|
Background
I taught English language and literature in English at a high school in Kabwe, Central Zambia after graduation in 1984, and was Head of English Department from 1985 until when I left in 1989. Between 1992 and 1994, I lectured Applied Language Studies and Business English, Organization and Communication studies at the National Institute for Public Administration (NIPA) in Lusaka, before joining the University of Zambia's Department of Literature and Languages, where I taught Formal Linguistics until I joined the Department of Linguistics at UWC in 1997.
Teaching and Supervision
I have lectured the following modules within the Language and Communication Programme:
- Communication and Media Studies (First Year)
- Second Language Acquisition (Second Year)
- Cross-cultural Communication (Second Year)
- Critical Media Studies (Second Year)
- Business and Organisational Communication (Third Year)
- Multilingualism in Education and Society (Postgraduate)
- First and Second Language Acquisition Studies (Postgraduate)
- Business and Organisational Communication (Postgraduate)
- Inter- and Cross-Cultural Communication (Postgraduate)
- Language contact and world Englishes (postgraduate)
I have supervised a number of Masters' and Doctoral theses on topics including:
- Archaism of Kinyarwanda
- Sexual taboos and interaction in Kinyarwanda
- Analyses of TRC testimonies from an SFL and CDA perspective
- Analyses of media texts from an SFL (Appraisal) and CDA perspective
- Academic writing as social practice from an SFL and CDA perspective
- Classroom interaction and Bernstein's (and Christie's) classroom macro-genres
- Language endangerment and death
- Multilingual discourse practices and community development from an SFL and multimodal perspective
- Analysis of African proverbs from an SFL perspective
- Linguistic and intertextual analysis of classroom interaction
- Language, culture and curriculum development
- Multilingualism and multicultural development in society and schools
- Literacy practices, visual literacies and multimodality
- Language, migration and identity formation
- Grammatical and social motivations to code-switching
Research interests
I have worked in a range of fields from Literature to Linguistics to Communication Studies and currently list the following as my research interests:
- Comparative Bantu and morpho-phonology
- The harmonisation of spelling systems of Bantu languages
- Multilingualism, social identities, community and school literacy practices
- Innovative multilingual practices in schools and communities
- Application of critical discourse analysis and Hallidayan systemic functional grammar to corporate discourse and business communication texts
- Language education, language planning and policy in Africa
- Models of bilingualism and their application to African contexts
Current research projects
Innovative multilingual practices in schools and communities.
Given the multilingual context, the high failure rates among black learners compared to other groups, and the apartheid legacy of separate schools and communities for different ethnic groups (black, coloured, white, Indian, etc) in South Africa, the study objectives are:
- To observe the nature and extent of integration of learners from different ethnic groups into the various school systems.
- To observe the language and literacy practices of selected school sites.
- To identify innovative practices that acknowledges diversity of community languages and literacy practices.
- To examine initiatives in schools that acknowledged and responded to the cultural and language diversity of communities.
- To explore the relationship between school and home literacy practices, as well as to consider their consequences for the success or failure of learners at school.
- To describe the specific literacy practices of diverse home, community and school contexts.
Standardisation of Orthographic Conventions of Bantu Languages
The aim of the study is to harmonise orthographic conventions and spelling systems of Bantu languages within and across geographical borders. It is not uncommon currently to find a language/dialect with two or more spelling systems within geographical borders. Inconsistencies found in the spelling system of the same language or closely related dialects have only added to the problem. This has implications for literacy practices in African nation-states, as well as, attempts to publish and to market materials in Africans languages that are accessible to readers of the same language/dialect across borders.
The Centre for Advanced Studies of African Societies (CASAS), Cape Town, supports this study.
Other research projects relate to:
- Models of bilingualism and their application to African contexts
- Application of critical discourse analysis and Hallidayan systemic functional grammar to corporate discourse and business communication texts
Selected publications
- 2005 Analysing social identity in casual Zambian/English conversation: A systemic functional linguistics approach. Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies: 23.
- 2004 'I can't really think in English': mediated academic texts as social practice in multilingual/multicultural learning contexts. Per Linguam.
- 2004 Issues in the Harmonisation of Orthographic Conventions of Nguni and Sotho Language Groups. In KK Prah (ed) Speaking in Unison. CASAS: Cape Town.
- 2003 A survey of literacy practices in coloured and black communities in South Africa: towards a pedagogy of multiliteracies. Language, Culture & Curriculum.
- 2003 Towards a Bantu orthography. Writing African. In KK Prah (ed). Cape Town: Casas. 43-54.
- 2002 The curse of colonial orthographies: the case of Sesotho. The Harmonisation and Standardisation of Southern African Languages. KK Prah (ed). Cape Town: CASAS. 15-30.
- 2001 The formal and semantic dimensions of language development: Implications for classroom English instruction in multilingual context. Per Linguam. 16: 2, 1-14.
- 2000 The Dilemma of the mother-tongue: towards bilingual education in South Africa. Language, Culture & Curriculum, 13: 1, 51-66.
- 1996 In search of the lost tongue: prospects for mother-tongue education in Zambia. Language, Culture & Curriculum, 9: 2, 109-119.
- 1996 The scope and categorization of African English: some sociolinguistic considerations. English World-Wide, 17: 1, 63-75.
Books
- 2002 Language Across Borders. Cape Town: CASAS.
|
