How do hip-hop songs produced from 2017 to 2023 depict and rationalize online fraud? This study examines the depiction of online fraudsters in thirty-three Nigerian hip-hop songs on nine popular streaming platforms such as Spotify, Deezer, iTunes, SoundCloud, Apple Music, and YouTube. Using a directed approach to qualitative content analysis, we coded lyrics based on the moral disengagement mechanism and core themes derived from existing literature. Our findings shed light on how songs (a) justify the fraudulent actions of online fraudsters, (...) (b) blame and dehumanize victims of online romance fraud, (c) glamorize online fraud, and (d) provide insights into prevailing attitudes, indigenous linguistics, and worldviews regarding cybercrime victimization. Specifically, our analysis shows the presence of moral disengagement mechanisms, including "dehumanization," “minimizing own agency,” and "displacement of responsibility." Moreover, we identify core contextual themes pertinent to online fraud in the Nigerian context: (a) "cyber spiritualism" and (b) "the North-South divide." This research underscores the global influence of musicians whose songs are easily accessible on diverse music platforms in trivializing the plight of online fraud victims. We argue that these artists' persuasive messages not only downplay but also satirize the victims' predicaments, thus contributing to the cultural worldviews and dimensions of online fraud. We conclude by underscoring these songs' capacity to actualize, reshape, and actively engage with the narratives of glamorization, justification, spiritualism, colonial legacies, gender dynamics, and societal implications. We recommend that future research endeavors explore non-conventional data sources adept at capturing the intricate fabric of cultural attitudes and dynamics. (shrink)

The renewed interest in the fate of endangered languages has led to the adoption by the Permanent International Committee of Linguists (CIPL) of a major project on such languages and the publication of Endangered Languages, edited by R.H. Robins and E.M. Uhlenbeck (1991). This book contains not only a discussion of the conditions that lead to language death but also case studies of endangered languages around the world.

This research was aimed to examine the relationship between perception toward merger and job motivation among employees of PT X. The subjects of this study were 97 employees of PT. X Jakarta. Pearson product moment correlation was used to test the hypothesis. The result showed that proposed hypothesis was accepted. The result shows that there was a significant relationship between perception toward merger and job motivation (r=0.581, p<0.05). In conclusion, increases in perception toward merger can have a significant influence on (...) the higher work motivation. Furthermore, perception toward merger also had a significant relationship with all dimensions of job motivation: arousal, direction, and maintenance (r=0.485, p<0.05; r=0.541, p<0.05; and r=520, p<0.05 respectively). (shrink)

Studies on terrorism with bias towards Boko Haram have mainly been carried out from non-linguistic fields. The few linguistics-related studies that have examined the media reportage of the BH activities, with emphasis on the discourse and linguistic strategies deployed in the representations, have not been sufficient. This study, therefore, identifies the linguistic and discourse strategies deployed by selected newspapers in representing the BH and other social actors. For data, headline and overline stories are purposively sampled from four newspapers, published from (...) 2011 to 2014, from the northern and southern parts of Nigeria. The analysis is guided by a combination of critical discourse analysis and systemic functional linguistics. In all the reports subjected to analysis, 13 representational strategies were identified, while at least 15 tools from Van Leeuwen’s categorisations were used in representing social actors. The newspapers also deployed discourse strategies to manage the voices of social actors, identify and specify the social actors and action, label, condemn BH activities, among others. The mediated reports on BH insurgency orientate Nigerians. (shrink)

The recently resurged Yoruba Nation (YN, henceforth) agitation joins some socio-political movements, social protests, and resistance group discourse in Nigeria that continue to gain traction in (critical) discourse studies. Guided by the theoretical paradigms of van Leeuwen’s representational strategies and Martin and White’s appraisal framework, 24 representative posts out of a thousand posts culled from Nairaland, Gistmania, and Naijaloaded generated between October 2020 and October 2021 were purposively selected and subjected to discourse analysis. Two levels of construction were realised: YN (...) agitators and YN agitation. YN agitators were associated with four constructions: cowards, violence mongers, terrorists, and organised strategists. YN agitation was associated with three constructions: a threat to sovereignty and national unity, and emancipation from oppression. Negative labels manifested more than positives. The dominant negative constructs of the YN agitation manifested implicitly and explicitly through labelling, negative comparison, appeal to sentiments, expression of detest, and flaming, while the positive constructs manifested through encomium and appeal to ethnic benefit. Online participants do not only project and spread their ideological stances on the YN agitation; they also make efforts to suppress antithetical stances. (shrink)

The paper discusses the critical need for ethical rethinking in relation to the environmental crisis in contemporary world. Beyond the present diversified perspectives in environmental ethical discourse (Anthropocentrism, Animal liberation/rights theory, Biocentrism and Ecocentrism), the paper makes a strong case for holism. The paper argues that while each of these schools of thought in environmental ethics has significant relevance and contributions to make, considered separately, they are for the most part, insufficient and inadequate toward revamping and protecting the world environment (...) from further deterioration. As a consequence, the paper establishes that only a Holistic Environmental Ethics that synergistically adapts, integrates and encompasses the positive aspects of these four environmental ethical theories in a holistic whole is promising in challenging the environmental crisis. (shrink)

Does it work? This question lies at the very heart of the kinds of controversies that have surrounded complementary and alternative medicines (such as herbal medicine) in recent decades. In this article, I argue that medical anthropology has played a pivotal and largely overlooked role in taking the sham out of the placebo effect with important implications for what it means to say a therapy or drug `works'. If pharmacologists and clinicians have corporeally located the concept of efficacy in terms (...) of bio-availability, pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetics, and herbalists in terms of a herbal revitalizing of the body's own vis medicatrix naturae, from the early 20th century onwards medical anthropologists (especially those who became interested in the `savage mind') have built up an equally rigorous theory of symbolic efficacy in terms of narratives, symbols and a kind of cognitive homeostasis. It was precisely as a mediating link between the somatic and the symbolic that I suggest a decriminalized placebo effect (as opposed to suggestion) could emerge in the middle of the 20th century. Taking the example of St John's Wort, I go on to show how notions of symbolic efficacy, spillover placebo efficacy and bio-efficacy co-circulate in recent attempts by herbalists, clinicians and pharmacologists to address the question of whether or not this herbal remedy `works' in the treatment of depression. (shrink)

Selection in reproductive medicine today relies on normative assessments of what ‘good life’ consists of. This paper explores the terms under which such assessments are made by focusing on three particular concepts of ‘quality’: quality of life, biological quality and population quality. It is suggested that the apparently conflicting hypes, hopes and fears that surround reproductive medicine can co-circulate because of the different forms of normative assessment that these concepts allow. To ensure clarity in bioethical deliberations about selection, it is (...) necessary to highlight how these differing forms of assessment are mobilized and invoked in practices of and debates about reproductive medicine. (shrink)

This paper engages in the debate between cultural modernists and cultural traditionalists concerning the importance of cultural fidelity as faced by African people via globalization and its alleged homogenizing tendency. Central to this debate is the issue of cultural truths and its use, that is, development. The paper therefore argues that African peoples do not need to “essentialize” their cultures. This is because the “truths about reality” with which they intend to employ in this quest for development are not exclusive (...) to any particular cultural society. The implication of the foregoing is the paper’s insistence that Africans adopt a complementarist attitude in their determination for cultural fidelity. It maintains that this attitude will make Africans avail themselves of ideas from elsewhere. Ultimately, the paper posits that this new disposition of Africans to their cultures and those of non-African societies will set her beleaguered states on a solid developmental trajectory. (shrink)

The late black American feminist lesbian poet Audre Lorde was known in feminist communities in the United States, Europe, Africa, the Caribbean, and elsewhere for her poetry and prose about how to survive various forms of oppression. Though Lorde authored many political and spiritual poems and essays in her adulthood, little has been written about Lorde’s early psycho-spiritual spiritual journey from Catholicism to I Ching, which informed her adult integrated African spirituality, which in turn informed her political and social consciousness. (...) Lorde’s poems to God, written during puberty and post-puberty, and her embrace of I Ching nondualism, provides insight into how Lorde understood the psycho-spiritual challenges of surviving through hopelessness and despair, and into confidence and hopefulness. (shrink)

Discourses between Ayōttitācar, 1845-1914 and Ma. Ciṅkāravēlu,1860-1946 on Buddhism. These were published in Tamilan̲, Tamil magazine, published between 1907-1914.

Discourses between Ayōttitācar, 1845-1914 and Ma. Ciṅkāravēlu,1860-1946 on Buddhism. These were published in Tamilan̲, Tamil magazine, published between 1907-1914.

On the ideas of Ayōttitācar,1845-1914, on Buddhism and medicine.