Research on collocations still generates plenty of interest among contemporary researchers of linguistics and translation research. The interest stems from the fact that there is a degree of inconsistency in terms of identifying and defining collocations in the literature. Conflicting views put forward by linguists made it difficult to draw a coherent interpretation of collocations. This suggests that collocational units are a fragmented area of research with blurred lines between frequently fixed co-occurrence sequences or a combination of words and free word combination. The collocation debate has hit a conceptual impasse. It rarely moves beyond merely giving broad definitions, overlapped with other technical terms in the field of corpus linguistics. This study examines the extension to which collocations are intertwined with other formulaic expressions such as idioms and free word combinations. Furthermore, the study considers whether Quranic collocations fit into the general standards of collocation. The study examined a sample of five selected English translations of the Quran to evaluate their degree of faithfulness and accuracy. The findings revealed that collocation is too multifaceted to be pinned down to a single definition. Linguists fell short of reaching a consensus or providing concrete empirical evidence on the complex nature of collocation. The findings also showed that the English translation of the Quran remains a work in progress. Views are polarised between those who advocate a close rendering of the Quranic text and those who believe in a ‘natural style’. Translators need to be aware how collocations are formulated and how they are embedded in the Quranic verses to convey their deep and implicit meaning and should not be interpreted at face value.
Mrs. Dalloway is one of Virginia Woolf’s greatest achievements. The novel continues to enthuse scholars across the globe, and there are myriad studies through which readers can gain a finer understanding of it. This paper attempts to show how Woolf implants in Mrs. Dalloway a plentiful range of experiences from her life. It argues that in order to have an ample understanding of a character’s state of mind or behavior, emphasis should be placed not only on the text but also on the role of the writer’s personal experiences in its formation. This paper discusses, more specifically, how Woolf’s own experiences are linked to Septimus’s, and showcases that Woolf’s life is a major influence on the story of Septimus.
This article examined the Igbo native speakers’ perception of request act as well as the linguistic politeness strategies used to achieve this communicative intention in their conversational English as bilinguals. The study participants were 2748 undergraduate Igbo native speakers purposively selected from different Federal and State Universities in the core Igbo-speaking states of South-east/South-south Nigeria. To elicit data, a 10-item discourse completion task (DCT) with guided options written in English and designed to evoke politeness strategies in request discourse projecting hypothetical situations was administered to the participants. The results showed that the study samples brought to fore their sociocultural expectations as Igbo by adopting principally the directness strategy in performing the request act. Also, findings revealed that the participants paid attention to certain sociolinguistic variables such as hierarchy, extent of familiarity, which contributed to the variance, observed in their choice of strategies in some contexts. Furthermore, the study noted a measure of linguistic transfer of a tinge of the native language to the target language (English language) as participants tried to fulfill the communicative goals of the request act in the target language. Notably, the findings demonstrated the possibility of communication breakdowns arising from grammatically correct but pragmatically inappropriate utterances from learners hence the need to further emphasize pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic consciousness - the dearth of which has been implicated in the study.
This study investigates the linguistic dimensions of the songs made popular by One Direction– the British-Irish boy band that captivated young fans around the world in the 2010s. The tailored corpus output was based on One Direction’s five albums (65 songs, 21,566 words). Using Voyant Tools (Sinclair & Rockwell 2016) and discourse analysis framework (Fairclough 1995, 2001), we examined the word frequency, collocation patterns and semantic references found in the lyrics. Further analysis was grounded on the 5-stage model of love and relationships by Levinger (1983). The results suggest that the lexicogrammatical associations found in One Direction’s songs show that words may have similar meaning but carry a different illocutionary message in terms of use patterns within a contextual structure. The semantic and pragmatic references in the lyrics also tell an emotional narrative of a roller-coaster-kind-of-young love and the challenges they face i.e., exhilaratingly titillating and painfully short-lived. From Oh yeah, baby to Oh, love, goodbye, love is indeed like a song; its own rhythm has a beginning and an end– a story that ironically reflects the band’s own fate. This study has major implications for corpus discourse research, particularly in analyzing the semantic references and implicatures of the lyrics and the story behind them.
Food is useful in the transference of semantic aspects that are vital in the construction of masculinity in society. Consequently, foodsemic metaphors that aid in the conceptualization of omosacha (a man) are pervasive in Ekegusii. Metaphor use may, however, present difficulties in comprehension due to the various interpretations that may be assigned to each of them. The meaning of Ekegusii foodsemic metaphors may, therefore, be elusive to the native speakers of Ekegusii. The paper employs the principle of conceptual mental spaces to interpret Ekegusii foodsemic metaphor within the Cognitive Linguistics framework. The study adopts descriptive research design. First, the terms that are used to describe men in Ekegusii are identified by administering an interview schedule to 48 Ekegusii native respondents purposively sampled on the basis of gender. The data collected is then subjected to the Metaphor Identification Procedure Vrije Universiteit (MIPVU) in which four annotators are used to identify Ekegusii male metaphors. Through the MIPVU, 52 metaphors are identified. The paper then selects one metaphor that describes a man as food hence the Ekegusii foodsemic metaphor for this study. The research reveals that the integration of the four conceptual mental spaces that include two input spaces, the generic space and the blended space is resourceful in structuring a man as a symbol of nourishment in Ekegusii. Moreover, the MIPVU is unveiled as a useful metaphor identification method that provides a clear guide in the establishment of precise metaphors for study. The study concludes that metaphors are integral components of communication and should be explained using the Cognitive Linguistics paradigm. The findings of the study will contribute to Linguistics especially the field of Cognitive Linguistics which is relatively new and has not been subjected to extensive research. In addition, the findings will be useful to metaphor scholars in comprehending Ekegusii male metaphors and culture.
