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“K-Word” Is It Anyway! : Understanding the Discourses Used to Justify And/Or Repudiate the Use of the Word “Kaffir” in Social Media Interactions

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Whose “k-word” is it anyway! : Understanding the discourses used to justify and/or repudiate the use of the word “kaffir” in social media interactions. By Sonia Mbowa Supervisor: Professor Kevin Whitehead. School of Human and Community Development, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg 2019 A research report submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Arts in Social& Psychological Research 1 DECLARATION I, ______Sonia Mbowa ____, declare that this research report titled whose “k-word” is it anyway! : Understanding the discourses used to justify and/or repudiate the use of the word “kaffir” in social media interactions is my own unaided work. It has been submitted for the degree of Master of Arts (Social and Psychological Research), to the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. It has not been submitted before, for any other degree or for examination to any other university. All sources have been correctly referenced using the APA format of referencing. Signature Date _______________ ____________ i Dedications To the memory of Professor Claire Penn. A mentor I had hoped to author several papers with. She left a great void! To Mmane Kgadi: “my memory loves you; it asks about you all the time”. I know you would celebrate me. It has been eight years yet not a day goes by that we do not long for you. We miss you; we miss your joyous presence! To Mohau le Phenyo: I love you! ii Acknowledgements To the Holy Trinity who is never confused. The National Research Foundation and the Wits Financial Aid & Scholarships Office are acknowledged for funding towards completing this Masters. Many thanks to my supervisor: Professor Kevin Whitehead, for agreeing to supervise this project even when my original ideas were crazy. Thank you for the unlimited consultation hours, for always giving rich and thorough feedback, for replying to long emails and for honouring all my requests for supporting documents& letters -Thank you again and again Kevin! I specially thank my parents for giving me the gift of education. My achievements are equally theirs. Thank you to the rest of my family and friends, for the prayers, for the encouragement, and for rooting for me. To Eliya with love: I hope I finally convince you that language does not merely describe but also creates that which it seeks to describe. Thank you for being my light big brother, for continuing to show up when I felt ugly on the inside. You know all the dark sides! To Thandokazi Maseti and Sharon Msiza, thank you for carrying me through the most. You know the tears, the rants and the complaints that this journey brought. Thandokazi, truly you love me! And lastly to all the people at Wits-HCRU and the 2017 MA-SPR class, y’all are amazing! May life treat all of you kindly with endless blessings. Enkosi! Kealeboga! Nakhensa! iii Abstract The word “kaffir” has particular histories and meanings in South Africa and has previously led to civil proceedings. In the current study I sought to understand the discourses and discursive strategies used by social media interlocutors to justify and/or repudiate the use of the word and to situate it as (un)acceptable. The study was interested in illuminating the unmediated manner in which social media interactions occur rather than the explanations that people give for the use of the word after it has been used. Twitter and public Facebook pages and groups were searched for posts that comprised the word “kaffir” in its variant spellings, including the euphemized “k-word”. The data was analyzed using discourse analysis. The findings from the study indicate that the discussions around the use of the word “kaffir” generally suggest that it is problematized depending on certain contextual factors like the racial category and age of the persons using the word. The discussions that follow after the initial post about the word “kaffir” highlight South Africa’s continuous struggle with race and accusations of racism and “reverse racism”; disagreements over the nature of racism were recurrent in the exchanges. Interlocutors relied on two competing discourses – the Contextualist discourse and the Universalist discourse to justify and/or challenge the (un)acceptability of using the word and to justify and/or challenge attempts to re-appropriate it as a positive self-identifier. The Contextualist discourse was used to argue that factors like age, race and context determine the (un)acceptability of the word. The Universalist discourse was used to justify the use of the word as acceptable and also to challenge it as unacceptable. Proponents of the Universalist discourse argued for the word “kaffir” to be made available to all people, irrespective of their race on the basis that the word was never racist at its inception. On the contrary, opponents argued that the word was racist at inception and therefore any continued used perpetuates racial stereotypes. KEYWORDS: “KAFFIR”, RACIAL SLURS, SOCIAL MEDIA, LANGUAGE, DISCOURSE iv Table of Contents Dedications....................................................................................................................................................ii Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................................................iii Abstract........................................................................................................................................................ iv Chapter 1....................................................................................................................................................... 1 1.1. Introduction and Rationale .............................................................................................................. 1 1.2. Research Aim and Research Questions ............................................................................................. 3 Chapter 2: Literature Review .......................................................................................................................... 4 2.1. The History of the Word “Kaffir” in South Africa: A Chronological Account .............................................. 4 2.2. Language and Discourse ....................................................................................................................... 7 2.3. The Use of Slurs ................................................................................................................................... 8 2.4. Social Media and Race........................................................................................................................ 19 Chapter 3: Methodology............................................................................................................................... 21 3.1. Aim: .................................................................................................................................................. 21 3.2. Research Questions:........................................................................................................................... 22 3.3. Data and Sampling Procedure ............................................................................................................. 22 3.4. Ethical Considerations ........................................................................................................................ 24 3.5. Limitations of the Data ....................................................................................................................... 26 3.6. Analytic Approach .............................................................................................................................. 26 Chapter 4: Data Findings and Discussion........................................................................................................ 28 4.1. Contextualizing and Universalizing the (un)acceptability of the word “Kaffir” ........................................ 28 Excerpt 1.............................................................................................................................................. 30 Excerpt 2.............................................................................................................................................. 31 Excerpt 3.............................................................................................................................................. 32 Excerpt 4.............................................................................................................................................. 35 Excerpt 5.............................................................................................................................................. 37 Excerpt 6.............................................................................................................................................. 38 Excerpt 7.............................................................................................................................................. 40 Excerpt 8.............................................................................................................................................. 42 Excerpt 9.............................................................................................................................................. 43 Excerpt 10 ...........................................................................................................................................
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