This paper examines poems written in English by Tanzanians from a feminist perspective. Specifically, the paper examines how Tanzanian poets in English handle feminist ideas. It interrogates how the poets address issues of human rights, dignity and equality from a feminist perspective in a predominantly patriarchal society. Through a feminist lens, the paper also delineates how the poets depict the reaction of women against masculinity and often female-gender insensitive traditional cultural beliefs which continue to subjugate and marginalise women. The paper contends that despite being ignored in terms of scholarship, Tanzanian poets in English have been preoccupied with the question of gender equality, which helps to define and place their contribution to literary and gender discourse in Tanzania. The paper concludes that Tanzanian poets in English have rhetorically been fostering the feminist agenda to undermine prevalent patriarchal norms and values. Keywords : Feminists, patriarchy, Tanzanian poets in English, masculinity, identity

The article examines the different factors and contexts which have influenced language policy in Malawi from the time of early missionaries to the present, and highlights the implications and consequences of the language policy—both politically, educationally and socially. However, given the conceptual framework of language policy and the historical, linguistic and cultural disposition of the Malawian society which emphasize education, the article has its main focus on the education system. In addition to intensive literature review and document analysis, semi-structured interviews, mainly with secondary school teachers, were conducted in Mzimba District in July 2014. The study ascertains that current language practices were founded on the framework and philosophies of various missionary groups which have highly influenced and affected the development of both indigenous and foreign languages in Malawi. It further discovered that the long-standing leadership of Hastings Kamuzu Banda has had a huge impact on language attitude, practices and the overall language policy. However, since the election of Bakili Muluzi and the new multi-party democracy, the policy has generally been characterised by linguistic pluralism although not much has been done to make it more favourable to vernacular languages due to lack of resources and improper implementation. The paper concludes that the implementation of language policy in Malawi, like in many other African countries, faces many challenges and is riddled with contradictions whether implicit or explicit. Keywords: Language of Learning and Teaching (LoLT), linguistic justice, vertical communication, language attitude, language policy, linguistic pluralism

Abstract This study examines the phenomenon of language displacement in the family domain. It looks at the languages that are spoken in the families of some educated Nigerians living in Gaborone, the capital city of Botswana. It has been observed that Nigerian families, especially those in diaspora, do not speak their mother tongue at home, preferring to interact and socialize with their children in English. This practice results in the displacement of indigenous languages in the family domain. The study focuses on fourteen (14) Nigerian families at the University of Botswana, who are from three (3) demographically more populous language groups: Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba, and two (2) comparatively demographically smaller language groups (Efik and Degema), in order to find out the languages spoken by these families and ascertain the reason(s) for language choice. The fifty (50) participants in the study were purposively sampled. Two (2) research instruments were used for data collection: the questionnaire and an interview schedule. Data were analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively, using insights from domain analysis. The most significant finding is that native languages are being displaced in most of the homes because most parents in the study preferred to interact with their children in English. The study therefore recommends that educated Nigerian parents should give their children a decided opportunity to be bilingual in both English and the mother tongue in order not to aggravate the endangerment of Nigerian indigenous languages both

800x600 In the English speaking world, the teaching of Shakespeare has historically been lauded as a prerequisite for cultural sophistication, and despite the 21 st Century’s post-colonially sensitive African academia, it remains compulsory on many University curricula. Shakespeare, it sometimes seems, is uniquely transcendent of Western imperialist propaganda of race and culture. Notwithstanding such naivety, when Batswana students study Shakespeare’s poetry, they encounter the confusion of culturally-inscribed root metaphor, or put another way, canonical Western literary symbolism. As the eminent postcolonial critic Edward Said argued, many of the major cultural debates of recent years depend upon deciphering the real meaning of metaphor. Focusing on the teaching of Shakespearean sonnets to Batswana students, this article seeks to interrogate the hermeneutic aporia caused by divergent cultural understandings within several specific types of conventional Western literary symbols. For instance, in the category of “the weather”, the symbolic connotations of the Shakespearean lexis “rain” are contradictory to those understood culturally by Batswana, regardless of whether it is translated into its equivalent of “pula” [rain] or “ go na ” [to rain] in the Setswana language or not. Three of the four instances of “rain” in the sonnets function as a synecdoche for bad weather and thus a symbol of life’s unhappiness – a meaning problematically antithetical to the univocal Batswana understanding of “rain” as a synecdoche for good weather, the harbinger of fertile soil, and hence a symbol of life’s blessings. The result is exegetical confusion, caused fundamentally not by the problems of translation, or even of language per se, but of cultural symbol. Keywords: Sonnet, symbolism, culture, imagery, Shakespeare, Botswana Normal 0 false false false EN-ZA X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:Table Normal; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:Times New Roman,serif;}

Post-independence African societies are victims of challenges of poor quality political leadership. Indeed, the experience of the individual in terms of access to justice and the empowerment of the self are abysmal. Against the above backdrop, critical and interdisciplinary inquiries have been focused on the challenge of restoring the dignity of the citizenry and enforcement of the rights enshrined on various legal provisions and international conventions. One of such attempts is the literature and law interdisciplinary approach at promoting justice. This paper underscores the paradigm of quest for justice in postcolonial Nigerian fiction. The study draws textual references from selected third-generation Nigerian novels represented by Helon Habila’s Waiting for an Angel and Bina Ilagha’s Condolences . The paper demonstrates that, the post-independence fiction corpus is dedicated to enthronement of justice in both stylistic and thematic outlooks. Keywords : Quest for justice, Nigerian fiction, third-generation, interdisciplinary commitment, law and literature

This project attempts to provide one cognitive, that is, schematic, network of all occurrences of the Qurʔānic saʔala ask. The theoretical framework to argue for the proposed network is dual: to argue for a number of pragmatic functions that seem to underlie the choice of saʔala; and to make a strong case that these pragmatic functions motivate cognitive interpretation. The paper, which initially examines distinct interpretations of Qurʔānic saʔala that ensue from a contextual analysis of its occurrences, reveals these pragmatic functions: ṭalab request, ʔistifsār enquiry, muħāsaba interrogation, ʔistifzāz aggravation, ʔiṭmiʔnān concern about well-being, tawbīx reproach, tabkīt rebuke, taqrīr attestation and duʕāʔ prayer. Based on this pragmatic and other related syntactic evidence, it argues that ask cognitively frames, not two, but three central types of cognitively-based construal: information-seeking ask, performative ask and interrogating ask. The paper proposes some conceptual structures trigger some various utilizations of Qurʔānic ask; and argues that they all interlink into one schematic network that enables readers, translators and interpreters of the Holy Qurʔān to account, in a natural manner, for the verb's execution of these pragmatic functions. Finally, the findings and their theoretical implications are outlined. Keywords : Arabic linguistics, cognitive semantics, linguistic pragmatics & Qurʔānic interpretation & translation