A Cross-Cultural Study of Objects of Complimenting in Western and Armenian Communities (Published)
The speech act of complimenting in Western and in some Eastern speech communities has been an object of extensive comparative investigation. However, the study of complimenting in Trans-Caucasian speech communities, the Armenian community in particular, remains less-investigated. The aim of the paper is to indicate the objects of complimenting in Armenian community. The analysis shows that taken in general terms the objects of complimenting in Western and Armenian societies do not differ greatly, but the accents are fairly different which can be explained by the mentality and perception of social values that each society displays. Whereas in Western societies the accent is on appearance and abilities, in Armenian community the greater part of compliments refers to the ability and performance, family members, especially children and hospitality. As far as appearance is concerned, the attention is focused mainly on new looks and new possessions (hairstyle, dress, earrings, etc.).
Keywords: Speech Act, communication, compliment, politeness strategy, praise, topic of compliment
Net Generation, Norm Generators and English in Nigeria’s Publishing Ecosystem (Published)
Online communication has seen the emergence of those who may be called ‘norm generators’. Norm generators are producing changes in social practices and linguistic norms with implication on language use. The major culprit is English Language in Nigeria. Using data from online media platforms, this paper examines the emerging culture of netspeak within the Nigerian digital space and how it affects the various aspects of the publishing ecosystem. Findings from the corpus analysis of the data reveal that changes in the linguistic norms of English affect issues, such as writing, editing, typesetting and formatting of manuscripts. The paper concludes that if adequate care is not taken to harmonise and reinforce the conventional norms and practice, variations in the emerging English norms within the Nigerian digital space and publishing ecosystem will negatively affect proper English usage. Above all, it will adversely affect the quality of publishing generally in the ecosystem.
Keywords: Digital Literacy, Editing, Publishing Ecosystem, Social media, communication
Improving Teaching of English Language through ICT for National Curriculum Consciousness: Limitations of Teachers in Nigeria (Published)
In Nigeria today, almost all human endeavours have imbibed the culture of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to boost the process of activities, but education sector is yet to optimally utilize the multidimensional opportunities inherent in computer use in pedagogy as it is done mostly in the western world. This review has identified the use of computer by developing software to teach English language contents. Teachers’ motivation has also been located as one of the indices that can improve teachers’ utilization of ICT facilities to achieve the pedagogical goals. Lack of existing localised programme and software plus dearth of computer in Schools, coupled with insufficient knowledge of computer use among practitioners have been identified as limiting factors to the use of ICT by Teachers. It is recommended that the training and retraining of teachers on ICT is very pertinent in achieving optimal goal of ICT utilization among teachers in Nigerian Schools.
Keywords: English Language, Information, Technology, communication