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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Delayed, Accelerated, Racialized: Exploring Neoliberal Temporal Encounters in Language Learning across Institutional Boundaries
Drawing on ethnographic data from eight adult learners partaking in a Swedish for Immigrants class, this article demonstrates that institutional practices are shaped by two neoliberal rationalities: market orientation and self-speakerism. The school’s market-oriented logic is materialized through regulated and accelerated access to work. At the same time, the ideology of self-speakerism operates through the slowing down of learners’ institutional time in the name of linguistic improvement. I argue that acceleration and slowing down both function as “technologies of temporal management” (Del Percio, 2021), governing not only migrants’ learning trajectories, but also the regulation of the Swedish labor market. These neoliberal temporal logics produce lived experiences of uneven temporal mobilities, which are materialized in waiting and feelings of being stuck. Lastly, I argue that the learners’ differential access to and navigation of these regimes produce lived experiences of racial time (Mills, 2020), through which racialized hierarchies of access, mobility, and belonging are reproduced.
SI: Educational encounters with Arabic speakers in the Nordic countries
Copyright (c) 2021 Samah Ibrahim https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Educational encounters through food, drink, and Arabic
This article investigates how food and drink may facilitate educational and relational encounters with Arabic-speaking adult students and open up possibilities for transpositioning (Hawkins & Tiwari, 2024; Li Wei & Lee, 2024) in adult basic education (ABE). Drawing on sensory ethnography (Pink, 2015), we analyze how food, drink, and communication across Arabic, Nordic languages, and English created joint emplacement and relational reciprocity in adult basic education settings in Finland and Norway. Adult students from South-West Asia and North Africa used educational spaces to act as teachers and hosts, in settings where they are often positioned as guests or even social clients. These encounters may allow for greater reciprocity than what is common in adult migrant education, as food and drink connect to transnational histories, affective and sociomaterial realities, and lived experiences.
Copyright (c) 2021 Johanna Ennser-Kananen, Ingrid Rodrick Beiler, Joke Dewilde https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
From university to working life: International student’s Finnish language learning experiences
In Finland’s integration policy, learning an official language, Finnish or Swedish, is prioritised to promote migrants’ entry into the labour market and participation in society. The implementation of the integration policy primarily focuses on formal language courses offered as part of integration training for unemployed jobseeker migrants with residence permits. However, this approach leaves other migrants largely outside the scope of integration training that provides Finnish language courses. Meanwhile, opportunities to learn Finnish outside formal education settings, namely non-formal and informal learning, have been mostly overlooked in integration and language education policies, as well as in academic research. This ethnographic study addresses these aspects by exploring the Finnish language learning trajectory and personal curriculum of an Arabic-speaking international higher education student, Ahmed, with a particular focus on the variety of his experiences across formal, non-formal and informal learning settings, which provide the context and opportunities for ‘integrative encounters’. Specifically, integrative encounters refer to micro-spaces, such as peer or group activities, that are meant to foster intercultural dialogue and promote migrants’ integration. The research findings thus reveal how these learning settings, whether formal, non-formal or informal, not only facilitate but also hinder an international student’s learning of Finnish during studies and after graduation. Furthermore, the findings illustrate how non-formal and informal learning alongside formal education, enabled by more or less integrative encounters, impact migrants’ broader integration process. Overall, this research highlights the necessity of adopting a holistic approach to language education and integration policies to effectively support migrants’ integration into working life and society at large.
Copyright (c) 2021 Sonya Sahradyan, Maarit Virolainen https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Reliability of assessment of five L1 groups in a high stakes test: Specific focus on Arabic L1 test takers
Language proficiency tests are frequently employed in citizenship application processes in many countries. This article investigates a high-stakes proficiency test used in Finland – the National Certificate for Language Proficiency (NCLP) – by examining the reliability of assessments for one spoken task, in the light of test justice and fairness. The data are drawn from project Broken Finnish: Accent perceptions in societal gatekeeping from NCLP. The data includes ratings from two assessment rounds, conducted in 2015 and 2016, based on a recorded spoken task completed by NCLP participants representing five different first language (L1) groups: Arabic, Estonian, Finland Swedish, Russian and Thai. We studied whether the repeated assessments were equivalent in terms of reliability regarding the L1 groups, with a specific focus on the Arabic L1 speakers. This focus was selected due to the pronounced discrimination experienced by Arabic L1 speakers in Finland, and the role of the NCLP gatekeeping citizenship, resulting in tangible real-life consequences for the test takers. Quantitative statistical methods were utilized, such as Gamma Coefficient (γ) and the agreement between ratings with Cohen’s Kappa (κ) and Spearman rank-correlations (r). Results showed that the separate subjective assessments were not equivalent among different language groups. The assessments of the Arabic L1 test takers had drastic variability. This raises concerns regarding the reliability and consequential validity of the assessments, highlighting critical issues of fairness and justice in language testing.
Copyright (c) 2021 Mia Halonen, Najat Ouakrim-Soivio, Elina Vaara https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Using your time wisely? Encountering racial time in institutional (non)transitions in the Nordic context
In this paper, we discuss how controlling the time and (im)mobility of “the other” in the Nordic context—governed by hegemonic whiteness—constitutes a coercive system. We do this by focusing on racial time (Mulinari, 2021) as the unequal distribution of time in which control of time and racialization are co-constructed. Our discussion is based on ethnographic data drawn from fieldwork in two Swedish upper secondary schools in language introduction programs and language introduction combined with national vocational programs; and in Finland, integration training comprising transition to the labor market. More specifically, we present examples from Arabic-speaking migrants in forced migration, foregrounding non-transitions within the education system and work life. We argue that such delays imposed on the racialized migrant bodies in this context are systemic, and discuss how the requirement of competence in the national language becomes tied to institutional walls. We also refer to neoliberal tropes of the employable, the educable, and the integrateable migrant body through the notions of will and use (Ahmed, 2014, 2019), and to the risk of becoming a “willful”, “useless”, and “undeserving” subject. The paper ends with a reflection on potential stranger encounters of otherwise as a way to break with dysfunctional institutional walls.
Copyright (c) 2021 Christina Hedman, Ameera Masoud, Enni Paul 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
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
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
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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 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