On Wednesday, the report was made public. You must know which one I’m talking about – it’s all anyone can talk about. And while I’m interested in many aspects of it, for me the choice of language on uKhozi FM was… enlightening. You see, two weeks ago, the phrase for ‘state capture’ was ukugwamanqa kombuso. […]
Tag: Discourse Analysis
The idea of choice is at the heart of an election. E-leg-ere is a Latin verb, meaning ‘to pick out’ or ‘to select’ from a list of candidates. And the Zulu verb uku-khetha means exactly the same thing. I’ve spoken about it before, I think. I should have, at any rate – my darling wife’s […]
I’ve been pondering how to phrase all this for some time now, but finding a way in is tricky. Previously, when I voiced some of these thoughts to my sister-in-law, I was met with the inevitable “don’t you think you’re just being paranoid?” Well, maybe I am. You see, you may not even notice any […]
The last time I looked at the election posters, I focused on a subtle difference in word choice. The ruling party chose a verb that signified a gang mentality, overpowering a submissive public into continuing to vote for them. The blue house chose something different, opting for using isiZulu’s penchant for reciprocity. This time round, […]
Iconoclasm – etymology: Ancient Greek, eikono-klazo (statue-smash). I’ve been listening to, and reading, reports on our recent spate of statue-phobia ngesiZulu recently – it’s been difficult not to do so, what with catchy hashtags and clashing rhetoric and escalating levels of mutual disrespect becoming the order of things. Iconoclasm is tricky business, you see. Whose icons do […]
Discourse analysis is about asking two questions about word choice (diction) and sentence structure – “why?” and “why not?”. For example: “WHY did the ANC choose to use the word hlanganyela on their isiZulu election posters?” and “WHY did the ANC choose NOT to use other words for togetherness on their isiZulu election posters?” The […]
uMabhengwane 