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CLAREP JOURNAL OF ENGLISH AND LINGUISTICS ACADEMIC WRITING FOR AFRICA: THE JOURNAL ARTICLE 2
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This article accounts for the articulation of vocalic sounds in the speech of selected Nigerian television newscasters. The work discusses how Nigerian newscasters who present network news to Nigerians and the international community articulate vocalic sounds. It argues that their articulation of vowels represents an acrolectal variety of spoken Nigerian English which Jowitt (2015) refers to as “Nigerian RP,” an endonormative model for spoken Nigerian English. Since previous studies on the vocalic system of Nigerian English were done over a decade or two decades ago, there is need for a follow-up empirical study which tracks possible developments in the variety. This article, therefore, tries to track possible developments in articulation of vocalic sounds by Nigerian newscasters within the period 2014–2017, and accounts for the various influences that shape their articulations. The paper, which adopted the acrolectal component of Ugorji’s (2010) trio lects classification, uses downloaded news broadcasts and interview sessions of thirty (30) purposively selected Nigerian television newscasters from YouTube (and tape-recorded where necessary). The data was analysed perceptually, acoustically and statistically. Tokens of occurrence of sound articulations were counted and presented in tables using simple percentage. The data shows that the realisations of monophthongs by 100% of the newscasters largely correspond to RP. The closing diphthongs, /eɪ/, /aɪ/, / aʊ/, /ɔɪ/, were phonemically realised by 98% of the newscasters in the manner of RP. The diphthong, /ʊə/, was reduced to a monophthong by 45% of the selected newscasters, while /əʊ/ was realised as /oʊ/, the American equivalent of the segment, by most of the newscasters. Triphthongs, /aɪə/ and /aʊə/ were realised by 55% of the sampled newscasters in quiet and power respectively.
Keywords: Vocalic, acrolectal, speech styles, dialectal articulation, Nigerian newscasters, television, Nigerian RP
In the current era of online interactions, both positive and negative experiences are abundant on the Web. As in real life, negative experiences can have a serious impact on youngsters. Recent studies have reported cybervictimization rates among teenagers that vary between 20% and 40%. In this paper, we focus on cyberbullying as a particular form of cybervictimization and explore its automatic detection and fine-grained classification. Data containing cyberbullying was collected from the social networking site Ask.fm. We developed and applied a new scheme for cyberbullying annotation, which describes the presence and severity of cyberbullying, a post author’s role (harasser, victim or bystander) and a number of fine-grained categories related to cyberbullying, such as insults and threats. We present experimental results on the automatic detection of cyberbullying and explore the feasibility of detecting the more fine-grained cyberbullying categories in online posts. For the first task, an F-score of 55.39% is obtained. We observe that the detection of the fine-grained categories (e.g. threats) is more challenging, presumably due to data sparsity, and because they are often expressed in a subtle and implicit way.
This report provides a framework through which hate speech emerging and disseminated online can be identified and analysed. Its aims are twofold. Firstly, it is meant to offer an introductory guide for those interested in mapping and analysing hate speech, especially as communicated through online media and in divided societies. Section 1 offers an overview of the recent debates over the definition of hate speech, both from a scholarly and legal perspective. Section 2 surveys different methodological tools that can be adopted to map and analyse hate speech and the trade-offs between the ability of providing a contextually grounded analysis of instances of hate speech and the possibility of processing large volumes of data. The second aim is to interrogate how a rigorous and academically informed analysis of hate speech can offer a novel terrain for engagement among different actors in divided societies, with a particular focus on Ethiopia. Section 3 reflects on the importance of bringing different actors around the same table, from members of the government and the opposition to bloggers supporting agendas at different ends of the political spectrum, and to engage in debates that can ultimately bound them to a shared definition of what is and what is not speech that can promote hate and violence, and to collectively recognize and develop measures to counteract it.
This paper presents the overview of the shared task, stance detection in Chinese microblogs, in NLPCC-ICCPOL 2016. The submitted systems are expected to automatically determine whether the author of a Chinese microblog is in favor of the given target, against the given target, or whether neither inference is likely. Different from regular evaluation tasks on sentiment analysis, the microblog text may or may not contain the target of interest, and the opinion expressed may or may not be towards to the target of interest. We designed two tasks. Task A is a mandatory supervised task which detects stance towards five targets of interest with given labeled data. Task B is an optional unsupervised task which gives only unlabeled data. Our shared task has had sixteen team participants for Task A and five results of Task B. The highest F-score obtained was 0.7106 for Task A and 0.4687 for Task B, respectively.
Proto-Ijoid has been reconstructed as having nine vowels that fall neatly into two harmonic sets based on the size of the pharynx. [i e o u] are produced with an expanded or a wide pharynx; [ɪ ɛ ɔ ʊ] are produced with a non-expanded or narrow pharynx, while [a] is considered an opaque vowel because of its ability to co-occur with both sets. These two sets do not co-occur in simple words. Williamson (1973) posits that in Nko̩ ro̩ o̩ , an Eastern Ijoid lect, there is a reduction in the vowel harmony system as a result of vowel mergers. The vowels most affected are [ɪ] and [ʊ] which seem to be disappearing from the speech of older speakers and is presently non-existent in the speech of younger speakers. [ɛ] and [ɔ] are sometimes substituted for [e] and [o] and may well be on their way to merging with [e] and [o]. This paper seeks to ascertain the extent of reduction in the vowel harmony system four decades later by comparing data from Nko̩ ro̩ o̩ with data from two Eastern Ijoid lectsː Kalab̩ ari̩ and I̩ b̩ ani̩ .
The philosophical discussion of nominal classification can be traced back to the Greek sophistic philosopher Protagoras (485-414 bc). Obviously, discussing the problem of "category" and "categorization," and especially the interdependences between category, categorization, and classification on the one hand, and naming, language, thought, perception, and culture on the other hand, has a long tradition, not only in philosophy, but also in linguistics. Even a brief glance over this literature and other literature that deals especially with nominal classification reveals that the basic problems continue to emerge in the discussion of this topic. This article summarizes some of these problems of nominal classification in language, presents and illustrates the various systems or techniques of nominal classification, and points out why nominal classification is one of the most interesting topics in cognitive linguistics. In particular, it discusses measure terms and class terms, noun class systems and gender, numeral classifiers, noun classifiers, genitive classifiers, and verbal classifiers.
Objective
Donepezil, an inhibitor of acetylcholinesterase (AChE) targeting the brain, is a common medication for Alzheimer's disease. Interestingly, a recent clinical study found that administration of this agent is associated with lower risk of hip fracture independently of falling, suggesting its direct effect on bone tissues as well. AChE has been reported to be involved in osteoblast function, but the role of AChE on osteoclastogenesis still remains unclear. We analyzed the effect of AChE and donepezil on osteoclastogenesis in vivo and in vitro.
Methods
Cell-based assays were conducted using osteoclasts generated in cultures of murine bone marrow macrophages (BMMs) with receptor activator of nuclear factor-kappa B ligand (RANKL). The effect of donepezil was also determined in vivo using a mouse model of RANKL-induced bone loss.
Results
Recombinant AChE in BMMs cultured with RANKL further promoted RANKL-induced tartrate-resistant acid phosphatase (TRAP)-positive osteoclast differentiation. RANKL also upregulated AChE expression in BMMs. RNA interference-mediated knockdown of AChE significantly inhibited RANKL-induced osteoclast differentiation and suppressed gene expression specific for osteoclasts. AChE upregulated expression of RANK, the receptor of RANKL, in BMMs. Donepezil decreased cathepsin K expression in BMMs and the resorptive function of osteoclasts on dentine slices. Donepezil decreased RANK expression in BMMs, resulting in the inhibition of osteoclast differentiation with downregulation of c-Fos and upregulation of Id2. Moreover, administration of donepezil prevented RANKL-induced bone loss in vivo, which was associated with the inhibition of bone resorption by osteoclasts.
Conclusions
AChE promotes osteoclast differentiation in vitro. Donepezil inhibits osteoclast function in vitro and prevents bone loss by suppressing bone resorption in vivo, suggesting the possibility that donepezil reduces fracture risk in patients with Alzheimer's disease.
Several studies have existed on various aspects of advertisement billboards and stickers, using different scholastic approaches. But none, to the best of our knowledge, has delved into the pragmatic analysis of religious billboards in The Redeemed Christian Church of God, Redemption Camp, Nigeria. This study is an attempt at filling this gap. The study is based on Austin's (1962) Speech Act theory. Seventeen billboards which were purposively selected served as our data. The data were analysed based on the theory in order to validate the following research questions: What are the pragmatic elements inherent in the billboards? What types of speech acts are preponderant in the billboards? Can we establish that the billboards communicate meaningful messages to the worshippers? The study indicated a preponderance of the illocutionary acts of informing and advising and demonstrated that the billboards are inundated with various meaning-making strategies which enhance their multifarious interpretations.
This observational study aimed at examining teacher/learner interactions in task based settings and understanding teachers’ perceptions about using task-based approach in reading comprehension classes. To achieve this end, two general English classes were observed in Islamic Azad university of Tabriz, Iran. The researcher followed a four part process of record-view-transcribe- and analyze (R-V-T-A). The results show that despite the claim that task-based approach is applied in foreign language classes in Iran, in reality grammar-oriented interventions are rather frequent in these foreign-language classes and that teachers have got unclear understanding about applying task-based approach in their classes. The results of the study may have pedagogical implications for instruction and curriculum development. © 2012, Australian International Academic Centre PTY LTD. All rights reserved.
Research has shown how tasks can improve L2 oral skills in different ways (Ellis, 2005). The effectiveness of task-based learning has drawn interest within Asian educational contexts which have been accustomed to more traditional methods of language instruction. Authorities in these contexts have recently started to express a desire for more communicative oral syllabuses. However, large class sizes, inadequate financial support, and teacher time constraints at many institutions have often made the implementation of task-based learning problematic. This paper attempts to address these issues by reporting action research on an interactive task designed by teachers on a limited budget for use in an intermediate-level university classroom in Japan. It describes how the task was used to facilitate interaction and use of a specific grammar form, English articles.
Advertising texts are pervasive in contemporary capitalist cultures in promoting and selling products. Given that sex and sexual identity are also configured as central in the formation of identity in such cultures it is not surprising that advertising harnesses sexual appeals in its operation. The language used in advertising reflects broader debates in culture, at the same time that it reinforces existing ideologies and helps to construct particular and partial ideas about sex, gender, and sexual identity.
This paper examines the lexico-semantic choices in the Pentecostal church posters. The researcher attempts to approach the interpretation of the Christian posters from the stylistic view point. Its meaning was made explicit using the tool of linguistics. It is a known fact, that stylistics is beneficial to both the teachers and students. Using M.A.K Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar, as the analytical framework, this paper, examines the lexical semantic choices in the Pentecostal church posters.Pentecostal church posters happen to be one of the several media of advertisement employed by the churches to disseminate information about the churches’ events to the audience/passers-by. Previous studies on the language of advertisements are concerned with the themes of commercial and political posters while the others looked at the elements of pragmatics such as speech acts and implicature etc. This paper reveals that the construction of posters (texts) is a linguistically conscious activity.
Edited by two leading experts on the languages of West Africa, this volume is the very first book to handle a range of topics in the syntax of Kwa, a branch of the Niger-Congo language family spoken by approximately 20 million people in Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, and Benin and in the extreme southwestern corner of Nigeria. Kwa includes a total of 45 related languages. The nine chapters each address a separate grammatical aspect of Kwa. These range from topics such as the verb phrase, argument structure, verb serialization and complex predicates, to discussions on tense, mood, and aspect and their relation to the structure of sentences. Also addressed are the structure of the noun phrase and the syntax of discourse particles.
The studies in this volume demonstrate that Kwa languages offer a very rich empirical domain for linguistic theorizing. In this book, experts who are mostly native speakers present empirical data and show its theoretical relevance to comparative linguistics and comparative syntax. The book brings together a wealth of material and fresh insights and is a superb example of how empirical research feeds into typological and theoretical linguistics. As such, it is a gold mine to students and teachers of comparative syntax, as well as for anyone interested in studies on Niger Congo languages.
The purpose of this study was to investigate and compare the impact of task-based instruction (TBI) and traditional instruction (TI) on the motivation and vocabulary development in secondary language education. The focus of the study was to also find out the perceptions of teachers about implementing these two instructional methods in their teaching practices. The participants were 97 students and 2 teachers engaged in the 7th grade EFL program at a private school in Istanbul, Turkey. Data was collected quantitatively from a vocabulary check test and motivation scale, as well as qualitatively from semi-structured interviews. The findings revealed that implementing TBI had positive impact on students' vocabulary development as well as their motivation. In line with these findings, it was also suggested that teachers perceived TBI to be a more effective method to be incorporated in secondary grade language practices. Based on the gathered findings, suggestions for redesigning and implementing the existing 7th grade EFL program were provided.
Foreword Introduction Part I: Approaches and methods 1. Style and Choice 2. Style, Text and Frequency 3. A Method of Analysis and some Examples 4. Levels of Style Part II: Aspects of style 5. Language and the Fictional World 6. Mind Style 7. The Rhetoric of Text 8. Discourse and Discourse Situation 9. Conversation in the Novel 10. Speech and Thought Presentation Passages and topics for further study Further reading Bibliography Index of works discussed General index
Advertising communication relies considerably on inferences and assumptions which help proceed towards eventual interpretation(s). It is the task of the audience to supply those implications based on the presumption of optimal relevance. Christian advertising as a specific domain draws largely from Christian ideological assumptions and communicates certain overt and covert messages. The audience's background knowledge and assumptions are crucial factors in the relevance-theoretic interpretation of advertisement messages. This work examines how ideological meanings and implicatures are communicated, what they communicate and how they are interpreted in Christian advertisements. The Relevance theoretical framework is employed for the analysis of the data. Seventeen (17) textual samples of Christian adverts drawn from handbills, posters and billboards in Abakaliki, Nigeria, are analysed. It is observed that Christian advertisers and their target audience share common values, which usually form the background, based upon which they both interact within the platform of language of advertising. The advertisers appeal to the audience through the offer of some benefits, mostly abstract, for which they cannot be held responsible if not fulfilled.
We address the problem of hate speech detection in online user comments. Hate speech, defined as an "abusive speech targeting specific group characteristics, such as ethnicity, religion, or gender", is an important problem plaguing websites that allow users to leave feedback, having a negative impact on their online business and overall user experience. We propose to learn distributed low-dimensional representations of comments using recently proposed neural language models, that can then be fed as inputs to a classification algorithm. Our approach addresses issues of high-dimensionality and sparsity that impact the current state-of-the-art, resulting in highly efficient and effective hate speech detectors.
In this chapter, the features of the pronunciation of English in Nigeria as observed in the productions of selected Nigerians have been isolated. This goes to confirm that Nigerian English has features that can identify it from other varieties of world Englishes. It has been shown that there are particular segmental phenomena and practices that are peculiar to Nigerian pronunciation. These include: fewer vowels and consonants resulting from the approximations of some English segments to close equivalents of Nigerian languages' sounds. Some vowel and consonant processes have also been identified some of which include: final consonants non release, simplification of consonant clusters and monophthongisation of diphthongs and triphthongs. With the non-segmental phenomena, a tendency to have a proliferation of stressed syllables resulting from non-reduction of vowels was identified. This feature of Nigerian performance is shown to cut across varieties and linguistic groups and to be significantly different from the performance of a native speaker. With regard to intonation, the characteristic feature of Nigerian pronunciation identified includes a tendency to have more intonation phrases resulting from pausing at ungrammatical points (Udofot 1996), and a preference for unidirectional intonation tones rather than bidirectional ones. In each case, the feature identified tends to reduce as one moves up the ladder of quality from Variety Two, our Standard Variety, to Variety Three, the Sophisticated Variety, which though close to British English has been shown to be significantly different, at least, in terms of non-segmental features. The chapter ends with a call for acceptance and codification of Nigerian English christened Ninglish, for teaching in Nigerian schools.
This book is about personal names, something of abiding interest to specialists and lay readers alike. Over a million people have checked the American Name Society website since 1996, for instance. Many philosophers and linguists suggest that names are ‘just’ labels, but parents internationally are determined to get their children’s names ‘right’. Personal names may be given, lost, traded, stolen and inherited. This collection of essays provides comparative ethnography through which we examine the politics of naming; the extent to which names may be property-like; and the power of names themselves, both to fix and to destabilize personal identity. Our purpose is not only to renew anthropological attention to names and naming, but to show how this intersects with current interests in political processes, the relation between bodies and personal identities, ritual and daily social life.
The questions that we want to consider here have arisen in a number of different contexts in recent work on the nature and use of language. Among these are the following:
(1)a.
Restricting the options for transformational grammar (TG) (discussed in section 1.1 below);
b.
Perceptual strategies and syntactic rules (section 1.2);
c.
Problems of obligatory control (section 1.3);
d.
Properties of the complementizer system (section 1.4).
Valency (alias 'valence') is a particular kind of dependency property exhibited by verbs, and to a lesser extent by adjectives and nouns. It involves the relationship between the different subclasses of a lexical word-class and the different structural environments they require or permit (cf. the chemical concept of valency). Valency was highlighted by Tesnière, who stressed the difference between valency-relevant 'actants' (= elaborators = arguments = complements) and universally available 'circonstants' (= free adverbials = adjuncts). Elaborators include not just objects of various kinds, predicatives and compulsory adverbials but also subjects. Valency analysis takes account of embedded clauses as elaborators, of the semantic roles of elaborators, and of transformational alternations and "stretched verb constructions.".
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The aim of this paper is to explain the need for a revision of the term “hate speech” in the era of Web 2.0 and to introduce two new terms into the literature of hate speech with the help of application of “speech act theory”, that is “hate discourse” and “hate speech act.” The need for the revision arises from the examination of the methodology used to analyze hate speech, which is critical discourse analysis (CDA). Even though CDA seems fairly sufficient for hate speech analysis in traditional media, it could be rather difficult to apply into the analysis of hate speech disseminated in social media because of the nature of the tremendous
data found in Web 2.0. Therefore it is believed that these two new terms could be beneficial to find more practical and new ways to combat against hate speech disseminated through social media.
keywords: hate speech, speech act theory, social media
In a hate speech case a court might have to determine whether a person's words were hurtful or harmful. Would it be possible to determine whether words are hurtful or harmful by using linguistics? This article offers a linguistic perspective on a court's interpretation of the Equality Act in a hate speech case and focuses on speech acts and politeness. If the speech acts of a verbal exchange are studied and the levels of politeness are gauged, a court would be able to affirm the hurtfulness or harmfulness of the speaker's words. The article begins with a brief discussion on the potential role of the linguist in a courtroom; this is followed by a summary of the facts of the case. Then the court case is analysed and discussed in terms of speech acts and politeness. By employing principles in pragmatics the author reaches the same conclusion as the court.
Noam Chomsky, more than any other researcher, has radically restructured the study of human language over the past several decades. While the study of government and binding is an outgrowth of Chomsky's earlier work in transformational grammar, it represents a significant shift in focus and a new direction of investigation into the fundamentals of linguistic theory.This monograph consolidates and extends this new approach. It serves as a concise introduction to government-binding theory, applies it to several new domains of empirical data, and proposes some revisions to the principles of the theory that lead to greater unification, descriptive scope, and explanatory depth.Earlier work in the theory of grammar was concerned primarily with rule systems. The accent in government-binding theory, however, is on systems of principles of universal grammar. In the course of this book, Chomsky proposes and evaluates various general principles that limit and constrain the types of rules that are possible, and the ways they interact and function. In particular, he proposes that rule systems are in fact highly restricted in variety: only a finite number of grammars are attainable in principle, and these fall into a limited set of types.Another consequence of this shift in focus is the change of emphasis from derivations to representations. The major topic in the study of syntactic representations is the analysis of empty categories, which is a central theme of the book. After his introductory comments and a chapter on the variety of rule system, Chomsky takes up, in turn, the general properties of empty categories, the functional determination of empty categories, parasitic gaps, and binding theory and the typology of empty categories.Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor at MIT. The book is the sixth in the series Linguistic Inquiry Monographs, edited by Samuel Jay Keyser.
This article explores the role of doubt and certainty in published research articles from eight academic disciplines. Drawing on a computer corpus of 56 research papers and interviews with expert informants, I identify the principal means by which academics modify their statements and the functions such modifications perform in negotiating knowledge claims in a range of areas of intellectual inquiry. The quantitative results reveal the importance of hedges and boosters in academic writing and their wide disciplinary variability. The analysis shows that these devices are responsive to the understandings of social communities, and that their use is one of the systematic means by which academics collabora]te to both socially create knowledge and construct their disciplinary worlds. The paper therefore suggests that these differences in rhetorical practices are related to the fact that academics construct knowledge as members of particular disciplinary communities and that their discoursal decisions are influenced by, and embedded in, the epistemological and interactional conventions of their disciplines.
The use of “Big Data” in policy and decision making is a current topic of debate. The 2013 murder of Drummer Lee Rigby in Woolwich, London, UK led to an extensive public reaction on social media, providing the opportunity to study the spread of online hate speech (cyber hate) on Twitter. Human annotated Twitter data was collected in the immediate aftermath of Rigby's murder to train and test a supervised machine learning text classifier that distinguishes between hateful and/or antagonistic responses with a focus on race, ethnicity, or religion; and more general responses. Classification features were derived from the content of each tweet, including grammatical dependencies between words to recognize “othering” phrases, incitement to respond with antagonistic action, and claims of well-founded or justified discrimination against social groups. The results of the classifier were optimal using a combination of probabilistic, rule-based, and spatial-based classifiers with a voted ensemble meta-classifier. We demonstrate how the results of the classifier can be robustly utilized in a statistical model used to forecast the likely spread of cyber hate in a sample of Twitter data. The applications to policy and decision making are discussed.
This paper explores how to teach English writing to big classes in China from the task-based perspective. Based on a comparison between the traditional 3Ps approach and the tasked-based approach, the paper proposes a practical linear procedure as to how to teach English writing in the task-based classroom to big classes. An empirical study is conducted in the form of questionnaires to test the effectiveness of this task-based procedure to foreign language writing in the Chinese EFL setting. Results show that the task-based approach is effective to teach big classes English writing, as it deepens students' understanding of the task-based approach and enhances various aspects of writing. However, there are several factors calling for future attention, such as teachers' roles, monitoring and evaluation in the practice of task-based instruction. It is hoped that this proposed procedure of task-based approach can serve as an inspiration for other foreign language teachers and stimulate more studies in task-based learning and teaching.
Hitherto, post-Saussurean linguistic theories have been unable to provide satisfactory descriptions of a creole continuum. This paper reviews previous attempts in the field, and indicates the need for a different theoretical orientation-one which would replace static, synchronic models of polar dialects with a single dynamic model incorporating both these and all the intermediate variations. In support of this argument, two sub-systems of the Guyanese creole continuum-the copulative and the pronominal-are described in terms of the dynamic evolution of the continuum as a whole; and it is demonstrated that, far from being an area of random variation, such a continuum represents a series of developmental stages ordered in accordance with basic principles of linguistic change. Finally, it is claimed that both the theory and the methodology advanced here cannot be limited to creole situations, but must have universal validity.
The Book Routledge has now published my book version of this text under the title Semiotics: The Basics. The online text (which is not the same) will continue to be available. The publisher's details of the book are here. Amazon UK lists it and readers may order it online; Amazon.com states that it will be stocked from March 2002 -readers from outside the UK who are in a hurry are therefore advised to order it from Amazon UK. Please support this site by ordering the book here. It shouldn't cost you any more than elsewhere and it will earn me more than my meagre royalty fee! Online ordering ISBN RRP (Pounds Sterling) Paperback edition 0-415-26594-0 9 ($15.95 US; 110,79 FF; DM 33,50; EUR 16,89-17,13) Hardback edition 0-415-26593-2 00 Note that it will be cheaper to buy the book than to print out the online version, and that the book will be much tidier to shelve and easier to browse! Praise for the Book 'This is the best introduction to semiotics I have read. The author combines a scholarly command of the subject with the ability to organise and present it in an enticing and informative way.
Triangulation refers to the use of multiple methods or data sources in qualitative research to develop a comprehensive understanding of phenomena (Patton, 1999). Triangulation also has been viewed as a qualitative research strategy to test validity through the convergence of information from different sources. Denzin (1978) and Patton (1999) identified four types of triangulation: (a) method triangulation, (b) investigator triangulation, (c) theory triangulation, and (d) data source triangulation. The current article will present the four types of triangulation followed by a discussion of the use of focus groups (FGs) and in-depth individual (IDI) interviews as an example of data source triangulation in qualitative inquiry.