Language as a ‘resource’ in South Africa: the economic life of language in a globalising society
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2002
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: vital:7035 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007370 , https://doi.org/10.1080/10131750285310031
- Description: preprint , We need to develop a much more refined and specific understanding of what is meant when people refer to language is a ‘resource’. If something can accurately be described as a resource, then by its very nature it carries with it or attracts, at least in potential, the social motivation associated with the utilization, development or exploitation of that resource. This is strikingly true where language is the resource in question, because language is so intimately bound up with human activity. Where it exists, such social motivation can be augmented and supported so as to realize the ends of language policy. Contrastingly, where it is seen that social motivation informing a particular language situation is at odds with the intent of language policy, then either implementation must retreat and move to other arenas, other points of influence, where intervention can be more effective, or those charged with implementation must resign themselves to costly and messy efforts to force unwanted change through legal authority.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2002
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2002
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: vital:7035 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007370 , https://doi.org/10.1080/10131750285310031
- Description: preprint , We need to develop a much more refined and specific understanding of what is meant when people refer to language is a ‘resource’. If something can accurately be described as a resource, then by its very nature it carries with it or attracts, at least in potential, the social motivation associated with the utilization, development or exploitation of that resource. This is strikingly true where language is the resource in question, because language is so intimately bound up with human activity. Where it exists, such social motivation can be augmented and supported so as to realize the ends of language policy. Contrastingly, where it is seen that social motivation informing a particular language situation is at odds with the intent of language policy, then either implementation must retreat and move to other arenas, other points of influence, where intervention can be more effective, or those charged with implementation must resign themselves to costly and messy efforts to force unwanted change through legal authority.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2002
Confronting the African nightmare: Yael Farber’s SeZaR (theatre review)
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2001
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:7046 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007388
- Description: Yael Farber’s adaptation of Julius Caesar marks something of a breakthrough in South African Shakespeare productions. The key achievement is that the play is no longer about Rome or Renaissance England, nor is it about processes of cultural translation or trendy theatrical Africanisation, largely cosmetic. This production is, in a generous way, squarely and pointedly about Africa.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2001
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2001
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:7046 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007388
- Description: Yael Farber’s adaptation of Julius Caesar marks something of a breakthrough in South African Shakespeare productions. The key achievement is that the play is no longer about Rome or Renaissance England, nor is it about processes of cultural translation or trendy theatrical Africanisation, largely cosmetic. This production is, in a generous way, squarely and pointedly about Africa.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2001
Guy Butler: 21 January 1918 - 26 April 2001
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2001
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:7053 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007413
- Description: [From Introduction]: For much of the last twenty-five years of his life, Butler’s thought and work were not perceived to be ‘current’ at all. His poetry was hardly read (what’s new there? – neither is anyone else’s); some of it lay in manuscript or obscure little publications until the Collected Poems appeared in 1999. The autobiographies attracted a loyal following amongst a small, educated reading public. His early dramas, though they met with initial success, were stifled by the poetic idiom to which they aspired, and by the racial claustrophobia against which they fought. (Demea, Butler’s South African reworking of the Medea, made it to the boards only in 1990 – the multi-racial cast, let alone the themes, kept it in hibernation until then.) The deluge of journalism and polemic suffered the usual fate of ephemera. Until resurrected by Stephen Watson in 1990, the essays and lectures remained buried in periodicals where they could not be assessed as a totality. His inspiring teaching was a gift to his students, hardly accessible to the wider society; and above all, much of his time was spent as homo commiticus, serving on the boards and sub-committees of numerous university institutions and other organizations, some of which he founded. In his autobiography, he observed wryly of his changed status following accession to the Chair of English at Rhodes in 1951: ‘Professors are not entirely themselves. Their interest as persons decreases because they are now public personages. Much of their time is spent on committees whose function is to pick the brains of individuals without giving them credit.’ Guy Butler gave generously of his brains in such circumstances.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2001
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2001
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:7053 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007413
- Description: [From Introduction]: For much of the last twenty-five years of his life, Butler’s thought and work were not perceived to be ‘current’ at all. His poetry was hardly read (what’s new there? – neither is anyone else’s); some of it lay in manuscript or obscure little publications until the Collected Poems appeared in 1999. The autobiographies attracted a loyal following amongst a small, educated reading public. His early dramas, though they met with initial success, were stifled by the poetic idiom to which they aspired, and by the racial claustrophobia against which they fought. (Demea, Butler’s South African reworking of the Medea, made it to the boards only in 1990 – the multi-racial cast, let alone the themes, kept it in hibernation until then.) The deluge of journalism and polemic suffered the usual fate of ephemera. Until resurrected by Stephen Watson in 1990, the essays and lectures remained buried in periodicals where they could not be assessed as a totality. His inspiring teaching was a gift to his students, hardly accessible to the wider society; and above all, much of his time was spent as homo commiticus, serving on the boards and sub-committees of numerous university institutions and other organizations, some of which he founded. In his autobiography, he observed wryly of his changed status following accession to the Chair of English at Rhodes in 1951: ‘Professors are not entirely themselves. Their interest as persons decreases because they are now public personages. Much of their time is spent on committees whose function is to pick the brains of individuals without giving them credit.’ Guy Butler gave generously of his brains in such circumstances.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2001
Guy Butler (obituary)
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 1999
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:7052 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007411
- Description: An obituary focusing on Guy Butler's Shakespearean preoccupations. The 1999/2000 volume of Shakespeare in Southern Africa only appeared in 2001. The Butler obituary was included as a 'stop-press' item as the volume went to print, which accounts for the apparent anomaly between the date of publication and the date of Guy Butler's death.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1999
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 1999
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:7052 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007411
- Description: An obituary focusing on Guy Butler's Shakespearean preoccupations. The 1999/2000 volume of Shakespeare in Southern Africa only appeared in 2001. The Butler obituary was included as a 'stop-press' item as the volume went to print, which accounts for the apparent anomaly between the date of publication and the date of Guy Butler's death.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1999
English in South Africa : effective communication and the policy debate : inaugural lecture delivered at Rhodes University
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 1993
- Subjects: Communication -- South Africa , English language -- South Africa , South Africa -- Politics and government -- 1993-1994
- Language: English
- Type: Text
- Identifier: vital:683 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1020752 , ISBN 0620031557
- Description: Inaugural lecture delivered at Rhodes University , Rhodes University Libraries (Digitisation)
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1993
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 1993
- Subjects: Communication -- South Africa , English language -- South Africa , South Africa -- Politics and government -- 1993-1994
- Language: English
- Type: Text
- Identifier: vital:683 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1020752 , ISBN 0620031557
- Description: Inaugural lecture delivered at Rhodes University , Rhodes University Libraries (Digitisation)
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1993