The Sociological Relevance of Ethiopian Literature in English: Relevance Theory in Focus

Woldemariam, Haileleul Zeleke 한국외국어대학교(글로벌캠퍼스) 아프리카연구소 2013 Asian Journal of African Studies Vol.34 No.-

This paper presents some arguments and methods for analyzing and interpreting the sociological relevance of Ethiopian literature in English giving more focus and importance to poetry. The method employed can support the analyses and interpretations of the views/voices within the writers in the faces of the ever changing Ethiopian society. In the Ethiopian tertiary education and scholarship contexts, educators, students and researchers might lack appropriate procedures for the interpretations of literary texts. In such contexts, intuitions are more trusted than scientific scholarship and procedures. This creates problem of miscommunication. This might also lead to rushed generalizations, misunderstandings and improper communications. In tertiary contexts, especially in classroom situations, absence of advanced methods of literary interpretation often places the teacher in an awkward confrontation with challenging postgraduate students. Relevance theoretic approaches can support educators, students and researchers to bridge this gap and help bring Ethiopian literature in English to the level of tertiary scholarship. Selecting three poems (one from each) of Tsegaye G., Eshetu C., and Asafa T., the researcher conducted text interpretations and classroom presentations. Within a period of two years (2010/2011—2011/2012), a total of 31 postgraduate students (MA in English) who registered for a course: “Stylistics for Language Teaching and Learning” were purposefully selected to interpret and present the major messages of these poems which they took as part of the course. In 2011, the class comprised of 19 MA students and all participated in 6 FGDs and in 2012, there were 12 students and all joined 4 FGDs. Each group presented the findings of FGDs to the entire class. All presentations were recorded and noted. The basic stream of the interpretations and presentations followed the theoretical underpinnings of Relevance Theory as proposed and promoted by Wilson and Sperber. The presentations and interpretations of these texts following RT showed that, amidst linguistic barriers, these poets have played not only sociological roles but also pedagogical roles in an ever changing Ethiopian society. It is found out that the three writers presented sociological issues from three different perspectives: African, Ethiopian and Oromo. Tsegaye presents sociological issues often shared by African Negritude writers which glorified pride in blackness and documents assimilations and alienations. Eshetu Chole presents burning sociological issues of all Ethiopians at the time. His political sociology focuses on the establishment of a visionary leadership in Ethiopian inclusive of Oromo People. This leadership should guide all Ethiopians from darkness and poverty to light and prosperity and finally to contested good governance. On the other hand, Asefa Dibaba is concerned with the freedom of Oromo. He believes that the Oromo are being insulted, humiliated, wretched and dehumanized. Then, he has suggested armed struggle to separate Oromo from Ethiopia. In this RT interpretive process, finally it can be concluded that a free statehood can be a true dream for the people of Oromo only through armed struggle.

The Sociological Relevance of Ethiopian Literature in English

Woldemariam, Haileleul Zeleke 한국외국어대학교 아프리카연구소 2013 Asian Journal of African Studies Vol.34 No.-

IMPROVING SOCIOLINGUISTIC COMPETENCE (SC) THROUGH FEMINIST STYLISTICS (FS)

Woldemariam, Haileleul Zeleke 한국외국어대학교 아프리카연구소 2018 Asian Journal of African Studies Vol.- No.43

Feminist stylistics (FS), like any other stylistics practice, draws basic assumptions from linguistics. Yet unlike other traditional stylistics practices, FS opens its doors to ideology and extra-textual factors in the analysis of a text. Unlike the formalist stylistics, for example, it renders less importance to linguistic form and linguistic elegance. Drawing relevant linguistic tools like passivisation, transitivity, agency and fragmentation from functional stylistics, FS can be applied to analyse power structures. In line with these assumptions, the ultimate aim of this research was to study the significance of FS in enhancing the sociolinguistic competence (SC) of students through teaching local poetry in English in the Ethiopian higher education context. A feminist stylistics model of teaching poetry was integrated with communicative language teaching (CLT) tasks so that an intriguing environment was recreated in the classroom for the students to develop their sociolinguistic competence. This project was an integral part of five other stylistics research projects. It was carried out on the basis of an experimental research design following a mixed method research. A total of 190 students (63.3%) were selected from the population of 300 students in various programmes of the Department of English and Other Languages at Adama University, Ethiopia, through a systematic sampling procedure. These students were again classified into experimental groups (95) and control groups (95) following a systematic sampling method. The students in the experimental group took FS module through the stylistics course which included FS and other modules in stylistics. A summary of the total mean gain score out of 20 showed an interesting result. Both the control and experimental groups performed almost similarly in their feminist stylistics pre-test which was calculated out of 20%. The experimental mean score was 9.8842 and a little bigger than the control mean score of 7.2316. Consequently, the t-test result showed that the existence of a mean difference of 1.33684 was not statistically significant. Therefore, there was no statistically significant difference between the mean test scores of the two groups. On the other hand, the t-test results for both pre and post tests for the feminist stylistics module were also observed. The t-value of the feminist stylistics post-test was 8.651. And, the table value of t-critical was 1.96 with 188 degree of freedom and at a significance level of 0.05. Because the t-value of 8.651 exceeded the t-critical value of 1.96 for a two tailed test at 0.05 level of significance for 188 degree of freedom, the null hypothesis was rejected. Therefore, the feminist stylistic method of teaching indigenous poetry does contribute to the improvement of the sociolinguistic competence of students in the English as a foreign language (EFL) context.

Assessment of wetland flora and avifauna species diversity in Kafa Zone, Southwestern Ethiopia

Wondimu Woldemariam,Tariku Mekonnen,Kerryn Morrison,Abebayehu Aticho 국립중앙과학관 2018 Journal of Asia-Pacific Biodiversity Vol.11 No.4

Wetland disturbance, degradation, and losses affect wetland-dependent plant and animal species. This study explored the extent of wetland area changes and diversity of plant and bird species in Kafa Zone—one of the most biodiversity-rich area in Ethiopia. Wetland size change and plant and bird species assessment were conducted at two wetlands: Alemgono and Doil following standard scientific procedures. In the past 15 years, 10.2–325.07 ha of wetland areas were converted to other land forms for various uses. The wetlands comprise 36 plant species belonging to 18 families and 56 bird species. Human disturbances and colonization of nonhydrophytes remained as major problems of the wetlands. Alemgono wetland was composed of a large number of plant species with high richness and evenness, whereas Doil wetland contained relatively few species, low richness, and high dominance. Unlike Alemgono, Doli wetland has high bird species richness, evenness, and low dominance. Based on the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) Red List criteria, 1.82% of birds of the study wetlands were critically endangered, 5.45% were vulnerable, 1.82% were near threatened, 80% were least concerned, and 10.91% were not assessed. This reveals that wetlands of the study area are the habitat for globally threatened bird species and that appropriate conservation measures are needed to save these species.

LANGUAGE AS AN INSTRUMENT OF HEGEMONY IN SELECTED NAMIBIAN PLAYS WRITTEN IN ENGLISH

Wilka Absalom,Haileleul Zeleke Woldemariam 한국외국어대학교 아프리카연구소 2023 Asian Journal of African Studies Vol.- No.55