Apples - Journal of Applied Language Studies
Apples - Journal of Applied Language Studies is a peer reviewed international Open Access journal housed by the Language Campus at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland. Apples transgresses disciplinary boundaries and invites submissions that broadly relate to issues of language in society. We welcome manuscripts from all areas and fields that discuss linguistic and discursive phenomena and their societal embeddedness, by addressing in/equity, exclusion/inclusion, societal challenges and developments, or language rights.
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Teachers’ perceptions on multilingualism in the context of two national languages
This study examines teachers’ views concerning multilingualism in Finnish-language and Swedish-language schools in Finland. Using the concepts of linguistically responsive teaching and sustainable translanguaging, the following research questions were posed: 1. How do teachers in Finnish-language and Swedish-language schools perceive multilingualism as reflected in their language use? 2. How do teachers in Finnish-language and Swedish-language schools perceive multilingualism as reflected in their guidance of the students’ language use? The data were collected through an online survey (N = 2 865) conducted in schools located in 291 municipalities across Finland, covering the entire country. Participants included primary school teachers, subject teachers, and special needs teachers. Almost a third of the participating schools reported no students with home languages other than Finnish, Swedish, or Saami. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were adopted. The results reveal that the teachers in Finnish-language schools relate the concept of linguistic diversity to all languages, whereas the teachers in Swedish-language schools often embrace the national languages within that concept. Furthermore, the results confirm the outcomes of previous research, reporting that Swedish-language schools have a dual role: to safeguard the use of the school language, which has a minority position in the Finnish society, and to acknowledge growing linguistic diversity. Teachers in both school types partially embrace multilingualism but need further support to implement linguistically responsive teaching. The results also suggest that to help teachers develop strategies for linguistically responsive teaching, the connection between teachers’ orientations and pedagogical knowledge needs to be further emphasised.
Copyright (c) 2021 Anna Slotte, Anne-Maria Kuosa , Emma Heikkilä, Kirsi Wallinheimo, Maria Ahlholm https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Keeping up with the normies: Rememiotizing SpongeBob SquarePants in mental health memes
Mental health discussions online are increasing and becoming more multimodal. Memes relying on pop-cultural references are integral parts of online cultures, and similar memes on mental health are also gaining popularity. Drawing on multimodal discourse studies, this article examines mental health memes (collected mainly from Imgur.com and Instagram and by using reverse snowball method) utilizing imagery from the cartoon series SpongeBob SquarePants. The article introduces a new analytical concept developed specifically for meme analysis: rememiotization. Building on scholarship on resemiotization and entextualization, rememiotization focuses on how semiotic resources are used and socio-cultural discourses materialized in memetic context, thus contributing to both meme studies and digital discourse studies. Exploring questions on how SpongeBob is rememiotized into mental health memes and how rememiotization participates in representing mental health issues, the article suggests that memes use different semiotic resources to represent issues related to mental health. Specifically, the memes represent how people relate to their mental health problems, other people, and treatment – emphasizing the feeling of social and societal exclusion. The paper also shows how these memes use humour to critique socio-cultural norms around mental health, de-centring the problem-talk focused discourses on mental health while representing experience-based narratives. Still, the memes pathologize and individualize mental health problems and thereby participate in contemporary diagnostic and therapeutic culture. By illuminating how people themselves process living with mental distress in memes, this paper provides crucial information about mental health not found in other contexts and offers new insight for successful mental health communication.
Copyright (c) 2021 Reeta Karjalainen https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The prominence of English in Danish workplaces: Approaching a bilingual labour market
We investigate the use of English in Danish workplaces using a representative questionnaire survey (n ≈ 854). Previous qualitative studies show that English is a frequently used lingua franca in white-collar workplaces, but not to the same extent in other types of work. Also, while many Danes have strong English competences, not everyone is able to use English. In order to better understand how much and where English is used in the labour market we investigate 1) How often Danes use English at work 2) How English use at work is related to location, age, education, industry, job title and job tasks. We find that an overwhelming majority of respondents use English at work, but that there are noticeable differences between educational groups, industries and job titles. Managers and IT workers are frequent users of English at work, whereas teachers and healthcare workers report relatively low frequency of use. Contrary to previous studies, we do not find a simple correlation between level of education and use of English. The results point to a labour market where English is a part of everyday working life for the large majority, but also to certain industries where the role of English is limited. Finally, we discuss the implications of these results in terms of labour market inclusion and exclusion.
Copyright (c) 2021 Dorte Lønsmann, Jacob Thøgersen https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Between efficacy and inequity: Teachers’ practices and beliefs regarding ability grouping for coping with learner diversity in language education at upper secondary school
According to Gymnasieskolernes Lærerforening (2020), the student composition at Danish upper secondary schools has become increasingly heterogeneous over time, as more learners are allowed in than before. Teachers are forced to deal with this, for example through differentiated instruction, and more specifically ability grouping. The strategy of ability grouping, where learners are divided into homogeneous groups/classes according to their level, is a controversial approach, which according to several international studies, has shown modest positive effects, mostly among strong students, and extended negative effects in relation to equity. In an online survey study regarding teaching differentiation (Rasmussen & Fernández, 2023), we found evidence for a relatively widespread use of ability grouping in third foreign language subjects such as German and Spanish in upper secondary schools in Denmark, as well as a tendency to abandon the practice after some time. This discovery led us to expand our study to include observations and interviews (with learners, teachers and school leaders) focusing specifically on ability grouping practices. Results indicate that many foreign language teachers practice some form of ability grouping. We find a polarized landscape, with strong believers, who experience teaching success and a positive response from the learners; outspoken opponents, who either reject the practice as a matter of principle or because of negative experiences; and some neutral school leaders who trust their teachers’ ability to decide what is best for their students, even when no evaluations of this practice are performed and even when the leaders themselves might doubt its appropriateness.
Copyright (c) 2021 Susana Silvia Fernández, Astrid Mus Rasmussen https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Newly Arrived Primary School Students’ Cross-Chronotopic Movements through Language Learner Agency and Peer Scaffolding
Global migration continues to reshape and enrich educational landscapes, introducing increased linguistic and cultural diversity into classrooms. In Sweden, this has contributed to a multilingual school environment, in which newly arrived students navigate the new educational context through both a new language of instruction and their existing linguistic resources. This paper explores how two newly arrived students, in a Swedish primary school, engage in learning through Multilingual Study Mentoring (MSM). Drawing on a case study of the two students, the study examines how language learner agency and peer scaffolding emerge as involvement practices in Multilingual Study Mentoring sessions in Greek and within the mainstream classroom context. The findings highlight how support structures—established by the municipality, school, and educators—foster responsibility, belonging, and meaningful participation. By focusing on interactions including teachers, students and Multilingual Study Mentors the study shows how the students adapt, collaborate, and co-construct learning in ways that respond to their needs. The cross-chronotopic movement between the MSM room and the mainstream classroom also highlights the fluid and negotiated nature of involvement across multiple learning spaces. This paper contributes to a deeper understanding of student participation in multilingual education and sheds light on the under-researched role of MSM in the Swedish context.
Copyright (c) 2021 Eirini Akavalou https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Reconceptualising the role of talk in CLIL
This theoretical paper offers a reconceptualisation of talk in CLIL based on sociocultural and dialogic theories of education. Building on these educational theories and the experiences of an on-going CLIL project, this paper presents a pedagogical model for the navigation of the ‘talkscape’ of the CLIL classroom. This model comprises a total of seven talk-types: organisational, social, critical, expert, exploratory, meta and pedagogic. In addition to these talk-types, the paper introduces the notion of a ‘transitional dynamic’. This notion aims to capture the transition from first language to foreign language use in CLIL both within the context of individual courses and across a broader CLIL educational pathway. It is hoped that this model provides a useful tool in both the practical realisation and theoretical development of CLIL.
clil, dialogic, transitional dynamic, sociocultural, pedagogical model
International comparisons of levels of literacy have in some countries been interpreted as an indication of a prevailing literacy crisis that demands political actions to avoid negative impact on national competitiveness, democracy, and coherence. Special attention is focused in the Danish crisis discourse on literacy as a reading competence and on migrants who, in particular, have become symbols of the crisis. In this article, the values and beliefs embedded in the political actions taken in the wake of the literacy crisis are analysed and the implications of the functionally based discursive construction of the literacy crisis for migrants are discussed. Based on an understanding of literacies as historically situated practices and value systems it is argued that the construction of the Danish literacy crisis can be seen as an ideological phenomenon aimed at changing pedagogical and educational values and practices. In addition, the specific construction of the literacy crisis leads to an increased pressure on migrants to adjust and adapt to a monolingual standard of literacy, and to certain valued literacy practices.
This paper considers multilingualism from the point of view of language learning and teaching. We discuss the ‘monological’ thinking in linguistics and in the research of language learning and teaching and argue that the monological stand, more often than not, also embeds a monolingual bias. As an alternative to monologism, we discuss dialogical notion of language and argue that this inherently involves a multilingual stand.
Expertise sharing in the field of court translating and interpreting
This article focuses on the challenges of multilingual court work in Finland. First, it argues for the need of shared expertise and multiprofessional collaboration in the field of legal translating and court interpreting. This claim is justified by a short description of a previous analysis of legal translation, by some recent interviews, by a survey, and by the theory of situated learning and legitimate peripheral participation. Second, the article describes a problematic multilingual session in a Finnish district court on the basis of a transcribed hearing. Finally, the article makes some suggestions for the development of the current situation of court interpreting and legal translating in Finland.
court interpreting, expertise sharing, multilingual hearing
Challenges and Aspirations of University Language Centres with Particular Reference to Croatia
The recent political, social and economic changes in Europe have had a great impact on higher education, in particular with regard to foreign language teaching at universities. This has resulted in an increased need for foreign language teaching at universities especially among non-philological studies. The expansion of new language centres has been a step forward in meeting the challenges of the Bologna Process and the emerging multilingual Europe. Language centres play an important role in second language learning especially in teaching foreign languages for specific purposes. However, they have not always been on equal terms with modern language departments and other non-linguistic departments. Language centre staff are often treated with mistrust, and misconception of their work is not uncommon. Several changes need to occur to improve the status of language centres. Firstly, the teaching staff should take more initiatives in research which would ensure a better standing and a more adequate status within the higher education institution they operate in. Furthermore, universities should develop language policies to promote foreign language learning according to the European Council recommendations. This would contribute to a more harmonious cooperation between language centres and other departments at universities.
language centres, foreign language for specific purposes (lsp), bologna process, foreign language policy
Language is a powerful tool. Linguistic creativity provides the means to new ways of knowing, thinking, and being, and allows a new set of dialogues to emerge. This paper illuminates how Guillermo Gómez-Peña, a Chicano performance artist, writer, activist and educator uses language to do just this. In this paper, I will specifically focus on Gómez-Peña’s use of monolingual English and Spanish, as well as his application of code-mixed dialogue and illustrate how his linguistic innovation reflects his position on Border Culture.
University Language Centres in Finland – Role and Challenges
The present article examines university language centres in Finland, their current role, and the challenges they face. The aim is to provide a point of comparison to Ivan Poljaković’s article on language centres in European higher education. In Finland, the framework and basic functions of university language centres are well defined by legislation and long-standing practices within the universities. The strategic planning of language studies in Finnish higher education takes place on the European, national, university and language centre levels. In this process , the language centres have their own roles and responsibilities. It is also important that the centres define their particular identity and status in relation to their basic tasks. Due to their multidisciplinary nature, involving several languages and various fields, today’s language centres foster and promote interdisciplinary scholarship and research in language pedagogy. Defining the role and tasks of a language centre entails defining the kind of research best suited to its strategy and goals. Pedagogical expertise is a salient characteristic of Finnish language centres, distinguishing them from many academic fields and departments. By employing a well-conceived recruitment policy resulting in a highly professional faculty, Finnish language centres can establish a strong identity and can benefit greatly from internal expertise and know-how. In addition, active cooperation is undertaken both internally and with outside partners, for example national (FINELC) and international (CERCLES) networks. Finally, the concept of integration in language centre teaching is central. For language centres in general, the practice of integrated teaching would be an effective way of promoting their expertise and enhancing their visibility.
Migrant family language practices and language policies in Finland
This article investigates the language practices and language policies of an Indian migrant family in their daily life in Finland. The purpose of this paper is to consider the potential of an empirical case study on migration to understand the interrelationship between macro and micro analyses of language policies and practices. Though the migrant language instruction is encouraged and executed under the national language policy in Finland, the second generation of the Indian family was taught their parental languages at home. The family members resort to English as the principle language of communication in their daily life interaction with local inhabitants. The diachronic study further reveals patterns of language shift for the mother toward the Finnish language. This shift has an impact on the language practices of the children.
Interpreting and managing a monolingual norm in an English-speaking class in Finland
This study explores the stances that multilingual learners adopt in the face of a monolingual, “English-only” norm in a primary English medium class in Finland. I examine classroom interaction focusing on three students and the ways in which they reinterpret, reformulate, and contest this norm. This research is informed by the perspective of language socialization and draws on methods of microethnographic discourse analysis. I find that the three focal students come into opposition when they interpret and manage the institutional monolingual norm differently, indexing issues of mother tongue expertise and group membership. Aleksi employs a variety of discursive practices in resisting the English language norm, conceptualizing it quite differently than Lucille who seeks to monitor language use among her peers. Ali operates on the border, revealing a surprising degree of metalinguistic awareness and interest in how languages are situated institutionally. All three students articulate different stances on the use of English and Finnish in their lives. Language use transcends institutional boundaries, and norms are reproduced in concert and in conflict with other members of the class. My findings speak to contested language practice everywhere, to institutional norms regarding language use, to the ways in which students respond, reproduce, and reject institutional linguistic ideologies, and the different roles students give to languages in their daily lives.
In this paper, I propose a shift in analytic focus from language to artifacts – that is, to personally meaningful objects that surface in interaction and generate talk – as a means of accounting for the historical dimension of the relationship between form and meaning. Artifacts activate memories and feelings from other times and places, informing ways of speaking in the conversational here-and-now. By applying discourse analysis to a conversation recorded during fieldwork at a social center for Spanish senior citizens in Paris, I show how various timescales – that is, the microgenetic scale of unfolding talk, the “series of connected discourse events” over weeks, months or even years, and the ontogenetic scale of individuals’ lives (Larsen-Freeman and Cameron 2008: 169) – converge in a single interaction. Such timescales inform not only the social meanings (the identities, stances, alignments) that individuals create, but also the linguistic resources they use to do so.
Syntactic transfer in the written English of Finnish studentsSyntactic transfer in the written English of Finnish students
This paper discusses syntactic L1 influence in the learner English of Finnish students in the light of the changed context for learning English in today’s Finland. Finns’ increased exposure to and use of English along with communicative language teaching methods have led to an improvement in some aspects of their English competence. However, the results of this study show that deviant L1-induced syntactic patterns in Finnish students’ written English during 1990-2005 have not decreased, which indicates that their mastery of these syntactic constructions has not improved. This implies that for learners whose L1 greatly diverges from the L2, informal learning and communicative language teaching methods alone may be insufficient for enhancing their L2 grammatical competence. The implications for English teaching will be discussed.
Multilingualism and the role of German in studying at Finnish universities from the viewpoint of students
In most academic disciplines, German has lost ground – just as many other foreign languages other than English. Especially in scientific publishing, English has become the most important language (Skudlik 1990, Wilson 2002). In addition, the aim of internationalisation in higher education is to increase the number of international degree programmes in “foreign” languages for undergraduate and MA students, and in practice this foreign language is today English (Ammon & McConnell 2002, Wächter 2008). The aim of our study was to examine the impact of this development of English becoming the dominating lingua franca in academia on the use of different languages in studying at Finnish universities. We were particularly interested in the attitudes of students toward multilingualism for study purposes. Because German has traditionally played an important role in Finland (Hiedanniemi 1980, Piri 2001), our main emphasis was on the questions of how widespread the knowledge of German still was among students, and how they judged the role of German in their disciplines. In addition, we assumed that in the times of increasing student mobility – with Germany as the most popular target country for Finnish students – oral skills in the target language were of crucial importance in making such an exchange a fruitful experience. Therefore, we claim that special attention should be paid to the preparation of students for the communicative challenges at the target university already in their home country. Another aim of our study was, consequently, to examine what type of proficiencies such preparation for studying in a German-speaking country should focus on. For this purpose, students were asked to evaluate their skills in German, and those who had participated in an exchange programme at a German-speaking university were asked about their motives for choosing the host country as well as for their experiences and possible culture-bound differences in communicative study practices compared to Finland. Our research questions for the study at hand were: 1. What is the role of multilingualism in studying at Finnish universities? 2. What is the role of German in studying at Finnish universities? 3. What are the challenges for native speakers of Finnish in German oral communication? 4. What differences were observed in discursive practices of the German-speaking countries and Finland? Our study is part of the project German as a vehicular language in Finland that focuses on the role of German in academic and business contexts. The present study is part of the first project phase in which surveys among students and staff at universities as well as in enterprises in Finland are conducted to examine attitudes toward multilingualism and the role of German. In the second phase, audio-visual recordings of authentic situations are planned to gather empirically verified insights into the variety of oral communicative practices in different disciplines, branches, and genres. The results of the project aim to contribute to the development of new pedagogical concepts that may help to further the motivation to learn languages other than English. We also hope that they will provide stimuli for national and international political debates on the role of different languages. Our survey was sent to over 20 000 students in May 2008 as an onlinequestionnaire. Within three weeks, we received 3516 answers (response rate 17.3 %). The questionnaire consisted mainly of closed questions with possibilities for open comments. In this study, we can only present some of the results. Our emphasis was on the closed questions, and open comments were used only to illuminate the quantitative results. The results show that the majority of the students (83 %) judged multilingualism as important or very important. However, because multilingualism was not more closely defined one can assume that for many students it meant using English in addition to their mother tongue. This assumption is supported by the fact that two thirds of the respondents had “at least some” knowledge of German but it was used by only a third of them for study purposes whereas English was used by almost everyone (“mostly – seldom”). Considering the status of Swedish (which was used “mostly – seldom” by about 57 %) as the second domestic language in Finland, German is still the second most important foreign language at Finnish universities but the majority of the students (53 %) regarded the knowledge of German as of minor or no importance in their disciplines. At German-speaking universities, German was still the main language of studying, and especially oral skills were judged to be of greater importance than in Finland. Finnish students used oral German especially often in semi- and unofficial situations such as for organising study-related affairs or in conversations with students and staff of the host university. Also in actual study situations (such as lectures or seminars) the importance of oral skills was considered great. These results imply the need for preparing exchange students for their stay in a German-speaking country, especially with regard to oral skills. This preparation should also focus on culturebound discursive strategies because expressing opinions was judged as being more commonly expected in German-speaking countries and their communicative culture regarded as more aggressive than that in Finland. The data collected in our survey can be characterised as off-site data, and the results reflect the perceptions of students. Only an analysis of on-site data, i. e. recordings of authentic study situations, would offer possibilities for finding out what these perceptions are possibly based on. The compilation of a corresponding openaccess corpus for oral study situations is being planned. Our study shows clearly that the use of foreign languages other than English is rather uncommon in studying at Finnish universities. Even though the use of one lingua franca has many advantages one must ask whether the current development toward the use of a single foreign language at Finnish universities is desirable and what advantages a more multilingual practice would have to offer. At least in the past, scientific cooperation over language borders has proved highly fruitful. If academic multilingualism is to be promoted, possible ways to achieve this goal have also to be considered. Among the reasons for the dominance of English in academic contexts are also, undoubtedly, diminishing possibilities to choose foreign languages to study at Finnish schools and the decreasing number of learners of foreign languages (other than English), which mutually depend on each other. Compared to the EU average, German as a foreign language is studied relatively more frequently in Finland but while the number of learners is increasing in the EU average, it keeps on decreasing in Finland. Learning different foreign languages should, in our opinion, be started as early as possible to provide a solid foundation for dealing with academic contents at the university. At least elementary language skills that two thirds of the respondents in our study mentioned of having obviously do not motivate them to use the language for study purposes. Universities and other institutions of higher education should, for their part, promote multilingualism more actively, and award students and staff who possess versatile language skills and also use these languages for study and professional purposes. It is in any case gratifying that Finnish exchange students mentioned as their main reason for the choice of a German-speaking host country their wish to learn better German. This confirms our previous results (Ylönen 2006) and is in line with a survey conducted by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMWF 2008) according to which improving German language skills was mentioned as the main reason for studying in Germany. In view of the international promotion of the role of German, the tendency observable at German universities to increasingly offer Englishspeaking degree programmes appears counterproductive. Universities and other institutions of higher education in German-speaking countries should be aware of this in their aspirations for internationalisation.
Mehrsprachigkeit im Studium, Deutsch als Verkehrssprache, Austauschstudium, Kulturgebundene diskursive Praktiken, Mündliche Fertigkeiten
Copyright (c) 2010 Sabine Ylönen, Virpi Vainio https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The Proficiency in Swedish of Finnish speaking University Students
All Finnish-speaking students in Finland are obliged to study Swedish at lower and upper secondary school. At university, students taking a degree must obtain a Civil Service Language Proficiency (CSLP) Certificate in Swedish, for which spoken and written proficiency corresponding to at least level B1 on the Council of Europe’s Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) must be demonstrated, along with the proficiency necessary for the professional field in question. This article aims to empirically examine the extent to which university students demonstrate the requested level of written proficiency when entering university, and to discuss potential actions to meet the challenges of the current situation. A total of 490 university students participated in the study, representing seven faculties at a Finnish-speaking university. Those 490 students wrote an essay in Swedish when beginning a course leading to obtaining a CSLP Certificate; three independent raters evaluated all the essays according to the CEFR scale. The results show that 52.9 % of the essays were marked below B1. This article concludes by discussing the need for increased consistency in assessment procedures at all educational stages. Possible actions for improving general level of skills at lower and upper secondary schools are suggested, as is a reconsideration of the need for everyone to obtain the CSLP Certificate as part of university study.
university students, written proficiency, swedish as a foreign language, civil service language proficiency certificate, language education policies in finland
Figurative Verben in der alltäglichen Wissenschaftssprache des Deutschen
Expressions such as ‘einer Frage nachgehen’, ‘ein Beispiel heranziehen’ or ‘an einem Beispiel etw. sehen’ are common in academic German. Interestingly, the verbs in such expressions are often – in part (e.g. gehen, ziehen), or as a whole (e.g. sehen) – derived from everyday language and they have developed a figurative meaning from a concrete origin. The seemingly ‘easy’ base forms often belong to the most frequent German verbs (Jones & Tschirner 2005) and are encountered relatively early by learners of German as a foreign language. However, studies concerned with English as a foreign language (Altenberg & Granger 2001, Lennon 1996) point to the difficulties that even advanced learners have with such verbs due to their polysemy and their occurrence in similar lexical forms, that is, in products of word formation. These figuratively used words or expressions are considered to be an essential characteristic feature of academic German (e.g. Graefen 1997, Hund 1999, Fandrych 2004), distinguishing it from other languages. Fandrych (2001, 2002, 2005) compared text commenting devices in both academic German and English. His results point to a difference between these otherwise closely related languages with respect to academic lexis: while English draws more on vocabulary of Latin-Roman origin, German derives words from everyday language. However, previous studies are based on a rather limited data base and do not provide any quantitative information about this type of German academic vocabulary. A comprehensive empirical study is needed to verify the observation, especially with regard to the importance of this lexis for learners of German who wish to study in Germany. In this paper a corpus-linguistic pilot study is presented which aims to empirically examine the contention that such figurativeness is a central feature of academic German. The term figurativeness in the context of academic language is used with respect to phenomena of meaning transfer and meaning extension from concrete to abstract. That is, the perspective of cognitive linguistics is adopted which sees figurative expressions as means of conceptualizing the abstract in terms of the concrete and not just as ornamental figures of speech (e.g. Sweetser 1990). The analysis focuses on verbs, whose figurativeness is assessed according to the following criterion: a verb used in academic texts is considered figurative if the verb as a whole or its verbal base also has a concrete meaning, that is, they denote a physical activity or perception (compare ein Beispiel geben, einen Begriff kritisch betrachten or auf eine Frage eingehen, eine Entwicklung darstellen). With regard to the types of vocabulary in academic texts the verbs under study are part of what Ehlich has called 'alltägliche Wissenschaftssprache', that is, lexical items derived from everyday language that are used in a similar way in most disciplines (Ehlich 1993). The study aims to shed light on three questions: First, what is the proportion of figurative verbs in academic German and to which semantic fields do the base verbs belong? Second, does the concrete meaning of the base contribute to or is reflected in the meaning of the derived verb used in academic language? Third, in which way do everyday uses and academic uses of a verb differ? These questions are examined on the basis of two corpora of written academic German: The first corpus is the academic part of the Herder-BYU (Tschirner & Jones 2005). It comprises about 1 million tokens from a range of academic disciplines and genres. It is divided into three subcorpora: humanities, science, and law/business/technology. The second corpus is a 1.2 million token corpus of research articles collected from various German language and literature studies journals. This corpus also consists of three subcorpora: literature studies, linguistics, and applied linguistics/German as a foreign language. What is the proportion of figurative verbs in academic German and to which semantic fields do the base verbs belong? To answer this question a sample was compiled from the two corpora. To empirically meet the criteria of alltägliche Wissenschaftssprache and to not introduce any other a priori restrictions, the sample of verbs was designed in an indirect way. First, all nouns were captured that occurred in the two corpora with a frequency of at least 100 times per subcorpus. These requirements were met by 16 nouns (Arbeit, Art, Bedeutung, Begriff, Beispiel, Entwicklung, Fall, Form, Frage, Grund, Jahr, Mensch, Möglichkeit, Sinn, Teil, Zeit). The sample of verbs then comprised all verbs that occurred together with these nouns. In the pilot study only those verbs were analyzed that occurred in conjunction with the following five nouns: Arbeit, Begriff, Beispiel, Frage and Teil. The quantitative analysis suggests that figurative verbs can indeed be regarded as a characteristic of academic German: In the pilot sample these verbs covered more than 50% (i.e. about 55% of the corpus of research articles and about 51 % of the academic Herder-BYU). Furthermore, it turned out that these verbs fall into seven groups according to the semantic fields to which the base verbs belong: verbs of motion and caused motion (e.g. einer Sache nachgehen, etw. auf etw. beziehen), verbs of posture and caused posture (e.g. entstehen, etw. feststellen), verbs of transfer (e.g. etw. angeben, etw. annehmen), verbs of showing (e.g. etw. zeigen, auf etw. hinweisen), verbs of grasping (e.g. etw. aufgreifen, etw. zusammenfassen), verbs of connecting and separating (e.g. etw. mit etw. verbinden, etw. von etw. trennen) and verbs of perception (e.g. etw. als etw. sehen, etw. betrachten). Does the concrete meaning of the base contribute to or is reflected in the meaning of the derived verb used in academic language? To answer the second question, a group of prefix verbs of the form ‘über + verb of motion’ (übergehen, überschreiten, überspringen and übersteigen) was examined. The occurrences of these verbs in the corpora under study suggest that the choice of the root motion verb is not arbitrary with respect to the meaning and usage of the derived verb in academic German. In which way does everyday use of a verb differ from academic use? Looking more closely at the verb ‘(einer Sache) nachgehen’ by comparing its academic uses with its occurrences in the non-academic parts of the Herder-BYU corpus (i.e. literature, newspapers, everyday prose and spoken German), it turned out that this verb has developed a special function in academic texts, especially in (German language and literature studies) research articles. There it is most commonly used to comment on the organization of the text, e.g. to announce forthcoming topics, or to refer to the work of other researchers. This metalinguistic function is reflected in the co-occurrence of nachgehen with deictic expressions such as hier, im Folgenden, in diesem Beitrag or with references. The typical co-occurring object of the verb in this context is the noun Frage. In contrast to this specific function, the occurrences of nachgehen in nonacademic texts hardly ever exhibit this text-commenting pattern. The results are finally discussed with respect to possible applications in teaching academic German. It is suggested that special emphasis should be given to the form of verbs. A characteristic of German academic verbs is the occurrence of the same prefix and base forms in numerous complex verbs with different meanings (e.g. eingehen auf, ausgehen von, angehen, hervorgehen aus / zurückgehen auf, zurückkommen auf, zurückführen auf, zurückkehren zu, zurückverfolgen, zurückgreifen auf). Most of the bases of these complex verbs belong as simplex to the most frequent German verbs (cf. Jones & Tschirner 2005). Their basic meanings will be encountered relatively early in learning German. But, as studies have shown (e.g. Lennon 1996, Altenberg & Granger 2001), these frequent and ‘well known’ words often pose difficulties for advanced learners. Laufer (1997, 2000) has introduced the term of deceptive transparency for cases in which part of a complex word seems to be familiar to the learner and therefore the word as a whole does not receive special attention, which may lead to misinterpretation. Focusing on the form of these verbs, speculating about the derived meaning and working out the specific functions in academic texts may help learners in coping with the vocabulary of academic German.
Copyright (c) 2009 Cordula Meissner https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Linguistic and applied linguistic approaches to English in a globalising/globalised world have rarely made connection with theories of language and globalisation in general (Jacquemet 2005; Bruthiaux 2008; Mufwene 2008) and least of all to the mainstream theories of globalisation of the economic, political and social sciences and cultural studies (Held, McGrew et al. 1999). By contrast, it is argued in the present article that a closer look at the globalising development of English in terms of the ‘semiodiversity’ (Halliday 2002) it expresses through the major varieties of ‘register’ (use), ‘dialect’ (user) and ‘genre’ (using) which are directly expounded by lexicosemantic, lexicophonological and lexicogrammatical levels of structure, respectively, allows us to see how these linguistic function-structure complexes themselves define a typology of globalising Englishes of Global English, World Englishes and Lingua Franca English, again respectively. In turn these Englishes manifest the ‘global’, ‘local’ and ‘glocal’ dimensions of the economic, political, social and cultural processes associated with the ‘hyperglobalizers’, ‘sceptics’ and ‘transformationalists’ of mainstream globalisation thinking, also respectively. As such, it is argued that this multiple set of co-defined core concepts of a mutually informing globalisation theory and linguistic theory lends itself well as the foundation of a more comprehensive and adequate sociolinguistic understanding of English in the world of the new millennium, one which can inform applied linguistic practices worldwide more substantially than has been hitherto the case.
globalisation, global englishes, world englishes, lingua franca english, semiodiversity
The present paper examines how some Erasmus exchange students studying temporarily at the University of Szeged or at the Charles University in Prague are socialized in(to) their new communities of practice. The paper adopts a language socialization perspective combined with a community of practice approach, and thus contributes to a vastly under-researched area within ELF. The paper reveals that the participants collect first hand experience of using ELF within their newly emerging Erasmus community of practice. Very importantly, though, ELF, is not the only language that they are using within the Erasmus community; and the Erasmus community is not the only community of practice which they orient themselves to. As will be shown, their experience of language socialization is a multifaceted one, characterized by pride and satisfaction, on the one hand, and dilemmas and regret, on the other.
language socialization, english as a lingua franca (elf), communities of practice
Negotiating a New Culture of Doing Learning?
The article examines aspects of interaction, learning and teacher approach in an international, web-supported learning project, which was organised between three universities as part of their programmes in teacher education. The study focuses on interpretative resources which may contribute to how students perceive teacher interventions and presence in web-based learning activity. The roles and actions of teachers and students in a web-learning environment are not merely interpreted on the basis of intentional verbalised moves. The negotiation of the presence and role of participants is also guided by a variety of visual and linguistic cues on the web as well as the discourses around the learning activities. From a research methodological point of view, the article emphasizes the importance of data-driven research paradigms and a wide scope of data-collection in mapping the complex context in which the participants act. As for pedagogical implications, it seems that developing successful pedagogies is not a matter of developing particular kinds of designs for learning environments, new task types or interaction patterns alone. What is important is to involve teachers and students alike in assessing the collaborative processes of learning, aware of the complexity of meaning-making in web-supported study.
The functional irrythmicality of spontaneous speech
Experimental evidence has fully refuted the stress- and syllable-timing hypothesis (SSH) of speech rhythms. However, it remains the prevailing view and still features in accounts of the rhythms of speech because no other hypothesis matches its deceptively bewitching power. This paper, written from a discourse perspective, proposes a replacement for SSH: spontaneous speech is functionally irrhythmic. Although the formal events of speech – phones, strong and weak syllables, words, phrases – occur ‘in time’ (they can be plotted on a time line) they do not occur ‘on time’, (they do not occur at equal time intervals). English is not stress-timed, French is not syllable-timed. The rare patches of rhythmicality are either ‘elected’ – as in scanning readings of poetry and the uttering of proverbs – or ‘coincidental’ – the side-effects of higher order choices made by speakers. Coincidental rhythmicality is most likely to occur where there are equal numbers of syllables between stresses. In spontaneous speech, the speaker’s attention is on planning and uttering selections of meaning in pursuit of their social-worldly purposes, and this results in an irrhythmic norm which aids comprehension.
Interlanguage speech recognition by computer
During the last decade, there has been a rapid growth in research into speechrecognition by computer (SRC). Computerised voice recognition systems have beendeveloped which are being used for a variety of applications. However there remain awhole range of issues which have to be elucidated and investigated before SRC canbe broadly useful including for language learning purposes. It is well documentedthat speaker variability caused by accent is one of these issues and one of the majorhurdles in accurate speech recognition. Foreign speaker recognition is particularlyproblematic to program for reasons that our work is beginning to suggest. In thispaper we describe and compare the SRC of an interlanguage speaker ofItalian/English versus a native speaker of English, both with repetitive straindisorder (RSD) and thus highly motivated, using the same software, DragonDictate,from Dragon Systems. Cognitive processes such as language transfer, fossilizationand communication strategies are examined in light of the research. We illustratethe possibility of using SRC in second language research with particular emphasison phonology. In this paper we not only explain our views of the potentials of thisnew technology in facilitating second language acquisition research but go to a moregeneral applied linguistics issue where we briefly discuss some implications for thedesign of speech recognition systems for interlanguage speakers. This focus, webelieve, can help make applied linguistics a main stream discipline, therebyincreasing the job space for applied linguistics graduates.