Migration and culture: Implications on Nigerian languages
December 2011
Language is important in the society as man needs it to communicate his ideas and experiences. As culture influences the structure and functions of a group, so also does the language influence the individual interpretation of reality. So, cultural identity can be established through the use of language, and a society is based on the language people speak. Migration from one place to another has a far...
Metaphor and the absurd: Reimagining the discourse on nationhood in Ola Rotimi’s plays
October 2011
Working within the framework of Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) model of conceptual metaphor, this paper investigates Ola Rotimi’s use of metaphor to frame the absurdities in the Nigerian society. Previous studies on Ola Rotimi have examined some of his texts from the perspective of the absurd or from literary criticism, but no conscious effort has been made to study the conceptual or cognitive...
A study of form and content
September 2011
This paper mainly takes four schools of criticism into account to make clearer the concept of ‘form’ and ‘content’. No doubt, it had been debated too much from Plato onwards. Formalists (New Critics included) put premium on diction. In fact they exclusively hold that ‘form’ dictates ‘content’ as such ‘content’ is at the mercy of ‘form’....
Learners' communicative competence in English as a foreign language (EFL)
September 2011
Moving from the 'focus on form' teaching approach such as grammar translation and audiolingualism, recently more language teachers have noticed the failure of form focusing approach in developing learners' communicative ability in real-life situations and shifted to adopt the communicative language teaching (CLT). The CLT approach highlights learners' communicative competence (Hymes, 1972)...
Anita Desai’s ‘in custody’: Unlocking the web of time and space
September 2011
This paper attempts to semiotically interpret the use of time and place as narrative device in Anita Desai’s ‘In Custody’. Space and time have aroused the curiosity of people for many centuries. It has been central to philosophy from its inception. In literature, there is no other device which captures imagination of the narrative in both temporal and spatial implications. Time and space are regarded...
Tales from the Hard Sideâ€: A French existentialist perspective on Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood
July 2011
This paper employs the French existentialist philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre and Fyodor Dostoyevsky’sCrime and Punishment to analyse the classic Japanese novel Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood. This paper explores the existential struggles of the main characters, Watanabe, Naoko, Nagasawa, Midori, Hatsumi, and Keiko, as they attempt to come to terms with the stresses of adolescent life in...
A state of complete simplicity in poetry and psychoanalysis
July 2011
Following the works of D. W. Winnicot and M. Balint on regression in psychoanalysis, this paper offers a discussion of states of harmony between self and other as these are expressed in poems by Whitman and Dante. An attempt is being made to demonstrate the emotional nuances expressed by poets in order to enhance psychoanalytic understanding. Key words: D. W. Winnicott, M. Balint,...
“To those who feel rather than to those who think:†Sound and emotion in Poe’s poetry
July 2011
In his critical writings, Edgar Allan Poe stressed the importance of the impressionistic use of sound and emotion in poetry. This research quantifies Poe’s use of emotionally communicative sounds and demonstrates that he wrote in accordance with his expressed principles praising the use of pleasant and sad emotions in poetry and decrying the use of active ones. Poe’s poems were submitted to a...
Exploring innovative activities in using news stories to teach advanced Chinese learners English in a multimedia way
June 2011
The basic reason of selecting English newspapers as a teaching tool is very pragmatic as English newspapers cover an array of information and knowledge and that is too within the reach of learners’ computers. The present paper aims to study issues that are interwoven with teaching English through English newspaper in an EFL (English as Foreign Language) classroom. Key words: News...
Alma’s psyche: The battlefield of opposite drives in Summer and Smoke
June 2011
To Jung, literary works are media through which the archetypes of the collective unconscious manifest themselves. Summer and Smoke is a striking psychological drama that can be analyzed based on the Jungian psychoanalysis. So employing Jung’s theories, the research aims at exploring the main archetypes hidden in the deeper layers of Alma’s mind in Summer and Smoke. Although...
Grammatical cohesion in students’ argumentative essay
June 2011
This study analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively the cohesive devices used by undergraduate students in their argumentative essay. One-hundred and four essays were collected and assessed by two interraters, but only 64 essays statistically qualified as the corpus of the study. Halliday and Hasan (1976) concept of grammatical cohesion was used as framework for the analysis of the essays. Reference had the...
A psychoanalytic reading of ‘Marechera’s house of hunger’, ‘the black insider’ and ‘mindblast’
May 2011
This paper analyses three works of art namely ‘House of Hunger’, ‘The Black Insider’ and ‘Mindblast’ by one of Zimbabwe’s most famous, talented and controversial authors, Dambudzo Marechera, using mainly psychoanalytic tools of inquiry. The aforementioned works of fiction have been carefully chosen to sample the writer’s skills and concerns as a poet,...
Apemanship: A critique of the modernization theory in Ngugi’s selected works and Clement Chihota’s â€Shipwreck†in No More Plastic Balls
May 2011
The paper critiques the Modernization Theory through an analysis of three of Ngugi’s selected works and Chihota’s short story “Shipwreck”. The paper contends that no society has ever developed on the basis of being copycats or following the philosophy of catching up. Development is inextricably linked to that society’s history, culture and the envisioned future. This paper argues...
An investigation into the relationship between the type of self-repair and structural complexity of utterances
May 2011
This study is concerned with the investigation of the relationship between the type of self-repair and the structural complexity of utterances in which they appear, focusing mainly on syntactic self-repairs. The subjects of the study were 48 students of East Asian backgrounds, learning English as a second language in Australia. Specifically, this study has sought to establish a relationship between the...
Theatre of the oppressor: A reading of Butake’s play, “Family Sagaâ€
March 2011
This article argues that theatre as an apparatus of change has for along time privileged the transformation of the oppressed people by inciting their conscience and consciousness. This incitement is meant to make them take action, leading to some kind of social and political agency. However, this article argues that the oppressor equally needs to be changed. Therefore theatre/drama as a tool of intervention...
The third sex: A paradox of patriarchal oppression of the weaker man
March 2011
The study explores the paradox of potential patriarchal subjugation of weaker men. The paper is informed by the belief that is contrary to the popular view in some feminist quarters that all men in patriarchal societies enjoy protection under the male-biased society that brutalizes its weaker female members, there is, in fact, a certain class of underrepresented males who are victimized by a system believed...
The quest for identity in Arthur Miller's "The crucible"
March 2011
The purpose of the present analysis of “The Crucible” is to study the action of the play in terms of the implication of quest for identity of the characters involved by scrutinizing the various dilemmas into which the characters find themselves. The self of an individual becomes foregrounded in the moment of crisis, which involves emotional, moral and social predicaments. Such situations...
Poetry in translation: A comparative study of Silverstein's monolingual and bilingual (English to Persian) poems
March 2011
Bilingual translations are as important as monolingual ones and can have many advantageous in different dimensions of literature, translation, education and other areas of study. But they are more difficult than monolingual translations, particularly in literary work, such as poem, novel, short story and etc. Translating literary text, particularly poetry is a difficult process as it includes different...
Qualitative and quantitative analyses of L2 learners’ performance in essay writing and two correction tasks: Insights from L2 acquisition research and cognitive psychology
February 2011
This study attempted to find answers for the following questions: (1) Are students’ errors in grammatical structures, as they will appear in their written output, due to deficiency in their conscious grammar rules, or to deficiency in their abilities to transfer this knowledge (if it exists) to other language tasks such as writing compositions in English? and (2) Can conscious rules...
Stanley Fish with respect to the reader
February 2011
The present study is an investigation of the reader-response theory on three works of Fish. In "Literature in the Reader: Affective Stylistics" (1970), "Interpreting the Variorum (II)" (1976), "Normal Circumstances" (1978), Fish charts the progress of his evolving interpretive method. For this study, first, a comprehensive reading is done on Stanley Fish's three major works...
Epistemological and moral implications of characterization in African literature: A critique of Patrick Chakaipa’s ‘Rudo Ibofu’ (love is blind)
January 2011
This paper examines African epistemology and axiology as expressed in African literature through characterization, and it adopts the Zimbabwean Patrick Chakaipa’s novel, Rudo Ibofu as a case study. It provides a preliminary significance of characterization in Zimbabwean literature and by extension African literature before demonstrating how characterization has been ‘abused’ by some African...
A critical study of encyclopedia of translation studies in China (1995 - 2001)
January 2011
It is generally assumed that the research of encyclopedia of translation studies (ETS) as a historical and cultural fact is inevitably influenced and manipulated by the cultural background. Toward this goal, this article gives a critical analysis of three ETS published in China (1995-2001) based on some compilation principles, so as to show the international audience what kind of translation knowledge and...
Symbols, metaphors and similes in literature: A case study of "Animal Farm"
December 2010
One of the aims of literary text is to say as much as possible as briefly as possible, means to say more in few words to achieve a maximum effectiveness. In this case, figures of speech, specifically symbol, metaphor and simile have an important role, as they include figurative meaning of words besides their literary meaning. In this article, symbols, metaphors and similes in George Orwell's‘Animal...
Another country not my own: Crossing disciplinary borders, forging alliances within the framework of a (communication across the curriculum) CAC initiative in the sciences
November 2010
This paper outlines within the framework of action research, the process of implementing a communication across the curriculum (CAC) programme in the Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences. It highlights the link between institutional context and the dialectical implications of merging the skills, agenda and focus of multidisciplinary teams while maintaining a balance of power. It is suggested that these...
Pausing preceding and following to in to-infinitives of Obama’s G-20 summit speech in London: Read vs spontaneous speech
November 2010
Research on pausing in read and spontaneous speech has been the concern of researchers in the past few decades. While elicited data reveals that in read speech pauses preceding heads of phrases are produced considerably longer by native speakers of English than pauses following heads in read speech, the situation tends to differ in spontaneous speech. Based on this premise, this study reports on President...
Abilities and disabilities of literature
April 2010
The present article tries to describe and analysis various roles that have been contributed to the literature as an organic unity for specific instrument. After a brief attempt to define literature, some of its essential characteristics are discussed. It is literature which simultaneously can promote and nourishes several facets of human mind. Literature has this aptitude that satisfies audience with news in...
‘Young Goodman Brown’: The close lane
April 2010
This study aims to present 'Young Goodman Brown' by Nathaniel Hawthorne as a satire of Puritanism as a prejudiced and intolerable system of belief reflected in the character of Brown who is seen as the incarnation of Puritanism which sees all non- conformists as sinners. Being the incarnation of the Puritan ideology, “Brown is not just one Salem citizen of the late seventeenth century, but...
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