In this dissertation, the notion of plagiarism is examined in the context of academic writing. The development of the notion of plagiarism is first of all put in historical perspective, because the problems revolving around the notion emerged with the first etymological reference to it as plagiarius (âkidnapperâ). One of the factors that complicate plagiarism is that it is confused with copyright in the wake of copyright legislation. Other extrinsic and complicating factors include unreliable statistics on plagiarism, the phenomenon of intertextuality as opposed to plagiarism, the Internet, varying cultural views on plagiarism and the influence of second language issues. Although the existence of plagiarism in academic writing is undisputable, its nature and management vary. Approaches to plagiarism in academic writing are as complex as the phenomenon of plagiarism itself. The approaches to plagiarism discussed here represent the general trends over the past decade. The sequence of discussion corresponds with the development of the approaches to plagiarism during the given period: first the ethical, then the policing, followed by the intentional, the developmental and learning, the textual, and the contextual approaches. With this complex situation in mind, definitions of plagiarism in 13 institutional policy documents are discussed in terms of six elements: the corpus, appropriation, source, reference, intention and scope. The vision and mission, values, academic and/or integrity issues and prescribed approach of each university are accounted for in the respective policies. This study prioritises the educational approach. Acts of plagiarism are often committed through lack of writing skills, especially in the case of inexperienced students that are still apprentices in the craft of academic writing. Basic writing techniques and transformational writing strategies are demonstrated with reference to Van Dijkâs (1971) transformation theory. The transformation types addition, deletion, repetition, structuring and argumentation are illustrated by means of examples. There is no simple solution to the complex dilemma of plagiarism. This dissertation indicates that an implementation plan for the prevention of plagiarism in academic writing comprises three aspects: a transparent policy, the didactic use of detection mechanisms, and the specific teaching of academic writing skills. The emphasis on the educational approach and proactive writing instruction entails that the focus in combating plagiarism is on education. Plagiarism as an unacceptable form of academic writing can be remedied by the teaching of acceptable writing techniques and strategies.

This study investigates the intercultural discourse between the Igbo and the Sesotho people residing in Bloemfontein. The study is motivated by the way in which the Igbo in Bloemfontein switch from one language into another, which is based on who their addressee is. The study assesses the backgrounds of the two countries (Nigeria and South Africa) where these ethnic groups emerged, including their languages. The backgrounds help in the assessment of the attitudes, feelings and opinions of the two groups under study in the way they relate with one another when they are in intercultural communication. Related literature was reviewed on different aspects of intercultural discourse and intercultural communication (Chapter 3), with focus on: different views on discourse/discourse analysis; discourse, racism and discrimination; differences in maleâs and femaleâs speeches. The review also covers language, migration and loyalty; language contact; intercultural discourse/communication; conversation analysis, as well as conversational features: turn-taking, interruption/overlapping, and code-switching/code-mixing. The review describes the field of discourse analysis and situates the current study within this field of research. The study further explored language stereotypes and xenophobic sentiments which help in identifying the power of dominant group over minority groups and foreigners, as well as the power of press in dissemination of information in the society. Given the complexity of the research, the study employed different research instruments: questionnaire, interviews and audio-recordings of natural interactions in different contexts (shop, hospital, church, home and among friends) in collecting data. The data were analysed using qualitative and quantitative (tables and bar graphs) research methods. Intercultural interaction/communication/discourse between the Igbo and the Sesotho shows that the attitudes and feelings of the two groups are positive, as they are comfortable, not afraid, confident, not nervous and relaxed when interacting with each other. The study reveals that the two groups often (81% Igbo and 92% Sesotho) switch from one language to another during intercultural communication. However, the kind of switch the study records is word/phrase switches, mostly the words/phrases of the dominant language (Sesotho). The reasons for their switches vary: to emphasis a word or an expression, to be more polite in greeting and appreciation, to show respect, as well as to identity with the addressee. The study records four sentences switching which only occurred among the children at home context. However, the results from the study show that during the intercultural communication between the Igbo and the Sesotho, turn-taking, interruptions and discourse dominance are determined by some factors, such as; age, educational background, gender, the relationships between the interactants, and the context of the interaction. The freedom with which women speak during interaction is also assessed. The study reveals that although women speak freely, they do not speak more freely than their male counterparts, in mixed-gender interactions. In addition, the results reveal that there are no restrictions on the speech of Igbo women. However, Sesotho shows some restrictions on the language of their married women, âhlomphaâ (a language of respect), where a married women are bound by tradition not to pronounce any word relating to the name of her in-laws. The study establishes that there are derogatory words to refer to both women and men in both groups. For example, in Igbo ânwoke/nwaay-agaâ and in Sesotho ânyopaâ are used to refer to barren woman with no counterparts for men. The study in addition investigates the words used to refer to foreigners and whether such words provide evidence for xenophobic sentiments in South Africa. The study identifies both positive and negative words used by the Igbo and the Sesotho to refer to foreigners. According to the majority of the respondents (79.5%), such words do not contribute to xenophobic sentiments in South Africa generally or Bloemfontein specifically.

Linguistic landscape (LL) research is a recent development in the field of sociolinguistics. The LL is written language in the public space; and the study thereof focuses on the linguistic choices in the LL and the motivations behind these choices. Language in the LL has unique semiotic properties and the LL hence offers a new approach to investigate sociolinguistic themes. The themes most commonly addressed are language policy and linguistic diversity. As a result of the bidirectional relationship between the LL and society, the LL not only reflects societal changes (informational function), but also shapes society (symbolic function). This is usually by expressing, creating and maintaining power relations and concepts of identity. The drastic transformation in South Africa from apartheid to democracy in 1994 was accompanied by, amongst other changes, the introduction of an innovative language policy, new power relations and changed perceptions of identity. The hypothesis is that these changes will impact on the LL. The LL in Philippolis is investigated with the aim to determine whether these changes indeed influence the LL, and if so, in what manner. This case study extends LL research to rural areas. Philippolis, although a typical small Free State town, also carries historical significance both in terms of population migrations and the role it played in the early development of the Free State Province. Like many other towns, the three neighbourhoods are still divided according to ethno-linguistic boundaries (white, coloured, and black), a remnant from the segregation policy of the previous regime. These three neighbourhoods constitute the survey area (research sites). The combined qualitative/quantitative approach includes a triangulated methodology. A complete inventory of the LL of these three sites was compiled on 20 and 21 May 2008. Only signs displaying Afrikaans, English, and/or African languages (533 in total) are considered for the analysis. The data are codified according to agency (top-down and bottom-up initiatives); code preference (by agency and by research site); and multilingualism (combinations of languages). The data are approached by firstly examining the current LL and secondly, by analysing the LL items that can be clearly perceived as either before or after 1994. The research parameters within which the data are interpreted, are agency (by whom is the LL created), readership (for whom the LL is created), and LL dynamics (in the light of the dialectic between the LL and society). The interpretation focuses on the motivations behind the language choices, whether pragmatic or symbolic. The findings are verified against the administrative, demographic and historical background. The discrepancy between the de jure and de facto language policy, as well as between the demographic census data and the presentation of ethnolinguistic communities in the LL; indicates that certain ideologies are at work. These ideologies are found to centre on language attitudes, power relations, and concepts of identity. The absence of African languages indicates that these languages are stigmatised, whilst the prevalence of English confirms its status as the language of wider communication and of prestige. The white Afrikaans speaking group is still the socio-economically dominant group, but the black population is an emerging socio-political power. It is obvious that they view themselves as such by their choice to associate with English. This study contributes to the field by expanding research on the LL of South Africa as well as on areas that are considered rural. It furthers the understanding of the transforming, post-apartheid South African society; as well as the sociolinguistic understanding of the relationship between language, and power and identity. It also hopes to contribute to the creation of a consistent methodology for the field.

The study presents a sociolinguistic analysis of the current language-in-education policy implementation in Tanzania. The current sociolinguistic thinking on bilingual education and language-in-education planning informs this evaluation. The analysis is presented against the background of the sociolinguistic principles of bilingual education as developed by García (1997). The challenges regarding implementation of bilingual education policy have been identified. The study indicates that there is no link between the envisioned ideals of the state to promote bilingual education and what obtains in the Education and Training Policy (1995), the document currently relied upon as far as language policy in the Tanzanian educational set-up is concerned. Chapter 1 provides the background of language-in-education planning and policy in Africa, where the advocacy for the use of African languages is high on the agenda. The obstacles, regarding the use of African languages alongside âimportedâ languages, are pointed out. The common obstacles range from the perseverance of the elite to maintain the status quo, the problem of language attitudes people have towards foreign languages such as English, French and Portuguese and more importantly lack of understanding of the concept of bilingual education and how it operates. Chapter 2 discusses bilingual education programmes with the view of monolingual education, weak and strong bilingual education. Sociolinguistic principles of bilingual education and theoretical considerations related to bilingualism also form part of this chapter. The theories explain some myths which people have regarding how the brain works when it comes to having two languages in education. In addition, language planning and policy concepts have been described to avoid the misconception held in some sociolinguistic literature that they are synonyms and aspects of the same activity. Language planning is seen as the activity that leads to the promulgation of a language policy while language policy is the body of ideas, laws, regulations, rules, procedures and practices intended to achieve the objectives of the policy. Chapter 3 discusses research methodology. The study is evaluative in nature and uses four research instruments, namely documentary reviews, interviews, observations and focus group discussions. Documentary review was meant to analyse the corpus of language-in-education policy documents created by relevant Tanzanian authorities to provide information on overt language policy and its implementation. The interviews were aimed at capturing information on views and perceptions of the education stakeholders regarding the concept of bilingual education and their understanding of the current policy and implementation. Observational method was specifically for supplementing the information gathered from interviews and facilitated cross-checking information in the policy documents. Similarly, focus group discussions provide further cross-checking and informs the development of the model for strong bilingual education. Chapter 4 provides a critical overview of language-in-education policy development in Tanzania from pre-colonial times to the present day. Language issues are discussed according to three different eras, namely pre-colonialism, during colonialism and post-independence. In all these eras, different languages, German, English, Kiswahili and ethnic languages were assigned different functions according to the motives the government in power had towards the languages. During colonial regime, German and English were preferable and they were regarded as languages of high status unlike Kiswahili and other ethnic languages. However, immediately after independence in 1961, the independent state put more efforts to promote Kiswahili. Chapter 5 focuses on data presentation and discussion. Challenges regarding the implementation of strong bilingual education policy in Tanzania are identified. They evolve around inadequate language-in-education policy design, inadequate comprehension of the concept of bilingual education and poor implementation strategies of the policy. Chapter 6 outlines the overview, overall conclusions and recommendation, where a viable and relevant model for implementing strong bilingual education in the Tanzanian sociolinguistic environment is proposed to guide the policy-makers tasked with language-in-education planning.

Authors of financial media discourse use metaphors to communicate with readers. Finweek is a renowned South African financial magazine and its articles on stocks and markets are written by expert authors in the field of the South African stock market. Finweek is published in Afrikaans and English and contains the same articles, but the Afrikaans and English metaphors differ. The study of metaphor in translated financial discourse on stocks and markets is a fundamental characteristic of financial texts and in a multi-lingual country such as South Africa it may support the expansion of the lexicon in the financial domain. The hypotheses were put that the translated media discourse in Finweek on stocks and markets contains coherent metaphor clusters that centre around the metaphors WAR AND POWER, and SPORT AND GAMES; that metaphor has an ideational function in the South African discourse on stocks and markets, i.e. it extends the lexicon; that the choice of metaphor coheres with certain objectives of the translator/author in the financial text in a specific cultural background, and that metaphor has an ideological effect. The study built on the results of research by Bowker and Pearson (2002) on the use of language for special purposes in corpora; the research of McEnery, et al. (2006) on corpus based linguistics; the research of Lakoff and Johnson (1980), Lakoff and Turner (1989), Lakoff (1997), Lakoff and Johnson (1999) and Kövecses (2002) on the source and target domains of metaphors; and the research by Koller (2004) on metaphor and gender in business media discourse. The research was conducted within the framework of corpus based translation. An Afrikaans and an English electronic corpus were compiled from 1 000 articles on stocks and markets that appeared in 33 editions of Finweek from March 2006 to October 2006. The two corpora were compiled as parallel corpora and the programme ParaConc was used for the analyses. The focus was on metaphor in LSP (Language for Special Purposes). The study showed that financial discourse on stocks and markets in the Afrikaans and English versions of Finweek are characterised by coherent metaphor clusters of WAR AND POWER and SPORT AND GAMES. The use of these specific conceptual metaphors reflects the goal that the author/translator has in the cultural background of the readers, because the metaphors in the Afrikaans and English texts differ. Evidence was found that, to transfer a specific message, the authors used a specific choice of metaphor. In reports on the performance of companies and the stock market, Finweek uses conceptual metaphors to transfer their perceptions. Inherent in these metaphoric terms are conceptual, communicative and ideological principles. The discourse shows a basic reference and notion of an evolutionary struggle for survival. On the level of conceptual metaphor struggle is conceptualised in terms of physical conflict as it occurs in the domains of both WAR and SPORT. The analysis indicated that, from a quantitative viewpoint, the WAR AND POWER metaphor appeared most frequently in the Afrikaans text and that the SPORT AND GAMES metaphor appeared the second most frequently. In the English text the SPORT AND GAMES metaphor appeared most frequently and the WAR AND POWER metaphor the second most frequently. A possible explanation for this finding is that the modern society in South African is confronted with violence, power play, fear, vulnerability and struggle. When an author wants to convey the notion of a struggle for evolutionary survival in Afrikaans, metaphors from the WAR AND POWER domain are used abundantly. On the other hand, sport is an international common concept and by using metaphors from the SPORT AND GAMES domain in English, the author can transfer to international readers the notion of struggle for evolutionary survival.

The objective of this thesis was to investigate pre-service teachers and student misconceptions of the equal sign, and then offer suggestions to pre-service teachers, teachers, university programs, and schools to prevent common misconceptions from occurring in classrooms. Some students do not realize the equal sign can have two different functions, operational and relational. There are several different reasons for this misconception, beginning with the lack of defining what the equal sign is and what it means in the classroom. In the first study, eighteen participants were interviewed to explain their responses when evaluating student work to gain an in-depth knowledge of pre-service teachers' perceptions of the equal sign and their ability to evaluate a students' response to a specific math task. Results showed that pre-service teachers have a better understanding of the equal sign and may be ready to teach the equal sign as a relationship between numbers. Furthermore, pre-service teachers would benefit greatly from evaluating students' work and looking for common misperceptions that students may have. In the second study, six fifth grade classes were studied to determine if there was a positive relationship for teaching atypical type equivalence statements to students and performing better on equivalence questions. Three classes from Spring 2011, were administered a test; two of the test items were used to analyze their understanding of the equal sign. In Fall 2011, another three fifth grade classes participated in lessons, which required students to analyze atypical type equivalence statements, and then they were given the same two test items. Results from this study supported the use of atypical type equivalence statements because more students in the experimental group correctly responded to the two items and were also able to justify their responses with work that exemplified good understanding of the equal sign as being a relationship. Both of these studies support increasing student and pre-service teachers understanding of the equal sign and the misconceptions students have regarding the equal sign. University programs and schools should utilize these results to require preservice teachers and teachers to evaluate student work to identify common misconceptions and teach the equal sign as a relationship between both sides and not as an operation.

No description available.

Hand gesture recognition is an active area of research in recent years, being used in various applications from deaf sign recognition systems to human-machine interaction applications. The gesture recognition process, in general, may be divided into two stages: the motion sensing, which extracts useful data from hand motion; and the classification process, which classifies the motion sensing data as gestures. The existing vision-based gesture recognition systems extract 2-D shape and trajectory descriptors from the visual input, and classify them using various classification techniques from maximum likelihood estimation to neural networks, finite state machines, Fuzzy Associative Memory (FAM) or Hidden Markov Models (HMMs). This thesis presents the framework of the vision-based Hand Motion Understanding (HMU) system that recognises static and dynamic Australian Sign Language (Auslan) signs by extracting and classifying 3-D hand configuration data from the visual input. The HMU system is a pioneer gesture recognition system that uses a combination of a 3-D hand tracker for motion sensing, and an adaptive fuzzy expert system for classification. The HMU 3-D hand tracker extracts 3-D hand configuration data that consists of the 21 degrees-of-freedom parameters of the hand from the visual input of a single viewpoint, with an aid of a colour coded glove. The tracker uses a model-based motion tracking algorithm that makes incremental corrections to the 3-D model parameters to re-configure the model to fit the hand posture appearing in the images through the use of a Newton style optimisation technique. Finger occlusions are handled to a certain extent by recovering the missing hand features in the images through the use of a prediction algorithm. The HMU classifier, then, recognises the sequence of 3-D hand configuration data as a sign by using an adaptive fuzzy expert system where the sign knowledge are used as inference rules. The classification is performed in two stages. Firstly, for each image, the classifier recognises Auslan basic hand postures that categorise the Auslan signs like the alphabet in English. Secondly, the sequence of Auslan basic hand postures that appear in the image sequence is analysed and recognised as a sign. Both the posture and sign recognition are performed by the same adaptive fuzzy inference engine. The HMU rule base stores 22 Auslan basic hand postures, and 22 signs. For evaluation, 44 motion sequences (2 for each of the 22 signs) are recorded. Among them, 22 randomly chosen sequences (1 for each of the 22 signs) are used for testing and the rest are used for training. The evaluation shows that before training the HMU system correctly recognised 20 out of 22 signs. After training, with the same test set, the HMU system recognised 21 signs correctly. All of the failed cases did not produce any output. The evaluation has successfully demonstrated the functionality of the combined use of a 3-D hand tracker and an adaptive fuzzy expert for a vision-based sign language recognition.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Toronto, 2004. / Advisers: Rick Volpe; Deb Fels.

Diss. (sammanfattning) Linköping : Linköpings universitet, 2005. / Härtill 5 uppsatser.