Felix Banda
Biographic Data
| ID | 652363 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Felix Banda |
| GIVEN NAMES | Felix |
| FAMILY NAME | Banda |
| SIGNATURE | BANDA F |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of the Western Cape |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1956-4418 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 43 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 143 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 43 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1992 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Learners’ perceptions of English essay writing problems in northern Namibia
Literature shows that Namibian learners encounter several challenges when writing essays in English. Hence, several studies have been carried out from the teachers’ perspective to identify problems that learners encounter when writing in English. However, there are few studies that were done to explore learners’ perceptions of their writing problems. Consequently, this article is aimed at exploring learners’ perceptions of challenges in writing i…
Monuments in linguistic landscapes and the semiotics of public memory in northern Zambia
This study interrogates the Mbala War Memorial, a monument erected to commemorate the role of Africans in the First World War in northern Zambia. It explores how visible language, space, location, and monument design communicate deeper and often unspoken meanings about spaces of public memory. From this vantage point, monuments in linguistic landscapes can be examined to uncover underlying power dynamics that influence public memory. Thus, the st…
Assessing the Relevance of the 1992 Namibian Language in Education Policy (NLiEP) Document
The current Namibian Language in Education Policy (NLiEP) document was first introduced in 1991 immediately after the country gained its independence. Even though this document has been in existence for more than 30 years, it has never been formally assessed or modified despite the changing socio-economic and language practices. Using four criteria (authenticity, representativeness, meaning, and credibility) suggested to evaluate documents for re…
Names of public memory spaces as sites of coloniality, cultural erasure, and downscaling in linguistic landscapes of Northern Zambia
Vowel hiatus resolution strategies in the Lungu, Mambwe and Namwanga languages
Guthrie classifies Lungu as M14, Mambwe as M15 and Namwanga as M22. Lungu, Mambwe and Namwanga (LuMaNa) have been characterised as emanating from a language called Fipa. The purpose of this article is to account for similarities and microvariations in the LuMaNa languages by examining the strategies evident in the manner that vowel hiatus is resolved. Using micro-variation linguistic theory, particularly in Bantu languages, and insights from stud…
The social semiotics of Mambwe clan names and praises
The study explores the clan names and praises of the Mambwe-speaking people of Northern Zambia from a social semiotics perspective. Specifically drawing on the concept of semiotic assemblages, it considers the names and praises as more than just linguistic resources but as meaning-making collections that contribute to the collective self-representation of the Mambwe people. The assembled expressions reflect their worldviews, sociocultural narrati…
Chemical phonology
Framed in the social constructivist and funds of knowledge framework, the article relates descriptions of phonemes in linguistics and elements of the periodic table in chemistry to show how the concept of a phoneme can be explained in a multidisciplinary manner to further the understanding of phoneme characteristics. The article argues that the concept of a phoneme can be understood to be similar to an element (with atoms as phonologically distin…
The Topoi of Mandela's Death in the Arabic Speaking Media
The present study attempts a political discourse analysis of a spoken Arabic corpus on the death of Nelson Mandela. The corpus mainly consists of the coverage of some Arabic-speaking TV channels that was broadcasted in the aftermath of the announcement of Nelson Mandela's death in 2013. The discourse-historical approach was employed with a view to finding out the various topoi and ideologies deployed in the corpus. For this purpose, the spoken co…
Language ideology, policy and classroom practices in Oshiwambo speaking areas, Northern Namibia
The study problematized language ideologies and policy to explore the efficacy of using English as the Language of Learning and Teaching (LOLT) among Oshiwambo speaking learners in the Omusati region of Northern Namibia. Focus group interviews with ESL teachers, interviews with the English Head of Departments (HODs), classroom observations and informal chats with the grade 12 learners were carried out at six secondary schools. The study finds tha…
Sociolinguistics and modes of social class signalling
The paper evaluates spatial, behavioural, and material signalling of social class in African contexts, focusing on Kenya and Zambia. In particular, it draws on notions of mode of class signalling and intersectionality and a vignette of an interaction between urban-based Western educated development agents and local participants in rural Kenya to illustrate how social class is implicated in interactions. The paper shows how significant features of…
Beyond language crossing
Popular songs are loaded with critical social, cultural and historical information and provide blueprints for future semiotic practices. I draw on notions of language as social practice and poststructuralist performative identities to show how language practices in popular music intersect with multicultural practices and meaning making in fluid African multilingual contexts. I illustrate how multilingual and multicultural practices bring into dia…
Birds and Bees, the ‘R’ Word and Zuma’s p*nis
Selling a presidential candidate
We use a moment in history, the lead up to presidential elections, to capture the semiotic transformation of linguistic landscapes of a multilingual African country, Zambia. We use observations and notions of assembling artefacts and semiotic assemblages to show that the semiotic product resulting from the rallies and campaign material from three selected political parties is not just made up of displays of party colours, slogans, song, dance, un…
Commodification of African languages in linguistic landscapes of rural Northern Cape Province, South Africa
English has been portrayed in linguistic landscape literature as the definitive language of commodification. However, using linguistic landscape images from two rural communities in the Northern Cape, South Africa, this article shows how indigenous African languages and localised English are entangled as commodities - whether used independently or in hybridised form - for the sale of various goods and services. We show that the commodification of…
Playful female skinscapes
Using oral narratives of tattoos and their bodily emplacement, the paper explores the performance of creativity, language and multilingualism, identity and gender among female students at three universities in South Africa. We draw on notions of skinscapes, the material culture of multilingualism and multimodality to illustrate, analyse and discuss the creativity and imagination of the design features of the assembled semiotic material that inspi…
Translanguaging and English-African language mother tongues as linguistic dispensation in teaching and learning in a black township school in Cape Town
Drawing on the notion of translanguaging, I show how learners in a Black township secondary school in Cape Town use their multilingual repertoire to achieve power, agency and voice. I use the conceptualisation of the prototypical pedagogical macrogenre from systemic functional linguistics to show how translanguaging can be used strategically to actualise regulative and instructional registers to engender teaching and learning in multilingual cont…
Linguistic landscapes and the sociolinguistics of language vitality in multilingual contexts of Zambia
The article illustrates a sociolinguistics of language vitality that accounts for ‘minority’ and unofficial languages across multiple localities in dispersed communities of multilingual speakers of Zambia where only seven out of seventy-three indigenous languages have been designated official and ‘zoned’ for use in specified regions. Using signage and narratives of place from selected rural and urban centres of the City of Lusaka and the City of …
Doing Politics in the Recent Arab Uprisings
The present paper aims to analyse a number of those slogans collected from the sit-in quarters in Egypt, Libya and Yemen. Using political discourse analysis, it unravels various typical discourse structures and strategies that are used in slogans in the construction of a sub-genre of political discourse in the Arab world. Drawing data from several mediums, including banners, wall graffiti, audio-visual instruments, chanting, speeches and songs, t…
Nyanja/Chewa Proverbs as Didactics
The paper explores how Nyanja/Chewa proverbs as stores of indigenous knowledge can be used to teach Nyanja/Chewa morphology and grammar, and as a tool to sensitise learners on aspects of academic writing. Using systemic functional linguistics and selected Nyanja/Chewa proverbs, the researchers illustrate how the patterning and the realisation of proverbs as texts in social contexts scaffold interpersonal meanings including appraisal and attitude,…
Diversity and contested social identities in multilingual and multicultural contexts of the University of the Western Cape, South Africa
We draw on Rampton's Crossing: Language and Ethnicity Among Adolescents (2014. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge) notion of ‘crossing’ to explore contestations in ethnolinguistic, cultural and racial affiliations at the University of the Western Cape (UWC), a university built for ‘Coloureds’ in apartheid South Africa, but which rebelled by admitting students of all races and ethnic backgrounds. Using interviews and observation data, we show contestatio…
African Renaissance and Negotiation of Yoruba Identity in the Diaspora
Drawing on poststructuralist discourse analysis and Hall's (1990) notion of diaspora cultural identities, this article explores the discontinuation and maintenance of Yoruba identity options by students at three Western Cape Province universities. Interviews and observations data are used to consider how different forms of representations and cultural practices associated with Yoruba in Nigeria lead to equally fragmented and hybrid lifestyles and…
“Poof! a’m heppily saving the Lord…”
This paper explores the use of punctuation, capitalisation, linguistic forms and images in the construction of evaluative discourses in male toilet graffiti at the University of the Western Cape. Of particular interest is how male students use these devises in the discursive construction of the appraisal resource of Attitude, Graduation and Evaluation. Using over 150 tokens of graffiti, the paper uses a multimodal approach employing notions of re…
Renegotiating cultural practices as a result of HIV in the eastern region of Malawi
A number of studies have shown that HIV awareness is very high among Malawians and yet infection rates are rising. Local cultural practices have been identified as contributing to this contradictory situation. Using data from 12 focus-group discussions collected in Balaka, Zomba, Machinga and Mangochi, the paper explores the reformulation of nine cultural practices as a preventive measure against HIV. The study reveals that cultural practices tha…
Commodification of transformation discourses and post-apartheid institutional identities at three South African universities
Using mission statements from the UCT, UWC and Stellenbosch University (South Africa), we explore how the three universities have rematerialised prior discourses to rebrand their identities as dictated by contemporary national and global aspirations. We reveal how the universities have recontextualised the experiences and discourses of liberation struggle and the new government's post-apartheid social transformation discourses to construct distin…
Language policy and orthographic harmonization across linguistic, ethnic and national boundaries in Southern Africa
The semiotic ecology of linguistic landscapes in rural Zambia
In addressing the dearth in studies on linguistic/semiotic landscapes in oral-language dominant rural communities, we use the notion ofrepurposingto show how people from rural areas of Livingstone and Lusaka in Zambia (South-Central Africa) extend the repertoire of 'signs' to include faded and unscripted signboards, fauna and flora, mounds, dwellings, abandoned structures, skylines, and village and bush paths (with no written names) in narrations…
The Dilemma of the Mother Tongue
The paper examines the position of the mother tongue in the proposed additive bilingual programmes in South Africa. It is argued that since the teaching and use of African languages, particularly as media of instruction, is less than adequate, their use in additive bilingual programmes, the official South African language in education policy, is unlikely to be successful. The paper is divided into three parts. First, the sociolinguistic, cultural…
Observatory's linguistic landscape
Using a longitudinal ethnographic study of the linguistic landscape (LL) in Observatory's business corridor of Lower Main Road, the paper explores changes brought about by the influx of immigrant Africans, their artefacts and language practices. The paper uses the changes in the LL over time and the development of an “African Corner” within Lower Main Road, to illustrate the appropriation of space and the unpredictability, which comes along with …
Defying monolingual education
This paper explores how bilingual learners and teachers challenge the monolingual discourses prescribed in language education policy and models in pursuit of voice and agency in classroom interaction. Through an examination of observation, interview and classroom interaction data in selected coloured primary and secondary schools in Cape Town, the paper investigates the tension between bilingual discourses of learners and prescribed models of edu…
Foreigners are stealing our birth right
We examine 575 randomly selected articles on Zimbabwean immigrants from the South African Media (SAM) database to expose discourses of exclusion and the production of the psycho-social condition – moral panic. We use critical discourse analysis, notions of remediation and immediacy to scrutinize discourse structures and other discursive strategies designed to conceal mediation and authorial prejudices, and to make the reader ‘experience’ the actu…
Sociolinguistics and modes of social class signalling
The paper evaluates spatial, behavioural, and material signalling of social class in African contexts, focusing on Kenya and Zambia. In particular, it draws on notions of mode of class signalling and intersectionality and a vignette of an interaction between urban-based Western educated development agents and local participants in rural Kenya to illustrate how social class is implicated in interactions. The paper shows how significant features of…
Selling a presidential candidate
We use a moment in history, the lead up to presidential elections, to capture the semiotic transformation of linguistic landscapes of a multilingual African country, Zambia. We use observations and notions of assembling artefacts and semiotic assemblages to show that the semiotic product resulting from the rallies and campaign material from three selected political parties is not just made up of displays of party colours, slogans, song, dance, un…
Translanguaging and English-African language mother tongues as linguistic dispensation in teaching and learning in a black township school in Cape Town
Drawing on the notion of translanguaging, I show how learners in a Black township secondary school in Cape Town use their multilingual repertoire to achieve power, agency and voice. I use the conceptualisation of the prototypical pedagogical macrogenre from systemic functional linguistics to show how translanguaging can be used strategically to actualise regulative and instructional registers to engender teaching and learning in multilingual cont…
Linguistic landscapes and the sociolinguistics of language vitality in multilingual contexts of Zambia
The article illustrates a sociolinguistics of language vitality that accounts for ‘minority’ and unofficial languages across multiple localities in dispersed communities of multilingual speakers of Zambia where only seven out of seventy-three indigenous languages have been designated official and ‘zoned’ for use in specified regions. Using signage and narratives of place from selected rural and urban centres of the City of Lusaka and the City of …
Doing Politics in the Recent Arab Uprisings
The present paper aims to analyse a number of those slogans collected from the sit-in quarters in Egypt, Libya and Yemen. Using political discourse analysis, it unravels various typical discourse structures and strategies that are used in slogans in the construction of a sub-genre of political discourse in the Arab world. Drawing data from several mediums, including banners, wall graffiti, audio-visual instruments, chanting, speeches and songs, t…
What can we say when the English used has gone so high-tech?’
The paper draws on data from a large study on communication modes between a rural community and development agents in Nyanza Province, Kenya. The initial motivation was the effect of institutionalised discourse on the development agenda. Interest was on development agents as cultivators of development discourse, and the extent to which they can be said to be honest cultural brokers, who mediate between institutionalised discourse of the Western d…
Classroom Discourse and Discursive Practices in Higher Education in Tanzania
The paper problematises student writing as social practice from the perspective of lecturers’ discursive practices. The paper uses data from a major study at a higher learning institution in Tanzania to explore lecturers’ discursive practices and familiarity with the university orders of discourse including English medium of instruction, in unequal power relations with students, for whom English is a foreign language. The lecturers’ practices are…
Beyond language crossing
Popular songs are loaded with critical social, cultural and historical information and provide blueprints for future semiotic practices. I draw on notions of language as social practice and poststructuralist performative identities to show how language practices in popular music intersect with multicultural practices and meaning making in fluid African multilingual contexts. I illustrate how multilingual and multicultural practices bring into dia…
Global Issues in Language, Education and Development
A Survey of Literacy Practices in Black and Coloured Communities in South Africa
The initial motivation for the study was the view of multilingualism as a resource, in which all languages and literacies at the disposal of a learner are used for his/her benefit. In turn, interest was motivated by the notion of literacy practices as social practices linked to broader cultural and socioeconomic conditions (Street, 2001). Interest was also motivated by recent studies which stress the value of understanding the literacy practices …
Playful female skinscapes
Using oral narratives of tattoos and their bodily emplacement, the paper explores the performance of creativity, language and multilingualism, identity and gender among female students at three universities in South Africa. We draw on notions of skinscapes, the material culture of multilingualism and multimodality to illustrate, analyse and discuss the creativity and imagination of the design features of the assembled semiotic material that inspi…
Style, repertoire, and identities in Zambian multilingual discourses
The paper explores the socially transforming multilingual discourses which draw on rural and urban indigenous Zambian languages, (Zambian) English, and mixed codes. Using illustrations from a Zambian website and related studies on multilingual discourse practices in Zambia, the paper shows how local and diasporic Zambians enact role structures and identities in multilingual discourses. We focus on localized stylization of Zambian discourses, in w…
Language policy and orthographic harmonization across linguistic, ethnic and national boundaries in Southern Africa
Localizing HIV/Aids Discourse in a Rural Kenyan Community
This paper examines the effectiveness of multimodal texts used in HIV/AIDS campaigns in rural western Kenya using multimodal discourse analysis (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 2006; Martin and Rose, 2004). Twenty HIV/AIDS documents (posters, billboards and brochures) are analysed together with interview data (20 unstructured one-on-one interviews and six focus groups) from the target group to explore the effectiveness of the multimodal texts in engaging …
Diversity and contested social identities in multilingual and multicultural contexts of the University of the Western Cape, South Africa
We draw on Rampton's Crossing: Language and Ethnicity Among Adolescents (2014. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge) notion of ‘crossing’ to explore contestations in ethnolinguistic, cultural and racial affiliations at the University of the Western Cape (UWC), a university built for ‘Coloureds’ in apartheid South Africa, but which rebelled by admitting students of all races and ethnic backgrounds. Using interviews and observation data, we show contestatio…
Commodification of transformation discourses and post-apartheid institutional identities at three South African universities
Using mission statements from the UCT, UWC and Stellenbosch University (South Africa), we explore how the three universities have rematerialised prior discourses to rebrand their identities as dictated by contemporary national and global aspirations. We reveal how the universities have recontextualised the experiences and discourses of liberation struggle and the new government's post-apartheid social transformation discourses to construct distin…
The Scope and Categorization of African English
Preview this article: THE SCOPE AND CATEGORIZATION OF AFRICAN ENGLISH: SOME SOCIOLINGUISTIC CONSIDERATIONS, Page 1 of 1 /docserver/preview/fulltext/eww.17.1.04ban-1.gif
A lexical‐semantic and syntactic‐grammatical analysis of Zambian English
This study is an attempt to compare the intuitions and reasoned judgments of second language learners of English on a number of semantic and syntactic phenomena in the language. Using the speech processing approach, subjects were tested on lexical‐semantic and syntactic‐grammatical linguistic performance tasks. Interest was motivated by the role of semantic space and formal space in language acquisition (cf. Slobin, 1985). In turn, interest was m…
A lexical‐semantic and syntactic‐grammatical analysis of Zambian English
This study is an attempt to compare the intuitions and reasoned judgments of second language learners of English on a number of semantic and syntactic phenomena in the language. Using the speech processing approach, subjects were tested on lexical‐semantic and syntactic‐grammatical linguistic performance tasks. Interest was motivated by the role of semantic space and formal space in language acquisition (cf. Slobin, 1985). In turn, interest was m…
In search of the lost tongue
This paper highlights the major problems associated with the implementation of mother tongue education in Zambia where the majority are inclined to speak urban forms of Zambian languages (or English) and are not competent in the formal tribal/ethnic languages taught in schools. Particularly, urban Zambians appear to have lost their ‘roots’ in language and hence their social identity. This is also suggested by the results of a recent comparative s…
The Scope and Categorization of African English
Preview this article: THE SCOPE AND CATEGORIZATION OF AFRICAN ENGLISH: SOME SOCIOLINGUISTIC CONSIDERATIONS, Page 1 of 1 /docserver/preview/fulltext/eww.17.1.04ban-1.gif
The Dilemma of the Mother Tongue
The paper examines the position of the mother tongue in the proposed additive bilingual programmes in South Africa. It is argued that since the teaching and use of African languages, particularly as media of instruction, is less than adequate, their use in additive bilingual programmes, the official South African language in education policy, is unlikely to be successful. The paper is divided into three parts. First, the sociolinguistic, cultural…
A Survey of Literacy Practices in Black and Coloured Communities in South Africa
The initial motivation for the study was the view of multilingualism as a resource, in which all languages and literacies at the disposal of a learner are used for his/her benefit. In turn, interest was motivated by the notion of literacy practices as social practices linked to broader cultural and socioeconomic conditions (Street, 2001). Interest was also motivated by recent studies which stress the value of understanding the literacy practices …
Global Issues in Language, Education and Development
Classroom Discourse and Discursive Practices in Higher Education in Tanzania
The paper problematises student writing as social practice from the perspective of lecturers’ discursive practices. The paper uses data from a major study at a higher learning institution in Tanzania to explore lecturers’ discursive practices and familiarity with the university orders of discourse including English medium of instruction, in unequal power relations with students, for whom English is a foreign language. The lecturers’ practices are…
What can we say when the English used has gone so high-tech?’
The paper draws on data from a large study on communication modes between a rural community and development agents in Nyanza Province, Kenya. The initial motivation was the effect of institutionalised discourse on the development agenda. Interest was on development agents as cultivators of development discourse, and the extent to which they can be said to be honest cultural brokers, who mediate between institutionalised discourse of the Western d…
Style, repertoire, and identities in Zambian multilingual discourses
The paper explores the socially transforming multilingual discourses which draw on rural and urban indigenous Zambian languages, (Zambian) English, and mixed codes. Using illustrations from a Zambian website and related studies on multilingual discourse practices in Zambia, the paper shows how local and diasporic Zambians enact role structures and identities in multilingual discourses. We focus on localized stylization of Zambian discourses, in w…
Fueli’ = ‘hatabu’
Kiswahili is the medium of instruction in Tanzania for 7 years of primary education and thereafter, English takes over at secondary and tertiary levels. However, there has been a debate about the efficacy of English in Tanzania's education system with some researchers recommending a switch to Kiswahili as a way to ameliorate the situation. By contrast, this paper examines the problems presented by the unharmonised and unstandardised scientific te…
Defying monolingual education
This paper explores how bilingual learners and teachers challenge the monolingual discourses prescribed in language education policy and models in pursuit of voice and agency in classroom interaction. Through an examination of observation, interview and classroom interaction data in selected coloured primary and secondary schools in Cape Town, the paper investigates the tension between bilingual discourses of learners and prescribed models of edu…
Localizing HIV/Aids Discourse in a Rural Kenyan Community
This paper examines the effectiveness of multimodal texts used in HIV/AIDS campaigns in rural western Kenya using multimodal discourse analysis (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 2006; Martin and Rose, 2004). Twenty HIV/AIDS documents (posters, billboards and brochures) are analysed together with interview data (20 unstructured one-on-one interviews and six focus groups) from the target group to explore the effectiveness of the multimodal texts in engaging …
Study groups and peer roles in mediated academic literacy events in multilingual educational contexts in South Africa
This paper explores the role of study groups in mediating academic writing, particularly \namong multilingual black students at the University of the Western Cape (UWC). Using data \nfrom questionnaires, focus groups, and interviews, as well as academic texts generated by \nstudy groups, the paper focuses on the efficacy of study groups in mediating literacy events in \nmultilingual educational contexts. Of particular interest here is the composi…
Fighting HIV/Aids through popular Zambian music
This paper explores how HIV/AIDS education messages are transmitted through popular Zambian music lyrics. The focus is on the recontextualisation of lived experiences and Zambian cultural practices in the fight against HIV/AIDS. Using multimodal discourse analysis, the paper uses Zambian popular music lyrics to show how Zambian musicians deliberately blend languages, socio-cultural artefacts and knowledge into a hybrid of ‘infotainment’ in the fi…
Dialogicality and imaginings of two ‘community’ notice boards in post-apartheid Observatory, Cape Town
This article undertakes a poststructuralist multisemiotic analysis of posters and notices found on two ‘community’ notice boards in the trendy, multicultural neighbourhood of Observatory in Cape Town, South Africa. An analysis of the two notice boards endeavours to reveal different strategic uses of English as well as varying constructions of (transnational) place-making and community in Observatory. The two notice boards reveal voices of transie…
Observatory's linguistic landscape
Using a longitudinal ethnographic study of the linguistic landscape (LL) in Observatory's business corridor of Lower Main Road, the paper explores changes brought about by the influx of immigrant Africans, their artefacts and language practices. The paper uses the changes in the LL over time and the development of an “African Corner” within Lower Main Road, to illustrate the appropriation of space and the unpredictability, which comes along with …
Foreigners are stealing our birth right
We examine 575 randomly selected articles on Zimbabwean immigrants from the South African Media (SAM) database to expose discourses of exclusion and the production of the psycho-social condition – moral panic. We use critical discourse analysis, notions of remediation and immediacy to scrutinize discourse structures and other discursive strategies designed to conceal mediation and authorial prejudices, and to make the reader ‘experience’ the actu…
African Renaissance and Negotiation of Yoruba Identity in the Diaspora
Drawing on poststructuralist discourse analysis and Hall's (1990) notion of diaspora cultural identities, this article explores the discontinuation and maintenance of Yoruba identity options by students at three Western Cape Province universities. Interviews and observations data are used to consider how different forms of representations and cultural practices associated with Yoruba in Nigeria lead to equally fragmented and hybrid lifestyles and…
“Poof! a’m heppily saving the Lord…”
This paper explores the use of punctuation, capitalisation, linguistic forms and images in the construction of evaluative discourses in male toilet graffiti at the University of the Western Cape. Of particular interest is how male students use these devises in the discursive construction of the appraisal resource of Attitude, Graduation and Evaluation. Using over 150 tokens of graffiti, the paper uses a multimodal approach employing notions of re…
Renegotiating cultural practices as a result of HIV in the eastern region of Malawi
A number of studies have shown that HIV awareness is very high among Malawians and yet infection rates are rising. Local cultural practices have been identified as contributing to this contradictory situation. Using data from 12 focus-group discussions collected in Balaka, Zomba, Machinga and Mangochi, the paper explores the reformulation of nine cultural practices as a preventive measure against HIV. The study reveals that cultural practices tha…
Commodification of transformation discourses and post-apartheid institutional identities at three South African universities
Using mission statements from the UCT, UWC and Stellenbosch University (South Africa), we explore how the three universities have rematerialised prior discourses to rebrand their identities as dictated by contemporary national and global aspirations. We reveal how the universities have recontextualised the experiences and discourses of liberation struggle and the new government's post-apartheid social transformation discourses to construct distin…
Language policy and orthographic harmonization across linguistic, ethnic and national boundaries in Southern Africa
The semiotic ecology of linguistic landscapes in rural Zambia
In addressing the dearth in studies on linguistic/semiotic landscapes in oral-language dominant rural communities, we use the notion ofrepurposingto show how people from rural areas of Livingstone and Lusaka in Zambia (South-Central Africa) extend the repertoire of 'signs' to include faded and unscripted signboards, fauna and flora, mounds, dwellings, abandoned structures, skylines, and village and bush paths (with no written names) in narrations…
Nyanja/Chewa Proverbs as Didactics
The paper explores how Nyanja/Chewa proverbs as stores of indigenous knowledge can be used to teach Nyanja/Chewa morphology and grammar, and as a tool to sensitise learners on aspects of academic writing. Using systemic functional linguistics and selected Nyanja/Chewa proverbs, the researchers illustrate how the patterning and the realisation of proverbs as texts in social contexts scaffold interpersonal meanings including appraisal and attitude,…
Diversity and contested social identities in multilingual and multicultural contexts of the University of the Western Cape, South Africa
We draw on Rampton's Crossing: Language and Ethnicity Among Adolescents (2014. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge) notion of ‘crossing’ to explore contestations in ethnolinguistic, cultural and racial affiliations at the University of the Western Cape (UWC), a university built for ‘Coloureds’ in apartheid South Africa, but which rebelled by admitting students of all races and ethnic backgrounds. Using interviews and observation data, we show contestatio…
Sociology (38 works) · Linguistics (33 works) · Multilingual Education and Policy (30 works) · Political science (22 works) · Second Language Learning and Teaching (20 works) · Pedagogy (14 works) · Gender Studies (13 works) · Philosophy (13 works) · Psychology (13 works) · EFL/ESL Teaching and Learning (12 works)