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Variación lingüística del inglés como lengua franca
Estudios ingleses
2012/ Unit 1: General Information martes y miércoles 12-13 de febrero
- The concept of variation. The Role of English in the world today and the concept of ELF (English as a lingua franca)
- Variation in speech and writing (Literature, CMC, 1 News and CA 2 )
- Tools for analysis of variation (CL 3 ) Wordsmith Tools and Voyeur
The concept of variation. The Role of English in the world today and the concept of ELF (English as a lingua franca)
▪ Linguistic variation and Linguistic variability: variability is an innate feature in human language. This means that individual speakers use different registers and styles depending on each situation (context). Furthermore, different speakers of the same language may use different forms to express the same idea – most of these variations are highly systematic.
1 CMC: Computer-mediated communication (^2) CA: Conversation analysis 3 CL: Corpus Linguistics 5 Hedge/hedging: words used to express a noncommittal or ambiguous statement. E.g.: sort of, kind of, like, I mean, you know, it’s just for, etc. (sorry, I’m sort of late)
The existence of linguistic variation can be influenced by personal choices – use of certain grammatical structures, pronunciation, vocabulary, etc. – or by other non-linguistic factors such as the speaker purpose in communication, the relationship between speaker and hearer, the production circumstances (context), the demographic affiliations of a speaker, etc.
▪ Types of variation:
- Regional variation: differences among the speakers of the same language.
- Occupational dialects: for example, the word “bug” does not have the same meaning for an IT consultant than for a doctor.
- Sexual dialects: certain words are associated either to men or women. E.g.: the words “adorable”, “cute” and “divine” are use to refer to women.
- Educational dialects: language is used differently depending on the degree of education someone has. E.g.: the more educated people are, the less they tend to use double negatives.
- Use of hedges 5
- Use of fillers (e.g.: anyway)
- Pauses or incomplete words
- Interaction and dialogue
- Lower level of formality (e.g.: vocabulary, contractions, etc.)
spontaneous, but planned.
- Use of descriptions
- No pauses or incomplete words
- No interaction
- Higher level of formality
Primacy of speech and primacy of writing
Language was originally a spoken phenomenon – primacy of speech. However, speech is no longer detached from language, as we are normally literate. One example in which we can talk of the primacy of writing is in the context of a formal lecture. In formal lectures, speakers use the language they employed for their publications – i.e. the formality of their written works conditions the level of formality of the speech used during a formal lecture.
Some features of speech that can appear in writing are stress, loudness, intonation, syllable duration, pauses, non-verbal
communication gestures and body language, etc. These features are sometimes explained in written texts so that the reader can understand something better. E.g.: the use of smileys and emoticons in an email or a conversation in a chat room, explanations of these features in literature and journalism, etc. For instance, if a journalist is describing the attitude of the suspect during a court case, he would need to explain with words how, say, the suspect expressed himself and used body language.
Some features of the written texts that may affect speech are the use of punctuation, type face – fonts, capital letters, etc. – the use of quotation marks, etc.
E.g.: This is “accurate” – we can indicate the use of quotation marks in speech by using body language. These quotation marks may serve to express that we want to detach ourselves from what is being said or we are questioning something.
Transcriptions of speech
When transcribing speech, we need to explain aspects such as body language, the situation in which the conversation takes place, etc. We will also need to use typology and explanations to explain if someone is shouting – in capital letters –, talking quickly
- [speed] –, is angry, behaving in a particular way, etc. Furthermore, we will also need to pay attention to how language is pronounced – we need to transcribe if a speaker pronounces
ICE Corpus (International Corpus of English). The latter is subdivided in different corpora – e.g.: ICE Jamaica, ICE Great Britain, ICE Iceland, ICE Singapore, etc.
- Private corpus: corpus that is available only for a group of people. For example, one private corpus could be if we made a corpus out of the transcriptions of all Sesame Street programmes. Uses of a corpus
- A corpus informs us about the most frequent words in a particular language or field. E.g. In a corpus collecting texts by Shakespeare, we can know the most frequent words used by this author. ESTUDIADO. Martes 19 de febrero We have to talk about variation in terms of variety of English, in terms of regional variation. English has a common core which is present in all the varieties. There are a number of dimensions inside the common core. In recent years, the term “lingua franca” has developed into EAF. “The term ‘English as a lingua franca’ (ELF) has emerged as a way of referring to communication in English between speakers with different first languages”. English becomes an international language between speakers with English as first spoken language. SUE (successful users of English) does not include non- native users of English because they are not
considered successful users of English. EAF is a contact language used by people who share neither a common native language nor a common national culture and for whom English is only a language for communication. English is a lingua franca and an international language. World English is another term perhaps more accurate than the others. When English is chosen as a language of communication for those who are not English, English is considered a lingua franca. There are lots of different places in which English is used:
- South Africa is one of the countries in which English is a lingua franca used as language of business.
- Asia similar to South Africa uses English as a lingua franca in business.
- English is doing the same in the European context in which English is a lingua franca as well. Here, we find the concept of Euro- English. In some European countries, it is very normal the use of English when shopping for examples. Even though English is not an official language, it is a language of communication in all levels. There are a total of 23 official languages but English is the most commonly used. “Word Englishes” is an emerged area in sociolinguistics (in the 90s). It reflects the idea of English as an international language. This idea is based on circle models developed by Braj Kachru.
Unit 2: Exploring the (Re-) presentation of spokenness in fiction 6.
Introduction
Analysis of fictional sources is a very good way of studying how a social group is perceived and how they depict themselves. It allows us to observe how these portrayals evolve through time. Literature traditionally has been used as a source. Literature is one of the few sources where the spoken mode was recorded. Other sources are private correspondence, courtroom proceeding, parliamentary debates, newspaper articles...
The transcription of speech to writing involves a loss (elements of prosody, repetitions, pauses, gestures). The selection of spoken features that an author makes in order to represent characters’ voices is rather telling. Regarding literature we have to consider that authors normally manipulate language in order to achieve something. Language awareness & speech realism: some authors have the aim to speech realism. Portrayal of orality is subject to the creativity of the author: stereotypical images. We have to make a distinction between direct speech representation and narrative voice.
Part 1
6 Fiction includes movies, cartoons, animated films, invented dialogue.
The linguistic characterization in written has spatial and temporal limits and there are other constrains by the conventions of the genre. There is limit speech realism as well because the main aim is to sell books. So there is a selection of features that the audience can identify as dialectal. For example, the selection of representative feature of IrE in the past derived into stereotypical representations: the stage Irishman.
Stage Irish, brogue and blunders
English plays from Elizabethan era through 18 th^ century
frequently depict Irish characters. The speech representation was focused on phonetics:
- In the 17 th^ century Irish parts played by English actor.
- Real need for non-standard spelling.
- The Irish character was stereotyped as rude, simple... There was an important evolution in speech representation in drama from Elizabethan times to late 18 th^ century: from
fascination to stereotype. The linguistic portrayal of the Irish in early Elizabethan drama reflects the English belief and political position on Ireland and the Irish at the time (exaggeration of features in English writers).
From phonetic to syntactic rendering
- With numeral/ quantitative expressions (as an approximation)
- Preceding an adjective phrase
- Preceding a prepositional phrase
- Preceding an adverbial phrase
- With verb phrases (the most frequent one)
- Others
- Collocate with: sort of, just and so
- Only two examples of clause-final: e.g. “That’s been bled from engine, like?”
- One example of clause initial: e.g. Like all those gospel songs he knows.
- Functions:
- Fuzzy thought, searching appropriate expression
- Exemplification
- Introducing explanation, alternative term or rephrasing
- Lexical focus: highlight, reinforce feelings (displeasure), exaggeration...
- Marking number: “approximately”
- Hedging, hesitation
- Sociolinguistic implications:
- Mark urban sophistication
- Mark in-group membership
- Dissociation from North side
- Andersen attributes the non-traditional uses of like to the influence of American English (e.g. non-final position). The be +after+v-ing construction
- The literary corpus: corpus presenter
- The baseline corpus: Limerick corpus of Irish English
- Focus on immediate outcome/recency/expression of surprise/downtoner: e.g. He’s after getting up a load of wind.
- Past as narrative device: e.g. they were just after coming up the main road.
- Collocate with just and only as intensifiers.
Concluding notes
- The combination of different methods of analysing language can let to explore the (re-) presentation of dialect in fiction more precisely.
Verbal conflicts tend to contain overlapping and this could be interpreted as a tactic to obtain vigorous support for speakers. Interruptions are used in common conversation to disagree somebody else’s opinions. But it is only when speakers insist in interruptions when overlapping becomes rude.
Another important feature is metaphors, the exploration of metaphors. ESTUDIADO REPASAR EJERCICIOS RELACIONADOS PARA EXAMEN
Martes 05 de Marzo
Discourse and CMC (computer mediator communication focus on language of blogs).
Introduction to online discourse.
- Social networking sites (like Facebook) comprise interactive, dynamic texts where people meet and perform social acts.
- Specific discursive spaces comprising multimodal discourses. Having communicative competence complains being literate within eBay.
- People’s online social networking draws on existing local, geographically and socially defined communities (personal interests).
- Sometimes interactants create new kinds of “online locality”.
- Much of what we know about offline contexts (CA) is applicable to online discourse (how language is used to enact friendship, expert power and be polite).
- New rituals in CMC: hyperlinking to show friendship, use of emoticons, sound files, font design, use to symbolize how we feel (new routines and conventions that implement “old codes”). Blogs
- Blogs are regularly updated online date-ordered text, with most recent posts positioned at the top of the screen.
- The term developed from WEB LOG.
- They seem to be as a diary but they have different purposes: academic blogs, community –art blogs, fan sites, fictional blogs.
- All of them have archived entries (tags on the sidebar)
- Most blogs are public.
Self as expert
- Bloggers are presented as expert in the theme in question. Different and varied themes (cycling, photography...)
- “Bloggers use a range of device, direct and indirect, that can make readers feel like they’re being talked to, included in a group and involved in the blog”.
- In blogs there is insider language (specialise) Place to link and their significance
- Other blogs
- Main stream media
- Websites that are not blogs
- Links within the same blog
- Links to other users-generated sites (youtube)
Self referencing establishes consistency of one’s performance of the self and encourages close reading.
Final notes
- In CMC DA (discourse markers) we need to focus on variation in the sense of multimodal aspects and the wider sociocultural context.
- Virtual spaces are new contexts for interaction and they offer rich and varied examples for the study of variation.
- Politeness strategies, introduction of rituals and ways of disagreeing have particular protocols in offline spaces and are slightly different online.
- Spaces like Twitter invite questions around the strategies people use to be concise and how they enrich their texts with links or other texts.
Discourse and the news Miércoles 13 de Marzo
There are two main traditions:
- Newspapers and the structure of news in written texts
- Broadcast news interview as spoken discourse (power and control) Definitions
- News deal typically with the most recent event of a public scale and importance. Its focus is often negative, concerning war, famine, accident, disasters...
- It favours the immediate, the concrete and the personal other than the abstract.
- Analysis of news discourse as ideology, good starting point in the way readerships assume that each title has its own,
