Osei Yaw AkotoKwame Nkrumah University Of Science and Technology | KNUST · Department of English
Osei Yaw Akoto
PhD (English Language); M.Phil (English Language); BA (English Language and Philosophy)
Looking 4 collaborators interested in using SFL, corpus-based & Linguistic Landscape approaches to explore names.
About
37
Publications
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Introduction
Osei Yaw Akoto (PhD) currently works at the Department of English, Kwame Nkrumah University Of Science and Technology. Akoto does research in Discourse Analysis, English for Academic Purposes, Corpus Linguistics and Onomastics. His current project is 'Corpus Linguistic Study of Names of Churches in Ghana.'
Publications
Publications (37)
In recent times, there has been an upsurge of scholarly attention on hitherto occluded genres such as the Letter of Recommendation (LoR). Although several studies have been conducted on the LoR, studies on lexico-grammatical features are rare. This study, therefore, adopts a corpus-driven approach to examine the use of personal pronouns (PPs) in Lo...
Texture proves to be a key indicator for measuring the quality of a text but establishing this text quality is a challenge for most English as a Second Language (ESL) students. This challenge has led to an array of studies to find the root cause(s) of this/these writing challenge(s) of ESL students. Despite these numerous studies, there is still pa...
Linguistic inquiry into football commentary has become prevalent in recent times. Despite the plethora of studies on football commentary, the cohesive elements within it remain unexplored. The present study, therefore, investigated the grammatical cohesive devices in Online Minute-By-Minute Football Commentary (OMBMFC). Three OMBMFCs from The Guard...
Linguistic inquiry into football commentary has become prevalent in recent times. Despite the plethora of studies on football commentary, the cohesive elements within it remain unexplored. The present study, therefore, investigated the grammatical cohesive devices in Online Minute-By-Minute Football Commentary (OMBMFC). Three OMBMFCs from The Guard...
This study adopts the Hallidayan Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), specifically the textual metafunction, to explore cohesion in Ghanaian and American Presidential Inaugural Addresses (PIAs). The SFL theory is aided by the corpus-assisted approach to text analysis. In all, sixteen PIAs given by different presidents from the American and Ghanai...
In recent times, Linguistic Landscape (LL) research has been extended to cover several variables, domains, modes, and geo-political contexts. Arguably, humour remains understudied in LL research. This article, therefore, examines incongruities in LLs using a corpus of digital signs and incongruous inscriptions gathered across several mediums in urb...
In classroom lectures, lecturers alternate roles to present appropriate disciplinary ethos to students. Hence, this corpus-based study examines lecturers’ roles through self-referential personal pronouns (SRPPs) across disciplines to further emphasize PPs as key rhetorical features for participant positioning in academic lectures. Lectures from L2...
In recent times, studies on I, we and you (tri-PP) in academic lectures have focused on the L1 context. This paper, however, investigates the commonalities in the discourse reference of I, we, and you across three disciplinary supercommunities (DSs): Humanities (HS), Social Sciences (HS), and Natural Sciences (NS), using a corpus from an L2 context...
The Ghana Journal of Linguistics is a double-blind peer-reviewed scholarly journal appearing twice a year (not including special issues), published by the Linguistics Association of Ghana. Beginning with Volume 2 (2013) it is published as an open access
journal in electronic format only, at https://gjl.laghana.org and
https://www.ajol.info/index.ph...
As one of the key sub-genres in academic discourse, the research
article’s abstract, has attracted the attention of scholars within the linguistics and
applied linguistics literature. This has led to the upsurge in studies that have
explored this all-important genre, with different analytical lenses and focuses.
Dominant among these studies are tho...
This paper examines graphemic and lexical borrowings in Twi for Academic Purposes (TAP). Textbooks written in Asante Twi by some renowned scholars in the language constituted the dataset for this study. The textbooks were read and all instances of anglicisms or English features borrowed into Twi were collected. The borrowed-features were identified...
Funeral ceremonies, from the Akan ethnographic perceptive, have the sole objective to honour the dead for their meritorious services to mankind. During such ceremonies, family members who have not been seen for years come together. It is a period used to settle family disputes, and in a situation where a man dies, family members get the opportunity...
Studies have sought to establish the ‘territory of reference’ or ‘patterns of
referentialities’ of I, we and you (tri-PP) in academic lectures across disciplinary
supercommunities (DSs): Humanities, Social Sciences and Natural Sciences. These
studies are largely from L1 context, and also report on only referents common to
the three DSs, without giv...
Over the years, scholars have sought to provide language-based typologies of
names, but while attempts have been made for some sub-branches of onomastics
such as anthroponymy and toponymy, there is arguably none for ecclesionymy (the
study of church names). Consequently, this paper sought to provide a languagebased typology of the hitherto underexp...
This paper is an expose on how fundraisers in some churches in Ghana use persuasive language, also referred to as 'loaded words' on their congregation to stir up their emotions to adhere to their demands and succumb to their instructions and directions. It specifically recounts persuasive expressions or utterances used by personalities who solicit...
Academic disciplines have varied attitudes towards the use of pronominal resources in both written and spoken genres. But most of the studies that seek to reveal these disciplinary peculiarities are largely grounded on written texts. In recent times, however, studies have been conducted using spoken texts such as university lecture, which is regard...
Several studies over the years have employed the rhetorical question "What is in a name?" to uncover the semantic-pragmatic imports of names. This paper examines church names (ecclesionyms) which constitute part of the religio-onomastic landscape of Ghana to discover the various languages embedded in them. To achieve this task, we gathered names of...
This paper combines approaches in corpus linguistics and linguistic landscape to examine geographical markers (GMs) in church names. Specifically, the study seeks to identify, classify and determine the “grounding” or positioning of GMs in church names. The study is based on the first-ever specialized corpus of 6600 running words of church names an...
Studies have established that thesis chapters are both similar and dissimilar with respect to their rhetorical choices. This paper examined metadiscourse use in the Introduction and Literature Review (LR) chapters of English Language theses from a nonnative context. The Introduction and LR chapters of ten theses, resulting in 50, 000 and 100, 500 w...
This paper is an expose on how fundraisers in some churches in Ghana use persuasive language, also referred to as ‘loaded words’ on their congregation to stir up their emotions to adhere to their demands and succumb to their instructions and directions. It specifically recounts persuasive expressions or utterances used by personalities who solicit...
Feedback is considered an integral part of the writing process. It has thus engendered the attention of scholars in discourse analysis, applied linguistics, language education, composition and rhetoric studies, and English for Specific Purposes. This attention, however, is heavily tilted towards worded feedback, at the expense of wordless feedback....
It has been established that there are inter-chapter variations regarding metadiscourse use in masters’ thesis. This paper, therefore, investigates the differences and similarities in metadiscourse use between the Introduction and Literature Review (LR) chapters in Sociology masters’ thesis from an English-medium university. The Introduction and LR...
Studies on the referents of I, we, and you (the tri-PP) in academic lectures across disciplinary supercommunities: Humanities (HS), Social Sciences (SS), and Natural Sciences (NS) are relatively not many. The few ones done limit themselves to commonalities in the referents across DSs. This paper thus appears the first of its kind to investigate ind...
Review genres are very crucial in the academy. Consequently, in recent times they have engendered the attentions of Applied Linguists, discourse analysts, literacy specialists, and most importantly scholars in EAP. In line with this, the present study explored variations in metadiscourse use across the literature review subgenre in English Language...
Investigation into metadiscourse use in master’s thesis Introductions across disciplines is arguably rare. Thus, this paper examined the use of metadiscourse devices in the Introduction Chapters in English Language and Sociology master’s thesis. The metadiscoursal devices in a corpus drawn from the Introduction Chapters of 20 English Language and S...
A growing body of research has sought to explore the language-identity interrelationship. The present study explored a key identity index – motto– of educational institutions in Ghana. Two hundred and forty-five mottos collected from multiple sources such as newspapers, billboards, and institutional souvenirs from institutions ranging from senior h...
Hedging, as a rhetorical tool, has received considerable attention from scholars from diverse fields of study such as advertisement, politics, and religion. Despite the extensive exploration of the topic, it has not received much attention in health communication. Thus, this study, which employs Quirk, Greeenbaum, Leech, and Svartvik’s (1985) funct...
The paper investigated personal pronoun use in letters of recommendation written by academics in Ghana
For over three decades now, research on undergraduate student pedagogy has shifted focus from an error analysis tradition to an emphasis on learner needs. As part of this shift, we examined the needs of students who offered Communicative Skills in an English-medium university in Ghana, and whether their needs were discipline-specific. Data were col...
In recent times, metadiscoursal devices are increasingly being studied by researchers in Applied Linguistics, Discourse Analysis and English for Academic and Specific Purposes because of their indispensable role in all forms of communication. Unfortunately, code glosses, one of the metadiscoursal devices, have not received much attention in metadis...
In recent times, metadiscoursal devices are increasingly being studied by researchers in Applied Linguistics, Discourse Analysis and English for Academic and Specific Purposes because of their indispensable role in all forms of communication. Unfortunately, code glosses, one of the metadiscoursal devices, have not received much attention in metadis...
Metadiscourse has been studied from multiple approaches: semantic, communicative, sociolinguistic, psycholinguistic, pragmatic and rhetorical approaches. Additionally, different scholars have also theorised the concept from a number of perspectives including Systemic Functional Grammar, Roman Jacobson taxonomy of the functions of language, relevanc...
Adaptation of Token-Value Concepts to the Analysis of Code Glosses in University of Cape Coast Students’ Handbook
ABSTRACT
Over the past three decades, metadiscourse studies have engendered a booming interest from scholars in Applied Linguistics, discourse analysis and English for Specific Purposes. While most of these studies have focused on disci...
Academic communication involves three key entities – the writer, the reader and the text. Before the last three decades, the reader was perceived as a passive consumer of the 'services' (texts) of the writer. Therefore, thesis writing was considered monologic, in that the writer's focus was on only the proposition. Drawing on Hyland's Interpersonal...
Questions
Questions (16)
I am currently investigating the 'graffscape' (linguistic landscape of graffiti) in the washrooms in a public university. I am interested in the language and mode choices. Additionally, I want to interview the students (graffitists) to know their motivations for the language and mode choice. How do I get actual graffitists to interview? Or can I interview any student?
Over the years, several people have asked the question 'What is in a name'. I have appropriated this question to names of churches so that we can share our views on what the names of churches connote.
I recently read an unpublished manuscript titled 'Why is academic writing so academic?' by Joshua Rothman (2014, https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/why-is-academic-writing-so-academic ). I found the short be very insightful and thought-provoking. However, the paper inspired me to further interrogate my understanding of the word 'academic', hence, I ask 'What's academic about academic writing?
I would like to know the views of scholars on the concepts outlined above.
Until recently, the complex surname structure I knew was the hyphenated ones like 'Osei-Owusu'. But now I have observed as complex as a three-theme surname like "Osei Owsusu Ansah'. This is a critical issue in onomastics, specifically anthroponomstics/anthroponymy'
