Department of English
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://197.255.125.131:4000/handle/123456789/23079
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Item Digital cities and villages: African writers and a sense of place in short online fiction(Journal of African Media Studies, 2023) Opoku-Agyemang, K.This article analyses how young African writers challenge stereotypes about the continent through their imagination of places in online short stories. These stories appear on the literary websites Brittle Paper, Jalada, Saraba, Flash Fiction Ghana, Adda and African Writer Magazine, with a focus on cities and villages. Authored by ten writers from Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Malawi and Egypt, the stories contain elements of fiction that risk perpetuating negative stereotypes about Africa as they imagine their respective settings. However, textual analysis supported by an appreciation of context reveals how the writers use these stereotypes as basis to craft strong African narratives. By doing so, the writers emphasize the effect that places have on characters, theme, setting and the image of Africa. Ultimately, the roles that urban and rural spaces play in online fiction are multifaceted and enhance the African narrative in complex waysItem Negotiating Linguistic Disruptions and Connections in Migratory Contexts: Language Practices among Child Migrants in an Urban Market in Ghana(Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 2021) Ansah, G.N.This article employs ethnographic methods to investigate communicative practices that shape the linguistic repertoires of child migrants in Agbogbloshie, an urban market in Ghana. Similar studies discuss the relationship between language and migration by focusing on language shift and loss among migrants; this article argues that migrants in complex linguistically diverse spaces—motivated by both social and economic dynamics of their space —make linguistic choices while negotiating their daily lives that lead to the development of complex, heterogeneous linguistic repertoires and practices. Data were gathered from interactions at childcare centers, where child migrants spend the day with peers and caregivers, and migrant homes, where child migrants spend the evenings and weekends with their families. The data reveals that while migrant parents negotiate their own multilingual practices with their migrant children, child migrants expand their linguistic repertoires through relationships and interactions with caregivers and peers in childcare centers and neighborhoods, leading to the development of heterogeneous language practices that neither their parents or caregivers necessarily possess. The article concludes that migration may lead to complex linguistic diversity. The study contributes to Indigenous perspectives on linguistic diversity and our understanding of the structure and nature of superdiversification . [migration, child migrants, multilingualism, Agbogbloshie Kayayei, language contact]Item Utilizing attributive patterns as a linguistic classification tool of newspapers(Newspaper Research Journal, 2024) Mintah, K.C.The indices for the classification of newspapers have often focused on agenda-setting roles, economic position and size of newspapers, among others. Concerning newspapers in Africa, Moehler and Singh (2011) and Hasty (2005) assert that the only index for the classification of newspapers is ownership. The study, therefore, focuses on the patterns of the attributive mode of the transitivity system of Systemic Functional Grammar to propose a linguistic alternative index for classifying newspapers. The findings indicate that the patterns of attributions that occur are significant and viable enough to classify newspapers.Item A cross-linguistic syntactic analysis of telicity in motion predicates in Southern Tati, Mandarin, and Ghanaian Student Pidgin(Studies in Language. International Journal sponsored by the Foundation “Foundations of Language, 2023) Chen, P-H.P.; Osei-Tutu, K.O.A.; Taherkhani, N.This paper proposes an analysis of telicity in motion predicates within the framework of the Exo-Skeletal Model (Borer 2005b). We hypothesize that a motion event is syntactically represented by a Path component, the core of which is a vP that introduces a Figure argument. This Path component is interpreted as quantity in the sense of Borer (2005b) when there is a certain type of morpheme present in the structure, such as a verb that denotes the reaching of an endpoint. A quantity Path component can then assign a semantic value to a functional projection called AspQP, which returns a telic interpretation. Data from Mandarin, Ghanaian Student Pidgin, and Southern Tati show AspQP can be assigned a value either with or without overt head movement. We further propose a distinction between Path and direction, which explains data that were left unexplained in previous studies and seemingly contradict our claim.Item Substitution phonological patterns in the English speech of Ghanaian children(Social Sciences & Humanities Open, 2023) Asare, T.A.J.; Orfson-Offei, E.When children find the production of a speech sound difficult, they tend to substitute it with another easier one, a phenomenon described as Substitution Phonological Pattern (SPP). This study investigated SPP in Ghanaian preschoolers, who spoke their individual Ghanaian languages like Akan and Ga as their first languages (L1) but were learning to speak English as a second language, to understand and document how these children pro nounced English speech sounds. Thirty preschoolers in a privately-owned basic school in Kumasi were selected and voice recorded as they mentioned twenty English lexical items from their textbooks after their teacher. Both the participants’ and their teacher’s productions of the stimulus words were transcribed according to the In ternational Phonetic Alphabet. The data was analysed using both qualitative and quantitative research ap proaches and within the framework of Natural Phonology Theory. Findings indicated that the children exhibited Fronting, Backing, and Stopping. The participants’ L1 and age among other factors were observed to be responsible for the processes identified: English sounds that were absent in the L1 of the children were difficult to produce for some of the children, while older children exhibited fewer cases of substitution. This study might serve as a documented material and a reference point for future researchers and Ministry of Education of the Republic of Ghana on Ghanaian children phonological experiences as regards the speaking of English.Item Communicative action and interaction in Africa: Towards a broader picture(Journal of Pragmatics, 2023) Anderson, J.A.; Schneider, K.P.; Mohr*, S.This article collection showcases recent empirical research on a range of pragmatic phe nomena in different parts of the African continent. It also aims at illustrating the diversity of approaches employed to study these phenomena, bringing together experts on various languages and from different backgrounds. In particular, the articles in this collection are focused on Nigeria, Cameroon, Namibia, and South Africa, examining language use in Yorùba, isiXhosa, English, French, and Nigerian Pidgin. The studies stem from different theoretical frameworks, adopt a variety of meth odologies, and deal with a range of communicative (inter)actions. Among the approaches adopted are speech act theory, politeness theory, conversation analysis, variational prag matics, and postcolonial pragmatics, and the data stem from ethnographic field notes, discourse completion tasks, dialogue production tasks, video recordings, large machine readable corpora, and multimedia recordings. The pragmatic phenomena analysed range from discourse markers, speech acts, and opening turns to the generic structure of traditional wedding ceremonies and multimodality in media interviews. This collection thus illustrates and advocates a broad understanding of pragmatics, theo retical and methodological pluralism, and the cooperation of experts on autochthonous languages and experts on former colonial languages in order to more adequately study the complexities of communicative (inter)action in AfricaItem Examining gendered discourses from an African locale: towards an intrasectional feminist critical discourse analysis(Critical Discourse Studies, 2023) Henaku, N.Following calls for transnational and decolonial perspectives in [feminist]CDA, this paper considers what it means to do a critical analysis of gendered discourses from a Global Southern perspective. It highlights how discourses from an African locale, with its complex local-global intra-action, provide another instance of the complexity of discursive and identitarian power in late modernity, arguing that this requires an intrasectional (not intersectional) feminist critical discourse analysis. Gendered discourses in a music video from hip-life, a localized hip-hop genre in Ghana, are examined to illustrate this argument. The analysis shows how the specific context examined recalibrates not just the social categories that often underlie feminist intersectional analysis but also gives us a complex view of power that interrogates CDA’s emphasis on top-down approaches to power, a binary conceptualization that does not account for the manifestations of the power-powerlessness dialectic within the same subject. The result is significant for both analysis and activism because a comprehensive global program for social transformation that includes non-Western contexts and their re visioning of our analytical lenses must attend to their rhizomic discursive-material entanglements if they are to be effective.Item “You are quite funny paa!”: A corpus-based study of borrowed discourse-pragmatic features in Ghanaian English(Corpus Pragmatics, 2023) Unuabonah, F.O.; Anderson, J.A.This study explores six borrowed discourse-pragmatic features – koraa/kraa, saa, paa, yoo, wai/wae, and waa, which are borrowed from indigenous Ghanaian languages into Ghanaian English, in order to investigate their sources, meanings, frequencies, positioning, syntactic distribution, collocational patterns, and discourse-pragmatic functions. The data, which are obtained from the Ghanaian components of the International Corpus of English, the corpus of Global Web-based English, and News on the Web corpus are analysed within a postcolonial corpus pragmatic framework. The results show that most of the discourse-pragmatic features occur in clause-final position and are usually attached to declaratives. Koraa/kraa, paa, and saa function as emphasis pragmatic markers and emotive interjections, yoo as attention, agreement, and emphasis pragmatic markers, waa as an attention marker, emphasis pragmatic marker, and emotive interjection, and wai as a mitigation and interrogative marker. Thus, the paper highlights the contributions of indigenous Ghanaian languages to the discourse-pragmatic aspects of Ghanaian English.Item Poetic Explorations in Bill F. Ndi’s Worth Their Weight in Thorns: (De)Constructing Hegemonic National Integr National Integration and Debating F ation and Debating Francophonecentric National Go ancophonecentric National Governance. ernance.(Purdue University Press, 2021) Yosimbom, H.M.This paper explores “hegemonic national integration” and “Francophonecentric national governance” in The Cameroons (TC) poetic scape. The former refers to La République du Cameroun (LRC)-British Southern Cameroons (BSC) or Southern Cameroons (SC) interconnectedness dominated by Francophones. The latter is governance that promotes a Francophone cultural superiority that refuses to see the Cameroonian world through Southern Cameroonians’ eyes. Cameroonians live in a time of enormous fragmenting “Francophonizing” and “Anglophonizing” processes. To flesh this argument out, this paper borrows critical perspectives from Benhabib’s “democratic iterations” and “deliberative democracy” and Rosenau’s “six-governance typology’ as requisites for good governance. It contends that “hegemonic national integration” and “Francophonecentric national governance” are pervasive features of Bill Ndi’s poetry. Indeed, SC literature of the anti-Francophoncentrism kind such as Nkengasong’s Across the Mongolo, Besong’s Disgrace, Nyamnjoh’s Souls Forgotten, etc., has not been recognized. For demonstrative purposes, focus will be on Ndi’s Worth their Weight in Thorns, a glaring example of such works. TC in which the poems are set is ruled by a power-drunk elite and characterized by socioeconomic and politico-cultural marginalization which is symptomatic of “hegemonic national (dis)integration” and “Francophonecentric national governance”. In TC, national integration and governance have become a kind of postcolonial re-racialization because the disparities between the wealthy/powerful Francophones and the poor/powerless Southern Cameroonians possess something akin to the racial character being witnessed in the USA. Consequently, reading Ndi’s collection from this perspective reveals the ongoing rivalry between the dominant LRC and the dominated SC as a stellar representation of a master-servant relationshipItem The Burma Campaign from an African Perspective: The 1944 World War II Travelogue of Sgt. F. S. Arkhurst of the Royal West African Frontier Forces(Journal of African Cultural Studies, 2022) Osei-Poku, K.This article analyses issues regarding identity and ideology in an African authored travelogue, “Jeep Road to Victory: African Engineers Carve a Way into Burma”, by Sgt. F. S. Arkhurst, which was published in The West African Review magazine in 1945. Sgt. Arkhurst was an officer in the Gold Coast Regiment of the Royal West African Frontier Forces in World War II. The focal points of this travelogue are the representations of the efforts of African soldiers in navigating the treacherous terrains of the South East Asia World War II battle grounds ranging from India/Bangladesh to the Kaladan Valley of Burma during the 1944 Burma Campaign. The article asks how African authored travel writing might bring new perspectives on how African soldiers contributed to the success of the war fighting on the side of allied forces.