently expresses the sense of being physically immobilized, or 'caught' uncomfortably in the body, by reading. Furthermore, the drawing captures the invisibility of the sometimes intense frustrations and the sense of failure bound up with reading, in that the 'Then' and 'Now' pictures look virtually the same, despite the emotional and psychological drama that unfolds in the accompanying labels. Several other students drew pictures representing reading in terms of physical strain or exhaustion: a little figure behind a desk saying 'Wow quite sleepy, anyway I got a test tomorrow' (student 3), a 118
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Figure 5.1 Anatomy of a failed reader: student's picture
sleeping face with the thought bubble 'Dreamland' over a book (student 12) and the figure of an athlete facing a high hurdle labelled TSYCHOSOCIAL' and a low hurdle labelled 'ANATOMY' (student 14). Supporting their written evidence, several students express satisfaction reading some texts (in all but one case identified as Anatomy texts) and a range of unfavourable and stressed attitudes towards reading texts on psychosocial topics (for example, see Figure 5.2). As I have demonstrated earlier, part of the reason for preferring Anatomy texts to psychosocial texts lies in students' conception of Anatomy as straightforward knowledge. However, there are other, more obscure, reasons for students' preference. Reading some texts, most notably Anatomy texts, does not significantly call into question students' prior knowledges and 'inner capital'. Furthermore, these texts make visible concrete but impersonal structures of the human 119
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Figure 5.2 Psychosocial and Anatomy: student's picture
body, directing the reader's attention outward and involving the mind in 'picturing' objects which are distinct from individual readers' identities or social experiences. Part of the accessibility and pleasure that students associate with reading Anatomy texts is that the discipline lends itself to 'picturing' knowledge. Several of the students speak of using drawings, diagrams, flow charts or pictures as techniques to aid them in reading Anatomy texts (see students 11 and 15 quoted earlier) and one student graphically illustrates the pleasure of using such a 'picturing' process while reading (Figure 5.3).
Figure 120
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Against this, psychosocial texts direct thought inwards, into the realms of the personal and private, constructing theories about psychological and social ways of being which may frequently call into question individual readers' identities, experience of life in society, or even entire life-worlds. Under these circumstances, reading could seem like a process demanding 'giving up' the self and its social ties. Although speaking of affective issues in small children's experiences of learning to read, Block's linking of 'failure' to read and the denial of the self seems relevant here. As he puts it, '[w]hen our meanings are denied, so too are our selves' (pp. 121-2). I tried to probe the general reluctance students expressed earlier in the semester about reading some types of texts by asking whether they had come across readings in the resource packs that they had found offensive or that they disagreed with. Eleven out of the 15 students expressed some sense of upset or disagreement, some of them quite explicitly: Yes.
At first I was confused, thinking that maybe what I knew was wrong. I thought that the writer was just making up his theory or opinion, which I can challenge him on, when time allows. (Questionnaire, question 7, student 4) YES. It just felt bad that I had to read those readings just for the fact that I am a student and I have to accept them, (student 8) Yes, I was feeling more stressed and leave it, try to do another thing or just go to my room and sleep because, I was reflecting it to myself, (student 9)
Students feel that they lack power (or time) to contest readings that conflict with their sense of identity. The readings leave some students feeling confused and at odds with themselves: a sense of contradictory identities comes across clearly in the student who tries to escape 'reflecting' what she has read (on)to her sense of self. Like the pictures shown or mentioned earlier, these responses also capture a sense of anxiety or exhaustion. A clearer sense of students' discomfort emerged a week later in their written and verbal responses to a homework task which asked them to read and draw a mind-map of their understanding of an extract from a developmental Psychology textbook published in South Africa (Louw et al. 1997). The text divides its material into four numbered headings of development during adolescence: 'Physical development', 'Cognitive development', 'Moral development' and 'Social, emotional 121
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and personality development'. Under the first heading it discusses the physical development that the body undergoes during puberty (pp. 506-7), and concludes this section with two paragraphs describing 'individual and cultural differences in adolescents' reactions to these changes' (Louw et al. 1997: 507), one paragraph mentioning some ways in which girls' puberty is marked, including a mention of 'genital mutilation', the other paragraph focusing on boys' rites of passage, including 'circumcision'. After this, two identical text boxes appear, respectively titled 'Female Genital Mutilation' (pp. 507-8) and 'Male Circumcision: can it be made safe?' (pp. 509-10). The first box speaks of the medical and psychological complications that may arise from genital mutilation, the cultures and countries in which it was or still is practised (including Britain and the United States '[d]uring the nineteenth century') and lists cases of resistance against the practice worldwide. The box on male circumcision points out that some European and all Jewish boys are also circumcised (p. 509). It then goes on to explain the health risks attached to African initiation rituals and includes a newspaper cutting about 46 initiates who were hospitalized in the Eastern Cape in 1996 after undergoing the procedure (p. 510). Circumcision, then, is briefly mentioned as a traditional 'rite of passage' under the first heading ('Physical development') and elaborated on in a text box. In their mind-maps, however, half of the students see circumcision as of central importance in the text, a quarter of them placing it on their mind-maps at the first level of text organization (see Figure 5.4 for a typical example), the others as a sub-topic under another main topic. It is important to note that despite this prominence, all the students' maps record this topic neutrally, without any evidence of affect or a critical stance. One could argue, on a technical level, that these students' mindmaps attach disproportionate importance to what amounts to illustrative detail in the text. However, I interpret their emphasis as a demonstration of the way in which readers selectively draw on their individually constituted 'linguistic-experiential reservoir' to construct their own meaning and focus of interest. What remains invisible in the cryptic written 'genre' of the mind-map, however, is the strong affect associated with the topic. When responding verbally to the reading afterwards, several students expressed dismay and anger, one saying that he stopped reading when he got to the text box (this student did not do the homework, since he remembered how upset he had been during the first semester when he .came across the reading for the first time). Students (male and female) said that they had felt exposed in their small groups during the first semester when this material was discussed in the 'Life Cycle' course. They felt that only 'black' African 122
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Figure
5.4
culture had been put under this kind of scrutiny, that neither the text nor a majority of students understood what male initiation rituals could mean to individuals who practise them as part of their culture, and yet that uninformed students felt free to express their opinion about the 'health risks' associated with these rituals. One student spoke about his own profound spiritual experience of the ritual, and the anger he felt the previous semester when students asked him during a group session why people still practised such dangerous rituals. Despite their anger and frustration, students said that they had not been confident enough to object to the reading's representation of the subject when they encountered it in first semester classes. In any case, there are strong taboos around discussing the topic in public which they did not want to break (Fieldnotes, class discussion, 22 August 2003). There is considerable irony in the text's representation of a potent cultural practice of embodied spiritual experience as mere 'bodily' biomedical emergency. The irony extends to students' responses, for whereas they usually preferred to attach a biomedical explanation to human experiences and conditions, the biomedical approach here clashed painfully with some of their identities and the value judgements that came into play in this situation. The most obvious of these 123
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would be particular cultural identities, but I should add here that several of the students said that although circumcision did not count among their own initiation practices, they still felt angered by the text, suggesting both a broader racial solidarity and a narrower solidarity based on their membership to the Intervention Programme. In a further written task requiring them to assess the general 'acceptability' of the readings in resource packs, students commented on matters such as the 'American' focus of some materials which they felt left them out of the picture, generalizations and stereotypes that misrepresented or underrepresented their experiences, or psychosocial theories of human development that they found offensive. For instance, a student wrote: 'they [the texts] give us examples of Americans and expect us to believe, understand and live according to their theories and ways of doing things'; referring to a discussion of drugtaking behaviour among adolescents, another wrote: ... this [text] looked at a certain population of adolescents. And it kind of generalised in relation to a typical adolescent. And I felt that this is not a good reading because we all have different culture. And culture or family set up has got a lot of influence on how we grow up, especially in adolescence.
and another: 'Most of the information in there [a text] is stereotyping, for instance, it is said that western people perform better than Africans in Piaget's tests for moral reasoning and thus I feel offended' (excerpts from written exercise done in class, 22 August 2003). The last response refers to a text's mention of research based on Piaget's standards for cognitive development, which reaches conclusions such as: 'In many African cultures, there is limited development of formal, abstract thinking', and 'Many people in African societies perform more poorly on Piagetian tests of formal operational thought than Westerners' (Louw et al. 1997: 512). In the same textbook, a discussion of Kohlberg's theories of 'moral development' is summarized as follows: 'Individuals who live in complex urban cultures reach the higher levels of moral reasoning earlier than those from less sophisticated rural cultures', and 'individuals from higher socio-economic strata display higher levels of moral reasoning than those from lower socioeconomic strata' (p. 515). Although the text acknowledges the hypothetical nature of these conclusions or presents counter arguments from other theorists, it is not hard to see why students felt undermined and angered by such materials, especially if they were not confident enough to express their dismay in the core curriculum.
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Some suggestions for the reading curriculum In formulating suggestions for the reading curriculum, I want to reiterate my view that the relative invisibility of the reading process has effects for both students and educators. Teaching and learning practices should in the first place aim at 'making visible' to students the role that reading plays in learning and in the curriculum. Particular readings could be used to prompt students into distinguishing between the different 'knowledges' which come into play in the learning and reading process: these are prior knowledge (constituting the reader's 'inner capital') and new knowledge emerging as a product of application and integration (rearranging or adding to the reader's 'inner capital'). Following Block's comment that 'all reading is premised on having questions for which answers will be sought' (p. 166), students could be encouraged to approach readings armed with general sets of questions which might help them recognize and activate the kinds of prior knowledge that might facilitate reading a particular text. Some of these questions, for instance, could be pre-reading questions focusing attention on texts' titles and details of publication, which might start the process of searching their 'inner capital' for areas of relevant prior knowledge. Self-monitoring questions could help readers keep track of problems posed by the case scenario, other readings or particular learning objectives. In this way, students could be assisted in redefining their conceptions of knowledge and of the purposes and objectives of reading, so that acquiring knowledge through reading would no longer represent an absolute and measurable 'knowledge' of 'content', but would become a more self-conscious process of constructing 'new knowledge' about the human body and the complex webs of health and illness of which it forms part. In the second place, teaching and learning practices should aim at building students' metaknowledge of text structure and the Discourses of different disciplines. For instance, I devised reading exercises for students on the 2003 Intervention Programme prompting them to discover the prevalent kinds of text structure encountered in Anatomy readings, as opposed to those in their readings on culture, society and psychology (see Pearson and CamperelPs 1994 discussion of the influences of text structure on reading comprehension). This involved considering the prevalence of spatial and temporal descriptions in Anatomy, as opposed to quite abstract and hypothetical cause and effect sequences in psychosocial texts. We also looked at the different types of evidence that the disciplines offer in support of their theories and potential dangers that could reside in such evidence (for instance, applying biological facts indiscriminately across contexts or 125
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using stereotypes when writing about cultural and other social groupings). The third area in which teaching and learning practices need to be developed would involve acknowledging the crucial role played by affect in the reading process, especially affect generated when students' identities are sidelined by dominant viewpoints expressed in texts. A major problem for students, especially non-mainstream students who speak English as an additional language, is that their prior knowledge, their particular reservoir of 'inner capital' that they bring to the reading process, might not be of a currency that would give them purchase on the types of meaning valued by their educators and peers. I would like to emphasize the need for designers of the curriculum and the educators delivering the curriculum to be both conscious of and flexible about the meanings they anticipate from students' reading activities. Careful mediation of all students' meanings should take place, so that students who arrive at particular meanings because of their individual or socio-cultural 'capital' are given ample opportunity to express themselves. Transformation of the curriculum depends on educators' willingness and ability to probe the 'inner capital' that leads both individual students and groups to their particular constructions of meaning. These meanings could contribute to the formulation of 'new knowledge' and possibilities of knowing, either in the field of study itself, or in educators' understanding of students' perceptions and difficulties in the field of study. For this reason educators need to be open to the kinds of prior knowledge that students draw on to arrive at their constructions of meaning, and need to search for ways of assisting non-mainstream students to give at least some visibility and currency to their 'inner capital' in the curriculum. One possibility that I am exploring at present is to assist students in the 2004/5 Intervention Programme to write up their responses to various reading materials, and to include their writing as resources in the curriculum of future years, thus making their critical viewpoints known and available to students and educators in the core curriculum. Finally, it needs to be recognized that students who speak English as an additional language have an important contribution to make when it comes to commenting on mainstream academic Discourses. Their particular knowledge of languages and life worlds could provide a critical angle on reading resources, an ability valued in the core curriculum, but one which too often goes untapped. All students 'lose out' when critical viewpoints are left unexpressed, both the students who feel unable to speak and those who do not even realize that something urgent has not been said. Students on the 2003 Intervention Programme, for instance, articulated their criticism of the reading 126
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material only once they had found a safe space to do so. This ultimately points to an urgent need in the core curriculum to develop an ability in all students to interrogate the particular socio-cultural foundations of their diverse reading resources.
Conclusion This chapter has argued that the successful development of teaching and learning practices aimed at strengthening students' ability to learn through reading is premised on educators' ability to 'make visible', to themselves and their students, the structures, processes and affective responses informing reading as a meaning-making process. The curriculum could gain enormously from educators' incorporating the thinking behind constructivist reading theory in both their design of the curriculum and of individual reading tasks. Educators should have clear reasons for setting particular readings, should try to understand how students would be situated by these readings, and should find pedagogically sound ways of scaffolding and mediating students' reading experiences. At the same time, educators should not lose sight of their students' agency as active and diversely situated meaningmakers, nor of the affect potentially residing in the reading process. Valuing and drawing on the 'inner capital' and prior knowledges of all students is both a challenge and an opportunity for the institution of higher education. The Primary Health Care ethos of the University's Faculty of Health Sciences in particular is strengthened enormously by the fund of resources and prior knowledge that highly promising students bring from diverse communities and life worlds in South Africa. Each new group of first-year students injects into the new integrated curriculum a reservoir of diverse knowledge and experience, of languages, individual family structures and cultural practices, of social conditions and ways of living in these, of life worlds in transit, gains, losses and new identities. However, unless all students develop the confidence and find space in the curriculum to contribute their prior knowledge and critical responses to the reading process, these may be lost to everybody. While the Intervention Programme provides a space for a small group of students to build their knowledge of new Discourses and metalanguages and to articulate their challenges to and criticisms of the reading material they encounter in the curriculum, it is exactly the experiences of these students that could stimulate continuous transformation of the core curriculum.
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Acknowledgements I wish to acknowledge the students on the 2003 Intervention Programme who generously shared their views and their writing with me; my colleague, Rochelle Kapp, who assisted me in developing materials for the language support sessions; and the convenors of the courses that I refer to in this chapter, Gavin Weir and Elmi Badenhorst, as well as members of the design teams that have been involved in the development of these courses, who have provided both a site for my research and many opportunities to try out and discuss ideas around questions of academic literacy in the new curriculum; and my colleague Cathy Hutchings for assisting me with reproducing illustrations.
References Anderson, R. C. (1984), 'Role of the reader's schema in comprehension, learning, and memory', in R. B. Ruddell, M. Rapp Ruddell and H. Singer (eds), Theoretical Models and Processes of Reading (4th edn). Newark, DE: International Reading Association, pp. 469-82. Block, A. A. (1995), Occupied Reading: Critical Foundations for an Ecological Theory. New York and London: Garland Publishing. Bransford, J. D. and McCarrell, N. S. (1974), 'A sketch of a cognitive approach to comprehension: some thoughts about understanding what it means to comprehend', in W. B. Wiemer and D. S. Palermo (eds), Cognition and the Symbolic Processes. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, pp. 189-229. Quoted in C. Weaver (1994; rpt 1980), Reading Process and Practice: from Sociopsycholinguistics to Whole Language. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, p. 23. Cummins, J. (1996), Negotiating Identities: Education and Empowerment in a Diverse Society. Ontario: California Association for Bilingual Education. Dennill, K. (1998), 'International views on primary health care', in K. Dennill, L. King and T. Swanepoel (eds), Aspects of Primary Health Care. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 1-27. Freire, P. and Macedo, D. (1987), Literacy: Reading the Word and the World. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Gee, J. (1996), Social Linguistics and Literacies: Ideology in Discourses (2nd edn). London: Palmer Press. Goodman, K. S. (1967), 'Reading: a psycholinguistic guessing game', Journal of the Reading Specialist, 4, 126-35. Goodman, K. S. (1994), 'Reading, writing, and written texts: a transactional sociopsycholinguistic view', in R. B. Ruddell, M. Rapp Ruddell and H. Singer (eds), Theoretical Models and Processes of Reading (4th edn). Newark, DE: International Reading Association, pp. 1093-1130. Kapp, R. (2000), ' "With English you can go everywhere": analysis of the role
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and status of English at a former DET school', Journal of Education, 25, 22759. Louw, D., Edwards, D., Foster, D., Gilbert, A., Louw, A., Norton, G., Plug, C., Shuttleworth-Jordan, A. and Spangenberg, J. (1997), Psychology: An Introduction for Students in Southern Africa. Johannesburg: Heinemann. Mathewson, G. C. (1994), 'Model of attitude influence upon reading and learning to read', in R. B. Ruddell, M. Rapp Ruddell and H. Singer (eds), Theoretical Models and Processes of Reading (4th edn). Newark, DE: International Reading Association, pp. 1131-61. Pearson, P. D. and Camperell, K. (1994), 'Comprehension of text structures', in R. B. Ruddell, M. Rapp Ruddell and H. Singer (eds), Theoretical Models and Processes of Reading (4th edn). Newark, DE: International Reading Association, pp. 448-68. Originally from J. T. Guthrie (ed.) (1981), Comprehension and Teaching: Research Reviews. Newark, DE: International Reading Association. Rose, D. (2004), 'Sequencing and pacing of the hidden curriculum: how indigenous learners are left out of the chain', in J. Muller, B. Davies and A. Morais (eds), Reading Bernstein, Researching Bernstein. London and New York: Routledge Palmer, pp. 91-107. Rosenblatt, L. M. (1978), The Reader, the Text, the Poem: The Transactional Theory of the Literary Work. Garbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Rosenblatt, L. M. (1994), 'The transactional theory of reading and writing', in R. B. Ruddell, M. Rapp Ruddell and H. Singer (eds), Theoretical Models and Processes of Reading (4th edn). Newark, DE: International Reading Association, pp. 1057-92. Ruddell, R. B., Rapp Ruddell, M. and Singer, H. (eds) (1994), Theoretical Models and Processes of Reading (4th edn). Newark, DE: International Reading Association. Ruddell, R. B. and Unrau, N. J. (1994). 'Reading as a meaning-construction process: the reader, the text, and the teacher', in R.B. Ruddell, M. Rapp Ruddell and H. Singer (eds), Theoretical Models and Processes of Reading (4th edn). Newark, DE: International Reading Association, pp. 996-1056. Smith, F. (1971), Understanding Reading: A Psycholinguistic Analysis of Reading and Learning to Read. New York: Holt, Rinehart. Weaver, C. (1994, 1988), Reading Process and Practice: From Socio-Psycholinguistics to Whole Language (2nd edn). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
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Change as additive: harnessing students' multimodal semiotic resources in an Engineering curriculum
Arlene Archer
The aim of the research represented in this chapter is to contribute towards developing a pedagogy that provides access for students to academic practices in a way sensitive to different students' subjectivities. The challenge is to offer students from diverse educational backgrounds an empowering and critical curriculum, not just bridges to established norms. To this end, I look at the semiotic resources of students in a Communication Course in Engineering and at the relation between these and the expectations of the discipline. Semiotic resources are the 'means and practices by which we represent ourselves to ourselves and to others' (Kress 1996: 18). They include abstract resources such as discourses, concrete resources such as materials, and structures such as genres. I am interested in the potentials and limitations of these resources in informal and formal assessment contexts in the tertiary environment, and the possibilities of using and validating these in curriculum design. In this chapter, I explore the transformative actions of students and the constraints on these actions in varying curriculum spaces and genres. I identify the semiotic resources used in an informal and unstructured curriculum task with low assessment weighting and no strict generic guidelines and look at what happens to these identified resources in a more regulated task with tighter academic conventions. In line with Halliday (1978), my position is that the semiotic resources available to a specific individual in a specific cultural, social and psychological history define semiotic 'potential'. The discursive history of an individual bears the traces of the discourses associated with the social places that the individual has occupied - 'habitus' in Bourdieu's (1991) terms. These form the representational experience 130
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and potential of the sign-maker. Kress talks about change as based on the 'interested action' of 'socially located, culturally and historically formed individuals, as the remakers, the transformers, and the reshapers of the representational resources available to them' (2000: 155). This view of the sign-maker as agentive emphasizes students' interests and motivations for the uses of particular forms, rather than insufficiency, incompetence and error.
Context for the study I undertook this study as a teacher-researcher from 1999 to 2002 in the context of a Communication Course in an Engineering foundation programme at the University of Cape Town. The programme caters for students from academically under-prepared backgrounds. The students are diverse in terms of languages, home countries, age differences, rural and urban origins, and gender (about one third are women). They are unified, however, in their interest in Engineering, their first-year status and their entrance to university via an alternate access route (with entrance criteria based on potential as tested by the University). Most have English as an additional language. The Communication Course aims to ensure that under-prepared students who have been admitted to the University have a fair chance of success. The curriculum design, therefore, has to take the students' backgrounds and schooling into consideration, as well as the new discourses and discourse communities they encounter in the tertiary environment. The year-long course is designed around a core project, the Rural Village project. This project introduces the idea of sustainability to the students, making them see Engineering as creating a more socially just and environmentally sustainable world for future generations. To prepare students for the Rural Village project, they were asked to complete a preliminary project on symbolic objects. Students were asked to identify everyday objects that have symbolic meanings and examine these in a range of geographical, cultural and communicational landscapes. For instance, a student may examine the presence of an electric stove or microwave in a home that has no electricity (as is the case in many South African homes). Here the student would have to explain that the object has little 'functional' use, but has symbolic value, such as aspirational value. For the Symbolic Object project, students have to produce a text (using any media) which discusses the physical characteristics and uses of their chosen object, as well as the symbolic, social and cultural meanings people attach to it. The aim is to explore meaning-making processes within particular communities of practice, and to begin to think about the 131
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implications of this for 'development' work. The project allows students to experiment with diverse resources in an informal and unstructured curriculum space with low stakes assessment. It attempts to draw on different kinds of knowledge and competencies, including experiential knowledge and students' primary and secondary discourses (Archer 2006). The Symbolic Object project is used to highlight the relative nature of meaning and the importance of multiple perspectives on a topic. These considerations feed into the Rural Village project, where students investigate the infrastructural and developmental needs of an existing rural settlement in South Africa. Each team member researches an aspect of development, such as appropriate housing, public transport provision, protection of water and appropriate power for domestic purposes. This project is assessed more formally than the Symbolic Object project: students are required to write a report and design an academic poster.
Methodology for identifying students' resources across informal and formal assessment tasks In order to identify what resources the students are using and how they are using them, I analyse the texts they produce on the course according to a social semiotic multimodal framework. This framework focuses on the relationship between texts and the social practices they realize. I look at the students' texts in the light of three semiotic categories: ways of organizing knowledge, coding orientation and discourse. These categories describe the order of a specific world and the resources used to represent that world and can be realized through any mode or combination of modes. By 'mode' I mean the culturally shaped material available for representation, such as visual mode, written mode or oral mode. In looking at 'ways of organizing knowledge', I focus on relations between entities, and the ways in which patterns encode experiential meanings. For instance, narrative structures show processes of change or sequencing in time. I use Bernstein's (1981) concept of coding orientation to talk about 'sets of abstract principles which inform the way in which texts are coded by specific social groups, or within specific institutional contexts' (Kress and van Leeuwen 1996: 170). When resources are repeatedly used in certain ways, expectations are established which are habitualized over time and these define the coding orientation of a text. For instance, abstract coding orientation utilizing conventionalized diagrams is often used in scientific texts. The understanding of discourse that I work with is that 132
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developed within recent social theory, based on the work of Foucault (1970), to refer to the ways social institutions define and regulate the practices within those institutions. In other words, discourses are 'socially constructed knowledges of (some aspect of) reality which give expression to the meaning and values of an institution or social grouping' (Kress and van Leeuwen 2001: 4). Although elsewhere I have examined a larger number of students' texts (Archer 2004), this chapter focuses on the representational resources in only two texts drawn from one group's work on the course. I identify the resources used in the Symbolic Object poster (a largely informal and unstructured curriculum task with low assessment weighting and no strict generic guidelines) and look at the ways these identified resources are transformed, persist unchanged or disappear in a more regulated task with tighter generic conventions, the team-produced Rural Village poster. The Symbolic Object poster was exploratory and students were encouraged to use different media (like cameras, which some had never used before). The Rural Village poster, on the other hand, had to convey information, argue or propose an idea in a succinct and compact way. The specific regulated conventions of the academic poster include generic aspects, such as a title, introduction, conclusion, bibliography and the names of the producers. The group which I focus on chose the 'goat' as a symbolic object, and the rural village they investigated was 'Efolweni'. Before analysing and comparing the resources utilized in the texts produced in these different curriculum spaces, I will briefly describe these two texts and the practices they signify. The Goat poster (see Figure 6.1) investigates the functioning of signs in specific practices, in this case a highly valued and codified practice, the slaughtering of a goat. The poster comprises a drawing which represents the different stages in the slaughtering process. The students chose the goat as object and the practice of sacrificial slaughter for their strong symbolic significance in a particular social setting. This is a highly complex set of practices, as Douglas (1966) has shown in her work. According to her, the structures of living organisms reflect complex social forms better than inanimate objects (p. 114). This cultural practice can function to communicate with the ancestors, as celebration and as a form of ritual purification (for example, if a woman's husband dies she can 'purify' herself with the goat's large intestine). The goat also functions as an indicator of social status and of power in a particular community. The Efolweni Village poster (see Figure 6.2) investigates the development of the village in terms of infrastructural aspects, such as water and sanitation, power supply and housing. The poster is 133
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Figure 6.1 The Goat poster
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Figure 6.2 The Efolweni Village poster
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organized along a set of binaries, a 'before' and 'after' scenario. The 'before' scenario is a statement of the problems experienced in the village. This is done through the visual mode (a drawing of two children in an impoverished environment) and the written mode (the statement written in a large font which encircles the bottom of the picture: 'We all need healthy environment! But how to maintain it?'). The 'after' scenario shows suggested proposals to address the problems, followed by the 'outcomes', the proposed future for the inhabitants of the village. In order to focus on students' representational resources, I will at first look at the underlying ways in which they organize knowledge in the Goat and Efolweni Village posters.
Students' ways of organizing knowledge in their texts Because the students' texts are produced for different purposes in differently regulated curriculum spaces, I expected them to organize their knowledge in quite different ways. Instead, I found that there were more similarities than differences in the conceptual frameworks and narrative structures that they used for these two projects. Producers of text can use conceptual patterns to represent participants in terms of their classification, their analytical and symbolic processes (Kress and van Leeuwen 1996: 56). Both the Goat and the Efolweni Village posters have two types of analytical hierarchies embedded in them - first the depiction of steps in a process, then of the whole broken into parts. In the Goat poster, the first hierarchy shows steps in the process of slaughtering a goat. Actions over time are represented as spatial configurations and all elements are spatially copresent, thus turning the process of dissection into a system. The second hierarchy shows the division of the whole into parts. The Goat functions as the 'whole' and the internal organs function as the parts that make up the whole. The Efolweni Village poster is also organized in terms of these two analytical hierarchies. The first hierarchy shows steps in the process of development (before, intervention, after). The second hierarchy divides the whole into parts. The final well-functioning village ('the whole') is divided into its infrastructural elements. Demonstrating how the parts make up the whole is done through naming and labelling. Even though the Goat and Efolweni Village texts are organized according to analytical hierarchies, both also have strong narrative structures with clear participants and defined vectors of action. Narrative patterns 'serve to present unfolding actions and events, processes of change' (Kress and van Leeuwen 1996: 56). Both texts are 138
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linear in that they describe the sequence of and the connection between elements. Narrative structure can be used to represent sequencing in time, but can also be used to represent change from one state to another. Both posters depict change through the medium of technology. In the diagram of the Goat, the physical is changed into the spiritual through 'technological' interventions. The slaughtering process is a symbolic ritual process, but can also be seen as a type of technological or scientific process operating in a particular sociocultural context. The Efolweni Village poster comprises a binary of the 'bad' (before) and the 'good' (after) and constructs the intermediate step as 'progress'. A state of desperation is changed into a state of wellbeing through technological interventions which develop the infrastructure of the village. Narrative defines the structure of the Efolweni Village poster more than it does the Goat poster. In the Efolweni Village poster, there is a sense of both process and system, and the 'outcomes' of the process are represented. In the Goat poster, the 'outcomes' of the slaughtering process are not represented. Process is turned into system, and the static order of display emphasizes temporal stability. I have tried to demonstrate the similarities in the conceptual frameworks and narrative patterns that manifest in both the texts, although they are produced in differently regulated curriculum spaces. What are the implications of this for curriculum design? It seems to me that these similarities can be utilized in teaching 'scientific' ways of thinking and representing. In the less regulated space at the beginning of the course, when the students do the Symbolic Object project, they draw on their knowledge of society and its practices, as well as on a range of representational resources to produce their texts. Using the representational resources that students bring to the academy to describe the conventions valued by the discipline could put these resources to astute pedagogical use. The way the Goat poster is organized into analytical hierarchies could be a conceptual cognitive resource for students to draw on, although the form of these hierarchies may be changed in an Engineering environment. Students could be alerted to the way in which both the participants and their actions are presented in a static configuration and the process of slaughtering is reified into a timeless system. This conversion of process into system is comparable to nominalizing in written text, which is an important feature of scientific discourse.
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Mixing domains of practice: coding orientation of students' texts Both the Goat and the Efolweni Village posters combine different coding orientations or textual encodings of social practice. The Goat poster combines naturalistic and abstract coding orientations. Naturalistic coding orientation is the 'commonsense' coding orientation which all people share when they are being addressed as 'members of our culture' (Kress and van Leeuwen 1996). In naturalistic coding orientation, representational features are deemed to correspond closely to our everyday perception of the world under normal conditions. This contextualization is achieved by a few tufts which represent grass to indicate that the setting is 'outside' and parts of the kraal fence which represent 'inside a cultural space'. Another concept that Kress and van Leeuwen use in textual analysis is 'modality'. Modality refers to the validity claims with respect to the truthfulness or degree of correspondence to reality in a text. In abstract coding orientation, modality is higher the more an image reduces the individual to the general and the concrete to its essential qualities. The drawing of the goat is done in pencil, including the headings, divisions of the page, text block and text. This gives the representation a 'diagrammatic' nature, with low modality in the naturalistic coding orientation, but high modality in the abstract coding orientation (where the concrete is reduced to its essential qualities). The inscriptional media and the mode of colour contribute to the high modality of this representation within the abstract coding orientation. In sharp differentiation from the pencil, the colour red accentuates the 'blood' of the slaughtered goat and its innards. The naturalistic colour of the blood heightens the naturalistic coding orientation against a more abstract background - a technique of emphasis which paradoxically draws attention to symbolic properties. The blood is emphasized as a key signifier as it is crucial in the ritualistic process of cleansing and purification. The Efolweni Village poster operates within both a naturalistic and an abstract coding orientation. Naturalism is realized in the poster through the metonymic use of the children to represent the village as a whole. The social and economic realities of the village are highlighted through the detail in the representation - the dirt, the flies, the empty tap, the poorly clad children. The 'centrepiece' of the poster assumes an abstract coding orientation which is realized through the drawings of the 'infrastructural inner workings' of the village. This is achieved by cutting away a section of the earth and representing what is beneath the ground. The diagram is carefully labelled (A to H) with a key to explain the different elements. There is also some indication of 140
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measurement (in a mixture of metres and feet) on the diagram (the toilet is 2m by 2m; the underground pit is 7.5 feet). Although the texts have different purposes and different audiences, there is an underlying similarity in the way that they orient themselves towards naturalistic and abstract representation. In both posters, the narrative structure is realized through naturalistic coding orientation, whereas the analytical structure is realized through abstract coding orientation. In the previous section, I showed how in the Goat poster, the narrative structure includes steps in the process of slaughtering a goat and in the Efolweni Village poster, the narrative structure includes stages in the development of the village. Both these narrative structures are realized through naturalistic coding orientation where details serve to create a likeness to 'reality'. The analytical structure in both the posters (the systematic dissection of the Goat and the schematic representation of the village infrastructure) is realized through abstract coding orientation where the concrete is reduced to its essential qualities, detail is omitted, and the represented participants become generic. This link between the coding orientation of a text and the organizational structure of a text can be brought to students' attention explicitly when teaching particular genres for com munication. Narrative structure and naturalism tend to work well together in representing concrete processes, but more abstract concepts require analytic structures and diagrammatic representation. In these texts, naturalistic, social realist and abstract coding orientations co-exist, with no one orientation given dominance. The Goat poster combined the naturalistic and the abstract in order to convey the 'scientific' nature of a particular cultural and social practice. The Efolweni Village poster combines naturalism and the abstract in order to appeal to a dual audience - both the engineers and the villagers themselves. These texts demonstrate that it is possible to maintain a range of domains of practice, while still producing a 'scientific' text acceptable in the curriculum space of the Communication Course and, to some extent, in the Engineering discipline. Mixing epistemologies: scientific discourse and primary discourses In their representations, students draw on discourses from the many socio-cultural domains of their lives. According to Gee (1996), people's primary discourses constitute their first social identity and provide the base for acquiring or resisting later discourses. Secondary discourses, which have to be learnt as part of socializations within local, state and 141
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national groups outside of early home socialization, are more public and formal (Gee 1996: 137). The relationship between primary and secondary discourses is not always neutral. There are those resources which are said in the ordinary course of exchanges and those discourses which are 'said indefinitely, remain said, and are able to be said again' (Foucault 1970: 57), like the truth claims of scientific discourse. Students draw on primary and other secondary discourses in learning the discursive practices of the institution. Gough (2000) makes the point that it is important to bear in mind that while a community may not display 'academic literacy', this does not mean that such a culture does not display secondary discourse types. He gives the example of the 'izibongo' or praise poem as a Xhosa genre requiring secondary discourse types. In my analysis of the Goat and Efolweni Village posters, I try to ascertain the primary discourses and different kinds of secondary discourses of students, and examine the ways in which students utilize and adapt these in a context where highly specialized secondary discourses are required.
Degrees of abstraction and formality It is important to highlight that scientific discourse has both visual and verbal realizations and to explore the dimensions of this in a discipline like Engineering, which is visual in orientation. In the written mode, scientific discourse is realized through lexical choice and particular grammatical constructions such as nominalization. In the visual mode, scientific discourse is realized through diagrammatic representation, naming and labelling the represented components, and the organization of information into analytical hierarchies. Scientific discourse is a semiotic practice which has evolved functionally to do specialized kinds of theoretical and practical work in social institutions. Broadly speaking, Anglophone scientific discourse comprises a lack of expressive metaphor, nominalizations to obscure human agency, and an informative aim rather than entertainment. According to Lemke, the language of scientific discourse 'sets up a pervasive and false opposition between a world of objective, authoritative, impersonal, humourless scientific fact and the ordinary, personal world of human uncertainties, judgements, values and interests' (1990: 129-30). A key feature of scientific discourse is the theoretical work of abstraction, although the means by which abstraction is realized may differ across modes. The diagrammatic representation in the Goat poster lends itself towards representations of timeless, static systems. The Efolweni Village poster also represents abstraction through the use of diagrams, which enable the depiction of 142
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a 'cross-section' view of the sewage system underground. In both posters, the emphasis is on naming and labelling the different represented components and showing how the 'parts' make up the whole. Probably because the Efolweni Village poster is a more regulated curriculum task, there is more of an awareness of the need for scientific academic discourse in the written mode than in the Goat poster. However, scientific discourse is more variable in this poster than in the less regulated Goat poster. Scientific discourse in the written mode on the Efolweni Village poster is actualized through a range of lexical fields which are drawn from sometimes inconsistent domains. The students speak of 'cost effectiveness' and 'minimizing cash': 'The materials of low cost effectiveness but high sustainability has been chosen. This will also minimize the cash that will be spent on the overall development project'. The terms 'cost effectiveness' and 'minimize' are drawn from the domain of a secondary discourse. The term 'cash', on the other hand, is from the domain of the everyday. The students use words like 'gonna', abbreviations like 'dept' and terms like 'water-sucking generator'. These lexical choices reduce the formality of the representation, as does the personal pronoun 'us' and exclamation mark in 'let's see the outcomes!'. In addition to the variable levels of formality in the written mode, the Efolweni Village poster draws on a range of levels of formality of visual representation/The technological diagrams which draw on the conventions of scientific academic discourse are juxtaposed with cartoon-like images. The informal is realized through 'colloquial' forms of typography such as the use of a graffiti-like font. Graffiti as an art form has provenance in street culture and subcultural 'hip-hop' groupings (Klopper 2000). The cartoon pictorial conventions also reduce the formality of the text and the represented participants engage the audience through direct address. The decision to depict the situation through children is reminiscent of global media representations of development which are often linked to requests for 'aid' (especially the direct address to the viewer). The children have 'psychological salience' (Kress and van Leeuwen 1996: 61) as the viewer is invited to identify and empathize with them. This invitation is also contained in the inclusive 'we' of 'we all want healthy environment'. The human face is particularly salient in getting viewers to identify. According to McCloud (1994), the more minimalist and generic the representation of the face, the easier we are able to 'find ourselves' in that representation. Hence, the pencil-drawn cartoon-like quality of the figures could encourage more identification than a photograph of two children would, and this form of representation has high modality in a social realist orientation. 143
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In both written and visual modes, scientific discourse is realized through degrees of authorial distance from the subject matter. In the Goat poster, the representation is made by an insider to cultural practices and no judgement is passed. The implied producer of the Goat poster is one who 'knows' and who is 'in' the culture, and there is a strong emphasis on belonging, encapsulated in statements such as 'In our culture ...' and 'According to tradition ...'. In contrast, the implied producer of the Efolweni Village poster is an outsider to cultural practices. This poster propagates an engineer's view of the village as a problem to be solved. Home-grown discourses The discourses that realize the abstracted, systematized knowledge of Engineering and those that realize 'commonsense' knowledge or 'nonprivileged' knowledge jostle against each other in the students' texts. A number of primary discourses and secondary discourses (other than those acquired in the academic context) emerged in my analysis of the students' texts and I will now look at these discourses more closely. I identified discourses of nostalgia and utopianism in the Goat and Efolweni Village posters. These discourses both encompass a yearning for a desired past or future which has been fictionalized and is perceived as absent in the present (Stewart 1993: 23). It would seem that nostalgia and utopianism are interrelated aspects of a society in transition where a tension exists between 'development' and 'change' as a necessary good and nostalgia for traditional timeless ways. The representation of slaughtering a goat demonstrates discursively and ideologically that this practice is age-old and timeless, with set traditions and codes of behaviour. The Efolweni Village poster with the underlying view of development it espouses is necessarily about 'change' which would seem to be antithetical to the conserving nature of nostalgia. Since change is equated to 'Westernization' on this poster, there is a strong emphasis on the move from traditional building forms (such as mud for houses) to more 'Western' forms of building materials, such as bricks. However, the idealizing thrust of nostalgia is preserved in the Utopian terms in which 'development' in Efolweni is envisaged. It is represented as 'nurturing' (the presence of the motherfigure), ordered, harmonious, clean and relaxed. The utopianism is reflected in the mode of colour for the poster card, where the students chose yellow for the top half (connoting dry parched earth and barrenness) and a Utopian blue for the bottom half (indicating 'blue skies', horizons, possibilities, the future). A hope for things to work out seamlessly is reflected in the written text: 'According to the budgets 144
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made, everything seems to be falling into place' and '... the other part [of the poster] is for the villagers to see what the future holds for them. It shows a happy and healthy life'. Concepts like nostalgia and utopianism might seem alien to Engineering discourse - to both students and staff - but they could be key concepts to explore in a course on rural development, which is necessarily about change. Identity issues and value systems are inextricably linked to what one feels nostalgic or hopeful about. The tension between nostalgia for the past and an imperative to change can be highlighted as part of the curriculum, as well as the semiotic realization of this tension. 'Change' can either be constructed as additive (building on existing practices) or as reductive (replacing existing practices). This kind of discussion is important in beginning to unpack the complex identity issues involved in living and working in a society like South Africa which is experiencing rapid transition. Another important discourse to emerge in my analysis of the students' texts is that of propriety. The discourse of propriety in the Goat poster concerns who may take part in the ritualistic act of slaughtering (men, not women and children). This is realized semiotically through the representation of an all-male encirclement during the cultural practice of slaughtering. In the image, the three men encircle the goat while they kill it. One holds the goat's front legs, the other the back legs, and the third slits its throat. This encirclement emphasizes the communal activity, togetherness and 'brotherhood'. The text on the poster explains that 'women and kids are not allowed to come close when the animal is slaughtered'. Gender thus demarcates the cultural and social spaces one is allowed to occupy in the worlds of these representations. In the Goat poster, 'sacred' spaces are reserved for men, and in the Efolweni Village, domestic spaces are reserved for women. In the Efolweni Village poster, the 'before' scenario is a 'motherless' scenario, characterized by lack, neglect and chaos. In the Utopian 'after' scenario, the mother is represented as nurturing, overseeing an ordered domestic scene. The discourse of propriety is signified in the Efolweni poster through the emphasis on 'cleanliness' and 'privacy'. This emphasis is realized semiotically in the representations of the children's bodies, where the emphasis falls on the importance of being clothed and a sense of 'dirt'. In the 'before' scenario, both children are partly unclothed. The older boy is wearing only shorts and the younger boy is wearing a T-shirt and no pants. Neither is wearing shoes. Their nakedness embodies the discourse of propriety where 'shame' is linked to 'dirt'. In the 'after' scenario, the children represent the embodiment of 'development'. They are both fully clothed and wearing shoes. They 145
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have no blemishes on their skin and are wearing clean clothes. The shift from organic building materials (mud and wood) to manufactured materials (bricks and asbestos) also reflects this notion of organizing the environment by eliminating what is ideologically classified as 'dirt'. According to Douglas, 'dirt offends against order - eliminating it is not a negative movement, but a positive effort to organize the environment' (1966: 2). She argues that by 'cleaning' we separate, place boundaries and make visible statements about the home we create out of the material house. This is pertinent to the Efolweni poster where the emphasis is on 'home' in the 'after' scenario, and home represents order, cleanliness, limited contact with the environment and clearly defined boundaries with nature. This study proposes making explicit to students the resources they are drawing on in producing their versions of academic discourse. For instance, it would be important to discuss the complex workings of propriety and how it feeds into processes of 'othering' in developmental work, especially since propriety works to suppress heteroglossia and naturalize itself as dominant. I propose setting up structures in the curriculum that can enable students to become aware of their tacit habits of meaning-making choices. For this, metalanguages of 'reflective generalization' (New London Group 1996: 86) could be important in achieving conscious awareness of what is being learnt, and in surfacing to consciousness what is already known. My concept of metalanguage is closely allied to Gee's 'meta-knowledge' which is 'seeing how the Discourses you have already got... relate to those you are attempting to acquire, and how the ones you are trying to acquire relate to self and society' (1996: 141). A metalanguage constituted through combinations of primary and secondary discourses can provide other ways of knowing the world - with the 'productive diversity necessary for reconstruction and redesign' (Janks 2000: 181).
Interaction of representational modes There is a tension between the verbal and visual modes in the Efolweni Village poster. The 'meaning' of the representation is realized through the visual mode (the diagram) with its underlying narrative structure. The meaning import of the written mode is almost superfluous, and the written seems to be an 'add on'. This secondary importance of the written in conveying the meaning of the text is revealed syntactically through a sometimes incomprehensible use of written language as in the following sentence: The implementation of water tanks instead of highly cost effective water damps'. The content of the written text is non-specific: 146
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The choice of material is assured to fulfil all the needs and to maintain a healthy environment, which is the most important part since that place has been suspected to be hosting 75.5% of the most dangerous diseases, as a result of pollution.
This group of students seem to be able to represent complex conceptual frameworks in the visual mode with more competence than in the written mode. This is in line with Kress and van Leeuwen's (1996) argument that there are general shifts in modal functions — the visual mode is doing more of the ideational work. In other words, it is becoming increasingly important as a carrier of information in multimodal texts. In this case the choice of the visual mode of representation enabled the utilization of different cognitive processes. Final comments This analysis reveals that the students are able to make translations between various life worlds and coding orientations (as habitualized forms of representational practice in particular communities). My argument is that moving between life worlds can result in 'mixed' genres where differently organized social worlds and their attendant coding orientations appear. It is clear that 'breaking' or reinterpreting some standard generic conventions often signals an encounter of diverse knowledges. For instance, the Efolweni Village poster constitutes a 'mixed' or 'alternate' genre where there is a disjuncture between the written and visual modes. Both of the posters examined in this chapter seem to position the students between the everyday and the world of technical endeavour. The world of the everyday draws the viewer in by identification with the actors and the world of abstraction positions the viewer as a neutral observer of an objectively present world. Rather than thinking of 'mixed genres' (since mixing is normal), we can think of genres and generic fragments embedded in and forming a part of the overall text. Perhaps the terms 'alternate' or 'emerging' genres might be more useful. Within a general awareness of the range of genres, of their shapes and their contexts, speakers and writers newly make generic forms out of available resources. For instance, the students' textual productions create space for the personal as well as the mystical in standard academic genres. Here is an opportunity to enrich and even transform Engineering genres, using students' world views and representational resources. In the alternate genres examined in this chapter, discursive struggles between authoritative discourses and students' home-grown discourses are prevalent. Secondary discourses do not simply replace 147
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primary discourses; rather, students utilize both in their textual productions. Many of the discourses in the two texts are students' primary discourses (and other kinds of secondary discourses) before these enter into dialogue with the discursive conventions of the Engineering discipline. Gough (2000) argues that the term 'secondary discourse' is often used to indicate 'English school education' and Western rhetorical norms. Used in this way, the secondary discourses of other communities are ignored. The Symbolic Object project surfaced valued practices with fixed norms that require a secondary discourse, such as the practice of slaughtering a goat. However, the students do also draw on knowledge of scientific conventions and are aware of the constraints on representation which they perceive to be attendant on a task of this nature within a pedagogical domain of practice. Also, although affect is not necessarily valued in the discipline of Engineering in the same way as it is in the Humanities, it emerges in the students' texts in traces of other discourses within the dominant scientific discourse. Alerting students to these traces and their modal realizations could make them aware of how affect is a part of academic discourse, but often in a different form than in the domain of the everyday. The discipline of Engineering does comprise a mixture of discourses which reflect the .mix of the social and the technical in the Engineering profession. These discourses include management, economics, sociology, politics and development. Social needs and pressures shape Engineering as much as Engineering and technology shape the nature of society. This study is an argument for the need to review a range of discourses in the Engineering curriculum (such as nostalgia, utopianism, propriety, gender) in order to expand the currently available ways for engineers to define themselves and their work. A curriculum which draws on and validates students' practices is invaluable in the context of traditional first-year Engineering courses, where knowledge is often atomized into subjects like maths and physics which are not always applied directly to real-world contexts. Students may begin to interrogate their past situation and their aspirations and also to think critically of Engineering as a profession within the context of South Africa. I have attempted to describe some of the students' ways of thinking and representing in order to look at how these are similar to and differ from disciplinary ways of thinking. This study is not a path of induction into preserving that which is useful in ways of thinking and representing in the academic discipline of Engineering, but looks at resources holistically, as systems of representation and transformation. The notion of 'design' recognizes a proliferation of resources (including multimodal resources) and meaning-making is about 148
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choosing and assembling these resources in relation to individual desire as well as perceptions of audience and context. In order to take greater control over our use of resources, these need to be made visible and problematized. Only those which are officially recognized, which are visible as communicational and representational resources can become available as elements in conscious design processes. In South Africa at the moment there are opportunities to embrace diversity and this study has looked at how to reflect these diverse meanings in the curriculum. The key question is how to draw on the representational resources of diversity in an equitable and pedagogically productive manner.
References Archer, A. (2004), 'Access to academic practices in an engineering curriculum: drawing on students' representational resources through a multimodal pedagogy'. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Cape Town. Archer, A. (2006, forthcoming), 'Opening up spaces through Symbolic Objects: harnessing students' resources in developing academic literacy practices in Engineering', English Studies in Africa. Bernstein, B. (1981), 'Codes, modalities and the process of cultural reproduction: a model', Language and Society, 10: 327-63. Bourdieu, P. (1991), Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Douglas, M. (1966), Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Foucault, M. (1970), 'The order of discourse', in R. Young (ed.) (1981), Untying the Text: A Post-Structuralist Reader. Boston/London/Henley: Routledge and Kegan Paul, pp. 48-79. Gee, J. P. (1996), Social Linguistics and Literacies: Ideology in Discourses (2nd edn). London: Palmer Press. Gough, D. (2000), 'Discourse and students' experience of higher education', in B. Leibowitz and Y. Mohamed (eds), Routes to Writing in Southern Africa. Cape Town: Silk Road International Publishers, pp. 43-58. Halliday, M. A. K. (1978), Language as Social Semiotic: The Social Interpretation of Language and Meaning. London: Edward Arnold. Janks, H. (2000), 'Domination, access, diversity and design: a synthesis for Critical Literacy education', Educational Review, 52, (2), 175-86. Klopper, S. (2000), 'Hip-hop graffiti art', in S. Nuttall and C. Michael (eds), Senses of Culture. Cape Town: Oxford University Press, pp. 178-96. Kress, G. (1996), 'Representational resources and the production of subjectivity: questions for the theoretical development of critical discourse in a multicultural society', in C. R. Caldas-Coulthard and M. Coulthard (eds), Texts and Practices: Readings in Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Routledge, pp. 15-32. 149
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Kress, G. (2000), 'Multimodality', in B. Cope and M. Kalantzis (eds), Multiliteracies: Literacy Learning and the Design of Social Futures. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 182-202. Kress, G. and van Leeuwen, T. (1996), Reading Images. The Grammar of Visual Design. London: Routledge. Kress, G. and van Leeuwen, T. (2001), Multimodal Discourse: The Modes and Media of Contemporary Communication. London: Edward Arnold. Lemke, J. L. (1990), Talking Science: Language, Learning and Values. Norwood, NJ: Ablex, Language and Educational Processes. McCloud, S. (1994), Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. New York: Harper Perennial. New London Group (1996), 'A pedagogy of multiliteracies: designing social futures', Harvard Educational Review, 66, (1), 60-92. Stewart, S. (1993), On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
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Who owns this image? Word, image and authority in the lecture
luc/o Thesen
Why lectures? Lectures are in many ways at the centre of academic practice, yet they have received surprisingly little attention in the New Literacy Studies tradition of academic literacy research. In theorizing access to 'nontraditional' students, much of the research on academic literacy has become synonymous with writing and writing-based practices (Ballard and Clanchy 1988, Ivanic 1998, Lea and Street 1998, Lillis 2001, Angelil-Carter 2000). Writing is obviously important. To deny that in the South African post-colonial context, where language and the bureaucratic functions of writing are so loaded, would be irresponsible. But research into writing is complicated by the feeling of absence that permeates essay writing in the academy. In the words of a student,1 'when you write, you are not expected to come from your home'. This absence is most obvious in the physical, temporal and social distance between essay writer and reader. It is also apparent in the sense of alienation or resistance that many students experience as they struggle to express themselves in a complex, shifting genre, and in the teacher/researcher's quest for 'authorial voice' in student writing (see Bangeni and Kapp, and Paxton, this volume). This paper explores interaction in a neglected genre, the lecture, where lecturer and students with a wide range of language and educational histories are copresent, in one place, in real time, where modes other than the formal written take precedence. Lectures are also of interest because they appear to be under pressure, as is evident in complaints from colleagues (students 'just want to be entertained') and students (lectures are 'boring'). They appear to have passed their sell-by date, with their association with transmission models of teaching, and the physical structure of the lecture theatre signals classical forms of architecture that reflect 151
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strongly coded practices of authority. However, they are also open to more contemporary functions. They lend themselves to performance, entertainment and spectacle, in a world in which visuality is playing an increasingly important role in the link between experience and knowledge. The 'shifts in the semiotic landscape' identified by Kress and van Leeuwen (1996) have profound implications for education. Lectures, like other genres associated with academic literacy, appear to be undergoing a shift towards a more informal, interactive ethos. Yet metronome-like, they continue to regulate time and space in university life. What is going on in this complex and contradictory space? I am interested in how lecturers and students from diverse language and educational histories participate in these events, and what their meanings signal about discourses and authority in contemporary South Africa. The end of Apartheid has led to a profound process of social realignment, in which we would expect shifts in how different forms of capital (Bourdieu 1990, 1991) are recognized in higher education. In the rest of this paper, I explore aspects of these changes through the analysis of a series of moments that are links in a chain of meaning. The analysis looks first at a brief discourse moment in a lecture, in which Robert, a thirty-something, 'white' male, discusses a photograph of young Xhosa initiates watching cricket.2 He poses the question 'Who owns this image?', and answers by saying that it is they - the initiates - who own the image. However, the analysis shows tha the middle-class, 'white' male 'voice of decontextualised reason' owns the image, in spite of the lecturer's attempts to infuse his commentary with a rich variety of social voices. Word, body and image combine in a flow of meaning that pushes some understandings underground, and helps others to come to the surface. These understandings are explored in a follow-up focus group, in which diverse students talk about the lecture. The chapter asserts the need to study the place of lectures in the flow of meaning in universities, and the importance of focusing on the visual-verbal interface in these events, to understand how lectures are read by diverse students. Their responses to the lecture indicate the complex nature of the identity work that takes place in lectures. They also suggest silences that accrue and reinforce structural inequalities, against the best intentions of participants. I argue that for lectures to justify their central place in changing universities, they need to be drawn into a less hierarchical, more informal space, where the authoritative utterances can be refracted and re-accentuated by the young people who own the future. The findings echo Pratt's (1991) description of the place of the lecture in a course that set out to challenge received wisdom: 152
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We were struck [...] at how anomalous the formal lecture became in a contact zone. [...] The lecturer's traditional (imagined) task [is] unifying the world in the class's eyes by means of a monologue that rings equally coherent, revealing and true for all [...] This task became not only impossible but anomalous and unimaginable. Instead one had to work in the knowledge that whatever one said was going to be systematically received in radically heterogeneous ways that we were neither able nor entitled to prescribe, (p. 10)
This chapter shows that while lectures are thought of as spaces for the display of authority, and the ensuing making of a coherent view of the world, this 'unifying of the world' may be a myth.
Theoretical framing: dialogism and authority Bourdieu provides the broad canvas for this study, with his analysis of how social fields are constituted through the interaction among the relative social positions that individuals hold within the field (higher education). His analysis of the individual in society is carried through the concept of habitus - '... embodied history, internalized as second nature and so forgotten as history' (Bourdieu 1990: p. 56). As this study is concerned with participation, Bakhtin offers the central concepts as he sees the speaker-audience relationship as constitutive of communication. He refutes transmission models of communication where sender and receiver are treated as separate entities. Both are present in each other's meaning-making. In the application of this dialogic principle to the lecture, the concept of 'addressivity' is useful. Bakhtin (1986) defines addressivity: An essential (constitutive) marker of the utterance is its quality of being directed to someone, its addressivity. As distinct from the signifying units of a language - words and sentences that are impersonal - belonging to nobody and addressed to nobody, the utterance has both an author (and consequently, expression) and therefore an addressee. This addressee can be an immediate participant-interlocutor in an everyday dialogue, a differentiated collection of specialists, a more or less differentiated public, ethnic group, contemporaries, like-minded people, opponents and enemies, a subordinate, a superior, someone who is lower, higher, familiar, foreign and so forth. It can also be an indefinite, unconcretised other, (p. 95; original emphasis)
Addressivity signals the 'other' as those co-present - the immediate audience - but also as more abstract socially and historically constituted entities of addressee. Addressees index types ('... collections of specialists, etc') which are present in the individual's utterance 153
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through a range of strata of different social languages (discourses). This stratification of language is the effect of a constant process of struggle and becoming. Meaning is made, and re-made, by the new inflections that emerge from struggles over meaning as words come into contact, through the utterance, with new situations and users. In this study, while the physical setting (the lecture) has remained unchanged over the long term, the participants - particularly the students - have changed significantly in the last two decades, and we would expect communication in the lecture to be shot through with these struggles over meaning. The concept of addressee, as used in the lecture setting, evokes both an abstract, and equally importantly, an embodied 'other'. Goffman (1981) stresses that much of how authority is conveyed in lectures, and other podium events, is carried by the physical presence of the lecturer, although the subject matter is ostensibly the focus of the lecture. This creates an uneasiness, in that participants need to show that they are attending to the lecturer, and have to pick up cues to meaning carried by spatial and gestural modes, but at the same time they must try not to 'violate his territoriality ... It is as if they were to look into the speaker's words, which after all, cannot be seen. It is as if they must look at the speaker, but not see him' (p. 140). Writers in the psychoanalytic tradition, such as Aoki (2002), see this discomfort as revolving around the gendered body, where it takes the form of suppression that underlies the teaching situation. As he puts it, both teacher and students have to 'act as if sexuality had been evicted from the classroom, where both sides know very well that such eviction is impossible' (p. 40). Bakhtin, though better known for his analysis of language, also stresses the 'plastic-pictorial', and therefore embodied, aspects of communication (1990). Bakhtin's dialogism is a theory of knowledge in which perception is crucial. What the individual sees is unique to her place in the world. In his earlier more philosophical and ethical writing, he uses the concept of 'surplus of seeing', the 'ever-present excess of my seeing, knowing and possessing' (1990: 23) to express the interdependence of people in time and space. He writes: This other human being whom I am contemplating, I shall always see and know something that he, from his place outside over and against me, cannot see himself ... as we gaze at each other, two different worlds are reflected in our eyes.
In the lecture situation, each participant inhabits a unique time-space position, while sharing an immediate context. Each knows that while they are present, each carries something extra - the ability to see more 154
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than the other - 'the world behind his back' (p. 23). In general, Bakhtin sees this relationship in benign terms, as a gift of incompleteness, though the phrase 'over and against' suggests a more conflictual angle. This reading suggests that 'surplus of seeing' is resonant in a society in transition, where difference is strongly signalled in the visual mode and embodied identity. Jefferson expresses this well: One does not see oneself as one is seen by others and this difference in perspective turns on the body. More specifically, since the body is what others see, but what the subject does not, the subject becomes dependent on the other in a way that ultimately makes the body the focus of a power struggle. (1989: 153)
In Bakhtin's later more sociological writing, the importance of the body in struggles over meaning is expressed in the idea of 'carnival' - 'the peoples' ambivalent laughter' (Bakhtin 1965, in Morris 1994: 201). He takes the idea from medieval carnival, and uses it to refer to 'the inversion of power structures, the parodic debunking of all that a particular society takes seriously, including and in particular all that which it fears' (Morris 1994: 250). The laughter is ambivalent, in that it is 'gay, triumphant, and at the same time, mocking, deriding. It asserts and denies, it buries and revives' (p. 200). Importantly, the main resource for this kind of expression is the body, with an exaggerated, positive, 'brimming over abundance' (Bakhtin 1965, in Morris 1994: 205). I return to these body-centred concepts later in the chapter, in the analysis of student responses to Robert's lecture. Bakhtin and Goffrnan's insistence on the way seeing brings the other into co-presence is an important part of this study, and provides theoretical founding for the analytical focus on multimodal discourse. The utterance is realized through multiple modes. Taking account of these will enable us to read meaning more deeply, particularly when these modes give clues to the embodied competence of the authorized, legitimate speaker - the lecturer. These non-linguistic modes may also be a resource for members of a diverse audience who do not own the dominant language. Gesture, for instance, could either support a student struggling to make sense of someone's words, but because it is as culturally laden as any other semiotic mode, students may also need to be helped to decode it. Multiple modes will also be a necessary element where the subject matter itself is increasingly mediated by visual images, and by multimedia, as is the case in much of the Humanities. In the lecture, semiotic modes such as space, gesture and gaze potentially play an important role in complementing language in the workings of capital. Authority is an important concept for Bakhtin. The other, or 155
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addressee, implies a status, or social positionality, relative to the speaker. The embodied capital carried by a confident, 'white', Englishspeaking male speaks before he opens his mouth, and predisposes addressees to respond in ways set down structurally by their relative social positions, providing an important aspect of context for the utterance. If the utterance 'appears to be furrowed with distant barely audible echoes and changes of speech subjects and dialogic overtones' (Bakhtin 1986: 130), each with their evaluative tone, how can these be conceptualized to take account of authority and power in a more nuanced way? Bakhtin (1981: 342) makes a useful distinction between 'authoritative' discourse and 'internally persuasive' discourse. When someone else's discourse is authoritative, it comes with its 'authority fused to it ... from a distanced zone, organically connected to a past which is felt to be hierarchically higher ... it demands our unconditional allegiance, and it allows no play with its borders, no gradual and flexible transition, no spontaneously creative stylizing variants on it' (p. 342). As examples, he cites religious, political and moral texts as well as 'the word of a father, of adults, of teachers etc' and says that 'one cannot divide it up - agree with one part, accept but not completely another, reject utterly a third part' (p. 343). Opposed to this privileged type, which resists getting 'drawn into the contact zone' (p. 345), someone else's discourse may be experienced as 'internally persuasive', and much more open to creative re-accentuation: it is 'half ours and half somebody else's' (p. 345). The dynamic between them determines the extent to which the interanimation of voices is possible: 'The struggle and dialogic interrelationship of these categories of ideological discourse are what usually determine the history of an individual ideological consciousness' (p. 342). They may co-exist in the utterance, though much more often people experience a divide between the two, which may be reconciled in the course of an individual's life. They are also in different relationships to each other at different historical periods. Some aspects of Bakhtin's world were in flux, while others were still relatively fixed, as is reflected in his typology of social strata ('word of the father', etc.). These concepts of authority are applied in a particular setting - a lecture theatre in a university that calls itself 'Worldclass in Africa'. We would expect a lecture to have strong elements of the 'authoritative word' by virtue of its formal arrangements, though these elements are diluted in late modern times, where, as Giddens (1991) points out, there is a shift from single authorities to multiple, competing authorities, an 'indefinite pluralism of expertise' (p. 422). The first few months at university are a liminal period for students, as they move further from moorings of home and the authoritative voices of elders, 156
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schoolteachers, priests. The signifiers for these authoritative voices are also undoubtedly shifting in South Africa, and are likely to reflect the peer group, and other adult voices, rather than those of nuclear family structures and stable institutions. The engagement with new authority figures - lecturers - potentially signals a new chance, for a differen stance to knowledge. Bakhtin (1981) writes of the importance of struggling with another's discourse and its influence in the history of an individual's coming to ideological consciousness ... One's own discourse and one's own voice, although born of another or dynamically stimulated by another, will sooner or later begin to liberate themselves from the authority of the other's discourse', (p. 348)
Responses to lectures in the first months of university are likely to express these threshold emergent qualities. In the next section, a transcription of a brief part of a lecture, and data from focus groups held after the lecture, are analysed. The methodology for this study is broadly a 'critical ethnographic' approach (Canagarajah 1999). This study brings two strands together. From the critical tradition, I draw on praxis-oriented analysis of access and authority, and an interest in questions such as: Whose knowledge counts? How are wider social concerns inscribed in texts and events? What are the contradictions and how do they play out? These questions are asked to sharpen informed, committed action in a workplace that describes itself as concerned with issues of social justice. Ethnography helps to theorize my role as participant observer and the consequences of choosing to research as participant-as-observer, with the responsibility to be open about purposes and to negotiate at every level (Hammersley 1994; Cameron et al. 1992). Ethnographic approaches also alert one to the importance of reflexivity and the politics of representation (Duranti 1997). The study employs multimodal discourse analysis in the social semiotic tradition (Jewitt and Oyama 2001, Kress and van Leeuwen 1996). Goffrnan's concept of footing - 'participant's alignment, or set, or posture, or projected self ... a change in footing implies a change in the alignment we take up to our selves and others present ...' (1981: 128) - provides the analytical metaphor for tracking the interanimation of voices in the main text analysed: a transcription of a lecture based on video material. Multimodal transcription is a major concern. I have developed my own system of transcription, and I am aware of the dynamics of 'transcription as theory' (Ochs 1979).
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The event: a lecture on representations of cricket This chapter narrows down to focus on a 'discourse moment' in a foundation course in the Humanities at a South African university. It is three quarters of the way through a lecture, in which Robert - a thirtysomething 'white' South African - is lecturing to over 300 first-yea students of the Humanities. Robert will give the same lecture immediately afterwards to the other half of the 1000-odd students in this compulsory foundation course. Students are engaged in a case study on representation and power, in which they are required to analyse representations of the game of cricket, cricketers and cricketing societies. The lecture revolves around a series of photographs of a cricket competition, in Kentani, in the rural Eastern Cape, one of the poorest parts of the country. The area has also been the setting for some of the fiercest resistance to both British colonial and Apartheid oppression. The photographs were taken by journalist Mike Hutchings, and exhibited in Cape Town at the time.3 The participants in the competition are 'black' South Africans, many of whom are migrant workers, and are home from the cities for Christmas and New Year. They embody the colonial game in their skills, dress, stance and other details, but have made it their own, so that it serves particular social functions on the margins of South African society, where the game of cricket has had a long, but neglected, history (Odendaal 2003). The event is strikingly different from the cricket matches beamed to us courtesy of the media, which had currency at the time. The setting is totally different - a far cry from the colonial pavilions, where, as Robert says in his lecture, 'the old farts club at Lords, sip tea from flasks' and 'the ubiquitous green of the pitch under lights' dominate and frame the event. Robert has gone to some lengths to respond to an opportunity presented by the exhibition, and has screened the images as the basis for a lecture. In the lecture, the images are glossy and potent, projected high up on the screen in a darkened, steeply raked, wood-panelled lecture theatre. In addition to its strongly theatrical elements, the event is also special, because the photographer is present. Robert introduces the photographer, but starts by telling the students that 'Shakespeare is dead' and that they have the power to impose their own meanings on these images, regardless of the photographer's presence. They are urged to 'own the image', and much of Robert's authority in the event stems from claiming the right to do so himself, in the presence of the photographer. He has been discussing a series of images. Some focus on the central drama and athleticism of the game, others show the 158
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unconventional spectators (groups of clapping women, children applauding from nearby trees), and a few show groups of children imitating the colonial sport, and making it their own. The image under discussion is a colour slide showing two young men - Xhosa initiates - sitting on the grass. They are dressed in the traditional attire of the ritual of initiation into manhood - wearing blankets, with white clay on their faces. They are the focus of the image, but they are in the background. In the foreground is the blurred shape of a cricket bat, with a red ball inches away from impact with the bat. In this chapter, the image is shown through the lens of a video camera in a still that includes the lecturer, Robert, seen pointing to the image (see Figure 7.1). The gaze of the young men in the image works on three levels. It is simultaneously directed at the game of cricket, the ('white') photographer, and everyone in the lecture theatre. As they face the viewer, the gaze appears as 'direct address' (Kress and van Leeuwen 1996). Both this and the 'frontal plane' (Kress and van Leeuwen 1996) create a relationship of involvement between represented participants and viewers of the image. But it is an uneasy
Figure 7.1 The lecturer asks: 'Who owns this image?' 159
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spectatorship, as initiates are generally separated from strangers in the period of initiation. Mager (1999) alerts us to the ongoing role of initiation in the construction of male identity in the Ciskei. The Ciskei - an Apartheid creation for political control of Xhosa resistance to colonial presence in this fiercely contested 'border' area of the Eastern Cape - became a site of political awakening and resistance to Apartheid. She explains: Initiation, with circumcision as its key element, remained the touchstone of Xhosa masculinities. It signaled changes in personality, manliness, and identity. A circumcised body signaled masculine identity and male power, over and against boys and women ... the experience of initiation enabled a shared sense of a common Xhosa nation. Identification with this 'imagined community' of AmaXhosa was critical for young men constructing ideas about themselves in the world. (1999: 133)
Ngwane's recent study (2002) updates this picture, and shows how dynamic and resilient this practice is. He gives an account of how initiation practices intersect with shifting power and roles linked to schooling and the economy. His study shows young men taking control to produce a different male subjectivity that values rhetorical skills, with all the connotations of agency and self-presentation, rather than the approach favoured by the older generation, with an emphasis on bodily discipline. These tensions between local and national interests were not spoken about in the lecture. I have chosen this image, Robert's mediation of it, and students' responses in the focus group, for analysis, because the semiotic chain is emblematic of the struggles over meaning in contemporary South Africa. The element of the image which incorporates 'the other' as a presence in the room needs to be discussed. There was a deep hush in the lecture theatre when the image appeared on the screen. As Hall writes, a representation such as this that deals with 'difference' from mainstream codes of understanding 'engages feelings, attitudes and emotions, and it mobilizes fears and anxieties in the viewer, at deeper levels than we can explain in a simple, commonsense way' (1997: 226). While definitions of 'mainstream' are also contentious in South Africa (and bring Hall's 'we' into question), where demographics and history change the rules of recognition, the image does appear to have unsettled students.4 At one level, it is a stereotype of African strangeness, and stereotypes work to close down unsettling ambivalence and maintain the wall between self and other, where other is seen as outside of history, as the object of the gaze. Interestingly, this picture reinserts the stereotypical image into history, by juxtaposing initiates 160
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with the colonial game of cricket, making them spectators. In 'strong' versions of the practice, initiates are excluded from the public gaze, and reject colonial institutions and artefacts. So the stereotypical frame has been broken, and two categories merge, and create ambivalence. It would take insider knowledge to recognize that both initiation and cricket festivals such as this are part of the ongoing struggles of marginalized rural people to assert their identity. The image can also be seen as a symptom of 'patriotic hysteria' in which we as South Africans 'strive to appropriate symbols that define our cohesion' (Langa 2004: 13). The image is thus a vital third element in the chain of meaning here. The event is constructed by speaker, audience and the referential content - the people in the image.
The lecturer: 'you borrow the authority you claim to resist' Robert is widely recognized as charismatic, engaged, passionate. Students react to him strongly, as is shown in the discussion later in this paper. They are seldom neutral about him. A student once said that when she thought of Robert, she 'saw a library'. As a 'white' male, private school and Oxford educated, he exudes a strong sense of the establishment. There is a marked rhetorical quality in his lecturing, resonant and poetic - in his own words, sometimes 'more sermon than lecture' - and his articulate, upper-class accented, orchestrated, wideranging display of different modes and registers of knowing intrigues and sometimes vexes students. But he is also young, attractive, informally dressed, transgressive, and in touch with youth culture and the complex contours of South African meanings, with which he often plays. Alongside this sense of expertise is a vulnerability, most visible in a marked facial tic. In an interview some time after the lecture, Robert recalled this moment in the lecture. It is ... one of the few in which my own scholarly and personal interests coincide with what I lecture ... the Eastern Cape, landscape and representations of emaXhoseni and the Xhosa world ... this is my province [...] It's a moment of expertise rather than a moment of teaching.
His strong identification with the image as part of his academic identity is conveyed to the students. The lecture is given in the mode of what Goffman calls 'fresh talk' (1981: 171) (as opposed to 'memorization' or 'aloud reading'). The talk is formulated from moment to moment. This creates the impression that the speaker is responding 161
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directly to the audience present, and that he knows his material so well, and is so invested in it, that he does not need to depend on a written version. The knowledge is so internalized that it does not need to be rehearsed. Robert's frame of reference for the lecture, and possibly for all lectures, seems to be contained in the metaphor of the performance. In his opening lecture on this course, he urged students to 'see the lecture as a concert', not to be passive receivers of knowledge, or to accept the 'kragdadige'5 orientations of school and old Apartheid versions of single authority. In an interview, he describes himself as an intellectual 'fox, not a hedgehog' (a reference to Isaiah Berlin's distinction). Hedgehogs seek single systems 'which carry us back to the Dark Ages they're theocratic really' and his 'foxy' stance on authority 'cuts out from a lineage of authority'. He states that he resists the authority of lectures, yet 'it's obviously very difficult to stand there and say "I resist the authority of this lecture". You borrow the authority you claim to resist'. This contradiction - a stance that claims to undercut authority while using the institutional speaking position as a platform - is a feature of his lectures. In an effort to engage students, he often provokes a crisis, adopting and shifting speaking positions, with and against the grain of prevailing public meanings. 'They own this image7: the discourse moment To capture the multi-layered semiotics of the event, I have arranged the transcription to show the co-occurrence of modalities. Other transcriptions of multimodal texts, for example Kress et al. (2001), usually show these modalities in tabular form. These read from left to right, with language usually in privileged position on the left, reinforcing the left-to-right reading path, and once again privileging language over other modes. In the interests of readability, I have only shown the speaker's gaze and gestures, as they seem salient in this discourse analysis (see Figure 7.2). Transcription conventions Pauses: (.) one second, (..) two seconds They = word/syllable stressed Descriptions in this font = iconic gestures //// baton-like gestures, used rhythmically to underscore prosody of speech «s = gaze, directed to students (audience) »i = gaze directed to image 162
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There are four parts in this commentary: a brief description of the image (lines 1 to 3); a complication in which this image is offset from others in the same genre (lines 4 and 5); a question, 'Who owns this image?' (lines 6 to 9), and an answer, They own this image' (lines 10 to 13). The utterance is shot through with different social languages, indicating shifts in footing, showing changes 'in the alignment we take up to ourselves and those present'. I shall briefly summarize the main social languages present, before examining some moments more closely. This is followed by a brief analysis of two modes realized visually: gesture and gaze. The discourses are not clearly demarcated, often overlapping in the same word. There is a discourse with its provenance in anthropology, with its present-tense, static structures, as in 'you have two abakhwetakhweta6 sitting here in the grass' (line 2), overlaid with the lofty literary 'classic', 'tour de force' and 'emblematizes'. There is also a genre of sports photography, which merges with and puns on a more subversive post-colonial literary discourse, in words like 'subject', 'gaze', 'disrupt' and 'recover'. It appears strongly in phrases like 'On the right hand side, out of focus' (line 2), 'somewhat blurred' (line 3), and several references to the structure and composition of the image ('focus' appears three times, as does 'red ball'). This co-exists with a discourse of the game of cricket (for example, 'caught by [photographer] Hutchings at the moment of contact', with a pun on 'caught'; 'immaculate forward defensive stroke' (line 2), 'how far removed from the MCC ...?' (line 8)). The initiates are only referred to briefly (the slightly mocking 'got up as much in a uniform of their context' which shifts dramatically to a reverential 'wearing their blankets, clayed in the white clay of initiation and regeneration' in lines 8 and 9). The 13 lines are held together by the teacherly, didactic discourse carried in the rhetorical markers of 'Perhaps' (line 1), 'Now', and in the rhetorical questions, 'Who owns this image?', 'How far removed ...?' and 'What sense does this make to them?'. These questions echo the InitiationResponse-Evaluation (IRE) discourse structure (Sinclair and Coulthard 1975) that permeates teacher talk in classrooms. These structures serve to introduce new topics and move the class along. They also appear to invite a response, but in particular in the lecture situation, no real dialogue is possible because of the unequal power relations. Next, I focus on two moments in the commentary: the first is in line 2, 'You have two abakhwetakhweta sitting here in the grass'. He frames this image as an 'anthropological classic', with the French 'tour de force', in an elevated, formal register, establishing the gaze of the other. The Xhosa term is seamlessly woven into the utterance, while the anthropological present tense 'you have here' seems to fix the 163
Figure 7.2
'Who owns this image?' Multimodal transcription from the lecture
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initiates in time and place, and at the same time lowers the register to the ordinary 'sitting here in the grass'. The addressivity has shifted here. The word 'abakhwetakhweta' resonates with different meanings. No explanation is given, so the addressivity assumes an audience that will understand. He uses the Xhosa term to signal familiarity with a cultural practice and another national language which is marginal but symbolically important. However, while it sounds seamless, in fact there is a slip in meaning: 'abakhweta', rather than 'abakhwetakhweta', is the correct form. The doubling of the -khweta echoes the current South African practice of naming sports teams after the national soccer team 'bafana bafana' meaning 'men of men'. Since then a slew of terms like amabokoboko (rugby) and banyana banyana (women's soccer) have become part of the post-Apartheid lexicon.7 The Xhosa word is pulled in two directions - backwards and forwards - at the moment of utterance. These struggles over meaning are echoed in the adverb of place, 'here'. 'Here' has several referents: to the place where the photograph was taken in the long grass on the edge of the rough cricket field in Kentani, which is already recontextualized from its origins in the colonial game. It also refers to the new place - the lecture theatre where the image is shown and somehow returned to a colonial setting, through the design of the lecture theatre. And there is a wider echo too, to South Africa, and to this discourse moment, in which a photographer has chosen to document this cricket event. The moment, through the multiple processes of relocation, centring on the representational processes of photography and lecturer, is highly charged. The local, complex meanings are subjected to the dominant discourses of the academy, and the documentary, and are rendered 'Other'. I shall look briefly at two aspects of this event that are realized visually: gesture and gaze. Gesture works powerfully to underline Robert's authority, serving several semiotic functions. Robert's arm acts as vector, pointing to the image, in a left-to-right narrative structure. Kress and van Leeuwen (1996: 61) argue that such a vector is the verbal equivalent of a proposition, with Actor (Robert) directing something at the Goal (initiates) who are seen as having something done to them. Through much of this excerpt, he is pointing at them, sometimes with arm extended, and at other times with a shortened arm that appears to hold the cricket ball. This gesture seems to contradict his words - 'They own the image'. It is the authoritative commentary that owns the image. Another gestural pattern is the co-occurrence with speech, to give a visual rhythmic character (Kendon 1996) to Robert's speech, that emphasizes the strong rhetorical quality in his lectures. This is particularly marked in lines 4 to 6, where the cupped hand gesture reinforces the high modality of his analytical claims: 'red 166
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ball' (twice); 'focus', and the emphatic 'not' (three times). As Robert says, his lectures are 'more sermon than lecture'. Perhaps most interesting for this analysis is a third function of gesture, the iconic reference as in the miming of the skilled cricket stroke (line 3) and the vertical chest-covering gesture (line 9). These gestures respectively represent the practices of the game of cricket, and of initiation, to which Robert appears to belong. While both practices have strong elements of 'the Empire strikes back', and have been appropriated into discourses of resistance, both cricket and initiation are deeply embedded in practices and discourses in which male voices are authoritative. Women are there, at best, as spectators. His gaze pattern is also interesting here. On an obvious level, it serves as a vector, to draw students' attention to the image. The eyeline thus makes a narrative proposition, like the pointing gesture, where the person who does the looking is the 'reactor', and the entity looked at is the 'phenomenon' (Kress and van Leeuwen 1996: 64). Like the gestures, I argue that this increases the sense of social distance in the relationship between the lecturer and the initiates - the Other. So in line 6, when Robert asks 'Who owns the image?', he glances only briefly at the spectators, when he mentions them. Then again, there is a brief glance before saying 'wearing their blankets' (line 9); briefly at the beginning of line 10 ('they'), with the word 'disrupting' (line 11) and then a glance right at the end, at the point when he walks back to the right-hand side, after he has asked 'what sense does this make to them?'. The gaze not only functions to link Robert to the image, but it serves a crucial function in stitching the audience to the presence of the cricket-watching initiates. I attempt to answer the Bakhtinian question 'who is speaking?' by using his distinction between authoritative and internally persuasive voices. There is a hierarchy of social languages indexing the complex addressivity here. Some of these languages are authoritative, though there are only traces of them. There is an academic/anthropological language, a technical language of photojournalism, and the language of the classroom. Then there is the language of cricket - just a game, but a formerly colonial game. These, with provenance in elite practices, combine in the strongest voice, which Wertsch (1990: 120) calls 'the voice of decontextualised rationality'. This is a privileged social speech type, or perspective, which usually incorporates several strata (e.g. generic, professional, etc.) that make up communication. Wertsch writes that its defining characteristic is that 'it represents objects and events ... in terms of formal, logical, and if possible quantifiable categories'. Meanings are established through abstract, generalizable theories, rather than through local, contextualized forms in which the 167
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listener may need 'information from the unique context' to understand its reference. In general, when the voice of decontextualized rationality is strong, it will tend to background aspects of the unique situation, and make them seem irrelevant. While the cricket expertise and knowledge of initiation appear to rupture the rationality, as they unfold specific details 'from the unique context', in effect, they add to it. The initiation is discussed with religious imagery ('regeneration') rather than specific historical information that Robert is very familiar with. Both cricket and initiation are also deeply gendered practices. The gendered and religious strata are incorporated into the voice of decontextualized rationality. These strata join with cricket expertise and initiation, which are both local and specific to this image, but where these local voices break through, as in the gestures and use of the Xhosa language (abakhwetakhweta), they are weak, and subject to the stronger rational voice. So the answer to Robert's question, 'Who owns this image?', is not the initiates but the voice of decontextualized rationality. The initiates remain silent. They are incorporated into a hegemonic discourse with a long history of othering. Robert, by boldly asserting in discussion of this image, and in much of the rest of his lecture, that 'they' own this image, yet doing so in a style that denies this, has precipitated something of a crisis. In an interview after the lecture he said, 'I just dread the sense that I have as a lecturer that my lectures die as it were with the instant and some "content" courses they last as long as the notes are held on the page until exams'. What do students make of this in the focus groups?
What students took away from the lecture In the next section, I explore the audience side of participation in the lecture. Fifteen students with diverse language and educational histories8 took part in the focus groups. As part of the methodology of this study, I asked students, most of whom were in my tutorial group, to identify lecturers who they thought were 'good' and 'not to be missed' and Robert's name was mentioned. He had made a deep impression on students. It was apparent from the start that he evoked strong reactions. After initial discussion with Robert, we negotiated which lectures I could attend, and whether a video recording could be made of the lecture.9 This is an extract from the first of two of his lectures recorded. Three focus groups were held with different groups of students, depending on availability, as soon as possible after the lecture. I chaired the discussion loosely, making sure that everyone had a chance to speak. The meetings began with the question 'What stayed with you?'. I stressed that I was interested in their responses to the 168
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event as a whole, in other words, what was memorable. I was not interested in testing what they had learnt - the examinable curriculum. That responsibility came with my role as tutor, not as researcher. This raises a question about the intersubjectivity in the focus groups. Here 'the other', from the students' point of view, was most obviously myself, also in a position of pedagogic authority, though attempting to downplay this. Unlike the lectures, they were also speaking to each other, and identifying their stances, some for the first time in this relatively public setting. It is my impression in the focus groups that they did not want to rock the boat, and tried to preserve a fragile unity among themselves in these forums. These were the first in a series of focus groups, and students relaxed more and more in these forums. 'Struggling with another's discourse': students making sense of the lecture Most of the discussions began with some reference to what they had picked up from Robert about critical analysis, and the 'freedom' the analyst has to interpret texts. Bongani and Soraya recalled Robert's reference to the 'chant' he shares with his students - 'Shakespeare is dead' - particularly potent when the author/photographer is there in the room with you, while Robert assertively develops his analysis of the images. In all groups, students commented on what they had realized about the importance of context, noting the shift in context from cricket at Newlands (cricket ground in Cape Town) to the Eastern Cape. There were also comments on Robert's 'brilliance': 'He kind of opened my eyes to things I'd never seen before. It's hard to get into the academic world, and he helps us to get used to it' (Lindee). In all groups, students recalled the way Robert had stood in front of the images: The way he expresses himself is very powerful' (Lerato, as she imitates his gesture with arm outstretched). Some comments are more speculative, and hint at what may be unsayable, as in Kerry's comment, 'You'd make a lot of money selling daytrips in his mind', and Sabelo 'He's too much into things'. These comments are responses to the dense, complex, ambivalent layering of discourses in his lectures. This is an extract of conversation from one of the groups. He moves from play to seriousness. Like he's saying 'I don't care but you have to listen'. He kind of commands that respect. (Sabelo) Not in a bossy way. (Kerry) That's nice. (Sabelo) 169
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'I've got something to say.' (Lindee, mimicking Robert) 'I know I'm good.' (Mark) 'I'm the man.' (Lindee) It's very exposing. (Riaan)
A closer analysis shows how, through reported speech, we can trace the refraction of Robert's lecture in the students' utterances. Sabelo's quote, 'It's as if he's saying, "I don't care but you have to listen'", opens up the space for parody. It is an example of what Volosinov/Bakhtin (1973, in Morris 1994) call 'pictorial' style of reported speech, in which 'Language devises means for infiltrating reported speech with authorial retort and commentary in deft and subtle ways' (p. 65). Pictorial style is contrasted with linear style, in which the author tries to retain the originality and boundaries of the reported speech. The use of pictorial style suggests agency, a strong process of becoming, and of play with the authoritative character of Robert's lecture. Other students in the group pick up from Sabelo, and carry the parody and quotation through their bodies, in accent, body language, facial expression, rather than through the inquit phrase, 'he says'. It has a centrifugal, playful, dispersing impetus, as a group of young people 'rip off an authority. It expresses the Bakhtinian 'carnival' elements of discourse. The contradiction in Robert's lectures - the voice of decontextualized rationality with the undercurrent of foxiness and subversion - is played with in this reconstruction. There is also a sense of solidarity, as they parody his authority, confidence and gendered presence. But ventriloquizing in this way, they do not have to commit to using possibly dangerous terms, like 'seductive' or 'arrogant', but can playfully try out the distance they want to adopt. Riaan, who sounds a warning note, breaks the string of parody; 'it's very exposing'. He is referring to Robert, but also to the way students are taken in by pleasure at Robert's performance. There was no room to make light of such a crucial matter. He thus establishes his disapproval, and signals a different orientation to Robert, derived, he later explained, from the anti-authoritarian stance he learnt from his mother. Some students expressed concern that they were being overwhelmed by the power of Robert's analysis. For example, Lindee echoed the same point: 'He wants us to analyse him as well, otherwise you have his ideas in your head, not your own'. Riaan consistently raised this: 'It's as if we've got Robert in our heads'; 'I'm concerned that we're looking through Robert's eyes' and 'he wants us to be sceptical about him'. In this group, Sabelo did the most talking, and his contributions give a clear image of someone's ideological 'becoming' and his 170
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awareness that he will 'sooner or later' separate himself from the authoritative voice. He said that the landscape and images discussed were 'kind of familiar' to him. 'I kept looking at the pictures, not concentrating on what Robert was saying, but having my own interpretation.' The images evoked another world of working-class rural life that he identified with. This enabled him to put Robert's commentary aside, possibly because of the power of the images or a deliberate resistance to the official commentary. With reference to the opening photograph of a young boy bowling with extravagant energy, against a backdrop of a wire mesh fence, Sabelo said, 'I expected Robert to say that the boy was copying a culture, not his own - that it was borrowed from TV. Later he added, 'His [Robert's] mind sometimes clashes with mine', referring to a picture where Robert interpreted the laughing children as taking pleasure in play, whereas Sabelo felt that The kids could have been smiling because the photographer was white'. Sabelo's sense that there was no limit to his imagination '... makes it difficult to challenge him. I keep quiet because I won't be able to answer him'. He referred to difficulties with being a Christian and wanting to use the Bible as an authority - not a recognized form of capital in this context. 'I want to have words to challenge him', but said that, in the meanwhile, he'd 'stay as a student until I have something to say'. My interpretation is that Sabelo recognizes the sermon-like character of Robert's discourse, which is consonant in style if not in approach with the authoritative voices that he values, and he is comfortable with it. Both religious and pedagogic authority come 'fused' to the officeholder. His experience as a 'black' working-class South African gives him a speaking position that enables him to say that he has read the images in his own way but that he would like to be like Robert in style. Perhaps their shared gender identity has something to do with this affinity. Resistance to Robert's authority was most strongly expressed in the third focus group, in which there were only women. The strongest voice in this group was Triya, a second-year student doing the course reluctantly, who said she found aspects of Robert's analysis 'offensive' - the most overtly negative value judgment to be expressed in the groups. The comments gathered momentum, from 'He over analysed the pictures ... I just wanted to sit back and enjoy' (Ella) to Triya 'He's like throwing his weight around'; 'lecturers need to be more interactive ... one view sort of stunts your analysis'; 'He should teach the skills we need, not just demonstration' and 'I felt like I wanted to put up my hand and make a comment'. And Anna's The impression I get from Robert I don't think he'd want to have an interactive lecture. He's the type who doesn't want to be argued wrong'. I am interested in the 171
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silences here. Anna's 'he's the type' enables her to avoid any mention of gender, 'race' or class. In the first focus group, which included three students from other African countries, there was an interesting discussion about power and Robert's ideological positioning. Marianne hesitantly gave a reading of where Robert is coming from ideologically in commenting on these images: It's just an assumption ... he doesn't really like the old form, where cricket came from ... posh people hanging around, very boring. (Marianne) He is encouraging how cricket has transformed. (Bongani)
Both students picked up on Robert's stance regarding post-colonial South Africa, and in his celebration of taking back meaning from the 'old forms'. Marianne (a 'white', private school educated Zambian) tentatively recasts, using her own terms 'the old form', 'posh people' and 'boring'. Bongani (a 'black', Xhosa-speaking man who grew up in a township in a small coastal town bordering the Eastern Cape) puts things more abstractly, referring to post-Apartheid transformation. Lerato, a young woman from Botswana who in a biographical interview proudly introduced herself by saying 'Both my parents are subsistence farmers', continues by saying what she'd learnt from him about 'who you are with other people': It [analysis] exposes who I am because he [Robert] exposes who he is. (Lerato) The way he analyses says something about who you are. Not in an us/them way, but in an international way — not South African or African way. (Tafedzwa) 'You live in a mud hut'. (Marianne, parodying the colonial perspective) So was he reinforcing that? [the 'international perspective'] (Researcher) No. In the initiation image with the young boys with blankets - he used that as an example of not reinforcing the international person's perspective. (Lerato) That picture of the initiation - it was like made up. They're not supposed to sit amongst people. They're supposed to sit in the bush. (Bongani)
This interchange is interesting in the hints it gives of how different students take him up in their own ideological becoming, and indicate 172
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their 'struggles with another's discourse'. Lerato, in identity terms probably furthest from Robert as a rural Motswana woman, shows a strong affinity and identification, which seems to express the idea of 'surplus of seeing': he offers self-exposure, which liberates her to do the same. Tafedzwa picks up on this, and introduces the category of the 'international person' and struggles to express herself without falling into us/them discourse. The category of 'international person' is safe, and provides a way forward for a hesitant exploration. This has none of the parodic confidence of the interchange analysed earlier that was led by Sabelo (pp. 169-70). Lerato is the first person in the focus groups to mention the image of the initiates. It invokes different meanings for different students. On the one hand, she uses it as an illustration of positive, inclusive meaning (a shared sense of African identity and 'encouraging how things have transformed'). On the other, for Bongani, it signals fraud, unwanted exposure and misrepresentation; 'it was like made up'. While earlier on he has noticed Robert's alignment with 'the new South Africa', here he feels the need to intervene and challenge the veracity of the image. He draws attention to the subject matter, not the commentary, so this is not a direct criticism of Robert. On the one hand he says the image was 'made up'. Yet he also says 'they are not supposed to ...' and thus distances himself from both the representation and the boys, who are doing the wrong thing by watching cricket instead of observing the isolation of the initiation process.
How do we talk about difference? Later, I asked Bongani about why he said this in the focus group, and what he meant by the picture being 'made up'. He has been through the initiation process, and said that he felt a strong need to defend an impression that he thought had been created by the image of the initiates, and to insert local, experiential meaning. There were quite a lot of us [in the focus group] and I was the only Xhosa guy so I didn't really want to say a lot... there are people of different cultures and I didn't want to expose my culture as not so respectable. I didn't want to leave people with the impression that's what we do - we watch cricket - you might as well go to Mauritius and go to the beach.
It was obvious in the discussion that the initiation process was deeply meaningful to him. 'I can't remember any stage in my life where I felt more confident'. It is also interesting that he raised his Xhosa male identity as marking him in the group, though he could not mention this 173
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in the focus group. Ethnicity is referred to as 'different cultures' and 'my culture' in the interview, but remains a silence in the focus group. He pointed out that Robert's discussion of the image is ... a bit offensive. The initiation ceremony is controversial. There are lots of people who fight over this stuff. Like that picture was showing the bad side of what's supposed to be done - showing people not respecting their culture, but we claim that we do.
It is clearly the sort of topic that starts to show the cracks in the panAfrican solidarity that students showed in the group talk where students distanced themselves, so carefully, and with due respect, from the 'international' perspective. When Bongani read my emerging analysis of Robert's discussion of the image, he said that from reading the transcript: It looks like there was a battle about who owns the image - a huge battle. How it's said doesn't look like they own the image ... when I see arguments like that I usually take the underdog's side ... I felt misrepresented. I'm not saying that a Xhosa person would have done it better, but the chances are that a Xhosa person could have said it better.
Bongani had put the image reproduced in this article up on the noticeboard in his room, but he explained that he would not display a treasured photograph taken during his own initiation. Both Bongani and Robert have the right to comment on this image, but their grounds are fundamentally different. Robert is an outsider, but has gathered the academic authority to comment, and has created his body of knowledge from this, as well as from growing up in the Eastern Cape. Bongani is an insider, and knows the codes of initiation practices and the associated meanings assigned in contemporary South Africa, but his body of knowledge has to stay silent. Even (or particularly) with his peer group, he 'didn't want to say a lot' and chose to play it safe. In the focus group discussions, students respond to the lecture in a wide variety of ways. Wry amusement, scepticism, parody abound, while some are also deeply moved and enabled by this encounter. Within individuals, there are contradictions, as students are simultaneously drawn to and away from Robert's performance. They express various degrees of 'half ours and half somebody else's'. Conclusion: How the social bleeds into the lecture This chapter has attempted to trace a chain of meaning, a series of engagements with the other. It begins with the lecturer's authoritative 174
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stance on a complex image, to relatively informal discussions with groups of students from different backgrounds and how 'the wider world of structures and positions is bled into these occasions' (Goffman 1981: 193) and flows over into the focus groups and beyond. Bakhtinian concepts related to the fundamental principle of dialogicality have been used to explore how these chains of meaning are constituted. It is clear that the voices collide, overlap and sometimes enter into chorus with the social languages that enter this space. The lecturer speaks through an accretion of rational, logical languages, though there are dialogic elements in the range of social languages that enter into the stratification of his utterance. This multivoicedness is typical of language in South Africa. The voices that rupture through are however subject to the dominant 'voice of decontextualised reason'. The students reflect and refract these strands in complex ways, depending on their own engagement with others, both before entry to university and in new communities as students of the Humanities. The most practised voice seems to be parodic, centrifugal, suggesting an anti-foundational generational discourse, as students express the carnival aspects of the lecture. Much more tentative is any discussion of politically charged signifiers of race, class, gender, ethnicity and national identity, although these strata are everywhere. Important identity work is taking place here, with physical presence and performance central as meaning-making resources to both lecturer and students. Given the amount of time spent in lectures, it is clear that students are exposed to stances to knowledge that are loaded with significance, and that they deconstruct lectures with energy and insight. An analysis of who the students are, and who they are becoming, which identity signifiers they occupy in the moment, and what resources they bring to reading the lecture, is another interesting though as yet under-explored aspect of this study. If the value of lectures is to be reduced to what is scribbled in exams, the wider emotional, aesthetic, embodied, political, ritual functions of the lecture continue unexamined and (largely) uninterrupted. The focus groups, tentative and partial as they are, begin to open up some of these spaces, and to indicate the need for what Canagarajah (2004), following Pratt (1991), calls 'pedagogical safe houses' where they can 'adopt alternate identities without being penalized for (what is perceived as) deviant behaviour' (p. 120). But the silences are as interesting as what is said. It is only through this process of excavation that I have realized my own part in circulating some of the silences. For example, it has been important to reach a more historically grounded understanding of the image of the initiates, and a better understanding of why Bongani said that the image was 175
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'made up', and could not say 'in my culture'. I am also aware of how no one picked up on Riaan's sense of danger, Triya's anger, Lerato's almost religious identification through mutual 'exposure' and Kerry's 'day trips in his head'. This chapter has also attempted to graft considerations of the visual mode on to a site that is traditionally analysed for its linguistic load. The visually coded aspects of the lecture contribute to the distribution and recognition of capital. While the lecturer's language is still fundamental in this demonstration of authority, it is clear that other modes - gesture, gaze, spatial location and, importantly in the case of this lecture, the incorporation of the visual image - also play a significant role. It is only through the image of the initiates that the lecturer is able to evoke their absence - their distance from the academic domain. Lectures, if they continue to have a central place for first-year students, need to be explored as texts, and our language of texts needs to incorporate an understanding of the body, performance, however fraught and complex this process is. It is the physical presence that reveals the mutual desire for recognition. The students want to 'have the language', to interrupt, to be heard. The lecturer wants to be sure that his lectures 'do not die with the instant'. Acknowledgements I am indebted to Sofie Geschier for her help with video recording and transcription, and for her enthusiasm and insight in talking about data, and to Kay McCormick and John Trimbur for careful reading and feedback. References Angelil-Carter, S. (2000), Stolen language? Plagiarism in Writing. Harlow: Pearson Education. Aoki, D. S. (2002), 'The teacher is a prick', in J. Jagodzinski (ed.), Pedagogical Desire: Authority, Seduction, Transference, and the Question of Ethics. Westport, CT: Bergin and Harvey, pp. 33-43. Bakhtin, M. (1981), The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, M. Holquist (ed.), translated by C. Emerson and M. Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press. Bakhtin, M. (1986), Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, C. Emerson and M. Holquist (eds), translated by Vern W. McGee. Austin: University of Texas Press. Bakhtin, M. (1990), Art and Answerability: Early Philosophical Essays by 176
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M. M. Bakhtin, M. Holquist and V Liapunov (eds). Austin: University of Texas Press. Ballard, B. and Clanchy, J. (1988), 'Literacy in the university: an anthropological approach', in G. Taylor, B. Ballard, V. Beasley, H. Bock, J. Clanchy and P. Nightingale (eds), Literacy by Degrees. Milton Keynes: SRHE/The Open University, pp. 7-23. Bourdieu, P. (1990), The Logic of Practice. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1991), Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge: Polity Press. Cameron, D., Frazer, E., Harvey, P., Rampton, M. B. H. and Richardson, K. (eds.) (1992), Researching Language: Issues of Power and Method. London: Routledge. Canagarajah, S. (1999), Resisting Linguistic Imperialism in English Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Canagarajah, S. (2004), 'Subversive identities, pedagogical safe houses, and critical learning', in B. Norton and K. Toohey (eds), Critical Pedagogies and Language Learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 116-37. Duranti, A. (1997), Linguistic Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Giddens, A. (1991), Modernity and Self-identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Cambridge: Polity Press. Goffman, E. (1981), Forms of Talk. Oxford: Blackwell. Hall, S. (ed.) (1997), Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London: SAGE Publications/The Open University. Hallett, G. (ed.) (2004), Moving in Time: Images of Life in a Democratic South Africa. Sandton: KMM Review Publishing. Hammersley, M. (1994), 'Introducing ethnography', in D. Graddol, J. Maybin and B. Stierer (eds), Researching Language and Literacy in Social Context. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters/The Open University, pp. 1-17. Ivanic, R. (1998), Writing and Identity: The Discoursal Construction of Identity in Academic Writing. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Co. Jefferson, A. (1989), 'Bodymatters: self and other in Bakhtin, Sartre and Barthes', in K. Hirschkop and D. Shepherd (eds), Bakhtin and Cultural Theory. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Jewitt, C. and Oyama, R. (2001), 'Visual meaning: a social semiotic approach', in T. van Leeuwen and C. Jewitt (eds), Handbook of Visual Analysis. London: SAGE Publications, pp. 134-56. Kendon, A. (1996), 'An agenda for gesture studies', Semiotic Review of Books, 7, (3), 8-12. Online at http://www.univie.ac.at/Wissenschaftstheorie/srb/ srb/gesture.html Kress, G., Jewitt, C., Ogborn, J. and Tsatsarelis, G. (2001), Multimodal Teaching and Learning: The Rhetorics of the Science Classroom. London: Continuum. Kress, G. and van Leeuwen, T. (1996), Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. London: Routledge. Langa, M. (2004), 'Introduction', in G. Hallett (ed.), Moving in Time: Images of Life in a Democratic South Africa. Sandton: KMM Review Publishing, pp. 8-14.
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Lea, M. and Street, B. (1998), 'Student writing in higher education: an academic literacies approach', Studies in Higher Education, 32, (2), 157-72. Lillis, T. (2001), Student Writing: Access, Regulation, Desire. London: Routledge. Mager, A. K. (1999), Gender and the Making of a South African Bantustan: A Social History of the Ciskei 1945-1959. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann; Oxford: James Curry; Cape Town: David Phillip. Morris, P. (ed.) (1994), The Bakhtin Reader: Selected Writings of Bakhtin, Medvedev, Voloshinov. London: Edward Arnold. Ngwane, Z. (2002), 'Apartheid under education: schooling, initiation and domestic reproduction in post-apartheid rural South Africa', in P. Kallaway (ed.), The History of Education Under Apartheid 1948-1994. Cape Town: Pearson Education South Africa/Maskew Miller Longman, pp. 270-87. Ochs, E. (1979), 'Transcription as theory', in E. Ochs and B. Schiefflen (eds), Developmental Pragmatics. New York: Academic Press, pp. 43—72. Odendaal, A. (2003), The Story of an African Game: Black Cricket and the Unmasking of One of Cricket's Greatest Myths, South Africa 1850-2003. Cape Town: David Phillip. Pratt, M. L. (1991/1999), 'Arts of the contact zone', in D. Bartholomae and A. Petroksky (eds), Ways of Reading (5th edn). New York: Bedford/St Martins. Online at http://web.nwe.ufl.edu/-stripp/2504/pratt.html. Sinclair, J. and Coulthard, M. (1975), Towards an Analysis of Discourse: the English Used by Teachers and Pupils. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Volosinov/Bakhtin (1973), 'Marxism and the philosophy of language', in P. Morris (ed.), The Bakhtin Reader: Selected Writings of Bakhtin, Medvedev, Voloshinov. London: Edward Arnold, pp. 62—73. Wertsch, J. (1990), 'The voice of rationality in a socio-cultural approach to mind', in L. C. Moll (ed.), Instructional Implications and Applications of Sociohistorical Psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 111-26.
Notes 1. 2.
3.
4. 178
The student is Sipho (not his real name), an informant in Nomdo's chapter in this book. The image, taken by photographer Mike Hutchings, has since been reproduced in a collection of photographs entitled 'Moving in time: images of life in a democratic South Africa', edited by George Hallett, 2004, and published by KMM Review Publishing, Sandton. It is the last image in the book (p. 273). South Africa was host to the International Cricket Council's 'World Cup' competition in 2003. The event was an important part of the national 'coming out' to join the international sports community after decades of Apartheid rule. In a tutorial before this lecture, I had made copies of the series of
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5. 6. 7.
8.
9.
images available to students as resources for narrative constructions. They were asked to select at least three of the images, and sequence them to tell a story. We compared similarities and differences in narrative constructions. This was the only image that was not chosen at all. An Afrikaans word meaning 'powerful', now used ironically to signal a particular, unitary concept of power and authority, with connotations of the Apartheid state. This is derived from the Xhosa word for initiate. The singular is umkhweta, and the plural is abakhweta. In the interview with Robert, we spoke about this slip. He gave an alternative explanation for the slip, located in a poem about a young man arrested and taken away in a police van (kwelakwela) to the initiation lodge. It is important to elaborate on the faultlines of this diversity. The 15 students were fairly representative of the Humanities faculty in gender terms (11 women and four men). Ten of the students were 'black', broadly defined, with varying national identities and class positions, five of whom were 'coloured', one Indian. Of the five 'white' students, all except one (a Zambian) had gone to state high schools. Between them, they spoke English, Xhosa, Zulu, Shangaan, Setswana, and Afrikaans as primary languages. Most of the students are fully bi- or trilingual. For at least six of the students, religion played a central role in their lives. Three students (from Zambia, Botswana, Zimbabwe) were not South African. Some lecturers preferred not to have the invasive presence of the video camera in their lectures. Robert was comfortable with this invasion. In this foundation course, it is not unusual to have the lecture video-recorded, for tutor and student records.
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8
Identity, power and discourse: the socio-political self-representations of successful 'black' students Gideon Nomc/o
Introduction South Africa remains one of the most unequal societies in the world. International visitors only have to drive a short while from Cape Town Airport before getting a glimpse of the shanty town squalor in which many 'black' South Africans are forced to live. This picture changes drastically a few minutes later as visitors near the city centre, or the nearby up-market suburbs, driving home the sense of how manifest the social divide really is. For many of South Africa's poor, hope lies in the completion of their secondary education. This is an achievement in itself, since various domestic factors often prevent them from doing so. Although this landscape may suggest the idea of a typical 'black' student as impoverished and without educational resources, this is not always the case. There exists a high degree of diversity amongst 'black' students' educational experiences. While some students would have attended under-resourced schools with overcrowded classrooms, no electricity and hardly any teaching and learning aids, others would have attended schools where classrooms were extremely well resourced. Facilities at these schools often include swimming pools, computer laboratories and even gymnasiums. However, despite their experience of well-resourced schooling, many 'black' students still find that they are treated differently from their 'white' middle-class peers, or that they are even stigmatized as 'behind', since to tertiary educators they often represent something removed from the middleclass, English-speaking norm. In this chapter I trace the experiences of two successful 'black' African students, Sipho and Loyanda (not their real names), whose academic achievements have earned them the prestigious Mellon Mays 180
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Undergraduate Fellowship (MMUF) award at the University of Cape Town (UCT). The two students, who are both highly successful, come from different class positions. Their history shows that being 'black' and 'African' is not a homogeneous experience. In my analysis of these students' experiences a key tool is Bourdieu's notion of 'the different species of capital' at play in various 'fields', such as 'the artistic field, or the religious field, or the economic field' (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992: 98-9). I argue that the different forms of capital, gained in a variety of fields, that each student possesses upon entry into the University, contribute towards very different experiences of higher education. The concept of capital gives insight into the value systems and reward structures that operate within the lives of these students and within their home and educational environments. Following Bourdieu, I show that specific types of capital indeed smooth successful transitions into higher education. At the same time, my chapter attempts a relocation of Bourdieu's thinking to a particularly South African world of changing social structures, in which the initial absence of specific types of capital does not necessarily spell failure or reproduce 'existing patterns of domination' in society, the 'rigid determinisms' which Bourdieu's work so often 'has to report, no matter how he may dislike them' (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992: 80n). I attempt to describe a social world and an educational domain in which student agency and shifts in the valuation of especially embodied cultural capital may lead to a conversion of undervalued types of capital into gain. In this respect, I look at how an institutional initiative like the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Programme may contribute to 'sponsoring' students' awareness of the different types of capital they possess, and of themselves as agents in their own development. I suggest a new category of capital, 'collateral capital', to speak about the Fellowship students' awareness of their own potential. The way in which these students represent themselves in relation to the domains of school and university in which they act, and the people with whom they interact in these domains, form an integral part of my research. I suggest that the struggles they engage in for recognition of their capital, and the ways they see and represent themselves, seem to be an important motivating factor in their continuing success at university.
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The University of Cape Town-Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship The University of Cape Town-Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship collaboration was established in 2002 as part of the University's Equity Development process. The Fellowship's primary objective is to identify promising 'black' undergraduates and to encourage them via monetary and mentoring support structures to take up careers as academics. The most important activity sponsored by the Fellowship is a compulsory visit to the United States of America to attend a monthlong Summer Institute at Emory University in Atlanta, which brings together an elite selection of students of colour from various socioeconomic backgrounds. Here the five students from the University of Cape Town meet up with 28 American fellowship students. The Summer Institute is entitled 'Race and the Academy', and, as the title suggests, the themes of race and identity are looked at very closely as a way of preparing the students for particular experiences that they may encounter in their profession as future academics. In this way, the Fellowship plays an important role in prompting them to reflect on who they are and who they are becoming by emphasizing and affording value to their experiences of being 'black' (or a minority). The Fellowship programme motivates students and creates an environment in which discussions around morality, struggle, inspiration, pride, confidence, endurance, success and hope abound. In this way the Fellowship sets up an empowering structure that recognizes and rewards certain kinds of capital, promoting the intellectual value of the contributions made by young people of colour in academia. The Fellowship also provides participating students with a common identity, through and against which they shape their representations of themselves.
Methodology My role as the University-Fellowship Academic Coordinator allowed me access to a range of data acquired from students who applied and eventually were successful in their Fellowship application.1 As coordinator I accompanied the students to the Summer Institute in Atlanta, and was therefore well placed to collect data on this part of their activities. For the purposes of this chapter I made a strategic decision to select only two out of the five University of Cape Town Fellowship students as case studies. Since at least two of the five fellows selected in any year have to be South African (those from the Southern African 182
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Development Countries are also eligible), I elected to concentrate only on South African students, as this category would be a constant. The image I build up of the two students and my analysis of their representation of themselves are based extensively on reflective essays they submitted as part of the application process for the Fellowship, their curricula vitae, Fellowship research projects and prospectuses, and transcripts from their post-Atlanta interviews (conducted as part of the University's evaluation of the programme). Since these are all forms of data that were produced in relation to the Mellon Mays Fellowship, my analysis tends to foreground the way in which the Fellowship experience has shaped students' self-representations. Within this broad framework, I trace the paths these students follow based on their experiences within specific educational contexts, such as home, school, the University and particular disciplines within the University. The analysis offered, therefore, takes place within a particular South African framework in which socio-political, cultural and economic factors converge to create choices and opportunities (or cause a lack thereof) in the lives of these two students. Both students have read and commented on my representation of them in this chapter. My interrogation of the data shows a disparity in the kinds of capital that these students possess. It also reveals the types of identity constructions and academic practices (a term I elaborate on later in the chapter) these students engage in and the manner in which these contribute towards their academic success at the University.2 This allowed for an integrated assessment of the impact of their Atlanta experiences on their understandings of being 'black' South African students. Theoretical considerations As stated in the introduction, I derive my key theoretical tools from Bourdieu. In the first place, I draw on his definition of various types of capital, a convenient summary of which can be found in Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992). Bourdieu says that 'capital presents itself under three fundamental species (each with its subtypes), namely, economic capital, cultural capital, and social capital ... To these we must add symbolic capital ...' (p. 119). He sub-divides cultural capital, which 'we should in fact call informational capital to give the notion its full generality', into three categories, 'embodied, objectified, or institutionalized' (p. 119). Of particular importance for my discussion are embodied capital which, according to Carrington and Luke (1997), 'describes the skills, knowledges, practices (including linguistic practices) and inherent inclinations of the individual' (p. 102) and 183
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institutional capital, which describes 'the credentials offered by social institutions such as schools, universities, corporate institutions, the state, etc.' (p. 102). Economic capital, according to the same writers, 'refers to capital that is directly convertible to money and would describe cash holdings, property, investments, etc.' (p. 102), and Bourdieu describes social capital as 'the sum of the resources, actual or virtual, that accrue to an individual or a group by virtue of possessing a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition' (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992: 119). Symbolic capital is an 'overarching concept' (Carrington and Luke 1997: 102), which Bourdieu describes as 'the form that one or another of these species' of capital 'takes when it is grasped through categories of perception that recognize its specific logic' or, put more simply by Carrington and Luke, 'the social phenomenon of status and prestige which comes with an accumulation and recognition of other capital' (p. 102). Carrington and Luke (1997) point out that 'all these forms of symbolic capital - cultural, economic and social... - must be authorized, that is they must be acknowledged and in some way officially "deemed" to be of value. Capital is not capital unless it is recognized as such authoritatively in a particular social field' (p. 103). Another key tool in my analysis is Bourdieu's (1991) construction of the term 'habitus', which refers to 'a set of dispositions which incline agents to act and react in certain ways' (p. 12). Since a disposition (for example habits, likes, dislikes) is acquired through the socialization process, it tends to be long-lasting and 'persists through the life history of the individual' (p. 13) where it takes on a particular structure that comes to resemble the social context in which it was nurtured. Bourdieu argues that the habitus has a direct bearing on the way in which individuals are likely to act, think and view the world (p. 17). Bourdieu's concept of 'field', which is viewed in relation to habitus, is also important here: 'A field ... is a structured system of social positions - occupied either by individuals or institutions ... structured internally in terms of power relations' (Jenkins 1992: 85). Institutions such as the home and education can be construed as fields. Added to this is Bourdieu and Wacquant's (1992) description of power in terms of capital 'whose possession commands access to the specific profits that are at stake in the field ...' (p. 97). The application of capital is useful for understanding the nature of the Fellowship students' academic achievements. Bourdieu's identification of four types of capital can be used to describe the nature of the capital which these two students bring with them into the University setting. Furthermore, it sheds light on the degree to which their capital improves or constrains access to social practices within 184
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academia. This is important since Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992) assert that '... capital is what is efficacious in a given field, both as a weapon and as a stake of struggle ...' (p. 98). They continue by stating that 'players can play to increase or to conserve their capital... work to change the relative value of [their capital] ... and ... valorize the species of capital they preferentially possess ...' (p. 99). The metaphor of 'players' playing to 'increase' or 'conserve' their capital draws attention to an element of agency in Bourdieu's work which is important for this chapter, in that my analysis emphasizes student agency within their fields of interaction and in their representation of themselves. Since part of my focus is on individuals' experiences and performance within an academic institution, I also draw on theories of academic literacy, particularly Gee's (1990, 1996) location of literacy activities within specific modes of Discourse (with a capital 'D'), which articulates well with Bourdieu's notions of habitus and symbolic capital (see Alborough 2004). Gee's (1996) analysis of the term 'Discourse' illustrates the manner in which language, symbolic expressions and artefacts are intricately linked to produce meaning within specific contexts (pp. 128-35). In Gee's (1990) definition, 'Discourses are ways of behaving, interacting, valuing, thinking, believing, speaking, and often reading and writing that are accepted as instantiations of particular roles by specific groups of people ... They are always ... social' (p. xix) and involve 'more than language' (p. xv). Drawing on Gee's (1990) definition of Discourse, Barton and Hamilton's (2000) analysis of literacy practices concludes that different types of literacies exist within different 'domains' of life, such as home, school, workplace. They go on to claim that the different literacy practices that occur within these different domains mean that people participate in distinct 'discourse communities' (p. 11). The different discourse communities that people participate in are not always in harmony: as Gee (1990) says, 'the individual is the meeting point of historically constructed possibly clashing Discourses' (p. 132). I will draw on the above understandings of Discourse and domain since, combined with the notion of habitus, these concepts give an indication of the aptitude individuals possess for participating within a particular Discourse. Applying this understanding to the different Discourses that the two students produce is fruitful, in that it reveals the different ideological underpinnings of each student's social, economic and political locations. My focus on how the two students represent themselves through a variety of texts and conversations leads me to aspects of identity theory, particularly as they manifest themselves in academic literacy 185
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work. Though departing somewhat from more deterministic elements of Bourdieu's thinking, some aspects of identity theory are broadly compatible with Bourdieu's notion of the struggle that takes place between different fields of power and, within those, struggles by different players and groups for the recognition of different species of capital (see Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992: 76n). A view of identity construction such as that contained in Ivanic's (1998) statement that 'the self is implicated moment by moment not only in power but also in power struggle' (p. 13) also links generatively with Gee's sense of the individual as a meeting-point of potentially clashing Discourses. Ivanic's view of identity construction 'recognizes the possibility of struggle for alternative definitions' of the self, which go beyond merely recognizing dominant ideologies and the ways in which these ideologies exert influence over 'people's sense of themselves' (1998: 13). This concept of 'alternative definitions' makes it possible to get a better sense of how the Fellowship students in my research resist, internalize and reconstruct their perceptions of the dominant discourses (academic success; 'black' empowerment; socio-economic status) in which they are immersed. Furthermore, the constructs of language, literacy and writing represent various forms of social action in which 'power struggles' for identifying the 'self become evident (Ivanic 1998: 13). In a similar fashion, Luke (1996) argues for the inclusion of 'a sociological theory of power, conflict and difference ... to ... account for why and how some discourses, knowledges and texts "count" more than others' (p. 312). These power struggles become what Honess and Yardley (in Ivanic 1998: 16) refer to as 'critical experiences' (for example, entering school or university for the first time). The nature of the critical experience is such that it impacts decisively on the way in which one begins to view oneself in a particular context and in relation to others around a particular event. As such, critical experiences are related to the contexts in which they occur and act as important signifiers of facets of an individual's identity. I have applied the concept of 'critical experiences' in this study for two reasons: firstly, it has provided a framework for analysing the particular experiences that these students have elected to dwell on in their self-representations. Their framing of the texts they have placed at my disposal is both strategic and political since it involves the rendering of a particular sense of how they view themselves, which may be in conflict with the way others view them. What is revealed, therefore, is a representation of identity that exists alongside and sometimes in contradiction with other identities. Secondly, my own selection and interpretation of these selected texts has enabled me to link various critical experience episodes in these students' lives to the 186
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continuity they display in their written and oral constructions of themselves. In the next section I shall begin to build up an image of the two Fellowship students and their environments, before moving on to an analysis of their self-representations. The students Loyanda was born in Gauteng (Johannesburg) in 1980 and grew up in an upwardly mobile urban environment. Her father is a successful businessman and her mother has a professional career. She matriculated from a private school, received various certificates in English proficiency and starred as an actress in a television drama series in South Africa, before spending a year in the United Kingdom. In 2000 she registered at the University of Cape Town for a BA (Law and Humanities). Since then she has made the Dean's merit list thrice. Loyanda graduated at the end of 2002 and was awarded her undergraduate degree with distinction. In 2002 she also won a writing prize, received a scholarship, came fourth in the preliminary rounds of a University Human Rights Moot Competition and was invited to act as guest lecturer in an undergraduate Linguistics course. In 2004 she graduated cum laude with a Law (LLB) degree and at the end of that year she was awarded a Rhodes 'SA-at-large Scholar Elect' scholarship, which she will take up at Oxford University in 2005 where she will pursue postgraduate research in the area of socio-legal studies. The second student, Sipho, was born in 1975 in King Williamstown in the Eastern Cape. He spent the first ten days of his life in a township where his father worked as a labourer. From there the family moved to a nearby township but did not have fixed accommodation. In 1979 they settled into a new township called Pagamesa, where Sipho experienced all his schooling. He first registered at the University of Cape Town as a Commerce student in 1995, but after an unsuccessful start he left the University, but returned later to study Drama. As a Drama student Sipho was selected to perform as a praise poet before hundreds of first-year students. He has also been selected to perform alongside professional casts on numerous occasions under the directorship of his mentor. He directed a production which was presented at two International Students' Festivals, one in Brno in the Czech Republic, which received an award for the best performance, and the other in Amsterdam in the Netherlands. He graduated at the end of 2003 as one of the first two 'black' students ever to graduate from that specific Drama stream (Mentor's progress report, 2003). In 2004 he took a break from his studies to gain experience in the entertainment industry, where he appeared briefly in a local South 187
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African television soap opera called Backstage, which is based on the lives of students attending an Arts and Performance school. He also appeared in a television advertisement during this time. In 2005 he took his extremely entertaining one-man play entitled Waiting for Thandiwe on the road. The play deals with his first encounters at the University and is currently being performed in front of various university audiences. Important sites and procedures of exchange: the ambiguous nature of success In this section I will examine how the different types of capital play themselves out in the different domains that Sipho and Loyanda move through. The scarcity or abundance of the different types of capital each possesses will be assessed in terms of the impact of each type of capital on the attitudes and perceptions that the students develop about themselves and others in these various settings. This type of assessment involves paying particular attention to the students' critical engagements with experiences of race, class, mentorship and language. The sub-sections presented here deal separately with each of the aforementioned concepts, illustrating the extent to which these concepts act as identity markers, as well as how they impact on their experiences of being 'black'. The first sub-section on race acts as a platform for the other sub-sections, and provides insight into how Sipho and Loyanda position themselves ideologically as 'black' South Africans. The analysis of these concepts occurs specifically within the domains of home, school and university, so as to provide a more systematic understanding of the motivations and constraints at play behind the two students' educational progression.
Problematizing 'blackness': T and 'we'
A preliminary reading of the data shows that the two students' explorations of identity, of what it means to be 'black' within the current South African context, stand in stark contrast. The following two extracts reveal a difference of opinion between Loyanda and Sipho's responses to the strong emphasis that was placed on race at the Summer Institute in Atlanta, where students tended to stereotype and generalize the 'black' experience. Loyanda felt the need to step outside this tendency and opted to be critical of the victim position in which other students were placing themselves. She says: 188
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It's not like we denied the fact that we are part of a bigger group and the fact that we are 'black'. For people like us, there's this whole like blackness, power to the people thing, that is just a bit much, you know. (Interview, November 2002)
Sipho, on the other hand, identified strongly with the communal 'black' experiences of struggle that the Institute foregrounded: 'the Institute is orientated towards "black" people and I don't think someone should be ashamed because it's our reality, we are talking about imbalances' (Interview, November 2002).
The differences between these students' experiences of being 'black' are made more apparent in the following two extracts where strong ideological clashes begin to emerge, with Loyanda adopting a strong individualistic stance in contrast to Sipho's community-based orientation. The first extract captures Loyanda's response to the debate that ensued at the Atlanta Summer Institute regarding the way in which she viewed being a 'black' South African. An attempt at claiming her middle-class status and alignment seems to emerge here: We [Loyanda and another student from UCT] described ourselves as individualists. We denned it differently from what other people would have interpreted it as, we were individualists in the sense that when we do things, we do it for ourselves, we want to improve ourselves, we want to better ourselves and put ourselves in good positions so that we can help people. You can't just change black people's minds, you have to change white people's minds as well. (Interview, November 2002)
Sipho, writing from the perspective of a 'black' artist, locates himself in the following way: artists have to break free from the romantic notion of individuality as the essence of the artist's creative impulse and recognize that art is a profession that has to fulfill a social role. They need to be made to understand that over indulgence in individuality is a social escape and a reflection of excessive ego. (Application essay, February 2002)
The students share the objective of wanting to effect positive change in South Africa, but with differences in their ideological perspectives. Loyanda directs her efforts at changing the mindsets of both 'white' and 'black' South Africans, and opts to do so from a position of power, in which her status as a 'black' intellectual will be recognized. For her, negotiating for change is futile without the appropriate credentials with which to do so. However, the way in which 'black' people generally are represented in society remains important to Loyanda, and 189
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forms the core of her Fellowship research project, entitled 'Representations of the idea of Africa: rediscovering the ordinary'. Her research attempts to locate 'a sense of the everyday' in a world which has tended to 'incorrectly label and misrepresent black African realities' by making use of extreme representations (Fellowship prospectus, June 2002). Her interest in ordinary 'black' realities is significant since it contradicts the strong individualistic stance she adopts earlier on. In her earlier statements 'for people like us, there's this whole blackness, power to the people thing, that is just a bit much, you know' and 'We described ourselves as individualists', she indicates the problem she has with simply being grouped with the 'black' masses. She feels the need to position herself critically in relation to generalizations of the 'black' socio-political and socio-economic experience. Judging by her achievements, Loyanda is anything but ordinary. However, her individualistic self-representation and her research interest in the representation of the 'ordinary' and 'everyday' in 'black' Africans' experience seem to indicate different and somewhat contradictory 'sites of struggle' in her sense of herself (McKinney and van Pletzen 2004: 161). Sipho, on the other hand, operates within a particular context of 'black' social consciousness, and speaks predominantly to a 'black' audience. He calls to account those who are not living up to the ideals of the liberation struggle. Majoring in Drama and Performance, his Fellowship project, entitled 'The outdoor theatre project: taking theatre to the streets', deals with issues of accessibility to theatre and argues for a reconceptualization of 'traditional theatre space' in which he tries to bridge the gap between the 'black' masses and audience participation in theatre (Fellowship prospectus, June 2002). In the comments above, both these students confront the picture of 'black' people as poor, struggling and somehow unsuccessful. Their research projects allow them to work through some of the conflicts of being 'black' and successful. The need to grapple with their success seems to occur for no other reason than that they are 'black' - had they been 'white', I wish to surmise, these issues would not have arisen. This prompts important questions about the levels of expectation prevailing in institutions where 'white' achievement is regarded as the norm. It also raises questions about the nature of successful 'apprenticeship' (Gee 1996: 139) into university practices. Economics of class
In this subsection, it will become apparent that these two students' different ideological orientations towards race relate to their class 190
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positions. In terms of economic capital, Sipho's background of poverty stands in stark contrast to Loyanda's affluent upbringing. It becomes clear that the extent of their economic capital has affected their transition into and progress through the educational field. It also impacts on the way in which they present themselves. Sipho refers to the embarrassment he suffered due to his mother 'selling at the township school's gates' and the shame he felt because she did not have a 'respectable' career such as 'a teacher or a nurse' (Interview, 28 July 2003). He recalls instances in his township schooling when he thought about playing truant but quickly reconsidered when his mother said: 'You'll end up digging the road while the sun is damn h o t . . . the way that father lived his life' (Proposal for final year production, August 2003). Sipho was, therefore, constantly confronted with this negative image of the type of work his father did and used it as a reminder of what he did not want to become. It is interesting to note that Sipho's narrative here presents an inversion of the community-based 'we' stance that he later champions. Sipho's lack of economic capital was the driving force behind his decision to do a Commerce degree, but also at the root of his initial failure at university. His choice of discipline is clearly aspirational, but it does not interest him, and even causes distress: he says of his experience when he first arrived at the University of Cape Town: 'It was all about getting a degree for a better job, there was an irrelevance in what I was studying' (Interview, 28 July 2003) and 'I remember my first two weeks, in my room, I went to cry, every day, every day, it was painful, you know' (Interview, November 2002). Sipho, then, is torn between taking a degree which could lead to viable employment, and studying something which he would enjoy and find more meaningful (but would also be far less lucrative with little job security), namely Drama (which he does take up a few years later). During his first two years in the Commerce faculty he failed most of his courses, blaming his poor performance on a township schooling system that poorly prepared him for commercial studies at university (Interview, November 2002). The decision to leave the University at that stage was, therefore, partly forced upon him by the institution, as he was unlikely to graduate within the required time. This situation was also exacerbated by his study loans, on which he was totally dependent - by 2003 he was heavily in debt. Sipho's access to other forms of capital at the University is profoundly limited by his class position. His sense of irrelevance, despair and eventual failure attests to this. Even though he is admitted to study at a middle-class institution such as the University of Cape Town, he initially does not have access to its established and recognized 'social 191
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networks and acquaintances' (Luke 1996: 330). This, in part, frustrates his desire to ensure future economic capital through studying Commerce. Nor does his cultural capital have currency, as can be seen in his comments about the shortcomings of his township schooling. True access to the institution is dependent on social capital and the possibility of converting embodied cultural capital into symbolic capital, that is, capital earning one recognition in a field, in this case, higher education. During his interview, Sipho makes apparent the pressure that 'black' working-class students experience at an institution like the University of Cape Town, and the tension created among 'black' students by imbalances in economic capital and unequal class structures (italics are mine): The economic factor is very alienating, that's the worst part of all. I still experience a tension between those who grew up in the townships and those who grew up in the suburbs, meaning between working-class and middle-class black students. For them middle-class 'black' people, they say we're making them feel like they didn't struggle, but I'm still in the township, not like I was, for me the township is not was, it is. The middle-class people benefit on the name of being 'black' ... (Interview, 28 July 2003)
Sipho personalizes his frustration about the 'black' class divide when he comments on Loyanda's Fellowship research presentation (entitled 'Representations of the idea of Africa: rediscovering the ordinary'): 'you cannot critique poor black people for representing themselves the way they do because it's all they know' (Interview, 28 July 2003). Sipho does not acknowledge that Loyanda's research presented a critique of the inaccurate manner in which the Western media and contemporary African writers present Africa. Instead, he tended to focus on and identify with the harsh depictions of poverty and strife being critiqued by Loyanda. Unlike Sipho, Loyanda was not saddled with monetary problems. When she reflects on her 'black' middle-class upbringing she traces her aptitude for studying back to 'a collaboration of support structures' at home which enabled her to collect valuable social capital. These range from her father taking the time to 'engage her in critical discussion' and her college-educated mother informing her about the importance of being independent and having 'ambition and initiative' (Application essay, February 2002). By acknowledging these social support networks, Loyanda's narrative slightly underplays her earlier emphasis on individual achievement. Loyanda's access to economic capital presented her with the 192
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luxury of choice and supported her accumulation of all other types of capital. She received excellent schooling and engaged in a variety of academic and social activities in the process. As a result she had a wide variety of skills, linguistic competencies and types of knowledge (embodied cultural capital) under her belt by the time she arrived at the University. The certification (institutional cultural capital) that accompanied her embodied cultural capital confirmed and authorized the competencies she professed to have. Drawing on Bourdieu (1986: 248), Luke (1996) emphasizes this point when he says that embodied cultural capital has much more of an 'exchange value' if such capital is accompanied by recognized documentation or proof (p. 328). On her arrival at the University, therefore, Loyanda possessed sufficient amounts of all types of capital, and had been granted honour in the form of 'credit... a kind of advance, a credence' (Bourdieu 1990: 120) with which to accumulate gain. In contrast to Sipho's experience, she states: 'I had perceived university as a challenge to overcome but found, instead, that it was merely an opportunity for me to shine' (Application essay, February 2002). And unlike the monetary complications experienced by Sipho, Loyanda was loan-free and in addition was the recipient of some financial aid. A strong sense of apprehension on Sipho's side, and enthusiasm with clarity of focus on Loyanda's, begins to emerge from the statements made by these two students. Sipho places economic and political factors as central concerns while Loyanda wishes to demonstrate her individual intellectual and academic capabilities. The economic factor reinforces the fundamental difference that has emerged between these two students, namely, that Loyanda possesses an abundance of the relevant capital needed for academic success, while Sipho is continually confronted with a scarcity of the desired capital, and as a result is embroiled in a struggle to survive. Class, in their case, is an identity marker that clearly structures their different experiences of being 'black'. I would argue that critical experiences such as growing up 'black' in racially divided South Africa, attending under-resourced township schools and living in a one- or two-roomed shack as a family of six may severely restrict one's choices and one's way of thinking about oneself. However, I would also like to show that both students in my research displayed various forms of agency, each in their own way entering into a struggle with oppressive structures. In Sipho's case lack of economic capital is definitely a limiting factor. However, he does display agency in a number of ways, such as taking a decision to continue with his schooling as long as the opportunity to do so was available, and to persevere, despite having 193
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great odds stacked against him. An example of the latter can be seen when he comments on the impact of political unrest on his schooling during his matriculation year (1994), where there was no choice in the matter but to abide by mass decision. He states of his final school year: 'We didn't go to school half the year, we didn't even know when we were coming back' (Interview, 28 July 2003). Furthermore, during these years of unrest Sipho acquired the Discourse of political struggle. As I shall show, these struggle literacies become a resource and give Sipho agency in an artistic-educational field, that of being a Drama student at the University of Cape Town. Another form of agency is his desire to establish relationships with others at the institution that share similar capital (i.e. cultural and social capital): when he first arrived at university, Sipho sought out other Xhosa speakers. Research conducted by Kapp and Bangeni (2002) among a group of 'black' University of Cape Town students shows that the tendency to establish relationships with those who share similar capital is not uniform. Their findings reveal that the majority of 'black' students who come from poorer communities seek to redefine themselves in a conscious attempt to escape their homegrown identities. The underlying assumption is that their home-grown identities limit their acceptance and assimilation into the University community. In Thesen (1997), an informant, Robert, points out that 'lying' about where one comes from is used as a last resort to escape the unfair and often discriminatory labelling practices that one may be exposed to within the institution (p. 497). According to Thesen it becomes a strategy for survival forced upon 'black' rural students whose habitus is stigmatized. Thesen goes on to say that 'black' rural students' acknowledgement of their origins only takes place once they have successfully acclimatized to their new surroundings and when they are feeling less threatened by the identities that others (e.g. family and university) wish to impose on them. In seeking out Xhosaspeaking students, therefore, Sipho acknowledges his origins, a move that strengthens his sense of 'belonging' and that supports him especially once he makes his shift from Commerce to Drama, the point at which he starts to draw creative sustenance from his class and cultural origins and convert his previously unrecognized social and cultural habitus into symbolic capital. At this point he has arrived at a stage where he can articulate his sense of solidarity with his origins quite plainly: 'I don't think of myself as someone from now, I think of myself as a continuation of people' (Interview, 28 July 2003). Although favoured much more by economic, social and cultural structures, Loyanda also displays forms of agency, for instance when as a 'black', female, South African student she takes an individual 194
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stance and steps outside the stereotypical mould of 'black' victimhood. At the same time, however, she is not blinded by her middle-class status: being 'black' allows her to see outside of the class and economic privileges that she has received. This is where her transformative agenda is most apparent. Through her interest in Law she plans to specialize in postcolonial socio-legal studies. Her research is aimed at examining how postcolonial culture has influenced African legal philosophy and legal systems. She seeks to demystify a complex legal Discourse to make it more accessible to the mostly impoverished and disempowered African population of South Africa (Fulbright Scholarship application, 2004). This desire to give something back to society by benefiting especially those from lower social classes represents another strong display of agency.
Mentorship: recognition of need Sipho and Loyanda's class locations offer important insights into their scholastic experiences, particularly in terms of the role models they choose. In the domain of school, Sipho does not refer to any particular teacher who acted as his mentor, but he does state that the teachers who 'performed' and used 'entertainment' in teaching 'inspired' him and reinforced the oral tradition of his cultural identity (Interview, November 2002). The embodied cultural capital which Sipho accumulates at school is therefore quite high because of his strong socialization into traditional African forms at school. Sipho states that his ideal role models while he attended school were (and still are) Chris Hani and Steve Biko3, whom he describes as those 'who stood against an angry wind' (Interview, 28 July 2003). Sipho's habitus has a distinctly political orientation. His disposition towards traditional African forms and his political orientation are both aspects of his habitus that he improvises on later when he composes and performs the experiences of 'black' students entering the University. Loyanda's role models during her schooling were her parents, as mentioned before, and her Grade 12 English teacher. She describes her parents as always being very supportive of her and the interest that her Grade 12 English teacher took in her progress at school, where she was the only 'black' pupil in her class, as being a turning point in her life (Application essay, February 2002). She writes of this teacher: She may not have known it but she changed my outlook on education. She awoke me to the impact a good teacher can have on a student [and] changed my perception of what I was capable of.
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Armed with the positive beginnings I possessed, UCT presented an opportunity for me to excel.
Their critical experiences at school impact strongly on the two students' opportunities and structures of mentorship at university. They arrive at the University of Gape Town with very different forms and levels of capital, especially in terms of their embodied cultural capital, which comprises skills, knowledge and dispositions learned through the socialization process (Luke 1996: 328). Loyanda's considerable capital of all kinds is easily recognized, and she describes one of her English lecturers as being 'more than just a lecturer or supervisor but a mentor and a friend' (Application essay, February 2002). This signals a continuation of the relationship she had with her grade 12 English teacher, a continuity of mentorship that confirms her status as someone who possesses potential. Recognition of Sipho's potential takes longer to come through, and it is only once he starts studying Drama that his capital becomes visible: in an artistic educational field, his habitus (being African, the experience of growing up poor, his political knowledge of the struggle against Apartheid and his overall ideological orientation) becomes a reservoir of creativity. These knowledges and dispositions become forms of symbolic capital in Drama, whereas they hindered him in his studies of Commerce, and even History, as I shall show at a later stage when I discuss Sipho's writing practices in particular academic disciplines. Even his lack of economic capital contributes to his 'dramatic' capital in that he can dramatize it (it contributes to the identity of the politicized, struggling, 'black' artist). In his new field of study, Sipho receives recognition and strong mentorship. He even becomes more strategic and less idealistic, choosing both a 'white' and a 'black' mentor for the different areas in which he needs sponsorship. His main mentor is 'white', male, and an associate professor in the Drama department. He is described by Sipho as someone who takes a 'real interest in theatre, since it is not a very profitable business to be in' (Interview, 28 July 2003). The 'white' academic mentor does not share Sipho's capital but is in a position to assist Sipho in gaining recognition for his capital through their collaborations on various productions in and outside the University. Sipho couples his 'white' academic mentor's production experience with the knowledge of a 'black' African artist mentor, whom he claims is 'someone who understands me, where I come from, who can discuss things ...' (Interview, 28 July 2003). Sipho and his 'black' mentor share the same capital and their interactions enable Sipho to confirm his own ideological agendas. Through sharing ideas with his 'black' 196
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mentor Sipho is able to process the ways in which he relays stories of the 'black experience' through performance. Sipho, therefore, is using his cultural capital (his first-hand knowledge and experience of African tradition) and even his experience of lacking economic capital in a constructive way through his choice of mentors. The recognition that Sipho gains through performance affords him social capital, since it strengthens his social networks in the field (including structures of mentorship) and gives him the opportunity to add value to his cultural capital. Such social capital, upon receiving recognition within the University, translates into symbolic capital (Luke 1996: 329). What is apparent from the above is that in some disciplines or areas of study (Commerce) Sipho's habitus is dubious and undervalued by the institution. But in a creative discipline like Drama he can connect with his experiences of being 'black' in an affirming manner. Like Loyanda, Sipho also seeks some form of continuation with his prior experiences, but has to work much harder at securing these connections. Language as capital: the spoken and written word Th emerges as a key factor in the way that these students represent themselves. Loyanda's private schooling, where English was the primary language of instruction, provided her with a fluency in both spoken and written English, in addition to her fluency in Zulu and Sotho. She obtained an 'A' symbol for English as first language in her final grade 12 (matriculation) examination and an award for excellence in Speech and Drama. This, together with the English proficiency awards she received, allowed her to enter university with a high degree of linguistic capital, which forms part of embodied cultural capital. Xhosa was the primary language of instruction at Sipho's township school and he recalls that teachers used Xhosa also to facilitate the teaching of English and Afrikaans lessons. He obtained a 'C' symbol for English as a second language in the final grade 12 examinations. In an interview he reflects on the way in which English, with all its colonial connotations, came to be 'glorified' in the townships, a factor which has come to anger him (28 July 2003). His early political orientation reinforced his negative attitude towards the use of English. This position severely impacted on his progress at university where English is the medium of instruction (except for some language courses). Sipho's negative disposition towards the use of English has a direct bearing on whom he chose to socialize with in the University's multilingual settings: when he first came to university he was more T97
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comfortable with Xhosa speakers and found it difficult to mix with English speakers (Interview, 28 July 2003). The language issue is crucial here, since Sipho's status as an English second-language student meant that he entered the University's teaching and learning environment at an obvious disadvantage. Sipho's feelings of inadequacy about expressing himself academically surface quite drastically at the Summer Institute in Atlanta. He remembers feeling very intimidated by his American peers because they were 'very eloquent', while he found it difficult to articulate his points: 'I had these issues about language and ... because of this language thing, sometimes you find that people never get to express themselves' (Interview, November 2002). Sipho's lack of embodied cultural capital (in terms of English proficiency), which is related to his working-class status, leaves him with no choice 'but to opt for the broken forms of a borrowed and clumsy language or to escape into abstention and silence' (Bourdieu 1991: 83). In contrast, Loyanda's experience at the Summer Institute was positive. She states: 'I did get some comments about the way I speak, like, oh you sound so English ... because you don't speak South African English anyway, you speak British English ...' (Interview, November 2002). Here it is useful to draw on Bourdieu's (1991) analysis of 'linguistic utterances' which he identifies as a 'practice', practice here being the 'product of the relation between' the habitus and the context with which it interacts (p. 17). Loyanda's linguistic habitus has adequately prepared her for speaking in an academic context. In other words, there is a high degree of congruence between her linguistic habitus and the field in which it occurs, resulting in a form of recognition from her peers. If we follow Bourdieu's analysis to its logical conclusion, in Sipho's case the lack of congruence between his linguistic habitus and the academic context of the Institute literally left him at a loss for words. The highlighting of Loyanda's accent is an important indicator of the difference in habitus between her and Sipho. Bourdieu asserts that the difference in accents between different socio-economic classes reflects 'the socially structured character of the habitus' (1991: 17). Accents, therefore, act as cues for the social location and linguistic capacity of the speaker in which linguistic capital acts as a signal of the degree of access that the individual has to other forms of capital. Here we are reminded that the determining value awarded by a group or institution to any kind of capital is contingent on the group's 'recognition' of that capital before it can be granted 'legitimacy' (Bourdieu 1991: 72-3 and 106). The area of academic writing in English, and in the disciplines, is another site of exchange in which students' capital is either validated 198
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or found wanting. Conventions of academic writing in the disciplines act as gatekeepers that reward conformity to recognized academic writing practice. This is clearly apparent in Loyanda's case, who describes her entry into the prescribed conventions of academic writing as follows: 'lecturers who came in contact with my work were impressed with my standard of academic writing and enquiry' (Application essay, February 2002). The ease with which Loyanda is able to make the transition into academic writing is striking. In Atlanta, for example, while Sipho was struggling to construct his Fellowship prospectus, Loyanda, in addition to writing up her prospectus, was preparing to submit a paper to the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Journal (it was later accepted and published). Her knowledge and control of academic Discourse has empowered her with what Peirce (1995) refers to as 'a right to speak' (p. 25). Her aptitude for achieving success marks her as an extraordinary 'black' student and may well stem from her location in a financially sound, emotionally secure and intellectually stimulating environment. For her the conventions of university life were in many ways an extension of school Discourse: in this respect, Loyanda has a head start, in that her home environment and class position 'filter aspects of valued secondary Discourses' into her early 'socialization' (Gee 1996: 138). The conventions of university had an air of familiarity that allowed for the way in which she wished to be seen, namely, as a competent, articulate and competitive individual. Sipho's lack of required linguistic capital marks his transition into the technical demands of academic writing as a struggle. Unlike Loyanda, Sipho lacked the English proficiency to fully express himself through his writing and was unable to 'command reception' (Peirce 1995: 24) of those lecturers for whom he wrote. In one instance he refers to the History courses he took as 'having too much rules' when it came to writing (Interview, 28 July 2003). He describes lecturer expectations in formal academic writing as follows: it's not about what you think, like you as a lecturer you just want to know how much I've read and how much I've used what I read. I'm always thinking, I must make sure I get something from this book, and you never get to express yourself. When you write you are not expected to come from your home. I remember most comments I got for my essays was like 'why do you always have to be political about things?'. (Interview session, 28 July 2003)
The statement that writing at the University is not supposed to come 'from your home' is poignant here: home here bears the meaning of habitus, as well as of an undervalued discourse community. Sipho, 199
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furthermore, states that it is difficult for him not to be political when writing about History since it is the central lens through which he views the world. He has a strong need to signal where his group allegiances lie. Of note here is that institutional values, prescriptive by nature, are inscribed in classroom practices. These prescriptions may lead to conflict, a clash of Discourses in Gee's terms (1996), a clash between what individuals wish to bring to the learning process and the limits placed on them by the conventions of the disciplines in which they participate (see Thesen's 1997 exploration of 'black' students' writing and their identities for useful insight into this). This clash of Discourses could lead to individuals questioning the validity of their habitus. But it could also lead to resistance and critique, of the kind that Gee (1996) describes when he says that 'people who are somewhat marginal to a Discourse or a culture' often 'have insights into the workings of these Discourses or cultures that more mainstream members do not' (p. 140). In this respect Sipho's humorous dramatic improvisations often represent a form of critique of dominant Discourses, and he, more than Loyanda, becomes the type of student Gee describes as 'mushfaking, resisting ... full of metaknowledge', the result of 'politicize[d]' teaching (p. 148). Linking the above discussion to Bourdieu's thinking, one becomes aware that the tension between resisting and conforming to the conventions of institutional Discourses is therefore also in part a response to the scarcity or abundance of capital that students have. Therefore, in contrast to his inability to 'command reception' (Peirce 1995: 24) through his writing in, for instance, History, Sipho speaks positively of his writing and performance in Drama: I try to create a new form, even to recreate my own self because I feel I've been clouded by other things. There's a lot of things I need to unlearn. Writing actually gives me that opportunity. The pen, I don't use it that much, I use it in point form, this is the situation Drama gives me the physical ability to recreate myself, for example, playing somebody else that I'm not everyday but that I might be inside ... (Interview, 28 July 2003)
The tendency to locate oneself more firmly within specific communities of Discourse (Barton and Hamilton 2000: 11) is illustrated by Sipho's preference for Drama. The practical and exploratory nature of the Drama courses allows him to engage in a form of academic practice where the process of capturing ideas in writing is secondary to the experience of translating that writing into performance. Banning (2002) comments that 'the greater emphasis on spoken forms' in 200
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dramatic Discourse has led to a general perception among Drama students that formally written academic texts are far 'less relevant' (p. 8) and that performance is a 'discourse whose practices are premised on the values of the innovative, the irrational, and the unpredictable' (p. 13). These are some of the 'rules' of writing and performing dramatic Discourse that connect with Sipho's habitus and embodied cultural capital. This connection also echoes Gee's (1996) notion that reading and writing intersect with social interactions, involving the distribution of 'goods', where 'goods' refers to that which is 'beneficial to have or harmful not to have' (p. 21). Sipho's enthusiasm for recreating himself (and therefore learning) through this kind of exploratory writing can probably be traced back to his schooling, where teachers used innovative methods to compensate for the lack of resources available. Sipho states about his schooling that 'The rules were being broken, but in a very nice, constructive way' (Interview, 28 July 2003). Sipho himself compensates for his lack of social and symbolic capital by 'investing' in a type of Discourse that allows him the freedom to explore the relationship between his multiple identities (as a Drama student, actor, poet, activist, working-class 'black' South African, Xhosa first-language speaker) and the 'changing social world' (Peirce 1995: 17-18). Through the discipline of Drama, he, too, has developed 'a right to speak' and in doing so, 'commands reception' (Peirce 1995).
The Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship: investing in being 'special7 There is a strong sense of coherence and continuity in Loyanda and Sipho's self-representation. This display of unity and continuity, however, is not arbitrary, but can be explained in terms of how Sipho and Loyanda have vested in particular contexts. These contexts have enabled them to create specific lenses which have influenced the way in which they engage in reflective practice. Rattansi (1999) states that 'Individuals have different degrees of investment in particular identities which have effectiveness over a number of contexts' (p. 101). McKinney and van Pletzen (2004) paraphrase this statement by Rattansi quite aptly when they state that identity 'is anchored ... in particular discourses and positions' (p. 161). It is my contention that certain expressions of unity and continuity evident in these students' self-representation are brought about by the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship, which provides a discourse community through and against which students formulate 201
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their identities as promising and successful 'black' students. Their investment in the Fellowship experience allows for some sort of validation of the purpose each pursues. One of the objectives of the Fellowship is to make these students feel special and worthy, and this makes it possible for Loyanda and Sipho to reflect in an aspirational way on their intellectual journeys, reconstructing even their earliest experiences as success, and projecting an image of motivation and future success. Loyanda for instance says in her application essay (February 2002): My sister has always supported me in my sometimes seemingly unrealistic dreams, two teachers inspired me. One always told me how bright and charming I was and how he knew I was going to make it far. Another showed that she had faith that a 'black' student could get an 'A' for English. I did ...
In her post-Atlanta interview (November 2002) she comments on the 'cream of the crop' label that the fellowship students have been given, and adds: 'This is cool, this is what I want to do. At least I'm making a difference and I'm doing something positive. You need revolutionaries. I'm definitely getting my PhD'. Sipho expresses this feeling of being 'special' much more explicitly: My mother was so excited when one of my teachers told her 'look after that boy, there's something there'. There's a sense of greatness I feel about myself, having risen from poverty stretches ... In those situations one thing that pulled me through was that sense of greatness, there's something, something great in store for me. (Interview, 28 July 2003)
And This hunger, you know, I want to be good — it drives me all the time. We were chosen because of the potential we show. I acknowledge my potential, but I know there is some other guy who could be in this position. But I think we were chosen because of our special qualities that people who were choosing [us] were looking [for] ... (Interview, November 2002)
This sense of 'being special' and having a special function in the world (a cornerstone of the Mellon Mays philosophy) becomes manifest in Loyanda and Sipho's lives and informs the types of practices they engage in. I regard this feeling of 'being special' as an extremely valuable aspect of these students' representation of themselves. In so much as I wish to stress the importance of this aspect in relation to the different types of capital Loyanda and Sipho possess, I have coined the 202
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term 'collateral capital', a kind of capital that I would argue stems from a special type of agency which originates in a subconscious sense of worth, providing positive affirmation of identity. Simply stated, it provides Sipho and Loyanda with a sense of knowing. Such capital is strengthened through mentorship and self-reflection, and becomes a 'surety' or 'security' of future success that the individual carries into new experiences. Empowering initiatives like the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship enormously increase the value of collateral capital in that they offer a strong pledge or guarantee of success to award-holders and make conscious the sense of 'being special'. I would argue that collateral capital grows as other forms of capital are strengthened, and in this respect an initiative like the Fellowship also plays a role in that it bestows economic capital (through its monetary award system) and provides entry into a system of social networks, thereby increasing award-holders' social capital. The Fellowship also functions as a legitimizing body which powerfully recognizes award-holders' embodied cultural capital, converting it into symbolic capital. Thus strengthened and made conscious, collateral capital leads to the development of a powerful metalanguage of success. In this, the Fellowship is also an enabling mechanism, creating a discourse community within which award-holders have the opportunity to reflect consciously on the critical experiences that have shaped them and to consider their future development. I would argue that it is collateral capital, strengthened through the Fellowship experience, that makes Loyanda and Sipho, despite their differences in social location and ideological orientation, draw from a shared pool of knowledge, that of their excellence and chances of future success. Conclusion The discussion above illustrates the complexities involved in trying to understand 'black' South African students' experiences today. In this respect Bourdieu's notions of capital has been a useful tool for highlighting the diversity in race, class and language experiences of a group of students who are all too often perceived and treated as a homogenous group in higher education. In the second place this chapter has attempted to apply Bourdieu's social theory to South African realities of rapid change. My research has led me to the belief that students' habitus, the recognized and misrecognized capital they carry, should form a vital part of the bargaining process within the classroom, where the worth of that capital should be constantly negotiated. Educational institutions such 203
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as the University of Cape Town should strive to be centres where it is possible for various types of capital to be recognized, exchanged and converted into gain. This exchange should be reciprocal in nature so as to inform curriculum development initiatives and to enrich students' perceptions of each other. The institution's recognition of the worthiness of such capital signals the worthiness of the student. Students' experience of the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship outlined in this chapter certainly confirms this position. The forms of self-representation and the literacy practices that the two students engage in are reflective of the diverse socio-economic and political contexts in which critical learning experiences unfold in South Africa. The Fellowship provides a space in which students can explore constructions of their past, present and future selves, and in which they can reflect on different ideological orientations towards being 'black', both in South Africa and in the wider world. Their experience under the empowering auspices of the Fellowship also creates awareness of the clash of discourses that inevitably plays out in individuals and institutions, and may offer ways of accommodating, critiquing or resisting such clashes in generative ways. My final point is that institutions would benefit by more initiatives such as the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Programme. As 'black' enrolment figures rise at tertiary institutions in South Africa it is becoming increasingly necessary to complement this process with competent 'black' teaching staff that are able to speak to the experiences of 'black' students in a multicultural and multilingual setting. The University of Cape Town-Mellon Mays collaboration and its inherent Discourse of empowerment presents an opportunity in which possibilities for change and transformation can be explored. Participation in this language of change process is crucial to the future of educational development in South Africa. At the University of Cape Town this language of change needs to extend into a culture of change in which its mission of being a world-class African University can begin to be realized. References Alborough, C. L. (2004), 'Designing social identities: a case study of a primary school theatrical performance by Zulu children in an English ex-model C school'. Unpublished Masters Dissertation, University of Cape Town. Banning, Y. (2002), 'Learning to act in L2 English: an ethnographic comparison of the experience of two students in the Drama Department at UCT'. Unpublished paper, Cape Town. Barton, D. and Hamilton, M. (2000), 'Literacy practices', in D. Barton, M. 204
Identity, power and discourse
Hamilton and R. Ivanic (eds), Situated Literacies: Reading and Writing in Context. London: Routledge, pp. 7-15. Bourdieu, P. (1986), The Forms of Capital', in J. G. Richardson (ed.), Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education. New York: Greenwood Press, pp. 241-58. Bourdieu, P. (1990), The Logic of Practice, translated by R. Nice. Cambridge: Polity Press. Bourdieu, P. (1991), Language and Symbolic Power, edited and introduced by J. B. Thompson; translated by G. Raymond and M. Adamson. Cambridge: Polity Press. Bourdieu, P. and Wacquant, L. (1992), An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Carrington, V. and Luke, A. (1997), 'Literacy and Bourdieu's sociological theory: a refraining', Language and Education, 11, (2), 96-112. Gee, J. (1990), Social Linguistics and Literacies: Ideology in Discourse. London: Palmer Press. Gee, J. (1996), Social Linguistics and Literacies: Ideology in Discourse (2nd edn). London: Palmer Press. Ivanic, R. (1998), Writing and Identity: The Discoursal Construction of Identity in Academic Writing. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Co. Jenkins, R. (1992), Pierre Bourdieu. London: Routledge. Kapp, R. and Bangeni, B. (2002), 'Language, identity and literacies in transition: a case study'. Paper presented at the Language Development Colloquium at the University of Cape Town. Luke, A. (1996), 'Genres of power? Literacy education and the production of capital', in R. Hasan and G. Williams (eds), Literacy in Society. London and New York: Longman, pp. 309-38. McKinney, C. and van Pletzen, E. (2004), '"... This apartheid story ... we've finished with it": student responses to the apartheid past in a South African English Studies course', Teaching in Higher Education, 9, (2), 159-70. Peirce, B. N. (1995), 'Social identity, investment, and language learning', TESOL Quarterly, 29, 9-31. Rattansi, A. (1999), 'Racism, postmodernism and reflexive multiculturalism', in S. May (ed.), Critical Multiculturalism: Rethinking Multicultural and Antiracist Education. London: Palmer Press, pp. 77—112. Thesen, L. (1997), 'Voices, discourse, and transitions: in search of new categories in EAP', TESOL Quarterly, 31, (3), 487-511. University of Cape Town (2003), The University of Cape Town: Rolling Plan 2004-2006'. Unpublished document, 31 March 2003.
Notes 1. 2.
Students' permission for use of data has been obtained. The University of Cape Town's rolling plan for 2004 calls for a comprehensive investigation into student experiences and notes that 'It is well recognized that affective factors can have a major 205
Academic literacy and the languages of change
3.
effect on students' learning and persistence. It is consequently essential that any comprehensive effort to understand and improve performance patterns should take account of students' out-of-class experiences, material conditions, attitudes and practices' (p. 43). Both these men were prominent political activists who have become powerful icons in the struggle against Apartheid. Steve Biko was a founder member of the Black People's Convention that incorporated up to 70 different black consciousness groups and associations. He died in 1977 of brain damage after being assaulted by the security police in detention. Chris Hani was a freedom fighter who became Chief of Staff of Umkonto We Sizwe, the military wing of the African National Council while the movement was banned. He became Secretary General of the South African Communist Party in 1991, was rated only second in popularity to Nelson Mandela in 1992, and was gunned down by a white supremacist assassin in 1993.
206
Index
abstract coding orientation 132, 140, 141 Academic Development Programme 7 academic disciplines 68, 74, 114 academic discourse(s) 82, 126, 199 barriers to 19, 76, 77 student perspective 74-82, 126-7 academic language 6 proficiency 17, 30, 117 academic literacy 12, 14, 67-83, 195-6, 198 barriers to 19 curricula 12 student perspective 70—82 term 10-11 academic literacy work: politics of place in 1-29 academic persona 80 academic posters 130-50 academic practices 183, 184-5 academic skills courses 5, 6 Academic Support community 6—7 Academic Support Programme 5-7 academic writing 67-83, 86, 198-9 see also scientific writing accents and social classes 198 acculturation 69 addressivity 153-4, 166, 167 affect 109, 118-24, 126, 148 Africa: representations of 189-90, 192 African identity 42, 48, 73, 160, 173 African language media 16, 31, 36, 88-91, 93, 100, 116-17 see also home language African ('black') students see 'black'/African students Afrikaans as medium 15-16, 35-6 Afrikaans language 3, 15-16, 35-6 agency 13, 32, 58,160, 170,181, 183,185,1935, 202 alienation 76 Alternative Admissions Research Project 5 alternative identities 186, 194 analytical hierarchies 138 analytical structure 141 anatomy text reading 115, 119, 120, 125 ancestors and identity 73 anthropology: discourse of 163 Apartheid economy (essays) 93-5 Apartheid legacy 3, 4, Apartheid system 8-11, 15-16, 93-5, 100, 116, 160 education policies 3, 15-16
language under 15-16, 30, 35-6 schooling under 5 see a/so political activism; struggle argument 38-9, 74-5, 79, 80 audience 149, 153-5 authorial presence 73-8, 81, 86, 151 see also 'voice' authorial self 69, 75-6, 81 authoritative discourse 147, 156, 170 authoritative voice 59, 157, 167, 171 authority 70, 151-79, 152, 154, 162 autobiographical self 69, 74, 75-6 Bacon, Francis 63 Bakhtin, M. 33, 55, 56-8, 61, 62, 64,86, 153-7, 170 Bantu Education Act, 1953 15 Basic Interpersonal Communicative Skills (BICS) 30, 117 Biko, Steve 195, 206n. 3 bilingualism 116, 117; additive 17, 30 Black Consciousness 36, 190 'black' (African) students 4, 5, 8, 11, 14 contribution of 126-7 enrolment 4, 5, 8, 82 self-representation of successful 180-206 see also entries under students 'blackness' 188-190, 204 Block, A. A. 121, 125 Blommaert, J. 13, 17 body 19, 155, 176 boundaries 3, 4, 19, 75-8, 190-95 Bourdieu, P. 6, 20, 130, 152, 153, 181, 183-6, 198, 203 CALP see cognitive academic language proficiency Canagarajah, J. 37, 157, 175 capital 132, 156, 176, 188-95, 203 fields of 181, 184, 191, 192, 198 recognition 184, 186, 192, 196 species/types 181, 183, 202-3 see also under types of capital, e.g. embodied capital Carrington, V, 183-4 CDA see critical discourse analysis Centre for Higher Education Development 9 change as additive 130-50 negotiating for 189 chorus in classroom discourse 43-4, 89
207
Index
circumcision 122—4 Ciskei 160 clashing discourses 61, 73, 81, 185, 186, 200, 204 class 4, 9, 35, 76-7, 188, 198, 199 economics of 190-5 class divide 193, 'black' 192 classroom practices 32-6, 200, 203 clause-chaining 88 code-switching 41, 47 coding orientation 132, 140-41, 147 cognitive academic language proficiency (CALP) 17, 30, 117 cognitive development 31, 46, 124 collateral capital 181-2, 203 collegial governance 4 colonialism/colonization 15-16 33-6 colonizing consciousness 36 colonizing language 15—16, 35 'coloured' 6, 16, 78, 83 command economy concept 93-5 Communication Course 130, 131 communication in lectures 133, 154 communicative language teaching 38—40 community-based orientation 189, 191 comprehension 108 computer literacy 19 constructivist reading theory 107-10 co-ordinating conjunctions 87-8 Cope, B. 18 creative writing in English 36 creativity 40, 63 cricket representation lecture 158-76 critical discourse analysis 85, 103, 169 critical experiences 186-7, 193, 196, 203 cultural boundaries/'issues' 75-8, 114 cultural capital 183, 192-8, 201, 203 embodied 181, 192, 193, 195, 196, 197, 198, 203 institutional 184, 193 cultural identities 123 cultural models 86, 92, 93, 94, 96, 99 cultural resources 83 culture, 'black' 72, 77, 75-8, 173 Cummins, J. 17, 30 curricula 6, 11, 12, 106, 110-11, 115-16, 118, 126,127, 131, 148-9 debate in humanities courses 68, 69, 75 democratic discourse 3, 4 Department of Education and Training (DET) 3, 5, 30-2, 48 DET schools 5, 8, 30-32, 47-8 diagrammatic presentation 132, 140—416 dialogism 58, 153-7 didactic discourse 163 digital divide 19 disadvantaged students 4, 6, 7, 8, 11, 82 disciplinary language 63 disciplinary ways of thinking 148 disciplines 68 discoursal self 69
208
discourse(s) 2, 61, 63-5, 70, 76, 80, 82, 85,108, 109, 125, 132-3, 146, 163, 170,185 adapting 87-91, 100 clashing see clashing discourses dialogue between 82 'home-grown' 61, 67, 144-6, 147 ideological framework 68, 70 integrating 82, 84, 91 investment in 201 mimicking (imitating) 68, 76 new see new discourses past see prior/past discourses self-representations 180 struggles between 147, 173 in township school 30-52 transformation of 86, 92, 131 see also critical discourse analysis and spec new discourse discourse communities 131, 185, 199 'discourse moment' 162, 166 discourse strategies/practices 70, 84, 87-91, 100, 117, 201 discursive tensions 3 disposition 184 domains 62, 64, 141, 185, 188, 201 dominant culture 74 dominant discourse 68, 78, 79-81, 84, 85, 100, 101, 166, 186, 200 dominant practices: socialization into 82 dominant voice 175 domination: patterns of 181 dramatic discourse 200-1 dual medium of instruction 35-6 EAL see English as additional language EAP see English for Academic Purposes economic capital 184, 186, 190-95, 203 economic development imperatives 4, 5 economic rationalist discourse 3-4 Economics discourse 84-103 economics of class 190-95 economy, Apartheid 93-5 education policies 3, 12, 15-16 educationally disadvantaged 4, 6, 8, 11, 82 educator's objectives 106 Efolweni see Rural Village poster electronic frontier of literacy 18-19, 20 embodied capital 20, 181, 183, 192-3, 195-8, 201,203 embodied identity 133 empowerment discourse 39, 204 engineering discipline semiotic resources for 130-50 English as additional language (EAL) 5, 7, 15— 18, 67, 92, 117, 126-7 contribution of students 126-7 English as favoured medium 16, 31 English as Foreign Language (EFL) 6 English as home language 15 English as language of resistance 36
Index
English as medium of instruction 3, 15—18, 30, 31, 35-6 English as official language 15-16 English as Second Language (ESL) 6, 15-18, 30-32, 43-7, 197-8 English for Academic Purposes (EAP) 5, 6, 8-9 English language 15-17, 31, 32, 33, 35-6, 39, 41, 47, 72, 197 functional approach 39, 47 status; power 16, 31, 33, 34-6, 38 switch to 17, 30 teaching 33-4, 38-40 township school discourses of 30-52 Engli English oral proficiency 197, 198, 199 epistemologies: mixing 141—2 equity, 4, 5, 8, 9, 28n. 2, 76 ESL see English as Second Language essay writing 70-83, 85, 97, 98-9 essayist literacy 82 ethnicity 73, 174 ethnography 37, 84, 157 evidence 97, 125 experience(s) 93-5, 99, 132, 197 experiential learning pedagogy 110—11 experiential meanings 132, 173 Fairclough, N. 85 f i e l first person pronoun 58—9 footing 157, 163 formal operational thought 124 formal register 80 formality 143 freedom of expression 38, 76, 80 'friendly letter' as genre 54-66 functional literacy 46, 47, 63 Galileo 54 gaze 155, 159, 160-61, 162-3, 166, 167 Gee, J. 11, 12, 13, 34, 61-4, 68, 86, 108-9, 185, 199, 200, 201 gender 76, 77, 78-9, 154, 168, 170, 171 generic conventions 147 genital mutilation 122 'genre pedagogy', 54 genres 55, 62, 64, 78, 147 gestures 154, 155, 162, 166-7, 169, 176 globalization 4, 9, 13, 14, 19, 33 Gough, D. 13, 88, 148 'habitus' 130, 153, 184, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199-200, 203 Halliday, M.A.K. 60, 63, 87 Hani, Chris 195, 206n 3 higher education 3-5, 7, 9, 11, 152 see also Centre for Higher Education Development holistic perspectives 73 home(grown) discourses 61, 67, 92, 108-9, 144-7
home language 16-17, 30, 35-6, 116-17 see also African language media humanities discourse 8-9, 29n. 8, 67, 68 Hutchings, Mike 158, 178 identity/ies 69, 109, 121, 123-4, 126, 152, 160, 173, 186, 194, 201, 203 ancestors and 73 language and 7\-A, 76 self-representations 180-206 struggle to assert 161 and value judgements 123-4 writing and 69-72, 84 see also specific identities, e.g. academic ...; African identity construction 183, 186, 201 identity markers/signifiers 175, 186,188, 193 identity theory 185-6 identity work 69, 152, 175 ideological becoming 170-71, 172 ideological consciousness 156, 157 ideological discourse 156, 157 ideological framing of lessons 45-6 ideological positions 73-5, 81, 172, 188, 189, 190-95 ideologies 84, 185, 186, 189 individualist stance 189, 194 information: global flow of 19 initiates (abakhweta) 163, 173, 176 initiation rituals 122-4, 168, 173 inner capital 107, 108, 116, 119, 125-7, 132, 156, 176 insider knowledge 174 institutional capital 184, 193 institutional cultures 4—5 institutional discourses 33, 81, 200 interactivity 146-7, 152, 171 interdiscursivity 86 interim literacies 86-7, 100 international perspective 172, 173, 174 internet 19, 96 internet discourse 96 intersubjectivity 169 intertextual analysis 84-103 intertextual borrowing 97 intertextual shift 96 intertextuality 86 Intervention Programme 112, 118, 127 Ivanic, R. 11, 69-70, 86, 186 Kalantzis, M. 18 knowledge 125, 157 new 125, 126 organizing 132, 138-9 prior see prior knowledge knowledge construction 34, 125 Kress, G. 19, 32, 68, 86, 100, 130, 131, 132, 159, 167 Kwaito music 20, 29n. 10
209
Index
language(s) 12, 16, 35, 63, 72, 76, 85, 154, 197 communicative teaching 38-40 diversity 17 and identity 71-5learning 47 switches 116 teaching 39 language-based access curricula 6 language colonization 15 Language Development Group 2, 3, 5—11 language etiquette 40-31 Language in the Humanities course 8—9, 67—9 language policy, 3, 12, 15-16, 30, 35 language rights 30 Languages of Change (theme) 2 'Languages of Change' project 13 learning 53, 85, 86, 93, 102, 125 objectives 111, 125 lecture(s) 111, 151-79 communication in 153, 154 speaker-audience relationship 153-5 as texts 176 lecture theatres 152-3 lecturer(s) 155, 157, 161-2, 176 legal discourse 195 lessons 38-49 letter as genre 54-66 liberation struggle see struggle Life Cycle Course 111, 122 linguistic capital, 197, 199 linguistic experiential reservoir 107-8, 114, 122 linguistic orientation 106 linguistic resources 1, 13, 55, 83 linguistic text 85 literacy/ies 10-13, 30, 34, 85, 86 functional 46, 47 practices 12-13, 39, 79-81, 109, 185, 204 socialization view of, 82 socially situated 11-12 in township school 30-52 in transition 67-83 see also academic literacy; new literacy; schooled literacy literary discourse(s) 88, 89, 163 literature, 47 Luke, A. 20, 103n. 3, 85, 183-4, 186 male identity 160, 173-4 managerialism 4 meaning(s) 13-14, 93, 126, 132, 152, 155, 158, 174-5 appropriation of 86, 91 mediation of students' 126 relative nature of 13, 132 situated 65, 86, 91-100 struggles over 160, 166 uncovering emerging 84^103 meaning-making 19, 91, 93, 104-5, 107, 108, 131-2, 146 reader's role 105, 107, 108,127 resources of 146, 148-9, 175 speaker/audience in 153
210
media (of communication) 87 media of instruction 3, 15-18, 30, 31, 35-6 medical students: reading 104-29 Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship 181, 182-3, 201-3 Mendel, Gregor 54 mental models 92, 94 mentorship 195-7 metaknowledge 109, 117, 125, 146 metalanguage 2, 49, 91, 146, 200, 203 metalinguistic tools 46, 109 mimicking discourse 68, 76 MMUR see Mellon Mays Fellowship mobility 8, 16, 32, 38, 81 modality 140 models 100 modes 132, 147, 155 mother-tongue see home language multilingual resources 101 multilingualism 18, 30, 116, 117 multiliteracies 13, 87 multimedia 155 multimodality 18-20, 148, 155, 162 multivoicedness 175 Mziwethu Secondary School, 36—52 narrative discourse 87-91 narrative structures 132, 138-9, 141 national unity 3 , 7 Nationalist Party 15, 25 naturalistic coding orientation 140-41 new discourses 67, 68, 74, 92 integration of 82, 83, 84, 91 learning process 81, 84, 86, 96 new literacy practices 81, 109 New Literacy Studies 2, 11-13, 34 New London Group 18 Newton, Isaac 63 nominalization 60, 63, 80 opera 20 oral communication in classroom, 38-40 oral discourse 90 ' oral proficiency 197 oral tradition: discourses from 87 oral/verbal fluency 38-42 origins: acknowledgement of 194 outcome-based education 52n. 5 own (words) discourse 53-66, 86, 157 own knowledge interpretations 98 parody 155, 170, 175 past discourses see prior/past discourses peer group 157, 198 Pennycook, A. 32-3 performance as discourse 200-1 perspectives 71, 132, 155 persuasive discourse 156 place: 'politics of 1-29 placed resources 13-14 plagiarism 78, 84
Index
Plain English campaign 53 Plain Language network 53 political activism 4, 7, 160, 193-4 see also struggle political ideologies 84 political orientation 197, 199-201 politics of academic knowledge 2 politics 'of place' 1-29 'popular democratic' discourse 3, 4 post-Apartheid transformation 172 power 48, 85, 86, 133, 156, 172, 184, 180-206 power relations 33, 39, 48, 85, 184 power structures: inversion of 155 power struggles of self 186 praise poems 88-9, 142 prestige 184 primary discourse 12, 68, 81, 82, 100, 103 n.45, 108, 109, 141-4 prior/past discourses 49, 62, 82, 84, 90, 91-2, 100 prior knowledge 97, 98, 108, 109, 111, 114-16, 119, 125, 126, 127 problem-based learning 111-12 propriety: discourse of 145-6 psychosocial environments 118 psychosocial texts 115, 119-21, 125 publishing: politics of 14 question and answer discourse 89-91 race 78, 182, 188, 190-1 racial boundaries 76-7, 78 'rainbow nation' (term) 7 rationality 167-8, 170, 174, 175 re-accentuation of discourse 156 reader's role in meaning-making 105, 107, 108, 110 reading affective responses to 118-24, 126 in curriculum 106,109,111-12,113-14,115, 119, 125-7 prior knowledge and 108, 109, 114-18, 119, 125, 126, 127 and social interactions 201 socially situated 11, 34, 201 visual representations of 104-29 reading abilities 105-6, 117 reading curriculum 125-7 students' evaluation of 126-7 reading theory, construct!vist 107-10 recognition 160, 176, 181, 184, 185, 186, 188-97, 198, 203 redress 4, 5, 9 referencing 80 refraction 63, 170 regional character in education 4 register 70, 74, 79, 80 religion 73, 168, 171 religious discourse 168 remaking of discourses 86, 92, 131 representational modes 146-7 representational practice 147
representational resources 131, 133, 139, 147, 149 research 4, 8; textually oriented 13 reservoirs of knowledge 107, 108 resource packs 111, 113, 121, 124 resources 100, 132-8, 146, 148-9, 180 control over 148-9 critical approach to 71-82, 114, 126-7, 131 harnessing students' 130-50 identifying 132-8, 146 limiting employment of 55 validating students' 101, 126, 148 see a/so academic resources,school resources, placed resources rhetoric 89-91, 100, 160, 163, 166 'right to speak' 201 role models 195 Rose, David 106, 109 Rosenblatt, Louise 107-8, 114 rote-learning 69, 73 rural cultures 124 rural people: identity, 161 Rural Village project 131-49 Rutherford, Ernest 54 sacrificial slaughter 133-5, 138-49 schemata 86, 92, 100, 105 school(s)/schooling 12, 16, 32, 34, 116 diversity 16, 116, 117 literacy in township school 30-52 Western style 34 school discourse(s) 30-52, 34, 92, 109, 199 scientific discourse 141—6 'own words' 53-66 scientific language 53—66 scientific 'voice' 59 scientific writing 'in own words' 53—66 'scope', 47 screen-based literacy, 18, 20 secondary discourse(s) 12, 13, 68, 89, 108-9, 141-2, 146, 148, 199 of African languages 88-91 in home discourses 88-9, 108-9, 199 secondary education 36-49, 180 self-constructions 204 self-definitions, alternative 186, -194 self-expression 126, 199 self-monitoring questions 125 self-perceptions 69, 70, 181, 186, 188 self-recreation 200, 201 self-representation(s) 69, 160, 180-204 semiotic boundaries 19 semiotic modes 132, 155 semiotic potential 130 semiotic resources 13-14, 92 harnessing students' 130-50 identifying students' 132 semiotic shifts 152 semiotic system(s) 2, 19, 160 'sign-maker' as agentive, 86, 131 silences in discourse 37, 152, 175 situated meanings 65, 86, 91-103
211
Index
social barriers 69, 77, 91 social capital 184, 192, 197, 203 social consciousness, 'black', 190 social discourses 109 social divide 180 social fields 153 social identity 141 social languages 163, 167, 173 social mobility 16, 32, 81 social practices in academia 184-5 social realignment 152 social realist coding orientation 141, 143 social role 189 social science essay genre 75 socialization 73, 82, 184, 197, 199 socio-cultural discourses 108, 117 socio-economic redress 4, 5, 9 socio-economic strata 124 sociolinguistics 13, 14 Sotho language 197 South African Breweries 96-9 Soweto uprising 36 space(s) 1, 108, 154, 155 spatial modes 154 speaker-audience relationship 153-5 spoken language discourse 87-91, 200 staff 4; development 6 status 70, 133, 156, 184, 185, 189, 198 stereotypes 124, 126, 160-61, 188-9194 story-telling discourse 87-91 struggle 6, 10-11, 189, 190 struggle literacies 194 student(s) 4-6, 8, 38, 81, 82, 131 agency see agency contribution of 101, 126-7 diversity of 4, 7, 100, 149 enrolment 4, 5, 8 mobility 8, 38, 81 need to be heard 176 participation 43—4 potential 5, 181, 196 resources see resources socio-political presentation of successful 'black' 180-206 task (mis)interpretation 84, 98-9 understanding needs of 100-101 validating capital of 101, 126, 148 view of typical 6 see also 'black'/African students support structures 192 symbolic capital 184, 192, 194, 197, 203 Symbolic Object project 131-49 symbolic policy making phase 3, 7 task design/instruction 84, 98-9, 126 teachers: ideological orientation 43 teaching 30, 33-4, 37-49, 84 television advertising discourse 96-7 testing for potential 5 text(s) 2, 13, 18, 68, 85, 108, 125, 138-9, 176, 186 see a7so intertextuality; lecture(s)
212
text-based literacy 6 textbook discourse: adaptation 100-1 textbook language 59-60, 62 textbook learning, 68, 111 textbook summaries: learning from 68 textbooks 111 textually oriented research 13, 85 theoretical expertise 14 theoretical models 95 theoretical resources 13—14 theorization 12, 95 theory(ies) 13-15, 78, 93, 94 township discourses, 32, 192 township school: discourses 30-52 tradition 32, 42-6, 77 traditional discourses/genres 87—91 university(ies) discontinuities 12, 32 transition to 47, 67-83, 86-7 university entrance 5. 8, 31 University of Cape Town 5, 7-11, 14, 16, 20, 67-70, 73,74, 75-8 upward mobility 81 urban cultures 124 utopianism: discourse of 144—5 utterance 153, 154, 155, 156, 163,198 Van Leeuwen, T. 19, 159, 167 verbal/oral fluency 38-40 visual mode 147, 155, 176 visual representations 104—29 visual-verbal interface 152 'voice(s)' 171 in academic writing 73-8, 80, 81, 86 authoritative 59, 157, 171 dominant 175 interanimation of 156, 157, 167 rnultivoicedness 175 in scientific writing 59 Western culture and schooling 34 'Who owns the image?' 151-79, 152, 167, 174 working class status 198 writer identity 69, 70, 86 writing 7-8, 12, 36, 84, 85, 86, 151, 201 act of identity 69, 84 socially situated 11, 34, 201 in transition 67—83 see also academic writing; text writing ability teaching 40 writing-across-the-curriculum 7 written language 87 Xhosa identities 42-6, 48, 160-61, 173 Xhosa language 32, 74, 166 Xhosa rhetorical style 88-9, 160 Xhosa secondary discourses 88-9, 142 Zulu rhetorical style 89-90 'Zuluness' as means of identifying 73
