Browsing by Author "Mkhatshwa, Elijah Johan"
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- ItemGrammatical analysis: its role in the reading of legal texts(2007) Mkhatshwa, Elijah Johan; Moyo, C.Y.In almost all the statutory sentences that obtain in the statutes of the University of Zululand and the University of Swaziland respectively, modification and subordination or rather embedding form part of the essential techniques used by the writers to enhance the communicative potential of the sentences. The objective of the study, therefore, was to establish that using adjectival and adverbial information in legal texts does have an effect on the act of reading and interpretation and the resultant meaning on the text. The construction of the sentences in the two statutes favours the study's hypotheses. The first hypothesis is that using adjectival and adverbial information in legal texts significantly enhances clarity and precision of the expression as mediated by the text. The second hypothesis is. that reference both within the nominal group and the verbal group in legal texts is susceptible of further specification. In chapter two, we argue, in Bex's (1996:95) terms, that texts orient themselves to readers in particular ways, and organize their information in ways appropriate to the medium selected and the context in which they occur. We also note that in the construction and interpretation of texts due attention is given to the elements in the language which are capable of encoding various functions and particular realizations of these functions determine the register of the text under consideration (cf. Bex, 1996:95). In our analysis of the statutes of the University of Zululand and the University of Swaziland respectively, we establish that language varies according to the activity in which it plays a part (Leech et al, 1982:10). We also establish that sentences with different structures have different communicative functions and that one important property of a sentence is its communicative potential (Akmajian et al, 1995:229). This communicative potential of sentences, with specific reference to the statutory sentences under discussion, is, as already indicated earlier on, enhanced by using modification both within the nominal group and the verbal group. Thus, it is worth emphasizing that in enhancing the effectiveness and communicative potential of the statutory sentences in order to achieve clarity and precision of the expression, modifying elements carrying adjectival and adverbial information are put to use in constructing the sentences. In consequence thereof, modification which employs non-nuclear constituents is accorded a central role in determining the effectiveness of the sentences whilst the acceptability of the sentences in terms of its grammaticaltty is determined solely by the nuclear constituents. Thus the argument that the occurrence of a modifier is never essential for the internal structure of a noun phrase and that a modifier can be easily omitted without affecting the acceptability of the noun phrase (Aarts and Aarts, 1988:63) is, in our view, not at issue. Our concern is not so much with the acceptability of both reference and predication within the structure of the sentence. Rather, we are concerned with whether the communicative potential or effectiveness of the sentences makes it possible for the communicative intent to be realized as intended. Our analysis of the sentences in the statutes in question, demonstrate that the necessary specification is contained in the modifier and that a modifier has the effect of explicitness and of specifying precisely that which is the point of information (Halliday and Hasan, 1997:96). Our view, therefore, is that although non-nuclear constituents (modifiers) in a sentence are optional, their role of specification cannot go unnoticed since they are tightly integrated into the structure of the clause (cf. Huddleston and Pullum, 2005). This view is corroborated by Akmajian et al's (1995:223) argument that the meaning of a syntactically complex expression is determined by the meaning of its constituents and their grammatical relations. Hence we argue that notwithstanding the fact that nuclear constituents are obligatory for the sentence to be accepted as grammatical, the grammaticality of the sentence as determined by the nuclear constituents does not necessarily translate into its effectiveness as a communicative device of information. It bears repeating, therefore, that in almost all the statutory sentences of the two universities, modification and subordination or rather embedding from part of the essential techniques use by the writers to enhance the communicative potential and effectiveness of the sentences.
- ItemRe-inscribing the author : an approach to the pragmatics of reading and interpretation in Sol Plaatje's Native Life in South Africa and Luke's Book of Acts(1999) Mkhatshwa, Elijah Johan; Garuba, H.O.The objective of this study is to affirm the presence of the intentional consciousness / stance in texts which purport to depict reality or real events. Intentionality, in the context of this thesis, is not conceived as a pre-existing thought or idea, which precedes the text, but as something, which inheres in the text and is produced in it. The Cartesian split between consciousness and being which the former conception enacts is here elided and authorial intention is read and produced in the process of writing itself. This distinction is significant because the main argument of this thesis is that authorial intention in texts that purport to depict real events and intervene in a particular socio-historical process for mobilizational purposes, leads to the production of a certain kind of text which deploys specific narrative strategies that consolidate its reading and rendering of events and re-inforce narrative closures. These intentionally motivated closures are embedded in narrative strategies, which are seen as both necessary and imperative for the consolidation and legitimation of the message and to foreclose other readings. Authorially motivated closures are predominant in classic realist texts in which as Roger Webster (1990:70) argues "there is a clear hierarchy of discourses controlled by a privileged central voice or narrator". This narrative voice or, to quote MacCabe, this "authorial and authoritarian 'metalanguage' judges and controls all other discourses in the text". And in classic realist texts in which the author does not seek to mask his presence by using other narrators and overtly seeks to move his audience in a specified direction, these closures become even more evident within the texture of the text. Texts of this nature are seen as means of achieving particular ends rather than as autonomous, independent units existing in a self-referential world of significance. Much of contemporary critical theory has unfortunately tried to efface the author from the text and/ or tried to marginalize the role of the author in the text. This thesis, however, seeks to re-inscribe the agency of the author in his / her intentional stance with regard to the text, more specifically in texts which depict real events and seek to impact upon the real world and the target audience. This thesis shows how this agency is enacted within the world of the text. Very briefly, this agency, I argue, is reproduced in narrative strategies which revolve around the twin poles of authority and legitimation; and these strategies operate at two levels within the text and these are the levels of the real events depicted in the narrative and then the prevailing discursive paradigms of the times. A narrative dialectic is thus erected between these two levels in the texts and this is mediated at every point by the active presence of the authorial engagement. The first chapter, which is largely introductory, serves as the theoretical clearing ground for the thesis. In it, I argue the case for intentionality by reviewing various critical positions in contemporary theory in relation to the author and the interpretation of texts. Thereafter I move on to spell out the ways in which authorial intention is embedded in realist narratives of the kind I have described. In my argument, I draw upon the critical practices and theoretical positions of postcolonial, feminist and Third World writers and critics whose work constitute an alternative tradition in which is inscribed specifically overt socio-political agencies. In the chapters that follow, I adopt the strategy of sketching out the historical and discursive context of the text. Thus chapter two focuses on the historical and discursive context of Luke's Book of Acts while chapter three focuses on the analysis of Acts. In the same manner, chapter four focuses on the historical and discursive context of Sol Plaatje's Native Life in South Africa while chapter five focuses on the analysis of the text (Native Life in South Africa). A brief conclusion sums up the argument of the thesis.