Don urges govt to fund research in private universities

Foluke Unuabonah, a Professor of (Corpus) Linguistics and (Multimodal) Discourse Analysis at Redeemer’s University, Ede, Osun State, has called on the Federal and State Governments to extend research support to private universities, stressing their contributions to national development.
‎
‎Speaking while delivering the 22nd inaugural lecture entitled “From Text to Context: Advancing Corpus Pragmatics in the Nigerian English Environment,” Unuabonah noted that private institutions pay taxes, train Nigerian students and play significant roles in advancing academic research in the country.
‎
‎According to her, ” Although there have been some modifications in recent years, it is believe that granting private universities the privilege to have their faculties as lead investigators in TETFUND- funded projects will go a long way in improving research in Nigeria.”
‎
‎Explaining her area of research, Unuabonah defined corpus linguistics as both a field and as a research methodology in linguistics which employs quantitative methods and focuses on the occurrences, frequencies and collocational patterns of specific linguistic phenomena, which lead to a vertical reading of texts and a high focus on lexical and grammatical analysis.
‎
‎She added that “it is now being applied to fields such as sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, pragmatics, literary and translation studies, language teaching and learning, medical, media and political discourses.”
‎
‎She therefore recommended that universities across Nigeria should include Corpus Linguistics as a course at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels in Departments of English and Linguistics, noting that the field offers endless opportunities for scholars and provides a systematic approach to studying language.
‎
‎The don further called for adequate government funding at both federal and state levels for research projects involving the compilation of different types of corpora, as well as investment in computer facilities, internet access, corpus software and training of academics in corpus linguistics.
‎
Unuabonah also urged Departments of Linguistics to lead efforts in compiling corpora of Nigerian languages such as Igbo and Hausa to support language preservation, understanding of pragmatic and other linguistic features that influence Nigerian English as a whole.
‎