Master of Arts (by dissertation) — African Languages & Literatures postgraduate personal statement example

Personal statement example

Before a funeral programme leaves our print shop, I read the clan names aloud to whoever has brought it in. Families often hand me a page of handwritten iziduko, the praises that follow a clan name, and want them set in type exactly as an uncle recites them at the graveside. Last month a woman stopped me halfway through a line and said the order was wrong. Her grandfather had always said it differently. We spent twenty minutes deciding which version belonged on paper. That kind of conversation now happens several times a week, and it is the reason I want to pursue a Master of Arts by dissertation in African Languages and Literatures.

I studied isiXhosa and History for my first degree. I came to it from the history side, interested in mission printing and the early isiXhosa press. The literature courses changed my direction. Reading S. E. K. Mqhayi, who wrote both as an imbongi and as a novelist, showed me how freely oral and written forms could move into each other. For my honours essay I recorded and transcribed praise poems performed at four university and school graduation ceremonies. I compared their use of clan praises and proverbs with the conventions Jeff Opland describes in his studies of Xhosa oral poetry. My main finding was modest but real. The performers kept the structure of traditional izibongo but changed who they addressed. They often praised institutions and degrees as well as people. My supervisor encouraged me to ask what happens when such language is fixed in print, and I have not stopped thinking about it.

After graduating I took a job at a small print and copy shop because I needed the income. I expected it to be unrelated to my studies. Instead I became the person who handles isiXhosa work. I typeset funeral and memorial programmes, church bulletins and the occasional wedding booklet. I have learnt to be careful with orthography. I have also learnt that families rarely agree on it. A single programme may contain a hymn in older mission spelling, a biography in English and clan praises written as they sound in one family's speech. Karin Barber's argument in The Anthropology of Texts, Persons and Publics, that everyday texts deserve the attention usually given to literature, gave me a way of seeing these documents as a genre rather than as paperwork.

My proposed dissertation would study funeral programmes from the Eastern Cape as written texts that carry oral forms. I would examine how clan praises, biographies and hymns are selected, ordered and spelt. I would also ask what families gain or lose when a recited genre becomes a printed keepsake. With families' consent, I would gather a corpus of programmes and interview the relatives who compiled them. I know I will need stronger training in research ethics, in the theory of orality and literacy, and in handling a mixed archive. Those are the things I hope a dissertation degree will give me.

Outside work I keep the records for my grandmother's stokvel. That means monthly contributions, minutes in a mixture of isiXhosa and English, and patient explanations when figures are questioned. It has made me tidy with documents and comfortable asking older people to repeat themselves. I also play chess at a community club on Thursday evenings. It has nothing to do with literature, but it has taught me to sit with a difficult position for a long time before committing.

I am applying because I already spend my days among texts that few people study closely. I would like the time and supervision to study them properly.