Legendary linguist leaves her mark
AFTER four decades as a teacher, lecturer, playwright, author, actress and more, Prof Charlyn Wessels Dyers is proudest of one thing: the many students she’s supervised and guided, and the contributions they will continue to make to multilingualism and social development in the country.
Dyers, a resident of Kuils River, is one of several recently-retired University of the Western Cape (UWC) academics who started their relationship with UWC as students, continued as lecturers, and who continued their walk at UWC, right up to retirement.
Dyers began working at UWC in a permanent position in 1994, was promoted to associate professor in 2002, to full professor in 2015, and also served as deputy dean of the faculty of arts in 2005.
She retired on January 31, 2017 as a full professor in the department of linguistics, ranked as a C1 researcher by the National Research Foundation.
Prior to joining the department, she was director of the Ulwimi Centre for Multilingualism and the Language Professions from 2001-2005, helping teachers cope with learners who speak languages other than English and Afrikaans – especially learners from the Eastern Cape.
“It was a struggle back then,” she recalls.
“Our job was to teach teachers the basics of isiXhosa so they would be better able to help children cope with the adjustment to a totally new language environment. Without it, it was difficult for children to cope, and this support was key to their academic success.”
Looking back, she says her contribution to multilingualism in the transitional years of this country is something she’s really proud of.
“Teachers appreciated the kind of input the university had in the community in such a direct way, and I’m glad we could be part of it all,” Dyers remarks. “The reward from this experience is that I still have teachers thanking me for this.”
The main focus of Dyers’s research has been late-modern multilingualism, with particular focus on translocation and language, language attitudes and ideologies, and language policy.
She has collaborated successfully with leading international sociolinguists, including Prof Jan Blommaert of Tilburg University in the Netherlands and her UWC colleague, Prof Bassey Antia.
She is a member of the British Association for Applied Linguistics, an executive member of the South African Applied Linguistics Association, and a former board member of the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation.
But if you ask her what she’s most proud of, it isn’t Kaaps in Fokus (SUNMedia, 2016), the book she co-edited with Prof Frank Hendricks, or her earlier work, Drama (Oxford Resource Series for Teachers) – currently in its tenth reprint, and translated into Korean in 2006.
Rather, it’s the six PhD and 19 MA graduates, including students from the universities of Ghent and Antwerp, who have graduated under her supervision.
“I’m convinced my UWC students will make a huge impact and contribute to our society,” she says. “They are bright and vibrant and enthusiastic, and I’m really pleased with that.”
An interesting aspect of Dyers’s life, running alongside her academic achievements from the very beginning, is her active involvement in the world of theatre as an actress, director and playwright.
In South Africa she is perhaps best known for her moving portrayal in the early 1970s of the mother (Makiet) in Adam Small’s drama, Kanna Hy Kô Hystoe, a role she reprised at the first Suidoosterfees in 2003.
Dyers is an active member of the Kuils River Moravian Church and serves on its council – and believes in putting her artistic talents to use in service of the church.
In 2007, she wrote and directed the play Moeder Lena – the story of South Africa’s first indigenous preacher and teacher, the Hessequa woman, Vehettge Tikkuie – for the Moravian Church in South Africa’s celebration of its 270th anniversary.
A professional production of the play followed at the Roots Festival at UWC in 2009, and the play has recently been published together with another one in a collection entitled Twee Merkwaardige Moraviese Vroue.
When asked if she will pick up her love for the performing arts and start acting again, Dyers is hesitant, but the light in her eyes tells another story. “It is expensive and time-consuming to stage a play at festivals – but it is still early days and we will have to see.”
Dyers was born in Somerset Hospital, Cape Town, on January 28,1952, the eldest daughter of Harold and Frances Wessels.
She grew up in Somerset West where she completed her primary and secondary education, and on her grandfather Herman Engel’s farm, Sandy’s Glen, near the Moravian mission station of Elim.
In Somerset West, where her mother worked as a nursing sister and her father as a primary school principal, she attended Vergelegen Primary School and the Methodist Primary School before moving to Gordon High School, where she had the good fortune of being taught by some of UWC’s earliest graduates, including Prof Harold Herman, whom she later worked alongside.
She was inspired to become a lifelong educator – first as a secondary school teacher of English at Bellville South High School in 1974, and then as a lecturer in English at the former Bellville Teachers’ Training College in 1977.
Having completed her BA degree, an honours degree in English and the Secondary Teacher’s Diploma, she was awarded a British Council bursary in 1979, which allowed her to complete her MSc degree in Applied Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh in 1980 under the supervision of Prof Stephen Pit Corder.
Following her marriage to a Brit, she remained in Edinburgh for 12 years, working as a lecturer in English as a foreign and second language at the Institute for Applied Language Studies, and at Stevenson College of Further Education.
Dyers also spent a year as a lecturer at the Free University of Berlin, and was a frequent guest lecturer at workshops organised by the British Council.
In January 1993, she returned to South Africa and UWC. In UWC’s English department she served as director of the English for Educational Development Programme, and was promoted to senior lecturer in 1999.
In March 2001, Dyers received her doctorate in linguistics from UWC, completed under the supervision of Prof David Gough, with co-supervision by now retired UWC professor Stanley Ridge and Prof Felix Banda, who still teaches at UWC’s linguistics department.
UWC and the arts run deep in her family.
Her brother is retired high school principal and UWC alumnus Trevor Wessels, and her sister is the wellknown evangelist and gospel singer, Phillipine. Her 23-year-old daughter, Frances, is a BA student at the University of the Western Cape.
Dyers, a linguistics professor from the University of the Western Cape, retired recently.
Box is communications officer at the Institutional Advancement: Media Office
I’m convinced my UWC students will make a significant contribution to our languages and social development