Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies

Functional stylistic studies to pedagogic discourse: a systematic review of literature

Guoqiang Liu — 2024-11-05

Pedagogic discourse has been studied stylistically from many theoretical perspectives. However, there is no recent systematic review of the functional stylistic approach to pedagogic discourse. This study presents a systematic review of the functional stylistic approach to analysing multimodal pedagogic discourse using Systemic Functional Linguistics and visual grammar. Through analysing studies from five databases, the review demonstrates that most studies focus on analysing multimodal pedagogic discourse, such as language, gesture, space, gaze, facial expressions, PowerPoint slides, mathematic symbolisms, whiteboard, and educational apps, from the perspectives of context, meta-functional meaning, and semiotic relations, and preferred qualitative analysis methods. The review also proposes a functional grammatical framework for pedagogic discourse stylistic analysis and implies a strong demand for a quantitative or mixed-methods approach to further investigate pedagogic discourse and its impact on pedagogic effect.

The ‘why’, ‘what’ and ‘how’ of pragmatics pedagogy in EFL/L2: meta-analysis review

Mihretu Yihunie Yalew — 2024-11-05

This study reviewed the theoretical assumptions and empirical study evidence of pragmatics and the significance of incorporating pragmatic instruction (PI) in EFL/L2 to learners’ communicative competence (CC) development. Research indicates that communicative language teaching (CLT) has faced challenges of theoretical assumptions that were primarily intended to teach English-asa-second- language (ESL) learners but not for EFL learners and practical classroom implementation difficulties since its inception in improving EFL/ L2 learners’ CC. Conversely, pragmatists advocate the incorporation of PI in EFL/l2 to target language (TL) learners’ CC development. Informed by studies of pragmatists; the present study reviewed the significance of incorporating the explicit and implicit approaches of PI in EFL/L2 on learners’ CC development. The study implemented a meta-analysis to assess the significance of PI in improving TL learners’ CC. The findings of the review revealed that both the explicit and implicit approaches of PI improve TL learners’ CC while most explicit groups significantly outperformed their implicit counterparts. Only one study of the reviewed articles revealed that the implicit instruction was not effective. Finally, the findings of this study were in agreement with the theoretical assumptions and previous study findings of PI and its positive significance on EFL/ L2 learners’ CC development. The findings also imply that incorporating PI in EFL/L2 familiarises educators, researchers, curriculum developers and material writers with the ‘why’, ‘how’ and ‘what’ of pragmatics.

Adoption of mixed method designs in applied linguistics research

Abuelgasim S.E. Mohammed — 2024-11-05

This study aimed to explore the adoption of mixed methods designs (MMDs) in applied linguistics research (2007–2021) and the types most commonly adopted. A purposive sample of a corpus of 300 applied linguistics research studies published in the specified period were selected. These articles were examined to identify their use of MMDs and their types. To determine the MMD types, Creswell and Plano Clark’s (2017) classification of MMDs was employed. The results revealed that MMDs appeared in the corpus in the fourth place, following qualitative, quantitative and quantitative/qualitative designs. The most common types of MMDs were found to be the convergent design firstly, followed by the explanatory sequential design. The exploratory sequential design did not appear in the investigated corpu)s. The greatest occurrence of these designs was found in the period 2012–2016, followed by 2017–2021. Regarding the most frequent subtypes, data analysis revealed that the data transformation, parallel database, questionnaire and fully integrated variants were the most prevalent designs. The case-selection variant did not appear in the corpus. The study recommends more attention to adopting MMDs in applied linguistics research.

Isocolon in EDM Sibiya’s novels: A stylo-syntactic evaluation

Sizwe Zwelakhe Dlamini — 2024-11-05

There seems to be no study so far that has interpreted isocolon from a descriptive linguistic point of view. Studies conducted on isocolon have considered this aspect as merely a poetic tool and have focused solely on its artistic function. It is for this reason that this aspect has been examined mainly in the genre of poetry. The main aim of this paper was therefore to provide a different perspective on isocolon by considering its syntactic patterns with reference to the genre of novels. Such an approach was an attempt to uncover not only the artistic function, but also the form (linguistic description) of this aspect. The discourse is presented through the lens of linguistic stylistics, which advocates a linguistic approach to style in literature. This approach seeks to objectify a literary text in a scientific manner through descriptive linguistics. Discourse analysis theory was also employed, since an investigation was made into Sibiya’s literary works and the influence of context. As novels served as primary sources, the study adopted textual analysis as a qualitative research technique.

Vocalic and intervocalic intervals in the speech of educated Idoma speakers of English

Omotosho Moses Melefa — 2024-11-05

The measurement of vocalic and intervocalic intervals, which has been proposed as a more reliable acoustic correlate of rhythm than inter-stress intervals or syllable duration, is usually not included in the description of the rhythm of Nigerian English, and little is known about how this contributes to the impression of rhythm in the speech of educated Idoma speakers of English. This study therefore investigated the speech rhythm of educated Idoma speakers of English by measuring vocalic and intervocalic intervals as acoustic correlates of speech rhythm. A carefully selected passage, read by 50 educated Idoma speakers of English, was analysed acoustically and statistically. The normalised pairwise variability index (nPVI) was employed to account for vocalic and intervocalic intervals in the speech of the participants in order show how this contributes to the impression of rhythm in their speech. The study indicated that there was no durational variability between successive vowels, in addition to low variability index values for vocalic and intervocalic intervals. These results showed syllable-timing rhythm. However, patterns from female participants along the continuum were less syllable timed than the male participants. There were also indications of sentence type variations with compound sentences, in some cases, less syllable timed than simple sentences.

Handling bad news in a male reproductive health clinic: a speech act perspective

Melvin Ouma — 2024-11-05

Communication is a crucial tool in all forms of interaction. The medical world without communication is inconceivable. Guided by Austin’s speech act theory, this work explores how doctors relay bad news in the form of infertility diagnoses in a reproductive health clinic in Kenya and the responses of male patients to this news. It is a qualitative study in a public health facility in Nakuru town in Nakuru County, Kenya. The two male patients recruited for this study were willing to participate without payment or coercion. The conversation on reproductive health problems between the doctor and male patients was collected using participant observation. The diagnosis of male infertility can be a significant source of distress for male patients as it challenges traditional perceptions of masculinity. Similar locutionary and illocutionary acts can elicit very different perlocutionary acts. An utterance, once made, cannot be altered, nor can its effect. A man’s emotional response to an infertility diagnosis is profound and irreversible. Bad news in a reproductive health clinic includes male infertility diagnoses, a condition that impacts the masculine identity of a man and threatens his entire existence.

Argumentation in police-suspect interactions in Ibadan, Nigeria

Temidayo Akinrinlola — 2024-11-05

In the Nigerian context, studies on police interrogation have acknowledged that investigating police officers (IPOs) wield power during police-suspect interactions (PSIs). We argue that power is not solely wielded by the IPOs during interrogation sessions; the suspect, who is often considered as a lesser participant during interrogation session, adopts argumentation to contest stances with IPOs. This study examines the rationale behind IPOs’ and suspects’ arguments in PSIs with a view to describing the implications of such arguments for power relations in PSIs. The study adopts insights from Frans H. van Eemeren and Rob Grootendorst’s pragma-dialectal theory of argumentation (PTA). The study adopts a qualitative research design. Data for the study come from 12 interrogation sessions on cases of attempted murder, rape, felony and theft, tape-recorded at the Oyo State Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Department (SCIID), Ìyágankú, Ibadan. While IPOs argue by posing a positive self, developing themes around cases, discouraging denials and retaining suspects’ attention, suspects on the other hand argue to affirm positive selves and object justification, counter IPOs’ stances and create extraneous details to distract IPOs. The study posits that argument is a veritable discourse tool for negotiating power in PSIs.

Are research articles becoming more syntactically complex? Corpus-based evidence from research articles in applied linguistics and biology (1965–2015)

Fan Pan — 2024-11-05

Research on the diachronic changes of syntactic complexity in research articles (RAs) in recent decades has been scant. As one of the first studies addressing this gap, the present study investigated the diachronic changes of eight indices of syntactic complexity in the RAs of applied linguistics and biology from 1965 to 2015 based on a corpus of 720 RAs (totalling 4.14 million tokens) from prestigious journals. The study revealed several common patterns of diachronic changes in syntactic complexity in two disciplines. First, RA writers in both disciplines tended to produce longer production units and employed more coordinate phrases and complex nominals over time, reflecting increased levels of syntactic complexity in two disciplines in recent five decades. In addition, both disciplines displayed an overall decline in the reliance on clausal elaboration (e.g. clausal coordination and clausal subordination), but an increase in phrasal complexity (e.g. phrasal coordination and complex nominals), which demonstrated an increased level of information compression in RA writing over time. The study also discussed changes in publication norms and practices in the two academic fields in recent decades that may be related to the diachronic changes of syntactic complexity features.

Effects of bilingualism on the cognitive development of selected Nigerian University undergraduates

Jane Chinelo Obasi — 2024-11-05

This study is an exploration of the perceptions and experiences of Igbo-English bilingual undergraduates in relation to the social, cultural and cognitive benefits and drawbacks of bilingualism. In this study, a questionnaire was designed and then given to 150 Igbo-English bilinguals from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and Enugu State University of Science and Technology. All the responses were identified, categorised and analysed qualitatively. Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory of cognitive development was adopted as the theoretical framework for this study. The findings showed that bilingualism has both positive and negative social, cultural and cognitive effects. Positively, from the perceptions and experiences of the undergraduates under study, bilingualism improves selective attention, and enhances the auditory stem response, among others, while negatively, it can be viewed as a threat to monolingual culture, and also affects speaking a second language other than that of the home environment, which creates conflict and confusion among parents and children.

IRIS: Empowering language researchers with access to quality materials and instruments

Hamzeh Moradi — 2024-11-05

The development of digital technologies and the high accessibility of the internet have made transparency of research design, instruments and resources more easily attainable. However, many language teachers and researchers are either unfamiliar with these useful online resources, or spend their valuable time and energy on those that afford less practicability, research applicability and quality, with few opportunities for conducting good research; therefore, the necessity of bringing such valuable materials and resources to their attention is clear. To this end, in this tech review article, I introduce the IRIS Digital Repository of Data Collection Materials, a subject-specific repository of instruments and materials for research into L1/L2/FL. This resource has distinguishing features that, in light of evidence from substantive methodological and theoretical L1/L2/FL research, make it an excellent and efficacious resource for L1/L2/ FL researchers and a useful tool for transparency in L2/ FL research and reporting practices.