WHAT DO WORDS REALLY SAY?: Newspaper coverage of the Marikana and Michael Brown incidents and an inquiry into media reinforcement of templates of group identity

Identity is malleable. Ideas about the nature of people associated with particular identities are also malleable. This study is not about identity formation or racial templates per se, but about the portrayal of identity and group identity in specific contexts, and how portrayals of identity contribute to the reinforcement of templates and stereotypes of group identity. Here we sought to examine the contexts in which identity words, or nominative case nouns as they are known in linguistics, are used in newspaper articles. Identity words such as ‘man’ and ‘police’ can occur in the subjective case or objective case, and have