The incorporation of corpus linguistics (CL) methods within critical discourse analysis (CDA) has increasingly gathered momentum over the last decade. This paper surveys studies using this triangulated framework, drawing on a database of 121 studies collected from three citation indexes: Social Sciences Citation Index, Arts and Humanities Citation Index, and Scopus. It presents a meta-analysis of these studies focussing on four variables, namely their chronological development, the domains of engagement, the issues that have been topicalised, and the area/regional coverage of the studies. In particular, the paper accounts for the factors that have contributed to the popularity of corpus-based CDA in the last decade as an approach to discourse analysis, provides insights into the evolution of this eclectic approach, and anticipates the future of the framework by offering suggestions. The paper concludes that corpus-based CDA presents both discourse analysts and corpus linguists with a robust methodology to tackle research questions bordering on discursive reflections of social issues and to identify new sites of public discourse for systematic analysis.
Address terms and reference terms are common but key naming behaviours that are enacted in various social interactions. Thus, unsurprisingly, they have received much attention in sociolinguistic research since the 1960s. The use of these two communicative acts in the academic setting, however, seems under-researched. This study, therefore, investigated address terms and reference terms students used for faculty in a public university in Ghana, utilizing Scott’s (1990) sociological theory on resistance to domination. An ethnographic as well as a triangulated approach, comprising participant and non-participant observations, semi-structured interview, and introspection, was used in the study. Analysis of the data revealed three major findings. First, students used three principal forms of address, namely titles, kinship terms, and nicknames for faculty. Second, students used titles, personal names, and nicknames as the major reference terms for faculty. Finally, address terms and reference terms functioned as symbols of domination and resistance to domination as well as markers of identities which were co-constructed by students. The study has implications for theory, intercultural communication, and further research.
Following insights from stylistic studies on European and American literature, as well as few earlier attempts on African literature, there has been a recent growing interest in the stylistic analysis of the African novel. The present study is meant to contribute to this growing literature by exploring Achebe's Anthills of the Savannah, primarily from a systemic functional linguistics perspective. Critics of the novel have emphasized that it represents Achebe's most articulate ideology on the sociopolitical situation of postcolonial Africa, in general, and Nigeria, in particular. The present study sheds new meaning on the thematic concern of the novel by exploring the interaction between narrative situation, transitivity patterning, and symbolism, on the one hand, and the characterization of Chris (one of the protagonists) and the themes of struggle and change, on the other hand. The study demonstrates that the systematic variation in narrative situations and transitivity patterns in which Chris is cast across key passages in the plot of the narrative show a transformation in his character, from powerlessness and ineffectiveness through perplexity and fear to self-reformation and bravery. This narrative and linguistic configuration of Chris's characterization, together with the symbolic intervention he makes in saving a girl from abuse towards the end of the novel, realizes the theme of struggle and change. Through Chris, Achebe urges the enlightened but apathetic citizen to rise up and transform his society through struggle. The study has implications for studies on Anthills of the Savannah, stylistic analysis, and further research. It particularly shows that linguistic analysis and the tools of literary criticism can complement each other in the interpretation of literature.
Systemic functional theory embodies a multilingual perspective to language from its earliest formulation. However, it was not until the last two decades that descriptions of languages other than English, particularly in the light of language typology, garnered much interest among scholars working with systemic theory. The objective of the present study is to survey the growing literature in this field. The survey consists of two main parts. The first part discusses theoretical developments in relation to language description and typology. The second part presents a meta-analysis of empirical studies in the field. The meta-analysis examines the historical progress in systemic typology and description of non-Anglo languages, the coverage of descriptions in terms of areal and genetic language families, mode of publication and, finally, methodological procedures employed by the studies. Challenges arising from these analytical decisions are also examined. The motivation for the study is to provide a state of the art review of the field in order to guide new descriptions and draw implications for further research in functional language typology, in general, and systemic typology, in particular.
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