ABSTRACT This study undertook a critical analysis of power asymmetry among discourse participants in sampled Kenyan courts. Specifically, the study investigated the questioning and pragmatic strategies used by lawyers, police prosecutors and unrepresented accused persons during direct examination and cross examination phases of trial, as well as the use of various speech act functions and background contributions by the examiners. In addition, the study also looked at how witness responses e...
ABSTRACT This study investigated lexical variation in spoken Lubukusu, a language spoken by the Bukusu people in the Western part of Kenya. Research has shown that all languages vary at all levels and that these variations are caused by certain characteristics of the speakers of a language. Such variations cause incomprehensibility among speakers of different social groups. Lubukusu being a heterogeneous language exhibits variations at various linguistic levels. This study identified lexical...
Abstract This thesis presents a comparative genre analysis between scholarly electronic mail and basic electronic message schema. This was by evaluating the relationship between scholarly electronic mail and basic electronic message schema. The study also examines communicative functions of the discrete parts as communicated by subscribers to the mailing list. Lastly, the study established and described the linguistic features that signal the discrete parts of scholarly electronic mail. A qu...
ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to investigate the Gĩkũyũ verbal extensions: their individual occurrence and their co-occurrences. Gĩkũyũ, just like other Bantu languages, has a rich and complex morphology. The complexity is more evident in derivational morphology than inflectional morphology. A feature that makes derivational morphology complex is the concatenations of the derivational affixes such as the verbal extensions under investigation in this study. The five affixes, na...
ABSTRACT The introduction of Parlons Français as the first ever French course book published locally in Kenya for the teaching of French as a foreign language, having been a development that was a turning point in the history of French teaching in this country, our concern in this critical study was to examine the suitability of the course book to the situation in Kenya. Our assessment is that this first attempt to develop a course book for the teaching of French by local authors has largely...
ABSTRACT This research evaluated the use of ideology in S. A. Mohamed’s novels to find out whether it impacts his works over a period of time. The study was informed by the fact that many critics tend to assume that the attitudes, thoughts and views of the writer are the same and stable all the time. Since at specific times, these attitudes, thoughts and views are informed by a certain ideology it was important to evaluate the ideologies of a writer for a longer period to see whether they r...
ABSTRACT This study set out to investigate the phonological awareness skills of learners with reading disability. When one is considered a normal reader, he or she does not encounter much difficulty in reading and understanding texts. There are, however, children who have problems with phoneme identification and thus do not read well and they also have difficulties in comprehending texts. These learners should be identified and be assisted so that they can proceed with their learning lives. T...
ABSTRACT This study investigated the challenges brought about by new stylistic perspectives in Kiswahili poetry. The main objective was to identify new stylistic perspectives in Kiswahili poetry, the settings which contributes to the new patterns of poetic compositions, and the challenges brought about by these new perspectives. In achieving the objectives of the study, the research was guided by the theory of stylistics which was expounded by among others Coombs (1953), Leech (1961). The stu...
ABSTRACT This research intends to investigate the theme of change and development of adolescents in Chozi Langu (Mogambi, 2014) and Dunia Mashaka Makuu (Omar, 2015). The research has investigated the character, situation, feelings and health change and development of the adolescents between the ages of 10 to 19 years. The issues investigated are parenting, poverty among others that influence the character change in adolescents. The research is guided by the tenets of Realism theory Luckas (19...
ABSTRACT Significant achievements have been made by feminists in challenging direct linguistic sexism by suggesting progressive and alternative ways language can be used to positively represent women. However, this has not hindered sexist individuals from continuing with their discrimination against women. They have come up with ways of strategically drawing on language to indirectly do so. The purpose of this study was to investigate attitude among Ekegusii radio listeners towards indirect l...
ABSTRACT Themes and styles are two aspects that complement each other in poetry. This reseach aims to show how these two aspects manifest themselves in selected collections of children’s Kiswahili poetry. To accomplish this, the reseacher utilized purposive sumpling to select the verses and stanzas that elicit various themes from selected anthologies. These anthlogies are, Utenzi wa Haki za Watoto (Abbas, 2003) and Mashairi Bulbul (Ahmed, 2010). The specific objectives of the reseach are: T...
Sexual Dysphemisms in South Nyanza Dholuo A Congnitive Linguistic Approach
ABSTRACT The main objective of this research was to study the styles in swahili short story. We used two short story books which are; Pendo la Heba(1996) and Mayai Waziri wa Maradhi na Hadithi Nyingine (2004). In our research, we also outlined and discussed different kinds of styles. This are; similes, personification, imagery and symbolism. We also showed the expected effects of the use of these different kinds of styles in choosen short story books. We were guided by stylistic theory in our...
ABSTRACT This study is a morphophonological analysis of some nouns borrowed by Hausa and Kiswahili from Arabic. Despite the fact that Hausa and Kiswahili belong to different linguistic families and are spoken in such distant areas of Africa they share a special historical background. The three main objectives of this research are: to identify the Kiswahili and Hausa nouns borrowed from Arabic; to determine the word formation processes applied in the Hausa and Kiswahili nouns borrowed from Ara...
ABSTRACT This study endeavored to investigate Dahl’s Law in reference with nouns, verbs and borrowed words in Ekegusii. The research intended to accomplish this by realizing the following three objectives; to explain Dahl‟s Law as revealed in Ekegusii, to illustrate how borrowed words in Ekegusii reveal Dahl‟s Law, to examine diachronic and synchronic versions of Ekegusii and their characteristics. The research was based on the Optimality Theory (OT) that was postulated by Prince and Sm...