Granting equal opportunities to non-standard and standard language learners is unfair practice, since these two language groups are expected to achieve the same outcomes at the end of their school career. Learners who speak a non-standard variety of a language are at a disadvantage in classrooms that promote the standard language and face struggles such as differences in pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, syntax, orthography, and discourse style. The current study exposed the challenges Mpondo-speaking learners face in learning the Xhosa standard language through the eyes of their teachers and subject advisors. The study was qualitative and a case study design was followed. Three Xhosa subject advisors and three Xhosa teachers were purposively sampled to provide data for the study. The findings showed that Mpondo-speaking learners were not exposed to the Xhosa standard language outside of the classroom context. The results also indicated that since Mpondo is a language that learners learn before going to school, it conflicted with Xhosa vocabulary and complicated the life of Mpondo-speaking learners when learning the new language, Xhosa. The results also showed that Mpondo-speaking learners received penalties in terms of marks allocation. They were punished for using their mother tongue. Finally, the findings revealed that Xhosa teachers and Xhosa subject advisors were of the view that using a dialect and standard language simultaneously in the classroom could minimise the challenges experienced by Mpondo learners.

Keeping in mind the recent COVID-19 pandemic, this paper builds on a study that examined how a major twentieth century South African newspaper utilised outbreaks of bubonic plague to propagate racial stereotypes in Johannesburg. The data were gathered from the Rand Daily Mail archive database and analysed thematically. Recent years have seen the emergence of new disciplines, such as historical pragmatics, along with calls for historians to move beyond collecting documentation into textual analysis. Thus, the researchers reanalysed selected data using systemic functional grammar to discover how the communicative intention was achieved. The research follows a descriptive qualitative method. It was found that the newspaper played a major role in the promotion of racial segregation. However, at times its reporting was nuanced. Understanding how past media made use of events and discourses to influence the public and achieve political goals can serve to inform the present and illuminate the future.

This article examines the linguistic landscape of Kampala (Uganda) by analysing the language dynamics that play out through shop signs. Engaging with data collected through photographs and interviews, this article draws on three interrelated theoretical perspectives: the markedness of languages, the symbolic power of languages, and good reasons for language use. The main findings suggest that the languages used on shop signs in Uganda are informed largely by attitudes towards English being a practical commercial language. Moreover, English is considered by shop owners to be the language of “class,” power, and a marker of the “educated” and therefore occupies the largest space on the shop signs. As such, the use of English on shop signs does not imply literacy or proficiency in the language, but rather forms a prestigious-symbolic identity.

There has recently been a significant amount of interest in the study of police written discourse, particularly in the areas of monolingualism, warnings, and identifying deception. This article draws attention to the serious—yet unresolved—issue of unintelligibility in police reports. It gives insight into the grammatical and lexical complexities seen in these narrative reports, as well as how they affect meaning. A qualitative research technique was used to investigate the phenomenon. A collection of police reports from multiple criminal incidents—assault, intimidation, and crimen injuria—was examined using the theoretical lens of error analysis. The analysis involved error identification, classification, and description. The results show that the reports contained several inaccuracies that placed a heavy interpretive load on readers. These results are expected to increase police awareness of the role of language in presenting meaning and evidence. It is envisioned that this will enable police to write with accuracy, thereby solving cases more reliably and effectively.

Communication gaps between members of the legal profession and people outside the profession still leave a lot to be explained. This study investigates the technicality of written legal documents by studying 10 Nigerian Supreme Court rulings, specifically the outcome of cases of human rights violations by the Nigerian military regime. Nine purposively selected excerpts were analysed using generic structure potential elements. The analysis generated nine elements, five of which are obligatory and the other four optional. The obligatory elements are Review of Lower Court Proceedings, Reproduction of Issues, Reference to Authorities, Application of Authorities, and Final Verdict. The optional elements are Review of Facts, Reproduction of Pleadings, Analysis of Evidence, and Analysis of Argument. This study concludes that generic structure potential is a useful theory for demystifying complex texts.

This study examined the Yoruba nation secessionist agitation from the viewpoint of stance and ideology in its discursive engagement on three popular Nigerian virtual communities: Nairaland, Gistmania, and Naijaloaded. Data were subjected to the theoretical and analytical paradigms of appraisal framework and critical discourse analysis. Two voices were identified in the study: the anti-Yoruba nation and the pro-Yoruba nation voices. The anti-Yoruba nation voice projected three ideologies: reformist, conservativist, and pessimist, while the pro-Yoruba nation voice projected separatist and arbitrationist ideologies. These ideological constructs were indexed by overlapping instances of appraisal subsystems and discursive strategies of perspectivisation, nomination, negative evaluative attribution, depersonalising metaphors, intensification, and intertextuality. Most participants suppressed antithetical stances to project an authorial ideological stance on the secessionist movement. Given the divisive nature of the secessionist stance, inflammatory and aggressive expressions as dominant discursive patterns are inimical to the efforts to promote inter-ethnic harmony, patriotism, and national integration.

Metaphors in policies can have a significant effect on how ideas are conceptualised and concepts are framed. By investigating the metaphors in a specific recent language policy framework, insights into the conceptualisation of language and related concepts can be provided. After identifying all the relevant metaphors, they were categorised into themes and the themes were described with some illustrative examples. The most prominent metaphor theme in the policy is HUMAN, where languages are portrayed as humans. Languages are also depicted as having bodies (EMBODIMENT), and as being physical entities (PHYSICAL) and plants (NATURE). Terminology as money (FINANCIAL) also features. The implications of these metaphors are discussed in the conclusion.

This article investigates the use of euphemisms in mitigating prohibited expressions in three Mabia (Gur) languages: Dagbani, Farefare (also known as Gurenε) and Kusaal. In the daily interactions of the Mabia people, they avoid using certain expressions, which are unmentionable in most contexts. These include the expressions for snakes and snakebite, sexual intercourse and genitalia, and death. The mention of the explicit terms for these expressions is face-threatening in Mabia society and can incur various forms of negative social consequences. Thus, instead of using these taboo expressions, speakers employ euphemisms as taboo-avoidance strategies; these euphemistic expressions oil social cohesion and indicate speakers’ communicative competence. The data used in this study were mainly gathered from primary sources. However, we augmented some of the primary data of Dagbani with some secondary sources drawn from N. A. Salifu's (2012) PhD thesis. We employ politeness theory and ethnography of communication as analytical lenses.

This study examines the relational work strategies that are deployed for the maintenance of social harmony, cooperation, and social equilibrium and how these are (mis)handled such that they result in breakdown in haggling exchanges between buyers and sellers in five purposively selected open markets selected from Port Harcourt city, Nigeria. Fifty-six exchanges (between five and twenty taken from each of the markets) involving two or more sellers/buyers in an encounter were recorded using an Android 7.0 phone. The exchanges were analysed with Locher and Watts’s theoretical perspective on relational work. The data showed that polite, impolite, and non-polite strategies were used by the sellers/buyers to achieve conviviality and favourable negotiation outcomes. Some of the strategies clearly contained face-threats, others were aimed at blatant face damage, and some were deployed for face-saving. The study established that no utterance is inherently “polite” or “impolite” without consideration of its context.