Thesis presented and defended with a view to obtaining the degree of Doctor of English Letters and Civilization

By

Etienne MUPEMBA KABWE KANTANDA
Works Manager

Option: Applied Linguistics

Jury members:
Full Members
Professor Athanase MALEKANI KAPELE: President of the jury (UNIKIN) Professor MUNDEKE OTOM'SI: Secretary of the jury (UNIKIN)
Professor MAJAMBO KALONDA: Promoter and effective member (UNIKIN) Professor MUKENGESHA YI KA TOMBE: Effective member (ISP/GOMBE) Professor MUNDALA O'TETE: Effective member (UNIKIN)
Alternate Members
Professor BUSAKI ONKEN (UNIKIN) Professor NSIMAMBOTE ZOLA (UNIKIN)

2023

ABSTRACT

This research is in the field of semantics and pragmatics of communication. It is conducted to fill in the gap in the knowledge of meaning obscurities. The problem of this thesis is the meaning obscurities in Lecturer-Student Communication. The thesis aims at examining meaning of utterances in Lecturer Student Communication in the Department of English Letters and Civilization so as to point out the meaning obscurities and their causes in order to suggest the tips for an effective Lecturer-Student Communication. Apart from the observation and interview used for data collection, five methods were used for data analysis. The first method was the Lexical Semantic Analysis. This method was used to analyze the word meaning used in the utterances. The second method was Compositional Analysis which was used to analyze the sentence meaning. The third method was Utterance Analysis which was used to analyze the utterance meaning. The fourth method was the Content Analysis which was used, first of all, to analyze the content of each utterance as a speech act and answers from the questions of the interviews. Then, it was used to group the analyzed utterances in the speech acts according to Searle's classification of speech acts. The last, but not the least, was the histogram method which was used to present the results. As far as the results are concemed, the utterances are grouped with their partial results (as speech acts) on the basis of Searle's classification of speech acts. The results from the analysis are summarized in clear, misleading, vague, ambiguous, and obscure utterances for each group. The results answered the research question and explained the causes of meaning obscurities in the Lecturer-Student Communication. Furthermore, the discussion led to the construction of_ Uncommunicative Meaning Obscurity Theory which explains how meaning is rendered obscure in the Lecturer-Student Communication. This is the contribution of this thesis to the evolution in semantics and pragmatics of communication.

SUMMARY

This research is in the field of semantics and pragmatics of communication. It fills the gap in knowledge of the obscurities of meaning. The problem of this thesis is the obscurities of meaning in the communication between teachers and students. The objective of this thesis is to examine the meaning of oral utterances in the communication between teachers and students in the Department of English Literature and Civilization in order to point out the obscurities of meaning and their causes in order to suggest the solutions for an effective communication between teachers and students. Apart from the use of observation and interview for data collection, five methods of data analysis were applied. The first method was the semantic analysis of words. This method was applied to analyze the meaning of words in oral expressions. The second method applied was the compositional analysis which was used to analyze the meaning of the sentence. The third enunciative method was applied to analyze the meaning of oral utterances. The fourth method was the semantic content analysis which consisted, firstly, of analyzing the semantic content of each utterance as the speech act and the interview responses and finally this method served to group the analyzed utterances into speech acts according to Searle's classification. The last method but not the least was the histogram method which was useful to present the results. Regarding the results, the utterances are grouped with their partial results (as speech acts) following Searle's classification. The results of the analyses are summarized into clear, deviationist, vague, ambiguous and obscure utterances for each group. The results answered the research question and explained the causes of meaning obscurities in Teacher-student communication. In addition, the discussion of these results led to the construction of the Theory of [Uncommunicative Meaning Obscurity] which explains how meaning is made obscure in Teacher-student communication. This is the contribution of this thesis to the evolution in semantics and pragmatics of communication.