This study delves into the syntactic notion of subject relation in Shona with the aim of characterizing and defining it. This is done through analysing data collected from two of the Shona speaking provinces in Zimbabwe, namely, Harare and Masvingo. The data collection procedures involved the tape recording of oral interviews as well as doing selective listening to different speeches. The data were then analysed using the projection principle, noun phrase movement transformational rule as well as the selectional principles established for the subject relation in the other well researched natural languages. The research found out that there is no one single rule that can be used to determine the subject of every possible Shona sentence. One has to make use of all the seven selectional principles established in the well-researched natural languages. The research managed to assess the applicability of the selectional rules in different sentences. The rules were then ranked according to their reliability in determining the subjects of each of the various Shona sentences. It also came to light that the Shona subject relation has a number of sub-categories as a result of the various selectional rules involved in determining them. These were also ranked in a hierarchy of importance as they apply in the language. For instance, whilst some are assigned to their host words at the deep structure or underlying level of syntax, some are assigned at the surface structure level and can be shifted easily. It also emerged that the freedom of the subject relation in the language varies with the sub-category of the relation. It came to light as well that in Shona both noun phrases (NPs) and non-NPs are assigned the subject role. / African Languages / D. Litt. et Phil. (African Languages)

The study sought to explore possibilities of harmonising Shona-Nyai cross-border varieties in Zimbabwe and Mozambique. Emerging from the responses were problems of attitudes, ignorance of what the harmonisation project entails and the different levels of development among the varieties to be harmonised. Participants believed that the challenges they faced could be resolved and they proposed some intervention strategies. Results from the questionnaire, the interview and documents analysed affirmed the generally held view that, the future of Shona-Nyai as a language and culture is securely in the hands of the speakers’ initiatives. The argument of the study has been that, the success of such a harmonisation project depends on the presence of favourable and conducive political and economic conditions through enabling language engineering activities. Information collected from the questionnaires was mainly presented in tables and information from interviews and document analysis was presented qualitatively in words. The language as a right and the language as resource orientations of language planning guided this study. The intention was to show that the preservation of linguistic diversity is important in the maintenance of group and individual identity and harmonisation should further this cause. Findings from this thesis indicate that for a successful harmonisation project to take place there is need for research in the documentation of underdeveloped Shona-Nyai varieties so that they have some presence in the education domain. The study recommends that people’s mindsets must be changed by packaging the harmonisation project in a way which they understand and appreciate. A holistic approach in solving the language problem can be achieved through a mixed approach of language policy formulation. / African Languages / D. Litt. et Phil. (African languages)

This qualitative study analyses gendered metaphors in selected Zimbabwean Shona songs. The study explores how musicians deploy gendered metaphors to propagate, reinforce or challenge gender views and positions held in the Zimbabwean contemporary society. The corpus of data comprised Shona popular songs released between 1988 and 2018 and down loaded from You-tube. The songs were transcribed, translated into English and metaphors identified and interpreted using a combination of the Pragglejaz Group (2007), Steen (2007) and Charteris-Black (2004) metaphor identification methods. Charteris-Black’s (2004) Critical Metaphor Analysis was adopted as the key theory and method of analysis. The analysis drew support from Lazar's (2007) Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis, Foucault (1980) and Butler's (1990) ideas on discourse and gender. The findings reveal that Zimbabwean musicians singing in Shona discursively use gendered metaphors to construct, reinforce or challenge views and positions on gender. While the metaphors describe and evaluate men and women positively and negatively for ideological purposes, the metaphors largely marginalise women more than men. The metaphors therefore, have the effect of legitimising and naturalising male dominance in the Zimbabwean society. However, the same musicians occasionally utilise metaphor discoursal power to resist, challenge and control the dominance. Metaphors become a conduit through which topical contemporary gender issues, norms and values, gender views and positions are highlighted and debated. Two contesting ideologies were noted: one ideology emphasised that women are inferior to men and men should tolerate them for their weaknesses and the second projected women as men’s equals and that men and women roles complement each other. It is the conclusion of this study that gendered metaphors in Shona song lyrics allow musicians to discursively and for ideological purposes reinforce, contest and negotiate various gender perspectives making metaphors a powerful tool for shaping views on gender. Therefore the research, recommends that stakeholders recognise and promote the critical role played by language on inculcating gender perceptions in such domains as music, to come up with language programmes that promote gender parity and equality in society. / Linguistics and Modern Languages / Ph. D. (Languages, Linguistics and Literature)

Bibliography: leaves 255-295 / The study of the Church of Christ’s ‘Identity- and Mission-Continuity’ in the Zimbabwean context explores how the Christian faith should be interpreted and contextualised in Africa. The Church of Christ in Zimbabe (COCZ) is a Christian movement claiming to be representative of the ethos of the Church that was founded by Jesus Christ on the day of Pentcost. The thesis raises critical questions of Christian identity and transformation in missionary founded churches like the COCZ in an attempt to contribute towards a locally based study of the Church. Consciousness to being a Church founded by Jesus Christ has implications for Christian unity (oneness) and ecumenism in the COCZ, and its wider Christian networks1. Use of its theological tenets, which are indeed congruent with its projected identity, to explore its history when it came to Zimbabwe in relationship to its founding charism helped because of scarcity of literature on the history of Christian denominations in Zimbabwe. This thesis has followed four objectives that are related to the four stages of experiences by the Church Jesus Christ founded, namely, the (1) early Church, (2) reformation evangelism, (3) missionary enterprise and, (4) contemporary (African) expressions of the faith. This study has investigated the origin and reasons for the formation of the Church in the midst of others; and why its missionaries chose Zimbabwe where there were other denominations. Local experiences of the Church after the departure of white missionaries motivated this study with questions on how the process of inculturating the gospel in the COCZ raised, especially the tension between continuity and discontinuity, linking and delinking, similarity and dissimilarity as well as diversity and diference. Creative synthesis on what Jesus intended; what missionaries brought; and what the God of history is doing in the contemporary life and efforts of the Church were implied and/or explicated. Using a two-pronged approach to the study, the thesis has, first, unearthed (primary) documents like minutes from church board meetings by Europeans (with misionary thinking that developed from these origins), to contextual (secondary) documents (on how local theologians in the context have engaged the different Christian doctrines in the Zimbabwean context). Secondly, an empirical method was used to interview and distribute questionnaires to a number of individuals, inclusive of those who were in the COCZ leadership and ordinary members. Data collection tools were semi-structured, giving respondents freedom to express themselves and/or their views on what the COCZ was doing and what they believe must be done. Data from interviews and questionnaires were correlated with views expressed in the written sources. The data was interpreted heuristically, in order to give light to new knowledge that was being formed in the process. As an interpretive tool, hermeneutics (the phenomenological approach using Atlas.ti 8 (SPSS, Nvivo 8) - for verbatim transcription) was made key in looking into the context, culture and religion of the COCZ. The thesis attempted to create a dialogue by relating identity, communal ontology and epistemology to the empirical study findings, literature and the methodology. Ecology and gender were some of the indispensable aspects of theology, crucial for human survival, harmony and peace that were discussed because they were neglected in the COCZ. The thesis also revisted differences and similitudes found in the gospel in relationship to the intended and unintended 1 Unity and oneness expressed in John 17 [“Et Unum Sint” – That they may be one], emphasise the sociality of the Godhood through the doctrine of perichoresis, which is unity of the Godhead in the economy (our) of salvation. xiii cultural contributions of the Ndebele and Shona so far, with the purpose of repositioning the COCZ within its own transformative framework. This helps the Church with a strategy of how to model its theology in an African context and how to learn from its past with the view to transform itself for the 21st century Zimbabwe. The study is not exhaustive on the nature, history and mission of the COCZ, and many avenues like hermeneutics, church polity, public theology, conflict studies and church doctrine can be carried out using the COCZ as a case study. In all, the study has laid a foundation for the contextualization, evangelization, inculturation and incarnation of the gospel of Jesus Christ through the COCZ in a postmodernist society. / Philosophy, Practical and Systematic Theology / D. Phil. (Systematic Theology)

Bibliography: leaves 253-298 / This study examines the language, identity and intercultural communication dynamics in the Xhosa communities of Cape Town where some immigrant Shona speakers dwell. Language is a complex and nuanced repertoire of culture and the choice of language constitutes part of an individual’s identity construction. Owing to these identity dynamics, the Shona speakers resident among the Xhosa communities find themselves entangled in the politics of belonging and identity that define the Shona-Xhosa immigrant landscape in Cape Town. The Shona speakers engaging in intercultural communication in Xhosa communities are confronted with language and cultural hurdles. Orbe’s Co-cultural Theory among others was central to the unpacking of the intricacies of culture and the Xhosa hegemony. Results show that Shona people speak Xhosa for social acceptance and to secure economic benefits. Nevertheless, this seems not to offer them profound indulgence with the Xhosa culture. Even if they comprehend the culture, their Shona cultural identity hampers their full admission into the Xhosa culture. This lack of cultural acceptance leaves the Shona speakers alienated from both Xhosa and Shona cultures. In that regard, Shona speakers among Xhosa communities in Cape Town live a fluid life in which relentless cultural change is the only constant. This transitory life promotes intercultural concession in the personal layer of self, leading to the emergence of a hybrid multicultural self-concept. The study thus contributes towards scholarship by revealing that the differences in individual linguistic circumstances in the process of intercultural negotiation appear to produce different levels of acquisition of the Xhosa culture and Xhosa by the Shona speakers. This is corroborated by the fact that Shona speakers who could not speak English learnt Xhosa faster than those who could speak English. This study argues that the maintenance of the Shona language by its speakers in Xhosa communities is as much their duty, as it is their right. Ultimately, the study posits that ethnocentrism stifles the intercultural communication process and leads to tiffs in multicultural communities / Linguistics and Modern Languages / D. Phil. (Languages, Linguistics and Literature)