Negotiating race and belonging in a post-apartheid South Africa: Bernadette�s stories
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Date
2014
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Kings College, Univ. of London
Abstract
Although apartheid officially ended in 1994, race as a primary marker of identity has
continued to permeate many aspects of private and public life in a post-apartheid
South Africa. This paper explores how race is discursively constructed through
narrative, particularly the quoted speech of others. It focuses on the stories told by a
single participant, Bernadette, in a focus group at a South African tertiary institution
and argues that despite the fact that she overtly rejects racist ways of thinking and
talking, her talk is still structured according to the apartheid logic of racial difference
and hierarchy. The analytical framework draws on Labov's seminal work on narrative
structure and more recent work by De Fina, Bamberg & Georgakopoulou to explore
how she uses narrative to perform her identity both in the interactional moment as well
as in terms of the broader social discourses which constitute her context.
Description
Keywords
Race, Discourse, Youth, South Africa, Narrative, Apartheid
Citation
Bock, Z. (2014). Negotiating race and belonging in a post-apartheid South Africa: Bernadette�s stories. Working Papers in Urban Langauge and Literacies, Working paper no. 144.