Research Articles (Linguistics)

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Accentuating institutional brands: A multimodal analysis of the homepages of selected South African universities
(Taylor & Francis, 2014) Mafofo, Lynn; Banda, Felix
In seeking to disentangle themselves from the constraints of apartheid, South African universities have immersed themselves in an identity modification process in which they not only seek to redress the past, but also to reposition their identities as equal opportunity and non-racial institutions. In this paper, we investigate how the University of the Western Cape, the University of Cape Town and Stellenbosch University have used visual and verbal semiotics to re-design their identities on their homepages to appeal to diverse national and international clients. Using Multimodal Discourse Analysis (MDA), we show how the multi-semiotic choices work together on the homepages to give the universities differentiated, competitive, powerful and attractive brands. We conclude that the homepages blended cultural semiotic artefacts, historical, global and transformational discourses, and architectural landscapes to construct different brand identities that, in turn, rebrand the universities from edifices of apartheid education to equal opportunity institutions.
Commodification of transformation discourses and post-apartheid institutional identities at three South African universities
(Taylor & Francis, 2016) Banda, Felix; Mafofo, Lynn
Using mission statements from the UCT, UWC and Stellenbosch University (South Africa), we explore how the three universities have rematerialised prior discourses to rebrand their identities as dictated by contemporary national and global aspirations. We reveal how the universities have recontextualised the experiences and discourses of liberation struggle and the new government�s post-apartheid social transformation discourses to construct distinctive identities that are locally relevant and globally aspiring. This has led to the semiotic refiguring of universities from spatial edifices of racially based unequal education, to equal opportunity institutions of higher learning, and to the blurring of historical boundaries between these universities. We conclude that the universities have reconstructed distinct and recognisable identities which speak to a segregated past, but with a post-apartheid voice of equity and redress.
Demystifying research methods: everyday experiences as socio-cultural co(n)texts for effective research methods in teaching and learning in institutions of higher learning in Africa
(University of Johannesberg, 2017) Banda, Felix; Banda, Dennis
The aim of the paper is to demonstrate how everyday knowledge can be incorporated into the classroom practices of institutions of higher learning to inform inclusive outcomes for linguistically and culturally diverse students. Using a metaphor of a marketer�s everyday interrogation of market conditions, a postgraduate guide to proposal writing and the funds of knowledge socio-cultural framework, we illustrate how forms of everyday and school knowledge can be used concurrently in the construction of socially responsive dialogic pedagogy. We argue for scholarship of teaching and learning (SOTL) in the South in which knowledge and theory generation is not a preserve of English only, but more so, of the complex interactions between English and the multiplicity of languages that students bring to the classroom. We conclude that SOTL in the South needs to be founded on the transfiguration of everyday knowledge and formal academic knowledge to facilitate the production of new and more powerful knowledge in multicultural postcolonial society. This would allow for inclusive pedagogy that caters for diversity in classrooms, and activity-based teaching and learning, networking students� experiential, community/home and formal academic knowledge in the construction of new and powerful knowledge.
Dialogicality and imaginings of two 'community' notice boards in post-apartheid Observatory, Cape Town
(Taylor & Francis, 2014) Peck, Amiena; Banda, Felix
This article undertakes a poststructuralist multisemiotic analysis of posters and notices found on two 'community' notice boards in the trendy, multicultural neighbourhood of Observatory in Cape Town, South Africa. An analysis of the two notice boards endeavours to reveal different strategic uses of English as well as varying constructions of (transnational) place-making and community in Observatory. The two notice boards reveal voices of transient and permanent groups alike and index new imaginative constructions of this changing neighbourhood. Furthermore, this paper explores the implications of strategic linguistic processes in self-marketisation of transnational and 'local' community members in Observatory. We conclude by expounding on the new perspective of transcultural capital and what it means to the sociolinguistics of a super-diverse neighbourhood in the post-apartheid neighbourhood of Observatory in Cape Town, South Africa.
Diversity and contested social identities in multilingual and multicultural contexts of the University of the Western Cape, South Africa
(Taylor & Francis, 2015) Banda, Felix; Peck, Amiena
We draw on Rampton's Crossing: Language and Ethnicity Among Adolescents (2014. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge) notion of 'crossing' to explore contestations in ethnolinguistic, cultural and racial affiliations at the University of the Western Cape (UWC), a university built for 'Coloureds' in apartheid South Africa, but which rebelled by admitting students of all races and ethnic backgrounds. Using interviews and observation data, we show contestations around Xhosa and Afrikaans as languages for black and coloured solidarity, respectively. We argue that the multilingual and multicultural contexts in place entail that social legitimacy is not achieved through fixed linguistics forms, bounded ethnolinguistic categories and predetermined racial characteristics but in negotiated in-group and out-group codes all of which are part of the students' repertoire. We conclude that diversity is a function of discourses of convergence and divergence as social practice, which give the institution its unique character. The contestations and contradictions thus reflect the democratic conditions on which discourses of diversity are produced and consumed by the multiple socio-cultural range of student populace.
Doing politics in the recent Arab uprisings: Towards a political discourse analysis of the Arab Spring slogans
(Brill publishers, 2015) Al-Sowaidi, Belqes; Banda, Felix; Mansour, Arwa
The present paper aims to analyse a number of those slogans collected from the sit-in quarters in Egypt, Libya and Yemen. Using political discourse analysis, it unravels various typical discourse structures and strategies that are used in slogans in the construction of a sub-genre of political discourse in the Arab world. Drawing data from several mediums, including banners, wall graffiti, audio-visual instruments, chanting, speeches and songs, this paper tries to show the extent to which the slogans serve as a medium by which political complaints and comments are dispensed and consumed. This paper draws on a rhetorical analysis to find out their persuasive effect on shaping the Arab intellect and on the change of the political atmosphere in the region. Lastly, this paper attempts to show to what extent the slogans meet the standards of political discourse and whether they can be considered as a sub-genre of political discourse or not.
Fighting HIV/AIDS through popular Zambian music
(Routledge, 2013) Banda, Felix; Mambwe, Kelvin
This paper explores how HIV/AIDS education messages are transmitted through popular Zambian music lyrics. The focus is on the recontextualisation of lived experiences and Zambian cultural practices in the fight against HIV/AIDS. Using multimodal discourse analysis, the paper uses Zambian popular music lyrics to show how Zambian musicians deliberately blend languages, socio-cultural artefacts and knowledge into a hybrid of 'infotainment' in the fight against HIV/AIDS. The paper concludes that although male dominance is still prevalent, choices regarding sex and discussions on sexual matters are no longer a preserve for the men, and that musicians are able to use language to reframe dominant cultural practices and taboos in the process of disseminating HIV/AIDS messages. This has produced altered social conditions, which sometimes distort the intended messages, but allow musicians to operate without fear of government censorship boards or running foul of cultural taboos.
'Foreigners are stealing our birth right': Moral panics and the discursive construction of Zimbabwean immigrants in South African media
(SAGE Publications, 2014) Banda, Felix; Mawadza, Aquilina
We examine 575 randomly selected articles on Zimbabwean immigrants from the South African Media (SAM) database to expose discourses of exclusion and the production of the psycho-social condition - moral panic. We use critical discourse analysis, notions of remediation and immediacy to scrutinize discourse structures and other discursive strategies designed to conceal mediation and authorial prejudices, and to make the reader 'experience' the actual content. In addition to making the anti-immigrant rhetoric appear legitimate, and the danger immediate and real, we argue that the apparent seamless content is often biased by selection and structured in such a way as to deny voice to immigrants and their advocates. Among other things, we conclude that since the readers' interpretations are filtered through lenses of subjectivities defined by communicative contexts characterized by job scarcity, poverty, crime and wanting healthcare, the news content heightens anxiety and miseducates more than it enlightens readers on migration issues. Hence there is a danger of SAM becoming unwitting conveyors of the same vices they preach against.
'Kids sold, desperate moms need cash': Media representations of Zimbabwean women migrants
(Taylor & Francis, 2016) Mawadza, Aquilina; Banda, Felix
The article draws on 575 randomly selected articles from the South African Media database to explore the representation of Zimbabwean women migrants. Using critical discourse analysis (CDA), the article shows that some of the dominant construction types depict a picture of caricatured, stereotypical and stigmatised Zimbabwean migrant women without voice and individuality. In turn, the diversity of their actualities is not captured in the process of constructing the twin images of Zimbabwean women as victims and as purveyors of decadent and other negative social ills in society. We conclude that Zimbabwean women migrants appear in the SA media primarily in three negative images: suppliers of sexual services, as un-motherly, and as victims. We also conclude that there is need for media to capture the voices of migrant women recounting their everyday lived experiences in different political and socio-economic contexts in order to account for the migrant women's voices of resilience, defiance and victimhood and of agency, against the normalising and marginalising influences of political institutions and national border controls. This would also help capture the transformative nature of migration to the women, the 'home' in Zimbabwe and the 'home' in South Africa.
Language ideology, policy and classroom practices in Oshiwambo speaking areas, Northern Namibia
(University of Western Cape, 2020) Iipinge, Kristof; Banda, Felix
The study problematized language ideologies and policy to explore the efficacy of using English as the Language of Learning and Teaching (LOLT) among Oshiwambo speaking learners in the Omusati region of Northern Namibia. Focus group interviews with ESL teachers, interviews with the English Head of Departments (HODs), classroom observations and informal chats with the grade 12 learners were carried out at six secondary schools. The study finds that students struggle to partake in meaningful classroom interaction and to comprehend instruction and content in English. Although students may express themselves better in Oshiwambo, they are not allowed. Some ESL teachers would use Oshiwambo to maintain order in class, but avoid using Oshiwambo to help struggling learners believing this would negatively impact learners� English proficiency. Some ESL teachers were also found to blame ESL content subject teachers for learners� poor English proficiency, as they used Oshiwambo in class to teach and explain content. We conclude that ESL classroom practice is teacher-centred by default, and students are muted as they find themselves with no voice to express themselves efficiently and efficaciously, and deaf to classroom content delivered in an unfamiliar language, English.
Language policy and orthographic harmonization across linguistic, ethnic and national boundaries in Southern Africa
(Springer Verlag, 2016) Banda, Felix
Drawing on online and daily newspapers, speakers' language and writing practices, official government documents and prescribed spelling systems in Southern Africa, the paper explores the challenges and possibilities of orthographic reforms allowing for mobility across language clusters, ethnicity, regional and national borders. I argue that this entails a different theorisation of language, and for orthographies that account for the translocations and diasporic nature of late modern African identities and lifestyles. I suggest an ideological shift from prescriptivism to practice-orientated approaches to harmonisation in which orthographies are based on descriptions of observable writing practices in the mobile linguistic universe. The argument for orthographic reforms is counterbalanced with an expose on current language policies which appear designed for an increasing rare monoglot 'standard' speaker, who speaks only a 'tribal' language. The implications of the philosophical challenges this poses for linguists, language planners and policy makers are thereafter discussed.
Mandela in the Arabic media: A transitivity analysis of Aljazeera Arabic website
(University of Southern California, Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism, 2016) Mohammed, Tawffeek Abdou Saeed; Banda, Felix
The paper uses an eclectic approach combining systemic functional linguistics (SFL), critical discourse analysis (CDA) and corpus linguistics to reveal how Mandela is presented in the Arab Media. SFL and CDA enable the researchers to explore the ideological and attitudinal bases underlying the selection of particular discourse structures for the realization of transitivity, that is, the ideational meaning in the texts/corpus. Specifically, the paper unravels process types, that is, material, relational, mental and verbal processes in data from Aljazeera�s Arabic website to account for the manner Mandela as a participant is presented compared to other participants, and the kinds of participant roles ascribed to him. The paper shows that material processes covering actions and events in which Mandela is the main agent and actor are by far the most frequently used type of processes in the corpus. Additionally, the discourse structures appear deliberately selected not only for sentimental reasons, but also to evoke readers� sympathy regarding his wife�s infidelities and his hospitalisation, and also to induce appreciation for the man who endured 27 years for the freedom of his people and yet held no grudges against those incarcerated him. We conclude that Mandela is constructed in such a way that he is the focal point on which the Arab world could look for moral inspiration, reformation and reconciliation in the face of adversities resulting from religious, political and socio-economic turmoil.
Nyanja/Chewa proverbs as didactics: Recontextualising indigenous knowledge for academic writing
(Taylor & Francis, 2016) Banda, Felix; Banda, Dennis
The paper explores how Nyanja/Chewa proverbs as stores of indigenous knowledge can be used to teach Nyanja/Chewa morphology and grammar, and as a tool to sensitise learners on aspects of academic writing. Using systemic functional linguistics and selected Nyanja/Chewa proverbs, the researchers illustrate how the patterning and the realisation of proverbs as texts in social contexts scaffold interpersonal meanings including appraisal and attitude, and stance. In turn, the researchers argue that proverbs typically have two thematically related parts, which can be used to teach aspects of academic writing in respect to appreciation of textual cohesion and coherence in meaning making. The researchers show that proverbs are typically structured to express evidentially, absolute truth and flawless logic, all of which are characteristic of academic writing. The researchers conclude that proverbs can be used as resources in the teaching aspects of pervasive language and, critical and cognitively demanding analytical skills.
Observatory's linguistic landscape: semiotic appropriation and the reinvention of space
(Taylor & Francis, 2014) Peck, Amiena; Banda, Felix
Using a longitudinal ethnographic study of the linguistic landscape (LL) in Observatory's business corridor of Lower Main Road, the paper explores changes brought about by the influx of immigrant Africans, their artefacts and language practices. The paper uses the changes in the LL over time and the development of an "African Corner" within Lower Main Road, to illustrate the appropriation of space and the unpredictability, which comes along with highly mobile, technological and multicultural citizens. It is argued that changes in the LL are part of the act of claiming and appropriating space wherein space becomes summarily recontexualized and hence reinvented and "owned" by new actors. It is also argued that space ownership can be concealed through what we have called "brand anonymity" strategies in which the identity of the owner is deliberately concealed behind global brands. We conclude that space is pliable and mobile, and that, it is the people within space who carve out new social practices in their appropriated space.
"Poof! a'm heppily saving the Lord...": multimodality and evaluative discourses in male toilet graffiti at the University of the Western Cape
(Taylor & Francis, 2015) Ferris, Fiona S.; Banda, Felix
This paper explores the use of punctuation, capitalisation, linguistic forms and images in the construction of evaluative discourses in male toilet graffiti at the University of the Western Cape. Of particular interest is how male students use these devises in the discursive construction of the appraisal resource of Attitude, Graduation and Evaluation. Using over 150 tokens of graffiti, the paper uses a multimodal approach employing notions of resemiotisation and remediation to show how taboo language, font size, images and sketches are repurposed to aid the evaluation of the 'self' and the 'other' in toilet graffiti. The paper shows that through utilising multimodal texts, graffiti writers are able to reformulate and situate novel meanings in contexts; and in terms of appraisal, the verbal and non-verbal semiotic material are strategically combined to engender novel evaluations.
Renegotiating cultural practices as a result of HIV in the eastern region of Malawi
(Routledge, 2014) Banda, Felix; Kunkeyani, Thokozani E.
A number of studies have shown that HIV awareness is very high among Malawians and yet infection rates are rising. Local cultural practices have been identified as contributing to this contradictory situation. Using data from 12 focus-group discussions collected in Balaka, Zomba, Machinga and Mangochi, the paper explores the reformulation of nine cultural practices as a preventive measure against HIV. The study reveals that cultural practices that involve sexual acts for completion are mediated through condoms and HIV tests. The study also shows that traditional herbs known for healing ailments are repurposed to symbolise sexual acts. We conclude that the idea of repurposing offers an avenue in which initiation and cleansing rites that involve sexual acts are replaced by other semiotics such as a traditional medicine called mtela. We also conclude that the modifications to cultural practices do not indicate complete abandonment of associated traditions, rather, they constitute the renegotiation of cultural practices and meanings associated with particular rites of passage. Lastly, we propose that a comprehensive prevention programme needs to be part of a wider national HIV-prevention effort combining a women and child rights and empowerment agenda and, critically, lifestyle lessons in a process of cultural renegotiation.
Review of Semiotic Landscapes: Language, Image, Spaceby Adam Jaworski and Crispin Thurlow
(CMDR, 2015) Banda, Felix
Although the volume was published in 2010, it still remains one of the most important contributions to a new field of enquiry in the study of language and signage in public spaces initially conceptualised and institutionalised by Landry and Bourhis (1997) as linguistic landscapes (LL). They defined linguistic landscapes as �[t]he language of public road signs, advertising billboards, street names, place names, commercial shop signs, and public signs on government buildings combine to form the linguistic landscape of a given territory, region, or urban agglomeration� (p. 25). As the title of the volume suggests, the aim was to extend the study to consider other semiotic material in place rather than linguistic ones alone. Jaworski and Thurlow prefer the term semiotic landscapes to LL to account for the fact that descriptions of space are not just about language, image and space, but more so about how interlocutors engage with semiotic material including objects in plan.
The role of linguistic context in children�s interpretation and acquisition of Cicewa idiomatic expressions: A systemic functional linguistics approach
(Taylor & Francis, 2017) Kamanga, Mervis; Banda, Felix
Research findings have shown that linguistic context helps young children to infer the figurative meaning of an idiom and learn the meaning. In this study, the role of linguistic context in children�s interpretation and acquisition of idioms was tested in 20 Cicewa-speaking children aged 4, 6, 9, 12 and 14 years in three experiments. Experiment 1 tested children�s ability to interpret idiomatic expressions in story context, Experiment 2 tested children�s ability to interpret idiomatic expressions in sentence context and Experiment 3 tested children�s ability to interpret idiomatic expressions out of context. The study adopted Systemic Functional Linguistics to establish the role of linguistic context in children�s acquisition of Cicewa idioms. Our findings are: (1) Idioms are acquired as texts within the linguistic context in which they are produced and that linguistic context alone is not sufficient to facilitate idiom acquisition and interpretation. (2) Children come to know an idiomatic expression as a text before they understand the sociocultural context in which it is consumed. We argue that idioms are acquired as texts and they are acquired together with the sociocultural context in which they are produced and consumed, and therefore the sociocultural context forms part of the idioms.
The semiotic ecology of linguistic landscapes in rural Zambia
(John Wiley & Sons LTD., 2015) Banda, Felix; Jimaima, Hambaba
In addressing the dearth in studies on linguistic/semiotic landscapes in oral-language dominant rural communities, we use the notion of repurposing to show how people from rural areas of Livingstone and Lusaka in Zambia (South-Central Africa) extend the repertoire of 'signs' to include faded and unscripted signboards, fauna and flora, mounds, dwellings, abandoned structures, skylines, and village and bush paths (with no written names) in narrations of place. We illustrate how they use the system of signage to transcend the limitations of the material conditions in the rural-scapes by redeploying memory, objects, artifacts and cultural materialities in place to new uses, and for extended meaning potentials. We conclude that focusing on the semiotic ecology in multimodal linguistic/ semiotic landscapes helps to accentuate the multisemiotic and diverse processual characteristics of meaning-making, even in areas that do not have scripted place and street names.
Sociolinguistics and modes of social class signalling: African perspectives
(Wiley-Blackwell, 2020) Banda, Felix
The paper evaluates spatial, behavioural, and material signal-ling of social class in African contexts, focusing on Kenya and Zambia. In particular, it draws on notions of mode of class signalling and intersectionality and a vignette of an interaction between urban-based Western educated develop-ment agents and local participants in rural Kenya to illustrate how social class is implicated in interactions.

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