African Immigrant Families' Views on English as a Second Language (ESL) Classes Held for Newly Arrived Immigrant Children in the United States Elementary and Middle Schools: A Study in Ethnography

This article is published with the permission of the authors.Twenty immigrant families from different Anglophone, Francophone, and Lusophone African countries were interviewed about their views on English as a Second Language (ESL) classes offered by the school systems in the United States to newly arrived immigrant children. Whereas nine families (mostly from Francophone and Lusophone Africa) found the ESL classes useful, eleven families (mostly from Anglophone Africa) found them to be useless because they did not help to improve their children's English. Some respondents were frustrated because ofthe criterion used in selecting students to participate in the program, and also because their children were kept in the program long after their English proficiency had improved. Most respondents saw inclusion within the mainstream classes, instead of separate ESL classes, as a better way to increase students' English competency.This material is the copyright of the authors. Please contact them for information about reproduction or reuse

Design, Synthesis, and Biological Screening of Selective Mu Opioid Receptor Ligands as Potential Treatments for Opioid Addiction

Today, more Americans die each year because of drug overdoses than are killed in motor vehicle accidents. In fact, in 2015, more than 33,000 individuals died due to an overdose of heroin or prescription opioids. Sadly, 40-60 % of patients on current opioid addiction treatment medications relapse. Studies have shown that the addiction/abuse liability of opioids are abolished in mu opioid receptor (MOR) knock-out mice; this indicates that the addiction and abuse liability of opioids are mainly mediated through MOR. Utilizing the “message-address concept”, the our laboratory reported a novel non-peptide, reversible MOR selective ligand 17-cyclopropylmethyl-3,14β-dihydroxy-4,5α-epoxy-6α (isoquinoline-3-carboxamido)morphinan (NAQ). Molecular modeling and mutagenesis studies revealed that the selectivity of NAQ for MOR is because of the π-π stacking of the isoquinoline ring of NAQ with W318. Therefore, other heterocyclic ring systems were explored to obtain a diverse library of compounds with similar or different molecular interactions and pharmacologic characteristics as NAQ. The newly designed compounds were indole analogs of 6α/β-naltrexamine. The compounds were synthesized and the affinity and selectivity for MOR determined using the radioligand binding assay while the functional activity at MOR was determined using the [35S]GTPγS binding assay. The indole analog of 6α-naltrexamine substituted at position 7 (compound 6) was found to be very potent and had the lowest efficacy in the [35S]GTPγS functional assay while the indole analog of 6β-naltrexamine substituted at position 2 (compound 10) was identified as a MOR agonist and had the greatest efficacy. In vivo studies were conducted using the warm-water immersion assay to find whether the synthesized compounds had antinociceptive effects and/or blocked the antinociceptive effects of morphine. Not surprisingly, compound 10 was identified as an opioid agonist while compound 6 almost completely blocked morphine’s antinociceptive effects. The opioid antagonist effect of compound 6 was found to be dose dependent with an AD50 of 2.39 mg/kg (0.46-12.47). An opioid withdrawal assay was conducted on compound 6 using morphine-pelleted mice. Compound 6 produced significantly less withdrawal symptoms at 50 mg/kg than naltrexone at 1 mg/kg. Therefore, compound 6 has the potential to be used in opioid addiction and withdrawal treatment

A phonetic description of some repair sequences in Akan conversation.

Natural human conversations are hardly 'error-free', due to the properties of interaction. Repair is therefor a concomitant part of any natural conversation. Phonetic (and sometimes Morpho-syntactic) cues are deployed to signal repair in conversation. Evidence is provided from natural interactions to show that such phonetic cues as pauses; prolongation of phonic or syllabic elements; loudness and pitch may be deployed singly or conjointly to signal repair. The paper also demonstrates that a detailed knowledge about repair provides a considerable insight into turn-regulation

Requests in Akan discourse.

This article was posted with permission from the University of Nebraska Press.This article explores the linguistic and sequential structure of Akan requests which are either direct or indirect. It is shown that direct requests are made as commands and may be preceded by an address form relating to the "requestee" and followed by a sentence justifying the request, whereas indirect requests are either conventional (i.e., expressed by hedging devices, acknowledgment of an imposition, and pronoun switching) or nonconventional (i.e., expressed by hints, proverbs, and metaphors). In both direct and indirect request events, the request-offer or request-refusal sequence may be interspersed with insertion sequences. Because of the collective nature of Akan society, requests are generally considered neither impositions nor a face-threat to the recipient, unless the requestee ignores the sociocultural and communicative contexts of the interaction

Language and Liberty in Ghanaian Political Communication: A Critical Discourse Perspective

The object of this study was to illustrate the entwining between language and liberty in Ghanaian political discourse. Using three letters written by Dr. J. B. Danquah (two addressed to President Nkrumah and one to the Speaker of Ghana’s Parliament) and working within the framework of language and liberty (Obeng, in press), I demonstrate that even though by being candid, Ghanaian political actors in opposition risked personal danger, such actors had communicative ways for pursuing and defending their negative liberty and positive liberty and for challenging powerful political actors’ oppressive and illegitimate actions. The discursive features employed to pursue liberty include: deferential mode of address, candour, inferencing, glittering generalities, emotional valence, politeness and intertextuality. The syntactic features used included conditional sentences, pronouns, physical verbs, lexical collocation and uppercase letters. The study concludes by submitting that liberty relies on language to become actuality and that political actors’ views on liberty and the historical, legal, political and cultural contexts of the discourse ecology in which they operate all impact their discourse performance in their fight for liberty

Communication strategies: persuasion and politeness in Akan judicial discourse.

Persuasive Akan judicial discourse includes a variety of effective strategies, among them the use of apologetic expressions or mitigators, deferential modes of reference, indirectly authored speech forms (e.g., tales, riddles, proverbs, etc. ), negotiation, complements, and acknowledgement of impositions. These persuasive strategies help legal professionals in dealing with the face-wants that arise in the judicial process. In this article, I demonstrate how Akan legal professionals, in persuading a chief and his elders to do what they will otherwise not do - pardon an appellant - employ one or more of these strategies to achieve their ends

The proverb as a mitigating and politeness strategy in Akan discourse.

This article was posted with permission of the University of Nebraska Press.Among the Akan of Ghana, the proverb is highly valued as a mode of communication. Pragmatically, it may be used in the management of "face." Specifically, it may act as a mitigator that minimizes the offensive intent of an upcoming "difficult" utterance, it may show a speaker's humility or his acknowledgement of the addressee's sensibility by providing a common ground that does not impale the sensibility of any of the conversational participants; or it may show deference or solidarity. Structurally, it may function as a predifficult, a preclosing, or a closing

Macroeconomic determinants of interest rate spreads in Ghana

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine macroeconomic determinants of interest rate spreads in Ghana for the period 1980-2013. Design/methodology/approach: The autoregressive distributed lag bounds test approach to cointegration and the error correction model were used for the estimation. Findings: The results indicate that exchange rate volatility, fiscal deficit, economic growth, and public sector borrowing from commercial banks, increase interest rate spreads in Ghana in both the long and short run. Institutional quality reduces interest rate spreads in the long run while lending interest rate volatility and monetary policy rate reduce interest rate spreads in the short run. Research limitations/implications: The depreciation of the Ghana cedi must be controlled since its volatility increases spreads. There is a need for fiscal discipline since fiscal deficits increase interest rate spreads. Government must reduce its domestic borrowing because the associated crowding-out effect increases interest rate spreads. The central bank must improve its monitoring and regulation of the financial sector in order to reduce spreads. Originality/value: The main novelty of the paper (compared to other studies on Ghana) lies on the one hand; analysing macroeconomic determinants of interest rate spreads and, on the other hand, controlling for the impact of institutional quality on interest rate spreads in Ghana

Explaining the Growth of Government Spending in Ghana

Government spending is a reflection of government policy choices. However, the implications of government spending growth necessitate an understanding of the drivers of the growth of government spending. The present paper modifies the median voter model to explain the growth of government spending by introducing foreign aid, public debt, and democracy. The paper argues that these variables are important drivers of government spending for developing countries, hence a model explaining the growth of government spending of these group of countries that ignores the potential impact of foreign aid, public debt and democracy does not capture fully what determines the growth of government spending. Such a model is too simplistic and less relevant for policy purposes. The paper therefore makes use of annual time series data to determine the long-and short-run impact of per capita income, tax share, minimum wage, population growth, foreign aid, public debt and democracy on the growth of government spending in Ghana over the period 1980-2012. The autoregressive distributed lag (ARDT) bounds test for cointegration and the error correction model (ECM) procedures were used for the estimation. Additionally, the paper provides results of generalized forecast error variance decomposition in order to determine the effect of innovations in both the dependent and independent variables on the dependent variable. The findings reveal that per capita income, tax share, population growth, minimum wage, foreign aid, public debt, and democracy are key determinants of the growth of government spending in the long-run. With the exception of minimum wage, these variables are also key determinants of the growth of government spending in the short-run. Variance decomposition results suggest innovations in per capita income and population growth generally account for the largest variations in government spending over the horizon considered. Also, innovations in foreign aid, public debt, and democracy are responsible for significant variations in government spending. The findings and policy recommendations of the paper provide vital information for policy implementation in Ghana

A Causality Test of the Revenue-Expenditure Nexus in Ghana

Abstract The paper investigates the revenue-expenditure nexus for Ghana. The study covers the period 1980-2013. It examines whether increases in government revenue cause increases in government expenditure or increases in government expenditure cause increases in government revenue. It also examines if changes in government expenditure and revenue have feedback effects on each other. The stationarity test indicates that both variables are stationary at the levels when the test is done with a constant and a trend, and are first difference stationary when the test is done with a constant but no trend. The paper analyses the long-run relationship between government expenditure and government revenue using the Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) method. The short-run relationships between the two variables are tested in a Vector Autoregressive (VAR) framework. The results show a very strong long-and short-run relationship between the variables. The second period lag of the revenue variable shows a negative relationship between government revenue and government expenditure. This indicates the possibility of the absence of Fiscal illusion in every two years of increased government expenditure. Granger causality test is done to determine the direction of the causal relationship between government expenditure and government revenue. The test gives a unidirectional causality running from revenue to expenditure. This implies government revenue causes government expenditure. Therefore, evidence of Tax-spend hypothesis is found. The implication is that, government must improve its revenue generation efforts in order for it to fund its ever increasing expenditure and to control the frequent fiscal slippages