Abstract

The aim of this article is to analyse and discuss spoken language texts in the form of two role-plays on religious themes, performed by pre-service teachers. The work was undertaken as a case study in a South African university, in a particular third-year teacher-training module entitled Issues and Challenges in Education. A critical approach to discourse analysis was used to analyse the spoken language texts of the dilemmas identified by the trainee teachers. An analysis of the two role-plays indicates that religious difficulties might be rife in South African schools. This discourse is mainly constructed through the differences between Christianity and Islam where the ‘logic of difference’ is strongly played out by the teacher. In the ‘orders of discourse’ in the classroom, texts from outside the classroom are brought in to highlight the differences between Christianity and Islam. These are knowledge statements used for the purposes of moral evaluation, which helps structure Christianity as different from Islam. Thus, the social macro–structures; that is, South Africa as a predominantly Christian country, are being mediated in micro-social practices situations, like in a classroom.

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