Sally Hunt | The Open University (original) (raw)
Papers by Sally Hunt
South African Journal of Linguistics, Nov 1, 1997
Hierdie artikel beskryf 'n vertakkingsmodel wat ontwikkel is om die interaksie wat in 'n ... more Hierdie artikel beskryf 'n vertakkingsmodel wat ontwikkel is om die interaksie wat in 'n tersiere onderrigmilieu in klein groepies plaasvind, te beskryf. Gebaseer op werk in verband met Gespreksana...
Routledge eBooks, Apr 2, 2021
Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks, 2015
Gender is an all-pervasive and extremely influential construct in the lives of individuals (Taylo... more Gender is an all-pervasive and extremely influential construct in the lives of individuals (Taylor, 2003). In children’s literature, we find a reflection of the attitudes towards gender prevalent in a given society at a particular time (Peterson and Lach, 1990). Therefore the study of how gender is represented in children’s literature can make a useful contribution to our understanding of how choices in language use support particular discourses, ‘broad constitutive systems of meaning’ (Sunderland, 2004: 6) or ‘ways of seeing the world’ (op cit: 28). These representations in turn perpetuate prevailing gendered power relations in that society, as research into children’s literature has shown (Thompson and Sealey, 2007). Corpus Linguistics offers a degree of objectivity and efficiency not possible in manual ideological analysis, as well as a set of tools particularly useful for the lexical analysis of considerable quantities of text. In this chapter, I report on my analysis of gendered discourses in the Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling, focussing on patterns around grammatical agency in the books.
This study uses Critical Discourse Analysis and Corpus Linguistics to analyse how South African m... more This study uses Critical Discourse Analysis and Corpus Linguistics to analyse how South African media, including online comment sections, represent womanhood and motherhood, with reference to two prominent South African public figures, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and the late Albertina Sisulu, both often referred to as “the mother of the nation”. In addition, I show how readers participate in public debate, in this case reiterating dominant views of women and positioning traditional nurturing and self-sacrificing attributes as desirable.
Discourse approaches to politics, society and culture, Oct 26, 2015
The discourses of the post-apartheid South Africa embody symbols of change and promises of new le... more The discourses of the post-apartheid South Africa embody symbols of change and promises of new lessons in history. This is the first volume that brings together analyses of a variety of discourses produced in South Africa through which we follow the evolution of transitional processes in the country’s political institutions and in the opinions of its populace. The book offers to the reader a visit to the Parliament, a peek into the internet forums, analyses of the country's official papers and speeches, and the media accounts. Through all these discourses we see the burning questions – "Who Are We Now?" and "Who Do We Want To Be?" – being repetitively examined and identities cross-formed while the country deals with new, post-apartheid challenges, as well as successes
Discourse approaches to politics, society and culture, Oct 26, 2015
This study uses Critical Discourse Analysis and Corpus Linguistics to analyse how South African m... more This study uses Critical Discourse Analysis and Corpus Linguistics to analyse how South African media, including online comment sections, represent womanhood and motherhood, with reference to two prominent South African public figures, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and the late Albertina Sisulu, both often referred to as “the mother of the nation”. In addition, I show how readers participate in public debate, in this case reiterating dominant views of women and positioning traditional nurturing and self-sacrificing attributes as desirable.
Gender and Language, Sep 13, 2017
Intersections and differentiations: a corpus-assisted discourse study of gender representations i... more Intersections and differentiations: a corpus-assisted discourse study of gender representations in the British press before, during and after the London Olympics 2012 1 Introduction Sport is undeniably one of the most pervasive areas of human activity spanning all social strata and widely present across media and education. Apart from being a form of entertainment and physical activity, it is a common cultural and symbolic resource deployed to aid group solidarity and identity formation (Meân and Halone 2010). Given that sport is so omnipresent in everyday life and intersects so many layers of society, it is an appropriate lens through which to study culture and social relations, including gender relations. As Beard (1998: 17) observes, if there are any gender issues in society, these are very likely to be reflected in sport. While some studies show an increase in the amount of coverage of women in sport, and the 'disturbing' and challenging effect this can have on the traditional perception of sport as a male domain (Messner et al. 1993), this has not necessarily led to gender parity, but rather to different ways of constructing sportswomen and sportsmen discursively (Messner et al. 1993) Overt expressions of sexism seem nowadays to be largely absent from sport news and commentators appear to be more aware of gendered language (Duncan et al. 2005), but gendered hierarchies are still maintained, arguably through much subtler patterns of representations, which can be more pernicious than blatant sexism (Duncan 2006). Given that most people experience sporting events through media only, sports media are a powerful tool in disseminating such biases and influencing, directly and indirectly, public attitudes. Because journalists do not just reflect their own views, but also draw heavily on perceptions and ideas that they believe are widely accepted (Cotter 2010), studying representations as constructed through the language of sports media can reveal discourses and biases widely distributed in society. With a few exceptions (Meân 2001; Sznycer 2010; McDowell and Schaffner 2011; Aull and Brown 2013; Caple 2013), linguists have, to date, paid little attention to the role of sport discourse in the construction of gendered identities and biases. It is for these reasons that a number of sports scholars call for greater attention to the discourse of sports media (Kassing et al. 2004). The present study responds to this call in that it aims to examine the impact of a global sports event on the discursive construction of gender representations in media reporting. i Whereas previous research on gender and sport has been mainly concerned with sports events in the North American or Australian context (e.g. Billings and Eastman 2002; Duncan et al. 2005; Bruce et al. 2010), this study investigates British media reporting surrounding the London Olympics in 2012. Also, most studies on sport and gender have focused on the representations of sportswomen and sportsmen during sports events and paid little attention to the impact on gender representations beyond these events. Given the current commitment of most international sports organisations including the International Olympic Committee (IOC) ii to promote gender equality in sport and beyond, examining the impact of sports events on gender representations seems a timely endeavour. By investigating patterns of gender representations before, during and after the London Olympics 2012, this study aims to assess whether this global sporting event had an impact on the construction of gender in media reporting and if so, what the nature of this effect was and whether it continued in subsequent reporting. Furthermore, most studies on the subject tend to treat gender as an isolated category, which does not adequately reflect the social 'reality' of gender, especially in sport. The notion of intersectionality reminds us that socially constructed categories such as gender cannot be studied in a one-dimensional way, as they are always bound with other social constructs, for example, ethnicity, age or nationality (Crenshaw 1991
Discourse, Context and Media, Aug 1, 2019
Taking as the starting point the importance of adopting an intersectional approach to studying me... more Taking as the starting point the importance of adopting an intersectional approach to studying mediatised representations, this study focuses on media construals of the South African athlete Oscar Pistorius. Spanning a range of intersecting identities-he is white, male, disabled, a sports champion and a convicted murderer-Pistorius presents an important case to study. In this paper, we focus on the period from his success in the 2012 London Olympics to his 'fall from grace' after fatally shooting his girlfriend in 2013. We use a combination of corpus linguistic tools and methods, and Critical Discourse Analysis, to interrogate corpora of press articles published in major British and South African newspapers. Investigating collocational patterns surrounding Pistorius, we show how media 'mix and match' aspects of his identity to construct a particular kind of persona. Whereas his disability and (trans)national identity are foregrounded in constructing him as a sports hero, his new emotionality and mental vulnerability are emphasized through gendered representations in the UK while a largely individual representation dominates in South Africa, where he is referred to overwhelmingly by name and in terms of his crime as an amputee, and only obliquely as white and male. At the theoretical level, our study adds to the body of research which challenges the notion that individual experience can be understood by categorising people in terms of one identity component (gender, race, ethnicity). More importantly, it shows that different
Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, 2000
This paper focuses on the effect of the gender of participants on the discourse patterns of unive... more This paper focuses on the effect of the gender of participants on the discourse patterns of university seminars, and compares the interaction patterns in two undergraduate seminars with those in two post-graduate seminars at Rhodes University. In the undergraduate seminars, two ...
Continued gender inequality and gendered representations in the media, broadly construed, remain ... more Continued gender inequality and gendered representations in the media, broadly construed, remain of concern because of the dialectic relationship between language and society. One source of gender cues is fiction written for and consumed by children. The characters encountered in the pages of a popular book constitute the stuff of identity building and may become role models for thousands of young and impressionable readers
Gender and Language, 2016
Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, 2015
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 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 include four focus group interviews from two universities, one which can be described as historically 'black' and the other as 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. Race and identity in South Africa Post-structuralist perspectives of race view it as a social construct, an outcome of the colonial project which sought to categorise and rank people in a hierarchy naturalising a view of whites, or 'Europeans', as superior to other races and which relegated 'blackness' to the lowest rung (Harris and Rampton 2003).
Gender is an all-pervasive and extremely influential construct in the lives of individuals (Taylo... more Gender is an all-pervasive and extremely influential construct in the lives of individuals (Taylor, 2003). In children’s literature, we find a reflection of the attitudes towards gender prevalent in a given society at a particular time (Peterson and Lach, 1990). Therefore the study of how gender is represented in children’s literature can make a useful contribution to our understanding of how choices in language use support particular discourses, ‘broad constitutive systems of meaning’ (Sunderland, 2004: 6) or ‘ways of seeing the world’ (op cit: 28). These representations in turn perpetuate prevailing gendered power relations in that society, as research into children’s literature has shown (Thompson and Sealey, 2007). Corpus Linguistics offers a degree of objectivity and efficiency not possible in manual ideological analysis, as well as a set of tools particularly useful for the lexical analysis of considerable quantities of text. In this chapter, I report on my analysis of gendere...
This paper focuses on the effect of the gender of participants on the discourse patterns of unive... more This paper focuses on the effect of the gender of participants on the discourse patterns of university seminars, and compares the interaction patterns in two undergraduate seminars with those in two post-graduate seminars at Rhodes University. In the undergraduate seminars, two different groups of students at first year level in different disciplines were videotaped. The major difference was in terms of composition: in one seminar, there were equal numbers of male and female students, while in the other, female students dominated numerically (75%). In addition, five of the six formed a close-knit group of friends, which proved to be an important factor in the analysis. At the postgraduate level, the student participants were identical and met in the same venue and at the same time on two successive days to discuss the same topic (affirmative action in the workplace). The important difference between the two classes was the fact that the first seminar was led by a female tutor and 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 di...
Discourse, Context & Media
Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, Feb 7, 2006
The extract under examination comes from a larger data set of conversations between female friend... more The extract under examination comes from a larger data set of conversations between female friends at university. At the point at which this conversation occurred, the partici-pants had known each other for approximately two-and-a-half months. As the subjects are studying and ...
Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture, 2015
South African Journal of Linguistics, Nov 1, 1997
Hierdie artikel beskryf 'n vertakkingsmodel wat ontwikkel is om die interaksie wat in 'n ... more Hierdie artikel beskryf 'n vertakkingsmodel wat ontwikkel is om die interaksie wat in 'n tersiere onderrigmilieu in klein groepies plaasvind, te beskryf. Gebaseer op werk in verband met Gespreksana...
Routledge eBooks, Apr 2, 2021
Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks, 2015
Gender is an all-pervasive and extremely influential construct in the lives of individuals (Taylo... more Gender is an all-pervasive and extremely influential construct in the lives of individuals (Taylor, 2003). In children’s literature, we find a reflection of the attitudes towards gender prevalent in a given society at a particular time (Peterson and Lach, 1990). Therefore the study of how gender is represented in children’s literature can make a useful contribution to our understanding of how choices in language use support particular discourses, ‘broad constitutive systems of meaning’ (Sunderland, 2004: 6) or ‘ways of seeing the world’ (op cit: 28). These representations in turn perpetuate prevailing gendered power relations in that society, as research into children’s literature has shown (Thompson and Sealey, 2007). Corpus Linguistics offers a degree of objectivity and efficiency not possible in manual ideological analysis, as well as a set of tools particularly useful for the lexical analysis of considerable quantities of text. In this chapter, I report on my analysis of gendered discourses in the Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling, focussing on patterns around grammatical agency in the books.
This study uses Critical Discourse Analysis and Corpus Linguistics to analyse how South African m... more This study uses Critical Discourse Analysis and Corpus Linguistics to analyse how South African media, including online comment sections, represent womanhood and motherhood, with reference to two prominent South African public figures, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and the late Albertina Sisulu, both often referred to as “the mother of the nation”. In addition, I show how readers participate in public debate, in this case reiterating dominant views of women and positioning traditional nurturing and self-sacrificing attributes as desirable.
Discourse approaches to politics, society and culture, Oct 26, 2015
The discourses of the post-apartheid South Africa embody symbols of change and promises of new le... more The discourses of the post-apartheid South Africa embody symbols of change and promises of new lessons in history. This is the first volume that brings together analyses of a variety of discourses produced in South Africa through which we follow the evolution of transitional processes in the country’s political institutions and in the opinions of its populace. The book offers to the reader a visit to the Parliament, a peek into the internet forums, analyses of the country's official papers and speeches, and the media accounts. Through all these discourses we see the burning questions – "Who Are We Now?" and "Who Do We Want To Be?" – being repetitively examined and identities cross-formed while the country deals with new, post-apartheid challenges, as well as successes
Discourse approaches to politics, society and culture, Oct 26, 2015
This study uses Critical Discourse Analysis and Corpus Linguistics to analyse how South African m... more This study uses Critical Discourse Analysis and Corpus Linguistics to analyse how South African media, including online comment sections, represent womanhood and motherhood, with reference to two prominent South African public figures, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and the late Albertina Sisulu, both often referred to as “the mother of the nation”. In addition, I show how readers participate in public debate, in this case reiterating dominant views of women and positioning traditional nurturing and self-sacrificing attributes as desirable.
Gender and Language, Sep 13, 2017
Intersections and differentiations: a corpus-assisted discourse study of gender representations i... more Intersections and differentiations: a corpus-assisted discourse study of gender representations in the British press before, during and after the London Olympics 2012 1 Introduction Sport is undeniably one of the most pervasive areas of human activity spanning all social strata and widely present across media and education. Apart from being a form of entertainment and physical activity, it is a common cultural and symbolic resource deployed to aid group solidarity and identity formation (Meân and Halone 2010). Given that sport is so omnipresent in everyday life and intersects so many layers of society, it is an appropriate lens through which to study culture and social relations, including gender relations. As Beard (1998: 17) observes, if there are any gender issues in society, these are very likely to be reflected in sport. While some studies show an increase in the amount of coverage of women in sport, and the 'disturbing' and challenging effect this can have on the traditional perception of sport as a male domain (Messner et al. 1993), this has not necessarily led to gender parity, but rather to different ways of constructing sportswomen and sportsmen discursively (Messner et al. 1993) Overt expressions of sexism seem nowadays to be largely absent from sport news and commentators appear to be more aware of gendered language (Duncan et al. 2005), but gendered hierarchies are still maintained, arguably through much subtler patterns of representations, which can be more pernicious than blatant sexism (Duncan 2006). Given that most people experience sporting events through media only, sports media are a powerful tool in disseminating such biases and influencing, directly and indirectly, public attitudes. Because journalists do not just reflect their own views, but also draw heavily on perceptions and ideas that they believe are widely accepted (Cotter 2010), studying representations as constructed through the language of sports media can reveal discourses and biases widely distributed in society. With a few exceptions (Meân 2001; Sznycer 2010; McDowell and Schaffner 2011; Aull and Brown 2013; Caple 2013), linguists have, to date, paid little attention to the role of sport discourse in the construction of gendered identities and biases. It is for these reasons that a number of sports scholars call for greater attention to the discourse of sports media (Kassing et al. 2004). The present study responds to this call in that it aims to examine the impact of a global sports event on the discursive construction of gender representations in media reporting. i Whereas previous research on gender and sport has been mainly concerned with sports events in the North American or Australian context (e.g. Billings and Eastman 2002; Duncan et al. 2005; Bruce et al. 2010), this study investigates British media reporting surrounding the London Olympics in 2012. Also, most studies on sport and gender have focused on the representations of sportswomen and sportsmen during sports events and paid little attention to the impact on gender representations beyond these events. Given the current commitment of most international sports organisations including the International Olympic Committee (IOC) ii to promote gender equality in sport and beyond, examining the impact of sports events on gender representations seems a timely endeavour. By investigating patterns of gender representations before, during and after the London Olympics 2012, this study aims to assess whether this global sporting event had an impact on the construction of gender in media reporting and if so, what the nature of this effect was and whether it continued in subsequent reporting. Furthermore, most studies on the subject tend to treat gender as an isolated category, which does not adequately reflect the social 'reality' of gender, especially in sport. The notion of intersectionality reminds us that socially constructed categories such as gender cannot be studied in a one-dimensional way, as they are always bound with other social constructs, for example, ethnicity, age or nationality (Crenshaw 1991
Discourse, Context and Media, Aug 1, 2019
Taking as the starting point the importance of adopting an intersectional approach to studying me... more Taking as the starting point the importance of adopting an intersectional approach to studying mediatised representations, this study focuses on media construals of the South African athlete Oscar Pistorius. Spanning a range of intersecting identities-he is white, male, disabled, a sports champion and a convicted murderer-Pistorius presents an important case to study. In this paper, we focus on the period from his success in the 2012 London Olympics to his 'fall from grace' after fatally shooting his girlfriend in 2013. We use a combination of corpus linguistic tools and methods, and Critical Discourse Analysis, to interrogate corpora of press articles published in major British and South African newspapers. Investigating collocational patterns surrounding Pistorius, we show how media 'mix and match' aspects of his identity to construct a particular kind of persona. Whereas his disability and (trans)national identity are foregrounded in constructing him as a sports hero, his new emotionality and mental vulnerability are emphasized through gendered representations in the UK while a largely individual representation dominates in South Africa, where he is referred to overwhelmingly by name and in terms of his crime as an amputee, and only obliquely as white and male. At the theoretical level, our study adds to the body of research which challenges the notion that individual experience can be understood by categorising people in terms of one identity component (gender, race, ethnicity). More importantly, it shows that different
Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, 2000
This paper focuses on the effect of the gender of participants on the discourse patterns of unive... more This paper focuses on the effect of the gender of participants on the discourse patterns of university seminars, and compares the interaction patterns in two undergraduate seminars with those in two post-graduate seminars at Rhodes University. In the undergraduate seminars, two ...
Continued gender inequality and gendered representations in the media, broadly construed, remain ... more Continued gender inequality and gendered representations in the media, broadly construed, remain of concern because of the dialectic relationship between language and society. One source of gender cues is fiction written for and consumed by children. The characters encountered in the pages of a popular book constitute the stuff of identity building and may become role models for thousands of young and impressionable readers
Gender and Language, 2016
Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, 2015
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 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 include four focus group interviews from two universities, one which can be described as historically 'black' and the other as 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. Race and identity in South Africa Post-structuralist perspectives of race view it as a social construct, an outcome of the colonial project which sought to categorise and rank people in a hierarchy naturalising a view of whites, or 'Europeans', as superior to other races and which relegated 'blackness' to the lowest rung (Harris and Rampton 2003).
Gender is an all-pervasive and extremely influential construct in the lives of individuals (Taylo... more Gender is an all-pervasive and extremely influential construct in the lives of individuals (Taylor, 2003). In children’s literature, we find a reflection of the attitudes towards gender prevalent in a given society at a particular time (Peterson and Lach, 1990). Therefore the study of how gender is represented in children’s literature can make a useful contribution to our understanding of how choices in language use support particular discourses, ‘broad constitutive systems of meaning’ (Sunderland, 2004: 6) or ‘ways of seeing the world’ (op cit: 28). These representations in turn perpetuate prevailing gendered power relations in that society, as research into children’s literature has shown (Thompson and Sealey, 2007). Corpus Linguistics offers a degree of objectivity and efficiency not possible in manual ideological analysis, as well as a set of tools particularly useful for the lexical analysis of considerable quantities of text. In this chapter, I report on my analysis of gendere...
This paper focuses on the effect of the gender of participants on the discourse patterns of unive... more This paper focuses on the effect of the gender of participants on the discourse patterns of university seminars, and compares the interaction patterns in two undergraduate seminars with those in two post-graduate seminars at Rhodes University. In the undergraduate seminars, two different groups of students at first year level in different disciplines were videotaped. The major difference was in terms of composition: in one seminar, there were equal numbers of male and female students, while in the other, female students dominated numerically (75%). In addition, five of the six formed a close-knit group of friends, which proved to be an important factor in the analysis. At the postgraduate level, the student participants were identical and met in the same venue and at the same time on two successive days to discuss the same topic (affirmative action in the workplace). The important difference between the two classes was the fact that the first seminar was led by a female tutor and 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 di...
Discourse, Context & Media
Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, Feb 7, 2006
The extract under examination comes from a larger data set of conversations between female friend... more The extract under examination comes from a larger data set of conversations between female friends at university. At the point at which this conversation occurred, the partici-pants had known each other for approximately two-and-a-half months. As the subjects are studying and ...
Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture, 2015