Projects of Communication Disorders and Linguistics
1. Mapping reading acquisition of Bengali children: A study of Bengali orthography processing
a. Investigator: Prof. Dr. Hakim Arif
b. Duration: 2017-2019
c. Granting agency: Dept. of Communication Disorders
d. Project Description: The goal of the project is to mapping the nature of reading abilities of Bengali children. Reading is regarded as the latest form of language processing because human beings had wait for the development of writing system to acquire this linguistic skill. As a form of language process reading ensures the skill of language comprehension with visual written scripts. Since different languages use diverse writing system, the nature of reading acquisition varies from language to language throughout the world. For example, children of Italian, Spanish and Serbo-Croatian languages with shallow orthography acquire reading and learning ability earlier than the children of English, French and Bengali with deep orthography. The orthography of Bengali is deep by nature because it includes different consonant ligatures for which graphemes of this language mostly fail to maintain one-to-one relation with its corresponding phonemes. Such a deep nature of Bengali orthography takes comparatively more time in children’s reading and learning processing. Hence acquiring reading ability of Bengali children is a challenging task. So, the project is trying to map the overall reading techniques of Bengali children, especially isolating deep and shallow graphemes of this orthography, identifying reading process of Bengali words, new words and pseudo-words, and determining a pragmatic reading strategy which will enhance learning ability of Bengali children.
2. Linguistics as a tool for communication disorders
a. Investigator: Prof. Dr. Hakim Arif
b. Duration: 2017-2018
c. Granting agency: Dept. of Communication Disorders
d. Project Description: The goal of this project is to examine the necessity of studying linguistics as a tool for the professionals of communication disorders. Speech pathologists or speech therapists working for the betterment of people with different speech and language disorders are ultimately identified as linguists. This is because the problems and disorders which they need to identify and assess mainly involve different aspects of linguistic structures and elements. For example, in order to ensure fruitful treatment, speech therapist must learn the nature of speech production, activity of vocal organs as well as mechanisms of voice production; language pathologists might acquire the details of grammar and lexicon of a language. Hence it is not an exaggeration that an efficient speech and language therapist must be excellent in linguistics. Considering the above observation, this project aims to make linguistics a powerful tool for communication disorder. As a part of this process, the project explains different core aspects of linguistics with a pragmatic objective as well as precise manner which finally make it suitable for the potential students and researchers of this discipline.
3. Title: Gathering Linguistic Metaphors published in the Bengali national newspapers (2015-2020): A cognitive linguistic interpretation
a. Investigator: Prof. Dr. Hakim Arif
b. Duration: 2014-2018
c. Granting agency: Department of Communication Disorders
d. Project Description: The objective of the project is to gather different linguistic metaphors published in different daily national newspapers in Bangladesh. Metaphor is a linguistic process of conceptualizing diverse abstract events and concepts surrounding us. So, it is obvious that every human being develop a specific form of conceptual metaphor in his/her cognitive system to express such abstract phenomena of the world. As a part of language expression conceptual metaphors get different linguistic realizations in different daily communicative events. Like other humans, Bengali journalists working in many Bengali national newspapers everyday spontaneously generate and publish different types of linguistic metaphors as the visualization of their cognitive endeavors. So, linguistic metaphors could be treated as invaluable treasure of humans’ cognitive abilities. By seriously taking the above observation into account, the present project takes an initiative to collect as well as document diverse linguistic metaphors regularly published (2015-2020) in different daily newspapers. At the same time, these linguistic metaphors to be collected will be categorized on the basis of its topics and objects to make these suitable for publication in the book.
4. Polite approach used in Written Bengali
a. Investigator: Prof. Dr. Hakim Arif
b. Duration: 2014-2016
c. Project Description: Politeness is an approach to linguistic behavior which includes both language structures and social norms. It is popularly said that the linguistic community which possesses more submissive view of social interaction, the linguistic expression of such community contain more linguistic symbols of politeness. For example, since Japanese people exhibit extremely polite behavior in their daily interaction, in Japanese there developed diverse linguistic constituents over the time. Accordingly, it is also reflected in written Japanese. Compared to Japanese, Bengali people are to some extent less polite in their daily linguistic interaction. Hence Bengali language lacks different linguistic lexicon expressing politeness. Considering the above reality, this project investigates different written documents of Bengali, especially invitation letters linguistic, to find out various lexicon and symbols denoting polite behaviors. At the same time, it also suggests some potential lexicon expressing politeness of Bengali people (if).
