BELLO OLUWASEUN RACHAEL

English Language

At the English Language department office

Appointment on Visitation important

Topic: ALIGNING USE OF LANGUAGE IN PARTICULAR SPEECH EPISODES WITH THE CULTURAL NORMS OF A GIVEN PEOPLE, ON THE ONE HAND; AND ELLABORATING AS WELL AS ACCENTUATUING THE STUDY OF LEXICOLOGY, ON THE OTHER HAND

Description: My area of research, over the years, has been twofold. First, I preoccupied myself with sociolinguistic studies, with reference to aspects on educational sociolinguistics and ethnographic analyses of distinct in-groups of relatively larger cognates. Second, I set out to unravel the significance of elaborating Lexicology as a distinct field of linguistic investigation. My concern, therefore, on the one hand, has been on unearthing how language and society intrinsically work on each other thus, modifying the worldviews of language users from time to time and from context/domain to context/domain. Consequently, I have, all the while, explored language use in social contexts with emphasis on English in a second language environment. Hence, I have especially dwelt on the aptness of locutions in given domains, especially as it relates to social acceptability in varied speech episodes. Straightforwardly, I, in the various studies, accentuate the need for language users to be grammatical and fitting, especially with occasion to language usage, not excluding class of participants with whom they are in discourse/interaction. Pointedly, one of my principal preoccupations has been carrying out ethnographic studies with the aim of uncovering the social traits and ideologies of distinct speech communities, with the goal being to enhance communication generally among diverse speech cognates. Needless to say, such pieces of research are significant in contributing to the on-going study on the codification of Nigerian English. Similarly, language users who desire to be both linguistically competent and communicative appropriate will benefit from the various research works. With reference to my exploration on Lexicology, on the other hand, I argue that Lexicology should not only be included among recognized levels in language/linguistic units on the scale but also that Lexicology should be elaborately and purposively investigated, basing my argument on the premise that Lexicology is the essence of any linguistic study.

#	Certificate	School	Year
1.	Ph.D (SOCIOLINGUISTICS)	DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH, UNIVERSITY OF IBADAN	2007

ALIGNING THE TIDBITS OF ENGLISH CULTURE TO LINGUISTIC PROFICIENCY: THE EDUCATED YORUBA ENGLISH SPEAKER S EXPERIENCE

The teaching of English in formal classroom settings has been, for a long time in Nigeria, structural rather than functional. Consequently, the Nigerian English learner, irrespective of his/her age and purpose for learning, has been tutored to memorize and merely reproduce forms as provided by the classroom teacher. However, with the various criticisms and modifications of second language teaching and learning theories, languages generally, with the English language in particular considering its status and relevance are now being meaningfully taught.Today, grammar is seen as conceptualization, with its knowledge being born out of language use. The storage and retrieval of linguistic data is related to if not dependent on users ability to save, process and make alive the cultural practices of the target language. Simply put, proficiency is directly linked to speakers ability to mentally store and separate forms symbols and icons found in language A from those found in language B, for instance.The research interest lies in discovering if there is a connection between informants knowledge of English idioms in their minds and the knowledge of same in their brain. Straightforwardly, I set out to discover if the acquisition of English idioms by this group of learners of English is a mental process or is merely a structural operation. This work is anchored in the general principle of Cognitive Linguistics which assumes that language users interaction with the world is mediated through informational structures in the mind. The findings show that informants do not largely bother to understand why and how native users of the language arrive at certain pragmatic expressions. Consequently, forms which suit the Nigerian experiences are substituted for their standard British English equivalents. The implication, therefore, is that informants limit their learning and usage of English idioms to structure rather than extend these to their cognitive, experiential and social contextual uses.

BELLO OLUWASEUN is a Associate Professor / Reader at the Department of English Language

BELLO has a Ph.D in SOCIOLINGUISTICS from DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH, UNIVERSITY OF IBADAN