Abstract:
Where human society is involved, the world
can never be objective, but is a place where,
through cultural power relations, human inequalities are legitimized by meaning,
interpretation and value (Hall 1997). At the same time prejudice and stereotyping
disguise inequality and enhance the exclusion of certain sectors of society. Mechanisms
such as inclusions, exclusions, confusing representations, cultural codes, and silences are
relevant stereotyping strategies. In this article the visual representations in Dutch and
Afrikaans language textbooks are compared in order to determine the strategies used to
address diversity within the textbooks. The conceptual framework and literature review
comprise an explication of the concepts and influential issues presented in the literature.
Data sources are constituted by the visual material of one textbook series from each of
the two language communities. The findings are presented as indicators derived from
focus group discussions. Eurocentric perspectives of the dominant white group about
the ‘other’ were identified, projecting the ‘other’ as problematic, poor and primitive. The
cultural codes in the visual material furthermore generalise the non-Western ‘other’ as
either extremely religious or as fundamentally different. No signs of apartheid prejudice
could be found in the Afrikaans textbooks and Afrikaans is demythologised as a ‘white’
language. The visual material offers a platform for different, even contradictory, values
in order to create a new cultural and social reality, even if the representation, in which
everybody speaks Afrikaans, is sometimes forced and unauthentic.
