CHAPTER 4: RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY
4.3 Research design
4.3.4 Data analysis and interpretation
The emphasis in this section is on the methods or strategies used to analyse the data gathered. Cresswell (1994) maintains that data analysis is a process of organising and interpreting the data. Data analysis involves manipulating data in order to generate information; this means that data analysis is about making sense of text or image data. It is important to group similar trends into categories and to identify common patterns that can help derive meaning from what seem unrelated and diffused (ibid.).
The study will offer a textual analysis which will be interpretative in nature. Pope et.
al. (2000:114) maintains that, “texts are characterized by the inference of general laws from a particular instance using content analysis to create categories and explanations. Qualitative research uses diagnostic categories to describe and clarify social phenomena”. According to Chowdhury (2015:1135) a multiplicity of qualitative research reveals that, “qualitative data analysis methods are generally done by coding, sorting and sifting qualitative data. There is strong evidence that qualitative data analysis also involves more than these data indexing and categorising activities”. For that reason the main female characters from all four selected texts will be analysed using feminist literary theory. The following categories will form the main part of the discussion.
4.3.4.1 Gender inequality
In most patriarchal societies of the world, Africa included, women have experienced gender inequality in one way or the other; be it in the work place or in the home environment. The pre-colonial era to date African cultures have maintained and practised gender inequality. One of the aims of this study is to investigation whether there has been a move in literature written by males, towards reflecting (in their
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work) that South Africa is now a democratic country, where all people are equal. de Laoretis (in Zuma) asserts that,
cultural interpretation of sex into gender and the unevenness that is representative of all gender systems across different cultures are assumed to be methodically connected to the design of social imbalances. She further states that the sex - gender system is a socio-cultural construct, a semiotic apparatus, a system of representation which gives meaning to individuals within the society (Zuma, 2009:57).
Structures like a family, for instance, are institutions where society mirrors its application of cultural manifestations. The study is concerned with the issue of cultural principles in that they afford men a powerful position in society and specifically in the family. It is within the family contexts that hierarchies of power are produced and in turn fixed in our societies. Basing this argument on the stories under investigation, the study presents arguments that the representation of male and female characters in specific gender roles may be informed by expected cultural behaviour.
4.3.4.2 Gender stereotypes
Miller (1982) in his book entitled In the Eye of the beholder: Contemporary issues in Stereotyping defines stereotype in the following manner;
the word ‘stereotype’ is derived from the Greek words ‘steros’, meaning solid, and ‘typos’, meaning the mark of a blow, impression or model. The term was first used to describe a method of printing designed to duplicate pages of type. A metal plate, cast from a mould, was used instead of the original form.
A link to contemporary usage is the idea of duplication, that all products of the stereotyping process would be identical. Another feature was rigidity or permanence. Miller goes on to say that ‘stereotype is a relatively rigid and oversimplified or biased perception or conception of an aspect of reality, especially of persons or social groups where grouping races or individuals together make a judgement about them without knowing them” (Miller, 1982:4).
Masuku’s (2005:17) definition is based on a more socially understood interpretation.
Hence she maintains that, “the stereotype is an overgeneralization of characteristics that may or may not have been noticed. It often contains a seed of truth that is unbiased and thus misleading”. This study focuses on the issue of cultural principles in that they afford men powerful positions in society and specifically in the family. It is
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within family structures that chains of command are created and in turn fixed to our society.
In this sense stereotype is a concept related to role, yet distinct. It can be defined as a “picture in our heads”, it is a composite image of traits and expectations pertaining to some group. Our language employs stereotyping as it is aligned with societal expectations. Stereotypes 'order' the world through particular categorizations of persons. In Zuma (2009:61) Nayar maintains that, “the stereotype preserves sharp limits and also translates the “other” into a set of static attributes. Most texts present women as ‘the other “and in turn predict/ expect that to be a universal belief”.
Robyn (1993) is of the opinion that attention to gender stereotype is another subject wherein feminists criticism can usually be identified as the stereotypcal way of tormenting female characters in a male-dominated society. Some feminists pungently believe that these male playwrights depend upon this distinction as a key to fighting essentialism, or a deterministic view that fate is a product of biology.
Some writings perceive female characters as individuals lacking in competence and resentful of males in their communities. These writings see males as the only sex in which any value resides. In the selected texts of this study the analysis takes the form of a close reading of these male literary texts which are deconstructed by means of searching for the unfairness of male writings and their failure to portray any positive image of female characters.
4.3.4.3 Portrayal of women images
The study will investigate the general perceptions regarding female characters as portrayed in many of the literary texts written by males. There is an indirect threat under which women live due to the portrayal of the lower status of the representation of female characters in literary works written by male authors. The next chapter seeks to map out the cultural perceptions of African male writers towards females and the gender discrimination in their literary texts. This study thus examines the plight of female characters. The research further attempts to inspire women to tell their own stories about their own experiences of life.
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4.3.4.4 Evaluation of representation of women images
In this section the findings, based on the analysis of data, will determine whether a male author of a particular novel or drama represents women images positively or negatively. Furthermore, whether his depiction of women images is real or idealistic, since the key to an evaluation is to make a value judgement. Taking into consideration the time of publication of each text in the contextual qualitative tradition, the study will argue whether the portrayal of women by male writers has changed to reflect the socio-political order in South Africa post 1994. The selected data source will enable the selection of ideas for the analysis chapter which will ascertain whether there has been issues of gender power and male dominance shifts, subsequent to South African proclamation of democracy in 1994. It will also determine whether male authored isiZulu literary texts have made any contribution towards reshaping the shared ideology which promotes tolerance, gender equality and justice in the society. Guided by the analysis findings the sudy seeks to show whether post-apartheid literary production does delineate a “new woman” for the new South African society.