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Alfred Matiki

University of Malawi, chancellor College, African Languages and Linguistics, Adjunct

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I am an Associate Professor in English Language and Linguistics, currently associated with the Department of African Languages and Linguistics, University of Malawi. My research interests center on sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, pragmatics and ESL. Some of my research publications have appeared in the International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, International Journal of Multilingualism, Language Policy, Journal of Humanities, Language Matters, World Englishes, Malilime: Malawian Journal of Linguistics, The Study and Use of English in Africa, among others. I am the former editor of Marang: Journal of Language and Literature, University of Botswana.

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natalia gagarina

Francis Cornish

University of Southern California

Milena Kuehnast

Humboldt Universität zu Berlin

Asela Reig Alamillo

Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Morelos

Heike Zinsmeister

University of Hamburg

Lancaster University

Christian Chiarcos

University of Augsburg

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Papers by Alfred Matiki

An Analysis of Anaphora Resolution in Common Botswana Newspaper Articles

Lwati: A Journal of Contemporary Research, 2009

This paper examines the resolution of anaphoric expressions in newspaper articles. More specifica... more This paper examines the resolution of anaphoric expressions in newspaper articles. More specifically, the paper attempts to determine the search space for antecedents for various anaphor forms and most referent types. Using articles from popular Botswana newspapers, the study demonstrates that writers have available to them a whole array of anaphora resolution strategies which include morphologically marked number, gender, and animacy; semantic roles; grammatical relations; number of intervening referents between anaphors and their antecedents; repetition among others.

Effect of the first language on writing in a second language

A Socio-pragmatic analysis of compliment responses among students at the University of Botswana

Journal of Humanities, 2017

Using tape-recorded interviews as well as Discourse Completion Tasks on compliment responses as e... more Using tape-recorded interviews as well as Discourse Completion Tasks on compliment responses as elicitation methods, this study set out to investigate the linguistic resources that students at the University of Botswana use in responding to compliments in English. It examined whether the Batswana respondents show any preference for certain types of compliment responses, and if such preferences are affected by such variables as level of education, sex and social status. By using Herbert's (1986) taxonomy of compliment responses, the study has shown that subjects preferred to agree with their complimenters. It has demonstrated that the interlocutors' level of education and sex were not significant factors in the choice of compliment response types. Recommendations for the teaching of the pragmatics of  The research that led to this paper was funded by the Research and Publications Committee of the Faculty of Humanities, University of Botswana through Grant # R800.

UCLA Ufahamu: A Journal of African Studies Title Whispers Permalink Publication Date

UCLA Ufahamu: A Journal of African Studies Title The Literary Circus Permalink Publication Date

A Socio-pragmatic analysis of compliment responses among students at the University of Botswana

This paper interrogates the image of Africa presented by Paul Theroux in his travel novel, The Lo... more This paper interrogates the image of Africa presented by Paul Theroux in his travel novel, The Lower River . In the analysis of the novel, I argue that Theroux’s narrative is a reconstruction of the Western colonizing discourse in contemporary literature. His narrative seeks to construct an image of Africa for the consumption of Western audiences who already exist in an ideological space that has distorted perspectives of Africa as a primitive space. By presenting Africa as a trap for white people and as a place of death, suffering, and superstition, The Lower River reinvents the stereotypical image of Africa as the Dark Continent, typical of early colonial travel narratives as well as fiction. Arguing from a theoretical base of Orientalism, the paper asserts that the distorted information relayed through the narrative serves the Occident in its endeavour to construct and dominate Orientals in the process of knowing them. The knowledge that the white protagonist, Ellis Hock, gathers...

Ufahamu: A Journal of African Studies

Patterns of Lexical Borrowing in Chichewa

Lexical borrowing is an important aspect of language change. The study of loanwords can give impo... more Lexical borrowing is an important aspect of language change. The study of loanwords can give important insights into the cultural and socio-historical circumstances of a language. This paper examines lexical borrowing patterns in Chichewa/Chinyanja. Using data from the Chinyanja monolingual dictionary, the paper attempts to determine the kinds of borrowings that are common, the degree of lexical borrowability, and the common source languages for the loanwords, and how these borrowings compare with borrowing patterns in other languages. The paper also shows that words are borrowed even when native equivalents are available in the target language. This leads to semantic narrowing for some of the words.

Language Planning and Linguistic Exclusion in the Legislative Process in Malawi *

When Malawi declared both Chichewa (Chinyanja) and English as official languages in the 1968 Mala... more When Malawi declared both Chichewa (Chinyanja) and English as official languages in the 1968 Malawi Congress Party (MCP) Convention, the idea was that both languages would have roles in all official domains of national life such as in government and administration, the judicial system, and the legislature. Subsequent political articulation and implementation of the policy, however, have heavily favored English over Chichewa and the other indigenous languages. This state of affairs has given rise to an asymmetrical coexistence between the two official languages in which English has established a clear hegemony over Chichewa. Within this sociopolitical context, the continued covert government promotion of English in domains that Malawians perceive as socially and economically important means that Chichewa and the other indigenous languages will continue to be viewed in terms of this standard. As Malawi treads along the path of democratization, the consequences of this language policy ...

The Literary Circus

The Literary Circus - eScholarship

Language planning and social change : a study of linguistic exclusion and the legislative process in Malawi

Abstract: This study examines the dynamic functioning of multilingualism in Malawi from a languag... more

Language shift and maintenance: social determinants of linguistic change among the Lomwe people

There have been a number of claims (Boeder, 1984; Kayambazinthu, 1989-90) that Chilomwe is a dyin... more There have been a number of claims (Boeder, 1984; Kayambazinthu, 1989-90) that Chilomwe is a dying language. These claims have generally been based on the observation that only older Lomwes speak the language, while the young seem to be losing their mother tongue. The extent of this loss is not well known because no extensive sociolinguistic study, especially of rural Lomwe, has been carried out. Boeder's repog, for instance, is based on oral reports of two students from the University of Malawi. Kayambazinthu, on the other hand, bases her assertion on a study she carried out in the Domasi and Malindi areas. Although her main focus was on Chichewa, Chiyao and English, and given that Domasi and Malindi are not strong Chilomwe speaking areas, she noted the diminishing use of Chilomwe among the few Lomwes found in these areas. She discovered that only the elderly speak it and in very restricted domains. The current study, which was carried out in the main hub of Chilomwe, fills thi...

On type frequency, loanwords, and noun classification in Chichewa

Translanguaging in Nigerian and Malawian online newspaper readers’ comments

by Modupe Alimi and Alfred Matiki

International Journal of Multilingualism, 2016

The social and educational marginalization of Muslim youth in Malawi

Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 1999

... Marginalization of Muslim Youth 259 Council for Islamic Information (ICII) Workshop on Da&amp... more ... Marginalization of Muslim Youth 259 Council for Islamic Information (ICII) Workshop on Da&amp;amp;#x27;wah in Africa, Mina, Nigeria, 1997, p. 11. 17. See Alfred Matiki, &amp;amp;#x27;Problems of Islamic Education in Malawi&amp;amp;#x27;, Journal Institute of MuslimMinority Affairs,Vol. 12, No. 1, 1991, pp. 127-134. 18. ...

Problems of Islamic Education in Malawi

Religion in Malawi, 1994

Translanguaging in Nigerian and Malawian online newspaper readers’ comments

International Journal of Multilingualism, 2016

A functional categoriality of adjectives in Chichewa and Chiyao

Journal of Humanities, 2000

A functional categoriality of Adjectives in Chichewa and Chiyao.

Problems of Islamic education in Malawi

Journal of the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs, 1991

Malawi is a predominantly Christian country where Muslims amount only to about 18% of the total p... more

An Analysis of Anaphora Resolution in Common Botswana Newspaper Articles

Lwati: A Journal of Contemporary Research, 2009

This paper examines the resolution of anaphoric expressions in newspaper articles. More specifica... more This paper examines the resolution of anaphoric expressions in newspaper articles. More specifically, the paper attempts to determine the search space for antecedents for various anaphor forms and most referent types. Using articles from popular Botswana newspapers, the study demonstrates that writers have available to them a whole array of anaphora resolution strategies which include morphologically marked number, gender, and animacy; semantic roles; grammatical relations; number of intervening referents between anaphors and their antecedents; repetition among others.

Effect of the first language on writing in a second language

A Socio-pragmatic analysis of compliment responses among students at the University of Botswana

Journal of Humanities, 2017

Using tape-recorded interviews as well as Discourse Completion Tasks on compliment responses as e... more Using tape-recorded interviews as well as Discourse Completion Tasks on compliment responses as elicitation methods, this study set out to investigate the linguistic resources that students at the University of Botswana use in responding to compliments in English. It examined whether the Batswana respondents show any preference for certain types of compliment responses, and if such preferences are affected by such variables as level of education, sex and social status. By using Herbert's (1986) taxonomy of compliment responses, the study has shown that subjects preferred to agree with their complimenters. It has demonstrated that the interlocutors' level of education and sex were not significant factors in the choice of compliment response types. Recommendations for the teaching of the pragmatics of  The research that led to this paper was funded by the Research and Publications Committee of the Faculty of Humanities, University of Botswana through Grant # R800.

UCLA Ufahamu: A Journal of African Studies Title Whispers Permalink Publication Date

UCLA Ufahamu: A Journal of African Studies Title The Literary Circus Permalink Publication Date

A Socio-pragmatic analysis of compliment responses among students at the University of Botswana

This paper interrogates the image of Africa presented by Paul Theroux in his travel novel, The Lo... more This paper interrogates the image of Africa presented by Paul Theroux in his travel novel, The Lower River . In the analysis of the novel, I argue that Theroux’s narrative is a reconstruction of the Western colonizing discourse in contemporary literature. His narrative seeks to construct an image of Africa for the consumption of Western audiences who already exist in an ideological space that has distorted perspectives of Africa as a primitive space. By presenting Africa as a trap for white people and as a place of death, suffering, and superstition, The Lower River reinvents the stereotypical image of Africa as the Dark Continent, typical of early colonial travel narratives as well as fiction. Arguing from a theoretical base of Orientalism, the paper asserts that the distorted information relayed through the narrative serves the Occident in its endeavour to construct and dominate Orientals in the process of knowing them. The knowledge that the white protagonist, Ellis Hock, gathers...

Ufahamu: A Journal of African Studies

Patterns of Lexical Borrowing in Chichewa

Lexical borrowing is an important aspect of language change. The study of loanwords can give impo... more Lexical borrowing is an important aspect of language change. The study of loanwords can give important insights into the cultural and socio-historical circumstances of a language. This paper examines lexical borrowing patterns in Chichewa/Chinyanja. Using data from the Chinyanja monolingual dictionary, the paper attempts to determine the kinds of borrowings that are common, the degree of lexical borrowability, and the common source languages for the loanwords, and how these borrowings compare with borrowing patterns in other languages. The paper also shows that words are borrowed even when native equivalents are available in the target language. This leads to semantic narrowing for some of the words.

Language Planning and Linguistic Exclusion in the Legislative Process in Malawi *

When Malawi declared both Chichewa (Chinyanja) and English as official languages in the 1968 Mala... more When Malawi declared both Chichewa (Chinyanja) and English as official languages in the 1968 Malawi Congress Party (MCP) Convention, the idea was that both languages would have roles in all official domains of national life such as in government and administration, the judicial system, and the legislature. Subsequent political articulation and implementation of the policy, however, have heavily favored English over Chichewa and the other indigenous languages. This state of affairs has given rise to an asymmetrical coexistence between the two official languages in which English has established a clear hegemony over Chichewa. Within this sociopolitical context, the continued covert government promotion of English in domains that Malawians perceive as socially and economically important means that Chichewa and the other indigenous languages will continue to be viewed in terms of this standard. As Malawi treads along the path of democratization, the consequences of this language policy ...

The Literary Circus

The Literary Circus - eScholarship

Language planning and social change : a study of linguistic exclusion and the legislative process in Malawi

Abstract: This study examines the dynamic functioning of multilingualism in Malawi from a languag... more

Language shift and maintenance: social determinants of linguistic change among the Lomwe people

There have been a number of claims (Boeder, 1984; Kayambazinthu, 1989-90) that Chilomwe is a dyin... more There have been a number of claims (Boeder, 1984; Kayambazinthu, 1989-90) that Chilomwe is a dying language. These claims have generally been based on the observation that only older Lomwes speak the language, while the young seem to be losing their mother tongue. The extent of this loss is not well known because no extensive sociolinguistic study, especially of rural Lomwe, has been carried out. Boeder's repog, for instance, is based on oral reports of two students from the University of Malawi. Kayambazinthu, on the other hand, bases her assertion on a study she carried out in the Domasi and Malindi areas. Although her main focus was on Chichewa, Chiyao and English, and given that Domasi and Malindi are not strong Chilomwe speaking areas, she noted the diminishing use of Chilomwe among the few Lomwes found in these areas. She discovered that only the elderly speak it and in very restricted domains. The current study, which was carried out in the main hub of Chilomwe, fills thi...

On type frequency, loanwords, and noun classification in Chichewa

Translanguaging in Nigerian and Malawian online newspaper readers’ comments

by Modupe Alimi and Alfred Matiki

International Journal of Multilingualism, 2016

The social and educational marginalization of Muslim youth in Malawi

Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 1999

... Marginalization of Muslim Youth 259 Council for Islamic Information (ICII) Workshop on Da&amp... more ... Marginalization of Muslim Youth 259 Council for Islamic Information (ICII) Workshop on Da&amp;amp;#x27;wah in Africa, Mina, Nigeria, 1997, p. 11. 17. See Alfred Matiki, &amp;amp;#x27;Problems of Islamic Education in Malawi&amp;amp;#x27;, Journal Institute of MuslimMinority Affairs,Vol. 12, No. 1, 1991, pp. 127-134. 18. ...

Problems of Islamic Education in Malawi

Religion in Malawi, 1994

Translanguaging in Nigerian and Malawian online newspaper readers’ comments

International Journal of Multilingualism, 2016

A functional categoriality of adjectives in Chichewa and Chiyao

Journal of Humanities, 2000

A functional categoriality of Adjectives in Chichewa and Chiyao.

Problems of Islamic education in Malawi

Journal of the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs, 1991

Malawi is a predominantly Christian country where Muslims amount only to about 18% of the total p... more