The law review paper between the Kingdom of the law and the realms of academia: A systemic functional analysis of adverbial clauses

Legal discourse has long been classified among those genres that defy generic changes the most (Gocić 2012). Recently, however, hybrid legal genres have been challenging this generic stability by imposing their own norms to coin a novel kind of ‘legal culture’ (Goźdź-Roszkowski 2011: 11). The law review article is a case in point for it combines both legal and academic standards of writing which make it “far richer in intertextuality and interdiscursivity” (Bhatia 2006: 6) than the traditional set of legal genres. This generic subversion can be traced in the lexico-grammatical choices made by the authors to turn their papers into influential legal sources rather than mere descriptions of the law. In this context, this study aspires to scrutinize the use of adverbial clauses as one specific lexico-grammatical choice in a corpus of 44 accredited law review papers with the aim of showing how this hybrid genre strives to evolve beyond the stagnation of what is termed ‘language of the law’. Specifically, a Systemic Functional Linguistics analysis of the semantic, structural and thematic uses of these structures is conducted to demonstrate how the hybridity of contexts in a single genre can make for unprecedented generic breaches. The quantitative and qualitative analyses revealed an uneven distribution of adverbial patterns in favor of non-finite purpose and finite condition, concession and reason clauses. Additionally, the positional distribution of these patterns is manipulated whenever the need arises to hedge claims as a form of allegiance to the communal demands of the law and academia. These choices are found to comply with the authors’ needs to balance both legal and academic rituals of writing while observing at the same time their personal needs to be highly acclaimed as legal scholars and to “publish or perish” (Christensen & Oseid 2008: 1)

A year of genomic surveillance reveals how the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic unfolded in Africa.

The progression of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic in Africa has so far been heterogeneous, and the full impact is not yet well understood. In this study, we describe the genomic epidemiology using a dataset of 8746 genomes from 33 African countries and two overseas territories. We show that the epidemics in most countries were initiated by importations predominantly from Europe, which diminished after the early introduction of international travel restrictions. As the pandemic progressed, ongoing transmission in many countries and increasing mobility led to the emergence and spread within the continent of many variants of concern and interest, such as B.1.351, B.1.525, A.23.1, and C.1.1. Although distorted by low sampling numbers and blind spots, the findings highlight that Africa must not be left behind in the global pandemic response, otherwise it could become a source for new variants

Investigating Humor Integration in Tunisian Tertiary English Classes: A Comparative Study of Teachers’ and Learners’ Perceptions

This study examines lecturers’ and learners’ perceptions on humor use in Tunisian tertiary classrooms, focusing specifically on the English major. The ultimate aim is to explore the types and frequency of humor use on the one hand and whether teachers regard humor in the same light as their students on the other. To this purpose, a mixed-methods approach consisting of questionnaires and semi-structured interviews is adopted to collect quantitative and qualitative data for analysis. The findings revealed that, in terms of frequency, humor is used by all interviewed teachers irrespective of their gender. Yet, the general percentage of humor use remains moderate and limited to specific oral subjects as confirmed by the students. The results also indicated the participants’ agreement on the efficiency and preference of verbal, spontaneous and relevant humor types. However, it has been shown that the lecturers use a very limited repertoire of humor forms, neglecting jokes which are more appreciated by their students. Inconsistencies between the participants’ responses are further traced at the level of their attitude towards humor use in class. While most of the teachers believe that the merits of humor are undeniable, they expressed skepticism and discomfort in dealing with this tool in class. To overcome these lacunas, this study builds on the students’ recommendations to improve their teachers’ practices and can therefore be a starting point for EFL curriculum designers in Tunisia to revise current materials for a better humor integration in higher education