Research Papers/Topics in English Language

A REPRERTOIRE OF TROPES: A STUDY OF FANTE-AKAN ASAFO SONG TEXTS FROM THE CAPE COAST AREA OF THE CENTRAL REGION OF GHANA

ABSTRACT This study of Fante Asafo song texts from the Cape Coast area of the Central Region of Ghana was undertaken with the assumption that a close look at the texts would yield a richness of language represented by a profusion of tropes. The areas covered include a general background to Asafo as a social organisation, as well as the form and content of sixty-five randomly selected songs. A conscious effort has been made to isolate key tropes which have been treated as features of discourse...

PRAGMATIC ACTS IN ALMS BEGGING IN LAGOS STATE, NIGERIA

ABSTRACT Previous studies on alms begging in the fields of medicine, psychology, sociology, journalism, and discourse analysis have depicted the phenomenon as a simple activity of requesting by indigent individuals who were often viewed as linguistically deficient. These studies did not adequately account for the context-driven and implicit communicative acts performed by beggars, thus limiting the understanding of this pragmatic phenomenon in society. Therefore, this study examined alms beg...

A LITERARY ANALYSIS OF THE BOOKS OF PROVERBS AND ECCLESIASTES

Abstract There have been efforts at research into biblical literature, particularly from the sociohistorical and doctrinal perspectives. However, little attention has been given to the literary and stylistic analysis of the Bible. The devotion to the sacredness of the biblical text has short-circuited the needed attention to a proper literary critique of the narrative. This study therefore is a close critique that foregrounds the literariness of the Bible with particular reference to the Kin...

A GENRE ANALYSIS OF NEWS BULLETINS ON SELECTED GHANAIAN RADIO STATIONS

ABSTRACT The study aimed to explore how journalists construct news bulletins on Ghanaian radio stations. Specifically, the study sought to examine the generic structures of news bulletins and how journalists draw on other sources for the writing of their texts. Four radio stations (Joy FM, Citi FM, Radio XYZ and Radio Ghana) were selected. The total number of data set comprised 20 transcribed episodes of radio news bulletins from the four radio stations. The analysis of the data set was done ...

A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF COHESION IN ENGLISH AND EWE: A CASE STUDY OF SOME WRITTEN TEXTS

ABSTRACT This study investigated how the Ewe language realizes cohesion in comparison with English. The study also sought to find out the extent to which either language in question interferes with the other in the use of cohesive devices among coordinate bilinguals, specifically Ghanaian undergraduate students reading Ewe as a major course of study. The findings revealed that both English and Ewe realize cohesion almost the same way, that is, by means of reference, substitution, ellipsis, co...

The Forms and Functions of Passive Constructions in Ghanaian Newspaper Editorials

ABSTRACT The present study aimed to explore the relationship between Ghanaian newspaper editorials and the passive voice. Using six hundred (600) editorial articles, three hundred (300) each from the Ghanaian Times and the Daily Graphic, the study sought to ascertain the register features such as field, mode, participants and how they relate to one another, the communicative purpose and passive constructions employed in the above named newspapers, thereby establishing the link between the co...

THE RISING HORIZON: A POST-COLONIAL READING OF AYI KWEI ARMAH'S OSIRIS RISING AND KMT: IN THE HOUSE OF LIFE

ABSTRACT This thesis sets out to investigate how Ayi Kwei Armah, as a post-colonial African writer, in Osiris Rising and KMT: In the house of life re-tells the history of Africa as a way of “writing back” to assert the African Identity as his way of responding to Hegel’s (1957) claim that Africa prior to European colonization had no civilization of note to boast of. Thus, through a study of the setting, plot and characters in the two novels, this work reveals how Armah artistically use...

A PRAGMATIC INVESTIGATION OF LANGUAGE USE IN HIV/ AIDS SOCIAL MANAGEMENT ADVERTISEMENTS IN OGUN STATE, NIGERIA

ABSTRACT Studies on the social management of HIV and AIDS in Nigeria have focused on how awareness about HIV and AIDS has been created through electronic media campaigns and organised interpersonal communication. These studies have not investigated context constrained language use in the advertisements on the disease despite the wide coverage and potential effectiveness of these advertisements in the public sensitisation about HIV and AIDS. This study, therefore, investigated the pragmatic f...

Persuasive Strategies in the Language of Insurance Advertising in the Print Media in Nigeria

ABSTRACT Available literature has applied different theories to the language of advertisement. It has examined it through stylistic, pragmatic and speech act theories but not from the perspective of interactional sociolinguistics. Therefore, this study applied John Gumperz‟s theory of interactional sociolinguistics to the language of Insurance advertising in newspapers and on billboards within the Nigerian linguistic and sociocultural context, with the aim of analysing the persuasive strat...

MEMORY, WOMEN AND WAR: CRITICAL REFLECTIONS ON TADJO’S THE SHADOW OF IMANA; TRAVELS IN THE HEART OF RWANDA AND ADICHIE’S HALF OF A YELLOW SUN

ABSTRACT This thesis sought to examine memory, women and war in Adichie‘s Half of a Yellow Sun and Tadjo‘s The Shadow of Imana ; Travels in the heart of Rwanda. The study is a qualitative one which is based on textual, content and critical analysis. The study also focused on the ways in which characters and the processes of characterization help us reflect on the broad themes of traumatic remembrances of war and its consequences on individual characters and the society as a whole. Adich...

A Morphosyntactic Investigation of Functional Categories in English and Ịzọn

ABSTRACT Existing studies on Ịzọn language have concentrated on unilingual application of traditional grammar in constructing well-formed sentences, thereby neglecting critical descriptions of the ways morphosyntactic features ensure the derivation of convergent structures. A contrastive examination of English, (a standard for universal grammar analysis) and Ịzọn languages can properly characterise these syntactically significant features. This work, therefore, investigates the morph...

THE PRAGMATICS OF PUBLISHERS’ INTENTIONS ON THE LINGUIST LIST JOURNAL PUBLICATION CALLS

ABSTRACT The Linguist List Web site is a forum where professionals exchange academic information, especially those related to conferences, calls for papers for journals and books, mailing lists and job opportunities. While all these are constructed in scholarly language, the ones with the most distinguished linguistic form, often with pragmatic meaning, whose proper interpretation has implications for linguists‟ careers, are calls for journal articles posted by publishers. Scholarly inform...

Pragmatic Acts in Selected Culture-Based Plays of Ahmed Yerima

ABSTRACT Culture is central to Ahmed Yerima‟s dramaturgy, and his culture-based dramatic texts largely project the cultural values of the three major ethnic groups in Nigeria, namely, Yoruba, Hausa and Igbo. Existing linguistic studies on Yerima‟s plays have concentrated on the use of proverbs and politeness features, ignoring an in- depth pragmatic study of their cultural contexts. This study, therefore, undertakes an investigation of culture-motivated pragmatic acts (practs) and contex...

READABILITY AND ACADEMIC COMMUNICATION: THE CASE OF THE HUMANITIES RESEARCH ARTICLES IN UNIVERSITY OF CAPE COAST

ABSTRACT Research articles (RA) constitute the most important means of communicating research findings in the academic community. Despite the crucial role played by RAs within the academic community, numerous studies across the world have shown that RAs are difficult to read and understand. In Ghana, there has not been any earlier works to evaluate the readability of RAs. The objective of this study was to explore the level of readability of RAs produced by lecturers in the Faculty of Arts in...

LINGUISTIC TAGGING AND IDEOLOGY IN SELECTED ENGLISHMEDIUM NIGERIAN AND CAMEROONIAN NEWSPAPER REPORTS ON THE BAKASSI PENINSULA BORDER CONFLICT

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...


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