The caramel Venus and other stories
- Authors: Terblanche, Tania
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:6006 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/1021214
- Description: My collection of stories illustrates the absurdity, the beauty and the pain of being human by depicting experience through fabulation. The intensity of existence comes to light in strange worlds that operate by rules of our inner mechanics, distorted so that only the colours and the shape of our hearts swim underneath. My fiction embodies these realities using the flatness of the fairy tale form while incorporating the humorous, the bizarre and the surreal. Some of the stories build dystopian worlds using the manifestation of the unfamiliar as a mirror of our psyche in an overpopulated and consumer-driven society. Others create contained worlds where the fantastical is fostered only by the narrator being drawn into an inner life. All the stories take us through inner landscapes with the humans, animals and objects around us that can pulse with so much meaning and then none at all.
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- Date Issued: 2016
The rising popularity of Pidgin English radio stations in Nigeria: an audience study of Wazobia FM, Lagos
- Authors: Durodola, Olufunke Treasure Anike
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: Wazobia FM (Nigeria) , Radio audiences -- Nigeria -- Lagos , Pidgin English -- Nigeria -- Lagos , Radio stations -- Nigeria -- Lagos , Mass media and culture -- Nigeria -- Lagos , Language and languages -- Variation , Popular culture -- Nigeria , Postcolonialism -- Nigeria
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:3550 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1020886
- Description: This research is located within media studies and draws on the Cultural Studies approach. It is an audience study, which uses the mixed methods of focus group discussions and an online survey to examine the importance of the use of Nigerian Pidgin as a broadcast language in investigating the rising popularity of Pidgin English radio in a multi-ethnic and multi-lingual Nigeria. The study focuses on Wazobia FM, a radio station in Lagos, and the first pidgin station in Nigeria. It seeks to determine whether the station’s audience engaged with the station’s programming based on its prioritisation of NigP and the linguistic identity it offers them. The study foregrounds the marginalised status of NigP within the politics of language in Nigeria. It traces the language’s evolution through popular and oppositional expressions in broadcasting and in music. It also seeks to establish the place of Pidgin English within the role that language plays in the formation of the Nigerian identity. This study thus adopts the ‘emic’ perspective, which underpins qualitative methodology, and views social life in terms of processes as opposed to static terms. The theoretical framework of this research revolves around culture, language and identity. Pertinent concepts in post-colonial studies, together with conceptual frameworks in Cultural Studies, such as popular culture, representation, hegemony and counter-culture have been used to make sense of the popularity of NigP radio stations.
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- Date Issued: 2014
"Too tired to speak?": investigating the reception of Radio Grahamstown's Lunchtime Live show as a means of linking local communities to power
- Authors: Tsarwe, Stanley Zvinaiye
- Date: 2011
- Subjects: Community radio -- South Africa -- Grahamstown Radio broadcasting -- South Africa -- Grahamstown Radio journalism -- South Africa -- Grahamstown Mass media -- Political aspects -- South Africa -- Grahamstown Grahamstown (South Africa) -- Economic conditions -- 21st century Grahamstown (South Africa) -- Social conditions -- 21st century Civil society -- South Africa -- Grahamstown Political participation -- South Africa -- Grahamstown
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:3488 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002943
- Description: This study sets out to investigate Lunchtime Live, a twice-weekly, one-hour long current affairs show broadcast on a small community radio station, Radio Grahamstown, to understand its role in the local public sphere, and its value in helping civil society’s understanding of and involvement in the power structures and political activities in Grahamstown. Lunchtime Live seeks to cultivate a collective identity and promote public participation in the public affairs of Grahamstown. As a key avenue of investigation, this study seeks to test theory against practice, by evaluating Lunchtime Live’s aspirations against the audiences’ perception of it. This investigation uses qualitative content analysis of selected episodes of recorded transcripts of the shows that aired between August 2010 and March 2011, together with the audiences’ verbalised experiences of this programme through focus group discussions. The study principally uses qualitative research informed by reception theory. The research reveals three key findings. First, that resonance rather than resistance is the more dominant ‘stance’ or ‘attitude’ towards the content of Lunchtime Live. Residents interviewed agreed that the programme is able to give a “realistic” representation of their worldview, and thus is able to articulate issues that affect their lives. Second, that whilst the programme is helping establish links between members of the civil society as well as between civil society and their political representatives, residents feel that local democracy is failing to bring qualitative improvements to their everyday lives and that more ‘participation’ is unlikely to change this. Most respondents blame this on a lack of political will, incompetence, corruption and populist rhetoric by politicians who fail to deliver on the mantra of ‘a better life for all’ in the socioeconomic sphere. The study finds a scepticism and even cynicism that participatory media seems to be able to do little to dilute. Thirdly, in spite of the largely positive view about Lunchtime Live’s capacity to be a platform for public engagement, its participatory potential is structurally constrained by the material privations of most of its listeners. Given that in order to participate in talk shows and discussions audience members have to phone in, economic deprivation often precludes this. It is clear from this research that despite shows such as Lunchtime Live that are exploring new techniques of popular involvement, the voice of the ordinary people still struggles to be heard.
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- Date Issued: 2011