This study explores the motivation for usage, benefits, and strategies to overcoming the challenges visually impaired people face in their Facebook interactions. Using in-depth interviews and a narrative analysis of five visually impaired students at the University of Cape Coast, we found that Facebook usage among visually impaired students, although unique in experiences and gratifications, has promoted the formation and strengthening of their social bonds in the community of visually impaired people and their significant other. However, the visually impaired students face significant challenges with interpreting the pictures and videos they encounter on Facebook because screen reader software currently in use cannot interpret graphical content forcing them to rely on their sighted friends which have created independence and privacy issues. Despite these challenges, Facebook remains a powerful communication tool for visually impaired students in interacting with both their disabled and non-disabled friends whom they would normally shy away from in person.

An abstract represents the summary of a piece of writing. Genre and metadiscourse analytical studies could highlight move variations in abstracts. The study aimed to investigate variations in the academic conference abstracts of the hard and soft sciences with a focus on rhetorical structure/sequence and the use of hedges/boosters. A corpus of sixty (60) abstracts was used for the study; this comprised 30 abstracts each from the soft sciences and the hard sciences. The abstracts were selected from two conference proceedings. The framework of rhetorical moves for abstracts comprising introduction (I), purpose (P), method (M), product (Pr), and the conclusion was used for the analysis of the rhetorical sequence of the abstracts. The abstracts were further analysed for their use of boosters and hedges. From the results, 43.3% of hard sciences abstracts (HSA) and 33.3% of soft science abstracts (SSA) followed the framework used. Furthermore, purpose, method, product, and conclusion were obligatory moves whereas the introduction move was optional in the SSA. On the other hand, only method and product moves were obligatory with the rest being conventional in SSA. The most dominant move sequence for HSA was I-P-M-Pr-C (46.7%) followed by I-M-Pr-C (17%) and I-P-M-Pr (17%) whereas P-M-Pr-C (43.3%) was the most dominant sequence followed by I-P-M-Pr-C (33.3%) for the SSA. The hard sciences abstracts and the soft sciences abstracts do not show marked differences in the authors’ use of boosters and hedges. Pedagogical implications of the findings of this study are useful particularly for academic conference applicants, academic writing instruction as well as advancing genre and metadiscourse research in conference abstracts.<p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/soc/0044/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

Linguistic pragmatics studies have incorporated sociolinguistic perspectives of pragmatic variations in computer-mediated massages, and in spoken and written interactions. Rather than adhering to a strict first order participant constructed conceptions or a second order analyst constructed conceptions of politeness, this paper argues that each of them could be used to inform the other through variant methodological approaches. This paper interrogated the influence of organisational structure and cultural expectations in the contents of administrative discourses to signal (im)politeness from two institutions: University of Education, Winneba and the Ghana Police Service, Winneba. Situated in 36 Politeness in Administrative Discourse: Some Perspectives from Two ~ Ting-Toomey's face negotiation theory and Fraser's views on politeness strategies, this paper attempted to bridge the gaps between three pragmatic subfields: linguistic politeness research, organisational communication, and institutional communication pragmatics. Data was gathered through discourse completion tests, focus group discussions, observations, and a content analysis of selected written documents. One significant finding from the study was that differences exist in pragmatic variations: lexical, syntactic, and textual resources to mark (im)politeness in both institutions. The study recommends the choice of politeness strategies to be informed by the structure and cultural expectations of organisations to help reduce conflicts and confrontations inherent in human exchanges.

This study investigates politeness in parliamentary discourse in Ghana. Using politeness theory as framework and the parliamentary Hansard as source of data, the study examines the politeness strategies employed by parliamentary actors, the implications of the frequency of the usage of the politeness strategies, and how the Standing Orders of Parliament determine the choice of a politeness strategy. Findings of the study show that political actors in the Parliament of Ghana use the bald on-record, the positive, the negative and the off-record politeness strategies in varied proportions. The study further reveals that the negative politeness strategy is the most frequently used politeness strategy with the Speaker being the highest user of the negative and the bald on-record politeness strategies. Again, the study found out that the off-record politeness strategy is the least used strategy. The Majority Members in Parliament use the highest frequency of the positive politeness strategies while the Minority Members of Parliament employ more negative politeness strategies. The study concludes that parliamentary discourse in Ghana employs more of the direct explicit polite expressions than the indirect implicit expressions of politeness. The study recommends that researchers should pay critical attention to the politeness phenomenon in parliamentary discourse.