Bachelor of Arts Honours (Afrikaans)

As a first-year postgraduate programme, the Bachelor of Arts (BA) Honours in Afrikaans aims to consolidate, deepen and intensify students’ theoretical and conceptual knowledge of the Afrikaans language, particularly in areas such as linguistics and literature. 

It also serves to provide students with methodologies and techniques which will prepare them for further independent research-based postgraduate study in their respective areas of specialisation.

The proposed curriculum will support the intended outcomes and enable graduates to demonstrate:

• knowledge of and engagement in an area at the forefront of a field, discipline, or practice related to linguistics (semantics, morphology) and literature (post-colonial literature), as well as an understanding of theories (linguistic theories on semantics, morphology, pragmatics, second language acquisition, and literature theories on reader-response theories, feminist and post-colonial literary theories), research methodologies (qualitative and quantitative), methods (interviews, surveys or questionnaires) and techniques relevant to the field, discipline or practice; and an understanding of how to apply such knowledge in a linguistic and literary context.

• the ability to use a range of specialised skills to identify, analyse and address complex or abstract problems drawing systematically on the body of knowledge and methods appropriate to a field, discipline, or practice of linguistics and literature.

• the ability to present and communicate academic, professional, or occupational ideas and texts effectively to a range of audiences, offering creative insights, rigorous interpretations, and solutions to problems and issues related to linguistics and literature.

• the ability to critically review information gathering, synthesis of data, evaluation, and management processes in specialised contexts to develop creative responses to problems and issues.

Programme Structure

The BA Honours in Afrikaans is a one-year postgraduate qualification comprising two compulsory core modules (i.e. a supervised Research Project completed over a year and Research Approaches and Methodologies) and any three optional/elective modules selected from the fields of Linguistics and Literature.

The various modules in the programme have no rules of progression in terms of the level of complexity as all modules are pegged at NQF level 8. However, only after completing the Research Approaches and Methodologies module will students conduct the Research Project.