The Languages of Ghana

Dakubu, M.E. Kropp

doi:10.4324/9781315683393

Cited by 17 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Gonja, Bassari, and Naafanra have all borrowed from Akan. Akan, however, shows little evidence of influence from neighboring languages (Kropp-Dakubu, 1988).…”

Section: Akanmentioning

confidence: 91%

‘Language’, power and liberty: Discursive constructions of Ghanaian glossolalic speeches

Obeng

Ofori

2023

Discourse & Society

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Unlike xenoglossia ( xenolalia), which involves speaking a language one has neither learned nor could have acquired naturally, glossolalia ( ecstatic speech) is the uttering of ‘incomprehensible’ stretch of utterances while in a state of trance. Using transcripts of recorded glossolalic utterances and of interviews collected over a 3-month period as our data source and working within the frameworks of language and power, and language and liberty we demonstrate that there is a strong link between glossolalic performance and the concepts of power and liberty. Thus, we establish that one’s ability to use glossolalia and another’s ability to interpret them are constituents of power. Also demonstrated is the use of specific linguistic (phonetic, syntactic, and pragmatic) resources to seek liberty for self or deny others liberty. We show further that individuals’ institutional obligation of regulating turns and determining turn duration of glossolalic interactions constitutes power and has relevance for liberty contestation, gain or loss. Finally, we prove that the performance of power and its interpretation are tools for exhibiting liberty.

show abstract

“…Gonja, Bassari, and Naafanra have all borrowed from Akan. Akan, however, shows little evidence of influence from neighboring languages (Kropp-Dakubu, 1988).…”

Section: Akanmentioning

confidence: 91%

‘Language’, power and liberty: Discursive constructions of Ghanaian glossolalic speeches

Obeng

Ofori

2023

Discourse & Society

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The official language of Ghana is English (Adika, 2012). Hausa, which is spoken as the most widely used language among the Muslims, and Arabic, which is learnt in Islamic schools the country over, are predominantly utilized for religious purposes Dakubu, 1988). In recent times, due to the increasing role of China in international politics and economics, Chinese is becoming an important language, as it is being taught in basic schools, senior high schools, and some tertiary institutions through outreach programmes carried out by Confucius Institutes in Ghana.…”

Section: The Linguistic Situation In Ghana and The Linguistic Profile...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Sociolinguistics of Names of Hotels in Accra

Agbaglo

Afful

2023

Linguistics Initiative

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In recent times, the language in public spaces (as seen in street names, school names, names of buildings, names of metro stations, names of tourist attractions, and commercial signs) has attracted scholarly attention in onomastics, with the focus on how it reflects the linguistic situation of urban landscapes and how it can be used to construct several identities. The present study aimed to investigate names of hotels in Accra – the capital city of Ghana, with considerable financial, cultural, and industrial significance – using Landry & Bouris’s (1997) Linguistic Landscape as a theory. The data comprises 160 hotel names accessed from the website of Yello Ghana, a well-known business directory. The analysis revealed, first, that most of the hotels deployed English monolingual names, with a few utilising bilingual names. Closely allied to this finding is the trend towards globalisation, as captured in some names of hotels. These key findings have implications for the scholarship in onomastics, urban landscape, language policy and planning, and further research.

show abstract

“…Notwithstanding the invariance of the factor structure across different geographical locations in Ghana, the generalizability of the study findings to persons in other regions not sampled for the study may be limited. Ghana is multiethnic and multilingual with at least six broad language groups (Dakubu, 2015). We studied only three of these languages, and therefore, we do not make assumptions about generalizing the findings to the rest of the country.…”

Section: Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 99%