Search

To what extent can ethnic boundaries be transcended in interethnic interactions? We are tackling this question in reference to Namibia, a post-apartheid society marked by a legacy of ethnic and racial divisions. Relying on discourse as a source of data, we identify the strategies employed by Namibians in a range of interview data and semi-experimental interethnic interactions for either accentuating or attenuating interethnic boundaries. We identify these strategies at the levels of ethnic categorization, language choice/variation and the management of speaker turns, and place them in the perspective of the participants' perspectives on ethnic Others. Our findings suggest that ethnic categories are salient in our data, although they do not exclude identification with superordinate categories in specific contexts. Our findings also show that patterns of categorization are reflected in language choice and turn management in the interactional context. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article reports the findings of an investigation into the main agencies and structures implicated in the spread of HIV/AIDS in Namibia. The empirical findings reported were obtained from qualitative and quantitative studies- Qualitative research methods such as key informant interviews (with nurses, AIDS counsellors, pastors, etc.), focus group discussions (with community members) and participant observations (in places such as cuca shops and markets) form the core of the data collection methods: while a questionnaire was administered to the research population (n=400) in an effort to collect supportive quantitative data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]