Oct 27
ChRIS CLÉiRIGhbook review
EDITOR: Virve-Anneli Vihman
EDITOR: Kristiina Praakli
TITLE: Negotiating Linguistic Identity
SUBTITLE: Language and Belonging in Europe
SERIES TITLE: Nationalisms across the Globe
PUBLISHER: Peter Lang AG
YEAR: 2013
REVIEWER: Elizabeth Olushola Adeolu, University of Edinburgh
SUMMARY
‘Negotiating Linguistic Identity: Language and Belonging in Europe’ is a
collection of papers mostly presented at a conference on language and identity
held at the University of Tartu in Estonia in 2011 in collaboration with the
Coimbra Group, which is made up of established, European research-focused
universities. The importance of the Coimbra Group with respect to the issue of
negotiating linguistic identity is revealed in a discussion about their
seemingly contradictory aims of shaping and promoting national identity while
at the same time promulgating international networking and relevance.
The volume is divided into three sections namely ‘Multilingualism’,
‘Self-Representation and Belonging’, and ‘Language and Policy’. The first and
second sections consist of four articles each, while the last is made up of
three articles.
Preceding the sections is an introduction by Virve-Anneli Vihman and Juegen
Barkhoff titled ‘Introduction: The Shaping of Linguistic Identity in Europe’.
Here, Vihman and Barkhoff state the aims of the Coimbra Group and note the
salient role of member universities as advocates of these aims. They also give
a brief history of language and identity, as well as that of linguistic
diversity and multilingualism in Europe, highlighting such issues as the
dichotomy between language policies promoting multilingualism, which evoke
images of equal language representation, and the reality of hegemony of
majority languages.
The first section, ‘Multilingualism’, opens with an article by Johanna Laakso
titled ‘Who Needs Karelian, Kven or Austrian Hungarian – and Why?’ Here,
Laakso looks at the issue of multilingualism from the point of view of
researches carried out by the European language Diversity for All (ELDIA)
research project. She outlines the challenges faced by the project, including
negativity attached to such terms as minority languages, variability in
fluency and use of target varieties, international mobility, and issues of
language planning and teaching. She advises that the best way to research
multilingualism would be to combine the views of language as a resource, which
speaks to the instrumental function of language, and language as a burden,
which is mostly associated with heritage languages, or so called minority
varieties.
The second article, ‘Estonian-Russian Code-Copying in Russian-Language Blogs:
Language Change and a New Kind of Linguistic Awareness’ is written by Anna
Verschik. In this article, Verschik examined how Computer Mediated
Communication (CMC), such as emails, blogs, and text messages that take place
using two or more electronic devices, could benefit the field of contact
linguistics and multilingualism. She analysed the data from five Russian
Language blogs written by ethnic Russians living in Estonia within the
code-copying framework developed by Johanson (1993, 2002) and found that not
only were each of them consciously choosing to use Estonian expressions in
their blogs, a phenomenon that could be explained as contact-induced, but also
code-copying across the board followed the same pattern. As a result, she also
highlights the importance of focus on individuals in multilingualism studies.
The third article in this section, written by Martin Ehala and titled
‘Russian-Speakers in the Baltic Countries’, follows the history of the
relationship between language and identity of the ethnic Russian-speakers
living in the Baltic countries – Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania – from the
Soviet times till the present day. Ehala concludes by saying that the more
the use of the state language (the majority language used in the country of
residence), the more dynamic and flexible identity is.
The final article in the section is ‘Interaction among European Languages and
German Vocabulary’, written by Bettina Bock and Rosemarie Lühr. Using German
as a case study, the chapter focuses on loan processes in European languages
and what this means for the idea of a common European identity. Bock and Lühr
consider the use of Germanisms, loan words that have been borrowed from the
German language and used in a similar sense by at least three European
languages, and Europeanisms, which represent the converse (Bergmann 1995),
positing that this sharing of words can be exploited in forming a common
European identity.
‘Self-Representation and Belonging’, the second section in this volume, starts
with an article by John E. Joseph. The article, ‘Indexing and Interpreting
Language, Identities and Face’, centers on the complicated nature of indexing
identities and face – a role which language plays. By means of a sample
conversation analysis, Joseph underlines this difficulty of distinguishing in
linguistic analysis between face (the contact-based image an individual
projects) and identity (a more enduring sense of belonging that may encompass
what an individual or group projects and the interpretation this is given by
others). He posits that both identity and face are symbiotic concepts which
can also be seen as different outlooks on the same reality.
The second article, ‘Languages and Identities in Catalonia’ by Emili
Boix-Fuster, tackles the connection between language and identity in Catalonia
since the recovery of democracy in 1975. He maintains that the Catalan
language and identity still enjoy prestige and the language is used in major
domains in Catalonia, in spite of the changing linguistic landscape with the
major influx of immigrants whose first language is usually Spanish, the
growing bilingualism with Spanish, and the elitism of the political leaders.
Boix-Fuster cautions though that the use of Spanish should be managed so that
Catalan does not get assimilated.
The third article, ‘Gaelic and Sorbian as Multiple Boundary Markers:
Implications of Minority Language Activism in Scotland and Lusatia’ by
Konstanze McLeod, addresses the issue of the Gaelic language and
Gaelic-related identities in Scotland; and the Sorbian language and
Sorbian-related identities in Eastern Germany. Both languages (and
identities) erstwhile restricted to the heartland regions where they originate
and are predominantly spoken are now of more interest to and spoken, albeit
with varying degrees of proficiency, by ‘outsiders’. This spike in interest in
the Gaelic and Sorbian languages and identities is thought to have been
prompted by the respective parent countries’ explicit promotional schemes.
McLeod concludes that this diversity in speakers and people identifying with
the language and culture is overridden by the more pressing matter of activism
for these languages in the present age.
The last article in this section, ‘The Role of Language in Estonian Identity’
by Aune Valk, gives a theoretical review using data from mostly quantitative
studies to examine the relationship between language and identity among ethnic
Russians living in Estonia, Estonians living in Estonia, and Estonians living
abroad (the last group are further subdivided into Old DiEst, those who
escaped Estonia in and around 1944 following the German occupation and their
descendants; and New DiEst, those who have left Estonia since 1991). From the
review of the related studies, Valk finds that while proficiency in Estonian
was the major indicator of Estonian identity for the Estonians abroad,
probably because of the desire to hold on to their heritage language and
identity; unlike their counterparts in diaspora, Estonians living in Estonia
(and ethnic Russians living in Estonia who speak the language and identify
with the Estonian community) did not see language proficiency as a major
marker of Estonian identity, but cited the desire to integrate into the
Estonian community.
The third section, Language and Policy, opens with Patrick Sériot’s ‘Language
and Nation: Two Models’. In this article, Sériot delves into a historical
definition of the relationship between language and nation by two defining
approaches. The first approach, the German romantic approach, is defined as
‘naturalistic’ (p. 259) and holds the view that a nation is defined by the
language it speaks, and thus language is static and absolute. The second
approach, the French Jacobin, which Sériot describes as ‘contractualist’ (p.
259), favours the view that language does not define a nation, and language is
dynamic. Sériot sides with the latter approach with a discussion of the issues
that the approaches generate in dealing with the non-isomorphic concepts of
nation and language.
The second article by Tomasz Kamusella, titled ‘Scripts and Politics in Modern
Central Europe’, explores the issue of multiscripturalism in Central Europe.
Multiscripturalism itself refers to “the use of two or more scripts when
writing in a polity or territory” p. 273. Kamusella charts the history of
scripting in Europe to the present day when the majority of Europe is
monoscriptural and multiscripturalism is the preserve of Central Europe where
Latin, Cyrillic and Greek are used. He ends by stressing the importance of
multiscripturalism in providing access to more information and being a tool
that can be employed in politics in Europe, for better or worse.
The last article in this section is by John Walsh. The article, ‘Pushing an
Open Door? Aspects of Language Policy at an Irish University’, dwells on the
Irish language policy at the National University of Ireland (NUI), Galway,
within the framework of the Official Language Act (OLA). Walsh examines the
implementation of the NUI’s language policy which supports the OLA’s
obligations, one of which Walsh focused his research on. This obligation was
the bilingual presentation of signage and stationery in a particular manner.
He looked at the implementation of this obligation at the NUI and also
students’ attitudes to that and other aspects of NUI language policy. His
findings point to the importance of universities’ support of the OLA through
their language policy, especially as the results he found were favourable in
every regard.
EVALUATION
This volume is useful for anyone interested in historical linguistics,
multilingualism, language and identity, and language policy and planning. In
spite of the fact that the volume is Europe-focused, the issues it tackles are
generalisable.
The volume is also valuable in the sense of incorporating diverse approaches
to the examination of the issues discussed. Not only were there empirical and
theoretical approaches, but it was also refreshing to see multilingualism and
identity discussed from the non-traditional point of view of Computer Mediated
Communication, as in Verschik’s ‘Estonian-Russian Code-Copying in Russian
Language Blogs: Language Change and a New Kind of Linguistic Awareness’.
As a whole, the articles were cohesive, as they all touched on the central
theme of negotiating linguistic identity in Europe. But, the sections
‘Multilingualism’ and ‘Self-Representation and Belonging’ had less coherence
than the section on ‘Language and Policy’. The majority of articles in the
former sections could easily fit either section; this defeats the purpose of
the division into sections in the first place. Indeed, it seemed that the
first two sections were named after the major issue in the first articles of
each of the sections.
Another issue that was disappointing but understandable (given publishing
deadlines and the undesirability of rushing research analysis) was the issue
of incomplete research results presented in two of the articles – Laakso’s
‘Who Needs Karelian, Kven or Austrian Hungarian – and Why?’ (p. 52); and
Ehala’s ‘Russian-Speakers in the Baltic Countries’ (p. 94). It would have
been interesting and probably more meaningful to have the full results in the
volume, but such an omission is not unusual.
Potential for future research was indicated by some of the articles in the
volume. One of such articles is Verschik’s ‘Estonian-Russian Code-Copying in
Russian Language Blogs: Language Change and a New Kind of Linguistic
Awareness’ which indicates the need for more research into CMC. Likewise,
Kamusella’s theoretical take on the issue of multiscripturalism and its effect
on politics in ‘Scripts and Politics in Modern Central Europe’ seems to be a
good foundation for further empirical studies.
Overall, the volume is a good reference book that makes for an interesting
and multi-dimensional study on familiar linguistic topics.
REFERENCES
Bergman, Rolf. 1995. ‘Europsmus’ and ‘Internationalismus’. Zur Lexikologischen
Terminologie [‘Europeanism’ and ‘internationalism’. On Lexicological
Terminology]. Sprachwissenschaft 20. 239-277.
Johanson, Lars. 1993. Code-Copying in Immigrant Turkish. In Guus Extra and
Ludo Verhoeven (eds). Immigrant Languages in Europe. 197 — 221.
Clevedon/Philadelphia/Adelaide: Multilingual Matters.
Johanson, Lars. 2002. Structural Factors in Turkic Language Contacts. London:
Curzon.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Elizabeth Olushola Adeolu is a Ph.D. candidate of Linguistics and English
Language at the University of Edinburgh, U.K. Her research interests include
such sociolinguistic and socio-phonetic areas as Dialect features, World
Englishes, Identity, Language Endangerment, language Attitudes and
Perceptions, Pidgins and Creoles. Her current research work is on attitudes
and perceptions of exonormative varieties by ESL speakers.
Oct 24
ChRIS CLÉiRIGhannouncements
Title: The Language of War Monuments
Series Title: Bloomsbury Semiotics
Publication Year: 2014
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing (formerly The Continuum International Publishing Group)
http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/
Book URL: http://bloomsbury.com/the-language-of-war-monuments-9781474224208/
Author: David Machin
Author: Gill Abousnnouga
Paperback: ISBN: 9781474224208 Pages: 248 Price: U.K. £ 24.99
Abstract:
This book analyses war monuments by developing a multimodal social-semiotic approach to understand how they communicate as three-dimensional objects. The book provides a practical tool-kit approach to how critical multimodal social semiotics should be done through visual, textual and material analysis. It ties this material analysis into the social and political contexts of production. Using examples across the 20th and 21st century the book’s chapters offer a way of analysing the way that monument designers have used specific semiotic choices in terms of things like iconography, objects, shape, form, angularity, height, materials and surface realisation to place representations of war in public places across Britain.
This social-semiotic approach to the study of war monuments serves three innovative purposes. First, it provides a contribution to the work on the ideological representations of war in Media and Cultural Studies and in Critical Discourse Analysis applied specifically to more banal realisations of discourse. Second, it responds to calls by historians for innovative ways to study war commemoration by providing an approach that offers both specific analysis of the objects and attends to matters of design. Thirdly, following in the relatively recent tradition of multimodal analysis, the arguments draw on the ideas of Kress and van Leeuwen (1996, 2001), adapting and extending their theories and models to the analysis of British commemorative war monuments, in order to develop a multimodal framework for the analysis of three dimensional objects.
Oct 24
ChRIS CLÉiRIGhannouncements
Title: Retranslation
Subtitle: Translation, Literature, and Reinterpretation
Publication Year: 2014
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing (formerly The Continuum International Publishing Group)
http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/
Book URL: http://bloomsbury.com/retranslation-9781441147349/
Author: Sharon Deane-Cox
Electronic: ISBN: 9781472585080 Pages: 256 Price: U.K. £ 74.99
Hardback: ISBN: 9781441147349 Pages: 224 Price: U.K. £ 75.00
Abstract:
Retranslation is a phenomenon which gives rise to multiple translations of a particular work. But theoretical engagement with the motivations and outcomes of retranslation often falls short of acknowledging the complex nature of this repetitive process, and reasoning has so far been limited to considerations of progress, updating and challenge; there is even less in the way of empirical study.
This book seeks to redress the balance through its case studies on the initial translations and retranslations of Flaubert’s Madame Bovary and Sand’s pastoral tale La Mare au diable within the British literary context. What emerges is a detailed exposition of how and why these works have been retold, alongside a critical re-evaluation of existing lines of enquiry into retranslation. A flexible methodology for the study of retranslations is also proposed which draws on Systemic Functional Grammar, narratology, narrative theory and genetic [sic] criticism.
Oct 18
ChRIS CLÉiRIGhannouncements
Systemic Phonology
Recent Studies in English
Edited by Wendy Bowcher and Bradley Smith
HB 9781845539399 £85
PB 9781845539467 £30
460pp
Series: Functional Linguistics, edited by Robin Fawcett
Receive 25% off the retail price when ordering from the book page quoting the discount code LINGUISTICS2014 (valid until the end of 2014).
https://www.equinoxpub.com/equinox/books/showbook.asp?bkid=479
This is the first volume in more than twenty years dedicated solely to Systemic Phonology. It presents twelve original contributions by leading scholars and contains both theoretical and applied studies. The collection includes analyses of a wide-range of texts including news readings, literary classics, classroom discourse, and sung texts. Amongst the theoretical contributions is a chapter which outlines the generative model of intonation and punctuation of the Cardiff School of Systemic Functional Linguistics. The volume closes with an interactive chapter where readers can listen to, read, and obtain a first-hand guided experience of analysing texts using the Systemic model of intonation.
Systemic Phonology: Recent Studies in English is of value to scholars and students of phonology, phonetics, music studies, semiotics, and media studies, particularly within the Systemic Functional tradition. This volume is also of interest to any researchers analysing meaning in relation to sound and music.
Oct 17
ChRIS CLÉiRIGhannouncements
Title: Multimodal Teaching and Learning
Subtitle: The Rhetorics of the Science Classroom
Publication Year: 2014
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing (formerly The Continuum International Publishing Group)
http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/
Book URL: http://bloomsbury.com/multimodal-teaching-and-learning-9781472522719/
Editor: Gunther Kress
Editor: Carey Jewitt
Editor: Jon Ogborn
Editor: Tsatsarelis Charalampos
Electronic: ISBN: 9781472571052 Pages: 208 Price: U.K. £ 14.99
Paperback: ISBN: 9781472522719 Pages: 248 Price: U.K. £ 14.99
Abstract:
This book takes a radically different look at communication, and in doing so presents a series of challenges to accepted views on language, on communication, on teaching and, above all, on learning.
Drawing on extensive research in science classrooms, it presents a view of communication in which language is not necessarily communication – image, gesture, speech, writing, models, spatial and bodily codes. The action of students in learning is radically rethought: all participants in communication are seen as active transformers of the meaning resources around them, and this approach opens a new window on the processes of learning.
Oct 16
ChRIS CLÉiRIGhannouncements
Title: Antagonism on Youtube
Subtitle: Metaphor in Online Discourse
Publication Year: 2014
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing (formerly The Continuum International Publishing Group)
http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/
Book URL: http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/antagonism-on-youtube-9781472566690/
Author: Stephen Pihlaja
Electronic: ISBN: 9781472566690 Pages: 192 Price: U.K. £ 74.99 Comment: PDF: 8/28/2014
Electronic: ISBN: 9781472566683 Pages: 192 Price: U.K. £ 74.99 Comment: EPUB: 9/11/2014
Hardback: ISBN: 9781472566676 Pages: 192 Price: U.K. £ 75.00 Comment: 10/23/2014
Abstract:
Similar to many sites on the Internet, interaction on YouTube often features confrontational, antagonistic exchanges among users. YouTube comments threads in particular are known for their offensive, conflagratory content. This books looks at this form of discourse. The term ‘drama’ (or ‘flame wars’) appears often as a label for a phenomenon that is easily recognisable. In these cases, serious disagreements can become entangled with interpersonal relationships and users take positions for themselves in relation to others and social controversies.
The focus of this book is on the ways in which metaphor contributes to the development of Internet drama, particularly on YouTube. Although a growing body of research into YouTube social interaction continues to develop descriptions of user experience on YouTube, empirical studies of the YouTube video page are rare, as well as close discourse analysis of user interaction on the site. This research specifically focuses on the interaction of a group of users discussing issues of Christian theology and atheism on the site, analysing how discourse facilitates to antagonistic interaction among users.
Since YouTube drama occurs publicly, the book focuses on actual YouTube video pages rather than user reports of their actions and responses. It investigates how and why YouTube drama develops through a systematic description and analysis of user discourse activity. Through close analysis of video pages, this study contributes to a greater academic understanding of Internet antagonism and YouTube interaction by revealing the factors which contribute to the development of drama over time.
Oct 16
ChRIS CLÉiRIGhannouncements
Title: Circus as Multimodal Discourse
Subtitle: Performance, Meaning, and Ritual
Publication Year: 2014
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing (formerly The Continuum International Publishing Group)
http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/
Book URL: http://bloomsbury.com/uk/circus-as-multimodal-discourse-9781472569479/
Author: Paul Bouissac
Paperback: ISBN: 9781472569479 Pages: 224 Price: U.K. £ 24.99
Abstract:
Now available in paperback, this volume presents a theory of the circus as a secular ritual and introduces a method to analyze its performances as multimodal discourse.
The book’s chapters cover the range of circus specialties (magic, domestic and wild animal training, acrobatics, and clowning) and provide examples to show how cultural meaning is produced, extended and amplified by circus performances. Bouissac is one of the world’s leading authorities on circus ethnography and semiotics and this work is grounded on research conducted over a 50 year span in Europe, Asia, Australia and the Americas.
It concludes with a reflection on the potentially subversive power of this discourse and its contemporary use by activists. Throughout, it endeavours to develop an analytical approach that is mindful of the epistemological traps of both positivism and postmodernist license. It brings semiotics and ethnography to bear on the realm of the circus.
[Not to be confused with Multimodal Discourse As Circus]
Oct 16
ChRIS CLÉiRIGhbook review
EDITOR: John Flowerdew
EDITOR: Li Wei
TITLE: Discourse in Context: Contemporary Applied Linguistics Volume 3
SERIES TITLE: Contemporary Applied Linguistics
PUBLISHER: Bloomsbury Publishing (formerly The Continuum International Publishing Group)
YEAR: 2013
REVIEWER: Michael Kranert, University College London
Review’s Editors: Malgorzata Cavar and Sara Couture
SUMMARY
‘Discourse in Context’ is not just a new collection of papers on language use
in different institutional contexts, but is, as the editor John Flowerdew
rightly claims (p. 2), the first collection specifically on the
discourse-context relation covering a broad variety of approaches to
discourse. The 15 chapters of this volume demonstrate the diversity of
approaches to both types of discourse — ‘little “d” discourse’ as language
use in context and ‘big “D” discourses’ (Gee 2005) as systems of knowledge and
belief. Each individual contribution represents an analytical approach to
D/discourse such as conversation analysis or critical discourse analysis
applied to a specific context, and all contributions discuss the text-context
relation on the basis of their approach to context.
In chapter 1, John Flowerdew introduces the reader to the problems of the
discourse-context relation and presents a concise overview of approaches to
it, introducing the most important lines of thought from Gricean Pragmatics
(e.g. Grice 1989, Sperber and Wilson 2001) to Systemic Functional Linguistics
(e.g. Halliday and Hasan 1985), outlining criticisms of them and referring to
the relevant literature.
In the second chapter, ‘Considering context when analysing representations of
gender and sexuality: A case study’, Paul Baker undertakes a close reading of
a DAILY MAIL article to demonstrate the features of sexual identity discourse
in the British media. He chose an article from 16 October 2009, entitled ‘Why
there was nothing “natural” about Stephen Gately’s death’, since this article
instigated ‘the highest number of complaints to the Press Complaints
Commission (over 25,000) ever recorded’ (p. 30). His close reading from a
feminist poststructuralist perspective employs elements of Fairclough’s
Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough 1989) and Wodak’s Discourse Historical
Approach (e.g. Reisigl and Wodak 2009) and uses a broad range of secondary
data such as other DAILY MAIL articles and online comments to analyse the
reception of the article in question. He also introduces the reader to the
corpus linguistic concept of discourse prosody (Stubbs 2001), in order to
verify his interpretation of certain linguistic features. Both the secondary
sources and the corpora are analysed as contexts of the DAILY MAIL article and
used to explain the language use of its author.
The third chapter is also based on a corpus-assisted approach to discourse.
Monika Bednarek’s ”’Who are you and why are you following us?” Wh-questions
and communicative context in television dialogue’ presents an analysis of
Wh-questions in 27 contemporary US television series. Bednarek argues for the
importance of the genre ‘television dialogue’, because with a global audience,
US television series have a significant influence on speakers of English as a
second language. This genre is particularly interesting because of its
particular text-context relation, i.e. the necessary ‘overhearer design’
(Bubel 2008) of scripted TV dialogue as a result of lines being addressed to
characters and to the audience at the same time. The dialogue is therefore
designed to tell a story for the audience as overhearers who can listen to the
dialogue, but can not take part in the interaction. This results in specific
linguistic structures Bednarek analyses, such as wh-questions that do not
appear in the same way in natural dialogue. Bednarek’s concordance and n-gram
analysis lead her to develop interesting hypotheses for further research on
this genre such as ‘why-, how- and what-questions function to create
involvement between characters whereas who- and where-questions are used for
plot development’ (p. 66).
In chapter 4, ’Discourse and discord in court: The role of context in the
construction of witness examination in British criminal trial talk’, Janet
Cotterill asks how the context of the British trial-by-jury system and its
ancient archaic rules and protocols influence the way barristers question
witnesses. The analysis pictures the courtroom as a context with asymmetrical
power relations between the professionals (who ask the questions), the
witnesses (who have to answer), and the jury as sanctioned overhearers who
have to judge the case without being able to play an active role in the
communication. In a selection of official trial transcripts, the witness
examination by lawyers is analysed using a hybrid methodology of Critical
Discourse Analysis (Fairclough 1989) and corpus linguistics, demonstrating,
how the barristers’ questions to witnesses are designed as a ‘display
exercise’ (p. 87) for the jury, telling the story from the prosecuting or
defending perspective.
Britt-Louise Gunnarson approaches ‘Business discourse in the globalized
economy’ (chapter 5) by employing a combination of sociolinguistic,
sociological and text linguistic methods. She construes context as a
multilevel model of contextual influences on language, capturing the social
context in a technical-economic, socio-cultural and a legal political
framework. The business discourse itself is contextualised on the local,
national and supranational level. In her paper, the author presents an
analysis of staff policy documents uncovering the narrative structures of the
genre as well as the different voices represented in the career stories told
in these policy documents.
Michael Handford’s Chapter 6, ‘Context in spoken professional discourse:
Language and practice in an international bridge design meeting’, focuses on
the ‘professional meeting’ genre, using a corpus-assisted analysis. The
context is captured with ethnographic methods which enable the author – who
witnessed the event personally and interviewed participants – to verify his
textual insights into the discourse. The detailed analysis of the material and
a comparison to other corpora of professional discourse show considerable
differences between business meetings in general and this engineering meeting
in particular. A further, broader analysis however will be necessary to
demonstrate, if these results can be generalised.
Chapter 7, ‘Ethnicities without guarantees: An empirically situated approach’,
puts ethnographic methods also employed in chapter 6 centre stage. In their
project ‘Urban Classroom Culture and Interaction’, Roxy Harris and Ben Rampton
have undertaken a large data collection following 5 girls and 4 boys aged
13-14 in a London secondary school for two years, using participant
observation, interviews, and producing 180 hours of radio microphone recording
and playback interviews on the recorded data. The authors offer a detailed
analysis of one episode involving an ethnically mixed group of girls. In this
episode, ethnicity is part of the exchange. Contextualising the data in the
transcript with ethnographic data, Harris and Rampton demonstrate that
ethnicity in this example is ‘a resource that the girls exploited quite
skilfully in pursuit of their really pressing interests’, i.e. prospective
boy-girl relations (p. 153).
In ‘Constructing contexts through grammar: Cognitive models and
conceptualization in British newspaper reports of political protests’,
Christopher Hart analyses the media coverage of the UK student protests
against rising tuition fees in 2010. He successfully translates the
socio-cognitive approach to critical discourse analysis (van Dijk 2008) into a
cognitive linguistic approach based on Langacker’s Cognitive Grammar
(Langacker 2008). This approach allows him to capture the construal of
demonstrator and police violence in the student protests in online press
reports. Unveiling the grammatical patterns used, Hart can demonstrate
convincingly, that the Guardian was the only newspaper in the sample that drew
attention to police violence, while the other newspaper articles construe the
hegemonic picture of legitimate police action using strategies of structural
configuration and identification.
Chapters 9 and 10 of the edited volume under review aim to change our idea of
the text context relation. Rick Iedema and Katherine Carroll present a method
of reflexive ethnographic intervention into health care communication. In
their study ‘Intervening in health care communication using discourse
analysis’, they define context as ‘that which is entirely excluded from
people’s attention’ (p. 186) and use video feedback in order to produce an
environment in which practitioners can distance themselves from their
naturalized practices such as infection control or ward rounds. This allows
professionals and analysts together to learn about physical habits or
communicative processes that are normally invisible to both. To demonstrate
how this learning takes place, the authors recorded and analysed the
conversations in video feedback sessions. Iedema’s and Carroll’s paper widens
the discussion from the material at hand to discourse theory in general and
the necessity to reflexive practice here, for example to question ‘the
existing boundaries between discourse analysis and social practice’ in order
to understand discourse as ‘a dynamic at the heart of complexity’ (p. 200).
In Chapter 10, ‘Locating the power of place in space: A geosemiotic approach
to context’, Jackie Jia Lou focuses on an advertising campaign to legitimize
gentrification of Chinatown in Washington DC in order to demonstrate the
semiotic potential of advertising boards because of their location in certain
neighbourhoods or in proximity to certain corporations. She fruitfully
combines classical discourse analytical tools such as systemic functional
linguistics with a new approach to context. This approach, based on Scollon
and Scollon (2003), combines an analysis of the interaction order and the
visual semiotics with the semiotics of a place and allows to capture, how the
text of the advertising boards is semiotically linked to its specific
location, for example outside the metro station in Chinatown.
Anna Maurannen’s chapter ‘Lingua franca discourse in academic contexts: Shaped
by complexity’ takes readers into what will be for many a familiar
environment: academia, in the form of a multilingual environment with English
as the lingua franca (ELF). Analysing data from the ELFA Corpus (English as a
Lingua Franca on Academic Settings), which consists of spoken, dialogical,
authentic, non-EFL-learning events such as academic seminars and conference
discussions, Maurannen shows that collaboration is salient in ELF, as all
speakers are aware that a non-native language is being used and that therefore
problems can occur. Her study also shows that, in this context, academic
hierarchy overrides language expertise when linguistic corrections are made;
it is not necessarily the English native speakers but rather the senior
academics who provide help in the use of English.
In Chapter 12, ‘A multimodal approach to discourse, context and culture’, Kay
L. O’Halloran, Sabine Tan and Marissa K.L. E return to a multimodal
understanding of discourse that was already featured in chapters 9 and 10.
Here, discourse is understood as multimodal semiosis, and as embedded in
multimodal context. The focus is therefore on the context which is not
external to discourse. The authors aim to capture the embeddedness of online
business news in the multimodal context of the internet. Employing ‘Multimodal
Analysis Video Software’ developed by Kay O’Halloran, the authors provide the
reader with a detailed impression of this useful tool, considering the
restrictions of a research article. Analysing videographic representations of
different actors in business news such as Certified Expert, Newsmaker and
Presenter, the authors demonstrate how events and social actors are
re-contextualised depending on the news networks distinctive communicative
practices.
Chapters 13 and 14 focus on language learning in different contexts. In
‘Intervening in contexts of schooling’, David Rose and J.R. Martin review the
effects of the genre-based literacy pedagogy they developed as a practical
application of the Sydney school of Systemic Functional Linguistics. The
authors summarize succinctly the Sydney school research into school genres
such as stories, reports or critical responses, and interpret Bernstein’s
theory of pedagogic contexts (Bernstein 1996) on this background. They argue
that teachers themselves do not reflect the structures and intentions of
genres used in school. Pupils therefore only acquire this knowledge
implicitly, rather than through conscious engagement with the language of high
quality examples. This creates and perpetuates inequalities in education,
since the pupils’ lack of knowledge is wrongly individualized when failure is
attributed to innate abilities. Therefore, they suggest a program of
genre-based literacy that teaches pupils to deconstruct genres in reading high
level curriculum texts. In a multi staged programmes, the learners will then
be guided to practice these genres in joint and individual writing and
rewriting of texts. A broad analysis of data from 100 randomly selected
classes shows the incredible impact of this teaching method on all low-,
middle- and high-achieving students in different school years compared to
students without read-to-learn instruction. The article provides impressive
examples of students’ work to illustrate the success of the method and
persuade the reader.
Hansun Zhang Waring’s ‘Turn-allocation and context: Broadening participation
in the second language classroom’ employs Conversation Analysis to understand
turn-taking in English as a second language class. She argues for a theory of
context that distinguishes sequential context (in other words: co-text), and
institutional context. In the sequential context, one action shapes the
understanding of the next and constrains possible following actions. The
institutional context is normally internalized and recognized as relevant by
the participants. Although her discussion on the theoretical understanding of
context in Conversation Analysis and its application to classroom discourse is
enlightening, the results of her analysis are not surprising to experienced
teachers: teachers broaden learner participation in a plenary situation by
either bypassing the first respondent or selecting an alternative category of
speakers.
In the final article of the volume, ‘Political discourse analysis –
Distinguishing frontstage and backstage contexts. A discourse-historical
approach’, Ruth Wodak presents some results from her fieldwork on ‘Doing
Politics’ in the European Parliament, also published in Wodak (2011). Her
analysis in this paper focuses on three short episodes from a working day of
an MEP (Member of the European Parliament) she calls Hans. Her close reading
of the transcripts shows the different registers Hans has to manage
‘frontstage’ (i.e. aimed at the public) and ‘backstage’(i.e. in internal
negotiations of policies). Her discussion of the results also shows the
importance of ethnographic data for the interpretation of discursive events,
which has already been pointed out for other contexts in Chapters 6 (‘spoken
professional discourse’) and 7 (‘ethnicity in urban classroom culture’).
Politicians form a community of practice (Lave and Wenger 1991) like other
professionals, and only with the support of ethnographic methods can an
external analyst interpret and understand their linguistic strategies.
EVALUATION
The volume under review aims to ‘bring […] together researchers from
different approaches, but all with the commitment to the study of language in
context’. By choosing a broad variety of approaches, the editor John Flowerdew
invites the reader to ‘compare and contrast these different approaches and the
application of their particular models of content’ (p. 1).
Many students and early career researcher share the challenge in trying to
find a methodologically broad overview of their field that is a good read and
at the same time gives a detailed insight into the analysis of linguistic
material. Introductions are often either written from only one theoretical
point of view, are theory-heavy, or do not present a variety of primary
material. In this respect, ‘Discourse in Context’ is a very welcome and
thought-provoking read, hopefully not only to established researchers
interested in the newest currents in the field, but also to beginners at the
postgraduate level or even motivated readers at undergraduate level. Thus, it
is truly regrettable that such an interesting collection of papers carries
such a heavy price tag of $190, because it will exclude precisely this
audience from gaining access to a publication they would profit from most.
All chapters are well-written and introduce their approach to language in
context in the clearest possible way. The contributions follow a similar
textual pattern, giving the reader a transparent insight into their methods
and goals, and allowing the comparative reading the editor intended. While
keeping their theoretical introductions succinct in favour of detailed
analyses of their primary materials, the overview over the academic literature
in the field is comprehensive and useful. Almost all authors use helpful
graphic representations for presenting their results; however, the gray scale
reproductions are not always well printed and are sometimes difficult to read;
Chapters 10 and 12 are a particular example of this.
Although not all findings of the research ‘Discourse in Context’ are
surprising as pointed out in the summary earlier, all papers deliver a
hands-on introduction into the methods of textual analysis and
contextualisation, and allow the reader to evaluate the merits of them. The
connections between the different chapters, however, could have been made
clearer by structuring the volume into sections, each with their own
introductions. For example, the structure could have focussed on research
methods: Chapters 2-4, 6 and 11, for example, use corpus linguistic
methodology in different ways, while Chapters 10 and 12 focus on
multimodality. Alternatively, or even in combination with a methodological
structure, papers with similar fields such as language learning (Chapters 11,
13 and 14), or professional discourses (Chapters 5, 6, 9 and 15) could have
been placed in themed sections. Separate introductions to such sections, which
would put the different approaches into context, would have made a volume
that succeeds in combining breadth and clarity an even better read.
REFERENCES
Bernstein, Basil B. 1996. “Pedagogy, symbolic control and identity: Theory,
research, critique” (London: Taylor & Francis), Critical perspectives on
literacy and education
Bubel, Claudia M. 2008. ‘Film audiences as overhearers’, “Journal of
pragmatics”, 40.1: 55-71
Fairclough, Norman. 1989. “Language and power” (Harlow: Longman), Language in
social life series
Gee, James P. 2005. “An introduction to discourse analysis: Theory and method,
2nd edn” (New York, Abingdon: Routledge)
Grice, H. P. 1989. “Logic and Conversation.” In Studies in the way of words,
22–40. Cambridge, Mass., London: Harvard University Press.
Langacker, Ronald W. 2008. “Cognitive grammar: A basic introduction” (Oxford:
Oxford University Press)
Lave, Jean, and Etienne Wenger. 1991. “Situated learning: Legitimate
peripheral participation / Jean Lave, Etienne Wenger” (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press), Learning in doing social, cognitive, and computational
perspectives
Halliday, Michael A. K., and Ruqaiya Hasan. 1985. Language, context, and text:
Aspects of language in a social-semiotic perspective. Language education.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Reisigl, Martin, and Ruth Wodak. 2009. ‘The discourse-historical approach’, in
“Methods of critical discourse analysis”, ed. by Ruth Wodak and Michael Meyer,
2nd edn (Los Angeles [u.a.]: SAGE), pp. 87–121
Scollon, Ronald, and Suzanne B. K. Scollon. 2003. “Discourses in place:
Language in the material world” (London: Routledge)
Sperber, Dan, and Deirdre Wilson. 2001. Relevance: Communication and
cognition. 2nd ed. Oxford, Cambridge MA: Blackwell Publishers.
Stubbs, Michael. 2001. “Words and phrases: Corpus studies of lexical semantics
/ Michael Stubbs” (Oxford ; Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers)
van Dijk, Teun A. 2008. “Discourse and context: A sociocognitive approach”
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)
Wodak, Ruth. 2011. “The discourse of politics in action: Politics as usual”
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan)
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Michael Kranert works in the field of political linguistics, applying
linguistic research methods such as Systemic Functional Linguistics and
Critical Metaphor Analysis to political discourses. His Ph.D. project at UCL
London aims to undertake a comparison of the discourses of New Labour and the
German SPD at the turn of the twenty-first century, explaining linguistic and
discursive differences with reference to differences in the political cultures
of Germany and the UK.
Oct 14
ChRIS CLÉiRIGhannouncements
Title: Researching Identity and Interculturality
Series Title: Routledge Studies in Language and Intercultural Communication
Publication Year: 2014
Publisher: Routledge (Taylor and Francis)
http://www.routledge.com/
Book URL: http://bit.ly/1sMatQJ
Editor: Fred Dervin
Editor: Karen Risager
Hardback: ISBN: 9780415739122 Pages: 246 Price: U.S. $ 135.00
Abstract:
This volume focuses on advances in research methodology in an
interdisciplinary field framed by discourses of identity and interculturality.
It includes a range of qualitative studies: studies of interaction, narrative
studies, conversation analysis, ethnographic studies, postcolonial studies and
critical discourse studies, and emphasizes the role of discourse and power in
all studies of identity and interculturality. The volume particularly focuses
on critical reflexivity in every stage of research, including reflections on
theoretical concepts (such as ‘identity’ and ‘interculturality’) and their
relationship with methodology and analytical practice, reflections on
researcher identity and subjectivity, reflections on local and global contexts
of research, and reflections on language choice and linguacultural aspects of
data generation, analysis and communication.
Oct 10
ChRIS CLÉiRIGhannouncements
Royal Society Publishing has just published Language as a multimodal phenomenon: implications for language learning, processing and evolution, compiled and edited by Gabriella Vigliocco, Pamela Perniss, Robin L. Thompson and David Vinson. This content can be accessed at http://bit.ly/PTB1651 and is freely available online until 26 October (from now until 19 October content is accessed by: User name: language Password: tb1651 (case sensitive)).
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