Abstract
Radio is accessible to a large populace due to its easy accessibility and economic nature. Its accessibility places it in a leading position in information dissemination. Moreover, radio has a plethora of media programmes to give packages of information prepared for the audience in a more suitable manner for the audience to consume differently. One of the many ways in which radio gives information to the audience is through radio drama.
The information presented through the radio drama medium is intended to educate, entertain, and inform the audience. The prowess possessed by radio drama (to enlighten audiences) deserves scholars’ attention to conduct work on radio drama to help further develop and entrench the medium. Therefore, this dissertation answers the call with the enthusiasm it deserves. The project critically analyses four Northern Sotho radio dramas that were broadcasted by the South African Broadcasting Corporation. The analysis focuses on the technical tools and structural elements of radio drama. The author of this dissertation identified the following radio dramas for analysis: Esego Nna (Molele, 1988), Ke Thato ya Gagwe (Mothiba, 1988), Ke Mohumi (Modiba, 1991) and Ke Moya (Molele, 1991).
The dissertation makes use of the qualitative research methodology in carrying out the study. The usage of qualitative research methodology used in this study enables the researcher to be able to make sense and understand some societal phenomenon. The data collection method in this dissertation is realised by soliciting radio audios from the South African Broadcasting Corporations. Therefore, the selected radio dramas as alluded to earlier are the data in this case are presented in a form of audio. Over and above that, in case of this dissertation the researcher is to analyse and interpret data by listening to the selected radio dramas to reach the dissertations conclusions.
The observation made in this study is that radio drama has the potential to disseminate information to a wide range of people with different societal and socio-economic backgrounds. Therefore, radio drama can be utilised to reach out to a wide range of people across the world. Also, the dissertation revealed the findings made in this study reveals that the selected radio dramas as mentioned earlier have
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used repetition well. Additionally, the dissertation in question reveals that radio drama does not suffer any limitation with regards to time, this is because radio drama unlike other forms of drama such as stage drama radio drama is not subjected to tempo and production technicalities of the day of performance. This is due to radio dramas’ beforehand production. As a result, the radio dramas duration does not vary depending on the technical issues on the day of performance. Hence, the performance of the selected radio dramas are all within the thirty minutes time frame.
However, this dissertation finds a limitation in all four selected radio dramas: Esego Nna (Molele, 1988), Ke Thato ya Gagwe (Mothiba, 1988), Ke Mohumi (Modiba, 1991) and Ke Moya (Molele, 1991). The selected radio dramas’ usage of dialogue to establish time leads the radio dramas not to be economical with the usage of words. The usage of dialogue to establish time leads the dramatist to use more words, which in turn leads the dialogue to be longer and prosaic.
Keywords:
Radio drama, Northern Sotho, Time, Chronology of events, Characterization, Didascalies, Music, sound effects, audience