ABSTRACT

This chapter considers the linguistic reflexes of differences of perspective across speakers of the same language. It examines a number of newspaper reports concerning certain events in the African township of Soweto and in what was at the time the Rhodesian capital, Salisbury – now Harare – capital of Zimbabwe. The chapter argues that the linguistic features identified above derive at least in part from a white perspective – that they result from choices different from those which a black journalist might have used in reporting these events for a black audience. It also argues that there are specific linguistic reflexes of the well-known fact that events are perceived and reported through a given ideological perspective. The kind of semantic extension that applies to terms like detention indicates yet another avenue by which ideologically laden connections can be established across different domains of experience.