The paradox of nation and nationhood and the process of reconciliation in Bole Butake’s Family Saga
June 2013
This study addressed and captured the problem associated with the definition of a nation. It further demonstrated that the notion of nationhood in postcolonial Africa is unequivocally paradoxical; those who were on power had without any shame become dictators, tribalistic. They employed all forms of exploitative means to further colonize their citizens. This paper focused on the lack of patriotism and...
Ambanasom’s Son of the Native Soil and the Western Concept of a Tragic Hero
June 2013
The essay, “Ambanasom’s Son of the Native Soil and the Western Concept of a Tragic Hero” discusses the view that although African and Western Literatures are fundamentally different as they exhibit or represent radically distinct cultural values, they nevertheless share some common notions. The concept of a tragic hero is one of those convergent spots where the two literatures...
Postcolonial feminism: Looking into within-beyond-to difference
June 2013
Postcolonial feminism is a relatively novel wing of postcolonial feminine scholarship. Postcolonial feminism or ‘third world feminism’ emerged in response to Western mainstream feminism. Western feminism has never been heedful to the differences pertaining to class, race, feelings, and settings of women of once colonized territories. Postcolonial feminism rejects Western feminism on the ground of...
Urdu in anglicized world: A corpus based study
June 2013
This paper aims to find out the variation in Urdu language due to language contact. It studies the use of English vocabulary in Urdu written language. The nature of the research is quantitative as well as qualitative as it examines the grammatical and domain-wise categories of English words used in Urdu and tries to determine the social factors that are the cause of this increase. It counts and calculates the...
Feminist discourses in Chenjerai Hove’s and Yvonne Vera’s selected nationalist narratives
June 2013
This paper demonstrated how Yvonne Vera and Chenjerai Hove’s selected works challenge the masculinized dominant nationalist version of history of the Zimbabwean liberation struggle against colonialism by foregrounding the black Zimbabwean woman’s ‘other’ struggles. Such a response to the biased nationalist narration has been to illuminate the other struggles that are women specific....
Processes and source of linguistic knowledge: Explorations in the theories of language learning
June 2013
Children have an enviable capacity for acquiring competence in whatever language or languages they get exposed to and in a manner so rapid, so creative, so uniform, so systematic, so regular and indeed so easy compared with the mammoth task that they within a remarkably short span of time accomplish victoriously. This marvellous phenomenon unique only to humans has instigated scholars to propound various...
Social critique in Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine
June 2013
The authors’ aim in this paper is to observe, examine and present the existing position of women and the problems they face both in India and abroad. Through the main character, Jasmine, the attempt is made to give a picture of women who suffer from man-made cultural and traditional prescriptions as well as sanctions which do not allow them live a life free from such constraints. The social issues that...
An analysis of figurative languages in two selected traditional funeral songs of the Kilba people of Adamawa State
June 2013
Figurative languages are employed in performing arts as a medium of expressing thoughts, feelings and ideas implicitly rather than explicitly. This paper analyses rhetorical devices in two funeral songs of the Kilba people of Adamawa State of Nigeria. The two texts were subjected to analysis using the descriptive and discursive approach. The outcome of the analysis revealed that performing artists among...
Clash of conventionality and unconventionality: Quest for deliverance from the social alienation in Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure
June 2013
The purpose of this study is to discuss the disgust of the two leading characters of Hardy’s Jude the Obscure in a context which shows their sense of alienation in the society. They view marriage as a hindrance to their happiness and, instead, prefer a love affair which, however, ends in their disgrace and misery. Hardy in fact tries to point his criticism to the Victorian society where the...
Writing “like†a woman: An analysis of The Fox by D. H. Lawrence
June 2013
This paper presents an analysis of The Fox – A Novella by D.H.Lawrence. It presents the conflicting interpretations of various critics, from the feminist point of view. It also highlights Lawrence’s perspective of what it means to ‘write like a woman’ and how it is reflected successfully. Key words: Writing like a woman, sexuality, textuality.
Assessing and evaluating continuing professional development
June 2013
“Learning is a never ending process”. The above quotation is so apt as the present day technological world is the eye witness. Continuing professional development (CPD) is a platform that provides practical guidance for a teacher educator for his learning and growth. This abstract focuses on how a teacher can become a trendsetter by evaluating oneself continuously for progressive...
Linguistic and cultural issues in translating Bruneian folk tales into Arabic
May 2013
A great number of Arabic folklore, including A Thousand and One Night and Kalila and Dimna have been translated into Malay. Nevertheless, none of the Malay folk tales has been rendered into Arabic. In 2004, however, thirteen Bruneian folk tales, including AnakIkan Raja Ikan, Buaya Buteh, Titisan Ayer Mata Buyong, Sulong Dan Bungsu, Wang Pandir Malu Makan Sekoi,...
Beckett’s Molloy: Postmodern schizophilia
May 2013
This study is an attempt to mark out the possible postmodern schizoid tendencies in Beckett’s Molloy, schizophrenia as a postmodern concept; the study aims to find the way in which postmodern theorists construe the clinical form rather than clinical designations of schizophrenia. Beckett’s groundbreaking novel with its eccentric characters, Molloy and Moran, entails a twofold ...
Violet without purple: The colour of spousal violence in Neshani Andreas’ The Purple Violet of Oshaantu
May 2013
Women are often the victims of spousal abuse which male writers, in their reductionist preoccupation with socio-political issues of the moment, often down play. This is the issue fore-grounded in this paper from the standpoint of a female novelist as seen in Neshani Andreas’ The Purple Violet of Oshaantu. It argues that wife battering continues courtesy of the silence of the fairer sex...
Planning out pre-writing activities
May 2013
This article tackles a very important stage of the process of writing, namely pre-writing. This stage helps students find ideas and arrange them properly. A framework is suggested that divides the pre-writing stage into two sections: invention and arrangement. The former deals with coming up with ideas whether they are relevant to the topic of writing or not. The latter has to do with organizing the ideas in...
Teaching expressions of cause, effect, purpose and function in English to students of science and technology
May 2013
Definitions of scientific terms, descriptions of scientific and technological processes and procedures, and the like have a pride of place in most of the scientific writings. As a result, the students who pursue their undergraduate or masters program in science and technology in various universities across the world require using several expressions in their writing tasks intended to define, describe...
Effectiveness of a glossary of security expressions in error predictability and translation performance of movie translators
May 2013
Hundreds of thousands of strategic movies and TV series are being produced every year and almost all of them get translated into so many different languages. The present paper is an attempt to examine the role of a particular type of glossary on the translation performance of movie translators. In this study, efforts have been made to develop the first cinematic glossary of security terms for movie...
Exploring sources of phonological unintelligibility in spontaneous speech
May 2013
The aim of this case study is to extend the work of Jenkins (2000, 2002) in identifying aspects of speech which decrease intelligibility in spoken interactions between non-native English speakers. Two native Hindi speakers and one native Spanish speaker (the first author) were recorded engaging in a two- hour spontaneous conversation in English. Speech transcripts from only four separate episodes of...
Self-reliance: The essence of making difference in Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken
April 2013
Life is a choice, and determining what to choose shows self-reliance, the dignity of the doer as well as the essence of human right in running life. The character of the poem, ‘’The Traveller’’ was encountering two choices of which he had to choose one to take for his continuing journey. The shape of the diverging roads could perhaps be in any forms; however, a Y shape took the...
Celebration of a girl’s journey from ‘interior colonized’ to liberated self: Kashmira Sheth’s Keeping Corner
April 2013
In twenty first century with changes in many facets of life books for children also have changed from simple stories that are rich in morals and traditions to those that reflect the new changing society. Children’s literature from India is not yet recognized around the world, but it is certainly spreading its wings. Writers of children’s literature produce books, both traditional and contemporary,...
Toward an RT-based functionalist approach to subtitling: A case study
April 2013
The paper first formulates an integrated approach to subtitling by combining elements ofSkopos theory, relevance theory and knowledge of media studies into one whole. Its ultimate goal is to realize the purpose of general translation as well as various kinds of specific aims on different occasions so as to facilitate audio-visual products to win over the intended audience, the market. Then, it discusses...
Inevitability of arts from inter-textuality
January 2013
Kristeva coined the term, intertextuality in 1966, and since that time intertextuality has come to have almost as many meanings as its users. It is no small task for this paper to clarify what intertextuality means for Kristeva and her mentor/colleague, Roland Barthes before criticizing their concept of intertextuality and its application in interpretation. Because no rational and coherent concept of...
Identity crisis- Indian English fiction of post 1980s
January 2013
Rapid developments in the fields of trade, market, commerce and telecommunication technologies, together with cultural confrontations at the global level are creating a paradigmatic shift in people's understanding of selfhood and identity. This paper makes a serious attempt to trace and map out the making of contemporary post-national identities within the sub continental cultural production of India and...
Doris Lessing’s The Grass is Singing: Anatomy of a female psyche in the midst of gender, race and class barrier
January 2013
One of the founder mothers of feminism, Doris Lessing made her debut as a novelist with The Grass is Singing (1950). The novel examines the relationship between Mary Turner- a white farmer’s wife and her black servant. The novel does not unswervingly explore the feminist causes. Still, Lessing’s portrayal of Mary Turner warrants a closer examination because of the unique perspective...
A mythical interpretation of Yeats’ The Second Coming
January 2013
W. B. Yeats’ poetry is rich in mythical symbols and imagery. He gleans the religion and philosophy of different cultures and traditions to give his poetic oeuvre an aura of profundity. His seminal poetic work, The Second Coming, can be read in the light of the ancient Indian myth of Narasimha avatar, the hum-animal hybrid incarnation of Lord Vishnu. The idea of the second coming of Christ sounds very...
Was Hamlet a level 5 leader? A critical analysis
December 2012
This paper is what can be described (in a positive sense) as a hybrid. This is because it analyzes the character of Hamlet in terms of his leadership qualities which means that it also explores the world of organizational behavior. In fact what the paper does is an analysis of one of Shakespeare’s most famous protagonists and then draws the specific leadership traits he exhibits. It does this by drawing...
Helpful hints for the successful teaching of reading comprehension in the ESL English language classroom
December 2012
The performance of ESL students in English language public examinations may not be unconnected with lack of proper comprehension of what is read. More specifically, performance in the comprehension section in public examinations such as the School Certificate/Senior School Certificate Examinations in Nigeria is appalling. Students’ performance in the West Africa Examination Council’s conducted...
Remnants of Urdu poetic culture and politics of language in Anita Desai’s ‘In custody’
December 2012
The performance of ESL students in English language public examinations may not be unconnected with lack of proper comprehension of what is read. More specifically, performance in the comprehension section in public examinations such as the School Certificate/Senior School Certificate Examinations in Nigeria is appalling. Students’ performance in the West Africa Examination Council’s conducted...
A case of art imitating life in Paul Slabolepszy’s angst-ridden Pale Natives (1994)
December 2012
Pale natives is one of the gems in Slabolepszy’s dramatic repertoire. The play focuses on the surviving clan of white males in South Africa, with South Africa’s imminent changeover of government as a backdrop. With typical machismo, Rabelaisian (Rabelaisian humour refers to vulgar use of bodily (scatological), sexual humour through exaggeration and suspension of disbelief...
Blanche Dubois’s tragedy of incomprehension in ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’
November 2012
The present paper elaborates on the concept of self- knowledge in Tennessee Williams’A Streetcar Named Desire based on Carl Gustav Jung’s psychoanalytic theory of archetypes. Jung considers the “collective unconscious” as a mental process in human mind from which he/she is not aware. It is the immortal part of man and the unknown psyche of him which is shaped by archetypes - the...
Transcending conventional identity structures: Dorothea Smartt’s re-negotiated self-projections
November 2012
Dorothea Smartt’s poetics reflects an innovative paradigm by which she challenges and reshapes concepts of national and gender identities. She explores old and new world inheritances, and skillfully traverses historical, cultural, temporal and spatial boundaries to arrive at a re-negotiated and reinvigorated identity. Smartt’s poetics thus evinces multiple elements: while it synthesizes Caribbean...
Semiotics and language interlarding in Yoruba traditional wedding bilingual discourse
November 2012
The paper discusses the traditional Yoruba wedding ceremony among bilingual Yoruba speaking families, with the following aims: (i) to throw more light on the discourse content and structure of the traditional Yoruba-English wedding bilingual discourse; (ii) to identify the place of semiotics and signage in the wedding discourse. Sociolinguistics and discourse analysis provided the theoretical framework for...
Season of Migration to the North and the story of the Sudanese Nation: Hopes and Impediments
October 2012
Season of migration to the North has been variously described as a novel of events, a postcolonial quest novel, and more than little postmodern novel. Having won large audience across the globe, Season of Migration to the North has been acclaimed as one of the first hundred masterpieces in the world and the best Arabic novel in the twentieth century. While Season of Migration to the North has been...
Will there ever be a final solution? Mahesh Dattani’s final solutions revisited in the light of communal divide
October 2012
India since ancient times has the history of communal violence and it has grown up witnessing all that goes with this sectarian divide and selective preferences. This undercurrent of mistrust runs unabatedly between the two most dominating communities in the sub-continent-Hindu and Muslim-as generation after generation this feeling of cultural and communal animosity is further transmitted to the coming...
The significance of religion in Hamlet
October 2012
The tragedy Hamlet is one of the most important of Shakespeare’s plays published and performed as part of the rainbow of world literature. This study investigates the role of religion in Hamlet, and attempts to provide a new interpretation to understand how religious beliefs influence the characters’ motives. Text analysis shows Hamlet’s social surroundings are receptive to...
Speaking as an indicator of general proficiency in placement test
October 2012
This study investigates whether there is a strong correlation between the speaking abilities of Iranian learners of English and their general proficiency as reported in placement tests. Thirty intermediate learners from three English conversation classes at an English language Institute in Tabriz participated in the study. A standardized 300 D test of Nelson English Test was used to determine their overall...
Structural or communicative approach: A case study of English Language teaching in Masvingo urban and peri-urban secondary schools
May 2012
This paper investigates the teaching of English as a second language (ESL) in Zimbabwe, using Masvingo urban and peri-urban secondary schools as a case study. The study employed both the quantitative and the qualitative designs. A questionnaire and document analysis was used to gather data. The data gathered were also analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively through tables, thick descriptions and...
A descriptional study on differences in L1 and L2 academic writing
May 2012
Since the first contrastive rhetoric study by Kaplan in 1966, many studies have been produced, and over several decades of development, there have been many contributions gained from previous contrastive rhetoric studies. Some researchers summarized and made critiques about certain studies. Stapleton (2002) claims the differences between academic writing in an L1 and an L2 are often misrepresented and...
Invisibility of the I's in “Their Eyes Were Watching Godâ€
April 2012
Janie Crawford, the female protagonist of Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, is a black woman. To be black and to be a beautiful woman entails the extreme visibility in case of body in the society. Janie is under the oppressing gaze of the patriarchal society and through strengthening the invisible inside and hiding it from the disciplinary power structure; she manages to return the gaze, to gain the...
What the body remembers: A feminist perspective of the Partition of India and Pakistan
April 2012
The most predictable form of violence experienced by women is when the women of one community are sexually assaulted by the men of the other community, in an overt assertion of their identity and a simultaneous humiliation of the other community by dishonouring their women. Being extremely vulnerable women become easy targets of every form of oppression. This evil is further compounded if they are placed in...
On the dimensions of test anxiety and foreign language learners
April 2012
Anxiety is one of the most basic human emotions and occurs in every person. In the educational setting, anxiety is experienced often by the students when being evaluated such as when taking a test which is called test anxiety. ‘Test anxiety’ is an apprehension over academic evaluation. This anxiety is also available in foreign language learning. This study intends to investigate the relationship...
Existentialism in two plays of Jean-Paul Sartre
March 2012
Existentialism is the movement in the nineteenth and twentieth century philosophy that addresses fundamental problems of human existence: death, anxiety, political, religious and sexual commitment, freedom and responsibility, the meaning of existence itself (Priest, 2001: 10). This study tries to define what existentialism is and stresses themes of existentialism. This research finally points out these themes...
Intertextuality in James Reeves' verses for children
March 2012
This article seeks to consider the relation between intertextuality and poetry through James Reeves’ verses for children. By examining all his poems intended to children, this study demonstrates that Reeves constitutes with his readers a peculiar as well as an interactive relationship, which may be detected mainly in the light of the dynamic model of intertextuality as it has been refined by certain...
Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theory Oedipus complex: A critical study with reference to D. H. Lawrence’s “Sons and Loversâ€
March 2012
Sigmund Freud and his Oedipus complex are among the most often discussed critical and contentious issues of modern psychology and literature. Freud has brought lot of controversies in the field of modern psychology and literary trend through his theory Oedipus complex. Contrariwise, in some other assessor’s notions his concept of Oedipus complex deserves a great deal of appreciation. Nonetheless,...
Academic writing challenges at Universities in Zimbabwe: A case study of great Zimbabwe University
March 2012
This paper reports on the findings of an inquiry into the nature of academic writing weaknesses inherent among first year undergraduate university students in Zimbabwe, using Great Zimbabwe University (GZU), as a case study. Five hundred and fifty students and fifteen lecturers constituted the sample. Document analysis, interviews and the questionnaire were used as data collecting instruments. Results were...
The influence of teachers and students’ language attitudes towards the use of shona as medium of instruction in secondary schools
February 2012
The article examines the influence of language attitudes of secondary school teachers and students on their choices as to whether Shona can be used as medium of instruction in secondary schools. Language policy in Zimbabwe prescribes (albeit in a non-committal manner) the use of L1 as medium of instruction from Grade one to three. Thereafter, English (L2 for the majority of students) is used exclusively as...
Advertising discourse: Studying creation and perception of meaning
February 2012
Discourse of advertising has been of interest and significance to many researchers. Linguists are particularly interested in studying creation of meaning and advertisers are largely concerned about studying consumption of meaning. The two go hand in hand. The present study aims at gauging the gap between creation and consumption of meaning through a pair of print advertisements. Creation of meaning was...
The theme of self and identity in the ‘Theater of the Absurd’
January 2012
Adam's idea of emergence of life out of habit and order out of chaos implicates the idea of getting to identity from nonentity. Dramatic literature, and more specifically, theTheater of the Abusrd, has proved promising in revealing the existential obsessions of man imposed on him by the demanding characteristics of the postmodern era. In the realm of theater, Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter, are...
The city of sarcasm and woe: Swift’s “A description of a city shower†and “A description of the morningâ€
January 2012
In his poetry, Jonathan Swift (1667 to 1745) has shown a deep concern in understanding human nature and explaining human behavior. This paper aims at studying the technical devices Swift uses to introduce a satirical image of the city in an attempt to clarify his moral outlook. With special emphasis on Swift's two poems "A Description of a City Shower" and "A Description of the...
British colonial education policy in Africa
December 2011
As a result of colonization, the colonizing countries implemented their own form of education within their colonies. Colonizing governments realized that they gained strength over colonized nations not only through physical control but also mental control. This mental control was carried out through education. The colonizer’s educational goal was to expose Africans to a superior culture. Colonizers...
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