Master of Arts in African Languages for Professional Contexts

Rationale for the qualification

The purpose of the programme is to equip students with the kind of knowledge and applied competencies in the African languages, that will enable them to have a principled understanding of the factors relevant to the successful planning, implementation and management of discourse practices for African languages in professional contexts (government, private sector, education) in relation to multilingual language policy.Given the broad purpose outlined above, the specific purposes of the programme are:

(a) to equip students with an advanced knowledge of the sub-disciplines of sociolinguistics, pragmatics, discourse and genre analysis, and the ethnography of communication with respect to professional discourse in multilingual contexts;

(b) to enable students to integrate a wide variety of information about the planning and management of higher-function discourse practices for African languages;

(c) to equip students with a specialised understanding of the problems pertinent to the development and use of the African languages for functioning in professional contexts, and to guide students to participate in the search for innovative solutions to these problems;

(d) to establish a basis for independent investigation through a capacity for advanced theoretical thinking and the ability to select and utilise critically appropriate applied competencies for performing complex tasks and problem-solving relating to discourse practices in African languages.

A three-year BA-degree with an African language as a major subject.

Recognition of Prior Learning

See above

N/A

GENERIC/CRITICAL CROSS-FIELD OUTCOMESThe graduate will

(a) demonstrate the ability to identify, formulate and solve problems of a theoretical or practical nature in the area of professional discourse practices;

(b) demonstrate competencies in the independent analysis, organisation and critical evaluation of information relevant to the successful planning, implementation and management of projects and policies;

(c) demonstrate the ability to develop and present arguments for communication with both subject specialists and non-specialists in the subject .

SPECIFIC OUTCOMES

The graduate will have

(a) advanced theoretical knowledge of the pragmatics of discourse practices in African languages in professional and public contexts;

(b) familiarity with the literature on sociolinguistics, the ethnography of communication, pragmatics, and discourse and genre analysis, and its application to the African languages in relation to multilingual language policy;

(c) a principled understanding of how the use of the African languages in professional contexts encodes ideologies, values, attitudes, social identities and relationships.The graduate will be able:

(d) to interpret, analyse and construct written and spoken discourses in African languages for the purpose of both internal and external communication in institutional and organisational contexts;

(e) to relate professional discourse practices in African languages to broader issues concerning language and society and the implementation of multilingual language policy;

(f) to identify and analyse issues relevant to developing and maintaining multilingual language policy in institutional and organisational contexts in order to create a culture sensitive to discourse practices in African languages.

• The assessment used for this qualification complies with the stated purposes of the qualification.
• A range of formative and summative assessments is used, but the emphasis falls on a thesis or interrelated series of assignments in which students have to display the desired outcomes. Written and oral examinations and presentations, role-playing, simulations, assignments, and case studies may also be used as instruments of assessment.
• The appropriate kinds of assessment are used in an integrated manner to determine whether the specified outcomes have been achieved (see section 8 below).The assessment used meets the standard and level of achievement for NQF level 8a.

Integrated assessment

Integrated assessment is accomplished by evaluation of a series of interrelated assignments that reflect the desired outcomes. The series of assignments represent an integrated summation of the level of knowledge and insight gained by the successful student as well as his/her academic and communicative abilities