The article provides a descriptive account of the phonology of Kussummiya spoken in southwest Ethiopia. It is basically a qualitative study in that linguistic data are collected from native speakers by using elicitation technique. The collected data are organized and analyzed categorically. The findings of the study show that Kussummiya has 21 attested consonant phonemes and five short and five long vowel phonemes which is a typical feature of Cushitic vowel system. All consonant phonemes geminate and they occur only in word medial position. Consonant gemination and vowel length are phonemic. Consonant cluster occur in word medial position with a maximum of two non-identical consonants. Some of the phonological processes identified in words or across words are: insertion, deletion, devoicing, spirantisation, assimilation and metathesis.
This qualitative research tried to look at the failure of the smallholder sugarcane development in Madura. To understand this issue, the approach used was social capital analysis by looking at trust as an important factor. The objective of this research was to understand and explore why the sugarcane development failed in Madura. This research used a qualitative method with a case study approach. The informants were recruited from three regencies in Madura: Bangkalan, Sampang, and Pamekasan) using purposive sampling. The results showed that the failure of the sugarcane development in Madura was due to distrust of farmers and investors as the two actors of sugarcane farming. This distrust arose as they were suspicious of one another and there was no honesty among them. Thus, trust as social capital is needed to develop a sugarcane business in Madura.
Al-dunyā aǧmal min al-ǧanna (“This world is more beautiful than paradise”) by the Egyptian writer Ḫālid al-Birrī is a memoir—firstly serialized in 2001, and then republished as a volume in 2006—recounting the author’s militancy in the fundamentalist group al-ǧamā‘a al-islāmiyya, for around five years. While scholars have referred to this book, generally, as a historical source and as a documentary about the activities and strategies adopted by al-ǧamā‘a al-islāmiyya, I will attempt here an analysis of the text as a memoir, in dialogue with both the Egyptian of Twentieth Century life-writing tradition, and the memoir global tradition. Under this perspective, I will discuss some tropes and discourses developed by the author. In particular, I will analyze how the author develops through this legitimizing genre themes as the quest for identity, the building of a new “self,” the relationship between the self and the Nation, represented through a tight network of cultural and literary references.
This study investigates the use and linguistic properties of refusal strategies by Jordanians and Syrian refugees in Jordan. To achieve this objective, a Discourse Completion Test (DCT), consisting of 10 situations: three requests, three offers, two invitations, and two suggestions was used. The participants were 40 (20 male and 20 female) Jordanians and 40 (20 male and 20 female) Syrian refugees in Jordan. The mixed-method data analysis resulted in a total of 1351 refusals: 719 Jordanian refusals and 632 Syrian refugees’ refusals. The refusals were classified by semantic formulas, directness (a dimension of communication style), and frequency of semantic formulas. The results show that the two groups utilize different semantic formulas with different frequencies when making their refusals. The two groups used a different number of direct and indirect formulas. Although the two groups belong to the Arabic culture, the differences were significant. One main difference is that Jordanians’ refusals were more direct and were often expressed as negative willingness, while the Syrian refugees’ refusals were less direct, providing an explanation of their refusals. The results also indicate that gender is a significant variable where females in the two samples tended to respond with lengthy responses when making their refusals, employing at least three refusal strategies.
Did the Greeks learn the alphabet directly from the Phoenicians or did they learn it from non-Semitic intermediaries? Were these intermediaries the Phrygians or did the Phrygians learn it from the Greeks or some other people? Discussing the form taken by certain Phoenician letters in the Greek and Phrygian alphabets, this article raises the hypothesis that the current forms of these two alphabets emerged for the first time in Cilicia Pedias towards the end of the 9th century BC at the chancery of the Achaean kingdom that had settled there. They were the first “Westerners” to master the Phoenician alphabet. From there, the alphabet, which by then had become consonantal and vocalic, would have spread to Phrygia through Cappadocia, and then to the peoples of the Mediterranean coast of Anatolia through Cilicia Trachea.
On November 22nd, 1974, the United Nations General Assembly promulgated resolutions No. 3236 and No. 3237, recognizing the political, cultural, and socio-economic rights of the Palestinian people, and formalizing the PLO’s participation in the General Assembly as an observer. These important resolutions were issued following the historic speech given by the President of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Yāsir ʿArafāt, on November 13th, 1974, before the United Nations General Assembly. This paper consists in the rhetorical and linguistic analysis of the main argumentative strategies employed by the Palestinian leader in his speech to achieve his perlocutionary goals. Specifically, the analysis is carried out on the basis of the methodological tools developed by Perelman and Olbrecths-Tyteca in The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation (1969). The Perelmanian tools are applied to ʿArafāt’s Arabic speech in order to determine the rhetorical techniques employed to build the audience’s agreement and to persuade them about the necessity to accommodate his people’s requests. From this research emerges the in-depth knowledge that the speaker has of his audience, addressing, from time to time, a particular or a universal audience, in an attempt to reach an agreement that is as broad as possible. For this reason, the speaker carefully chooses the language through which to convey his message, excluding the Islamic formulas and lexicon, which usually characterize his speeches. Furthermore, the agreement with the public is established through the repeated reference to universal values, which allow him to place the Palestinian question in a framework shared by the audience. Finally, the present study illustrates the copious argumentative strategies that ʿArafāt employs to generate a change of perspective on the Palestinian question, facilitating the process of persuasion.
With the flames of racial and ethnic discrimination glowing vehemently everywhere, the present study probes into the representation of color-based discrimination in Egyptian movies. It depicts the stereotypes and value judgments taken as norms characterizing black people in Egyptian movies. The paper's methodological approach is both qualitative and quantitative. Quantitatively, a structured questionnaire on Microsoft forms consisting of three questions that are related to Movie watching habits, stereotyping, and attitudes & future recommendations, was used to elicit 75 viewers' reactions toward the negative representation of black people in Egyptian movies. Qualitatively, the researchers analyzed some scenes that were extracted from six Egyptian movies. The quantitative findings showed that some of the participants have a typical stereotype about black people based on what they watch in the movies and recommended representing them in a better way in the future. The qualitative findings revealed inter-discoursal characteristics of racist discourse in Egyptian movies. The conclusions and recommendations call upon global media hubs and social media platforms to help combat and eradicate racism through banning the production of TV programs and shows that condone racist beliefs and practices.
By the Song period (960–1279), very few chronicles compiled before the tenth century were preserved in the imperial and private book collections. Early chronicles served as sources for the compilation of dynastic histories and comprehensive accounts; later, as their transmission was no longer valued, they were largely forgotten. As it is widely known, a great deal of these texts was neither transmitted nor fully lost, as fragments survived in Song institutional and literary compendia. Thanks to these compendia, we can glance at their content and form, and make hypotheses concerning their value, readership, and early transmission. Descriptive booklists of the Song -eleventh to the thirteenth century- imperial and private collections are another valuable source of information on the content, cataloging criteria, and later reception of medieval works of a historical nature. Through a reading of the synoptic descriptions of the items listed in the biannian, “accounts arranged chronologically,” sections of book catalogs from the Song period, this article aims to cast some light on the features of these early chronicles.
This article attempts to analyze how Kim Hyun-seung’s thoughts about Christianity have changed throughout his poetic works. Considered to be a Puritan-like-figure, Kim Hyun-seung is regarded as the most representative Christian poet in Korea. His works, often written in a solemn mood, are characterized by prayer and devotion to God. In Autumn, the significant season for Kim, he gets immersed in religious contemplation. As a solely wandering bird in his works, the raven symbolizes his religious soul. However, Kim was skeptical about the religion during his middle period due to the limitations of Christianity. His frustration was accompanied by solid solitude with the loss of God, which is in opposition to Kierkegaardian solitude. After suffering from a crisis of death, he returned to Christianity with absolute faith in his final years. His oscillation between the religious faith and the recognition of reality reflects his persistent pursuit of religious ethics, which cannot be fully satiated.
The article proposes an interpretative revisitation of a rather well-known and widespread iconographic motif in Egyptian art: the depiction of the Pharaoh striking his enemies. The scenes of subjugation constitute a red thread that connects all pharaonic dynasties, with an obvious propagandistic purpose to benefit the power of the Pharaoh, and more extensively of the imposition of Egyptian order against the chaos created by everything outside the empire, reason to take foreigners prisoners and therefore punished. The analysis develops on the double strand of monumental art and glyptic media, with a comparison of the diffusion of the two media and an in-depth study of scarabs dated between the 18th and 20th Dynasty found in the southern Levant.
This study investigates identity salience of four types of identities; national, religious, cultural and global, for Ammani people in view of the post-structuralist perspective on identity (Baxter 2016). It also examines the extent to which age, gender and the social context affect identity change and stability in light of Communication Accommodation Theory (Giles et al. 2012). The analysis of the data reveals that the most salient identity for the participants is the religious identity for both genders and all age groups, except in certain circumstances namely traveling, where national identity was shown to be the most salient. Gender and age play an important role in the extent to which each group attaches itself to each type of identity and the way they view these attachments. The results suggest that Amman could be witnessing a change in its identity construction and the way its people express their identity.
This paper stems from the challenge of translating Pirandello’s plays into Swahili and is aimed to open up a polylogue between Italian and Swahili literature. Therefore, in searching for connections between Luigi Pirandello’s and Penina Muhando’s plays, this paper will explore multiple masks engaged in a reciprocal dialogue among the following six selected plays: Enrico IV (‘Henry IV,’ Pirandello 1921); Così è, Se vi pare (‘It is so, if you think so!’ Pirandello 1917); Il Berretto a Sonagli (‘Cap and bells,’ Pirandello 1916); Pambo (‘Decoration,’ Muhando 1975); Nguzo mama (‘The Mother Pillar,’ Muhando 1982); and Lina ubani (‘An Antidote to Rot,’ Muhando 1984). In conclusion, this study will illustrate how different forms of sociohistorical alienation, which encircle the twentieth century, are stylistically represented in these plays through the characters who wear the masks of madness, or ‘sage-madness.’ To allow an in-depth analysis of the plays this study will be divided into two parts. Part one will examine Enrico IV (‘Henry IV,’ Pirandello 1921) and Pambo (‘Decoration,’ Muhando 1975). Part Two will examine Così è, Se vi pare (‘It is so, if you think so!’ Pirandello 1917); Nguzo mama (‘The Mother Pillar,’ Muhando 1982); Il Berretto a Sonagli (‘Cap and bells,’ Pirandello 1916); and Lina ubani (‘An Antidote to Rot,’ Muhando 1984).
Aim of this study is to investigate the impact of an online word recognition application on the reading skills of Italian Japanese learners. The application is designed to enhance learners' automatic word recognition abilities by incorporating principles of reaction time research and gamification. Japanese being a complex writing system that requires mastery of orthography and phonology, automatic word recognition is a crucial aspect of fluent reading. Reaction time research has demonstrated that the faster a person can recognize a word, the more fluent their reading becomes. Moreover, gamification has been found to be an effective means of motivating learners and improving their performance. The implementation and evaluation of this online word recognition application represents a novel approach to enhancing Italian Japanese learners’ reading proficiency.
This study aims to critically analyze metaphors employed in Arabic cosmetics advertisements and compare them to those used in English advertisements. A specialized corpus including 250 advertisements (125 Arabic advertisements and 125 English ones) of different cosmetics products was compiled. The method adopted for data analysis was based on Charteris-Black’s (2004) Critical Metaphor Analysis framework (CMA). Data analysis demonstrated that advertisers in the context of cosmetics advertisements use different conceptual metaphors to depict cosmetics, beauty, skin/hair care and skin/hair. The findings revealed that both languages share 5 conceptual metaphors out of 10. Moreover, some metaphors reveal how both Arabs and Westerners perceive the beauty of skin or hair.
This paper presents a comparative study of the linguistic data collected during fieldwork in three Arabic-speaking towns in Morocco: Larache, in the north; Temara, on the central Atlantic coast; and Berkane, in the east. The goal of the article is twofold: first of all, it aims at highlighting the new dialectological findings made by analysing the three corpora separately; secondly, it attempts to clarify, by means of a comparative analysis, if there is evidence of a modern koine spreading from the urban areas in Central Morocco to other regions of the country. To these purposes, seven variables pertaining to the levels of phonetics, verbal and nominal morphology are selected for cross-analysis among the three corpora. Previous dialectological data on the same and other Moroccan areas are then taken into account to advance hypotheses on the spread and the ancientness of the identified phenomena of linguistic variation, and their more or less likely connection to the modern koine. The results show that, while there is indeed a certain degree of convergence among the three towns (with Berkane being the least involved in the converging trend), some of the phenomena identified could be explained as accommodation to other varieties having common features with the inter-urban koine, while others could be the result of mutual rather than one-way convergence. More sociolinguistic data are needed to clarify the doubts raised by the analysis.
