Christine Anthonissen | Stellenbosch University (original) (raw)

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Papers by Christine Anthonissen

CITATION: Brand, I. & Anthonissen, C. 2017. Taalbewussyn as komponent van geletterdheidsvaardighe... more CITATION: Brand, I. & Anthonissen, C. 2017. Taalbewussyn as komponent van geletterdheidsvaardigheid : 'n ondersoek na narratiefvaardigheidontwikkeling by Graad 3-leerders. LitNet Akademies, 14(2):696-725.

Curare, 2008

This paper investigates some of the communicative features of discourses mediated by bilingual em... more This paper investigates some of the communicative features of discourses mediated by bilingual employees in the context ofAntiretroviral Therapy (ART) in South Africa. Since 2002, the South African government aims at providing ART for all affected communities. Bilingual employees play an important role in this enterprise because health workers and patients often do not belong to the same linguistic and ethnic group and sometimes even do not share a Lingua Franca. Therefore, these employees act as cultural and linguistic mediators, also in during doctor-patient consultations. Although their participation is often indispensable, their institutional status is low.

Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics Plus, 2012

This paper considers a number of pertinent sociolinguistic aspects of a distinct process of langu... more This paper considers a number of pertinent sociolinguistic aspects of a distinct process of language shift recently noted in some historically Afrikaans first language (L1) communities established in the Cape Metropolitan area. Particularly, it considers qualitatively how a number of families made deliberate choices to change the family language from Afrikaans L1 to English L1. It elaborates on an exploratory study undertaken in 2003, adding data collected in 2008 and 2009, investigating linguistic repertoire and language choice in a number of families where there has been contact between English and Afrikaans over a number of generations. The aim, eventually, is to characterise the nature of the perceived process of language shift. The paper considers how widespread use of both English and Afrikaans in communities that until recently were predominantly Afrikaans, impacts on linguistic identities. It reports on structured interviews with members of three generations of families who currently exhibit English-Afrikaans bilingualism where members of the younger generation are more fluent in English. It finds that there is evidence of language shift, it reports on the circumstances that motivate such shift, and concludes that the third generation presents either a monolingual English identity where Afrikaans has a decidedly second language status, or a strong English-dominant bilingual identity.

Journal of Multicultural Discourses, 2008

This article considers the role of the interpreters at the hearings of the South African Truth an... more This article considers the role of the interpreters at the hearings of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in view of a topical question in translation studies. Referring to experiences of simultaneous translating interpreters, the paper highlights a number of ...

English Today, 2013

This article gives an appraisal of bilingualism in Afrikaans and English among the Cape ‘Coloured... more This article gives an appraisal of bilingualism in Afrikaans and English among the Cape ‘Coloured’ community and of shifting patterns within it. It has become customary to use quotation marks around the term Coloured and lower case to signal that this and other race-based terms are contested ones in South Africa (see Erasmus, 2001; Ruiters, 2009). On the advice of the ET editor for this issue, however, I will use the term with the capital and without quotation marks, since he argues – conversely – that the use of lower case and scare quotes in print can also be misconstrued as disrespect for a community. In this community it appears that a shift is underway from Afrikaans as first and as home language to English as the dominant family language. However, this shift does not follow a straightforward linear trajectory, and while some speakers appear to have abandoned Afrikaans in favour of English, in many families the language has not been jettisoned. Before citing studies that explor...

This paper attends to the silences that become particularly salient through the ways in which pub... more This paper attends to the silences that become particularly salient through the ways in which public communication in the media obscures minor details, alternative versions of an event, and even complete stories. In doing so it relates to various theoretical instruments introduced in Critical Discourse Analysis, that acknowledge the impact of unequal power relations, and the manipulative actions of those who are in charge of powerful institutions such as the security services in a totalitarian state, the information services of a government suspected of doing “dirty tricks” or the news media serving an ideology that will keep people careless of basic human rights, in power. It refers illustratively to the period of 1985 to 1990 when successive States of Emergency imposed strict censorship regulations on public news media in South Africa. [See Anthonissen in Wodak, R. and G. Auer Borea (eds.) 2009. Confronting Traumatic Pasts. An International Comparison. Vienna: Passagen Verlag.0

Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics, 2012

By submitting this dissertation electronically, I declare that the entirety of the work contained... more By submitting this dissertation electronically, I declare that the entirety of the work contained therein is my own, original work, that I am the sole author thereof (save to the extent explicitly otherwise stated), that reproduction and publication thereof by Stellenbosch University will not infringe any third party rights and that I have not previously in its entirety or in part submitted it for obtaining any qualification.

Benjamins Current Topics Special issues of established journals tend to circulate within the orbi... more Benjamins Current Topics Special issues of established journals tend to circulate within the orbit of the subscribers of those journals. For the Benjamins Current Topics series a number of special issues have been selected containing salient topics of research with the aim to widen the ...

Applied Linguistics

Following a suggestion by Crosthwaite (2005) that autobiographical narratives can be viewed as or... more Following a suggestion by Crosthwaite (2005) that autobiographical narratives can be viewed as organizational practices, this article turns attention to events of recalling and articulating personal histories of trauma produced during and after the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) hearings of 1996–8. Witness testimonies at the TRC were institutionally framed to fit the aims of national reconciliation in ways that may have limited the kinds of contribution witnesses unfamiliar with the institutional structure could make. Discourses recorded at the human rights violations hearings of the TRC give evidence of speakers recalling traumatic events of state violence that disrupted their lives and displaced them both physically and psychologically. This article considers how traumatic experience poses challenges to the coherence of autobiographical narrative as well as how narrative structures that do not fit institutionally introduced formats can become opaque to the...

This paper uses Critical Discourse Analysis as a methodological framework for considering the way... more This paper uses Critical Discourse Analysis as a methodological framework for considering the ways in which Die Kerkbode (a publication of the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC)) mediated the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) from 1995 to 2001. It reflects on the reasonable expectations one could have of a publication of the nature of Die Kerkbode with its very specific readership. It also reflects on how such expectations were met (or not). The analysis indicates how an early position of doubt as to the integrity of the TRC process gradually developed into one that responded mmore sensitively to the volume of testimonies to human rights abuses during the years of the Struggle. However, it also indicates a primary interest in the image of the DRC and its own (limited) participation in the TRC processes. There is no coverage of particular narratives of the special event hearings, the Human Rights Violations hearings or the Amnesty hearings. No reference is made to real events which were topicalised during the TRC hearings themselves. Eventually, in 2001, there appear to be a return to a position that questions the value of the TRC and attention is directed at calls for amnesty rather rather than restitution for those who had suffered most. This calls for further reflection on why the DRC could at the time not respond with empathy and a more considered understanding of 'reconciliation'.

Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture, 2003

This paper gives a description of multilingual practices in two HIV-care centres in Lesotho on th... more This paper gives a description of multilingual practices in two HIV-care centres in Lesotho on the basis of interviews with both health care providers and some patients who make use of the services of these centres. It considers the importance of effective linguistic communication in HIV-care and the hazards posed to such communication when physicians do not share the first language of the patients and of others working in these health care facilities. It gives the insights gained in a recent study on the kinds of interventions developed to facilitate communication in such multilingual institutional settings. In one of the centres informal interpreters are appointed to assist in transfer of information during consultations; in the second centre interpreting is only casually available from bilingual staff members. Besides interpreting, participants reported engaging in a number of other mediating practices. Evidence gained from informal interpreting studies elsewhere suggests that more than literal translation is required to achieve the kind of communicative success that will ensure quality in the health care provided to a vulnerable community. This study agrees with such findings and has generated a number of suggestions for improving the management of the linguistic diversity in communication within such clinics. The paper focuses on the specific resources provided in the healthcare centres and on the strategies participants use to enhance medical communication. 1. Multilingualism in the Lesotho health care system HIV/AIDS clinics in Lesotho are sites of multilingual health care. The multilingual situation in these clinics is explained by the fact that besides the wide distribution of Sesotho, English is widely used as a lingua franca and among the local population a considerable number know Afrikaans as an additional language. Additionally, due to the reliance of the health care system on health care workers of foreign origin, referred to as expatriate personnel 1 , a range of other 1 The number of physicians of foreign origin is estimated at 80% of those working in Lesotho. In the two clinics where this study was done, all physicians were of foreign nationality.

Hamburg Studies on Multilingualism, 2010

Managing linguistic diversity in a South African HIV/AIDS day clinic Christine Anthonissen Stelle... more Managing linguistic diversity in a South African HIV/AIDS day clinic Christine Anthonissen Stellenbosch, South Africa This article addresses aspects of multilingual communication in a number of state-run HIV-clinics in the Western Cape. It describes linguistic diversity in ...

Critical Discourse Analysis, 2003

14 Interaction between Visual and Verbal Communication: Changing Patterns in the Printed Media Ch... more 14 Interaction between Visual and Verbal Communication: Changing Patterns in the Printed Media Christine Anthonissen It is common cause that we refer to Critical Linguistics (CL) and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as interdisciplinary areas of research with no pre-tence ...

Scriptura, 2012

Abstract: This article uses Critical Discourse Analysis as a methodological framework for conside... more Abstract: This article uses Critical Discourse Analysis as a methodological framework for considering the ways in which <i>Die Kerkbode</i> mediated the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) from 1995 to 2001. It reflects on the reasonable expectations one ...

Lssa Saala Saalt Joint Annual Conference 2013, Jun 28, 2013

Per Linguam, Dec 3, 2014

This paper uses a sociocultural theory and heteroglossic approach to investigate the bilingual le... more This paper uses a sociocultural theory and heteroglossic approach to investigate the bilingual learning experience of seven Afrikaans/English bilinguals at Stellenbosch University. In particular these bilinguals were asked to reflect on the language choices they make when completing various assessment tasks and when they are internalising new information. These students were also asked to reflect on the ways in which a bilingual learning context has changed their language proficiency. It is evident from the data that the language choices are made for a multiplicity of reasons, and that the participants draw on a number of different voices, some contradictory, to articulate their experience. These findings are discussed especially in connection to the implications for policy makers, showing that methodologies such as surveys and questionnaires in which participants are requested to make a choice, do not reflect the heteroglossic and ambiguous nature of bilingualism.

This paper considers a number of salient, characterising features of the verbal mediation process... more This paper considers a number of salient, characterising features of the verbal mediation process that took place in the TRC hearings on gross human rights violations. This is done with reference to the methodology developed in Discourse Sociolinguistics. It considers how various ...

Curare, 2008

Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics Plus, 2012

Journal of Multicultural Discourses, 2008

English Today, 2013

Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics, 2012

Applied Linguistics

Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture, 2003

Hamburg Studies on Multilingualism, 2010

Critical Discourse Analysis, 2003

Scriptura, 2012

Lssa Saala Saalt Joint Annual Conference 2013, Jun 28, 2013

Per Linguam, Dec 3, 2014

This chapter in Wodak and Koller (2008) refers to the nature of censorship in the media. Such cen... more This chapter in Wodak and Koller (2008) refers to the nature of censorship in the media. Such censorship is viewed as an action of silencing that occurs in at least two ways: (i) an authoritative body imposes censorship in order to obscure information it believes to be harmful either to itself or to others, and (ii) an individual or a group exercises self-censorship by withholding information believed to be harmful to themselves or to others. Between the two extremes of imposing silence by killing the speaker and achieving silence by subduing the speaker into self-censorship, there are a range of ways and means of dictating what can be said and what not. Thiesmeyer’s (2003:11) claim that “silencing results from an act of language where language is used in order to enable some kinds of expression and to disable others” is taken as a point of departure. The chapter considers overt and covert forms of censorship that range from ignoring the voices of minority groups or digressing opinions, through forbidding publication, to burning newspapers and even murdering writers of provocative texts. It specifically considers the structure and use of two kinds of censorship prevalent in media discourses, namely censorship of the powerful who may violate the rights of lesser subjects, and self-censorship of those more vulnerable who are not easily able to claim rights of free speech.
Illustratively, reference is made to South African legislation used in censoring the media during the 1980s, and to political, historical and social circumstances which gave rise to the publication (or not) of censored media texts. The focus is on events of silencing the media in South Africa in 1986 when severe state censorship was introduced to subdue and stamp out the growing protest of disenfranchised citizens.
[Chapter 6 in Wodak, R. and V. Koller (eds.) 2008. Handbook of Communication in the Public Sphere. Berlin: Mouton DeGruyter.]

For many South Africans English has become symbolic of education, affluence, internationalism and... more For many South Africans English has become symbolic of education, affluence, internationalism and freedom (see e.g. Nomlomo 2004; Sigcau 2004 and Heugh 2007). It is regarded as serving not only the nation in promoting public and cross-cultural communication, but even more so the individual, as the golden key to upward socio-economic mobility. Those who at this point in time have acceptable levels of proficiency in English, certainly do benefit from it. For this reason, the conviction prevails that all South African learners should be allowed equal and sufficient opportunities to attain an enabling level of English proficiency. The reality, however, is that comparatively few South African learners have been afforded such access. A consequence of the above scenario is that whole generations of learners are attempting to make their way through the schooling system without a useful level of proficiency in the medium of instruction (MoI). Ultimately, the low level of English L2 proficiency learners in this situation acquire fails to unlock the door to the desired upward socioeconomic mobility (Alexander 2012; Krugel and Fourie
2014). In addition, there is an ongoing debate about the new forms of English developing in
postcolonial contexts as a result of contact with various indigenous languages. The legitimacy of these variant forms and the desirability (or not) of trying to uphold Anglo norms in education through the medium of English (cf. Pennycook 1995), are often contested.
This chapter will not engage in the disputes on which Englishes should be endorsed as illustrative of high proficiency and which not. It provides an overview of the development of the Language in Education Policy with special attention to a new dispensation, the implementation of which started after 1994. It also reflects on conditions that have inhibited the de facto implementation of improved forms of maintenance bilingual education. It presents a sociolinguistic profile of the current distribution of South African languages and then gives a developmental history of past and recent South African language-in-education policies (LiEPs). Referring also to the power of English, the chapter discusses attitudes towards English as a MoI in South African schools and weighs arguments for and against mother tongue education (MTE) versus bilingual education as two of the proposed solutions to the problem of selecting MoIs in South Africa. In conclusion, the chapter presents suggestions developed in Perold (2011) for going beyond the idealisations contained in the 1997 Language in Education Policy, to actually achieving its aims of providing enabling education for all.

SOCIAL REALITIES OF INCREASING (super-)diversity, mobility, and the corresponding high appraisal ... more SOCIAL REALITIES OF INCREASING (super-)diversity, mobility, and the corresponding high appraisal of linguistic competences and skills are currently not developing—as was expected—into egalitarian systems and structures in multilingual communities. To the contrary, much evidence of how former inequalities, prejudices, and social and linguistic hierarchies are still active and even amplified abounds in many apparently liberal societies.
This paper focuses precisely on this issue, examining how various late-capitalist and postcolonial regimes recast new forms of diversity into old molds through the implementation of language-education policies and programs. In what follows we explore the main forces and processes that perpetuate inequality, some of which simply continue outdated dispensations while others present innovations even if still not bringing fundamental change. Particularly, we focus on the impact that neoliberal policies have in schools, the transnational division of labor and the persistence of knowledge, values, and ideologies rooted on the colonial past. The interplay of these processes and their impact on the recent proliferation of language programs, and on how diversity is recast, is substantiated in an illustrative section where we refer to three specific educational contexts which represent different national arrangements: South Africa, the United States, and Argentina. We consider different kinds of language programs, and examine different dimensions of the educational processes (from linguistic policies to local practices in classrooms) in these settings. Focusing on these three situations, this paper aims to develop an understanding of what the social, economic, organizational, and even epistemological conditions are that contribute to the perpetuation of inequalities.