1,720,955 research outputs found
Dichotomies and Dynamics in Linguistic Pan-Africanism
Get PDFThe language question in Pan-Africanism is as complex as the tortuous historical journey of the black continent is. The age-long efforts at arriving at a single or a very few pan-African languages have been confronted with strong and undeniable realities. This paper examines the complexities, through tree major areas of: the language question itself, the multiple nationalism consciousness, and the centrality of language to not only identity but also development. It concludes that, varied and mountainous as the dichotomies and dynamics of linguistic pan-Africanism may appear, the fact remains that Africa may not get its developmental efforts right until the language issue, vis-Ã -vis education, science and technology, is fixed.
Keywords: Language question, dichotomies, dynamics, indigenous languages, development
Humour and Irony in Kourouma’s Novels
Get PDFIn a flavour of humour, Kourouma draws a trajectory of the lives of his heroes to portray the irony of life in each case. From Fama in Les soleils des indépendances to Birahima in Allah n’est pas obligé, including the King of Soba in Monnè, outrages et défis, as well as President Koyaga in En attendant le vote des bêtes sauvages, the life story of the protagonist in each case ended the opposite way to their initial expectations. This is in spite of all their efforts put in, both in the overt and in the covert, to achieve target. And in all the cases, the protagonists kept hoping for the best until their eventual ironic turn of events. This is the thrust of irony and humour in the four novels which this study has highlighted: the irony of the disillusionment being experienced by Africans as against the high hopes and expectations promised by the independence of the1960s.
Keywords: Kourouma, humour, irony, satire, African literature
The Challenges of Globalization to Linguistic Pan-Africanism and African Development
Get PDFThe latest but not the least of the challenges that confront efforts in linguistic pan-Africanism is that of globalization. This study underlines the importance of language in development and highlights efforts being made at different levels towards achieving linguistic pan-Africanism. While being conscious of the dangers of narrow nationalism, the study recognizes a much more damaging danger in the imperialistic and neo-colonial phenomenon called globalization. Working in concert with multinational and world organizations such as World Bank, International Monitory Fund (IMF), World Trade Organization (WTO), globalization seeks to build a world system in which languages of lesser economies and powers have no relevance. Africa would have to navigate through these realities as it seeks to arrive at pan-African language(s) that would be truly African and serve as springboard for its much needed development.
Keywords: Language, pan-Africanism, Globalization, Development, Nationalism
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
- …
