Localization of Terms Associated with the Covid-19 Pandemic from English to Arabic: A Study of Linguistic Means and Machine Translation Techniques (Published)
The emergency conditions experienced by the world during the COVID-19 pandemic have led to radical changes in both the lexicographic and semantic levels of the Arabic language. As with other languages around the world, Arabic had to keep up with the rapid development and massive flow of information and to be able to localize the terminology associated with the pandemic in the English language as the dominant global language, especially in the scientific field. The period of the COVID-19 virus outbreak and its accompanying effects and developments witnessed the production of a huge number of newly coined terms in the English language, which posed a major challenge for Arabic translators and required them to search for linguistic means to localize these new terms, ranging from derivation and borrowing to translation and the use of machine translation techniques based on artificial intelligence programs.”
Keywords: COVID-19, Localization, linguistic means, neologies, technical means.
An Analysis of COVID-19 Poster of the Ghana Health Service: A Semiotic Approach (Published)
The COVID-19 virus is a new virus linked to the same family of viruses as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). The virus is primarily spread between people during close contact, most often via small droplets produced by coughing, sneezing, and talking. The droplets usually fall to the ground or onto surfaces rather than travelling through air over long distances. Transmission may also occur through smaller droplets that are able to stay suspended in the air for longer periods of time. Less commonly, people may become infected by touching a contaminated surface and then touching their face. A number of people in Ghana are continually being infected on daily basis and as such the government has made efforts to reduce the spread and rate of infections through one of its agencies, Ghana Health Service under the Ministry of Health by educating the general public to observe the safety protocols through a COVID-19 poster advertisement. The rationale for choosing COVID-19 poster for the study is because posters are multimodal texts that combine textual and visual modes to educate the Ghanaian populace to adhere to the COVID-19 safety protocols. Textual modes refer to the words written on the selected poster while visual modes refer to the non-verbal signs displayed in the image. The objective of this study is to investigate how semiotic and textual modes are exploited to control and direct the attitude of the reader towards the images. The educative poster of the Ghana Health Service was subjected to a qualitative analysis using Barthes (1998) Semiotic Theory. This research looks at the visual and textual modes of the COVID-19 poster used at vantage points in public places and in various institutions. A descriptive research design was employed for this study as the most suitable for the attainment of the study objectives. The findings show that COVID-19 poster generally deliver a message that together we can defeat COVID-19 by following the safety protocols and obeying government regulations. And also, by observing and analysing the verbal and visual signs in the poster, each of these images and verbal signs are designed to convey an idea or a message, and communicate to readers to have a special effect on them. Again, this study establishes that the visual design as visual language is culturally specific and that the poster represents our environment; social interaction that is the interaction between the producer of the image and the reader.
Citation: Eric Aning (2021) An Analysis of COVID-19 Poster of the Ghana Health Service: A Semiotic Approach, European Journal of English Language and Literature Studies, Vol.9, No.6, pp.56-68
Keywords: COVID-19, Visual modes, multimodal, semiotic modes, textual modes
The effectiveness of culture on EFL learners during COVID-19 (Published)
This article aims to investigate the relationships between culture and Language. The motivation for this article is driven from the need to understand how culture plays an effective role in learning EFL through suitable specific instructional strategies. One of the educators ‘ attempts is to take the advantage of the technology to invest the culture to get effective learning of the English Language through E-tools. And this serves and support education in the age of COVID-19.Language is the backbone of communication. It is more than vocabularies and grammar, it comprises cultural, social, and communicative settings that were considered the fruitful environment to learn the language. Teaching cultural content via E-tools is a unique method of teaching the English Language in the crisis to bridge the educational gaps in the students’ learning in the E- space of learning. There are cultural issues that are deserved to be learned and adopting them in the educational system for widening the pupils ‘minds toward learning English as a second language. Those issues could be implemented by suitable teaching strategies to let students learn professionally as well as to overcome the cultural challenges in light of COVID-19.
Keywords: COVID-19, Culture, Language, Second Language
Stylistic Analysis of President Buhari’s Addresses of Nigerians in the Face of Covid-19 Pandemic (Published)
The role of language in any speech event cannot be overemphasized. Language is the vehicle through which political speeches are carried out. This study investigated two speeches of President Muhammadu Buhari during the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic to ascertain how he has employed language, the linguistic elements used and the stylistic and pragmatic imports. Using the theoretical framework of stylistics, the researcher found out that Buhari tactfully used words to address Nigerians on Covid-19 and stressed the measures to be taken to contain the spread of the virus. To achieve the pragmatic effect of his speeches, he used lexical devices such as transitional makers, repetition, alliteration, assonance, pronouns to project the theme/subject matter of the language discourse. It was found out that the speaker used coordination to denote relationship of grammatical units, show contrast and as a re-statement of what he said earlier. The speaker repeatedly used coordination in his speeches and this is commendable since in language, identical items may be conjoined in an indefinite number of times. The analysis revealed that president is committed in combating the coronavirus pandemic that is ravaging his nation.
Keywords: COVID-19, Epidemiology, Language, Stylistics, medical register, pandemic