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The Pragmatics of Publishers’ Intentions on the Linguist List Journal Publication Calls
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The Pragmatics of Politeness in Post Office Service in Ibadan Metropolis, Nigeria
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NIGERIA AND THE PALESTINIAN - ISRAELI CONFLICT 1960 - 2006
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NIGERIA AND THE PALESTINIAN – ISRAELI CONFLICT 1960 - 2006
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- Although politeness has been well researched in political, medical, media and commercial transactions, it has not been well considered in the area of service delivery in the post offices in Nigeria where it is perceived that the staff exhibit unfriendly attitude to customers. This study, therefore, explores politeness in service encounters in the post offices in Ibadan metropolis with the view to establishing the existence of politeness in the transactions in the establishment, identifying politeness strategies used and highlighting the contributions of job satisfaction, domestic problem, gender, educational status of staff, appearance of customers to the exhibition of politeness during transactions. The study was carried out within a combined theoretical framework of genre classification propounded by Eija Ventola, Suzzane Eggins and Diana Slade, which focuses on the optional and obligatory stages during transaction, Lim's and Bowers' facework theory that locates nuance polite expression orientations and Spencer-Oatey’s rapport managements which categorises rapport strategies. Five post offices from the five local government areas within Ibadan metropolis were randomly selected. Forty seven willing clients and 35 counter attendants were orally interviewed while questionnaires were administered to 35 willing clients and 35 counter attendants respectively. Post office service questionnaire, interviews and participant observation were used for data collection. Transactions in Yoruba were translated into English. Data were analysed using content analysis T-test, ANOVA and Pearson r correlation. Contrary to the belief among many Nigerians that post office staff were generally impolite, a high degree of politeness was established in the staff’s interactions with customers. Although some impoliteness existed, the degree did not affect the transactions. Both the staff and the customers made use of ‘solidarity’, ‘approbation’ and ‘tact’ politeness strategies. The staff frequently used covert ‘solidarity’ expressed by silent acceptance and readiness to offer service. ‘Tact’ came in the form of ‘advice’ and ‘order’ in answer to requests. ‘Approbation’ took the form of ‘suggestion’. Both tact and approbation strategies are power implicated. Customers on the other hand, engaged overt solidarity strategies such as ‘agreement’, ‘cooperation’ and ‘greeting’. ‘Thanking’ was the main approbation strategy; and ‘please’ and implied ‘need’ were used as ‘tact’ strategies when making requests and clarifications. There were relationship between appearance and politeness (r=0.39), job satisfaction and politeness (r=0.29). However, domestic problem, educational status and sex of did not influence the expression of politeness There was a considerable degree of politeness in Ibadan post office service encounters, which facilitated interactions between the staff and the customers. 1 results 1
- Conflict 1 results 1
- Conflict, Nigeria 1 results 1
- Counter attendants 1 results 1
- Customers 1 results 1
- Illocutionary acts 1 results 1
- Journal Publication Calls 1 results 1
- Linguist List 1 results 1
- Locutions 1 results 1
- Middle East 1 results 1
- Nigeria 1 results 1
- Politeness 1 results 1
- Post office 1 results 1
- Publishers‟ intentions 1 results 1
- Service encounter 1 results 1
- The Linguist List Web site is a forum where professionals exchange academic information, especially those related to conferences, calls for papers for journals and books, mailing lists and job opportunities. While all these are constructed in scholarly language, the ones with the most distinguished linguistic form, often with pragmatic meaning, whose proper interpretation has implications for linguists‟ careers, are calls for journal articles posted by publishers. Scholarly information on the Linguist List site has covered site description and scope of operation, but little scholarly work has been attempted on the pragmatic features of the posts, especially journal calls, in spite of its impact on academics‟ professional life. This study, therefore, examined the locutions and illocutionary acts performed in the journal call discourses on the site with a view to establishing the link between the linguistic forms and pragmatic functions in the discourse and their implications for linguists‟ publication prospects. The study adopted a descriptive design and Searle‟s speech act theory, utilising only the locutionary and illocutionary aspects of the theory because of their potency to show a link between linguistic choices and language users‟ intentions. Stratified and purposive sampling techniques were used to select 115 (25% of the 460 posts on the site) journal call posts which comprised pure linguistics (38), applied linguistics (56) and interdisciplinary linguistics (21) on 17December, 2011 from http://linguistlist.org/browse-journals.cfm. Data were subjected to pragmatic analysis. Two levels of locutions were found: lexico-semantic and syntactic levels. The lexicosemantic level covered vocabulary which pointed to the scope of the journals (SJ), academic practice (AP), publication process (PP), editorial composition (EC) and peerreview (PR). Paradigmatic features (synonyms related to PP, SJ, and subscriber‟s status (SS); antonyms revealing research methodology (RM), SJ, PP, and SS were observed. Syntagmatic elements included collocates which showed JT, SJ, RM, PP, paper solicitation (PS), journals utility (JU), and journals‟ access types (AT). At the syntactic level, sentence types revealed simple, compound, complex and anomalous sentences. Except synonyms related to JS and SS which were peculiar to interdisciplinary journals, all other features were common to all the posts. Seven illocutionary acts manifested in the journal posts: Explaining, Preferring, Describing, Mentioning, Proposing, Restricting and Claiming. In the SJ, JU, SS, and PP, the publishers Explained, Preferred, Described, Mentioned and Proposed. They Claimed in PS, AT, JU and PP; and Restricted in SJ, RM, SS and PP. One level of pragmatic communication occurred in the discourse: Indirect communication achieved through non-IFID-(Illocutionary force indicating device) driven acts. While Explaining, Describing and Mentioning acts pragmatically guided scholar-audience‟s choice of journals and professional output; Proposing, Preferring, Restricting and Claiming intimated them with the expected scholastic standards of the journals, charged them with self-evaluation and check listing prior to submission, and hinted at the possibility of failure. Locutions and pragmatic functions of publishers‟ discourse on the Linguist List Web site symbiotically revealed the linguistic forms and pragmatic communication of publishers. These unveil the publishers‟ intentions and the implications of their effectiveness or otherwise for academic publications in the posted journals 1 results 1
- The consequences of the United Nations partitioning of Palestine in 1948 have been recurrent wars and peace processes in the Middle East, as the conflict has remained intractable. While studies have been conducted on these wars and peace processes, there has been no systematic study on Nigeria's policy and role in the Middle East crisis and peace process. This study, therefore, focused on Nigeria's foreign policy and role in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. It examined the origin and consequences of the Palestinian conflict and identified the determinants of Nigeria's Policy in the Middle East. The data for the study were gathered through documentary research, questionnaire administration, observation and interview. A total of 234 questionnaires were administered to Nigerian students, lecturers, and senior civil servants. Delphi panel interview was conducted among Nigerian and non- Nigerian ambassadors posted to the Middle East. Furthermore, secondary data were obtained from books, journals, newspapers, and the Internet. Descriptive statistics was used to analyze aspects of the data that were quantitative. The unilateral partitioning of Palestine into Jewish and Palestinian States and the subsequent creation of the Jewish State in 1948 was the major cause of the conflict between Israel and the Arab States. A majority of respondents (61.1%) preferred to describe Nigeria's foreign policy on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and peace process as that of neutrality. The policy of neutrality was determined by Nigeria's ethnic and religious diversity according to 62.4% of the respondents. In weighing the factors that determined Nigeria's policy in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and peace process, 47% of the respondents chose Nigeria's membership of regional and International Organization especially the United Nations and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, 35.5% chose economic factors (oil), 26.9% selected the ruling elite, 12% marked geographical factors, 10.7% chose military factors, 9.4% marked public opinion, 8.1% chose pressure group action, while 7.7% chose political parties. Despite Nigeria's huge resources and leadership role in Africa, it has not been a major player in the Middle East Crisis. The key actors in the conflict and peace process have been the United States of America, the former Soviet Union (now Russia), Israel, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Palestine Liberation Organization and the United Nations. Nigeria pursued a pragmatic foreign policy which was determined essentially by two main factors: Nigeria's multi ethnic and religious composition, and its membership of regional and international organizations. There is a national consensus about what role Nigeria should play in the global arena. Nigeria is commonly portrayed as secular, Afrocentric and pan-Africanist. However, with the Middle East, this projection and consensus appeared blurred. Because Nigeria does not have a strategic interest in Israel, its foreign policy and role in the conflict and peace process were anchored on the interest of other nations and organizations and not on its national interest. Nigeria's foreign policy should be premised on its national interests in relation to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. These interests need to be explicitly articulated and pursued, for in the final analysis 1 results 1
- The consequences of the United Nations’ partitioning of Palestine in 1948 have been recurrent wars and peace processes in the Middle East, as the conflict has remained intractable. While studies have been conducted on these wars and peace processes, there has been no systematic study on Nigeria’s policy and role in the Middle East crisis and peace process. This study therefore focused on Nigeria’s foreign policy and role in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. It examined the origin and consequences of the Palestinian conflict and identified the determinants of Nigeria’s Policy in the Middle East. The data for the study were gathered through documentary research, questionnaire administration, observation and interview. A total of 234 questionnaires were administered to Nigerian students, lecturers, and senior civil servants. Delphi panel interview was conducted among Nigerian and non- Nigerian ambassadors posted to the Middle East. Furthermore, secondary data were obtained from books, journals, newspapers, and the Internet. Descriptive statistics was used to analyze aspects of the data that were quantitative. The unilateral partitioning of Palestine into Jewish and Palestinian States and the subsequent creation of the Jewish State in 1948 was the major cause of the conflict between Israel and the Arab States. A majority of respondents (61.1%) preferred to describe Nigeria’s foreign policy on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and peace process as that of neutrality. The policy of neutrality was determined by Nigeria’s ethnic and religious diversity according to 62.4% of the respondents. In weighing the factors that determined Nigeria’s policy in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and peace process, 47% of the respondents chose Nigeria’s membership of regional and International Organization especially the United Nations and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, 35.5% chose economic factors (oil), 26.9% selected the ruling elite, 12% marked geographical factors, 10.7% chose military factors, 9.4% marked public opinion, 8.1% chose pressure group action, while 7.7% chose political parties. Despite Nigeria’s huge resources and leadership role in Africa, it has not been a major player in the Middle East Crisis. The key actors in the conflict and peace process have been the United States of America, the former Soviet Union (now Russia), Israel, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Palestine Liberation Organization and the United Nations. Nigeria pursued a pragmatic foreign policy which was determined essentially by two main factors: Nigeria’s multi ethnic and religious composition, and its membership of regional and international organizations. There is a national consensus about what role Nigeria should play in the global arena. Nigeria is commonly portrayed as secular, Afrocentric and pan-Africanist. However, with the Middle East, this projection and consensus appeared blurred. Because Nigeria does not have a strategic interest in Israel, its foreign policy and role in the conflict and peace process were anchored on the interest of other nations and organizations and not on its national interest. Nigeria’s foreign policy should be premised on its national interests in relation to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. These interests need to be explicitly articulated and pursued, for in the final analysis. 1 results 1
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