Discourse and Human Rights ViolationsChristine Anthonissen, Jan Blommaert First published as a Special Issue of the Journal of Language and Politics 5:1 (2006), this collection of papers focuses, from a number of different disciplinary perspectives, on aspects of language and communication in official processes of dealing with traumatic pasts. It is a text that belongs to the genre of talking about pain, about state violence, about uncovering suppressed truths. Linguists and a number of other social scientists investigate discourses, mostly ones generated during hearings of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), scrutinizing them for how trauma is articulated and sometimes overcome, for how confrontational discourses are publicly managed, for how, after gross human rights violations, reconciliation can be mediated. Language is viewed as an instrument of confronting a traumatic past, of negotiating conflict, and of initiating processes of healing for individuals as well as in communities. |
Contents
1 | |
13 | |
Narrative inequality in the TRC hearings | 33 |
Critical discourse analysis as an analytic tool in considering selected prominent features of TRC testimonies | 65 |
South African Novelists and the Grand Narrative of Apartheid | 89 |
Linguistic Bearings and Testimonial Practices | 101 |
History in the makingThe making of history | 115 |
The series Benjamins Current Topics | 143 |
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Alex Boraine amnesty process apartheid Austria authors Blommaert Boraine Cape Town chapter Colin de Souza commissioners communities conflict context crimes Critical Discourse Analysis cultural defined definitions difficulties diflerent Discourse Sociolinguistics event Excerpt exhibition experiences field film find first focus genre Ghent University Gugulethu hidden transcripts Human Rights Violations husband identified inequality institution interviews Johannesburg justice Krog language linguistic London Lubalo memory narrative Nomonde officer official ofthe one’s pain participants particular past perpetrators perspective police political Posel Press questions Reconciliation Commission Reconciliation in South refers Reflections reparations shooting shot social society South Africa South African Truth specific stories strategies structure suffering tell testified testimonies texts tion told topics topoi TRC hearings TRC literature TRC process Trojan Horse Truth and Reconciliation Truth Commission units University of Cape victims Villa-Vicencio violence war crimes Wehrmacht Wendy Orr Western Cape witnesses Wodak women