A genre analysis of South African female celebrities in isiXhosa texts

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT:This research work has put into practice the theoretical framework of text constructionadvanced by Grabe and Kaplan (1996) for the analysis of South African female celebrities'texts in Xhosa. Theoretical elements employed in this study includes linguistic elementsand the elements that are applicable to the structure of narrative texts. This frameworkcan be included in teaching methods and approaches for the development of the learners'analytic skills in analyzing the discourse structure of written texts. These skills are to beacquired by learners, are part of the Curriculum 2005 and are meant specifically for theteaching and learning of languages.This study has employed a range of textlinguistic strategies for analyzing written genretexts on issues relating to female music artists and actresses. It is imperativelyrecommended that language teachers with the incorporation of Curriculum 2005methodology can use these strategies in order to produce learners that are able to analyzetexts successfully and who have an awareness about how language is used in textconstruction as a reflection of social activities. For the purpose of analysis in this thesis,texts from the Xhosa Bona magazine with contents ranging from acting careers and musicartists has been collected. This study demonstrates that text analysis involves to a largerextent, an investigation of generic factors such as the communicative purpose, the cultureand the community, and as well as the traumatic and exciting human experiencesencountered by people in the society in which the text is produced.A broad definition of a narrative and a text will be established in the discussion of thegeneric features of texts. The text-linguistic construction, the analysis of linguisticstructures, and the elements of the overall structure of narratives will be demonstrated inthe analysis of Xhosa texts with emphasis on the discussion of the parameters of theethnography of writing as proposed by Grabe and Kaplan (1996). The following questionsare addressed by these parameters of the ethnography of writing: Who writes what towhom. for what purpose. why. when and how? In addition to these parameters thestudy addresses the elements of narratives based from the overall structure of narrativetexts as proposed by Labov (1972). In Labov's framework the following elements areaddressed: the orientation section. the complication. the evaluation. the resolutionand the coda. In addition to these elements examined the move structures will beexplored as a way of summarising the facts and the message carried by the content ofeach Xhosa text written for the purpose of analysis. This study explores the implicationsand rationale for the incorporation of text analysis in language teaching and learning, aswell as to explore the relationship between the theoretical underpinning of this study withthe learning outcomes of Curriculum 2005 which have to be applied in languagepedagogy.Finally, this study has proved that the theoretical framework of Grabe and Kaplan (1996)and the elements of the overall structure of narrative texts of Labov (1972) as employed inthe written text construction, will introduce language teachers and learners into an effectivelanguage learning and teaching. This implies that the strategies acquired in this study canbe employed in any analysis of written text in any language study as it has been exploredin the analysis of Xhosa genre texts of South African female celebrities from a XhosaBona magazine.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University