Irina Turner | University Of Bayreuth, Germany (original) (raw)

Books by Irina Turner

Via the idea of businification - a neologism describing the infiltration of business ideology in... more Via the idea of businification - a neologism describing the infiltration of business ideology into political and media texts -, this book traces the shift towards neo-liberalism in post-apartheid South Africa through the rhetorical gestures of the country's political narrators. In an application of Critical Discourse and Content Analysis, it examines linguistic changes within the corpus of the annually recurring State-of-the-Nation-Address from 1994 to 2012. This analysis is a contribution to research on business language from a non-Western perspective. Its interdisciplinary approach is of interest to researchers of South African political history, African Studies, Media Studies, and Sociolinguistics.

VDM, 2008

With regards to gender, the constitution of South Africa holds one of the most advanced positions... more With regards to gender, the constitution of South Africa holds one of the most advanced positions in the world. Yet social realities seem far removed from written ideals. This book examines the role of cultural production in bridging the gap. In 2005, the author Irina Turner examined the photography exhibition Is Everybody Comfortable? at the Castle of Good Hope in Cape Town, South Africa. The exhibition was produced by the Market Photography Workshop in Johannesburg. The author analyses to which extent contemporary South African photography can influence societys perception of a postmodern gender concept. The study outlines the emergence of this gender notion in South Africa embedding it in the context of arts and culture. Based on that edifice, a discursive analysis of the exhibition in Cape Town - supported by interviews with visitors, photographers, and critics - investigates to which extent gender theory can be applied to social reality. This book is written for professionals in the cultural sector, for gender activists, for development practitioners, and for everybody concerned with the implementation of theory into practice.

Editions by Irina Turner

This book discusses the status and importance of decolonisation and indigenous knowledge in acade... more This book discusses the status and importance of decolonisation and indigenous knowledge in academic research, teaching, and learning programmes and beyond.
Taking practical lessons from a range of institutions in Africa, the book argues that that local and global sciences are culturally equal and capable of synergistic complementarity and then integrates the concept of hybrid science into discourses on decolonisation. The chapters argue for a cross-cultural dialogue between different epistemic traditions and the accommodation 'Indigenous' knowledge systems in higher education. Bringing together critical scholars, teaching and administrating academics from different disciplines, the chapters provide alternative conceptual outlooks and practical case-based perspectives towards decolonised study environments.
This book will be of interest to researchers of decolonisation, postcolonial studies, higher education studies, political studies, African studies, and philosophy.

Journal Articles by Irina Turner

African Journal of Rhetoric, 2023

Turner, I., Sijadu, Z., & Rudwick, S. (2023). South Africa Laughs At Covid: A Functional Perspect... more Turner, I., Sijadu, Z., & Rudwick, S. (2023). South Africa Laughs At Covid: A Functional Perspective on Political Humour in Social Media. African Journal of Rhetoric, 15(1), 375-405.

Abstract
Multilingual, political communication during the COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa (Rudwick et al. 2021) elicited a great variety of responses on social media. This paper focuses on humorous engagements by politicians and the public with official government health and crisis communication on sites where these were streamed. After outlining rhetorical commonplaces (topoi) invoking humour and their specific functions such as relief, incongruity, superiority, enforcement, subversion, and concealed hate speech, we apply discourse analysis to selected social media examples of humorous government communication and their reception on social media. The focus lies on two prominent themes during the pandemic unfolding in 2020/2021: the South African alcohol ban and the vaccine rollout/roll-back. The comments range from deploying humour to cope with anxiety caused by the pandemic uncertainty to racially charged malicious statements about politicians or certain vulnerable social groups. Humour is thus a double-edged sword in communication.1 We conclude that humour plays a vital role in critical moments of political communication, but its easing effect tends to fade with the duration of a crisis.

Curriculum Perspectives, 2023

Many South African universities aim to implement one or more African languages into formal and di... more Many South African universities aim to implement one or more African languages into formal and digital structures, in a process known as localisation. Often, however, this objective is not met due to manifold obstacles, not least of which is a conceptual contradiction of bounded languages and translingual practices. Digitalisation promises to diversify teaching and learning experiences as well as knowledge production at universities. At the same time, it threatens to reproduce analogue power structures. How do institutions negotiate these potentials and pitfalls? This paper explores the digitalisation of isiXhosa at three South African universities in the Eastern Cape province: Nelson Mandela University, Rhodes University, and the University of Fort Hare. Qualitative methods such as discourse analysis and immersed observation were applied to describe state-of-the-art developments in the digital implementation of isiXhosa in the realms of outward representation and communication, learning spaces, and knowledge repositories.

Journal of Pragmatics, 2023

Radio remains the most important information and entertainment medium in translingual South Afric... more Radio remains the most important information and entertainment medium in translingual South Africa. Subject to digitalization, it underwent major technical and structural transformation processes known as media convergence to maintain and to broaden audiences. These transformations have significant effects on the pragmatic realization of interactive talk and knowledge transfer. The study is based on an empirical multimodal discourse analysis of a Facebook video by the isiXhosa radio station Umhlobo Wenene. It observes dynamics of media convergence on the communicative situation. The example from a multilingual and mediated setting highlights impacts of conversation conventions externally imposed by promotional obligations. Furthermore, it examines how material affordances affect the conversation. The analysis shows that radio convergence has some enabling as well as some restrictive effects for realizing translingual knowledge transfer in mediated expert interviews.

Indiscipline as Method: From Telescopes to Ventilators in Times of Covid, 2021

There is no unproblematic way to study things as “African”, yet an epistemologically situated app... more There is no unproblematic way to study things as “African”, yet an epistemologically situated approach based on concrete technological projects situated in Africa and their social and political implications offers an important account of the intersection of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and African Studies. We explore this perspective through the notion of “indiscipline” using the Square Kilometre Array radio telescope project (SKA) based in South Africa as a case study through which to observe “indiscipline” as a methodological approach ato technoscience at work. Indiscipline helps frame the socio-technical (by)products of astrophysics and engineering, and we present the production of ventilators for COVID-19 patients as an example of how the design of mega-science projects can become entangled with the dynamics concerns of society. Our conclusion elaborates on the politics of large technological systems, opening up a conversation on the intersection of science and society in the context of the Fourth Industrial Revolution in African settings, using the template of experiences with the SKA and ventilators projects.

Politikon South African Journal of Political Studies , 2021

This study is based on a discourse analysis of official COVID-19 addresses by South African natio... more This study is based on a discourse analysis of official COVID-19 addresses by South African national government ministers with a focus on linguistic choices. While access to healthcare is an obvious issue of social justice during the pandemic, language plays a covert role in processes of access and inequality. Linguistic understanding influences social participation and during an epidemic crisis, access to language plays a significant role in improving responses of affected individuals. Although English is widely accepted as a common lingua franca in the country, it excludes those who are not proficient in the language. In this article, we analyse code-switching practices, translanguaging, and increasing African language usage among ministers of parliament during official COVID-19 speeches and briefings. We argue that the growing use of multilingual resources among South African politicians carries ramifications on language politics, i.e. a shift away from an unquestioned monolingual discourse purporting English as ‘the’ lingua franca which has in the past characterised most national speeches. From this new multilingual perspective, the pandemic has effected an inward orientation rather than the previously dominating concern with international relations.

SOCIOLINGUISTIC STUDIES, 2020

Urban bias remains a debated topic in South Africa in many spheres of society. Due to the logic o... more Urban bias remains a debated topic in South Africa in many spheres of society. Due to the logic of apartheid, ‘rural’ came to mean ‘black’; or in post-apartheid-speak ‘previously disadvantaged’. Up to today, the effects of long-term structural and systematic disadvantaging are quite tangible in the country. Though in parts also applicable to urban settings, poverty, insufficient infrastructure and lack of access are largely foremost still a problem of the rural – and mostly black – population. These structural imbalances are purported through a number of social fields including academia. Often, studies are conducted where access and conveniences are close and risks impeding the successful completion of research projects are low. While the tendency to consider feasibility in research is not per se questionable, the total body of research projects and results might foreground a distorted reflection of South Africa’s sociolinguistic landscape. Binary categories of urban/rural, however, carry a certain bias within themselves and are thus not comfortably fitting in a South African context but call for deconstruction. On this background, the chapter presents a critical review of 135 scholarly articles (2010–2017) from the eminent linguistic journal Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies examined for traces of urban bias in the research set up and weighs the results in the light of the current socio-political situation in South Africa.

Modern Africa , 2019

Today, the Rainbow Nation as the central metaphor for post- apartheid South Africa falls short of... more Today, the Rainbow Nation as the central metaphor for post- apartheid South Africa falls short of serving as a unifying identification marker due to its tendency to gloss over contrasting living realities of diversified identities and ongoing systemic discrimination. The South African Fallism movements – the student-driven protests against neo- colonial structures in academic institutions – spearheaded public criticism with the current state of ongoing social disparity in South Africa and revived the critique of so-called rainbowism, i.e., the belief that a colour-blind society can be created. In an application of Critical Discourse Analysis focusing on mythical metaphors, this article asks to what extent the new president Cyril Ramaphosa in his maiden State of the Nation Address projected a post-Zuma South African nation and answered to the challenges posed by Fallists.

Modern Africa, 2015

In multilingual South Africa, language use is more often than not a matter of choice than of abil... more In multilingual South Africa, language use is more often than not a matter of choice than of ability. The application of indigenous languages like isiXhosa seems nevertheless less preferable in certain social contexts such as the job environment, where English is seen as the language of “success and status” (Casale and Posel 2010: 58). This paper probes the relationship between an isiXhosa language identity and career chances for university graduates. It examines, in a micro study, how young graduates from Fort Hare University in East London perceive the role and conception of English and isiXhosa for identity construction with a focus on employment opportunities. This view is contrasted with local employers’ perceptions on the matter. The interviews show that the dominance of English in the workplace as a global and “neutral” language remains largely unquestioned. In conclusion, the paper provides suggestions for further research into the role of indigenous languages in the South African business environment, on a broader scale.

Chapters by Irina Turner

In The Routledge Handbook of Sociolinguistics Around the World (pp. 400-410). Routledge., 2023

Mohr, S., Turner, I., & Ellece, S. E. (2023). Sociolinguistics in Southern Africa. In The Routled... more Mohr, S., Turner, I., & Ellece, S. E. (2023). Sociolinguistics in Southern Africa. In The Routledge Handbook of Sociolinguistics Around the World (pp. 400-410). Routledge.

Radio, Public Life and Citizen Deliberation in South Africa, 2021

In South Africa's part-privatized media landscape, entertainment and information remain the main ... more In South Africa's part-privatized media landscape, entertainment and information remain the main mandates of radio. More than ever, however, contemporary content producers have to accommodate commercial obligations towards sponsors and business partners and thus change the face of public media spaces. The merging of media outlets known as convergence plays a vital role in this commodification process. By integrating social media formats, radio also inherits their specific commercial logic. Charity represents one way of redressing social imbalances caused by capitalism and seemingly serves public non-profit interests. It thereby depends heavily on converged media spaces. This chapter taps into the research gap of media analysis on mediated charity in the Global South. From the perspective of political economy, this chapter critically examines the ambiguous nature of the radio charity genre between altruism and commerce and reflect on its role in South Africa. Based on the empirical analysis of selected charity promotions in South African radio shows, the chapter discusses commercial communication on radio through a semiotic lense. The analysis considers the multilayered effects that convergence ― e.g., through streaming video recorded radio shows on social media ― bring about in realizing the genre of charity promotion.

Decolonisation of Higher Education in Africa Perspectives from Hybrid Knowledge Production, 2020

In: Bakhit, Mohamed A. G. ; Turner, Irina ; Narh, Peter ; Alemu, Girum Getachew ; Boger, Julia ; Brinkmann, Felix (ed.): Challenging notions of development and change from everyday life in Africa. - Bayreuth : Inst. für Afrikastudien , . - pp. 22-48 . Bayreuth African Studies Working Papers, 2013

The performance of a nation is measured by financial indices like the gross national product (... more The performance of a nation is measured by financial indices like the gross national product (GNP) and development statistics like the Human Development Index (HDI) taking dimensions like mortality rate, standard of education or income per capita into account. Whether the development of these figures is positive or negative is determined in comparison to other nations. However, well-being in terms of spirituality, social relationships, ethical values etc. is not considered. In global discourse (Fairclough 2006) it assumed that material wealth makes for happier people and therefore economic growth is the most important feature to foster development. A nation’s official self-assessment and interpretation of these figures is collectively uttered by politicians channelled to the outside world through the president as the epitome of official nation’s representation. State-of-the-nation speeches serve as a condensed peak of a nation’s self-evaluation. This mainstreamed generalization however, cannot reflect the qualitative or subjectively experienced perception of changing life for individual citizens. The new social media Facebook and Twitter as well as the possibility for online citizens to post their comments on blogs is a way of expression deviating opinions from the collective voice of government. On the example of South Africa’s recent history, this article contrasts the official government’s version of development evident in the-state-of-the-nation speeches with people’s real-life experiences uttered online. A critical discourse analysis (Blommaert 2006) of four state-of-the-nation speeches by South African president Jacob Zuma (2009-2012) compared to selected postings on Facebook, Twitterand Newspaper-Comment-Blogs, allows for an assessment of the gap between official rhetoric and people’s real life experiences.

New Media Influence on Social and Political Change in Africa. Olorunnisola, Anthony A. ; Douai, Aziz (ed.):, 2013

The colonization of discourses (Chilton & Schäffner, 2002) is a wide-spread phenomenon of globali... more The colonization of discourses (Chilton & Schäffner, 2002) is a wide-spread phenomenon of globalization and naturally affects politics. The power of business-speak over politics and the media seems to be steadily increasing. Most vulnerable to that development, which the author calls businification, seem to be countries in transition that have to assert themselves rhetorically on a global scale while keeping traditional voters content at home. In an application of critical discourse analysis, the chapter seeks to trace this businification by comparing three presidential state-of-the-nation-addresses (SoNA) of three South African presidents after one year in office (1995, 2000, and 2010). Through contextualizing these texts with their media reception from a corpus of 15 newspaper articles reporting on the speeches, the outer influences on the core text become transparent. The findings suggest a parallelism between a growing professionalism in politics and the businification of political rhetoric whose development cannot be viewed as exclusively negative.

Reviews by Irina Turner

Discourse & Society, 2015

VDM, 2008

African Journal of Rhetoric, 2023

Curriculum Perspectives, 2023

Journal of Pragmatics, 2023

Indiscipline as Method: From Telescopes to Ventilators in Times of Covid, 2021

Politikon South African Journal of Political Studies , 2021

SOCIOLINGUISTIC STUDIES, 2020

Modern Africa , 2019

Modern Africa, 2015

In The Routledge Handbook of Sociolinguistics Around the World (pp. 400-410). Routledge., 2023

Radio, Public Life and Citizen Deliberation in South Africa, 2021

Decolonisation of Higher Education in Africa Perspectives from Hybrid Knowledge Production, 2020

New Media Influence on Social and Political Change in Africa. Olorunnisola, Anthony A. ; Douai, Aziz (ed.):, 2013

Discourse & Society, 2015

Routledge eBooks, Jun 27, 2023

Curriculum perspectives, May 9, 2023

Modern Africa, Jul 8, 2019

Today, the Rainbow Nation as the central metaphor for postapartheid South Africa falls short of s... more Today, the Rainbow Nation as the central metaphor for postapartheid South Africa falls short of serving as a unifying identification marker due to its tendency to gloss over contrasting living realities of diversified identities and ongoing systemic discrimination. The South African Fallism movements-the student-driven protests against neocolonial structures in academic institutions-spearheaded public criticism with the current state of ongoing social disparity in South Africa and revived the critique of so-called rainbowism, i.e., the belief that a colour-blind society can be created. In an application of Critical Discourse Analysis focusing on mythical metaphors, this article asks to what extent the new president Cyril Ramaphosa in his maiden State of the Nation Address projected a post-Zuma South African nation and answered to the challenges posed by Fallists.

Politikon, Apr 3, 2021

ABSTRACT This study is based on a discourse analysis of official COVID-19 addresses by South Afri... more ABSTRACT This study is based on a discourse analysis of official COVID-19 addresses by South African national government ministers with a focus on linguistic choices. While access to healthcare is an obvious issue of social justice during the pandemic, language plays a covert role in processes of access and inequality. Linguistic understanding influences social participation and during an epidemic crisis, access to language plays a significant role in improving responses of affected individuals. Although English is widely accepted as a common lingua franca in the country, it excludes those who are not proficient in the language. In this article, we analyse code-switching practices, translanguaging, and increasing African language usage among ministers of parliament during official COVID-19 speeches and briefings. We argue that the growing use of multilingual resources among South African politicians carries ramifications on language politics, i.e. a shift away from an unquestioned monolingual discourse purporting English as ‘the’ lingua franca which has in the past characterised most national speeches. From this new multilingual perspective, the pandemic has effected an inward orientation rather than the previously dominating concern with international relations.

Journal of Pragmatics, Jun 1, 2023

VDM Verlag Dr. Müller eBooks, Mar 27, 2008

With regards to gender, the constitution of South Africa holds one of the most advanced positions... more With regards to gender, the constitution of South Africa holds one of the most advanced positions in the world. Yet social realities seem far removed from written ideals. This book examines the role of cultural production in bridging the gap. In 2005, the author Irina Turner examined the photography exhibition Is Everybody Comfortable? at the Castle of Good Hope in Cape Town, South Africa. The exhibition was produced by the Market Photography Workshop in Johannesburg. The author analyses to which extent contemporary South African photography can influence society`s perception of a postmodern gender concept. The study outlines the emergence of this gender notion in South Africa embedding it in the context of arts and culture. Based on that edifice, a discursive analysis of the exhibition in Cape Town - supported by interviews with visitors, photographers, and critics - investigates to which extent gender theory can be applied to social reality. This book is written for professionals in the cultural sector, for gender activists, for development practitioners, and for everybody concerned with the implementation of theory into practice.

Critical Arts, Jul 4, 2015

Speaking of culture is a daring venture as the concept can entail all or nothing. More than the p... more Speaking of culture is a daring venture as the concept can entail all or nothing. More than the products, ideas and values, it is also the fibre, rhythm and direction of a society organically growing from the soil and seed it is made of. In other words, cultures are shaped by the sediment they emerge from. In global discourses, this bounding root is often neglected in favour of highlighting the endless possibilities of a globally connected community. Contemporary analyses of mediated cultural production inspired by or directly related to the Internet, celebrate the innovation and anarchic liberation from restricting conventions brought about by intertextuality and recontextualisation, though they seem to neglect that even the Internet has a history and that (online) cultural products are made by people who breathe and bleed, and have an agenda and social situatedness.1 To describe the link between materiality and aesthetic formation, Ritzer (p. 447) aptly quotes Walter Benjamin’s metaphor of the full stomach that, although not literally featuring as a full stomach in our dreams, somatically impacts on its mental turnout. Equally, material and economic circumstances impact on the outcome of aesthetic products. The parable thus describes this conditioning relationship between the material world and the ephemeral outputs that we call arts and culture, or simply

The colonization of discourses (Chilton & Schäffner, 2002) is a widespread phenomenon of globaliz... more The colonization of discourses (Chilton & Schäffner, 2002) is a widespread phenomenon of globalization and naturally affects politics. The power of business-speak over politics and the media seems to be steadily increasing. Most vulnerable to that development, which the author calls businification, seem to be countries in transition that have to assert themselves rhetorically on a global scale while keeping traditional voters content at home. In an application of critical discourse analysis, the chapter seeks to trace this businification by comparing three presidential state-of-the-nation-addresses (SoNA) of three South African presidents after one year in office (1995, 2000, and 2010). Through contextualizing these texts with their media reception from a corpus of 15 newspaper articles reporting on the speeches, the outer influences on the core text become transparent. The findings suggest a parallelism between a growing professionalism in politics and the businification of political rhetoric whose development cannot be viewed as exclusively negative.

Sociolinguistic Studies, Jul 22, 2020

With regards to gender, the constitution of South Africa holds one of the most advanced positions... more With regards to gender, the constitution of South Africa holds one of the most advanced positions in the world. Yet social realities seem far removed from written ideals. This book examines the role of cultural production in bridging the gap. In 2005, the author Irina Turner examined the photography exhibition Is Everybody Comfortable? at the Castle of Good Hope in Cape Town, South Africa. The exhibition was produced by the Market Photography Workshop in Johannesburg. The author analyses to which extent contemporary South African photography can influence society`s perception of a postmodern gender concept. The study outlines the emergence of this gender notion in South Africa embedding it in the context of arts and culture. Based on that edifice, a discursive analysis of the exhibition in Cape Town - supported by interviews with visitors, photographers, and critics - investigates to which extent gender theory can be applied to social reality. This book is written for professionals in the cultural sector, for gender activists, for development practitioners, and for everybody concerned with the implementation of theory into practice.

Routledge eBooks, May 1, 2021

This book discusses the status and importance of decolonisation and indigenous knowledge in acade... more This book discusses the status and importance of decolonisation and indigenous knowledge in academic research, teaching, and learning programmes and beyond. Taking practical lessons from a range of institutions in Africa, the book argues that that local and global sciences are culturally equal and capable of synergistic complementarity and then integrates the concept of hybrid science into discourses on decolonisation. The chapters argue for a cross-cultural dialogue between different epistemic traditions and the accommodation 'Indigenous' knowledge systems in higher education. Bringing together critical scholars, teaching and administrating academics from different disciplines, the chapters provide alternative conceptual outlooks and practical case-based perspectives towards decolonised study environments. This book will be of interest to researchers of decolonisation, postcolonial studies, higher education studies, political studies, African studies, and philosophy.

Modern Africa: Politics, History and Society, Dec 30, 2015

In multilingual South Africa, language use is more often than not a matter of choice than of abil... more In multilingual South Africa, language use is more often than not a matter of choice than of ability. The application of indigenous languages like isiXhosa seems nevertheless less preferable in certain social contexts such as the job environment, where English is seen as the language of "success and status" (Casale and Posel 2010: 58). This paper probes the relationship between an isiXhosa language identity and career chances for university graduates. It examines, in a micro study, how young graduates from Fort Hare University in East London perceive the role and conception of English and isiXhosa for identity construction with a focus on employment opportunities. This view is contrasted with local employers' perceptions on the matter. The interviews show that the dominance of English in the workplace as a global and "neutral" language remains largely unquestioned. In conclusion, the paper provides suggestions for further research into the role of indigenous languages in the South African business environment, on a broader scale.

African Journal of Rhetoric , 2023

Curriculum Perspectives

Journal of Pragmatics