Legon Journal of the Humanities

“Coat and Uncoat!”: Satire and socio-political commentary in My Book of #GHCoats

Kwabena Opoku-Agyemang — Mon, 11 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Research related to creative expression has examined the form and nature of satire in both oral and print poetry in West Africa but is yet to adequately consider digital poetry. This essay examines Nana Awere Damoah’s My Book of #GHCoats, arguably the first example of African conceptual poetry. A collation of humorous fictional quotes by Ghanaian Facebook users, #GHCoats allows for analysis the context of socio-political satire. In exploring the presence and utility of satire in #GHCoats, this essay analyzes the features of conceptual poetry as used via social media to present digital poetry as a developing force of creative expression.

Authorship, place and voice in research: A transitivity analysis of selected African and Western journals

Alimsiwen E. Ayaawan, Bassey E. Antia — Mon, 11 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The concept of voice has become crucial within academic discourse, where texts constitute sites for enacting identity. In spite of the recognition that expressing authorial voice in writing constitutes a salient feature of academic writing, various studies have pointed out that there appears to be a fair amount of trepidation when it comes to the expression of authorial voice in academic texts, especially so for L2 writers. The argument has been that L2 writers are likely to suppress authorial voice in writing. This argument identifies the L2 status as the underlying cause of the lack of voice in writing. This study examines the relationship between the expression of authorial voice and the cultural location of the journals in which articles are published. It examines authorial voice in the methodology sections of research articles published in Western and African journals. Methodology sections extracted from 60 journal articles from two broad disciplines – Arts and Social Sciences constituted the corpus for the study. Using Halliday’s transitivity framework, the study revealed that within the methodology section, there is a general tendency to diminish authorial voice and that this is reflected in the nature of first-person pronoun usage and in the distribution of the transitivity patterns across the corpus. The study suggests that the cultural location of journals does play a subtle role in the expression of authorial voice and presence in the methodology sections of RAs. There are no deep divergences between the two categories.

The narrative discourse of a bilingual talking drum: The case of the Dagomba timpani

Fusheini Hudu — Mon, 11 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This paper analyses the discourse structure of the language of the timpani (a single-membrane goblet-shaped drum) of the Dagomba. Using data from video recordings of predawn performances and interviews with the drummers, it shows that the timpani performance is an elaborate and structured narrative discourse that blends panegyrics, prayers and exhortations directed at chiefs, citizens, spiritual and historical beings. The use of the timpani is a borrowed tradition from the Asante in the 1700s, along with many aspects of Asante cultural communication, including Akan as a dominant language of encoding. During its centuries of adaptation, it has incorporated aspects of the culture of the Dagomba, including the production of speech in Dagbani during lengthy performances, making it a unique bilingual talking drum. The paper shows that this instrumentally encoded bilingual narrative exhibits the discourse properties of oral or written text and can be subjected to the same formal discourse analysis.

Turn taking in Ghanaian judicial discourse

Samuel Gyasi Obeng, Akua Campbell — Mon, 11 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Turn construction and turn allocation in social interactions have been studied from different theoretical and methodological perspectives, the most important and debated ones being conversation analysis and (critical) discourse analysis. Even though turn taking has been studied in informal conversations in Ghanaian languages, nothing has been done on turn taking in Ghanaian judicial discourse. This paper examines turn taking management in Ghanaian Western-based judicial interaction. Working within the conversational analytic framework and language and power, the paper investigated how speaker turns were managed, especially, how turn allocations were shaped by speaker roles and identities in judicial domains. Data for the study consisted of transcripts of nine hours of naturally occurring tape-recorded Ghanaian courtroom interactions comprising civil and criminal cases. The data were recorded in Accra and Koforidua between November 2018 and February 2019 and consisted of sixteen court proceedings and seventy-three speakers. Results indicated that turn allocation was managed mostly by the judges with the other court participants, especially the attorneys and interpreters, occasionally self-selecting or selecting others, mainly, the disputants. Also identified was that not all linguistic resources for turn taking were equally accessible to all participants. In conclusion, the identities and roles of the court actors determine and constrain the available linguistic and pragmatic tools needed for effective turn taking management.

‘Righting’ the wrong: Text revision in ESL students’ composing processes in senior high schools in Greater Accra, Ghana

Emmanuel Lauren Oblie — Mon, 11 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Revision is a fundamental strategy in second language learners’ text composition primarily because it guarantees congruence between these learners’ translated texts and their writing intentions as they effortfully compose in a nonnative language. As such, as part of a larger study, the current research explores the revision behaviours of learners in English composition in senior high schools in Greater Accra, Ghana. Twenty-four students were purposively sampled to write a timed argumentative essay under think-aloud conditions. The data were analysed using Conijn et al.'s (2021) tagset of revision as an analytical framework. The findings show unique and general characteristics of the trigger, spatial location, sequence, orientation, evaluation, action and linguistic domains of the students’ revision behaviours. Also, the findings reveal significant weaknesses in the revision behaviours of the participants and offer insights into aspects of their overall composing competence. From the findings, English language teachers in Ghana are encouraged to adopt revision-strategy instruction and also develop the cognitive and metacognitive skills of their students.

Online foreign language learning at the tertiary level: Lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic

Benedicta Adokarley Lomotey, Ildiko Csajbok-Twerefou — Mon, 11 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic caused a recourse to online teaching in many parts of the world, and for several disciplines, including foreign language learning. Although quite an amount of research has been conducted on Online Foreign Language Learning (OFLL), issues relating to OFLL in philology programs have received relatively little attention. Furthermore, differences in students’ experiences according to the foreign language of study remain under-researched. The current paper addresses this gap using both quantitative and qualitative methods. A survey was conducted among one thousand, one hundred and five [1,105] (former) students of an African university. The researchers examined the new methods applied in the teaching of Arabic, Chinese, French, Kiswahili, Russian, and Spanish as foreign languages at the research setting during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study investigated the challenges encountered by participants, participants’ perceptions of OFLL, and its impact on their performance. The findings showed that challenges encountered by participants included issues such as inadequate physical interaction in the foreign language and problems with internet connectivity. However, the findings also suggest that OFLL has certain advantages such as the reduction of anxiety and the increase of foreign language enjoyment among learners. These findings suggest that OFLL has some benefits which foreign language institutions should make good use of even beyond times of crisis. Measures to achieve this include the usage of efficient online learning management software and the provision of digital training programs for students and teachers.