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Volume 28.2 (2017) COLLEGE OF HUMANITIES, UNIVERSITY OF GHANA LEGON JOURNAL OF THE HUMANITIES Vol 28.2 (2017) COLLEGE OF HUMANITIES, UNIVERSITY OF GHANA E-ISSN: 2458-746X ISSN: 0855-1502 LEGON JOURNAL OF THE HUMANITIES VOLUME 28.2 (2017) Editor Augustine H. Asaah Assistant Editor Rosemary Amenga-Etego COLLEGE OF HUMANITIES, UNIVERSITY OF GHANA E-ISSN: 2458-746X ISSN: 0855-1502 CREATIVE COMMON LICENSE Attribution-Non commercial-No derivates 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) This issue was produced with financial support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York through the University of Ghana Building the Next Generation of Academics in Africa (BANGA-Africa) Project. Legon Journal of the Humanities 28.2 (2017) P a g e | ii Legon Journal of the Humanities is indexed in the database of Modern Language Association. It is also accessible on the platform of African Journals Online (AJOL). Legon Journal of the Humanities is published by the College of Humanities, University of Ghana EDITORIAL BOARD Nana Aba A. Amfo ………………………………………………………Chair Associate Professor of Linguistics Dean, School of Languages, College of Humanities University of Ghana, Legon, Ghana [email protected] Augustine H. Asaah ……………………………………………….........Editor Professor, Department of French School of Languages, College of Humanities University of Ghana, Legon, Ghana [email protected] Rosemary Amenga-Etego ………………………......….........Assistant Editor Senior Lecturer, Department for the Study of Religions School of Arts, College of Humanities University of Ghana, Legon, Ghana [email protected] Esi Sutherland-Addy ………………………...........................………Member Associate Professor Institute of African Studies, College of Humanities University of Ghana, Legon, Ghana [email protected] Susanne Gehrmann ………………………………………......….…...Member Professor of African Literatures and Cultures Department of Asian and African Studies Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany [email protected] Legon Journal of the Humanities 28.2 (2017) P a g e | iii Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni ………………......…………...............….. Member Professor, Department of Development Studies Professor and Head, Archie Mafeje Research Institute (AMRI) University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa [email protected] Cas Wepener ………………………………………………….........…Member Professor of Religions and Head Department of Practical Theology University of Pretoria, South Africa [email protected] Joshua Amuah …………………………………….....……………….Member Senior Lecturer and Head Department of Music School of Performing Arts, College of Humanities University of Ghana, Legon, Ghana [email protected] EDITORIAL ASSISTANT: Eunice Lucien-Marc PAST EDITORS 1974-1977: Lawrence A. Boadi 1987-1994: John N. D. Dodoo 1994-1999: Alex K. Dzameshie 1999-2003: E. Kweku Osam 2004-2009: Gordon S. K. Adika 2009-2015: Helen A. Yitah Legon Journal of the Humanities 28.2 (2017) P a g e | iv ADVISORY BOARD Moradewun Adejunmobi, Professor, African American and African Studies, University of California, Davis, USA. Emmanuel K. Akyeampong, Professor of History; Professor of African and American Studies, Center for Government and International Studies, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA. Li Anshan, Professor of International Relations; Director, Institute of Afro- Asian Studies and Center for African Studies, Peking University; Vice-President, Chinese African Studies, China. Hyun-Chin Lim, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, Founding Director of Asia Center, Seoul National University; President, Korean Social Science Research Council, Korea. Dorothy Odartey-Wellington, Associate Professor of Spanish, School of Languages and Literatures, University of Guelph, Canada. David Owusu-Ansah, Professor of History; Executive Director, Faculty Access and Inclusion, James Madison University, Harrisonburg-VA, USA. Nicola Piper, Professor of International Migration, Department of Sociology and Social Policy, Director of Human Rights and Democratization (Asia Pacific), The University of Sidney; Convener, Sidney Asia Pacific Migration Network (SAPMIN), Australia. Laud Ato Quayson, Professor and Director, Center for Transnational and Diaspora Studies, University of Toronto, Canada. João José Reis, Professor, Department of History, Federal University of Bahia, Salvador, Brazil. Maria Koptjevskaja Tamm, Professor of General Linguistics, Department of Linguistics, Stockholm University, Sweden. Legon Journal of the Humanities 28.2 (2017) P a g e | v Email: [email protected]; [email protected] For further details, (e.g. guide for contributors, copyright, etc.), kindly go to the journal’s website: http://coh.ug.edu.gh/ljh Legon Journal of the Humanities 28.2 (2017) P a g e | vi Table of Contents Enhancing Doctoral Research Education through the Institution of Graduate Writing Courses in Ghanaian Universities ......................................................... 1 Joseph B. A. Afful The Ethnosemantics and Proverbs of ‘Ohia’, Poverty, in Akan ....................... 23 Kofi Agyekum Personal Attribute Nominals in Akan : A Constructionist Perspective ............. 49 Clement Kwamina Insaidoo Appah Introducing Nkami: A Forgotten Guang Language and People of Ghana................................................................................................................ 73 Rogers Krobea Asante Multimodal Code-pairing and Switching of Visual-verbal Texts in Selected Nigerian Stand-up Comedy Performances ..................................................... 105 Mufutau Temitayo Lamidi ‘I just said it, I didn’t mean anything:’ Culture and Pragmatic Inference in Interpersonal Communication ........................................................................ 131 Felix Nwabeze Ogoanah Stella Nkechi Kpolugbo Language, Education and Linguistic Human Rights in Ghana ...................... 151 Charles Owu-Ewie Book Review: Véronique Tadjo’s En compagnie des hommes ...................... 173 Augustine H. Asaah Legon Journal of the Humanities 28.2 (2017) P a g e | vii Afful, J. B. A / Legon Journal of the Humanities 28.2 (2017) DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.4314/ljh.v28i2.1 Enhancing Doctoral Research Education through the Institution of Graduate Writing Courses in Ghanaian Universities Joseph B. A. Afful Associate Professor, Department of English University of Cape Coast Cape Coast, Ghana Email: [email protected] Submitted: May 26, 2017 / Accepted: September 18, 2017 / Published: October 31, 2017 Abstract A key support service in doctoral research that has increasingly gained attention is academic writing courses. This position paper argues for the institutionalization of graduate writing courses in universities in Ghana in order to acquaint doctoral students with the theoretical, procedural, and practical aspects of the writing of high stakes academic genres. An overview (including evaluation) of existing courses on research- related writing in some universities is proffered. The study consequently presents arguments to support a proposal for institutional graduate writing courses in Ghanaian universities, followed by a discussion of other pertinent issues such as the curriculum, staffing, and funding. It is hoped that the institutionalization of such a writing support service will ultimately improve the quality of doctoral research education in Ghana. Keywords: academy, doctoral research education, Ghana, graduate writing course, support Introduction Worldwide, doctoral research education has, in recent times, attracted increasing amounts of research and policy attention, partly, in response to a perception that all is not well at this most advanced end of the formal educational spectrum partly by reason of its close link to national development. However, attention has principally focused on organizational and administrative matters such as completion times, completion rates, costs, and benefits (Bair & Haworth, 2005; Bansel, 2011; Bitzer, Trafford, & Leshem, 2014; Aitchison & Mowbray, 2015) as well as on the broad issue of quality (Manathunga, Paseta & McCormack, 2010) of doctoral education and the scare of unemployment that faces doctoral students upon the completion of their programs (Kamler & Thomson, 2014). Legon Journal of the Humanities 28.2 (2017) P a g e | 1 Afful, J. B. A / Legon Journal of the Humanities 28.2 (2017) 1-22 Research writing has only recently begun to receive serious attention. In other words, little attention has been paid to the processes through which doctoral candidates learn to write and, hence, learn to become authorized and authoritative writers within the scholarly communities in which they seek to take their place. In this paper, I define academic writing, part of which is that central, difficult, and often trauma-ridden activity of the production of the ultimate doctoral thesis, as: a term largely used to describe written works presented from an informed stance that is reflective of significance, criticality, detail and organization, and designed for review by a wider audience. In most instances, the term is used primarily to describe a style of writing specific to a discipline within the academic sphere. It is an integral part of teaching and learning at the tertiary level as it is the primary measure by which educational success is judged. (Watson, 2013. p. 12) Without doubt, writing instruction is critical to doctoral student success (Lee, 1998; Aitchison & Lee, 2006; Flaherty & Choi, 2013; Burford, 2017). Lee (1998) refers to the ‘profoundly textual nature’ of doctoral research. Writing, conceptualized as a discursive, social, and