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The Power of Discourse: An Introduction to Discourse Analysis
... The negotiation of a shared orientation between doctor and patient takes place through series (sequences) of exchanges in a sequence, until the doctor is finally able to match a medical diagnosis with the patient's problem. Chimombo and Roseberry (1998) observe that discourse participation in medical communication involves more than one speaker and listener, i.e. relations and medical personnel other than the doctor and the client participate. They conceive of medical communication as a goal-oriented process that considers participants, medium, strategies, setting and theme. ...
... The structure of dialogue in social interaction has been described from the complementing perspective of 'structuration' and 'synchronization' (Richardson 1981, Adegbite 1995. The concept of structuration, on the one hand, is associated with the perspective of discourse analysis initiated by Sinclair and Coulthard (1975) and developed by other scholars (Burton 1980, Coulthard and Montgomery 1981, Akindele 1986. It pertains to the description of discourse as 'product' in terms of constituent structural categories such as lesson, (interaction), transaction, exchanges, moves and acts. ...
... These account for the use of avoidance strategies such as euphemism and technical jargons in medical communication. (Chimombo and Roseberry 1998). Although indirectness in medical communication sometimes occurs in the Western cultures, the phenomenon is more pronounced in African countries. ...
This study describes discourse tact in diagnoses in doctor-patient interactions in English in selected hospitals in South-western Nigeria. Using recorded conversations between doctors and patients in those hospitals as data, the mutual contextual beliefs of participants, speech act patterns, including linguistic patterns, and other pragmatic features are analyzed from the perspective of the pragmatics of discourse.
The findings indicate the predominance of doctor-initiated spoken exchanges in which doctors elicit and confirm information and give directives to patients, while the patients give information and attempt to respond appropriately to the doctors’ moves. It is also observed that conversation maxims are flouted and politeness maxims exploited in order to enhance successful diagnosis in the interaction. Finally, it is observed that doctor-patient interaction is only one out of many aspects of medical communication that require the attention of language scholars in order to gain insight into language as an act of social behaviour and action, especially with respect to the institution of medicine.
... Discourse analysis is a relatively new and increasingly popular research approach within the social sciences (Burr, 1999;Chimombo & Roseberry, 1998;Gee, 1999). Although only emerging around the 1970"s, and still currently evolving, its growing popularity is largely due to an increasing scepticism and discontent with the narrowness of psychology, as well as a growing awareness of the theoretical foundations of the traditional empiricist paradigm in the social sciences (Smith et al., 1995;Potter & Wetherell, 1987;Woolgar, 1996). ...
... However, the varieties of discursive approaches also have their commonalities, albeit in only the broadest of terms. For instance, many discursive researchers maintain that a discursive approach is chiefly characterised by a sensitivity to language (e.g., Parker, 1999;Chimombo & Roseberry, 1998;Fairclough, 1990;Henwood & Pidgeon, 1992). Before I turn to a discussion of some of these commonalities, I will firstly clarify what is meant by the term "discourse". ...
... Analysis of discourses as a research tool is a recent development. Nonetheless, this tool has quickly spanned across many disciplines from linguistics and communication to social psychology to artificial intelligence, each one with concurrent adaptations to achieve the means of "understanding texts and the communicative process that gives rise to them, therefore enabling discourse analysts to gain a deeper understanding and appreciation of texts" (Chimombo and Roseberry, 1998). ...
... The geography of the discourse terrain is complex, with widely disparate assumptions being made about fundamental topics such as method, theory, the nature of discourse, the nature of cognition, and the nature of social structure. Chimombo and Roseberry (1998) define discourse as: … a process resulting in a communicative act. The communicative act itself takes the form of a text. ...
... Media news also mediates the way every individual illustrates their connection to other institutions or organizations, such as the local community, family, the nation and the world in general. Chimombo and Roseberry (1998) state: ...
... This moves linguistic analysis to an interest in what happens when people use their linguistic knowledge to do things in the world (Johnstone, 2002, p. 3): it is thus the analysis of language in use. For Chimombo and Roseberry (1998), the objective of DA is to understand and appreciate texts, spoken or written, and to highlight how these texts become meaningful to their users. ...
This paper scrutinizes the key discourses present in the policy texts about women subject to violence in Morocco in order to examine the macrostructures that constitute the backbone of these documents. The overall objective is to see whether the discourse prevalent in the policy environment and articulated in a specific document named “Tamkine” opposes or agrees with the human rights discourse. It will be shown that the official government and the human rights one constitute two different poles in their approach to gender violence in Morocco.
... She said: [duӼli ma?] which indicates in English "get inside, why don't you?" In this context, the mother showed a high impression of authority and power towards her daughter to comply with the order to enter the house (Moussadek 2012 (Chimombo & Roseberry, 1998). ...
The present research investigates the natural and noticeable phenomenon of ElHchachna vernacular which is the use of the pragmatic markers [bba] and [wa] whether at the beginning or at the end of speech. This speech behavior is prevalent in Ouedi Righ’s speech community; the area located in the southeast of Algeria. In addition, El Hchachna who are descendants of the Berber Zenata tribe tend to use [bba] and [wa] in their dailylife communication to express different purposes. As a result, this study sheds some light on Ouedi Righ’s spoken variety through exploring a number of tribal groups that live in the area and use either the Tugurtian Colloquial Arabic or Temmacine Tamazight (Tašәlḥit). Furthermore, our work also mentions the different factors that make the residents of Ouedi Righ use the two markers [bba] and [wa] in their vernacular. Another point is that the use of the mentioned particles is still preserved and maintained by the majority of Ouedi Righ’s speakers, especially among families and friends in streets. As a research methodology, the plan that has been selected to conduct this study is a mixedmethod strategy. The obtained final results show that the majority of Ouedi Righ’s inhabitants still maintain the utilization of [bba] and [wa] in their vernacular, and 90% of both genders widely use the mentioned markers in their spoken variety which is considered as a high proportion in this desert region.
... This means that language use differs according to one's situation -the subject of discussion, the interlocutors and the environment -formal or non-formal. Accordingly, court interpreting is not only a highly specialised fi eld, interactions in court are more complex than in an ordinary conversation (Chimombo and Roseberry 1998). In any case, legalese has been acknowledged as a (unique) genre, and those who function in the legal environment, including court interpreters, have to be familiar with the register or genre. ...
This article explores the lexical problems of court interpreters interpreting from Setswana to English and
from English to Setswana in Botswana. Data for the study were collected from audio CDs and transcripts
of court proceedings of criminal trials at Lobatse High Court. Among the major findings are the poor interpretation of some of the lexical items in Botswana’s elaborate kinship and cattle naming systems into English, and that of certain English legal jargon and slang expressions into Setswana. Evidence of a tacit collective resolve, especially by judges, to ensure that interpreters perform adequately in the Botswana law court exists in the data.
... This type of meaning can be subdivided into collocative meaning which arises through association with words that tend to occur in the environment of another word. In other words, a collocative meaning of a word is one that a word acquires based on the meanings of words which tend to occur in its vicinity (Leech, 1975, p. 26) (Chimombo & Roseberry, 1998, p. 117). Accordingly, semantic change can be looked at via 'denotative' (conceptual) and associative (connotative) meaning. ...
The study mainly examines the connotative meaning of several terms that are frequently used in the media in the political discourse of the September 11th attacks and the ‘War on Terror’. Eight items were identified which are ‘Sunni’, ‘jihad’, ‘Islamist’, ‘fatwa’, ‘terrorism’, ‘radicalism’, ‘militant’ and ‘fundamentalism’. The study explores the existence of these terms in the Corpus of Contemporary American English in terms of the frequency of the selected terms, collocations and collocation patterns over two periods of time: ten years before and after the September 11th attacks. The results of the study revealed that the frequency of these terms had remarkably increased after September 11th and their conceptual meaning had been colored with new connotations.
... hat through the media news, selected information can be obtained and they will be the elements for the people to think about their relationship to the state. Media news also mediates the way every individual illustrates their connection to other institutions or organizations, such as the local community, family, the nation and the world in general. Chimombo and Roseberry (1998) state: Language is deemed as a system of signs that convey ideas (Yildiz, 2002). The language the media uses has an immense power in influencing the publics' judgments on a range of issues, from politics to social interpretations. It may even control the changes of public opinions. The printed words have always been a powerful force as ...
... Jacques Derrida's work (e.g., 1976aDerrida's work (e.g., , 1978aDerrida's work (e.g., , 1981aDerrida's work (e.g., , 1981bDerrida's work (e.g., , 1988 forms part of the postmodernist perspective concerned with the discursive construction of reality (while a full discussion of discourse analysis is beyond the scope of our analysis, Chimombo & Roseberry [1998], and Fairclough [2003] provide comprehensive discussions; for a critical realist critique of deconstruction, see Wight, 2004). It attempts to demonstrate the artificiality of the institutionalized, ordinary, taken-for-granted structures of the social world by showing these structures to be inseparable from their discursive expression. ...
Research has increasingly recognized the importance of rhetoric to organizational functioning. However, there remains a paucity of detailed analyses probing its nature, particularly in such contexts as public accounting. The purpose of this paper is to deconstruct two forms of rhetoric, which are prominent within international public accounting firms and are emblematic of two modes of governance that are dominant in contemporary society-bureaucracy and expertise. The first is the formalist voice, that focuses on the objectivity with which firms are managed by administrative partners; the second is the expertise voice, that focuses on the subjectivity of practice partners which is necessary for exercising professional judgment. It is concluded that the distinction between objectivity and subjectivity is inherently contentious as each is enlisted to supplement the shortcomings of the other in these firms. Instead they may be seen as involved in a relationship in which they are inexorably intertwined.
... As a further manifestation of what Graham (1975: 61) refers to as being "assigned to a semantic house of ill fame", feminine titles of honour such as queen, governess, madam, mistress, lady and dame have been degraded and have all in one form or the other been associated with prostitution or fornication (see Schulz 1975 andChimombo 1998). Feminine terms such as old maid, spinster and heroine have also acquired negative connotations, because while the first two seem to be taken to suggest ill-luck in the matter of marriage, heroine is the name of a destructive drug (see Cheshire 1985 andCameron 1985). ...
This paper surveys the incidence of sexism in the structure and use of English, and compares it with corresponding aspects of Yoruba. Subsequently, it examines the areas in which, due to the co-existence of the two languages in southwestern Nigeria, the languages influence one another with regard to sexism.
The paper shows that while Yoruba is not sexist in some respects in which English is, English imposes sexism on the language. It shows also areas in which sexism existing independently in both languages reinforce one another. Finally, it shows how sexism in Standard English seems to have been eliminated in the formation of Nigerian Pidgin English which derives from the contact between English and Yoruba.
This article makes a comparative study of American and Polish rightist populisms and their ways of operating using structural analysis of their discourses as a main tool of examination. It aims to prove that those are indeed structural similarities that are responsible for the success of populisms in diverse environments. While examining examples of populist rhetorics and noticing the surprising efficacy of similar discourse in different political and social conditions, I expose internal structure of populism(s). I state that populism(s) is constructed mostly by and on empty signifiers. Those signifiers can then be matched in broader structures, of which the most fundamental one is the opposition: “We”—“Them”. Such mythological structures are flexible enough so that any subject or object can be inscribed into them. They are also flexible enough to transgress the borders of one domain and to transgress state borders: to “wander” around the global world.
Senthang (Kuki-Chin, Tibeto-Burman) is spoken in Central Chin State, Burma/Myanmar. This study aims to describe the participant reference patterns in Senthang narrative discourse. The text corpus used for analysis consists of four oral folktales containing a total of 546 clauses. Each text was recorded digitally, transcribed, glossed, translated, and then analyzed using Dooley & Levinsohn's (2001) sequential default model, which takes as its foundation Givón's (1983) concept of topic continuity.
Senthang's inventory of referring expressions is found to include overt NPs, pronouns, and zero anaphora. These referring expressions have several functions on the discourse level, consisting largely in signaling the identifiability, activation status, and thematic salience of participants.
Participant rank reflects a participant's global thematic salience. It is determined by adapting Givón's (1983) measurements of topic continuity. The analysis of one of the four texts demonstrates that the more linguistic material used to introduce a participant, the higher that participant’s rank.
Default codings of referring expressions are determined for eight subject and non-subject contexts according to the sequential default model. However, the defaults for the two contexts immediately following reported speech are only tentative due to the paucity of their occurrence. More coding tends to occur at episode boundaries and other discontinuities, while less coding tends to occur when there is little to no semantic ambiguity in the identification of a participant.
Pronouns occur only rarely in Senthang narrative discourse outside of reported speech. Within reported speech, however, they occur more frequently. Further investigation into the functions of independent pronouns both inside and outside reported speech is recommended.
The findings of this study contribute to the description of Senthang, which has remained largely undescribed until recently. They are of special interest to those studying the discourse structures in other pro-drop languages--particularly to those studying other Kuki-Chin languages--as well as to those creating and/or translating materials in Senthang for the purpose of community development.
Over the last 30 years, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have become increasingly present in international discourses and ?active in international decision-making. Among the estimated several million NGOs in existence today, an increasingly visible number of organizations are defining themselves in religious terms - referring to themselves as "religious", "spiritual", or "faith-based" NGOs. This book documents the initial encounters between the particularly international segment of those organizations and the UN while at the same time covering the Protestant and Catholic spectrum that dominated the early years of their activities in the UN-context. This book focuses on the construction of the human rights discourse inside two religiously affiliated organizations: The Commissions of the Churches on International Affairs (CCIA) and Pax Romana (IMCS / ICMICA). These organizations have been formally accredited as NGOs by the UN, label themselves as religious, and look back upon a long and intense cooperation with the UN. Lehmann presents material from the archives of those two organizations that has so far rarely been used for academic analysis. In doing so, as well as documenting the encounters between those organizations and the UN, and looking at the Protestant and Catholic spectrum, the book provides new insights into the very construction of the notions of 'the religious' and the 'secular' inside those organizations. This work will be of great interest to all students of religion and international relations, and will also be of interest to those studying related subjects such as global institutions, comparative politics and international politics.
Abstract
In our current globalised world of scientific and academic practices, research within English
for Academic Purposes (EAP), and more specifically, English for Research Publication
Purposes (ERPP) has undergone an exponential upsurge. The present study is part of a
wider research project, led by the ENEIDA research group, aiming among other things at
exploring Spanish scholars’ attitudes and experiences of research publication by means of a
large online questionnaire sent to academics from five Spanish universities and institutions.
We here report on the answers provided by Chemistry and Economics’ scholars as regards
attitudes and motivations to use English for publication purposes. Relevant differences
between them reveal different degrees of internationalization for Chemistry and Business
scholars as well as different disciplinary idiosyncrasies and expectations.
Resumen
En el contexto actual de prácticas científicas y académicas globalizadas, la investigación
del inglés para fines académicos y, de forma más concreta, del inglés con fines de publicación
ha crecido de forma exponencial. Este estudio se integra dentro de un proyecto de
investigación llevado a cabo por el grupo ENEIDA cuyo objetivo, entre otros, es explorar
las actitudes y experiencias de los académicos españoles con relación a la publicación de
su investigación utilizando un cuestionario en línea que se envió a académicos de cinco
instituciones y universidades españolas. Presentamos aquí las respuestas de las disciplinas de
Química y Económicas por lo que se refiere a actitudes y motivaciones a la hora de utilizar el inglés como lengua de publicación de la investigación. Las diferencias entre estas dos
disciplinas revelan diferentes grados de internacionalización así como diferentes expectativas
e idiosincrasias disciplinares.
Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to provide a clear and replicable methodology for conducting a policy archaeology. This paper articulates the steps in policy archaeology and the process is applied to a study of Discourses of disability in special education policy in Ontario, 1965-1978.
Design/methodology/approach
– The metaphor of field archaeology guided the process of locating relevant texts through backward and lateral mapping and locating and interpreting artefacts. The artefacts were discursive representations of complex policy problem of disability in stakeholder texts. The Discourses were compared chronologically, within and across stakeholder texts. An explanatory narrative relates the Discourses to the socio-historical context.
Findings
– There were significant contradictions in the discursive construction of disability. The texts of the Council for Exceptional Children presumed agreement that disability was an intrinsic, permanent deficit within the student with disabilities. In contrast, the other stakeholders stated that disability was the result of socially and educationally constructed barriers.
Research limitations/implications
– This paper makes no claim of universal truth. The interpretations and conclusions reached are influenced by the researcher’s knowledge and experience. Other scholars may reach other conclusions.
Practical implications
– Scholars have a clear and replicable methodology for conducting a policy archaeology. This methodology is currently the most “true” to the metaphor of archaeology and uses Discourse analysis, interpretation and the creation of a narrative situated in a socio-historical context.
Originality/value
– The study shows that the Discourses of disability in special education policy in special education policy in Ontario place children with disabilities at a serious educational disadvantage.
Kritiðkosios diskurso analizës metodologiniø principø taikymas sociologiniuose tyrimuose 1 Straipsnyje analizuojama " diskurso " samprata, pristatoma diskurso anali-zës metodologiniø prieigø ávairovë, iðryðkinamas ir argumentuojamas kri-tiðkosios diskurso analizës metodologinës tradicijos pritaikomumas socio-loginiams tyrimams. Analizuojant kritiðkosios diskurso analizës metodolo-ginae tradicijà atskleidþiami jos teoriniai pamatai, bendrieji analitiniai rë-mai, aptariamos specifinës taikymo sritys. Raktaþodþiai: diskursas, diskurso analizë, kritiðkoji diskurso analizë
This study examines the publication, review and collection of fiction and poetry titles written by African-American women, published between 1980-1990 by Association of Research Libraries member academic libraries located in the United States. It is an examination of institutionalized legitimizing social forces and their influence on the collection and sanctioning of knowledge as expressed through academic library collections. An analysis of discourse of a small set of titles reveals how expressions of social reality by a marginalized social group inform the discourse of larger society inherent in such library collections. A statistical analysis reveals that 70% of the titles written by African-American women during this time frame were poetry and that over half of these titles were published by small publishers. It was determined that there was no statistical relationship between the size of the publisher and the number of these titles a publisher produced. Approximately 40% of the titles received at least one book review, but the six core library professional and book trade review journals did not proportionately review these titles. The factors that were related to holdings of these titles include the total number of book reviews a title received, the number of titles the author published, the presence of an African-American Studies Department at the member institution, and the total number of volumes held by the library.
Die Rolle von Wahrnehmung für institutionentheoretisch-basierte Ansätze in den Japanstudien wird in drei Beiträgen beleuchtet. Walter Ötsch diskutiert die komplexen Prozesse der Wahrnehmung von Realität. Er betont die Bedeutung kognitiver Muster in Raum und Zeit (Kultur) für ein mentales framing. Katja Triplett und Michael Pye untersuchen die Rolle von 'Rationalität' in religiösen Transaktionen in Japan. Auf der Basis mehrerer Fallstudien argumentieren sie, dass solche Aktivitäten häufig als zweckrational in einem engen ökonomischen Sinn verstanden werden können. Dirk Nabers betrachtet die Entwicklung internationaler Beziehungen und stellt einen Forschungsrahmen vor, kognitive und diskursive Phänomene genauer zu beachten. -- The relevance of cognition for institution-based models in Japanese studies is discussed in three papers. Walter Ötsch discusses the complex processes how we perceive reality. He stresses the importance of cognitive paradigms in time and space (culture) for mental framing. Katja Triplett and Michael Pye analyse the role of 'rationality' in religious transactions in Japan. Looking at several case studies, they argue that activities can often be understood as goal-driven in a narrow economic sense. Dirk Nabers looks at the evolution of international relations and presents a research agenda to pay attention to cognitive and discursive phenomena.
Poverty reduction today, at least in rhetoric, is a global priority; the essential role of education in poverty reduction is universally assumed. However, the dialectic between the concurrent and contradictory processes of ‘poverty reduction’ and ‘poverty induction’ is not well understood, and the historically rooted and globally entrenched larger structural processes of ‘poverty induction’ are indeed being allowed to advance and grow. Adult education over the lifespan, which relative to other sectors of education has the most important role to play in projects of poverty reduction worldwide, is regretfully the least supported by the policy elite. A new band of activist adult educators is needed, rich in intellect and imbued with commitment, joined in a system of adult lifelong education that is both comprehensive and commensurate with the tasks of constructing projects of poverty reduction in the short run, and of deconstructing ideologies and structures of poverty induction in the long run.
Preference organisation was once a prominent concept in conversation analysis, but it has been construed in a number of mutually incompatible ways and it is now used in a very restricted manner. With the publication of Harvey Sacks' collected lectures, however, it has been possible to take a fresh look at the concept and to provide a criterion of preference. This paper shows that preference can be explained in terms of noticeable absence and accountability. The preferred action is the “seen but unnoticed” action (Garfinkel, 1967), whereas the dispreferred action is of two types. The first is noticeable and accountable, but not sanctionable, while the second is noticeable, accountable and sanctionable. The paper shows how this concept operates in three key lectures by Sacks and in data extracts.
This paper describes how language contributes to the oppression and exploitation of animals by animal product industries. Critical Discourse Analysis, a framework usually applied in countering racism and sexism, is applied to a corpus of texts taken from animal industry sources. The mass confinement and slaughter of animals in intensive farms depend on the implicit consent of the population, signaled by its willingness to buy animal products produced in this way. Ideological assumptions embedded in everyday discourse and that of the animal industries manufacture and maintain this consent. Through analysis of texts, this paper attempts to expose these assumptions and discusses implications for countering the domination and exploitation of animals.
Although communication in medical practice is reputed for exactitude and objectivity, many doctors in several countries make equivocal, concealing utterances in certain situations when relating with clients. This phenomenon, despite its importance in doctor-client interaction, has received little attention from language scholars who have discussed concealment mainly as a strategy in news delivery. The present study examines concealment items in the interaction between doctors and clients in South-western Nigerian hospitals and their pragmatic implications for medical communication in Nigeria. Fifty (50) conversations between doctors and clients on several ailments were tape-recorded in the six states of South-western Nigeria. Structured and unstructured interviews were conducted with selected doctors and clients. The corpus was examined for the linguistic and pragmatic resources deployed by doctors in concealing information, and was analysed using Jacob Mey's theory of pragmeme and insights from the literature on news delivery strategies. Concealment was found to take place between doctors and clients in a two-phase mode: Referential and pragmatic. Utterances which have descriptive forms at the referential level assume subjective and divergent shades in the context of concealment at the pragmatic level. Nine concealment strategies (jargonisation, veiling, forecasting, mitigation, stalling, normalisation, dysphemisation, euphemisation and doublespeak) were found to be employed to achieve four broad goals: Preventive, palliative, culture-compliant and confidential with respect to 25 diseases /medical procedures. Concealment in consultative encounters takes into account the socio-psychological security needs of clients and attends positively to clients' cultural expectations.
This article identifies three innovations with great promise for improving the use of information technology in education. The Semantic Web, discourse analysis, and social network analysis are briefly described, and their potential contributions to education are highlighted. Two articles in this issue are identified as highly meritorious in promoting the integration of information technology in education.
Narrative Representation Theory has emerged as a linguistics-based framework to account for the formation of macrosuperstructure in natural human languages. Previous studies on a wide range of linguistic systems including Native American languages, African American vernacular, varieties of Englishes, and Chinook jargon have discovered a systematic rule-governed pattern in their narrative discourse. This article claims that Creole languages, archetypal forms of human languages, also present fundamental similarities with these languages in the organization of their narrative superstructure. They manifest such fundamental structural relations as constituency or hierarchical ordering, precedence or linear sequence, and componentiality or atomic elements, which cooperate with other linguistic constituents, namely, phonology, morphology, and syntax. Narrative representations, which function as part of the underlying language faculty, are direct projections of the supersentential module in the mind. They are realized as 5-layered external levels of hierarchical narrative units. Each of these levels may consist of a linear-sequential unit of internal constituents. Also, the terminal node of the linear sequence must be filled with the appropriate atomic element of "a structured idea." These findings suggest that the system of narrative superstructure is rule governed and autonomous, and thus should be regarded as part of internalized language.
This article attempts to investigate, in depth, the concept of ideology in translation. That is to say, the extent to which ideology can influence the translator's style and choice of words that will, consequently, shape the receivers’ worldviews. In recent years the issue of ideological leanings and the implications of ideology on translation have received particular attention. Owing to the importance of this issue of ideology, and as an example of the issues that both the translating practitioner and theorist must deal with, this article provides a detailed, comparative analysis of a translation of the first, formal speech delivered by bin Laden on 7 October 2001 concerning the events of September 11 and his conflict with the United States. The analysis assesses the probability of a translator's ideological intervention in the text and other technical, linguistic problems.
This study investigates communicative competence in English among rural African high school learners in the Eshowe circuit. Poor student performance especially in higher institutions has generally been linked to incompetence in English Second Language, which motivated an investigation into communicative competence among high school learners from a rural background. The study was conducted in five high schools in the Eshowe circuit The design of the study necessitated the adoption of qualitative approach in order to probe the multifaceted phenomenon of communicative approach in its natural setting (the classroom situation). The theoretical underpinnings on which this study relied on were extracted from the field of discourse analysis and text linguistics. Also, due to the nature of the study i.e. being concerned with communicative competence and Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), much of the literature reviewed surveyed the concept of communicative competence from scholars and researchers such as Chomsky (1969); Hymes (1982); Widdowson (1985), and Saville-Troike (1997). Moreover, the linguistic context on which the study was based necessitated that we explore the definitions of bilingualism and multilingualism. Classroom discourse was used in analysing the lessons in a Second Language classroom setting. Lessons seemed to display a unique classroom interaction pattern, typical of teacher-pupil interaction in a Second Language classroom. In addition, the study looked at the extent to which the lessons complied with the expectations of the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) with particular attention to \earner roles and teacher roles in CLT. Moreover, the analysis of lessons is subjected to seven standards of textuality discussed by Beaugrande and Dressier (1981), which helped determine the textuality of lesson texts, as these standards are activated during communicative events. The study further considered possible remedy to the errors found in English lesson transcripts. Though the National Curriculum Statement offered viable solutions to learners' errors, a challenge lied with errors committed by teachers, who according to the study, fell below the assumed competence and fell short of being subject specialists. Nevertheless, teachers' utterances were characterised by occurrences of code-switching, which according to the study played a positive role in regulating classroom behaviour. From the analysis of lessons it emerged that in most lessons, though a communicative approach was followed, there was little or no linguistic input from the teachers, which raised doubts about the implementation of the communicative approach to language teaching. Indeed, data indicated shortfalls in the implementation of CLT as expected in NCS. The problem of communicative incompetence loomed heavily not only over the learners, but also over the teachers as well, which is a cause for concern in the teaching of English as a Second Language. A thesis Submitted as a requirement for the degree of doctor of Philosophy (D.Phil) in the Department of English, Faculty of Arts at University of Zululand, 2008.
Abstract The paper examines the pragmatic roles that locutionary acts play in understanding the communication between doctors and patients in Southwestern Nigeria. Working within John Austin’s locutionary acts, with restrictions to the lexical occurrences and lexical relationships observed in the discourse, it got data through tape recordings of doctor-patient conversations and interviews of both doctors and patients (and/or their relations).The findings revealed that two categories of locutions were engaged in hospital interactions, namely, locutions intended to be understood by non-professionals and locutions not intended to be understood by non-professionals. The paper observes that locutions in medical discourse in Southwestern Nigeria bring standard lexical choices and local linguistic initiatives of medical practitioners into a pragmatic union. It therefore concludes that the pragmatic engagement of these choices displays the tact the practitioners use in dealing with patients, and it recommends the need for the practitioners to master the locutions and their pragmatic adaptation for effective management of patients. Keywords: Locutions, Pragmatic functions, Medical discourse, Southwestern Nigeria.
ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: THE USE OF FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE IN THE CONSTRUCTION OF MUSICAL MEANING: A CASE STUDY OF THREE SIXTH GRADE GENERAL MUSIC CLASSES Emilija A. Sakadolskis, Doctor of Philosophy, 2003 Dissertation directed by: Professor Marie McCarthy, Chair, Music Education The intent of this study was to examine how musical meaning is constructed using figurative language (i.e., tropes such as metaphor) in the music classroom. The researcher observed three sixth-grade general music classes taught by one teacher in a private school for girls. Audio recordings of nineteen class sessions, including individual discourse of the teacher and six students, were transcribed for analysis. Theories of cognitive linguistics were applied to the data, with the theory of embodied schema guiding the analysis. Five schemata involving figurative language emerged: containment and entity, personification, verticality, regularity vs. irregularity, and location, space and motion. An additional emergent category of timbre articulations was presented. Analysis showed the ubiquitous use of the container metaphor with its in-out spatial orientation for musical events, elements, and even for persons. There were personifications of music, perceived as an "agent" who implies, speaks, and has needs. Classroom discourse frequently involved polysemous words such as up or down, high or low. Students offered value judgments of musical events based on their notions of regularity or irregularity. To a surprising extent they rejected dissonance and non-Western tunings which they perceived to be irregular rather than different. There were references to music as an external force that causes movement, occupies space, and has a clear location. Students lacking the professional vocabulary to describe timbre used similes, analogies, onomatopoeia, and synthetic metaphors. Several pedagogical implications were identified. The ambiguous meanings of polysemous words offer opportunities to explore cognitive relationships that exist between those different meanings. Teachers can bring musical meaning to consonance and dissonance by verbally bridging the chasm between disparate understandings of those concepts. Student strategies dealing with timbre descriptions point to the efficacy of developing metaphoric capacities in students. Teaching methods involving kinesthetic experience support the notion of embodied cognitive schemata, but further discussion is needed concerning the relationship among sensory experience, mental representation, and linguistic expression in the construction of musical meaning. Data analysis shows that figurative language is essential in constructing musical meaning, even as it challenges established educational thinking and practice.
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