1,720,958 research outputs found
Ethnographic analysis of round characters’ Onomastics in Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman
No full textThis study examines Wole Soyinka‟s Death and the King’s Horseman from an ethnography of communication‟s point of view. The work is designed to break the silence on the dearth of onomastic studies on Soyinka. The playwright infuses his novel with onomastic sensibility such that the names reflect different socio-cultural backgrounds, and, in turn, stress the themes of death and scapegoatism raised in the text. The study further reveals that conversation genre is a major tool which the author has manipulated successfully in exercising his naming power over his characters. In addition, it is clear that informing is the principal illocutionary act underlying all the names. These therefore imply that the playwright is both conversing with and informing his reader/audience through his naming strategies. This is so because there is economy of words in naming and, oftentimes, more is being communicated than said through the few strands of letters woven together as a name. The study finally affirms that names are “identity markers that depend on established convention” (Adams 2009, p. 82) and “whatever difference exists between literature and life can be explained as a difference of the contexts in which naming takes place” (Izevbaye 1981, p. 168).Keywords: Wole Soyinka, horseman, ethnography, onomastics
ETHNOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS OF ROUND CHARACTERS’ ONOMASTICS IN WOLE SOYINKA’S DEATH AND THE KING’S HORSEMAN
Get PDFThis study examines Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman from an ethnography of communication’s point of view. The work is designed to break the silence on the dearth of onomastic studies on Soyinka. The playwright infuses his novel with onomastic sensibility such that the names reflect different socio-cultural backgrounds, and, in turn, stress the themes of death and scapegoatism raised in the text. The study further reveals that conversation genre is a major tool which the author has manipulated successfully in exercising his naming power over his characters. In addition, it is clear that informing is the principal illocutionary act underlying all the names. These therefore imply that the playwright is both conversing with and informing his reader/audience through his naming strategies. This is so because there is economy of words in naming and, oftentimes, more is being communicated than said through the few strands of letters woven together as a name. The study finally affirms that names are “identity markers that depend on established convention” (Adams 2009, p. 82) and “whatever difference exists between literature and life can be explained as a difference of the contexts in which naming takes place” (Izevbaye 1981, p. 168). Keywords: Wole Soyinka, horseman, ethnography, onomastic
Twins' Naming among the Yoruba Nigerians: A Sociolinguistic Study
No full textTwinning is a common phenomenon among the Yoruba Nigerians. The birth of twins is highly significant because it marks an onomastic revolution (or turn around) in the family. The naming system of such a family changes automatically, because recent names evolve, older ones are either modified or dropped outright, and those that follow use the twins’ names as a reference point. Such (new) names are patterned after the ‘ibeji’ (twins), where ‘ibi’ denotes the act of giving birth and ‘eji’ denotes two. For the twins’ siblings and their parents, the arrival of ibeji is a mark of social deference, hence many families pray to God for twins.La naissance de jumeaux est un phénomène très commun chez les Yorubas du Nigéria. La venue de jumeaux y provoque un effet très significatif puisque cela marque une révolution (ou même un renversement) onomastique dans le système de dénomination familiale. Celui-ci s’en trouve modifié automatiquement, car les noms récents évoluent d’un coup alors que les plus anciens se trouvent changés ou tout simplement abandonnés puis ceux qui suivent en dépendent par référence. Selon le patron ayant cours, ces « nouveaux » noms incorporent le terme ‘ibeji’, soit ‘ibi’ dénotant l’accouchement et ‘eji’ signifiant deux ou paire. Pour la fratrie des jumeaux et leurs parents, l’arrivée d'ibeji constitue une marque de déférence sociale, donc bien des familles prient pour que Dieu leur accorde des jumeaux
A Socio-pragmatic Study of Characters’ Names in Wole Soyinka’s The Strong Breed
Get PDFThis study attempts an onomastic analysis of Wole Soyinka’s The Strong Breed from a socio-pragmatic perspective. Six names of the major characters in the text are selected for the study. They are given an in-depth analysis based on Halliday’s (1978) socio-semiotic variables model among others. The study indicates that naming (by Soyinka) transcends the illocutionary act of labeling to bring into play the social indices of occupation, age, geography, ethnicity and religion. Out of five variables examined, religion has the highest frequency. This, therefore, proves the religious/scapegoat theme stressed in the work. The study also indicates that names are meaning potentials and a good understanding of the author’s use of names is a great key that unlocks his perceived difficult text(s)
A Sociolinguistic Study of Fagunwa/Soyinka’s The Forest of a Thousand Daemons
Get PDFThis study takes a sociolinguistic approach to analyze The Forest of a Thousand Daemons, a translation of the Yoruba text, Ogboju Ode Ninu Igbo Irunmale (1938) which was authored by Daniel Olorunfemi Fagunwa, the greatest Yoruba novelist and translated by Wole Soyinka, a literary icon cum Nobel laureate. The work is premised on the fact that many literary and linguistic attempts at Fagunwa’s work have failed to benchmark the text with the speech act theory and the VARIES model simultaneously as we have done in this study. Fifteen excerpts from the text served as our data. Each datum is subjected to content and quantitative analyses based on relevant sociolinguistic variables of vocation (occupation), sex, age, religion, geography (ethnicity), age, education and socio-economic status. The data were further dissected according to the speech act theory by Austin (1962) in a bid to ascertain the validity of their illocutionary force(s). The study indicates that social institutions affect language (choice and use) a great deal and language, in turn, performs different illocutionary acts among various heterogeneous social groups in a speech community like the Yoruba, which is replicated in the text.
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
Politeness Phenomenon in Abiku Names Among the Yoruba Africans: A Pragmatic Study
Get PDFThis study attempts a pragmatic study of Abiku names from the face act theory’s perspective.The thrust of the work is to establish that certain politeness acts are either violated or obeyed in the Yoruba naming systems of Abiku children; thereby proving the economy of words in names and that more is communicated than said within the little strands of letters. Ten Abiku names are selected and analyzed using the pragmatic principle of face act. The study indicates that names, (in particular, Abiku names) in the traditional African Yoruba setting, transcend ordinary labeling to historicize, socialize, spiritualize and influence people psychologically.Key words: Abiku; Yoruba; Face acts; Saworo; Life cycle; Anthroponym; Deat
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
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