Metaphorical sense-making: visual-narrative language portraits of South African students
This article reflects on a creative visual-narrative approach to understanding South African students’ lived experiences of languages. Data were collected in two interviews: the first entailing a biographical history and the drawing of a linguistic portrait on a simple body outline
and the second a narrative interview utilising the portrait generated in the first as a basis for talking about language and identity. Framing the research process in this creative visual mode shifts the focus of narrative talk, simultaneously grounding it in affective, embodied experience,
and enabling a reflexive position from which to analyse the taken-for-granted role of language in the minutiae of everyday life. The theoretical lenses of identity and subjectivity are invigorated through these metaphorical representations, and new creative possibilities are released for analysing
the role of language in mediating shifting power dynamics in post-apartheid and postcolonial South African life.
Keywords: Visual methods; embodiment; identity; language; metaphor; narrative; subjectivity
Document Type: Research Article
Affiliations: 1: Stockholm University and University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa 2: University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa
Publication date: 03 July 2018
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