Abstract The present study explores the linguistic complexity (LC) of public legal information (PLI) texts for young persons by deploying the Hallidayan model of lexical density and grammatical intricacy. It examines how the Australian legal statutes’ grammatical intricacy and lexical density are reformulated into PLI texts to make them more accessible for a specific vulnerable group. The findings reveal that although the PLI texts were claimed to be written in plain language, they trade some types of complexity for others. The paper extends Halliday’s model of complexity by adding lower rank complexes and embedded clause complexes as realisations of intricacy and density. It proposes “embedded intricacy” as a feature of a hybrid of spoken and written language. Furthermore, the study suggests reconsidering how law can be recontextualised for young persons in a more accessible way.
{"title":"Linguistic complexity of public legal information texts for young persons","authors":"Monaliza Hernandez Mamac","doi":"10.1515/text-2021-0187","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/text-2021-0187","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The present study explores the linguistic complexity (LC) of public legal information (PLI) texts for young persons by deploying the Hallidayan model of lexical density and grammatical intricacy. It examines how the Australian legal statutes’ grammatical intricacy and lexical density are reformulated into PLI texts to make them more accessible for a specific vulnerable group. The findings reveal that although the PLI texts were claimed to be written in plain language, they trade some types of complexity for others. The paper extends Halliday’s model of complexity by adding lower rank complexes and embedded clause complexes as realisations of intricacy and density. It proposes “embedded intricacy” as a feature of a hybrid of spoken and written language. Furthermore, the study suggests reconsidering how law can be recontextualised for young persons in a more accessible way.","PeriodicalId":46455,"journal":{"name":"Text & Talk","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-01-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45827012","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Previous studies have mostly revealed the negative media representations of foreign domestic helpers (FDHs), which are pervaded by racist content. Yet, no study has adopted a corpus-assisted discourse analytic approach to systematically investigate a large amount of language data about foreign domestic helpers collected from the news media. To fill this niche, this study employs the notion of discourse prosodies to examine the dominant discourses surrounding foreign domestic helpers in the context of Hong Kong as represented in the South China Morning Post. The findings reveal two dominant discourses underlying the media representations of FDHs: supportive and othering discourses, suggesting ideological implications for both anti-racism and racism, respectively. In conclusion, the usefulness of employing corpus-assisted discourse analysis to examine dominant discourses in media representations is highlighted.
{"title":"Media representations of foreign domestic helpers in Hong Kong: a corpus-assisted discourse analysis","authors":"Yating Yu","doi":"10.1515/text-2021-0084","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/text-2021-0084","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Previous studies have mostly revealed the negative media representations of foreign domestic helpers (FDHs), which are pervaded by racist content. Yet, no study has adopted a corpus-assisted discourse analytic approach to systematically investigate a large amount of language data about foreign domestic helpers collected from the news media. To fill this niche, this study employs the notion of discourse prosodies to examine the dominant discourses surrounding foreign domestic helpers in the context of Hong Kong as represented in the South China Morning Post. The findings reveal two dominant discourses underlying the media representations of FDHs: supportive and othering discourses, suggesting ideological implications for both anti-racism and racism, respectively. In conclusion, the usefulness of employing corpus-assisted discourse analysis to examine dominant discourses in media representations is highlighted.","PeriodicalId":46455,"journal":{"name":"Text & Talk","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45000339","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract In this article, we narrow our investigation to the talk provided by one teacher in the exploration phase of a primary school science project. The exploration phase warrants attention given its role in providing students with a common base of science activities that draws on their prior knowledge. We examine lesson excerpts from a grant-winning primary years science teacher who sets up her Year 3 students to explore garden ecosystems. The study’s analytic framework is derived from Systemic Functional Linguistics and focuses on the way the teacher uses certain aspects of ideational, interpersonal and textual functions to mediate between the instructional and regulative discourses. Our findings show that the teacher orientated to the regulative discourse to provide students with access to an instructional discourse. Additionally, the teacher used a significant number of pronouns for signalling, and sequencing connectives that flowed on to a significant number of complex noun groups. We draw attention to the range of speech functions and comment on their role in school science lessons.
{"title":"Teacher talk in primary school science: a focus on the exploration phase","authors":"Megan Oats, Beryl Exley","doi":"10.1515/text-2020-0178","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/text-2020-0178","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In this article, we narrow our investigation to the talk provided by one teacher in the exploration phase of a primary school science project. The exploration phase warrants attention given its role in providing students with a common base of science activities that draws on their prior knowledge. We examine lesson excerpts from a grant-winning primary years science teacher who sets up her Year 3 students to explore garden ecosystems. The study’s analytic framework is derived from Systemic Functional Linguistics and focuses on the way the teacher uses certain aspects of ideational, interpersonal and textual functions to mediate between the instructional and regulative discourses. Our findings show that the teacher orientated to the regulative discourse to provide students with access to an instructional discourse. Additionally, the teacher used a significant number of pronouns for signalling, and sequencing connectives that flowed on to a significant number of complex noun groups. We draw attention to the range of speech functions and comment on their role in school science lessons.","PeriodicalId":46455,"journal":{"name":"Text & Talk","volume":"43 1","pages":"159 - 184"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48038854","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract The process of identification and annotation of evaluation has received a lot of attention in recent years. However, given the complexity of the topic, the discussion of some of the central issues is still ongoing. The present article contributes to this debate by presenting an annotation scheme that is designed for the identification and annotation of evaluative stance in a corpus of four English genres, namely, newspaper discourse, political discourse, newspaper scientific popularization and fora. A 4,862-word corpus was sampled from a larger 400,000-word corpus compiled within the research project STANCEDISC on the study of stance in discourse varieties. The scheme posits a series of ad hoc categories designed to optimise the transparency, reliability and replicability of the identification, annotation and analysis of evaluative stance. The categories are as follows: parts of speech (Noun Phrase, NP; Adjectival Phrase, AP; Adverbial Phrase, ADVP; Verbal Phrase, VP), function (classifying, predicational and attitude), metaphoricity (metaphoric and non-metaphoric), and value (positive and negative). The aim of this paper is to explain the scheme together with the theoretical justification of the categories and the methodological procedure adopted, and to illustrate the implementation of the scheme by discussing examples taken from different genres.
{"title":"Developing an annotation protocol for evaluative stance and metaphor in discourse: theoretical and methodological considerations","authors":"Laura Hidalgo-Downing, Paula Pérez-Sobrino","doi":"10.1515/text-2021-0096","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/text-2021-0096","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The process of identification and annotation of evaluation has received a lot of attention in recent years. However, given the complexity of the topic, the discussion of some of the central issues is still ongoing. The present article contributes to this debate by presenting an annotation scheme that is designed for the identification and annotation of evaluative stance in a corpus of four English genres, namely, newspaper discourse, political discourse, newspaper scientific popularization and fora. A 4,862-word corpus was sampled from a larger 400,000-word corpus compiled within the research project STANCEDISC on the study of stance in discourse varieties. The scheme posits a series of ad hoc categories designed to optimise the transparency, reliability and replicability of the identification, annotation and analysis of evaluative stance. The categories are as follows: parts of speech (Noun Phrase, NP; Adjectival Phrase, AP; Adverbial Phrase, ADVP; Verbal Phrase, VP), function (classifying, predicational and attitude), metaphoricity (metaphoric and non-metaphoric), and value (positive and negative). The aim of this paper is to explain the scheme together with the theoretical justification of the categories and the methodological procedure adopted, and to illustrate the implementation of the scheme by discussing examples taken from different genres.","PeriodicalId":46455,"journal":{"name":"Text & Talk","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-11-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41743506","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract This article addresses the question of whether context plays a role in creating novel multimodal metaphors. Or, to put the question differently, from where do Arab political cartoonists (as members of several, overlapping or hierarchically related knowledge communities) recruit creative conceptual materials for metaphorical purposes? Specifically, it draws a distinction between direct and indirect sources of metaphor, where embodied experience is classified as direct, and communication (watching TV, reading books and newspapers, etc.) as indirect. Discourse, albeit a major source of human knowledge and hence of metaphor, has received much less attention than it deserves. Using a large-scale corpus of 300 Arabic political cartoons, this study is intended to fill this research gap. It would be difficult to talk about multimodal metaphor without other construal operations such as metonymy and conceptual integration. To clarify the meaning of this, metaphor is seen as a byproduct of blending; and the visual representation of an abstract domain requires choosing a metonym, or chain of metonyms, from a specific domain that in the given context stands for the domain as a whole and that is eminently depictable. Thus, it is of interest to discuss why a cartoonist uses one metonym rather than another. This research is considered relevant for intercultural and cognitive studies, because it also addresses the question of how regional variation in knowledge is related to similar variation and diversity of metaphorical creativity.
{"title":"The creative minds of Arab cartoonists: metaphor, culture and context","authors":"A. Abdel-Raheem","doi":"10.1515/text-2021-0100","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/text-2021-0100","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article addresses the question of whether context plays a role in creating novel multimodal metaphors. Or, to put the question differently, from where do Arab political cartoonists (as members of several, overlapping or hierarchically related knowledge communities) recruit creative conceptual materials for metaphorical purposes? Specifically, it draws a distinction between direct and indirect sources of metaphor, where embodied experience is classified as direct, and communication (watching TV, reading books and newspapers, etc.) as indirect. Discourse, albeit a major source of human knowledge and hence of metaphor, has received much less attention than it deserves. Using a large-scale corpus of 300 Arabic political cartoons, this study is intended to fill this research gap. It would be difficult to talk about multimodal metaphor without other construal operations such as metonymy and conceptual integration. To clarify the meaning of this, metaphor is seen as a byproduct of blending; and the visual representation of an abstract domain requires choosing a metonym, or chain of metonyms, from a specific domain that in the given context stands for the domain as a whole and that is eminently depictable. Thus, it is of interest to discuss why a cartoonist uses one metonym rather than another. This research is considered relevant for intercultural and cognitive studies, because it also addresses the question of how regional variation in knowledge is related to similar variation and diversity of metaphorical creativity.","PeriodicalId":46455,"journal":{"name":"Text & Talk","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-10-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43037540","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract This article traces the presence of the concept digital semiotics in scientific literature with the aim of constituting a corpus of study that would allow to identify its goals and fields of interest. We undertook a systematic review of the term in the most important academic databases. We obtained 389 records and analyzed each of them in terms of publication date, type, content, and synthesis of contributions that develop distinct lines of investigation in digital semiotics. The results show a reduced number of first level publications that approach in detail this object of inquiry while establishing multimodal semiotics and social semiotics as the most consolidated branches. However, we found an increasing amount of gray literature that paves the way towards a deeper semiotic research tradition in the 21st century. We conclude by calling for a revision of semiotics, understood as a field of study that brings together interdisciplinary relationships and methodological solutions that interrogate the digital culture.
{"title":"The digital approach to semiotics: a systematic review","authors":"Inmaculada Berlanga-Fernández, Everardo Reyes","doi":"10.1515/text-2021-0073","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/text-2021-0073","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article traces the presence of the concept digital semiotics in scientific literature with the aim of constituting a corpus of study that would allow to identify its goals and fields of interest. We undertook a systematic review of the term in the most important academic databases. We obtained 389 records and analyzed each of them in terms of publication date, type, content, and synthesis of contributions that develop distinct lines of investigation in digital semiotics. The results show a reduced number of first level publications that approach in detail this object of inquiry while establishing multimodal semiotics and social semiotics as the most consolidated branches. However, we found an increasing amount of gray literature that paves the way towards a deeper semiotic research tradition in the 21st century. We conclude by calling for a revision of semiotics, understood as a field of study that brings together interdisciplinary relationships and methodological solutions that interrogate the digital culture.","PeriodicalId":46455,"journal":{"name":"Text & Talk","volume":"0 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-09-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41344131","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
S. Greco, Sara Cigada, Chiara Jermini-Martinez Soria
Abstract This paper sets out to analyse why dispute mediators identify disputants’ euphoric and dysphoric emotions in the context of mediation discussions, turning them into “said” emotions. Our analysis is based on a corpus of seven role-played mediation sessions, which took place in French. Adopting the notion of strategic manoeuvring from argumentation studies, we consider recurring instances of the presentational device of naming emotions, as used by the mediators. Our findings show that the mediators name emotions in two ways. First, they identify dysphoric emotions that lie at the root of the parties’ conflict, making these explicit. Second, they present to the parties a trajectory of their emotions, which moves from dysphoric to euphoric through the discussion that takes place during mediation. These two presentational strategies correspond to three functions that relate to the mediator’s goal of helping the parties find a solution to their conflict: clarifying the core of the conflict, empowering the parties as co-arguers and making emotions part of an argumentative discussion.
{"title":"The naming of emotions in dispute mediators’ strategic manoeuvring: a case study using a French language corpus","authors":"S. Greco, Sara Cigada, Chiara Jermini-Martinez Soria","doi":"10.1515/text-2021-0044","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/text-2021-0044","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper sets out to analyse why dispute mediators identify disputants’ euphoric and dysphoric emotions in the context of mediation discussions, turning them into “said” emotions. Our analysis is based on a corpus of seven role-played mediation sessions, which took place in French. Adopting the notion of strategic manoeuvring from argumentation studies, we consider recurring instances of the presentational device of naming emotions, as used by the mediators. Our findings show that the mediators name emotions in two ways. First, they identify dysphoric emotions that lie at the root of the parties’ conflict, making these explicit. Second, they present to the parties a trajectory of their emotions, which moves from dysphoric to euphoric through the discussion that takes place during mediation. These two presentational strategies correspond to three functions that relate to the mediator’s goal of helping the parties find a solution to their conflict: clarifying the core of the conflict, empowering the parties as co-arguers and making emotions part of an argumentative discussion.","PeriodicalId":46455,"journal":{"name":"Text & Talk","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-09-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46641510","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract This study examines how Swedish prospective adoptive parents display parental suitability in assessment interviews with social workers. In adoption assessment interviews, applicants are invited, through question-and-answer sequences, to present their knowledge about adoption-related issues and demonstrate their suitability as future adoptive parents. Adoption applicants are also faced with social workers’ attempts to prepare them for future parenthood with advice and guidance. In this high-stakes interaction, however, guidance might indicate the applicants’ lack of central knowledge or insights, which can have potential face-threatening consequences. The data consist of 36 hours of audio recorded assessment interviews. Using interaction analytical methods, the analysis shows how adoption applicants engage in the multi-layered task of managing social workers’ guidance while also demonstrating parental suitability. Adoption applicants are found to take on the perspectives presented by social workers, and simultaneously to maintain their own standpoint, using a two-step procedure: (i) they eagerly claim their knowledge and align with the social worker, and (ii) they demonstrate their adoption-specific knowledge or personal characteristics that support the presentation of their parental suitability. The findings provide insights into the practice of assessing prospective adoptive parents and contribute to the understanding of how applicants establish their self-presentations as suitable future parents while adjusting to institutional requirements in situ.
{"title":"Constructing future parental suitability: prospective adoptive parents’ communicative strategies in adoption assessment interviews","authors":"Madeleine Wirzén","doi":"10.1515/text-2021-0061","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/text-2021-0061","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This study examines how Swedish prospective adoptive parents display parental suitability in assessment interviews with social workers. In adoption assessment interviews, applicants are invited, through question-and-answer sequences, to present their knowledge about adoption-related issues and demonstrate their suitability as future adoptive parents. Adoption applicants are also faced with social workers’ attempts to prepare them for future parenthood with advice and guidance. In this high-stakes interaction, however, guidance might indicate the applicants’ lack of central knowledge or insights, which can have potential face-threatening consequences. The data consist of 36 hours of audio recorded assessment interviews. Using interaction analytical methods, the analysis shows how adoption applicants engage in the multi-layered task of managing social workers’ guidance while also demonstrating parental suitability. Adoption applicants are found to take on the perspectives presented by social workers, and simultaneously to maintain their own standpoint, using a two-step procedure: (i) they eagerly claim their knowledge and align with the social worker, and (ii) they demonstrate their adoption-specific knowledge or personal characteristics that support the presentation of their parental suitability. The findings provide insights into the practice of assessing prospective adoptive parents and contribute to the understanding of how applicants establish their self-presentations as suitable future parents while adjusting to institutional requirements in situ.","PeriodicalId":46455,"journal":{"name":"Text & Talk","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-09-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45555096","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract This paper investigates the referential information structure (IS) of full and reduced specificational it-clefts, which interacts as a distinct layer with their relational IS. Drawing on spontaneous spoken data from the London-Lund Corpus, this study examines how discourse-new and discourse-given information, i.e., referential IS, is distributed over the clefted noun phrase (NP) and cleft-relative clause. To assess the discourse-familiarity of nominal referents and open propositions, I develop an analytical model hinging on the predictability of information in accordance with the prospective dynamic of spoken language. The findings show that the distribution of given and new information is more diverse than described in existing typologies. In particular, it is revealed that the hitherto overlooked pattern in which both value and variable are discourse-given and in which the specification relation may be new or given is in fact the most common one. The findings also show that the choice between full and reduced it-clefts as two basic options is only partly motivated by the discourse-familiarity of the variable. The analysis of the prosodically coded relational IS reveals that multiple prosodic patterns can be mapped onto each category of clefts, thus demonstrating that the conflation of the referential and relational IS of it-clefts is untenable.
{"title":"Towards a new typology of the referential information structure of specificational it-clefts","authors":"Charlotte Bourgoin","doi":"10.1515/text-2021-0081","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/text-2021-0081","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper investigates the referential information structure (IS) of full and reduced specificational it-clefts, which interacts as a distinct layer with their relational IS. Drawing on spontaneous spoken data from the London-Lund Corpus, this study examines how discourse-new and discourse-given information, i.e., referential IS, is distributed over the clefted noun phrase (NP) and cleft-relative clause. To assess the discourse-familiarity of nominal referents and open propositions, I develop an analytical model hinging on the predictability of information in accordance with the prospective dynamic of spoken language. The findings show that the distribution of given and new information is more diverse than described in existing typologies. In particular, it is revealed that the hitherto overlooked pattern in which both value and variable are discourse-given and in which the specification relation may be new or given is in fact the most common one. The findings also show that the choice between full and reduced it-clefts as two basic options is only partly motivated by the discourse-familiarity of the variable. The analysis of the prosodically coded relational IS reveals that multiple prosodic patterns can be mapped onto each category of clefts, thus demonstrating that the conflation of the referential and relational IS of it-clefts is untenable.","PeriodicalId":46455,"journal":{"name":"Text & Talk","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-09-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48363273","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract The aim of the study was to compare the use of formulaic language, here called multiword structures, in advanced L2 English speech of two Swedish groups with a group of first language (L1) speakers of English. One Swedish group was resident in London and one in Stockholm, thus implying different degrees of exposure to English. Three categories, notably multiword phrases, multiword utterances and metalinguistic multiword structures, were investigated by comparing quantity and distribution. The groups completed two oral tasks, a role play and a retelling task. The results of the Swedish group resident in London were similar to the L1 English group on all measurements of multiword structures in the role play. In the retelling task multiword phrases were significantly fewer in both second language (L2) groups compared to the L1 English group, although there were L2 individuals within the L1 speaker range. Another question concerned the extent to which the three groups used multiword structures which were equivalents, i.e. transferable between English and Swedish. In the retelling task both Swedish groups produced significantly more equivalents than the L1 speakers. The implications of these findings are discussed.
{"title":"Formulaic language in L1 and advanced L2 English speech: multiword structures in the speech of two Swedish groups compared to a group of L1 English speakers","authors":"B. Erman, Margareta Lewis","doi":"10.1515/text-2021-0090","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/text-2021-0090","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The aim of the study was to compare the use of formulaic language, here called multiword structures, in advanced L2 English speech of two Swedish groups with a group of first language (L1) speakers of English. One Swedish group was resident in London and one in Stockholm, thus implying different degrees of exposure to English. Three categories, notably multiword phrases, multiword utterances and metalinguistic multiword structures, were investigated by comparing quantity and distribution. The groups completed two oral tasks, a role play and a retelling task. The results of the Swedish group resident in London were similar to the L1 English group on all measurements of multiword structures in the role play. In the retelling task multiword phrases were significantly fewer in both second language (L2) groups compared to the L1 English group, although there were L2 individuals within the L1 speaker range. Another question concerned the extent to which the three groups used multiword structures which were equivalents, i.e. transferable between English and Swedish. In the retelling task both Swedish groups produced significantly more equivalents than the L1 speakers. The implications of these findings are discussed.","PeriodicalId":46455,"journal":{"name":"Text & Talk","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-09-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45270268","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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