Papers by Asuamah Adade-Yeboah
JET (Journal of English Teaching)
The study examined the social and political circumstances in Ghana which evolved because of the p... more The study examined the social and political circumstances in Ghana which evolved because of the pandemic created by COVID-19, and the extent to which President Akufo-Addo was able to effectively use the medium of speech to manage this global health emergency. This study focused on the stylistic choices of the speech and investigated how different sentence structures, repetitions, political jargon, and other linguistic characteristics were deployed. Textual analysis involves the appreciation of a text while explaining its ideological and cultural dimensions (Fursich, 2009). This study was underpinned by the Narrative Paradigm Theory and Sociolinguistics. Under Narrative Paradigm Theory, narratives have a plot and characters that are involved in an interaction and can therefore be seen as a narrative in form and function. Sociolinguistics shows how language can be presented in specific contexts of social life, and how it reflects and then includes meaning and structure in those contex...
International journal of literature studies, Dec 14, 2022
Oedipus the King' is an ancient tragic play that tells the story of King Oedipus of Thebes, who l... more Oedipus the King' is an ancient tragic play that tells the story of King Oedipus of Thebes, who lived about a period before the proceedings of the Trojan War. Gradually, this King came to the realization that he had accidentally slaughtered Laius, his father, and married Jocasta, his biological mother. Fate, conflict, and free will (i.e. the inexorableness of oracular prophecies) are the main themes of the text. This paper examines selected stage directions in Oedipus the King, a text written by Sophocles. A purposive sample technique was used in selecting these stage directions. In linguistics, language, and literary criticism, 'referentiality' is usually deployed to describe the connotational and denotational sense of an entity to explicate the association between language and extralinguistic object. So, content analysis design, through referentiality, was deployed in critiquing and exhuming the hidden meanings of the selected stage directions. Thus, the use of the referentiality model coupled with definiteness and indefiniteness facilitated the unearthing of familiarity, identifiability, and uniqueness from the selected extracts. The paper is structured in four thematic areas: the introduction, methods, analysis and discussion, and conclusion.
International journal of linguistics, literature and translation, Jan 9, 2022
In this paper, we examine the extent to which adverbs are, in themselves, sentiment-laden, the ef... more In this paper, we examine the extent to which adverbs are, in themselves, sentiment-laden, the effect they have on the words they modify as well as the sentiment of sentences they appear in as a whole and consider the sentiment scores as listed from SentiWordNet in relation to definitions laid out in WordNet. We examined 100 adverbs of manner, comparing their definitions as laid out in WordNet with their sentiment scores as given in SentiWordNet. It was concluded that adverbs of manner are in themselves sentiment-laden and that there is a significant-enough disparity between the definitions and the sentiment scores to introduce errors in SentiWordNet-based automated sentiment evaluations of sentences.
International journal of linguistics, literature and translation, Oct 31, 2021
This paper reviews Williams' (2013) assessment of the language-in-education policies of three Afr... more This paper reviews Williams' (2013) assessment of the language-in-education policies of three African countries-Malawi, Zambia, and Rwanda. Williams' (2013) paper, therefore, constitutes the main data of our review paper. The methodology used was descriptive design. Specifically, content analysis was used in reviewing the main sections of Williams' (2013) paper. The current paper has four sections. These are introduction; language-in-education policies in Malawi, Zambia, and Rwanda; the research design, findings, and conclusion of Williams (2013); and the conclusion. We anticipate that the review would provide useful information for educationists, language planning and policymakers, researchers, and all key stakeholders.
International journal of English and comparative literary studies, Jul 20, 2021
Based on the theory of existentialism, this study seeks to find out Ama Ata Aidoo's view on how i... more Based on the theory of existentialism, this study seeks to find out Ama Ata Aidoo's view on how illiteracy affects the African Woman in her drama, Anowa, which was published in 1970. The text depicts the illiterate woman as being powerful woman in African society. However, Ama Ata Aidoo posits that illiteracy makes the woman a pathetic individual who is not able to function effectively in this changing world. This study seeks to deepen the appreciation of Ama Ata Aidoo's Anowa, by contributing to the understanding of Aidoo's attitude to the illiterate Ghanaian woman (and for that matter African woman) who is seen as a powerful matriarch, but frustrated by African society as a result of lack of formal education. The available literature was explored to find what other writers have said on Aidoo's Anowa. We used the method of qualitative content analysis in our analysis. The findings of the study show that Ama Ata Aidoo uses her writing to satirize societal weaknesses for her readers to refrain from committing such wrongs. Her illiterate women characters in Anowa are bent on maintaining their traditions and are not prepared for change. Consequently, Aidoo uses the character, Anowa, to depict change in African societies.
A critical appraisal of the role of the tradition of tragedy from the Aristotle classical period ... more A critical appraisal of the role of the tradition of tragedy from the Aristotle classical period to modern times reveals that tragedy as a genre in respect of themes passed through a metamorphosis. This paper aims to look at how the French Neo-Classical period defined and practised the concept of tragedy. The paper provides content analysis of Phedre by Racine with a view to understanding the presentation of the heroine during the period. The portrayal of Phedre as a tragic heroine shares elements reminiscent of the classical concept of tragedy. The paper fulfils an identified need to study the concept of tragedy and shows the appendages of the classical thinking in the neo-classical period.
International Journal of Language and Literary Studies
Examining the language of a literary text can be a reliable way of comprehending literary writers... more Examining the language of a literary text can be a reliable way of comprehending literary writers’ experiences. This paper explores the relationship between linguistic forms and socially construed meaning in Atukwei Okai’s poem, “The Oath of the Fontomfrom”. The objectives of the study were to (1) examine the poet’s process choices and their typical distribution in the text, (2) assess the participant characteristics of each process category, and (3) establish the role of the speaker/persona in the poem. This descriptive qualitative study was underpinned by the transitivity framework of Halliday and Matthiessen’s (2014) Systemic Functional Linguistics. So, a content analysis tool was used in analysing the text by revealing how meaning is presented. The results revealed that the poet (or persona) used different kinds of processes to present meaning to his reader.Consequently, when these processes were analysed, the results indicated that material processes were most frequently used. ...
International Journal of Language and Literary Studies
Speech presentation varies from political, religious, economic, and academic to social issues. Ov... more Speech presentation varies from political, religious, economic, and academic to social issues. Over the years, in academia, some research works have been carried out in various fields of speech presentation. However, studies on the modality in the speeches of educational leaders in Ghana are not pronounced. Consequently, this paper is a textual analysis of the mood choices deployed in the 2015 matriculation ceremony speech of Prof W. O. Ellis, who is one of the past vice-chancellors of Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Ghana. The matriculation ceremony was for the 2015/2016 graduate students in the Institute of Distance Learning (IDL), KNUST. With prior permission, the data (Vice Chancellor’s speech) was purposively selected from the University’s portal. The research design used for this study was qualitative. Accordingly, the speech (data) was analysed using the content analysis method. With this method, we identified the various mood structures, the cond...
International Journal of Literature Studies
‘Oedipus the King’ is an ancient tragic play that tells the story of King Oedipus of Thebes, who ... more ‘Oedipus the King’ is an ancient tragic play that tells the story of King Oedipus of Thebes, who lived about a period before the proceedings of the Trojan War. Gradually, this King came to the realization that he had accidentally slaughtered Laius, his father, and married Jocasta, his biological mother. Fate, conflict, and free will (i.e. the inexorableness of oracular prophecies) are the main themes of the text. This paper examines selected stage directions in Oedipus the King, a text written by Sophocles. A purposive sample technique was used in selecting these stage directions. In linguistics, language, and literary criticism, 'referentiality' is usually deployed to describe the connotational and denotational sense of an entity to explicate the association between language and extralinguistic object. So, content analysis design, through referentiality, was deployed in critiquing and exhuming the hidden meanings of the selected stage directions. Thus, the use of the referentiality model coupled with definiteness and indefiniteness facilitated the unearthing of familiarity, identifiability, and uniqueness from the selected extracts. The paper is structured in four thematic areas: the introduction, methods, analysis and discussion, and conclusion.
International Journal of Linguistics, Literature and Translation
Conflict, a general phenomenon, exists in everyday life. It has different intrapersonal aspects (... more Conflict, a general phenomenon, exists in everyday life. It has different intrapersonal aspects (thus conflict within a person). There is also a kind of conflict that exists between two people or two groups of people. This is interpersonal conflict. It can be between a person and technology or between ideas. Conflict has been defined as a disagreement or clash between people, ideas, or cultures. Therefore, culture becomes a unique and sentimental phenomenon that is not only cherished but also protected dearly by individuals as well. Thus, literature has become one of the means through which cultural sentiments are projected and expressed. For a long time, Africans have been subjected to cultural imposition and displacement of Western culture. This paper aims to examine the theory that considers the superiority of westernization. This study adopts the sociological theory by focusing on Soyinka's Death and the King’s Horseman and Ama Ata Aidoo’s Dilemma of Ghost. Our decision to s...
International Journal of Language & Linguistics, 2020
This paper compares the simple clause structure in three languages of Kyerepong (Okere), Akuapem ... more This paper compares the simple clause structure in three languages of Kyerepong (Okere), Akuapem Twi and English. Again, the paper discusses how the structures mark focus and topic; and how they are used in copula and locative constructions. The paper comprises seven main parts. The first part gives a brief linguistic background of the two Ghanaian languages. The second part looks at the constituent order of the three languages; and the third considers the phonological processes involved. The remaining parts (which constitute the hub of the paper) focus on how the simple clause in these three languages is used in focus, topic, copula and locative constructions.
World Journal of English Language, 2022
Linguistically, most Africans are multilingual entities. Extremely, the seventeen (17) West Afric... more Linguistically, most Africans are multilingual entities. Extremely, the seventeen (17) West African states display this feature. Thus, in a typical L2 classroom in Africa, the learner is likely to come into contact with several languages. These languages are mostly the official languages(s), the second or third language(s), the international language, and the indigenous languages spoken by both the learners and the teachers. Sometimes, the official language(s) is/are selected indigenous languages (for example, Igbo, Yoruba, and Hausa, in the case of Nigeria). In some cases, the second language is the international language used for official engagements and international discourse. In Western Africa, Ghana is one such country that uses English as both the official and international language. When learners from diverse sociocultural backgrounds are exposed to several languages in a particular classroom setting, a lot of processes emerge. One of such processes is nativisation or indige...
International Journal of Linguistics, Literature and Translation, 2021
This paper reviews Williams’ (2013) assessment of the language-in-education policies of three Afr... more This paper reviews Williams’ (2013) assessment of the language-in-education policies of three African countries – Malawi, Zambia, and Rwanda. Williams’ (2013) paper, therefore, constitutes the main data of our review paper. The methodology used was descriptive design. Specifically, content analysis was used in reviewing the main sections of Williams’ (2013) paper. The current paper has four sections. These are introduction; language-in-education policies in Malawi, Zambia, and Rwanda; the research design, findings, and conclusion of Williams (2013); and the conclusion. We anticipate that the review would provide useful information for educationists, language planning and policymakers, researchers, and all key stakeholders.
International Journal of Communication and Media Science, 2021
This study examines the extent to which major variables like ownership and ideological inclinatio... more This study examines the extent to which major variables like ownership and ideological inclination distinguish between how the state-owned and the privately-owned leading daily newspapers, Daily Guide and Daily Graphic, portray issues related to the Ashanti region. The study employed content analysis as its methodology. A total of 27 issues that were published by the two newspapers in the six months period, January-June, 2015 in which the study was conducted were used for analysis. It was found in the study that the Daily Guide published more favorable stories on the Ashanti region than Daily Graphic in the time of the study. However, it cannot be concluded that Daily Guide is highly Ashanti region biased because the attributes to justify such a conclusion are minimal. It was also found that both papers published more stories on political themes than any other themes. The Daily Graphic was also found in the study to have published more stories on the Ashanti region than the Daily Graphic.
Based on the theory of existentialism, this study seeks to find out Ama Ata Aidoo’s view on how i... more Based on the theory of existentialism, this study seeks to find out Ama Ata Aidoo’s view on how illiteracy affects the African Woman in her drama, Anowa, which was published in 1970. The text depicts the illiterate woman as being powerful woman in African society. However, Ama Ata Aidoo posits that illiteracy makes the woman a pathetic individual who is not able to function effectively in this changing world. This study seeks to deepen the appreciation of Ama Ata Aidoo’s Anowa, by contributing to the understanding of Aidoo’s attitude to the illiterate Ghanaian woman (and for that matter African woman) who is seen as a powerful matriarch, but frustrated by African society as a result of lack of formal education. The available literature was explored to find what other writers have said on Aidoo’s Anowa. We used the method of qualitative content analysis in our analysis. The findings of the study show that Ama Ata Aidoo uses her writing to satirize societal weaknesses for her readers...
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2010
English drama spearheaded by William Shakespeare, is dominated by the Post-Classical Renaissance.... more English drama spearheaded by William Shakespeare, is dominated by the Post-Classical Renaissance. Prerenaissance drama in England was essentially allegorical plays extolling Christian values. This paper therefore critically looks at how Shakespearean tragic hero is defined and portrayed. The paper, using textual analysis, provides extracts from William Shakespeare's King Lear as the main text to present King Lear as tragic hero. The study shows that the post-classical renaissance period portrays the tragic hero on the basis of weakness of character and is different from the Aristotelian concept of tragedy as hamartia, a going wrong.
Studies in Literature and Language, May 1, 2013
There is a hiatus between the Neo-classical and the modern period in the sense that, there was a ... more There is a hiatus between the Neo-classical and the modern period in the sense that, there was a dearth of tragedy in Europe in the 18 th and 19 th centuries when comedy became the major dramatic form. The 20 th century was a time of immense anxiety in the world. This anxiety can be traced to the disorder in the modern life as a result of the breakdown in religious discipline. This paper therefore aims to look at the unique personal characteristics to present this new hero whose personal lack of order does not present a deviation from the system but confirms a dislocation in the system itself. The study provides extracts from Beckett's Waiting for Godot as the main text, Beckett's Endgame, Miller's, The crucible, Death of the Salesman, All my Sons, and View from the Bridge as supporting texts to present the European concept of the tragic hero.
International Journal of Linguistics, Literature and Translation
In this paper, we examine the extent to which adverbs are, in themselves, sentiment-laden, the ef... more In this paper, we examine the extent to which adverbs are, in themselves, sentiment-laden, the effect they have on the words they modify as well as the sentiment of sentences they appear in as a whole and consider the sentiment scores as listed from SentiWordNet in relation to definitions laid out in WordNet. We examined 100 adverbs of manner, comparing their definitions as laid out in WordNet with their sentiment scores as given in SentiWordNet. It was concluded that adverbs of manner are in themselves sentiment-laden and that there is a significant-enough disparity between the definitions and the sentiment scores to introduce errors in SentiWordNet-based automated sentiment evaluations of sentences.
Just as tragic heroes and heroines have been identified with different eras and cultures, the cla... more Just as tragic heroes and heroines have been identified with different eras and cultures, the classical ideal of the tragic hero will be incomplete if the concept of tragedy is not focalized. This paper, therefore, looks at how the classical period defined and delineated its tragic hero based on the action and the plot of the play. The paper provides extracts from Sophocles ’ King Oedipus as the main text and Euripides ’ Iphigenia in Tauris as a supporting text to present Oedipus as the tragic hero. Textual analysis shows that the delineation of the tragic hero lies in the source or context of the tragic situation. Sophocles and Euripides ’ views on the tragic hero are similar to Aristotle’s concept of “hamartia ” of the classical period.
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Papers by Asuamah Adade-Yeboah