People’s perceptions of HIV/AIDS as portrayed by their labels of the disease: the case of Botswana

It is typical of societies to come up with their own labels or names to any phenomenon that may befall them in the course of their life time. Human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) has been no exception to this practice. In Botswana most of these labels are either in Setswana or English whereby an Eglish expression is simply adopted and used to refer to HIV/AIDS. This study looks at the different labels or names that have been used to refer to HIV/AIDS in Botswana. It is an attempt to provide insights into perceptions of HIV/AIDS by the local communities portrayed through the naming of this disease. The study demonstrates how, through the different labels, the local communities started in denial distancing themselves from this disease and in some cases associating AIDS with ailments already known to them, cultural practices and taboos. Some of these labels further demonstrate thenegative attitudes that may have fuelled HIV-related stigma in the country. Based on the informants’ responses, the paper further attempts a categorisation of these labels influenced by different attitudes to HIV/AIDS, some of which are self-perpetuating and may continue to be a hindrance to the fight against the disease

Abbreviations and Acronyms: The Case of Tlhalosi ya Medi ya Setswana

This paper looks at how abbreviations and acronyms are treated in African language dictionaries in general compared to selected mainstream English dictionaries. Specifically, the study looks at their treatment in T.J. Otlogetswe's (2012) Tlhalosi ya Medi ya Setswana dictionary. Altogether, a survey of twenty selected dictionaries was carried out examining the treatment of abbreviations and acronyms in these dictionaries. Ten of these dictionaries are mainstream English dictionaries and the remaining ten are dictionaries of varied African languages spoken in the Southern African region e.g. Shona, Ndebele, Venda, Setswana and Northern Sotho. The study addresses four questions: (a) whether African lexicographers include abbreviations and acronyms in their dictionaries as is practice in mainstream English dictionaries; (b) if so, how these have been treated; (c) what linguistic features are highlighted in these entries, if any; and, (d) what recommendation the study makes for the way forward.The results showed that in most of the African dictionaries in the survey, unlike in mainstream English dictionaries, abbreviations and acronyms are not included despite the fact that many of them are coined and used by native speakers of these languages. An exception is Otlogetswe (2012) with a list of 25 abbreviations and acronyms. The paper recommends that African lexicographers include abbreviations and acronyms as part of their lexicon because these lexical items are coined by the communities making them part of the vocabulary of the language. Users of these dictionaries should find entries of abbreviations and acronyms in these dictionaries whenever they want to confirm the meaning, or when teaching.Keywords: Abbreviations, acronyms, African languages, dictionary, French acronyms, lemmas, lexicographers, monolingual, pronunciation, semantic properties, stress, ton

African Linguistics in Central and Eastern Europe, and in the Nordic Countries

Non peer reviewe

Language endangerment and language documentation in Africa

Non peer reviewe

ESP and ELT: an overview of the common ground

No Abstrac

Chiikuhane/Chisubiya ideophones: A descriptive study

This paper is a taxonomic and descriptive study of Chiikuhane (Chisubiya) ideophones. It demonstrates that just like many other Bantu languages, Chiikuhane has a list of ideophones which, phonologically, fall into three categories: monosyllabic, disyllabic and the reduplicated forms. Their tonal patterns vary as they are all pre-specified and cannot be captured by rule. In terms of meanings, Chiikuhane ideophones denote sound, intensity, motion, colour, and state of something. The paper further looks at a set of fossilized forms which describe different types of ‘talking’. On the surface, these forms were assumed to be ideophones as well because of their vividness, dramatic nature and expressive function conveying the personal feelings or attitudes of the speaker towards something, typical of ideophones. However, a closer look at their morphosyntactic features shows that these are derived verbs with some of those ‘infrequent’ affixes observed in some Bantu languages such as Tswana.South African Journal of African Languages 2014, 34(2): 151–15