Ontological substitutions in the analysis of unconventional academic discourse: Pitfalls of Linguistics and Sociology

Abstract

This article takes issue with that tendency of linguistic and sociological analysis of unconventional discourse, which in effect either produces a catalogue of errors, or substitutes the discursive reality in itself with English grammar, or both. The empirical anchorage of this argument is moored in the writing practices of African discursive agents who have been schooled in the (residual) system of ‘Bantu’ education and whose discourse tends in the main towards grammatical imprecision. Fundamentally, the argument that is put forward seeks to give a positive account of these unconventional writing practices as a discursive reality sui generis. The sociological corrective rests in giving an account of the socio-historical conditions and social relations that are responsible for the emergence and existence of said modalities of discourse. This paper in effect redefines these socio-historical conditions and social relations in terms of their constitution as a field of discursive production, which is ultimately responsible for giving birth to particular ways of discoursing. It is the intention of this paper that it presents in Chalaby's (1996) ‘Sociology of Discourse’ an account of the discursive process at work such that one may be able to meet the act of discoursing, in South Africa, on its own ground.