Browsing by Author "Hurst, Ellen"

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
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    A comparative analysis of metaphorical expressions used by rural and urban Ndebele speakers: the contribution of S'ncamtho
    (2018) Ndlovu, Sambulo; Hurst, Ellen
    This thesis explores language expansion and change through metaphorical expressions that originate with urban youth varieties. It focuses on the impact of S'ncamtho, an Ndebele-based urban youth variety of Bulawayo in Zimbabwe along the variables of rural/urban, sex, age and level of education. The thesis uses Cognitive Metaphor Theory to build on research on metaphor in urban youth varieties to answer the overarching question; how is S'ncamtho impacting Ndebele? It confirms that sex and sexuality, music and partying, love and relationships are popular themes in S'ncamtho. The thesis identifies relexicalisation and replacement of metaphoric vehicles as the main metaphor derivational strategies in S'ncamtho and confirms the existence of clearly discernible genres of metaphor in S'ncamtho which are proverbs, sayings, aphorisms and euphemistic metaphors. While S'ncamtho and other youth varieties in Africa have been identified as urban varieties, the study brings in the dimension of measuring the spread of S'ncamtho to peri-urban and rural areas. Data from questionnaire tests, interviews and observations is analysed using the Idiom Familiarity and Comprehension Judgement Method to measure the impact and spread of S'ncamtho metaphors. The guiding theory in evaluating the spread of S'ncamtho metaphors is a Social Psychology framework- Social Impact Theory (SIT). The thesis argues that S'ncamtho metaphors spread outside Bulawayo’s high density male youth to female and older Ndebele speakers in and outside the city, it identifies male youth in the age cohort 15- 35 years as more familiar and using more S'ncamtho metaphors compared to females and older males in urban, peri-urban and rural areas. It also reveals that S'ncamtho metaphor familiarity declines with age and distance from Bulawayo, and that generally females use less S'ncamtho compared to males and the young are more familiar with S'ncamtho compared to adults. The research reveals that there is no significant difference between rural and urban professionals in S'ncamtho metaphor familiarity and this confirms that improved communication networks impact on the spread of S'ncamtho as professional people frequent Bulawayo for pay and other services. However, the study also noted that there are still more people who have negative attitudes towards S'ncamtho, compared to those who view its impact positively. The thesis argues that the popularity of S'ncamtho has seen S'ncamtho metaphors operating in professions including journalism, health professions, teaching and religious professions. Furthermore, attitudes are changing as some people have begun to view S'ncamtho positively outside the criminal prejudices.
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    A study of the Namibian transitional language policy in education and the role of code-switching in achieving it
    (2022) Kela, Judith Namubi; Hurst, Ellen; Mesthrie, Rajend
    The study investigated the Namibian transitional language in education policy and the role of code-switching in achieving it. Firstly, the study identified the types, structures and roles of code-switching in the Grade 4 bilingual classroom. Secondly, the study established the challenges faced by educators and students regarding English as the medium of instruction during the transition phase. Thirdly, the study established the challenges that educators face in implementing the Namibian language in education policy during the transition phase in Grade 4. The data were collected at the Gabriel Mubita Primary School (pseudonym) of the Zambezi region of Namibia. The study adopted qualitative research methods and data were collected via classroom observations and in-depth interviews. Furthermore, the participants were two educators who were observed and interviewed, together with their Grade 4 students. The data of the study were audio and visual recorded, translated and transcribed. Thereafter, the data collected were linguistically and thematically analysed into themes and sub-themes. The findings of the study were that code-switching was predominately utilised by educators and students at the school under investigation. It was revealed that educators employed three different types of code-switching namely situational, educational and interpersonal codeswitching for pedagogical, teaching and social reasons. The research also found that three different structures of code-switching were utilised by educators, mainly intra-sentential and inter-sentential, while tag-switching was rarely utilised. Code-switching was utilised for roles such as: to encourage students to participate in the classroom, for explanations and clarification purposes, to maintain discipline in the classroom, to show solidarity, to reiterate, to translate and to explain the subject content that students could not grasp as they were beginners. The findings revealed that educators and students faced challenges such as lack of English proficiency, shortage of teaching and scholarship materials, students' linguistic under-preparedness and limited exposure to the target language. Lastly the findings showed that educators had insufficient training on the transition phase, lack of policy awareness, and that the transition to English as the medium of instruction takes place too early. The study recommends that the policymakers must involve educators when developing the policies and ensure that educators are trained in policymaking, orthography of two common languages such as Subiya and Sifwe must be developed since students in the Zambezi Region are not taught in their mother tongue but rather in Silozi, the lingua Franca of the Zambian origin, educators must be given a pre-service and in-service training by the Ministry of Education on how to deal with code-switching or formulate a language policy that includes code-switching since it is considered a powerful teaching tool during the transition phase, teaching and learning material resource shortages within schools should be addressed by the Ministry of Education.
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    Academic literacy workshops: a handbook for students and instructors
    (2012) Hurst, Ellen
    This workbook contains the material for a series of short supporting sessions on writing and research skills for students at University. These skills include finding materials, academic and critocal reading, writing good literature reviews, and referencing. Most of the material should be useful for all levels of student, from undergraduate to postgraduate. Each session, if run as a workshop, will last approximately 45 mins to 1 hour. Instructors can walk through the material with their students, or create powerpoint slides and use the material as a presentation.
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    Style, structure and function in Cape Town Tsotsitaal
    (2008) Hurst, Ellen; Mesthrie, Rajend
    The thesis applies a social constructionist framework and Foucauldian Discourse Analysis to demonstrate that while Tsotsitaal was perceived by many respondents as a language of gangsters and criminals, evidence suggests that it is actually part of an ongoing identity construction for young, black, primarily male urban township residents in South Africa, which is performed through a subcultural style. By applying Myers-Scotton's Matrix Language Frame model to questionnaire and interview data collected in two Cape Town townships, Gugulethu and Khayelitsha, the thesis identifies the syntactic framework of Cape Town Tsotsitaal as Xhosa.
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    The use of Iscamtho by children in white city-Jabavu, Soweto: slang and language contact in an African urban context
    (2014) Aycard, Pierre Benjamin Jacques; Mesthrie, Rajend; Hurst, Ellen
    The work presented in this thesis relies on language recordings gathered during thirty months of fieldwork in White City-Jabavu, Soweto. The data was collected from children between the ages of two and nine, following anthropological participant observation, and through the use of an audio recorder. Strong attention was given to the sociolinguistics and structure of the language collected. This thesis is interested in issues of slang use among children and language contact, as part of the larger field of tsotsitaal studies. It is interested in: sociolinguistic issues of registers, slang, and style; and linguistic issues regarding the structural output of language contact. The main questions answered in the thesis concern whether children in White City use the local tsotsitaal, known as Iscamtho; and what particular kind of mixed variety supports their use of Iscamtho. Particularly, I focus on the prediction of the Matrix Language Frame model (Myers-Scotton 2002) regarding universal constraints on the output of language contact. This model was used previously to analyse Iscamtho use in Soweto. Using methodologies from three different disciplinary fields (anthropology, sociolinguistics, and linguistics) as well as four different analytic perspectives (participatory, statistical, conversational, and structural), I offer a thorough sociolinguistic and linguistic description of the children's language. I demonstrate that the universal constraints previously identified do not apply to a significant part of the children's speech, due to stylistic and multilingual practices in the local linguistic community. I further demonstrate that style, slang, and deliberate variations in language, can produce some unpredictable and yet stable structural output of language contact, which contradicts the main hypotheses of universal natural constraints over this output formulated by the Matrix Language Frame model.