This document discusses how environmental and cultural factors influence knowledge construction when interpreting expressions from Yoruba to English. It analyzes 12 Yoruba expressions and their possible interpretations in English, showing how context and the interpreter's knowledge affects meaning. The key findings are that an individual's socialization in their native language determines how deeply they can think and construct knowledge. Directly translating words limits meaning to surface level without considering context. Pragmatics is important for understanding intended meaning based on the situation. Knowledge construction is influenced by social and geographical context rather than isolated meanings.

1. INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENTAL
PHENOMENON ON KNOWLEDGE
CONSTRUCTION: INTERPRETING
SOME YORUBA EXPRESSIONS TO
ENGLISH
EMAILADDRESSES:adegboyegadamilola8@gmail.com
and matonabiyi16@gmail.com
CONTACT ADDRESS: Department of English, University
of Lagos, Akoka, Yaba, Lagos

2. INTRODUCTION
 The ability for a good knowledge construction in communicating produces a non-
ambiguous and understandable expression.
 Likewise, a good grasp of the environmental ethics or cultural background of
English as a Second Language (henceforth ESL) speaker and listener will help best
in constructing and interpreting the expressions from the Mother Tongue (Yoruba)
to English language.
 Windschitl (2002) claims that knowledge construction process starts with the view
that knowledge must be constructed within the cognitive structure of every
individual, so that it is fundamentally personal, whilst being dependent on
experiences in the learning environment and on social interaction.
 This approach to the construction of knowledge by individuals or community is
structured not only by one’s neurological capacity but it is influenced by
sociolinguistic or cultural exposure of the individual or the community.
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3.  Knowledge construction has emerged out of the constructivist school of theory
developed by John Dewey (1933), Jean Piaget and others.
 Knowledge construction is an active process by which individuals incorporate new
content into their existing cognitive frameworks, formulating new conclusions and
pieces of evidence as a result.
 The construction of knowledge is an active process, in that the learner is constantly
being forced to reconsider what they know in the wake of new information, cultural
understanding, and experiences.
Washoe County School District: 21st century on learning opines some activities that
require students to generate ideas typically include one (or more) of the following:
 Interpretation – means drawing inferences beyond the literal meaning.
 Analysis – means identifying relationships among the parts of a whole.
 Synthesis – means identifying the relationships among two or more ideas.
 Evaluation – means judging the quality, credibility, or importance of data, ideas, or
events.
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4.  Von Glasersfeld (1995) also proposes four essential epistemological tenets of
knowledge construction; the first is that knowledge is not passively accumulated, but
rather the result of active cognising by the individual.
 cognition is an adaptive process that functions to make an individual’s behaviour
more viable given a particular environment.
 This means that knowledge construction cannot be possible in isolation but the
behavioural level of the individual, the level of education or learning (illiterate), the
environment which is of importance to this study (Yoruba cultural setting) as well as
other factors influence the interpretation of Yoruba expressions to English
expressions.
 According to constructivist theories, learning is a social phenomenon that involves
language, real world situations, interaction and collaboration among people in a
social setup.
 Constructivism then, is an approach that claims that humans are better able to
understand the information they have created by themselves.
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5.  Vygotsky‘s constructivism is known as social constructivism because of the
significance of culture and social context.
 Social constructivism is the application of general constructivism in social
surroundings that proposes there is shared learning among people resulting in shared
cultural meaning.
 Culture is thus believed to be a creation of social activity, both a process and a product
of social interchanges (Valsiner, 2007).
 Jean Piaget , who focused on how humans make meaning in relation to the interaction
between their experiences and their ideas. He articulates constructivism by explaining
the four sources from which he proceeded to develop this way of thinking, They are
both historical and biographical sources and can be summarily described by the
headings.
 1) Language, (2) the work of the skeptics from the beginnings of Western History, (3) a
key concept of Darwin’s theory of evolution and, (4) Cybernetics.
 He, summarized some salient aspects of the constructivist way of thinking. First of all,
it is a way of thinking and it is not a description of any world. It is a model,
hypothetical model.
 Therefore, this paper will focus on identifying how this environmental phenomenon
exist using data gathered from the expressions of the population considered, it will
analyze the interpretation of the mother-tongue expressions to English and show that
expressions, language use and environmental phenomenon are relevant to knowledge
construction.
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6. METHODOLOGY
 Sapir Whorf Hypothesis (1929) on Sociolinguistics states that the way people think
is strongly affected by their native languages. His major argument is that language
can have effect on thought.
 He expatiates with two hypotheses which are linguistics relativity and Linguistic
determinism.
 Linguistic relativity states that structural differences between languages are
paralleled by non-linguistic cognitive differences.
 On the other hand, linguistic determinism is discussed as the structure of a language
that strongly influence or determine someone’s world view
 As long as the language differs structurally, different speakers will therefore
experience the word differently.
Therefore, the second theory which is a factor that is used for the analysis is pragmatics.
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7.  According to Yule (1996:3), pragmatics is interested in the analysis of
meaning as expressed via a speaker and understood via a listener.T hus, it can
be said that pragmatic analyses are more concerned with what people convey
through using certain utterances than with what the words in those utterances
may mean in isolation. In pragmatics, meaning is not considered to be as
stable as linguistic forms.
 Mey (2001:6) believes that a genuine pragmatic account has to deal with the language
users in their social context; it cannot confine itself to those grammatically encoded
aspects of context.
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8. ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION OF
SELECTED DATA PRAGMATICALLY
 For this study, there are at most two interpretations for each utterance both of which
are acceptable linguistically but the best option will be influenced by the ability to
recognise the level of the knowledge construction of the speaker or the
circumstances.
 One of the interpretations into English language will be the primary while the
other(s) will be secondary depending on the level of the knowledge construction of
the speaker being able to decipher the best and exact meaning of the utterance
stated.
 E001 O kan : This literally means ‘sour’ but the speaker’s intention and the context
make us realise that the ESL (Yoruba) speaker does not first mean the food is sour
but the specie of food (cassava flour-Garri) is sweet. For instance, the garri is sweet
On the other, a person who is not so culturally inclined to the Yoruba Knowledge
construction will see the expression to be negative and say ‘the garri is sour(bitter) but
the correct utterance should be the earlier expression stated.
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9.  E002 O ti gan pa: The usage context of this expression can best give the meaning
of it. Relating it to water, it means the water is ‘iced’, if it is related to cloth, it
could mean the cloth is ‘well starched’ or the cloth is ‘old.’ This further expatiate
that the interpretation of an ESL speaker whose mother tongue is Yoruba cannot just
be interpreted linguistically but culturally and contextually.
• Interpretations: It is iced
• It is stagnant
• This expression when used it is used as a result of knowledge construction that a
Yoruba speaker of English second language user will understand that ‘o ti gan pa’
meant is either that of 2a or 2b. for example, some dialectal speakers of Yoruba
would not understand that the 2b does not meanwhat it is. This is common with the
Ijebu speakers of Yoruba, especially to mock anyone that amends or stitches a
dress.
 E003 O ni eran ife: This means in the cultural setting that someone is easily loved
and favoured. However, the speaker’s intended meaning also matter because he
could be sarcastic in the context of a love relationship and say the person has a
portion of love meat to give to the other party.
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10.  E004 O ju aye: This idiomatically (culturally) means someone ‘pretending.’ On the
other hand it could be a scene of a negative event befalling someone, the person
said to be experiencing or has experienced a lot of world’s manipulation.
 E005 E n fi owo kan mi: This means linguistically, ‘you are touching me.’ However,
the speaker could mean something more based on the context that this is not an
ordinary touch but a romantic one. This has depicted that there is a deeper meaning
to the statement whether it should be stopped or enjoyed.
 E006 Aso naa jona: a lame man will mean that the cloth is burnt with fire, but
pragmatically, when referring to colours mean the cloth is a ‘dark coloured one’ or
when referring to the complexion of a being, it means the person ‘bleached’ the
skin.
 E007 Ile aye le o: It means ‘the world is a difficult one’ to live in or life (a man’s
experience) is difficult. It is a show of regret about life.
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11.  E008 Ojo aje ni ola: This means ‘tomorrow is Monday.’ However, the context of the
speaker means there is a need to plan for tomorrow because it is ‘a day of sales’ where
you hope to get profit.
 E009 Aye wa leko: This cannot be determined without considering the mode or tenor
(context of situation) of the speaker. If the context is that of bliss, the person means
‘there is a lot of fun in Lagos.’ On another hand, it means ‘unpalatable situations are
being experienced in Lagos,’ it means it is not easy to make it in Lagos, it is full of
hardship.
 E010 Oun ko hun ko ni ‘gbe wa wule’: This means nothing will make us ‘dig the ground’
(a type of work). This idiomatically (culturally) means nothing would ‘destroy us’
 E011 O rin si: meaning ‘walking steps increased or the thing (psychotic situation) has
come. If a Yoruba speaker should use the second sentence to a mother tongue user of
English, the thing spoken of cannot be comprehended as what the L2 speaker meant.
This expression is a product of knowledge construction of the Yoruba speaker refers to
the fact that ‘an abnormal usual occurrence that happens to one has occurred again’.
Only a Yoruba speaker can make this construction as a result of his reality.
Linguistically, ‘rin’ in Yoruba means to walk, if an L2 English speaker will just
understand it for walk, such expression once made will not make meaning to such person
because he is not part of the reality that birthed such expressions.
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12.  EO12 O ju ri: eyes have seen
We have experienced a lot
For this expression, though it seems like a figurative expression in Yoruba language, but
only a ESL speaker with deep understanding of Yoruba with their knowledge construction
will understand the second part is not talking about the literal statement but the figurative
one which is the latter.
.
Findings
 First and foremost most, the analysis show that the level of a speaker’s socialization
with his/her native language will determine the indepth of thought fostering the
knowledge construction in discourse.
 Also, the according to the literature of Saphir-Whorf, linguistic relativity is a
limitation to the construction of knowledge because, if words interpretation are
limited to direct transliteration then meaning will be at the surface level alone.
 It is further noted that pragmatics is of great value to knowledge construction as the
meaning extracted from the subjects discourses can’t be a choice made in isolation but
a determinant of what the speak intends in which the context also help the listener
make the right choice of construct.
 This research therefore, concludes from its findings that meaning of expressions are
in the background of their geographical site, meaning can be limited by the
construction of individuals.
•
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13. REFERENCES
Dewey, J. (1933). How we think. A restatement of the relation of reflective
thinking to educative process. Boston: D. C. Heath.
Kalra, M.B. (2012). Teachers‘ personal theories of knowledge, learning and
learners: Implications for teacher education programmes. Unpublished
doctoral dissertation, Faculty of Education, University of Delhi (1996).
Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mey, J. (2001). Pragmatics: An Introduction Oxford: Blackwell .Paper
Masters: Custom Writing Services page (Accessed online 27th April, 2019).
Customer service 1-570-955-1438.
Piaget, J. (1952). The origins of intelligence in children. New York:
International University Press Schnitman (ed.) Nuevos paradigmas, cultura y
subjetividad (115–128).
Vygotsky, L. (1978). The Role of Play in Development .In M.Cole (Ed.), Mind
in Society. (pp. 92-104). Cambridge, MA: Harvard .
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14. THANK YOU
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