Article published in:
Critical Linguistic Perspectives on Coping with Traumatic Pasts: Case studies
Edited by Christine Anthonissen and Jan Blommaert †
[Journal of Language and Politics 5:1] 2006
► pp. 37–70

Narrative inequality in the TRC hearings

On the hearability of hidden transcripts

| Institute of EducationUniversity of London and Ghent University
| University of Cape Town
| University of Cape Town
South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission victim hearings were a highly unusual discourse event in which previously silenced and powerless people were offered a prestigious public forum and speech format to tell about their experiences of human rights violations. However, despite the equal access offered to victims for the telling of their stories, pre-existing inequalities persisted and were reflected in the relative ‘hearability’ of these stories. We use the concept of ‘pretextuality’ to account for the relative hearability. The concept refers to the varying degrees of competence in language varieties, literacy and narrative skills that people bring with them to a communicative interaction, and which influence the impact of their narratives. Through detailed analysis of selected testimonies, we demonstrate ways in which the inequalities suggested above emerged in the hearings.
Keywords: Truth and Reconciliation Commission, human rights violations, hidden transcripts, narrative, pretextuality, discourse analysis, South Africa
Published online: 14 April 2006
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.5.1.04blo
Cited by

Cited by 10 other publications

Anthonissen, Christine
2008. On Interpreting the Interpreter – Experiences of Language Practitioners Mediating for the TRC. Journal of Multicultural Discourses 3:3 ► pp. 165 ff. Crossref logo
Bakiner, Onur
2015. One truth among others? Truth commissions’ struggle for truth and memory. Memory Studies 8:3 ► pp. 345 ff. Crossref logo
Blommaert, Jan
2008. Bernstein and poetics revisited: voice, globalization and education. Discourse & Society 19:4 ► pp. 425 ff. Crossref logo
De Fina, Anna, Paternostro, Giuseppe & Amoruso, Marcello
2020. Learning How to Tell, Learning How to Ask: Reciprocity and Storytelling as a Community Process. Applied Linguistics 41:3 ► pp. 352 ff. Crossref logo
Lawrence, Susan
2009. Annelies Verdoolaege, Reconciliation Discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2008. Pp, xii. 238. Hb USD 158.00, EUR 105.00.. Language in Society 38:2 ► pp. 262 ff. Crossref logo
Lynch, Gabrielle
2018.  In Performances of Injustice, Crossref logo
Macdonald, Helen
2014.  In Ethnographic Worldviews, ► pp. 61 ff. Crossref logo
Newby, Lucy
2021. Troubled Generations? (De)Constructing Narratives of Youth Experience in the Northern Ireland Conflict. Journal of War & Culture Studies 14:1 ► pp. 6 ff. Crossref logo
Olayinka Unuabonah, Foluke
2020. Argumentation in Nigerian investigative public hearings. Journal of Argumentation in Context 9:2 ► pp. 199 ff. Crossref logo
Verdoolaege, Annelies
2009. The audience as actor: the participation status of the audience at the victim hearings of the South African TRC. Discourse Studies 11:4 ► pp. 441 ff. Crossref logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 19 september 2021. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

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