TODA uses the constitutive effects of discourse as its salient features: (a) the formation of social identities (either individual or collective); (b) the social relations between social identities; and (c) the development of systems of knowledge and belief. They are arranged in no particular order since no one comes before another and they occur in an integrated dialectical relationship.
There are three perspectives or dimensions from which TODA engages with data in order to expose the important clues as to the underlying historical conditions of the production of the phenomenon under diagnosis. These perspectives are discussed below.
3.12.5.1 The first dimension: discourse as a text
This refers to the linguistic features and organisation of concrete instances of discourse. Choices and patterns in vocabulary (e.g. wording, metaphor), grammar (e.g. transitivity, modality), cohesion (e.g. conjunction, schemata) and text structure (e.g. episode, turn-taking
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system) should be systematically analysed. Mostly, learning guides are formulated exclusively by whites in South African higher education institutions and, as a result, they carry the viewpoint of the dominant discourse (see Chapter Four). Under these states of affairs the culture of the dominated discourse (black African culture) (see Chapter Four) becomes excluded. It is logical for the researcher to agree with Fairclough on the argument in this dimension: texts (learning guides) as discourses directly or indirectly sympathise with and promote the dominant
discourse. Another essential strategy to analyse and expose
texts/learning guides as instruments for domination is to look for the absences of revolutionary vocabulary from the text. Fairclough could be referring to these absences when he talks about choices and patterns of vocabulary. The change from the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) to the Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) policy is a good example. The wording is carefully chosen in such a way that it is easy to masquerade GEAR as similar to or even better than RDP. That is why GEAR is legitimised despite current retrenchments and the daily skyrocketing of fuel prices. A decade into democracy there are still no job opportunities, but South Africa's economy is nevertheless ranked among the best in the world. All policies in South Africa today are in line with the concept of globalisation. This concept originated and belongs to the West. South Africa is doing everything to conform to world standards as demanded by globalisation. It has been stated in Chapter Two that merging higher education institutions was a copycat of Europe trends.
A learning guide of OBM 122 in the ACE program at the University of Free State states that the teacher as classroom manager has been put there by God to manage the class for successful and effective teaching. By implication, this may mean that the teacher's authority in class is unchallengeable – by being a God-appointee he attains the status of
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knowing everything that needs to be known by the learners in life. Where is creative learning and critical thinking in this situation?
The gist of the argument here is that the learning guide does not present or represent the 'truth' or 'reality'. Kress (1990) supports this view by pointing out that "the speaker (or writer) expresses ideological content in text and so does the linguistic form of the text... selection or choice of a linguistic form may not be a live process for the individual speaker... but the discourse will be a reproduction of that previously learned discourse. Texts/learning guides are selected and organised syntax forms whose content structure reflects the ideological organisation of a particular area of social life. Knowledge, as with wealth, is divided unequally in South Africa and suffers the same fate.
3.12.5.2 The second dimension: discourse as discursive practice
Discourse as discursive practice means something that is produced, circulated, distributed and consumed in society. Fairclough (1992) sees these processes largely in terms of concrete linguistic objects (specific texts or text-types that are produced, circulated, consumed, and so forth). Approaching discourse as discursive practice means analysing vocabulary, grammar, cohesion and inter-textuality, which are three aspects that link a text to its context.
One point that came up in defence of the learning guide during the interviews in the collection of data is that the students from the dominated discourse cannot afford textbooks, because they are expensive. A question raised by a certain respondent was whether it should be that quality is forsaken for the affordability of a learning guide. He argued that it was possible to produce a rich learning guide with lofty and sophisticated material in its content for the benefit of the learners.
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The cheap and ideologically biased learning guide is produced and circulated for consumption among unsuspecting learners, and reproduces the status quo.
If the films/soapies on SABC (Generations, Isidingo, Muvhango, The Bold and the Beautiful, etc) were to be classified as texts (in fact, they originally occur in text form) it would be right to ask whose culture do they promote. An emotional debate has ensued nationally on the passing of a Bill that abolishes virginity testing (ukuhlolwa kwezintombi). Virginity is not important in the Western culture, hence the promotion of the use of condoms. However, to the black people it is something sacred. This could actually help in fighting the scourge of HIV and AIDS. In all the above examples of texts (films, learning guides) the compilers or writers make a lot of money. They kill two birds with one stone by the circulation of these texts: financial gain, and promoting and sustaining the status quo.
Concern on the circulation of these texts is also raised by Aronowitz when he points out:
To fully understand the ideological impact and manipulative function of current media presentations, it is necessary to appreciate the multi-layered character of contemporary mass culture. In addition to the overt ideological content of films and television... transmitting new role models, values, life styles to be more or less consciously emulated by a mass audience... there are also a series of covert messages contained within them which appeal to the audience largely on the subconscious level (1993: 53).
The university, as a battlefield where the two sets of discourses fight, should be seen and recognised as having a particular set of relations with the dominant discourse/society. These relations define the university as neither a locus of domination nor locus of freedom. Instead,
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the university, with relative autonomy, functions largely to produce and legitimate the knowledge skills and social relations that characterise the dominant power relations in society. At the same time universities, like other public institutions, contain points of resistance and struggle, and it is within these spaces that the ideological and material conditions exist to produce oppositional discourses and practices. However, the researcher is of the opinion that the structure of universities in South Africa is currently inextricably tied to the interests which suppress the critical concerns of intellectuals willing to fight for an oppositional public sphere. Such interests can be dismantled in favour of more radical practices only through the collective efforts of resisting intellectuals.
3.12.5.3 The third dimension: discourse as social practice
This refers to the ideological effects and hegemonic processes in which discourse is a feature. Hegemony is concerned with power that is achieved through constructing alliances and integrating classes and groups through consent, so that the articulation and re-articulation of orders of discourse is correspondingly on stake in hegemonic struggle. The freedom of speech granted to academics and the autonomy of institutions of higher education is used and benefits the dominant discourse (the state) in its endeavours, the maintenance of the status quo.
All material produced under these circumstances reproduce the prevailing social power relations. Hence the positioning of the learning guide is an instrument of domestication by the dominated discourse, because it is either openly in support of or "neutral" about the prevalent social order. In this way the learning guide becomes an element of hegemony. It is at this level that Fairclough (2000) sees small spaces and possibilities of change. He says: "Hegemonies change; and this can be
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witnessed in discursive change, when the latter is viewed from the angle of inter-textuality”. The way in which discourse is being represented, respoken or rewritten sheds light on the emergence of new orders of discourse, struggles over normativeness, attempts at control and resistance against regimes of power.
3.13 CONCLUSION
As a qualitative project, the whole study is biased towards giving full recognition to the respondents. This study, being grounded on a critical emancipatory paradigm, violates the universalistic nature of reality and other positivistic laws. In so doing, nothing is done to devalue the scientific value of the study.
The opinions of Aronowitz and Elliot are used to substantiate the above statement:
Whenever we disburse with values, political considerations or historical context, our attempt to understand the situation we are researching is weakened. Our appreciation of an educational situation is contingent on the context wherein we encountered it, the theoretical frames we brought with us to the observation. Cartesian-Newtonian modernism has told us that our research must serve no specific course: but critical post-modernism has caused us to realize historical period produces rules that dictate what non-partisanship entails. In other words, different rules privilege different causes. Thus what we see as a research is shaped by particular world views, values, political perspectives, conceptions of race, class, gender relations, definitions of intelligence and so on. Research, thus, can never be non-partisan for we must choose the rules that guide us as researchers; critical theory's exposé of the hidden ideological assumptions within educational research marked the end of our innocence (1993:60; 998: 214).
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CHAPTER FOUR: ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION
OF RESULTS
4.1 INTRODUCTION
This chapter presents data gathered, analysed and interpreted through qualitative strategies as discussed in Chapter Three. Although initially the intention was to have a sample of 15 participants in this part of the research, because of factors beyond the control of the researcher, only nine ultimately participated, as these were the only ones that availed themselves for the interviews. The other six participants were unavailable despite the elaborate prior arrangements made with them and their faculties/schools.
However, the unavailability of six out of the anticipated total of 15 academics does not in anyway detract from the usefulness and validity of the findings presented herein, based on the interviews with the nine, because what is important in using qualitative strategies is not the number of respondents, it is rather the information produced. Duncan (1993) in Mahlomaholo (1998) convincingly argues that large sample sizes sometimes yield information that cannot be managed and adequately analysed. He also notes from Potter and Wetherell (1990) that “…samples of a hundred texts would often simply add to the labour involved without really producing anything more significant than a sample of what, for example, ten texts would have produced” (1993: 73).