Department of General Linguistics
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A critical analysis of media discourse after a natural flooding disaster in Malawi, in 2015
(2018-03)ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This is a multimodal critical discourse analysis study that investigates the media discursive strategies in the representation of the catastrophic flooding disaster of January 2015 in Malawi. It analyses ...
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Pragmatic markers in L1 Luganda-L2 English bilingual spoken discourse: A relevance-theoretic approach
(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2018-03)ENGLISH ABSTRACT: In this dissertation, I examine the manifestation of Luganda and English pragmatic markers as embedded elements, and analyse the procedural roles they play in facilitating interaction in bilingual spoken ...
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A cross-cultural analysis of corporate press statements: A case study of Monsanto
(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2018-03)ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Multinational corporations (MNCs) such as Monsanto direct a significant amount of attention to strategic marketing efforts in order to achieve a number of goals. These goals include brand awareness, ...
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.Perceived object similarity in isiXhosa: assessing the role of noun classes
(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2018-03)ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Categorizing objects is central to the way we as humans interact with the world. Without the capacity to form categories, we might not have been able to function efficiently. It is generally assumed that ...
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Speech act realisation strategies and possible effects of transference by speakers of Khoekhoegowab into English when acquired as a second language.
(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch Univesity, 2017-12)ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study focused on requestive behaviour of speakers of Khoekhoegowab (KKG) in their mother tongue and in English as a second language (ESL), to uncover strategies mother tongue speakers of KKG employ ...
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A study of multilingual Extended Degree Programme (EDP) students: The construction of voice through metadiscourse markers in written texts
(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2018-03)ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Higher Education has become increasingly diverse, and this is especially true in South Africa where universities have adapted to allow for more equitable access. To facilitate student success in this ...
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Speaker meaning attributed to the terms salvation and insindiso in selected mainline and independent church contexts
(Stellenbosch University, Faculty of Theology, 2009-12)This study was conducted to ascertain what meanings the terms salvation, saved, and their isiZulu equivalents have for some Zulu Christians. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with nine mother-tongue speakers of ...
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Civil unrest in South Africa: Insights from cognitive linguistics and critical discourse analysis
(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2018-03)ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The critical investigation of political discourse has been of interest to philosophers, rhetoricians, political scientists, and linguists for centuries. Dating back to Aristotle, thinkers have been ...
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The name of the fourth river : a small puzzle presented by a fragment of Kora, for Johan Oosthuizen
(Stellenbosch University, Department of Linguistics, 2017)This squib is a brief venture into the minor sub-branch of Linguistics known as Toponomastics, or the study of the meanings and sources of place names. The topic is suggested by a previously unpublished fragment in the ...
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Nominal marking in Northern Tshwa (Kalahari Khoe)
(Stellenbosch University, Department of Linguistics, 2017)Languages of the Khoe family have a complex pronominal system that distinguishes three categories each for person, gender, and number. However, while languages of the Khoekhoe branch and the western subgroup of Kalahari ...
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A preliminary look at negative constructions in South African Sign Language : question-answer clauses
(Stellenbosch University, Department of Linguistics, 2017)How negation is expressed by means of manual and/or non-manual markers has been described in a wide range of sign languages. This work has suggested a split between sign languages requiring a manual negative element in ...
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Poetry in South African Sign Language : what is different?
(Stellenbosch University, Department of Linguistics, 2017)Poetry in a sign language can make use of literary devices just as poetry in a spoken language can. The study of literary expression in sign languages has increased over the last twenty years and for South African Sign ...
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‘Ja-nee. No, I'm fine’ : a note on YES and NO in South Africa
(Stellenbosch University, Department of Linguistics, 2017)This paper considers some unusual uses of NO and YES observed in South African English (SAE) and other languages spoken in South Africa. Our objective is to highlight the fundamentally speaker-hearer-oriented nature of ...
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Movement in the Afrikaans left periphery : a view from anti-locality
(Stellenbosch University, Department of Linguistics, 2017)It has been convincingly argued that the so-called “left periphery” of the sentence makes available multiple positions which host topicalised and focalised phrases, among other elements. Projections in the C-domain have ...
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Negative exclamatives in Afrikaans : some initial thoughts
(Stellenbosch University, Department of Linguistics, 2017)We consider the to date minimally discussed phenomenon of negative exclamatives in Afrikaans. Negative exclamatives superficially seem to be negative, when they are in fact positive exclamations. These structures therefore ...
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The secret nominal life of Afrikaans intransitive adpositions
(Stellenbosch University, Department of Linguistics, 2017)Languages like Afrikaans are sometimes said to feature a class of adpositions that can be described as “intransitive” (e.g. binne “inside”, bo “upstairs”, agter “in the back”, buite “outside”, onder “downstairs” voor “in ...
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Student voice and agency in master's thesis writing in a second language context: Beyond the use of pronouns
(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2017-12)ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis investigates the multimodal construction of voice and agency in master's theses within the South African context. I argue that voice is not only realized through linguistic features but also ...
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Multilingualism in Health Care: Communicative experiences of expatriate healthcare providers with varying linguistic repertoires in Windhoek, Namibia
(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2017-12)ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study reports on the investigation of communicative practices among multilingual participants in healthcare in Windhoek, Namibia, from the perspective of expatriate healthcare practitioners ...
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Spelling out P: a unified syntax of Afrikaans adpositions and V-particles
(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2017-12)ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Elements of language that are typically considered to have P (i.e. adpositional) category status frequently exhibit divergent morphosyntactic properties, and it is often the case that one and the same ...
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Language and place-making: public signage in the Linguistic Landscape of Windhoek's Central Business District
(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2017-12)ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Investigating linguistic landscapes (LLs) has primarily been a matter of assessing language use in public signage. In its early days research in the field focused largely on quantitative analysis and ...
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A relevance-theoretic analysis of selected South African English pragmatic markers and their cultural significance
(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2017-12)ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study examines the development and contemporary functions of three pragmatic markers (PMs), shame, hey and is it, common in South African English (SAfE). The analyses of these PMs were undertaken ...
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‘#Strenght’: A critical investigation of the contemporary representations of men and women in fitness communities on Instagram
(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2017-12)ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Contemporary linguists seek to describe and analyse all manifestations of language, including those occurring on the Internet (see Crystal 2011:1). Investigating visual and linguistic representations ...
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Nie sommer nie : sociohistorical and formal comparative considerations in the rise and maintenance of the modern Afrikaans negation system
(University of Stellenbosch, Department of General Linguistics, 2016)This article has three major objectives. Firstly, it aims to describe and account for the peculiarity of the modern Afrikaans negative concord marker nie2 in the familiar Western European context. I appeal to Roberge’s ...
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Giving voice : studies in honour of Christine Anthonissen
(University of Stellenbosch, Department of General Linguistics, 2016)INTRODUCTION: The central concern of this special issue is the notion of ‘voice’. Although widely used in humanities research, this concept is not without contestation. Sperling, Appleman, Gilyard and Freedman (2011:71) ...
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Left dislocation in North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic dialects
(University of Stellenbosch, Department of General Linguistics, 2016)The North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic (NENA) dialects, which are the focus of this paper, were spoken across a wide area encompassing northern Iraq, north-west Iran, south-eastern Turkey, Armenia and Georgia. In these spoken ...
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The comprehension and production of quantifiers in isiXhosa-speaking Grade 1 learners
(AOSIS Publishing, 2016)Background: Quantifiers form part of the discourse-internal linguistic devices that children need to access and produce narratives and other classroom discourse. Little is known about the development - especially the ...
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Lexical and grammatical development in trilingual speakers of isiXhosa, English and Afrikaans
(AOSIS Publishing, 2016)Background: There is a dearth of normative data on linguistic development among child speakers of Southern African languages, especially in the case of the multilingual children who constitute the largest part of this ...
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Whose voice is right when I wright? Identity in academic writing
(SUN MeDIA, 2016)INTRODUCTION: Paré (2010:40) relates a story of a student who sees the postgraduate journey as being on a bus and says, “I’m not quite sure yet where it’s going. The scary part is that I am the one driving the bus.” I, ...
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Mandarin native speakers' perceptions and attitudes towards learning English as a foreign language
(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2017-03)ENGLISH ABSTRACT: As the spread of the English language advances exponentially, the need for improving English language teaching for second language (L2) learners becomes more prominent along with subsequent research into ...
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Construction of linguistic identities among cross-border communities: The case of Samia of Uganda and Samia of Kenya
(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2017-03)ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This dissertation investigated the discursive identity construction of a community who is separated by a national border. The town of Busia cuts across the Ugandan/Kenyan border and the community language ...
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