Research Articles (Linguistics)

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Diagnostic assessment of academic reading: Peeping into students’ annotated texts
(MDPI, 2022) Antia, Bassey E.; Vogt, Karin
Text annotations are literacy practices that are not uncommon in the reading experience of university students. Annotations may be multilingual, monolingual, or multimodal. Despite their enormous diagnostic potentials, annotations have not been widely investigated for what they can reveal about the cognitive processes that are involved in academic reading. In other words, there has been limited exploration of the insights that signs (verbal and non-verbal) inscribed by students on texts offer for understanding and intervening in their academic reading practices. The aim of this exploratory study is to examine the diagnostic assessment potentials of student-annotated texts. On the basis of text annotations obtained from teacher trainee students (n = 7) enrolled at a German university, we seek to understand what different students attend to while reading, what their problem-solving strategies are, what languages and other semiotic systems they deploy, what their level of engagement with text is, and, critically, how the foregoing provide a basis for intervening to validate, reinforce, correct, or teach certain reading skills and practices. Theoretically, the study is undergirded by the notion of text movability. Data suggestive of how students journey through text are argued to have implications for understanding and teaching how they manage attention, use dictionaries, own text meaning, and appraise text.
Diagnostic assessment of academic reading: Peeping into students� annotated texts
(MDPI, 2022) Antia, Bassey E.; Vogt, Karin
Text annotations are literacy practices that are not uncommon in the reading experience of university students. Annotations may be multilingual, monolingual, or multimodal. Despite their enormous diagnostic potentials, annotations have not been widely investigated for what they can reveal about the cognitive processes that are involved in academic reading. In other words, there has been limited exploration of the insights that signs (verbal and non-verbal) inscribed by students on texts offer for understanding and intervening in their academic reading practices. The aim of this exploratory study is to examine the diagnostic assessment potentials of student-annotated texts. On the basis of text annotations obtained from teacher trainee students (n = 7) enrolled at a German university, we seek to understand what different students attend to while reading, what their problem-solving strategies are, what languages and other semiotic systems they deploy, what their level of engagement with text is, and, critically, how the foregoing provide a basis for intervening to validate, reinforce, correct, or teach certain reading skills and practices. Theoretically, the study is undergirded by the notion of text movability. Data suggestive of how students journey through text are argued to have implications for understanding and teaching how they manage attention, use dictionaries, own text meaning, and appraise text.
Enhancing an international perspective in public health teaching through formalized university partnerships
(Frontiers Media, 2017) Brzoska, Patrick; Akgun, Seval; Antia, Bassey E.; Thankappan, K. R.; Nayar, Kesavan Rajasekharan; Razum, Oliver
Teaching in the field of public health needs to employ a global perspective to account for the fact that public health problems and solutions have global determinants and implications as well. International university partnerships can promote such a perspective through the strengthening of cooperation, exchange, and communication between academic institutions across national boundaries. As an example for such an academic network in the field of public health, we introduce the International Public Health Partnership - a collaboration between a university in Germany and universities in India, Turkey, and Nigeria. Formed in 2005, it facilitated the exchange of information, fostered discussion about the transferability of public health concepts, contributed to the structural development of the universities involved, and promoted an intercultural dialog through a combination of local and distance learning activities. Although well accepted by students and staff, different obstacles were encountered; these included limited external funding, scarce own financial, time and personnel resources, and diverging regulations and structures of degree programs at the partnership sites. In the present article, we share several lessons that we learned during our joint collaboration and provide recommendations for other universities that are involved in partnerships with institutions of higher education or are interested to initiate such collaborations.
Epistemological access through lecture materials in multiple modes and language varieties: the role of ideologies and multilingual literacy practices in student evaluations of such materials at a South African University
(Springer, 2016) Antia, Bassey E.; Dyers, Charlyn
This paper seeks to address the ways in which ideology and literacy practices shape the responses of students to an ongoing initiative at the University of the Western Cape aimed at diversifying options for epistemological access, specifically the language varieties and the modes in which parts of the curriculum for a third year linguistics module are delivered. Students� responses to the materials in English and in two varieties of Afrikaans and isiXhosa (as mediated in writing vs orally) are determined, and used as basis to problematize decisions on language variety and mode in language diversification initiatives in Higher Education in South Africa. The findings of the paper are juxtaposed against particular group interests in the educational use of a language as well as differences in the affordances and impact of different modes of language use. The paper suggests that beyond the euphoria of using languages other than English in South African Higher Education, several issues (such as entrenched language practices, beliefs and language management orientations) require attention if the goals of transformation in this sector are to be attained.
Epistemological access through lecture materials in multiple modes and language varieties: the role of ideologies and multilingual literacy practices in student evaluations of such materials at a South African University
(Taylor & Francis, 2016) Antia, Bassey E.; Dyers, Charlyn
This paper seeks to address the ways in which ideology and literacy practices shape the responses of students to an ongoing initiative at the University of the Western Cape aimed at diversifying options for epistemological access, specifically the language varieties and the modes in which parts of the curriculum for a third year linguistics module are delivered. Students’ responses to the materials in English and in two varieties of Afrikaans and isiXhosa (as mediated in writing vs orally) are determined, and used as basis to problematize decisions on language variety and mode in language diversification initiatives in Higher Education in South Africa. The findings of the paper are juxtaposed against particular group interests in the educational use of a language as well as differences in the affordances and impact of different modes of language use. The paper suggests that beyond the euphoria of using languages other than English in South African Higher Education, several issues (such as entrenched language practices, beliefs and language management orientations) require attention if the goals of transformation in this sector are to be attained.
The interaction of text and visual in specialized dictionary definitions
(John Benjamins Publishing, 2013) Antia, Bassey E.; Ivo, Njuasi
Although visuals have been co-deployed with text in specialized dictionaries as far back as the European Renaissance, the interaction of both representational modalities is relatively under-researched. As a consequence, available knowledge is relatively limited with respect to the kinds of visuals employed in specialized dictionaries, the kinds of definiendum that elicit specific types of visuals, the functions of visuals relative to text in definitions, and the association between particular visuals and visual-text functions. This study sheds light on these questions from the perspective of specialized dictionaries in two fields (Biology and Mechanical Engineering). Significantly, the study underscores how the ontology or nature of Biology and Mechanical Engineering appear to determine both the selections made of visual types and the dominant text-visual relationships. The study further makes a contribution to cleaning up the Augean clutter that is the terminology of visuals.
Multilingual assessment: Levelling the cognition–emotion playing field at the University of the Western Cape
(Taylor and Francis Group, 2021) Antia, Bassey E.
This article examines the relatively understudied question of how cognition and emotion (as induced by language) interact in assessment situations in higher education contexts. It does so against the backdrop of different outcomes for students with varying forms of linguistic cultural capital in South African higher education. Applying phenomenology as methodology, we unpack the ways in which students at the University of the Western Cape experience both monolingual and multilingual assessment from the standpoint of the cognition– emotion interface. The findings show that while monolingual assessment created affective barriers to cognition, a far more enabling environment was created by the provision of alternative multilingual linguistic arrangements. The article reflects on the implications of the analysis both for levelling the playing field in a context where language is a major source of inequality and for scholarship on language in assessment.
Multilingual examinations: Towards a schema of politicization of language in end of high school examinations in Sub-Saharan Africa
(Taylor & Francis, 2018) Antia, Bassey E.
In many countries of sub-Saharan Africa, the release of each year’s results for the end of high school examinations heralds an annual ritual of public commentary on the poor state of national education systems. However, the exoglossic/monolingual language regime for these examinations is infrequently acknowledged as contributing to the dismal performance of students. Even less attended to is the manner in which the language of examinations, through shaping students’ performances, may be exacerbating social inequalities. This article politicizes the language of examinations in the region in the hope of generating policy and research interest in what is arguably an insidious source of inequality. The article makes three arguments. Firstly, it is argued that current exoglossic/monolingual practices in these examinations constitute a set of sociolinguistic aberrations, with demonstrable negative effects on students’ performance. Secondly, it is argued that the gravity of these paradoxical sociolinguistic disarticulations is better appreciated when their social ramifications are viewed in terms of structural violence and social inequality. Thirdly, in considering how to evolve a more socially equitable examination language regime, it is argued that the notion of consequential validity in testing positions translanguaging as a more ecologically valid model of language use in examinations.
Researching teacher multilingual-talk and student-benefits: Rethinking knowledge blindness, diglossic cognition and its constructs
(Routledge, 2024) Antia, Bassey E.; Bassi, Madu M.
Although supported by different ideologies of language, code-switching and translanguaging are, surprisingly perhaps, united in some of the claims made in their names. In the literature on classroom practices, one shared claim is that content is simplified for students when the teacher uses features enregistered as the non-official classroom language/s in a way that overlaps with and/or complements features enregistered as the official classroom language. Functional allocation of languages/features, a corollary of this claim, arguably interpellates what may be termed diglossic cognition. The problem with this diglossic cognition is that it is largely knowledge-blind and equates cognition with the mere use of particular languages or features. This study finds that there are both language and knowledge variables in teacher multilingual-talk that explain students’ enhanced cognition, and, therefore, invites a rethink of the unnuanced connections made between language (feature) choice and cognition.
Shh, hushed multilingualism! Accounting for the discreet genre of translanguaged siding in lecture halls at a South African university
(De Gruyter Mouton, 2017) Antia, Bassey E.
Translanguaged siding is the term used here for the relatively under-researched phenomenon of student-to-student communication occurring in parallel to the teacher-talk, but using language and other semiotic resources that differ from the teacher's in order to shape understanding of the teacher's meanings or to make other meanings. This article draws on Fishman's reflections on his now famous 1965 question Who speaks What language to Whom and When?, and on Bakhtin's work on dialogicity to examine the dynamics of semiotic choice in translanguaged siding as well as its functions in the experience of multilingual students at a South African University. Data obtained from recorded interviews, a questionnaire survey and documentary evidence allow for establishing that (1) there are complex chains of correlation involving subsets of identified siding variables, and (2) translanguaged siding can be supportive of learning, contrary to associations of siding with Malinowskian small talk.
Speaking with a forked tongue about multilingualism in the language policy of a South African university
(Springer Netherlands, 2019) Antia, Bassey E.; van der Merwe, Chanel
As part of a broader student campaign for ‘free decolonized education’, protests over language policies at select South African universities between 2015 and 2016 belied widespread positive appraisals of these policies, and revealed what is possibly an internal contradiction of the campaign. The discourse prior to the protests (e.g. “excellent language policies but problematic implementation”), during the protests (e.g. silence over the role of indigenous African languages in the “Afrikaans must fall” versus “Afrikaans must stay” contestations), and after the protests (e.g. English becoming a primary medium in some institutional policy reviews) warrant attention to critical literacy in language policy scholarship. Based on a theoretical account of speaking with a forked tongue, this article analyzes the language policy text of one South African university. The analysis suggests, simultaneously, why similar policies have tended to be positively appraised, why students’ calls for policy revisions were justifed, but why the changes clamoured for arguably amount to complicity in self-harm.
Theorising terminology development: Frames from language acquisition and the philosophy of science
(UNISA Press, 2016) Antia, Bassey E.; Ianna, Bem
The manner in which our conceptualisation and practice of terminology development can be informed by processes of knowledge change in child language development and a paradigm shift in disciplines, has been relatively underexplored. As a result, insights into what appears to be fundamental processes of knowledge change have not been employed to reflect on terminology development, its dynamics, requirements and relationship to related fields. In this article, frames of knowledge change in child language development and the philosophy of science are used to examine terminology development as knowledge growth that is signalled lexico-semantically through a range of transformations: addition, deletion, redefinition and reorganisation. The analysis is shown to have implications for work procedures, expertise types, critique, and for the relationships between terminology development and translating.
University multilingualism: A critical narrative from the University of the Western Cape, South Africa
(Routledge, 2015) Antia, Bassey E.
This article offers a narrative of the University of the Western Cape, South Africa, from the prism of the duality of language as a co-modality (with people, protest, policy and practices) for constituting the institution in whole or in part and as a reflection of its co-modalities. For its framing, the narrative eclectically draws on language politics and policy, a grammar of multilingual landscapes and the epistemology of linguistics. Besides contributing to a historiography of university language policies, the narrative has implications for language policy analysis.
Writing biology, assessing biology: The nature and effects of variation in terminology
(John Benjamins Publishing, 2016) Antia, Bassey E.; Kamai, Richard A.
There has been substantial research into terminology as an issue in learning science, especially against the backdrop of concerns over school literacy in science and as sometimes reflected in the poor performance of high school students in assessment tasks. Relevant research has emphasized issues such as lexical load, complexity and metaphor. Variation in the use of terminology has, however, been relatively under researched, although there is evidence that terminology use does vary within and across high school textbooks of science. Drawing on an eclectic theoretical framework comprising transitivity analysis (Halliday 1994), legitimation code theory semantics (Maton 2013a), and the context-specific term model (Gerzymisch-Arbogast 2008), this article identifies and classifies variations in the terminology employed in three high school textbooks of biology in Nigeria. It then determines what impact assessment tasks which use terms that differ from those employed in students' study materials have on students. Examples are found of variant terminology impeding science literacy and task performance, even though there is reason to suspect such variation might in fact have been leveraged to enhance cognition.

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