Department of General Linguistics
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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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Student expectations and perceptions of the usefulness of their linguistic repertoires for achieving social integration and academic success at an international university in Namibia
(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2017-03)ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The study examined the perceptions and expectations held by students towards the usefulness of their linguistic repertoires in helping them achieve social integration and academic success at the International ...
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From autopsy to autonomy in writing centres : postgraduate students' response to two forms of feedback in a health professions education module
(Stellenbosch University, 2016)In post-apartheid South Africa, writing centres exist in almost every university to address the academic writing needs of students. At Stellenbosch University Writing Lab, writing consultants use collaborative learning and ...
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A narrative enrichment programme in literacy development of Afrikaans-speaking Grade 3 learners in monolingual rural schools
(Stellenbosch University, Department of General Linguistics, 2016)This study is motivated by existing information on the discontinuity between home literacy practices and school literacy expectations of learners who typically speak a local variety of their mother tongue which differs in ...
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Saying the word : voice and silence in an autoethnography about chronic illness
(Stellenbosch University, Department of General Linguistics, 2016)People living with chronic illness experience impairment in various ways, not the least of which is how they are sometimes marginalised by the people with whom they interact. Over the last few decades, as social science ...
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They came there as workers : Voice, dialogicality and identity construction in textual representations of the 2012 Marikana miner’s strike
(Stellenbosch University, Department of General Linguistics, 2016)In August and September 2012, a mineworkers’ strike took place at a mine operated by Lonmin, a British producer of platinum metals, in the Marikana area of the South African platinum belt. The strike received international ...
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Towards a pragmatics of non-fictional narrative truth : gricean and relevance-theoretic perspectives
(Stellenbosch University, Department of General Linguistics, 2016)From a linguistic perspective, ‘truth’ is undoubtedly a pragmatic notion, as the truth of an utterance is not determined solely by its linguistic meaning, but is dependent upon the context in which it is uttered. Although ...
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The language scripts of pre-school children and of the language intervention volunteer : mismatched discourses?
(Stellenbosch University, Department of General Linguistics, 2016)Children with low socioeconomic status (SES) often enter school with poor language skills (Raizada, Richards, Meltzoff and Kuhl 2008), and fall further behind their middle-class peers with every passing grade (cf. Cunningham ...
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Does socioeconomic level have an effect on school-age language skills in a developed country?
(Stellenbosch University, Department of General Linguistics, 2016)Socioeconomic status (SES) has been reported in several contexts as a predictor of child language skills. This study questions whether this holds true for New Zealand, a developed country in which government provides funding ...
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Critical discourse analysis as queer linguistics : religious pro- and anti-LGBT equality framing and counterframing in two letters to the editor in the City Press
(Stellenbosch University, Department of General Linguistics, 2016)This article is situated at the intersection of the applied linguistic fields of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), Collective Action Framing (CAF) and a sociolinguistic field recently referred to as “queer linguistics” ...
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Left dislocation : a typological overview
(Stellenbosch University, Department of General Linguistics, 2016)The Left Dislocation construction is a typologically universal phenomenon that has received detailed analysis, from both formal and functional perspectives, in a number of genetically and areally diverse languages. The ...
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From vectors to waves and streams : an alternative approach to semantic maps
(University of Stellenbosch, Department of General Linguistics, 2016)This article designs a method of improving traditional, qualitative semantic maps based on grammaticalisation paths, by including both quantitative data (frequency) and information concerning a gram’s environment (the ...
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An alternative to the Lewisian view of conventions
(University of Stellenbosch, Department of General Linguistics, 2016)Lewis (1969) characterises conventions as regularities that arise from recurrent coordination games. I argue, contra Lewis, that conventions are rules that promote a relevant goal in virtue of coordinating our behaviour. ...
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Omission and other sins : tracking the quality of online machine translation output over four years
(University of Stellenbosch, Department of General Linguistics, 2016)Online machine translation (MT) has empowered ordinary language users to have texts translated all by themselves. But are these users aware of the pitfalls? This article draws on a longitudinal study that explored the ...
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Left Dislocation in Arabic : the complexity of form and meaning
(Stellenbosch University, Department of General Linguistics, 2016)This paper studies the complexity of L(eft) D(islocation). It demonstrates that the function that is crosslinguistically associated with LD is conveyed in Arabic by a set of LD constructions. In the analyzed corpus, these ...
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A functional profile of Left Dislocation in Biblical Hebrew
(Stellenbosch University, Department of General Linguistics, 2016)The primary aim of this paper is to provide a functional profile of verbal Left Dislocation (=LD) constructions in the Torah and Former Prophets (Genesis–2Kings). As a precursor, however, an abbreviated syntactico-semantic ...
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The politics of mother tongue education : the case of Uganda
(Stellenbosch University, 2016)This paper aims to explain the trend of mother tongue (MT) education in Uganda by examining particularly government’s practices towards MT education. MT education was (re)introduced in Uganda in 2006/2007 due to disappointing ...
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Unlocking later-developing language skills in older children by means of focused language stimulation
(Stellenbosch University, 2016)Certain language structures and skills continue to develop after the age of school entry. The present study sought to establish whether directly targeting the development of such complex language structures and skills in ...
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On establishing co-reference in left dislocation constructions
(Stellenbosch University, Department of General Linguistics, 2016)The phenomenon of left dislocation (LD) has received relatively little attention in the generative literature. In Government & Binding theory and early versions of Minimalist Syntax, the left-dislocated expression is ...
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The position of English in the language repertoires of multilingual students at a tertiary institution: A case study at the Vaal University of Technology
(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2016-12)ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis describes a case study on the position of English in the language repertoires of students at the Vaal University of Technology (VUT). Despite its multilingual student body, English is ...
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Racialised discourse in the former Model C School: Discourse of exclusion and inclusion
(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2016-12)ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis reports on racialised discourse in a former Model C school in the Northern Suburbs of the Western Cape. The primary areas of investigation were surrounding the discourses of inclusion and ...
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The acquisition of wh-question constructions in Mandarin Chinese by L1 isiXhosa-speaking and L1 English-speaking high school learners
(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2016-12)ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study investigates the acquisition of main clause wh-questions in Mandarin Chinese, at an elementary stage of language learning, by first language (L1) Englishand L1 isiXhosa-speaking high school ...
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Code-switching and translanguaging inside and outside the classroom: bi-/multilingual practices of high school learners in a rural Afrikaans-setting
(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2016-12)ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The dominance of Afrikaans as medium of communication in the rural town of Upington in the Northern Cape, South Africa, is reflected in the day-to-day communication practices by the vast majority of its ...
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Listening in HIV counselling and testing: hearer signals in rural patient-counsellor HIV consultation
(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2016-12)AFRIKAANS OPSOMMING: MIV en VIGS is sedert die 1980s ’n kommerwekkende nasionale gesondheidskwessie in Suid-Afrika. Na beraming het daar teen 2014 ʼn getal van 6,8 miljoen mense tussen die ouderdomme van 15 en 49 met MIV ...
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The acquisition of (in)definiteness in English as a foreign language by Tanzanian L1 Swahili secondary school learners
(2016-12)AFRIKAANS OPSOMMING: Die studie waaroor in hierdie proefskrif gerapporteer word, het ondersoek ingestel na die verwerwing van (on)bepaaldheid in Engels as Vreemde Taal (EVT) deur hoërskoolleerders met Swahili as eerstetaal ...
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The use of multilingual glossaries in enhancing the academic achievement of Extended Degree Programme students in a mainstream subject
(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2016-12)ENGLISH ABSTRACT: One of the explanations for South African students’ poor performance at university, is the apparent mismatch or discontinuity between the exit level of secondary education and the entry level of higher ...
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The role of (de)motivational factors in the context of learning English in South Korea
(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2016-11)ENGLISH ABSTRACT: In November 2013, the Switzerland-based global English education company, EF Education First, reported that, in terms of English ability in non-native countries, South Korea was ranked moderately ...
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Reflexives and reflexive constructions in Afrikaans
(Stellenbosch University, Department of Linguistics, 2015)This article provides a non-formalistic description of the various reflexive pronouns in Afrikaans. In addition to the traditional class of reflexive pronouns, it is shown that possessive pronouns can also be used reflexively. ...
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The discourse of liberation : frames used in characterising the gay liberation movement in two South African newspapers
(Stellenbosch University, Department of Linguistics, 2015)This article reports on the quantitative findings of a study that straddles the applied linguistic field of critical discourse analysis and a sociolinguistic field recently referred to as “queer linguistics”. Drawing on a ...
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