Aspects Of Ethiopian Culture As Reflected In Ethiopian Children's Literature In English
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Date
2009-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Ethiopian children's literature is an area that has not been given
much attention for long even though it has a long history in Ethiopian
literature. Researching this area started in 1994 for the first time, that
only focuses on Ethiopian children's literature in Amharic. But this
research draws attention to Ethiopian children's literature in English.
The overall focus of this study is to examine the cultural aspects
reflected in Ethiopian children's literature in English whether in their
wording or illustration. To attend to this objective the study collected
data from Ethiopian children's fiction in English and made a combined
analysis of textual and descriptive analysis. The data comprises extracts
and illustrations from the fictions.
The study reveals that there are some major Ethiopian cultural
aspects depicted in Ethiopian children's literature in English. These
major cultural aspects are social roles, norms, beliefs, material culture,
customs and language. In addition, symbolic cultural elements were
expressed genuinely even though the Ethiopian culture has its own
symbol of expressing its artifacts and other aspects of Ethiopian culture.
The study also reveals that children's literature uses the illustrations
more than the wordings to reflect the cultural elements.
The study consists of four chapters; the introduction, a review of
literature, analysis, and summary and conclusion. The introductory
section deals with the background of the study, the statement of the
problem, the scope and the study methods. The review of literature
section gives a conceptual framework on culture and children's
literature. Moreover, it reviews related studies in this particular study
topic. The third chapter makes a brief discussion on the cultural aspects
in selected children's fiction in English. The last section comprises the
summary of the whole analysis and the conclusion that is driven from it
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Ethiopian Culture As Reflected in Ethiopian Children's