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Papers by ZUBAIRU MALAH

International journal of languages, literature and linguistics, 2015

The objectives of this study are: (1) to identify the similarities and differences between the se... more The objectives of this study are: (1) to identify the similarities and differences between the segmental phonemes of English and Hausa languages, and (2) to predict learning difficulties among the Hausa ESL learners based on this comparison. Learners of English as a second language (L2) are usually faced with difficulties largely contributed by the features of their first languages (L1). The Hausa speakers in Nigeria learn English as a second language and features of the Hausa language are heavily evident in their spoken English. Among the causes of difficulty in pronouncing English among the Hausa speakers is the segmental deviation. This study compares and contrasts the segmental phonemes of English and Hausa. Behaviorists and Structural linguists in the 1950's and 1960's founded the theoretical foundations of the Contrastive Analysis (CA) and since then, this approach has been employed in the second language acquisition studies. In the course of this study, the researchers employed desk research where data were drawn from archive and then analyzed side-by-side revealing their similarities and differences. The results of the study demonstrate that although Hausa and English have some similar phonemes, the sounds do not behave the same way in the two languages, and Hausa has 47 phonemes when English has 44. Differences in the phonological features between the two languages result in challenges faced by the Hausas in learning English.

The objective of this study is to investigate and analyze the English-Malay Loanblends. The realm... more The objective of this study is to investigate and analyze the English-Malay Loanblends. The realm of Contact Linguistics is concerned with the consequences when languages come into contact (Blake, 2008). However, among the inevitable consequences is the emergence of pidginized forms, creoles, code-switching, code-mixing and also lexical borrowings (Hoffer, 2002; Christopher, 2005; Durkin, 2011). This study focuses on loanblends as discovered by Haugen (1950) as forms of hybridized borrowings consisting of both importation and substitution. These are borrowings whose mode of adaptability into the recipient language (Weinreich, 1953) employs both native and foreign elements. The researcher employed survey and observation of different instances of loanblends from the English-Malay borrowings in daily use among the Malay speakers in Serdang. The findings of the study demonstrate that the Malay speakers use some loanblends of English-Malay morphemic fusions. In these loanblends, the last morphemes are mostly substituted with native expressions but the meanings remain the same with the original words in the donor language. As a conclusion, the researcher is convinced that the English-Malay borrowing is a rich area of academic investigation and he finally recommends further researches on phonemic substitution in English-Malay loanwords.

International Journal of Linguistics, 2020

Following the seminal publication of Halliday and Hasan's Cohesion in English (1976), lexical coh... more Following the seminal publication of Halliday and Hasan's Cohesion in English (1976), lexical cohesion became a major source of prolific inquiries among discourse analysts. Through the decades, this field of research has made tremendous advances in terms of newer frameworks and the data being explored. Lexical cohesion studies have applied different models to investigate different registers and genres (spoken and written) and reported findings which significantly advanced knowledge on the relation between lexical resources and different properties of discourse. Adopting the review method, this paper attempts to provide a brief account on lexical cohesion as an approach to discourse analysis. It endeavors to capture some appreciable impression of description, emergence, development and practical application of lexical cohesion in discourse studies. The paper is generally structured into four major sections as: (1) emergence and nature of cohesion in discourse analysis, (2) scholarly rhetoric and debate on cohesion and textuality in discourse, (3) approaches to lexical cohesion analysis, and (4) insights from lexical cohesion studies. Therefore, this study reviews the theory of (lexical) cohesion and its significance as a field of researching discourse. It is hoped that the study would be of help to students and researchers interested in applying lexical cohesion to analyze discourse.

International Journal of Language and Literary Studies, 2021

Numerous studies have revealed how Lexical Cohesion supported the fulfilment of political leaders... more Numerous studies have revealed how Lexical Cohesion supported the fulfilment of political leaders’ persuasion intention in their rhetoric. The purpose of this study was to cross-culturally explore President Obama’s and President Buhari’s Inaugural Speeches to examine the impact of culture on the persuasive functions of Lexical Cohesion in their rhetoric. Therefore, while drawing on Pragmatics, the study adopted a qualitative discourse analysis approach, utilised an eclectic framework of Lexical Cohesion based on Hoey (1991), Martin (1992) and Eggins (2004) to analyse Obama’s and Buhari’s first inaugural speeches. The findings indicate, on one hand, that although Obama deployed more categories and more frequencies of Lexical Cohesion than Buhari did, ‘Repetition’ (50%) was the most dominant source of Lexical Cohesion in each of the two speeches. Moreover, the most reiterated item in the two speeches were personal pronouns, where Obama mostly repeated the pronoun ‘we’, which had inclu...

International Linguistics Research, 2020

Conceptual metaphors continue to receive scholarly attention from discourse analysts taking polit... more Conceptual metaphors continue to receive scholarly attention from discourse analysts taking political discourse seriously. Studies are often interested in the versatile discourse functions of metaphors; how political leaders deploy them as powerful weapons in their armory of political oratory. Therefore, this study extends the current knowledge by exploring conceptual metaphors in President Muhammadu Buhari’s political rhetoric. It was guided by two major questions: (1) What types of conceptual metaphors does President Muhammadu Buhari deploy in his political rhetoric? and (2) What rhetorical functions do the Conceptual Metaphors deployed in President Muhammadu Buhari’s political rhetoric perform? The study’s theoretical impetus was Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), and Charteris-Black’s (2009) Contemporary Model of Metaphor and Political Communication was also applied in the analysis. The speeches analyzed include: (1) Muhammadu Buhari’s Presidential Pri...

International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature, 2016

Applied linguists paying scholarly attention to newspaper genres have often argued that findings ... more Applied linguists paying scholarly attention to newspaper genres have often argued that findings emerging from such studies would be of pedagogical significance because most of the newspaper genres share certain conventional features with school genres. Similarly, this study explored lexical cohesion in newspaper editorials, and it is understood that the findings could help learners in handling persuasive writings. The study sought to identify the dominant sources of lexical cohesion in the editorials, and also to examine how lexical cohesion is utilized to achieve coherence in the editorials. Drawing on Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), the study applied Eggins’ (2004) model of lexical cohesion and analyzed 30 editorial texts of 20, 354 words drawn from three major Nigerian newspapers: The Guardian, The Nation, and Vanguard. The analysis revealed 2, 685 ties across 849 sentences. The data demonstrated that the major types of lexical cohesion in the editorials include: repetiti...

Drawing on the notion of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), researchers have variously explor... more Drawing on the notion of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), researchers have variously explored texts of different registers and genres in attempts to account for the varying features of texts responsive to different conditions of their production in authentic social interactions (see, for example, Li, 2010; Ansary and Babaii, 2009; Taboada, 2004; Martin, 2001; Hasan, 1984). Among the fields of research in this tradition is cohesion analysis, which is concerned with discourse relations that transcend grammatical structure (Halliday, 1994; Halliday and Hasan, 1976). Similarly, this study drew on SFL and focused on Lexical Cohesion and Tone in Nigerian newspaper editorials. The objectives of the study were the following: to identify the types of lexical cohesion used in the editorials, to examine how lexical cohesion is utilized in building coherence in the editorials, and to examine how the lexical devices are used to signal the writers’ tones. The research approach was qualitati...

International journal of languages, literature and linguistics, 2015

The objectives of this study are: (1) to identify the similarities and differences between the se... more The objectives of this study are: (1) to identify the similarities and differences between the segmental phonemes of English and Hausa languages, and (2) to predict learning difficulties among the Hausa ESL learners based on this comparison. Learners of English as a second language (L2) are usually faced with difficulties largely contributed by the features of their first languages (L1). The Hausa speakers in Nigeria learn English as a second language and features of the Hausa language are heavily evident in their spoken English. Among the causes of difficulty in pronouncing English among the Hausa speakers is the segmental deviation. This study compares and contrasts the segmental phonemes of English and Hausa. Behaviorists and Structural linguists in the 1950's and 1960's founded the theoretical foundations of the Contrastive Analysis (CA) and since then, this approach has been employed in the second language acquisition studies. In the course of this study, the researchers employed desk research where data were drawn from archive and then analyzed side-by-side revealing their similarities and differences. The results of the study demonstrate that although Hausa and English have some similar phonemes, the sounds do not behave the same way in the two languages, and Hausa has 47 phonemes when English has 44. Differences in the phonological features between the two languages result in challenges faced by the Hausas in learning English.

The objective of this study is to investigate and analyze the English-Malay Loanblends. The realm... more The objective of this study is to investigate and analyze the English-Malay Loanblends. The realm of Contact Linguistics is concerned with the consequences when languages come into contact (Blake, 2008). However, among the inevitable consequences is the emergence of pidginized forms, creoles, code-switching, code-mixing and also lexical borrowings (Hoffer, 2002; Christopher, 2005; Durkin, 2011). This study focuses on loanblends as discovered by Haugen (1950) as forms of hybridized borrowings consisting of both importation and substitution. These are borrowings whose mode of adaptability into the recipient language (Weinreich, 1953) employs both native and foreign elements. The researcher employed survey and observation of different instances of loanblends from the English-Malay borrowings in daily use among the Malay speakers in Serdang. The findings of the study demonstrate that the Malay speakers use some loanblends of English-Malay morphemic fusions. In these loanblends, the last morphemes are mostly substituted with native expressions but the meanings remain the same with the original words in the donor language. As a conclusion, the researcher is convinced that the English-Malay borrowing is a rich area of academic investigation and he finally recommends further researches on phonemic substitution in English-Malay loanwords.

International Journal of Linguistics, 2020

Following the seminal publication of Halliday and Hasan's Cohesion in English (1976), lexical coh... more Following the seminal publication of Halliday and Hasan's Cohesion in English (1976), lexical cohesion became a major source of prolific inquiries among discourse analysts. Through the decades, this field of research has made tremendous advances in terms of newer frameworks and the data being explored. Lexical cohesion studies have applied different models to investigate different registers and genres (spoken and written) and reported findings which significantly advanced knowledge on the relation between lexical resources and different properties of discourse. Adopting the review method, this paper attempts to provide a brief account on lexical cohesion as an approach to discourse analysis. It endeavors to capture some appreciable impression of description, emergence, development and practical application of lexical cohesion in discourse studies. The paper is generally structured into four major sections as: (1) emergence and nature of cohesion in discourse analysis, (2) scholarly rhetoric and debate on cohesion and textuality in discourse, (3) approaches to lexical cohesion analysis, and (4) insights from lexical cohesion studies. Therefore, this study reviews the theory of (lexical) cohesion and its significance as a field of researching discourse. It is hoped that the study would be of help to students and researchers interested in applying lexical cohesion to analyze discourse.

International Journal of Language and Literary Studies, 2021

Numerous studies have revealed how Lexical Cohesion supported the fulfilment of political leaders... more Numerous studies have revealed how Lexical Cohesion supported the fulfilment of political leaders’ persuasion intention in their rhetoric. The purpose of this study was to cross-culturally explore President Obama’s and President Buhari’s Inaugural Speeches to examine the impact of culture on the persuasive functions of Lexical Cohesion in their rhetoric. Therefore, while drawing on Pragmatics, the study adopted a qualitative discourse analysis approach, utilised an eclectic framework of Lexical Cohesion based on Hoey (1991), Martin (1992) and Eggins (2004) to analyse Obama’s and Buhari’s first inaugural speeches. The findings indicate, on one hand, that although Obama deployed more categories and more frequencies of Lexical Cohesion than Buhari did, ‘Repetition’ (50%) was the most dominant source of Lexical Cohesion in each of the two speeches. Moreover, the most reiterated item in the two speeches were personal pronouns, where Obama mostly repeated the pronoun ‘we’, which had inclu...

International Linguistics Research, 2020

Conceptual metaphors continue to receive scholarly attention from discourse analysts taking polit... more Conceptual metaphors continue to receive scholarly attention from discourse analysts taking political discourse seriously. Studies are often interested in the versatile discourse functions of metaphors; how political leaders deploy them as powerful weapons in their armory of political oratory. Therefore, this study extends the current knowledge by exploring conceptual metaphors in President Muhammadu Buhari’s political rhetoric. It was guided by two major questions: (1) What types of conceptual metaphors does President Muhammadu Buhari deploy in his political rhetoric? and (2) What rhetorical functions do the Conceptual Metaphors deployed in President Muhammadu Buhari’s political rhetoric perform? The study’s theoretical impetus was Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), and Charteris-Black’s (2009) Contemporary Model of Metaphor and Political Communication was also applied in the analysis. The speeches analyzed include: (1) Muhammadu Buhari’s Presidential Pri...

International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature, 2016

Applied linguists paying scholarly attention to newspaper genres have often argued that findings ... more Applied linguists paying scholarly attention to newspaper genres have often argued that findings emerging from such studies would be of pedagogical significance because most of the newspaper genres share certain conventional features with school genres. Similarly, this study explored lexical cohesion in newspaper editorials, and it is understood that the findings could help learners in handling persuasive writings. The study sought to identify the dominant sources of lexical cohesion in the editorials, and also to examine how lexical cohesion is utilized to achieve coherence in the editorials. Drawing on Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), the study applied Eggins’ (2004) model of lexical cohesion and analyzed 30 editorial texts of 20, 354 words drawn from three major Nigerian newspapers: The Guardian, The Nation, and Vanguard. The analysis revealed 2, 685 ties across 849 sentences. The data demonstrated that the major types of lexical cohesion in the editorials include: repetiti...

Drawing on the notion of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), researchers have variously explor... more Drawing on the notion of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), researchers have variously explored texts of different registers and genres in attempts to account for the varying features of texts responsive to different conditions of their production in authentic social interactions (see, for example, Li, 2010; Ansary and Babaii, 2009; Taboada, 2004; Martin, 2001; Hasan, 1984). Among the fields of research in this tradition is cohesion analysis, which is concerned with discourse relations that transcend grammatical structure (Halliday, 1994; Halliday and Hasan, 1976). Similarly, this study drew on SFL and focused on Lexical Cohesion and Tone in Nigerian newspaper editorials. The objectives of the study were the following: to identify the types of lexical cohesion used in the editorials, to examine how lexical cohesion is utilized in building coherence in the editorials, and to examine how the lexical devices are used to signal the writers’ tones. The research approach was qualitati...