Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/02572117.2023.2200477
N. S. Zulu
KPD Maphalla won several accolades for his literary achievements and was prolific in all literary genres, but his forté was poetry. This article investigates the prominent themes of his thirteen novels by employing biographical literary criticism as the theoretical framework, which connects the content of texts, or parts thereof, to the author’s life. The article concludes that biographical literary criticism enhances one’s understanding of a literary text and functions as a useful literary tool in the examination of Maphalla’s fictional texts.
{"title":"The literary oeuvre of KPD Maphalla: a thematic analysis","authors":"N. S. Zulu","doi":"10.1080/02572117.2023.2200477","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02572117.2023.2200477","url":null,"abstract":"KPD Maphalla won several accolades for his literary achievements and was prolific in all literary genres, but his forté was poetry. This article investigates the prominent themes of his thirteen novels by employing biographical literary criticism as the theoretical framework, which connects the content of texts, or parts thereof, to the author’s life. The article concludes that biographical literary criticism enhances one’s understanding of a literary text and functions as a useful literary tool in the examination of Maphalla’s fictional texts.","PeriodicalId":42604,"journal":{"name":"South African Journal of African Languages","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44497526","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/02572117.2023.2200466
Johannes Seema
This article explores the poetry of KPD Maphalla as a distinguished creative writer who left his footprint on African literature, Basotho literature in particular. His creative writings has brought significant changes in the lives of Africans who found hope in poetry. His creative writing reflects an African worldview because his poetry is like a mirror that Africans can hold up to look at themselves. It a mirror that shows them who they have been and who they are now. His artistic expression gave Africans a voice, and his creative works are viewed as having a positive impact in many societies. Maphalla’s creative art played an important role in the social and cultural development of the Basotho community, and his creative expressions in different genres expressed the political, spiritual, historical as well as social concerns for his people. His creative writing covers dimensions such as political, historical, and sociological issues. For this article, both thematic discourse analysis and multiplicity of meaning will be employed as guiding frameworks to examine Maphalla’s poetry under discussion.
{"title":"Reflections on KPD Maphalla’s poetry: political, spiritual and social perspectives","authors":"Johannes Seema","doi":"10.1080/02572117.2023.2200466","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02572117.2023.2200466","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the poetry of KPD Maphalla as a distinguished creative writer who left his footprint on African literature, Basotho literature in particular. His creative writings has brought significant changes in the lives of Africans who found hope in poetry. His creative writing reflects an African worldview because his poetry is like a mirror that Africans can hold up to look at themselves. It a mirror that shows them who they have been and who they are now. His artistic expression gave Africans a voice, and his creative works are viewed as having a positive impact in many societies. Maphalla’s creative art played an important role in the social and cultural development of the Basotho community, and his creative expressions in different genres expressed the political, spiritual, historical as well as social concerns for his people. His creative writing covers dimensions such as political, historical, and sociological issues. For this article, both thematic discourse analysis and multiplicity of meaning will be employed as guiding frameworks to examine Maphalla’s poetry under discussion.","PeriodicalId":42604,"journal":{"name":"South African Journal of African Languages","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41851725","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article applies sociolinguistic and descriptive translation studies approaches to identify and analyse aspects of power dynamics embedded in the English and Kinyarwanda versions of the book of Genesis in the Christian Bible. The major aspects described include imperative/compulsion, warnings/prohibitions, curses/punishments, supremacy, authority/fear, solidarity/cooperation, deference and politeness. A number of non-verbal markers of power are also analysed. This article posits that power relations constitute a non-negligible social aspect of language which should be carefully taken into consideration in Bible translation. The comparative analysis of the English and Kinyarwanda translations of selected passages shows that the neglect of these aspects leads to a loss of the original context and meaning, and this may have disastrous effects on the target audience.
{"title":"Power relations in Bible translation: a sociolinguistic analysis of selected English and Kinyarwanda passages from the book of Genesis","authors":"Vedaste Ndizera, Télesphore Ngarambe, Évariste Ntakirutimana","doi":"10.1080/02572117.2022.2132693","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02572117.2022.2132693","url":null,"abstract":"This article applies sociolinguistic and descriptive translation studies approaches to identify and analyse aspects of power dynamics embedded in the English and Kinyarwanda versions of the book of Genesis in the Christian Bible. The major aspects described include imperative/compulsion, warnings/prohibitions, curses/punishments, supremacy, authority/fear, solidarity/cooperation, deference and politeness. A number of non-verbal markers of power are also analysed. This article posits that power relations constitute a non-negligible social aspect of language which should be carefully taken into consideration in Bible translation. The comparative analysis of the English and Kinyarwanda translations of selected passages shows that the neglect of these aspects leads to a loss of the original context and meaning, and this may have disastrous effects on the target audience.","PeriodicalId":42604,"journal":{"name":"South African Journal of African Languages","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46178899","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/02572117.2022.2132690
M. Baloyi
Authors’ writing styles and diction applied in advertisements give the language a specialised aspect in translation. The translation of advertisements from English into Xitsonga is still undervalued, based on the observation that Xitsonga newspapers prefer to advertise in English. This article explores a corpus of two print advertisements and employs a descriptive qualitative design by document analysis to provide an in-depth analysis of the translation of both metaphoric statements and subtle words from English into Xitsonga. The study is underpinned by the functionalist approach of translation theory to illustrate the dynamic nature of the selected advertisements. The article exposes the confusion, threats, prejudice and linguistic motives of domination by and hegemony of English as the often-hidden attempts to discredit Xitsonga. The question is: How can Xitsonga advertisements be appropriately couched in English semantic features and still make sense to the target reader? The article observes that the translation of advertisements from English into Xitsonga is at the cusp of being declared ‘adaptation’ or ‘transcreation’. However, it posits that since advertising is characterised by persuasive meaning, it requires the translator’s skilful manipulation of the functionalist approach in translation.
{"title":"Semantic features in English print advertisements: a Xitsonga translation perspective","authors":"M. Baloyi","doi":"10.1080/02572117.2022.2132690","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02572117.2022.2132690","url":null,"abstract":"Authors’ writing styles and diction applied in advertisements give the language a specialised aspect in translation. The translation of advertisements from English into Xitsonga is still undervalued, based on the observation that Xitsonga newspapers prefer to advertise in English. This article explores a corpus of two print advertisements and employs a descriptive qualitative design by document analysis to provide an in-depth analysis of the translation of both metaphoric statements and subtle words from English into Xitsonga. The study is underpinned by the functionalist approach of translation theory to illustrate the dynamic nature of the selected advertisements. The article exposes the confusion, threats, prejudice and linguistic motives of domination by and hegemony of English as the often-hidden attempts to discredit Xitsonga. The question is: How can Xitsonga advertisements be appropriately couched in English semantic features and still make sense to the target reader? The article observes that the translation of advertisements from English into Xitsonga is at the cusp of being declared ‘adaptation’ or ‘transcreation’. However, it posits that since advertising is characterised by persuasive meaning, it requires the translator’s skilful manipulation of the functionalist approach in translation.","PeriodicalId":42604,"journal":{"name":"South African Journal of African Languages","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42128283","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/02572117.2022.2132697
K. Theledi
The study investigates the syntactic differences between adjectives and relative words in Setswana and isiZulu. Setswana and isiZulu are from the same Bantu language family and both share certain general characteristics such as agglutinative morphology, but they differ in orthography, i.e. conjunctive and disjunctive orthography. The aim of the article is to show the differences between the adjective and relative words of isiZulu and Setswana in sentences. The intention is to display the possibility of comparing isiZulu and Setswana without comparing them to English. English is a valuable resource, but it should not be promoted at the expense of indigenous languages. The focus of this study is on the ordering and occurrence of the adjectives and to investigate whether Setswana and isiZulu adjectives and relatives do occur in a specific order when used attributively. A descriptive research design and qualitative approach are used to collect and analyse secondary data from the existing data to solve the research questions, such as: Do Setswana/isiZulu adjectives and relatives occur in a specific manner and can nouns and adjectives be conjoined in Setswana and isiZulu?
{"title":"Syntactic differences between adjectives and relative words in Setswana and isiZulu","authors":"K. Theledi","doi":"10.1080/02572117.2022.2132697","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02572117.2022.2132697","url":null,"abstract":"The study investigates the syntactic differences between adjectives and relative words in Setswana and isiZulu. Setswana and isiZulu are from the same Bantu language family and both share certain general characteristics such as agglutinative morphology, but they differ in orthography, i.e. conjunctive and disjunctive orthography. The aim of the article is to show the differences between the adjective and relative words of isiZulu and Setswana in sentences. The intention is to display the possibility of comparing isiZulu and Setswana without comparing them to English. English is a valuable resource, but it should not be promoted at the expense of indigenous languages. The focus of this study is on the ordering and occurrence of the adjectives and to investigate whether Setswana and isiZulu adjectives and relatives do occur in a specific order when used attributively. A descriptive research design and qualitative approach are used to collect and analyse secondary data from the existing data to solve the research questions, such as: Do Setswana/isiZulu adjectives and relatives occur in a specific manner and can nouns and adjectives be conjoined in Setswana and isiZulu?","PeriodicalId":42604,"journal":{"name":"South African Journal of African Languages","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48505919","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/02572117.2023.2200461
S. Chaphole
Self-writing is a literary site that seeks to interrogate issues of subjectivity, experience and laying oneself bare. Its proponents immerse themselves in a particular spatial and temporal frame such as the colonial times, the apartheid era and the democratic moment. There are autobiographical writings that celebrate individual consciousness, style and experience during the apartheid era in South Africa. This article investigates how, from a selection of his poetry, KPD Maphalla ‘narrates himself in verse’, where the focus is to distinguish Maphalla the author (the narrator) from Maphalla the character (the narrated, the self-referent). The article considers the autobiographical elements of theme and style as conveyors of the meeting place between the narrator and the narrated in Maphalla’s poetry.
{"title":"KPD Maphalla’s autobiographical poetry: narrating oneself in verse","authors":"S. Chaphole","doi":"10.1080/02572117.2023.2200461","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02572117.2023.2200461","url":null,"abstract":"Self-writing is a literary site that seeks to interrogate issues of subjectivity, experience and laying oneself bare. Its proponents immerse themselves in a particular spatial and temporal frame such as the colonial times, the apartheid era and the democratic moment. There are autobiographical writings that celebrate individual consciousness, style and experience during the apartheid era in South Africa. This article investigates how, from a selection of his poetry, KPD Maphalla ‘narrates himself in verse’, where the focus is to distinguish Maphalla the author (the narrator) from Maphalla the character (the narrated, the self-referent). The article considers the autobiographical elements of theme and style as conveyors of the meeting place between the narrator and the narrated in Maphalla’s poetry.","PeriodicalId":42604,"journal":{"name":"South African Journal of African Languages","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45687886","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/02572117.2022.2139940
D. S. Matjila
The finding of this article is that water in poetry serves specifically as a marker of metaphorical information in the sense that it accentuates, continues and establishes relationships between elements of metaphorical constructions. To Raditladi and the Batswana in general, rain is compared to cattle, which provide and sustain life for the people. To Marais and the Afrikaner tradition in general, the wedding day is the beginning of a new life; the rain brings new life to the land. This article examines two poems in Setswana and Afrikaans. The aim is to analyse water images in the poems and make comparisons. This research study is informed by the multi-, inter- and transdisciplinary (MIT) research approach cutting across subjects, themes, concepts, ideologies, races and languages. This is a textual study with textual analysis as the methodology. It also employs critical discourse analysis and intertextuality as theoretical frameworks to analyse and interpret the data gathered.
{"title":"Water as a metaphorical marker in Setswana and Afrikaans poetry","authors":"D. S. Matjila","doi":"10.1080/02572117.2022.2139940","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02572117.2022.2139940","url":null,"abstract":"The finding of this article is that water in poetry serves specifically as a marker of metaphorical information in the sense that it accentuates, continues and establishes relationships between elements of metaphorical constructions. To Raditladi and the Batswana in general, rain is compared to cattle, which provide and sustain life for the people. To Marais and the Afrikaner tradition in general, the wedding day is the beginning of a new life; the rain brings new life to the land. This article examines two poems in Setswana and Afrikaans. The aim is to analyse water images in the poems and make comparisons. This research study is informed by the multi-, inter- and transdisciplinary (MIT) research approach cutting across subjects, themes, concepts, ideologies, races and languages. This is a textual study with textual analysis as the methodology. It also employs critical discourse analysis and intertextuality as theoretical frameworks to analyse and interpret the data gathered.","PeriodicalId":42604,"journal":{"name":"South African Journal of African Languages","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41496697","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/02572117.2023.2200634
N. S. Zulu, E. N. Malete
{"title":"The literary production of KPD Maphalla: an introduction","authors":"N. S. Zulu, E. N. Malete","doi":"10.1080/02572117.2023.2200634","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02572117.2023.2200634","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42604,"journal":{"name":"South African Journal of African Languages","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42520930","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/02572117.2023.2200450
Mantoa Motinyane
The years 1990 to 1994 were the most critical years in the lives of all South Africans. For writers, this period presented an opportunity for expressions that have long been suppressed due to the censoring of writers in South Africa. Poetry was one of the ways in which a writer was able to reveal and express his or her thoughts about what they see, hear and the general events that are related to their lives and society at large. Maphalla is also one of the writers who used the pen to spread the messages of death, pain, love, hope and peace, whilst also being very critical of the socio-political environment at the time. As his name (the peaceful one) implies, Kgotso Maphalla was a writer who was able to rebuke, criticise and give hope in a peaceful manner. This article analyses four of Maphalla’s poems from his poetry book called Seitebatso [Oblivion]. The four poems were selected to address the themes of freedom, hope and injustice. There are many traditional methods used to analyse poems. In this article, I have chosen to use critical discourse analysis, which is a method of analysing spoken language and text, to demonstrate the balance between language, identity, social relations, and power. Discourse is therefore molded by relations of power and invested ideologies. In this kind of analysis, I show that Maphalla used language in a manner that reflected freedom, peace, and hope that the volatile situation will settle down, at a very uncertain time in South Africa.
{"title":"A critical discourse analysis of Maphalla’s selected poems: South Africa’s pre-democratic election messages","authors":"Mantoa Motinyane","doi":"10.1080/02572117.2023.2200450","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02572117.2023.2200450","url":null,"abstract":"The years 1990 to 1994 were the most critical years in the lives of all South Africans. For writers, this period presented an opportunity for expressions that have long been suppressed due to the censoring of writers in South Africa. Poetry was one of the ways in which a writer was able to reveal and express his or her thoughts about what they see, hear and the general events that are related to their lives and society at large. Maphalla is also one of the writers who used the pen to spread the messages of death, pain, love, hope and peace, whilst also being very critical of the socio-political environment at the time. As his name (the peaceful one) implies, Kgotso Maphalla was a writer who was able to rebuke, criticise and give hope in a peaceful manner. This article analyses four of Maphalla’s poems from his poetry book called Seitebatso [Oblivion]. The four poems were selected to address the themes of freedom, hope and injustice. There are many traditional methods used to analyse poems. In this article, I have chosen to use critical discourse analysis, which is a method of analysing spoken language and text, to demonstrate the balance between language, identity, social relations, and power. Discourse is therefore molded by relations of power and invested ideologies. In this kind of analysis, I show that Maphalla used language in a manner that reflected freedom, peace, and hope that the volatile situation will settle down, at a very uncertain time in South Africa.","PeriodicalId":42604,"journal":{"name":"South African Journal of African Languages","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41908414","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}