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
A survey of literature on | 13 |
On the hearability of hidden | 33 |
Critical Discourse Analysis as an analytic tool in considering selected | 65 |
South African Novelists and the Grand Narrative of Apartheid | 89 |
The German Wehrmacht | 115 |
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affect African amnesty analysis apartheid asked aspects attention authors become Cape Town chapter claim Commission commissioners communities consider context crimes critical cultural deal described discourses discussion event example exhibition expectations experiences expression fact give going happened hearings human rights important indicate individual institution interest interviews involved issue justice language linguistic literature live London look means memory narrative official pain participants particular past perpetrators perspective police political position present Press produced published questions Reconciliation Commission refers Reflections remembering Report response shot social society South Africa specific stories strategies structure Studies suffering talking tell testify testimonies texts tion told topics transcripts TRC hearings Truth and Reconciliation Truth Commission units University various victims violations violence Wehrmacht witnesses Wodak women