Zannie Bock is an Associate Professor in the Linguistics Department at the University of the Western Cape (UWC). Her current research interests include work on discourse and narrative analysis, with a focus on race and language among university students, emerging styles in youth instant messaging chats, and decolonial approaches to literacy in higher education. Recent publications focus on three main areas: first, how young South Africans in a range of multilingual institutional settings use language to negotiate their racial identities and positions, and the role of ‘small stories’ in these complex positionings. A second focus has been the emerging styles of mobile chatting among UWC students. Her overriding concern is with the multifaceted and innovative ways in which young people use language to express their identities and negotiate their positions in a complex and rapidly transforming post-apartheid South Africa. A third significant dimension to her work is a new research project in decolonial literacies and pedagogies in higher education, and the preparation of a volume of essays, co-edited by herself and Christopher Stroud, entitled, Languages and Literacies in higher education: Reclaiming voices from the south (Bloomsbury Press). She is also the project leader and co-editor of the Linguistics department’s textbook, Language, society and communication: an introduction, published in 2014 (second edition in 2019). Address: Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa
This paper uses a case study of two children's drawings, early writings and imaginative role ... more This paper uses a case study of two children's drawings, early writings and imaginative role play to illustrate how children use a variety of modes to make meaning in ways which are creative and beyond the design and expectation of adults. It aims to valorise the kinds of practice which children routinely engage in but which are often overlooked and devalued by adults, both parents and teachers. Framed by social semiotic theories of communication, multimodal pedagogies and cognitive accounts of children's drawings, it illustrates how the children in this study work easily and seamlessly across a variety of materials and modes, using the semiotic resources available in their environments, to create imaginary worlds and express meanings according to their interest. In profiling these children, this paper lends support to the claim of multimodal pedagogies that it is the shifting across modes, as well as the freedom to choose the mode of expression, that engages the children...
From will to well. Studies in linguistics offered to Anne-Marie Simon-Vandenbergen, 2009
Tabula Gratulatoria Afdeling Algemene Taalwetenschap, Vakgroep Duits, UGent Karin Aijmer David Ba... more Tabula Gratulatoria Afdeling Algemene Taalwetenschap, Vakgroep Duits, UGent Karin Aijmer David Banks Zannie Bock Marc Boone Gert Buelens Chris Bulcaen Christopher S. Butler Joost Buysschaert Lieven Buysse Marta Carretero David Chan Philippe Codde Patrick Collard Timothy Colleman Peter Collins Stef Craps Hubert Cuyckens Katrien Daemen-De Gelder Kristin Davidse Bernard De Clerck Freddy Decreus Tine Defour Liesbeth Degand Luc De Grauwe Thérèse de Hemptinne Marc De Mey Marysa Demoor Kathelijne Denturck Katrien Deroey Raymond ...
In this article we explore the consequences of the social literacies model of understanding stude... more In this article we explore the consequences of the social literacies model of understanding students’ academic literacy practices at a South African University. We highlight some of the paradoxes of this model in South Africa in terms of the particular demands of dominant literacy practices and past discriminatory policies which denied access to such practices and which created alternative practices. We include some observations we have made about including alternative literacies in assessment practices in tertiary classrooms.
Language, Society and Communication: An Introduction, 2014
'Language, Society and Communication: An Introduction' is a southern African intr... more 'Language, Society and Communication: An Introduction' is a southern African introduction to linguistics, language and communication. It breaks new ground by re-presenting mainstream linguistic theories from a southern perspective. For example, it takes as its primary frame of reference this region's immensely rich and complex linguistic heritage. It introduces students to core theoretical concepts and frameworks in linguistics but illustrates these with local (southern African) content, much of it drawn from the authors’ own research projects (e.g. Nama and language shift, hip hop and transgressive literacies). Unlike any other textbook available, it illustrates linguistic phenomena with examples from a range of Bantu languages, as well as English and Afrikaans. Secondly, it seeks to promote a ‘linguistics from the south’, not only in terms of contextualising knowledge in southern African terms, but also in the sense that it is premised on the understanding that ‘multilingualism is the norm'. In this way, it critiques the monoglossic paradigms and essentialising conceptions of language we have inherited from ‘the north’. And, lastly, it is unique in the sense that it introduces students to a range of innovative fields in contemporary sociolinguistics, such as social media, branding, graffiti and linguistic landscapes.
This paper explores how the spatiality of South Africa's apartheid regime remains a struc... more This paper explores how the spatiality of South Africa's apartheid regime remains a structuring motif in the way young South Africans perceive and talk about place and space, despite that fact that apartheid officially 'ended' in 1994. Illustrating our argument with data collected in focus groups at the University of the Western Cape, we refer to such constellations of place and subjectivities as a 'zombie landscape' in the sense that the 'undead' and highly racialized ways of speaking about space and place continue to 'haunt' the present. We develop our argument using a mesh of concepts that link the imagining of place to the formation of intergenerational subjectivity. First, we use a notion of 'trace' in order to conceptualize how place is imagined out of the circulation of memories of apartheid and fragments of experience. Secondly, in order to further interrogate how place engages the formation of subjectivity, we turn to a post-humanist expansion of Du Bois' model of stance-subjectivity. And thirdly, we attempt to account for the longue duree of the trope of apartheid as place by discussing how a Foucauldian subjectification can be reconciled with a posthumanist Freudian notion of condensation. We conclude by suggesting that this approach to landscapes of the imagination has the potential to inform new research directions in Linguistic Landscapes, particularly towards a post-humanist perspective.
In this paper, I analyse the testimony of Colin de Souza given before South Africa's Truth a... more In this paper, I analyse the testimony of Colin de Souza given before South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in the mid-1990s.1 My aim is to explore how De Souza projects an identity of himself as 'agentive', as an innovative and flexible individual who is capable of outwitting and outmaneuvering his opponents despite the
Considerable research on social media has documented the diversity and creativity inherent in man... more Considerable research on social media has documented the diversity and creativity inherent in many youth texting styles and instant messaging. However, little scholarship has explored the impact of ...
Contemporary scholarship on race investigates how racism is deeply embedded in everyday norms and... more Contemporary scholarship on race investigates how racism is deeply embedded in everyday norms and practices in ways which subtly, even unwittingly, serve to reproduce white domination. In South Africa, like many other postcolonial societies, racial constructs continue to be particularly salient. This paper focuses on how a young South African, Bernadette, navigates the complex terrain of racial positioning in a focus group interview with her peers. Drawing primarily on Labov’s seminal work on narrative, as well as more recent interactional approaches, it investigates how Bernadette uses the reported speech of others in her stories as a key narrative strategy for racial positioning. The analytical findings suggest that despite her efforts to distance herself from what she perceives as racist talk, she slips into a racializing discourse which is much less overt than that which she rejects, and which has the effect of reassembling the apartheid hierarchy as an explanatory framework. Th...
Although apartheid officially ended in 1994, the issue of race as a primary identity marker has c... more Although apartheid officially ended in 1994, the issue of race as a primary identity marker has continued to permeate many aspects of private and public life in a post-apartheid South Africa. This paper seeks to understand how youth at two South African tertiary institutions position themselves in relation to race and the apartheid past. Our data includes four focus group interviews from two universities, one which can be described as historically ‘black’ and the other historically ‘white’. Given the complex nature of the data, we elected to use a combination of corpus linguistics and discourse analysis as our methodological approach. We explore how words such as black, white, coloured, they, we, us and them feature in the interviews. Our analysis shows that the positioning by the interviewees reflects a complexity and ambivalence that is at times contradictory although several broader discourse patterns can be distilled. In particular, we argue, that all groups employ a range of discursive strategies so as to resist being positioned in the historical positions of ‘victim’ and ‘perpetrator’. Our paper reflects on these findings as well as what they offer us as we attempt to chart new discourses of the future.
This paper uses a case study of two children's drawings, early writings and imaginative role ... more This paper uses a case study of two children's drawings, early writings and imaginative role play to illustrate how children use a variety of modes to make meaning in ways which are creative and beyond the design and expectation of adults. It aims to valorise the kinds of practice which children routinely engage in but which are often overlooked and devalued by adults, both parents and teachers. Framed by social semiotic theories of communication, multimodal pedagogies and cognitive accounts of children's drawings, it illustrates how the children in this study work easily and seamlessly across a variety of materials and modes, using the semiotic resources available in their environments, to create imaginary worlds and express meanings according to their interest. In profiling these children, this paper lends support to the claim of multimodal pedagogies that it is the shifting across modes, as well as the freedom to choose the mode of expression, that engages the children...
From will to well. Studies in linguistics offered to Anne-Marie Simon-Vandenbergen, 2009
Tabula Gratulatoria Afdeling Algemene Taalwetenschap, Vakgroep Duits, UGent Karin Aijmer David Ba... more Tabula Gratulatoria Afdeling Algemene Taalwetenschap, Vakgroep Duits, UGent Karin Aijmer David Banks Zannie Bock Marc Boone Gert Buelens Chris Bulcaen Christopher S. Butler Joost Buysschaert Lieven Buysse Marta Carretero David Chan Philippe Codde Patrick Collard Timothy Colleman Peter Collins Stef Craps Hubert Cuyckens Katrien Daemen-De Gelder Kristin Davidse Bernard De Clerck Freddy Decreus Tine Defour Liesbeth Degand Luc De Grauwe Thérèse de Hemptinne Marc De Mey Marysa Demoor Kathelijne Denturck Katrien Deroey Raymond ...
In this article we explore the consequences of the social literacies model of understanding stude... more In this article we explore the consequences of the social literacies model of understanding students’ academic literacy practices at a South African University. We highlight some of the paradoxes of this model in South Africa in terms of the particular demands of dominant literacy practices and past discriminatory policies which denied access to such practices and which created alternative practices. We include some observations we have made about including alternative literacies in assessment practices in tertiary classrooms.
Language, Society and Communication: An Introduction, 2014
'Language, Society and Communication: An Introduction' is a southern African intr... more 'Language, Society and Communication: An Introduction' is a southern African introduction to linguistics, language and communication. It breaks new ground by re-presenting mainstream linguistic theories from a southern perspective. For example, it takes as its primary frame of reference this region's immensely rich and complex linguistic heritage. It introduces students to core theoretical concepts and frameworks in linguistics but illustrates these with local (southern African) content, much of it drawn from the authors’ own research projects (e.g. Nama and language shift, hip hop and transgressive literacies). Unlike any other textbook available, it illustrates linguistic phenomena with examples from a range of Bantu languages, as well as English and Afrikaans. Secondly, it seeks to promote a ‘linguistics from the south’, not only in terms of contextualising knowledge in southern African terms, but also in the sense that it is premised on the understanding that ‘multilingualism is the norm'. In this way, it critiques the monoglossic paradigms and essentialising conceptions of language we have inherited from ‘the north’. And, lastly, it is unique in the sense that it introduces students to a range of innovative fields in contemporary sociolinguistics, such as social media, branding, graffiti and linguistic landscapes.
This paper explores how the spatiality of South Africa's apartheid regime remains a struc... more This paper explores how the spatiality of South Africa's apartheid regime remains a structuring motif in the way young South Africans perceive and talk about place and space, despite that fact that apartheid officially 'ended' in 1994. Illustrating our argument with data collected in focus groups at the University of the Western Cape, we refer to such constellations of place and subjectivities as a 'zombie landscape' in the sense that the 'undead' and highly racialized ways of speaking about space and place continue to 'haunt' the present. We develop our argument using a mesh of concepts that link the imagining of place to the formation of intergenerational subjectivity. First, we use a notion of 'trace' in order to conceptualize how place is imagined out of the circulation of memories of apartheid and fragments of experience. Secondly, in order to further interrogate how place engages the formation of subjectivity, we turn to a post-humanist expansion of Du Bois' model of stance-subjectivity. And thirdly, we attempt to account for the longue duree of the trope of apartheid as place by discussing how a Foucauldian subjectification can be reconciled with a posthumanist Freudian notion of condensation. We conclude by suggesting that this approach to landscapes of the imagination has the potential to inform new research directions in Linguistic Landscapes, particularly towards a post-humanist perspective.
In this paper, I analyse the testimony of Colin de Souza given before South Africa's Truth a... more In this paper, I analyse the testimony of Colin de Souza given before South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in the mid-1990s.1 My aim is to explore how De Souza projects an identity of himself as 'agentive', as an innovative and flexible individual who is capable of outwitting and outmaneuvering his opponents despite the
Considerable research on social media has documented the diversity and creativity inherent in man... more Considerable research on social media has documented the diversity and creativity inherent in many youth texting styles and instant messaging. However, little scholarship has explored the impact of ...
Contemporary scholarship on race investigates how racism is deeply embedded in everyday norms and... more Contemporary scholarship on race investigates how racism is deeply embedded in everyday norms and practices in ways which subtly, even unwittingly, serve to reproduce white domination. In South Africa, like many other postcolonial societies, racial constructs continue to be particularly salient. This paper focuses on how a young South African, Bernadette, navigates the complex terrain of racial positioning in a focus group interview with her peers. Drawing primarily on Labov’s seminal work on narrative, as well as more recent interactional approaches, it investigates how Bernadette uses the reported speech of others in her stories as a key narrative strategy for racial positioning. The analytical findings suggest that despite her efforts to distance herself from what she perceives as racist talk, she slips into a racializing discourse which is much less overt than that which she rejects, and which has the effect of reassembling the apartheid hierarchy as an explanatory framework. Th...
Although apartheid officially ended in 1994, the issue of race as a primary identity marker has c... more Although apartheid officially ended in 1994, the issue of race as a primary identity marker has continued to permeate many aspects of private and public life in a post-apartheid South Africa. This paper seeks to understand how youth at two South African tertiary institutions position themselves in relation to race and the apartheid past. Our data includes four focus group interviews from two universities, one which can be described as historically ‘black’ and the other historically ‘white’. Given the complex nature of the data, we elected to use a combination of corpus linguistics and discourse analysis as our methodological approach. We explore how words such as black, white, coloured, they, we, us and them feature in the interviews. Our analysis shows that the positioning by the interviewees reflects a complexity and ambivalence that is at times contradictory although several broader discourse patterns can be distilled. In particular, we argue, that all groups employ a range of discursive strategies so as to resist being positioned in the historical positions of ‘victim’ and ‘perpetrator’. Our paper reflects on these findings as well as what they offer us as we attempt to chart new discourses of the future.
This thesis is a discourse analysis of five testimonies from South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliat... more This thesis is a discourse analysis of five testimonies from South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The aim of the analysis is to explore the ways in which the testifiers perform their identities, construe their experiences of life under apartheid, and position themselves and their audiences in relation to these experiences. The shaping role of context – both local and historical – is also considered.
The testimonies are drawn from the Human Rights Violation hearings and all are given by testifiers associated with the Bonteheuwel Military Wing: four activists and a family member of one of the activists. The analysis shows that even within a homogeneous group of testimonies there is enormous variability. This variability can be explained by the role of the testifiers (as activist or non-activist) as well as their differing narrative purposes. Each testimony is the product of a number of linguistic choices: from the choice of language as medium of communication to the subtle linguistic choices people make which construe their identities and index their stance.
The thesis is informed by a view of language as social process and draws on theories of Discourse Analysis and Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) for its theoretical framework. From Discourse Analysis, theories which view social reality and identity as constructed are used, while from SFL, a number of theoretical tools for the close readings of texts are selected. In this respect, the SFL theories of genre, appraisal, transitivity and periodicity are used. With regard to the theory of appraisal, this thesis makes an original contribution to the theory by arguing that within multilingual contexts, code-switching functions as an appraisal resource. This thesis also offers a detailed description of the macro-generic structure of the TRC testimony, thereby adding to the pool of spoken data analysed from an SFL genre perspective.
The thesis also explores the social discourses testifiers draw on in their construal of their identities. It argues that while the activists share a collective social identity, they select differently from the discourses available for this construal, and infuse these with their own individual identities to create testimonies which are distinctive and unique even though they refer to common experiences. The testimony of the non-activist (family member) draws on a different set of discourses as might be expected, given the different perspective and narrative purpose of the testifier.
Understanding the subtle and significant ways in which different testifiers construe their experiences is important, this thesis argues, to understanding their “narrative truths”, or the way in which they have remembered and made sense of their experiences. It is part of the establishment of the TRC’s mandate to establish “as complete a picture as possible” of suffering under and resistance to apartheid.
Language, Society and Communication: An Introduction, 2014
'Language, Society and Communication: An Introduction' is a southern African introduction to ling... more 'Language, Society and Communication: An Introduction' is a southern African introduction to linguistics, language and communication. It breaks new ground by re-presenting mainstream linguistic theories from a southern perspective. For example, it takes as its primary frame of reference this region's immensely rich and complex linguistic heritage. It introduces students to core theoretical concepts and frameworks in linguistics but illustrates these with local (southern African) content, much of it drawn from the authors’ own research projects (e.g. Nama and language shift, hip hop and transgressive literacies). Unlike any other textbook available, it illustrates linguistic phenomena with examples from a range of Bantu languages, as well as English and Afrikaans. Secondly, it seeks to promote a ‘linguistics from the south’, not only in terms of contextualising knowledge in southern African terms, but also in the sense that it is premised on the understanding that ‘multilingualism is the norm'. In this way, it critiques the monoglossic paradigms and essentialising conceptions of language we have inherited from ‘the north’. And, lastly, it is unique in the sense that it introduces students to a range of innovative fields in contemporary sociolinguistics, such as social media, branding, graffiti and linguistic landscapes.
Uploads
Papers by Zannie Bock
The testimonies are drawn from the Human Rights Violation hearings and all are given by testifiers associated with the Bonteheuwel Military Wing: four activists and a family member of one of the activists. The analysis shows that even within a homogeneous group of testimonies there is enormous variability. This variability can be explained by the role of the testifiers (as activist or non-activist) as well as their differing narrative purposes. Each testimony is the product of a number of linguistic choices: from the choice of language as medium of communication to the subtle linguistic choices people make which construe their identities and index their stance.
The thesis is informed by a view of language as social process and draws on theories of Discourse Analysis and Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) for its theoretical framework. From Discourse Analysis, theories which view social reality and identity as constructed are used, while from SFL, a number of theoretical tools for the close readings of texts are selected. In this respect, the SFL theories of genre, appraisal, transitivity and periodicity are used. With regard to the theory of appraisal, this thesis makes an original contribution to the theory by arguing that within multilingual contexts, code-switching functions as an appraisal resource. This thesis also offers a detailed description of the macro-generic structure of the TRC testimony, thereby adding to the pool of spoken data analysed from an SFL genre perspective.
The thesis also explores the social discourses testifiers draw on in their construal of their identities. It argues that while the activists share a collective social identity, they select differently from the discourses available for this construal, and infuse these with their own individual identities to create testimonies which are distinctive and unique even though they refer to common experiences. The testimony of the non-activist (family member) draws on a different set of discourses as might be expected, given the different perspective and narrative purpose of the testifier.
Understanding the subtle and significant ways in which different testifiers construe their experiences is important, this thesis argues, to understanding their “narrative truths”, or the way in which they have remembered and made sense of their experiences. It is part of the establishment of the TRC’s mandate to establish “as complete a picture as possible” of suffering under and resistance to apartheid.