ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to explore the role of drama in teaching English to enhance students’ communicative skills at the University of Namibia. The discussions of the research focused on assessing the benefits of using drama in the teaching of English to increase students’ motivation and self-confidence, as well as meeting the aims of integrating drama activities in the teaching of the English Access Course at the University of Namibia or in any other English language teac...
Abstract This thesis is an analysis of Shakespeare’s use of rhetoric in the kings’ speeches in King Henry IV Part II and Henry V. The main aim of the study was to analyse Shakespeare’s use of rhetorical devices and their purpose in selected kings’ speeches appearing in King Henry IV Part II and Henry V. This study is based on selected extracts of speeches from the two plays. The speeches were analysed using the rhetorical analysis theory to unravel the use of rhetorical techniques and...
Abstract This dissertation is a rhetorical study of the speeches of Bishop Kleopas Dumeni of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Namibia. The main purpose of the study was to analyse Bishop Dumeni’s selected speeches based on the five canons of Aristotle, namely, invention, arrangement, style, delivery and memory, and his three modes of persuasion of logos, pathos and ethos. This study examined the English and Oshiwambo speeches which Bishop Dumeni delivered at meetings locally and internati...
Abstract The study is a critical analysis of the literary representations of socio-political issues in the Namibian society as portrayed in Philander’s two anthologies: The Namibian Stage Chronicles (2010) and King of the Dump and Other Plays (2005). Namibia attained independence in 1990 and socio-political issues such as unemployment, violence against women and children, nepotism, corruption, poverty, injustice and economic window dressing dominate life. The chosen plays from the two anth...
ABSTRACT In the contemporary world of advertising, the highly sexualised feminine figure sells products (Haugg, 1998). The study examines, through the theoretical lenses of Poststructural Feminism and Semiotic Theories, how women are projected sexually in mass media advertisements, specifically, pictorial perfume advertisements in Her and Vogue magazines. It examines how such ‘sexualised’ images and (re)presentations of the feminine shape public opinions and perceptions on/about gender a...
ABSTRACT This study critically investigated linguistic cross-pollination, or linguistic inter-influence, that took place when two mutually unintelligible languages (Silozi and English) came into contact for an extended period of time. The study specifically analysed how such contact affected both English and Silozi at the level of phonology, morphology and lexicon, as they were used interchangeably by Silozi speakers at tertiary institutions (IUM, NUST, and UNAM) in Windhoek. The study used ...
ABSTRACT This study analysed the stylistic features of foregrounding and figurative language as used by Diescho in his “Dictums” published in the New Era newspaper between January 2014 and December 2015, using the formalist theory. The researcher selected 20 of these dictums that dealt with social and political issues. Though Diescho is an author of several works, a political analyst and a commentator on various issues who is articulate and creative in style, especially when it com...
ABSTRACT Sexual discourse refers to sex-related verbal activities that many Nigerian tertiary institution students engage in. Existing studies have addressed sexual discourse from socio-cultural, sociolinguistic and critical linguistic perspectives but have not adequately studied its pragmatic import, especially in relation to encounters centering on sexual intercourse. This study, therefore, investigates the discourse forms, contextual features, pragmatic functions, and attitudes to and perc...
Abstract The focus of this study was on code-switching that occurred in the Namibian Parliament as observed from the volumes of parliamentary Hansards from the year 2015 to 2017. This was a desktop study that employed a qualitative design to determine the patterns and reasons for code-switching in the Namibian Parliament. Content analysis was used to analyse data collected from the 10 volumes of printed parliamentary Hansards. Data was further interpreted using Myers-Scotton's Matrix Languag...
ABSTRACT Even though there are several studies in the field of literature that looked at violence, most researches did not necessarily concern political violence which cast across any human being. Political and electoral violence are pernicious vices that continue to afflict most African states, with Kenya and Zimbabwe, included. It is a truism that these two are mother and baby, with political violence being the umbrella under which electoral violence shoots itself. The motivation behind th...
Abstract Humour, which is associated with amusement and laughter, is produced in comic performances, particularly stand-up comedy; and Nigerian stand-up comedians (NSCs) use language to evoke humour and correct social vices. Existing studies have conceptualised humour, its use and sub-genres but have not given adequate attention to intentionality in Nigerian stand-up joking contexts. This study, therefore, investigated humour strategies and context in Nigerian stand-up comedy, in order to ide...
ABSTRACT Previous studies on news in electronic media in Nigeria have mostly concentrated on linguistic and stylistic features with little attention on discourse strategies and underlying ideological factors considered to be significant in the construction and full understanding of radio news. There is need for more attention to be paid to ideologies and discourse strategies in media discourse as they enhance the comprehension of radio news. This study, therefore, investigated the discourse s...
ABSTRACT The hypertext, a relatively new digital genre, structures texts into links and nodes. This results in textual plasticity which gives room for different forms of stylistic experimentations by the authors of the texts. While scholars have focused on the structural composition and general nature of hypertexts, they have not adequately attended to their distinctive features. This study addresses this neglect by examining the style of the language of hyperfiction. The study adopts Hallida...
ABSTRACT This study explored the strategies that primary school English teachers in Rorya District apply in enhancing the learning of English language among the pupils. The study was motivated by the fact that the District has different ethnic community languages; thus, teachers of English teach pupils with diverse linguistic backgrounds. In specific, the study identifies the strategies used by teachers to enhance learning of English and the effectiveness of the strategies used. Also, to ass...
ABSTRACT Linguistic tagging, the labelling of people and their actions with particular sociopolitically- grounded values, is an ideological denominator that plays a significant role in media framing of conflict. Despite this significance, existing studies on the Nigeria-Cameroon Bakassi Peninsula border conflict, which had concentrated on the historical, political, legal and sociolinguistic dimensions, largely neglected an exploration of the dynamics of linguistic tagging. Therefore, this stu...