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Item Open Access Criteria of embarrassment: J. M. Coetzee's 'Jesus Trilogy' and the legacy of modernist difficulty(Taylor & Francis, 2022) De Villiers, RickThis article takes as its starting point the divergent responses that J.M. Coetzee’s Jesus trilogy (The Childhood of Jesus [2013], The Schooldays of Jesus [2016] and The Death of Jesus [2019]) has drawn from reviewers and scholars respectively. Where reviewers have generally regarded these works’ difficulty as obstructive, scholars have taken their difficulty as both the justification and catalyst for sustained engagement. This divergence is explained, in part, as a consequence of the literacies developed by and in response to modernism – literacies which regarded difficulty as both the signature of the worthwhile artwork and as the criterion which justifies the special attention of specialized readers. If one aim of this article is to situate Coetzee and Coetzee studies within this tradition, a second aim is to ask whether the forms of attention garnered by his late trilogy are less an index of intrinsic challenges than of Coetzee’s reputation as a challenging writer. To do so is to worry the overready ascription of ‘Coetzeean’ difficulty – along with the modes of reading it tends to enlist – in order to reposition bewilderment, embarrassment and other ugly aesthetic-affects as generative for criticism.Item Open Access Zulu Poems of (and for) nature: Bhekinkosi Ntuli’s environmental imagination in Imvunge Yemvelo (1972)(Cambridge University Press, 2021) Nyambi, Oliver; Otomo, Patricks VouaNature, climate crisis, and the Anthropocene have carved space in recent inter-, cross-, and multi-disciplinary humanities studies. In South Africa, such studies have barely touched literature in African languages. Nyambi and Otomo focus on the tropes of “lady nature,” nostalgia, and dystopia in Zulu writer Bhekinkosi Ntuli’s Imvunge Yemvelo to explore the complex ways in which these tropes test the normative epistemes of ecological crises. Beyond rejecting imperial distortions of indigenous environmentalism, Ntuli’s poems re-center local knowledge of nature in understanding its relationship with humans. That knowledge subverts epistemic structures of colonial conservation, revising and re-visioning racially geo-politicized knowledge hierarchies.Item Open Access Surfers van die tsunami: navorsing en inligtingstegnologie binne die Geesteswetenskappe(Sun Media Bloemfontein, 2014) Senekal, Burgert A.; Brokensha, SusanAbstract not availableItem Open Access Reinventing the social scientist and humanist in era of big data : a perspective from South African scholars(Sun Media Bloemfontein, 2019) Brokensha, Susan; Kotze, Eduan; Senekal, Burgert A.Abstract not availableItem Open Access Academic writing in Blackboard: a computer-mediated discourse analytic perspective(University of the Free State, 2012) Brokensha, SusanEnglish: This article reports on how text-based synchronous and asynchronous modes of communication in Blackboard were employed at tertiary level to encourage students to share their perceptions of academic writing and sensitise them to the writing process. Employing a computer-mediated discourse analytic (CMDA) framework, three research questions were posed: What were the discussion topics in each mode of computer-mediated communication (CMC)? What types of knowledge construction were reflected in each mode? What kinds of discourse features were generated in each mode? The overall conclusions reached were that both modes of CMC reflected conceptual moves, although few theoretical ideas were present in asynchronous CMC and none in synchronous CMC. Asynchronous CMC was also more syntactically complex than synchronous CMC. This preliminary study suggests that both modes may help learners achieve the above aims.Item Open Access Signposting the inferencing route: a relevance theoretic analysis of intertextuality and metaphors in print advertisements(University of the Free State, 2013) Conradie, MarthinusEnglish: This article reports an analysis of the manner in which copywriters use direct and indirect product claims to guide consumers’ interpretations of metaphors in print advertisements. The analysis utilises a relevance theoretic framework, and the results are illustrated by means of a qualitative analysis of four case studies, taken from a larger sample of 120 print advertisements. The first stage of the analysis employs the concept ‘intertextuality’ to study the manner in which advertising texts construct the intertext as the source of a metaphor, with the advertised product as the target. In the second stage, a relevance theoretic framework is used to investigate the role that direct and indirect claims play in guiding consumers’ interpretations of the product claims inherent in these metaphors. To achieve the latter aim, Simpson’s (2001) ‘reason’ and ‘tickle’ constructs are used.Item Open Access “Oh, now I get it ...”: comic dupe irony in print advertising(University of the Free State, 2013) Conradie, MarthinusEnglish:Advertising texts are typically designed to engage audiences in the process of meaning construction. This article conducts a relevance theoretic analysis of a sample of print advertisements that employ a specific type of irony towards this goal, based on Partington’s (2007) conceptualisation of comic dupe irony. The results suggest that comic dupe irony is manifested in a discrepancy between two narratives. Consumers are encouraged to establish relevance by processing the irony that arises from this discrepancy, thus expending more processing effort for the promise of relevant cognitive effects.Item Open Access Lingual primitives and critical discourse analysis: a case of gender ideology in Cosmopolitan(University of the Free State, 2013) Conradie, MarthinusEnglish: This article investigates the utility of combining critical discourse analysis with the framework of lingual primitives advanced by Weideman (2011), in a critical analysis of gender ideology in the women’s lifestyle magazine Cosmopolitan. More specifically, two elementary linguistic concepts are combined with the critical discourse analysis methodology in order to analyse a sample of feature articles from Cosmopolitan. The results are illustrated on the basis of a case study that is representative of this larger sample. The findings suggest that the abuse of power in this magazine is best conceptualised as the abuse of lingual trust.Item Open Access Raising awareness of classroom constructs: an application of Kelly’s repertory grid technique(University of the Free State, 2011) Greyling, WillfredEnglish: This article argues that Kelly’s repertory grid technique allows prospective teachers and their trainers to gain critical-reflective depth when they respond to statistically computed relationships between the poles of pairs of constructs in their group and personal grids. Using ten classroom-specific scenarios as elements, the teachertrainer elicited approximately 800 constructs from a cohort of prospective teachers in the first stage of this awareness-raising project. From these, 12 constructs were selected to include in a repertory ratings grid. Tentative hypotheses about the meaning making within the group and for each individual were formulated. These hypotheses were ten-tative trainer-formulated accounts which could only be accepted or rejected by the participating cohort of teachers in “dialogically accomplished” task-response se-quences based on relational subjectivity. Writing tasks were formulated requiring the teachers to validate or reject these tentative hypotheses. These responses were logged and used as evidence of critical-reflective analyses directed at meaning making.