This paper explores (im)politeness and gender in a specific advicegiving practice of young Ghanaians online. The data is collected from the Facebook fan page of Mama Zimbi, a radio and TV personality from Ghana, and consists of a sample of 400 messages in response to two male and two female advice-seekers' problem messages. The messages are analyzed according to form-and content-based categories, focussing on the directness and content of advice, the content of discursive moves other than advice, and address terms.The results indicate that very direct forms (i.e., imperatives) are the preferred way by both males and females to give advice. Directness, however, cannot be equated with impoliteness or politeness, which rather depends on a combination of the content of advice, further discursive moves and additional elements such as politeness markers. Although there are trends towards more cooperative advice by females and more negative responses directed at males, there are many exceptions to this and no clear gender differences are found. The high number of rude or sarcastic comments most probably serves the function of entertaining readers, while other users try to maintain politeness on the page by giving sincere advice and/or scolding those who insult advice-seekers.
Student Pidgin (SP) is an African youth language practice among Ghanaian students and graduates. It originated in cities along the Ghanaian coast, where most empirical research on SP has been conducted so far. Little is known about the use of SP in other regions of the country. The present paper aims to fill that research gap by comparing reported use and language attitudes of students in Ghana’s two largest cities, the capital Accra and Kumasi, capital of the Ashanti region. The cities have a comparable number of inhabitants, but are located in different regions of Ghana. Over two hundred high school and university students answered a written questionnaire or participated in qualitative interviews. The results show significant regional differences both in reported use and attitudes towards the youth language, which can be explained by the different language ecologies of Kumasi and Accra.
Germany, were concluding a six-month transatlantic exchange of jobs. Both the librarians an participating libraries declared the exchange a complete success. In the following article, Heidi and Elisabeth share their impressions of the Riverside/Regensburg Exchange with C&RL News readers.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.