- Volume 11, Number 4 (2023)
WHEN CULTURES COLLIDE: EXPLORING THE CRUCIAL ROLE OF CONTEXTUAL CUES IN INTERCULTURAL HUMOR
Sarah Khalid Al-Mohammed
Humor has been found to play a critical role in interpersonal communication, facilitating friendly relations, and generating positive outcomes. However, its use in intercultural communication poses a challenge due to differences in language and culture between interlocutors. This study examines the effect of contextual cues on the deployment of humor in intercultural communication. The quasi-experimental design compares two groups of international students, with one group watching a video clip of a joke with contextual cues and the other group reading a transcript of the same joke. The study uses a Likert-type scale to measure the level of understanding, delivery, failure,...
THREADS OF WISDOM: SEMANTICS AND STRUCTURE IN YAKA PROVERBS, A PRAGMATIC INSIGHT INTO THE ART OF IMPARTING ADVICE
Jean-Pierre Mabiala Ntumba
This paper analyzes the Yaka proverbs from a pragmatic point of view in terms of the speech act of advice. The research is two-fold, starting with a definition of proverbs and their characteristics, followed by an analysis of the speech act of advice in Yaka proverbs at three levels: pragmatic, semantic, and structural. The article highlights ten Yaka proverbs and describes their morpho-syntactic structure, denotation meaning, connotation or literary meaning, and pragmatic analysis and interpretation. The analysis examines the semantic meaning of advising, assuming the reader would want to know what should be done and whether the speaker has good...
IN THE HEART OF KENYANG: A LINGUISTIC EXAMINATION OF COGNATE OBJECTS IN AN UNDER-EXPLORED LANGUAGE
Zainabu Ibrahim, Kwame Osei Amoako
This paper examines the use of cognate objects in Kenyang, a Niger-Congo language spoken in Cameroon, and their relationship with transitivity. Cognate objects are nouns that display both argument and adjunct properties and share etymological roots with the verb. The study categorizes 50 Kenyang verbs based on whether their cognate objects are morphologically or semantically related to the verb and explores the syntactical properties that distinguish cognate objects from regular transitive objects. The paper also discusses theoretical implications within the generative framework and the transitivity properties of the verb as translated by the Case Theory and Theta Theory. The research...