christine anthonissen

My research of the past eight years has to a large extent remained within the tradition of CDA and its applications within multilingual social institutions marked by unequal power relations among the various role players. I do use CDA “critically” as in some contexts a mixed method approach is more suited to the particular problem under investigation. Considering the interdisciplinarity of CDA, introduction of concepts and methods from other areas of sociolinguistics is regarded as enriching rather than confounding. Besides continuing work of 2006/2007 with and interest in the theme of “language and trauma” and looking back on the ten years after the TRC, I also started considering various approaches used in managing language discordance in healthcare, where reliance on a lingua franca and on community interpreting have become important modes of verbal interaction.
A new development in my latter work has been an extension into themes of language planning and policy, and how this materialises in educational contexts. My research  considers how language planning and language policy provides for the language rights of students with multilingual repertoires and first languages that are minimally used as languages-of-learning. Here work with post-graduate students has covered the range from early literacy development (see Olivier 2010, Brand 2015) through to language practices of multilingual students in higher education (see Oostendorp). The enduring question in looking at typically South African discourses, as to whether CDA is methodologically the only or the best analytical instrument in investigating these typically South African discourses and unfolding contemporary history remains in focus. In data-collection I started to introduce an art-based approach which assists in generating authentic data among participants whose linguistic resources are generally difficult to access (cf. work with African migrants to SA).