Ideologie, ‘egte’ norme en literêre taalhandelinge

For many years text-immanent approaches to literature have dominated the scene of Afrikaans literary criticism. This article adds a voice to the ‘spontaneous' discourse in which ethical norms (especially socio-political guidelines), too, come into play when a literary text is studied. Since the context in which a text is written and read is of great importance in such an approach, speech act theory is used in order to determine the intentions (illocutions) of the writer in the texts, as well as the reactions (perlocutions) of readers to the text. The purpose of this is mainly to establish whether critique of ideology manifests itself in speech acts directed towards freedom and dignity for all people. On the other hand there may also be signs of unconscious ideological illocutions in the contradictions which occur within or between the different levels of communication (macro, meso and micro). These contradictions are related to socio-political contradictions which are repressed within the South African community. In order to illustrate this kind of approach, three novels of Etienne van Heerden are discussed, viz. Om te awol (1984), Toorberg (1986) and Casspirs en Campari's (1991).