Discourse and human rights violations.

9789027222350

Discourse and human rights violations.

Ed. by Christine Anthonissen and Jan Blommaert.

John Benjamins Publishing Co.

2007

142 pages

$96.00

Hardcover

Benjamins curren topics; v.5

DT1974

Focusing primarily on discourse arising out of the work of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Committee (TRC), six papers presented by Anthonissen (U. of Stellenbosch, South Africa) and Blommaert (London School of Economics, UK) explore aspects of how language functions in the process of mediating reconciliation, amnesty, and restitution. Topics include the range of academic discourses generated in anticipation of the TRC, narrative inequality in the TRC hearings, sociolinguistic analysis of techniques of rephrasing painful memories, precursors of TRC concerns of remembrance and forgetting found in the works of South African novelists, and the limitations of language when relating pain in an institutional space that is not necessarily safe. Also included is a comparative chapter investigating Austrian linguistic memories of World War II atrocities of the German Wehrmacht

([c]20072005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR)

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