database connection failed! database connection failed! database connection failed! database connection failed! language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue july 2017, volume 9, number 1 pp. i-iv issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2017.9.1 i from the editors teaching with technology: integrating new technologies in the language skills over the last decades, we have witnessed a rapid development of technology in the arena of education in general, and more particularly in the area of second/foreign language (sl/fl) teaching, which is the major concern of the present volume. although it might be logical to state that technology has influenced education and sl/fl teaching practices, perhaps we are just at the very beginning of the integration of new technologies in the context of language education. the interest in technology and its implementation in the sl/fl classroom is not new. indeed, several researchers, and especially in recent years, have drawn their attention to the potential of technology in the language teaching and learning context (e.g. beltrán-palanques 2013, 2014, chapelle 2013, taguchi and sykes 2013, gonzález-lloret and ortega 2014, carriópastor 2016, martín-monje et al. 2016). a range of technologies are available for sl/fl teaching, the use of which will be somehow determined by language teachers’ readiness, interest and knowledge. however, it is also true that, on some occasions, access to technology is somehow constrained by external factors that impede teachers’ use of technology in the fl/sl classroom. to the best of our knowledge, it is an undeniable fact that technology may play a role in the language classroom, but we should not lose sight of the fact that our major concern as sl/fl teachers is to develop learners’ communicative competence (celce-murcia 2007). therefore, the idea is not just to add technology in the classroom, but to use technology to support language teaching instruction. taking those aspects into account, the main idea of the present edited volume is to shed some light on how technology can be integrated in the language classroom from various perspectives. this edited volume will be of interest to researchers and language teachers who are interested in the field of sl/fl teaching and new technologies, bearing in mind that selected experiences encompassing the use of technologies in the teaching of language skills have been from the editors articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2017.9.1 ii carefully selected and included. the volume is divided into two sections. the first section includes seven articles and the second presents two reviews that enrich the perspective provided on technologies and their use in the language classroom. in the first article of this volume, calvo-benzies explores the possibilities of implementing information and communication technologies (icts) in teaching pronunciation. her article, contribution of new technologies to the teaching of english pronunciation, provides both an overview of materials available and an empirical study on how english for specific purposes (esp) students used technologies to improve their pronunciation skills, showing a high level of satisfaction. in the second article presented in this volume, learners’ identities at stake: digital identity texts in the efl classroom, garcía-pastor focuses on the study of identity in digital texts written by english as a foreign language (efl) students, presenting an analysis of how students’ identity is discursively constructed through diverse resources to create a digital communication narrative style. talaván and costal present a project where they assess the potential of intralingual dubbing in english as a resource to improve oral production skills at a higher education level. idub – the potential of intralingual dubbing in foreign language learning: how to assess the task introduces a study including dubbing tests, questionnaires and observation as data to present conclusions that will help other teachers to implement dubbing activities in the b2 language class. in the fourth article included in this volume, teaching apps for the learning of languages through sports: technology and sports in the english and spanish as an l2/fl classroom, botella and galindo present a selection of apps for teaching and learning english through sports. these apps are analysed to present a range of activities that can be included in the language classroom within the framework of task-based language teaching with technology. the fifth article presents a study framed within mobile assisted language learning (mall), where an original mobile app is used by students to enhance their participation and motivation in the language class. up2b2: playing english grammar games at the b2 level depicts the implementation of an app that consists of multiple language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2017, volume 9, number 1 pp. i-iv issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2017.9.1 iii choice questions on varied aspects at b2 grammar and vocabulary level and presents gamification components (response time, competition, score ranking, etc.) that enable arguelles, martínez, garcía and da silva to present quantitative and qualitative indicators to reach positive conclusions on motivation and competence levels achieved with the use of the app. in the article english teaching and beyond: a multimodal and integrated approach, explores how medical english teaching materials can be improved by incorporating multimodal activities to develop communicative skills in non-native english speaking doctors in their relation with patients. a practical proposal is put forward by franceschi to show how medical english teaching materials could be improved to strengthen doctors’ ability to offer patient-centred effective and affective communication. in the last article of this section, miura aims to investigate the feasibility of assessing learners’ sociopragmatic competence by analysing a spoken corpus of requests produced by japanese students of english. pragmalinguistic features of requests in shopping role-plays were extracted from the national institute of information and communications technology japanese learner english (nict jle) corpus and rated in terms of politeness. the process and results are shown in this article, assessing politeness of requestive speech acts produced by japanese learners of english in a spoken corpus. the volume ends with two reviews. the first one is a review of a practical guide to integrating technology into task-based language teaching, written by montanervillalba, who carefully examines the strengths of the book as a helpful resource that offers teachers of foreign languages a straightforward plan to successfully integrate technologies into tblt in the classroom as well as to develop technologically-mediated materials. the second review, written by fernández-nogueira, reflects on the book second language acquisition: a theoretical introduction to real world applications and its applicability as a resource to introduce students and trainees to the topic of sla in a clear way. among its strengths, the author highlights the inclusion of activities and the presence of references for further research on the topic. from the editors articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2017.9.1 iv vicent beltrán-palanques blanca garcía riaza guest editors universitat jaume i, spain universidad de salamanca, spain mari carmen campoy cubillo editor universitat jaume i, spain references beltrán-palanques, v. 2013. “teaching the four language skills communicatively: the potential of new technologies”. in chodkiewic, h. and trepczyńska, m. (eds.) language skills: traditions, transitions and ways forward. newcastle upon tyne: cambridge scholars publishing, 456-471. beltrán-palanques, v. 2014. practical concerns in sl writing: working collaboratively across instructed settings using new technology tools. analecta malacitana, anejo xcvi, 27-36. carrió-pastor, m. l. 2016. (ed.). technology implementation in second language and translation studies. new tools, new approaches. singapore: springer. celce-murcia, m. (2007). “rethinking the role of communicative competence in language teaching”. in alcón, e. and safont, m. p. intercultural language use and language learning. dordrecht: springer, 41-57. chapelle, c. 2013. english language learning and technology. amsterdam: john benjamins. gonzález-lloret, m. and ortega, l. 2014. (eds.) technology-mediated tblt: researching technology and tasks. amsterdam: john benjamins. martín-monje, e. elorza, i. and garcía-riaza, b. 2016. (eds.) technologyenhanced language learning for specialized domains. practical applications and mobility. routledge: london. language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue november 2018, volume 10, number 1 pp. i-iii issn 1989-7103 from the editor multimodal means of instruction: broadening academic literacies and practices departing from the concept of multimodality as “a field of application rather than a theory” (bezemer and jewitt 2010: 180), the current volume aims at presenting multimodal practices in different learning environments. multimodal means of instruction can overtly change communication landscapes in terms of spaces and texts. in this volume, new academic identities are revised departing from multimodal texts (visual texts, written texts that use images, written texts that discuss visuals, etc.) which combine with the primary aim of generating meaning. this issue intends to delve into the definition of multimodality in order to promote multimodal learning environments by revisiting theories and practices of multimodal education. the volume includes valuable contributions to multimodality in education trying to ease the differences between conventional teaching practices and the fast constant changes of the modern society (kress and van leeuwen 2001). the volume works as an updated reference for multimodality in different spaces, varied modes and diverse texts within disciplinary variations for pedagogical practices. the volume is divided into two main sections, a wider section with four full papers and a following section with a book review. in the opening article of this volume ​stefania consonni analyses powerpoint (ppt) as a leading genre in academic discourse, focussing on the implementation of student motivation boosting strategies. she explores how ppt can be used to motivate teachers and students from two perspectives, ideational and interactional, using multimodal and critical discourse analysis approaches. 1 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2018.10.1 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue from the editor in the next contribution, ​larissa d’angelo discusses the effectiveness of the pre-formatted construction of discourse through powerpoint presentations by observing the abuse of bullet point presentations, the limited format and size of slides that support minimum content and the ever-present risk of overwhelming viewers with too much text or data. she concludes that multimodal powerpoint artefacts simply enrich and accompany what the presenter has to say, and recommends presenters to regain confidence in their oratorial skill instead of allowing the slides dominate their presentations. in the next article, ​ruth breeze brings us closer to multimodality in fine arts. she focuses on the genre of single image account (sia) (swales 2016) for didactic purposes by examining pedagogical resources on the national gallery’s website. she argues that sias are combined with suggestions to enhance primary school pupils’ learning through creative activities across a variety of modes. she eventually proposes guidelines for writing sias for educational purposes in other contexts. in the final contribution to this issue, ​tamara hernández analyses feedback on written production and how the use of new technologies in the classroom such as grammar checker can aid both, the teacher in the correction process and the students in their language development. after comparing feedback provided by the teacher and feedback provided by the software grammar checker to a group of english as foreign language students, she concludes that grammar checker can be a potential tool for self-correction and that feedback may facilitate students’ language development. in the book review that follows, ​lucía bellés-calvera revises the publication multimodality in higher education ​, by archer and breuer (2016). the volume deals with multimodal writing practices and pedagogies in tertiary education. the work approaches forms of academic writing that have been catalogued as academic genres, therefore known by an academic discourse community that has previous knowledge on the genre and its conventions. the volume is undoubtedly a valuable contribution to the dissemination of multimodal knowledge in higher education. 2 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2018.10.1 language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue november 2018, volume 10, number 1 pp. i-iii issn 1989-7103 i would like to close this editorial by especially thanking my colleague and co-editor of this volume carmen sancho guinda. likewise, i am grateful to all the scholars that have collaborated in the peer-review process of the articles that make up this volume. begoña bellés-fortuño editor universitat jaume i, spain references bezemer, j. and jewitt, c. 2010. “multimodal analysis: key issues”. in litosseliti, l. (ed.), ​research methods in linguistics ​. london: continuum, 180-197. kress. g. and van leeuwen, t. 2001. ​multimodal discourse: the modes and media of contemporary communication ​. london: arnold. swales, j. 2016. “configuring image and context: writing ‘about’ pictures”. ​english for specific purposes, ​41, 22-35. 3 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2018.10.1 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue language value june 2020, volume 12, number 1 pp. i-iii http://www.languagevalue.uji.es issn 1989-7103 language value, issn 1989-7103. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2020.12.1 i from the guest editor the way ahead in languages for specific purposes the processes of globalisation, the increasing dominance of english in academic and professional spheres, and the ongoing changes in higher education worldwide have destabilised the role of specialised language teaching at university level. like many situations of instability, the current panorama presents those involved with both opportunities and threats. on the positive side, the increase in international contact in most areas of social, academic and economic life means that the need for specialised language education is probably greater than ever before. no one leaves school with excellent professional communication skills in a second language – and so precisely those skills should be the focus of new generation languages for specific purposes (lsp) courses. but unfortunately many institutions have been slow to understand the vital role that language training for specific purposes has in equipping students for their future professions. the teachers and departments responsible for lsp teaching also urgently need to update their own knowledge and competences, redesign their courses, and seize this opportunity to become experts in professional communication. as linguists, lsp practitioners are uniquely positioned to conduct principled inquiry into specialised language domains, to map the specific features of professional genres, and to build a robust understanding of how different discourse communities use them. such research will allow lsp teachers to adopt a critical attitude to material that is available (jiang and hyland 2020), and to devise courses and resources that match more closely with what their students need. against this background, this special issue of language value brings together a number of papers that sketch out new routes for lsp teaching in the next ten years. as we would expect in lsp, these papers all presuppose a solid underpinning in genre and sound knowledge of how language is used in specialised discourse communities. but they are also forward-looking in different ways, characterised by a special emphasis on aspects such as the importance of digital technologies, our growing awareness of from the editor language value, issn 1989-7103 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2020.12.1 ii multimodality, and the need to cultivate pluriliteracies in complex multilingual settings (meyer 2015). in the first article, ignacio guillén galve and miguel ángel vela tafalla show how the application of technology to digital genres can inject new dynamism into our understanding of english intonation and its rhetorical functions in professional language. their research brings further insights into promotional aspects of scientific discourse, and has practical applications for those of us involved in supporting students on the road to becoming scientists on the international academic stage. also focusing on spoken language, in the next paper bojan prosenjak and iva lučev address the importance of helping students to develop presentation skills in international relations, proposing pedagogical innovations designed to make students take responsibility for their own learning in a collaborative and reflective way. in their course design, peer assessment plays a key role in sensitising students to the different aspects of their performance. in our changing scenario it is not always easy to negotiate the relationship between language experts and other university teachers, or between teachers specialising in different languages. in the third article, teresa morell takes on the essential issue of how lsp experts should cooperate with teachers involved in english medium instruction (emi), analysing ways of optimising preparation for emi in the spanish context. after this, situated in the very different context of a university on the border between the usa and mexico, theresa donovan, isabel baca and teresa quezada add a new dimension to the discussion of lsp in the age of globalisation by approaching the need for students to develop pluriliteracies. the idea of developing professional and academic literacy in two languages in a way that is affirmative and mutually complementary is epitomised in their design for a cross-disciplinary certificate program in bilingual professional writing. their paper also points to the increasing importance of languages other than english as targets for lsp, and the growing need for students to develop linguistic mediation skills, biliteracies and bicultural competences. the last paper in this selection, by enrique sologuren insúa, helps to expand this plural approach to lsp by addressing the need for principled research on lsp in languages other than english. sologuren’s article provides a detailed account of the language value june 2020, volume 12, number 1 pp. i-iii http://www.languagevalue.uji.es issn 1989-7103 language value, issn 1989-7103 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2020.12.1 iii creation of a map of student genres from a spanish learner corpus in engineering, which should provide a starting point for developing a focused writing programme for engineering students in his university, and in similar contexts. finally, i would like to thank all the people who have helped with this special issue of language value. my thanks go particularly to the two editors, begoña bellés fortuño and carmen sancho guinda, and to lucía bellés calvera. i am also grateful to all those who took part in the aelfe conference in pamplona in 2019, which was the starting point for this special issue. my special gratitude goes to larissa d’angelo, marcelino arrosagaray, sally burgess, miguel garcía yeste, christoph hafner, ana halbach, matthew johnson, mark krzanowski, maría josé luzón, gerrard mugford, barry pennock, joan ploettner, hanne roothooft, davinia sánchez and ekrem simsek for their guidance, comments and advice on the papers in this issue. ruth breeze guest editor university of navarra, spain references jiang, f. k. and hyland, k. 2020. “prescription and reality in advanced academic writing”. ibérica, 39 [in press]. meyer, o. 2015. a pluriliteracies approach to teaching for learning. graz: european centre for modern languages. microsoft word editorial vol 8 maquetado.docx language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue april 2016, volume 8, number 1 pp. i-iv issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2016.8.1 i from the editors teaching and assessing listening skills effectively in the language classroom: research-based approachers as stated in the last volume of the international journal of listening, “compared with the other l2 skills of reading, writing and speaking, the field of listening is the youngest in terms of research” (goh and aryadoust, 2016: 6). this youth of listening skills development in the field of language teaching is partly due to availability of technological advances (audio recordings and videos) and (computer-based) teaching materials which were introduced at a later date in the classroom than paper-based materials. but a slower development of listening skills research is also determined by the fact that listening is a complex skill: it requires attention and concentration, it demands an instant recognition of an event and its related keywords, since vocabulary control and schemata knowledge (situation, topic knowledge and background knowledge) under which the listening input takes place are key factors in determining effective listening. not only that, speaker factors (accent, intonation) and individual listener factors such as the listening strategies employed by an individual, gender or anxiety levels, are part of the listening skills construct. when we talk about assessing listening skills, together with these issues there is the question of task format in relation to both input and output requirements, the types of questions used in assessing listening skills or the number of times students are allowed to listen to a (video/audio) recording. all these aspects of listening make research in listening an intellectually and academically challenging work. this volume presents three articles dealing with listening skills under three very different perspectives. the first article by gonzález-vera and hornero corisco deals with the advantages of using audiovisual materials to enhance speaking and listening skills. in the second article, martín del pozo tackles an important issue in academic listening: that of spoken discourse markers and how they influence listening from the editors articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2013.5.1 ii comprehension success in english as a medium of instruction (emi) classrooms. finally, natalia norte presents a highly innovative article that goes beyond traditional listening comprehension analyses and focuses on the multimodal comprehension of audiovisual input. gonzález-vera and hornero corisco worked on a questionnaire to find out their students’ profile as listeners, trying to identify areas of difficulty in the listening process. this is the point of departure for implementing classroom tasks with the same students focusing on the detected problems. these authors advocate for the inclusion of authentic audio-visual materials and technologies in the efl teaching and learning process trying to ascertain their belief that this type of material aids not only listening skills development but is also helpful in the enhancement of speaking skills when we use such materials as input to overcome language difficulties, such as those encountered with specific phonemes in the foreign language. in “discourse markers and lecture structure: their role in listening comprehension and emi lecturer training” it is suggested that lecturers need a more overt signaling of lecture stages as well as being able to turn to a wider stylistic variety of discourse markers. providing a thoroughly exemplified review of lecture phases and how discourse markers apply to each phase, martín del pozo analyses the importance of discourse markers in lecture listening comprehension. contextualizing this research in the internationalization process that is taking place in universities, together with the promotion of the teaching of content subjects in a foreign language, provides an added value to this article. results in this article indicate that the lectures analyzed in the emi (english as a medium of instruction) recordings are characterized by repetitiveness and weak stylistic resources when using discourse markers. this may influence students’ lecture listening comprehension since the input they get may not be as clear and staged as it could be. in the emi context, the vision of listening skills not as separate skills but as part of the speaking-listening continuum in conversation is particularly relevant. as the author reveals, there are two key aspects in this process from the emi perspective. one is paying attention to the “student learning to listen” and the other one is paying attention language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue april 2016, volume 8, number 1 pp. i-iv issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2016.8.1 iii to the “lecturer learning to speak”. both are closely related in a lecture situation and affect lecture comprehension on the one hand, and lecture effectiveness on the other. in “multimodal digital tools and efl audio-visual comprehension: students’ attitudes towards vodcasts”, norte examines students’ attitudes towards the use of audio-visual listening materials (e.g., vodcasts) compared to traditional audio ones (e.g., audio tracks). the author selected vodcasts that were clearly connected to the participants’ specific syllabus in an attempt to consider academic interest of the listeners/test-takers as part of the experiment design. one of the aims of the study was to observe and contrast students’ attitudes towards listening to audio tracks versus watching vodcasts. a number of relevant reasons to support the use of vodcasts become apparent. these include issues that are relevant in the literature of listening skills both in first and second or foreign language acquisition (wolfgramm, suter and göksel 2016), namely, that they aid concentration, and make students understand context and situations better. these three factors are frequently surveyed as predictors for effective listening comprehension in the literature. it was also shown how for the majority of students multimodality enhances comprehension and reduces anxiety. the volume ends with a review of a multimodal analysis of picture books for children: a systemic functional approach written by arsenio jesús moya guijarro. in the review, written by mary frances litzler, the connection between the linguistic and the visual aspects of picture books analysed in the book is discussed. therefore, the book identifies the verbal and visual strategies used by writers and illustrators in order to convey a representation of reality, but also to create an effective interaction with readers (children) and coherent wholes of communication, serving thus as a framework for assisting in the selection of appropriate books for young readers. mª carmen campoy-cubillo nuria edo-marzá editors universitat jaume i, spain from the editors articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2013.5.1 iv references goh, c. c. m. and aryadoust, v. 2016. “learner listening: new insights and directions from empirical studies”. international journal of listening, 30 (1-2), 1-7. wolfgramm, c, suter, n. and göksel, e. 2016. “examining the role of concentration, vocabulary and self-concept in listening and reading comprehension.” international journal of listening, 30 (1-2), 25-46. language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue july 2017, volume 9, number 1 pp. 218-221 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2017.9.9 218 book review a practical guide to integrating technology into task-based language teaching marta gonzález-lloret georgetown university press: washington, d.c., united states of america, 2016. 84 pages isbn-13: 9781626163577 isbn-10: 162616357x reviewed by salvador montaner villalba salvador.montaner@campusviu.es valencian international university, spain over and above the fact that the latest educational technologies seem more exciting and more interesting than their earlier counterparts, because the implementation, use, and assessment of the originals was not guided by educational principles in language development, they could only really be utilized for entertainment purposes. today, however, task-based language teaching (tblt) and its theoretical principles in task-based language learning (tbll) now provide an excellent and far more interesting approach for educators and teachers of foreign languages wishing to introduce technology into the classroom. as a direct result of this, students’ learning of a foreign language can now be fostered within both the formal and informal contexts of school and home, thereby allowing them to achieve high-quality language learning through authentic tasks and in a fun way. many researchers studying second language acquisition have coincided in pointing out that the huge number of didactic applications designed to be used as a principled framework in tblt are useful for organizing the technological implementation of language learning. moreover, the innovative combination of tasks and technology, led by the principles of tblt and tbll, bring affordances for language learning through students’ connection with other speakers of the language that they are learning. in this way learners are encouraged to be creative, which in turn makes language learning personally more meaningful to them and, practicing in this way, helps to minimize students’ fear of failure or embarrassment, as well as, broadly speaking, promoting mailto:salvador.montaner@campusviu.es a practical guide to integrating technology into task-based language teaching language value 9 (1), 218–221 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 219 learning by doing. thus, the student of a foreign language can become the main protagonist of their own language learning process. the interest in the topic of this book is quite evident since the number of publications related to the marriage between tblt and technology has grown rapidly in recent years, particularly, in the fields of second language studies, in the general fields of education and, moreover, in the field related to educational technology. in her own introduction to her book, the author, marta gonzález-lloret, states that her aim in writing it has been to apprise and guide both teachers of foreign languages and educators who are interested in learning new techniques about how the theoretical principles of tblt can be transferred to practical classroom tasks in order to improve technology-mediated materials for a tblt syllabus. hence, this book is targeted, on the one hand, at both preand in-service teachers of foreign and second languages, who will find it useful in the day-to-day teaching of taskbased, technology-mediated lessons. on the other hand, it is also oriented at professionals who develop both language curricula and materials, thereby giving them the opportunity to see for themselves how theoretical concepts can become authentic activities in the classroom by offering illustrations of materials which have been utilized effectively. the author combines both the theoretical principles and practical illustrations of technology-mediated tblt. the book comprises four chapters, each of which finishes with three different sections which are designed to afford the reader with an excellent opportunity to discuss the key aspects mentioned throughout the chapter with colleagues. the first of these sections is called “reflective questions” and is aimed at encouraging further personal research and debate on some of the topics raised. the next section invites the reader to carry out some tasks, which have been suggested as “activities” for students in the chapter, so that they can put into practice and test the various concepts explained for themselves. last, but by no means least, the reader is provided with a “recommended reading” section, so that the topic of the chapter can be further extended to the reader’s satisfaction. book and multimedia review language value 9 (1), 218–221 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 220 each of the four chapters follow the steps to be taken in the implementation of a tblt syllabus, in accordance with the criteria established by mike long (1985, 2015) and john norris (2009) for such a curriculum. chapter 1, entitled “what is technology-mediated tblt?”, presents the reader with the book’s approach. gonzález-lloret conceives “technology-mediated tblt” as a recent method of thinking, and analyses the effects of combining tblt and technology. here we are introduced to the key concepts of tblt, and are offered various definitions of the term “task”, which lead us to reflect on the considerations we should take into account when contemplating the use of the task-based language-teaching approach. chapter 2, the title of which is “how to conduct a needs analysis of tasks and technologies”, is related to the first step in the implementation of a tblt syllabus, which is to conduct a “needs analysis”. the importance of doing this for teachers contemplating the idea of working with tblt underpins the creation of materials and is what tailors the tasks to their specific requirements. the author guides the reader through this process by offering illustrations of what to do and the various sources, resources and methods that can be employed. she examines: 1. what activities are needed, 2. what target language is required, and 3. what level of digital literacy is involved. an example of a spanish program at an american university is given. chapter 3, called “creating, organizing, and sequencing tasks”, deals with the creation, organization, and sequencing of didactic activities. this chapter explains the basic principles of tblt that are to be taken into account when creating activities. it sets out the steps for implementing combined didactic language and technological activities in tasks that address the linguistic targets identified in the needs analysis, and goes on to illustrate possible activities which can be used to suit the needs of different situations. in this way gonzález-lloret proposes different methods to sequence didactic activities in order to create a technology-mediated, task-based unit. these sequenced pedagogic tasks are based on the task complexity theory. the two major works on task complexity, peter robinson’s cognition hypothesis (2001) and peter skehan’s limited attentional capacity model (1998), are briefly explained in this chapter. in addition, further academic reading available on this topic is suggested. various illustrations of complete units are shown and explained, together a practical guide to integrating technology into task-based language teaching language value 9 (1), 218–221 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 221 with proposals for possible changes in order to fit them to various language levels and technological contexts. examples of units in chinese (an intermediate blended tblt course in chinese), spanish (a unit for learners of spanish with the focus on poetry classes), esl (a commercially available illustration of english language materials), and the hospitality industry (a catering and hospitality web-based language kit) are also included. finally, chapter 4, the title of which is “performance-based assessment and curriculum evaluation”, is aimed at the last two steps: improving a tblt syllabus after having implemented the materials, and learner evaluation and curriculum assessment. the author maintains that assessment/evaluation is of great relevance for the sustainability of any technology-mediated tblt program, even though the assessment issue is one of the weakest areas in tblt. this chapter pays special attention to how to connect and how to deal with performance-based evaluation in technology-mediated tblt materials. gonzález-lloret continually highlights the key issues of performance-based evaluation throughout the chapter. she once again offers illustrations, as well as proposing different educational technologies that can make assessment of the learning process easier. in its conclusion, this chapter offers guidelines to help teachers of foreign languages assess the effectiveness of the materials that they have created, and provides illustrations of task-based unit evaluation. this short, practical guide, first released as an ebook and currently in print, offers both educators and, more specifically, teachers of foreign languages a clear plan as to how to successfully integrate technology into tblt in the classroom and to develop technologically-mediated materials. whether the aim is to conduct a needs analysis, create homework or classroom materials, or design and implement a new approach to student evaluation, the book a practical guide to integrating technology into taskbased language teaching, written by m. gonzález-lloret, will be a welcome resource for language teachers at any level. received: 6 december 2016 accepted: 19 february 2017 language value december 2020, volume 13, number 1 pp. 116-120 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es issn 1989-7103 language value, issn 1989-7103 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2020.13.7 116 book review accessibilitat i traducció visual anna matamala eumo editorial, 2019. 275 pages isbn: 978-84-9766-687-9 reviewed by ana-isabel martínez-hernández anhernan@uji.es universitat jaume i, spain accessibilitat i traducció audiovisual (audiovisual accessibility and translation, in english) by anna matamala (2019) is a book written in catalan which delves into the possibilities of making the audiovisual experience complete for all consumers by modifying content. with the rise of audiovisual and virtual content in the communication media, many people with disabilities such as hearing loss or visual impairment are left behind in the most run-of-the-mill experiences, especially those containing aural and visual elements as they cannot fully participate in the imaginary construct created by the voices, images and sounds. this book not only intends to show how to accommodate films, series and tv programmes to the needs of the audience, namely the hard of hearing and the blind or partially blind, but it also provides a general overview of the job of the translator, including translation techniques, along with an analysis of media accessibility. furthermore, the book proposes activities for the reader to reach their own conclusions and experience first-hand. in doing so, matamala captures the reader’s attention and attains reader’s interaction and participation, making traditionally passive reading an active learning experience. although this book covers the subject of translation, it is not only addressed to professional translators inasmuch as they are already acquainted with the information regarding translation techniques and professional aspects of the job. the audiences that, to my mind, would benefit from this book the most are translation teachers and students, due to its manual layout. matamala has written and designed this book in a way that learning occurs gradually; that is to say, definitions and more general aspects of translation are presented and illustrated at the beginning of the book to culminate in the https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0226-3288 mailto:anhernan@uji.es accessibilitat i traducció visual language value 13(1), 116–120 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 117 explanation of those techniques that cater for the consumers’ needs in order to accommodate content. the aim of content accommodation is to maximise the audiovisual experience in people with disabilities, namely subtitles, visual description or audio subtitling among others, in order to approach audiovisual content to them. the book is divided into 11 chapters, which at the same time could be divided into 4 main blocks. the first three chapters constitute the first block. they are an introduction to the world of translation and the job of the translator. these first chapters contain information about adapting foreign content to the average viewer. the second block (chapters 4 to 6) focuses on different adaptation or content modification strategies for the general public. block three, includes chapters 7 to 10, it focuses on media accessibility. that is, how the content-modification strategies described in previous chapters can be applied to make audiovisual content accessible to all, especially but not limited to those with visual or hearing impairment. the book comes to an end with an analysis of the state of the art and the yet-to-come (chapter 11 –block 4). all of these chapters include a definition of the items covered as well as the current situation and their use in the catalan context, along with the analysis of the adaptation methodologies used by public tv broadcasters, most common standards and practices, and some recommendations. additionally, the author references countless authors and collects an extensive bibliography for further information on the topics. the book opens with a ‘reality check’ of the limited accessibility to the audiovisual world. the author refers to the incomplete involvement of people with visual or hearing impairment in the audiovisual experience. in the first chapter, matamala outlines and defines what the term ‘audiovisual content’ refers to, i.e. those products based on sound and visual elements. in addition to this, matamala encourages the reader and potential translator to think of the purpose, the target audience or the setting the audiovisual product was designed to be enjoyed in, among others. once the author establishes the important elements to bear in mind from an audiovisual perspective, a general classification is given to modify the original content and make it more accessible, namely sound and visual modifications. matamala touches on the accessibility to information and communication, i.e. media accessibility, its evolution in the past decade and how the job of the translator becomes paramount to guarantee equal access to it. the focal point of chapter 2 is on the barriers and challenges the translation of the book review language value 13(1), 116–120 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 118 audiovisual elements might pose. the first challenge for the translator is linguistic variation, both interlinguistic, i.e. more than one different language present, and intralinguistic, i.e. dialect and register. the second challenge is terminology, which is presented as a second challenge since it is key to the understanding of the meaning, whether technical or fabricated for the sake of the audiovisual work, in order to be able to transfer this meaning and ascertain that the target audience will be able to decode it. along these lines, cultural references also pose a quandary to the professional translator, as well as intertextuality, i.e. reference to other works, and humour. the author proposes techniques to conquer these obstacles, but the suggestions are not without their limitations, which are also identified in this book and the reader is warned about them. in chapter 3, matamala enumerates and suggests a series of tools for professional practice such as linguistic, translation or time management tools among others, as well as tools for research. the resources mentioned in this chapter may be useful for both the self-employed professional translator and the translator-to-be, as the author reviews their utility and applicability. all the chapters in the next two blocks include a definition of the technique exposed along with its evolution in the catalan context. chapters 4 to10 include a section in which the author compiles different possible groupings suggested by different authors for such content-modification modality. furthermore, the author offers a description of the main characteristics as well as information on the technical and linguistic aspects. the last sections in all the chapters of this block aim at the professional world of the translator in which the process of the given modality, industry standards and recommendations are outlined along with further research on the topic. chapter 4 focuses on one of the modifications of audiovisual content: dubbing. the definition for this technique is given in the chapter in conjunction with a clarification for many widespread misconceptions about it, namely the mistaken belief that what translators do is merely translate a script. the author goes on to specify the detail and work behind a dubbing script to debunk this myth. the chapter that follows (chapter 5) introduces voice-over as a second content-modification modality in contrast with dubbing and simultaneous interpreting. according to the author, these three are similar, yet different from each other. despite having some shared traits with dubbing such as the modification of the soundtrack, voice-over does not require lip synchrony, for accessibilitat i traducció visual language value 13(1), 116–120 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 119 instance; and although in both simultaneous interpreting and voice-over the translation overlaps with the original, in the former the translation is live, whereas there is previous written preparation in the latter (matamala, 2019). chapter 6 deals with subtitling for the general audience, its uses, general characteristics and steps that need to be followed in the subtitling process. matamala underlines the possible variations within the format and detail of the subtitles depending on whether the target audience is able to decode sounds. she goes on to provide a description of this technique by juxtaposing it with other techniques such as dubbing or voice-over. chapter 7 has to do with the accessibility of the audiovisual content and the job of the translator in interpreting those contents in an effort to decode them for those with a visual or hearing disability. an example the author points out is sign language. additionally, chapter 8 goes back to subtitling, although this time the writer unravels subtitling techniques for the hard of hearing. she recounts how catalan public broadcasting services pioneered accessibility through subtitling in the spanish media. chapter 9 deals with video description, which consists in narrating what the eye can see. in other words, to transfer visual elements to linguistic and aural elements. this modality has been traditionally associated with lack of vision, although, as the author puts it, it can also enhance the audiovisual experience in the average viewer. matamala provides an insight into the catalan broadcasting context by giving a myriad of examples of audiovisual works that have been made accessible through this modality, as well as listing official regulations, namely in the valencia area, which establish that certain government speeches of interest to the general public should be video-described. chapter 10 is also connected with a modality to make the media accessible: audio subtitling. this modality, as claimed by the author, benefits a variety of audiences ranging from people with a visual disability to a reading disability. in this modality, it is important to identify the characters before their intervention, among other distinctive features listed in the book. chapter 11 closes the book addressing the issue of new practices and recent research among which the field of virtual reality can be found. the book culminates in a look to the future and a critical eye on the present, including what is exposed in this book. all things considered, the book is a useful guide book for translation students, professors and professionals since it defines and summarises the uses of translation book review language value 13(1), 116–120 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 120 modalities and their uses are illustrated with clear examples. these examples add a note of realism, which proves profitable for those who are about to be immersed in the translation labour market. received: 08 september 2020 accepted: 15 september 2020 microsoft word reseña litzler.doc language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue april 2016, volume 8, number 1 pp. 77-81 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2016.8.5 77 book review a multimodal analysis of picture books for children: a systemic functional approach arsenio jesús moya guijarro equinox publishing ltd: sheffield, uk and bristol, ct, usa, 2014. 301 pages. isbn: 978 1 908049 77 3 and 978 1 908049 78 0 reviewed by mary frances litzler mf.litz@uah.es universidad de alcalá, spain this book is a study of nine picture books for children ranging in age from 0 to 9 years old. the conceptual framework follows halliday’s systemic functional grammar (2004) (henceforth, sfg) and kress and van leeuwen’s visual social semiotics (2006) (henceforth, vss). the main objective is to “identify the verbal and visual strategies used by writers and illustrators… to convey a representation of reality, to create interaction with child-readers and to form coherent wholes of communication” (257). the author is also interested in determining the correlation between the target age of the children and the choices made by the writers/illustrators as evidenced by the sample of books. it is hoped that the results of this study can lead to expanded information on the covers to children’s books and on “web pages, public brochures or literary reviews that state the age range for which a specific tale has been written” (4). at the same time, the study is intended to serve as a framework for assisting teachers and other professionals involved in selecting books that are “appropriate for their young readers” (259). according to the author, this study differs from previous research in that it considers the connection between the linguistic and the visual aspects of the picture books, while other writers either ignore the combination of the two or focus their work from a literary or cognitive perspective. this is the case, for example, of feaver (1977) or moebius (1986) (1). in addition, authors who have examined children’s picture books from a multimodal standpoint, such as lewis (2006), martin (2008) or painter et al. (2013), have not considered the age of the target readers (1-2). book and multimedia review language value 8 (1), 77-81 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 78 three books for each of piaget’s (1981, 1984) three cognitive developmental stages (02, 3-6 and 7-9 years old) are examined. the nine of them are all originals, as opposed to adaptations, and they have won literary awards for their quality. in addition, they have “defied time” and, in this sense, are classics that have been popular for at least one generation after the author (13). examples are the very hungry caterpillar and the tale of peter rabbit. a thorough introduction to the study is presented in chapter 1. it includes a clear reasoning for the present study, the selection of books and the sample size. chapter 2 introduces halliday’s systemic functional grammar and visual social semiotics as the framework for this research along with the author’s rationale for using them as opposed to other models. the chapter takes the non-specialist’s hand to lead him or her step-by-step through an overview of the concept of text, the differences between formal and functional grammar, and the different types of functional grammar. at this point, the characteristics of sfg that make it appropriate as the theoretical framework for the study are explained. specifically, the author indicates that sfg considers language beyond the sentence level in its context (28); it views language as a sociocultural phenomenon (29); it describes the three metafunctions for which language is used: ideational, interpersonal and textual meaning (32-3); and it operates as a set of systems (36). the three types of meaning, along with their parallels in vss, form the basis for the study presented in this book. in a similar fashion to the introduction to sfg, the author provides an overview to visual social semiotics by comparing it to other types of multimodal analysis before stating his reasons for opting for vss, which echo the reasons for using sfg. in particular, the representational, interactive and compositional metafunctions of vss correspond to the three metafunctions in sfg (47), the vss model considers texts in their social context (48) and it is made up of a number systems (48). finally, a discussion of the concept of mode is provided. chapters 3, 4 and 5 provide details on the representational, interpersonal/interactive and textual/compositional metafunctions respectively. the applicable theoretical notions from sfg and vss are explained for each of them along with a discussion of the difficulties in applying the models to the books examined here. examples of these problematic areas include the assignment of specific verbs to different categories (7577), or the handling of ellipsis of subjects or finite verbs when determining mood structure (98-99) according to sfg. in terms of vss, difficulties can involve the need a multimodal analysis of picture books for children: a systemic functional approach language value 8 (1), 77-81 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 79 for additional categories for labelling images in order to enable more precision in the descriptions (78-79), or in the determination of the degree of modality for the illustrations in the picture books (99-101). of particular interest in each chapter is a section on the combination of the two models together to obtain a more complete analysis of texts. chapter 3 goes into more detail in this respect and reviews work carried out in this area to date along with describing different possible degrees of agreement between verbal and visual elements at the representational level in a text, based on such authors as barthes (1977), nikolajeva and scott (2000), and unsworth (2006). one contribution of this study is the author’s decision to include circumstantial elements when comparing the combined effect of the verbal and visual aspects of the books because a provisional examination of the books for the different ages revealed some differences in this respect (70). each chapter then provides an analysis of one of the books as an illustration of the concepts discussed up to that point. chapters 6, 7 and 8 each discuss the findings of the corpus of 9 books as a whole in terms of each of the three metafunctions described in the previous chapters. as in chapters 3, 4 and 5, the verbal aspects of the stories are discussed first, followed by their visual aspects, and then both are considered together. the main question addressed in the third of these sections is whether the visual information is merely a reflection of the verbal information or if it is a necessary part in communication of the plot (143). a fourth and final section in each chapter examines the relationship between the target age of the children for which the books were written and the verbal and visual choices made by the authors and illustrators. while the third section of the chapters comments to some extent on age while discussing the connection between verbal and visual information, the fourth section goes into a more detailed analysis that includes statistical measures for each of the different aspects of the metafunction in question. readers with little or no background in statistics will have no difficulty following the discussion, as the explanations are clear. while these three chapters are, in fact, more technical in nature, the author’s highly readable presentation of the results will enable non-specialist readers to benefit from the descriptions. the ninth chapter serves as a conclusion to the entire study. it provides a summary of the verbal and visual features used to represent the three metafunctions, as observed in the sample of books and according to each of the three age ranges. the discussion book and multimedia review language value 8 (1), 77-81 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 80 provides a valuable contribution to the study of picture books for children thanks to its new findings. while some of the results vary depending on the target age, other results were found to be common to all three age groups, suggesting that they are characteristics of the genre of picture books. one of these is the relationship of complementarity between the verbal and visual modes of communication, particularly in terms of the representational metafunction of language (278). in other words, the images provided in the books provide essential information for the storylines instead of paralleling the plot, even in the case of the books for the youngest age group, contrary to the author’s expectations (169). the final pages of this chapter include some suggestions for writers and illustrators to assist them in making picture books more attractive to their young readers by taking advantage of the potential that exists in combining the verbal and visual modes in their work effectively. while the study is not aimed at them, researchers and educators who incorporate this study into their plan for evaluating books can convey these ideas indirectly to creators of future books. a strength of this book is its thorough yet clear reasoning and explanations. the reader of the study is guided from start to finish so that both the theoretical framework and the actual technical analysis itself can be comprehensible to those involved in the field of education as opposed to linguistics or communications. this, together with the practical objectives and new findings of the study, mean that moya guijarro’s book is fundamental reading for those involved in the selection of picture books for children. references barthes, r. 1977. introduction to the structural analysis of narratives: image-musictext. london: fontana. feaver, w. 1977. when we were young: two centuries of children’s book illustrations. london: thames and hudson. halliday, m.a.k. 2004. an introduction to functional grammar (3rd edition). revised by christian m.i.m. matthiessen. london: edward arnold. kress, g. and van leeuwen, t. 2006, 1996. reading images. the grammar of visual design. london: routledge. a multimodal analysis of picture books for children: a systemic functional approach language value 8 (1), 77-81 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 81 lewis, d. 2006, 2001. reading contemporary picture books. picturing text. london: routledge. martin, j. 2008. “intermodal reconciliation: men in arms”. in unsworth, l. (ed.) new literacies and the english curriculum: multimodal perspectives. london: continuum, 112-148. moebius, w. 1986. “introduction to picture books codes”. word and image, 2 (2), 141158. nikolajeva, m. and scott, c. 2000. “the dynamics of picture books communication”. children’s literature in education, 31 (4), 225-239. painter, c, martin, j. and unsworth, l. 2013. reading visual narratives. image analysis of children’s picture books. sheffield and briston, ct: equinox. piaget, j. 1981. psicología y pedagogía [psychology and pedagogy] (8th edition). barcelona: ariel. piaget, j. 1984. la representación del mundo del niño [the child’s conception of the world]. (6th edition). madrid: morata. unsworth, l. 2006. “towards a metalanguage for multiliteracies education: describing the meaning-making resources of language-image interaction”. english teaching, practice and critique, 5 (1), 55-76. received: 25 september 2015 accepted 22 march 2016 language value http://www.languagevalue.uji.es november 2018, volume 10, number 1 pp. 89-93 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2018.10.6 89 book review multimodality in higher education arlene archer and esther odilia breuer brill: leiden, boston, 2016. 270 pages. isbn: 978-90-04-31205-0 reviewed by lucía bellés-calvera lucia.belles@uji.es iulma / universitat jaume i, spain multimodality in higher education, by archer and breuer (2016) deals with multimodal writing practices and pedagogies in tertiary education. with the boost of new technologies in the field of education, studies on modes of communication (e.g. writing) have focused on their evolution throughout the years, particularly in the learning process. this book is aimed at educators and researchers who are interested in the writing communication practices required in a variety of domains, namely architecture, engineering or cultural studies among others. it is true that multimodality has become quite complex in the past few years given that writing is regarded as a means of knowledge even in practical fields, such as science and media production. in this sense, this volume could be used as a resource book for those educators who want to reflect on the relevance of multimodal competencies when conveying a message, especially when they want to suit students’ needs in the near future. at the same time, the content of the book is precise and easy to follow as it includes interviews and pictures that can help readers understand the changes that have taken place in the communication landscape. within the introductory chapter, bezemer and jewitt (2010: 180) state that the field of multimodality is one “of application rather than a theory”. this concept has been present in higher education through pedagogies and texts that involve the use of pictures and new information and communication technologies (icts). throughout the book, issues such as academic genres, verbal and non-verbal communication are reviewed. other relevant topics are related to teaching writing practices taking into account http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ mailto:lucia.belles@uji.es book review language value 10 (1), 89–93 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 90 students’ linguistic and social backgrounds, since these elements will aid them to construct their academic identities. the volume consists of 11 chapters grouped in three main sections that explore a specific theme:  part 1 accounts for multimodality in academia (chapters 1–4).  part 2 involves multimodality in text composition (chapters 5–8).  part 3 delves into multimodality across domains (chapters 9–11). the focal point of the first chapter is an interview with gunther kress, a well-known international researcher whose fields of expertise involve education, genre studies, and multimodality, among others. kress accounts for four challenges that higher education is facing at the moment from a multimodal approach, those of knowledge, social, agency and non-native researchers/students. all of them have to do with what he calls umbruch, a german word that stands for a period of change and transition. he points out the notion of knowledge should be re-examined in higher education institutions, since writing in the academic field has been the source traditionally accepted. the “social” has varied, that is, academic disciplines have developed over time, thereby having an impact on recent research. chapter 2 illustrates the evolution of the lecture from a historical point of view. in fact, it presents the different written and spoken communication practices taking the middle ages as a starting point. hence, it shows how the role of authority and learners in lectures has adapted to the contemporary era, which is characterized by the “triumph of the eye over the ear” (clark, 2006: 36), due to the introduction of icts. in other words, this genre has proven to be flexible in terms of academic identity and authority as suggested by thesen (2007, 2009a, 2009b). lectures are regarded as a multimodal teaching practice where modes (written, spoken, gaze, image) interact with each other. the chapter that follows (chapter 3) departs from a multimodal analysis of the research monograph. despite being highly influenced by written language, figures, tables and other graphic elements are traits of a research monograph. according to bateman (2008), its dominant mode is text-flow, which may vary depending on the discipline. so far, the author delves into two additional concepts in the chapter: medium and genre, which help to identify multimodal genre patterns within the genre and multimodality model (gem) (bateman, 2008). focusing on this http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue multilingual higher education. beyond english medium orientations language value 10 (1), 89–93 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 91 gem model, several aspects concerning content play a significant role in a research monograph, such as layout, visuals, cohesive devices and recontextualisation. the first part of the volume closes with chapter 4 where the author discusses academic arguments, paying attention to non-verbal communication (i.e. visuals). even though scholars state that images can convey messages on their own, limitations need to be acknowledged given that these visuals probably need to be supported by some kind of linguistic content. hence, the chapter concludes that visuals depend on spoken or written communication to avoid ambiguous statements. the second part of the volume is based on text composition from a multimodal perspective. chapter 5 reviews the notion of multimodal academic argument, previously mentioned in chapter 4. the author looked at the multimodal assignments of first year undergraduate students enrolled in a history and theory of architecture module. by means of pedagogical implications, the author remarks the need for a multimodal pedagogy to train educators. chapter 6 introduces a discussion on how the use of digital media has not only influenced the emergence of new genres, but also the reconsideration of the existing ones. moreover, being familiar with popular culture can help students produce multimodal texts at university. so far, the social relations generated by icts leads the author to reflect on this issue. chapter 7 reinforces the idea that all texts are multimodal to some degree. the author focuses on six art and design writing projects, carried out by students who were free to combine text and imagery. however, in this multimodal texts a balance between freedom and restriction as well as between content and innovation was required. part 2 of the book ends with chapter 8, which emphasizes the need to share one’s voice in academic writing. as it stresses the ability to display one’s critical thinking as an author, writer identities are key. according to clark and ivanič’s (1997: 137), there are three identities: a) the autobiographical self, in which the writer tells his/her life story; b) the discoursal self, which can be found in higher education and is related to the writer’s field of expertise; and c) the authorial self, which corresponds to “the writer’s sense of authority or authorial presence in the text” (p.137). the author claims that providing students with image theatre techniques in writing courses can encourage them to express their authorial and discoursal selves equally. http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ book review language value 10 (1), 89–93 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 92 part 3 of the volume includes chapters 9, 10 and 11. chapter 9 analyses intersemiotic relationships in undergraduate science textbooks, particularly american ones, which display text and images to make meaning. including explicit instruction of these features in academic courses allows students to improve their writing and reading strategies effectively. chapter 10 has to do with a case study carried out with postgraduate international accounting students. following halliday’s systemic functional linguistics (1985), the author describes participants’ multimodal practices in a management accounting module. the fact that international students may have grown with a different linguistic and cultural background may affect their comprehension in higher education contexts. therefore, issues like language (efl/esl) and culture need to be borne in mind. the last chapter (chapter 11), based on the integrative multisemiotic model proposed by lim (2004), goes into the specific functions of the written components of civil engineering drawings, which are said to carry contextual meaning. these written components combined with pictures contribute to the overall meaning-making process. all things considered, the volume is a good reference to think about the dissemination of knowledge in higher education from a multimodal approach. the authors do not only review traditional communication practices in academic settings, but they also include a variety of texts and visuals explaining the changes they have undergone in our society, more specifically in higher education institutions. references bateman, j. a. 2008. multimodality and genre: a foundation for the systematic analysis of multimodal documents. london: palgrave macmillan. bezemer, j. and jewitt, c. 2010. “multimodal analysis: key issues”. in litosseliti, l. (ed.), research methods in linguistics. london: continuum, 180–197. clark, w. 2006. academic charisma and the origins of the research university. chicago: university of chicago press clark, r. and ivanič, r. 1997. the politics of writing. london: routledge. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue multilingual higher education. beyond english medium orientations language value 10 (1), 89–93 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 93 halliday, m. 1985. an introduction to functional grammar. london: edward arnold. lim, f. v. 2004. “developing an integrative multi-semiotic model”. in o’halloran, k. l. (ed.), multimodal discourse analysis. london: continuum, 220–246. thesen, l. 2007. “breaking the frame: lectures, ritual and academic literacies”. journal of applied linguistics, 1, 33–53. thesen, l. 2009a. lectures in transition: a study of communicative practices in the humanities in a south african university. unpublished doctor of philosophy, university of cape town, cape town. thesen, l. 2009b. “researching ‘ideological becoming’ in lectures: challenges for knowing differently”. studies in higher education, 34 (4), 391–402. received: 26 may 2018 accepted: 23 july 2018 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ language value june 2020, volume 12, number 1 pp. 148-153 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es issn 1989-7103 language value, issn 1989-7103 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2020.12.7 148 book review specialised english: new directions in esp and eap research and practice ken hyland and lillian l. c. wong routledge: london and new york, 2019 (1st ed.). 260 pages. isbn: 978-1-138-58877-6 reviewed by gang yao gang.yao@um.es universidad de murcia, spain universitat politècnica de valència, spain the field of specialized english has expanded on an unprecedented scale. we have already seen that there is a plethora of research articles in specialized top journals like journal of english for academic purposes and english for specific purposes, as well as influential volumes and handbooks: in english for specific purposes (esp), publications like the handbook of english for specific purposes edited by paltridge and starfield (2013), introducing english for specific purposes by anthony (2018); in english for academic purposes (eap), publications such as the seminal collection research perspectives on english for academic purposes edited by flowerdew and peacock (2001), introducing english for academic purposes by charles and pecorari (2016), and the routledge handbook of english for academic purposes edited by hyland and shaw (2016). the field, however, is moving so fast that many researchers and practitioners are unable to keep current with its developments and trends. hyland and wong‟s volume, therefore, seeks to contribute to the evolving and dynamic scholarship of specialized english by gathering cutting-edge chapters on current and international perspectives on specific varieties of english. it covers a wide range of recent issues of eap and esp, such as english as a lingua franca, workplace english, academic interaction, practitioner identity, data-driven learning, and critical thinking. in addition, diverse genres are included, among others, research articles, workplace talks, university tutorials, builders‟ diaries, and personal statements. mailto:gang.yao@um.es specialised english: new directions in esp and eap research and practice language value 12 (1), 148–153 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 149 the volume contains 17 specially commissioned chapters by some of the world‟s leading experts. the chapters are grouped in a thematic way, covering key concepts of specialized english (chapter 1-chapter 6), textlinguistic analyses (chapter 7-chapter 12), and classroom practices (chapter 13-chapter 17). the first thematic module focuses on a series of current issues in specialized english language research and teaching. it starts with a chapter by anna mauranen where she looks at the use of english as a lingua franca (elf) in the trend of globalization and language contact from macro-social, individual‟s cognitive, and micro-social perspectives. by exploring authentic data from corpora of spoken and written elf in academic settings, the author shows that elf as a dynamic and complex system brings about linguistic changes in english through the process of approximation and fixing. in chapter 2, jane lockwood raises the conceptual issue of „workplace english‟ that oversimplifies the specialized and contextualized communicative needs. she thus proposes a multilayered analytical framework to unpack and theorize workplace english and suggests a specially tailored syllabus planning and assessment design. vijay bhatia in chapter 3 argues that the application of critical genre analysis that focuses on interdiscursive performance (bhatia, 2017) will benefit the curricular design of english for professional communication (epc), thereby plugging the remaining gap between school practices and professional practices in the world of work. the fourth chapter by john flowerdew provides some thought-provoking insights into the notion of power, which is closely related to different aspects of eap, including institutions, eap practitioners, the environment of english as a global lingua franca, disciplinary communities, pedagogy, and discourses. he concludes that eap practitioners need to familiarize themselves with those different power relationships and adopt a critical and assertive approach in order to change the marginalized situation of eap. echoing flowerdew‟s viewpoint, alex ding in chapter 5 focuses on the peripheral and marginal role of eap practitioners and examines the cause and effect relationship between “professional disarticulation” (hadley, 2015: 57) and practitioner identity crisis. he argues that the status, development, and recognition of eap practitioner identity are diminishing, due to the impact of neoliberalism, a lack of socialization and cultural capital, and some internal conflicts within the field. he concludes by advocating a collective consideration of the identities that eap book review language value 12 (1), 148–153 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 150 practitioners are willing to develop and commit to. the first section ends with a chapter by lynne flowerdew where she first raises several conceptual issues in both elf and learner corpus research of disciplinary writing, such as native-speaker norms and comparability. by discussing four previous corpus studies of both fields, the author suggests that future research should seek to build bridges between the two fields and to find their similarities and differences. the second part of the volume concerns texts of various genres, including research articles, university tutorials, students‟ texts, and personal statements. ken hyland in chapter 7 explores the use of interaction by disciplinary writers over the past 50 years. by implementing hyland‟s (2005) model of stance and engagement, he attempts to uncover whether writers‟ commitment and attitude towards what they said, as well as their engagement with readers, have changed over time and across disciplines. his findings suggest that changes in stance and engagement do exist but are slow and barely noticed. in chapter 8, ian bruce proposes a social genre/cognitive genre model in order to examine the expression of critical thinking through written text. the successful application of this model in two genre studies demonstrates that it is important to incorporate resources such as rhetorical moves, metadiscourse devices, metaphor, and engagement markers into the expression of critical thinking. chapter 9 by coxhead and dang seeks to explore the usefulness of existing single-word and multi-word academic lists in preparing learners for the vocabulary used in university laboratory and tutorial scenes. the results show that academic spoken word list (aswl) outperforms other single-word lists in terms of coverage and number of items and that the overlap of multi-word lists that consists of core items is useful. the study further provides suggestions for eap pedagogy, materials, and course design. in chapter 10, janet holmes shifts her attention to the workplace and especially focuses on how different levels of social constraints of the „culture order‟ (holmes, 2017) affect workplace interaction. her analysis based on recorded data foregrounds the sociopragmatic skills that newcomers should acquire for professional identity construction. the study ends by providing practical instruction to develop teaching and learning materials. jean parkinson in chapter 11 calls scholarly attention to multimodal student texts, where visual elements are becoming increasingly common. drawing upon prior studies, parkinson explores the possible use of social semiotic and move analyses specialised english: new directions in esp and eap research and practice language value 12 (1), 148–153 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 151 in student‟s multimodal texts. finally, she suggests that esp teachers raise student‟s awareness of rhetorical conventions in visual meaning, as well as coherence between visual and written meaning. interested as well in students‟ texts, ann johns focuses on student‟s personal statement (ps) writing task in chapter 12. by looking at the ps writing processes of three secondary students, she illustrates what the challenges in writing are and how the students meet them. she concludes the chapter by offering pedagogical suggestions to help students construct identity and explore accomplishments. the last section of the volume consists of five chapters that explore pedagogic practices both as general principles and specific classroom situations. it begins with laurence anthony‟s research which addresses some common issues when eap instructors or learners implement data-driven learning (ddl) in classrooms, such as the construction of corpus and the interaction with it. he introduces a variety of corpus analysis tools and accompanying teaching strategies in order to integrate ddl effectively into classroom practices. in chapter 14, lilian wong continues the topic of ddl and applies this approach to multidisciplinary thesis writing courses. the feedback from students and instructors suggests that while students tend to have a positive attitude towards the corpus-assisted writing resource, teachers seem to feel ambivalent about it. jill northcott in chapter 15 investigates the academic feedback on student writing provided by eap tutors and subject tutors, respectively. her analysis found that there are some areas where both tutor groups can provide meaningful feedback, whereas in other areas one or the other tutor group is more qualified as feedback providers. this gap suggests the need for collaboration between eap and subject tutors. in chapter 16, wingate and ogiermann explore writing tutors‟ use of directives in relation to dialogic versus monologic teaching styles. the results, based on the analysis of ten academic tutorials, did not meet their expectations. the tutor with the dialogic approach was expected to use fewer directives and more mitigated devices than the tutor with the other approach. further analysis suggests that the contradictory results were influenced by the sequential position of the directives in the dialogue. following the same research topic as in northcott‟s study (chapter 15), in the final chapter (chapter 17), li and cargill also explore the collaboration between eap practitioners and subject experts, but in the setting of a chinese university. they analyze and reflect on why the second book review language value 12 (1), 148–153 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 152 author‟s attempt at facilitating an attitude of openness to collaboration at the said university is unsuccessful. the views from both discipline supervisors and students suggest implications for chinese eap teachers. taken together, the chapters encompassed in this collection capture some of the most interesting and important developments in the field, contribute to expanding reader‟s knowledge of specialized varieties of english, and suggest avenues that could be explored in future studies. the chapters cover wide-ranging topics, theories, methods, and tools that are tailored to suit teachers‟ and learners‟ specific needs. it is noteworthy that although it explores the same focal field, this volume differs from other relevant publications in that it synthesizes the most up-to-date studies and authoritative discussions from established scholars of the field. moreover, a special section of the volume is devoted to introducing approaches, tools, and practical advice for diverse classroom settings, which would be particularly appreciated by eap/ esp practitioners and teachers. overall, the edited volume specialised english: new directions in esp and eap research and practice by hyland and wong brings together differing views on specialized english and provides fascinating insights into the theories and practices of eap/esp. it is an invaluable resource for upper-level undergraduate and postgraduate students and researchers in eap/esp or applied linguistics in general, as well as pre and in-service teachers and tutors of eap/esp. references anthony, l. 2018. introducing english for specific purposes. london: routledge. bhatia, v. k. 2017. critical genre analysis: investigating interdiscursive performance in professional communication. london: routledge. charles, m. and pecorari, d. 2016. introducing english for academic purposes. london: routledge. flowerdew, j. and peacock, m. (eds.) 2001. research perspectives on english for academic purposes. cambridge: cambridge university press. specialised english: new directions in esp and eap research and practice language value 12 (1), 148–153 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 153 hadley, g. 2015. english for academic purposes in neoliberal universities: a critical grounded theory. heidelberg, london and new york: springer. holmes, j. 2017. “leadership and change management: examining gender, cultural and „hero leader‟ stereotypes”. in cornelia, i. and s. schnurr (eds.) challenging leadership stereotypes: discourse and power management. singapore: springer, 15-43. hyland, k. 2005. “stance and engagement: a model of interaction in academic discourse”. discourse studies, 7 (2), 173–192. hyland, k. and shaw, p. (eds.) 2016. the routledge handbook of english for academic purposes. london: routledge. paltridge, b. and starfield, s. (eds.) 2013. the handbook of english for specific purposes. malden, ma: wiley-blackwell. received: 05 june 2020 accepted: 08 june 2020 database connection failed! database connection failed! language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue november 2018, volume 10, number 1 pp. 29-44 issn 1989-7103 powerpoint presentations in the classroom: re-evaluating the genre larissa d’angelo ​larissa.dangelo@unibg.it department of foreign languages, literatures and cultures university of bergamo, italy abstract since the late 1990s, microsoft powerpoint has become the expected presentation genre. however, several studies have demonstrated its many faults, such as the pre-formatted construction of discourse leading to the abuse of bullet point presentations, the limited format and size of slides that support minimum content and the ever-present risk of overwhelming viewers with too much text or data (alley 2003, 2004, robertshaw 2004, gottlieb 1985, keller 2003, tufte 2003). taking into consideration how the linguistic and visual elements, as well as the design and text organizations found in powerpoint presentations have evolved in the last 20 years, the present paper analyses the negative effects that the default slide structure provided by microsoft ppt, consisting of topic-subtopics and bullet points, has on the audience. the paper will then demonstrate the positive learning effects that the assertion evidence structure has on readers. the different retaining degree of three groups of undergraduate students are tested, after having exposed them to ppts applying phrase headlines, phrase headlines and images or the assertion evidence structure. keywords​​: ppt, powerpoint, powerpoint presentation, multimodality, multimodal genre, multimedia design i. introduction in today’s academic world, powerpoint presentations have become increasingly common not only in the hard sciences but also in the humanities, showing how the fast-paced, visually attractive data-driven presentations typical of marketing and business have invaded even the most traditional settings. as tufte (2009) confirms, “slideware – computer programs for presentations – is everywhere: in business settings, in government bureaucracies, even in our schools and universities, where several hundred million copies of microsoft powerpoint are generating trillions of slides each year.” indeed, if the conventional method of presenting research results at conferences, 29 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2018.10.3 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue mailto:yolandajoy.calvo@uib.es mailto:yolandajoy.calvo@uib.es larissa d’angelo workshops and even university lessons was to stand in front of an audience reading a paper, scribbling on lucid or writing formulas on a blackboard, today lectures have been enriched with images, colour and sometimes even music and videos thanks to new, enhanced software. as myers (2003: 3) recognises, […] anyone who walks around a university campus today will soon be aware that academic discourse is not just about words. there are colour-illustrated textbooks, videos, and interactive whiteboards boards in teaching sciences, materials and actions in labs, lectures and demonstrations, powerpoint presentations in university lectures, web pages as support for teaching and publicity, and music signalling the scientific in television documentaries. powerpoint as a multimedia tool is used not within university walls but also by primary school teachers teaching k-12 grades (martin and carr, 2015). the software is the most utilized tool and is used daily to introduce new topics, explain concepts and presumably enhance lessons by integrating multimodal exercises (2015: 10-11). among a number of multimedia software available, enabling them to create multimodal material for k-12 students, teachers still choose first and foremost powerpoint, followed by vimeo, youtube, camtasia, animoto, prezi and xtranormal (2015: 8). why has this surplus of multimodal instruments invaded the academic world so strongly in the past few years? as myers (2003: 3) states, science has always been multi-modal; historians have shown that it is our own textual bias that cuts out the elements of the visual and the performed from past scientific practice (gross et al. 2002). but it could be that new technologies make it easier to carry non-verbal elements from medium to medium, and easier to interweave different modes. the effects of technology on academic discourse are numerous and sometimes insidious, changing what were once ‘traditional genres’ such as the research article and the lecture into multimodal genres, requiring new preparation and delivery skills and a new approach to genre analysis. myers (2000: 184) offers a particularly rich and illuminating discussion of the intersection of technology and genre in which he discusses the effects of powerpoint on his own lecture preparation, delivery, and 30 language value​ 10 (1), 29–44 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue power point presentations in the classroom: re-evaluating the genre reception. after dealing with the more obvious consequences, such as the ‘bulletization’ of information, he goes on to write: […] the written text, produced by the machine, has become the star; i am reduced to an unseen voiceover of my own lectures. that may not matter in a business setting, where different people from sales or personnel may be called upon to speak the same words. but for a university lecturer, it marks a shift in what goffman (1981) called footing; that is, i am seen as the animator rather than the source of the utterance. instead of my speaking with the aid of some visual device, the text is speaking with my aid. swales (2004: 7) reinforces myers’ account of technological impact by stating that certain multimodal genres, such as the powerpoint, inevitably blur the boundaries between the academic and the commercial, and between the written and the visual. along the same lines, rowley-jolivet (2001) observes that the frequent use of photographs in conference presentations (hereinafter cp) reinforces the sense that these presentations often deal with early-stage, breaking-news research. given the cp time pressures, the idea that “a picture is worth a thousand words” has clearly come to the fore (swales 2004: 199). for this reason, visual presentation and graphics in conference powerpoint presentations and handouts have become vital to outline a piece of work in a form that is easily assimilated and stimulates interest and discussion (matthews 1990, tufte 1990). how has the genre of oral presentations evolved through the years and how is it that powerpoint invaded university classrooms and conference venues? more importantly, how does powerpoint’s traditional format modify academic discourse? long before today's presentation programs, such as microsoft powerpoint, openoffice.org, impress or apple iwork keynote, presentations at companies such as ibm and in the military used bullet lists shown by overhead projectors. however, the format has become omnipresent as powerpoint, which was created in 1984 and later acquired by microsoft, spread around the world. this spoken/written genre has evolved together with 31 language value​ 10 (1), 29–44 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue larissa d’angelo technology and its popularity has raised several debates concerning its common practice use at conferences (keller 2004, parker 2001, schwartz 2003). visual aids and computer presentations can enhance speaker credibility and persuasion, increase audience interest, focus audience attention, and aid retention of key points/content, although the exact opposite is also true when visual aids and computer presentations are used poorly by a speaker (stoner 2009). in fact, presentation programs may help speakers organize their talks, but what is convenient for the speaker might be detrimental to both content and audience. the typical powerpoint style suggested by the program itself and the ready-made templates available to microsoft users routinely disrupt, dominate, and trivialize content, elevating format over content and betraying an attitude of commercialism (tufte 2009). since the 1980s, gottlieb (1984) and others (alley 2003, atkinson 2005, doumont 2005, gaudelli et al. 2009, keedy 1982) have rejected phrase headlines, responsible for unclear main assertions and lack of connections in the evidence, and have advocated the assertion-evidence structure, which features a sentence-assertion headline supported by visual evidence (see figure 1). figure 1. ppt slide employing the assertion-evidence structure. 32 language value​ 10 (1), 29–44 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue power point presentations in the classroom: re-evaluating the genre how does the assertion-evidence structure work? when a presentation slide appears before the audience, the audience immediately turns to it and tries to decipher its contents and purpose. the assertion-evidence structure helps the audience quickly understand and retain the contents of a slide by providing a sentence headline, which orients the audience to the purpose of the slide; the audience can then turn its attention back to the presenter. once the presenter has made clear what the main message of the slide is, the presenter should support that assertion primarily with images and with words where needed. the reasoning for this guideline is that images, if well-conceived, can communicate information much more quickly to the audience than blocks of text can. using a sentence headline is not the norm in scientific presentations (alley and robertshaw 2004). in fact, because thousands of presentations typically use phrase headlines (or no headlines at all), the assertion-evidence structure goes against what is most often seen and recommended. phrase headlines in presentation slides in fact, should be avoided because they seem to reduce the personal connections between the presenter and audience, thus disturbing the flow of information and reducing the persuasive force of the message. because presentation slides reduce the personal connections between the presenter and audience, presenters have to be critical thinkers about the reader-oriented strategies employed and, most of all, when this academic genre is appropriate and when it is not (alley 2003). taking into consideration how the linguistic and visual elements, as well as the design and text organizations found in powerpoint presentations have evolved in the last 20 years, the present paper analyses the negative effects that the default slide structure provided by microsoft ppt, consisting of topic-subtopics and bullet points, has on the audience. on the other hand, the paper will demonstrate the positive learning effects that the assertion evidence structure has on readers. more specifically, the different retaining degree of three groups of undergraduate students will be tested, after having 33 language value​ 10 (1), 29–44 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue larissa d’angelo exposed them to ppts applying phrase headlines, phrase headlines and images or the assertion evidence structure. ii. methodology two main methods for presenting data will be taken into consideration and analysed hereafter: on the one hand the standard method for presenting information through the projection of data in bullet-style and/or graphical formats i.e. phrase headlines, on the other hand the assertion-evidence structure, which is gradually gaining acceptance in the hard sciences. to ascertain the positive or negative effects of these two different types of ppt formats on the audience and on the university student population in particular, three groups of undergraduate students attending the university of bergamo between october 2015 and december 2017 have been selected and exposed to the same subject matter, which was however presented in different forms (see table 1). the first group, counting 58 students, served as the control group and was exposed to a 30-hour module, entitled ‘the language of written advertisements in english’, which took place in the first semester of the academic year 2015/16 and was addressed to first year students enrolled in the intercultural communication for co-operation and business undergraduate degree programme. the control group was exposed to lessons utilizing ppt presentations, which employed “bullet style” phrases, interspersed with graphs and chunks of text. the second group counted 45 students enrolled in the same undergraduate degree programme and exposed to the same 30-hour module, which took place the following academic year, although in this case, relevant illustrations were added to text-only presentation materials. the third group counted 62 students, enrolled in the same degree programme as the previous two groups of students and attending the same course, although the 30-hour module took place, in this case, in the first semester of the academic year 2017/18. the latter batch of students was exposed to carefully re-designed slides organized according to the assertion-evidence structure (figure 1). 34 language value​ 10 (1), 29–44 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue power point presentations in the classroom: re-evaluating the genre table 1. tests conducted and group characteristics group semester academic year number of students number of course hours material used 1 1​st 2015/2016 58 30 topic-subtopic slide design, “bullet style” phrases with graphs and chunks of text 2 2​nd 2016/2017 45 30 topic-subtopic slide design, “bullet style” phrases with graphs, chunks of text and illustrations 3 1​st 2017/2018 62 30 ppt slides following the assertion-evidence structure all the students selected for the research had an attendance rate of at least 90%, had all studied english for at least five years before the beginning of the course, and reached a certified b1 level of english. all students were administered the same multiple-choice test on the last day of the course and were given 30 minutes to complete the task. students were administered the test without notice so as to measure the retention of the material to which they had been exposed over the previous 3 months, without preparation. the test featured 20 questions focusing on the content of the course and 5 different answers were provided for each question. the results obtained by the second and third group were compared with the results obtained by the control group and the relevant statistics were drawn, demonstrating the positive effects of adding relevant images to ppt slides and using the assertion-evidence structure. iii. results the investigation described in this section relies heavily on the generative theory of multimedia design (mayer 2001). this theory is based on the view of learning as knowledge construction, the idea that learner’s actively build mental representations 35 language value​ 10 (1), 29–44 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue larissa d’angelo based on what is presented and what they already know. it therefore advocates that materials that facilitate selection, organization, and integration of to-be-learned information are of benefit in designed instruction. the following hypotheses have been tested on three groups of non-native undergraduate students, following a 30-hour module in english: 1. by simply adding relevant illustrations to text-only presentation materials, retention increases; 2. people comprehend and retain better without extraneous information (learning material must be simplified, removing everything that isn’t directly related to the discussion). as table 2 shows, the first group of students, which served as the control group for the research, scored an average of 68% on the final test. these students were exposed to learning material which consisted mainly in ppt slides employing “bullet style” phrases, interspersed with graphs and chunks of text. a limited number of images were shown in ppt slides and numerous references were instead made to the textbook adopted for the course. table 2. retention increase with different ppt layouts group material provided average score on test (%) retention increase (%) 1 (control group) mainly text-only ppt slides 68% 2 ppt slides with text and images 87% +19% 3 ppt slides displaying the assertion-evidence structure. 94% +26% the second group of students was exposed to the same ppt slides, to which relevant images were added. unlike the learning material provided to the previous group, in this case, almost every slide included at least one picture relevant to the subject matter. at 36 language value​ 10 (1), 29–44 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue power point presentations in the classroom: re-evaluating the genre the end of the course these students scored 87% on the test given, demonstrating that just by adding relevant illustrations to text-only presentations, retention increased by 19%. the third group of students were exposed to carefully re-designed ppt slides, employing the assertion evidence structure. learning material was simplified, removing everything that was not directly related to the discussion and a sentence headline was used, followed by a clear picture or simplified graph, reinforcing and/or complementing the information given in the headline. sentence headlines were no longer than two lines so as to avoid heavy chunks of text and the total number of slides provided was less numerous, so that in certain instances information was conveyed only orally and relied on the rhetorical capabilities of the presenter. the students belonging to this group scored an average of 94% on the final test, showing that the use of the assertion-evidence structure increased retention by 26%. this last finding provides a powerful incentive not only to re-design and re-think the layout of university course materials, but also to implement the assertion-evidence principle whenever a transfer of knowledge is required as in academic meetings, conferences and workshops. it is also a strong incentive to avoid including graphics or multimedia effects simply for the sake of including them and to incorporate only the graphics that closely relate to the content, removing all extraneous, distracting details (sommers 2008). iv. discussing the assertion-evidence structure: swimming against the current as introduced in the previous sections, since the late 1990s, microsoft powerpoint has become the expected presentation genre, because it is the most commonly pre-installed software in pcs and macs alike. the software developed from a culture of slides within business, government, and military organizations, with the latter particularly fond of bullet phrases in documentation, long before the introduction of electronic presentations. in particular, powerpoint was introduced when the form of 37 language value​ 10 (1), 29–44 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue larissa d’angelo communication began requiring interaction in different forms both horizontally and vertically within an organization (pece 2005). in corporate history, dupont has been one of the first users of charts and graphs to be viewed in a special chart-viewing room. this practice was widely copied and what was “uniquely dupont” (orlikowski and yates 1994) – use of graphs as visual aids – became more widespread. by the second half of the 20th century, visual aids became the norm and the pre-processed ‘bullet style’ presentation of information became the standard rhetorical construction employed in academic and non-academic settings. the shift from carefully crafted lucid presentations and expensive 35 mm slides to ready-to-use and widely accessible ppt slides has revolutionized and standardised rhetoric, deconstructing the art of oratory within university walls (keller 2004, parker 2001, myers 2000, tufte 2003). its design forces users to follow a pre-formatted construction of discourse, encouraging an abuse of bullet point presentations; the format and size of slides do not support much content and tables as well as graphs, if presented through a ppt slide, hold very little information and the risk of overwhelming viewers with too much text or data is ever-present (alley and robertshaw 2004, keller 2003, tufte 2003). if these negative aspects were not enough, tufte (2003) has correctly underlined that the biggest fault of the software is its tendency to “dilute thought” (2003:6), encouraging a “generic, superficial, simplistic thinking” (2003: 5). although it simplifies the presenter’s task of delivering oral discourse because of its bullet point style, its design limits and slows down the flow of information; simply reinforcing what is being said, thus rendering this tool inadequate to for complex, non-linear issues. another fault lies in the quick loss of audience attention because listeners are led to shift their attention from the speaker to the screen, quickly tuning out the presenter and concentrating solely on the text. if slides utilize fonts that are not easy to read or they overwhelm readers with too much text, the ultimate outcome is that viewers, who have stopped listening, eventually stop reading too, losing all interest in the presentation because the material shown was not able to trigger an emotional response. 38 language value​ 10 (1), 29–44 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue power point presentations in the classroom: re-evaluating the genre there are however recent studies that present and promote alternative uses of the software, so that it can be correctly utilized in an educational setting. for example, lai, tsai and yu (2011) propose a two-layer display of information on screens to avoid overloading students with information. kumar’s (2013) study supports the position described above, indicating that students preferred powerpoint over blackboard-based lectures, because the “inherent deficiency of each method is compensated by the other. while blackboard teaching is deficient in showing three dimensional diagrams, animated videos, and sounds; the same can be demonstrated using a powerpoint presentation” (p. 240). a solution to this dilemma is provided by the assertion-evidence structure utilized with group 3 in the present study. this structure proposes the use of full sentences instead of phrase sentences, which are typically fragments of phrases and do not help viewers comprehend immediately what is being shown in the slide and, most of all, do not favour retention of the subject matter. alley and robertshaw (2004) suggest placing the sentence headline in the upper-left corner of the slide, so that the audience sees the headline before anything else on the slide and to favour a quick retention, it should be no more than two lines long and justified left. several good reasons exist for using sentence headlines. one is that a sentence headline forces the presenter to come to rehearse and carefully select the assertions he or she is making (alley 2003, 2004, alley and robertshaw 2004, gottlieb 1985). the presenter is in a better position to select the best evidence to support those assertions because s/he has clearly established what the assertions of the presentation are when s/he wrote the easily-readable headlines to display on the slides. a second reason is that using sentence headlines makes the set of slides stand-alone better as a set of notes. for instance, if a slide simply had the headline “results,” it would not be nearly as helpful to the audience two weeks later when viewed as part of a set of notes. the ‘results’ slide displaying a short headline, summarizing the main results is much more effective and useful once notes are re-read at home. 39 language value​ 10 (1), 29–44 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue larissa d’angelo a third reason for the value of sentence headlines is that presentations using sentence headlines tend to have significantly fewer slides (alley and robertshaw 2004), thus reducing the frenetic pace that weakens so many presentations. the reason for the reduction in the number of slides is that if the presenter cannot write a sentence for the slide that states its assertion, the design calls for the elimination of the slide (alley 2003, gottlieb 1985). once the presenter has established what the main concept of the slide is with the sentence headline, he or she supports that concept primarily with images and with words (where needed). images, if well-conceived, can in fact communicate information much more quickly to the audience than blocks of text. if a block of text must be included in a slide, it should be no longer than two lines, including the headline, because audiences are much more likely to read blocks of text with one or two lines than longer blocks. because audiences are more likely to remember lists of twos, threes, and fours than lists of fives, sixes, or sevens, lists with more than four items should be avoided. moreover, when a long list is presented, the audience sees the length, perhaps reads the first couple of items, and then tends to give up on the remaining items. when a long list must necessarily be included in a slide, presenters should then place only the four most important items from that list onto the slide and reserve the less important items for the speech (alley and robertshaw 2004). another useful technique that comes with the use of the assertion-evidence structure is to be generous in the use of white space, because it prevents a slide from seeming overcrowded (hill 2004). white space not only allows the audience to separate the items in the slide’s body, but also helps viewers find a logical order in which to view them. presenting something following a non-standard ppt layout requires a deep understanding of the subject matter as bullet point prompts are no longer available. therefore, the assertion-evidence structure demands a much greater preparation by the presenter than a standard ppt presentation, besides the difficulty of applying changes to 40 language value​ 10 (1), 29–44 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue power point presentations in the classroom: re-evaluating the genre the typography and layout of slides. however, as the previous section demonstrated, the results of applying this new design are well worth the effort. iv. conclusions the present research has highlighted the potentialities of presentation software such as microsoft ppt, as well as the numerous criticisms this genre has collected in recent years. ppt slides have become the standard format to present ideas and transfer knowledge not only in governmental and business settings, but within the academy as well. in the humanities, ppt presentations have spread incredibly fast and have become the norm not only in classrooms but also in academic conferences and seminars. viewers have come to expect (and respect) what has been defined as ‘group wall reading’, often not realizing that ppt slides are not always the best vehicle of information and can easily become a medium, which hinders communication instead of facilitating it. there are numerous faults inherent to the software, such as the fact that very little information can be conveyed on each slide, limiting content to a series of bulleted lists and fragmented sentences. microsoft automatically suggests a standard form of presentation, rich in special effects that can be visually appealing but also unnecessarily distracting. all these elements allow slides to dominate over the speaker and instead of being a means to enrich messages, slides become the message itself. the dominance of projected slides over the speaker often means that presenters forego an important opportunity to connect with the audience and in many cases the message is lost because of a lack of clarity, overwhelming information or simply a lack of interest. given the numerous drawbacks this software has, why should academics still use it? because, as the results of this research have demonstrated, despite its potentially dangerous features, a ppt – if well used – can become a tremendously effective communication tool. because of its multimodal nature, it is capable of combining text, but also images, graphs, movies and music. if slides are properly reorganized, redundant 41 language value​ 10 (1), 29–44 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue larissa d’angelo text and disturbing special effects eliminated, and images are added to complement the message, a ppt can become an excellent medium of communication. in order to achieve this aim, a presenter must necessarily regain confidence in his/her oratorical skills, allowing slides to simply enrich and accompany what the presenter has to say, instead of dominating the presentation with redundant text, lists and graphs, which are bound to be read aloud, sadly distancing the presenter from the audience. making a transition from the now ‘traditional’ slide format, to a format such as the assertion evidence structure, is not an easy and requires substantial work, a deep knowledge of the subject matter and most of all, enough confidence to ‘navigate solo’, not using the software as a mere prompter but as an accompanying and enriching tool. references alley, m.​​ 2003. ​the craft of scientific presentations.​ new york: springer-verlag. alley, m. and robertshaw, h. 2004. ​rethinking the design of presentation slides: the importance of writing sentence headlines. asme imece (anaheim, ca: asme, 2004), paper 61827. atkinson, c. 2005. ​beyond bullet points: how to use microsoft powerpoint to create presentations that inform, motivate, and inspire​. redmond, wa: microsoft press. atkinson, c. ​​2009. “the problem with powerpoint”. ​bbc news. 19 august 2009. http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr//2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8207849.stm doumont, j. 2005. “the cognitive style of powerpoint: not all slides are evil”. technical​ communication​, 52(1), 64-70. 42 language value​ 10 (1), 29–44 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue power point presentations in the classroom: re-evaluating the genre gaudelli a., alley m., garner, j. and zappe s​​. 2009. “common use of powerpoint versus the assertion-evidence structure: a cognitive psychology perspective”. technical communication​ 56, 331-345. goffman, e.​​ 1981. ​forms of talk​. oxford: basil blackwell. gordon, s. 2001. ​really bad powerpoint (and how to avoid it). 25 august 2009. http://www.sethgodin.com/freeprize/reallybad-1.pdf gottlieb, l. 1984. “new-breed presentationists sometimes closely collaborate on presentations”. ​proceedings of the 1984 professional communication society conference of the ieee​. atlantic city, nj: ieee. gottlieb, l. 1985. ​well organized ideas fight audience confusion​. livermore, ca: lawrence livermore national laboratory. gross a., harmon j. and reidy m. 2002. ​communicating science: the scientific article from the 17th century to the present.​ oxford: oxford university press. hill, j.​​ 2004. “the writing on the wall”. ​presentations ​(march 31, 2004). keedy, h. 1982. ​pro visuals can improve your presentations​, sixth annual practical conference on communication proceedings (knoxville, tn: university of tennessee, october 22-23, 1982), 13-34. keller, j. y.​​ 2004. “is powerpoint the devil?”. ​chicago tribune​ (23 january 2004). kumar, m. p. 2013. “preferences of undergraduate medical students: electronic and non-electronic teaching methods in pathology”. ​international journal of research in health sciences​, 1, 239–241. lai y., tsai h. and yu p. (2011). “screen-capturing system with two-layer display for powerpoint presentation to enhance classroom education”. ​educational technology & society,​ 14(3), 69-81. martin f., and carr m. l. 2015. “an exploratory study on k-12 teachers' use of technology and multimedia in the classroom”. ​journal of educational technology,​ 12(1), 7-14. 43 language value​ 10 (1), 29–44 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue larissa d’angelo matthews, d. l. 1990. “the scientific poster: guidelines for effective visual communication”. ​technical communication​ 37(3), 225–232. mayer, e. r.​​ 2001. ​multimedia learning.​ cambridge: cambridge university press. myers​​, g. 2000. “powerpoints: technology, lectures, and changing genres”. in trosborg, a. (ed.) ​analysing professional genres​. amsterdam: ​john benjamins publishing company. myers, g.​​ 2003. “words, pictures and facts in academic discourse”. ​iberica​, 6, 3-13. orlikowski j. w., and yates j. (eds.), “genre repertoire: examining the structuring of communicative practices in organizations”. ​administrative science quarterly​, 39, 541-574. parker, i.​​ 2001. “absolute powerpoint”. ​the new yorker​ (28 may 2001). pece, s. g. 2005. ​the powerpoint society: the influence of powerpoint in the u.s. government and bureaucracy.​ ma thesis, virginia state university. rowley-jolivet, e. 2002. “visual discourse in scientific conference papers: a genre-based study”. ​english for specific purposes​,​ ​21,19-40. schwartz, j. 2003. “the level of discourse continues to slide”. ​the new york times (28 september 2003). sommers, a. 2008. ​tips for designing persuasive slide presentations. ​07 june 2018. http://www.businessperform.com/articles/training-practice/slide-presentation-des ign-tips.html stoner, g. m. 2009. ​effectively communicating with visual aids​. 10 july 2018. mattstoner.net/presentations/effective_visuals.pdf swales, j. 2004. ​research genres. explorations and applications. cambridge: cambridge university press. tufte​​, ​e.​​ 1990. ​envisioning information​. cheshire: graphics press llc. tufte, e.​​ 2003. ​the cognitive style of power point​. cheshire: ​graphics press llc. 44 language value​ 10 (1), 29–44 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue power point presentations in the classroom: re-evaluating the genre tufte, e.​​ 2009. “power point is evil”. ​wired ​(november 2009). 45 language value​ 10 (1), 29–44 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue larissa d’angelo received: 6 may 2018 accepted: 23 july 2018 46 language value​ 10 (1), 29–44 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue language value december 2020, volume 13, number 1 pp. 58-77 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es issn 1989-7103 language value, issn 1989-7103 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2020.13.3 58 audiovisual translation tools for the assessment of hard of hearing students ana maría hornero corisco ahornero@unizar.es pilar gonzalez-vera pilargv@unizar.es university of zaragoza, spain abstract the spanish university requires all its students to reach a specific level in a foreign language, as part of the requisites to obtain their degrees. at present, there is a lack of homogeneity in the criteria set for the assessment of hard of hearing students‟ skills. a preliminary survey reveals the current measures applied in a number of spanish universities. our suggestion is that a uniform listening test should be implemented for hard of hearing students. the main goal of our research was to check what kind of test is more adequate for these students. for that purpose, several hard of hearing students did different listening activities using audiovisual materials that had been previously edited and adapted to their special needs. they also responded to different question tasks: multiple-choice, true/false, gap-filling. the results throw some light on the type of test format that should be used with the hard of hearing community. keywords: efl assessment; sdh; hearing-impaired university students; audiovisual texts; listening comprehension test; spanish university i. introduction the spanish university requires all its students to reach a specific level in a foreign language –established by the common european framework of reference for languages (henceforth cefr)– as part of the requisites to obtain their degrees in any discipline. that means all students must pass a language exam designed and conducted by the universities themselves or, alternatively, take an external exam (such as the cambridge english preliminary (pet) or first (fce)), to provide evidence of that command of a foreign language, which is, predominantly, english. hard of hearing students must also comply with this requisite. the university of zaragoza issues the certacles b1 certificate through the centro universitario de lenguas modernas. this certificate, approved by the crue (conferencia de rectores de las universidades españolas), the government of aragón and the ministry of education, is issued by spanish universities i . the test assesses https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0000-2714 mailto:ahornero@unizar.es https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4919-8113 mailto:%20pilargv@unizar.es audiovisual translation tools for the assessment of hard of hearing students language value 13(1), 58–77 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 59 reading comprehension, listening comprehension, writing and speaking. the details on the assessment of every skill are shown on the web page of the centro universitario de lenguas modernas ii . the royal decree 1791/2010 of 30 december, on the status of university students, establishes that the assessment tests must adapt to the needs of students with disabilities iii , starting with the university entrance examination, as specified in the royal decree 1892/2008, 14 november iv . in the case of students entering a master‟s degree programme, the university should also provide support, advice and consider the adaptations required. after some months of cooperation with the office of disability services at the university of zaragoza we had the suspicion that there was lack of homogeneity in the criteria set for the assessment of hard of hearing candidates in their foreign language exams nationwide. ii. literature review this work has been inspired by previous research on subtitling as well as by the work carried out by professionals related to students with disabilities. in this line, a useful starting point has been the guía de adaptaciones en la universidad, de la red de servicios de apoyo a personas con discapacidad en la universidad (sapdu, 2015) vii , written in collaboration with the national organisation of the spanish blind (once) and the crue. this association comprises 76 spanish universities. in the section on teaching, it recommends the use of subtitles when using videos in class. we also consulted the standard une 153010 (aenor, 2012) viii and the analysis of current practices in subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing in spain, like the work by báez montero and fernández soneira (2010). they undertake a revision of the features that characterise subtitle recipients (i.e., deaf readers of closed-captions) that present deep deafness or have a partial loss of hearing. our research is aimed not at profound prelocutive deaf students, whose “hearing loss appears during gestation or within the first two years of life” (fischer, 2012, p.306). these students are exempted from taking the listening and oral tests. it is aimed, ana maría hornero corisco and pilar gonzález-vera language value 13(1), 59–77 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 60 instead, at postlocutive deaf students, for whom subtitles should work well increasing the exposure time of the captions on the screen, and at implanted deaf, who may be even able to read unadapted captions. also, helpful has been pereira (2010), whose contribution intends to check the validity and functionality of a set of technical, orthotypographical and linguistic criteria for elaborating subtitles for deaf and hard of hearing adults in spain. moreover, lorenzo‟s (2010) recommendations serve as a guide to be taken into consideration when drafting the spanish standard for subtitling for deaf and hard of hearing for digital television. her recommendations are distributed into three levels of interest: the technical, the linguistic and the cultural level. lorenzo and pereira also (2011) present some of the most frequent difficulties met by subtitlers of audiovisual texts for the deaf, highlighting oral language comprehension problems and comprehension problems derived from culture and intertextuality. pazó (2011) supports the issue of adapted subtitles that allow the deaf and hard of hearing viewers to exercise their right to information. for that purpose, she explains the need and the advantages of adapted subtitles and describes that process of adaptation. varela romero‟s (2011) analysis makes clear the urgent need of guides for subtitlers, which should, among other things, contain glossaries of the commonest vocabulary for deaf viewers as well as information about the structures that facilitate the decoding of the message. moreover, talaván (2019) points out the efficiency of the use of subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing (sdh) as a pedagogical tool in l2 settings, particularly in the enhancement of listening and writing skills. these research articles, among others, have been taken into consideration for the elaboration of our proposal. iii. case study iii.1. participants the office for students with disabilities at the university of zaragoza provided 28 hard of hearing students (all of them had partial hearing loss and used hearing aids or had cochlear implants). they were divided into two groups: group a included those with lower linguistic abilities, and group b were more mature linguistically. each of these groups was then subdivided into two, a1-a2 and b1-b2, so that all students could take audiovisual translation tools for the assessment of hard of hearing students language value 13(1), 58–77 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 61 all test formats, which would allow them to have a broader vision of assessment methodologies; the results obtained would also be more reliable. iii.2. methodology the main interest of this research was to check what kind of test was more adequate for hard of hearing students. three types of listening comprehension tests were distributed, where all the questions were closed, so as to get the most objective results. our study, structured in two stages, had as a point of departure the results of the preliminary survey, which reveals the criteria of the different spanish universities regarding the requirements needed in the case of hard of hearing students. then we proceeded, in the first place, to carry out a series of listening activities in which different test formats were used. an analysis followed that included both the comparison of the students‟ results in the activities proposed and a post-questionnaire where students assessed the activities. iii.2.1. preliminary survey in order to verify this, we designed a short survey and the office of disability services at the university of zaragoza distributed it to the 58 spanish universities which belong to the sapdu network (red de servicios de apoyo a personas con discapacidad en la universidad, in spanish). the aim was to obtain a clearer map of the skills currently considered in the assessment of the foreign language ability of hard of hearing students. at this stage, we needed to find out: a) the level of command of a foreign language required in each university to obtain a bachelor degree or to enrol in a master‟s programme. b) what skills hard of hearing students need to pass that exam. c) how their listening skills are assessed, and more precisely, whether they had to take the same listening tests as the other students. how their oral skills are assessed, and more precisely, whether they had to take the same oral tests as the other students. ana maría hornero corisco and pilar gonzález-vera language value 13(1), 59–77 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 62 iii.2.1.a. answers a total of eighteen universities, namely, the university of alicante, the autonomous university of barcelona, the university of barcelona, two campuses of the carlos iii university of madrid, the catholic university of valencia, two campuses of the complutense university of madrid, the university of córdoba, the jaume i university, the university of la coruña, the university of la rioja, the university of málaga, the miguel hernández university, the university of oviedo, the comillas pontifical university, the university of salamanca, the university of santiago de compostela, the university of valencia and the university of zaragoza, participated in the survey, which represents 31% of the total number addressed. the number of hard of hearing students ranged from three (university of oviedo) to fifty (university of valencia and complutense university of madrid, in two campuses v . the results of our observation were the following: a) with regard to the level of command of a foreign language required to obtain a bachelor‟s degree or to enrol in a master‟s programme, in the majority of cases, 15 universities (83.25%) b1 is the requirement. in the two universities of barcelona (11.11%) it is b2; only one, the miguel hernández university, answered that no level is required. b) there seems to be certain homogeneity in the universities‟ criteria for the skills assessed in the case of hard of hearing students. three skills are tested in the majority of the enquired universities: writing in 17 (94.35%), listening in 16 (88.8%) and reading in 14 (77.7%), while speaking is only required in eight universities (44.4%). two universities did not answer this question. c) for students who do not have a disability the oral production test may consist of a dialogue or/and the exposition of a subject during 7-10 minutes. as the description of the test points out, two tasks are undertaken and the test is recorded vi . when asked about how they assess the oral production skills of their hard of hearing students, the results were: 8 audiovisual translation tools for the assessment of hard of hearing students language value 13(1), 58–77 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 63 universities did not answer this question, 7 adapt or modify the test, according to the level of hearing loss, the adaptation consisting in a time extension; and 3 universities admitted that the hard of hearing students take the same test as the rest of students. there is, therefore, no agreement on the type of oral production test for hard of hearing students. for students who do not have a disability he listening comprehension test consists in hearing or watching a minimum of two and a maximum of four documents, where students have to answer multiple-choice, true/false, matching pair questions. as to how hard of hearing students are tested in their listening skills, five universities did not answer this question, three offer a lip-reading test, and three admitted that the hard of hearing take the same test as the rest of students. the rest adapt or modify the test, according to the level of hearing loss: the listening test may be replaced with a written exam, or may be combined with lip-reading; in other cases, the adaptation may consist in a time extension. the answers of the universities do not specify how they grade this level of impairment, although, according to the information provided by the office of disability services at the university of zaragoza, the procedure for grading is similar in all universities. all this shows that there is no agreement on the type of listening test for hard of hearing students. this encouraged us to suggest a method, supported by previous research on accessibility (lorenzo & pereira, 2011; pereira, 2010) and usability of subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing, to assess listening comprehension skills in hard of hearing students. iii.2.2. the texts iii.2.2.a. subtitling the three texts chosen for this study complied with the b1 level of english (according to the cefrl) ix . they were documentaries with only one voice, the narrator‟s, dealing with the orinoco river, the process of mummification and the australian landmark uluru x . they lasted for three minutes each, following the recommendations of scholars like rost (2002) and talaván (2013), and they were also self-contained so that their comprehension did not depend on previous scenes and the level of concentration required was not too high. in all the cases, they were listened three times. the clips on ana maría hornero corisco and pilar gonzález-vera language value 13(1), 59–77 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 64 the orinoco river and the process of mummification were subtitled in english according to the established conventions of sdh (subtitling for deaf and hard of hearing) included in the present spanish regulation une-153010 (aenor, 2012). besides this, they were also prepared for lip-reading xi . the subtitles were positioned near the bottom-centre of the screen. as pereira (2010, p.90) points out, “deaf and hard of hearing viewers are used to this format since most television channels, following the standard une 153010 recommendations, use this format for non-simultaneous subtitles”. we used an opaque box so that the text would not fade into the background. only one colour was used in the clip, as there was only one voice, the narrator‟s. the subtitling process also included the adaptation of the reading speed to sdh. according to some studies carried out in the united kingdom, the reading ability of prelocutive deaf viewers is one or two words per second, which means that subtitles should be displayed between one and five seconds longer than for hearing viewers or postlocutive deaf viewers (pereira, 2010). thus, the six-second rule used in general subtitling that supports a reading speed of 17 cps (characters per second) was replaced with 15 cps in sdh, in accordance with the une-153010 (aenor, 2012). according to báez montero (2010, p.39) “research on the reading levels of the deaf reveals that the population that generally finishes compulsory school reaches a reading-writing level comparable only to the reading-writing level of a hearing counterpart aged 10”. furthermore, she points out: because of educational issues (…) the deaf users‟ command of a second language (l2) or foreign language in a written version does not allow them to read at the same rate found for users reading a first language (l1). this is why it will be essential to adapt the speed of the captions to their needs so that they can grasp the actual message of the captions (báez montero, 2010, p.42). therefore, we had to opt for the strategy of omission in those cases in which the image allowed the students to infer the referent. as is well known, overall comprehension of a subtitled audiovisual text does not rely only on subtitles. for hard of hearing youngsters, image is probably the main way to build meaning (lorenzo, 2010, p.146). we also reduced the number of characters, using „river‟ or „delta‟ as a substitute for „the orinoco river‟ or „the orinoco delta‟, respectively, in order to match the speed-reading restrictions and facilitate the reading, respecting the technical limits of the subtitle, being at all times loyal to the content of the video clip (pazó, 2011). in addition, in the audiovisual translation tools for the assessment of hard of hearing students language value 13(1), 58–77 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 65 clip on the orinoco we had to cope with another problem: vocabulary. we cannot forget that the hearing impaired do not have a wide range of vocabulary in their mother tongue or in their second language. therefore, the strategy applied in those cases was the replacement of the complex term „capybara‟ with an easier one, „rodent‟. this substitution technique is frequent in the creation of subtitles for the hard of hearing. the structure and vocabulary of the adapted subtitle gets closer to their linguistic competence, making a more complete reading comprehension possible. however, the adapted subtitle does not always correspond with the audio, leading therefore to the feeling that some information gets lost. this could possibly be avoided by putting into effect awareness-raising campaigns (pazó, 2011). in the clip about the process of mummification, as in the previous one, we found problems of relatively hard terminology and reading-speed. moreover, due to the somehow technical nature of the text, there were originally more difficult words and syntax was more complex, too, for this specific audience. therefore, we had to pay special attention to the choices made in terms of structures and lexis, making sure that the chosen elements would be understood by deaf viewers, relating new knowledge (lexis, cultural referents or structures) to the knowledge that they already had (lorenzo 2010, p.143). for this reason, the vocabulary was adapted, following the same strategy as in the clip on the orinoco. we replaced those terms with others with similar or identical meaning. for example: table 1. adaptation of the vocabulary in the text on the process of mummification original version subtitled version pouch bag religious significance religious value wading bird bird bill beak votive offerings offerings shroud cloth we omitted them whenever possible, as in „imported lead-based pigment‟, which was reduced to „imported pigment‟. ana maría hornero corisco and pilar gonzález-vera language value 13(1), 59–77 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 66 about syntax, we cannot forget that the passive voice is too abstract for the hard of hearing, although not so for regular students. this led us to turn the passive voice into active or to use the continuous form, simplifying both complex structures and verb forms, according to the guidelines proposed by the une-153010 (aenor, 2012, p.29), as shown in table 2: table 2. adaptation of the syntax in the text on the process of mummification. original version subtitled version all moisture was eliminated eliminating all moisture being mummified with a human mummified with a human a portrait panel was placed over the face a portrait was over the face a large linen cloth was wrapped around the mummy a large linen cloth wrapped around the mummy very few red mummies are known to exist very few red mummies exist all moisture was eliminated eliminating all moisture we also considered maintaining those words which could be clearly identified due to their position in the sentence. this was the case of „very few red mummies are known to exist‟, in which, instead of subtitling it as „we know very few mummies‟ our option was „very few red mummies exist‟, keeping the word „exist‟ at the end and avoiding confusion in the listener, who could have identified it in the original soundtrack. as far as the reading-speed problem is concerned, in the clip on the process of mummification the solution was given by the video itself, as there were long pauses while the process described was portrayed. this gave us more time and extra frames for the subtitles. iii.2.2.b. lip-reading the lip-reading test was carried out with small groups of three to five students in a peaceful and well-lit classroom. the preparation of the lip-reading was based on the instructions followed by supervisors who administer versions of the cambridge pet listening tests for the hearing impaired. it required previous training, following carefully the indications provided in the supervisor‟s booklet. the reader asked the students to audiovisual translation tools for the assessment of hard of hearing students language value 13(1), 58–77 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 67 read first the instructions of the test. she stood facing the students at a short distance, so that they could easily read her lips. the reader had trained the reading, marking pauses along the text with asterisks. those pauses allowed the students to read the questions or check their answers. the intonation of the reading sounded as natural as possible. the examiner read the texts three times with a careful articulation, pausing at the asterisks. when she stopped, the students had time to read the questions again or take notes. iii.2.3. the tests three different test formats, multiple-choice questions, true or false, and fill-in-thegaps, were chosen to test the students‟ skills with documentaries about the orinoco, the process of mummification and the uluru, respectively. while in the first and the second case students had to make inferences, gathering different pieces of information in order to answer the questions, in the third test, they were asked more specific information. iii.2.4. implementation students of groups a1 and b1 watched the subtitled clip on the orinoco three times. simultaneously, the students of groups a2 and b2 took the same test using the method of lip-reading in a different room. once finished, the former subgroups took the test on the process of mummification but this time with the lip-reading method and the latter with subtitles. finally, all the students took the listening test on the uluru and watched the video without subtitles three times. iii.3. results and discussion the results in the multiple-choice format test based on the clip of the orinoco revealed that group a (see figure 1) behaved unevenly in the lip-reading test, none obtaining more than 4 out of 10: 0 (40%), 2 (40%), 4 (20%); their results were much better in the test based on the subtitled clip, in which 90% obtained a score of 4 or more: 0 (10%), 4 (30%), 6 (40%) and 8 (20%). ana maría hornero corisco and pilar gonzález-vera language value 13(1), 59–77 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 68 figure 1. results group a. orinoco. in general, group b (see figure 2) obtained better results than a, scoring between 6 and 10 in the lip-reading test of the orinoco: 6 (25%), 8 (50%) and 10 (25%), a fact that could be expected, as this group was more mature linguistically. moreover, the results in the subtitled test improved those of the lip-reading test: 8 (50%) and 10 (50%), that is, the lowest score was 8; and, consequently, the scores obtained in the subtitled test were higher in both groups. 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 0 2 4 6 8 10 orinoco sub orinoco lip figure 2. results group b. orinoco. in the case of the test with a true/false format based on the clip about the process of mummification, group a (see figure 3) distributed its scores in the lip-reading test as follows: 0 (10%), 4 (30%), 6 (20%), 8 (20%), 10 (20%), which means that 60% achieved 6 or more. the results for lip-reading were better in this text than in the orinoco text. this could be due to the format itself, as students had to choose between two options, whereas in the previous format they had four. by contrast, the results in the test based on the subtitled clip did not show remarkable differences in group a compared to the lip-reading test, although they were slightly better here: 2 (20%), 4 (20%), 6 (40%), 8 (10%) and 10 (10%). audiovisual translation tools for the assessment of hard of hearing students language value 13(1), 58–77 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 69 0 10 20 30 40 50 0 2 4 6 8 10 mummification sub mummification lip figure 3. results group a. the process of mummification. it is worth drawing attention to the distribution of the scores in group b (see figure 4). even though this group of students was stronger than a, their results in the lip-reading test were even weaker than in group a. none of the students in group b scored more than 4: 0 (50%) and 4 (50%), all of them failing in the lip-reading test on this occasion. nevertheless, all group b students who took the test using the adapted subtitled version succeeded, scoring 6 or more: 6 (25%), 8 (50%) and 10 (25%). they did far better than with the lip-reading test. 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 mummification sub mummification lip figure 4. results group b. the process of mummification. the third test was a short documentary about the uluru rock, with no subtitles on the screen. the students had to fill in the blank with one word that was said in the video. group a (see figure 5) was mainly lost, as the results indicate: 75% scored 0, 15% scored 2 and 10% scored 4. although group b (see figure 6) obtained better results, they were by no means good, being concentrated on 2 and 4 and amounting to 75% together: 0 (12.5%), 2 (37.5%), 4 (37.5%) and 6 (12.5%). this confirms that group b was more mature linguistically and it may throw some light on the type of format that should not be used with the hard of hearing community. the overall results were too ana maría hornero corisco and pilar gonzález-vera language value 13(1), 59–77 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 70 low in both groups and the lack of adaptations let the hard of hearing students in a position of inferiority with respect to hearing students, as they are confronted with a double problem: the comprehension of the text and its audibility. 0 20 40 60 80 0 2 4 6 8 figure 5. results group a. uluru. 0 10 20 30 40 0 2 4 6 8 figure 6. results group b. uluru. iii.4. final questionnaire once the activities were done, students had to complete a final questionnaire (table 3) concerning their opinion about the activities carried out. its aim was to complement the information received from the objective test results. thus, students were asked: table 3. final questionnaire 1. which of the three tests has been easier for you? a) lip-reading b) video c) subtitled video 2. have you previously done any listening comprehension activities in a foreign language? a) yes b) no audiovisual translation tools for the assessment of hard of hearing students language value 13(1), 58–77 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 71 3. if your answer was yes, select which method you have previously used for the listening comprehension activity (you can mark more than one answer): a) lip-reading b) subtitled video c) audio track 4. have you ever tested your listening skills? a) yes b) no 5. select which method you have used for the assessment of listening comprehension: a) lip-reading b) subtitled video c) audio track 6. what has been most difficult for you in each text? number from most difficult (1) to least difficult (3) in each case: text about the orinoco river vocabulary grammatical structures text speed text about the mummification process vocabulary grammatical structures text speed text about mount uluru vocabulary grammatical structures text speed 7. what kinds of questions have you found most difficult? number from most difficult (1) to least difficult (3) in each case: multiple choice fill the gaps true/false the final questionnaire brought together the opinion of the students about the test format they liked most. the preference for the subtitled video clearly stood out in both ana maría hornero corisco and pilar gonzález-vera language value 13(1), 59–77 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 72 groups. however, group a also considered the option of lip-reading, even though in very low percentages. when asked what type of test format was the easiest, the preferences varied, depending on the group. in group a 66.6% opted for the true/false format, whereas in group b, more mature students, their preferences were divided. overall, there was a common agreement that the most difficult format type was that of filling in the gaps. finally, as for the students‟ previous experience with listening skills, in the case of group a 80% admitted they had never done any listening comprehension activity in class. an even higher percentage (90%) was also for those that had never taken a listening test and the method used with those who had done so (10%) had been the traditional test based on the listening of an audio track. in contrast with them, 62.5% students in group b had done listening comprehension activities in class –this may have been another reason for their better results, too. iv. conclusions the preliminary survey completed by 18 universities revealed that in 83.25% of them the level of a foreign language required to obtain a degree is b1. in that exam on the level of a foreign language the assessment of the listening skills is required in 88.8% of the cases. but there is no agreement as to how those listening skills are tested in the case of hard of hearing students. it seems that universities tend to adapt the test, according to the level of impairment. our suggestion is that a listening test should be implemented for hard of hearing students, provided they have partial hearing loss and use hearing aids or have cochlear implants. students with severe hearing loss should ask the office for students with disabilities at their universities to prepare a curriculum accommodation plan. if the student succeeds in the assessment of the other skills, s/he will receive a certificate saying that „the candidate is exempt from satisfying the full range of assessment objectives in the examination‟. the main goal of our research was to check what kind of test is more adequate for these students. for that purpose, they did different listening activities using audiovisual materials that had previously been edited and adapted to the students‟ special needs. they also responded to different question tasks: multiple-choice, true/false, gap-filling. audiovisual translation tools for the assessment of hard of hearing students language value 13(1), 58–77 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 73 the results show that in the multiple-choice format test the scores obtained in the subtitled test were higher in both groups. in the true/false format test, all group b students who took the test using the adapted subtitled version succeeded. they did far better than with the lip-reading test. last, the third documentary showed no subtitles on the screen and a gap-filling format test. the low results in this case may throw some light on the type of test format that should not be used with hard of hearing students. the final questionnaire concerning the students‟ personal opinion about the activities carried out matched their preference for the subtitled video clip with the better results obtained in it. it also confirmed that the most difficult test format, the gap-filling format, was regarded as the least favoured one, possibly because it involves a higher cognitive effort. therefore, we would recommend not using it in the case of hard of hearing students. we agree with báez montero (2010) that the community of hard of hearing students “demands and requires the use of captions, not only as a source of information but also as a medium for overcoming the communication barriers which the members of their community have been encountering for centuries and which need to be abolished” (p.27). we firmly believe that the environment of the hard of hearing community must provide all the necessary tools to overcome the communication barriers they meet on a daily basis. subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing (sdh), moreover, foster their learning of oral languages, as they rely on another semiotic code, the image on the screen (varela romero, 2011). our concern about the needs of these students also motivated our participation in the preparation of the protocolo de adaptación referido a la acreditación del nivel b1 en lengua extranjera: inglés específico para personas con discapacidad auditiva for the university of zaragoza. with this goal in mind, we can make the best of the technical resources available and adapt them to their users‟ needs. moreover, subtitles for the hard of hearing should be regarded not merely as “an aid to understanding the audiovisual text but also as an enjoyable system to learn oral languages” (lorenzo, 2010, p.146). universities should count on professionals that create these adapted subtitles or train their evaluators so that they can make the adaptations required. ana maría hornero corisco and pilar gonzález-vera language value 13(1), 59–77 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 74 former research and the results obtained in our tests support our suggestion to promote the use of adapted subtitled video clips for hard of hearing students who need to pass the level of a foreign language required in a spanish university. the use of audiovisual texts for that purpose would help them overcome the barrier of a foreign oral language with the aid of a visual support, something that is not provided by the traditional listening to an audio track. the fact that image is for many deaf and hard of hearing probably the main way to build meaning cannot be overlooked. moreover, the student would face a more realistic text, more in line with the situations s/he has to deal with every day. the next step would be to make it extensive to the teaching and development of oral skills in the classroom. taking a step further, our suggestion would be to encourage all universities to use these tools and materials for the assessment of the standards of competence required in foreign languages. this would open the way to homogeneity in the type of assessment of the skills and the number of skills assessed in the spanish university. notes i see general information about certacles on https://culm.xxx.es/sites/culm. xxx.es/files/users/jjc/1._que_es_un_certacles.pdf ii see general information on https://culm.xxx.es/sites/culm.xxx.es/files/users/jjc/7.1._certacles_b1__descripcion_formal_del_examen.pdf iii “art culo 2 . studiantes con discapacidad. las pruebas de evaluación deberán adaptarse a las necesidades de los estudiantes con discapacidad, procediendo los centros y los departamentos a las adaptaciones metodológicas, temporales y espaciales precisas”. iv real decreto 1892/2008, de 14 de noviembre, por el que se regulan las condiciones para el acceso a las enseñanzas universitarias oficiales de grado y los procedimientos de admisión a las universidades públicas españolas (boe 24 de noviembre de 2008): “art culo 19. studiantes que presentan alg n tipo de discapacidad. estas medidas podrán consistir en la adaptación de los tiempos, la elaboración de modelos especiales de examen y la puesta a disposición del estudiante de los medios materiales y humanos, de las asistencias y apoyos y de las ayudas t cnicas que precise para la realizaci n de la prueba de acceso, as como en la garantía de accesibilidad de la información y la comunicación de los procesos y la del recinto o espacio físico donde esta se desarrolle”. v a word of caution: the number of hearing impaired students given by the universities that filled out the survey may not be the real facts: some students never go to the office for students with disabilities or never reveal their special needs to the institution. vi see the formal description of the test at https://culm.xxx.es/sites/culm.xxx.es/files/users/jjc/7.1._certacles_b1_descripcion_formal_del_examen.pd f https://culm.xxx.es/sites/culm.%20xxx.es/files/users/jjc/1._que_es_un_certacles.pdf https://culm.xxx.es/sites/culm.%20xxx.es/files/users/jjc/1._que_es_un_certacles.pdf https://culm.xxx.es/sites/culm.xxx.es/files/users/jjc/7.1._certacles_b1_-_descripcion_formal_del_examen.pdf https://culm.xxx.es/sites/culm.xxx.es/files/users/jjc/7.1._certacles_b1_-_descripcion_formal_del_examen.pdf https://culm.xxx.es/sites/culm.xxx.es/files/users/jjc/7.1._certacles_b1_descripcion_formal_del_examen.pdf https://culm.xxx.es/sites/culm.xxx.es/files/users/jjc/7.1._certacles_b1_descripcion_formal_del_examen.pdf audiovisual translation tools for the assessment of hard of hearing students language value 13(1), 58–77 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 75 vii https://ouad.xxx.es/sites/ouad.xxx.es/files/users/ouad/guia%20de%20adaptaciones_digital.pdf viii current studies of accessibility in immersive media show that “home users are willing to accept the implementation of new features in sdh in immersive content”, which might result in the introduction of modifications in the spanish subtitling standard une 153010 (agulló & matamala, 2019). ix one of the authors has been responsible for years for the preparation of the english test of the university of zaragoza entrance examination, which assesses different competences in that level). x as pointed out earlier, the listening skills of regular students may be assessed with audiovisual texts, although in this case dialogues among characters are expected. xi the authors prepared the subtitles for the videos, as well as the lip-readings they were specifically produced for this study. the idea would be to have a number of subtitled videos prepared to test deaf students at the university of zaragoza, a service which would be provided by the office for students with disabilities. references aenor. (2012). actualizaciones de la norma une-153010. subtitulado para personas sordas y personas con discapacidad auditiva. retrieved from http://www.aenor.es/aenor/normas/normas/fichanorma.asp?tipo=n&codigo=n0 049426#.v02v9lddkee agulló, b. & matamala, a. (2019). subtitling for the deaf and hard-of-hearing in immersive environments: results from a focus group. the journal of specialised translation, 32, 217–234. báez montero, i. & fernández soneira, a. (2010). spanish deaf people as recipients of closed captioning. in a. matamala and p. orero (eds.), listening to subtitles: subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing listening to subtitles (pp.25-44). bern: peter lang. fischer, m. b. (2012). translating fictional dialogue for children and young people. berlin: frank & timme gmbh. lorenzo, l. & a. pereira. (2011). deaf children and their access to audiovisual texts: educational failure and the helplessness of the subtitles. in e. di giovanni. (ed.), diálogos intertextuales 5: between the text and the receiver: translation and accessibility (pp.185-201). frankfurt am main: peter lang. https://ouad.xxx.es/sites/ouad.xxx.es/files/users/ouad/guia%20de%20adaptaciones_digital.pdf http://www.aenor.es/aenor/normas/normas/fichanorma.asp?tipo=n&codigo=n0049426#.v02v9lddkee http://www.aenor.es/aenor/normas/normas/fichanorma.asp?tipo=n&codigo=n0049426#.v02v9lddkee ana maría hornero corisco and pilar gonzález-vera language value 13(1), 59–77 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 76 lorenzo, l. (2010). criteria for elaborating subtitles for deaf and hard of hearing children in spain; a guide of good practice. in matamala, a. and p. orero (eds.), listening to subtitles: subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing listening to subtitles (pp.139-147). bern: peter lang. pazó lorenzo, i. (2011). la adaptación del subtitulado para personas sordas”. in e. di giovanni (ed.), diálogos intertextuales 5: between the text and the receiver: translation and accessibility (pp.203-215). frankfurt am main: peter lang. pereira, a. (2010). criteria for elaborating subtitles for deaf and hard of hearing adults in spain: description of a case study. in a. matamala and p. orero (eds.), listening to subtitles: subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing (pp.87-102). bern: peter lang. royal decree no. 1892/2008 of 14 november, establishing the conditions for access to official university degrees and admission procedures to spanish public universities [real decreto 1892/2008, de 14 de noviembre, por el que se regulan las condiciones para el acceso a las enseñanzas universitarias oficiales de grado y los procedimientos de admisión a las universidades públicas españolas]. retrieved from https://www.boe.es/buscar/act.php?id=boe-a2008-18947 royal decree no. 1791/2010 of 30 december, which approves the statute of the university student [real decreto 1791/2010, de 30 de diciembre, por el que se aprueba el estatuto del estudiante universitario]. retrieved from http://sid.usal.es/leyes/discapacidad/15909/3-1-5/real-decreto-1791-2010-de-30de-diciembre-por-el-que-se-aprueba-el-estatuto-del-estudiante-universitario.aspx rost, m. (2002). teaching and researching listening. new york: routledge. sapdu. (2015). guía de adaptaciones en la universidad, de la red de servicios de apoyo a personas con discapacidad en la universidad. retrieved from http://sapdu.unizar.es/sites/default/files/guia%20de%20adaptaciones_digital. pdf talaván zanón, n. (2013). la subtitulación en el aprendizaje de lenguas extranjeras. barcelona: octaedro. https://www.boe.es/buscar/act.php?id=boe-a-2008-18947 https://www.boe.es/buscar/act.php?id=boe-a-2008-18947 http://sid.usal.es/leyes/discapacidad/15909/3-1-5/real-decreto-1791-2010-de-30-de-diciembre-por-el-que-se-aprueba-el-estatuto-del-estudiante-universitario.aspx http://sid.usal.es/leyes/discapacidad/15909/3-1-5/real-decreto-1791-2010-de-30-de-diciembre-por-el-que-se-aprueba-el-estatuto-del-estudiante-universitario.aspx http://sapdu.unizar.es/sites/default/files/guia%20de%20adaptaciones_digital.pdf http://sapdu.unizar.es/sites/default/files/guia%20de%20adaptaciones_digital.pdf audiovisual translation tools for the assessment of hard of hearing students language value 13(1), 58–77 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 77 talaván zanón, n. (2019). using subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing as an innovative pedagogical tool in the language class. ijes, 19(1), 21–40. varela romero, s. (2011). subtitulado para sordos: camino hacia una normativa. análisis del éxito comunicativo de chicken run y pinocho 3000. in e. di giovanni (ed.), diálogos intertextuales 5: between the text and the receiver: translation and accessibility (pp.247-259). frankfurt am main: peter lang. received: 23 january 2020 accepted 07 december 2020 cite this article as: hornero corisco, a. & gonzalez-vera, p. (2020). audiovisual translation tools for the assessment of hard of hearing students. language value, 13(1), 58-77. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.languagevalue.uji.es. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2020.13.3 issn 1989-7103 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ special issue: multimodality in elt language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2010, volume 2, number 1 pp. i-iv issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors i from the editors special issue: multimodality in elt this issue addresses multimodality in english language teaching. multimodality refers to the combination of various communicative modes (sound, images such as graphs or pictures, video, written text, transcribed speech, etc.) within one text. we talk of multimodal text because understanding that text implies understanding the interaction among all its components in the different formats. the challenge for linguists working in the field of language teaching is the need to conduct theoretical research on both the multimodal text structure and on the possible ways to adapt and integrate these multimodal texts into the design of pedagogical material. five papers dealing with different perspectives of multimodality are included in this volume. the first two articles by querol-julián and curado fuentes deal with the use of multimodal corpora, and the other three explore the design and implementation of multimodal texts in the classroom. while the article by busà suggests ways to implement multimodality to develop oral presentation skills, the fourth article by varaala and jalkanen discusses the issue of multimodal literacy and reading comprehension. finally, domínguez romero and maíz arévalo propose ways to test and implement listening comprehension materials. as mentioned above, two of the five articles use multimodal spoken corpora to examine ways in which such corpora may be utilised in two very different contexts. advances in corpus linguistics have witnessed a progress from one-million-word corpora to over two-billion-word corpora that were named third generation corpora. the term third generation corpora is now increasingly associated with “a new generation of corpora: the multi-modal, multi-media corpus – that which combines video, audio and textual records of naturally occurring discourse” (knight, evans, carter and adolphs 2009: 1). the corpora used by querol-julián and curado fuentes belong to this category. the first article by querol-julián deals with a multimodal spoken corpus of conference lectures. the second article examines a corpus of english, spanish and bilingual children’s conversations and investigates the use of children’s discourse for adapted http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� from the editors articles are copyrighted by their respective authors ii hypermedia content design. the corpus used for this study also contains the transcripts and media data associated to those conversations. in the first article, multimodality in discussion sessions: corpus compilation and pedagogical use, querol-julián analyses multimodal discourse in a corpus of spoken academic discussion sessions. she carries out a multilayered study of evaluation in two small comparable corpora of discussion sessions in conference paper presentations. the author seeks to find out new ways to analyse spoken texts from a multimodal perspective. the corpus used in this study includes the transcription of kinesic and paralinguistic features that co-express with the (also annotated) semantic evaluation performed by speakers in the corpus. she also identifies dialogic exchange patterns between discussants (becoming one of the first researchers to distinguish this speaker category in a corpus annotation scheme) and presenters. the article concludes by presenting possible pedagogical applications of her research and envisaging further research and applications. in the second article, curado fuentes uses the childes corpus to develop adaptive hypermedia content design. he explains how specific multimodal traits can be integrated within the design of pre-elementary school lessons. this author uses the childes corpus as a source for analysing spanish and english sub-corpora that are selected with this aim in mind. he shows how conversational patterns in collaborative situations in which children interact with adults are an interesting source of multimodal aspects that easily correlate with meta-discursive items and markers. in her article sounding natural: improving oral presentation skills, busà suggests ways to improve oral communication by creating tasks which integrate several discourse modes. her article describes an experimental approach to the use of multimedia texts in the university classroom, and she proposes the combination of different communication modes in spoken videos that are produced naturally by native speakers and which are not specifically designed for classroom use. busà discusses how this combination has the added value of giving students a sense of reality in the tasks performed and in the way they envisaged classroom input as well as in the output they were asked to achieve. for this author it is essential not only to explain spoken discourse features but also to evaluate how students use them after receiving multimodal input. thus, dependencies language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2010, volume 2, number 1 pp. i-iv issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors iii between modalities (speech and gestures, for example) are analysed in order to raise students’ awareness of the multimodal nature of communication. the fourth article, changing spaces, expanding mindsets: towards l2 literacies on a multimodal reading comprehension course, examines how content linking in multimodal texts creates new reading paths in which the reader is an active agent in the reading process. thus, user-based modality choice or cross-references between modalities are examples of how the new mindset for reading texts in a multimodal environment may work. in their article, varaala and jalkanen tackle two main issues: the added value that multimodality may or may not bring to language learning, and the assignment categories that are meaningful from a learner’s perspective. they point out how the volume of texts that are built on in a multimodal environment demands constant revision on the part of the teacher and suggest that check points should be an essential part in the design of a multimodal reading comprehension course. multimodality and listening comprehension: testing and implementing classroom material is also related to the teaching context. in this last article domínguez romero and maíz arévalo evaluate how information value, saliency and framing may be analysed in listening comprehension tasks that appear in two textbooks. their research is carried out in two homogeneous groups of university students. with this aim in mind, they redesign a number of listening tasks so as to examine how these three parameters may or may not affect comprehension if multimodal design is changed. they conclude that in the case of listening skills, multimodality plays an important role in aiding students’ comprehension and that there are multimodal variables that seem to affect the understanding of spoken text to a greater extent. the volume ends with yigitoglu’s review of using corpora in the language learning classroom: corpus linguistics for teachers and a comprehensive multimedia review carried out by cardenas-clarós on using english for academic purposes. a guide for students in higher education. mari carmen campoy cubillo miguel f. ruiz garrido universitat jaume i, castelló editors http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� from the editors articles are copyrighted by their respective authors iv reference knight, d., evans, d., carter, r. and adolphs, s. (2009) “headtalk, handtalk and the corpus: towards a framework for multi-modal, multi-media corpus development”. corpora, 4 (1), 1-32. reference language value june 2020, volume 12, number 1 pp. 30-55 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es issn 1989-7103 language value, issn 1989-7103 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2020.12.3 30 the impact of peer assessment on the attainment level of oral presentations skills bojan prosenjak bojan@labos.com.hr labos language training and translations, croatia iva lučev ivalucev@gmail.com libertas international university, croatia abstract the aim of contemporary language for specific purposes (lsp) is to prepare students for independent and competent performance in the globalised world of english as a lingua franca, with oral presentations as an indispensable element. recognising that many students experience anxiety when faced with public speaking, teachers need to boost their self-confidence and improve their oral presentation skills, which can be achieved by promoting team-work and collaborative learning. the aim of this paper is to explore whether peer assessment of oral presentations influences the level of students’ attainment of oral presentation skills. the research was conducted at the dag hammarskjöld university college of international relations and diplomacy in zagreb. the participants assessed their colleagues’ presentations at the beginning and the end of the semester by using rubrics. they appeared to have improved after receiving peer feedback, at least according to their peers’ comments and slightly higher rating on the rubric. additionally, the analysis of the participants’ attitudes toward peer assessment complements the quantitative findings, demonstrating that participants recognise its importance and are able to self-reflect more efficiently on their own and their colleagues’ work. keywords: esp, oral presentation skills, peer assessment, peer assessment tool, attitude towards peer assessment i. introduction i.1. peer assessment one of the aims of education is to enable students to function independently in the labour market where they will be required to assess their colleagues' strong and weak points, as pointed out by nortcliffe (2012). teachers of english in lsp courses are in an advantageous position as they can assist their students in achieving that goal by helping them develop three indispensable sets of skills – oral presentation skills in english, teamwork and collaborative learning, and active participation in learning together with taking responsibility for their own learning – thereby increasing their autonomy (everhard and murphy 2015). one method that teachers of english have at their disposal is peer assessment, a tool that learners use in order to reflect on and specify the mailto:bojan@labos.com.hr mailto:ivalucev@gmail.com the impact of peer assessment on the attainment level of oral presentations skills language value 12 (1), 30–55 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 31 level, value, and quality of their peers’ performance (topping 2009). since peer assessment has been shown to result in improvements in the effectiveness and quality of learning (topping 2009), we decided to explore whether peer assessment of oral presentations influences the level of students’ attainment of oral presentation skills. i.2. benefits of peer assessment peer assessment can be generally regarded as an active agent in stimulating engaged and substantial involvement of students in the overall learning process, by which they become more independent in setting and evaluating their own learning criteria. in addition, peer assessment provides an objective and functional tool for making detached and informed decisions concerning the assessment of one’s peers, as well as selfassessment (de grez, valcke and roozen 2012). on the one hand, peer assessment activities in today’s pedagogical practices are favoured because they decrease the central role of the teacher in the classroom (de grez, valcke and roozen 2012), which is especially important given the unrelenting reality that teachers often lack the time to provide their students with individual, timely, and quality feedback on their work (andrade and valtcheva 2009). on the other hand, peer assessment is a crucial element of observational learning. observational learning, according to bandura (1997), can help students comprehend more explicitly the learning outcomes, or goals, that they are attempting to achieve, both by observing their peers and by receiving meaningful feedback from them. in that way, they can compare their performance to the performance of their peers sustained by a defined measurement tool, or standard. as research has suggested (e.g. murillozamorano and montanero 2017), peer feedback aimed at improving the presentations or the process that was used to prepare them, structured around precisely defined and preexplained rubrics, may well improve the students’ perception and reflection upon their performance in the role of speakers. as they strive towards improving their presentation skills – the goal they have set for themselves – the desired level of performance ceases to be an abstract ideal and becomes much more comparable, compatible, and attainable (de grez, valcke and roozen 2012). bojan prosenjak and iva lučev language value 12 (1), 30–55 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 32 i.3. peer assessment vs. teacher feedback another argument for the implementation of peer (and self-) assessment in the language classroom, as already suggested, is that its application can positively unburden the role of teachers in assessment, as well as allow for the more beneficial inclusion of students as active participants in selfand peer evaluation, and in the broader process of formative assessment (de grez, valcke and roozen 2012). formative assessment in this context, as suggested in ozogul and sullivan (2007), refers to the evaluation of student work that is not yet in its final form, and can thus be exploited for its potential for subsequent learning. in this way students become more involved in the language acquisition process because they assess the quality of each other’s progress formatively and estimate the level up to which they have fulfilled the set criteria or goals, thus assessing for revision and improvement of results, and not for grades (andrade and valtcheva 2009). more to the point, peer feedback is richer in both volume and immediacy (topping 2009), while an increased number of assessors decreases subjectivity and increases reliability, as stated by falchikov (2004). nortcliffe (2012) mentions further advantages of peer assessment, namely that more assessors provide more sources of feedback, which in turn leads to better self-reflection and enables those assessed to apply the feedback they have received in their subsequent work, e.g. oral presentations. equally important is the possibility of an ensuing discussion in which the student who received the feedback has the opportunity to request clarification and communicate directly with the assessor, especially when the whole process of peer assessment is part of a repetitive process which allows the student present their work, demonstrating the improvements or defending their initial positions (murillo-zamorano and montanero 2017). in this way, students become partners in the teaching-learning process, their self-esteem is raised, they become more self-critical and proactive learners, and they focus on their future learning goals, which they see as set by themselves, not externally (lindsay and clarke 2001). the complexity of the issue at hand could be summarised as a “caveat” to both researchers and practitioners (topping 2009: 26): the impact of peer assessment on the attainment level of oral presentations skills language value 12 (1), 30–55 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 33 providing effective feedback is a cognitively complex task requiring understanding of the goals of the task and the criteria for success, and the ability to make judgments about the relationship of the product or performance to these goals. […] do not assume the teachers are any more reliable than the peers! you might want to match yours against the average of several peer assessments. i.4. efficient peer assessment teachers still play a crucial role in peer feedback activities. they must teach students how to give efficient feedback because without it such activities are futile. comparable results have been achieved by other researchers as well (murillo-zamorano and montanero 2017): participation in traditional assessment methods, based on the teachers’ immediate feedback in the classroom, produces favourable outcomes. the feedback with which students provide one another on their oral presentations, on the other hand, should be useful and accompanied by non-judgmental comments in order to show the presenters where improvements can be made for their subsequent presentations (harlen 2006). hodgson and pyle (2010) add that feedback should not be given only as points but should be accompanied by comments which are to be discussed both by the assessors and the presenter after the presentation. the results of their research show that the students experienced the greatest learning gain when feedback is given as comments only. according to falchikov (2004), feedback should be given in three stages – first, studentassessors should start with some good points regarding the presentation, as this boosts the presenter’s self-confidence; second, they should move onto advice for improvement, since the presenters will then be more willing to accept criticism; third, feedback should end with other good points, thus embedding constructive feedback within positive feedback (the so-called “sandwich method”). i.5. possible problems with peer assessment peer assessment has some potential downsides that are not to be disregarded when teachers consider using it in their teaching practice. its strengths and weaknesses have to be weighed against each other, and teachers should decide for themselves whether such bojan prosenjak and iva lučev language value 12 (1), 30–55 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 34 an approach is the best option in their lsp classes. ross (2006) and falchikov (2004) list several disadvantages of peer assessment activities for students. the results of their research show that some students objected to doing the teacher’s job, lacked the confidence to mark fairly, took these activities as an opportunity to embellish their grades, feared retaliation in response to awarding low grades to their peers, misunderstood the data from assessment sheets, and let friendship and hostility influence peer assessment outcomes. jelaska (2005) add that peer assessment is also dependent on different learner types, namely that collaborative learners are the ones most likely to fully participate in such activities and thus fully benefit from them; that participant learners may participate in them and benefit from them to some extent; and that independent, dependent, avoidant and competitive learners will not participate in them nor fully benefit from them. falchikov (2004) and lavrysh (2016) also list several disadvantages of peer assessment from the teachers’ perspective: some did not comprehend its benefit, some were afraid to include it in their classes, some experienced difficulty in building a positive environment focused on improving, some believed that students lacked the necessary experience for these activities, some thought that students would collude and award each other over-inflated grades, and finally some felt uncomfortable with the change of role and giving students control. ii. research aims and questions after teaching esp to university students of international relations for several years, we have come to recognise that many of them experience anxiety, nervousness and stage fright when they are given the task of delivering an oral powerpoint presentation in front of their peers, a task which will be everyday practice in their professional career. it was felt that using only teacher assessment contributed to their anxiety, so we wanted to investigate whether the advantages of efficient peer assessment observed by previous researchers would influence the level of our students’ attainment of oral presentation skills, i.e. improve their results. in other words, we aimed to see whether pre-instructed and pre-structured feedback from peers might provide a positive stimulus in the sense that the students begin to recognise and appreciate consequential feedback coming from the impact of peer assessment on the attainment level of oral presentations skills language value 12 (1), 30–55 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 35 someone in the same position. furthermore, we were interested in gaining insights into our students’ attitudes towards peer assessment and examining whether its previously researched shortcomings would be outweighed by its benefits. in our research, we wanted to explore whether the students’ level of oral presentation skills would be measurably higher in their second presentation after having received peer feedback on their first presentation and whether their attitude towards peer assessment would change after the second presentation. therefore, we asked ourselves the following research questions (rq): (i) rq1: will there be any difference in the students’ attainment of oral presentation skills between the first and the second presentation based on peer assessment? (ii) rq2: will there be any difference in the attainment of oral presentation skills in the second presentation between first-year and second-year students based on peer assessment? (iii) rq3: will there be any difference in attitude towards peer assessment after the second presentation? (iv) rq4: will there be any difference in attitude towards peer assessment between first-year and second-year students? iii. research methodology our study was conducted at the dag hammarskjöld university college of international relations and diplomacy in zagreb in the summer semester of the academic year 2018/2019. all students in year 1 and year 2 were included in it – 36 participants in the peer assessment of oral presentations (17 participants from year 1 and 19 from year 2) and 28 participants in the evaluation of peer assessment activities via a questionnaire (13 participants from year 1 and 15 from year 2). the data used in this study was collected using the two instruments – the peer assessment table (figure 1) and the questionnaire (figure 2). bojan prosenjak and iva lučev language value 12 (1), 30–55 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 36 figure 1. peer assessment table figure 2. peer assessment questionnaire rubrics were used in the peer assessment table as students understand assessment criteria better if they use rubrics, and they become more realistic judges of their own performance since they monitor their own learning, without having to rely on their teacher's feedback (thomas, martin and pleasants 2011). there are fifteen elements in the impact of peer assessment on the attainment level of oral presentations skills language value 12 (1), 30–55 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 37 the table, divided into three categories with five elements in each – four for assessing the presenters themselves, and the fifth one for assessing the powerpoint elements (shaded grey in the table). before the participants saw the table for the first time, they mentioned all the elements in the discussion on what constitutes a good presentation, guided by the researchers; thus, nothing in the table, once presented, was new or unclear to them. responses from the questionnaire about participants’ self-perception of potential learning values when engaging in peer feedback activities are also found and tested in other recent studies (rodríguez-gonzález and castañeda 2016). an almost identical peer assessment table and the questionnaire had been used in a pilot study in the private high school for the arts in zagreb several months prior to this study. on the one hand, the rubrics in the peer assessment table had been designed by the researchers and high school students together, and they were almost identical to the ones in this study – they only lacked the three elements related to the powerpoint, as the presentations were only oral, without any visual aids. on the other hand, the items in the questionnaire, which had been designed by the researchers, were identical to the ones used in this study. as the answers to these five questions given by high school students had proved very useful in the pilot study, and as the questions had been fully understood by the students, the same questions were used in this study. for the purposes of this study, the answers to open-ended questions in the questionnaire were classified into three categories – positive, negative and neutral. such rubrics completed by participants who examined their peers’ presentations were used by other researchers as well (rodríguez-gonzález and castañeda 2016). firstly, positive answers included comments which stated that the rubrics helped the students, that they were useful for the preparation of both their own presentations and the assessment of their peers’, specifying at least one helpful element they had learnt from this assignment which they would implement in future presentations as well as peer assessment assignments. secondly, in their negative answers the participants said that the rubrics had not helped them during the preparation of their own or the assessment of their peers’ presentations, that they had not learnt anything from this assignment, and that they would not prepare differently for their future presentations, bojan prosenjak and iva lučev language value 12 (1), 30–55 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 38 nor would they assess their peers differently. finally, the neutral answers were those which did not give clearly negative or positive answers to the questions asked. the data was collected in eight stages as described below. 1) in the introductory lesson, the study was presented to the participants, and they were given an opportunity to give their consent to participate in it; then, the elements of oral presentations were presented and discussed with the participants. 2) the benefits and potential disadvantages of peer assessment were discussed. 3) the peer assessment table was presented to the participants and its elements were discussed, drawing parallels to the same elements discussed in stage 1 above. 4) a video of a student giving an oral presentation was shown to the participants, and they used the peer assessment table to assess the presenter in the video, followed by a discussion regarding their points and comments. 5) the participants took the peer assessment tables home in order to prepare their first presentation. the topic that they presented was very closely related to the material covered in their classes – year 1 presented on chosen countries and year 2 on chosen (sub)cultures. they later gave their presentations in class and other participants assessed them using the same peer assessment tables, after which a discussion on the given feedback followed. 6) after the first round of presentations, all the participants completed a questionnaire in which they commented on their peer assessment experience. 7) the presenters took all the completed peer assessment tables home in order to study their peers’ feedback and prepare for their second presentation, which was on the same topic. the impact of peer assessment on the attainment level of oral presentations skills language value 12 (1), 30–55 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 39 8) towards the end of the semester, two months after the first round of presentations, the participants gave their presentation for the second time, after having studied their colleagues' feedback given in the peer assessment tables. this presentation was once again also followed by the peer assessment activity, then by a discussion. finally, the participants were asked to comment on the peer assessment experience using the same questionnaires. the data collected was then entered into microsoft excel, followed by a t-test in spss which calculated whether there was a statistically significant difference between the analysed sets of data. iv. results and discussion iv.1. the difference in the students’ attainment of oral presentation skills between the first and the second presentation the primary focus of macrostructure analysis is on major forms and structures. these major forms and structures refer to the semantic structures. the results of our study showed that, out of maximum 75 points, the total average peer assessment points were 68.17 for the first presentation and 71.01 for the second presentation (figure 3), indicating that the participants awarded their peers higher points for the second presentation than for the first one. looking more closely at the average peer assessment points for each of the three categories (organisation, language and non-verbal communication), it is also evident that the participants awarded their peers higher points for the second presentation in all three categories (figure 4). bojan prosenjak and iva lučev language value 12 (1), 30–55 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 40 figure 3. total average peer assessment points figure 4. average peer assessment points per category however, even though there is a difference between the average points for the two presentations overall, as well as in each individual category, those differences were not proven to be statistically significant (table 1). table 1. the difference in the peer assessment points between the first and the second presentation. variable round n m sd t p organisation 1 36 23.0558 1.38821 -3.059 .063 2 36 23.9051 .92076 language 1 36 22.7029 1.93269 -1.981 .250 the impact of peer assessment on the attainment level of oral presentations skills language value 12 (1), 30–55 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 41 2 36 23.5399 1.64098 non-verbal communication 1 36 22.4084 1.52894 -3.693 .266 2 36 23.5694 1.10509 total 1 36 68.1672 4.19630 -3.223 .294 2 36 71.0144 3.23813 when looking at the peer assessment points awarded for each of the fifteen constituent elements of presentation skills as set out in the peer assessment table (figure 5), it can be observed that the participants were constantly awarded higher points by their peers in their second presentation. the lowest average points in the first presentation were awarded for the element of eye contact (4.25 points out of maximum 5.00), followed by accuracy (4.34 points). furthermore, the biggest differences between the first and the second presentation were observed in the categories of eye contact (0.31 points), voice (0.28 points) and persuasiveness (0.27 points), all of which pertain to the category of non-verbal communication. figure 5. average peer assessment points per element bojan prosenjak and iva lučev language value 12 (1), 30–55 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 42 this small and thus not statistically significant increase between the first and the second presentation could be attributed to a relatively small sample of participants (36), or to the fact that they were awarding high points to each other for the first presentation, so there was little room for measuring improvement in the second one. moreover, the participants could have avoided giving each other low scores because their relationships affected their ability to assess objectively, or even because some of the rubrics might have been unclear to them. however, this increase is seen as relevant to the aims of our study because it demonstrates that some improvement in the attainment of oral presentation skills did occur in the second presentation. the comments that the participants included in their assessment tables and in the discussion that followed after each peer assessment strengthen the relevance of this increase. the peer feedback after the first presentation was very constructive and objective, whereas the one following the second presentation, apart from also including advice on what to improve, contained comments on the progress in the second presentation – whether there had or had not been any. the level of the participants’ oral presentation skills might have improved in their second presentation owing to the very feedback they had received after the first presentation, which was both discussed in class immediately after the presentation and studied at home in order to be comprehended more thoroughly and applied more competently in the subsequent presentation. given below are some examples of constructive feedback from the peer assessment tables after the first presentation for each of the fifteen constituent elements (the letter p with the number stands for the participant who was being assessed):  introduction: p2: no hook. p12: her own story. impressive. p24: put something interesting. p35: i liked the hook.  development: p5: put contents and conclusion. p6: no structured parts at all. p26: clearly structured parts.  conclusion: p6: the end was quick. p20: the quote at the end was beautiful. p24: very good ending with a famous person. the impact of peer assessment on the attainment level of oral presentations skills language value 12 (1), 30–55 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 43  length: p2: too short. p5: on point. p16: it was more than 10 minutes. p26: longish but interesting.  visual impression: p5: images are really good. p16: small letters. p21: just facts on slides. not too much text.  fluency: p5: because of the reading, you didn’t show your expression well. p18: some stuttering. p35: i couldn’t understand some word.  range: p23: work on extending your vocabulary. p28: no linking words. p49: has a little problem with longer words.  accuracy: p1: some minor errors. p5: some mistakes, but you can do it better. p10: try to work on your pronunciation. p21: indirect speech.  appropriateness: p31: too much information. p35: i understood everything. p49: good language, but needs work.  written language: p2: misspelt words. p16: little mistakes, overall really good. p33: a few spelling and grammar errors. p34: no mistakes found.  body: p13: too many gestures. p23: work on your posture. p42: crossed hands on chest. p46: a lot of smiling, which is very nice and cute.  eyes: p2: no eye contact at all. p6: you are reading, no eye contact. p34: try to make more eye contact. p46: not facing the audience.  voice: p2: he needs to speak louder. p5: she is too quiet, but not fast. p16: maybe too slow. p49: too many pauses.  persuasiveness: p21: she was nervous a little bit, too many ‘um’s. p23: we can see you’re nervous because you were playing with the pointer.  interaction: p42: not a lot of pointing, which was needed to explain all those pictures. p43: he showed everything in the presentation, pictures, etc. bojan prosenjak and iva lučev language value 12 (1), 30–55 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 44 below are some examples of the feedback for some of the elements of the peer assessment table following the second presentation in which the participants compare the results and assess whether the presenters made any progress in relation to the first presentation:  development: p16: better than last time.  length: p22: much better than the last time. p22: big improvement.  visual impression: p2: some new information. p5: like always, nice to look due to all the pictures. p16: better than last time. p28: i’m still impressed with the layout of your slides.  fluency; p5: great improvement in pronunciation. p15: great pronunciation, big improvement. p26: pronunciation has been improved.  range: p16: much better.  accuracy: p10: improvement.  body: p31: better than last time. p35: you have much more movement.  eyes: p6: much better. p22: more than usual, but still not enough. p35: more eye contact. p49: better than last time.  voice: p17: this time you smiled, love it! p35: everything was at the same level.  persuasiveness: p5: great! more confident! p10: little bit nervous, but much better than last time. p20: first iv.2. the difference in the attainment of oral presentation skills in the second presentation between first-year and second-year students the points that participants in year 1 were awarded by their peers for both presentations were compared to the points awarded to the participants in year 2 (figure 6). it is evident that year 1 participants received slightly higher total average points for the first presentation than year 2 participants: 68.47 compared to 67.89 out of 75.00 maximum points. the situation was, however, reversed in the second round of presentations – the impact of peer assessment on the attainment level of oral presentations skills language value 12 (1), 30–55 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 45 year 2 participants received slightly higher total average points than year 1 participants: 71.04 compared to 70.04. the increase for year 1 participants between the first and the second presentation equalled 2.51 points (or 3.35%), whereas the for year 2 participants it was 3.15 points (or 4.20%). figure 6. total average peer assessment points per year as the results above demonstrate, year 2 participants attained a higher level of their oral presentation skills in their second presentation based on peer assessment than year 1 participants. although the difference might not seem categorical (71.04 points for year 2 participants compared to 70.98 points for year 1 participants), year 2 participants increased their overall number of points in the second presentation by 4.20%, whereas in the case of year 1 participants, the increase was only 3.35%. this goes to show that that year 2 participants could be more successful in applying the received peer feedback in their subsequent presentation than year 1 participants. the reasons for that might be that they have more experience in giving presentations and had already been given feedback in the past, which is corroborated by their responses in the questionnaire. another reason could be that they are more academically skilled and agile and can thus achieve better results in scholastic endeavours presented to them than their younger colleagues. iv.3. the difference in attitude towards peer assessment after the second presentation bojan prosenjak and iva lučev language value 12 (1), 30–55 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 46 after each of the two rounds of presentations, the participants’ attitudes towards the experience of peer assessment were examined using the peer assessment questionnaire. upon analysing all five questions of all the participants of both years, the results demonstrated a positive response to 79% of all the questions after the first presentation and to 89% of all the questions after the second presentation (figure 7). in comparison, the number of neutral responses decreased from 9% to 3%, and so did the number of negative responses – from 12% to 8%. figure 7. total attitude change towards peer assessment between the first and the second presentation taking into consideration the participants’ responses to each question separately (figure 8), it becomes clear that the number of their responses in which they expressed a positive attitude towards peer assessment was higher after the second presentation than after the first presentation for all questions except the third one (what have i learnt from this assignment?) – the number of positive responses was lower after the second presentation than after the first presentation: 88.00% compared to 91.43%. that question is also the one to which negative responses were higher after the second presentation than after the first presentation: 8.00% compared to 2.86%. in all other questions, there was a decrease in the number of responses expressing a negative attitude after the second presentation in comparison to those after the first presentation. the impact of peer assessment on the attainment level of oral presentations skills language value 12 (1), 30–55 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 47 figure 8. the attitude expressed in the participants’ responses in the peer assessment questionnaire given below are some examples of positive, neutral and negative attitudes expressed in the participants’ responses: 1) “how did the evaluation elements in the table contribute to the preparation of my own presentation?” positive attitude: p25: the elements from the table were good guidelines while preparing a presentation. they were like small reminders of what to pay attention to. p21: the elements in the table helped me to prepare my presentation better, to put less text and more pictures and charts in the presentation. neutral attitude: p2: they helped somewhat, but since i already had a decent presenting experience, i was familiar with most of the elements. negative attitude: p4: to be honest, i didn't really use the table while making my presentation, but since i was aware i was going to be judged according to it, i did put more effort into my ppt. 2) “how did the evaluation elements in the table help in assessing my colleagues' presentations?” bojan prosenjak and iva lučev language value 12 (1), 30–55 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 48 positive attitude: p4: helped me see how many factors go into making a ppt & knowing those factors enables you to see faults & issues people have in their ppts that you can help them with or advise them on those issues. p30: i was more focused on some things, while before i would assess the whole presentation without thinking about their posture, for example, which also really matters. neutral attitude: p25: they made the peer assessment simpler, but it would be good to add a few more elements. negative attitude: p5: i focused more on assessing than on the content of the presentations. it would be better to have fewer of them. 3) “what have i learnt from this assignment?” positive attitude: p3: that the sandwich practice is great & really helps people give advice without being too mean. p31: i have learned that i'm too nervous during the presentation and everybody sees it. so i need to work on this 'problem'. neutral attitude: p46: honestly, not much; learned how to be more compassionate and understanding towards somebody's mistakes/flaws, or more objective. negative attitude: p38: that colleagues do not need to assess presentations. 4) “how will i prepare for future/upcoming presentations?” positive attitude: p13: i am not going to read, put more pictures on slides and practise before the presentation. p14: i am going to prepare using your concept of elements because it is much easier in this way. thank you!!! neutral attitude: p10: with little changes, but basically in a similar way like until now. negative attitude: p41: the same as until now. the impact of peer assessment on the attainment level of oral presentations skills language value 12 (1), 30–55 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 49 5) “how will i evaluate/assess my colleagues' presentations from now on?” positive attitude: p13: i am going to be honest because it is for their own good, and i expect the same from them. p31: i will evaluate them remembering all the aspects i learned from the table. neutral attitude: p45: in the same way, not to strictly, not too leniently. negative attitude: p38: the same as my colleague evaluated mine. overall, the participants expressed a more positive attitude towards peer assessment after the second presentation than after the first one. this might indicate that with practice and more frequent exposure to presentations, followed by peer assessment activities, the participants recognised the benefits of peer assessment and provided more positive responses in the questionnaire regarding peer assessment. furthermore, if one looks at the responses to each question separately, it is probable that for questions 1, 2, 4 and 5 the participants expressed a more positive attitude after the second presentation than after the first one due to the fact that they understood the benefits of the peer assessment elements as guidelines in preparing their own and assessing their colleagues’ presentations. their responses suggest that they might have become aware of those skills that they had not previously mastered up to the desired level, such as not reading from their notes, putting more pictures and less text on the slides, improving their fluency and accuracy, their speech speed, etc. the responses also show that the participants appear to have decided to plan their later preparations more carefully and on time, using the elements in the table, and rehearsing before the actual presentation. the responses to question 3 were the only ones where there was a noticeable decrease in the number of positive attitudes expressed after the first presentation than after the second presentation, and where a rise in the number of negative attitudes became apparent. this could be explained by the fact that the participants might have misunderstood the question and expected to have gained more knowledge from this activity, and not skills. although the results of our study show that the participants did acquire more skills, they were possibly not aware of that when directly asked. the above results demonstrate that the participants could have recognised that the peer assessment table elements are a useful guideline in their preparation for the bojan prosenjak and iva lučev language value 12 (1), 30–55 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 50 presentations, which might provide a focus in order to address all the constituent parts, and finally encourage them to work on their weaknesses. they emphasised the importance of feedback coming from different sources, thereby making it more objective, and they especially valued the constructive criticism which guided them in improving their subsequent presentations. furthermore, they were active participants in the teaching-learning process because they provided feedback to their peers and in that way helped them to improve, but they also simultaneously become more familiar with the requirements of a successful presentation, which finally resulted in the strengthening of their own presentation skills. the majority of the participants in our study said they would continue using the peer assessment table for their future presentations, specifying how they would improve them – by adopting the practice of rehearsing, allowing themselves more time for preparation, not reading their notes, paying attention to the text-image ratio, working on their fluency, accuracy, and pace, etc. finally, their responses to the questions regarding future peer assessment showed that they plan to continue being objective, professional, serious, constructive, honest, realistic, critical, strict, but also more careful and thorough. iv.4. the difference in attitude towards peer assessment between first-year and second-year students after having analysed the questionnaire responses of each year separately, it can be seen that the number of positive responses for year 1 participants increased from 86% to 98%, whereas the number of neutral responses decreased from 8% to 2% and the number of negative responses from 6% to 0% (figure 9). on the other hand, the number of positive responses for year 2 participants increased from 73% to 80%, whereas the number of neutral responses decreased from 9% to 4% and the number of negative responses from 18% to 16% (figure 10). the impact of peer assessment on the attainment level of oral presentations skills language value 12 (1), 30–55 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 51 figure 9. year 1 attitude change towards peer assessment between the first and the second presentation figure 10. year 2 attitude change towards peer assessment between the first and the second presentation the above results clearly show a difference in attitude between year 1 and year 2 participants. year 1 participants improved their attitude towards peer assessment since after the second presentation there was not a single negative attitude expressed in any of the responses to all five questions, and an overwhelming majority, 98% of the participants, expressed a positive attitude in all of their responses after the second presentation, which was an increase of 12% compared to the first presentation. such results could suggest that year 1 participants benefited from peer assessment to a great extent since many of them had never even given a presentation, so they might have seen this table as a useful tool and guide. on the other hand, although year 2 participants also expressed a more positive attitude after the second presentation than after the first one, this increase in positive attitudes in their responses was only 7%, a rise from 73% to 80%, and the number of responses expressing a negative attitude dropped by only bojan prosenjak and iva lučev language value 12 (1), 30–55 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 52 2%, from 18% to 16%. this could suggest that a number of them were relatively experienced in giving presentations and familiar with some of the assessment criteria, so this activity was not as beneficial for them as for year 1 participants. it might also be the case that not all year 2 participants used the elements in the table for the preparation of their presentations or took into consideration their colleagues’ feedback for the preparation of their second presentation. v. conclusion the results of this study seem to offer insights into the effectiveness of peer assessment as an indispensable activity, not only in esp classes in higher education but also in other english classes and even other courses and subjects. students in programmes such as the international relations programme will most likely be required to deliver presentations in english in front of an audience, using visual aids such as powerpoint. that is why it is considered to be fundamental for esp teachers to instruct and train their students to master the skills of presentation, using peer assessment activities and peer assessment tools. the primary aim of this study was to find the answers to our research questions, and they showed us that the participants attained more oral presentation skills in their second presentation in comparison to the first presentation based on peer assessment; that the second-year participants attained more oral presentation skills in the second presentation based on peer assessment; and that all the participants expressed a more positive attitude towards peer assessment after the second presentation, but first-year participants more than second-year participants. from this point, it is possible to continue researching other potential correlations in the process of teaching and assessing oral presentation skills in esp courses. however, some limitations of our study have to be taken into account. one of them is the previously mentioned small sample of participants who delivered and assessed the presentations – only 36 participants took part in the quantitative part of our study and only 28 in the qualitative part – as well as the number of presentations given by the participants in this study – only two. it might also be interesting to see whether the participants would attain an even higher level of presentation skills in the third or even the impact of peer assessment on the attainment level of oral presentations skills language value 12 (1), 30–55 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 53 fourth presentation, i.e. if they would receive even higher points in the subsequent presentations and whether there would be a statistically significant difference between each round of presentations, especially between the first and the last. another limitation could be the fact that not all students in all classes can be given such training in peer assessment and be guided by their teacher as was the case with the participants in this study. this study can be expanded to investigate the participants’ attitudes more thoroughly: it would be relevant to see if their attitudes would continue to be more positive with every subsequent presentation, or if a ceiling after a certain number of iterations might be expected, after which positive attitudes would no longer continue to increase, but would, perhaps, even decrease. another matter worth considering is whether to change the topic of the presentation for each performance, exploring the effect that such an intervention would have on the attainment of presentation skills of the participants. additionally, peer assessment could be compared to teacher assessment to provide further insight into the degree of objectivity of peer assessment. furthermore, future research could use a more objective measure to test improvement, by for instance asking teachers or assessors to use the rubric and to analyse video recordings of both presentations, preferably without knowing which was the first and the second presentation. finally, the peer assessment table could be changed according to the needs of other esp teachers – some elements could be left out, and others could be added, the point scale could be expanded to include more points, the table could be in a digital form, etc. in conclusion, final emphasis needs to be placed on the double, or even triple, effect of peer assessment in the context of improving esp students’ presentations skills. such an endeavour could provide the students with feedback on their work, giving them the much-needed focus on and appreciation of all of the indispensable elements an oral presentation should comprise, and teaching them how to adopt both roles they had been cast in – the role of the assessor and the role of the assessed. moreover, it would necessarily implicate the teachers themselves in a very different and non-traditional way. their role in the process of peer assessment, in general, is to be able to appreciate fully how their students react to direct appraisal and commentary by their peers as opposed to a figure of authority, how (and if) they confront criticism and fault-finding, bojan prosenjak and iva lučev language value 12 (1), 30–55 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 54 how to discern between potential ill will, inexperience, and carelessness by the assessors, and finally how to define their own position in the process of peer assessment. all things considered, we contend that it is only when all the participants of a learning environment – the student presenter, the student assessors and the teacher – act together, that the level of oral presentation skills of esp students can really be improved. references andrade, h. and valtcheva a. 2009. “promoting learning and achievement through self-assessment”. theory into practice, 48 (1), 12–19. bandura, a. 1997. self-efficacy: the exercise of self-control. new york: w.h. freeman and company. de grez, l., valcke, m. and roozen, i. 2012. “how effective are selfand peer assessment of oral presentation skills compared with teachers’ assessments?”. active learning in higher education, 13 (2), 129–142. everhard, c. j. and murphy l. (eds.). 2015. assessment and autonomy in language learning. basingstoke, uk: palgrave macmillan falchikov, n. 2004. “involving students in assessment”. psychology learning and teaching, 3 (2), 102–108. harlen, w. 2006. “assessment for learning and assessment of learning”. in harlen, w. (ed.) ase guide to primary science. hatfield: association for science education. hodgson, c. and pyle k. 2010. a literature review of assessment for learning in science. slough berks: national foundation for educational research. jelaska, z. 2005. hrvatski kao drugi i strani jezik. zagreb: hrvatska sveučilišna naklada. lavrysh, y. 2016. “peer and self-assessment at esp classes: case study.” advanced education, 6, 60–68. the impact of peer assessment on the attainment level of oral presentations skills language value 12 (1), 30–55 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 55 lindsay, c. and clarke, s. 2001. “enhancing primary science through selfand paired assessment”. primary science review, 68, 15–18. murillo-zamorano, l. r. and montanero, m. 2017. “oral presentations in higher education: a comparison of the impact of peer and teacher feedback”. assessment & evaluation in higher education, 43 (1). nortcliffe, a. 2012. “can students assess themselves and their peers? – a five year study”. student engagement and experience journal, 1 (2). ozogul, g. and sullivan, h. 2007. “student performance and attitudes under formative evaluation by teacher, self and peer evaluators”. educational technology research and development, 57 (3), 393–410. rodríguez-gonzález, e. and castañeda, m. e. 2016. “the effects and perceptions of trained peer feedback in l2 speaking: impact on revision and speaking quality”. innovation in language learning and teaching, 12 (2). ross, j. a. 2006. “the reliability, validity, and utility of self-assessment”. practical assessment research & evaluation, 11 (10). thomas, g., martin, d. and pleasants, k. 2011. “using selfand peerassessment to enhance students’ future learning in higher education”. journal of university teaching & learning practice, 8 (1). topping, k. j. 2009. “peer assessment” theory into practice, 48 (1), 20–27. received: 07 november 2019 accepted: 22 may 2020 cite this article as: prosenjak, bojan and lučev, iva. 2020. “the impact of peer assessment on the attainment level of oral presentations skills”. language value, 12 (1), 30-55. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.languagevalue.uji.es. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2020.12.3 issn 1989-7103 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ microsoft word gonzález & hornero.doc language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue april 2016, volume 8, number 1 pp. 1-25 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2016.8.2 1 audiovisual materials: a way to reinforce listening skills in primary school teacher education1 pilar gonzález-vera pilargv@unizar.es ana hornero corisco ahornero@unizar.es universidad de zaragoza, spain abstract this paper aims to show the effective use of audiovisual materials in the teaching of efl to primary school teachers. for that purpose a representative sample of undergraduate students of the degree in primary education with a pre-intermediate b1 level was selected. the students, whose ages ranged from 18 to 22, belonged to the so-called e-generation (prensky 2001). in the first stage of the study a questionnaire was distributed in order to shed light on our students’ level of english as well as on the ways and resources they have used to learn english. it revealed that oral communication skills (listening, speaking and pronunciation) were usually underestimated. bearing in mind these results, the present study proposed two main activities, one focused on listening comprehension and another on the improvement of pronunciation through audiovisual materials keywords: clil, university, methodology, guidelines, scaffolding, student-centred i. introduction there seems to be no doubt at present that, as experts in the field state, “the momentum of growth has become so great that there is nothing likely to stop the continued spread of english as a global lingua franca” (crystal 2006: 421). it is easy to understand that, due to the great spread of functionality of english today, many countries have adopted it as “a medium of communication, either for internal or external purposes” (crystal 2006: 427). however, other professionals of efl teaching claim that 1 financial support for this research has been provided to the swift h 46 group by the regional government of aragon. pilar gonzález-vera and ana hornero corisco language value 8 (1), 1–25 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 2 in too many countries (…) english is still taught with little regard to its practical use. until all english teachers are teaching english as a tool for communication, countries and individuals will not enjoy the full benefit of a global language (epi, 5). surveys at the european level have proved the weak competence of spanish users of english2. a questionnaire completed in 2012 by 2,000 students of secondary education in aragon revealed that not much time is devoted to listening outside the classroom. according to the students’ perceptions, there would seem to be a need to insist on the practice of listening (hornero et al. 2013, mur-dueñas et al. 2013, plo et al. 2014). our own survey evidences the weaknesses of spanish secondary education students' oral skills in english. now those students are at university and their oral competence needs urgent improvement. the students, whose ages ranged from 18 to 22, belonged to the so-called e-generation (prensky 2001), characterised by living surrounded by a digital culture and their ability to perform multiple tasks. these students have a low tolerance for lectures and prefer active rather than passive learning, which leads to a change in the model of pedagogy, “from a teacher-focused approach based on instruction to a student-focused model based on collaboration” (tapscott 2009). the questionnaire revealed that oral communication skills (listening, speaking and pronunciation) were usually underestimated even though language curricula consider communication as the ultimate goal of learning a language. when it comes to focusing on listening skills, the description for the b1 level provided by the eaquals3 bank of descriptors (figure 1) can be taken as a reference: 2 for this purpose, see the results of the 5th edition of the english proficiency test, which presents a ranking of 70 countries based on test data from adults who took their online english tests in 2014. spain is, according to this survey, located in the “moderate band”, which corresponds to cefr level b1. 3 eaquals (evaluation & accreditation of quality in language services) is an international association of institutions and organisations involved in language education whose aim is to promote and guarantee high quality in language teaching and learning. to achieve this aim, eaquals has created and published a demanding set of criteria to verify the quality offered by its accredited member-schools. audiovisual materials: a way to reinforce listening skills in primary school teacher education language value 8 (1), 1-25 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 3 figure 1. from the eaquals bank of descriptors. b1 level overall listening i can understand the main points of clear standard speech on familiar, everyday subjects, provided there is an opportunity to get repetition or clarification sometimes listen to interlocutor i can understand what is said to me in everyday conversations, but i sometimes need help in clarifying listen to tv and films i can understand the main points in tv programmes on familiar topics when the delivery is relatively slow and clear bearing in mind the results of the questionnaire and the above bank of descriptors for the b1 level, the present study proposed two main activities, one focused on listening comprehension and another on the improvement of pronunciation through audiovisual materials, as part of their continuous assessment in the subject english in primary education i. students were given clear instructions for the completion of the tasks based on clips from the british animated children’s television series peppa pig and ben and holly’s little kingdom. the choice of these clips was justified by the thematic focus that is related to one of the units of the subject and the clarity of the rp (received pronunciation) accent used in both series. ii. listening within a communicative learning approach our study aimed to test the efficiency of using audiovisual materials and activities in the training of future teachers, focusing on the improvement of their listening skills. there is no doubt that both extensive and intensive listening provide students with the opportunity to hear different speakers and accents, strengthen their speaking habits and help them to improve their pronunciation. but whereas the former is usually done for pleasure, intensive listening tends to be more concentrated, less relaxed, and is often dedicated not so much to pleasure as to the achievement of a study goal. moreover, it is often done with the intervention of the teacher (harmer 2007). pilar gonzález-vera and ana hornero corisco language value 8 (1), 1–25 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 4 more traditional recorded material (cds, for instance) used in the classroom may also help to improve the students’ listening skills, but in this case the students cannot see the speaking taking place. the great advantage of watching audiovisual clips is that they get to see ‘language in use’. it is easy for them to see how intonation matches facial expression and what gestures accompany certain expressions, and they can learn a number of cross-cultural clues. the introduction of technology and audiovisual materials in education has been intrinsically connected with the irruption of communicative approaches in language teaching contexts. the umbrella term “communicative approaches” (widdowson 1978, brumfit and johnson 1979, littlewood 1981, krashen and terrell 1983, ellis 2003) gathers together different innovative approaches organised on the basis of communication. under these approaches learning is thought to emerge through language production, and being able to communicate requires more than mastering linguistic structures, since language is fundamentally social. any truly communicative activity must have three features (gonzález-vera 2015: 72): information gap, choice and feedback as learners. firstly, a text is communicative as it displays information that is unknown to the “reader”. communication exchange takes place as the participant has to understand the meaningful words or phrases of the message in order to fill the information gaps s/he has. the activity is communicative insomuch that speakers have to choose what (content) and how (form) to reply to the other participants; in other words, they have to rely on their communicative competence, apart from their linguistic competence. lastly, bearing in mind that communication is purposeful, the participants can evaluate whether or not the purpose of their message has been achieved by means of feedback, that is, the information reported by the listeners. these activities also have to be motivating and rewarding for learners. the students’ interest in audiovisual texts lies at the root of considering the incorporation of audiovisual resources in learning-teaching environments. in addition, communicative approaches opt to expose students to natural language and advocate for the use of authentic language materials, as is the case of audiovisual texts. the use of animated tv series in the teaching of primary school teachers allows them to learn by means of authentic materials that deal with stimulating topics for their future students, namely, children. therefore, the usefulness of these materials is beyond doubt. audiovisual materials: a way to reinforce listening skills in primary school teacher education language value 8 (1), 1-25 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 5 iii. research methodology iii.1. data collection the group under analysis was group 1 of english in primary education i, which included 37 students in their freshman year. this subject, taught in the faculty of education at the university of zaragoza, was worth 6 ects, which entailed 150 hours' work for the student. 50 of them were class hours, distributed across lectures and seminars, and 100 hours involved autonomous learning. in order to study the impact of audiovisual materials on the development of our students’ communicative competence, we first collected qualitative data from a questionnaire designed for this purpose. the questionnaire (figure 2) shed light on our students’ relationship with english and their level of language in different skills. it was composed of two parts. the first part included students’ personal information such as their mother tongue, the time they had been learning english and their level of english. the second part of the questionnaire concentrated on the types of exercises they usually practise in and out of class, which could contribute to assess the relationship between their strengths and weaknesses in the different skills and the time devoted to training these abilities. the questionnaire concluded with questions related to the type of resources used by the students to train aural skills and identified the main pitfalls that learners encountered when listening. figure 2. initial questionnaire. 1. surname, name 2. age 3. gender 4. country of origin 5. level of studies accomplished (secondary school, vocational training, graduate, post-graduate, others) 6. native speaker of… 7. how many years have you studied english? 8. how do you consider your level of english? (advanced, upper intermediate, intermediate, lower intermediate, beginner) 9. where did you learn english? (you can choose more than one option): at school, at a private language school, private classes, in summer camps, pilar gonzález-vera and ana hornero corisco language value 8 (1), 1–25 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 6 travelling and meeting people, watching tv, seeing films, others. 10. how strong are your speaking skills in english? (advanced, upper intermediate, intermediate, lower intermediate, beginner) 11. how strong are your listening skills in english? (advanced, upper intermediate, intermediate, lower intermediate, beginner) 12. how strong are your reading skills in english? (advanced, upper intermediate, intermediate, lower intermediate, beginner) 13. how strong are your writing skills in english? (advanced, upper intermediate, intermediate, lower intermediate, beginner) 14. have you got any english level certificate? (ket, pet, fce, cae, trinity level, ietls, toefl, others) 15. as a whole, what level of english do you think you have (according to the european framework)? (a2, b1, b2, c1, c2) 16. can you speak any other foreign language(s)? which? what level do you think you have? 17. have you been to an english-speaking country? if so, where and how many times? specify the duration of your stay there (less than a week, from 1 to 3 weeks, from 3 weeks to 2 months, more than 2 months) 18. how frequently (hardly ever, not often, usually, always) do you do the following tasks outside class? listening exercises reading exercises compositions speaking grammar and vocabulary team work others 19. which of these activities do you most enjoy doing in class? listening comprehension oral presentations debates working in pairs others 20. how often do you do listening tasks outside the classroom? (hardly ever, not often, usually, always): 21. what materials do you use? podcasts, cds, video clips, others. 22. do you ever use audiovisual materials outside the classroom? (hardly ever, not audiovisual materials: a way to reinforce listening skills in primary school teacher education language value 8 (1), 1-25 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 7 often, usually, always) 23. do you like using audiovisual materials to improve your english? why? 24. which of the following problems may appear when someone speaks to you in english or when you do a listening comprehension activity. indicate the frequency in each case (hardly ever, not often, usually, always). i don’t understand many words and i get lost very soon it is difficult for me to identify the sounds in english i need to hear the text more than once if it is very long and i find it difficult to concentrate 25. how hard is it for you to understand (very easy, easy, hard, very hard): the listening exercises in your workbook real conversations news and documentaries radio programmes, podcasts tv series the questionnaire was followed by two activities with which we attempted to improve our students’ level in those skills that presented more difficulties. for the design of these activities, jain’s (2013: 79) suggestions for a positive framework for developing communication skills were taken into consideration: identify audience define the characteristics of your audience. select topic define the topic, purpose, and scope of your communication. set objective and criteria set objectives to measure the outcomes and effect of your communication. gather information find sources and gather information for your communication. select medium decide what you will use to deliver your communication. develop structure of message create your message and determine how it will be best communicated. test and revise practise, test, and revise communication. deliver communication send the communication. in our case, the type of audience was future primary school teachers. as they would have to teach children, we decided to choose two animated television series aimed at children. regarding the topic, these television series deal with issues which appeal to the target audience. on the one hand, our students needed to learn how to tell stories to their pupils and these series would present the main structures and expressions required pilar gonzález-vera and ana hornero corisco language value 8 (1), 1–25 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 8 for their future job; on the other hand, the subjects of these stories may be interesting and motivating for their pupils, thereby stimulating their desire to learn. the activities designed allowed them to practise communicative skills and to assess their success in communication. iii.2. data analysis all of our students were women aged 18 to 24 and most of them were spanish, except for 5%, who were romanian and whose mother tongue was romanian. although most of our students came from high school, a considerable number of them came from vocational training (11%), which led to a heterogeneous group with different levels of english. they reported having devoted a good number of years to the study of english: 10-17 years. although the majority studied english at school and many of them took private classes, they also learnt english by watching tv (12%), something that some years ago would have been unthinkable. the questionnaire revealed that most of our students considered they were good at reading, whereas the percentages regarding their strengths in listening and speaking skills were more divided although the highest percentages move in low levels (figure 3). 22% considered their listening and speaking skills basic and 38% and 32% lower intermediate in listening and speaking, respectively. one striking aspect was the high percentage (57%) of students who did not have any certificate proving their level of proficiency in english, and those who did have a certificate had a2. however, when they were asked about their level of english, they thought they had b1. the fact that 76% of the students had never been to an english-speaking country was very enlightening; information about their (low) level in other languages was also obtained, french being their first option as second foreign language. audiovisual materials: a way to reinforce listening skills in primary school teacher education language value 8 (1), 1-25 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 9 figure 3. level of listening, reading and speaking skills. how strong are your listening skills in english? basic (22%) lower inter (38%) intermediate (27%) upper interm (14%) how strong are your reading skills in english? basic (14%) lower inter (10%) intermediate (54%) upper interm (2%) how strong are your speaking skills in english? basic (22%) lower inter (32%) intermediate (41%) upper interm (5%) students were also asked how frequently they do different types of activities in and outside class (figure 4). the study reveals that students do not often do listening, speaking and reading exercises outside class, and none of them reported doing listening or speaking activities everyday outside class. in contrast, students are used to doing grammar and vocabulary exercises in and outside class. this leads us to think that students have been exposed to the grammar translation method and not to the direct method, which implies a lot of practice of listening and speaking. the questionnaire also confirms our suspicions that, in class, listening and speaking skills were underestimated with respect to the time devoted to reading, and grammar and vocabulary activities, even though the main aim of efl lessons is to strengthen the students’ communicative competences. in addition, although team work is fostered in class, as a consequence of the implementation of task-based learning, the number of pilar gonzález-vera and ana hornero corisco language value 8 (1), 1–25 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 10 times students do team work outside class is still low. however, the students reported they enjoy team work and working in pairs, which should be taken into consideration for the activities that are proposed to motivate students. the low percentages in oral presentations and listening comprehension activities as tasks that students enjoyed most led us to think that they are not presented in an attractive way. students said that they associated listening comprehension activities with a passive activity in which an excerpt was played and their involvement was low; and the reason for disliking oral presentations seems to rest on the lack of guidance they are given while doing or preparing them. figure 4. frequency in the practice of listening, speaking, reading, and grammar and vocabulary exercises in and out of class. in-class out-of-class listening exercises 0 20 40 60 hardly ever (3%) few times (41%) usually (54%) always (3%) listening exercises 0 20 40 60 hardly ever (19%) few times (54%) usually (27%) always (0%) speaking 0 20 40 60 hardly ever (5%) few times (43%) usually (46%) always (5%) speaking 0 20 40 60 hardly ever (27%) few times (49%) usually (24%) always (0%) audiovisual materials: a way to reinforce listening skills in primary school teacher education language value 8 (1), 1-25 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 11 reading 0 20 40 60 80 hardly ever (3%) few times (14%) usually (65%) always (19%) reading 0 20 40 60 hardly ever (14%) few times (54%) usually (24%) always (8%) grammar & vocabulary 0 20 40 60 hardly ever (0%) few times (14%) usually (54%) always (32%) grammar & vocabulary 0 20 40 60 hardly ever (11%) few times (41%) usually (43%) always (5%) team work 0 20 40 60 hardly ever (3%) few times (46%) usually (46%) always (5%) team work 0 20 40 60 hardly ever (27%) few times (57%) usually (16%) always (0%) the use of traditional resources in class contrasts with the materials students tend to use outside class, video clips being the option preferred (30%) (figure 5). however, when asked about the frequency with which they use audiovisual materials outside class they stated they do not use them very often. perhaps they have not been taught how to use them, since a considerable percentage (95%) showed a liking for av materials (figure 6). students said that they enjoy av materials because they make the class more entertaining and catch their attention; it is easier to learn through av materials and students are aware of their potential as a means to improve their accent and pronunciation. pilar gonzález-vera and ana hornero corisco language value 8 (1), 1–25 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 12 figure 5. type of materials used out of class. what materials do you use? figure 6. frequency of use of audiovisual materials out of class and reasons for their introduction as part of the learning process. do you ever use audiovisual materials outside the classroom? do you like using av materials to improve your english? why? . they make classes more entertaining . they add interest, by attracting students’ attention . they make it easier to follow the class . they help to improve your accent/pronunciation the questionnaire concluded with questions about the problems they have in a listening activity when they have to listen to someone speaking in english (figure 7). most of them said that they would need to hear the text more than once, something that may occur in an everyday situation (as when you ask the addressee to repeat a question that you have not quite understood). the second factor that makes comprehension difficult is the length of the texts. as they do not have any visual aid, they have to concentrate more on the oral message and they can get lost if it lasts too long. 0 20 40 60 80 never (3%) hardly ever (11%) sometimes (68%) usually (16%) always (3%) audiovisual materials: a way to reinforce listening skills in primary school teacher education language value 8 (1), 1-25 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 13 figure 7. frequent problems when someone speaks to you in english or when you do a listening comprehension activity. 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 hardly ever few times usually always trying to understand every single word makes you get lost identify the sounds in english need to hear the text more than once very long texts, which makes the text difficult to understand conversely, the problem of understanding words and sounds, which one could think is the main pitfall for our students, is considered to be almost insignificant. finally, students were asked about the type of text they found harder to understand (figure 8). the questionnaire revealed that the types of texts students find easier to understand are those taken from their workbook. this can be explained by the fact that these types of texts are “artificial”, as they are “too perfect”, clearly discernible accents are used, and few colloquialisms are found. contrary to what it may seem, this is not an advantage, as we are not exposing our students to real situations. news and documentaries, where technical terms pepper the text and a formal register is employed, followed by radio programmes, where students do not have any visual aid, are considered the most difficult texts in the students’ opinion. pilar gonzález-vera and ana hornero corisco language value 8 (1), 1–25 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 14 figure 8. level of difficulty to understand different types of aural texts. how hard is it for you to understand… 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 very easy easy hard very hard listening exs. of your workbook real conversations news and documentaries radio programmes, podcasts tv series easiest: workbook exercises > real conversations > tv series > radio programmes most difficult: news > radio/tv given the low level of language reported and the scant practice of oral skills (listening and speaking), two activities were designed in order to improve students’ learning. these activities were based on the use of authentic materials and gave them the opportunity to develop strategies for understanding language as it is actually used. iii. 3 activities and discussions activity 1 the first activity (activity 1) focused on the listening skills of our students and was aimed at the development of their comprehension when listening. the activity was included in unit 2 of the subject english for primary education i. this unit was about the places and elements that can be found at school, such as the canteen, the playground, see-saws, slides, etc. and the students also had to learn how to tell stories, bearing in mind that they will be primary school teachers. audiovisual materials: a way to reinforce listening skills in primary school teacher education language value 8 (1), 1-25 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 15 taking all this into account, we decided to use peppa pig and ben and holly’s little kingdom as our texts. first of all, they were authentic materials that dealt with topics and issues related to the children’s world, which could engage our students in the activity, and, secondly, their level of english was reasonable for our students, as the initial questionnaire revealed a general low level of english. activity 1 was made up of two tests. the first one evaluated the students’ comprehension when the students can only listen to an audio track; and the second assessed their listening comprehension when the students count on all the elements they have in a real-life situation (audio, visual aid and contextual information). the first test (figure 9) included two multiple choice listening activities, without any visual aid, and the episodes selected were ‘grandpa at the playground’ (peppa pig) and ‘the frog prince’ (ben and holly’s little kingdom). thus, the topics of playground activities and elements, and fairy tales and their structure were covered. figure 9. listening comprehension pre-test. a) you are going to listen to an episode of peppa pig. you will hear the recording twice. indicate t (true), f (false) or ds (doesn’t say). only one answer is correct. peppa pig. ‘grandpa at the playground’ 1. peppa pig takes his grandpa to the park t f ds 2. peppa’s grandpa didn’t like the roundabout t f ds 3. grandpa’s rules benefit the little ones t f ds 4. the children end up making their own rules to go on the swing t f ds 5. mummy pig suggests the same rule should work for all t f ds b) you are going to listen to an episode of ben and holly’s little kingdom (ben & holly). you will hear the recording twice. pilar gonzález-vera and ana hornero corisco language value 8 (1), 1–25 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 16 ben & holly. ‘the frog prince’ 1. ben is not allowed to go out to play t f ds 2. ben is not very keen on using magic t f ds 3. there are twenty odd frogs in the pond t f ds 4. holly and violet identify ben because he wears a waistcoat t f ds 5. violet easily turns ben back into an elf t f ds in the peppa pig test, the students got an average mark of 6.6 and in the case of ben and holly’s little kingdom, an average of 7, the total average being 6.8 (figure 10). figure 10. results of the multiple choice test without visual aid. 6 6,5 7 7,5 peppa pig ben&holly total average a few days later, another group of listening activities was presented to the same students (see below “listening test”). these activities included multiple choice and gapfill exercises, the latter being more difficult, in the students’ opinion. after the analysis of the results we could observe an improvement, 7.1 now being our students’ average mark. “listening test” a) peppa pig. ‘the blackberry bush’ you are going to see an episode of peppa pig. you will see it twice. complete the sentences below with the correct information in no more than five words. 1. peppa and her family are at granny and grandpa pig’s house. granny wants to make _____________ for dessert. 2. mummy pig has been climbing the blackberry bush since ____________. audiovisual materials: a way to reinforce listening skills in primary school teacher education language value 8 (1), 1-25 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 17 3. but mummy pig falls off the ladder and gets stuck in _____________ . 4. that reminds peppa of the fairytale of ____________. 5. once the problem is solved, they all go and take the __________. b. peppa pig. ‘bedtime story’ instructions: you are going to see an episode of peppa pig. you will see it twice. complete the sentences below with the correct information in no more than five words. 1. it is night time. daddy pig reads peppa and george a bedtime story. after a while, peppa notices her little brother is still playing, so she makes up another story which begins, as usual, with the words: ___________ there was a little pig… 2. in the story, georgie pig saw a little house in the forest, and inside the house there was __________ 3. peppa asks her little brother every now and then: __________ 4. in the story, georgie pig walks all around the world and finds a big green dragon with __________ 5. the little friends in the story go back home ____________ c. peppa pig. ‘sports day’ you are going to see an episode of peppa pig. you will see it twice. indicate t (true), f (false) or ds (doesn’t say). only one answer is correct. 1. peppa argues that she is the fastest of all children t f ds 2. that peppa is not the winner is not so important for her father t f ds 3. if george had not run, he would have jumped farther than richard rabbit t f ds 4. in spite of peppa’s reluctance, daddy pig finally races in the relay pilar gonzález-vera and ana hornero corisco language value 8 (1), 1–25 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 18 in peppa’s team and does very well t f ds 5. finally the girls pull the rope hard and win t f ds d. peppa pig. ‘school play’ you are going to see an episode of peppa pig. you will hear the recording twice. indicate t (true), f (false) or ds (doesn’t say). only one answer is correct. 1. peppa’s play group are going to put on a play: little robin hood t f ds 2. daddy dog sounds very scary as a bad wolf t f ds 3. the teacher postpones photographing to the end of the play t f ds 4. pedro the hunter does not help grandma t f ds 5. peppa is convinced she is the best actress t f ds finally, the study concluded with the final exam of this subject (post-test), which included a listening test, consisting of two gap-fill exercises, one of them a story that followed the pattern of those seen in the previous activities. students were not allowed to watch the clips but just listened to them twice. the length of the clips was three minutes, and they were used for the first (pre-test) and second activities (test). the students’ results for the listening part of the final exam revealed an improvement in the case of those who had participated in this study (students from group 1). they got 7.5 as their final mark in the listening part. their results were compared to those of the students belonging to groups 2 and 3. while group 2 included the students with the highest marks in selectividad (university access exams), who also had another subject, psychology, taught in english and had the intention of taking the speciality of foreign language in their final year, group 3 was comprised of students with lower marks who came mainly from vocational training. the results from the comparison were satisfactory, as they showed how the marks of the monitored students were better than those of students in the other groups, the average mark in group 2 being 7, and 6.4 in group 3 (figure 11). audiovisual materials: a way to reinforce listening skills in primary school teacher education language value 8 (1), 1-25 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 19 figure 11. comparison of the results of the listening test and comparison of the post-test results. 0 2 4 6 8 1st activities 2nd activities post/exam g1 (monitored) post/exam g2 ("bilingual") post/exam g3 ("last") activity 2 in the second activity students were given a script corresponding to an episode of peppa pig and another one of ben & holly. they were asked, first of all, to read it aloud, paying attention to the pronunciation of the words and the intonation patterns required in the conversation. then they recorded their readings and sent them to us. the episodes were: 1. peppa pig. ‘the tooth fairy’ 2. ben & holly. ‘books’ (the episode was edited, as it was originally too long) a few days later, the students watched the two episodes corresponding to the scripts they had read a few days earlier. they could watch them as many times as they needed and then they recorded their second reading. finally they sent us the recordings. a total of 24 students sent the four readings (the complete set). the students were given simple instructions for the reading activity but no information concerning what was going to be analysed. the interest of this activity was focused on pronunciation and to what extent it could improve after watching the two episodes. by ‘improvement’ we mean that the speaker’s pronunciation came closer to the english sounds of rp, which is unquestionably linked with education, prestige and authority; it is the accent that is most intelligible to the british population as a whole (honey 2000). our interest focused on the pronunciation of 10 phonemes which are particularly difficult for spanish students of english. six of them were found in the reading of the episode of peppa pig: /ʤ/ as in ‘george’ /v/ as in ‘visit’ pilar gonzález-vera and ana hornero corisco language value 8 (1), 1–25 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 20 /i:/ as in ‘leave’ /j/ as in ‘you’ /ʌ/ as in ‘brush’ final /g/, as in ‘pig’ and four in the episode of ben & holly: /s/ as in ‘star’ /h/ as in ‘holly’ /ʃ/ as in ‘shining’ /ð/ as in ‘that’ then the pronunciation of the ten phonemes in the first and second reading was compared. here follows the analysis of the results: 1. peppa pig. where was the improvement detected? in the second reading of peppa pig, after watching the episode, there was an improvement in pronunciation in 25 cases. the phonemes affected (‘improved’) were: . from /ʊ/ to /ᴧ/ in ‘brush’ (9) . from /i/ to /i:/ in ‘leave’ (8) . /j/ in ‘you’ (5) . from /b/ to /v/ in ‘visit’ (2) . from /j/ to /ʤ/ in george’ (1) improvement represented 71.4% of all the cases where there was a change in pronunciation (35). 2. ben & holly. where was the improvement detected? in the second reading of ben & holly, after watching the episode, there was an improvement in pronunciation in 19 cases. the phonemes affected were: . from epenthetic /e/ before /s/ initially to /s/ in ‘stars’ (7) . from [x] (voiceless velar fricative to aspirated /h/ in ‘holly’ (5) . from plosive /d/ to the fricative /ð/ in ‘that’ (4) . from /s/ to /ʃ/ in ‘shining’ (3) of all the cases where there was a change in pronunciation (24), improvement accounted for 79.1%. this might lead us to interpret that the extent of improvement has audiovisual materials: a way to reinforce listening skills in primary school teacher education language value 8 (1), 1-25 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 21 been higher in this second practice, perhaps aided by the fact that the students had already gone through a previous `training’ process with the reading of the episode of peppa pig. a number of students ˗ six in each case ˗ did not, however, vary their pronunciation in the second reading. in other words, 25% of the students tested did not modify their pronunciation in the second reading, in either case, (see figure 12). the data reveal that in some cases in the first reading of peppa pig our students did not pronounce the following phonemes properly and no improvement was observed in the second reading. this means that, in these cases, the students need to continue to practise in order to achieve a pronunciation that more closely resembles the sounds of english. further pronunciation exercises (like reading word pairs or more audiovisual activities) would be helpful for that purpose. the phonemes that needed more practice were: . /v/! 79.1%. the students did not differentiate /b/ and /v/ in words like ‘very’. . /ʤ/! 70.8%. the students did not differentiate /ʤ/ and /j/ in words like ‘just’ or ‘george’. (they produced the phoneme /j/ all the time). . /j/ ! 16.6%. the students did not produce the phoneme /j/ in words like ‘you’. instead, they uttered the palatal lateral approximant / ʎ/. . /ʊ/! 12.5%. the students did not lower and centralise the phoneme to /ᴧ/ in words like ‘brushing’. . /i:/ ! 8.3%. the students did not produce the long vowel in ‘leave’. pilar gonzález-vera and ana hornero corisco language value 8 (1), 1–25 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 22 figure 12. phonemes that need improving (peppa pig). likewise, in the first reading of ben & holly some of our students did not pronounce the following phonemes properly and no improvement was observed in the second reading. in this case, the following phonemes needed further practice (see figure 13): /ʃ/ ! 58.3%. the students did not differentiate /s/ and /ʃ/ in words like ‘shining’. /s/ ! 50%. the students produced the epenthetic /e/ before the initial /s/ in ‘stars’. /ð/ ! 41%. the students did not distinguish the pair /d/-/ð/ in ‘that’. /h/ ! 20.8%. the students produced the [x] (voiceless velar fricative) initially, in the “spanish way”, instead of the english aspirated /h/ in ‘holly’. figure 13. phonemes that need improving (ben & holly). therefore, as we have seen, in 75% of the cases there was a modification in pronunciation and, as pointed out previously, improvements were noted in 71.4% of cases in peppa pig and 79.1% in ben & holly. audiovisual materials: a way to reinforce listening skills in primary school teacher education language value 8 (1), 1-25 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 23 moreover, a clear improvement was perceived in the use of the appropriate intonation patterns. as we all know, intonation is a fundamental factor in speaking. it is used to show the grammar of what is being said (e.g., a falling tone indicating a statement, a rising tone a question), the speaker’s attitude or a change in turn in conversation. however, it is difficult to learn and insufficient attention is devoted to its observation and teaching. one of the advantages of being exposed to watching videos is that students may raise their awareness of the power of intonation, a basic tool in every conversation. iv. concluding remarks and pedagogical implications in the case of the language training of primary school teachers, the use of animated television series allowed potential school teachers to learn by means of authentic materials that deal with stimulating topics for their future learners, that is, children. the choice of peppa pig and ben and holly’s little kingdom seemed to be appropriate for the level of english in the class. although, at first sight, one can think that the students might feel embarrassed or discouraged working with texts whose language level is not high and may be regarded as simple and naïve, the effect was the opposite. the students appreciated the use of authentic resources and saw these texts as potential materials for their pupils, which encouraged and motivated them. the results were positive in both listening and speaking, as the final exam (post-test) revealed. while the progress in the case of listening was more remarkable, the improvement of their communicative skills was not so apparent. this could be justified by the profound lack of instruction in communicative skills during the students’ previous training. any improvement in these skills, however small it may be, encourages us to continue integrating the practice of using audiovisual materials, as it has proved to be so fruitful and rewarding. watching video clips allowed our students to improve their listening comprehension skills. the visual aid provided information that contributed to the full understanding of the message. as happens in real life, students completed what they understood aurally with what they saw; in other words, they filled in the missing gaps with visual information. working with audiovisual texts also allowed our students to see language pilar gonzález-vera and ana hornero corisco language value 8 (1), 1–25 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 24 in use, that is, to relate paralinguistic behaviour to intonation, an effective way to learn a range of cross-cultural clues at the same time. by training future teachers with these tools and activities once it has been proved they are effective and motivating we are paving the way for a more straightforward inclusion of these materials and technologies in the efl teaching and learning process. likewise, we are also ensuring the methodologies of foreign language teaching are updated a demand made by students themselves. references brumfit, c. and johnson, k. 1979. the communicative approach to language teaching. new york: oxford university press. crystal, d. 2006. “english worldwide”. in hogg, r. & d. denison (eds.) a history of the english language. cambridge university press eaquals bank of descriptors <http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/education/elp/elpreg/source/key_reference/eaqualsbank_levels_en.pdf> ef english proficiency index <http://www.ef.com.es/epi/> ellis, r. 2003. task-based language learning and teaching. oxford university press. gonzález-vera, p. 2015. la evolución en el aprendizaje de idiomas, más allá de internet. verbeia, 63-74. honey, j. 1991.does accent matter? london: faber & faber. hornero, a., mur-dueñas, p. and plo, r. 2013. “oral skills in the spotlight: efl in secondary education in a spanish local context”. synergy 9(2), 111-123. harmer, j. 2007 (4th ed.) the practice of english language teaching. harlow: pearson/ longman. jain, m. 2013. “different techniques for developing communication skills”. irc’s international journal of multidisciplinary research in social & management sciences, 78-82. krashen, s. & terrell. t. 1983. the natural approach. oxford: pergamon. audiovisual materials: a way to reinforce listening skills in primary school teacher education language value 8 (1), 1-25 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 25 littlewood, w. (1981). communicative language teaching: an introduction. cambridge university press. mur-dueñas, p., plo, r & hornero, a. 2013. “spanish secondary school students’ oral competence in efl: self-assessment, teacher assessment and assessment tasks”. miscelánea: a journal of english and american studies 47, 103-124. plo, r., a. hornero & mur-dueñas, p. 2014.“implementing the teaching/learning of oral skills in secondary education in aragon: gauging teachers’ attitudes, beliefs and expectations”. international journal of english studies 14 (1), 55-77. prenksy, m. 2001. “digital natives, digital immigrants”. on the horizon, 9 (5). 17 february 2015 <http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/prensky%20%20digital%20natives,%20digital%20immigrants%20-%20part1.pdf> tapscott, d. 2009. grown up digital: how the net generation is changing your world. new york: mcgraw-hill. widdowson, h. g. 1978. teaching language as communication. oxford university press. received: 19 february 2015 accepted: 21 february 2016 cite this article as: gonzález-vera, p. & hornero corisco, a. 2016. “audiovisual materials: a way to reinforce listening skills in primary school teacher education”. language value 8 (1), 1-25 jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2016.8.2 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors mª ángeles martín language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue april 2016, volume 8, number 1 pp. 26-48 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2016.8.3 26 discourse markers and lecture structure: their role in listening comprehension and emi lecturer training maría ángeles martín del pozo maryange@dlyl.uva.es universidad de valladolid, spain abstract listening comprehension of lectures in l2 contexts is a widely researched topic. findings have been applied to both materials and course design. this paper focuses on findings about the facilitative role in comprehension of those discourse markers (dm) which signal lecture structure. these markers can also be of assistance in l2 contexts such as new english medium instruction (emi) scenarios, where the lecturer is not a native speaker of english. a small-scale investigation about the presence of these markers in emi lecturer discourse is presented. findings indicate that lecturers need a more overt signalling of lecture phases and a wider stylistic variety enabling them to do so. the paper concludes by suggesting that eap materials for training students in listening comprehension could be a good resource to provide the lecturer with a repertoire of linguistic tools to structure their lecturers and in consequence facilitate comprehension for students. keywords: listening comprehension, academic language, bilingual education, teacher education, discourse markers i. introduction flowerdew (1994) defended the undeniable importance of teaching listening comprehension skills in a language other than the mother tongue. the reason for this was the high number of students learning through a foreign language at that time. today, more than two decades later, his vindication becomes even more vital with the proliferation of english medium instruction (emi) and other bilingual education approaches. practice has outpaced the provision of qualified and prepared teachers. surveys reveal that spanish teachers at all educational levels are more concerned with linguistic than with methodological training. though the partiality of this vision is arguable, the urgency of language upskilling is evident for in-service and prospective emi teachers. this paper aims to advocate and propose the utility of academic listening comprehension materials as a valid resource to support emi teachers in the process of class preparation. research about the role of discourse markers in lecture discourse markers and lecture structure: their role in listening comprehension and emi lecturer training language value 8 (1), 26-48 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 27 comprehension and the learning materials derived from these findings could now be transferred to these new scenarios of l2 listening comprehension. the paper will open with a reflection on the lecture as an academic oral genre and the role of discourse markers to signal phases and facilitate comprehension. next, the actual presence of these dm in emi lecturer discourses will be observed to identify linguistic needs. finally, some academic listening materials will be suggested as resources to cover those needs. ii. listening comprehension in lectures ii.1 academic listening: understanding lectures some teaching methods such as tutorials, seminars and practical sessions are gaining momentum in the european higher education area (ehea). however, the lecture continues to be “a cornerstone of many tertiary level courses and, due to the increase in student numbers, it is likely to remain so” (exley and dennick 2009: 10). therefore, it is currently relevant to contribute to a better understanding of how lectures are comprehended and of how to deliver them successfully, both for l1 and l2 contexts. in lectures, the use of language is complex. there are significant differences between listening to academic discourse and more general listening events. miller (2002) points out some of them: academic discourse presents a special disciplinary orientation, it is delivered to an audience in particular ways, the underlying rhetorical structures are different from other conversational contexts. complexity in lectures does not only affect the language. the situation itself is also multi-faceted. the listener has to integrate information coming from different channels (auditory, visual and perhaps kinetic). this is one of the main differences between the lecture comprehension process and the comprehension process of other oral genres. thus, knowledge of the factors affecting l2 academic listening comprehension could provide benefits (hyland 2009: 97). these factors have been the center of attention in numerous research studies, among which academic listening (flowerdew 1994) is still maría ángeles martín del pozo language value 8 (1), 26-48 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 28 said to be the most comprehensive work. the main argument underlying the whole book is that knowledge of how lectures are comprehended in l2 can be applied to: 1) teaching students to understand lectures in a second language, and 2) assisting lecturers to facilitate comprehension. or in other words, as mendelssohn (1998) reflects: the call for greater support in academic listening for non-native speakers comprises two aspects: the need to help students to help themselves, and the need to educate lecturers when they have classes with significant numbers of international students (p.92). if we transfer this to emi contexts where the lecturer is a non-native speaker of english, the application of this information to support and educate lecturers translates differently than it would in the case of native speakers. subsequently, the question is what knowledge about lecture comprehension derived from these studies is useful for the linguistic education of teachers in emi contexts. a consideration of the factors affecting lecture comprehension could provide answers. any good quality teaching practice should ponder these factors, but perhaps they present distinctive connotations in l2 contexts. some of these aspects are tightly related to personal style (such as speed of delivery). others, though depending on style, are “trainable”. some of these factors are formal while others are cultural. the research on l2 academic listening performance emerged from the growing practice of specific language courses for students of content in l2 (chaudron and richards 1986). the findings of this research are potential input for instructional materials, curriculum design and teacher training. this paper focuses on some of the findings about the formal factors which affect lecture comprehension and on their derived pedagogical implications. that is to say, the overview of some of the aspects revealed by the research provided in this paper endeavors to consider those which could be transferred to assist lecturers in delivering more comprehensible classes. ii.2 formal elements in the lecture: phases and discourse markers the use of certain rhetorical markers is a major feature of the language of lectures. these markers are lexical phrases which help to signal the most important content, and to indicate moves in argumentation or the boundaries of non-essential information. discourse markers and lecture structure: their role in listening comprehension and emi lecturer training language value 8 (1), 26-48 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 29 these discourse markers (dm henceforth) are one of the most studied formal elements in l2 and l1 lectures. the state of the art (bellés-fortuño 2008) shows heterogeneity in the concept and taxonomies of dm. discussion about them is beyond the scope of this paper, since it tries to maintain an applied and didactic orientation. chaudron and richards (1986) provided one of the first and most widely used categorizations, which distinguishes between micromarkers and macromarkers. though this classification has also been discussed, their study opens up a series of investigations about the role of markers in understanding lectures. this paper will focus only on macromarkers, that is, metadiscursive comments on how the lecture itself will be organized, or phrases which signal to the listener what is coming next (e.g., today, we’ll talk about; now, let’s take a look at; we’ll come back to that later). the label dm will be maintained to refer to them. this option is justified by the phase model (young 1994), which identifies a macrostructure of the lecture independent from the discipline or other situational factors. it is a model allowing the lecture to be approached as a genre. phases are: strands of discourse that recur discontinuously throughout a particular language event, and, taken together, structure the event. these strands recur and are interspersed with others resulting in an interweaving of threads as the discourse progresses. (1994: 165) this model fulfills two requirements that are relevant for this research paper. firstly, the model has a didactic purpose, since the aim of a detailed description of lectures is to make them more comprehensible for students. secondly, this phase model goes beyond traditional linear models such as “introduction, middle, end”, which cannot seize the complexity of the lecture as a discursive act. young's model is not linear but recurrent. in addition, young identifies some linguistic elements that are distinctive in each of the phases. dm are a group of these elements which, for example, signal or delimit a phase. the same author endorses the relevance of recognizing these linguistic features for both lecturers and l2 students: “an acquaintance with the correct schematic patterning of lectures will greatly assist students” (p.173). table 1 recaps this phase model. maría ángeles martín del pozo language value 8 (1), 26-48 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 30 table1. lecture phases (young 1994) structuring discourse lecturer indicates the direction that they will take in the lecture. conclusion lecturers summarize points made during the class. m e ta d is c o u rs a l evaluation the lecturer reinforces each of the other strands by evaluating information which is about to be or has already been transmitted. interaction the lecturer establishes contact with students to check if they have understood or to reduce distance. content the lecturer transmits theoretical information. n o n -m e ta d is c o u rs a l exemplification the lecturer explains theoretical concepts through concrete examples. as already said, dm are an important element in this model. dm in lectures have been approached from two perspectives (bellés-fortuño 2008: 112): 1. the role and function of these dm in l1 lectures (from the perspective of the lecturer-sender and the genre per se), 2. the role of those dm in lecture comprehension in l2 (from the perspective of the student-receiver). this second group has been more widely researched that the first one. before summarizing the main contributions of studies in this line (section ii.4), it is convenient to dedicate a section to reflect on the importance of dm in listening comprehension. ii.3 dm and listening comprehension listening is a complex skill which involves physiological and cognitive processes in conjunction with the processing of contextual information. a brief overview of the cognitive elements involved in listening will raise awareness of the implications for listening in l2 contexts. this section relates dm to both the sources of knowledge which aid listening comprehension and the processes of listening comprehension. firstly, anderson and lynch’s model of listening comprehension (1988: 13) identifies three main sources of knowledge: schematic knowledge (background knowledge and schemata), discourse markers and lecture structure: their role in listening comprehension and emi lecturer training language value 8 (1), 26-48 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 31 contextual knowledge (situation and context), and systemic knowledge (knowledge of the language system at the phonological, lexicosemantic, morphosyntactic, and discursive levels). dm are elements of the language system, and therefore knowledge of them can potentially enhance comprehension. in addition, dm signal the different phases in a lecture (young 1994). this is related to schematic knowledge. students are supposed to have lecture schemata in their l1 and this knowledge could be used to understand lectures in l2. other theoretical models provide information about the processes involved in listening. two main types can be identified: top-down processes and bottom-up processes. in the first type, the listener builds a conceptual framework for comprehension using context and prior knowledge stored in long-term memory (topic, genre, culture, schema knowledge). on the other hand, bottom-up processes imply the construction of meaning by building up from smallest units of meaning (phoneme-level) to increasingly larger ones up to discourse-level elements. these processes do not exclude each other but interact depending on the purpose of the listening and on the listener’s skills (vandergrift 2004). understanding the unit of meaning constituted by dm favors bottom-up comprehension processes. finally, the microskills models should be considered. richards' (1983) highly cited paper provided a detailed list of skills needed for conversation and academic lecture speech, which others have followed (mendelssohn 1998). richards' taxonomy (1983) includes “the ability to recognize the role of dm for signaling the structure of the lecture”. in this case, top-down processes are promoted. hence, knowledge of dm is likely to foster both comprehension processes. perhaps this is one of the reasons for their presence among the skills needed for comprehension ability. ii.4 dm in lecture comprehension the significance of dm in lecture comprehension is sustained through their permanence as a focus of interest for many researchers. chaudron and richards' pioneering investigation (1986) concluded that macromarkers signaling major transitions and emphasis in a spoken academic lecture helped successful recall. since then, other researchers have approached the question by combining different variables such as the maría ángeles martín del pozo language value 8 (1), 26-48 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 32 type of markers or the kind of evaluation process. most of the studies agree on the facilitating effect of dm, especially macromarkers and metadiscourse in contexts where the student is not a native speaker of the language of instruction. the methodology followed in these studies was similar. firstly, an experimental group received the lecture with dm, while a control group received the same lecture without those dm (chaudron and richards 1986, eslami and eslami-rasekh 2007, flowerdew and tauroza 1995, jung 2003, morell 2004, reza et al. 2012, inter ali.). secondly, students' comprehension is checked by means of questions, tests or the notes taken. in the same way, tehrani and dastjerdi (2012) showed that cohesion and coherence in the written compositions of students who received the lecture with dm was higher than in those by students who received the lecture without dm. some other studies included an interventional step: some students received explicit instruction on dm. results show that these did better than students who had not been explicitly taught dm (smit 2006). smit's intervention program focused on training the students to notice when and how lecturers use dm to verbally signpost the different movements in the lecture. thus, dm achieve a twofold utility as indicators of the structure of the discourse and as potential aids in training listeners to understand better. the consensus about the presence of dm as a facilitator of comprehension seems to be general. the disagreements among these studies may be rooted in the type of markers studied, the students' language proficiency or the test employed. this paper will not discuss such disagreements. in conclusion, the facilitative role of dm to signal lecture phases (young 1994) is implicit in the findings of most of these studies. as a result, pedagogical implications derived from them include the teaching of these elements to students and the recommendation for lecturers to incorporate them in their discourses. accordingly, mendelssohn (1998) offers eight suggestions for lecturers, all derived from the studies and experiences compiled in flowerdew (1994). the third of mendelssohn’s suggestions reads: “train lecturers to insert many more overt dm that highlight the overall structure of the lecture” (p. 93). eslami and eslami-rasekh (2007) emphasize the “teachability” of these elements: discourse markers and lecture structure: their role in listening comprehension and emi lecturer training language value 8 (1), 26-48 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 33 the use of discourse markers can be considered as an area of strategic competence that can be taught and may have an immediate effect on comprehension. this means that nonnative speakers can compensate for skills that they lack by using appropriate strategies. (p.35) (emphasis added) materials design and methodology for the teaching of these elements are based on the findings of studies on academic listening comprehension like the ones reviewed in this section. benefits have extended to lecturers and to students. however, with the growing expansion of clil/emi, content lecturers are not necessarily native speakers. the next section deals with some of the implications of this reality. iii. lectures in l2: the new scenarios of english medium instruction iii.1 new contexts of english medium instruction: forces behind and challenges ahead the ehea, the internationalization of universities, and some european linguistic policies are promoting the teaching of non-linguistic disciplines in a foreign language at all educational levels. this is known as clil (content and language integrated learning) in english and aicle (aprendizaje integrado de contenidos y lengua extranjera) in spanish. in higher education, the label english medium instruction (emi) is preferred. emi does not necessarily imply the dual focus on language and content. in fact, a distinguishing feature of emi is the non-existence of linguistic objectives (smit and dafouz 2012). emi is content-driven and lecturers are not language teachers but content experts. however, some improvement in students' language skills is always expected in bilingual programs. the speed of development and the expansion of these practices have no precedents and the forces behind them (such as those mentioned at the beginning of the section) can be easily identified (coleman 2006). this celerity of implementation implies that praxis is outpacing theory. therefore clil/emi conceptual and theoretical frameworks are still under construction and a “theory-lessness” (dalton-puffer 2007: 10) permeates this trend. another important challenge at all educational levels is teacher training (martín del pozo 2013). the profile of emi lecturers is moving from native speakers to speakers of maría ángeles martín del pozo language value 8 (1), 26-48 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 34 english as a lingua franca (elf). before the current clil/emi boom, content lecturers were very frequently native speakers or had far more proficiency than students. however, this is no longer the case, or at least not in spanish universities (lasagabaster and sierra 2010). language level is one of the main difficulties and reasons for lecturers to be reluctant to teach their content subjects through english. some studies (see compendium for spain in martín del pozo 2015) show that teachers do not consider themselves in need of methodological training. their main perceived need is only linguistic upskilling. there is also a debate about the linguistic needs and the language qualification required for content lecturers to take emi courses (halbach and lázaro 2015). teacher training is left to each individual institution and the materials available are scarce. a serious approach to this substantial challenge could start by describing how lecturers are actually teaching through english. the next section presents some classroom research about lecturer discourses. iii.2 dm in spanish emi teacher discourses the preceding sections have centered on the significance of dm in lectures and their facilitative role in the process of lecture comprehension in l2. two main pedagogical implications are derived: 1. the convenience of training students to identify and comprehend these elements. 2. educating lecturers for a conscious use of dm could be beneficial. regarding this second pedagogical implication, a first step to be taken is to observe the frequency and type of dm employed in teacher discourses. several studies have been conducted on emi lecturer discourses in the spanish context. the research group clue (content learning in university education) gathered a corpus of oral data from different universities in the comunidad autónoma de madrid. one of the novelties of this research group is to approach the discourse of a non-native speaker of english. previous investigations have centered on strategies employed by native speakers of english teaching to international audiences or on these international audiences' understanding of lectures by native speakers. discourse markers and lecture structure: their role in listening comprehension and emi lecturer training language value 8 (1), 26-48 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 35 núñez and dafouz (2007) studied four content lecturers' teaching through english and identified the different phases of the lecture (young 1994). however, phase and phase change were only explicitly indicated in a small number of occasions. in addition, the use of some explicit markers such as “for example” did not correspond to a signaling value. these researchers forewarn that both cases (scarce signaling or ambiguous signaling) may be a hindrance for comprehension. a following study (dafouz and nuñez 2010) expanded on and enhanced the research conducted in 2007. this time, the analysis did not only identify lecture phases but also the functional elements in each of them, with especial attention to dm. the resources with a signaling function of three spanish lecturers teaching through spanish were contrasted with those used when lecturing through english. findings reveal that lecturers transfer linguistic tools from l1 to l2. however, l2 productions show a lower frequency, precision and stylistic variety. explicit signaling of phase change is considerably inferior to the frequency and variety of resources when changing phase in spanish. conclusions indicate that resorting to these types of resources may strongly depend on personal teaching style and on the fact that lecturers tend to reproduce in l2 their own style in l1. however, very specific linguistic needs are derived from these results. one of them is the convenience of providing linguistic tools to signal phases, together with the awareness of their utility for the students to comprehend lectures. these studies call for further research in parallel contexts, such as the one addressed in the next section. iv. context, research questions and methodology this section describes a small-scale investigation conducted in a spanish emi context. the long-term aim is to assist lecturers with the language needed to teach in english, in particularly with dm to signal lecture structure. the first step before devising a pedagogical intervention, and therefore the immediate aim, is to observe the current presence of dm in these teachers’ discourses. iv.1 research question the following specific research questions attempt to fulfill the aim of describing the presence of dm in lecturer discourses and identifying linguistic training needs. maría ángeles martín del pozo language value 8 (1), 26-48 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 36 1. how many occurrences of the dm are there in the lecturer discourses? 2. what is the linguistic form of these dm? iv.2 context the escuela de ingeniería informática de segovia (eiisg) (universidad de valladolid, spain) was the first public higher education institution to offer a bilingual degree in computing in the comunidad de castilla y león. emi was an optional practice from 2006 to 2011 within the program ingeniero técnico de informática de gestión. the subjects taught through english ranged from microeconomics, operating systems, software engineering, math, physics, information systems, programming, and other related areas of knowledge. the number of credits in english increased from 26 to 117 over this five-year period. the attitudes and perceptions of students and lecturers for the first two years of the experience were reported in martín del pozo (2008a and b) along with some narratives of lecturers’ difficulties, strategies and achievements. at the eiisg, 'the shift towards l2 medium education in english does not correlate with the introduction of clil' (marsh and laitinanen 2005: 2). this means there are no explicit language objectives at the institutional or the individual level at the university. this is a widespread trend in spanish universities. nonetheless, students’ linguistic competence is always expected to benefit from any bilingual program. six lecturers were videotaped during the delivery of a sample lecture. the transcriptions of the verbal language formed a corpus whose most relevant features are specified in table 2: table 2. corpus description lecturer topic recording time (minutes) number of words emi experience (years) lecturer 1 processes in operating systems 31 2,580 2 lecturer 2 information representation in quantum arithmetic 27 2,140 5 lecturer 3 consumer preferences 40 3,300 3 lecturer 4 graph theory 51 2,650 5 lecturer 5 basic concepts of mathematics 22 2,273 4 lecturer 6 gauss’s theorem and applications 36 3,470 4 total number of lectures: 6 207 minutes 16, 413 words discourse markers and lecture structure: their role in listening comprehension and emi lecturer training language value 8 (1), 26-48 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 37 the six lecturers were selected on the basis of gender, subject and their having more than two years' experience teaching through english. their discourses were analyzed to observe dm. this paper reports only on those dm used to signal the opening (openers), the sequencing (sequencers) and the introduction of new topics (verbal topicalization) in the discourse structuring phase. iv.3 methodology the linguistic analysis of these data required the design of a taxonomy based on previous models. among the available models used in previous studies, such as chaudron and richards (1986) or bellés-fortuño (2008), the most suitable for our purpose were the lecture phases model (young 1994), already described in ii.2, and the taxonomy which dafouz and nuñez (2010) used in their analysis. since this paper centers only on dm for opening, sequencing and introducing new topics, an abridged version of the taxonomy is presented. table 3. abridged taxonomy (dafouz and nuñez 2010: 220) the opening move in the research process was to identify what constitutes a dm in the six lecturers’ discourses. once these markers had been identified, the analysis of each of them was undertaken following the taxonomy described above. both qualitative (formal features) and quantitative (number of occurrences) information was used. the main relevant findings are now summarized. v. results and pedagogical implications v.1. results this is a small-scale investigation in a bilingual degree at a spanish university. results are not unexpected to be similar to those of previous studies in emi parallel contexts, definition/function example openers signal of the formal beginning of a class today, we are going to talk… sequencers mark particular positions within a series first, then, next… d is c o u rs e st ru c tu ri n g p h a se verbal topicalizers indicate introduction of new topics/topic shifts another concept maría ángeles martín del pozo language value 8 (1), 26-48 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 38 such as the research on lecturers' discourse by dafouz and nuñez (2010). these results provide important insights into the features of spanish lecturers using english to teach content subjects. nevertheless, as figure 1 shows, markers to structure lectures prevail over the other types, although their presence is limited and characterized by a lack of stylistic variety (see tables 4 and 5). figure 1. distribution of dm per lecturer in lecture phases as regards the qualitative features of the dm, the following tables 2 and 3 provide an overview of markers produced to open the lecture, to indicate sequence, and to introduce new topics. discourse markers and lecture structure: their role in listening comprehension and emi lecturer training language value 8 (1), 26-48 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 39 table 4. dm in lecturers 1, 2 and 3 table 5. dm in lecturers 4, 5 and 6 maría ángeles martín del pozo language value 8 (1), 26-48 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 40 the frequencies and categories in the lecturers' discourses provide useful information about individual linguistic needs. however, commenting on and discussing them in detail is far beyond the extension and scope of the present paper. what is relevant is that, though they do have a battery of resources given their expertise in lecturing in l1, these are seen to be repetitive and stylistically weak. v.2. pedagogical implications indications or teacher training implications formulated in studies about the importance of dm in listening comprehension fall under the general label “train lecturers”. they need to be specified in language contents. this paper contributes to the specification, as the pedagogical implications derived from the findings are evident and match those proposed by similar studies. the first one is that emi lecturers require linguistic tools to signal lecture phases. materials in section vi could provide this instruction. a second implication is the convenience of raising lecturers' awareness about the significance of introducing such dm. the materials recommended in section vi can potentially make them aware. a third implication concerns the reality that assisting non-native speakers to deliver lectures will concurrently have an effect on students’ comprehension. this is of great importance, as there is a tendency towards emphasizing the instrumental character of listening comprehension: “learning to listen in the l2 and learning the l2 through listening” (rost 2002: 91). although the explicit teaching of language is not among the duties of content teachers (neither are they trained to teach language), teachers are linguistic models of the academic and discipline discourses. dm are part of academic discourse and students are more likely to learn them if heard in lectures. finally, language training would perhaps be more welcomed and accepted if it could be overcome autonomously. the problem is the dearth of clil/emi teacher-training materials for autonomous work. however, there are materials available, though they were not initially designed for that purpose. this paper advocates the use of materials targeted towards students who have to attend lectures in english. the new emi scenarios where lecturers are also non-native speakers (or precisely because they are not native speakers) may also benefit from what has already proven efficient in eap contexts. discourse markers and lecture structure: their role in listening comprehension and emi lecturer training language value 8 (1), 26-48 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 41 vi. listening comprehension materials: a resource to assist emi lectures the wide range of materials for learning academic listening demonstrates that the application of knowledge and results derived from research on l2 listening comprehension has targeted students much more than lecturers. for instance, the special research attention paid to how the structure of the lecture is signaled has resulted in instructional materials to train l2 students to identify signposting elements and overall lecture structure. this will only be possible if the lecture is structured and signaled. lynch (1994) quotes a review by o'brien (1984) on some materials to teach academic listening comprehension: as authentic as they sound, however, one has to recognize that special care has been given to the structure of the talks. they have a structure and it is clearly marked. sadly this is not always the case with the real lecture. perhaps we should start training the lecturers (o'brien, 1984, original emphasis). this could be understood as a complaint about the lack of authenticity in l2 listening comprehension teaching materials and at the same time a call for lecturers to follow the generic conventions of the lecture. in the same line, jung (2003) warns that eap listening materials have limitations when compared to authentic lectures. for example, extracts are too short in comparison to real life or intonation is not fully exploited for communication purposes. in spite of this, eap listening comprehension materials could be used to learn lecture conventions, both for the native and the non-native speaker. they are often rich in samples of language to signal hierarchical organization in lectures, or language to refer to visual aids and other similar linguistic resources which would be useful for emi lecturers. using these already-existing materials is a contribution to “maximize content teachers' access to the generic tools for more explicit signaling of metadiscursive devices” (dafouz and núñez 2009: 109). the resources (books, dvds and websites) in the following list were originally targeted towards non-native speakers who had to attend content lectures in english. non-native content lecturers who have to deliver instruction in english could benefit from the linguistic tools available in these resources. the resources are ordered by publication maría ángeles martín del pozo language value 8 (1), 26-48 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 42 date, though there are also expanded new editions. this list illustrates the permanent interest in teaching listening comprehension in academic environments. emi lecturers may benefit from this heritage by making use of these resources as self-training tools. the list is by no means exhaustive. it aims to serve as an example and indication of where to look for linguistic assistance to teach through english at university. table 6 offers examples of the language that emi lecturers could learn from these materials. the stylistic variety of a single functional resource is evident. table 6. sample of openers what i intend to say is what i'd like to do is to discuss what i intend to do is to explain in my talk today, my topic today is today, i'm going to talk about i'm going to talk to you about my colleagues and i are going to give a short presentation on today i want to consider in this talk, i would like to concentrate on the subject of this talk is the purpose of this talk is to this talk is designed to it has to be noted that the table is preceded by some directions to the student who is using this resource to learn listening comprehension skills: at the beginning of a lecture, or a section of a lecture, the lecturer will give you some idea about the structure of the lecture. listen for these signals as it will help you understand what the lecturer is saying. (text preceding table 6 in one of the recommended materials) however, the possibility and the utility of a shift from “student learning to listen” to “lecturer learning to speak” is manifest. similar models to table 6 are abundant in the following resources. 1) books these course books include information about how a typical lecture is organized and strategies for recognizing introductions, conclusions, and digressions. the accompanying dvds or websites use actual excerpts and transcripts from authentic lectures covering a wide range of topics and academic disciplines. some strategies for note-taking are also provided. discourse markers and lecture structure: their role in listening comprehension and emi lecturer training language value 8 (1), 26-48 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 43 lebauer, r. s. 1988. learn to listen; listen to learn: academic listening and notetaking. englewood cliffs: prentice hall goodith, wh. 1998. listening. oxford: oxford university press celte. 2002. essential academic skills in english: listening to lectures. university of warwick salehzadeh, j. 2006. academic listening strategies: a guide to understanding lectures. ann arbor: university of michigan press beglar, d., murray, n. 2009. contemporary topics: academic listening and note-taking skills. new york: pearson education smit, j and campel, t. 2009. english for academic study: listening. reading: garnet parrish, b. 2009. four point: listening and speaking 2, advanced. ann arbor, mi: university of michigan press wennerstrom, a. 1991. techniques for teachers a guide for nonnative speakers of english this reference is provided at the end because it is not targeted towards students but to academic professionals who speak english as a second language. it originated to train non-native teaching assistants in us higher education. 2) web resources http://www.englishforacademicstudy.com portal to other sites related to academic english. some of them are free access. they include clips of lectures and information about the phraseology used in the different phases. http://www.uefap.com/ using english for academic purposes. a guide for students in higher education maintained since 1999 by andy gillett. tips and phrases to recognize lecture structure. the information on academic functions can be very useful for content delivery. http://www.prepareforsuccess.org.uk/ maría ángeles martín del pozo language value 8 (1), 26-48 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 44 this interactive web tool includes, among other aspects of academia, resources and tips to deal with the language challenge of lecturers in l2. vii. summary and conclusions the paper opened by highlighting the prevalence of the lecture as an academic genre and thus the significance of understanding how it can be effectively comprehended (sections ii.1 and ii.2). reasons for the facilitative role of dm in lecture comprehension have been argued (section ii.3). findings reveal that the presence of dm in lecturer discourse seems to have a positive impact on lecture understanding. on the contrary, the absence of dm may be a hindrance for oral comprehension in academic contexts (section ii.4). the production of more dm is advocated in the conclusions of the studies mentioned in ii.4. therefore, if dm are a recommended feature, the first question to be answered is the type of presence of these signposting elements in lecturer discourse in emi contexts. discourse analysis of some spanish lecturers (section iii.2) reveals that: 1) there is a small number of dm and lecture phases are implicitly signaled (dafouz and nuñez 2010), and 2) contrastive analysis shows less stylistic variety and less precision in l2 than in l1 (dafouz and nuñez 2010). the small-scale investigation of lecturer discourse at eiisg (section iv) coincides with the earlier findings, with the exception of lacking the contrastive aspect with discourses in spanish. if a lack of explicit signaling may hinder comprehension, and if emi lecturers are not producing the desirable number of dm in l2, it seems highly convenient to make lecturers aware of their importance and to train them in the production of markers which clarify lecture structure. academic listening materials designed to enhance students’ lecture comprehension (section vi) could also be employed to provide lecturers with a wide range of linguistic tools for signaling lecture phases. other conclusions of this paper are not of that immediate pragmatic nature. regarding teacher linguistic needs, the research findings summarized in this paper seem to suggest that the debate would be more productive if attention focused on the type of language required for successful emi lecture delivery rather than concentrating on what language qualifications emi lecturers should hold. moreover, most of the clil/emi research to discourse markers and lecture structure: their role in listening comprehension and emi lecturer training language value 8 (1), 26-48 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 45 date has tended to focus on the product of clil/emi instruction (language learning gains) rather than on the process of teaching and learning. in a modest attempt to fill this research lacunae, this paper has approached one of the elements of the process: dm in lecturers' discourse. the reason for this has been the significant role of dm for lecture comprehension, widely proven by studies on l2 listening comprehension. finally, the paper has advocated a new utility of academic listening comprehension materials whose suitability is supported by theoretical models of the listening comprehension process. these materials, originally designed to train students in esp and eap contexts, could serve now as a resource for autonomous language upskilling of clil/emi lecturers. these professionals can be considered “a new eap learner” (martín del pozo 2015b). in addition, one of the “synergies of mutual inspiration” (dalton-puffer 2007: 297) between esp and clil/emi could be making use of already-existing and solidly underpinned materials. a second source of inspiration is the application of the knowledge about listening comprehension in l2 lectures to these new l2 scenarios. references bellés-fortuño, b. 2008. discourse markers within the university lecture genre: a contrastive study between spanish and north american lectures (unpublished doctoral thesis). universitat jaume i: castellón. chaudron, c. and richards, j.c. 1986. “the effects of discourse markers on the comprehension of lectures”. applied linguistics 7, 113-125. coleman, j. 2006 “english-medium teaching in european higher education”, language teaching 39, 114. dafouz, e. and núñez, b. 2009. “clil in higher education: devising a new learning landscape”. in dafouz, e. and guerrini, m. (eds.), clil across educational levels. madrid : santillana, 101-112. dafouz, e. and núñez, b. 2010. “metadiscursive devices in university lectures: a constrastive analysis of l1 and l2 performance”. in dalton-puffer, c., nikula, t and u. smit (eds.) language use in content-and-language-integrated learning. amsterdam: john benjamins, 213233. maría ángeles martín del pozo language value 8 (1), 26-48 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 46 dafouz milne, e. 2011. “english as the medium of instruction in spanish contexts: a look at teacher discourse”. in ruiz de zarobe, y., sierra, j.m. and gallardo del puerto, f. (eds) content and foreign language integrated learning: contributions to multilingualism in european contexts. frankfurt: peter lang, 89-110. dalton-puffer, c. 2007. discourse in content and language integrated learning (clil). amsterdam: john benjamins publishing. eslami, z. r and eslami-rasekh, a. 2007. “discourse markers in academic lectures”. asian efl journal. 9 (1), 22-38. exley, k. and dennick, r. 2009. giving a lecture: from presenting to teaching. london: routledge falmer. (1ª ed 2004). flowerdew, j. (ed.). 1994. academic listening: research perspectives. cambridge: cambridge university press. flowerdew, j. and tauroza, s. 1995. "the effect of discourse markers on second language lecture comprehension". studies in second language acquisition 17, 435-458. halbach, a. and lázaro, a. 2015. “la acreditación del nivel de lengua inglesa en las universidades españolas: actualización 2015.” available online here: http://www.britishcouncil.es/sites/britishcouncil.es/files/british-council-laacreditacion-del-nivel-de-lengua-inglesa.pdf . hyland, k. 2009. academic discourse: english in a global context. london: continuum. jung, e.h. 2003. “the role of discourse signaling cues in second language listening comprehension”. the modern language journal 87(4), 562-577. lasagabaster, d. and sierra, j. 2010. “immersion and clil in english: more differences than similarities”. elt journal 64(4), 367-375. doi: 10.1093/elt/ccp082 lynch, t. 1994. “training lectures for international audiences”. in j. flowerdew (ed.). 269-289. martín del pozo, m.a. 2008a. “impartir asignaturas en inglés: su potencial para el desarrollo de competencias en alumnos y profesores de una ingeniería técnica”. discourse markers and lecture structure: their role in listening comprehension and emi lecturer training language value 8 (1), 26-48 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 47 jornadas internacionales universidad politécnica de madrid sobre innovación y convergencia europea. universidad politécnica de madrid. martín del pozo, m.a. 2008b. “la enseñanza de contenidos en inglés: estudio de caso de una ingeniería técnica en la universidad de valladolid”. actas del i congreso internacional de interacción comunicativa y enseñanza de lenguas. valencia: universtitat de valencia, 381-388. martín del pozo, m.a. 2013. “formación lingüística del profesorado universitario para la docencia en inglés”. revista de docencia universitaria 11 (3), 197-218. martín del pozo, m.a. 2015a. “teacher education for content and language integrated learning: insights from a current european debate”. revista electrónica interuniversitaria de formación de profesorado 18 (3), 153-168. martín del pozo, m.a. 2015b. “the needs of a new eap learner: clil teachers”. in shrestha, p. (ed.) current developments in english for academic and specific purposes: local innovations and global perspectives. reading: garnett education, 115-138. marsh, d. and laitinen, j. 2005. “medium of instruction in european higher education: summary of research outcomes of european network for language learning amongst undergraduates (enlu) task group 4”. jyväskylä: unicom, university of jyväskylä. mendelssohn, d. 1998. "teaching listening", annual review of applied linguistics, 18, 81-101. miller, l. 2002. “towards a model for lecturing in a second language”. journal of english for academic purposes 1, 145-162. núñez perucha, b. and dafouz milne, e. 2007. “lecturing through the foreign language in a clil university context: linguistic and pragmatic implications”. views vienna english working papers. current research in clil 2 16 (3) ,u. smit and ch. dalton-puffer (eds.), 36-42. o’brian, t. (1984) hearsay. (review of lynch 1983). times educational supplement. june 22. richards, j. 1983. “listening comprehension: approach, design, procedure”, tesol quarterly, 17 (2), 219-240. rost, m. 2002. teaching and researching listening. london: longman. maría ángeles martín del pozo language value 8 (1), 26-48 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 48 smit, u. and dafouz, e. 2012. introduction. in u. smit, u. and e. dafouz, e. (eds.) “integrating content and language in higher education: gaining insights into english-medium instruction at european universities”. aila review, volume 25.iii, 1–12. tehrani, a. and dastjerdi, h. 2012. “the pedagogical impact of discourse markers in the lecture genre: efl learners. writings in focus”. journal of language teaching and research, 3 (3), 423-429. thompson, s. 2003. “text structuring metadiscourse, intonation and the signalling of organization in academic lectures”. journal of english for academic purposes, 2, 5-20. vandergrift, l. 2004. “learning to listen or listening to learn”. annual review of applied linguistics 24, 3-25. young, l. 1994. “university lectures macro-structures and micro-features”. in flowerdew, j. (ed.), 159-179. received: 21 february 2015 accepted: 12 february 2016 cite this article as: martín del pozo, m.a. 2016. “discourse markers and lecture structure: their role in listening comprehension and emi lecturer training”. language value 8 (1), 26-48. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2016.8.3 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue november 2018, volume 10, number 1 pp. 67-88 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2018.10.5 67 teacher’s feedback vs. computer-generated feedback: a focus on articles tamara hernández puertas tamaraeoi@gmail.com escuela oficial de idiomas (castellón), spain abstract as attested by a vast number of studies, in the process of second/foreign language acquisition feedback plays an important role as it may trigger learners’ noticing of the mismatch between their interlanguage and the target language (schmidt 1990). in foreign language classrooms, feedback on written production may not be properly provided due to a large number of students or time constraints (chacón-beltrán 2017). in this sense, the use of new technologies in the classroom may help both the teacher in the correction process and the student in his/her language development. in the present study we aim to compare feedback provided by the teacher and feedback provided by the software grammar checker (lawley 2015). one group of english-as-a-foreign language (efl) students received teacher’s feedback on their mistakes on articles in their written production whereas a second group obtained feedback on the same grammar aspect by means of the above-mentioned software. the control group did not obtain feedback on their errors. results show statistically significant differences in the last composition for the group who received teacher’s feedback, although this feedback did not have a lasting effect in the tailormade delayed test. in light of these findings, we may claim that the use of grammar checker as a potential tool for self-correction and feedback may facilitate students’ language development, at least on the grammar aspect under analysis. keywords: corrective feedback, teacher’s feedback, computer-generated feedback, writing, articles, errors i. introduction second language acquisition (sla) is a complex process involving multiple variables along with natural elements such as errors, which should be regarded as part of the language learning process and not as something negative that has to be avoided. by means of errors, learners may test their hypotheses about how the target language works and teachers obtain information about learners’ progress and difficulties in their development. traditionally, teachers (and sometimes, peers) have provided correction in the formal context in various ways to help learners overcome their errors (both oral and written) and further their learning. the issue of whether mistakes should be corrected, when and how, among other questions, has fuelled much research, together with the elaboration of different typologies accounting for corrective feedback (cf) types, http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue mailto:tamaraeoi@gmail.com tamara hernández puertas language value 10 (1), 67–88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 68 ranging from most indirect to most direct. however, there seems to be some agreement on the fact that, although demanded by the learners, providing cf is a complex task to do. corrective feedback for oral mistakes may be obtrusive and thus interrupt the flow of conversation. in turn, cf for written errors may take much of the teacher’s time and sometimes it is only provided superficially. over the past two decades, there have been efforts to develop software which aids in the process of student writing along with some other software which provides a score on students’ written production. the focus of this study is on the former, that is, we aim at contributing to the expanding body of research on computer-generated feedback in an attempt to examine whether this type of feedback has an impact on students’ linguistic accuracy when compared to teacher’s feedback. with this aim in mind, the software grammar checker was employed by one group of students as source of feedback on errors, whereas another group obtained teacher’s feedback. ii. corrective feedback and sla making mistakes is part of the natural process of learning a language. however, when producing output, students may not be aware of how successful they have been at conveying their messages if some kind of feedback is not offered. corrective feedback becomes, then, a key factor in the sla process since mere language exposure does not seem to be enough and second language (l2) speakers need some kind of corrective feedback to notice the discrepancies between their output and the l2. the term corrective feedback (lyster 1998) has adopted different terminology depending on the author: for example, ‘negative evidence’ (long 1991), ‘interactional feedback’ (lyster and mori 2006) or ‘negative feedback’ (ortega 2009). for the purposes of the present study, we will adhere to the definition provided by russell and spada (2006: 134): ‘corrective feedback will refer to any feedback, provided to a learner, from any source, that contains evidence of learner error of language form’. in this sense, corrective feedback refers to the teacher’s reaction to a mistake, when this reaction causes attention to language forms and has a corrective aim. much research has been carried out on cf, and most has employed different types of cf based on the learner’s reaction (i.e., uptake). for instance, ellis (2009) classified cf types along the http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue teacher’s feedback vs. computer-generated feedback: a focus on articles language value 10 (1), 67–88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 69 implicit-explicit dichotomy. implicit feedback referred to recasts (i.e., reformulation of the learner’s incorrect utterance minus the error), repetition and clarification requests, in which the learner has to work harder in order to spot the mistake and self-repair. in turn, explicit feedback included explicit corrections, metalinguistic explanations, elicitations and paralinguistic signals which showed in a more direct way that the learner’s production was wrong. although the effectiveness of cf on acquisition is a debatable issue, it is regarded as an intervening element in the process of sla. in fact, since the early 90s, a vast number of studies have demonstrated the beneficial role of cf on acquisition. moreover, some meta-analyses and reviews of the literature (for example, russell and spada 2006, spada 2011), point to the positive effects of cf for l2 grammar learning and its durability over time as long as it is noticeable, comprehensible and as individualized as possible. ii.1. the effect of corrective feedback on written production in the current multimedia age, different modes of writing and image combine to make multimodal texts which communicate meanings and may be used for language learning. images (including the use of colors) play an essential role in multimodal communication as attention-getters (kress 2010), therefore maximizing the potential for learning. in this sense, a crucial condition for the effectiveness of cf is that the student notices the input features and the differences between his/her interlanguage and the target language forms. the notion of noticing was coined by schmidt (1990) and supported by other researchers (e.g., mackey et al. 2000, philp 2003) as one of the crucial elements necessary for acquisition to take place, in the sense that noticing is essential for input to become intake. intake has been defined by ellis (1994: 708) as ‘that portion of input that learners notice and therefore take into temporary memory’. learners may notice input thanks to the cf provided to them in the language classroom. indeed, research has shown that cf does occur in the classroom in a high proportion (e.g., panova and lyster 2002) as an intervening variable in the process of language learning. the benefits of cf in oral interaction point to learners’ noticing of problematic forms, opportunities to modify output and test hypotheses, and an increase in linguistic http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue tamara hernández puertas language value 10 (1), 67–88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 70 accuracy. yet, the debate about the value of written corrective feedback (wcf, henceforth) has yielded conflicting results (evans et al. 2010). for instance, in a muchcited study by truscott (1996), he argued that ‘correction is not only unhelpful but even counterproductive’ (1996: 354). in the same vein, polio et al. (1998) and fazio (2001) stated that cf can be discouraging and ineffective to improve subsequent writings due to the pressure it may create on learners. however, broadly speaking, research has found a beneficial effect of cf on writing accuracy (e.g., bitchener 2008, lee 2013). more specifically, bitchener and ferris (2012) claim that students' accuracy improves when they attend to feedback as they draw their attention to linguistic inconsistencies or mistakes. moreover, for ethical reasons, learners need to be provided with cf in their written production, even more when it has been shown that students want to improve their linguistic accuracy (ferris and hedgcock 2005) and that they expect to have their writing mistakes marked (guénette 2007). feedback may be delivered in a more direct (explicit) or indirect (implicit) way. direct feedback is offered when the teacher provides the correct form straight away and the student is supposed to incorporate that correction in the final version. contrarily, in indirect feedback the teacher merely indicates in some way (underlining or highlighting the error, or marking in the margin of the text) that there is an error, without providing the correction. thus, the student knows there is a mistake and he/she has to solve it. in this sense, some voices have claimed that indirect feedback is more desirable because it may engage students in problem solving and, eventually, in more progress in accuracy over time than direct feedback (ferris et al. 2000). different degrees of explicitness in feedback provision were examined in ferris and roberts’ (2001) study: group a had their errors underlined and coded, group b had their errors underlined but not coded and group c (control group) had no error markings. no statistically significant differences were reported between group a and b, suggesting that more explicit feedback (underlining and coding of errors) was not more advantageous than simple underlining. some research has addressed the impact of different types of feedback on accuracy in student writing. chandler (2003) had four treatments including (i) correction, (ii) underlining with description, (iii) description of error only, and (iv) underline. findings show that conditions (i) and (iv) resulted in more accurate pieces of writing in http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue teacher’s feedback vs. computer-generated feedback: a focus on articles language value 10 (1), 67–88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 71 the next assignment, whereas treatments (ii) and (iii), which involved a description of the error type, had the opposite effect. overall, the number of studies which have addressed the effectiveness of direct and indirect wcf show inconclusive findings. however, there seems to be a wider consensus on the fact that if feedback is provided, learners’ accuracy tends to improve when compared to control groups receiving no feedback, as reported by ene and upton’s (2014) study. ii.2. computer-generated feedback in writing when to provide feedback has been one of the main concerns in the field of language correction and feedback. warschauer (2010) claimed that autonomous learning and revision could be enhanced by promptly delivered feedback. indeed, when little time lapses between the student’s writing and the teacher’s cf, learning opportunities may be maximized. in the same line, guichon et al. (2012) argued that if learners can get ‘just in time’ feedback, they may self-correct almost immediately after their mistakes and possibly incorporate this feedback in subsequent writings. in this way, written cf may be more effective as in traditional classrooms feedback is only provided by the teacher several days after the written production. as stated by spada (2011), corrective feedback occurs both in natural learning contexts as well as in formal environments, although it is more frequent and presumably more beneficial and necessary in the latter. yet, in large classes in which the students are required to perform written tasks, teachers need to lessen their workload by delegating work to their students, who may use electronic feedback to self-correct their written productions (lee 2013). therefore, more time could be devoted to other areas which need more attention in writing, such as content and organization (chen and cheng 2008). in this sense, and especially in the education domain, the importance of technology and the benefits it may provide to the learning process shows how it is taking over classrooms at all levels. the use of computer tools, what is called ‘computer-assisted language learning’ (call), applied to the classroom and the students' way of working represents an extra value and motivation. in fact, as becker stated (1991: 385), ‘in the 1980s, no single medium of instruction or object of instructional attention produced as much excitement in the conduct of elementary and http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue tamara hernández puertas language value 10 (1), 67–88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 72 secondary education as did the computer.’ call is an approach that has many advantages: first, it adapts to the learning of the students letting them control their own pace, second, it allows them to be more autonomous since they are the ones who make their own choices, third, it offers them freedom and authenticity and finally, it develops their critical thinking. in this vein, computer-mediated feedback may contribute to help students write more independently both inside and outside the classroom. moreover, research from tiene and luft (2001) suggests that the use of technology fosters individualized communication between teacher and students more often and allows teachers to focus on higher-order aspects of writing, leaving common grammar or spelling mistakes to the program. as just stated, new technological implementations in the language classroom have influenced the skill of writing, especially the revision and editing processes by means of online tools. the interplay of range of modes on screen (for example, image and writing) has resulted in a redesign of how students can receive feedback. as jewitt put it (2002: 172), ‘communication and learning are multimodal’. this multimodality may be significant for writing improvement. in this sense, in the past twenty years, software aiming at scoring and/or providing feedback on students’ writings has been devised (e.g., criterion, myaccess, grammarly, summary street, to mention but a few), with diverse degree of effectiveness on students’ satisfaction (chen and cheng 2006). still, some voices (e.g., ware and warschauer 2005) claim that the amount of time a teacher may spend correcting students’ compositions may be dramatically reduced if teachers can rely on computer-generated feedback. moreover, software which generates feedback on writing has been created providing either reports on grammatical errors or more holistic assessment on aspects such as content or organization of the piece of writing. in the case of grammar checkers, potter and fuller (2008) reported an increase in students’ motivation, proficiency and confidence in grammar rules in the use of english grammar checkers. in turn, nadasdi and sinclair (2007) argued that the french online grammar checking program bonpatron was as effective as teacher correction. also, burston (2008) investigated the accuracy of this grammar checker showing that 88% of errors were spotted by the software. mistakes were highlighted by means of color-coding: red indicated those grammatical aspects the student had to modify and orange was used to signal segments or words which needed to be verified. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue teacher’s feedback vs. computer-generated feedback: a focus on articles language value 10 (1), 67–88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 73 despite the a priori benefits of grammar checkers, they are not without limitations. as argued by davis (1989), any user of grammar checkers has to set their perceived usefulness and ease of use, two key factors in davis’ technology acceptance model (tam) determining the likelihood of acceptance of new technology. a second drawback refers to the fact that sometimes computer-generated feedback may not be specific or informative enough to guide learners in their revision process, eventually causing frustration or dissatisfaction (chen and cheng 2006). iii. grammar checker in 2001 the universidad nacional de educación a distancia (uned) in madrid started to work on the software grammar checker (gc, henceforth) in an attempt to detect errors made by english-as-a-foreign-language students. it provides written feedback on grammar, spelling, and words used incorrectly based on a corpus of eighty million words ‘taken from the written component of the british national corpus’ (lawley 2015: 26). as explained by this author, the program divides the text into segments that are compared to that corpus and highlighted in red if they do not appear in it or have a threshold number lower than 0 and 0.1, in orange if they occur in the corpus fewer than 500 times and their threshold numbers range between 0.1 and 0.5, or yellow if they occur fewer than 75 times and their threshold numbers lie between 0.5 and 0.9. therefore, this program requires cognitive process from students as it only uses certain colors to show frequency but does not offer the possibility to receive corrections at the click of a mouse. students are responsible for changing the segment or not upon reflection. in this way, it offers the opportunity to learn from mistake. gc does not provide a score for the text, it merely alerts users to those combinations that are rare or do not occur. gc works as follows: after creating an account, the student has to write the text and press “enter your text” and then “start” to check if there are any mistakes. first, spelling mistakes are highlighted in yellow (also purple if it is a very rare word but not necessarily a mistake, e.g., proper names) and by clicking on the words highlighted useful feedback is provided. by clicking on “modify”, the previous spelling mistakes can be corrected and checked again by pressing “check again”. then the same http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue tamara hernández puertas language value 10 (1), 67–88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 74 procedure is followed for the “incorrect sequences filter” that highlights grammar mistakes such as ‘these table’, and for the “problem words filter” which refers to correct english and does not highlight any word but suggests words that are usually misused by students, e.g., ‘insano’ (unhealthy). therefore, if after reading the suggestions the student thinks he/she has made a mistake, he/she can modify it. the most important step for the aims of the present study is the button “pairs filters” which highlights phrases that do not usually occur, e.g., ‘had do’. in order to know the frequency with which those phrases occur and decide whether it is a mistake or not, the student can use the search engine at the top of the screen. figure 1 below illustrates a screenshot of gc: figure 1. screenshot of grammar checker. gc was selected for the purposes of the present study for several reasons: firstly, it offers a cue (highlighting in colors) so that students can locate, reflect and self-correct, which, according to the literature, may be conducive to learning. secondly, gc does not overwhelm language learners with metalinguistic terminology which may be at odds with some learners’ literacy (dikli 2006). thirdly, this software does not score learner’s written production, but provides them with feedback and possible suggestions for improvement. finally, it is an affordable program for only €14 a year for students http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue teacher’s feedback vs. computer-generated feedback: a focus on articles language value 10 (1), 67–88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 75 aiming, in the present study, for level b2 of the common european framework of reference of languages (cefr). iv. the study prior to this research, a pilot study to test the use of gc was conducted with a group of students with a similar level of proficiency as the participants in the present study and also enrolled in an official school of languages. the purpose of that pilot study was, on the one hand, to test the computer program, and on the other hand, to decide important aspects such as the level and the number of students participating and the targeted grammatical aspects (articles, verb tenses and prepositions in this case). one group of students received teacher’s feedback and another obtained feedback by means of gc. analysis of the data collected in the pilot study revealed a higher number of corrections after computer feedback. therefore, this program proved helpful in highlighting and correcting students’ mistakes. taking into account previous research pointing at overall benefits of wcf in the development of students’ writing accuracy on the one hand (bitchener 2008, russell and spada 2006), and the rapid growth of computerized feedback in educational contexts on the other (ene and upton 2014), in this study we entertain two research questions. the first research question aims at revealing what type of feedback (teacher vs. computer) will have a better effect on accuracy in the targeted grammar aspect (articles). on the other hand, the second research question aims at showing what type of feedback (teacher vs. computer) will have a lasting effect in the delayed tailor-made test. iv.1. participants three groups of spanish students (n=27) participated in the present study. they were divided into two treatment groups and the control group. all participants were studying at an official school of languages in order to pass the b2 level for professional reasons and reported having studied english for over 6 years. their mother tongue was spanish and/or catalan and their ages ranged from 20 to 50 years old (mean=39.3). http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue tamara hernández puertas language value 10 (1), 67–88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 76 the study was carried out as part of their formal efl instruction and the compositions were regular assignments the students had to elaborate as part of their written homework. iv.2. targeted grammar aspect: articles errors on rule-governed forms allow for more focused correction than errors which are not rule-based (lee 2013). ferris (1999) termed the first type of errors ‘treatable errors’, as some grammar errors may be treatable through feedback. in this vein, articles fall under this ‘treatable’ category and for spanish efl students they may be a recurrent source of errors, especially the zero article. in fact, the english article system has been shown to be used inaccurately by foreign language learners, even with high proficiency. despite the fact that article errors seldom cause misunderstanding, since they possess low communicative value, it is still necessary for learners to overcome their problems with this specific grammar form. on this account, master (1995) pointed out that attention to the article system was important because this type of errors may leave the impression that the learners have incomplete control of the target language. some years later, bitchener (2008) also argued that efl learners across different language proficiency levels experience difficulties in their mastery of the english article system. these perceived difficulties, along with the fact that articles are potentially ‘treatable’, were the reasons to have articles as targeted grammatical forms for examination. iv.3. types of feedback group 1 (n=11) received teacher’s feedback, group 2 (n=8) computer feedback and the control group (n= 8) obtained no feedback on the targeted grammatical aspect. computer feedback was provided by grammar checker by means of a color code (red, orange and yellow) as explained in section iii. it was an indirect type of feedback which only signaled potentially problematic bits in the compositions. for comparability issues, teacher’s feedback had to be indirect as well, so she also used colors similar to the ones in the computer software to highlight the mistakes on articles. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue teacher’s feedback vs. computer-generated feedback: a focus on articles language value 10 (1), 67–88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 77 iv.4. data collection procedure in a session prior to the data collection, participants belonging to group 2 were trained in the use of grammar checker and they were explained what the color code meant and how they had to correct their mistakes. afterwards, all participants were asked to write a 180/200-word composition based on a comic strip (abbey time 1). in strip 1 someone is writing a letter to an old woman, in strip 2 abbey appears next to an elvis-looking man, in strip 3 the man is holding some flowers and a teddy bear, in strip 4 a woman different from the old woman and physically similar to abbey is looking at the man with a menacing gaze, in strip 5 abbey looks sad and in strip 6 someone who seems to be abbey is writing a letter. as mentioned above, group 1 received teacher’s feedback and group 2 obtained computer feedback. the control group did not get any feedback on articles but on other non-targeted grammatical aspects. after this feedback, they rewrote a second version of the same comic strip (abbey time 2) to check whether correction had been effective. the time elapsed between abbey 1 and teacher’s feedback was one week, and between teacher’s feedback and abbey 2 also one week. two weeks after abbey 2, participants composed a second text based again on a similar graphic prompt but with different strips (pam time 1). in strip 1 someone is writing a letter while the image of pam appears in the background. in strip 2 an old woman is holding a sheet of paper, and in strip 3 the woman who looks like pam is looking at the elvis-looking man with a menacing gaze. in strip 4 the man is showing the woman a cake he has just made, in strip 5 the old woman looks happy and in strip 6 the old woman is writing a letter. the same process as the one depicted above applied: after the first composition (pam time 1), feedback (either by the computer software or the teacher) was provided and students wrote a second version (pam time 2) after 2 weeks from the first version. therefore, 4 compositions (abbey time 1 and 2 and pam time 1 and 2) are the data for analysis. six weeks after having written the last of the four compositions, the participants were asked to complete an individual tailor-made test (see a sample in appendix 1) to check any long-term impact of the two types of feedback. the tailor-made tests included all the errors each student had made in abbey time 2 and pam time 2, that is, after having http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue tamara hernández puertas language value 10 (1), 67–88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 78 obtained feedback three times (either from the teacher or the computer). table 1 illustrates the timeline for data collection. table 1. timeline for the data collection procedure. week 1 abbey t1 week 2 teacher's or computer feedback week 3 abbey t2 week 4 teacher's or computer feedback week 5 pam t1 week 6 teacher's or computer feedback week 7 pam t2 week 8 teacher's or computer feedback week 14 tailor-made test all four compositions belonged to the same genre, that of narrative story, in which a short story is described. the learners had to describe what was happening in the story according to the given pictures. therefore, as stated by bitchener (2008), valid text comparisons can be made because both storylines were related and even seemed a continuation and had similar characters. for this reason, similar tenses, structures and vocabulary for both comic strips were expected. iv.5. results and discussion a kruskal-wallisi test was run to determine whether there existed significant differences in the two experimental groups and the control group taking into account errors on articles in abbey time 1, that is, in the first composition the learners had to write. as can be seen in table 2, results show no significant differences, a fact that, from a methodological point of view, is desirable as it indicates that all groups made an equivalent number of errors (p>0.05 in all three groups). table 2. means and standard deviations for abbey time 1. group mean and standard deviation group 1: computer’s feedback .91 (2.07) http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue teacher’s feedback vs. computer-generated feedback: a focus on articles language value 10 (1), 67–88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 79 group 2: teacher’s feedback 1.13 (1.35) control group .50 (.75) as to the first research question, a first analysis was carried out to determine whether feedback had been useful when students had to write abbey time 2 and pam time 2 (i.e., when they had obtained feedback after abbey time 1 and pam time 1). with that aim in mind, a wilcoxon signed-rank test ii taking into account the number of errors on articles between abbey time 1 and 2, and between pam time 1 and 2 revealed only statistically significant differences between pam 1 and 2 for the group who had been offered teacher’s feedback (group 1; p=.026). for group 2 (computer group) and the control group, no significant differences were observed, as table 3 depicts: table 3. comparison between time 1 and time 2 in both compositions. group 1 (teacher) group 2 (computer) control group z (w) z (w) z (w) abbey time 1 and 2 1.00 .00 .81 pam time 1 and 2 2.23 .68 .33 as stated above, only a significant decrease in the number of errors in the use of articles occurs between pam 1 and 2 for group 1. although both treatment groups at the time of writing pam 2 had received feedback three times, in light of our results teacher’s feedback appears to be more effective as far as linguistic accuracy is concerned, despite the fact that this feedback was as indirect as the one provided by the computer. in view of the above results, the effect size was calculated (cohen’s dii). for pam time 1 and 2, the effect size was large (d=1.024), but the rest of effect sizes ranged from medium to small. a second test was used (wilcoxon signed-rank test) to examine the effect of feedback in abbey and pam at time 2. again, as shown in table 4 below, the analysis reveals only statistically significant differences for group 1, that is, it seems that teacher’s feedback had a positive effect on reducing learners’ errors on articles. one possible explanation for this finding is that learners tried harder to self-repair before giving their revised compositions back to their teacher. maybe they were not so confident about computer’s http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue tamara hernández puertas language value 10 (1), 67–88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 80 feedback and might have felt skeptical about this source of feedback. still, that is the only significant difference, since group 2 and the cg did not show any significant difference in reducing the number of errors. our results seem to align with sauro’s (2009) research on zero articles. her two treatment groups received two types of computer feedback (recast and metalinguistic information). the indirect type of feedback (recast) in sauro’s study and highlighting in the present investigation do not seem to have an impact on learners’ correction of their errors. table 4. means and standard deviations for abbey time 1. abbey & pam time 2 z (w) p group 1 (computer) 2.11 .035 group 2 (teacher) .37 .70 control group .81 .41 in an overview of the grammar checker grammarly, cavaleri and dianati (2016) report that 22% of their students agreed that the feedback provided on their writing was not always helpful, as some of the feedback made no sense for learners. our participants may presumably have been in the same situation, finding the feedback too indirect. as for the second research question, a wilcoxon test was run. in group 1, there were no statistically significant differences (z(w)= 1.63; p= .10; d=.25) between the errors students had made in abbey time 2 and pam time 2 and the tailor-made tests, showing a small effect (calculated with cohen’s d). the same pattern applies to the results for the computer group and the control group, as there were no significant differences between the mistakes in time 2 in both compositions and the tailor-made tests (z(w)= 1.63; p= .10; d=.14) for group 2 and (z(w)= 1.89; p= .059; d=.40) for the cg, again with a small to medium effect size. despite the fact that, as shown by the results of the first research question, there were significant differences in the number of errors after teacher’s feedback, this applied only to immediate gains which were not maintained in the long term, as attested by the results for the second research question. neither of the treatment groups showed gains in accuracy in the tailor-made post-tests. again, one likely explanation for this result be http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue teacher’s feedback vs. computer-generated feedback: a focus on articles language value 10 (1), 67–88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 81 the fact that feedback was too indirect and the color codes were too vague and not showing the learners what to focus on in a more specific way. in this sense, multimodal combination of text and image (colors, in this case) did not seem to benefit the students’ self-correction process. although it has been claimed that learners may benefit more from indirect cf because they need to engage in deeper language processing (van beuningen et al. 2008), cf which is too indirect may not reach the desired goals in the long run. indeed, chandler (2003) found that direct feedback resulted in largest accuracy gains, both in revisions of previous writings and in subsequent writing, whereas students who revised their compositions after indirect cf were unable to do so. a second explanation points to the fact that the compositions learners had to write were not graded. as a result, their motivation could have been rather low along with the possibility that they might have got bored of writing four compositions which were very similar and demanded little creativity. v. conclusion many adult students may have to work autonomously on their language acquisition process. as shown by the findings of the present study, computer-assisted learning tools such as grammar checker may prove useful in that process, as ‘everything that can be done to facilitate accurate self-correction is positive’ (lawley 2016: 879). still, gc merely suggests potential problems by highlighting some written bits, thus leaving it up to students to solve the error. in this vein, computer-generated feedback may have resulted to be a difficult task for the students who received this type of feedback ‘due to their learned dependence on teacher-provided feedback’ (peterson 2017: 48). moreover, the effectiveness of computer-generated feedback to highlight aspects such as content or organization of writings is questionable as humans can assess writings more accurately than computers (reiners et al. 2011). the present study aimed at comparing the impact of teacher’s and computer feedback on students’ errors, as most errors are repeated among students, which makes the teacher correct the same error numerous times. in this sense, and despite the abovementioned drawbacks of using technology for grammar correction, software such as http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue tamara hernández puertas language value 10 (1), 67–88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 82 grammar checker could improve this situation, encouraging students to be more independent of the teacher and more responsible for their own learning. benefits may apply both for the learners and the teacher. yet, taking into account the results of this study, we concur with ware’s (2011) claims that computer-generated feedback should be seen as a supplement to writing instruction and not as a replacement, since teacher’s cf, although as indirect as the one delivered by gc, seemed to work better in reducing the number of errors in the short run. we adhere to heift and hegelheimer’ (2017) recent claims that there is still scant evidence with regard to whether computer-generated feedback results in accuracy development and learning over time, pointing to a need of long-term research to determine these issues. this piece of research was conducted in authentic classrooms as part of students’ ordinary classes. in this sense, it represents a realistic picture of efl instruction, which impacts on its ecological validity, even though some factors, such as students’ commitment during the process may be a handicap. therefore, as limitations to the study we can mention the small sample size, which poses questions of generalizability, and the fact that the feedback provided addressed errors on articles, that is, rulegoverned forms which are more amenable to correction (lee 2013). the extent to which other non-rule-governed aspects may benefit from the two types of cf has not been examined in the present study. also, the type of indirect feedback offered (highlighting errors) may prove more useful for students at higher levels of proficiency. perhaps the small impact of this kind of feedback in the present study may be due to the proficiency level of the participants, who could have felt at a loss because of their limited linguistic competence. finally, a further limitation refers to the effectiveness of grammar checker, since it depends highly on the teacher and students' attitudes toward computerbased feedback and their technology-use skills in working with computer-based programs, because not all teachers and students may be equally skilled. notes i non-parametric test that compares independent sample of equal of different sample sizes. ii non-parametric test used to compare two related samples in this case http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue teacher’s feedback vs. computer-generated feedback: a focus on articles 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scaffolding, second language acquisition (sla); language and curriculum integration; constructivism i. second language acquisition over the last few decades, second language acquisition (sla) researchers have actively sought to comprehend how languages are acquired and learnt (chomsky, 2006; krashen, 1982; vygotsky & kozulin, 1986). over time, an array of sometimes contradicting theories emerged in response to a perceived deficiency of previous approaches. traditional methods such as the grammar-translation method, with a focus on learning about the language (bonilla carvajal, 2013), and the audiolingual method, which encouraged memorisation of chunks of languages (richards & rodgers, 2014), were later replaced by the natural approach (terrell, 1977) which emphasised the importance of exposing learners to an extensive amount of comprehensible input in https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6157-7925 mailto:mt.morell@ua.es https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5433-3378 mailto:jmpcad@rit.edu amelie langdon and jillian m. pandor language value 13(1), 1–22 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 2 the target language (tl) (krashen & terrell, 1983). more recently, the importance attributed to communicative competence and proficiency have given way to „middle ground approaches‟ which blend pragmatic and functional knowledge, thus placing language acquisition as a social practice. researchers such as cummins (2000), gibbons (2002), and ellis and shintani (2013) strongly support the importance of social interactions and learning in authentic situations as they believe that languages are best acquired in context and through real-life experiences. although it cannot be said that contemporary theorists have overlooked the cognitive aspects of sla, current trends advocate for a more balanced focus on form and meaning, a mixture of implicit and explicit teaching, emphasis on extensive and varied language input as well as ample opportunities for output, to name a few of the ten principles of sla as enunciated by ellis (2005). i.1. constructivism in addition to the ever-evolving field of sla, over the last century, pedagogy has undergone equally tremendous transformation and now favours approaches that promote more student-centred classroom practices (matamoros-gonzález, rojas, romero, vera-quiñonez & soto, 2017). with the student at the centre of the learning experience, values of mutual respect, growth mind-set, and emotional support are embedded in the learning environment, and thus, guide transformative education in any discipline (cummins, 2000). at the heart of this revolutionary pedagogical perspective is constructivism (piaget, 1952), rooted in the 20th century works of academics from various disciplines including education pioneers jean piaget, lev vygotsky and maria montessori, among others. constructivism (piaget, 1952) considers the learner to be an active participant in the discovery and creation of meaning, where learning is embedded in, and occurs from an accumulation of authentic and contextual social interactions experienced by the learner (lave & wenger, 1991; vygotsky & kozulin, 1986). these general pedagogical concepts transfer effortlessly to language learning, therefore, academics in the fields of applied linguistics are encouraging educators to link instructional content to real-world experiences (ozverir & herrington, 2011). an investigation of scaffolding strategies to support structured inquiry language teaching to novice learners in a primary school setting language value 13(1), 1–22 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 3 such theoretical frameworks of sla and pedagogy gave rise to inquiry-based learning (ibl) in the language classroom, which offers a framework that allows learners to construct meaning and build knowledge through discovery and investigation. proponents of ibl argue that children are naturally inquisitive (schwarzer & luke, 2001; townsend, 2005), and thus inquiry is a natural process of learning (short, 2009). although such an approach to teaching languages may appear to be the perfect hybrid of student-centred learning that fosters social interaction, there are several contingencies to its successful implementation which will be explored in further detail in the subsequent sections of this paper. ii. inquiry-based learning originally used as a scientific exploration method (pedaste et al., 2015; rocard et al., 2007), ibl has proven to be efficient and engaging for all ages and subject matter (short, 2009; wells, 1995). however, it presents unique considerations depending on the educational context or discipline at hand (papaevripidou, irakleous & zacharia, 2017). ibl encompasses various degrees of facilitator support from high to low levels of guidance, with an inquiry continuum that ranges from „very structured‟ with strong teacher guidance, to „open‟, student-generated investigation. while open inquiry does offer more voice and choice to students, it is advised to introduce the process gradually and to provide sufficient scaffolding, especially for primary-aged children (banchi & bell, 2008; killen, 2012). ii.1. language and inquiry integration: opportunities and challenges the combination of an inquiry-based approach and the use of the tl affords endless possibilities of contextualised scenarios, which as a result are thought to provoke deeper student engagement and motivation as well as more profound opportunities for sla (caputo, 2014; cummins, 2000; killen, 2012). in line with this notion, larsen-freeman (2018, p.64) strongly advocates for a “porous classroom” where the teacher invites a flow of exchange with the world outside the traditional boundaries of the classroom, amelie langdon and jillian m. pandor language value 13(1), 1–22 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 4 thus exploring and creating language within the context of its natural sociocultural and historical occurrence, not as a series of stand-alone topics or set of grammar rules (cummins, 2000; gibbons, 2002; ozverir & herrington, 2011). in addition to ibl, other discovery methods have served sla in the past few decades, mainly driven by the need for authentic contexts and the desire to emphasise communicative skills. such methods, including content based instruction (cbi) (brinton, snow & wesche, 1989) and problem based learning (pbl) (boud & feletti, 1997), are commonly encountered in the literature. both operate under the same constructivist paradigm and social constructivist theories as ibl, whereby knowledge is mainly constructed by learners through social interactions, rather than solely via a traditional model of didactic delivery. these approaches have been widely implemented with great success for english language learners (ells), therefore offering the tangible experiences and relatable contexts sought after in language inquiry interaction (cummins, 2000; gibbons, 2002; walqui, 2006). in spite of growing evidence to support the benefits of ibl in language classrooms, given the highly contextualised learning environment it affords (caputo, 2014; lee, 2014; wells, 1995), such an approach in an additional language (l2) presents significant challenges for educators and learners alike. this is particularly true among novice language learners of primary school age, which will be the focus of this paper. indeed, research in ibl approaches to teaching languages shows that some primary years educators report difficulties in implementing ibl in their l2 classrooms, claiming its incompatibility with novice language learners (lebreton, 2014; ledger, van vooren, villaverde, steffen & lai, 2016; schwarzer & luke, 2001). researchers in the field (caputo, 2014; lebreton, 2014; lee, 2014; van vooren, lai, ledger, bueno villaverde & steffen, 2013) have attempted to gain knowledge on this issue and shed light on the following question: how can l2 teachers implement ibl in a language that learners have not yet mastered? to further highlight the relevance of this question, davidson (2009, p.27) clearly explains that the „inquiry tools‟ needed to lead an investigation, such as proficiency in an l2, are still being developed, thus leaving learners faced with a linguistic overload that is likely to cause a major impediment to the proper adoption of ibl in the tl. inquiring in a language that is still being acquired proves challenging for an investigation of scaffolding strategies to support structured inquiry language teaching to novice learners in a primary school setting language value 13(1), 1–22 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 5 both the learners and the teacher alike, as it forces the inquiry to remain at low-level questioning and thinking (van vooren et al., 2013). as a response to such high linguistic demands, learners might resolve themselves to use their mother tongue (l1) to assist them through the inquiry process. this notion is highly debated in the literature, as research shows that some teachers attempt to ban the use of the l1 in their classrooms, considering it to be a practice that is counterproductive to sla (dare, 2009), while other studies indicate that the use of the l1 can be a valuable tool to support novice learners in their cognitive development, ensuring a positive psychological outlook towards the l2 (caputo, 2014; cummins, 2000; larsen-freeman, 2018; schwarzer & luke, 2001). in addition to the challenge of linguistic load, discovery learning (bruner, 1961), as a broader pedagogical approach, has also been criticised for putting excessive cognitive pressure on learners (kirschner, sweller & clark, 2006; tuovinen & sweller, 1999). this argument is based on the claim that minimally guided instructional methods such as ibl, pbl and cbi are less effective for novice learners than more traditional approaches that emphasise direct instruction and strong guidance. according to kirschner et al. (2006), free exploration and open inquiry put excessive strain on the working memory of the novice learner, who does not yet possess the required prior knowledge to retain new information or apply it in creative ways. however, sla literature suggests that structured inquiry, or a strongly guided approach to teaching and learning in the tl, can support learners during the acquisition of new knowledge (caputo, 2014; killen, 2012; kirschner et al., 2006). a structured approach is based on the idea of a zone of proximal development (vygotsky & kozulin, 1986), in which the teacher supports students in bridging a learning gap through scaffolding strategies. it is assumed that such „structure‟ in the approach to ibl will be gradually removed in the future when the learner becomes more autonomous and advances in l2 proficiency beyond the novice stages. therefore, in order to provide tasks that are appropriately challenging, while avoiding cognitive overload or compromising the use of the tl, a high level of teacher support is imperative throughout this approach. this notion is highlighted by dare (2009), who suggests language teachers should aim to place their pedagogical practices in the amelie langdon and jillian m. pandor language value 13(1), 1–22 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 6 “developmental zone” (dare, 2009, p.76), where high-challenge and high-support coexist. iii. research questions and approach to the literature review as presented above, the context of this paper is inscribed in a constructivist approach to l2 teaching, where appropriately structured inquiry and language integration offers valuable learning opportunities. however, some challenges related to adequate linguistic and cognitive loads with respect to novice language learners in an ibl context still need to be addressed in order to ensure the successful implementation of this approach. therefore, this study aims to explore scaffolding practices found in the literature that can be implemented to support primary-aged novice language learners within a structured inquiry approach based on the recommendations gathered from sla research, in an attempt to answer the following questions: how can structured inquiry support l2 teachers working with novice learners in primary years curricula that incorporate such methodologies? more precisely, what scaffolding strategies are essential to support language acquisition in a structured inquiry approach? while the focus of this paper is ibl, it became evident that limited studies have tackled the narrow topic of inquiry-based l2 learning in primary-aged students. therefore, the search had to expand its scope to include comparable teaching approaches, namely concept-based learning, pbl and other curriculum integration models such as cbi and content and language integrated learning (clil). evidence of scaffolding strategies in the literature, where a discovery approach was offered to students, were classified into two main categories: language-specific scaffolding and inquiry-specific scaffolding (see table 1). in order to organise the language-specific strategies, the framework proposed by cummins (2000) was adapted to comprise the following three areas of language teaching: focus on meaning, focus on form and focus on use. the focus on meaning category encompasses all strategies and tools that support meaning making and help generate comprehensible input in the tl. focus on form gathers strategies that teach the language structure and system in a consciousness-raising manner. focus on use covers strategies that allow learners to use the language in a meaningful and creative way. for the purposes of this study, each area an investigation of scaffolding strategies to support structured inquiry language teaching to novice learners in a primary school setting language value 13(1), 1–22 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 7 of language teaching mentioned above was analysed separately, however in a classroom context they tend to overlap seamlessly. inquiry-specific scaffolding strategies were classified according to an adapted version of wells‟ (1995, p.244) “interactive inquiry model of learning and teaching”. this simplified framework consists of three main phases of inquiry: research, interpretation and presentation. the research phase includes all strategies related to initiating interest, formulating questions and explicitly teaching research skills. the interpretation of data stage allows for categorising strategies related to organising and analysing information gathered during the research process. the presentation of findings phase groups teaching strategies related to the ways in which students showcase learning constructed during the process. table 1. evidence of scaffolding strategies present in the literature for a structured language inquiry approach structured language inquiry approach language-specific scaffolding inquiry-specific scaffolding o focus on meaning o research skills o focus on form o interpretation of data o focus on use o presentation of findings iv. results and discussion as previously mentioned, an adaptation of cummins‟ (2000) framework allowed for a categorisation of the type of scaffolding in the following three areas: (a) focus on meaning, (b) focus on form, and (c) focus on use. the data found in the literature are in the form of pedagogical practices as well as recommendations offered by academics in the field of sla and structured inquiry teaching. a discussion for each category ensues. iv.1. focus on meaning the literature reveals that in attempts to enrich students‟ vocabulary and to provide comprehensible input, language educators are using various scaffolding strategies that amelie langdon and jillian m. pandor language value 13(1), 1–22 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 8 fulfil three main language-related pedagogical purposes: contextualising, bridging and interacting. iv.1.1. contextualising contextualising strategies attempt to make meaning clear to students. the literature advises teachers to present their speech in conjunction with non-linguistic tools to provide a rich sensory context with a strong emphasis on visual aids (dare, 2009; townsend, 2005; walqui, 2006). with this purpose in mind, modelling the language through action and dramatisation as well as with visuals, realia, manipulatives and films are commonly employed by language teachers to make the tl accessible to low proficiency learners (buhrow & uoczak garcía, 2006; moses, busetti‐frevert & pritchard, 2015; thomson, 2012; van vooren et al., 2013; zeegers & mckinnon, 2012). in addition, contextualisation can take its source directly from the content of the curriculum with a clil approach. as discussed, language integration has become a trend to promote teaching through the language, rather than about the language; thus making it a popular approach with ells in the usa to accelerate the command of academic literacy (moses et al., 2015; walqui, 2006; wells, 1995). iv.1.2. bridging generally perceived as good pedagogical practice, bridging strategies are recommended for making connections between background knowledge and new information, and to encourage recall, prediction and inference (buhrow & uoczak garcía, 2006; cummins, 2000; gibbons, 2002; walqui, 2006). some evidence of this technique is present in the literature in the form of activities in the chinese language that involve the exploration and distinction between similar phonological, orthographical or semantic words as a means of highlighting difficulties and ensuring appropriate usage of vocabulary (lee, 2014). similarly, in the context of ells, walqui (2006) suggests providing schema building activities in the form of a compare/contrast matrix that offers structured and clear connections between students‟ prior knowledge and new information. other researchers enable the creation of links between students‟ personal interests and an investigation of scaffolding strategies to support structured inquiry language teaching to novice learners in a primary school setting language value 13(1), 1–22 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 9 emotional connections with curriculum content to provide meaningful educative experiences that are relevant to students, and therefore increase individual motivation to learn (cummins, 2000; short, 2009). similarly, when conducted prior to the study of a unit, field trips afford personal experiences and generate enthusiasm about inquiring (van vooren et al., 2013). however, it can be argued that it may prove challenging for novice language learners to reach such levels of deep reflection given their age as well as their limited fluency and free expression in the tl. as a means of diminishing such difficulties, front-loading, or pre-teaching new vocabulary/pre-formulating the content that will be covered, is an effective technique for novice learners to access new information and activate prior knowledge (dare, 2009). resources such as vocabulary lists, dictionaries, and cue cards are common tools to pre-teach unknown content in order to facilitate comprehension of a text (moses et al., 2015; schwarzer & luke, 2001; thomson, 2012; van vooren et al., 2013). iv.1.3. interacting a final category appears in the form of interactional strategies. classroom interactions including those of teacher-to-student nature, whole class and group discussions, are building blocks of the social constructivist learning theory (dare, 2009; schwarzer & luke, 2001; thomson, 2012; townsend, 2005). during classroom inquiry, questioning, which ultimately drives thinking, is an essential part of ibl (cummins, 2000; dare, 2009) and is extensively demonstrated in practice with multiple examples in the literature of whole-class discussion and teacher-led questioning (buhrow & uoczak garcía, 2006; moses et al., 2015; thomson, 2012; zeegers & mckinnon, 2012). the quality of teacher-student and student-student interactions is instrumental in ensuring an effective learning environment. the teacher‟s role in establishing a safe and welcoming classroom culture is an underlying requirement to the success of any of the strategies that are referenced in the literature. thus, a supportive school context where all learners feel valued and respected as individuals is essential (cummins, 2000; gibbons, 2002; townsend, 2005). it is effectively with the learners‟ emotional well-being in mind that some teachers are allowing the use of the l1 during l2 lessons (buhrow & uoczak garcía, 2006; schwarzer & luke, 2001). the process of utilising multiple languages to amelie langdon and jillian m. pandor language value 13(1), 1–22 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 10 communicate, also called translanguaging i , is increasingly perceived as a meaningmaking strategy by language educators despite generating contentious debates. when students switch languages, not only is comprehension possible, but the learners‟ individual identity and culture is acknowledged and valued (cummins, 2000; larsenfreeman, 2018). finally, language educators use corrective feedback during classroom interactions to emphasise appropriate sentence structure and choice of words (schwarzer & luke, 2001; thomson, 2012; van vooren et al., 2013). according to ellis (2006), corrective feedback enables a focus on syntax through reformulation to enhance meaning as well as reflection on errors, especially in oral interactions. considering the variety of „focus on meaning‟ strategies encountered in a wide array of action-research papers and linguistic theory, it appears that teachers have a reasonable understanding of how to enhance input for novice language learners by making it more comprehensible. in addition, this varied repertoire may also indicate the belief that offering repeated exposure to the language in the receptive mode is a prerequisite to building meaning (cummins, 2000; pritchard, 2009; schwarzer & luke, 2001; walqui, 2006). iv.2. focus on form this category focuses on the teaching of formal features and functions of language such as grammar, syntax and orthography (long, 1988, 1991; long & crookes, 1992). as discussed, while recent sla research tends to agree on the need to teach grammar, how it is taught is still a controversial topic as contemporary researchers have suggested a more balanced approach (cummins, 2000; ellis, 2006). effectively, it is recommended that teachers continue to give priority to language form, but the approach should be more implicit in nature and based on explorative learning. by raising awareness of the language structure instead of explicitly offering the rule and practicing it through rote exercises, students are able to observe and infer correlation between the meaning and function of certain language structures to thereafter, with appropriate teacher guidance, deduce the grammatical rule in question (caputo, 2014; lee, 2014). as a result of this approach, according to townsend (2005, p.152) “when students increase their an investigation of scaffolding strategies to support structured inquiry language teaching to novice learners in a primary school setting language value 13(1), 1–22 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 11 awareness of the structure and effects of language, they gain proficiency in the use of language”. linking back to the concept of contextualising learning (mentioned in the previous section), research in language teaching shows that enabling connections between content and learners‟ personal interests also helps to teach grammar in a meaningful way (gibbons, 2002; larsen-freeman, 2015). to illustrate this instructional approach, it is useful to consider cummins‟ (2000, p.276) idea of “critical language awareness” which accentuates the need to engage learners in critical inquiry into language form by providing authentic texts with real-life implications or cultural messages that link to students‟ interests and passions. while many examples can be found that have the potential to promote engagement and motivation to explore forms (cummins, 2000; moses et al., 2015, schwarzer & luke, 2001), the literature lacks detail to truly evaluate the effectiveness of such projects, and the degree to which they are conducted in an inquiry-based approach. it is important to note that form-focused strategies seem underrepresented as a category in comparison to the wider variety of meaning-making strategies introduced above. according to larsen-freeman (2015), despite the advice offered by researchers to avoid explicit grammar teaching as an exclusive method, grammar instruction is predominantly taught in a traditional (or didactic) way at the expense of ibl (lebreton, 2014; van vooren et al., 2013). therefore, it could be hypothesised that progressive language scaffolding strategies, such as raising awareness, only appear sporadically in the literature because they are rarely implemented in practice. iv.3. focus on use as described by cummins (2000, p.9), the “focus on use” component of his framework assumes that linguistic production should emphasise the real-life usage of language rather than exclusively its practice; characterised as low-level activities or exercises that involve the repetition of a specific form or function of the language, often deprived of meaningful context. this distinction between practice and use is essential as it has a direct (and generally positive) impact on students‟ motivation to engage in language production given that true „usage‟ of the l2 can only be achieved through learnercentred tasks that are both relevant and challenging (bunch, 2013). the nature of such amelie langdon and jillian m. pandor language value 13(1), 1–22 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 12 tasks in the language classroom is described by ozverir and herrington (2011) as being ill-defined, close to real-world communicative situations and potentially including various sub-tasks that both scaffold and guide the inquiry process. in addition, cummins (2000) emphasises the importance of providing a purpose for language use that affords deeper thinking and questioning to motivate learners to construct and express understanding and meaning. he urges teachers to aspire to educate students, rather than simply teach them, something that can be achieved by offering truly enriching learning experiences rooted in authentic contexts. field trips, also referenced as a means of contextualising a new language under the heading „focus on meaning‟ as mentioned above, even if only possible occasionally, provide rich and authentic opportunities with a genuine purpose for l2 communication. however, as an alternative, authentic tasks designed in the classroom –which entail a level of superficiality because of the contrived environment within the school walls–, still demonstrate a positive impact on the attention span and motivation of young learners who can recognise the applicability of these tasks to real world contexts. although sporadic, some evidence of language use classroom strategies embedded in potentially rich communicative opportunities is present in the literature. for instance, tasks requiring students to represent or transform a text into another genre (walqui, 2006; zeegers & mckinnon, 2012) or even the creation of trans-disciplinary texts. while such activities can be engaging and may promote language use (cummins, 2000; ntelioglou, fannin, montanera & cummins, 2014), there is a lack of instructional evidence of adequate inquiry depth. other instances of language use are offered in the literature such as plays (ntelioglou et al., 2014; townsend, 2005) and posters as products of an inquiry project (buhrow & uoczak garcía, 2006; moses et al., 2015); however, once again only described briefly. further information on the approach for each task would be necessary to ensure ibl is properly used in conjunction with the tl, thus presenting the needed conditions for effective language use. in complement to the tasks evaluated above, other individual scaffolding tools enabling language use are mentioned in the literature. as such, the strategy of shared-writing, by which the learners contribute as a group to the production of a text with the help of the teacher, enable emerging l2 users to be supported in accessing meaningful language an investigation of scaffolding strategies to support structured inquiry language teaching to novice learners in a primary school setting language value 13(1), 1–22 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 13 production (buhrow & uoczak garcía, 2006; fullerton et al., 2015; moses et al., 2015; ntelioglou et al., 2014). other tools such as journaling and small group work are reported to be valuable in allowing shy and less confident learners to express their thoughts in the tl in a safe environment (capitelli, hooper, rankin, austin & caven, 2016; cummins, 2000, thomson, 2012; townsend, 2005). for complete language beginners, the use of l1 can also be used to facilitate expression in the most fluent language available, thereby allowing higher-level thinking, which is later translated into the tl to the learner‟s best ability (buhrow & uoczak garcía, 2006; cummins, 2000). v. inquiry-specific scaffolding strategies according to killen (2012, p.300), “… [the] primary role [of teachers] should be to help students learn how to think, rather than teaching them how to remember”. with this quote as a guide, this next section gathers evidence of scaffolding strategies that support the inquiry process and explicitly teach the skills necessary to successfully conduct ibl in the l2. an adapted version of wells‟ (1995) framework was used in efforts to organise the data collected from theoretical academic works and accounts of teachers‟ pedagogical practice, as described in table 1. v.1. research of empirical data phase according to wells (1995), the research phase of the inquiry cycle should include scaffolding strategies that aim to fulfil three main purposes: to initiate interest, to help in formulating questions, and to teach research skills. the first of these purposes implies offering access to carefully curated, relevant and varied resources. offering a choice of literary genres, including fiction pieces in addition to informational resources, is recommended to allow the student to consider various standpoints for the same historical event (short, 2009). moreover, engagement activities that allow for multiple experiences through exploration of real-world phenomena (capitelli et al., 2016; zeegers & mckinnon, 2012) are powerful tools to support and extend understanding beyond factual resources that are generally prescribed by the curriculum (short, 2009). in order to generate enthusiasm, such resources and activities should also attempt to amelie langdon and jillian m. pandor language value 13(1), 1–22 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 14 connect with the learners‟ prior knowledge and current understanding before being extended. once learners have gained familiarity and developed a keen interest in a topic, a natural wondering should occur out of issues discovered in the information-gathering phase. guidance towards developing a research question is needed at this stage. for this purpose, short (2009) recommends tools such as “i wonder” journals or classroom charts to follow the process of questioning and reasoning of each student. other teachers have used modelling and thinking-aloud to generate questions with young emerging l2 learners to help with reasoning in the tl (moses et al., 2015). the kwl chart –what a student knows [k], wants to know [w], and has learned [l] – is another tool commonly used to track student progress in their investigation and wondering (moses et al., 2015). at this stage, it is important to note that a structured inquiry approach generally implies that the teacher initiates the topic or question to be explored; therefore, killen (2012) warns teachers to ensure that the research questions are challenging and engaging for students as well as open for interpretation and adaptation so that they are malleable throughout the inquiry process. v.2. interpretation and analysis of data phase once the research stage has generated enough material, learners can start organising and interpreting the data in order to make sense of evidence and attempt to answer the research question. this implies that learners systematically and purposefully collect and record information before coming to conclusions (wells, 1995). with this purpose in mind, some teacher-researchers report adopting various strategies to keep track of findings. moses et al. (2015) taught students to record newly learnt information on sticky notes with sentences starting with “i learned” in order to record key information as well as to practice rephrasing relevant content with this sentence starter. other teachers exploring inquiry-based instruction for esl, co-create anchor charts with students that enable emerging bilinguals to record their learning and reflect on their thinking. these large classroom displays not only provide a representation of the inquiry pathway but also make an easy reference visual for key vocabulary and meaningful chunks of language which have the added benefit of supporting learners an investigation of scaffolding strategies to support structured inquiry language teaching to novice learners in a primary school setting language value 13(1), 1–22 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 15 with making meaning more comprehensible (buhrow & uoczak garcía, 2006; moses et al., 2015). although some instances of strategies for organising data are present in the literature, little evidence of strategies enabling an analysis of the data is offered. instead, the analysis phase is only implicitly mentioned without tangible examples. on the other hand, and in line with socio-constructivist theories, it could be argued that classroom interactions in both l1 and l2 have the potential to facilitate the interpretation and analysis of data phases. therefore, given the extensive use of class discussion, group and pair work during the inquiry process as presented throughout the reviewed literature (capitelli et al., 2016; caputo, 2014; cummins, 2000; moses et al., 2015; wells, 1995; zeegers & mckinnon, 2012), it is possible that l2 teachers are heavily relying on this strategy to generate understanding and analysis of data during the inquiry cycle. v.3. presentation of findings phase this phase includes teaching strategies that support learners in showcasing newly acquired knowledge at the end of the inquiry process. research shows that presentation skills can be explicitly taught to novice l2 learners through modelling, with an emphasis on common mistakes in efforts to highlight preferred techniques (moses et al., 2015). other final products may include brochures, audiotapes, posters or studentdirected lessons to the whole class (moses et al., 2015; schwarzer & luke, 2001). surprisingly, the use of technology is only mentioned on rare occasions in the literature (ntelioglou et al., 2014; zeegers & mckinnon, 2012), despite having the potential to be a valuable tool to support language production thanks to its multimodal possibilities to showcase learning (ntelioglou et al., 2014). although some examples of what the presentation of findings may look like are offered in the literature, there is very little evidence of how teachers are assisting learners to acquire the needed skills to successfully achieve this goal. vi. conclusion amelie langdon and jillian m. pandor language value 13(1), 1–22 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 16 this work aimed to provide a comprehensive literature review of language teaching strategies based in constructivist theory to demonstrate that a structured inquiry approach can support l2 educators in teaching novice language learners in a primary school context. such evidence was collected from a range of academic research on language acquisition and ibl among primary-aged learners. in line with current language acquisition research that emphasises the importance of offering extensive comprehensible input (cummins, 2000; pritchard, 2009; swartzer & luke, 2001; walqui, 2006), the above literature review revealed that educators prioritise a wide array of strategies dedicated to meaning-making (i.e. focus on meaning). however, it could be indicative of a tendency towards a more didactic model at the expense of a student-centred ibl approach. although research supports that learners should also be offered ample opportunities for meaningful language output (i.e. focus on use) as well as being exposed to the language systems through raising awareness (i.e. focus on form) (cummins, 2000), less evidence of such scaffolding is found in the literature. it was also discovered that few strategies are employed to explicitly teach inquiry skills, especially with respect to the interpretation of data phase. it is unclear whether this lack of information is due to a deficiency of knowledge of inquiry and language integration on behalf of teachers, or whether this topic is still at the early stages of exploration as a field of research; therefore, a more extensive search would be valuable. congruent with constructivist ideas, structured l2 inquiry should employ varied scaffolding strategies to equally address language meaning, form and use alongside authentic learning as a means of acquiring the tl. therefore, the present work may be useful in promoting teachers to rethink l2 pedagogy and ensure that all phases of the inquiry process and all language modes and skills are adequately supported with efficient strategies to yield meaningful learning experiences for students; something that can be achieved through a successful process of structured inquiry. notes i defined by larsen-freeman (2018) as situations “where students use, rather than exile, their existing language resources in their learning of a new language” (p.61). an investigation of scaffolding strategies to support structured inquiry language teaching to novice learners in a primary school setting language value 13(1), 1–22 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 17 references banchi, h., & bell, r. 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(1999). a comparison of cognitive load associated with discovery learning and worked examples. journal of educational psychology, 91(2), 334–341. 10.1037/0022-0663.91.2.334 van vooren, c., lai, c., ledger, s., bueno villaverde, a., & steffen, v. (2013). additional language teaching and learning in international baccalaureate primary years program schools. the hague: international baccalaureate organization. vygotsky, l.s., & kozulin, a. (ed.) (1986). thought and language. cambridge: mit press. walqui, a. (2006). scaffolding instruction for english language learners: a conceptual framework. international journal of bilingual education and bilingualism, 9(2), 159–180. doi: 10.1080/13670050608668639 wells, g. (1995). language and the inquiry-oriented curriculum. curriculum inquiry, 25(3), 233–269. doi: 10.1080/03626784.1995.11076181 zeegers, y., & mckinnon, h. (2012). „does a spider have fur‟? blending primary science and english language learning for esl students. teaching science: the journal of the australian science teachers association, 58(4), 7–13. received: 09 june 2020 accepted: 02 december 2020 cite this article as: langdon, a., & pandor, j.m. (2020). an investigation of scaffolding strategies to support structured inquiry language teaching to novice learners in a primary school setting. language value, 13 (1), 1-22. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.languagevalue.uji.es. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2020.13.1 issn 1989-7103 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue november 2018, volume 10, number 1 pp. 1-28 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2018.10.2 1 multimodal literacy in academic environments: powerpoint as a motivational genre stefania consonni stefania.consonni@unibg.it università degli studi di bergamo, italy abstract this paper explores powerpoint (ppt) as a leading genre in academic discourse, focussing on the implementation of student motivation boosting strategies. ict nowadays plays an increasingly important role in pedagogy, by reinforcing the informative and persuasive impact of instructional materials through multimodal strategies including verbal and visual codes, as well as performative elements. a hybrid genre in academic oratory, ppt offers corporeality of knowledge, modularity and easily transmittable format, providing presentations with structure and facilitating ordering and summarizing operations. ppt can therefore be ranked among today’s epistemic machineries, whereby knowledge is construed by discourse. the paper analyses the semiotic and metadiscursive features of a corpus of presentations produced in various universities for both academic staff and students. research questions explore how ppt can be used to motivate teachers and students, from both an ideational and interactional standpoint. an integrated analytical approach is employed, bridging multimodal and critical discourse analysis. keywords: multimodality, powerpoint, digital literacy, motivation, academic discourse, genre analysis i. introduction this paper addresses the ways in which information and communication technology (ict), and particularly powerpoint (ppt), is affecting the semiotic and linguistic features of academic communication, both in symmetric and asymmetric settings, with a specific focus on the dissemination and implementation of student motivation boosting strategies. motivation is a major factor in today’s pedagogy: as the latin root of the word suggests, to motivate students means ‘to move’ them, i.e., to incentive or drive them to act in order to achieve specific results or goals (williams and williams 2011: 2). as socio-cognitive psychology indicates, motivation and cognition work in concert, in that individuals have the ability to discern how to regulate their behaviour so that it meets their learning goals (eccles and wigfield 2002: 123). research on the psychopedagogy of foreign languages and the pedagogical influence of ict (dörnyei 2001; dörnyei and schmidt 2001) has shown in particular that students should be encouraged to play an active role in the educational process (bellés-fortuño and ollero 2015: 146), http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue mailto:%20stefania.consonni@unibg.it stefania consonni language value 10 (1), 1–28 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 2 for this can optimise the degree of their commitment to (and pleasure in) learning. this means that reluctant learners can become self-regulated learners, i.e., they can learn how to apply agency, purpose and self-efficacy beliefs, and set goals and performance outcomes for themselves. presentation software nowadays plays an increasingly important role in supporting and reinforcing the informative and persuasive impact of instructional materials through multimodal strategies – including verbal and visual codes, structured and performative elements, as well as kinesic and paralinguistic features – which prove crucial in motivating students. while there is some debate around the argumentative style of ppt, especially targeting its syntactically deprived, noun-phrase-bullet-point repetitiveness (tufte 2003), evidence shows that, from the point of view of students, ppt’s motivational impact cannot be denied, in terms of both promoting intentions and boosting results (amare 2006; kosslyn et al. 2012; stark and paravel 2008; susskind 2005). a number of affordances contribute to the pedagogical efficacy of slideshows, including argumentative immediacy, corporeality of knowledge, modularity, easily transmittable format (kaplan 2011), as well as the facilitation of pacing and summarizing operations (lari 2014; paoletti et al. 2012). this paper investigates the multi-literacy strategies employed in a corpus of motivational ppt presentations from various universities, aimed at both academic staff (i.e., instructing lecturers on how to motivate students) and at students themselves (i.e., offering advice on how to optimize resources and skills). an integrated methodological framework will be employed, bridging multimodal, critical discourse and genre analysis. as a matter of fact, ppt meaning-making processes stem from a conflation of verbal language (alley and neely 2005; blalock and montgomery 2005; burke and james 2008; paoletti et al. 2012), visual strategies (clark 2008; diani 2015; wysocki 2003, 2007), and bodily communication, such as gesticulation and pointing (jurado 2015; knoblauch 2008), all of which make ppt a hybrid genre in academic oratory. as multi-semiotic objects, ppts will be here investigated from two intertwined perspectives, stemming from systemic functional grammar metafunctions (halliday 2002, 2004): http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue multimodal literacy in academic environments: powerpoint as a motivational genre language value 10 (1), 1–28 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 3 (i) on the ideational level – dealing with the ways in which a visual and textual construct can signify the ‘real’ world inside its semiotic boundaries, and thus convey extra-linguistic experience (halliday 2004: 29) – the representation of informative meanings in ppts will be examined. a typology of the semiotic modes employed in the corpus will single out the referential strategies building a unified image of students’ self-confidence and study skill optimisation. such multimodal analysis will highlight the visually realised aspect of motivation discourse in the corpus, stimulating the following research question: to what extent, and with what effects, does the intersemiotic translation of different modes (jakobson 1959: 233) shape the ideational component of ppt as a multi-literacy genre in academic discourse? (ii) on the interpersonal level – dealing with the creation of contact and engagement strategies between a visual and textual construct and its embedded audience, and accounting for the linguistic construction of social relationships (halliday 2004: 29) – the paper will identify and quantify the most recurrent metadiscursive features employed in order to maximize engagement of both teachers and learners. a typology of the most frequent engagement markers and functions (hyland 2005: 53-54; heino, tervonen and tommola 2002) will showcase the interactional significance (and verbal realisation) of motivation discourse in the ppt corpus. the following research question will be addressed: how do different realisations of engagement within the instructional community contribute to define the rationale for ppt as a prominent genre in academic communication? the interaction between the ideational and interactional features of ppt as an academic genre will lastly be explored, following a social semiotic approach to multimodal analysis (kress and van leeuwen 1996, 2001), in order to examine the extent to (and the ways in) which each level contributes in the resemiotization process construing ppt as an example of synoptic/multi-semiotic textuality (charles and ventola 2002: 172). http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue stefania consonni language value 10 (1), 1–28 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 4 ii. materials for the purpose of this analysis, a corpus of 32 ppt presentations, recently produced by different universities in 22 countries (including europe, africa, china, india, russia and the usa), has been assembled. the google search engine (kw: “academic motivation .ppt”) has been used in order to retrieve the documents. given ppt’s diffusion as the “most ubiquitous form of digitally assisted demonstration”, aimed at a manifold “sociotechnical assemblage” of audiences (stark and paravel 2008: 3), and assuming academic motivation to be a complex psycho-social phenomenon (eccles and wigfield 2002), an equal number of slideshows targeted to lecturers and to students have been sampled. the former instruct academic staff on how to inspire intentional learners, stimulate commitment to attend class and perform well in exams, while the latter train students to set goals, enhance competence and self-efficacy perception, develop study skills and autonomous behaviour, etc. two subcorpora have thus been obtained, contrasting symmetric (subcorpus 1) vs. asymmetric (subcorpus 2) communication contexts, totalling 1,213 slides and 56,288 words, as can be seen in table 1. table 1. distribution of materials in the corpus. number of slides number of words subcorpus 1 (symmetric) staff to staff 744 38,254 subcorpus 2 (asymmetric) staff to students 469 18,034 total 1,213 56,288 iii. method this study incorporates socio-visual semiotics and metadiscourse analysis. on the ideational level, a contrastive analysis of the visual communication strategies employed in the corpus will be carried out, highlighting the different semiotic resources employed in ppts in order to convey referential contents, in both symmetric and asymmetric settings. a multiplicity of visual modes – all of which carrying significant functional load (tardy 2005: 320) – can be evidenced to interact simultaneously and synergetically http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue multimodal literacy in academic environments: powerpoint as a motivational genre language value 10 (1), 1–28 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 5 (diani 2015: 103) in the corpus. a typology of four semiotic types of visuals will be organised: a) the numerical mode, i.e., the quantitative presentation of empirical data via mathematical formulae and/or such devices as numerical tables (bertin 2001; rowley-jolivet 2002); b) the graphical mode, i.e., the presentation of information to be found in graphs, diagrams, maps and other artefacts based on info-graphical strategies (bertin 2011), aiming at the conceptual framing and synoptic visualization of empirical quantities, so as to display information incidence, evidence, recurrence patterns, etc.; c) the scriptural or linguistic mode, i.e., the presentation of information using written verbal language (rowley-jolivet 2000, 2002), pivoting on the linguistic and argumentative construction of information; d) the figurative mode, i.e., the presentation of information using visual artefacts such as photographs, images, webpages, etc. (rowley-jolivet 2002, 2004), which hinge on allusive and affective symbolizations of empirical reality, so as to elicit emotional responses on the part of the viewer. it should be noted that (a) and (b) are monosemic modes, in that, by referring to empirical quantities in extra-linguistic reality, the meaning of every sign is defined beforehand, and known prior to (and regardless of) any “observation of the collection of signs” (bertin 2011:2). while both mathematics and graphics display high adherence to empirical phenomena, i.e., they generally tend to be perceived as unambiguous, objective, neutral and non-culture driven, they differ as to their perceptual structure, for graphics visually provides instantaneous perception to quantitative phenomena which would otherwise require longer processing. in the light of this, it is possible to explain today’s growing need for the visualization of data and information (friendly 2009; tufte 2001). (c) and (d) are instead polysemic modes, because “the meaning of the individual sign follows and is deduced from consideration of the collection of signs”, so that “signification becomes subjective and thus debatable” (bertin 2011: 2). http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue stefania consonni language value 10 (1), 1–28 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 6 although the difference between written language and figurative imagery largely amounts to their appeal to different sensory stimuli (hearing and sight), and to the different referential and social interactions strategies they employ, both are perceived as being on the opposite side of the referential spectrum from mathematics and graphics, as they tend to be considered subjective, biased and culture driven. although social semiotics has fully clarified that visual language works on a lexicogrammar of its own, realizing meanings as linguistic structures do (kress 2003, 2010; kress and van leeuwen 1996, 2001; van leeuwen 2004, 2005), and that no human (re)presentation of extra-linguistic reality is ever without cognitive effects, such perception may have an explanation. as a matter of fact, while numerical and graphical visuals tend to naturalize the distance between their semiotic boundaries and the reality they – as signs – stand for, the scriptural and figurative modes tend to emphasize such hiatus, and to display their “rich cultural load” (rowley-jolivet 2000: 4), since in the case of polysemic codes, the “reading operation takes place between the sign and its meaning”, whereby ambiguity and subjectivity are brought in the process (bertin 2011: 2). reading pictures, as well as reading words, actually involves not only construing meanings from what we see/read, but also from what we know (kostelnick 1993: 244), which makes both operations overtly cognitive in nature. figure 1 offers a schematization of the semiotic modes along the (perceived) referential continuum. figure 1. the four semiotic modes along the referential continuum. the present analysis will account for the proportions, functions and variation patterns of numerical, graphical, scriptural and figurative slides in both ppt subcorpora. the cognitive interplay among all types can, as a matter of fact, provide an ideational picture of ppt as an integration code (kress and van leeuwen 2004) hinging on semiotic spanning processes among concurrent co-textual modes (charles and ventola 2002). http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue multimodal literacy in academic environments: powerpoint as a motivational genre language value 10 (1), 1–28 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 7 on the interpersonal level, a microscopic bottom-up linguistic analysis will be carried out – within the scriptural slides of both ppt subcorpora – in order to identify and quantify the most recurrent interaction-oriented metadiscourse features creating engagement effects with readers/viewers. a typology of engagement markers (hyland 2005: 53-54; heino, tommola and tervonen 2002; vassileva 2002; webber 2002, 2005) will be organised and discussed, accounting for the verbal realizations of motivation discourse: a) reader pronouns (you, your, yourself), i.e., direct appeals to the audience embedded in presentations, which are highly expected to develop a sense of meanings being specifically produced for them; b) community pronouns (inclusive we, our, ourselves), i.e., appeals to an integrated educational community, in which a sense of togetherness and commonality is built; c) questions, i.e., structures positing meanings interrogatively rather than assertively, covering doubts the audience may have on specific aspects, suggesting or anticipating a cognitive gap that the presentation will deal with, signalling “queries in need of reply, interpretation, and conclusion” (soler 2007: 100); d) imperatives, i.e., directive structures conveying do’s and don’ts to be implemented; e) obligation, or compulsion, modals (should, must, have to, need to), i.e., modals implying “to a greater or lesser extent, that the speaker is advocating a certain form of behaviour” from the part of the audience (quirk and greenbaum 1990/2008: 68). the proportions, functions and variation patterns among the five types of engagement markers and between the subcorpora will be discussed, in order to evidence the ways in which two different segments of a discourse community are targeted by specific interactional resources and pragmatic strategies. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue stefania consonni language value 10 (1), 1–28 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 8 iv. results iv.1. ideational level table 2 provides a breakdown of the semiotic types of slides (numerical, graphical, scriptural and figurative) to be found in each ppt presentation, and in each subcorpus. table 2. semiotic modes in ppt presentations: variations between subcorpora ppt no. slides avg. numerical graphical scriptural figurative subcorpus 1: symmetric context (staff to staff) 01 29 46,5 3 1 25 0 02 48 5 7 35 1 03 35 0 3 18 14 04 40 0 9 30 1 05 25 2 2 21 0 06 26 3 5 18 0 07 48 0 0 45 3 08 24 0 2 18 4 09 35 0 1 33 1 10 28 0 2 25 0 11 65 0 3 58 4 12 18 0 1 17 0 13 72 0 28 41 3 14 21 0 0 21 0 15 102 0 1 86 15 16 128 0 4 105 19 tot. subcorpus1: 744 13 (1,8%) 69 (9,3%) 596 (80,1%) 65 (8,8%) subcorpus 2: asymmetric context (staff to students) 17 61 29,3 0 7 18 36 18 24 0 2 18 4 19 28 0 0 11 17 20 21 0 0 21 0 21 28 0 2 25 1 22 37 0 0 10 17 23 34 0 3 23 8 24 9 0 0 5 4 25 20 2 4 14 0 26 22 0 1 19 2 27 25 1 0 16 8 28 25 0 7 10 8 29 21 0 0 16 5 30 15 0 0 8 7 21 42 0 22 20 0 32 57 0 6 49 2 tot. subcorpus 2: 469 3 (0,7%) 54 (11,5%) 283 (60,4%) 119 (25,4%) http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue multimodal literacy in academic environments: powerpoint as a motivational genre language value 10 (1), 1–28 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 9 the typology has been organized following the referential continuum in figure 1. beside the disparity in the total (744 vs. 469), and in the average number of slides (46,5 vs. 29,3) in the subcorpora – which could be explained in terms of the different attention span and literacy standards to be expected from an expert vs. student audience – the table evidences some remarkable variations among the semiotic modes. numerical slides, presenting empirical reality via quantitative tables and formulae, seldom occur in both subcorpora (1,8% in subcorpus 1 and 0,7% in subcorpus 2). their typical function is to provide figures as empirical, or scientific, evidence to what is being discussed in the presentation, as is shown for instance in figure 2 (williams 2013, from subcorpus 1), informing lecturers about the statistical significance of typical operant conditioning measures. given that the pragmatic purpose of the ppt corpus in consideration is to motivate people, whatever their role in the educational process, it is not surprising that numerical slides should appear as the least frequent mode: as a highly discipline-specific type of visual, they can perform gate-keeping functions with respect to the lay audience, thus producing ostracism and exclusion effects (kostelnick 1993: 250). figure 2. numerical slide (williams 2013) a fairly similar trend is shown in both subcorpora by another token of highly specialized visual communication: amounting to 9,3% of subcorpus 1 and 11,5% of subcorpus 2, graphical slides are represented by diagrams, charts, maps and other data visualization devices, which present extra-linguistic reality by means of picturing relevant numerical http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue stefania consonni language value 10 (1), 1–28 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 10 quantities. although the graphical portrayal of quantitative information may be perceived as an epistemologically neutral operation, one which does not interfere with the objective rendering of reality as it is, outside of any semiotic system, this is merely the effect of epistemic and social naturalization. a graph, for instance, is designed in order to show evidence, emphasize relevance of information, frame significant data, etc. despite its monosemic character, it is in itself a cognitive operation, entailing a certain degree of interpretation of extra-textual reality. the reading of empirical data through patterns is easier to perceive in visual rather than in numerical (or textual) form, because of the highly informative – and claim-making – potential of info-graphical compositional knowledge. this makes the graphical mode an optimal resource for the coding of topological meanings in computational terms (rowley-jolivet 2000: 6), and a most effective strategy in discipline-oriented professional visualization, one that is also deeply linked to the epistemology of the disciplinary field in which such visuals are produced (ibid.). in both ppt subcorpora under examination, graphical slides have this function, as can be seen in figure 3 (mertz 2013). this graphical slide from subcorpus 2 shows students how to develop leadership skills by visualizing the quantitative relationship between task(or individual-)focused behaviour and social (or supportive) behaviour. figure 3. graphical slide (mertz 2013) opposite trends are instead shown by the two most frequent semiotic modes in both subcorpora, namely, the polysemic ones: linguistic slides amount to 80,1% of subcorpus http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue multimodal literacy in academic environments: powerpoint as a motivational genre language value 10 (1), 1–28 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 11 1 vs. 60,4% of subcorpus 2, while figurative slides represent 8,8% of subcorpus 1 vs. 25,4% in subcorpus 2. a closer look at the data reveals that approximately twice as many scriptural slides can be found in subcorpus 1 (596) than in subcorpus 2 (283), while the reverse applies to figurative slides (119 in subcorpus 2 vs. 65 in subcorpus 1). this seems to suggest that in staff-to-staff presentations, when it comes to the preferred strategy for structuring ideational contents, especially when typological meanings are involved, words are expected to be more effective than pictures: that is, when targeting the logical and argumentative competence of academic staff, the verbal and linguistic construction of information prevails, as can for instance be inferred from figure 4 (wood 2017, from subcorpus 1), explaining a researcher’s key findings in psychocognitive pedagogy. figure 4. scriptural slide (wood 2017) conversely, the dominant mode in asymmetric presentations is the allusive, affective and persuasive representation of polysemic visuals. figurative language is preferred when an emotional response – which is at the foundation of self-motivation processes (clark 2003) – is being elicited, as can be inferred from figure 5 (salama 2014, from subcorpus 2), featuring a portrait of what motivation and team work may look like, in the shape of an inspiring illustration of social-supportive behaviour. being endowed with a high degree of iconicity, i.e., a complex referential load, which makes signification a subjectively biased operation, calling for disambiguation from the part of the viewer in order to be fully understood, figurative imagery pivots on the emotional response of the http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue stefania consonni language value 10 (1), 1–28 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 12 audience, who is engaged in complementing the allusive stimuli offered by the visuals with personal meanings. for this reason, figurative visuals are typical of advertising language, for their main function is a persuasive one (rowley-jolivet 2002: 30). on the contrary, specialized visuals such as graphical devices, which are typical of scientific language, have a highly eidetic potential, i.e., they are endowed with predetermined discipline-specific informational meanings, which are required for such visuals to be understood at all. while graphical visuals are monosemic, eidetic and stylised, and perform an informative and argumentative function, figurative visuals are polysemic, iconic and allusive, and have a persuasive and promotional function. figure 5. figurative slide (salama, 2014) the proportions of figurative and linguistic slides within each ppt subcorpus can be further observed in charts 1 and 2. symmetric contexts display nearly the same amount of graphical and figurative slides, while the figurative vs. scriptural ratio is nearly 1:10 (see chart 1). in asymmetric contexts, there are twice as many figurative than graphical slides, while the figurative vs. scriptural increases to approximately 1:2 (see chart 2). http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue multimodal literacy in academic environments: powerpoint as a motivational genre language value 10 (1), 1–28 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 13 chart 1. semiotic modes in subcorpus 1 chart 2. semiotic modes in subcorpus 2 with respect to such tendencies, it can be observed that different pragmatic functions are associated with the discursive modes of the subcorpora (sala 2008: 16). this appears to be a more convincing explanation than the alleged objectivity of verbal language vs. the subjective bias of visual language. being targeted to the verbal literacy skills expected from academic staff, the ppt presentations in subcorpus 1 obey a predominantly informativeand argumentative function, as can easily be expected in expert-to-expert http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue stefania consonni language value 10 (1), 1–28 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 14 disciplinary communication, where “knowledge production is carried out and codified” in writing (berkenkotter and huckin 1995: 1). on the contrary, addressing the visual literacy skills of students, and being meant to elicit a psychological response from them as a trigger to better self-management strategies, the presentations in subcorpus 2 exploit the attractiveness of visual display and obey a persuasive and promotional function. both discursive modes – the verbal/argumentative and the visual/persuasive – are reflected in the rationale for ppt as a leading academic genre, in both research and instructional settings. on the one hand, in symmetric contexts, the cognitive architecture and impact of what is considered the most typical “conferencing product” (campagna 2009: 387) is granted by the functional collaboration between verbal (i.e., running text) and visual discourse formulations (i.e., use of visuals, formatting devices, etc.; virbel et al. 1999: 35). the synchronous visual-cum-verbal progression (rowley-jolivet 2000: 13) is as a matter of fact perceived and decoded as an integrated whole by the audience. conversely, in asymmetric contexts, the multi-literacy stimuli offered by ppt can be said to be effective as concerns the transfer of contents from experts to learners: evidence from social and behavioural sciences (kosslyn et al. 2012; paoletti et al. 2012) shows that ppt’s conflation of lexico-syntactical and visual structures tends to be preferred by students over traditional media (such as blackboards or transparencies), in that it facilitates and strengthens information processing operations, to such an extent that students tend to tag themselves as “visual learners” (amare 2006: 302). by stimulating the perception and retention of materials, ppt textuality both enhances students’ self-efficacy beliefs (susskind 2005: 211) and boosts their motivation towards learning (corbeil 2007; ilter 2009; lari 2014; oommen 2012; wang 2011). interestingly, motivation seems to emerge from the investigated ppt corpus as a psychosocial outcome of multi-semiotic textuality. iv.2. interpersonal level table 3 provides a breakdown of the most recurrent metadiscursive resources to be found in the linguistic slides of both subcorpora, and meant to elicit engagement and commitment from the part of the audience embedded in ppt presentations. data are presented in normalized figures (per 10,000 words). it can clearly be seen that there is a http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue multimodal literacy in academic environments: powerpoint as a motivational genre language value 10 (1), 1–28 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 15 much higher frequency of engagement markers in subcorpus 2 than in subcorpus 1 (542,86 vs. 325,97). although, as shown in table 2, subcorpus 2 has approximately half as many scriptural slides as subcorpus 1 (283 vs. 596), the average frequency of markers in scriptural slides is over twice as high in subcorpus 2 (45,23) than in subcorpus 1 (20,37). motivational discourse addressing students seems in fact more in need of specific linguistic resources in order to signal the inclusion of readers as discourse participants, emphasising on the one hand commonality – as is the case of the inclusive pronouns we, us, our, ourselves – and on the other the individuality of each reader/viewer, who needs to be constantly made aware (by means of reader pronouns such as you, your, yourself) of being the presentation’s designed addressee and beneficiary. table 3. engagement markers in ppt presentations (normalized frequency per 10,000 words): variations between subcorpora ppt no. engagement markers avg. reader pronouns (you, your, yourself) community pronouns (we, us, our, ourselves) questions imperatives obligation modals (should, must, have to, need to) subcorpus 1: symmetric context (staff to staff) 01 3,66 20,37 0 2,35 1,04 0 0,26 02 3,92 0,26 1,82 1,04 0 0,78 03 16,99 3,66 0,26 6,53 6,53 0 04 4,44 1,56 0,26 2,61 0 0 05 7,05 0,26 0 6,79 0 0 06 9,41 0,26 0 0,78 7,58 0,78 07 44,7 9,14 1,04 1,82 32,67 0 08 10,19 1,82 0,52 0,78 6,79 0,26 09 12,80 2,35 0 2,61 7,05 0,78 10 7,05 3,39 2,35 1,3 0 0 11 60,64 27,97 4,44 8,88 18,82 0,52 12 12,28 5,48 2,09 1,3 3,39 0 13 6,79 0,26 0 6,53 0 0 14 3,92 0 0 0 2,35 1,56 15 48,88 10,19 2,09 14,37 20,91 1,30 16 73,19 23 14,37 17,51 17,25 1,04 tot. subcorpus 1: 325,97 89,66 31,63 73,97 123,38 7,32 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue stefania consonni language value 10 (1), 1–28 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 16 subcorpus 2: asymmetric context (staff to students) 17 28,27 45,23 8,87 0,55 10,53 8,31 0 18 49,35 28,27 1,66 13,3 5,5 0,55 19 37,7 15,52 0 2,21 18,85 1,1 20 12,75 6,65 2,21 3,88 0 0 21 75,41 19,4 1,66 23,28 23,84 7,2 22 42,69 28,83 3,88 1,66 8,31 0 23 21,62 9,42 1,1 1,1 9,98 0 24 28,27 18,29 0,55 0,55 7,76 1,1 25 29,38 16,63 0,55 7,76 4,43 0 26 29,38 13,3 1,1 7,76 7,2 0 27 8,87 7,2 0 1,66 0 0 28 8,87 2,21 0 0,55 5,5 0,55 29 32,16 14,41 2,77 3,88 9,98 1,1 30 63,76 34,93 13,86 5,5 8,87 0,55 31 14,97 6,09 1,1 6,65 1,1 0 32 59,33 13,3 3,32 12,19 25,5 4,99 tot. subcorpus 2: 542,86 243,43 34,38 102,58 145,28 17,19 the preferred interactional features in both subcorpora are reader pronouns and imperatives, albeit in inverted proportions. while imperatives are the most widely used category in subcorpus 1 (123,38), followed by reader pronouns (89,66), reader pronouns rank first in subcorpus 2 (243,43), followed by imperatives (145,28). the proportions within each subcorpus can be further observed in charts 3 and 4. symmetric contexts show a you vs. we ratio of 3:1, while the imperative vs. you ratio is approximately 4:3 (see chart 3); in asymmetric contexts, the you vs. we ratio increases to 7:1, while the imperative vs. you ratio declines to 3:5 (see chart 4). this seems to indicate that community pronouns, emphasising common knowledge or experience, or advocating team spirit (vassileva 2002: 270), are a favourite interactional resource when motivation discourse is meant for academic staff, whereas reader pronouns, stressing individual worth and thus boosting individual effort, are a typical resource when students are being addressed. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue multimodal literacy in academic environments: powerpoint as a motivational genre language value 10 (1), 1–28 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 17 chart 3. engagement markers in subcorpus 1 (normalized frequency per 10,000 words) chart 4. engagement markers in subcorpus 2 (normalized frequency per 10,000 words) the charts also reveal information about the third preferred resource for engagement in the ppt corpus, i.e., questions. while asymmetric contexts use way less than half as many questions as reader pronouns (102,58 vs. 243,43), in symmetric contexts the proportion significantly changes to approximately four interrogative structures every five reader pronouns (73,97 vs. 89,66). questions are typical of ppt’s conventionalized http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue stefania consonni language value 10 (1), 1–28 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 18 cognitive style (tufte 2003), and of ppt as an “open-for-discussion” tool (webber 2002) for communicating state-of-the-art knowledge to an audience who is expected to react, either asking questions or producing comments. as can be seen in figure 6 (landis 2005, from subcorpus 1), the typical ppt slide follows an add-on, theme-rheme (or gap-filler) information sequence, eliciting the reader/viewer’s curiosity via the heading, and providing answers in the body text (usually organized through bullet points). if slides in general are organized in gap-filler slots, in the case of subcorpus 1 this seems to match the possible informational request of an expert audience, who, being engaged by a possible gap in their knowledge system, will probably look forward to developing new educational protocols. in the case of a student audience, instead, ppt’s argumentative structure tends to be perceived as facilitating the understanding and retention of instructional materials (susskind 2005: 204). in both contexts, the use of interrogative structures can be said to function as an interactional booster of standard ppt gap-filler argumentative patterns. figure 6. typical question slide (landis 2005) overall, results on the interpersonal level seem to confirm that different engagement strategies are needed in different communicative situations. the behaviour of imperatives and questions in the subcorpora seems in particular to substantiate what was hypothesized at the ideational level (cf. iv.1 above). metadiscursive resources http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue multimodal literacy in academic environments: powerpoint as a motivational genre language value 10 (1), 1–28 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 19 complement the verbal and argumentative tenor of subcorpus 1 with explanatory and normative features: as a matter of fact, symmetric presentations frequently anticipate and clarify possible cognitive gaps from the part of lecturers, as well as establish the do’s and don’ts of motivating students. questions and imperatives are not perceived here as face threatening acts (goffman 1967), for subcorpus 1 addresses a professional audience, expecting explicit instructions and caveats from ppts. the visual and persuasive tenor of subcorpus 2, on the contrary, needs differently cogent interactional resources, for its purpose is to enthuse individuals to commit to volitional learning – which involves the massive use of reader pronouns and of figurative imagery (as shown in iv.1). imperatives also frequently occur in subcorpus 2. here, however, directives tend to be packaged in specific argumentative sections within each ppt presentation (as can be seen in figure 7, holmes 2013, from subcorpus 2), do’s and don’ts sections which students may decide not to access in case they do not wish to take specific advice. such strategic hedging of imperatives in subcorpus 2 contributes to dismantle the face-threatening potential of directives, while keeping the potential benefits of instructional discourse active iv. concluding remarks by bridging socio-visual semiotics and metadiscourse analysis, this study has investigated the ideational and interpersonal strategies structuring ppt as a resourceful genre for the implementation of motivation strategies in academic environments. results from multimodal analysis have shown, on the ideational level, that the construction of informative meanings in ppts hinges on the intersemiotic translation of different modes (jakobson 1959: 233), i.e., the interaction and integration of the numerical, graphical, scriptural, and figurative mode. the coexistence of four semiotic systems, interacting with one another along the referential continuum and activating across different pragmatic purposes and communicative settings, construes ppt as an integration code among a plurality of literacy practices, combining and synergizing monosemic and polysemic systems of signification (kress and van leeuwen 2001). a synoptic screen genre (charles and ventola 2002: 172), the ppt slideshow is characterized by a combination of multi-semiotic resources constituting a whole and http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue stefania consonni language value 10 (1), 1–28 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 20 coherent communicative act (degano 2012), both in research and pedagogical settings. meaning-making processes are distributed, and constantly resemiotized (iedema 2001), across all modes, accommodating flexible functional variation patterns, as evidenced by the contrastive analysis between the subcorpora. the flexibility with which each semiotic mode can modulate itself within the same communicative event suggests ppt as a hybrid “inscribed genre”, that is, a mainly (albeit not exclusively) written genre combining “language, image, and graphics in an integrated whole” (van leeuwen 2004: 10). such hybridity explains ppt’s efficacy in academic discourse, with respect to both informative and argumentative (diani 2015) and persuasive and promotional functions (busà 2010). in this respect, results on the ideational level seem to confirm – in line with (and in the light of) recent linguistic and psycho-pedagogical research (bellésfortuño and ollero 2015; bellés-calvera and bellés-fortuño 2018; dörnyei 2001) – that ppt may positively influence students’ task-focused and social supportive behaviour. both effects can impact the building of a unified image of self-confidence, and the optimisation of students’ study skills and general organisation. motivation seems therefore to be an interestingly psycho-social and discursive phenomenon. results from metadiscourse analysis (and on the interpersonal level) have shown how motivational ppts hinge on a typology of interactional markers – namely, reader and community pronouns, imperatives, and questions – whose function is to maximize engagement and commitment from the part of both teachers and learners. engagement markers are the main linguistic manifestation of motivation discourse in the ppt corpus, and, as in the case of the abovementioned four semiotic modes, they also evidence functional variation patterns along different pragmatic purposes and communicative contexts. interactional outcomes of motivation discourse can encompass a range of functions, from explanatory to normative to emotional ones, depending on the proportions among the various types of metadiscourse used in the subcorpora, and complementing the argumentative efficacy of ppt as a leading genre in academic contexts. the case of questions and imperatives seems in particular to highlight the high potential for dialogical communication, and for the eliciting of various degrees of commitment on the part of the reader, which is typical of ppt’s standard logical structure, usually built on gap-filler (or theme-theme) information sequences. reader http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue multimodal literacy in academic environments: powerpoint as a motivational genre language value 10 (1), 1–28 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 21 and community pronouns also seem a typical resource of ppt as a hybrid “inscribed genre” (van leeuwen 2004: 10), whereby repeated appeals to individual readers and the pedagogical community – also crucial in the process of motivating both oneself and others – are accommodated by the multi-semiotic affordances of the genre. in conclusion, this paper has aimed to suggest that the motivational impact of ppt in a constructivist academic environment can be found at both the ideational and the interpersonal level. it is distributed across four signification systems, stemming in different ways from the ideational expression of empirical experience offered by various types of visuals (such as, for instance, graphical devices and/or figurative imagery), as well as from the linguistic construction of dialogical roles between academic staff and students in the communication of experiential meanings (as is the case of metadiscourse markers). multimodal literacy can therefore contribute, on the one hand, to the development of committed, autonomous and creative behaviour on the part of individual students, and, on the other, to the reinforcement of social processes of “communication and collaboration among students” as well as between students and teachers (bellés-calvera and bellés-fortuño 2018: 107). in the light of the above, potential implications of the present study may include extending the analysis to the third metafunction systemic functional grammar metafunction (halliday 2002, 2004). researching ppt as a fully trifunctional language may help further research focus on the ways – also including “performative” aspects of ppt, such as kinesic and paralinguistic features (van leeuwen 2004: 10) – in which the trifunctional load is worked out among the different resources in the multi-semiotic mix. references alley, m. and neeley, k.a. 2005. “rethinking the design of presentation slides: a case for sentences headlines and visual evidence”. technical communication, 52 (4), 417-427. amare, n. 2006. “to slideware or not to slideware: 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(eds.). what writing does and how it does it: an introduction to analysis of text and textual practices. mahwah: erlbaum and associates, 123-163. — 2007. “seeing the screen: research into visual and digital writing practices”. in bazerman, c. (ed.), handbook of research on writing. london: routledge. 8 october 2017. https://www.routledgehandbooks.com/doi/10.4324/9781410616470.ch37#ref37_ 1 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue http://chcr.umich.edu/materials/2013-05-13-williams.pptx https://www.routledgehandbooks.com/doi/10.4324/9781410616470.ch37#ref37_1 https://www.routledgehandbooks.com/doi/10.4324/9781410616470.ch37#ref37_1 stefania consonni language value 10 (1), 1–28 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 28 received: 10 april 2018 accepted: 23 july 2018 cite this article as: consonni, stefania 2018. “multimodal literacy in academic environments: powerpoint as a motivational genre”. language value 10 (1), 1-24. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2018.10.2 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue language value december 2020, volume 13, number 1 pp. 78-102 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es issn 1989-7103 language value, issn 1989-7103 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2020.13.4 78 learning vocabulary for ielts academic reading: an evaluation of some pedagogical materials marta serrano van der laan marta.serrano.vanderlaan@gmail.com universidad nacional de educación a distancia (uned), spain abstract a large receptive vocabulary could have a significant impact on scores in the ielts academic reading test. however, the lack of official information about vocabulary in this test raises questions regarding how lexis is selected and approached in existing ielts training materials. this paper evaluates three books issued by leading elt publishers to assess how far they effectively help learn vocabulary for the academic reading test. first, the lexis in the test is identified based on what can be gleaned from official information and available research. then, the three books are evaluated using a checklist of criteria relevant to the acquisition of this lexis. the results suggest that the materials investigated may not contribute enough towards the acquisition of vocabulary useful for success in the academic reading test. this paper offers some important insights into some shortcomings of current ielts training materials and points to ways of surmounting them. keywords: ielts; reading; materials; evaluation; acquisition; vocabulary i. introduction passing ielts academic with an overall score of 7.0 (c1 on the common european framework of reference (cefr)) is a goal for many students worldwide. the ielts (international english language testing system) academic test is used by universities worldwide to determine whether candidates‟ proficiency in english will enable them to study in english-medium environments. an ielts score above 6.0 is usually required for admission. i.1. a strategy for success in ielts many candidates find themselves in the need of attaining an overall ielts score that is above their current level of proficiency, in a limited period of time dictated by university application procedures. candidates also tend to approach the exam with different levels of ability in the four language skills. as the overall ielts score is the average of the scores attained in each of the four discrete skills tests that make up the https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5198-9715 mailto:marta.serrano.vanderlaan@gmail.com learning vocabulary for ielts academic reading: an evaluation of some pedagogical materials language value 13(1), 78–102 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 79 exam, good results in one or more tests can significantly raise overall exam scores. thus, it can be a useful strategy to dedicate efforts to improving results in the test in which success is most likely. one of the tests in which candidates attain their highest scores, regardless of overall level (ielts, 2020), is the academic reading (ar) paper. in ar, candidates must answer 40 questions about three long, real-world texts in one hour. one way of improving reading scores could be by developing receptive, or recognition, vocabulary knowledge. research has established the key role of vocabulary knowledge in reading (laufer & ravenhorst-kalovski, 2010; nation, 2013; schmitt, jiang & grabe, 2011) and relevant literature suggests that vocabulary can be learnt quite quickly for receptive purposes (nation, 2013; sökmen, 1997; webb & nation, 2017). although not specifically assessed, knowledge of vocabulary seems to play a key role in the ar test. a close inspection of published practice tests i reveals that answering the majority of the questions requires the recognition of synonymy and paraphrase. additionally, the length and density of the texts mean that a lack of vocabulary may constitute a major handicap in this high-stakes language examination. therefore, increasing receptive vocabulary size could positively impact reading scores and as a consequence overall scores could be raised. i.2. framing the problem in order to increase the size of candidates‟ receptive vocabulary for success in ielts ar, it is necessary to know what vocabulary is involved. however, guidance as to the vocabulary to study for ielts ar is scarce. the test is not based on a set vocabulary syllabus, and the ielts consortium divulges little information regarding vocabulary useful towards passing the test successfully. at the same time, existing literature on vocabulary in ielts mainly regards the ielts speaking and writing tests. at the same time, ielts coursebooks usually include sections on vocabulary, and some textbooks dedicated to vocabulary for ielts are also available. given the dearth of research and information about vocabulary in this test, it is unclear how these materials are informed. furthermore, recent literature suggests that coursebooks often seem to marta serrano van der laan language value 13(1), 78–102 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 80 lack a solid grounding in principle and familiarity with state-of-the-art research on vocabulary (schmitt, 2019). i.3. aim and scope this paper critically evaluates three books that claim to help learners acquire vocabulary towards ielts. the aim of the study is to understand whether these books effectively provide exam candidates with the vocabulary they need for success in the ar test. to this purpose, a checklist was developed and used to evaluate how far the books address the features of ar vocabulary that can be gleaned from official information and available literature. the checklist also examines the books‟ grounding in established pedagogical principle the outcome of the evaluation suggests that the books examined fall short of their claims due to their unsatisfactory grounding in research and pedagogical principle. this paper provides some important insights into the limitations of current vocabulary study materials for ielts. the results presented here may usefully inform future ielts vocabulary learning materials. ii. theoretical background although it is well-researched that vocabulary is crucial for reading (alderson, 2000; schmitt, jiang & grabe, 2011), this paper evidences that only a surprisingly small body of literature is available on vocabulary in the ielts ar test. nonetheless, relevant information about the lexis in the test can also be learnt from some studies on other aspects of ielts. this section provides an overview of research that provides key insights into vocabulary in ielts ar and that underpins the present investigation. ii.1. vocabulary and reading research indicates that reading comprehension is dependent on high percentages of vocabulary knowledge (hu & nation, 2000; milton, 2009). in fact, alderson (2000, p.35) asserts that vocabulary knowledge is “the single best predictor of text learning vocabulary for ielts academic reading: an evaluation of some pedagogical materials language value 13(1), 78–102 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 81 comprehension” among the many other variables that are also involved. knowledge of vocabulary applied successfully to reading implies the possession of a large receptive lexicon, that is, a strong form-meaning knowledge (schmitt, 2014). as aspects of deeper word knowledge such as morphology or collocation are provided or clarified by the context, depth of vocabulary knowledge may be of less relevance (schmitt, 2014). however, phonological knowledge may be highly relevant to reading as phonological memory may play a greater role than has previously been considered (lin, 2019; milton, 2009; walter, 2008) awareness of derivation may also have a bearing on reading, as research indicates that knowledge of a stem word is no guarantee of recognition of its derived forms (schmitt & zimmerman, 2002). a further element of vocabulary knowledge that affects reading is formulaic language, that is, the tendency of vocabulary to take the shape of phraseological units of two or more words, rather than consist in single words connected syntactically (schmitt, 2013). martinez and murphy (2011) showed that formulaic units can be the source of incomprehension, as they are often semantically opaque and readers may not recognize them as units of meaning. thus, knowledge and awareness of formulaic language is key to successful reading. it would seem, therefore, that a good receptive knowledge of vocabulary should be highly useful towards passing the ielts ar test. this lexicon should be composed of key individual words and opaque formulaic or multiword units (mwus) (martinez and schmitt 2012). this strong sight knowledge should be supported by some aspects of deeper vocabulary knowledge such as phonology and morphology. ii.2. vocabulary and ielts ar vocabulary in ielts has received little attention overall in the literature to date. however, a few specific studies are available. bax (2013) found that successful ar candidates were more lexically proficient and better able to match words in the questions with synonyms in the text than less successful candidates. milton, wade & hopkins (2010) correlated ielts scores to vocabulary size test results, finding a very strong relationship between receptive vocabulary size and the ar test. moreover, they found that 48% of variance in scores in this test can be explained by orthographic, or marta serrano van der laan language value 13(1), 78–102 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 82 sight, vocabulary size, making this the possibly most determining factor for success in the ar test. this suggests that attention to orthographic knowledge of vocabulary is highly relevant for the ar test. relevant insights about vocabulary in ielts ar can also be gained from work not specifically investigating vocabulary. in their study of how ar test materials are developed, green and hawkey (2011) show that source texts for ar reading passages tend to be more general than academic. even after adaptation to the ielts test format, the texts seem uncharacteristic of standard academic texts, as they contain larger than typical percentages of high-frequency vocabulary (green & hawkey, 2011; weir hawkey, green, unaldi & devi, 2009). this suggests that focusing strictly on academic vocabulary is not useful when approaching the ar test. in fact, it can be deduced from schmitt and schmitt (2014) that concentrating on general high-to mid-frequency lexis would be more appropriate, as their seminal paper shows that this vocabulary tends to be prevalent in non-specialist, university-level texts. the relevance of these frequency levels is corroborated by the findings in drummond (2018), which reveal that candidates attaining an overall ielts score of 6.5 to 7.0 may have a vocabulary size that affords them approximately 90% text coverage. according to schmitt and schmitt (2014), such coverage is granted by knowledge of the first 3to 4000 most frequent words in english, i.e. highand early mid-frequency vocabulary. ii.3. vocabulary learning and published pedagogical materials classroom experience and research show that many learners struggle to acquire substantial amounts of vocabulary, even over time (henriksen and danelund 2015), and often have a poor knowledge of high-frequency vocabulary (lawley 2010). one reason for this situation may lie in the shortcomings of published learning materials. in his recent research agenda, schmitt (2019) lists investigating why these materials so often do not reflect current vocabulary teaching principles. to mention just a few of the numerous studies that reveal such deficiencies, lawley (2010) and acosta moncada et al. (2016) found that the coursebooks they analyzed dedicated a surprising amount of space to less frequent lexis, to the detriment of high-frequency vocabulary. o‟loughlin (2012) and demetriou (2017) also found that extensively used coursebooks contained learning vocabulary for ielts academic reading: an evaluation of some pedagogical materials language value 13(1), 78–102 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 83 little frequent vocabulary and overall approached it unsystematically, often only providing one encounter with the target items. given these premises, prospects appear inauspicious also for published vocabularylearning materials aimed at ielts. a few dedicated books are currently available on the market, as are some ielts training materials that contain a section on vocabulary. these materials would seem to merit close inspection for a number of reasons. firstly, they may effectively be the only existing guides to learning vocabulary for ielts, given the dearth of research and information available on vocabulary and the exam. at the same time, this very lack of information gives rise to questions regarding how the pedagogical choices in these books are informed. moreover, assessment materials such as those mentioned above outline potential weaknesses that should be verified also in these materials. iii. methodology this investigation sets out to answer the following research question: are existing published vocabulary learning materials for ielts useful towards increasing receptive vocabulary size with a view to successfully passing the ar test? in this section the methodology and the materials used to answer this question are described. iii.1. the books evaluated three books were selected for the present investigation (see table 1). four main criteria were used to select these books. firstly, all three were issued by well-established english language teaching (elt) publishers. this suggests that they are pedagogically sound and developed by experts in the field and therefore valid materials for ielts candidates. secondly, the presence on an international level of all three publishers means that the books are available to students in many countries and that it is therefore useful to examine their content. thirdly, the three books have good face-value, in that they look clearly structured, cover a variety of ielts topics, seem to present and practice vocabulary in contexts and exercises that are relevant to the exam, and provide an array of apparently useful ancillary material such as vocabulary lists, revision tests marta serrano van der laan language value 13(1), 78–102 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 84 and exam tips. a final criterion for selecting these books for evaluation was that they seem to be aimed at a target level of ielts 6.0 and above, which tend to be the scores from which ielts is accepted in university application processes around the world, thus making the books relevant to ielts candidates. table 1. the books evaluated. title authors publisher year of publication referred to in text as vocabulary for ielts. self-study vocabulary practice cullen, p. cambridge university press 2008 vfis focusing on ielts reading and writing skills (2nd ed.) lindeck, j., greenwood, j., & o‟sullivan, k. macmillan education australia 2011 firw vocabulary for ielts williams, a. collins 2012 vfi all three books are directed at both ielts academic and ielts general training. vfis (cullen, 2008) and vfi (williams, 2012) approach the target vocabulary topically, rather than by individual test. the items are presented and practiced in different exam-type contexts throughout the units, but no indication is provided as to which items or learning strategies might be specifically useful for each of the four different tests in the exam. firw (lindeck, greenwood & o‟sullivan, 2011) is aimed at developing reading and writing skills for ielts. vocabulary is dealt with in two brief subsections in the unit on reading, where some suggestions are made about identifying and learning useful lexis, but no specific words are taught. vfis (cullen, 2008) teaches about 1,211 lexical items including mwus, organized into twenty topic-based units, with a test every five units. lists of all the target items in each unit are provided at the back of the book. the vocabulary is taught through a variety of exercises including exam-type tasks, and listening and reading activities. a further five units close the book and focus on vocabulary learning skills, and on vocabulary for the writing tests. the book boasts the label „cef (common european framework) b2– c1‟, but it is not clear whether these are starting-out or target levels. learning vocabulary for ielts academic reading: an evaluation of some pedagogical materials language value 13(1), 78–102 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 85 vfi (williams, 2012) covers about 277 different words through 18 topic-based units, with two revision units. the input does not include mwus, and a complete word list is not supplied. by contrast, the book provides a list of common collocations for most of the target vocabulary. each input unit focuses on 14-15 words connected to the unit topic. the target words are presented at the beginning of every unit using a dictionaryentry format for each word, providing part of speech, a definition and one or two example sentences. the subsequent sections of each unit practice these words through a variety of exercises, including listening, reading and exam-type tasks. the book targets students at an ielts level of 5.0 5.5 who are aiming at a score of 6.0+. firw approaches vocabulary for the reading tests in two subsections (lindeck, et al., 2011). building up your vocabulary (pp.43-44) offers some brief suggestions on how to learn vocabulary in general and what type of lexis to look out for. in identifying how words relate to each other (pp.44-47) learners are advised to notice relationships between words such as hyponymy, meronymy and collocation. the aim of these subsections is therefore not to teach a specific list of words, but rather to outline some useful strategies to learn vocabulary for ielts reading. no level is specified, but the presence of lengthy explanations and the choice of language used seem to target students beyond an intermediate level of proficiency. iii.2. the checklist a simple checklist was developed to analyse the usefulness of the three books towards learning vocabulary that will help pass the ar test at a band level above 6.0 (see table 2). table 2. checklist for evaluation checklist 1. does the book teach the 1 – 8000 most frequent words in english, including multiword units (mwus)? 2. is the vocabulary-learning program clearly defined? 3. is a strong form-meaning knowledge developed? 4. is morphology addressed? 5. is phonology addressed? 6. is synonymy and antonymy addressed? marta serrano van der laan language value 13(1), 78–102 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 86 7. are clear explanations provided regarding how to use the book? 8. is feedback provided? 9. is repetition facilitated and encouraged? 10. are vocabulary learning strategies suggested? the checklist takes inspiration from materials analyses such as tomlinson and masuhara (2013), tomlinson (2010), and reinders and lewis (2006) and the questions are grounded in the following pedagogical and theoretical principles:  frequency should be a key consideration when selecting vocabulary (nation, 2013; schmitt, 2008).  vocabulary does not only involve individual words (martinez & schmitt, 2012)  receptive vocabulary knowledge includes morphological and phonological awareness (walter, 2008; gardner, 2013)  learners need to be aware of the dimensions of the task ahead in order to set targets and plan their work (dörnyei, 2001; little, 2003; schmitt 2008)  autonomous learning strategies need to be fostered as the classroom typically does not afford sufficient time to deal with the amount of learning required (webb & nation, 2017). iii.3. procedure the target words in vfis (cullen, 2008) are listed at the back of the book, while in vfi (williams, 2012) they are at the beginning of each unit. these words were counted using the microsoft word word count tool in order to determine the books‟ learning load. as this tool cannot identify formulaic units as single lexical items, the components of the phrases and two-word compounds in vfis (cullen, 2008) were counted as individual words. this was not considered a miscount, as many of these components are also dealt with individually in the books. furthermore, many of the formulaic units learning vocabulary for ielts academic reading: an evaluation of some pedagogical materials language value 13(1), 78–102 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 87 covered are semantically transparent, making it useful to understand their individual components. nonetheless, the phrases and compounds were also counted as individual units, totalling 300. in order to establish the levels of frequency of the vocabulary in vfis (cullen, 2008) and vfi (williams, 2012), all the words were processed through the frequency analysis tool compleat web vp bnc-coca 1-25 (cobb, n.d.). this web tool matches the words inputted to corpus-based frequency lists, identifying the level of frequency of each word. some of the words used as examples in firw (lindeck et al., 2011) were also profiled on this tool. the phrases in vfis (cullen, 2008) were checked manually against the phrase list (martinez & schmitt, 2012).this is a list of the 505 most frequent semantically non-transparent mwus in english. the aim was to assess the usefulness of the phrases included, given the relevance of frequency to vocabulary learning. the results and implications of this frequency profiling are discussed in section iv below iv. the evaluation: results and discussion having examined the books known as vfis (cullen, 2008), vfi (williams, 2012) and firw (lindeck et al., 2011), the results obtained can be observed in table 3 below. table 3. results of the evaluation. vfis (cullen, 2008) firw (lindeck et al., 2011) vfi (williams, 2012) 1. does the book teach the 1 – 8000 most frequent words in english, including multiword units (mwus)?    2. is the vocabulary-learning program clearly defined?    3. is a strong form-meaning knowledge developed?   () 4. is morphology addressed? () () () marta serrano van der laan language value 13(1), 78–102 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 88 5. is phonology addressed? ()  () 6. is synonymy and antonymy addressed? ()  () 7. are clear explanations provided regarding how to use the book?    8. is feedback provided?  ()  9. is repetition facilitated and encouraged? ()  () 10. are vocabulary learning strategies suggested? () () () iv.1. question 1: does the book teach the 1 – 8000 most frequent words in english, including mwus? as argued above, the ar passages can be predicted to require knowledge of highto mid-frequency vocabulary, i.e. the 8,000 most frequent words in english. since research has established that language is highly formulaic, and that opaque formulaic units can challenge reading comprehension, knowledge of mwus (martinez & schmitt, 2012) at similar levels of frequency should also be necessary. the vocabulary profiles of the words in vfis and vfi show that they largely belong to the appropriate frequency range. however, the books only target a small number of vocabulary items. no explanation is provided as to the choice of these particular items, no reference is made to the (rest of the) 8,000 most frequent words in english, and the concept of frequency and its key role as identifier of usefulness (schmitt, 2010) is not mentioned. firw indirectly refers to frequency by dividing vocabulary into versatile words (lindeck et al., 2011, p.43) which “can be used in many different contexts”, and specific words (lindeck et al., 2011, p.43) “[of] very limited use, as they are usually used in one field or context only”. the vocabulary profile of the example versatile words reveals that they fall into the 1-5k range, i.e. highto mid-frequency according to schmitt and schmitt (2014). thus, versatile would seem a suitable name for these words, and, given their relevance for the ar test, prompting students to learn them is clearly appropriate. however, learners are again not informed of how many versatile words there are in learning vocabulary for ielts academic reading: an evaluation of some pedagogical materials language value 13(1), 78–102 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 89 english, nor that research-based, pedagogical lists of versatile words exist and are available free of cost on the web, for example the frequency lists published on compleat lextutor (n.d.). vfis (cullen, 2008) includes 50 mwus, and vfi (williams, 2012) none. of the mwus in vfis (cullen, 2008), only 15 appear in the phrase list (martinez & schmitt, 2012). why such a large amount of low-frequency phrases are included is unclear, particularly as high frequency formulaic units are often poorly known even at more advanced levels (martinez & murphy, 2011). firw (lindeck et al., 2011) touches on formulaic language in the section on collocation, which is part of a larger section discussing word relationships. being able to identify these is presented as an important reading skill. collocations are initially approached as a two-word pair phenomenon, with examples such as ask a question, interested in (lindeck et al., 2011, p.47). subsequently, formulaic units, such as hold the key or facing stiff competition, are shown as further examples of collocation (lindeck et al., 2011, p.47). given their semantic opacity, these phrases qualify as mwus and could therefore more profitably approached as units of meaning rather than as a sequence of related words (martinez & schmitt, 2012). no distinction is made between the two types of formulaic unit and no indication is given as to which might be more relevant to learn for reading purposes (i.e. mwus). iv.2. question 2: is the vocabulary-learning programme clearly defined? setting goals is key towards ensuring a principled and systematic learning program,e (nation, 2013), determining the scope of the task (schmitt, 2008), developing and maintaining motivation (dörnyei, 2001), and supporting autonomous learning (little, 2003). vfis (cullen, 2008) and vfi (williams, 2012), however, outline their vocabulary-learning programmes only in very broad terms. vfis “aims to extend and improve the accuracy of your vocabulary and help you prepare for the ielts test” (cullen, 2008, p.4), while vfi claims to help “improve your vocabulary when preparing for the ielts examination” (williams, 2012, p.4). close inspection of the contents reveals that neither book explicitly states exactly how many words they teach nor why these words should be learnt. in fact, in the two chapters on vocabulary learning skills marta serrano van der laan language value 13(1), 78–102 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 90 (21 and 22), vfis suggests acquiring further, non-specified vocabulary beyond the book‟s word list (cullen, 2008). thus, the dimensions and the exact composition of the learning programme are not clear. firw does not quantify vocabulary learning aims. instead, learners seem to be invited to build up an ielts lexicon through reading generally (lindeck, et al., 2011) p.44). this seems an impractical suggestion for time-strapped ielts candidates, as research has amply proven that incidental learning of vocabulary through reading yields far smaller and slower results than intentional word learning (file & adams, 2010; laufer, 2003; webb & nation, 2017). ielts candidates cannot afford to spend time on undefined learning programmes with no clear predicted outcome. a further problem regarding the definition of the learning programme in these books is that learners are not advised to identify where their vocabulary knowledge intersects with the books‟ syllabuses. only advanced learners are advised to begin study of each block of five units in vfis (cullen, 2008) by taking its corresponding vocabulary test. the assumption seems to be that learners at lower levels are unlikely to be familiar with most or any of the words in the book. this is not necessarily the case: research suggests that learners do not acquire vocabulary linearly, but rather according to their needs and to the language they are exposed to (schmitt, 2019). as discussed above, textbooks often focus more on low-frequency vocabulary than on high-frequency lexis (lawley, 2010; o‟loughlin, 2012). thus, determining their distance from the target is useful for all learners. however, to achieve this, they must be informed of the dimensions of the task and be provided with the means to assess their position with respect to the target. none of the books afford this support satisfactorily. iv.3. question 3: is a strong form-meaning knowledge developed? schmitt (2014) claims that a receptive lexicon useful for reading involves a strong formmeaning knowledge. to this purpose, learners need to recognize word form and connect it with its meaning, and re-encounter target items repeatedly at spaced intervals (webb & nation, 2017). recent literature consistently recommends the use of flashcards to develop form-meaning knowledge (gardner, 2013; nation, 2013, webb & nation, 2017), as cards allow manipulation such as randomization and reshuffling (ballance & learning vocabulary for ielts academic reading: an evaluation of some pedagogical materials language value 13(1), 78–102 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 91 cobb, 2018). bilingual l1–l2 word cards have been found to be particularly conducive to learning (schmitt, 2008, webb & nation, 2017). none of the books in this evaluation focuses explicitly on developing form-meaning knowledge nor mention bilingual word pair learning nor flashcards. vfi (williams, 2012) can be seen to facilitate form-meaning knowledge in that it presents the target words in the dictionary-entry format of word plus brief definition, but not so repeated retrieval and manipulation. vfis (cullen, 2008) prefers a word list, without providing meaning or guidance for learning it, and in spite of the risk of serial learning induced by the list format (nation and webb 2011). firw (lindeck et al., 2011) might have been ideally positioned to advise students to use flashcards, as its vocabulary section consists in suggestions for learning vocabulary. it does not mention flashcards, however, and instead discusses guessing from context and dictionary use to discover meaning, which are reading skills rather than ways to learn vocabulary. iv.4. question 4: is morphology addressed? awareness of morphology can help increase vocabulary size and the recognition of lexis (gardner, 2013, p.131). awareness of derivation is particularly relevant for reading, as research has shown that derived forms may not be understood, despite knowledge of stem forms (schmitt & zimmerman, 2002). morphology is dealt with in a variety of ways in the three books, although overall a lack of underlying systematicity is apparent. vfis (cullen, 2008) draws attention to aspects of morphology in page margin notes randomly placed through the units. for example, “prefixes can help you work out the meaning of unknown words” (cullen, 2008, p.113). students are invited to find derivations for words learnt and to record them in a table, and word-family table completion exercises appear at different points in the book. the word list includes derived forms for at least 112 stem words, but attention is not specifically drawn to this relationship, and it is not clear why these particular words and forms have been selected and not others. vfi (williams, 2012) provides inflections for the nouns and verbs covered in every unit, and also dedicates some attention to affixation via exercises and exam tip boxes in page margins. however, the importance of these concepts for vocabulary development marta serrano van der laan language value 13(1), 78–102 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 92 is not explicitly addressed. by contrast, firw (lindeck et al., 2011) mentions the importance of affixation for guessing the meaning of unknown words. unfortunately, prefixes are defined as “usually show[ing] the opposite or a contrast” (lindeck et al., 2011, p.51), while suffixes are defined as “chang[ing] the word form” (lindeck et al., 2011, p.51). these are, to say the least, incomplete and infelicitous explanations. overall, morphology is addressed to some extent in all three books, but without the systematic, explicit attention it requires. iv.5. question 5: does the book address phonology? phonology is usually assumed to regard speaking and listening. this may explain why it is not addressed in firw (lindeck et al., 2011), which focuses on reading and writing. however, some research suggests that phonology is highly relevant for reading, particularly for speakers of languages with alphabetic orthography. walter (2008) argues that words read are stored first in the phonological loop rather than in the visuospatial sketchpad. milton (2009) claims that it is strongly possible that the phonic representation of words is far more significant than their written form for the mental lexicon of most learners. furthermore, it seems that it is the specific prosodic features of formulaic sequences which identifies them as linguistic units, to the point that lin (2019, p.90) suggests that they would be better treated as “strings of sounds rather than strings of words”. of the three books, vfis dedicates most attention to pronunciation, including one pronunciation exercise in each of twelve units, which focuses on individual sounds, minimal pairs and stress patterns. the exercises always have an audio component. learning the pronunciation of a word is listed as one of the steps in the general wordlearning plan outlined in unit 22, and the word list at the back of the book provides the phonemic transcription for each individual word, but not for the mwus. this is unfortunate, as lin (2012) suggests that learning mwus as sound units facilitates the learning and retention of the phrases and can contribute towards greater reading fluency. vfi (williams, 2012) only touches on pronunciation in unit 4 (stress patterns), unit 8 (/s/ vs /z/), unit 12 (“problem consonants”, p.53) and unit 16 (/ǝ/). a brief exercise is included that uses the book cd. phonemic transcriptions or audio tracks of the target learning vocabulary for ielts academic reading: an evaluation of some pedagogical materials language value 13(1), 78–102 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 93 words are not provided. thus, phonology is addressed summarily in vfis (cullen, 2008), minimally in vfi (williams, 2012) and not at all in firw (lindeck et al., 2011). iv.6. question 6: is synonymy and antonymy addressed? bax (2013) stressed the value of attending to synonymy when preparing for ielts, and practice material i endorsed by ielts reveals that recognition of synonymy is highly relevant in order to answer questions in the ar test. vfi (williams, 2012) explicitly draws attention to synonymy in units 2 and 14. however, work is limited to one or two exercises, with no suggestions for how to build up a lexicon of synonyms or what words to concentrate on. vfis (cullen, 2008) regularly includes exercises that require identifying synonyms in a text or finding synonyms for words extracted from a text, but never mentions the specific importance of synonymy for the ar test. by contrast, firw (lindeck et al., 2011) dedicates a whole section to synonymy and antonymy, where it defines the concept and explains the importance of being able to identify synonyms and antonyms in text and questions in the ar test, and provides examples of both types of word relation. prefixes are underlined as frequent identifiers of antonymy, but suffixes (e.g. useful-useless) are not mentioned. techniques are not suggested for developing a lexicon of synomyms and antonyms, as could be keeping tables of word families, or making mindmaps, and this seems an opportunity missed in this guide to building up vocabulary for the ar test. iv.7. question 7: are clear explanations provided regarding how to use the book? nation (2011) posits that the focus of a vocabulary learning programme should be more on learning than on teaching vocabulary. this suggests that self-study plays a major role in this learning process, also considering that classroom time is too limited to ensure large amounts of vocabulary learning (webb & nation, 2017). in their list of features of good self-study materials, reinders and lewis (2006) include the need for clear explanations on how to use them. it therefore seems appropriate to critically assess whether, how and how much learners are guided in using the books investigated here. marta serrano van der laan language value 13(1), 78–102 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 94 both vfis (cullen, 2008) and vfi (williams, 2012) provide detailed suggestions for how to work through the units, using the ancillary materials (word list, tests and reference section in vfis; collocations list and revision units in vfi) and keeping a vocabulary notebook. firw (lindeck et al., 2011), by contrast, limits instructions for using the book to one paragraph where learners are advised to do all the exercises provided. they are also told that they can “easily select the particular sections to study based on [their] specific needs” (lindeck et al., 2011, p.v). a useful improvement would be to supply tools to help learners identify these needs. however, this would only be helpful if clear vocabulary learning targets were identified previously, and this does not occur, as has been discussed with regard to question 2 above. iv.8. question 8: does the book provide feedback? feedback is a key factor in learning, as it facilitates self-evaluation and fosters motivation (dörnyei, 2001). in all three materials analyzed here, feedback can be obtained from the answer keys provided at the end of each book. firw (lindeck et al., 2011) offers no further occasions for feedback, while in vfis (cullen, 2008) and vfi (williams, 2012) many of the learning tips found in the units can be viewed as indirect feedback, as they can stimulate reflection. the five tests in vfis (cullen, 2008) and the two revision units in vfi (williams, 2012) are further sources of feedback. some check questions at the end of each unit, or a plan of expanded rehearsal (schmitt, 2010) could be useful additions to develop the feedback features in these books. iv.9. question 9: is repetition facilitated and encouraged? repeatedly meeting a new word strengthens knowledge of and about it (nation, 2013; webb & nation, 2017). although there is no agreement in the literature as to how many revisitations of a lexical item are necessary in order to learn it (see schmitt (2007) for some possible numbers of repetitions), systematic revision sessions are necessary, as research shows that forgetting begins shortly after the end of a learning session (schmitt, 2007). learning vocabulary for ielts academic reading: an evaluation of some pedagogical materials language value 13(1), 78–102 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 95 basic repetition tools are provided in vfis (cullen, 2008) in the shape of regularly spaced vocabulary tests –one test every five units, for a total of five tests– while vfi (williams, 2012) provides two tests, after the first and last ten units. aside from this, there are few further opportunities for revisiting vocabulary, as only a handful of target words ever appear more than once in these books. by contrast, revisiting vocabulary is recommended in the two-page how to use the book sections of both volumes, although no guidance is provided as to how or how often to do it. repetition is neither mentioned nor facilitated in firw (lindeck et al., 2011). it would therefore appear that the books investigated here do not offer sufficiently structured recycling programmes. iv.10. question 10: are vocabulary learning strategies suggested? memorization and retrieval techniques play a key role in retention of vocabulary (ellis, 2001). moreover, research indicates that successful learners seem to use a variety of vocabulary learning strategies, and therefore explicit instruction of these techniques could be beneficial (chacón-beltrán, 2018). in unit 22, vfis (cullen, 2008) proposes the following sequence of learning steps, illustrated with example words and exercises: find out the meaning and the different forms of a word, learn its pronunciation and how to spell it; use the word, remember the context, apply spelling rules (cullen, 2008, pp.114-116). the book can therefore be said to provide a framework for learning the basic aspects of a word, i.e. form, meaning, and use. curiously, the examples and exercises that illustrate each step do not use vocabulary taught in the book. this wordlearning plan could usefully be moved to the beginning of the book, focusing it on the book‟s word list, thus furnishing learners with a practical strategy for setting out to learn the target vocabulary. the plan should include concrete learning techniques for memorizing, retaining and retrieving the new vocabulary. firw usefully suggests trying different strategies to decide which are more effective (lindeck et al., 2011, p.43). further useful suggestions are using target words in a written sentence, checking their pronunciation and then saying them out loud repeatedly, and learning to distinguish between frequent and less frequent words. learners are also advised to guess meaning from context and check the accuracy of the guess at a later stage, which is again more of a reading strategy than a technique for marta serrano van der laan language value 13(1), 78–102 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 96 “building up your vocabulary”, as the section heading would have it (lindeck et al., 2011, p. 43). other essential word-learning methods are not mentioned, such as memorization and retrieval techniques. no activities for trying out the proposed techniques are included, and no tools are suggested that can help learners record, memorize and retrieve new vocabulary. vfi (williams, 2012) makes brief but frequent suggestions for vocabulary learning throughout the book in the „exam tip‟ boxes, such as studying example sentences or learning the different parts of speech of a new word. curiously, here too the strategies are not applied to the vocabulary syllabus in the book, but seem to be aimed at a broader and undefined vocabulary learning program. the suggestions in the tip boxes might more usefully be related to the target vocabulary in the units, facilitating its learning, recycling and retrieval. as can be seen, the learning strategies proposed in all three books are suitable for longterm study programs. this seems an impractical approach for ielts materials, since studying for ielts typically takes place within a short time span. student life is articulated by a variety of short-term deadlines, such as those imposed by university application and admission procedures, which usually include presenting ielts scores by a given date. the provision of a framework for short-term vocabulary learning would be desirable in materials that claim to prepare for ielts. such a framework could consist in the deliberate learning of form-meaning pairs from word cards and word lists. the literature shows that this is a highly effective way of quickly acquiring significant amounts of vocabulary, particularly if the word lists are bilingual (elgort, 2011; laufer & shmueli, 1997, schmitt, 2008, webb & nation, 2017). v. conclusions this study set out to investigate whether three vocabulary learning books for ielts issued by authoritative publishers could be considered effectively useful towards passing the ar test successfully. the outcome of the evaluation performed suggests the contrary. none of the books make a clear case as to what vocabulary is necessary for ielts ar, nor how much of it can be learnt by using the materials. at the same time, the vocabulary addressed seems to be the result of an insufficiently informed and learning vocabulary for ielts academic reading: an evaluation of some pedagogical materials language value 13(1), 78–102 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 97 incomplete selection, as no mention is made of relevant frequency levels, target vocabulary size or text coverage afforded. schmitt (2019) identified the need for current vocabulary materials to be more systematic and principle-based. he also pointed at the key role of materials writers as the most appropriate players to develop pedagogically sound vocabulary learning programmes, as teachers tend to be time-strapped and unable to keep up with state-of -the art research. the results of this study confirm schmitt‟s research agenda and lay bare the urgent need for appropriate vocabulary materials for ielts study. this paper identifies relevant issues regarding vocabulary learning materials for ielts, in particular the need for materials to use a principled approach, grounded in research. they also need to outline clear learning objectives based on the effective requirements of the exam. a limitation of this study is the lack of a more precise knowledge of the features of the vocabulary typical of ar texts. as an independent study not funded or endorsed by ielts, access to authentic ielts exam materials was impossible. future research could usefully investigate a statistically significant sample of ar passages, making it possible to provide ielts candidates with evidence-based vocabulary learning goals. notes i cambridge university press publishes past ielts papers on a more or less annual basis in their ielts practice tests volumes. a practice test is also available on https://www.ielts.org/ references acosta moncada, m., castro donoso, j., demarchi gigogne, d., jerez escobar, m., maltés guajardo, j., miranda cuevas, p., moraga quiroz, c.p., & rojas tello, m. 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(2013). survey revue: adult coursebooks. elt journal, 67(2), 233–249. walter, c. (2008). phonology in second language reading: not an optional extra. tesol quarterly, 42(3), 455–474. webb, s., & nation, p. (2017). how vocabulary is learned. oxford: oxford university press. weir, c., hawkey, r., green, a., unaldi, a., & devi, s. (2009). the relationship between the academic reading construct as measured by ielts and the reading marta serrano van der laan language value 13(1), 78–102 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 102 experiences of students in their first year of study at a british university. in p. thompson and l. taylor (eds.), ielts research reports 9, report 3 (pp.97156). manchester: british council. received: 10 june 2020 accepted: 11 december 2020 cite this article as: serrano van der laan, m. (2020). learning vocabulary for ielts academic reading: an evaluation of some pedagogical materials. language value, 13(1), 78-102. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.languagevalue.uji.es. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2020.13.4 issn 1989-7103 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ microsoft word m_warren_1_1.doc language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue september 2009, volume 1, number 1 pp. 1-16 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors the phraseology of intertextuality in english for professional communication martin warren research centre for professional communication in english english department, the hong kong polytechnic university abstract there is increasing interest in researching phraseology and intertextuality, but they are not usually studied together. this paper explores the implications of combining the two in the learning and teaching of english for professional communication. using data compiled at the hong kong-based research centre for professional communication in english, in combination with the recently developed corpus linguistics methodology of ‘congramming’ (cheng et al. 2006, cheng et al. 2009), this study investigates how intertextuality can be signalled in a corpus of discourse flows. a discourse flow is a series of interconnected discourses and the flows in this study were collected from a professional over a period of one week. concgramming is the process of fully automatically identifying concgrams in a text or corpus. concgrams are co-occurrences of words (e.g. hard and work) irrespective of any constituent variation (work hard, work very hard, work so very hard, etc.) and positional variation (i.e. work hard, hard work, etc.) that might be present. using concgrams extracted from the discourse flow corpus, examples of frequent phraseologies associated with the signalling of intertextuality are identified and their role in the realisation of intertextuality discussed. keywords: concgram, constituent variation, discourse flow, intertextuality, phraseology, positional variation introduction descriptions of the nature of professional discourse are hard to come by because it is difficult for the researcher to access professional discourses due to the thorny issues of confidentiality and/or the reluctance of professionals and their organisations to permit researchers to collect and analyse their discourses. these difficulties are well documented by others interested in investigating business and professional discourses (see, for example, candlin 2002, louhiala-salminen 2002, mccarthy and handford 2004, sarangi 2002,). this study examines the discourses a professional engages with over a working week. it is particularly interested in how a specific discourse flow relies on intertextuality to situate each discourse relative to other discourses in the flow and whether there is a phraseology associated with signalling this form of intertextuality. martin warren language value 1, (1), 1–16 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 2 a discourse (or text) does not exist in isolation. each one is usually based partly on prior discourses, partly on the current communicative goals of the speaker or writer, and partly in anticipating or predicting future discourses. this study is interested in the interconnectedness of discourse events and how they are explicitly managed in discourse flows. the very existence of discourse flows is evidence of the “intertextuality” (e.g. de beaugrande 1980) of discourses, which is the process by which parts of a specific discourse(s) become part of other discourses. by means of intertextuality, the information in a specific discourse is “condensed, reformulated and reshaped to fit the purposes of the author” (ventola 1999: 109). this is not the first study to look at discourse flows. for example, a study by gimenez (2006) looks at what he terms “embedded” business e-mails which is the term he uses to describe a discourse flow. others have studied such flows and termed them “mosiac messages” (markus 1994) and “e-mail dialogues” (eklundh and macdonald 1994). however, other studies on interconnectedness and intertextuality have not examined how these phenomena are signalled, which is the focus of this study. when the data for the project were collected it was recognised that the researchers’ needs, expectations and interpretations with regard to the data collected may sometimes differ from those of the professionals who provided the data. sarangi (2002: 99) emphasises the importance of understanding “professional practice and knowledge representations from the insiders’ perspective”. in order to follow sarangi’s advice on how to better analyse and interpret the discourses collected, additional information was collected including information that would assist in determining whether or not the discourses collected were interconnected. the data examined in this paper were collected over a five-day period from an information technology (it) manager based at a multinational bank in hong kong. the data collected consist mainly of e-mail correspondence written in english between the it manager and his colleagues, both internal and external to the multinational bank. the data were analysed and collated into discourse flows consisting of interconnected e-mails which were sometimes also interconnected with other types of discourse such as meetings, telephone calls, informal discussions and reports. at the end of the data collection period, there was a review of the data collected to determine whether or not it was necessary to go back to the subject for more information in order to better understand and analyse the data. after the data the phraseology of intertextuality in english for professional communication language value 1, (1), 1-16 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 3 were analysed, the researcher again met with the subject to discuss the findings and conclusions. the input of the it professional was particularly important in helping the researchers to correctly identify discourses belonging to the same discourse flow. a simple illustration of a discourse flow is shown in figure 1 below. figure 1. discourse flow. in figure 1, the current discourse is depicted in the centre of a discourse flow. this discourse makes reference to prior discourses (for example, a telephone discussion, project report, meeting or prior e-mail) and it may also refer to discourses which are prospected or predicted to occur by the speaker/writer of the current discourse. just as the current discourse at the centre of this discourse flow is in part comprised of prior and predicted discourses, so each of the prior and each of the predicted discourses are also comprised of prior and predicted texts. in this way, all discourses are intertextual in that they are comprised partly of previous discourses and also typically prospect or predict future discourses. importantly, the ability of a speaker or writer to master intertextuality, and to appropriately signal it, helps to facilitate communication in professional contexts and hence is an important component of professional communicative competence. in the data collected, thirty-two separate discourse flows were identified across a fiveday period. in this particular professional context, e-mail communication is the main means of communication and so contributes significantly to intertextuality. the discourse flows total approximately 30,000 words of data and they were also compiled as a small corpus to assist in examining the language used to signal intertextuality. intertextuality candlin and maley (1997: 203) describe one important way in which “discourses are internally viable” which is that they manifest “a plurality of sources” and are “thus prior discourses ↔ current discourse ↔ predicted discourses martin warren language value 1, (1), 1–16 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 4 intertextual” in nature. in other words, a discourse is less coherent, or may even be incoherent, if it is not appropriately situated within its discourse flow relative to both prior and predicted discourses. situating a discourse within its discourse flow requires the partial incorporation, or references to, prior discourses and, typically, the prospection or prediction of future discourses. there are a number of forms intertextuality can take, according to bhatia (2004: 126127). for example, “texts providing a context” (ibid: 126) such as the response to a prior request or “texts within and around the text” (ibid: 127) as in the sequencing of sections or chapters in a text. also, “texts explicitly referred to in the text” (ibid: 127) such as the explicit use of citations and “texts implicitly referred to in the text” such as the adaptation of a well-known quotes in a text which then relies on the shared knowledge between the participants to be correctly understood. the last of the forms described by bhatia are “texts embedded within the text” and “texts mixed with the text” (ibid: 127). an example of the former is when a different genre is used within a text, for example a section of a legal document in a business e-mail, and an example of the latter is the use of direct quotes in the text. all of the forms of intertextuality described by bhatia need to be handled appropriately by speakers and writers, and they all require that the speaker or writer signals to the hearer or reader that intertextuality is taking place. failure to signal intertextuality may result in the discourse being less intelligible to the hearer or reader. examples of intertextuality manifested in e-mails collected in this study are given below (example 1). in the e-mails, intertextuality related to prior texts is underlined while intertextuality related to predicted texts is shown in italics. the e-mails have been anonymised and all participant names are denoted with a capital letter followed for four xs (for example, axxxx) and all confidential information and company names are denoted with three xs. the phraseology of intertextuality in english for professional communication language value 1, (1), 1-16 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 5 example 1. a sequence of e-mails illustrating intertextuality (prior texts underlined, predicted texts in italics) e-mail 1 from: dxxxx sent: friday, june 13, 2008 1:35 pm to: axxxx; kxxxx cc: txxxx; nxxxx; rxxxx; sxxxx subject: re: changes required for indirect facilities & cases with guarantors rating >= 5 6. without approval to use it re: test cases importance: high 1. hi axxxx & kxxxx 2. previously, axxxx told us that we should use event supertype = ‘0’ instead of 3. ‘2’ to obtain the approved limit for indirect facility. we amended the idecision 4. calculator and managed to test the case with approved indirect facility 5. successfully. however, when we try to re-test the similar case again recently, it 6. failed and we realized that the event supertype = ‘0’ is not found for the approved 7. indirect facility (but only found ‘2’ & ‘1’). 8. please advise asap which event supertype (xxx) we should use? axxxx 9. said we should only look at column “xxx xx dom object”. i will log this as a 10. xxx problem. 11. also, the facility country of risk attribute (xxx) was in previous xxx xml, 12. but is now missing. has xxx version changed recently which affected these? 13. thanks. 14. dxxxx e-mail 2 from: axxxx sent: friday, 13 june 2008 2:04 pm to: lxxxx; bxxxx cc: vxxxx; pxxxx; jxxxx subject: fw: changes required for indirect facilities & cases with guarantors rating >= 5 without approval to use it re: test cases importance: high 1. lxxxx/bxxxx, 2. this is another error of the frr interface that field value is not matched with 3. interface specification. 4. please fix or clarify this asap. 5. pxxxx, 6. please log an xxx on xxx. martin warren language value 1, (1), 1–16 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 6 7. regards 8. axxxx e-mail 3 from:bxxxx sent: friday, june 13, 2008 2:55 pm to:axxxx cc: vxxxx; pxxxx; jxxxx; kxxxx subject: re: changes required for indirect facilities & cases with guarantors rating >= 5 6. without approval to use it re: test cases 1. hi axxxx, 2. could l understand at which stage of the credit application lifecycle this seems to 3. be an issue? 4. at the point of approval the lifecycle event is xxx = 2. however, remember 5. that the rms would like to see the previously approved (xxx = 0), the 6. proposed line (xxx = l) and the approved line (xxx = 2). 7. you might want to note that the approved timeline here under xxx = 2 can be 8. amended by ccu input units if the workflow path of “approved on paper” 9. is taken. hence the snapshot for the frr calc at the approved timeline here too 10. may also change if ccu input has to make changes to the limits as per the hard 11. copy approved xxx. 12. however, once everything has been confirmed approved, the final xxx document 13. printed and the credit facility detaches from the credit application, the facility only 14. has “existing” events (ie. xxx = 0). that will also be synonymous with your 15. approved line for the facility. 16. i need to find out from development if anything has changed in the xxx object 17. preventing the facility country of risk attribute (xxx) that was in previous 18. xxx xml, but is now missing. lxxxx, can you help raise an xxx assist for 19. this? 20. hope this clarifies. 21. thanks. 22. bxxxx. e-mail 4 from: axxxx sent: friday, june 13, 2008 3:06 pm to: dxxxx cc: vxxxx; pxxxx; hxxxx; sxxxx; fxxxx; gxxxx the phraseology of intertextuality in english for professional communication language value 1, (1), 1-16 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 7 subject: fw: changes required for indirect facilities & cases with guarantors rating > 6. 5 without approval to use it re: test cases 1. dxxxx, 2. i think the question from xxx is that in which stage we would like to have the 3. frr calculated. 4. you can call me to discuss and if necessary, we can get gxxxx and hxxxx 5. involved. 6. regards 7. axxxx one notable aspect of intertextuality such as that depicted in the above sequence of consecutive e-mails, which are taken from a larger discourse flow, is that the writer usually begins the discourse by invoking a prior discourse and closes by predicting a future discourse. this structure can be seen in e-mails 1, 2 and 4 in which the writers begin and end in this manner. the exception is e-mail 3 which begins with a question, and questions, of course, typically predict a future discourse, but, even in e-mail 3, the opening question, while predicting a future discourse, contains a reference to a prior discourse. writers, therefore, have a strong tendency to begin a new discourse by situating it relative to prior discourses. there is also a strong tendency to end a discourse with the prospection or prediction of a future discourse and this can be seen in all of the above e-mails which end with questions (e-mails 1 and 3), requests for action (e-mail 2) and offers of assistance (e-mail 4). the stereotypical opening and closing formulaics are ‘thank you for your e-mail’ and ‘thank you in advance for your help’ and neither of these are found here which is to be expected in a fast-moving discourse flow between colleagues where these four e-mails are written and read within a short timeframe of approximately ninety minutes. most importantly, all of the above e-mails clearly show that intertextuality is by no means confined to the opening and closing stages of e-mails. they demonstrate that intertextuality is to be found throughout and references to prior and predicted discourses account for most of the contents of these discourses. intertextuality, therefore, is not a minor factor when describing the composition of a discourse, in these business e-mails it plays a major role. on balance, there are more references to prior discourses across the four e-mails, but a number are also predicted. prior discourses are sometimes martin warren language value 1, (1), 1–16 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 8 paraphrased (see, for example, e-mail 3, lines 9-11) and sometimes they are quoted directly (see, for example, e-mail 1, line 2). however it is achieved, intertextuality needs to be signalled and below some of more frequent phraseologies used when doing this are examined. signalling intertextuality it has been shown that intertextuality is prevalent in the e-mails examined in this study. incorporating intertextuality into a discourse requires the speaker or writer to signal that it is taking place in order for the discourse to be intelligible to the hearer or reader. an earlier preliminary study (warren, 2008) identified words and invariant clusters which are associated with the signalling of intertextuality. for example, please, as, and based on occur frequently in the data and were found to be associated with prior discourses, as discussed, based on your advice, or with predicted discourses, please check. this study, however, is interested in uncovering phraseologies associated with this function which may exhibit variation. in order to find instances of phraseological variation, the discourse flow corpus was “concgrammed” (cheng et al. 2006, cheng et al. 2009, greaves and warren 2007, warren, 2009) using concgram 1.0 (greaves 2009). this software is specifically designed to fully automatically find word co-occurrences irrespective of variation and therefore reveals the full range of phraseologies in a text or corpus as opposed to software which is focused on finding n-grams (sometimes termed ‘clusters’ or ‘bundles’) which is unable to automatically find instances of phraseological variation. as a result, less predictable phraseologies were uncovered. the use of n-grams, such as based on, which contain predictable lexical words to signal intertextuality is perhaps not so surprising. however, concgram found other less predictable phrases associated with intertextuality which are less predictable and contain a core set of so-called ‘grammatical’ words. the importance of the co-selection of grammatical words framing more lexically-rich words, termed ‘collocational frameworks” (renouf and sinclair 1991), has received very little attention. this lack of attention has not been helped by the use of stop lists (i.e. lists of words, typically frequent grammatical words, deliberately excluded from corpus searches) which pushes them further off many the phraseology of intertextuality in english for professional communication language value 1, (1), 1-16 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 9 researchers’ radar. the phraseological tendency in language, or what sinclair (1987) terms “the idiom principle”, whereby words are co-selected by speakers and writers to create meaning, has yet to be fully described and all the forms and variation that these co-selections take need to be better understood. figures 2-6 below provide instances of some of the more frequent phraseologies found to signal intertextuality. for each phraseology, the total number of occurrences associated with intertextuality is given as a percentage of the total number of occurrences in the discourse flow corpus to underline the extent to which these phraseologies are associated with intertextuality. phraseologies are defined broadly in this study as all recurrent co-selections of two or more words in the corpus and here the interest is in those phraseologies which serve explicitly to introduce, or otherwise signal the boundaries of, intertextuality in the e-mails. it should also be pointed out that the convention for representing concgrams which exhibit variation is to write the words comprising the concgram alphabetically separated by a forward slash. predict prior 9 and trying to recreate. in some instances we can find the problem in others we can t and we don’t 10 which is name of ooa risk entity, and we can’t find the record in xxx. but we can find the figure 2. instances of “can/the/we”, 15/17 (88%). in figure 2, 88% of the instances of the phraseology we can + the are used to introduce intertextuality in the form of both predicted and prior discourses. this phraseology frames a main verb which indicates the form of action to be taken in the case of predicted discourses (for example, ‘make’, ‘test’, ‘discuss’) or the action that has been taken in the case of prior discourses (‘find’), and is then typically followed by a reference to the contents of the future discourse (for example, ‘xxx reports’, ‘patch’ and ‘changes’) or the prior discourse (‘problem’ and ‘record’). the variation in this particular phraseology is confined to constituency variation. martin warren language value 1, (1), 1–16 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 10 instances of similar phraseologies are illustrated in figures 3 and 4. figure 3. instances of “need/to/we”, 37/41 (90%). the phraseology we + need + to occurs more frequently in the corpus than we can + the (41 versus 17) and almost all of the instances (90%) are associated with the onset of intertextuality and all of these are predicting a future discourse in the ongoing discourse flow. again, variation is confined to constituency variation with the use of modal verbs between we and need in lines 1-5. this phraseology forms part of a larger verb group which includes a lexical verb that usually indicates the action to be taken in the predicted discourse (for example, ‘identify’, ‘check’, ‘change’ and ‘discuss’). in figure 4, there are three phraseologies which are, again, associated with predicting discourses in the discourse flow. figure 4. instances of “can/you”, 26/28 (92%) and “could or would/you”, 29/29 (100%). the phraseologies in figure 4 are very strongly associated with the prediction of future discourses and, in the case of could or would/you, all of the instances in the discourse the phraseology of intertextuality in english for professional communication language value 1, (1), 1-16 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 11 flow corpus are associated with the onset of this form of intertextuality. also, while these phraseologies do not exhibit constituency variation, they can have positional variation. irrespective of the variation that is exhibited, they are all associated with requests for action and the nature of the action to be taken is provided by a wide variety of lexical verbs (for example, ‘clarify’, advise’, ‘check’, ‘suggest’, ‘confirm’, ‘continue’, ‘elaborate’, ‘generate’, ‘call’ and ‘join’). figure 5 shows examples one of the more unlikely phraseologies, to/you, found to be associated with the onset of intertextuality in the data studied. figure 5. instances of “to/you”, 41/43 (95%). this phraseology occurs frequently (43 instances) and also has a strong association with intertextuality (95%). it has both constituency and positional variation and can signal both prior and predicted discourses. when it is used in its contiguous form, to you, it is in the context of the writer referring to a prior discourse which is accessible to the reader (lines 6-8) or, in the case of predicted texts, a discourse that will be accessible to the reader in the future (line 1). in the other instances, you again refers to the reader and the to-infinitive states the action taken (‘notify’) in a prior discourse or requested to be taken (for example, ‘provide’ and ‘liaise’) in a predicted discourse. figure 6 is another unlikely phraseology composed of grammatical words which has considerable variation, both constituency and positional, and is strongly associated (90%) with the initiation of intertextuality in the e-mails. martin warren language value 1, (1), 1–16 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 12 figure 6. instances of “is/the/to”, 19/21 (90%). despite the extent of the phraseological variation, the patterns of usage are evident whether they are associated with predicted or prior discourses. in all of the above instances, the is used in combination with either the identification of the predicted discourse (for example, ‘following’ and ‘xxx patch’) or prior discourse (‘risk entity’, ‘update’, ‘procedure’ and ‘changes’) or the individual(s) responsible for the discourse (line 7). while is and to are typically used in combination with the action required (for example, ‘is to be done’ and ‘is ready to deploy’) or the action taken (for example, ‘this is to confirm the changes’ and ‘here is the procedure to fix the problem’). conclusions this paper has shown, through the examination of e-mails collected in a professional context, that each e-mail is part of a discourse flow. this in turn means that an important component of each of these e-mails is its intertextuality which results from the speaker or writer situating each e-mail within the discourse flow. it is argued that the inability to situate a discourse within its discourse flow may result in the discourse being less intelligible to the hearer or reader. intertextuality is a major component of the e-mails examined in this study and is the product of referencing both prior and future discourses. given the levels of complexity in both producing and interpreting the widespread intertextuality to be found in almost any discourse, an important aspect of professional communication is that the speaker or writer needs to be able to effectively signal the boundaries of intertextuality. this study has found that there are identifiable phraseologies, which are used almost exclusively for this function. the phraseology of intertextuality in english for professional communication language value 1, (1), 1-16 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 13 while there are a number of options available to speakers and writers to signal intertextuality, there are discernible patterns of phraseology associated with the signalling of both prior and predicted discourses and these patterns, in turn, contribute to the coherence achieved by intertextuality. the study of the phraseology of interconnected discourses rather than individual words has been shown to be a good way of uncovering how intertextuality is managed by writers and speakers. what has been most significant with regard to the phraseologies associated with signaling intertextuality identified in this study is that they are predominantly comprised of grammatical words which frame or foreground a wider variety of lexically-rich words. given the potential variety of lexically-rich words that can be framed or foregrounded by these phraseologies of grammatical words, it has been shown that it is often the co-selection of grammatical words which is the more easily identified source of signalling intertextuality, and the borders of intertextuality, in a discourse based on their frequency in the discourse flow corpus. this finding further underlines the importance of not excluding grammatical words when searching a corpus. more research is needed, but from these initial findings it is increasingly better understood that professionals often need to signal intertextuality in their professional discourses and that there is an identifiable set of phraseologies associated with this important discourse function which could have implications for the learning and teaching of english for specific purposes. it is important to have the ability to refer to, and accurately reference, prior and predicted discourses, as well as the ability to summarise prior discourses and succinctly revise specific aspects of them. coupled with these skills is the need for a heightened awareness on the part of speakers and writers with regard to the importance of intertextuality and appropriately signalling its presence in the ongoing discourse flow. acknowledgements thanks are due to the it professional who generously provided the data used in this study. the work described in this paper was substantially supported by a grant from the research grants council of the hong kong special administrative region (project no. polyu 5480/06h, b-qo2j). martin warren language value 1, (1), 1–16 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 14 references bhatia, v. 2004. worlds of written discourse. london: continuum. candlin, c. (ed.) 2002. research and practice in professional discourse. hong kong: city university of hong kong. candlin, c. and maley, y. 1997. intertextuality and interdiscursivity in the discourse of alternative dispute resolution. in gunnarsson, b-l, linell, p. and nordberg, b. et al (eds.) the construction of professional discourse. london: longman, 201–222. cheng, w., greaves, c. and warren, m. 2006. from n-gram to skipgram to concgrarn. international journal of corpus linguistics 11 (4), 411-433. cheng, w., greaves, c., sinclair, j. mch. and warren, m. 2009. uncovering the extent of the phraseological tendency: towards a systematic analysis of concgrams, applied linguistics, 30 (2), 236-252. de beaugrande, r. 1980. text, discourse and process. london: longman. eklundh, s. and macdonald, c. 1994. the use of quoting to preserve context in electronic mail dialogues. ieee transactions on professional communication 37 (4), 97-202. gimenez, j. 2006. embedded business e-mails: meeting new demands in international communication. english for specific purposes 25, 154-172. greaves, c. 2009. concgram 1.0: a phraseological search engine. amsterdam: john benjamins. greaves, c. and warren, m. 2007. concgramming: a computer-driven approach to learning the phraseology of english. recall journal 17 (3), 287-306. louhiala-salminen, l. 2002. the fly’s perspective: discourse in the daily routine of a business manager. english for specific purposes, 21, 211-231. markus, m. 1994. electronic mail as the medium of managerial choice. organization science 5 (4), 502-527. mccarthy, m. and handford, m. 2004. “invisible to us”: a preliminary corpus-based study of spoken business english. in connor, u. & t. upton (eds.), discourse in the phraseology of intertextuality in english for professional communication language value 1, (1), 1-16 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 15 the professions: perspectives from corpus linguistics. amsterdam/philadelphia: john benjamins, 167-202. renouf, a.j. and sinclair, j.mch. 1991. collocational frameworks in english. in aijmer, k. and b. altenberg (eds.) english corpus linguistics: studies in honour of jan svartvik. london: longman, 128-43. sarangi, s. 2002. discourse practitioners as a community of interprofessional practice: some insights from health communication research. in candlin, c. (ed.), research and practice in professional discourse. hong kong: city university of hong kong, 95-113. sarangi, s., and coulthard, m. (eds.) 2000. discourse and social life. london: longman. sinclair, j.mch. 1987. collocation: a progress report. in steele, r. and t. threadgold (eds.) language topics: essays in honour of michael halliday. amsterdam: john benjamins, 319-331. ventola, e. 1999. semiotic spanning at conferences: cohesion and coherence in and across conference papers and their discussions. in bublitz, w., u. lenk and e. ventola (eds.) coherence in spoken and written discourse. amsterdam: john benjamins, 101-124. warren, m. 2008. the role of intertextuality in discourse coherence. international conference: discourse coherence text and theory. centre de linguistique theoretique et appliquee (celta), paris-sorbonne university, paris, france, september 18-20, 2008. warren, m. 2009. why concgram? in greaves, c. (ed.) concgram 1.0: a phraseological search engine. amsterdam: john benjamins, 1-11. received september 2009 martin warren language value 1, (1), 1–16 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 16 cite this article as: warren, m. 2009. “the phraseology of intertextuality in english for professional communication”. language value, 1 (1), 1-16. servei de publicacions de la universitat jaume i: castelló, spain. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue july 2017, volume 9, number 1 pp. 36-61 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2017.9.3 36 learners’ identities at stake: digital identity texts in the efl classroom maría dolores garcía-pastor maria.d.garcia@uv.es giel – universitat de valència, spain abstract this paper focuses on the study of identity in digital identity texts produced by english as a foreign language (efl) learners within a specific subject of the teacher in primary education (english) degree at a spanish university. to this end, 51 digital identity texts were analysed following a “positioning perspective”, which views identity in terms of “reflexive” and “interactive” positions (davies & harré 1990). results show that learners constructed non-unitary identities whose subject positions were often contradictory. they also associated certain positions with silencing identities, transition identities and identities of competence within the reflexive and interactive categories (cf. norton & toohey 2011, manyak 2004), while ascribing others to their viewers interactively. in general, students discursively presented themselves as competent actors through diverse semiotic and linguistic resources they deployed in an affective narrative style characteristic of some forms of digital communication (jones & hafner 2012, page 2012). keywords: efl teaching and learning, identity, position, identity texts, digital discourses i. introduction in spite of its centrality to language education (de costa & norton 2016), the notion of identity and its relation to academic success has been largely ignored in mainstream pedagogical practices and curricular policies (cummins et al. 2005a, 2005b, cummins & early 2011, cummins et al. 2015). the use of digital identity texts (dits) with english language learners (ell) has proved highly efficient in this regard, since such texts address identity affirmation, on the one hand, and literacy engagement, on the other, which has resulted in the development of students’ multimodal and multilingual cognitive and academic language proficiency skills (calps) (see, e.g. bernhard et al. 2006, cummins 2006, cummins et al. 2005a, 2005b, cummins et al. 2015, giampapa 2010, etc.). identity texts are individually or collectively created texts that adopt multiple forms (e.g. a poem, a digital story, etc.) and may be established in more than one language. although such texts have commonly been employed with ell from marginalised social groups (e.g. immigrants), they may also benefit other learner populations like ../../../usuario/appdata/local/microsoft/windows/inetcache/desktop/maria.d.garcia@uv.es learner's identity at stake: digital identity texts in the efl classroom language value 9 (1), 36–61 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 37 mainstream college efl students (garcía-pastor, in press). therefore, we have used dits in the fl classroom to offer university students the possibility of presenting and building their identities in such a way that allows them to a) link them to “identities of competence” (manyak 2004) which may further fuel their literacy engagement; or b) reject negative identities that prevent them from expressing themselves freely in the target language. in the dits under study, students were encouraged to reflect on who they are and/or have become as efl learners by considering how they have been learning the language, what kinds of learners they think they are (ellis 1994), and which learning strategies they think they use in their learning (o’malley & chamot 1990, oxford 1990). all in all, this paper aims to highlight the relevance of the notion of identity in language education, and the usefulness of identity texts in the efl classroom by scrutinising learners' identities and their construction in dits. we believe that such analysis may shed light on which identities are likely to allow students to have a “voice” in the second/foreign language (l2/fl) and help them improve; which can make them feel oppressed and impede their progress (norton 1995, norton 2010, norton & toohey 2011); and which learners associate with unequal power relations in educational contexts. ii. identity texts ii.1. identity texts identity texts are to be understood within a theoretical framework that belongs to the critical paradigm in social research, in which power is regarded as ubiquitous; it is conceived as emerging in and through language, and it is defined as a site of struggle in social contexts (baxter & babbie 2004, cohen et al. 2011). more specifically, identity texts are embedded within a theoretical perspective that views societal power relations in educational structures and interactions as unequal, and one of the main sources of underachievement among ell. in this way, identity texts emerged as part of a large project conducted in schools within the greater toronto area to support the development of literacy in ell and students from marginalised social groups both in english and in their l1 (cummins 2006, cummins et al. 2005a, cummins et al. 2015). the notion of literacy underlying these texts goes beyond traditional linear text-based maría dolores garcía pastor language value 9 (1), 36–61 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 38 reading and writing skills to refer to technologically and non-technologically mediated literacies that are part of students’ everyday writing practices in a variety of languages and contexts in and outside school (see cope & kalantzis 2015). thus, identity texts are bilingual or multilingual artefacts that students produce in written, spoken, signed, visual, musical, dramatic or multimodal forms as a result of having invested their identities in them (cummins & early 2011). some examples include e books, picture books, wall-charts, etc. the following is a specific example of an identity text in the shape of a dual english-urdu book co-authored by seventh graders, who present themselves and describe their experiences in canada as immigrants from pakistan. figure 1. dual language book from a seventh grade social studies unit (cummins et al. 2005b). most importantly, identity texts “[hold] a mirror up to students in which their identities are reflected back in a positive light” (cummins & early 2011: 3). the learner's positive self-image is reinforced when they share or jointly create their texts with peers, parents and teachers. this makes the relationship between the learner’s daily life and school even more meaningful, and strengthens the link between educational institutions and families (bernhard et al. 2006, cummins 2006, cummins et al. 2005a, 2005b, giampapa 2010). learners can thus feel that their cultural and linguistic capital is not excluded from curriculum and instruction, and, in consequence, they are likely to adjust better to the educational system of the foreign community. learner's identity at stake: digital identity texts in the efl classroom language value 9 (1), 36–61 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 39 as opposed to these general features, dits in this study were individually created, and produced only in the target language. however, like other identity texts, they are the product of learners’ creative work in the context of the classroom. in sum, identity texts help learners consolidate their identities and enhance their language learning (bernhard et al. 2006, cummins 2006, cummins et al. 2005a, 2005b, cummins & early 2011, cummins et al. 2015, giampapa 2010). ii.2. identity and positioning in this study identity is understood as “ego”, which is in a continuous dialogical tension with “alter” in and through discourse (bakhtin in todorov 1995, baxter & montgomery 1996). ego not only needs alter to come into being, but also cannot be stripped of discourse, in such a way that identity is relational, social, and discursively produced and re-produced in and through interaction with others. such interactions also need to be understood in the context of past and future conversations. therefore, identity is a diverse, dynamic, often contradictory, multiple rather than unitary concept, that is jointly negotiated and socially constructed in and through discourse, and that involves a struggle by the learner to achieve identities s/he desires in a society characterised by unequal power relations (norton 1995, 1997, 2010, norton & toohey 2002, 2011). this view of identity has been advocated by post-structuralist perspectives which generally adopt a social constructivist approach to social reality (cf. baxter 2016, block 2013). among these perspectives, we align ourselves with davies and harré’s (1990) theory of positioning. this theory emerged as a counterpoint to the classical dramaturgical model in social psychology, which focuses on the static, formal and ritualistic concept of role to account for the enactment of identity. identity in this theory is thus conceived in terms of “position” and “positioning”, which refer to “the discursive production of a diversity of selves” (davies & harré 1990: 47), and the discursive process whereby this occurs respectively. davies and harré further distinguish between “interactive positioning”, i.e. how a speaker’s discourse positions the interlocutor(s), and “reflexive positioning”, namely, how the speaker positions him/herself in and through discourse. maría dolores garcía pastor language value 9 (1), 36–61 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 40 from this approach, discursive practices provide subject positions from which learners can speak, since they offer the resources (i.e. images, metaphors, story lines and concepts) that enable them to be positioned in the way such discursive practices prioritise. however, learners are also free to choose among the diverse and contradictory subject positions available within different discursive practices, and on some occasions, resist certain positions they are ascribed (e.g. menard-warwick 2007). self-reflection is crucial in this regard, since interlocutors can thus become aware of the fact that they can accept or reject “the subject position[s] that the particular narrative and the related discursive practices might seem to dictate” (davies & harré 1990: 48). ii.3. identity and technology in dits technology “acts as an amplifier to enhance the process of identity text production and dissemination” (cummins & early 2011: 3). however, we would argue that technology also contributes to increase students’ investment in their language learning, since learners find new opportunities beyond language for the creation of their autobiographical narratives (darvin & norton 2014). learners can thus find a space to claim greater authorial agency (fong et al. 2016, darvin & norton 2014), gain a sense of self-efficacy, and further affirm and legitimise their cultural identities when sharing their linguistic and cultural backgrounds (darvin 2016, darvin & norton 2014, lam 2000, thorne & black 2011, yi 2007). therefore, the use of technology for the production of their texts contributes to learners’ construction of competent identities, since they feel they can use the fl in new and attractive ways that promote their selfperception as multicompetent actors (fong et al. 2016, chen 2013, lam 2000, thorne & black 2011, yi 2007). additionally, dits incorporate digital storytelling, which learners can use both for creative writing and for thinking critically about social issues (e.g. bernhard et al. 2006, gregori-signes 2008, 2014, gregori-signes & pennock-speck 2012, oskoz & elola 2016). thus, dits help learners reject selfand other-related stereotypes, whilst promoting a positive perception of l2 writing as a familiar, pleasant and creative process, away from the traditional conception of school literacy (darvin & carlton, 2014), which may be alienating for some ell (cummins 2006, lam 2000, yi 2007). in learner's identity at stake: digital identity texts in the efl classroom language value 9 (1), 36–61 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 41 sum, dits help learners link the different subject positions they identify with to real or imagined identities of competence they desire, and hence progress in their academic language development (bernhard et al. 2006, cummins 2006, cummins et al. 2005b, cummins et al. 2015, darvin & norton 2014, giampapa 2010, gregori-signes & pennock-speck 2012, oskoz & elola 2016, reyes-torres et al. 2012). iii. methods iii.1. research questions in light of the above, the following research questions were established: • how do college efl learners build their identities in their dits, i.e. which subject positions do they identify with and which semiotic and linguistic resources sustain them? • which subject positions do they associate with identities of competence, transition identities and silencing identities, and how do they view these in terms of the unequal power relations that characterise social and educational institutions? iii.2. corpus and data collection procedures in order to answer these questions, 51 dits were collected from university efl students. these texts were produced in the context of a specific course within the teacher in primary education studies at a spanish university. learners received specific instructions for the creation of their texts. with regard to content, they were required to offer a description of themselves as efl learners, and include at least a “dramatic question” in their stories, i.e. a question that fully or partly guides the story and is answered by the end (cf. gregori-signes 2008, 2014, robin 2006). concerning format, students were allowed to use any video or photo editing program they felt comfortable with to create their texts, and their stories should not exceed seven minutes. iii.3. participants the participants in this study were 51 university efl students, who were pursuing a degree in english teaching in primary education at the time of the study. they include maría dolores garcía pastor language value 9 (1), 36–61 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 42 7 males and 44 females between the ages of 22 and 25 years. they are mostly bilingual spanish-catalan speakers with an average b2 level of competence in english. the teacher is also the researcher in this study, with twenty years of experience in tefl and twelve years in second language teacher education. iv.4. analysis data analysis followed the “positioning” perspective outlined by davies and harré (1990), which was also informed by three types of narrative analysis related to identity and its negotiation in discourse (block 2010): “thematic analysis”, which focuses on the content of what is said, “structural analysis”, which interrogates ‘how’ such content is produced, and “dialogic/performative analysis”, which refers to ‘who’ an utterance is addressed to, ‘when’ and for what purposes. thus, we paid attention to what learners communicated with regard to their efl learner identities; how, i.e. which semiotic and linguistic resources they used to index such identities; who the addressee/s of their stories was/were at specific points in their discourses; and what for (block 2010, davies & harré 1990, thorne & black 2011). we also considered some of ivanič’s (1998) categories for the study of identity in written discourse, namely, the “autobiographical self” or the writer’s self in terms of their roots and previous life experiences, the “discoursal self” or the self the writer constructs based on their semiotic and linguistic choices, and the “self as author”, which is an aspect of the discoursal self that foregrounds the writer’s authorial agency. a general analysis of learners’ dits was first conducted to develop an understanding of their content and their structure. a more focused analysis followed consisting in descriptive comments on the content of students’ texts; semiotic/linguistic comments on their use of symbolic resources for meaning-making; and conceptual comments related to concepts emerging in their stories that are relevant in the literature. the third step in data analysis aimed to identify identity-related themes and categories, considering already-established macro stereotypical positions, e.g. “learner”, “native speaker” (darvin & norton 2015), “student” (fong et al. 2016), and so forth. specific subject positions within such categories were then identified, and the resulting identities and positions were further related to identities of competence (manyak 2004), transition learner's identity at stake: digital identity texts in the efl classroom language value 9 (1), 36–61 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 43 identities (norton & toohey 2011) and silencing identities (norton 1995, norton 2010, norton & toohey 2011). part of the data was also analysed by another researcher who was familiar with the method of analysis described above, but was not involved in the study. to ensure reliability, comparisons of our independent analyses, and refinements to the identity categories emerging from these were performed. v. results and discussion v.1. learners’ construction of autobiographical selves: identity texts as personal narratives students built their language learner identities mainly in the form of autobiographical selves that were discursively constructed in and through the selection of certain episodes in their lives. these episodes included the learner’s first experiences with language within the family and at school, their experiences with languages other than their l1 throughout secondary education and university, especially english, and their experiences related to these languages abroad. the selection of such episodes from the past and their narration in the first person singular to inform the viewer accounts for the shape of learners' dits as “memoirs”, that is, a specific kind of autobiographical genre which “focuses on some aspect of a person’s life” (brisk 2015: 103). however, learners’ texts not only had the informational or explanatory purpose of memoirs, students also intended to tell their stories to an audience, so that their texts shaded into personal recounts. personal recounts or narratives are a story genre in which the author deals with a temporal succession of events from a personal perspective, documents the sequence of events, deals with problematic events, evaluates the significance of events in the story, and provides a resolution (brisk 2015, johns 2003, rothery & stenglin 2005). therefore, learners' texts included not only a sequence of events, but also an evaluation of their relevance, one or more problems constituting the complication stage of the story, a crisis in a few cases, and a resolution. the problems students established in their texts referred to disappointing episodes throughout their learning process commonly framed as anxiety-increasing and motivation-decreasing periods, and issues such as the best age to start learning l2/fl, and the best way and/or method to acquire maría dolores garcía pastor language value 9 (1), 36–61 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 44 it. these problems conveyed “some disruption of usuality” in their stories (rothery & stenglin 2005: 233), and were occasionally introduced through dramatic questions posited to the viewer, for instance, “were we motivated in the high school's lessons?”. these questions acted as rhetorical devices that aimed to boost dramatic tension and increase the viewer's interest (gregori-signes 2008, 2014, robin 2006). in spite of the problems learners narrated, their dits were generally cast in a positive light, and were celebratory of their identities as efl learners (fong et al. 2016). these findings also account for the fact that only 13 texts (25%) contained crisis points. these crises consisted mainly of situations in which learners’ anxiety had reached the highest level, their motivation was at a minimum, and they were experiencing other frustrations in their learning, like monotonous grammar-oriented lessons and dreadful teachers. the resolutions to these crises were contingent upon learners themselves, who had to start some course of action and change their situation, e.g. a learner isolated herself from the negative learning context she was experiencing at high school, and nourished her intrinsic motivation by attending a language school. occasionally, resolutions came from external sources like a teacher who crossed the learner's path, a friend who encouraged the learner to enrol in a specific language school or the student's mother, father or both, who changed the learner’s educational centre, registered him/her at a language school, or sent him/her abroad. v.2. students' identities as efl learners although students’ autobiographical selves were ubiquitous in their texts, learners adopted certain subject positions in specific ways that illustrate how they built their identities. there were two macro stereotypical positions students invoked: “language learner” and “native speaker”, which emerged as the two poles of a dialectical pair (cf. baxter & montgomery 1996). however, a third macro stereotypical position, i.e. “intercultural speaker”, also surfaced as a counterpoint to these, thereby supporting the idea that in our global and digitally mediated world, “the asymmetric distribution of power no longer rests on the simple dichotomy of native speaker and language learner” (darvin & norton 2015: 41). the positions of “language learner” and “native speaker” appeared as mutually exclusive subject categories which, by contrast, could not be learner's identity at stake: digital identity texts in the efl classroom language value 9 (1), 36–61 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 45 defined without the other. learners positioned themselves as “language learners” vis-àvis “native speakers”, which they associated with the positions of “teacher” and “member of a foreign community”. students discursively indexed these positions mainly by means of semiotic resources like personal pictures or videos in which they appeared with other classmates and their teachers (figure 2), and stereotypical images of themselves or pupils with their teacher in the classroom (figure 3). figure 2. personal video extract of learner with classmates and teacher figure 3.stereotypical image of learners with teacher. students also deployed photographs of themselves with l1 english speakers (figure 4) and, less frequently, stereotypical pictures of native speakers as members of a foreign culture (figure 5). the common use of images containing both teachers and learners as well as learners and native speakers as opposed to separate images for each of these categories underscores their understanding of the “language learner”, and “native speaker”, “native speaker-teacher”, “native speaker-member of a foreign community” and “teacher” positions as interdependent (cf. thorne & black 2011). maría dolores garcía pastor language value 9 (1), 36–61 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 46 figure 4. personal image of learner with native speakers. figure 5. stereotypical image of native speakers as members of the foreign culture. learners’ non-standard use of english indexed their identities as language learners (menard-warwick 2007) coupled with the absence of specific features they ascribed to the position of “native speaker”, the most salient one being the ability to communicate in the target language. students equated this ability with speaking, which they identified as the best way of learning the l2/fl, thus engaging in the discussion of issues traditionally debated in second language acquisition (sla) (ellis 1994, gass & selinker 2008, larsen-freeman & long 1991). in so doing, they reflexively positioned themselves as “sla learners” or learners of the foreign language teaching course they wrote their texts for (flt learners), whilst interactively positioning their audience as individuals who share such knowledge, namely, their teacher and classmates, or any other sla/flt teacher and students. in this way, learners developed a sense of community (darvin & norton 2014, davies & harré 1990, lam 2000, thorne & black 2011), which personal recounts have proved suitable for (brisk 2015). the following example illustrates these findings: example (1) i started learning my second language when i was three years-old in the german school of valencia. i have grown up hearing german during a big and important part of the day five days a week; and since all of the teachers were native speakers there was no other option for us children to try and speak german if we wanted to communicate. learner's identity at stake: digital identity texts in the efl classroom language value 9 (1), 36–61 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 47 in this example, the student equates communication in german with speaking, and ascribes this ability to her native speaker (ns) teachers. she also argues that extended exposure to german and reception of input in this language were the most suitable conditions to learn it in her school days (krashen 1982, swain 1993). however, she had conform to the position of “german speaker” as part of her identity (“there was no other option for us children to try and speak german if we wanted to communicate”), and had to struggle to increase her cultural and linguistic capital in this language. her initial resistance to embrace this position, her final adoption of it, and her struggle to learn german illustrate her awareness of the unequal power relations that permeate language learning and education, her contribution to their reproduction (davies & harré 1990, norton 1995), and her attempts at levelling the power imbalance deriving from these (darvin & norton 2014, 2015, norton, 1995, 2010, norton & toohey, 2002, 2011, menard-warwick 2007). although she temporarily rejected being positioned as a “german speaker”, she claims this position for herself, unveiling a self-image of someone who has become bilingual as a result (cummins et al. 2015). learners’ equation of communication in l2/fl with oral proficiency, and an advantageous, distinctive and special ability, which amounts to being “native” and evokes the most appropriate and natural way of learning a language, unveils a) a view of face-to-face ordinary conversation as the primary type of discourse in any language (cf. e.g. lakoff 1989), b) an understanding of basic interpersonal communication skills (bics), namely, “conversational fluency in a language” (cummins 2008: 2), as the elementary abilities any language learner should master (cummins 1983), and c) a standardised conceptualisation of l2/fl learning, whereby the “native speaker” is the “norm” to follow, linguistic accuracy is accentuated over meaning-making, and formal versus functional aspects of the language are foregrounded (cf. cummins 2006, cummins 2005a, 2005b). these considerations evince students’ beliefs about, and prejudices against, different types of communication with regard to efl learning. teachers may rely on this information for the design and implementation of pedagogical practices that raise students’ awareness of the capacity of other forms of communication (e.g. writing, digital communication) for developing their digital, multilingual, and multiliterate abilities in the target language. maría dolores garcía pastor language value 9 (1), 36–61 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 48 students associated oral proficiency in l2/fl with academic success and literacy development (manyak 2004), and hence identities of competence they related to the positions of “english learner in an immersion context”, “english learner with nativelike oral proficiency”, “family bilingual”, “intercultural speaker”, “english teacher in primary education”, “active learner” and “motivated learner” besides “native speaker”. nevertheless, they not always considered the position of “native speaker” an identity of competence when combined with that of “teacher”. apart from oral proficiency, a dynamic and communicative type of language instruction was required for an ns teacher to qualify as competent. in spite of mainly depicting face-to-face interaction in l2/fl positively, students occasionally related this form of communication to frustration and anxiety by discursively constructing and identifying with the position of “anxious learner”. they attributed this position with test anxiety, communication apprehension and fear of negative evaluation (horwitz et al. 1986), and built it as a silencing identity that did not allow them to express themselves freely or have a “voice” in english. learners’ use of images of individuals conveying frustration and/or requesting help, conceptual images emphasising the word “anxious” or “anxiety” (kress & van leeuwen, 2006) and other images denoting negative meanings (e.g. a hand with the thumb down) indexed this position along with linguistic elements such as: negative emotion verbs (“disconnect”, “dislike”) (cf. oskoz & elola 2016); thought verbs related to cognitive processes of others about self (“think”, “judge”) (see brisk 2015); negative noun-phrases on selfperception of own worth (“low self-esteem”, “low self-confidence”); intensifiers (“higher”) (cf. darvin 2016, jones & hafner 2012, page 2012); and negative qualifiers applied to self (“stupid”). the learner in extract (2) draws on some of these semiotic and linguistic resources to refer to speaking in front of the class as an anxiety-provoking situation, which she compares with the anxiety-free context of small group interaction. learner's identity at stake: digital identity texts in the efl classroom language value 9 (1), 36–61 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 49 example (2) that is very important because with a little group of people i can speak without problem, but when i have to speak to the whole class, i am feeling a bit anxious, because i think everybody is judging me, and i am aware that i have to reduce that anxiety if i want to improve my skills. students linked the subject position of “anxious learner” to that of “unmotivated learner”, and categorised both primarily within the position of “english learner in secondary school”, which also included the position of “passive learner”. these schoolbased positions described types of learners unable to learn and use the target language efficiently mostly in ordinary conversation, hence silencing identities (cf. norton 2010, norton & toohey 2011). students also associated these identities and positions with a “transmission pedagogy” (cummins 2006: 57), namely, a pedagogy that, inter alia, denies the language learner a) access to real language use by emphasising a formal versus a functional approach (lam 2000), b) the possibility of making sense of their learning process, and c) the opportunity to get to know other languages and cultures. learners mainly referred to this type of pedagogy in their secondary school episodes with this educational stage emerging as a coercive institutional context that reproduces linguistic and social inequalities (bordieu & passeron 1990). students discursively built such silencing identities and positions by means of stereotypical pictures of english textbooks, grammar exercises, disinterested and stressed pupils, and prisoners in jail. the most frequent linguistic resources underlying all these school-based positions were grammatical terms and expressions (e.g. “fill in the gaps exercises”, “drills”, “textbook”), core vocabulary related to a summative type of evaluation (e.g. “exams”, “tests”), negative emotion verbs and nouns (“dislike”), and negative qualifiers (“boring”, “tedious”) (see cummins 2006, cummins 2005a, 2005b, lam 2000). in this maría dolores garcía pastor language value 9 (1), 36–61 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 50 way, learners also indicated their detachment from, and rejection of, these identities and positions. example (3) illustrates these findings: example (3) in addition, all lessons including the english one were boring, repetitive and decontextualised. so i feel very lost when i tried to memorised lots of concepts and ideas that made no sense for me. furthermore, as i am a dependent-field and intuitive learner, this problem affected my grades as my level of motivation continued to decrease quickly. suddenly, i realised i didn’t want to study with the only specific goal of passing a test. this situation contributed to increase my level of anxiety because i want to succeed, but at the same time, i was having a very strong feeling of dislike about the way high school subjects were structured. it was in this period that my motivation reached a minimum as i decided to leave english lessons out of having failed the fce exam. the student here depicts his position of english learner in secondary education as a silencing identity that derives from discouraging instructional practices, and an educational context organised around exams and grades. such a context forced him to conform to this identity at the time, leading to poor learning outcomes (cf. davies & harré 1990, norton 1995, norton & toohey 2011). in order to offer his description, the learner employs some of the aforementioned semiotic and linguistic resources, e.g. a stereotypical image of a stressed student, wile e. coyote asking for help, and a prisoner in jail coupled with summative evaluation terms (“exam”, “test”), negative emotion verbs and nouns (“felt lost”, “dislike”) and negative qualifiers (“boring”, “repetitive”). learner's identity at stake: digital identity texts in the efl classroom language value 9 (1), 36–61 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 51 transition identities are based on the idea that learners invest in their language learning to increase their linguistic and material resources in l2/fl (norton 1995, 2010, norton & toohey, 2002, 2011). therefore, they are a bridge to real or imagined identities of competence. in this study, these identities were observed to include subject positions that mainly referred to types of english learners in the school setting (english learner in primary school, english learner in extracurricular activities); english learners in instructional contexts outside school (english learner in private lessons, english learner at a language school); autonomous learners who attempt to learn from audiovisual materials in the fl (music, films and tv series) (consumer of audiovisual materials in english), that is, from sources of input different from the teacher. in sum, transition identities and positions were not restricted to the school context as opposed to silencing identities, and further underscored learners’ identities as “choosing subjects” (davies & harré 1990). the semiotic resources underlying these identities range from real pictures of students’ school centres, language schools, teachers and classmates, to images or video and music excerpts of their favourite singers, bands, tv series and films. learners’ use of these real images signals their personal involvement in the narrative construction of such identities (kress & van leeuwen 2006), frequently so as to render them positively. similarly, the linguistic elements and structures students employed to enact them in and through discourse, e.g. positive state and action verbs (“understand”, “improved”, “encouraged”), modal verbs indicating ability (“could”), marked use of terms related to the process of learning and the learner’s engagement in such a process (“learning”, “interest”, “engaged”), and upgraders (“a lot”, “quite well”, “really”) (darvin 2016, jones & hafner 2012, page 2012), highlight their positive attitude and, in some cases, even their pride in these ways of being a learner: example (4) on the other hand around that time i listened to english music very often, since my sister played it constantly at home. my favourite song made me enthusiastic about its meaning and about learning the language. this song maría dolores garcía pastor language value 9 (1), 36–61 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 52 is “wind of change” (song starts playing). at the beginning i couldn’t understand the lyrics, but later i started to understand some words. through music i realised that learning english was useful, so i developed an interest to learn it. in this example, the student discursively builds and takes the position of “consumer of audiovisual materials in english”, in particular, “consumer of english music”, through certain semiotic and linguistic resources that enable her to depict herself as an autonomous learner she is proud of, since she was able to understand the lyrics of her favourite english song. the competence, silencing and transition identities and positions discussed above along with the semiotic and linguistic resources that instantiate them illustrate both the learners’ reflexive and interactive positioning in their dits. learners rejected and claimed some of these positions and identities for themselves in order to empower themselves as efl learners. concerning silencing categories, students subverted the powerlessness ascribed to these (darvin & norton 2014) by a) discursively showing and narrating the struggle they experienced to increase their linguistic and cultural capital in the target language (see example 1 above) (menard-warwick 2007), and b) exhibiting mastery of specific theoretical concepts and issues mostly through the use of specialised jargon (this applied especially to the position of “sla/fl learner”). in both cases, students saw themselves as “capable of higher order thinking and intellectual accomplishment” (cummins et al. 2015: 577), and were commonly proud of their learning efforts and knowledge (fong et al. 2016, chen 2013). however, it was mainly through identities of competence and their positions that students bid for power in their texts. more specifically, as the macro stereotypical position of “native speaker”, albeit desirable, was conceived as unreachable, learners learner's identity at stake: digital identity texts in the efl classroom language value 9 (1), 36–61 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 53 invoked the position of “intercultural speaker”, which they commonly specified in the positions of “erasmus student”, “exchange student” and “international student”, and defined as a mediator between languages and cultures, and a citizen of the world. this subject position is in line with criticism raised against the figure of the ns as the model for appropriate language use in and outside the field of language education (e.g. prodromou 1992, house 2008). by endorsing the position of “intercultural speaker”, learners thus partly rejected this model, accepting instead a diverse english-speaking world (crystal 2003) populated by millions of english language users with different linguistic and socio-cultural norms, all of them equally valid as a baseline for comparison with their learner language (ellis 1994, garcía-pastor 2010). lastly, students also empowered themselves in their dits by foregrounding their position as authors/writers, which emphasises the self as the author aspect of their discoursal selves (ivanič 1998). in so doing, they were interactively positioning the viewer as a reader/receiver, thus casting the latter as a powerless agent (darvin & norton 2014). learners claimed greater authorial agency mostly through the use of their own voices to narrate their stories and other resources such as visually ascribing a printbased format to their personal recounts (e.g. “chapter 1: age”, “high school”, etc.) and metalinguistic comments that further stressed their position as “experts”, and that of viewers as “novices” (e.g. “i know who i am, what i like, and what i’m good at”). in this way, learners not only stressed their authorial identity, but also revealed an understanding of print-based literacy as authoritative in comparison with other forms of literacy. these ideologies should be deconstructed and discussed in l2/fl teacher education courses and efl classrooms to raise students’ awareness of their presence, and promote views of literacy in the target language more attuned with our digitally mediated world, in which written and spoken modes of communication merge (kress & van leeuwen 2006) and literacy practices go beyond the written word (darvin 2016). vi. conclusions this study has explored university students’ identity construction as efl learners in dits produced in the context of a specific subject within the english teacher in primary education degree. this paper contends that an understanding of how learners maría dolores garcía pastor language value 9 (1), 36–61 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 54 build their identities in and through digitally mediated literacy practices and genres like identity texts can provide insightful information for educators to design materials and implement pedagogical practices that embrace students' multiple reflexive positionings, promote identity positions which offer the greatest opportunity for social participation and interaction in l2/fl, and combat positions that silence their voices. upon analysis, learners mainly crafted their identities as autobiographical selves, which contributed to shape their texts partly as memoirs, and mostly as personal recounts or narratives. however, they also discursively built their identities through certain subject positions that evinced the multiple, fragmented, non-unitary, fluid and contradictory nature of their identities. students not only positioned themselves in and through their texts (reflexive positioning), but also positioned their viewers (interactive positioning) primarily to generate a sense of community. learners depicted the macro stereotypical positions of “learner” and “native-speaker” as opposites in a dialectical dyad, and that of “intercultural speaker” as a counterpoint to these two. they ascribed the position of the “native speaker” and “intercultural speaker” the ability to use the target language efficiently in oral communication and a natural way of learning, whilst defining the position of “learner” mainly by the absence of these features. therefore, they associated the former with identities of competence, and some subject positions defining the latter with silencing identities and transition identities leading to imagined or real identities they desire. in order to build these identities and positions in their dits, students resorted to a series of semiotic and linguistic resources, which contributed to the construction of their identities as a site of struggle, helped them undermine powerless ways of being a learner, and empowered them as efl learners. the position of “intercultural speaker” was relevant in this regard, since students appropriated this position as a way to subvert the lack of power typically ascribed to being a learner and to overcome the unreality of always qualifying as a native speaker. these findings further attest to the potential of identity texts for identity affirmation. in sum, this study has attempted to highlight the multiplicity and complexity of learners’ subject positions and identities as language learners, and acknowledge the ways in which language, identity, agency and power are inextricably intertwined in digitally mediated literacy practices. learner's identity at stake: digital identity texts in the efl classroom language value 9 (1), 36–61 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 55 acknowledgements this study is part of a larger project on the use of identity texts with efl learners to foster teaching for linguistic transfer in higher education (ref. uv_sfpie_rmd15_314975). it has also been developed within the research group giel (grupo de investigación en enseñanza de lenguas). i am grateful to the two anonymous reviewers of this paper for their comments. i would also like to thank ronan miller for his suggestions on an earlier version of this manuscript. references baxter, j. 2016. “positioning language and identity: poststructuralist perspectives”. in preece, s. 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http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue november 2018, volume 10, number 1 pp. 45-66 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2018.10.4 45 listening with your eyes: multimodal approaches to art appreciation in primary school ruth breeze rbreeze@unav.es instituto cultura y sociedad, universidad de navarra, spain abstract fine arts offer opportunities for multimodal approaches in education. museums and galleries are now aware of their social role, and provide outreach activities designed to bring an understanding of art to a wider public. their websites offer educational material for school children, showing how artistic knowledge and sensitivity can be cultivated with young age groups. however, little attention has been paid to such didactic material by discourse analysts interested in multimodality. this paper builds on swales’s (2016) article on the genre of the single image account (sia), which centres on texts about famous paintings written by experts for a general readership. here, i focus on sias for didactic purposes, examining pedagogical resources on the national gallery’s website. accessible sias are combined with suggestions to enhance primary school pupils’ learning through creative activities across a variety of modes. guidelines are provided for writing sias for educational purposes in other contexts. keywords: primary education, art education, multimodality, genre analysis, discourse analysis, single image analysis i. introduction over the last thirty years, the role of museums and art galleries in many countries has been transformed, so that we can now talk of their key role in bringing culture to wider audiences and promoting lifelong learning. as far as children are concerned, it is clear that museums and galleries have a special function as educational spaces outside the classroom that offer a rich learning environment (arbués and naval 2014). with this in mind, leading art galleries around the world have developed an increasingly diverse range of educational and outreach activities designed to bring the works they house to a larger public, and to promote a deeper understanding of art among different target groups (tishman et al. 2007). as a result, many art galleries have devised educational programmes of activities for children of different ages, including hands-on workshops (brooklyn museum 2018), special guided tours for different target groups, or invitations to respond in visual form to the works of art on display (national gallery 2018). outside the english-speaking world such adaptations were generally less common, http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue mailto:%20rbreeze@unav.es ruth breeze language value 10 (1), 45–66 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 46 possibly for budgetary reasons, but there are signs that this is changing (fontal merillas 2009). most national and regional governments now acknowledge that investment in national heritage is an important goal, and within this, that it is important to promote an understanding of this legacy among the younger generation. for this reason, it is useful to look at the educational strategies adopted in countries like the usa and the uk, which have a longer tradition of bringing culture to a wider audience. this may help institutions in other countries to develop resources along similar lines, either by adapting them for use in local languages, or by devising activities and materials in english for an international audience, or for local schools involved in content and language integrated learning (breeze and garcía laborda 2016). one of the simplest and least expensive educational strategies to emulate and implement is the preparation of material based on specific artists or individual works of art, adjusted for different age groups. such material can be used by schools to prepare their visits, or as an aid when studying a particular topic. if it is appropriately adapted to the age groups in question, it can help children learn to experience and appreciate art (harris and zucker 2016), and might also act as a stimulus for creative responses of different kinds, thus involving the principle of learning-by-doing (martikainen 2017). one such resource is provided in the national gallery, london, as part of its ongoing educational outreach programme (national gallery 2018). it consists of sets of notes for primary school teachers, each of which has an explanation of one painting, accompanied by other information (such as background details about the artist’s life, his patrons, or the subjects of the painting), and in most cases, ideas for educational activities designed to help children respond to the painting, or encourage them to develop their own creative skills. these resources are linked to the “take one picture” project that the gallery has carried out for many years in collaboration with primary schools. each year, a particular picture from the national gallery is chosen, and the gallery provides educational material and short courses for teachers about it. at the end of each season, the gallery hosts an exhibition showing some of the work that schoolchildren have produced in response to the painting chosen. this programme has several advantages for our present purposes: the national gallery provides a considerable volume of material designed specifically for primary school teachers, this is always focused on a single work of art, and it is expressly intended to be used by the teachers both to http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue listening with your eyes: multimodal approaches to art appreciation in primary school language value 10 (1), 45–66 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 47 develop their pupils’ appreciation of art and to foster their creativity. in this paper, my aim is to explore how these “notes for teachers” materialise these aims discursively, and to relate this to the bibliography on art education and museum pedagogy, in the hope that it will be interesting for theorists, but also useful for those involved in art education elsewhere. in this paper, my main approach is discourse analytical, informed by genre theory. genres serve typical socially recognised communicative purposes, and are in some sense conventionalised (bhatia 2004). genres provide a window onto professional practices, and onto the values and epistemology of particular disciplinary communities. by finding out what is stable, or at least frequent, in particular genres, we can learn more about the community that produced them, how they think and how they communicate. within this, in the concrete case at hand, it is striking that from the perspective of applied linguistics, relatively little attention has been paid to the area of educational and popularising discourses about the visual arts. despite the intense interest in multimodality and text-image interplay that has developed over the last thirty years (bateman 2014), most work in the educational field has centred on how picture books create meaning through convergent or complementary semiotic modes (nicolajeva and scott 2001, salisbury and styles 2012), or how textbooks, infographics or websites exploit intermodal effects (unsworth 2006). little research is available that explicitly deals with the way the written mode deals with the visual one, or how language is used to talk about (rather than with or alongside) pictures. one honourable exception to this is swales’s ground-breaking paper “configuring image and context: writing ‘about’ pictures” (2016), which examines one-page accounts of single masterpieces intended for educated adult readers. in this paper, i build on swales’s analysis in two ways: first, by examining texts about art written for primary school teachers, in the knowledge that they are likely to incorporate aspects that may help these readers to arouse children’s interest in art; and second, by looking at the practical suggestions available alongside most of these texts, which propose classroom activities and project work to stimulate children’s creativity in a variety of media. i will then use this analysis to build a heuristic that could be useful for anyone who needs to write popular educational material to accompany works of art. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue ruth breeze language value 10 (1), 45–66 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 48 ii. theoretical background works of art in museums and galleries are almost invariably accompanied by written accounts, whether in the form of labels or brief explanations, or in longer formats such as press releases, exhibition catalogues, popular art books and critical analyses. to these, we must add websites and audioguides, which also provide abundant information in different modes. within this, the single image analysis (sia) provides a central focus for analysis, since this is a genre found across many of these different publications, and one which in some sense holds the key to art appreciation and education. as swales (2016) notes, writing about pictures involves first “reading” the picture, and then sequencing the description of the image itself with discussion of any relevant aspects of the context (subject, artist, period, movement, etc.). although the twofold aim of description and discussion might seem to lend itself to some kind of general-specific macrostructure (in this case, realised in terms of first context, then description), or perhaps a specific-general structure (starting from the image and moving to a commentary encompassing aspects of its background), this does not seem to be usual among art writers. as swales (2016) shows, what seems to be typical is a kind of “dialectical tacking” (geertz 1980: 103) between the image, on the one hand, and the background, on the other. regarding move structure, swales’s own analysis of the sia identifies this zigzagging between image and background as perhaps the characteristic hallmark of art writing for a general public. in the alternation between image and context, most of swales’s examples seemed to set out from the context, and then to intersperse description of the image with discussion of different aspects of background, but the amount of text dedicated to each, and the length of each “turn”, varied considerably from one text to another. beyond this, swales also analyses five other features that he found to be typical of the sias in his corpus. these are: o comparisons (with other works, or with other artists, styles or periods); o a relative scarcity of intertextual references (i.e. to the writings of other critics or art historians); http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue listening with your eyes: multimodal approaches to art appreciation in primary school language value 10 (1), 45–66 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 49 o complex epistemic patterning, in which speculation is prominent and in which the writer offers “contested (or at least contestable) interpretations of the art objects as well as speculations about the artists and the factors that may have led to the production and construction of their works”; o frequent use of brackets, to introduce information such as important dates, the whereabouts of paintings, and explanations of materials or techniques; o positive evaluative language, used to bring out particular qualities of the painting or painter. in this paper, i will use the general principles of genre analysis (bhatia 2004, swales 1990), and the previous work by swales (2016) to build a description of the sias intended for primary school teachers. from the general principles of genre analysis (swales 1990, bhatia 2004), it would be expected that these texts will bear some kind of family resemblance to the sias analysed in swales (2016), but that their slightly different communicative purpose will condition their content and structure in different ways. my analysis is complemented with an overview of the different types of activity proposed with a view to enhancing children’s experience of art. in the last section, i will provide a heuristic intended to guide writers who need to produce texts about art for educational purposes, based on my observations and analysis. iii. texts and method my study focuses on 25 sets of “notes for primary teachers”, published in the “teachers’ notes” section of the national gallery website (national gallery 2018). the notes had all been prepared for the “take one picture” scheme that has been running annually since 1995. notes centring on an entire exhibition, rather than a single image, were excluded from this study. in each case, a single picture from the collection was selected, notes were prepared, and schoolchildren from all over the country were invited to submit examples of how a class or year group used this particular painting to inspire creative learning. the children’s work was then exhibited by the gallery in the popular “take one picture” exhibition. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue ruth breeze language value 10 (1), 45–66 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 50 all of the notes included in the present study focused on a single image, and 17 were principally pictures of human subjects, while there were five landscapes, two seascapes and one still life. the notes were downloaded from the website and read carefully, in order to note structural organisation and any other features that they had in common. they were then re-read and coded, and illustrative examples of text selected for each of the main features identified. iv. genre features each of the notes consists of a sia of variable length (generally around 2000 words, but sometimes much shorter), accompanied by the image of the painting itself, sometimes with one or two other images, such as close-up shots of details within the painting, or other paintings using a comparable technique or subject. after the main text, most of the notes include a list of activities that could be used with primary school pupils, sometimes graded according to age or curricular objectives. the text itself is often subdivided by means of headings such as “about the artist”, “about the painting”, “about the subject”. however, the notes vary greatly: in some cases, the writer has preferred to include a single section with the title “about the painting”, while in others original headings are inserted, such as “artistic licence” or “the end of an era”. although some of the aspects identified by swales (2016) were also found here, certain features are prominent in the notes that do not appear in his analysis. we might speculate that some of these, at least, are related to the fact that these texts are written for a specific target: primary school teachers who are going to use the picture with their class. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue listening with your eyes: multimodal approaches to art appreciation in primary school language value 10 (1), 45–66 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 51 graph 1. features included in notes on paintings of human figures (blue) and landscapes/seascapes/stilllifes (red). in what follows, i shall discuss some of the more prominent features identified in most of the notes. iv.1. tacking between image and context like the sias analysed by swales, these texts interweave descriptions of the painting with explanations about the personal, historical and artistic background. the following example from the notes about “the hay wain” by john constable serve to illustrate this back-and-forth movement, which seems to take the reader skilfully in and out of the painting, emulating the way a guide might point to features of the picture and interlace these observations with explanations of different kinds. in the example, i have italicised references to the image: http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue ruth breeze language value 10 (1), 45–66 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 52 (1) before constable was born his parents lived in the mill house and afterwards the family continued to live in the suffolk countryside – the setting for this painting. constable drew much of his initial inspiration for scenes such as this one from memories of the childhood he had spent in the area. the wisps of smoke curling from the chimney of the house, and the woman beside it, drawing water from the river, give the scene a harmonious, domesticated atmosphere. in the background, in the yellow and green fields, dappled with sunlight, we can see (.....) the cloudy, wind-swept sky would seem to indicate the possibility of rain and certainly evokes the english summertime weather. constable actually made many of the cloud studies for this painting on hampstead heath in london. (notes to constable’s “the hay wain”) this free-flowing approach to textual organisation is most pronounced in those sets of notes which do not have internal subheadings. in others, where the text is subdivided into sections with titles like “about the painting”, “about the subject”, etc., the organisation is more constrained, but even here the tendency to zigzag is perceptible. for example, in the notes on turner’s “the fighting temeraire”, a section on background accomplishes seamless moves from context to image, as in the following example: (2) the development of steam power was recognised at the time as enormously important, but as with any new technology, responses ranged from the wildly enthusiastic to the deeply pessimistic. these diverse reactions in a time of change are reflected in the fighting temeraire, where turner exaggerates the stark contrast between the two vessels, which stand for the old order and the new. as the sun sets on the horizon to the right, the new moon rises in the sky. (notes to turner’s “the fighting temeraire i”) as this example illustrates, the descriptions provided in the notes are rarely just descriptions, in the sense that they have a didactic purpose – to draw our attention to particular aspects of the painting and bring out their significance. when the writer tells us that the sun sets on the right as the new moon rises, he/she is not simply providing a routine description of the painting: he/she is drawing our attention to features that we might otherwise not have seen, and bringing out the relevance of these in the light of the background he/she has just explained. the written text largely follows the script of a guided tour, in which the guide/writer points to aspects of interest within the painting and relates these to external issues (themes, symbolism, artist, subject). http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue listening with your eyes: multimodal approaches to art appreciation in primary school language value 10 (1), 45–66 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 53 sometimes, the description of the picture has to be more explicit than a guide would be, in terms of what goes where, as the text has to perform the role of the pointing finger to show where the points of interest lie, and also has to bring out the importance of visual aspects (such as colour or line) that might not need to be indicated so explicitly with an audience standing nearby: (3) there is story-telling in the picture, but we notice the setting first: the early morning sky, the sun (…). next we may take in the bustle of the port (…). we may have to look quite closely to spot the queen. claude helps us to do this through the composition of the picture. he leads our eyes to the group of people on the steps on the right: they are at an intersection of a line of perspective (the step) and the strong vertical of the far left column of the palace. the queen is marked out in the group by the bold colours of her clothes: a pinkish-red tunic, a royal blue cloak and a golden crown. (notes to claude’s “seaport with the embarkation of the queen of shebaii”) the “tacking” noted by swales (2016: 25) can thus be related to the didactic function of teaching people how to look (tishman et al. 2007: 61-62): as we follow the text, we can experience the process of slowing down, looking, pausing and looking again that is so important in the development of our powers of observation. as fontal merillas explains (2009: 84), one of the challenges in art education is to teach strategies to develop receptivity, to guide people so that they can feel their way into a work of art. the recursive describing and explaining encapsulated in the notes is a textual representation of this expert process of pointing, sharing and bringing out the wealth of meaning within each picture for the novice observer. as graph 1 shows, the notes also contained some other recurring themes. these are explained below, with examples where appropriate. iv.2. explanation of historical background one feature which is prominent in the examples that swales (2016) uses, but which he does not analyse in any depth, is the presentation of historical background. in the notes, historical information is present in most cases, and tends to be pitched at a popular level, bringing out direct connections with the picture: http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue ruth breeze language value 10 (1), 45–66 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 54 (4) the 1760s saw the beginning of the industrial revolution which went on to dramatically affect the lives of all british people. wright produced many paintings of industrial environments with strong contrasts of light and shadow, such as blacksmiths’ forges, glass blowing houses and blast furnaces. (notes to wright’s “an experiment on a bird in the air pump iii”) background is also typically provided in the form of explanations of terminology used in the title or description of the picture: (5) the parading figures in rubens’ composition depict a roman ‘triumph’. a triumphal procession was the greatest honour that could be given to a roman general and was usually awarded to celebrate a great military campaign or victory. (notes to rubens’ “a roman triumphiv ”) in general, we can assume that the person writing the notes assumes little knowledge on the part of the reader, or at least, that he/she wishes to make the information as clear, explicit and straightforward as possible for teachers who are going to use the painting with primary school children. iv.3. appeal to human interest perhaps with the primary school target audience in mind, the writers of the notes often try to engage human interest in the people represented in the picture. this is represented in graph 1 as engagement with characters, but also within the various types of narrative that appear in the notes. intuitively the appeal to human interest would seem to promote the forging of a personal connection, so that observers learn to relate more deeply to the image (tishman et al. 2007: 64-65): (6) the organ’s sound presumably has inspired the caged bullfinch to sing, which in turn has provoked the predatory cat to leap hopefully up the back of the boy’s chair. the two girls seem unaware of this small drama, while baby thomas, rusk in hand, has eyes only for the cherries held out by his elder sister. (notes to hogarth's “the graham childrenv ”) the notes also encourage readers to take an interest in the artist and his life: http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue listening with your eyes: multimodal approaches to art appreciation in primary school language value 10 (1), 45–66 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 55 (7) in 1630, at the age of 53, rubens married again. to everyone’s surprise he did not marry into the nobility, but chose helene fourment, the 16-year-old daughter of a respectable merchant family. rubens was clearly bowled over by his new wife with whom he has five children, and she figures in numerous portraits, including a version of ‘the judgement of paris’ in which she appears as venus. (notes to rubens' “an autumn landscape with a view of het steenvi ”) within the cultivation of human interest, the child perspective has a particular importance. this perspective appears in various ways, including the explanations of life in the painter’s time: (8) boys would be apprenticed around the age of 14 and would need to train for some years. as well as learning to draw and paint they needed to master various practical and craft skills. once trained, they could join the painters’ guild and set up as independent masters with their own assistants and apprentices and hope to gain prestigious commissions. (notes to pintoricchio's “penelope with the suitorsvii ”) but the account of the people in the painting, if these are children, also tends to be a special focus of interest: (9) the young girl on the right of the painting holds a hoop and stick. the hoop for such a toy might be made of metal or wood, and the object of the game was to keep the hoop upright while rolling it along the ground with the stick. skilled players could do this for lengthy amounts of time and some performed tricks. (notes to renoir's “the umbrellasviii ”) (10) the painting has a jolly atmosphere with the three children making a lot of noise and enjoying themselves. and it’s painted in a realistic way, so you can imagine being in this room with them, singing along and hearing their laughter. (notes to molenaer's “two boys and a girl making music xi ”) iv.4. use of embedded narrative one aspect that is particularly prominent in these sias, presumably because of their didactic purpose and young wider audience, is narrative, which again can involve either telling the story depicted, or recounting incidents from the life of the painter, the commissioning of the painting, or its subsequent reception (see human interest, above, and graph 1). http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue ruth breeze language value 10 (1), 45–66 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 56 (11) odysseus is the figure coming through the door disguised by the goddess athena as an old beggar with his staff. on the wall above penelope’s head are his bow and quiver of arrows. penelope sets up an archery contest saying she will marry the suitor who can string the bow and win the contest. no one is strong enough to string the bow except odysseus himself. he reveals his identity and the couple are reunited. (notes to pintoricchio's “penelope with the suitors”) this narrativising tendency also extends to the story of objects in the painting: (12) this drinking-horn, made in 1565, still exists and is on show at the amsterdam museum in amsterdam. it belonged to the saint sebastian archers who were the likely patrons of the painting. on special occasions the officers would gather to feast and the horn would be filled with wine and ceremoniously passed among them. (notes to kalf's “still life with the drinking horn of the st sebastian’s archers’ guild, lobster and glassesx ”) however, it should also be noted that the notes are intended for people working within a rather broad age range, which means that the narratives offered are not geared to a particular age group. it seems that the teachers in each case would be responsible for adapting the contents and language of the story to their students’ level and interests. iv. 5. positive evaluative language in his analysis, swales (2016) pointed to evaluative language as one of the features that seems to be present in essence in sias, but which is subject to individual (or possibly cultural) variation. here, since the writers are anonymous, it would be difficult to trace any cultural effects. there is certainly evaluative language in almost all the notes, but it is administered very sparsely and soberly. thus we are told that “the stonemason’s yard” is “often regarded as canaletto’s masterpiece”, while turner is “one of britain’s best-known landscape painters”. a more interesting kind of evaluation tends to be delivered through the wording of the descriptions themselves: we read that pintoricchio “cleverly gives us a sense of the whole narrative” by showing different episodes of odysseus’ story in the foreground and background, while turner’s sailing ship is “painted delicately in light tones” before a “glorious sunset”. the focus of these sias is on observation and response to the image, but there are none of the “enthused evaluations” reported by swales (2016: 32), http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue listening with your eyes: multimodal approaches to art appreciation in primary school language value 10 (1), 45–66 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 57 and objective observation is generally preferred to emotional evocations of aesthetic effects. iv.6. using the five senses with the target audience in mind, some of the notes draw on senses other than sight in order to suggest ways of presenting the picture. the most usual strategy is through the evocation of sound, as in example (10) cited above describing molenaer's picture, or example (13) below: (13) the picture is not only full of riotous colour and movement but also full of imaginable sounds: you can almost hear the growls of the animals; the horns and pipes being blown by musicians; the pounding of footsteps. (notes to rubens’s “a roman triumph”) other senses are occasionally engaged in these sias, particularly touch, in the context of temperature: (14) how cold is it? cold enough for ice that is safe for skating – and for a large horse to walk on it! (notes to beerstraaten's “the castle of muiden in winter xiii ”) but interestingly, multisensory response is encouraged in the activities listed at the end of the notes much more frequently than it is used in the actual sia (see graph 1). iv.7. explanation of symbolism a further didactic strategy that is prominent in these notes is the special emphasis on explaining the symbolic aspects of many of the paintings. some of these glosses are rather straightforward, like the following one, which boils down to “dogs can symbolise faithfulness”: (15) in art, dogs are often used to symbolise marital fidelity, so perhaps veronese was making a comment by including them in his painting. (notes to veronese, “the family of darius before alexander xii ”) http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue ruth breeze language value 10 (1), 45–66 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 58 however, in other cases the writer attempts a more elaborate explanation involving several layers of meaning, including aspects of technological, social and cultural history that shed light on specific aspects of the painting: (16) black was an expensive dye at this time and was only worn by wealthy people: it also signified melancholy and indicated that the wearer had introspective intellectual qualities, which were much admired at the time. (notes to holbein's “the ambassadors”) iv.8. asking questions and speculating as graph 1 shows, one feature that many of the notes have in common is their use of questions or speculative suggestions, which overlaps with what swales (2016: 28-29) calls “contested interpretations”. although in his texts this function was frequently associated with epistemic elements, most particularly hedging and various hearsay/mindsay evidentials, in the notes it is mainly represented by direct questions: (17) next to this jar stands an imposing figure robed in red, quite different to all the others present. with his hand outstretched towards us he is the only person to look out of the painting and make eye-contact with us. is he asking us a question or perhaps inviting us to take a closer look? (notes on wright’s “an experiment on a bird in the air pump”) in most cases, these questions have no answer, but sometimes an answer is proposed, usually an answer in line with the age of the prospective audience and their presumed response to the picture: (18) something, or somebody, has caught the attention of the little girl on the right, and the woman on the left. what, or whom, are they looking at? perhaps they are looking at us? it is almost as if we are standing in the picture with them. (notes on renoir's “the umbrellas”) in a few cases, a more sophisticated analysis is presented, which seems to address the teachers rather than their (primary age) students. in this case, more complex hedging devices (“tend to believe”) and uncertainty is stressed (“we cannot be sure”) in order to spark curiosity: http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue listening with your eyes: multimodal approaches to art appreciation in primary school language value 10 (1), 45–66 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 59 (19) but which man in the painting is alexander? (…) art historians tend to believe that the man in crimson is alexander, because he is more central to the composition, and is the more conspicuously dressed of the two, but we cannot be sure. the possibility of confusion is necessary if we are to understand the queen mother’s mistake. veronese has left us with a mystery, and after nearly 500 years, we are still not sure of the answer. (notes to veronese, “the family of darius before alexander”) iv.9. explanation of symbolism a further aspect that may be particularly prominent because of the educational function of these texts is their insistence on aspects of technique and material. (20) seurat had a special interest in optics and the science of colour, particularly the writings of the chemist michel-eugène chevreul. (...) chevreul stated that complementary colours, opposites on the colour wheel, enhanced each other when placed side-by-side. the use of complementary contrasts can be seen everywhere in the picture, from small brushstrokes to larger areas of colour. for example, in the predominantly green riverbank, there are strokes of the complementary colours pink and green, and also some bright yellow and violet, and orange and blue. (notes to seurat, “bathers at asnièresxiv ”) this emphasis on topics such as primary colours here certainly reflects the primary school curriculum. however, other explanations of material and technique are more sophisticated. in the notes on wright’s painting “an experiment on a bird in the air pump”, the question of dark and light is emphasised, and brought into a wider art historical context: (21) wright used screens in his studio to control the light and here he has displayed a dazzling arrangement of light and deep shadow. the thin layers of dark glaze (paint mixed with varnish to give a translucent glow) are placed next to more thickly opaque highlights. using extremes of light and shade in a painting to create a sense of drama is called chiaroscuro and is most usually associated with caravaggio and his followers. (notes to wright’s “an experiment on a bird in the air pump”) moreover, the text goes on to explain that this is more frequently found in religious paintings of the era, and provides two images illustrating uses of chiaroscuro in other paintings to complement the reader’s understanding of its function. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue ruth breeze language value 10 (1), 45–66 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 60 in other cases, the explanation deals with the concrete material basis of paint and canvas. again, description is complemented by interpretation, in which the work of art in question is compared with other works or styles. (22) the painting uses oil paint applied to paper. this gives it a smooth finish, with no surface texture. the three pieces of paper were stuck together, and the joins are quite visible, especially at the left. they were then mounted on canvas. this is an unconventional approach, but one which is typical of degas. the three sections make it resemble both a triptych, a three-panel christian altarpiece, and three-part japanese woodblock prints. (notes to dégas's “beach sceneix”) other notes concerning technique bring out idiosyncratic aspects of the painting in question which might be interesting to a young audience, or which illustrate something significant about the material, technique or style of the picture: (23) also visible are lots of pentimenti. literally meaning ‘changes of minds’, these alterations or corrections have become increasingly visible as the oil paints have become translucent with the passage of time. for example the lynx in the bottom right hand corner appears to have an extra leg and initially the young man in white had a larger head of hair. (notes to rubens’s “a roman triumph”) v. heuristic for writing educational single image accounts this section is intended as a guide for teachers or museum staff who need to create educational material for use with young children. in the following section (vi), there is a compilation of activity types that could be used to accompany the explanation of the work of art. imagine yourself standing in front of the picture, explaining it to a group of children:  what overall impression does this picture make?  how might children use the five senses to respond to this picture?  what themes or aspects do you want to talk about in more detail?  how are these themes or details associated with?: http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue listening with your eyes: multimodal approaches to art appreciation in primary school language value 10 (1), 45–66 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 61 o shared human feelings (particularly those accessible to children) o narratives (myths, legends, historical events) o symbols (conventional or original)  are the composition, techniques or materials used interesting?  do you want to talk about any relevant aspects of the painter’s life?  are there any mysteries or unanswered questions associated with the painting, its subject or its artist? when you are writing your sia, remember that you need to use words to “point” to particular aspects of the painting that you want to discuss. you can use expressions like these to begin your description:  as we can see in the image...  as the picture shows...  scenes/figures/landscapes like this... you can then relate these descriptions to background and context by using phrases like:  these colours are associated with...  this image evokes...  the objects here symbolise...  this type of figure is typical of the... you can go back from discussing context to pointing out instantiations in the painting by using phrases like:  ... is reflected/represented/echoed in the painting, where...  ... can be seen in the composition of the picture, which... remember, you don’t need to give definitive explanations about everything. it might be more interesting to open up discussion so that children can try to think of answers: http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue ruth breeze language value 10 (1), 45–66 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 62  what do you think this person is thinking?  why do you think the artist chose this colour/animal/background? vi. sample activities in this section, i provide an overview of different types of activities found in the notes, without reference to specific paintings, age groups or curricular goals, and going from the more general response activities to the more complex or specific ones. o learning to look at the picture more carefully: working together in pairs, one pupil describes the picture and another draws, then they swap roles; using the website to create crops of the picture and then working together in groups to piece together the whole picture. o responding to the people in the painting on a personal level: what do you think the people are saying/thinking/feeling? if you could ask one of the people one question, what would it be? o multimodal response to the painting: ‘listen’ with your eyes, what can you hear? what is the noisiest thing in the painting? if you could jump into the painting, what would you see, hear, smell, touch? who or what might live in there? what music would go with this painting? if the picture were an advertisement, what could you use it to advertise? o responding to the subject of the painting by reproducing one part of it, or drawing/painting something along similar lines, i.e. a full length painting of oneself with a classmate, a tableau of a scene from mythology, a group portrait, a skyscape, a “modern” still life, a representation of the same scene in a different season. o response to the subject, theme or mood of the painting by creating works in different media, including visual arts, i.e. sculpture and film, but also music or imaginative writing (stories, poems, descriptions). o using part of the picture as a basis for a design: i.e. the floor in the painting is made of patterned tiles, so design your own patterned tiles. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue listening with your eyes: multimodal approaches to art appreciation in primary school language value 10 (1), 45–66 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 63 o experimenting with materials used by artists in the past, e.g. egg tempera. o researching and responding to artistic styles: research the elements of rococo style and design something inspired by it. o exploring connections with other curricular areas: find out the french words for the objects in the painting. make a geographical enquiry into volcanoes. on a modern map, trace odysseus’s journey from troy to the island of ithaca. investigate how other religions and culture participate in similar parades and celebrations today. investigate dragon symbolism in other cultures. vii. conclusions we have seen that these notes share some of the basic features identified by swales (2016), most particularly the characteristic zigzagging between image descriptions and context explanations. in this, it is interesting to think of the role of the writer as emulating that of the museum guide, but also as reflecting a stable tendency among art writers to oscillate between the visual and the verbal, or between showing and telling. in baxendall’s classic words (1979: 455), “one of the art historian’s specific faculties is to find words to indicate the character of shapes, colours and organizations of them. but these words are not so much descriptive as demonstrative”. unlike other multimodal genres, where the different semiotic modes may generate convergent, complementary or divergent messages (bateman 2014) and language-image interactions have to be decoded by users (unsworth 2006), in this genre the written text is expressly dedicated to revealing and explicating the image. here, the writer uses words explicitly to create a shared vision of the picture, and to guide the reader’s eyes into and around the world within the frame. despite the underlying commonality that these notes share with swales’s sias, certain new features are prominent here. we might speculate that some of these, at least, are related to the fact that these texts are written for a specific double target: primary school teachers (immediate readers) who are going to use the picture with their class (target audience). as fontal merillas explains (2009: 84), one of the challenges in art education is to facilitate the development of receptivity and artistic sensibility. teachers therefore http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue ruth breeze language value 10 (1), 45–66 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 64 need to deploy a range of strategies to encourage their pupils to share a sensation, feeling or idea, and thus to help them feel their way into a work of art (harris and zucker 2016). for this reason, aspects such as human interest (in the people represented in the picture, or in the artist and his life) are often highlighted in these sias, and narrative (again, telling the story depicted or incidents from the life of the painter) has an important role in many of the texts. in some of the notes, multimodal responses based on hearing/smelling/feeling propose additional points of access to the painting, stimulating the imagination and encouraging children to experience the picture more fully (harris and zucker 2016). the notes thus gently propose a series of pedagogical strategies for the teachers to use with their pupils. the activities suggested at the end of the notes build on this by prompting multimodal responses of the kind recommended in recent art pedagogy (martikainen 2017). finally, one discursive feature that many of the notes have in common is their use of questions or speculative suggestions, which overlaps with what swales calls “contested interpretations”, but which is generally expressed here through direct questions. unlike the hedged speculations reported by swales, these do not provide a glimpse of academic controversy, but rather convey a certain cognitive challenge which children may find stimulating. notes i “the fighting temeraire”, by joseph turner. ii “seaport with the embarkation of the queen of sheba”, by claude lorrain. iii “an experiment on a bird in the air pump”, by joseph wright. iv “a roman triumph”, by peter paul rubens. v “the graham children”, by william hogarth. vi “an autumn landscape with a view of het steen”, by peter paul rubens. vii “penelope with the suitors”, by pintoricchio (bernardino di betto). viii “the umbrellas”, by pierre-august renoir. ix “beach scene”, by edgar dégas. x “still life with the drinking horn of the st sebastian’s archers’ guild, lobster and glasses”, by willem kalf. xi “two boys and a girl making music”, by jan miense molenaer. xii “the family of darius before alexander”, by paolo veronese. xiii “the castle of muiden in winter”, by jan abrahamsz beerstraaten. xiv “bathers at asnières”, by georges-pierre seurat, all notes are available on the webpage: https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/learning/teachers-and-schools/teachers-notes http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/learning/teachers-and-schools/teachers-notes listening with your eyes: multimodal approaches to art appreciation in primary school language value 10 (1), 45–66 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 65 references arbués, e. and naval, c. 2014. “museums as educational social spaces”. estudios sobre educación, 27, 133-151. bateman, j. 2014. text and image. a critical introduction to the visual/verbal divide. london: routledge. baxendall, m. 1979. “the language of art history”. new literary history, 10, 453-465. bhatia, v. k. 2004. worlds of written discourse. london: continuum. breeze, r. and garcía laborda, j. 2016. “issues in teacher education for bilingual schools”. estudios sobre educación, 31, 9-12. brooklyn museum. 2018. hands on art. 19 march 2018. https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/education/youth-and-families/hands_on_art fontal merillas, o. 2009. “los museos de arte: un campo emergente de investigación e innovación para la enseñanza del arte”. revista electrónica interuniversitaria para la formación del profesorado, 12 (4), 75-88. geertz, c. 1980. negara. the theater state in nineteenth-century bali. princeton, nj: princeton university press. harris, b. and zucker, s. 2016. “making the absent present: the imperative of teaching art history”. art history pedagogy and practice, 1 (1). 19 march 2018. http://academicworks.cuny.edu/ahpp/vol1/iss1/4 martikainen, j. 2017. “making pictures as a method of teaching art history”. international journal of education and the arts, 18 (19). 19 march 2018. http://www.ijea.org/v18n19/v18n19.pdf national gallery. 2018. take one picture. 19 march 2018. https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/learning/teachers-and-schools/take-onepicture nicolajeva, m. and scott, c. 2001. how picturebooks work. london: routledge. salisbury, m. and styles, m. 2012. children’s picturebooks: the art of visual storytelling. london: lawrence king. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue ruth breeze language value 10 (1), 45–66 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 66 sears, e. 2002. “‘reading’ images”. in sears, e. and t. k. thomas (eds.) reading medieval images. ann arbor: university of michigan press, 1-17. swales, j. 1990. genre analysis. english in academic and research settings. cambridge: cambridge university press. swales, j. 2016. “configuring image and context: writing ‘about’ pictures”. english for specific purposes, 41, 22-35. swales, j. and feak, c. 2013. academic writing for graduate students. ann arbor: university of michigan press. tishman, s., mckinney, a. and straughn, c. 2007. study center learning: an investigation of the educational power and potential of the harvard university art museums study center. boston ma: harvard project zero. unsworth, l. 2006. “towards a metalanguage for multiliteracies education: describing the meaning-making resources of language-image interaction”. english teaching practice and critique, 5 (1), 55-76. received: 10 april 2018 accepted: 23 july 2018 cite this article as: breeze, ruth 2018. “listening with your eyes: multimodal approaches to art appreciation in primary school”. language value 10 (1), 45-67 jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2018.10.4 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue july 2017, volume 9, number 1 pp. 160-183 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2017.9.7 160 medical english teaching and beyond: a multimodal and integrated approach daniele franceschi daniele.franceschi@jus.unipi.it university of pisa, italy abstract the aim of this paper is to show how medical english teaching materials may be improved by introducing multimodal tasks encouraging a holistic approach to communication. medical english for specific purposes textbooks and coursebooks typically focus on how to speak effectively, but they fail to prepare doctors to speak and behave affectively, although it has been demonstrated that how doctors communicate is as important as what they communicate in order to build a therapeutic alliance with their patients (ambady et al. 2002; cao et al. 2016; dimatteo et al. 1980; hall 1995, among others). teaching materials should thus include activities aimed at strengthening doctors’ ability to offer patient-centred care through mindful communication in association with specific body signals. a proof-of-concept teaching unit is provided here in order to exemplify how esp materials could be made more responsive to the needs of professional practice by adopting a method that brings together targets for learning medical english as well as counselling techniques. keywords: medical english teaching, esp, multimodal learning, patient-centred communication, counselling i. introduction doctor-patient communication has been studied extensively over the years (e.g. fong ha & longnecker 2010; salanger-meyer 2014), with the ultimate aim of improving the quality and effectiveness of medical encounters. most studies, however, have remained confined to the observation of the linguistic and paralinguistic features of this type of specialised spoken discourse (gülich 2003; adolphs et al. 2004; ten hacken & panacová 2015), disregarding the interplay of the verbal dimension with other semiotic modes, which also play an important role in successful communication between doctors and their patients. research has recently started to show that non-verbal elements (e.g. facial expressions, hand gestures, body posture and movement) are also fundamental for patient engagement and management (cf. among others, duffy et al. 2004; yasmeen 2013; franceschi 2017). these studies suggest that healthcare professionals should be made aware of the whole range of possibilities and strategies, both linguistic and para-linguistic, available to them for effective communication. the existing materials for teaching medical english, however, still focus almost exclusively on the analytic (or verbal meaning) component of language, with activities that help learners to mailto:daniele.franceschi@jus.unipi.it medical english teaching and beyond: a multimodal and integrated approach language value 9 (1), 160–183 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 161 expand their knowledge of specialised terminology and their speaking skills in a number of different situations. in other words, teaching materials tend to give more importance to language content (i.e. what is communicated) than to form (i.e. how something is communicated) (franceschi, forthcoming). although various types of tasks for developing appropriate communicative strategies are present in course and textbooks, they typically draw learners’ attention only to a range of standardised rhetorical devices, e.g. for showing politeness, care and understanding towards patients when communicating a diagnosis. the fact that these attitudes towards the patient can be enhanced and supported through the use of accompanying non-verbal signals has been overlooked. therefore, the following sections put forward a series of activities for teaching medical english to trainee and practising doctors from a multimodal perspective, i.e. with audiovisual exercises aimed at raising their awareness of how the verbal message can be reinforced via specific non-verbal elements and behaviours. the activities proposed below are based on authentic video-recorded interviews between doctors and patients with hepatitis c, i which can be considered model examples of successful recipient-tailored, i.e. patient-centred, communication. ii the following sections illustrate in detail a number of integrated techniques from two unrelated fields, i.e. efl/esl teaching and psychology/counselling, which should ideally make practising and prospective doctors more aware of the importance of affective communication in the medical sector. the didactic approach followed is thus multimodal iii and holistic in that it addresses both the verbal dimension and other modes of meaning-making in context. the watching/listening and speaking activities presented here are suitable for upper-intermediate and advanced learners, at a b2 or c1 level of the common european framework of reference for languages (cefr), respectively. ii. observing non-verbal behaviour the first and fundamental step in the methodology proposed here consists in training learners to activate channels of attention that usually remain semi-dormant, because we tend to grant more importance to the expression of our inner thoughts and feelings rather than to the observation of the other. listening and observing with full presence, however, is a necessary ingredient for doctors to be able to understand their patients’ requests and what lies behind and beyond their words. in order to tune in with their patients, doctors need to adopt a receptive and supportive attitude consisting in specific behaviours aimed at facilitating communication. despite the importance of the latter elements, learning how to deal with patients is often left to the doctor’s own sensitivity and experience because university modules seldom teach communication and daniele franceschi language value 9 (1), 160–183 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 162 relational skills explicitly. iv language instruction may represent an opportunity to work both on the development of linguistic competence for specific medical purposes and on the doctors’ ability to better liaise with their patients. doctor-patient dialogues contain several non-verbal elements worth drawing learners’ attention to. as an in-class task, learners may first of all be asked to watch a fragment of a video-recorded dialogue without any audio and to observe physiognomy and body language. this silent observation phase, instead of a more traditional listening comprehension exercise, may be viewed as somewhat odd. this is because language learners usually listen for the gist, specific information, or new words and expressions to be acquired. the approach used here, instead, consists in first focusing learners’ attention on facial expressions, hand gestures and body movements. an initial uninterrupted watching of a 2-3 minute segment is recommended, v after which some general questions need to be asked, as illustrated in table 1, in order to gather learners’ impressions about the nature of the relationship they have observed. this activity is geared towards raising learners’ awareness of deceivingly peripheral issues, which are in fact important factors for successful medical communication. table 1. initial questions following the silent observation phase 1. what is the doctor’s attitude? how does the patient seem to react to it? 2. what do you think the doctor is like as a person? 3. does the doctor behave in a professional manner? 4. how would you feel if you were the patient? 5. in your opinion, how does the doctor feel while talking to the patient? indirectly, this exercise also helps learners to broaden their knowledge of adjectives used to describe people’s personalities and attitudes. it is important at this stage to brainstorm them and come up with as many words and phrases as possible, which may also be written on the board and clarified before continuing with the rest of the activity. the language instructor needs to expand vocabulary by introducing synonyms and antonyms, and may perhaps also ask learners to make comparisons between their own doctors and the one in the video, in order to stimulate more active participation and involvement. this may be done in small groups, in pairs or individually. the next stage consists in identifying and naming the exact non-verbal elements associated with speech. the language instructor must pause the video whenever facial expressions, hand gestures and body movements appear to play an important supporting medical english teaching and beyond: a multimodal and integrated approach language value 9 (1), 160–183 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 163 function. table 2a is an example of an exercise that each learner will do while the instructor shows and pauses the video at relevant moments. every image frame in the exercise must correspond to the actual moment of the video shown on the screen for the whole group. table 2a. example of a video observation exercise describe and interpret the doctor’s behaviour (gaze, facial expressions, hand gestures, body posture, etc.) image frame non-verbal behaviour & interpretation 1 2 3 daniele franceschi language value 9 (1), 160–183 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 164 4 5 6 learners should be encouraged to describe, in their own words, the doctor’s behaviour in the greatest detail possible. they could start, for instance, by considering gaze direction, facial expressions and specific hand gestures, and then observe body posture/position and proximity to the patient. it may be necessary to elicit responses with direct questions, such as is the doctor looking at the patient while talking to him/her? is the doctor smiling? what movements is the doctor doing with his/her head/hands/body? how close to the patient is the doctor (standing/sitting)? and so forth. all these aspects then need to be described in terms of their function. learners should therefore interpret the doctor’s behaviour by answering a number of questions that the instructor will have prepared in advance, e.g. why is the doctor nodding? what do the doctor’s smiles suggest? what do the doctor’s open hands with intertwined fingers indicate? etc. table 2b gives an example of what learners should ideally medical english teaching and beyond: a multimodal and integrated approach language value 9 (1), 160–183 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 165 produce. finally, a closing discussion on the possible effects that the doctor’s behaviour may have on the patient is advisable. table 2b. example of a completed video observation exercise describe and interpret the doctor’s behaviour (gaze, facial expressions, hand gestures, body posture, etc.) image frame non-verbal behaviour & interpretation 1 slightly shaking head (doesn’t know why patient is there), slightly worried gaze (waits for presentation of symptoms), holding open hands together with fingers intertwined (welcoming attitude) 2 nodding (shows understanding), looking straight into patient’s eyes (shows attention and interest), slightly worried gaze, holding hands together with fingers intertwined (shows willingness to wait and listen) 3 nodding, smiling (shows understanding and sympathy) 4 smiling and keeping an upright position (shows confidence and ease), looking straight into patient’s eyes (shows interest and engagement), holding hands together with fingers intertwined (shows willingness to wait and listen) daniele franceschi language value 9 (1), 160–183 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 166 5 steepling (as if begging for an answer), squinting with head slightly turned to the right (looking for an answer that may not be easy for the patient to find) 6 sitting across the table, not too far from the patient (shows willingness to be there for the patient) learners should reflect at the end of this session and draw up a list of those extralinguistic features appearing in the video that seem to positively impact the interaction between the doctor and the patient. alternatively, the instructor may prepare a preliminary list of elements, which learners may contribute to, tick or comment in terms of level of importance. table 3a provides an example of an activity that could be used for wrapping up and stimulating further discussion on the perceived importance of nonverbal elements in doctor-patient interactions. table 3a. learners’ perception of the importance of non-verbal elements in doctor-patient interactions please tick the appropriate boxes and add information in each of them with reference to the physical appearance and behaviour of the doctor in the video. do not tick where there are no instances of that category or if you view a certain aspect as irrelevant, add 1 tick if that particular aspect is only marginally important, 2 ticks if you consider it important and 3 ticks if you think it is very important. clothing formal casual medical kinesics posture positioning proximity gestures head arms hands legs feet touch arms hands fingers facial expressions smiling frowning aggressive non-committal other gaze eye contact length of eye contact medical english teaching and beyond: a multimodal and integrated approach language value 9 (1), 160–183 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 167 learners will first add elements to the relevant categories and then comment on the role that specific factors play in the interaction. for instance, in the case observed in table 2b above, the doctor repeatedly makes head movements. therefore, the category ‘gestures’ and the subcategory ‘head’ need to be further specified as exemplified in table 3b. nodding could be perceived as an important element in the conversation vi and learners may want to add two ticks there and then explain what impact such behaviour has on the quality of the interaction. table 3b. example of a completed exercise on the perception of the importance of non-verbal elements in doctor-patient interactions gestures head shaking head nodding √ √ iii. using your imagination before letting learners listen to the doctor’s actual words, they can be finally asked to imagine the dialogue with the patient and produce a possible version of those exchanges that they have previously analysed only in terms of non-verbal behaviour. in particular, they should focus on what they think the doctor’s responses to the patient might be; an example of what learners may add next to each image frame is provided in table 4. this writing activity actively involves learners and helps them to structure a possible doctor-patient interaction. the instructor should assist them in finding ways to construct the dialogue with phrases and expressions that are likely to be encountered in this context. vii once learners have completed the conversation, they will act it out in pairs or in front of the class after spending a few moments memorising it. daniele franceschi language value 9 (1), 160–183 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 168 table 4. example of a completed multimodal writing task image frame non-verbal behaviour & interpretation verbal text 1 slightly shaking head (doesn’t know why patient is there), slightly worried gaze (waits for presentation of symptoms), holding open hands together with fingers intertwined (welcoming attitude) so, what can i do for you, mr x? these role-plays may also be used to work on different types of registers, speaking styles and behaviours. to this end, the instructor needs to ask learners to modify the dialogues and introduce elements expressing, for instance, disinterest, annoyance or excessive caution on the part of the doctor. it is important to give learners the opportunity to experiment with various communication strategies and behaviours and see what effects they may have on both the patient and the doctors themselves. since a fuller range might be possible in future situations, learners should amplify the variability and intensity of their responses as much as possible, viii shifting from a polite and reassuring attitude to a rather aggressive, impolite and even uncaring mode. learners need to notice how facial expressions, hand gestures and body movements change together with the use of a different oral style. these acting-out activities are usually engaging, although some learners might be shy and unwilling to take on a certain role. however, the more they manage to reproduce and identify with various behavioural patterns, the more effective these activities will be. role-playing offers an opportunity to act out various feelings and to learn the language required to express them. iv. active listening and watching language acquisition and learning necessarily entail processes of imitation and subsequent internalisation of exemplars. in an l1 setting there is a natural and continuous exposure to stimuli that are spontaneously and unconsciously absorbed from medical english teaching and beyond: a multimodal and integrated approach language value 9 (1), 160–183 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 169 an early age. learners of a second or foreign language, instead, need to be guided and instructed to develop that metalinguistic knowledge required for grammatically accurate and socio-linguistically appropriate production. hence the importance of exposing learners to authentic language inputs, while at the same time also asking them to actively reflect on these inputs. transcription exercises, although difficult and time consuming, prove useful to work on these two aspects simultaneously. the instructor should pause, rewind and play the video segment as many times as necessary to allow learners to listen to and transcribe the actual conversation. the next suggested activity consists in asking learners to notice the differences between the expressions and speaking style used by the doctor in the recording and their previous creative version of the interaction with the patient. in the cases in which this task has been implemented, learners have often reported that their phrasing is not as natural and loose as the doctor’s way of speaking. although they are generally able to structure a conversation with a potential patient in english, they present difficulties in the choice of rhetorical strategies. therefore, it is important to explicitly inform learners about the repertoire of devices at their disposal. the following sections examine five phenomena (i.e. repetition and reformulation, hedging, informality, figurative language and the expression of empathy/sympathy), which have been identified as recurrent features of doctor-patient communication and recognised as essential elements for successful medical interactions (franceschi 2017). it will also be observed how the use of these elements may be sustained by accompanying non-verbal signals that validate verbal information. learners should be made aware of these features of spoken medical discourse through a number of multi-modal activities that will be outlined below. iv.i. repetition and reformulation repetition and reformulation are typically two sides of the same coin (gülich 2003), meaning that they have the same function, i.e. that of presenting facts in a simplified and easier-to-understand way. since medical discourse is often filled with a wealth of technical terminology patients may not be necessarily familiar with, it is important for doctors to be able to rephrase concepts using simpler language and synonyms. this is a particularly important aspect to be considered especially by those learners who are l1 daniele franceschi language value 9 (1), 160–183 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 170 speakers of a romance language, such as italian, french, spanish, etc. these learner populations have a tendency to be verbose and to use copious latin-based vocabulary due to issues of language transfer. words of latin origin, however, are usually considered formal in english and are not always easy to understand for the layperson. the following examples show how the doctor in the video segment examined successfully manages to substitute medicalese ix with plain english and express the same idea in other, more straightforward words: x (1) we have not seen the remission, in other words the getting rid of the virus, just with alternative medicine. (2) and i’m wondering if you know anybody that has gone through standard of care treatment with the, we call it adjunctive, meaning ‘in addition to’ standard of care, these adjunctive treatments. (3) the fluid in the abdomen is called ascites. another common technique to ensure that a patient understands what is being talked about is the introduction of synonyms and paraphrases, often resulting in the use of doublets as well as of lists of several items that essentially express the same idea: (4) some patients with genotype two can even take fewer weeks of therapy, but because you have significant fibrosis and scarring […]. (5) you know, working out in the farm, where you get injuries and sores and cuts and bruises and scrapes, that’s ways of again transmitting blood between people that would be minor and nothing that you would pay attention to, but potentially could have occurred […]. after being shown some instances of these rhetorical strategies, as in the examples above, learners should be asked to identify similar phenomena of simplification. tables 5 and 6 present activities aimed at helping learners to develop their ability to repeat and reformulate ideas. table 5. example of a vocabulary exercise on synonymous words and expressions medical english teaching and beyond: a multimodal and integrated approach language value 9 (1), 160–183 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 171 identify words and expressions in the following sentences that are synonyms or basically express the same concept 1) what our therapies can do is help minimise the toxicity or side effects of standard of care therapy. 2) there are some good studies that show that with weight loss and exercise that can be reversed. […] there are good studies that show that that can be turned around. table 6. example of a vocabulary exercise on reformulation (explanation) underline the expressions in the following sentences that provide an explanation of the words in bold 1) […] when you have underlying, active sores, if you will, the hepatitis, then the alcohol is much more damaging than it would be to a normal liver. 2) some of them already have very advanced disease, cirrhosis, which would be at the one extreme of severe scarring damage to the liver. finally, but just as importantly, learners will observe the association of the various verbal strategies (used by the doctors to reformulate and simplify their speech) with non-verbal cues that appear to have the same function. table 7 below presents a succession of images and the corresponding text, which learners will have previously transcribed. this time they will be asked to identify the verbal elements that are being given prominence to through the use of gestures. table 7. example of a completed multimodal listening comprehension/watching exercise identify those words and phrases that hand gestures appear to highlight image frame non-verbal behaviour & interpretation verbal text 1 bringing hands together vertically (indicates a narrower space) what our therapies can do is help minimise the toxicity or side effects of standard of care therapy daniele franceschi language value 9 (1), 160–183 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 172 2 moving left hand to one side as if supporting something (describes the idea of there being another possibility) and i’m wondering if you know anybody that has gone through standard of care treatment with the, we call it adjunctive…, 3 lifting left hand as if preparing to put something into a container (simulates the movement of ‘adding’ something to something else) … meaning ‘in addition to’ standard of care, … 4 bringing hands together as if holding something round (suggests holding something heavy) … these adjunctive treatments. it is obvious that hand gestures are used here to aid the patient’s comprehension of complex lexical items, such as minimise and adjunctive. they appear to have the same goal as paraphrases and reformulations, i.e. the simplification of a certain concept, by means of an iconic or metaphoric illustration of the meaning of words. iv.ii. hedging hedging (lakoff 1972) is a useful rhetorical strategy for doctors who often need to speak with tact and soften the blow of what they are communicating, for instance while giving a diagnosis. it consists in not speaking too directly thanks to the use of elements, called ‘hedges’, aimed at mitigating the emotional impact on the addressee of what is being discussed. hedging may also have other functions (cf. frazer 2010), e.g. suggesting that the speaker is not fully committed to what is being said. in the conversations examined for the present study, the doctors attempt to persuade their patient that standard of care therapy is the best option for his condition, despite the possibility of medical english teaching and beyond: a multimodal and integrated approach language value 9 (1), 160–183 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 173 a number of side effects that he may experience while on treatment. the patient fears that these side effects might aggravate other problems he has and for which he is also being treated. therefore, the doctors have to find a way of encouraging him to follow their advice, while at the same time dealing with his worries and taking his requests into consideration. this is an example of hedged communication: (6) well, the interferon side effects make you feel like you have [pause] the flu, to some extent. erm, you may have some loss of appetite, may lose a little weight on treatment. erm, the ribavirin might give you, oh, sometimes a little funny taste in the mouth, sometimes a little soreness, maybe some rash. the elements in bold in this example are used to attenuate the force of the utterance and perhaps allow the patient to accept the doctor’s advice more easily. although the initial well suggests that there is indeed a likelihood of side effects, such a verbally unexpressed message is mitigated by the use of the two modal verbs may and might, the adverbs sometimes and maybe, and the expression a little. the interjections (erm, oh) and the pause also seem to attenuate the force of the utterance, because they give the doctor time to think and to present facts in a less direct way. the modal items in particular introduce optionality and help to minimise the threat potentially perceived in the doctor’s words. learners should be asked to read examples like this one aloud and compare them with their unhedged (fabricated) counterparts in order to see what changes in terms of tone. other activities may consist in identifying elements with a similar hedging function, exemplified in table 8 below, or in adding them to sentences where none of these elements appear, as in table 9: table 8. example of an exercise on the use of hedges (i) exercise: identify hedges in the following sentences 1) it also looks like being stage three, which you’ve seen the model of the liver and how the next stage is cirrhosis, which is the worst, you know, stage that you can get to, kind of the final stage with hepatitis c, that your condition which it sounds like you have had for a while, you know, that case scenario was non-a non-b was hepatitis c from what we can tell. 2) […] there was a recent study with acupuncture that actually just showed that this is the case in people with hepatitis c. table 9. example of an exercise on the use of hedges (ii) daniele franceschi language value 9 (1), 160–183 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 174 exercise: add linguistic hedges to the following sentences 1) now it’s time for you to consider getting the hep c treated and trying to get rid of that infection. 2) in that case you must consider the treatment. it is interesting to observe how the use of non-verbal cues may also play a role in allowing utterances to be perceived as less assertive. this is possible when hand gestures, for instance, visually depict the semantic content of hedges. learners should therefore be engaged in activities that draw their attention to the possibility of supplementing spoken language with non-verbal items, which may facilitate communication and ultimately have an impact on the likelihood of the patient’s compliance. in order for learners to take a more active role in the teaching and learning process, they will be asked to tell the instructor to pause the video when a certain form of behaviour on the part of the doctor appears to support the use and function of linguistic hedges. table 10 below shows what learners should ideally be able to do while or after watching a segment of a hedged doctor-patient dialogue. table 10. example of a completed multimodal listening comprehension/watching exercise on the use of hedging devices highlight linguistic hedges in the text and identify co-occurring non-verbal cues non-verbal behaviour & interpretation verbal text doctor raises left hand towards his mouth, brings thumb and index finger together, with squinting eyes (physically reproduces the concept of ‘smallness’); erm, the ribavirin might give you, oh, sometimes a little funny taste in the mouth, sometimes a little soreness, maybe some rash. iv.iii. informality we have already observed in section iv.i. above that replacing latin-based terminology with words and expressions of anglo-saxon origin is likely to facilitate comprehension by the layperson. the avoidance of technical vocabulary produces an informal, often colloquial style, which may be used in those contexts where the need for clarity is particularly strong, e.g. when doctors need to inform and educate patients about surgical procedures. in the example below, for instance, all the verbs used by the doctor are multi-word verbs describing straightforwardly how a liver biopsy is performed. such a medical english teaching and beyond: a multimodal and integrated approach language value 9 (1), 160–183 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 175 style is assumed to soften the perception of fear and danger associated with the description of the procedure in question: (7) your liver is up here under the ribs. we numb up the area of the skin and we put the needle directly into the liver, we suck up a little piece of liver and take it back out. […] and the piece of liver that we take out, it’s about as thick as the lead in the lead pencil, not the pencil itself, just the lead. this is an example of recipient-tailored language use (brown and fraser 1979), aimed at establishing doctor-patient alignment. learners of medical english need to be aware of the fact that the use of a certain type of register may have a significant impact on the quality of the relationship with patients. therefore, they should experiment with different speaking styles and consider what effects they may bring about. for instance, table 11 below shows an example task where learners substitute the underlined items with more formal words and expressions carrying the same meanings. table 11. example of a completed exercise on register variation exercise: provide latin-based alternatives to the underlined verb phrases your liver is up here under the ribs. we numb up (anaesthetise) the area of the skin and we put (insert) the needle directly into the liver, we suck up (suction) a little piece of liver and take it back out (extract). […] and the piece of liver that we take out (extract), it’s about as thick as the lead in the lead pencil, not the pencil itself, just the lead. another activity may consist in simply asking learners to identify instances of informal language use in a series of sentences, as in table 12 below, in order to draw their attention to the fact that register variations may be due to different elements, e.g. the presence of colloquialisms, onomatopoeic phrases and slang expressions. table 12. example of an exercise on register variation exercise: identify colloquial elements in the following sentences 1) well, turns out, if you get rid of the hepatitis c with treatment, there’s a good chance that your risk of cancer is gonna go way down. 2) the biopsy itself, the needle is in there less than a second. boom boom, it’s done! 3) why the heck would you want treatment? daniele franceschi language value 9 (1), 160–183 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 176 generally speaking, it may be argued that the use of body language and gestures emphasise informality and add a sense of commitment and enthusiasm to what the doctor is talking about. instead of focusing on a fragment of a videoed doctor-patient interaction, learners could be invited to watch a longer segment and locate all those relational signals that help to establish an informal rapport. iv.iv. figurative language speaking figuratively, i.e. by means of similes and metaphors, is a common strategy that doctors use to increase message clarity, as can be observed in the following example, in which hepatitis c infections are compared to different types of cars: (8) cos hepatitis c is more than one virus, if you will. there are different subtypes, just like ford has different kinds of cars, they are all fords, but one’s a truck and one’s an suv etc. hepatitis c has different subtypes. in the data examined, hepatitis c is also figuratively associated to a fire and drinking alcohol is presented as dangerous for the liver of a person with hepatitis c as pouring gasoline on fire would be (9). the hepatitis c virus is then indirectly referred to as a friend when it remains dormant and does not cause any complications (10). the latter meaning is activated by the phrasal expression to get along alright together, which is normally used to refer to people who are on good terms: (9) the combination of alcohol with active hepatitis, i look at this as kind of putting alcohol on a fire or putting gasoline on a fire, it just makes the fire worse. (10) […] and their disease never progressed anywhere very seriously. so for some reason their body and the virus are kind of getting along alright together, without major damage occurring. a rather challenging, creative activity may consist in asking learners to enrich the descriptions and explanations provided by doctors, in the conversations they analyse, with imagined scenarios that compare different aspects on the basis of qualities they have in common, as in the examples above. such a technique seems to facilitate comprehension of both human anatomy and medical conditions and processes. the doctors under scrutiny repeatedly also show their patients anatomical models and medical english teaching and beyond: a multimodal and integrated approach language value 9 (1), 160–183 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 177 encourage them to think in terms of comparisons and associations, as exemplified in table 13 below. table 13. a doctor’s use of a liver model to aid the patient’s understanding of its physiological/pathological anatomy image frame non-verbal behaviour & interpretation verbal text 1 showing a healthy liver model, rubbing hand on its surface (indicates it has a smooth surface) this piece of a liver, if you will, is what a normal liver would look like. it’s kinda like what you’d see in a supermarket. you know, just kind of smooth and a little reddishpurple, but a very smooth, shiny, nice surface 2 showing a cirrhotic liver model, pointing to its surface (indicates that it has a very hard, nonsmooth surface) this would be cirrhosis, which would be stage four disease. lumpy, bumpy, rock hard. […] cirrhotic liver is […], it literally feels like a rock since it might be complicated for learners to use objects and models in the language classroom, they could simply try to draw or find photos on the internet in order to complement their talking with visual aids or props. iv.v. empathy and sympathy the doctor’s ability to imagine himself/herself in the patient’s position, thus experiencing the emotions and ideas of that person (empathy), will most probably activate feelings of sorrow and compassion (sympathy) and then a willingness to help. the development of both empathy and sympathy seems to play a fundamental role in the doctor-patient relationship (anfossi & numico 2004, halpern 2003, larson & yao 2005, williams & bendlow 1996). the analysis of the data used for the present study has suggested that initially uncooperative patients, who refuse to undergo treatment and daniele franceschi language value 9 (1), 160–183 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 178 to follow their doctor’s advice, may eventually change their attitude if approached in a suitable communicative style that shows understanding and care. the latter elements therefore appear as crucial for building trust and achieving patients’ compliance. the expression of sympathy and empathy needs to be made explicit both linguistically and non-linguistically, i.e. it has to translate in the use of specific language patterns and also find support in a series of non-verbal signals that sustain what words are communicating. these two aspects are bound together and cannot contradict each other. in other words, there has to be a correspondence between the choice of words and expressions that doctors use and their behaviour. caring words alone would not be enough if the doctor’s attitude expressed disinterest, for instance. therefore, learners of medical english should be constantly reminded of the importance of accompanying their speech with suitable behaviours, thus reflecting their ideas and intentions. the multi-modal transcription in table 14 shows how the verbal and non-verbal dimensions can be felicitously combined for effective and affective communication. table 14. showing and expressing sympathy/empathy image frame non-verbal behaviour & interpretation verbal text 1 keeping lips shut, looking at patient with a sad expression, almost about to cry (simply listens and deeply sympathises/empathises with the patient) i hear you. i think that i’m not gonna take your alcohol away from you right this minute, but […]. and so, i hear you, i hear that this is really important for you and that you’re not ready to give it up…, 2 keeps looking at patient, but with head slightly turned to the right (suggests that she is considering things from another perspective), hands pointing together (suggests the idea of cooperation) …, but if you are willing to talk about alternatives i can certainly help you in that, in that way. i’m willing to be there for you and work with you in terms of being able to trade the alcohol for those alternatives to ptsd. medical english teaching and beyond: a multimodal and integrated approach language value 9 (1), 160–183 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 179 learners should discuss techniques and brainstorm ways to express empathy and sympathy that they feel most comfortable with. owing to individual differences in personality, certain communicative styles may be perceived as more or less natural or difficult to adopt. it is therefore crucial to assist learners in finding a personal compromise in their choice of the type of language and behaviour they are willing to use with patients, within their own abilities and limits. v. conclusions and future perspectives this article has put forward some alternative classroom activities for teaching medical english multi-modally, thus going beyond what is usually found in esp texts and coursebooks to this day. the basic assumption is that meaning does not lie solely in the choice of language forms and strategies in given situations, but it is also created in the course of the interaction via non-verbal signs (argyle 1975/1988, poyatos 1992, wharton 2009). this is particularly true in doctor-patient exchanges, in which what is left unsaid and is otherwise communicated appears to be of paramount importance for building rapport and trust. such an aspect, however, has not been taken into consideration sufficiently in english language teaching materials geared towards the medical profession. future research should be aimed at producing a systematic taxonomy of non-verbal behaviours that doctors could adopt in various situations of their daily practice with patients. while medical staff certainly know how to express thoughts and feelings verbally, they seem to find it much harder to pinpoint their natural behaviour nonverbally in different contexts, e.g. to express concern, disappointment, empathy and so forth. this consideration raises a number of questions. it seems clear that there is a need to train english language instructors for healthcare and medicine to combine their teaching skills with specific competences and knowledge that are usually required of psychologists and counsellors. this is certainly not an easy task, as it presupposes a significant change in our training programmes. in addition, there are both cultural and gender-related issues that need to be observed if a behavioural repertoire were to be proposed for its use in the language classroom. what works in one country might be daniele franceschi language value 9 (1), 160–183 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 180 viewed as culturally inappropriate in another. the same applies to the perceived level of acceptability in the use of certain non-verbal elements by men and women doctors with their male or female patients. notes i these interviews are part of a database prepared by caring ambassadors program inc., oregon city, or, which can be accessed for free at http://hepcchallenge.org. i would like to thank lorren sandt (executive director of caring ambassadors program inc.) and dr lyn patrick (medical director at progressive medical education, irvine, ca, www.progressivemedicaleducation.com) for allowing me to use the interviews and reproduce some images for my research. ii authentic video-recorded doctor-patient dialogues are extremely difficult to find and use because of privacy issues. however, there are several medical drama tv series, which may also be used for teaching purposes, despite their tendency to present situations in a more dramatised way. iii kress & van leeuwen (2001: 20) have defined multimodality as “the use of several semiotic modes in the design of a semiotic product or event, together with the particular way in which these modes are combined – they may for instance reinforce each other […], fulfil complementary roles […], or be hierarchically ordered”. iv this can be easily verified by checking the curricula of university courses on-line. the university of yale, for instance, only offers basic and clinical courses for students of medicine (e.g. energy and metabolism, genes and development, human anatomy) and does not seem to include modules on more ‘peripheral’ topics, such as communication (http://medicine.yale.edu/education/curriculum/integrated/index.aspx). the same applies to courses offered by harvard-mit programmes in health sciences (https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/find-by-topic/), which are also strictly medicine-oriented to the detriment of a more humanistic approach to healthcare. v 2-3 minutes of silence can actually be perceived as quite long by the language instructor, who usually promotes frequent spoken interaction in the classroom. however, it is important not to interrupt this silent phase in that it helps learners to observe rather than listen. vi see lambertz (2011) for a discussion and a review of the literature on the use of backchannels to show engaged listenership. vii it would be useful to encourage learners to think of alternative expressions, possibly with different levels of formality, to what they have written. for instance, instead of saying what can i do for you? a conversation with a patient might begin with other questions, such as what brings you here today? or how can i help you? and so on. viii this technique is commonly used in gestalt therapy (naranjo 1993). it proves particularly powerful and effective for making people more aware of the costs/harms/risks and benefits of a certain behaviour. ix medicalese is the jargon used by medical and healthcare professionals. x technical terms are in bold, while their explanations have been underlined. it is also interesting to note that the reformulations are often introduced by a word or phrase signalling that we are faced with a paraphrase into a more popularised/ordinary style. these words or phrases have been italicised. medical english teaching and beyond: a multimodal and integrated approach 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(eds.) 2015. word formation and transparency in medical english. newcastle upon tyne: cambridge scholars publishing. yasmeen, b.h.n. 2013. communication: a basic skill of medical practice. northern international medical college journal 5 (1): 291-292. wharton, t. 2009. pragmatics and non-verbal communication. cambridge: cambridge university press. williams, s. j. and bendlow, g. 1996. “emotions, health and illness: the ‘missing link’ in medical sociology.” in v. james and j. gabe (eds.), health and the sociology of emotions. oxford: blackwell, 25-53. received: 31 january 2017 accepted: 20 february 2017 cite this article as: franceschi, daniele. 2017. “medical english teaching and beyond: a multimodal and integrated approach”. language value 9 (1), 160-183. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2017.9.7 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue july 2017, volume 9, number 1 pp. 132-159 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2017.9.6 132 up2b2: playing english grammar games at the b2 level irina argüelles álvarez irina.arguelles@upm.es margarita martínez núñez margarita.martinez@upm.es ana belén garcía hernando anabelen.garcia@upm.es antonio da silva fariña antonio.dasilva@upm.es universidad politécnica de madrid, spain abstract the study presented herein is framed within the mobile assisted language learning (mall) approach and presents the results from the use of an original mobile app, developed by the research team, on the part of 73 students. the app prototype consists of multiple choice questions and answers that assess varied aspects of the grammar, vocabulary and use of english at level b2 according to the common european framework of reference for languages (cefrl). the application presents motivating gamification components that aim at enhancing students’ participation and regular use of the game. some of these gamification features are response time, use of competition and training tests, and a score ranking based on nicknames. the study uses different indexes in order to describe the use of the platform and qualitative and quantitative indicators to reach positive conclusions related to students’ increased motivation and improvement in their grammar and vocabulary competence levels. keywords: applications in subject areas; architectures for educational technology system; evaluation of cal systems; post-secondary education; mobile assisted language learning i. introduction universities and other tertiary level centres or institutions are today experiencing a global revolution for which internationalization is a priority if they are to survive. bilingual programmes across europe, degrees taught in english as a medium of instruction (emi programmes) or erasmus+ student and teacher mobility imply the need to demonstrate an adequate level of proficiency in english which most universities across europe have established as b2, according to the common european framework of reference for languages (cefrl). a b2 level has been established as the minimum standard for engineering students at the universidad politécnica de madrid (upm) to obtain their degree, although placement tests carried out across the university for the last seven years place most of them at an a2/b1 level. this means, for many students, two levels below the required one. to deal with this and other similar situations, some official programmes at different european universities have incorporated subjects that mailto:irina.arguelles@upm.es mailto:margarita.martinez@upm.es mailto:anabelen.garcia@upm.es mailto:antonio.dasilva@upm.es up2b2: playing english grammar games at the b2 level language value 9 (1),132–159 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 133 aim to prepare the students to obtain the required b2 certification. others have opted for an extracurricular offer with or without the participation of the language centres in the same universities when such language centres exist. in the last few years, the upm has offered both optional subjects in its degrees as well as free-elective european credits through extracurricular training, in order to prepare students preferably for the “test of english for international communication” (toeic), but more generally for most external certifications included in the list provided by the crue (conferencia de rectores de universidades españolas – spanish universities rector conference) as official certifications (crue acreditación en idiomas) http://www.acreditacion.crue.org/. furthermore, several innovation projects which address the learning of english i have been developed by groups under innovation university internal calls for internationalization. our research was developed under one of these innovation projects. a game, called up2b2, was presented to enhance and motivate the practice of english grammar and vocabulary at a b2 level on the part of the students (argüelles álvarez et al. 2015). the project was framed within mobile assisted language learning (mall) (viberg and grönlund 2012, chinnery 2006), which is increasingly associated with mobile gaming, as kukulska-hulme (2009: 159) puts it, the basic idea being that students use their mobile devices to learn languages through games. the concept of gamification (kapp 2012, werbach 2014) has therefore been directly associated with mall. more specifically, the aim of our research was to design and test a multiple-choice question and answer game to review different aspects of grammar, vocabulary and use of language at the b2 proficiency level. the game was considered a complement to other possible regular or extracurricular english courses that the students at the escuela técnica superior de ingeniería y sistemas de telecomunicación could be attending. it was offered to 73 students who were at either higher a2 or b1 english level. all these students had been admitted and were enrolled in the groups preparing for the b2 certification exam at the upm. initially, the aim was twofold. on the one hand, it intended to study the degree of improvement, if any, in the proficiency level of those students who used the app regularly as compared with those students who did not. on the other hand, the aim was to reach conclusions regarding motivational aspects which irina argüelles álvarez, margarita martínez núñez, ana belén garcía hernando and antonio da silva fariña language value 9 (1),132–159 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 134 could derive from the use of the gamification features in the app to learn vocabulary and grammar. several studies point to the contribution of the mall approach to learning. viberg and grönlund (2012) revise research carried out in the field of mall from 2007 to 2012 and conclude that mall enhances the learning of foreign languages. burston (2013) presents annotated bibliography of implementation studies in mall, many of them comparing groups in preand post-tests with positive results in listening skills, vocabulary learning, grammar knowledge, reading comprehension and writing skills (spelling, grammar, punctuation, editing or re-drafting) apart from other more general gains in motivation to learn, e.g. reflection on language usage or use of strategies and positive interaction. rico et al. (2015) also highlight the benefits of mall and gamebased learning. motivation has been found to be vital to increase students’ participation and success (milligan et al. 2013). individual motivation is related to the reasons to do something (ryan and deci 2000). an individual is intrinsically motivated to carry out an activity for the mere satisfaction inherent in the activity, whereas they will be extrinsically motivated by the impulse to complete an activity to get a desired result. gamification combines these two types of motivation: it provides extrinsic rewards such as levels, points or badges, which improve engagement, in addition to raising feelings of mastery achievement, autonomy and sense of belonging (muntean 2011). several studies have demonstrated the added value of motivation to the learning process when incorporating typical features of games (osma ruiz et al. 2015a, 2015b). others have shown that students prefer to use games as a means to learn grammar or vocabulary not only because they find it more enjoyable and challenging, but also because they find the learning more fruitful and long-lasting (lui 2014). furthermore, benefits of learning languages through the use of apps that integrate gamification features are reported in sauerland et al. (2015) or figueroa (2015). mosavi-miangah and nezarat (2012) add to these conclusions and the well-known concept of “anytime/anywhere” (ubiquitous learning or u-learning in jung 2014) other advantages and also disadvantages of mobile language learning. the pros include a better use of the students’ free time, while some of the cons would be reading up2b2: playing english grammar games at the b2 level language value 9 (1),132–159 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 135 difficulties on small screens, problems to complete specific tasks mostly due to an inappropriate initial design – activities that take too long to complete on the mobile devices and/or lack or cost of internet access (stockwell 2008) – or, most frequently, issues related to usability and accessibility (jordano de la torre et al. 2013 cited in pareja et al. 2016). the study of the aspects specifically related to the use of a mobile app to learn are therefore also of great interest. this is the reason why, in our study, we added a third aim to the two already mentioned: to analyse parameters that characterize some of the user patterns, so as to reach some preliminary conclusions on ubiquitous learning. ii. context the app prototype, up2b2, was developed by the multidisciplinary educational innovation group (giem) ii in the academic year 2014-2015 (argüelles álvarez et al. 2015). the repository of questions and answers comes from former pen and paper proficiency exams that had been carried out for the previous three academic years (six semesters) across the university and had afterwards been validated by members of the group. validity and reliability issues were addressed in (argüelles álvarez 2013) and (argüelles álvarez and martínez núñez 2015), based on more than 2,000 answers to each of the questions and answers that made up the final bank of 500 questions and answers for the app. as described in the introduction section, up2b2 presents a gamification component which seeks to motivate students using it. our hypothesis is that the competitiveness features of the activities will favour the regular use of the game and the students’ interest in the app (ryu 2013, sykes and reinhardt 2013, osma ruiz et al. 2015a, 2015b). as mentioned earlier, the aim of our research is threefold: firstly, different indexes have been defined for monitoring the platform and to reach conclusions regarding the extent to which a mall methodology influences an improvement in proficiency, if any. secondly, we aim to study the motivational factors related to the use of mall together with the inclusion of several gamification features in the learning process. lastly, ubiquitous learning is preliminary studied based on some patterns of irina argüelles álvarez, margarita martínez núñez, ana belén garcía hernando and antonio da silva fariña language value 9 (1),132–159 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 136 use, as these are important components in any mobile-based non-formal learning process. based on previous research on motivation by stockwell (2013) or ushioda (2013), questionnaires were purposefully designed (appendix i) to look for students’ perceptions and perspectives in relation to mobile language learning. the results of these questionnaires were analysed qualitatively by a frequency likert scale and correlation spearman’s coefficient. these questionnaires were prepared and administered together with the post-test that 73 students completed after a period of four months’ training preceded by a pre-test. the pre/post-tests, as noted above, aimed to assess improvements in students’ proficiency levels, and gave rise to the quantitative results that will be presented later. iii. description of the app iii.1. application requirements and design the system that realizes the up2b2 application has been designed to meet a set of requirements. in the following we summarize these requirements together with the rationale behind them:  the game has to be playable by using the widest possible range of mobile/nonmobile devices (client devices in what follows), including smartphones (android, ios or others), tablets and personal computers. since students are going to use their own equipment to play the game, this requirement makes it easier for more students to enter the system no matter what specific device they have.  the players are included in a ranking based on their score. the ranking is made public but each player is shown by their nickname instead of their real name. this requisite defines the up2b2 gamification features the effects of which are evaluated in this work.  the database of multiple-choice questions together with their associated metainformation (correct answer, category, level of difficulty) is maintained on a server. the client device should not store the questions but download them online just at the up2b2: playing english grammar games at the b2 level language value 9 (1),132–159 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 137 time when they are needed to play. this enables the questions to be updated without having to update all the locally installed apps and it also saves memory space on the client devices.  stemming from the previous requisite, the client device needs to have an operative internet access whenever the player wants to do a test. any additional technical requisite on the client device should be kept at a minimum, for the same reasons set out in the first point above.  the server also has to store the parameters that define the main characteristics of the game: the ranking of the different players, the maximum time to perform each test, whether there is a maximum time of inactivity after which the user loses points, etc. again, this allows the game parameters to be updated without having to force all the users to update the app on their devices.  the server should provide the administrator with the possibility of updating both the questions in the database and the configuration of the game parameters so that all the changes take place at the same time. given the requirements presented, we chose web technologies to develop up2b2 and it was implemented as a multiplatform webapp. the client-side, which implements the user interface, has as the sole requisite a web browser capable of executing javascript code and applying css (cascading style sheets) rules. the vast majority of modern devices fulfil these basic requirements. moreover, we produced native versions of the app for android and ios users, although the web-based access is always available on any platform. irina argüelles álvarez, margarita martínez núñez, ana belén garcía hernando and antonio da silva fariña language value 9 (1),132–159 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 138 figure 1. main technologies used by the up2b2 app. the application was designed to be adaptive, suitable for different screen sizes and services. visually attractive css components were used, which greatly resemble those on the most popular platforms and contribute to a distinctive look-and-feel aspect, very similar to native applications. the server-side, i.e. the back end of the application, is deployed on a specific server accessible via the internet and provides all the necessary management of users and application parameters and hosts the questions database. figure 1 shows a schematic representation of the main elements involved in up2b2 and their associated technologies. we would like to refer the reader interested in more technical details to (argüelles álvarez et al. 2015). up2b2: playing english grammar games at the b2 level language value 9 (1),132–159 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 139 iii.2. introduction of gamification features: competition tests as mentioned in the introduction to the study, the aim of the gamification features included is to increase the students’ motivation in the use of the application, thus favouring their training in the language aspects that can be exercised through it. we designed a system by which users obtain points after having completed competition tests. these points serve to order the users on the participants’ global ranking so that everyone can check their position on it. the number of points that each user gets results from their language competence, on the one hand, and the speed when answering the competition tests, on the other. furthermore, a hysteresis component has been introduced to consider not only the last test completed but also the previous ones, with a weight that decreases exponentially. this means that whenever the user completes a new competition test, the score obtained is weighted equally (50% each) with their previous score, in order to obtain the updated number of points of the player. every player starts the game with 0 points. the number of points obtained in a specific competition test is calculated as shown in table 1. table 1. operations made to obtain the score in a competition test. p_test = p_competence + p_speed. p_competence = 9 x (num. of correct answers) – 4 x (num. of mistakes). p_speed = +10 (if the test is completed in less than half the maximum time established) or -10 (in the opposite case). from the way the score is calculated and bearing in mind that every competition test consists of ten questions, it can be deduced that the number of points of each student is always between -50 and +100. the weighting derived from the hysteresis favours that the “new stars”, who improve fast from lower scores, get more points in absolute value than those who have a longer history of excellent results. this aspect is not by chance, as there are in fact many seasonal competition sports (e.g. tennis) that establish, in a similar way, a ranking mechanism that favours those players who are situated in a lower position and improve significantly. this scoring procedure increases competitiveness and forces the participants who are situated in higher positions to maintain a sustained effort in order to defend their position in the ranking. irina argüelles álvarez, margarita martínez núñez, ana belén garcía hernando and antonio da silva fariña language value 9 (1),132–159 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 140 the platform also provides the option to subtract points if the user spends a given amount of time without doing any competition test (e.g. 48 hours) and so regularity in the use of the game is promoted through the game itself. nevertheless, for the current academic year we have considered it more suitable not to activate this option to control a possible negative effect in the case of those users who experience loss of points in the ranking due to non-regular use. the users were introduced into the system by their real names and email addresses. they were provided with an initial random password but they could (and were recommended to) change both their username (their nickname) and password the first time they entered the application. therefore, the user ranking shows nicknames instead of real names, as can be seen on the right-hand side of figure 2. figure 2. feedback given to students through training tests (left and centre) and players ranking associated to competition tests (right). iii.3. feedback and specific categories review: training tests it should not be forgotten that the main aim of the up2b2 application is to offer further training in the english language at a b2 level. the users can present different needs to reinforce specific aspects of the language (e.g. word order), and they could find it useful to receive feedback regarding the categories where they perform better or worse according to the historical record maintained in the server. up2b2: playing english grammar games at the b2 level language value 9 (1),132–159 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 141 pursuing this aim and in addition to the competition tests, the user can also select training tests. the goal of these tests is to prepare the students before the actual use of the competition ones. the results on training tests do not modify the score obtained by the user in competition as the objective of the training tests is only of a formative nature. this modality allows the user to select the category he/she wants to train (grammar, vocabulary, word order or verbs) or to opt for a random mixture of categories in a way similar to what they are expected to do in competition tests (assorted category). the training tests have fewer time restrictions than the competition ones; besides, for every question answered, the results are clearly reported, and in the case of not having succeeded, the correct option is highlighted (see figure 2, left-hand side and centre). iv. research methodology iv.i methodology followed for the study from the research team’s experience in previous innovation projects, students usually report that they feel overloaded when asked to collaborate in innovation research. the main reason they give is that they have to deal with too many resources in their regular courses and researchers ask them to use a new one, an app in our case. thus, they often ask for structured environments, clear instructions and a high degree of orientation when it comes to incorporating new tools into their learning. irina argüelles álvarez, margarita martínez núñez, ana belén garcía hernando and antonio da silva fariña language value 9 (1),132–159 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 142 up2b2 v0: first prototype of app and learning contents results of pilot test: inputs for the second phase of app and materials up2b2: final app and materials ready for final evaluation final results and conclusions testing of first prototype in pilot environment second phase of: • app.enhancement. • learning mat. completion. first phase of: • app. design & implem. • learning materials. final evaluation start: figure 3. methodology followed for up2b2. the design, development, validation and test methodology that we have followed for the up2b2 system follows a spiral model (see figure 3). two phases are considered to be necessary for the design and implementation in order to better adapt the app to the needs of real users. in the first phase (argüelles álvarez et al. 2015) the prototype was tried out by a small group of students in a closed and controlled environment to analyse its usability, since this is one of the aspects considered important from the initial design, as highlighted in previous research (ali et al. 2015, jordano de la torre et al. 2013 cited in pareja et al. 2016). this first phase allowed us to develop the second version of the app, as well as to improve the server database with additional questions, up to around 500, as stated earlier. it also made us aware of the importance of clearly informing the users on the specificities of the app in order to encourage its usage before the evaluation. thus, we followed an ordered list of stages for the second phase of up2b2, paying special attention to the information given to the students, not only before the evaluation period but also during it. up2b2: playing english grammar games at the b2 level language value 9 (1),132–159 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 143 the study was carried out during the second semester (spring semester) of the academic year 2015-2016. firstly, in-class information was given to the students at the beginning of the academic semester. either one or two teachers from the research team gave a brief talk to the groups of students that were offered the possibility of using up2b2. in this way, students learnt about the basics of the app and they knew beforehand that they would receive an automatic mail with the necessary information to start the process. all potential users had previously been given access to the aforementioned moodle site, and the automatic email was sent to invite them into this platform. once they had logged in, students could find the instructions to officially enrol in the up2b2 activity. those students who decided to participate had to fill in a short questionnaire that was useful for characterizing the sample (demographical data, studies-related data and information on their previous experience in using apps to learn english). secondly, they had to do a placement test (i.e. the pre-test) to estimate their initial level of english. we used the oxford quick placement test v2 for this purpose. once they had finished, they received a second e-mail, this time personalized, which provided each student with their initial username and password to access the up2b2 app. students could contact the up2b2 team throughout the competition period by using a specific email address in case they had any doubts or problems. after this period had expired, participants were again asked to log into the moodle site in order to repeat the placement test (i.e. the post-test) and to fill in a final survey. the results of this final survey would be analysed by the research team to measure their satisfaction while studying english with the app. iv.ii characterization of the sample and statistical analysis the number of students selected for the study was 73. the group was randomly chosen among the individuals who were enrolled in the subject introduction to english for professional and academic communication i and ii, two b2 level preparatory subjects that are taught in different engineering degrees at the upm. the sample was split into two: the experimental group (63 individuals) and the control group (10 individuals). since most students wanted to use the app, the researchers opted for a small control group (fidalgo-blanco et al. 2016). nevertheless, this control group would have enough irina argüelles álvarez, margarita martínez núñez, ana belén garcía hernando and antonio da silva fariña language value 9 (1),132–159 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 144 subjects to ensure that both the experimental and the control groups were statistically homogeneous according to the levene statistic, as shown in table 2. table 2. characterization of the sample. characterization of english level and study habits group % (nº) total % (nº) initial level control experimental a2 30% (3) 26.98% (17) 28.76% (21) b1 50% (5) 55.55% (35) 54.80% (40) b2 20% (2) 17.46% (11) 16.44% (12) study time 1 : less than 1 hour 30% (3) 39.68% (25) 38.35% (28) 2 : between 1 and 3 hours 50% (5) 36.50% (23) 38.35% (28) 3 : between 3 and 5 hours 20% (7) 19.05% (12) 19.18% (14) 4 : more than 5 hours 0% (0) 4.76% (3) 4.12% (3) technology adoption uses smartphone apps to learn english 20% (2) 33.33% (21) 31.51% (23) uses web apps to learn english (not mobile devices) 20% (2) 36.51% (23) 34.25% (25) individuals characterization male 70% (7) 73.015% (46) 72.60% (53) female 30% (3) 26.99% (17) 27.40% (20) between 20 and 26 years old 100% (10) 100% (63) 100% (73) studies: engineering degree 100% (10) 100% (63) 100% (73) the statistical analysis reported in this paper was carried out using ibm’s spss software version 21. data follow normality, based on the shapiro-wilk test. from the data presented in table 2, and the levene statistic for variance homogeneity, in the initial analysis (levene c = 0.389 and level p = 0.679), we could state that both groups of items are equivalent for the study, i.e. they are statistically homogeneous regarding the characterization of the sample. up2b2: playing english grammar games at the b2 level language value 9 (1),132–159 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 145 v. results and discussion v.1. students’ marks the study of the improvement in academic results in the course was conducted with the previously defined groups. the group that used the application had a mean score of 38.49 (sd = 7.92) in the post-test, while the control group had a mean score of 33.90 (sd = 6.707). in this first analysis we studied the improvement in learning attained by using the app up2b2. we carried out a 2 (group type) x 1 (examination) analysis of covariance (ancova). the student’s initial level grades were controlled by a pre-test. we considered the exams as intra-subject variables and the group type as the variable between the subjects. a significant effect between both variables was found: for tests, f = 103.90, p<0.001, η 2 = 0.597, for group type (i.e. control vs. experimental), f = 5.885, p < 0.018, η 2 = 0.78, and for interaction f = 6.256, p <0.015, η 2 = 0.082. after having used the application for the competition period, the two groups exhibited statistically significant differences in the test results, the marks obtained by the experimental group being higher than those of the control group. the app performance was measured through the level of improvement in the learning results in the post-test. this improvement has been also corroborated by different studies on english language learning with mobile devices (saran et al. 2012, chen and hsu 2008, cavus and ibrahim 2009), all of them based on instructional learning. positive knowledge gains are mainly explained by more frequent practice and repetition (saran et al. 2012, thornton and houser 2005). our study, even within the same context of instructional learning, incorporates gamification features that were not present in the aforementioned articles. the incorporation of gamification features, as stated earlier, brings with it a more interactive learning experience and increased motivation. v.2. students’ motivation for the analysis of students’ motivation and expectations, the students’ responses were examined after the application use period had expired by applying a standardized evaluation instrument (jung 2014). we used a likert scale (1-5), the analysis being http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/s0747563216303843#bib82 irina argüelles álvarez, margarita martínez núñez, ana belén garcía hernando and antonio da silva fariña language value 9 (1),132–159 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 146 focused on students’ responses to questions concerning the following points: 1) to what extent the characteristics of mobile learning (ubiquity, innovation, ease of use, usefulness and contents) are elements that motivate learning, and 2) how much they perceive that they have learned and how high their expectations are to continue learning. the total number of respondents was 63. from the 9 elements analysed and shown in table 3 below, a cronbach alpha of 0.836 was obtained. when analysing the results we must highlight that students do not consider the app as the only instrument to improve their level of english (q7) with a mean of 2.94 (sd = 1.01). however, the use of an app for learning “is more fun” (q5) with an average of 3.97 (sd = 0.86) and it is a challenge they welcome (q3), with a mean of 3.73 (sd = 0.87). table 3. percentages of participant responses regarding their attitudes towards motivation and expectations with up2b2. frequency (%) mean sd strongly disagree (1) disagree (2) neither agree nor disagree (3) agree (4) strongly agree (5) (q1) using different working modalities whenever i feel like it has helped me design my own learning strategy. 1.59 20.63 28.57 33.33 15.87 3.41 1.04 (q2) i like using new and different methods to study english. 0.00 3.17 12.70 41.27 42.86 4.24 0.80 (q3) learning english using an app is an interesting challenge. 0.00 7.94 30.16 42.86 19.05 3.73 0.87 (q4) using an app to learn english makes me invest more time in my learning. 0.00 7.94 30.16 42.86 19.05 3.65 0.94 (q5) using an app to study english makes it more fun. 1.59 4.76 14.29 53.97 25.40 3.97 0.86 (q6) using an app to study english makes me feel good. 4.76 9.52 26.98 38.10 20.63 3.60 1.07 (q7) i can improve my competence in english up 9.52 23.81 31.75 33.33 1.59 2.94 1.01 up2b2: playing english grammar games at the b2 level language value 9 (1),132–159 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 147 to the level i need only with an app. (q8) the combination of my previous knowledge in english and the information i get through an app can help me improve my marks in english. 0.00 9.52 31.75 50.79 7.94 3.57 0.78 (q9) after this experience, i will use other mobile apps to study english. 4.76 7.94 22.22 50.79 14.29 3.62 0.99 almost 85% of the students who used the application demand new learning methodologies and agree or strongly agree that they like to use new and different methods to study english (q2). however, less than 50% identify these technologies as a tool to design their own learning strategy (q1). these results indicate that, although students consider this app as a novel and innovative learning tool, they are not willing to incorporate this tool into their personal learning strategy in the long term. 65% of the students plan to continue using mobile applications to study english (q9). in addition, approximately 59% agree that this app helps to improve their competence in english (q8). motivational factors are linked to gamification as the basis to understand motivation to play. five motivational adaptive factors to use the application have been selected from the questions in the survey based on personal investment theory (pit) (shilling and hayashi 2001, mcnamara et al. 2009) (see table 4). table 4: selected motivational adaptive factors. immediacy (q10) the app has allowed me to obtain information to learn english quite immediately. innovation (q11) i am a person who is in the habit of trying new things before others. usefulness (q12) i consider this application useful to learn english. easiness (q13) learning english has been easier with this app. interactivity/ connectivity (q14) the app let me interact with other students. the correlation coefficients of these motivational factors are shown in table 5. irina argüelles álvarez, margarita martínez núñez, ana belén garcía hernando and antonio da silva fariña language value 9 (1),132–159 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 148 table 5. correlation spearman’s coefficient. innovation usefulness easiness interactivity/ connectivity immediacy correlation coef. (bilateral significance) -.096 (p = .455) .390 ** (p = .002) .468 ** (p = .000) .332 ** (p = .008) innovation correlation coef. (bilateral significance) .069 (p = .592) .074 (p = .563) .272 * (p = .031) usefulness correlation coef. (bilateral significance) .795 ** (p = .000) .420 ** (p = .001) easiness correlation coef. (bilateral significance) .424 ** (p = .001) ** correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (bilateral) * correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (bilateral) whereas innovation factors do not seem to be important as a motivational factor to use the application, connectivity and interaction of the application influences the rest of the motivational factors (immediacy, innovation, usefulness, easiness). as connectivity and interaction motivational factors are provided by the gamification elements, we can conclude that incorporating gamification elements increases students’ motivation to study. the positive feedback they get pushes students forward and they become more interested and stimulated to learn (muntean 2011). gamification has been frequently used to provide incentives seeking to modify specific negative behaviours such as discouraging interruptions or distraction. previous studies provide convincing arguments for what is viewed as the core of mobile learning: the facilitation of learning across different contexts, as defined by sharples et al. (2007) or pachler et al. (2010). v.3. students’ usage profile learning outside the classroom places the responsibility for time management on the students themselves. ubiquity provided by mobile devices is especially useful for nonformal learning because it is integrated into the users’ real life. undertaking learning activities, for example, while in transit, is only made possible by using mobile devices. generally speaking, there are two ways of using mobile devices to support mobile language learning: as a regular, habitual pattern of activity or in a spontaneous, unplanned way (kukulska-hulme et al. 2012). regular patterns revolve mainly around opportunities in daily routines, such as at breakfast, lunch times or last thing before http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/s0747563216303843#bib75 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/s0747563216303843#bib60 up2b2: playing english grammar games at the b2 level language value 9 (1),132–159 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 149 going to bed, whereas spontaneous learning is determined by sudden available time and student’s mood for learning. in this research, ubiquitous learning and use patterns are preliminary studied from the histogram of times at which students use the app in a day or during the week as well as the time spent playing with the app per day. the actual usage pattern is valuable information in order to make future improvements to the app usability and, consequently, to improve the students’ learning experience. for example, implementing specific feedback for students who follow a planned app usage schema, e.g. every night before going to bed, will be easier. in what follows, results are discussed in terms of students’ activity profile. figure 4 shows the tendency in the times at which the app is used and supports the idea of a greater degree of freedom to use personal time, thus personalizing the way and the context in which the student actually studies. this is a clear example of anytime/anywhere learning patterns that mall technologies make easier (saleh and bhat 2015). figure 4. daily usage profile. figure 4 shows the histogram of times at which students accessed the up2b2 system throughout the day. the server logs revealed that there are high activity levels around midnight, from 11:30 pm to 2:00 am, which falls drastically after this time. this can be considered a good use of time available after having dinner and before going to bed. irina argüelles álvarez, margarita martínez núñez, ana belén garcía hernando and antonio da silva fariña language value 9 (1),132–159 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 150 activity resumes again at 6:00 am and starts increasing from 8:00 am, which can be considered breakfast time. another moment that can be related to common daily activities is seen at 13:30, lunch time in spain, when there is a peak of activity. students might be using the app while waiting in the cafeteria self-service queue. regarding saturday and sunday, many people try to plan time at the weekend for homework or extra activities and, therefore, these could be considered regular planned activities. however, in our study, as shown in figure 5, most of the students prefer not to carry out learning activities with the app at the weekend. even mondays exhibit low figures, only around 10% of test activity. the bulk of activity occurs in the middle of the week, with a high concentration of activity around tuesday, wednesday and thursday. figure 5. weekly usage profile. finally, it is important to know how long the students are engaged doing tests. as shown in figure 6 most of the days (35%) students do just one test. 55% of the days students did between two and 10 tests per day. there are a residual number of situations (10%) where students do more than 10 tests per day. up2b2: playing english grammar games at the b2 level language value 9 (1),132–159 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 151 figure 6. students tests per day histogram. vi. conclusions and future work in this article we have presented the fundamental characteristics of an application consisting of a question-answer competition game for the learning of english language at a b2 level. the application has been oriented to its use from mobile terminals in accordance with the mall approaches, and has been designed integrating a strong gamification component which aims at motivating its users to use it regularly. in addition, as an innovative contribution, the application has been fed with a wide battery of questions and answers, previously validated by their use in official examinations for the accreditation of the b2 level in english at the upm. the app has been evaluated through an ancova analysis by measuring the students’ improvement in their results in an english test. two groups of statistically homogeneous students were selected, i.e. the experimental and the control groups. after the competition period with the app, the experimental group obtained higher marks in the post-test than the control group. regarding motivation, the accomplishment of competition tests and the subsequent positioning on a mastery ranking has proved to be a challenging practice. on the other hand, training tests allow the students to exercise specific language skills. students’ motivation and expectations have been studied by means of a survey, in which a standardized evaluation instrument based on a likert scale has been used. the use of the app has been found to be positive for the objective of learning english, even though it is not considered as the only instrument neither is it seen as a tool to be included in a irina argüelles álvarez, margarita martínez núñez, ana belén garcía hernando and antonio da silva fariña language value 9 (1),132–159 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 152 personal learning strategy in the long term. five motivational factors have been evaluated in the survey and the correlation coefficients among them have been extracted. from the results, we have found that connectivity and interactivity are the main motivational factors that influence the rest. these two factors are directly related to gamification features, and we can conclude that gamification has played an important role in fostering motivation to study english. study habits are influenced by the “anytime / anywhere” possibilities that mobile apps present. in our analysis we have found that students tend to make a good use of, otherwise idle, periods (just before going to bed or waiting in the cafeteria queue), although weekends are not their preferred time to study. regarding frequency of use, only 10% of the students do more than 10 tests per day, 1 or 2 tests per day being the most usual frequency. up2b2 offers university students interested in improving their competence in english anytime and anywhere a convenient way to study, provided they have access to a smartphone. moreover, working with a technology that they use on a daily basis and with which they feel confident, favours acceptance and learning becomes easier. from the results obtained, mall should be considered as another resource alongside the others in the educational toolbox. the relationship between personal differences or learning styles and proficiency in english is an area worth investigating. the results derived from this analysis could be very useful for improving the app in order for it to better adapt to the students’ needs and preferences. as a secondary future objective, we will aim at receiving feedback on from the students using the app regarding aspects more related with the technology and its usability. these are interesting from the point of view of the app functionality and the users’ experience in order to improve the prototype in further stages of the research. the evaluation of this experience and the students’ sensitivity to the app from a more technical point of view will also allow us to reach conclusions regarding possible individual differences among users. up2b2: playing english grammar games at the b2 level language value 9 (1),132–159 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 153 acknowledgements the project illlab: mobile application for language learning "up2b2" (ie1415-59002) has been funded by the upm annual call for teaching innovation projects 2014-2015. notes i among these projects we highlight the following: illlab: mobile application for language learning "up2b2" (course 2014/2015, upm code: ie1415-59002), and techenglish (course 2014/2015, upm code: pt1415-01000). ii escuela técnica superior de ingeniería y sistemas de telecomunicación (school of telecommunications and system engineering) at the upm. references ali, a., alrasheedi, m., ouda, a.h. and capretz, l.f. 2015. 2a study of the interface usability issues of mobile learning applications for smart phones from the users perspective”. international journal on integrating technology in education (ijite) 3(4), december 2014. argüelles 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(eds.), mlearn 2012: proceedings of the 11th international conference on mobile and contextual learning, helsinki, finland, 9-16. in http://goo.gl/mpofs2 [access: dec 2016]. wasko, m. and faraj, s. 2000. “it is what one does: why people participate and help others in electronic communities of practice”. journal of strategic information systems, 9(23), 155-173. werbach, k. 2014. “(re)defining gamification: a process approach. persuasive technology”. proceedings 9th international conference, persuasive, padua, italy, may 21-23, 266-272. irina argüelles álvarez, margarita martínez núñez, ana belén garcía hernando and antonio da silva fariña language value 9 (1),132–159 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 158 appendix 1 cuestionario posterior a la utilización de la aplicación valore las siguientes cuestiones relacionadas con su experiencia durante la utilización de la app up2b2 para la mejora de sus conocimientos de inglés. evalúe cada una con un número entre 1 (nada de acuerdo, muy poco) y 5 (muy de acuerdo, mucho). 1 2 3 4 5 la app me ha permitido utilizar contenido para aprender inglés cuando y donde lo he necesitado.       la app me ha permitido obtener información para aprender inglés de manera inmediata.       he podido estudiar el contenido necesario para el aprendizaje del inglés a través de un proceso de aprendizaje auto dirigido.       he podido acceder al contenido necesario para el aprendizaje del inglés directamente a través de la app.       la posibilidad de utilizar varios modos (competición, entrenamiento) para trabajar le da un carácter más personal a la app.       el poder utilizar las distintas modalidades de trabajo cuando yo quiera me ha permitido diseñar mi propia estrategia de aprendizaje.       me gusta utilizar métodos nuevos y diferentes para estudiar inglés.       soy una persona que suele probar cosas nuevas antes que otros.       encuentro el contenido de la aplicación completo.       la aplicación funciona bien.       esta aplicación me ha resultado útil para aprender inglés.       con esta aplicación me ha resultado más fácil aprender inglés.       la app me ha permitido interactuar con otros estudiantes de inglés.       la utilización de una app facilita la comunicación entre estudiantes de inglés y proveedores de contenidos.       aprender inglés utilizando una app es un reto que me agrada.       utilizar una app para aprender inglés me hace invertir más tiempo en este aprendizaje.       utilizar una app para estudiar inglés lo hace más divertido.       utilizar una app para estudiar inglés me hace sentir bien.       estoy satisfecho con el uso de una app para el aprendizaje del inglés.       prefiero el uso de una app a otros métodos de aprendizaje del inglés.       puedo mejorar mis conocimientos de inglés hasta el nivel que necesito a través de una app.       la combinación entre mis conocimientos previos de inglés y la información que puedo adquirir a través de una app me puede ayudar a mejorar mi nota de inglés.       después de esta experiencia pienso seguir utilizando aplicaciones móviles para estudiar inglés.       up2b2: playing english grammar games at the b2 level language value 9 (1),132–159 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 159 received: 10 december 2016 accepted: 19 february 2017 cite this article as: argüelles álvarez, irina, martínez núñez, margarita, garcía hernado, ana belén, da silva fariña, antonio. 2017. “up2b2: playing english grammar games at the b2 level”. language value 9 (1), 132-159. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.erevistes.uji.es/languagevalue. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2017.9.6 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue natalia norte language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue april 2016, volume 8, number 1 pp. 49-76 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2016.8.4 49 multimodal digital tools and efl audio-visual comprehension: student’s attitudes towards vodcasts natalia norte fernández-pacheco natalynorth@gmail.com cesa alicante, spain abstract the emergence of information and communication technologies (ict) has helped in the development and application of new language teaching materials that promote a multimodal approach (jewitt, 2009, 2013; kress and leeuwen, 2001). multimodal digital tools, such as vodcasts, bring together diverse modes of communication, which may enhance students’ foreign language audio-visual comprehension. this paper discusses a study on the attitudes of 40 spanish students at a b2 level, aged between 14 and 19, towards the use of vodcasts, in comparison with audio tracks. questionnaires were employed to gather data on student attitudes towards two british council vodcasts. the results showed positive attitudes towards the use of multimodal digital tools (e.g., vodcasts) rather than traditional listening activities (e.g., audio tracks). we suggest these findings point to the potential of vodcasts not only as influential multimodal tools to improve efl students’ audio-visual comprehension but also to increase students’ enjoyment and engagement when learning english as a foreign language. keywords: multimodality, digital tools, audio-visual comprehension, efl, students’ attitudes, vodcasts i. introduction though multimodal communication has always existed, there has been a preference for exploring one mode, spoken or written, in isolation. in the 20 th century, visuals (e.g., photographs, figures and graphics) started to gain importance in educational contexts and they were included in textbooks to help students in the process of meaning-making and comprehension. recently, the rapid dissemination of technology has contributed to the expansion and employment of innovative language teaching resources, leading to a shift from printed elements of communication to digital resources (jewitt, bezemer, jones, & kress, 2009). these digital tools (e.g., webpages, blogs, social networks, online dictionaries, and vodcasts) support a multimodal approach, due to the range of modes that are employed in their production. from a multimodal perspective, information is transmitted and received from the orchestration of different communicative modes of representation. on the one hand speakers make use of verbal (i.e., spoken and written) and non-verbal modes (i.e., images, music, and body natalia norte fernández-pacheco language value 8 (1), 49-76 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 50 movements) to convey meaningful communicative acts. on the other hand, the audience perceive the information from the auditory and visual channels, and activate their cognitive processes to enable audio-visual comprehension. however, audio-visual comprehension does not only take place in interactional or two-way exchanges, but also while using transactional (i.e., one-way) multimodal digital tools such as vodcasts. the use of visuals to enhance foreign language comprehension has acquired a special role during the last decade. nevertheless, little research has been carried out to check the effects of orchestrating visual and aural inputs to understand foreign language (e.g., coniam, 2001; ramírez & alonso, 2007; sueyoshi & hardison, 2005; suvorov, 2009; wagner, 2007, 2010). this article focuses on students’ attitudes towards the use of multimodal digital tools such as vodcasts to improve their efl audio-visual comprehension. for this purpose, firstly, i provide a review of the most relevant resources and studies related to i) multimodality, ii) the application of multimodal digital resources in language learning settings, and iii) audio-visual comprehension. secondly, i present a small-scale study 1 carried out to explore students’ viewpoints on audio-visual tools as foreign language listening activities (norte, 2016). this study paid attention to the efl students’ attitudes towards the use of multimodal digital tools (e.g., vodcasts) in comparison with traditional listening tools (e.g., audio tracks). ii. the multimodal landscape the diversity of semiotic resources and social contexts involved in communication have produced a great variety of theoretical and disciplinary practices associated with multimodality (o’halloran & smith, 2011). multimodality, defined as, “…the use of several semiotic modes in the design of a semiotic product or event, together with the particular way in which these modes are combined…” (kress & leeuwen, 2001:20), facilitates the possibilities of identifying, examining and reaching conclusions about the production of meaning though the orchestration of modes in diverse contexts. according to jewitt (2013), three different premises underlie the multimodal approach. firstly, language is a part of a multimodal ensemble. that is to say, representation and communication is produced due to the variety of modes that contribute, equally, in the 1 this paper relates to a part of the doctoral thesis presented by the author. multimodal digital tools and efl audio-visual comprehension: students’ attitudes towards vodcasts language value 8 (1), 49-76 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 51 process of meaning. therefore, multimodality emphasises the idea of analysing all modes produced in multimodal ensembles (representations of more than one mode). secondly, each mode in a multimodal ensemble is understood as realizing different communicative work. this assumption is based on the way modes have been created from the influence of culture, society and the use throughout history. consequently, modes could differ from culture to culture and they are shaped by different meaning potentials and semiotic resources. thirdly, people orchestrate meaning through their selection and configuration of modes. the postulation of this premise draws attention to the technological improvements produced in recent decades with the integration of the internet and new forms of online communication and representation. due to these improvements, a special interest has grown about how modes work, semiotically speaking, and how they are used in online discourse. the interest in multimodality in recent times has arisen from the arrival and the rapid spread of technology. new technologies (multimedia and mobile technologies) have taken a more prominent position in our lives and created new ways of representing and communicating meaning. since the development of the internet in the 1990s and other technological tools, a generation of “digital natives” (prensky, 2001:1) has arisen. digital natives are very much familiar with the use of laptops, smartphones, video cameras, digital music and video players, videogames and many other electronic gadgets. this acquaintance with technology, or digital literacy, seems to be innate among ‘natives’ and its acquisition has been compared to that of their mother tongue. in contrast, those who were born before this technological impact, known as “digital immigrants” (prensky, 2001:1), have felt the pressure of having to adapt to this new technological situation. one of the main reasons for this necessity to adjust to technological improvements is due to the emergence of new forms of communicative discourses found in social media and social networks. these discourses (e.g., facebook, twitter, youtube, and whatsapp) are distinguished by their potentials in the multimodal landscape, due to the great variety of modes that are employed in their designs. although it was believed that previous discourses, without technology, did not include more than one mode, there was a tendency of orchestrating written language and images (bezemer & kress, 2014b). in the 21 st century, coined as the era of digitalization, people, especially youth, are more aware of the technological affordances natalia norte fernández-pacheco language value 8 (1), 49-76 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 52 of different semiotic resources (e.g., moving images, still images, typography, sounds and colours). as a consequence, more and more multimodal texts are appearing, making an effort to facilitate comprehension. due to this growth in the assembly of multimodal texts, new theoretical means are necessary to have a better understanding of how they operate in the process of meaning making (ventola, charles, & kaltenbacher, 2004:1). the various possibilities of combining communication modes in the ‘new’ media, like the computer and the internet, have forced scholars to think about the particular characteristics of these modes and the way they semiotically function and combine in the modern discourse worlds. as happened centuries before with written and spoken language, a framework, that explains how these texts are created and how they can be produced, is required. that is to say, there is a need for a kind of meta-language related to other modes apart from language, such as images (still or moving) and gestures, among other modes of representation, that will help in the designing and production of multimodal texts (bezemer & kress, 2014a). iii. multimodal digital language learning resources: vodcasts the development of vodcasts (i.e., video recordings uploaded onto the net with rss feeds), during the last number years has been possible due to the widespread use of the internet around the world, the creation of broadband technologies which permit users to download large media files, the familiar use of multimedia personal computers, the opportunity of streaming and downloading as separate actions, and the ubiquity of new technological devices (campbell, 2005). moreover, the advances in software (e.g., audacity and odeo) to create vodcasts and podcatchers (e.g., podomatic, education podcasts, itunes) to upload and download them have contributed to their proliferation. vodcasts are characterised by their use in different settings, for this reason, they have been categorised (evans, 2008) as a form of mobile learning (m-learning), which allow students “learning across multiple contexts, through social and content interactions, using personal electronic devices” (crompton, 2013:4). in language learning contexts, vodcasts may be considered quite beneficial for students. some of these possible benefits are included in table 1. on the internet, we can find vodcasts related to a wide range of themes such as politics, the news, radio, television, music, fashion and beauty, multimodal digital tools and efl audio-visual comprehension: students’ attitudes towards vodcasts language value 8 (1), 49-76 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 53 literature, arts and entertainment, comedy, education, health, games and hobbies, and technology, among others. this diversity of topics allows language teachers and students to choose those vodcasts that are more suitable to their interests. table 1. benefits of using language learning vodcasts benefits foster an active role of the learner. promote flexible learning, anytime and anywhere. foment participation and collaborative-peer activities. facilitate the introduction of different communicative modes. adjust to students’ learning styles, difficulties and disabilities. offer a great variety of topics creating rewarding learning experiences. distribute authentic-content situations. support formal and informal learning. promote blended learning environments. the application of multimodal digital learning resources, such as vodcasts in traditional language learning environments is becoming quite common not only because of technological advances, but also by the interest in facilitating language learning. this new form of educational situation is known as blended language learning (henceforth, bll). bll is defined by stracke (2007: 57) as “a particular learning and teaching environment, that combines face-to-face (f2f) and computer assisted language learning (call)”. thus, as represented in figure 1, blended language learning embraces the use of traditional language lessons, in which there are teacher-students and studentsstudents interactions, and the use of technology-mediated language learning activities to contribute in the process of language learning. natalia norte fernández-pacheco language value 8 (1), 49-76 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 54 figure 1. components in blended language learning. traditional face-to-face language instruction is related to language learning situations in which teachers and students interact inside the classroom without the use of technologies. this kind of language instruction has been predominant during centuries and research has been carried out to identify significant issues with regard to these interactions (e.g., negotiation of meaning and the influence of interactive and noninteractive lectures), and how they could be influential on students’ language learning (e.g., allwright, 1984; cazden, 1988; chaudron, 1988; morell, 2000, 2004; sinclair & coulthard, 1975). call makes use of technological devices to facilitate the learning process without the need to have both, teacher and learners, together in the same setting. this form of instruction also takes into account a variety of modes to present information, even in a more powerful way than in traditional lessons. the orchestrations of modes produced by technological devices are more engaging for teachers and students, and consequently, they may influence the language learning process in some way. when combining these two leading forms of multimodal representation (i.e., traditional lesson and technology-mediated instruction) the process of language learning takes a new perspective in which multimodal communication gains great importance. recently, several scholars (e.g., chinnery, 2006; kukulska-hulme, 2013) have proposed a new form of call in which mobile technologies are used for language learning purposes, i.e. mobile-assisted language learning (mall). mall is described as “mobile traditional language lessons call blended language learning multimodal digital tools and efl audio-visual comprehension: students’ attitudes towards vodcasts language value 8 (1), 49-76 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 55 technologies in language learning, especially in situations where device portability offers specific advantages” (kukulska-hulme, 2013: 3701). the field of mall is not considered independent but related to call and mobile learning (i.e., learning everywhere and anytime using electronic devices), apart from second language acquisition (stockwell & hubbard, 2013). mall differs from call in “its use of personal, portable devices that enable new ways of learning, emphasizing continuity or spontaneity of access and interaction across different contexts of use” (kukulska-hulme & shield, 2008: 273). in other words, mall promotes the use of mobile tools and mobile learning. little research has been done on vodcasts to better understand their efficacy on students’ comprehension, and particularly, improving foreign language audio-visual comprehension. basically, research on listening skills in language learning courses has been performed through the analysis of audio podcasts. moreover, much attention has been given to students’ attitudes and perceptions towards the use of audio podcasts rather than the effects podcasts could produce on learning outcomes. results about the students’ perceptions towards the use of podcasts have been quite positive (kavaliauskiene & anusiene, 2009; chan, chi, chin, & lin. 2011; o’bryan & hegelheimer, 2007). however, the experiences can differ among students and teachers according to their knowledge on the use of technologies (kim & king, 2011). in different reports students have also shown their worries about the length and style of podcasts (li, 2012; chan, lee, & mcloughlin, 2006). in the landscape of foreign language listening comprehension, ashraf, noroozi and salami (2011) performed a study to check the effects of promoting listening skills in efl situations through the use of audio podcasts. they proved that students in the experimental group (listening to audio podcasts) obtained better listening results than the ones in the control group (listening to english radio programs). students stated their preferences towards audio podcasts for several reasons: the ease of access, the possibility of listening to them at any time and place, lowspeed speech and the opportunity of listening to podcasts several times. abdu and abdul (2012) carried out an experimental study in yemen with 60 students. it aimed to analyse the effects of audio podcasts and vodcasts as supplementary material in traditional english language listening courses. through listening tests and the compilation of students’ attitudes, they produce some evidence natalia norte fernández-pacheco language value 8 (1), 49-76 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 56 supporting the use of podcasts and vodcasts compared to traditional listening courses. abdous, camarena, and facer (2009), in their study comparing integrated and supplementary podcasts in foreign language courses, reaching the conclusion that students who used audio and video podcasts had positive perceptions towards them. furthermore, students found podcasts quite useful in reference to their use as learning tools to improve their language skills (listening, speaking and vocabulary). campos (2012) focused his research on measuring the effectiveness of listening to vodcasts to improve listening skills in foreign language learning. the results obtained through his experimental study concluded that vodcasts were a great pedagogical resource, especially due to the fact that, when 71.8% of the subjects stated real improvement on speaking and listening skills; 81% of the subjects believed they could learn pronunciation better, and 93.7% of the subjects manifested the effectiveness as an english learning tool according to the participants. iv. efl audio-visual comprehension up until the 1990s not much attention was given to the instruction and assessment of foreign language listening (rost, 2002). however, in the last 25 years, research related to the cinderella skill (as named by mendelsohn, 1994), as listening was considered, has increased and evolved into new approaches. although listening is defined as the action of “processing information which listeners get from visual and auditory clues in order to define what is going on and what the speakers are trying to express” (rubin, 1995:151), studies on this language skill and its strategies have been mainly focused on auditory input. little attention has been given to describe the influence of non-verbal cues in the construction of meaning and comprehension using audio-visual resources. due to technological advances and the proliferation of audio-visual materials in language learning contexts, new research directions have arisen to describe the different effects of auditory, audio-visual or multimedia inputs on students’ comprehension. when referring to the process of audio-visual comprehension, it is not only necessary to describe the information processing model (anderson, 2009) and its phases (i.e., perception, parsing and utilization), but also the language learning strategies and listening strategies (i.e., metacognitive, cognitive and socio-affective strategies) that are recommended by researchers of the field (bacon, 1992; goh, 2002; goh & taib, 2006; multimodal digital tools and efl audio-visual comprehension: students’ attitudes towards vodcasts language value 8 (1), 49-76 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 57 lynch, 2009; mendelsohn, 1994; o’malley & chamot, 1990; rubin, 1994; vandergrift, 1997, 2003; vandergrift et al., 2006). as mentioned previously, audio visual resources, such as vodcasts, are associated to the concept of multimedia, which refers to the combination of multiple forms of media (i.e., text, sounds, images, graphics and animations) in a digital system. therefore, the use of vodcasts, as multimodal and multimedia tools, and students’ audio-visual comprehension might be associated with the cognitive theory of multimedia learning (ctml) by mayer (2005, 2009). this theory is based on the dual-channel assumption, taken from clark and paivio’s (1991) dual-coding theory, which emphasises that “the human information-processing system contains an auditory/verbal channel and a visual/pictorial channel” (mayer, 2005: 33).thus, one of the main reasons leading towards ctml is its concern with auditory and visual modalities for comprehension and learning. that is to say, comprehension increases when information is perceived from different channels. consequently, audio-only materials may not be as effective as multimodal material. the use of visuals to enhance foreign language comprehension has acquired a special role during the last decade. however, little research has been carried out to investigate the effects of orchestrating visual and aural inputs to understand foreign language. some scholars (e.g., sueyoshi & hardison, 2005; ramírez & alonso, 2007; wagner, 2010) lean towards the positive effects of video resources since they display relevant elements (i.e., non-linguistic knowledge) necessary to facilitate comprehension. other studies (e.g., coniam, 2001; suvorov, 2009), which compared audio and visual modes in listening tests were inconclusive. among the studies that have determined that visuals help students to better perform listening tests, ramírez and alonso (2007) prepared a quasi-experimental research study to check the effects of digital stories (in english) on six-year-old spanish students and claimed positive results from the experimental (watching digital stories) over the control group. digital stories allowed children to comprehend linguistic structures and vocabulary. moreover, students were able to give some feedback despite their lower proficiency level of english. another idea emphasized by ramírez and alonso is the level of attention students had while watching digital stories. they concluded in favour of using internet-based technologies with songs, games, and stories, since they may contribute in the process of natalia norte fernández-pacheco language value 8 (1), 49-76 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 58 comprehension. wagner (2010), compared two groups of students on an esl listening test. the control group took the listening test with audio input while the experimental group carried out the same listening test through video input. the results demonstrated that non-verbal information from the video positively influenced students’ performance. sueyoshi and hardison (2005) focused their attention on the role of speakers’ faces and gestures from videotexts and how they contributed to second language learners’ listening comprehension. forty-two low-intermediate and advanced learners of english, were distributed according to three different stimulus: audio-visual including gestures and face expressions, audio-visual with no gestures, and audio-only. from the comprehension tasks, sueyoski and hardison determined that students from both levels of english performed better when visual cues were shown. however, higher-level students obtained better results in the audio-visual condition including face, and lowerlevel students when the input was audio-visual including gestures and face. data from questionnaires reported students’ positive attitudes toward visual cues, especially in face-to-face interactions. as we have reviewed in the previous sections, research on podcasts and language learning has mostly been concerned with audio podcasts and students’ attitudes, but scarce research has focused on connecting multimodality, vodcasts and audio-visual comprehension. for this reason, based on the multimodal approach of meaning making ( jewitt, 2009; kress & leeuwen, 2001) and taking into account the importance of dual-channels in the ctml (mayer, 2005, 2009), this study pays attention to efl students’ perceptions towards vodcasts in comparison to audio listening activities v. methodology this small-scale study attempts to answer the following research questions, “what are the students’ attitudes towards the use of audio-visual (e.g., vodcasts) compared to traditional audio (e.g., audio tracks) comprehension activities in language learning contexts?” and “do students believe that multimodal digital tools (e.g., vodcasts) could help them to improve their level of english?” taking into consideration these research questions, we have designed the following study which attempts to begin to fill the gap of multimodal digital tools (e.g., vodcasts) and audio-visual comprehension. multimodal digital tools and efl audio-visual comprehension: students’ attitudes towards vodcasts language value 8 (1), 49-76 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 59 v. 1. the participants the participants of this study were 40 spanish students, 15 males and 25 females, aged between 14 and 19, from a private language school in alicante. they were enrolled in an upper-intermediate or b2 level course, according to the common european framework of reference for languages (cefr). these students had been learning english as a foreign language for approximately 8 to 10 years, and they had passed the intermediate level or b1 level in this language school. students had been accustomed to using audio tracks for listening comprehension activities, and to following the same ritualised procedure. first, they would read the questions, then, they would listen twice to the recording, and finally, they would answer the questions while listening. once the students had completed the exercise, their teacher would give feedback on the answers, referring to unknown vocabulary, idiomatic expressions, pronunciation, etc. although their textbooks included audio-visual resources (e.g., video extract with authentic realworld interviews, multiroms, ipack, online resources), the participants of this study were accustomed to carrying out audio comprehension activities without visuals. the main reason for not implementing audio-visual resources on a regular basis was due to a lack of technological infrastructure at the school. v.2. the vodcasts the two vodcasts employed in the study are called english is great, part 1 and camden fashion. they are taken from itunesu and they are free downloads. english is great (part 1) belongs to the series of vodcasts britain is great. the first vodcast has a duration of 5 minutes and 18 seconds and explains how the english language has evolved over the years. richard, the presenter, goes to the british library in london to interview roger walshe, the head of learning. the vodcast informs viewers of the items in the library, the impact of the industrial revolution, the influence of the internet on english, and the versatility of the language. the second vodcast, camden fashion, is part of the series of vodcasts word on the street has a duration of 4 minutes and 28 seconds. one of its notable characteristics is the presence of written prompts on the screen. in camden fashion, carmen, the presenter, goes to camden market to explain the variety of fashion styles that can be found there. first, she talks about the history of the market and the importance it has had for punk fashion. she also describes the main natalia norte fernández-pacheco language value 8 (1), 49-76 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 60 characteristics attributed to punks over time. other fashion styles, such as british fashion and cyber-goth are also mentioned throughout the vodcast. in addition, angela, from the grazia daily, gives details about british fashion and the london fashion week. finally, carmen interviews jack, who defines cyber-goth style. the reason for choosing vodcasts from the british council was two-fold: first, because of the notable reputation of this organization in language education. second, because of the connection of the vodcasts to the specific syllabus of the participants of the study. moreover, they fulfil some of the characteristics (i.e., exposure to the language, authenticity and length) established by rosell-aguilar (2007) to bear in mind when choosing vodcasts for language learning purposes. and finally, both vodcasts contained a variety of semiotic modes of communication (i.e., still images, gestures, written language, spoken language and music) which helped in the construction of meaning making. v. 3. the questionnaire after the viewing of these two vodcasts, which were used as add-on activities, as described by rosell-aguilar (2007: 476) and hew (2009: 337), students filled in a questionnaire (see appendix a) about their attitudes towards listening to audio tracks and watching vodcasts. in the questionnaire, students provided information about their level of english, age, sex, nationality, and the years studying english. this information was relevant to collect data related the characteristics of each participant. then, they answered 6 likert-scale questions (1=strongly disagree to 5=strongly agree), related to audio listening activities and vodcasts. these statements were focused on aspects such as sound quality, length, speed, entertainment, understanding and anxiety. the selection of these parameters are grounded on some complaints that students manifested throughout the course while doing audio listening activities. finally, they answered two open questions related to preference and language improvement, do you prefer doing activities with video podcasts or the usual listening activities? why? and do you think that the use of video podcasts could help you to improve your level of english? why? vi. results on the first question, which asked students whether they thought the sound quality of multimodal digital tools and efl audio-visual comprehension: students’ attitudes towards vodcasts language value 8 (1), 49-76 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 61 the vodcasts was better than usual, 92.5 % either agreed or strongly agreed. responses to question two on the length of the vodcasts, showed that more than two thirds of students (72.5%) did not believe they were too long. on the third question, which asked if they considered that the speakers in the vodcasts talked slower than those in the normal audio exercises, many students answered in a neutral way (23.5%) or disagreed (27.5%). question 4 asked students if they thought that vodcasts were more enjoyable and entertaining than the audio listening activities from the textbook, to which more than half agreed or strongly agreed (82.5%). on the fifth question, which asked if they deemed vodcasts more difficult to understand than the activities in class, the vast majority disagreed (45%) or strongly disagreed (27.5%). finally, question 6, confirmed that students’ anxiety was reduced with the vodcasts since 47.5% agreed or strongly agreed and 42.5% showed a neutral attitude. all these results are represented in the following graphs (figures 27). 1. i found vodcasts' sound quality better than in the usual audio activities. figure 2. statement 1: comparing sound quality between vodcasts and audio activities. 2. i found vodcasts too long . figure 3. questionnaire statement 2: students’ attitude towards vodcasts length. natalia norte fernández-pacheco language value 8 (1), 49-76 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 62 3. i found the speakers in the vodcasts talked slower than the ones we listen to in normal audio exercises. figure 4. questionnaire statement 3: students’ attitudes towards speakers’ speed in audio exercises and vodcasts. 4. i found vodcasts more enjoyable and entertaining than the listening activities from the textbook. figure 5. questionnaire statement 4: students’ attitudes towards enjoyment comparing vodcasts and audio listening activities. 5. i found vodcasts more difficult to understand than the activities in class. figure 6. questionnaire statement 5: students’ attitudes towards the difficulty of understanding vodcasts. multimodal digital tools and efl audio-visual comprehension: students’ attitudes towards vodcasts language value 8 (1), 49-76 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 63 6. i felt less anxious watching vodcasts and answering the exercises than in the usual listening activities. figure 7. questionnaire statement 6: students’ attitudes towards the anxiety produced by vodcasts and audio listening activities. at the end of the questionnaire there were two open questions related to preferences and opinions. these questions were included to have a more qualitative point of view since the previous statements just showed information about the students’ opinions without making reference to any reason for those ways of thinking. to the question, do you prefer doing activities with video podcasts or the usual listening activities? 90% of students seemed to show more positive attitudes towards the use of vodcasts as illustrated on table 2. table 2. reasons supporting the use of vodcasts reasons supporting the use of vodcasts they are more enjoyable/ interesting/ more fun/ exciting. they are easier /clearer to understand (because you see the people while talking). i feel more active when i see the video. i pay more attention/ i am more concentrated. i can see the people who are talking. they make you feel good and not nervous. they are more useful to understand the situation easily. natalia norte fernández-pacheco language value 8 (1), 49-76 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 64 the images and movements help you to understand. the context helps to know what they are talking about. speakers speak more slowly. to the question, do you think that the use of video podcasts could help you to improve your level of english? 97.5% of students had a positive attitude towards the use of vodcasts to improve their level of english. the most significant reasons to reinforce their answers are represented in table 3. table 3. reasons supporting the improvement of language learning using vodcasts reasons supporting language improvement using vodcasts you understand them better. they are not as formal as textbooks. i focus more on the context. i use my eyes and my ears and not only my ears to understand. they help me to learn vocabulary and expressions. they help me to keep concentrated because they are not as boring as audios, so i can understand more. they are less boring. in the audios in class, the speakers speak so fast that i cannot understand anything. when you watch videos you learn english better. you learn pronunciation. you learn more when you see pictures or a film. the sound quality is better. -you can interpret better when you see the person talking. i can improve listening and speaking skills. as i enjoy watching the video, i learn they are quite natural. multimodal digital tools and efl audio-visual comprehension: students’ attitudes towards vodcasts language value 8 (1), 49-76 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 65 better. vii. conclusions and discussion this study focused on analysing efl students’ attitudes towards the use of multimodal digital tools (e.g., vodcasts) in comparison with traditional listening tools (e.g., audio tracks). the idea of gathering together students’ point of views about new forms of teaching may be considered essential to improve their learning life. in order to determine the students’ opinions, they completed a questionnaire based on a range of parameters mentioned previously: sound quality, length, speed, enjoyment, difficulty, anxiety, preference and language improvements. in general terms, and answering our first research question, “what are the students’ attitudes towards the use of audio-visual (e.g., vodcasts) compared to traditional audio (e.g., audio tracks) comprehension activities in language learning?”, we could say that students preferred audio-visual comprehension activities. from the questionnaires, we have found that students seem to have a positive attitude towards the use of vodcasts (abdous et al., 2009; abdu & abdul, 2012). results from the first question (sound quality) showed that students preferred vodcasts in terms of sound. this outcome may have been influenced by the novelty of new technologies and the devices used to record and watch vodcasts. we must take into account that these language learners were used to doing listening activities (only audio) with a cd player. this technological aspect may have influenced the students’ attitudes since the sound quality produced by some radio speakers is not comparable to other kinds of speakers. the results from the second question (i.e., length) were quite significant. although the audio tracks that these upper-intermediate students were used to listening to were shorter in time (2-3 minutes), the vast majority of students did not have the sense of being watching the vodcasts for a long time, despite they lasted more (4-5 minutes) than the normal audio listening activities. this fact might be connected to the idea of amusement, that is to say, when people are watching or doing something that they really like, they lose all sense of time. furthermore, the orchestration of different semiotic resources (e.g., spoken and written language, music, kinesics and images) could change students’ time perception since they are not just focused on a piece of paper trying to natalia norte fernández-pacheco language value 8 (1), 49-76 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 66 understand every spoken single word. the third question, devoted to speed, results were quite diverse. as a consequence, we cannot confirm that speed is a prominent parameter to be considered for students in the preference between vodcasts and audio tracks. it is important to bear in mind that b2 students (common european framework of reference for languages, cefr) are exposed to foreign language materials according to their level, and consequently in upper-intermediate, speakers’ speech speed should be the same not only in audio tracks, but also in audio-visual materials. question 4 was included to determine if students enjoyed watching vodcasts in comparison to listening to audio tracks. 82.5% of students reported that they found vodcasts more enjoyable and entertaining. this could be due to the innovative technological situation in which language learners were involved. since the students selected for the study are digital natives (prensky, 2001), they might enjoy more language learning using technological devices (e.g., whiteboards and laptops) rather than printed materials (e.g., books). furthermore, as was mentioned before, the use of different semiotic resources or multimodal tools, might also contribute to the students’ preferences. currently, the use of visuals, kinesics and musical elements, among others, is deeply-rooted in the era of digitalization and language teachers do not have to forget that students are used to including these resources as part of their construction of meaning-making (jewitt, 2013). the development of meaning-making is also linked to understanding and comprehension. for this reason, the fifth question was focused on the students’ opinions about the difficulty of understanding vodcasts and audio tracks. the results from students exposed that vodcasts were considered easier to understand than audio tracks. these results could be comparable to those from the studies by sueyoski and hardison (2005) and wagner (2010), which showed a notable preference for video materials. we have to consider that vodcasts are multimodal audio-visual materials that combine a range of modes to help in the process of meaning-making. thus, the combination of verbal and non-verbal modes might be useful to enhance foreign language comprehension. the sixth question, related to anxiety, was included to measure if students felt anxious trying to understand the messages represented in the vodcasts. according to the percentages, more than half of students felt less anxious watching vodcasts and answering the exercises than in usual activities. the level of anxiety could have been reduced due to the pre-reading of the questions from the exercises. in that multimodal digital tools and efl audio-visual comprehension: students’ attitudes towards vodcasts language value 8 (1), 49-76 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 67 way, they were able to gain previous knowledge about what the vodcasts were about. as the orchestration of modes in audio-visual material help in the construction of meaning-making, the level of difficulty to understand the message might decrease, and consequently, the level of anxiety. the easier the message is to understand, the lower the level of anxiety is. for his reason, it is important that teachers pay more attention to the selection of adequate materials and teaching methods so students could feel more confident and less anxious. question 7 gave us important information to suggest the students’ positive attitudes towards vodcasts, in terms of preference. moreover, the answers given were quite considerable to create a link between multimodality and audio-visual comprehension. as reported in table 2, students preferred watching vodcasts because they were easier to understand due to the context in which the speech was included (i.e., written words, kinesics, music, and images). as stated by some students “the images and movements help you to understand" and “the context helps to know what they are talking about”. they expressed the importance of images and gestures to enhance audio-visual comprehension and to catch their attention in favourable learning conditions (i.e., less nervous). from these results, we could imply that the use of several modes influences students’ comprehension in language learning contexts. and consequently, they reinforce the relevance of the ctml (mayer, 2005, 2009) and the use of materials in which students employ dual-channels (verbal/auditory and visual/ pictorial) to better understand information. finally, question 8 was used to answer the second research question, “do students believe that multimodal digital tools (e.g., vodcasts) could help them to improve their level of english?” the high percentage of positive answers confirmed the students’ willingness to use multimodal digital tools to improve their foreign language learning. from the reasons given to support this idea, students put special emphasis, once again, on the importance of context, the use of visual and aural channels to understand messages, the natural dialogues, and the possibility to improve other skills (e.g., speaking) apart from listening. in sum, this particular group of students had overwhelmingly positive attitudes towards the use of multimodal digital tools such as vodcasts. these findings suggest the natalia norte fernández-pacheco language value 8 (1), 49-76 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 68 potential efficacy of vodcasts as tools that may increase both student enjoyment and engagement as well as aural/oral learning outcomes in the fl classroom, making use of a variety of communicative modes. due to the importance to verbal and non-verbal elements to increase comprehension reported by students, further research should be done to measure how the orchestration of verbal and non-verbal modes could be influential on students’ audio-visual comprehension. multimodal discourse analyses (kress & leeuwen, 2001; norris, 2004, o’halloran & smith, 2011) of multimodal digital materials may help in the identification of the modes orchestrated and the design of audio-visual comprehension activities. this fact could help foreign language teachers to better select the materials they use so as to enhance students’ audio-visual comprehension. the development and employment of language teaching materials with suitable orchestrations of modes according to our students’ needs, may favour students’ language learning experience. furthermore, other interesting lines of research could be followed, for instance, how vodcasts, as mobile-assisted language learning materials, can influence on language learning (chinnery, 2006; kukulska-hulme, 2013). nowadays, in the era of digitalization, the use of technologies inside and outside language classrooms should not be something exceptional. therefore, the idea of blended language learning environments could be expanded in the interests of students. for this reason, it is important that language teachers are aware of the numerous advantages that multimodal digital tools can offer to students in 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(eds.) 2004. perspectives on multimodality. amsterdam: john benjamins. wagner, e. 2007. “are they watching? an investigation of test-taker viewing behavior during an l2 video listening test”. language learning & technology, 11 (1), 6786. retrieved from http://llt.msu.edu/vol11num1/wagner/ wagner, e. 2010. “the effect of the use of video texts on esl listening test-taker performance”. language testing, 27, 493-513. doi:10.1177/0265532209355668 multimodal digital tools and efl audio-visual comprehension: students’ attitudes towards vodcasts language value 8 (1), 49-76 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 75 appendix a: questionnaire questionnaire (formulario) part (parte) 1 english level (nivel de inglés): ____________________ age (edad): ______ sex (sexo): female(mujer) male (hombre) nationality(nacionalidad): _________ years studying english (años estudiando inglés): ______ part (parte) 2 -tick the correct number according to your opinion (pon un tic en el número correcto según tu opinión). 1 – strongly disagree (totalmente en desacuerdo) 2 – disagree (en desacuerdo) 3 – neutral (neutral) 4 – agree (de acuerdo) 5 – strongly agree (totalmente de acuerdo) 1 2 3 4 5 1. i found the video podcasts' sound quality better than in the usual audio activities (la calidad de sónido del los “videos podcasts” me pareció mejor que la de las actividades habituales de audio). 2. i found the video podcasts too long (los “video podcasts” me parecieron demasiado largos). 3. i found the speakers in the video podcasts talked slower than the ones we listen to in normal audio exercises (me pareció que los hablantes de los “video podcasts” hablaban más lento que aquellos que escuchamos en los ejercicios de audio). 4. i found the video podcasts more enjoyable and entertaining than the listenings from the textbook (los “video podcasts” me parecieron más divertidos y entretenidos que los audios del libro de texto). 5. i found the video podcasts more difficult to understand than the natalia norte fernández-pacheco language value 8 (1), 49-76 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 76 listenings in class (los “video podcasts” me parecieron más difíciles de entender que los audios de clase). 6. i felt less anxious watching the video podcasts and answering the exercises than in the usual listening activities (me sentí menos nervioso viendo los “videos podcasts” y contestando a los ejercicios que con las actividades habituales de audio). 7. do you prefer doing activities with video podcasts or the usual listening activities? why?(¿prefieres hacer actividades con “video podcasts” o las actividades frecuentes de audio?,¿ por qué?). _____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ 8. do you think that the use of video podcasts could help you to improve your level of english? why? (¿crees que el uso de “video podcasts” puede ayudarte a mejorar tu nivel de inglés?). _____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ received: 22 february 2016 accepted: 4 april 2016 cite this article as: norte fernández-pacheco, n. 2016. “multimodal digital tools and efl audio-visual comprehension: students’ attitudes towards vodcasts”. language value 8 (1), 49-76. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2016.8.2 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors database connection failed! microsoft word bowers_1_1.doc language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue september 2009, volume 1, number 1 pp. 39-50 issn 1989-7103 . articles are copyrighted by their respective authors how the linguistic colonization of the present by the past influences the colonization of other cultures adopting english as second language c. a. bowers university of oregon abstract the conduit view of language that is widely taken-for-granted in the education of english speaking cultures has marginalized awareness that most of the english vocabulary are metaphors whose meanings were framed by the analogies that can be traced back to earlier thinkers. thus, words such as “property”, “wealth”, “progress”, “individualism”, “tradition”, “woman”, and so forth, carry forward the earlier ways of understanding—including the prejudices and silences of earlier eras. this essay addresses several of the implications of this process of linguistic colonization of the present by the past within the english speaking communities, as well as how the largely unrecognized process of cultural colonization by the past may be reproduced in teaching english as a second language. one of most important implications relates to how the meaning of words framed by earlier thinkers who were unaware of environmental limits continues to perpetuate the same patterns of thinking that is now globalizing an economic system that is ecologically unsustainable. another implication of not recognizing that the metaphorical nature of the english vocabulary has a history is that when learning english is associated with becoming modern and progressive, the process of cultural colonization continues. what is often marginalized are the intergenerational forms of knowledge, skills, and mutually supportive relationships that both english and non-english speaking cultures need to revitalize as alternatives to the consumer-oriented lifestyle that has such an ecologically destructive footprint. keywords: linguistic colonization, metaphor, double-bind, framing, ecological, intergenerational, sustainability two groups —english speakers and those who are learning english as a second language— now face a common threat. this is the ecological crisis that is impacting different regions and cultures in ways that vary from the melting of glaciers that are the source of water for hundreds of millions of people, to the drying up of aquifers, the collapse of local fisheries, the spread of droughts, the loss of forests, and the extinction of species that some scientists view as the early stage of entering the world’s 6th extinction of life. less often mentioned, but no less threatening, are the billions of pounds of chemicals, ranging from pcbs, dioxins, mercury, and pesticides— to cite only a few of the chemicals that have been put into the environment in the name of progress and profit. they can now be found in humans, the water supply, and in the how the linguistic colonization of the present by the past influences the colonization of other cultures language value 1, (1), 39–50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 40 plants and animals eaten around the world. the crisis has resulted in the poverty and hopelessness experienced by several billion people who are caught between the global spread of a money economy and the loss of their intergenerational knowledge that enabled previous generations to live a subsistence lifestyle within the limits and possibilities of their bioregion. the focus here will be on how much of the vocabulary that frames the thinking and values of people in english speaking countries and, by extension, the thinking of people who are learning to think and communicate in english as a second language, contributes to deepening the ecological crises. the problem that goes unrecognized in english speaking countries is the linguistic colonization of the present by the past. for people learning to speak english as a second language, the problem is an even more complex process of cultural colonization. linguistic colonization of the present by the past occurs in english speaking public schools and university classrooms, in the media, in the use of the internet by english speakers, and in daily conversations when it is ignored that the meaning of words (metaphors) are framed by cultural assumptions that were taken-for-granted at an earlier time in the culture’s development. what is widely overlooked in english speaking settings where students are being socialized in how to think and communicate about different aspects of their culture, as well as about other cultures, is that words have a history. the dominant message, as michael reddy pointed out in his pioneering essay, is that the educational processes as well as the everyday use of language, reinforce the idea that language is a conduit in a sender/receiver process of communication. in effect, the widely held assumption is that ideas, information, data, etc., can be put into words and then sent to others through the conduit of language (reddy 1979). this concept of language is important in maintaining several minor myths that have huge implications —for deepening the ecological crises and for contributing to the linguistic colonization of other cultures. first, the conduit view of language is essential to maintaining the myth that individuals are autonomous thinkers (or have the potential to become so). second, this view of language supports the idea that the rational process is free of cultural influences. this myth also requires assuming that words have a universal meaning — over time and for different cultures. the third myth is that there is such a thing as objective knowledge, information, and data. this myth hides the reality that observations and other ways of gathering c. a. bowers   language value 1, (1), 39–50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 41 “objective” information, data, and ideas involve a human observer who relies upon a culturally layered metaphorical language that has a history that is seldom recognized. these three myths, as well as the idea that language is a conduit, marginalize awareness that most words are metaphors. the idea that the analogs that frame the meaning of words are derived from the individual’s embodied experiences, which george lakoff and mark johnson refer to as the source of “embodied reason” (lakoff and johnson 1999: 555), further marginalizes the awareness that words have a history, and that individuals are born into a community shared linguistic ecology that provides the initial cognitive schemata for interpreting the world, making value judgments, and that also influences the individual’s embodied experiences (bowers 2009, lakoff and johnson 1999). recognizing that words have a history should lead to the awareness of another fundamental characteristic of language. that is, most words are metaphors, and their meanings are framed by the process of analogic thinking. in 1885, friedrich nietzsche described the process of analogic thinking when he wrote “in our thought, the essential feature is fitting new material into old schemas…” (kaufman 1967: 273). that is, the initial understanding of what is new and thus unnamed is to identify what it is like, or what is similar. for example, in the early stage of developing computer technology there was an awareness that computers “processed” data and information. psychologists at that time also thought of human intelligence as processing information. this assumed similarity between computers and human thinking led to thinking of computers as devices that exhibited “artificial intelligence”. as people became more accustomed to thinking of computers as exhibiting intelligence, it has become the new analog for understanding the brain as a computer. another example of analogic thinking is in a textbook that explains that genes are passed from one person to the next in the same way that footballs are passed —which is an analog that most young students understand. in yet another textbook the students’ understanding of a crop of vegetables is introduced as the analog for understanding the life cycle of a forest. this analog leads to the basic misunderstanding that the main difference between farming the forest and a crop of vegetables is the mount of time between when the two “crops” can be harvested. this mapping of the familiar onto what is new may provide an initial basis for understanding, as long it is emphasized that the new and the already familiar are not represented as identical. what is often overlooked, however, is how the process of how the linguistic colonization of the present by the past influences the colonization of other cultures   language value 1, (1), 39–50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 42 analogic thinking may involve ignoring that the differences are far more important than similarities. the dire consequences that may result from the choice of the wrong analogs can be seen in how president ronald reagan explained, in response to his critics, that an economy is like a game, and that the leader of the team does not change the plan in the fourth quarter. both an economy and a game may be based on a plan, but the difference is that one can walk away from a game that is poorly played and quickly put it in the past. but one cannot walk away and put out of thought an economy that is out of control. understanding the new in terms of the already familiar should alert students to being aware that words have a history, and that they carry forward the assumptions, prejudices, and silences of the individuals or groups who established the analogs that subsequent individuals or generations accept as framing the meaning of words. as other aspects of metaphorical thinking are explained, including how this process is key to understanding the linguistic colonization of the present by the past, other examples of metaphorical thinking will be introduced—including how to reframe the meaning of words by introducing new analogs that are ecologically and culturally informed. a key influence on the choice of analogies that frame and, over time, lead to the reframing the meaning of words, is the existence of what can be referred to as the root metaphors of the culture. the root metaphors in western cultures, such as patriarchy, anthropocentrism (a human-centered world), individualism, progress, mechanism, and now evolution, have their origins in the mythopoetic narratives, powerful evocative experiences, and other forces in the culture’s past and present experiences. root metaphors provide the largely taken-for-granted interpretive frameworks that influence cultural ways of thinking and practices in a wide range of activities — and over hundreds and even thousands of years. the vocabulary influenced by the root metaphor both reinforces its taken-for-granted status while at the same time excluding words that undermine its conceptual coherence. for example, johannes kepler (1571-1630) suggested that instead of thinking of the universe as a divine organism it should be thought of as a giant clockwork. this mechanistic root metaphor continues to be the basis of thinking in the area of artificial intelligence and even taken-for-granted by important environmental thinkers such as e. o. wilson who refers to the brain as a machine, and as a problem in engineering. the root metaphor of individualism started c. a. bowers   language value 1, (1), 39–50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 43 out as an image or iconic metaphor that changed over time from being associated with being a subject, to being a citizen, to being self-creating, to being autonomous. it has now become a root metaphor (interpretative framework) in the west that leads to a taken-for-granted understanding that individuals own property and ideas, to the current understanding that they that construct their own ideas and values (as some educators now claim), to possessing civil rights, and so forth. this brief overview of the role of root metaphors, which are derived from the culture’s mythopoetic accounts of the beginning, purpose, and processes of reality, is meant to bring into focus a key aspect of language that is overlooked when the culture’s educational processes represent language as a neutral conduit. to restate a point made earlier, words have a history and in many instances the current meanings can be traced to an earlier period in the culture’s history when people were responding to a different set of circumstances. that is, analogies that framed the meaning of words that are still taken-for-granted today were settled upon by influential thinkers who were attempting to establish how to think about the changes taking place in their times. john locke, for example lived during a time of transition in the traditional feudal system of land ownership. the analogy that became his legacy to western cultures was to claim that private ownership of property is established through the person’s labor. adam smith, who was concerned about the restrictions of the mercantile system on local farmers and business, argued for “free markets” and observed that members of his community were engaging in activities he described as “truck, barter, and trade”. the analogs introduced by smith and the french physiocrats (who coined another metaphor, “laissez faire”) reflected the community-based experience and thinking of that era. however, the local markets that served as the analogs for his economic theory were ignored by readers who succeeded in reifying and thus turning his metaphorically based theory into a universal truth that has the same status as the law of gravity. that is, the cultural context as well as assumptions and prejudices of smith’s era have been ignored by today’s marketliberals who are working to globalize the layers of misunderstandings related to the idea of a free-market economy. to restate what is ignored when language is understood as a conduit in a sender/receiver process of communication: words are not objective representations of the real world, but are, as nietzsche pointed out, metaphorically based interpretations of people who were responding to the needs of their times. too how the linguistic colonization of the present by the past influences the colonization of other cultures   language value 1, (1), 39–50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 44 often their responses to the challenges of their times involved a linguistic problem that gregory bateson has recently shed light upon. if we engage in examining the origins of the analogs that are carried forward and continue to influence today’s thinking, including the silences and prejudices, we would recognize what is now referred to by gregory bateson as double bind thinking (1972). conceptual and moral double binds result from relying upon earlier ways of thinking as the basis for addressing current issues and problems. double bind thinking increases the likelihood that the metaphors inherited from earlier thinkers will prevent us from recognizing the deep conceptual roots of the ecological crises for the simple reason that these earlier thinkers took for granted many of the same root metaphors that gave conceptual direction and moral legitimacy to the industrial and consumer-dependent culture that is overshooting the sustaining capacity of the earth’s natural systems. today, the major emphasis in addressing the ecological crisis is to rely upon technological solutions, which leaves these root metaphors unexamined. thus, economic growth is still seen as part of the solution to the crises of our times even though it further threatens the self-renewing capacity of natural systems. more specific examples of double bind thinking for speakers of english occurs when they ignore that the analogs that frame the meaning of much of today’s key words reproduce the prejudices, silences, and taken-for-granted deep cultural assumptions of earlier thinkers. for example, the analogs for thinking of “technology” as both culturally neutral and as an expression of progress, of “tradition” as a source of individual oppression and a restriction on progress, of “wealth” as measured in material possessions and money, of “intelligence” as an attribute of the autonomous individual and a process that occurs in the brain, of “freedom” as a right of the individual that needs to be expanded without limits, of “community” from the anthropocentric perspective that excludes awareness of the animals and plants that share with humans the same physical space, of “literacy” as representing a more advanced stage of cultural development, and so on, have all been influenced by different combinations of the west’s dominant root metaphors that were taken-for-granted in the past—and are still taken-for-granted by the majority of today’s speakers of english. c. a. bowers   language value 1, (1), 39–50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 45 as we begin to recognize that both cultures and natural systems can be understood as ecologies (which means expanding the meaning of the word beyond how ernst haeckel reduced the greek word oikos in 1866 to mean the study of natural systems) the above metaphors, as well as many other english words (metaphors) take on profoundly different meanings. for example, both cultural and natural ecologies have a history and face the challenge of surviving into the future. given this understanding, culturally and ecologically informed analogs that frame the meaning of the word “tradition” no longer reproduce the enlightenment thinkers’ way of thinking of traditions as privileging small groups over others and of standing in the way of progress and rational thought. similarly, if we understand cultural and natural ecologies in terms of information circulating through the interdependent systems, and of the patterns that connect within and between both ecologies, it becomes clear that the old analogs for understanding “intelligence”, “freedom”, “individualism” and so forth, need to be radically revised. these context free metaphors were derived from the abstract theories of western philosophers and theorists who ignored other cultural ways of knowing as well as the cultural influences on their own thinking (bowers 2007). we also need to take account of what bateson refers to as the unit of survival —which takes account of how the individual is nested in the cultural ecology that is simultaneously nested in the natural ecology. as many non-english speaking cultures are facing the impact of global warming and other forms of environmental degradation that have far more severe consequences than what is being experienced in western countries, the problem of linguistic colonization of the present by the past becomes an even greater challenge where english is being adopted as a second language —and in some instances, as the primary language for relying upon western technologies and for participating in the global economy. if english words such as “development”, “modernization”, “market”, “progress”, “state”, “science”, “poverty”, and so forth, are taught as though they represent different universal possibilities, in the same way that gravity is understood as universal reality, then the colonization of the present by past influential english speakers is being ignored. that is, if students learning the meaning of english words do not question the current appropriateness of the analogs settled upon at earlier stages in the development how the linguistic colonization of the present by the past influences the colonization of other cultures   language value 1, (1), 39–50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 46 of english speaking cultures, they will be undergoing the worst case scenario of linguistic colonization. if the english vocabulary were informed by analogs derived from a deep understanding of the differences in the world’s cultural ecologies as well as the natural ecologies, the linguistic colonization associated with learning english would not be so life threatening. but it would still be a form of linguistic and thus cultural colonization. given the thousands of years it has taken to revise the analogs as well as the underlying root metaphors for such english words as “environment” and “woman”, which are still not widely adopted in english speaking countries, it is not likely that other key metaphors in the english vocabulary will be revised in ways that avoid the double bind that albert einstein warned about when he observed that we cannot rely upon the same mindset to fix the problem that it created. there are a number of other important issues connected with learning english as a second language. one of the issues relates to learning english from a printed source. as walter ong and others have pointed out, print-based communication alters consciousness in fundamental ways (muhlhausler 1996, ong 1982). the form of cultural colonization that occurs when print-based communication is relied upon, such as in computer-mediated learning, is that print reproduces many of the characteristics of a conduit view of language, including how it hides that words have a culturally specific history as well as how it reinforces a taken-for-granted attitude toward abstract thinking. the printed word, whether appearing in a book or on a computer screen, marginalizes the importance of local contexts, tacit understandings, and the patterns of metacommunication that are integral to spoken english. it also marginalizes the importance of personal memory of identity forming narratives and relationships with mentors and others who nurture and model how to participate in the largely non-monetized intergenerational commons—which, in most cultures, have a smaller ecological footprint. in short, print-based approaches to learning english contribute to the reification of the analogs settled upon by earlier thinkers, thus making it difficult for the first-time learner to question them. there is another issue that arises when english is being learned as a second language. as local communities in english speaking countries are rediscovering the c. a. bowers   language value 1, (1), 39–50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 47 intergenerational knowledge, skills, and practices that represent alternatives to the industrial and consumer dependent lifestyle that has such an adverse impact on the environment, there is beginning to be a change in the analogs that frame the meaning of such words as tradition, individualism, freedom, community, intelligence, progress, and so forth. for example, associating tradition with learning how to preserve vegetables as well as the daily practices of the older generation that are less reliant upon increasingly scarce sources of energy and water means that the enlightenment derived analogs that represented tradition as an obstacle to progress are less taken-for-granted today. similarly, the old analogs that represented all forms of change, especially in the area of technology and in the development of new markets and consumer goods, as the expression of progress are also being increasingly questioned as people are beginning to ask what traditions of community self-reliance are being overturned. the old analogs that framed the meaning of individualism, freedom, and community are also beginning to be questioned as the emerging root metaphor of ecology becomes more widely understood as the explanatory framework for understanding the interdependence between cultural and natural systems. the key point is that if the teachers of english as a second language are unaware that the ecological crises is causing fundamental linguistic changes among a small yet growing segment of the population in english speaking countries they may be teaching their students to adopt the meaning of words framed by the earlier analogs that are now being questioned and modified in way that take account of how to live more ecologically sustainable lives. changes in the root metaphors of patriarchy, anthropocentrism, and even mechanism, which framed the meaning of much of english vocabulary that still justifies economic and cultural colonization, are beginning to be revised as the explanatory power of new root metaphors such as evolution and ecology are recognized as more relevant to meeting today’s challenges. in effect, the emerging analogs that are reframing the meaning of words are being contested by reactionary groups still holding onto the assumptions that underlie the industrial and consumerdependent lifestyle, and the old analogs are being challenged by social groups who are beginning to exercise ecological intelligence that is informed about the interdependencies of cultural and natural systems. the linguistic changes occurring in english speaking countries that are resulting from the growing awareness of the cultural how the linguistic colonization of the present by the past influences the colonization of other cultures   language value 1, (1), 39–50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 48 roots of the ecological crisis means that teaching english cannot be separated from helping students understand how linguistic changes mirror the contending political and economic forces in english speaking countries. there is a third issue that needs to be addressed in teaching english as a second language. that is, not only is there a need to introduce students to how the different ways in which key words are being contested and revised in english speaking countries, students also need to be encouraged to consider how the old analogs that framed the meaning of english words would, if accepted as the way everyday reality should be understood, undermine traditions that the students think essential to their own selfidentity and sense of community self-reliance. they should also be encouraged to question whether the new ecologically informed analogs that are changing the meaning of english words have implications for rethinking the historically constituted analogs that underlie their own vocabulary. do the historically constituted analogs that frame the meaning of key words in their own language take account of such challenges as the ecological crisis that earlier influential thinkers were unaware of? following ivan illich’s suggestion, wolfgang sachs published a series of essays by third world writers who examined how adopting the still dominant english meaning of such words as “development”, “progress”, “markets”, “needs”, “poverty”, and so on would introduce fundamental changes in local ways of thinking and practices. the collection of essays, titled the development dictionary: a guide to knowledge as power (1992), provides a model of what also needs to be included in teaching english. escaping from the subtle and complex ways in which linguistic colonization occurs can only be achieved by questioning the cultural assumptions taken-for-granted by earlier influential thinkers who established the analogs for judging what represents “developed” and “modern” cultures, and what cultures are to be viewed as undeveloped and backward. the ecologically informed analogs are reframing the meaning of words of these colonizing words by foregrounding the importance of such words and phrases as “ecologically sustainable”, “eco-justice”, and “local knowledge”. as the linguistic colonization of the present by the past is not unique to english, the need to conserve ecologically sustainable cultural practices is closely related to the need to conserve the diversity of the world’s languages. this will require greater awareness c. a. bowers   language value 1, (1), 39–50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 49 that words are metaphors, that they have a history, and that the analogs that frame their meaning are derived from mythopoetic narratives and powerful evocative experiences that underlie culturally specific assumptions that are too often taken for granted. whether classroom teachers and university professors can avoid relying upon the conduit view of language that marginalizes the awareness that most words are metaphors that often carry forward the misconceptions, prejudices, and silences of earlier generations will be a challenge that must be met if they are to avoid the double bind that bateson and einstein identified. references bateson, g. 1972. steps to an ecology of mind. new york: ballantine books. bowers, c. a. 2007. “philosophy, language, and the titanic mindset”. language and ecology. http://ecoling.net/journal.html, 2 (1), 1-16 bowers, c. a. 2009. “why the lakoff and johnson theory of metaphor is inadequate for addressing the cultural issues related to the ecological crises” language and ecology http://ecoling.net/journal.html, 2, (4), 1-16. kaufmann, w. (ed.) 1967. friedrich nietzsche: the will to power. new york: vintage books. lakoff, g. and johnson, m. 1999. philosophy in the flesh: the embodied mind and its challenge to western thought. new york: basic books. muhlhausler, p. 1996. linguistic ecology: language change and linguistic imperialism in the pacific region. london: routledge. ong, w. 1982. orality and literacy: the technologizing of the word. new york. methuen publishers. reddy, m. j. 1979. “the conduit metaphor—a case of frame conflict in our language about language”. in ortony, a. (ed.) metaphor and thought. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press, 284-324. sachs, w. 1992. the develoment dictionary: a guide to knowledge as power. london: zed books. how the linguistic colonization of the present by the past influences the colonization of other cultures language value 1, (1), 39–50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 50 received may 2009 cite this article as: bowers, c. a. 2009. “how the linguistic colonization of the present by the past influences the colonization of other cultures adopting english as second language”. language value, 1 (1), 39-50. servei de publicacions de la universitat jaume i: castelló, spain. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue. issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue july 2017, volume 9, number 1 pp. 62-88 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2017.9.4 62 idub – the potential of intralingual dubbing in foreign language learning: how to assess the task noa talaván ntalavan@flog.uned.es tomás costal tcostal@flog.uned.es universidad nacional de educación a distancia, spain abstract research on the use of active dubbing activities in foreign language learning is gaining an increasing amount of attention. the most obvious skill to be enhanced in this context is oral production and a few authors have already mentioned the potential benefits of asking students to record their voices in a ‘semiprofessional’ manner. the present project attempts to assess the potential of intralingual dubbing (english-english) to develop general oral production skills in adult university students of english b2 level in an online learning environment, and to provide general guidelines of dubbing task assessment for practitioners. to this end, a group of undergraduate pre-intermediate students worked on ten sequenced activities using short videos taken from an american sitcom over a period of two months. the research study included language assessment tests, questionnaires and observation as the basic data gathering tools to make the results as reliable and thorough as possible for this type of educational setting. the conclusions provide a good starting point for the establishment of basic guidelines that may help teachers implement dubbing tasks in the language class. keywords: audiovisual translation, dubbing, language learning, oral skills, online tasks, assessment rubric i. introduction the idub – intralingual dubbing to improve oral skills project arose from the need to evaluate the potential didactic efficiency of dubbing as an active task in distance foreign language (henceforth, l2) environments as well as from the lack of assessment materials in this learning context. such a point of departure led the research team involved in this teacher innovation network sponsored by the uned (universidad nacional de educación a distancia) to set up a two-month experience where students would have to record their voices so as to dub ten short clips. although some previous studies had already assessed (to a greater or lesser extent, as the theoretical framework will present) the role of dubbing as a didactic resource in l2 education, none had yet focused on distance learning students working in online environments. besides, since the literature dealing with this area of study is still scarce, mailto:ntalavan@flog.uned.es mailto:tcostal@flog.uned.es idub the potential of intralingual dubbing in foreign language learning: how to assess the task language value 9 (1), 62–88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 63 no author has (to date) attempted to suggest a specific assessment procedure that can accompany such a task and so motivate practitioners to carry out this activity on a more frequent basis. when students synchronise their recorded voices to a video fragment, they can work in two different directions according to the guidelines provided by the teacher: l1-l2 or l2-l2 (since l1-l1 would not imply any l2 learning whatsoever and l2-l1 is a very unlikely combination for l2 learning). since most existing studies have focused on the l1-l2 combination, idub has attempted to make a contribution to assess the power of intralingual dubbing (l2-l2) as a task. whatever the combination, the task is the same: students need to substitute the actors’ voices trying to get as close as possible to a real dubbing process, adapting their words and sentences to the characters’ mouth movements. this type of didactic approach to the use of authentic video forces students to work on listening comprehension first (to make out the script if the teacher does not provide them with it), then on writing production (at least in terms of spelling, since they copy the original down and do not produce new text) when they have to write the script that they will use to record their voices, and finally on oral production. oral production is enhanced here in terms of pronunciation, naturalness of speech, speed and fluency. hence, dubbing constitutes a very comprehensive task that can produce a series of interesting l2 learning benefits. the main aims of this paper are to provide an introduction to the field of dubbing as an active task in l2 environments, to describe a research experience (idub) where dubbing was used in an online distance learning context, to analyse the main conclusions derived from it and to provide general guidelines that can help practitioners in the assessment of this type of didactic task. ii. theoretical framework the field of translation studies and the increasingly specialised subject of audiovisual translation (avt) have attempted to tackle dubbing from multiple perspectives, which range from the interdisciplinary to the sociocultural, critical and linguistic. dubbing, taken as a modality of translation, involves the transference of meaning from one language to another and, given the particularities of this audiovisual technique, the aural noa talaván and tomás costal language value 9 (1), 62–88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 64 and visual channels interact with one another bringing forward additional constraints, such as synchrony between the text and the image and the need for cohesion and coherence at both the linguistic and the visual levels. in fact, one of the aims of dubbing is to make viewers believe that what they are actually being shown is not only realistic, but also familiar to them (díaz cintas and orero 2010). leaving aside classical references which inquired into the cinematographic qualities of revoicing techniques and those in which aesthetics and philosophical disquisitions are the main focus of attention, eight separate categories of classification could be drawn from the diverse pool of resources available: (a) dubbing as a subdiscipline within avt; (b) compendia of particular examples or corpus-based descriptive studies; (c) the nature of dubbese, understood as the language of dubbing, separate from both the source language (sl) and the target language (tl); (d) considerations on voice and vocal qualities applied to dubbing either as a theoretical or as a practical endeavour; (e) dubbing as a cultural phenomenon from a contemporary perspective; (f) orality and its relationship with dubbese; (g) dubbing as a tool to build bridges between the humanities and the exact sciences and, finally, central to this paper; (h) the potential pedagogical applications of dubbing in language learning. all of these categories have been influential when it comes to designing an assessment rubric that could respond to the needs of diverse students in as wide a variety of learning contexts and environments as possible. a) dubbing and avt contemporary commentators tend to believe that the feud between the proponents of dubbing and subtitling as ideal solutions to the avt conundrum is fruitless and should instead be confronted from the point of view of compatibility rather than competitiveness and pre-eminence (díaz cintas 1999). in their seminal research synthesis, koolstra et al. (2002) conclude that, in the light of the experimental data gathered via longitudinal studies in several european countries, it would be adventurous to state that either of the modalities under study – subtitling and dubbing – could be favoured or disfavoured according to their potential benefits or drawbacks. this would help explain why, in spite of local shifts and minor changes in the european audiovisual panorama, subtitling, dubbing and voice-over continue to coexist, to shape a global idub the potential of intralingual dubbing in foreign language learning: how to assess the task language value 9 (1), 62–88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 65 communications and entertainment industry, as well as to open new pathways for academic debate, and to generate new resources for translators and translator trainers (bartrina and espasa 2005, chaume 2013, siegel et al. 2013). b) descriptive studies humour, taboo, censorship, the behaviour of speech communities and national accounts of dubbing practices from the origins of cinema up to the present age abound in those countries where audiovisual and multimedia translation have recently become the focus of academic attention, but also in mainstream publications where avt and dubbing have managed to find a niche audience. perhaps at the cost of originality and the development of a more solidly consolidated theoretical framework, compendia of examples and corpus-based audiovisual research have emerged and continue to emerge from dissertations, theses and doctoral digests of unpublished works, as well as from specialised journals and publications (see audissino 2012, de bonis 2014, garcía luque 2005, gonzález iglesias and toda 2011, jiménez carra 2009, llamas gutiérrez 2010, martí ferriol 2007, matamala 2010, zabalbeascoa 2012, and zanotti 2016 for relevant samples). c) the nature of dubbese dolç and santamaria’s (1998) research could be seen as a pioneering study in which the effects of linguistic policy and final user expectations are identified as principal contributors to the consolidation and fossilisation of a syntax, a lexicon and a grammar that is neither here nor there – neither tl nor sl proper – in catalan dubbing. later authors have followed their lead with different language combinations and pay heed to additional constraints such as viewer preferences (romero fresco 2006, 2012), cultural specificities (bonsignori 2015, naranjo sánchez 2015, pavesi 2009, ranzato 2012) or televisual traditions (baños 2013). in terms of assessment and evaluation, given that the nature of dubbese is still difficult to pinpoint and reception studies remain scarce, perhaps a more encompassing view of the matter at hand would make it possible to dissolve a few of its incongruities. one such case would be the question of the so-called artificiality of dubbese, which seems to go unnoticed once audiences are exposed to recognisable audiovisual genres and formats. even if we should expect an exclusively linguistic approach to dubbese to offer an incomplete view of both production and noa talaván and tomás costal language value 9 (1), 62–88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 66 reception of dubbed products, as far as characterisation and credibility (suspension of disbelief) are concerned, dubbese as an in-between or perhaps even an l3 (zabalbeascoa 2012) should receive due consideration. d) voice and vocal qualities together with computing, accessibility and ergonomics, as will be discussed below, the phonetic-phonological, psychological and anatomical features related to the dubbing process have attracted some scholarly attention. brumme (2012) calls the relation that is established between characters, bodies and voice ‘fictitious voice’ and ‘feigned orality’. these three separate but complementary dimensions are mentioned by various authors, such as mera (1999) and whittaker (2012), in their personal evaluations of dubbing as a sensory experience that may transcend the sum of its procedural parts. by leaving an indelible mark on the spectator, these bodies with no voice of their own and these extradiegetic voices, which are made to fit a stranger’s body, ultimately support the intended effect of ensuring viewer immersion into the fictional product that is shown under a given set of conditions. e) dubbing and culture as stated earlier, dubbing, understood as an avt modality, lends itself well to interdisciplinary approaches by means of which critical methodologies outside the field of linguistics are capable of finding new inroads, thus favouring ideological and terminological reconsiderations. recent exponents of this trend would be lashley’s (2012) reading of lip-dubbing in social networks and virtual video broadcasting platforms taken as highly complex cultural reappropriation phenomena whereby ‘produsers’ (i.e. producers who also act as users, such as youtube channel managers) intermix language, traditions, customs and worldviews to create derivative works and interact with other peers. regardless of the instability of lashley’s proposals, which are heavily reliant on discursive practices and a cultural materialist view of social exchanges, fan phenomena should be incorporated into the evaluation and assessment phases of a didactic project based on dubbing. the shift from amateurship to professionalism in self-learning environments bears relevant similarities to selfregulated task-based learning supplemented with the instructor’s guidance. idub the potential of intralingual dubbing in foreign language learning: how to assess the task language value 9 (1), 62–88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 67 f) orality and dubbese over the course of this bibliographical review we have come across appreciations of dubbing as ‘natural’ or ‘unnatural’, ‘aesthetic’ or ‘anti-aesthetic’, ‘real’ or ‘fictional’. indeed, the issue of orality in dubbed productions has created significant controversy, with observations which, although seemingly in the tradition of splitting hairs, contribute to the relocation of essential terminological elements. in this regard, bandia (2011: online) points out that: […] the quest for a global reach has given rise to multiple ways of enscribing oral narratives and performances into written form through pseudotranslation or translationrelated practices such as transcription, entextualisation, transformation, transcreation, intercultural writing and translation proper. therefore, scriptwriting and the illusion of orality, prefabricated as it may be, is yet another contributing factor in the didactic approach to dubbing: intralingual (sl-sl), interlingual (sl-tl) and creative (sl-sl* and sl-tl*) versions of the definitive audio track, on whose paralinguistic elements – such as music and sound effects – practitioners may also intervene by taking on an editorial role, provide abundant opportunities to compare, contrast and eventually perfect either individual or group productions. g) building bridges the application of optimisation principles to language studies has found a productive outlet in computational and corpus linguistics, but this interest has also reached the dubbing process and the possibility of achieving a far more streamlined system of production. brisaboa et al. (2015) have created an algorithm to determine the optimal distribution of resources (actors, directors, recording studio rooms and sound technicians) to complete as much dubbing work as possible in galician studios by investing the least amount of money. although still in the pilot phase, the results of a preliminary implementation of the model have increased efficiency under a given set of conditions. matousek and vit (2012) have designed a computer program capable of readjusting automatic dubbing, based on text-to-speech technologies, using subtitle positions as a cue. this software would help make audiovisual products more accessible noa talaván and tomás costal language value 9 (1), 62–88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 68 to blind or partially-sighted audiences. despite their complexity, these computer-based models can attest that it would be feasible to train learners’ competences in an integrated manner (linguistic, technological, cultural, learning to learn, sense of initiative and entrepreneurship, among others) focusing on an avt modality as apparently simple as dubbing. h) pedagogical applications several studies have considered the potential pedagogical applications of dubbing in language learning, carrying out short-term experiments with a relatively low number of subjects and different conditions of replicability. barbe (1996), for instance, advocated the introduction of the dubbing modality of avt as a useful tool for translator training despite the technical difficulties it might present. kumai (1996: online), on the other hand, perceived that dubbing could contribute to the development of linguistic and paralinguistic skills in the l2 (especially pronunciation, intonation, awareness of rhythm, fluency, speed and the emulation of body language as utilised by native speakers) even more than tasks centred on oral interpretation, as “[…] the hard work of analysis has been done by the movie actors and the director, so the students can use them as models”. in burston (2005), technical difficulties were overcome by encouraging an appropriate division of the task into stages: “video selection, scene cropping and muting, initial class presentation of the target video, group listening comprehension (or scenario creation) activities, individual practice, group rehearsal and, finally, soundtrack dubbing” (79). the author acknowledges that these tasks respond to the principle of being action-oriented, communicative and need not focus solely on oral production, as they involve writing and reading as well. navarrete (2013) concurs with burston’s view of task design, methodological clarity, active student participation and engagement as fundamental elements geared towards the introduction of avt-based class modules. both authors highlight that the selection of very few clips adequate to the participants’ level may be made compatible with set materials already in use in face-to-face educational contexts, where the communicative approach is favoured and task-based or project-based learning inform the official curriculum. in fact, wagener (2006) reports that the existence of institutional learning agreements between the teaching staff and the idub the potential of intralingual dubbing in foreign language learning: how to assess the task language value 9 (1), 62–88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 69 students enrolled in formal language learning courses might prove beneficial not exclusively in organisational terms, but also regarding motivational factors. the findings presented in talaván et al. (2014, 2015) have tried to attest said advantages and will be further analysed in subsequent reviews to outline possible reformulations within the structure of language study programmes in online distance education environments. as for the available results in didactic research and dubbing, danan’s (2010) is perhaps the experiment least possible to replicate, given that it was put in practice with military personnel enrolled in highly intensive language learning courses (up to 800 class hours in a single year) and the target languages were dari, pashto and farsi. nevertheless, the data extracted from supervisor evaluations and qualitative questionnaires revealed that dubbing may indeed be considered as an appropriate tool for active language learning with the following caveats: all students should complete all the steps set in the task (from transcript writing to voice recording), instead of dividing the task into smaller subtasks and assigning a specialised role to each participant in the group, and video selection should take into account clip length restrictions as well as student preferences from the outset. he and wasuntarasophit (2015) attempted a similar experiment to danan’s with 34 chinese female student learners of english. the task consisted in dubbing a complete episode of friends in 4 weeks. students were advised to devote at least one hour a day for the duration of the project and the objective was to improve comprehensibility, fluency and accentedness while transferring audiovisual content from chinese into english. two different pre-tests and post-tests, similar to semi-structured interviews, were employed as a measure of the student’s progress. in terms of pronunciation, the qualitative data indicate that the groups not only became aware of their production errors, but were also incentivised by the task design to continue practising on their own. the authors recognise that clip selection could have responded better to the students’ individual needs and that motivation should have been considered as a variable to be more closely controlled. also in the chinese primary and secondary school setting, wakefield (2014) believes that dubbing is comparable if not superior in some respects to textual dramatisation in terms of language learning applicability. even though task design seems to indicate that noa talaván and tomás costal language value 9 (1), 62–88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 70 the author has very young learners in mind, he suggests – almost as an afterthought – that creative dubbings might also be beneficial. in other words, he was proposing that students creating their own version of the script should be added to the modality as a language-learning activity which requires the activation of higher-order thinking skills (krathwohl 2002). in university contexts, chiu’s (2012) experiment proved inconclusive after using dubbing as a supplementary tool to teach pronunciation (intonation and effusiveness) to chinese students. after completing a single task, which consisted in dubbing a 10minute clip live in front of the whole class (the voices were not recorded but read out loud in front of a projecting screen with the video muted), the author observes that “[…] the nature of the focus-on-form tasks embedded in synchronous film dubbing is not entirely in accordance with the principles of communicative language teaching because learners produce utterances through internalisation” (e26). this type of experimental design, therefore, would require several adaptations prior to implementing a second iteration: the clips should last between one and two minutes, the topics should be student-selected and actual recordings ought to take place for the task to be classified as dubbing. finally, it is interesting to note how recent studies, such as jüngst (2013) and ghia and pavesi (2016), insist on the potential of audiovisual translation and, more particularly, dubbing as a task which may be employed to train several language skills at once (production, reception, interaction and mediation), thereby inviting other scholars to concentrate their research efforts on this modality to unveil its true potential in second language acquisition. iii. the idub project the idub project arose as a continuation of icap, a teacher innovation network carried out a year before so as to assess the potential benefits of intralingual captioning to improve written production and vocabulary skills. within icap, the research team created ten clipflair activities i using ten videos taken from the american sitcom how i met your mother (bays and thomas 2005–2014) and had students working on their intralingual subtitling for two months, with very positive feedback and learning idub the potential of intralingual dubbing in foreign language learning: how to assess the task language value 9 (1), 62–88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 71 outcomes, especially in terms of writing skills enhancement (talaván et al. 2016). thus, the idea behind idub rested upon replicating these ten activities but changing the instructions, so that students were asked to record their voices in a dubbing-like manner, as will be explained in the description of the tasks below, instead of creating subtitles. the participants differed, since they came from various courses and years, but they were all students of the same degree in english studies at the uned. the idub project took place from february to june 2014 and students were involved in the learning tasks from mid-march to mid-may. the main research goals were to analyse the level of oral production skills improvement that students could achieve, as well as to assess their degree of motivation working with dubbing as an active didactic task and to analyse the potential usefulness of the creation of an ad-hoc rubric to assess the students’ dubbing productions. in order to reach the corresponding conclusions, the research design made use of language assessment tests, questionnaires and observation. by triangulating data gathering tools, the research team attempted to provide reliable results that could be consistent enough to offer possibilities of replication and partial generalisation of the conclusions derived therein. iii.1. participants idub was presented as an extracurricular activity for first-year undergraduates enrolled in the subject inglés instrumental ii, which runs through the second semester of the degree in english studies at the uned. students were offered the opportunity to participate in a two-month experience where they could promote their oral skills and earn an extra mark in their final course grade. 25 students volunteered for the task, out of which only 15 worked on the activities and 10 completed all the final tests and questionnaires. it must be noted that the dropout rate in distance learning education is usually high (lassibille and navarro gómez 2008, mec 2016) and that the activity was quite challenging and demanded many hours of work on the part of the participants involved (two or three hours per task on average plus forum interventions). the subjects’ ages ranged from 18 to 52 (with an average of 34) and all the students who completed the project were native speakers of spanish. their level of proficiency in english (according to their own perception) ranged from intermediate to advanced noa talaván and tomás costal language value 9 (1), 62–88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 72 with almost half of the participants considering their level as upper-intermediate, which is understandable since they were supposed to be taking a course to consolidate b2 level (cefrl, council of europe 2001) at the time, and because at least 50% had also lived in an english-speaking country for half a year or longer. however, their proficiency level in terms of skills was irregular, as shown in figure 1. figure 1. participants’ self-perception of their l2 level of departure. hence, as expected, most participants considered themselves more proficient in reception than in production skills and speaking was one of the skills at which they felt less competent. finally, it should be noted that all subjects were familiar with the use of audiovisual materials in the language class and almost 80% made frequent use of them (either in their original version or with subtitles) outside the class. all but one (who claimed to be a fandubber, that is to say, a person who dubs online videos voluntarily and because they are usually fans of the corresponding movie or series) had no previous experience in the active use of dubbing tasks and their expectations when they got involved in the idub the potential of intralingual dubbing in foreign language learning: how to assess the task language value 9 (1), 62–88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 73 project were centred mainly on the improvement of oral skills: listening and, more intensively, speaking. iii.2. resources: the clips, the tests and the questionnaires as stated above, the clips were taken from a previous research project (icap), where they had been pre-selected according to a series of relevant criteria (talaván 2013): they were all extracted from the same season (season 9, the last one) of how i met your mother and they were short (1–2 minutes long), interesting, humorous, self-contained, included a specific communicative function, and presented a maximum of three characters each (most of them only two). the idea behind this selection was to allow students to understand the clip (even if they did not know the show at all) and make the tasks as motivating as possible to facilitate the recording process, where each student had to do all the voices in every single video. in order to test the level of proficiency in oral production with which participants started and check their improvement after two months working on the dubbing tasks, two types of speaking test were designed: one focused on pronunciation, the other on fluency. the former instructed subjects to record themselves reading a specific script, trying to sound as natural as possible emulating the original, which was taken from a humorous video (a permanent link to the video was provided to present students with a reference model). the remaining tests, which focused on assessing fluency, included detailed instructions that the students should follow to record themselves for 2–3 minutes performing a specific task with no script involved. as far as the preand the post-questionnaires are concerned, the former was designed to gather information that would describe the sample and provide a clear point of departure to help analyse the results (pre-questionnaire: https://goo.gl/t5j0gz). the latter, on the other hand, was aimed at gathering relevant feedback on the potential didactic benefits of this experience, as well as to complement the data derived from the language assessment tests and observation (post-questionnaire: https://goo.gl/6ja2qk). https://goo.gl/t5j0gz https://goo.gl/6ja2qk noa talaván and tomás costal language value 9 (1), 62–88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 74 iii.3. procedures: the tasks the students who volunteered for idub were registered as members of an online community based on the uned virtual campus (called alf). the virtual space devoted to the project contained all the instructions participants were to follow, the tasks themselves, and forums where they could receive the teachers’ assistance at any time. the dubbing tasks, which were uploaded to the clipflair platform (http://www.clipflair.net/), all contained similar instructions and had the first two interventions recorded as a sample to help students understand the activity better. table 1 provides the list of activities, their corresponding links and a reproduction of the general instructions provided. table 1. clipflair dubbing activities and instructions. clipflair activities general instructions for dubbing 1check-in: https://goo.gl/drm2wo 2advice: https://goo.gl/lh3kp8 3phone call job offer: https://goo.gl/8hzfvb 4narrating 1: https://goo.gl/vnqvum 5announcements: https://goo.gl/dztfay 6complaining: https://goo.gl/pxxgio 7requests 1: https://goo.gl/ak7nhh 8narrating 2: https://goo.gl/dyjqv4 9justifying: https://goo.gl/9iyvrb 10requests 2: https://goo.gl/zntlqh dub this scene as naturally as possible (do the voices for the different characters if you can). to dub: – create ‘captions’ to record the voices, one caption per intervention (just as you can see in the first four examples). you can write the script for the captions in the ‘script box’. check this video (from minute 1.46) to see how you can create ‘captions’: http://vimeo.com/70557366 – once you have the ‘caption’ created, you can click on the red button and record your voice for every part (you can erase the first two sample recordings by clicking on the [rec] button). – when you finish, you can save all the audio segments as a single audio file (to merge it with the video elsewhere) by clicking on the [folder] button at the top right of the ‘revoicing’ box. notes: – when you dub, try to use a natural pronunciation in english (mimicking works very well). – try to be as fluent as possible in your interventions. – exaggerate difficult english sounds so that they ‘sound’ like english (it’s fun!). ________________________________________________________ for your information • do not forget to save your work by clicking the [save] button at the bottom of the activity window. • feel free to play around, move components by dragging their title bar, close components, etc. if you get lost, refresh your browser (f5) or close and open it again. • for more information, have a look at our website http://clipflair.net • need help? go to our forum at http://social.clipflair.net and ask. http://www.clipflair.net/ https://goo.gl/drm2wo https://goo.gl/lh3kp8 https://goo.gl/8hzfvb https://goo.gl/vnqvum https://goo.gl/dztfay https://goo.gl/pxxgio https://goo.gl/ak7nhh https://goo.gl/dyjqv4 https://goo.gl/9iyvrb https://goo.gl/zntlqh http://vimeo.com/70557366 http://clipflair.net/ http://social.clipflair.net/ idub the potential of intralingual dubbing in foreign language learning: how to assess the task language value 9 (1), 62–88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 75 as can be derived from the table, all tasks were similar in structure (with different videos and language content) and the main goal was for students to record their voices as naturally as possible trying to respect synchrony as far as they could. participants were asked to complete the ten activities in the course of the two-month period they devoted to the project and to share their activities with their fellow students in the forums right after completing each of them. in this way, they were able to start a peerto-peer review process in which their teachers also intervened to provide the necessary feedback. once the two-month period was over, a final video conference was held, where students provided feedback on the project and exchanged views on the experience as a whole. moreover, in a final stage, the students’ dubbing tasks were assessed following the specific rubric designed for this project. iii.4. the assessment of the dubbing tasks: a proposal from the previous overview of dubbing as an avt modality, as an accessibility technique and as a tool for active language learning, it may be advanced that the potential didactic applications of its integration in formal learning has undoubtedly been hinted at, but by no means fully revealed yet. sample populations are limited (always below 40 participants), task objectives are loosely delineated, the variables to be controlled are difficult to compute, the evaluation process is influenced by whether or not the task is a course requirement or a voluntary endeavour, content and topic heterogeneous, the length of the projects is frequently short and the data gathered from questionnaires, pre-tests and post-tests (when data triangulation is advisable) are frequently not available in full. hence, the following assessment rubric was designed keeping in mind the fundamental purpose of quantifying task results. a total of five fields were established: (a) accuracy, (b) synchrony; (c) pronunciation; (d) intonation, and (e) performance/dramatisation. these are elements which should feature in the final product of an avt dubbing assignment and, therefore, the rubric may be used to judge the quality of a student’s production when working on dubbing tasks. the rubric does not assess any of the stages prior to the final result, as would be the case of group discussions and class debates, noa talaván and tomás costal language value 9 (1), 62–88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 76 script or transcript writing, revision, translation or, for that matter, technical expertise in manipulating sound and image using computer software. those considerations should remain separate since they are dissimilar linguistic skills or entirely different competences, which, perhaps, the task was not designed to enhance and, in consequence, measure conveniently. rather, these aspects should be part of the continuous assessment, during which feedback may be provided by the instructor or other students, depending on the approach taken to evaluate the way participants accomplish a series of goals. table 2 reproduces this assessment proposal. table 2. proposal for a dubbing assessment rubric. assessment 0 – 2.0 1. accuracy 2. synchrony 3. pronunciation 4. intonation 5. performance/dramatisation final mark 1 – no evidence 0.0–2.5 points 2 – some evidence 2.6–5.0 points 3 – good 5.1–7.5 points 4 – excellent 7.6–10 points 1. accuracy: the voice recordings are grammatically correct. 2. synchrony: there is synchrony between the duration of each voice recording and the duration of the original actor’s corresponding utterances. 3. pronunciation: the voice recordings are pronounced correctly. 4. intonation: intonation is natural. 5. performance and dramatisation of the dialogues: performance resembles the original utterances. the polyvalent character of this rubric lies in the fact that the five fields of assessment do not distinguish between language combinations, direction of the translation (intralingual, interlingual, direct or reverse), whether the assignment involves mimicking the original version or creating a new one, or the participant’s defining characteristics, thus offering a blueprint for the achievement of a clearer, more encompassing instrument of evaluation. each of these fields, however, will require further validation through piloting and, to that end, a variety of different implementations which do offer the possibility of being replicated are urgently called idub the potential of intralingual dubbing in foreign language learning: how to assess the task language value 9 (1), 62–88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 77 for. those instances of live dubbing where the final product is ephemeral because of its predominantly performative qualities (as in he and wasuntarasophit 2015) do not allow for intersubjective or inter-experimental comparisons. ideally, participants’ synchronised voices should be recorded, added to the visual track, edited, assessed and classified in accordance with some type of measurable result. in addition, at least one hour on average should be set aside for every minute of video to be dubbed as part of a project, which does not include the transcript and editing phases, also essential to the procedure although assessed differently. in consequence, danan’s (2010) and chiu’s (2012) use of complete episodes of television series is discouraged, both on didactic and copyright grounds, if dubbing tasks are also to be introduced successfully at other study levels, such as primary and secondary education. iv. data analysis and discussion the data collected for this project were analysed from a triple perspective, using three different data gathering tools: language assessment tests, questionnaires and observation. as far as oral proficiency enhancement is concerned, table 3 shows the average marks and the standard deviation obtained after assessing the oral preand post-tests submitted by the students who completed the project. table 3. language assessment tests data summary. oral pre-test 1 oral post-test 1 oral pre-test 2 oral post-test 2 average mark 7.375 7.775 7.060 8.250 standard deviation 0.866 1.387 1.630 1.724 it must be remembered that the first pre-test only asked subjects to record their voices reading a script, aiming at evaluating pronunciation, while the second one looked at fluency through a speaking task where they were asked to improvise following some noa talaván and tomás costal language value 9 (1), 62–88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 78 pre-established guidelines. the four tests were assessed by two observers following a specific oral production rubric. table 3 shows how the standard deviation is quite low in all four cases, as expected, provided the group was supposed to have a rather similar level of departure. it is slightly higher in the two post-tests, and this can be interpreted as the sample becoming less homogenous after the variable of dubbing as a didactic task is applied, given that learners typically benefit from each resource differently, according to their level of commitment and, being online distance students, depending on the time they have available to do the tasks. as regards oral skills improvement, a slight change seems to occur in terms of pronunciation when the marks in pre-test and post-test 1 are compared. how relevant this fact may be in terms of the real enhancement derived from the dubbing tasks is to be contrasted with information obtained through the two remaining data gathering tools: questionnaires and observation. however, considering the activity was carried out over just two months, dubbing could potentially be identified as an aid in the students’ pronunciation advancement. the difference between pre-test and post-test 2 shows how the amelioration in terms of fluency seems to be more noticeable. we could derive that this enhancement is brought about by the type of work involved in the dubbing tasks, where different skills (especially listening, writing and speaking) interact, and where students can learn about fluency through mimicking native speakers’ speech characteristics. however, bearing in mind the small size of the sample and the subjectivity involved in measuring oral skills improvement through a rubric (even if two observers are involved), these data are contrasted and complemented below. observation was performed by various researchers involved in idub and took place during the whole project, specifically through the students’ participation in the forums, the assessment of the dubbing tasks using the rubric described in the previous section, and the feedback obtained from the final videoconference. apart from the messages of the general forum and an additional one created to address technical issues, students had one virtual space dedicated to each dubbing task. there, they were expected to share the links to their dubbed activities once finished and to provide peer-to-peer feedback. in relation to this, table 4 compares two subjects’ views on the didactic use of dubbing in l2 taken from the forums devoted to the first and the tenth activity to analyse their evolution. idub the potential of intralingual dubbing in foreign language learning: how to assess the task language value 9 (1), 62–88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 79 table 4. students’ forum interactions on their l2 improvement. forum task 1 forum task 10 s2: i’m satisfied but i think i could improve my pronunciation a little bit more. nevertheless, it’s a bit difficult when you try to adapt the sentences to the timing. about s4’s clip, you’ve done a good work [sic], but for the next one, try to be more natural. imagine that you are in that situation. it’s much more funny! and try to pay attention to some consonants that i’m sure you can do better, for example “r” and “sh”. good work and cheer up! s2: s1 as usual has an awesome accent, she sounds like a native, on the other hand some of the dubs are cut at the end. s4 is so natural. besides, your dub is probably one of the most accurate relating to the time. and finally, s3, it is breathtaking the way you improve your dub from the first one to the last task, even with quick chunks that are very difficult to achieve. s3: i think you have done a good work [sic]. i find that s1’s pronunciation is very “english”, but on the other hand, s2’s intonation is more natural (it sounds more like original actors do). maybe you both can try to improve these aspects for the next clip. s3: hi s4! as always, your intonation is good, and you’ve made an effort in order to improve your pronunciation. i think you have succeed [sic]! even though this is your last clip, keep in your mind [sic] all the tips you received and try to improve a little bit every time. i’ll do my best in order to do that too. it’s been a real pleasure to watch and comment your work. as the previous examples show, most students were especially concerned with improving their pronunciation. hence, the slightly less evident pronunciation enhancement that was shown in table 3 is counterbalanced by the students’ reflections. the encouragement students provided one another with from the outset should also be noted, as well as how motivated all of them felt both in the individual dubbing work and in the collaborative peer-to-peer assessment stage. moving on now to the assessment of the students’ dubbing tasks, the average total score obtained in all activities was good, considering it was the first time learners faced dubbing activities of this sort: they obtained an average of 6.7 (out of 10), using the rubric described before. the best results were recorded in the field of pronunciation (with an average score of 1.6 out of 2) and especially intonation (1.9 out of 2). this can be interpreted in terms of the students’ eagerness for imitation, trying to sound as natural as possible, just as was suggested in the task instructions. the worst results were seen in terms of synchrony (1.1 out of 2) and performance/dramatisation (1.2 out of 2). this fact was somehow expected given the novelty of the task, the challenge involved in synchronisation (adjusting the voices to the characters’ mouths) and the fact that subjects were not supposed to have any drama skills. hence, a clear advance in terms of noa talaván and tomás costal language value 9 (1), 62–88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 80 pronunciation and intonation (that also intervene when it comes to improving fluency) is also confirmed at this stage of observation, on the basis of the assessment rubric. the final videoconference researchers organised once the project had come to an end provided relevant feedback to complement previously discussed data. one subject’s opinions are presented here as a sample of the type of commentary that was provided: (s5) “[dubbing] is extremely useful, very interesting, very stressful also because of the timing […] but it was very good and i am looking forward to repeating it. [...] it was extremely fun. i think it was perfectly organised, perfectly scheduled”. as regards suggestions for improvement, the videoconference provided an important hint that may be considered for further research in the field: the possible reduction in the number of activities was put forward by several participants, since ten dubbing tasks in the space of two months, on top of everything else, had implied too many hours’ work and might have been one of the reasons behind the dropout rate. turning now to the analysis of the answers gathered from the post-questionnaire, it should be noted that the students’ perception of their own improvement in the main l2 communicative skills thanks to the dubbing tasks is significant, as shown in figure 2. figure 2. students’ perceptions of l2 improvement. subjects felt oral skills to have been promoted the most, coinciding with the results obtained in their oral post-tests. the marked feeling of advancement in terms of listening skills may have been an important aid in the development of fluency, since by constantly being faced with authentic oral language, learners can understand and so produce more fluent utterances. it is noticeable how participants also considered the other skills at work when performing the dubbing task, although to a lesser degree. idub the potential of intralingual dubbing in foreign language learning: how to assess the task language value 9 (1), 62–88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 81 after all, they had to write the script in order to record their voices and they also read hundreds of comments in the forums during the course of the project. if we put this together with their positive perceptions in terms of vocabulary enhancement and the development of communication strategies, the dubbing tasks could be said to present didactic potential as l2 activities that contribute to develop communicative skills in an integrated manner. participants also considered the project had aided them to gain selfconfidence in the use of english, to reflect on their own language learning and to develop both their creative and their ict skills. most learners judged the selected clips to be enjoyable and motivating and they perceived the clipflair platform to be a bit hard in technical terms. the researchers had to admit that the recording component of clipflair was not working as perfectly as expected at the time and agreed on the possibility of trying other alternatives in the future. however, one comment by s3 in the videoconference somehow minimises this perception: “[clipflair] is a great platform. i know many language teachers and i have recommended it to them all”. in the same line as the opinions gathered from observation, the questionnaire revealed that 77.8% of the subjects would like to dub again, even if half of the students considered it a rather difficult task. within their suggestions for future tasks, 100% would opt for tv series again, 71.4% for movies or documentaries, 57.1% for news programmes, and 28.6% for commercials. when asked about the possibility of trying other types of dubbing, 55.6% would like to try interlingual reversed (l1 to l2), while a lower proportion (33.3%) would rather stay in the intralingual (l2-l2) combination. the data presented in this section have helped to reveal intralingual dubbing in l2 as a motivating, challenging, and highly engaging task, albeit a very demanding one, but also clearly rewarding. in terms of oral skills improvement, the three different data gathering tools have clearly pointed towards a relevant enhancement in terms of both pronunciation and fluency, although the small size of the sample demands further and more systematic related studies. noa talaván and tomás costal language value 9 (1), 62–88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 82 v. concluding remarks this paper has endeavoured to make the needs of research in avt modalities more explicit by putting forward some of the issues that affect the available corpus of experimental approaches to dubbing tasks as an active tool for language learning. the lessons to be gathered from the idub project, in which the clipflair platform and other key technological resources, such as the digital infrastructure of an online distance university, favoured the successful accomplishment of an innovative didactic initiative, are indeed relevant. the presentation of avt-related tasks as voluntary and extracurricular activities does affect sample population behaviour in a variety of ways: student commitment tends to shift between two undesirable extremes: completion of all tasks in an extremely short time span, which has an impact on the quality of the final products and impedes continuous assessment from taking place, or premature abandonment of the project (dropout). the inclusion of avt tasks in the official curriculum, even in the case of pilot experiences, would allow for longitudinal studies to be carried out and for an increased level of reliability in the results obtained from experimental and control groups. to this end, perhaps the establishment of modular programmes in secondary and primary school levels might help researchers to find coherent counterarguments for the statements that, quite often, are weighed against the didactic potential of dubbing (and other avt modalities) in educational environments. to boot, in spite of the popularity of the field and the attention that is being paid to it by academia, no hard evidence and convincing long-term, statistically-relevant findings have yet been shared with the scientific community. to overcome these misgivings, a more tactical standpoint should be tried. although it would be relevant to highlight that other avt modalities, such as voice-over, may be tried to offer practitioners new ideas to be put to the test; perhaps it would be even more convenient to agree on the most feasible way to produce a common framework of reference to advance in the application of avt in a classroom where, so far, the audiovisual continues to be regarded as a complement (and therefore facultative) which rarely, if ever, features in standardised testing at any level. replication of similar experiments under very similar conditions does not detract from the overall value of a piece of research; on the contrary, it may fundamentally contribute to the confirmation idub the potential of intralingual dubbing in foreign language learning: how to assess the task language value 9 (1), 62–88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 83 of relevant findings or the refutation of unsubstantiated claims. this, however, is hardly possible when the language combinations selected, the modality under study, the time devoted to observation and data gathering, as well as the characteristics of the participants cannot be paralleled with what little has been published. notes i . clipflair is an online platform specially designed to use audiovisual translation modalities as a didactic 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(ed.) language arts in asia ii: english and chinese through literature, drama and popular culture. newcastle upon tyne uk: cambridge scholars publishing, 160–166. noa talaván and tomás costal language value 9 (1), 62–88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 88 whittaker, t. 2012. “locating “la voz”: the space and sound of spanish dubbing”. journal of spanish cultural studies, 13 (3), 292–305. doi:10.1080/14636204.2013.788915 zabalbeascoa, p. 2012. “how spanish in an american film is rendered in translation: dubbing butch cassidy and the sundance kid in spain”. perspectives-studies in translatology, 22 (2), 255–270. doi:10.1080/0907676x.2012.695380 zanotti, s. 2016. “images of youth on screen: manipulative translation strategies in the dubbing of american teen films”. altre modernità, special issue. ideological manipulation in audiovisual translation, 144–165. doi: 10.13130/20357680/6853 filmography anderson, g. and gernon, c. 2004–2009. the catherine tate show. tiger aspect productions. bays, c. and craig, t. 2015–2014. how i met your mother. 20th century fox television and bays thomas productions. received: 20 december 2016 accepted: 19 february 2017 cite this article as: talaván, noa and castol, tomás. 2017. “idub – the potential of intralingual dubbing in foreign language learning: how to assess the task”. language value 9 (1), 62-88. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2017.9.4 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue language value june 2020, volume 12, number 1 pp. 1-29 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es issn 1989-7103 language value, issn 1989-7103 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2020.12.2 1 new research genres and english prosody: an exploratory analysis of academic english intonation in video methods articles in experimental biology ignacio guillén galve iguillen@unizar.es miguel a. vela-tafalla mvela@unizar.es university of zaragoza, spain abstract the digital multimedia environment where research communication develops nowadays has important consequences for eap course design (pérez-llantada 2016), since speaking and visuals are ever more decisive for communicative success (crawford-camiciottoli and fortanet-gómez 2015). however, intonation manuals have remained virtually unchanged for decades, reflecting a time of limited access to actual academic intonation in use. to countervail this situation, we draw on hafner‘s (2018) multimodal analysis of experimental biology video methods articles by examining the intonation used in an exploratory corpus of the researcher‘s introduction section, identified as the most hybrid in generic nature. our analysis suggests that traditional hallidayan intonation explained in handbooks like hewings (2007) and brazil (1994) fails to capture phenomena observed in our corpus. these intonational phenomena (mostly deviations from traditional tonicity) have been found to be consistent with genrespecific factors like communicative purpose and move structure. consequently, a broader revision of academic intonation materials is proposed. keywords: english for academic purposes; digital research genres; english intonation; english pronunciation teaching i. introduction i.1. background today more than ever, research communication and science dissemination are mainly digital multimedia activities. this communicative environment shapes the practices of both producers and consumers of scientific texts, which is discernible in the emergence of new academic genres and the adaptation of more traditional ones to the new contexts. consequently, in the interest of providing appropriate frameworks and pedagogical insights for english for academic purposes, the study of academic and professional genres in recent years has been concerned with genre change and innovation (hyon 2018, pérez-llantada 2016, tardy 2016) as well as intertextuality and interdiscursivity (bhatia 2017, hafner and miller 2019). mailto:iguillen@unizar.es mailto:mvela@unizar.es ignacio guillén galve and miguel a. vela-tafalla language value 12 (1), 1–29 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 2 after the journal article and its orbiting part genres (see pérez-llantada 2013), the academic blog stands as the most widely studied digital research genre, with studies (luzón 2013a, 2013b, zou and hyland 2019, 2020) focusing on the linguistic strategies deployed by academic blog writers to adapt scientific discourse to a hybrid, highly interactional genre with a wider, diversified audience. in writing, other digital research genres that have been explored include web-based texts for crowdfunding science (mehlenbacher 2017), online conference announcements (lorés 2018), virtual special issue introductions (mur-dueñas 2018), and graphical abstracts (sancho-guinda 2016). some relevant studies addressing oral digital research genres cover work on research dissemination videos (luzón 2019), video methods articles (hafner 2018), webinars (ruiz-madrid and fortanet-gómez 2017), and online poster sessions (d‘angelo 2012). interestingly, all these studies but the last make use of multimodal discourse analysis (cf. kress and van leeuwen 2001). this analytical framework, common in the study of other oral academic (i.e. not online or research) genres (see morell 2018, querol-julián and fortanet-gómez 2012, valeiras-jurado et al. 2018), is highly convenient to capture the combination of semiotic resources that the digital medium affords and provide valuable insight into the synergies achieved by the different modes of scholarly communication online. this presentation, if succinct, is enough to gain an impression of how rich and diverse the present-day repertoire is when new digital research genres are added to the existing pool of academic genres. adding to studies that address the genres of interest directly, there is also increasing scholarly interest in understanding the contexts of generic practices and the different constellations of genres that arise, which is mainly achieved by researching intertextuality and interdiscursivity (bhatia 2017, hafner and miller 2019) and especially by implementing ethnographic methodologies (paltridge et al. 2016, swales 2019). all in all, this situation of growing scholarly interest in new forms of research communication appears to favour studies which highlight the hybridity and interdiscursivity of texts in new contexts, as well as the exploitation of the multimodal resources of the digital environment. however, to the best of our knowledge, no research has tackled intonation in these investigations. we argue that intonation can contribute to the exploration of both types of phenomena, as a linguistic resource new research genres and english prosody: an exploratory analysis of academic english intonation in video methods articles in experimental biology language value 12 (1), 1–29 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 3 subject to contextual constraints and as a mode contributing to the meaning-making process of multimodal expression. consequently, this paper presents an initial approach to the study of intonation in relation to digital research genres and discusses the pedagogical implications of some preliminary yet valuable findings. i.2. aim and rationale previous research with a similar topic is scarce and usually different from the research interests of this project. crystal and davy‘s (1969) famous work on stylistics, featuring mainly prosodic analysis, considers a ―modality‖ dimension corresponding to what has been defined as genre in esp/eap since swales (1990). however, this dimension is just a minor part of a proposed framework for stylistics studies. johns-lewis (1986b) presents a different problem in exploring prosodic characteristics of ―discourse modes‖. these ―modes‖ are reading aloud, acting, and conversation, so this study also falls short of linking intonation to generic configuration. cheng et al. (2008) present a valuable corpus-driven study of intonation in discourse including an academic sub-corpus with a variety of non-research-related text types like the student presentation or lecture. nevertheless, their selection does not strive for genre representativity, as their interests lie in other factors. indeed, their text labels are reminiscent of micase (simpson et al. 2002) which refers to ―speech event types‖ rather than genres. something similar happens with the few studies of intonation related to genre from the systemic-functional perspective (e.g. rivas and germani 2016), since genre conceptualization in systemicfunctional linguistics (martin et al. 1987) departs from our research interests. finally, o‘grady (2020) has recently argued for register studies to incorporate prosodic analysis. reviewing these studies shows that there is scholarly interest in the study of intonation in discourse, even if esp/eap research has yet to address genre in connection with intonation. genre studies that include intonation are mainly restricted to multimodal analyses, as in the above-mentioned work. understandably, these analyses cannot afford to dwell on intonation for too long, considering it together with other semiotic modes. we also understand that general studies of oral discourse usually overlook the spoken component and investigate transcripts of spoken events. this is often due to the sheer ignacio guillén galve and miguel a. vela-tafalla language value 12 (1), 1–29 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 4 nature of the research design since many methodologies were devised and refined to investigate the wording component of discourse. therefore, this paper presents the first steps into intonation analysis of digital research genres. our central thesis is that the english intonation system is used rhetorically like any other linguistic system: genre restricts or permits the available choices according to the purpose of the speaker, the intended audience, and the formal constraints of rhetorical structure. accordingly, we want to contribute to current research by answering these research questions: what is the interplay between intonation and genre? is a general english intonation framework appropriate to analyse digital research english? and consequently, are english intonation manuals appropriate for the teaching of academic oral skills? in the following sections, the analytical approach, some preliminary results, and an original proposal for the adaptation of intonation manuals to the teaching of academic spoken english (ase) for digital research genres will be presented. ii. corpus and methods ii.1. text selection and move analysis owing to the exploratory nature of this study, it takes a qualitative approach in order to gain insight as to how to proceed with the analysis of more data in future research. therefore, we have close-analysed a small-scale ad-hoc corpus of five texts so as to observe with detail the interaction between genre and intonation. these texts are clips from video methods articles (vmas) published by the journal of visualized experiments. vmas are online videos featuring on camera the demonstration of methodological procedures of different disciplines within the broad fields of biology, medicine, or engineering. the production of the video, controlled by the journal itself, follows the acceptance of a double-blind peer-reviewed manuscript proposal. hafner (2018) analysed vmas for generic integrity, rhetorical structure and multimodal expression. thus, they constitute an optimal object of inquiry to start delving into intonation analysis, as a digital research genre that is emergent but sufficiently new research genres and english prosody: an exploratory analysis of academic english intonation in video methods articles in experimental biology language value 12 (1), 1–29 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 5 established in its discourse practices to be analysed for a stabilized-for-now rhetorical structure. hafner (2018: 27) identifies, between the video intro and final closing credits, the possible moves for five possible sections in vmas. an initial overview presents the viewer with a straightforward summary of the procedure, followed by the researcher‘s introduction, which highlights its advantages, applications, and innovative value. the procedure is performed in the main section, demonstration, while a voiceover gives recipe-like instructions. then, the representative results section shows interesting application. the video concludes with the researcher‘s conclusion, recapitulating the previous information. this rhetorical analysis is convenient to explore the meanings of intonation, as it provides an understanding of what each section is trying to accomplish. in his study, hafner (2018) chooses to exemplify multimodal analysis in the demonstration section, as it exploits visual resources to communicate procedural knowledge. likewise, we have focused our analysis on the researcher‘s introduction (ri) section, where researchers face the camera and make statements about their research. this interesting hybridization of promotional and scientific discourse makes it attractive for intonation analysis to investigate what strategies researchers deploy for the particular purposes of the genre. indeed, the other sections consist of voice-over explanations which are usually read by the journal‘s professional voice actors. out of hafner‘s (2018) corpus of 11 vmas in experimental biology, 7 of them are open-access. we have analysed the ri sections of the five most recent of these, in order to avoid considerations of genre change over time, which is beyond the scope of this project. the videos were extracted from the source code of the webpage. each vma‘s section of interest was clipped, its audio track was extracted for later intonation analysis, and it was transcribed manually. each clip was coded as vma-ri plus numbers one to five (e.g. vma-ri1), as shown in table 1 with information about the year of publication, size, length, original times, and reference. table 1. corpus items. item year words length time reference vma-ri1 2011 46 20‘‘ 00:56-01:16 https://doi.org/10.3791/2638 vma-ri2 2012 34 14‘‘ 01:06-01:20 https://doi.org/10.3791/3037 ignacio guillén galve and miguel a. vela-tafalla language value 12 (1), 1–29 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 6 vma-ri3 2013 63 22‘‘ 01:17-01:39 https://doi.org/10.3791/50762 vma-ri4 2015 96 35‘‘ 01:10-01:45 https://doi.org/10.3791/50974 vma-ri5 2016 110 43‘‘ 00:21-01:05 https://doi.org/10.3791/54112 total 349 2‘14‘‘ hafner‘s (2018: 27) possible rhetorical moves for the ri section are: 1) introducing self, 2) forecasting the demonstration, 3) explaining significance, 4) introducing additional researchers, 5) inviting the audience. in moves 1 and 4 the speaker simply presents the researchers involved, usually by providing their name and credentials. move 2 anticipates the procedure to be demonstrated, while move 3 focuses on the implications and novelty of the technique. finally, move 5 serves as a link to the next section, asking for the viewer‘s involvement. each move was assigned a colour code for analysis with microsoft word‘s highlight tool. ii.2. intonation analysis intonation is the linguistic apparatus which manipulates pitch in speaking for different semiotic purposes. this exploratory study approaches intonation analysis from the phonological model described in tench (1996), which continues halliday‘s (1963, 1967) identification of three systems that combine for intonational meaning. first, tonality refers to the division of the utterance of spoken discourse into successive intonation units (ius). second, tonicity refers to iu-internal analysis by identifying the tonic syllable, defined as the last pitch-prominent syllable. third, tone refers to the selection of pitch movements associated with the tonic. this model has been influential for other models and is adapted in intonation manuals without making reference to its terminology (hewings 2007, mott 2011). new research genres and english prosody: an exploratory analysis of academic english intonation in video methods articles in experimental biology language value 12 (1), 1–29 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 7 our methodology combines instrumental and acoustic observations of intonational phenomena (wichmann 2013). in short, instrumental pitch visualization software has informed and validated manual acoustic coding. therefore, intonation analysis has followed a three-stage process: first, acoustic analysis marking up the text; second, instrumental observation with the praat computer program (boersma and weenink 2019); lastly, modification of the initial acoustic mark-up. tonality is mainly concerned with the identification of boundaries between ius, which are typically thought to correspond to pauses in speech. however, since these are phonological categories and not physical/phonetic incidents, boundaries are in practice more difficult to recognize (roach 2009): speakers may make iu-internal pauses or proceed to the next iu without making a pause. therefore, we have followed cruttenden‘s (1997) and tench‘s (1996) cues to boundary identification, marking them with a vertical line (|). as an illustration, we have not assigned a boundary to the filled pause ―er‖ in (1), as it would create a boundary at an odd grammatical juncture and as the first part of the unit does not include a tonic syllable. conversely, in (2), despite the absence of a pause between ―solution‖ and ―and‖, pitch and rhythm are clearly distinct to signal a boundary. (1) | and the two people that will er present that | are my two phd students | (vma-ri2) (2) | as the solution | and the setting | for each prepared exosome solution | has to be performed individually | (vma-ri4) tonicity is mainly concerned with the identification of the tonic syllable, i.e. the last prominent syllable of ius. the tonic syllable has also been referred to as the nucleus of the iu (cruttenden 1997), so that the syllables preceding it are called pre-tonic or prenuclear. in turn, these syllables can be described as head and pre-head, the former being the syllables from the first stress to the tonic and the latter being the unstressed syllables before the start of the head. tonicity analysis is therefore implicated in the internal structure of the iu. consequently, we identify two types of tonic phenomena. first, the tonic syllable is marked with the associated tone explained below. second, other prominent elements in the pre-nuclear segment are identified, mainly the phenomenon of having an acoustically perceptible jump from a relatively low pitch to a higher one in a non-tonic syllable. we refer to this phenomenon as a step-up in pitch, marking it with ignacio guillén galve and miguel a. vela-tafalla language value 12 (1), 1–29 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 8 a caret (^). we did not find other relevant variations in the head in our exploratory corpus. finally, tone is the movement of pitch in the tonic syllable. focusing on the tonic syllable, only primary tones (tench 1996) have been identified: the fall, marked with a backslash (\); the rise, marked with a forward slash (/); and the fall-rise, marked with a combination of both (\/). an example of text with the whole mark-up system can be seen in (3). (3) | the demon^stration of this method is \critical | as the so/lution | and the /setting | for each prepared \exosome so/lution | has to be performed indi\vidually | (vma-ri4) here, there are five ius (tonality) delineated by boundaries (|). tonic syllables (tonicity) can be identified by the preceding tone mark (tone). and the tonic phenomenon of stepup in pitch can be seen in ―demonstration‖, marked with a caret before the stepped-up syllable. note too that the fall-rise is a compound tone and the rise may be realized at a point later than the tonic syllable, as in ―exosome solution‖, where the tonic syllable is the first syllable of ―exosome‖ despite the rise taking place in the second syllable of ―solution‖. iii. preliminary results iii.1. rhetorical structure the most common move configuration in our corpus (three of five) is a two-move section consisting of move 3 (explaining significance) followed by move 4 (introducing additional researchers). vma-ri1 consists of move 3 alone and vmari2 is dissimilar, having move 2 (forecasting the demonstration), then move 4 and a final move 5 (inviting the audience). these two are the shortest and also the oldest, suggesting that the rhetorical configuration of the section has gained stability with time. moreover, the most frequent moves found are arguably the most promotional and interactional, which suits the overall communicative purpose of the section to highlight the advantages, applications, and innovative value of the technique in question. iii.2. intonation and genre new research genres and english prosody: an exploratory analysis of academic english intonation in video methods articles in experimental biology language value 12 (1), 1–29 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 9 tonality analysis in vmas reveals a total of 63 ius: 22.2% consist of whole clauses, and 47.6% higher-order clause constituents (19.0% subjects, 15.9% adverbials, and 12.7% predicates). large ius are typical of scripted/prepared speech and, more interestingly, fulfil the expectations of the genre, as boundaries are found at junctures that are critical for showcasing what they are presenting. for instance, (4) shows whole pieces of information with only one idea per iu and a final prepositional phrase with its own iu, ―in a single analysis‖, which is the main asset of their presentation, thus enacting move 3 (explaining significance). (4) | the ^main ad\vantage of this /technique | is that by ^using mass spectrometry-based prote\/omics | we can simul^taneously quantify most of the known ptms on histone \/proteins | in a single a\nalysis | (vma-ri5) the selection of tonic syllables is related to boundary placement, as boundaries follow the words which have been made prominent. thus, in (4), ―proteomics‖, ―proteins‖, and ―analysis‖ are nuclear. instead, ―advantage‖ is prominent even if not iu-final, for ―technique‖ has been de-accented as a context-predictable lexical item. this usage of tonicity also corresponds to the purpose of the section within the vma genre: as an opening section, the main ideas are presented in an unmarked way by accenting the relevant technical words; as a persuasive section foregrounding the rest of the vma, the emphasis is on the benefits of the methodology explained. tone choices are quite straightforward and respond to general english usage of intonation. rises (15.9%) are used to indicate shared knowledge; falls (55.6%) to introduce new information, and fall-rises (28.6%) to introduce new information while indicating sharedness or incompleteness. the greater incidence of falls relates to the act of introducing a new technique, while rises and fall-rises together (44.4%) can be expected in a digital research genre, where the audience has some familiarity with the content. the use of appositions in move 4 (introducing additional researchers) shows how these explicative devices mirror the tone selection of their antecedents. this reinforces the identification of the noun phrases by assigning them the same tone and contributes to the function of introducing the researchers and providing their credentials, as seen in (5) and (6): ignacio guillén galve and miguel a. vela-tafalla language value 12 (1), 1–29 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 10 (5) | natarajan \/bhanu | a \research /specialist | and kelly \karch | a graduate \student | (vma-ri5) (6) | as^sisting the procedure will be clare \hayes | a research a\ssistant in our group | (vmari3) in sum, an initial three-system analysis of the data in our small-scale corpus would corroborate the idea that intonation plays a specific role in the social action carried out by the genre, considering its communicative purposes and its situational context. iii.3. step-ups even if pre-tonic intonational phenomena were not considered in the initial design of the study, as a first approach to the study of intonation in relation to generic configuration, we have allowed for the data to yield relevant results outside our preconceived framework. thus, from a data-driven perspective, we have found step-ups (i.e. jumps to a higher pitch in non-tonic syllables) to be sufficiently present in our corpus and discourse-relevant to merit scholarly discussion even in this early stage research. in (4), three examples are indicated by the caret symbol (^). the stressed syllables in ―main‖, ―using‖, and ―simultaneously‖ are made prominent by receiving an acoustically perceptible higher pitch. this is confirmed by instrumental measurement, showing respectively a 79%, 87%, and 80% pitch increment, as opposed to ―single‖ in the same utterance, which is just initial in the iu head without a step-up and presents a 48% higher pitch than its preceding syllable. interestingly, intonation manuals conceive of step-ups as phenomena that occur in two positions: the beginning of the head, i.e. the first stressed syllable, creating what has been variously called ―high key‖ (brazil 1994: 97), ―onset‖ (collins and mees 2013: 145), or ―stepping head‖ (mott 2011: 242, tench 1996: 132); or the tonic syllable itself, e.g. in brazil (1994) and hewings (2007). however, our results show occurrences of step-ups at stressed syllables other than the first in the iu or the tonic. the only reference we have come across mentioning such possibility is a brief notice to dismiss ―anomalous tone units‖ in roach (2009: 142). consequently, we refer to occurrences considered in textbooks as ―canonical‖, meaning they are officially recognized, while new research genres and english prosody: an exploratory analysis of academic english intonation in video methods articles in experimental biology language value 12 (1), 1–29 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 11 occurrences of step-ups at other places will be called ―non-canonical‖. in a count of 63 ius in our corpus, 31.8% (n=20) have a step-up of either type, 19.0% (n=14) being canonical and 12.7% (n=8) non-canonical. canonical step-ups are present in (4) and (6); non-canonical step-ups in (7): (7) | this method can help answer ^key questions in rna bi\ology | such as how the interplay of ^different rna binding \proteins | regulates rna \processing | (vma-ri1) exploration of the functions of this intonational device suggests, first, the introduction of new topics in move-initial ius, and second, contrast or highlight, which corresponds to the function of move 3 (explaining significance) itself. our exploratory data did not reveal functional differences between canonical and non-canonical step-ups. iv. discussion the data suggest that relating intonation usage to genre is not only possible but perhaps necessary, as the general english intonation framework would only partially account for the intonational functions observed. therefore, manuals covering features of this type require a few significant modifications for the teaching of those english intonational strategies that contribute to the development of academic oral skills. this section discusses these points against the backdrop of current theoretical and methodological reflections in eap. lastly, section v delineates a pedagogy of the step-up as a genredriven phenomenon. the approach to spoken academic language does not seem to need to differ from the approach to rhetorical choices such as hedging in academic writing. paltridge et al. (2009: 37-41) explain that creating an appropriate academic-sounding text involves not only linguistic choices (e.g. active vs passive voice) but also rhetorical choices (e.g. ―whether to express oneself diffidently‖). good command of the academic language at a linguistic and rhetorical level is thus said to ensure the use of a communicatively adequate academic style. however, while stylistic features of academic writing have been extensively documented in the field of eap (e.g. hinkel or swales and feak mentioned by paltridge et al. 2009), generic features of spoken academic style have received much less ignacio guillén galve and miguel a. vela-tafalla language value 12 (1), 1–29 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 12 attention, except within the field of english pronunciation. very little work investigates academic speaking, whereas academic writing has a repertoire of well-known publications covering a wide range of aspects (e.g. english 2011, lillis and curry 2010, paltridge et al. 2009, ravelli and ellis 2004). on the other hand, academic spoken english (ase) seems to have generated two types of materials: guide-like books, such as reinhart (2013) or blanpain and lafutt (2009), which may deal with spoken genres and discuss intonation but adopt a skills perspective in connection with general features of oral production; and text corpora such as base (thompson and nesi 2001) or micase (simpson et al. 2002), driven by the notion of speech events and only covering traditional ones. consequently, multimodal, digital genres such as vmas do not fall within the scope of coursebooks and corpora. indeed, only less academic/formal publications (e.g. thaine 2018) have considered english pronunciation and eap. still, these approaches seem underpinned by theoretical and methodological reflections similar to those in introductory eap textbooks such as charles and pecorari (2016). all these ase materials and theories foreground skills, lexico-grammar and rhetorical structure, although pronunciation is known to have an impact on efficient communication in academic spoken genres: the skill of listening involves activating several sources of knowledge, including the phonology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics of the language, along with body language such as eye contact and gesture. in order to understand speech, listeners must decode auditory and visual signals (often referred to as ‗bottom-up processing‘) and must also construct meaning from the input (often called ‗top-down processing‘). (charles and pecorari 2016: 154) however, despite the limited role of pronunciation for general ase (as one of several ―sources of knowledge‖ in ―bottom-up processing‖), the concept of genre can be used to highlight the rhetorical, communicative importance of pronunciation. when charles and pecorari (2016: 156) address ―listening comprehension in lectures‖, phonology emerges as meaningful precisely because of ‗delivery‘, a genre-related aspect: ―in terms of delivery, students often have problems due to speech rate, accent and pronunciation, and it has been suggested that lecturers should slow their speech rate‖. this perspective implies the possibility of presenting certain aspects of pronunciation as genre-driven teaching/learning topics (even if considered a ―difficulty‖). it also allows these authors new research genres and english prosody: an exploratory analysis of academic english intonation in video methods articles in experimental biology language value 12 (1), 1–29 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 13 to invite the eap practitioner to provide input to ―lecturers‖ as a way of raising ―awareness of good practice‖ while underscoring that ―it is clearly necessary to teach students to cope with these difficulties‖ (ibid.). step-ups can thus be viewed both as a type of generic input and as a type of generic difficulty. we also argue that the pedagogy of the vma genre, like the lecture, requires us to take account of both sides of the process: the producers of the genre and their typically academic audience. as we see it, the vma is part of an academic context demanding ―not just listening, but also making a spoken contribution to the discourse‖ (charles and pecorari 2016: 161). nevertheless, vmas are not general, spontaneous spoken discourse; rather, we view them closer to genres like the conference presentation, as the type of ―academic speech event‖ which charles and pecorari (2016) call ―monologue‖, which ―can be rehearsed and even scripted to some extent‖. interestingly, this eap-manual description of academic monologue as a rehearsed and somewhat scripted product contains elements that link it to the description of ―prepared speech‖ given in, for example, hewings‘ (2007: 114) pronunciation-centred coursebook english pronunciation in use advanced: in most contexts, when we speak we are making up what we say as we go along. however, many people at times need to plan and prepare speech more formally, and read this aloud from a written text or develop it from notes. for example, students and academics may have to give presentations or lectures in class or at a conference. hewings (2007) already mentions and connects the same genres (―presentations‖), type of user (―students and academics‖), and setting (―conference‖), with similar pedagogic purposes. hewings‘ analysis characterizes ‗prepared speech‘ by a number of ―features of pronunciation‖ which include step-ups. in unit 57 (hewings 2007: 120), the author explains that we can use ―a step-up to a relatively high pitch‖ to show (i) that information contrasts with previous information or what was expected, or (ii) that we are starting a new topic. one of the examples of the ‗contrast‘ function is ―although many people think of ants as a nuisance, they play // a  vital role // in many ecosystems‖. the step-up on ‗vital‘ expresses a contrast between the common belief that they are a nuisance and their actual vital role. ignacio guillén galve and miguel a. vela-tafalla language value 12 (1), 1–29 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 14 as regards the ‗new topic‘ function, one of the examples provided in the book is a stepup on the word ‗that‘ in a sentence-initial phrase like ―with that in mind‖. the step-up occurs between a paragraph about the general topic of the impact of business and industry on the environment, and another about a proposal for making the production of environmentally-friendly cars the joint endeavour of scientists and manufacturers. the text is put in the voice of a senior manager from an imaginary car manufacturer, who uses the step-up on ‗that‘ to separate the claim that her company is already aware of their impact on the environment from the claim for a joint effort as a new topic. the step-up indicates that the new topic, the manager‘s proposal for a joint effort, must be interpreted as following on from her statement of industrial awareness, that is, ‗with  that in mind‘. not unlike hewings (2007), charles and pecorari (2016: 163) also use the term ‗feature‘ to distinguish ―the features that are typical of successful presentations‖, and they do so as a prior step to considering ―how to teach presentation skills‖; among other features, ―varying pitch and speech rate‖ are said to ―contribute to interesting and lively talks‖. step-ups can thus be viewed as instances of ―varying pitch‖, although they have a far more precise definition in the context of english phonology. for instance, hewings (2007: 100) explains that ―the symbol  is used to show a step up in pitch. in other words, the voice moves up to a noticeably higher level than it was at before‖. later, as shown above, the step-up is re-defined functionally in the context of ‗prepared speech‘ (hewings 2007: 120). accordingly, as expected from the nature of hewings‘ book, the function of intonation (here, step-ups as a linguistic feature relevant to developing presentation skills) is narrowed down from charles and pecorari‘s (2016: 163) general function of contributing to ―interesting and lively talks‖ to very specific communicative functions such as signalling ―contrasts‖ and ―new topics‖. reinhart (2013) seems to consciously strive to bridge the gap between english phonology and eap. for instance, reinhart assigns functions to stress and intonation as used in a given genre (the ‗oral presentation‘) even if, owing to the aims of the book, those functions boil down to the essentials of tonicity. see e.g. the analysis on reinhart (2013: 86): new research genres and english prosody: an exploratory analysis of academic english intonation in video methods articles in experimental biology language value 12 (1), 1–29 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 15 notice that in this example [then after this step, // the cooled vapor travels to a condenser.///], rising intonation does not occur on the last word before the pause (step) but on this. this is probably because the speaker wants to distinguish this step from other steps in the process. yet, reinhart seems to be open to considering deviations from the norm, as a later remark indicates: ―no matter what the general guidelines are, rising intonation can occur on any word that the speaker chooses to highlight‖ (reinhart 2003: 126). this admitted variability in the placement of ‗highlighting‘ (displacing it from the last word of the unit to a previous word) always seems functional in the genre, just as the function of ―distinguishing‖ above is one of several indicated (e.g. ―reassuring the listener‖ or ―clarifying‖). this perspective is particularly relevant to the interpretation of the coexistence of canonical and non-canonical step-ups in vmas. evidently, because reinhart‘s (2013) work focuses on ase, she does not stop to consider or determine the range or degrees characterizing, for example, the ‗rising‘ of intonation —this is rather a phonetician‘s task. nevertheless, her remarks suggest that it is well worth examining the communicative potential of pitch modification in genres with a strong ase component and, subsequently, that different functions can be assigned to the complex constituted by the voice moving up to various degrees of ―higher level in pitch than it was at before‖ (hewings 2007: 100) and the position inside the iu in which the phenomenon takes place. v. pedagogical proposal v.1. the adaptation of bradford’s (1988) intonation in context to the teaching and learning needs originating from the occurrence of step-ups in vmas concerning the practical delimitation of a step-up pedagogy, we propose to adapt materials from the theory of discourse intonation (di) to the eap needs exemplified by vmas. brazil (1975, 1994) developed di from halliday‘s three-system approach as in this paper. however, his focus on the communicative and informational use of intonation soon became a pedagogical drive to make intonation more accountable to communication, brazil‘s (1994) pronunciation for advanced learners of english (pale) being the most prominent example. pale is well known for including several interactive contexts such as instruction giving or taking control of discourse. these ignacio guillén galve and miguel a. vela-tafalla language value 12 (1), 1–29 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 16 contexts are likely to be relevant to learners who, for example, need to make oral presentations. before brazil‘s pale, coulthard (1985) had already underscored this pedagogical drive when he made it clear that, in di, intonation choices depend on context and that, consequently, generalizations about the intonational meanings of isolated stretches of speech without their context should be avoided. halliday‘s system is, conversely, more analytical, more tied to detail, with an emphasis on iu-structure description (tonicity). even if brazil‘s iu has a structure, di attaches more importance to the existence of iuassociated ―options‖ (see coulthard 1985 for a summary) than to the thorough delineation of a system as halliday‘s (for a summary of work on english intonation in the hallidayan tradition bloor and bloor (2013: 15) suggest consulting greaves 2007, halliday and greaves 2008, or tench 1996). originating from brazil‘s school, bradford‘s (1988) intonation in context is still geared to conversational situations (typical of di), while presenting intonation as a system with important communicative functions in any speaker-listener interaction. adding to its display of di put into practice, what we value most from the book is the internal organization of its units, allowing the learner to explore the meaning conveyed by intonation before production exercises. therefore, our pedagogical contribution in this exploratory study is the adaptation of bradford‘s system to the teaching and learning needs originating from the occurrence of step-ups in vmas. another great asset in bradford‘s approach is its in-context nature, since this approach is sustained by the di claim that intonation choices are bound up with their context of occurrence. for this study, vmas constitute the context in which step-ups occur; to be precise, their move 3 (‗explaining significance‘), a rhetorical stage with a clear communicative function. despite the advantages in bradford‘s method, we are aware that our pedagogical proposal must address charles and pecorari‘s (2016: 81) warning concerning the adaptation of materials for eap, given that ―published materials are written to cater to a wide, often global, audience and it is therefore highly unlikely that they will meet all the needs of your specific group of students‖. accordingly, our adaptation of bradford‘s method will reorganize its parts as ‗tasks‘ in line with charles and pecorari‘s (2016: 74) new research genres and english prosody: an exploratory analysis of academic english intonation in video methods articles in experimental biology language value 12 (1), 1–29 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 17 definition of eap materials as comprising ―both texts and the tasks designed to exploit them for language learning purposes‖. our ―texts‖ will be extracts from our corpus. our ―tasks‖ will result from the recasting of bradford‘s method. our ―specific group of students‖ will be related to the notion of academic discourse community in terms of swales (1990: 24-27). in this model, discourse communities are characterized as having mechanisms of intercommunication among their members, and utilizing and possessing one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims, which is where vmas come in handy. as our pedagogical proposal is constrained by genre considerations, it is geared to learners who are also advanced level researchers, which implies that our instructional strategy would have to be modified for use with novice researchers unaware of the existence and communicative advantages of new genres like the vma. bradford‘s (1988: 3) five-step method starts with a ―sensitisation‖ task presenting one feature of english intonation so learners ―become aware of the choices a speaker can make and how they sound‖. then, ―explanation‖ describes the feature and the meanings of the choices available. ―imitation‖ and ―practice activities‖ follow, for learners to recognize the feature and practice production. a final ―communication activity‖ provides the opportunity ―to think about the feature‖ and use it in a freer situation. the step-up is our intonation feature of interest, particularly as detected acoustically and instrumentally in the ius from our corpus. we propose to present it as a linguistic choice and demonstrate how it sounds. for this latter purpose, we suggest using the praat software, as nagy (2014: 101) has shown that ―[v]isualization tools and computer-assisted language learning (call) provide new possibilities for the study of suprasegmental features by enabling learners to connect the perceived auditory signal with its visual representation‖. following this argument, we believe that praat provides ―adequate visual feedback‖ because pitch tracings are easily interpretable, unlike, e.g., spectrograms. accordingly, we suggest extracting pitch tracings from our corpus together with their transcript (see figure 1), thus incorporating speech visualization into bradford‘s method as a pedagogical tool for sensitization purposes. ignacio guillén galve and miguel a. vela-tafalla language value 12 (1), 1–29 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 18 figure 1. praat pitch tracings with the marked-up transcription it is indeed possible to adapt a whole unit to the requirements of step-ups in the specific genre of vmas. bradford‘s unit 7, on ―contrasts‖ (39-45), displays the closest topic and aims to hewings‘ unit on ―step-ups‖, whose title highlights the phonetic phenomenon instead of the basic function. combining its fully-fledged structure with similarity of topic and aims, bradford‘s type of unit stands out as a very suitable starting point for adaptation. bradford‘s (1988) ―explanation‖ section uses di‘s ―high key‖, not ―step-up‖, with the function of expressing contrast to hearers‘ expectations. we use hewings‘ term for its metaphorical, more intuitive nature, close to the process type of meaning of the generalenglish verb ‗to step something up‘, whereas brazil‘s ‗key‘ comes from the specialized field of music. v.2. tasks and sub-tasks of the pedagogical proposal v.2.1. sensitization v.2.1.a. task after adopting speech visualization as a pedagogical tool, and ‗step-up‘ as more pedagogical terminology, our adaptation of bradford‘s sensitization substructure entails deciding on texts to replace conversation for the listening-for-gist task and on questions for learners to discuss those texts. our choice is an extract from our corpus, accompanied by a transcript (8) with this type of heading (adapted from bradford‘s new research genres and english prosody: an exploratory analysis of academic english intonation in video methods articles in experimental biology language value 12 (1), 1–29 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 19 task 1.2, and hewings‘ description of step-up): ‗the parts in which the voice moves up to a noticeably higher level than it was at before are shown below‘: (8) | this method can help answer ^key questions in rna bi\ology | such as how the interplay of ^different rna-binding \proteins | regulates rna \processing | the main ad/vantage of this technique | is that we in\crease both | the per/formance | and the reso/lution | of our \transcriptome-wide /maps | of protein rna inter r\actions | (vma-ri1) v.2.1.b. sub-tasks as we view step-ups as resulting from the formal constraints of the rhetorical structure of vmas, the learner can discuss what constitutes the reasons for the step-ups occurring in the audio as a first sub-task. comments elicited would be along the lines of ‗communicative function‘ as relates to the move where the extract with step-ups occurs. the next sub-task for sensitization involves listening again with pitch tracing and transcript in front, first to show the occurrence of canonical step-ups, then for noncanonical ones. the final sub-task involves finding other places where speakers do stepups. v.2.2. explanation v.2.2.a. task the second task, ‗explanation‘, describes the functions of our taxonomy of step-ups. the strong correlation between step-ups and move 3 in our corpus indicates that their function is basically to provide emphasis and contrast (hewings 2007: 120). ‗explaining significance‘ sometimes involves highlighting the new characteristics of the method or technique described in vmas, and alternatively, contrasting the characteristics with those of traditional/conventional procedures. this genre-driven function is performed by placing the step-up either ―in the first prominent word of [the] speech unit‖ (hewings 2007: 120; our ‗canonical step-up‘), or later in the iu (hence, ‗non-canonical step-up‘), since the most appropriate word for emphasis or contrast may not be the first prominent one in the unit. ignacio guillén galve and miguel a. vela-tafalla language value 12 (1), 1–29 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 20 v.2.2.b. sub-tasks for example, in vma-ri4, ―the demon^stration of this method is \critical‖, there is a canonical step-up for emphasis on the theme, at the start of the iu, because the notion of ‗demonstration‘ is likely to be key to the goal of a video methods article, since the ―method‖ proper, not its demonstration, will simply be ‗known‘ information for the practitioners of this genre. consequently, the new information (the evaluative adjective ―critical‖, demonstration = critical) occurs at the unmarked position for this type of information, which is the last lexical word of an iu, and with an unmarked tone choice (falling). later in vma-ri4, there is also an instance of a non-canonical step-up: ―to find the ^optimal sensi\tivity /range‖. emphasizing the idea of ‗finding a range‘ (i.e. using the first prominent word) makes no communicative sense in terms of explaining significance, as the researchers want to convey that the ―optimal‖ range is the only one that matters for their technique. accordingly, it must be explained to learners that more than one position is communicatively available for step-ups, that the lexico-grammar influences the position, but that the communicative function is invariable regardless: indicating what is really significant (the demonstration and, later, the optimal range) can be carried out both by a canonical step-up and by a non-canonical one. v.2.3. imitation v.2.3.a. task this third task represents the first stage of production, which does not require sub-tasks. having described the types of step-ups in vmas, repetition will not amount to mere drilling: the learner imitates the phenomenon with a conscious communicative aim in mind. using (9) below as textual support, the learner repeats only from ―by‖ to ―vivo‖ (step-ups on ―vitro‖ and ―emulates‖). knowing that the two step-ups in these units occur in move 3 enhances the value of repetition as a drill, since the step-ups highlight that there are two e-coli environments but the vma is centred around the ―in vitro‖ one and, moreover, that, if the choice raises issues of validity, the researchers are conscious that the in-vitro environment is an emulation; it is imitation, hence, of the emphasis/contrast function described in the ‗explanation‘ task. finally, imitating a noncanonical step-up shows that a delayed step-up may also respond to the position of the new research genres and english prosody: an exploratory analysis of academic english intonation in video methods articles in experimental biology language value 12 (1), 1–29 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 21 lexical items used to shape the lexico-grammar of the function (see, in (9), the phrases ―in vitro‖ and ―in vivo‖, with the former occurring after an initial stress). (9) | this method can help test \/circuits | in the field of syn\thetic bi/ology | by providing an in ^vitro e-coli en\/vironment | which ^emulates that in \vivo | (vma-ri3) v.2.4. practice activity v.2.4.a. task the fourth task pivots on learners as likely vma ‗practitioners‘. with an upperintermediate or higher level of english, they are expected to determine which words from (10) below (given without mark-up) are candidates for a step-up, especially since they have been exposed to the ‗explanation‘ and ‗imitation‘ tasks proposed. the tonicity of the message in our example derives from the notion that the technique the vma reports leads to an increase in speed because prototyping is no longer necessary, and is, therefore, more efficient than other techniques, a very relevant question to a ‗methods‘ genre. ―increasing‖ (or ―speed‖ itself) and ―prototyping‖ become suitable words for stepping up. (10) | the implications of this /technique | extend towards in^creasing the speed of synthetic biological de\/sign | by removing the need to conduct all ^prototyping steps in \vivo | (vma-ri3) v.2.5. communication activity v.2.5.a. task finally, the adaptation of bradford‘s ‗communication activity‘ is based on the genre itself. therefore, learners start by looking for the information needed to respond to jove‘s goal (https://www.jove.com/about/) of allowing scientists, educators and students ―to see the intricate details of cutting-edge experiments‖ rather than read them in text articles. v.2.1.b. sub-tasks ignacio guillén galve and miguel a. vela-tafalla language value 12 (1), 1–29 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 22 therefore, the first step in this task entails thinking of a lexico-grammar (i.e. making vocabulary and grammar choices) capable of sustaining a video demonstration aimed at facilitating scientific reproducibility; in other words, a text meant to be read aloud, i.e. a ―scripted‖ or ―prepared speech‖ text. learners may be invited to access a vma of their discipline, e.g. biology, and use it as a model. they can watch the video, which contains both voice-over and speech from one of the authors and then they can reflect on the reasons for the occurrence, in either the voice-over or the researcher‘s introduction, of any step-ups they identify, especially by relating them to the function of the move where they take place. with help from the instructor, they may also use visualization software to verify the step-ups. then, as a second sub-task, they can use their own research and write a vma script which emulates the intonation in the model, i.e. its communicative purposes for the genre. vi. conclusion despite its exploratory nature, the present study illustrates how to account for the interplay between intonation and genre. for this purpose, we analysed a small-scale corpus of five clips from video methods articles (vmas) published by the journal of visualized experiments. vmas are thus dealt with as an instance of genre. we focused on their researcher‘s introduction (ri) section where researchers face the camera and make statements about their research. it is the hybridization of promotional and scientific discourse occurring in this section that made us consider the analysis of intonation as a very suitable procedure for the investigation of the strategies which researchers deploy for the particular purposes of a genre. as explained above, this approach to the study of genre is justified because a growing scholarly interest in new forms of research communication has not yet generated enough research into the communicative impact of intonation. this said, we decided to examine the communicative potential of the changes in pitch (whether in terms of direction or relative height) shown by some intonation units in vmas. the exact object of study was the complex phenomenon constituted by the voice moving up to various degrees of higher level in pitch and the position inside the intonation unit in which the rise to higher pitch takes place. in our study, the new research genres and english prosody: an exploratory analysis of academic english intonation in video methods articles in experimental biology language value 12 (1), 1–29 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 23 phenomenon is presented as an intonational device to be referred to with the term ‗stepup‘. the main asset of the present study is that it adopts a data-driven perspective. as our main goal was to explain how the study of intonation can contribute to the exploration of the multimodal resources of the digital environment, corpus size was not considered an overriding factor for a study aimed at that type of setting. with this in mind, the preliminary results presented in this paper suggest that the general english intonation framework is not appropriate to analyse digital research english. accordingly, as a datadriven decision, we also present a pedagogical proposal for the adaptation of intonation manuals to the teaching of step-ups in an academic spoken english (ase) genre. our data reveal that intonation can be viewed as a linguistic resource subject to contextual constraints and as a mode contributing to the meaning-making process. in vmas, stepups are used to introduce new topics in move-initial intonation units, and also to contrast or highlight as depending on the function of a specific move in the rhetorical structure, ―explaining significance‖. on the other hand, our data do not reveal functional differences between canonical and non-canonical step-ups. in conclusion, our study indicates that it is not only possible to relate intonation usage to genre but that it is necessary to do so, and that, as a result, english intonation manuals dealing with these types of features should be modified to teach intonational strategies, the step-up being a case in point. while in eap literature the role of pronunciation for ase is generally judged to be rather limited (as one of several ―sources of knowledge‖ in ―bottom-up processing‖), in this paper the concept of genre has been used to highlight the rhetorical, communicative importance of pronunciation, since it examines and discusses the step-up as a genre-driven teaching/learning topic which results from the formal constraints of the rhetorical structure of vmas. for this reason, we have complemented our study with a pedagogical proposal for the step-up based on the adaptation of barbara bradford‘s (1988) method in intonation in context to the generic factors described above. the most important characteristic of our proposal is the adoption of speech visualization as a pedagogical tool, the use of ‗stepup‘ as a more pedagogical terminology than ‗high key‘, ‗onset‘, or ‗stepping head‘, and a set of tasks in which the type of response to be elicited from the learner is based ignacio guillén galve and miguel a. vela-tafalla language value 12 (1), 1–29 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 24 on the notion of communicative function as determined by the move where step-ups tend to occur. this type of analysis and subsequent pedagogy is in its initial stage, and it remains to be seen whether its results, or the pedagogical proposal itself, are sustained by the analysis of a larger corpus compiled from texts similar to vmas, or can be extended to other intonational phenomena or strategies in the genre. acknowledgements this research was supported by the spanish ministry of economy and competitiveness (project code: ffi2015-68638-r mineco/feder, eu) and by the regional government of aragón (project code: h16_17r). miguel a. vela-tafalla also acknowledges funding from the spanish ministry of education, culture and sports (research fellowship fpu2016/04734). references bhatia, v. 2017. critical genre analysis. london and new york: routledge. blanpain, k. and lafutt, a. 2009. academic spoken english: a corpus-based guide to lectures, presentations, seminars and tutorials. leuven: acco. bloor, t. and bloor, m. 2013. the functional analysis of english: a hallidayan approach (3rd edition). london: routledge. boersma, p. and weenink, d. 2019. praat: doing phonetics by computer. 15 october 2019 <http://www.praat.org/> bradford, b. 1988. intonation in context. cambridge: cup. brazil, d. 1975. discourse intonation. birmingham: university of birmingham, english language research. — 1994. pronunciation for advanced learners of english: student’s book. cambridge: cup. charles, m. and pecorari, d. 2016. introducing english for academic purposes. london: routledge. http://www.praat.org/ new research genres and english prosody: an exploratory analysis of academic english intonation in video methods articles in experimental biology language value 12 (1), 1–29 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 25 cheng, w. greaves, c. and warren, m. 2008. a corpus-driven study of discourse intonation. amsterdam and philadelphia: john benjamins. collins, b. and mees, i. 2013. practical phonetics and phonology: a resource book for students (3rd edition). london and new york: routledge. coulthard, m. 1985. an introduction to discourse analysis. london: routledge. cruttenden, a. 1997. intonation (2nd edition). cambridge: cup. crystal, d. and davy, d. 1969. investigating english style. london: longman. d’angelo, l. 2012. ―from posters to e-posters: the evolution of a genre‖. university of reading language studies working papers, 4, 46–54. english, f. 2011. student writing and genre. london: bloomsbury. greaves, w. 2007. ―intonation in systemic functional linguistics‖. in hasan, r., c. matthiessen and j. webster (eds.) continuing discourse on language, vol. 2. london: equinox, 979–1025. hafner, c. 2018. ―genre innovation and multimodal expression in scholarly communication: video methods articles in experimental biology‖. ibérica, 36, 15–42. 06 october 2019 <http://www.aelfe.org/documents/36_01_iberica.pdf> hafner, c. and miller, l. 2019. english in the disciplines: a multidimensional model for esp course design. london: rougledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429452437 halliday, m. 1963. ―intonation in english grammar‖. transactions of the philological society, 62 (1), 143–169. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-968x.1963.tb01003.x — 1967. intonation and grammar in british english. the hague: mouton. halliday, m. and greaves, w. 2008. intonation in the grammar of english. london: equinox. hewings, m. 2007. english pronunciation in use advanced. cambridge: cup. hyon, s. 2018. introducing genre and english for specific purposes. new york: routledge. http://www.aelfe.org/documents/36_01_iberica.pdf https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429452437 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-968x.1963.tb01003.x ignacio guillén galve and miguel a. vela-tafalla language value 12 (1), 1–29 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 26 johns-lewis, c. 1986. ―prosodic differentiation of discourse modes‖. in johns-lewis, c. (ed.) intonation in discourse. london and sidney: croom helm, 199–219. kress, g. and van leeuwen, t. 2001. multimodal discourse: the modes and media of contemporary communication. london: arnold. lillis, t. and curry, m. j. 2010. academic writing in a global context. london and new york: routledge. lorés, r. 2018. ―online conference announcements as spaces for disciplinary communication‖. english text construction, 11 (2), 256–284. https://doi.org/10.1075/etc.00011.lor luzón, m. j. 2013a. ―public communication of science in blogs: recontextualizing scientific discourse for a diversified audience‖. written communication, 30 (4), 428–457. https://doi.org/10.1177/0741088313493610 — 2013b. ―this is an erroneous argument‖: conflict in academic blog discussions. discourse, context and media, 2 (2), 111–119. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2013.04.005 — 2019. ―bridging the gap between experts and publics: the role of multimodality in disseminating research in online videos‖. ibérica, 37, 167–192. martin, j. r., christie, f. and rothery, j. 1987. ―social processes in education: a reply to sawyer and watson (and others)‖. in reid, i. (ed.), the place of genre in learning: current debates. geelong: deakin university press, 46–57. mehlenbacher, a. 2017. ―crowdfunding science: exigencies and strategies in an emerging genre of science communication‖. technical communication quarterly, 26 (2), 127–144. https://doi.org/10.1080/10572252.2017.1287361 morell, t. 2018. ―multimodal competence and effective interactive lecturing‖. system, 77, 70–79. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2017.12.006 mott, b. 2011. english phonetics and phonology for spanish speakers (2nd edition). barcelona: publicacions i edicions de la universitat de barcelona. https://doi.org/10.1075/etc.00011.lor https://doi.org/10.1177/0741088313493610 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2013.04.005 https://doi.org/10.1080/10572252.2017.1287361 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2017.12.006 new research genres and english prosody: an exploratory analysis of academic english intonation in video methods articles in experimental biology language value 12 (1), 1–29 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 27 mur-dueñas, p. 2018. ―disseminating and constructing academic knowledge in online scholarly journals: an analysis of virtual special issue introductions‖. discourse, context and media, 24, 43–52. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2018.04.010 nagy, j. 2014. ―the use of speech visualization technology in prosody teaching‖. in varga, c. (ed.), new trends in language didactics: noj direcţii in didactica limbilor. cluj: presa universitară clujeană, 95–107. o’grady, g. 2020. ―is there a role for prosody within register studies: and if so what and how?‖ language context and text, 2 (1), 59–92. paltridge, b., harbon, l., hirsch, d., shen, h., stevenson, m., phakiti, a. and woodrow, l. 2009. teaching academic writing. ann arbor: the university of michigan press. paltridge, b., starfield, s. and tardy, c. 2016. ethnographic perspectives on academic writing. oxford: oup. pérez-llantada, c. 2013. ―the article of the future: strategies for genre stability and change‖. english for specific purposes, 32 (4), 221–235. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2013.06.004 — 2016. ―how is the digital medium shaping research genres? some cross-disciplinary trends‖. esp today, 4 (1), 22–42. querol-julián, m. and fortanet-gómez, i. 2012. ―multimodal evaluation in academic discussion sessions: how do presenters act and react?‖ english for specific purposes, 31 (4), 271–283. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2012.06.001 ravelli, l. and ellis, r. 2004. analysing academic writing. london: continuum. reinhart, s. 2013. giving academic presentations. ann arbor: the university of michigan press. rivas, l. and germani, m. 2016. ―analysing correlations between generic patterns and prosodic realizations in interviews in english‖. international journal of language studies, 10 (2), 103–126. roach, p. 2009. english phonetics and phonology: a practical course (4th edition). cambridge: cup. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2018.04.010 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2013.06.004 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2012.06.001 ignacio guillén galve and miguel a. vela-tafalla language value 12 (1), 1–29 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 28 ruiz-madrid, n. and fortanet-gómez, i. 2017. ―an analysis of multimodal interaction in a webinar: defining the genre‖. ibérica, 2, 274–264. https://doi.org/10.29007/p8mm sancho-guinda, c. 2016. ―semiotic shortcuts: the graphical abstract strategies of engineering students‖. hermes journal of language and communication in business, 55, 61–90. https://doi.org/10.7146/hjlcb.v0i55.24289 simpson, r., briggs, s., ovens, j. and swales, j. 2002. the michigan corpus of academic spoken english. ann arbor: the regents of the university of michigan. swales, j. 1990. genre analysis. cambridge: cup. — 2019. ―the futures of eap genre studies: a personal viewpoint‖. journal of english for academic purposes, 38, 75–82. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2019.01.003 tardy, c. 2016. beyond convention: genre innovation in academic writing. ann arbor: university of michigan press. tench, p. 1996. the intonation systems of english. london: cassell. thaine, c. 2018. eap learners and pronunciation craig thaine webinar. 15 october 2019 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgft4ldb7_q thompson, p., and nesi, h. 2001. ―the british academic spoken english (base) corpus project‖. language teaching research, 5 (3), 263–264. https://doi.org/10.1177%2f136216880100500305 valeiras-jurado, j., ruiz-madrid, n., and jacobs, g. 2018. ―revisiting persuasion in oral academic and professional genres: towards a methodological framework for multimodal discourse analysis of research dissemination talks‖. ibérica, 35, 93–118. wichmann, a. 2013. intonation in text and discourse: beginnings, middles and ends. london and new york: routledge. zou, h., and hyland, k. 2019. ―reworking research: interactions in academic articles and blogs‖. discourse studies, 21 (6), 713–733. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461445619866983 https://doi.org/10.29007/p8mm https://doi.org/10.7146/hjlcb.v0i55.24289 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2019.01.003 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgft4ldb7_q https://doi.org/10.1177%2f136216880100500305 https://doi.org/10.1177/1461445619866983 new research genres and english prosody: an exploratory analysis of academic english intonation in video methods articles in experimental biology language value 12 (1), 1–29 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 29 — 2020. ――think about how fascinating this is‖: engagement in academic blogs across disciplines‖. journal of english for academic purposes, 43, 100809. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2019.100809 received: 12 december 2019 accepted: 23 may 2020 cite this article as: guillén galve, ignacio and vela-tafalla, miguel a. 2020. ―new research genres and english prosody: an exploratory analysis of academic english intonation in video methods articles in experimental biology‖. language value, 12 (1), 1-29. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.languagevalue.uji.es. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2020.12.2 issn 1989-7103 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2019.100809 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ nur yigitoglu language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2010, volume 2, number 1 pp. 140-143 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors 140 book review using corpora in the language learning classroom: corpus linguistics for teachers gena r. bennett the university of michigan press: ann arbor, 2010. 144 pages. isbn: 978-0-47203385-0. reviewed by nur yigitoglu dasnyy@langate.gsu.edu department of applied linguistics and esl georgia state university, usa the interest in using corpora and corpus-based materials in language teaching and research continues to grow. over the past few years, research by second language teaching specialists has emphasized the importance of using corpora and corpus-based materials in the second language learning classroom. this is true not only for research articles (conrad 1999, cortes 2007), but also for academic conferences such as those organized by the american association of corpus linguistics (aacl). in using corpora in the language learning classroom: corpus linguistics for teachers, bennett aims to make the ideas of corpus linguistics accessible to second language teachers, graduate students specializing in applied linguistics, and teacher-trainers working with language instructors. the volume is divided into three main parts and eight chapters, and also includes two appendices and a conceptual index. to understand and apply corpus linguistics in language teaching, it is essential to comprehend what corpus linguistics is and what it is not. part 1 “an introduction to corpus linguistics” gives a brief overview of corpus linguistics. “principles of corpus linguistics” (chapter 1) sets the scene for the remaining of the book by reviewing the characteristics of the corpus approach. also in this section the reader can find specialized terms (e.g. frequency list, normed count), target features (e.g. collocation and lexical bundles in phraseology) and online sources related to the corpus approach, http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� mailto:dasnyy@langate.gsu.edu� using corpora in the language learning classroom: corpus linguistics for teachers by nur yigitoglu language value 2, (1) 140–143 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 141 as well as details about different types of corpora and concordancing programs. bennett concludes this first chapter with a most useful framework for creating corpus-designed activities which involves seven steps (bennett 2010: 18-20): ‘ask a research question’, ‘determine the register on which your students are focused’, ‘select a corpus appropriate for the register’, ‘utilize a concordancing program for quantitative analysis’, ‘engage in qualitative analysis’, ‘create exercises for students’, and ‘engage students in a whole-language activity’. the author goes on to suggest possible ways to modify these activities by language level in order to make them more accessible to students. parts 2 and 3 of the book are devoted to the applications of corpus linguistics to language teaching. in part 2 “corpora in language teaching”, bennett focuses on corpus-based teaching materials (chapter 2) and corpus-cited texts (chapter 3). in chapter 2 “corpus-influenced materials”, bennett presents a list of published english language teaching materials that can be used in various levels. in addition, for teachers wishing to integrate such materials in their teaching, this section provides a checklist to analyze corpus-based teaching materials. chapter 3 “corpus-cited texts” focuses on grammar and vocabulary sources that present the readers with large corpus findings. this section primarily focuses on three main sources, namely (1) the longman grammar of spoken and written english (biber et al. 1999), (2) the cambridge grammar of english (carter and mccarthy 2006) and (3) the oxford collocations dictionary (lea 2002). in light of the discussions around these most-cited corpus sources, bennett provides readers with suggestions to appropriately use and integrate these sources in their language classrooms. as its title suggests, part 3 “corpus-designed activities” offers a set of corpus-designed activities which can be used in the classroom to teach a variety of language skills. for instance, in chapter 4 bennett exemplifies how to teach english articles using the corpus of contemporary american english (coca); chapter 5 is devoted to the teaching of signal words in academic speaking with the help of the michigan corpus of academic spoken english (micase), and chapter 6 focuses on academic vocabulary using the academic word list (awl). in addition to these activities, which can be designed using publicly available corpora, some activities integrating learner corpora are also illustrated in chapter 7. in the concluding chapter, bennett summarizes the http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� book and multimedia review language value 2, (1) 140–143 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 142 main ideas presented throughout the book, and offers a table with details of corpusbased textbooks and tools that can be used across the english language teaching curriculum. the book ends with a series of appendices that provide additional material, such as lists of corpora and concordancing tools, and class materials (on articles, signal words, academic vocabulary, and comma errors). all in all, using corpora in the language learning classroom can be of great interest to english teachers who wish to integrate corpus-based materials in their classroom. given the lack of available literatures on the practical applications of corpus linguistics into english language teaching, bennett’s work fills a gap in the area of language teaching and corpus-based material development. however, the book falls short in one area: although it covers a wide range of publicly available corpora, there are a number of surprising omissions, especially in terms of learner corpora such as the corpus of english essays written by asian university students (ceeaus), the international corpus of crosslinguistic interlanguage (icci), and the esf (european science foundation second language) database. in addition, those readers solely interested in the use of specialized corpora for english for specific purposes use may find this book less useful than those who teach general english, since the volume focuses exclusively on the applications of corpus linguistics in the general english classroom. to this end, there are other important and recent corpora which should have been added to the list of corpora the book includes. for instance, corpora such as the vienna-oxford international corpus of english (voice) might be useful for readers interested in english for specific purposes. still, the volume might be especially suitable for ma tesol programs as well as inservice teacher training programs. specifically, the book might serve as an essential reading for graduate classes on corpus linguistics and material development. in comparison with other books on applications of corpus linguistics to english language teaching, using corpora in the language learning classroom: corpus linguistics for teachers offers more practical examples and references to the relevant literature. given that very few studies provide such detailed description of the teaching applications of corpus linguistics in this way, bennett’s work serves as a reference book not only for teachers of english but also for anyone interested in exploring what corpus linguistics can offer for english teaching. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� using corpora in the language learning classroom: corpus linguistics for teachers by nur yigitoglu language value 2, (1) 140–143 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 143 references biber, d., johansson, s., leech, g., conrad, s., and finegan, e. 1999. longman grammar of spoken and written english. essex: pearson. carter, r. and mccarthy, m. 2006. cambridge grammar of english. cambridge: cambridge university press. conrad, s. m. 1999. “the importance of corpus-based research for language teachers”. system, 27, 1-18. corpus of english essays written by asian university students. <http://language.sakura.ne.jp/s/ceeause.html> cortes, v. 2007. “exploring corpora in the english for academic writing class”. ortesol journal, 25, 9-16. the esf (european science foundation second language) database. <http://talkbank.org/data/bilingbank/esf/> international corpus of crosslinguistic interlanguage. <http://cblle.tufs.ac.jp/ llc/icci/> oxford collocations dictionary for students of english. 2002. lea, d. (ed.). new york: oxford university press. vienna-oxford international corpus of english. <http://www.univie.ac.at/ voice/page/corpus_availability> received october 2010 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://language.sakura.ne.jp/s/ceeause.html� http://talkbank.org/data/bilingbank/esf/� http://cblle.tufs.ac.jp/%20llc/icci/� http://cblle.tufs.ac.jp/%20llc/icci/� http://www.univie.ac.at/%20voice/page/corpus_availability� http://www.univie.ac.at/%20voice/page/corpus_availability� book review analyses of the semantic features language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2011, volume 3, number 1 pp 138-152 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors 138 analyses of the semantic features of the lexical bundle [(verb) preposition the noun of] siaw-fong chung, f. y. august chao, tien-yu lan and yen-yu lin sfchung@nccu.edu.tw national chengchi university, taiwan abstract this paper investigates twenty-two prepositions in two different lexical bundles – [preposition the noun of] (at the point of, from the perspective of, etc.) and [verb preposition the noun of] (shouted above the noise of, suffering from the effects of, etc.), the only difference being that the former does not include the head verb that is present in the latter. strings of constructions were extracted from the british national corpus and the types of possible verbs, prepositions, and nouns in each possible combination were analyzed. the paper also details an experiment in which the types of nouns under each of the twenty-two prepositions were coded by human subjects in terms of their semantic features. finally, a computer program was also utilized to calculate the shared meaning of the different verbs and nouns. the results showed that the nouns in [(verb) preposition the noun of], though they might form clusters of meanings, may not behave in the same way with and without the presence of the verbs. keywords: prepositions, lexical bundles, nouns, semantic features, corpus, constructions i. introduction according to biber et al. (2004) and levy (2008), who investigated ‘lexical bundles’ in spoken versus written registers, lexical bundles, or multi-word sequences, are “the most frequent recurring lexical sequences in a register”, including, but not limited to, fourword sequences such as do you want to, take a look at, to come up with, i don’t know what, one of the things, those of you who, and so forth (p. 376). their instances of bundles may or may not contain a head verb. most previous studies on lexical bundles focus on register-specific materials. for instance, biber (2009) compared the most common multi-word patterns in conversation and academic writing and found that the multi-word patterns occurring in the two registers are different. patterns in conversation tend to be fixed sequences including both function words and content words; patterns in academic writing, however, tend to http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� mailto:sfchung@nccu.edu.tw� analyses of the semantic features of the lexical bundle [(verb) preposition the noun of] language value 3 (1), 138–152 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 139 be formulaic frames consisting of invariable function words with an intervening variable slot that is filled by content words. focusing on academic prose, biber proposed that there are numerous fillers that may occur in the frame the * of the. it was found that four different prepositions tend to precede the * of to form the four-word lexical bundles: at the * of, on the * of, in the * of, and to the * of, all of which are patterns of interest in the present paper. among these, the most distinctive frame is at the * of, which co-occurs frequently with the fillers end, time, beginning, level, expense, start, center/centre, top, and base. on the other hand, in the * of takes several high frequency fillers that are distinctively used in this frame, namely case, absence, form, context, course, and process. using a similar ‘frame’, this paper investigates the distributions of different variables (in capitals) in the pattern [(verb) preposition the noun of]. the present work focuses not on any specific genre, but on material contained in the british national corpus (bnc), a general corpus. we propose that similar clusters of nouns (and verbs) can also be found in a general corpus. our study further hypothesizes that the verbs and nouns can be measured in terms of their semantic relatedness. to answer this question, two types of methodologies were employed – one including an experimental-based analysis of semantic features, while the second involves the automatic extraction of semantically related hypernyms. the details of this will be illustrated in the next section. in a different study, also following a genre approach, luzón marco (2000) investigated the collocational framework in the medical research paper. the results showed that two of the most common frameworks in the corpus are: [the noun of] (e.g. the start of), a noun of (e.g. a variety of). [the noun of] tends to be used in expressing the construction of nominalizations (e.g. the cloning of); [a noun of] is frequently applied to describe the process of quantifying and categorizing. another important finding is that these two frameworks are likely to precede or follow the collocates belonging to specific semantic classes. for example, the risk of is always preceded by verbs with causative meanings (related/associated with/to the risk of). it was concluded that the selection of specific collocates for these frameworks is conditioned by the linguistic conventions of the genre. in a different study and in an attempt to improve the understanding of the function of lexical bundles in academic prose, biber et al. (2004) compared the use of such bundles by published authors in history and biology. the most http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� siaw-fong chung, f. y. august chao, tien-yu lan and yen-yu lin language value 3 (1), 138–152 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 140 frequent four-word lexical bundles in these genres were classified in terms of their structure groups. the findings revealed that lexical bundles in history mainly belong to two structural groups – noun phrases and prepositional phrases – while lexical bundles in biology cover a wider range of structural groups, including noun phrases, prepositional phrases, [it + vbe + adjective], [vbe + complement], and [noun phrase + v + complement] clause fragments. in general, in both history and biology genres, the majority of the bundles could be categorized into the groups containing a noun phrase with an of phrase fragment (e.g. a measure of the, the beginning of the) and prepositional phrases with an embedded of phrase (e.g. as a function of, at the beginning of, at the university of). from here, one can see that most of these studies in lexical bundles needed to deal with noun phrases and prepositional phrases in one way or another. for instance, biber and conrad (1999) found that, in academic prose, 60% of the bundles are phrasal, parts of noun phrases or prepositional phrases, as in the case of, as a result of, on the basis of, and on the other hand. noun phrases and prepositional phrase fragments were also found as the most frequent patterns in academic prose (also found in biber et al. 2004 and hyland 2008a, 2008b). similarly, scientific discourse is also characterized by very frequent occurrences of nouns, long words, prepositions, conjuncts, being agentless, and by-passives, as well as past participial adverbial clauses (biber 1988). in a book by silvestre (2009), he investigated the particle meanings of in and on. in his methodology, “multi-word lexicalized expression” was recognized as one of the criteria in extracting verb-particle constructions (vpc). multi-word expressions were included in his vpc analysis because some uses of in and on, such as in “to decide in favor of sb” are “motivated by” the noun (favor in this example) “rather than being directly bounded to the verbal element” (p. 159). given the above studies, we postulate that it might be useful to investigate lexical bundles by examining the nouns (and the verbs) in a given construction. this paper inspects both the nouns and the verbs in the constructions [(verb) preposition the noun of], which co-occur with twenty-two different prepositions.1 rather than looking at one particular preposition, this paper investigates a group of prepositions in terms of distributional patterns. as silvestre (2009) discovered, some of the particles were more closely related to the nearby nouns than to the verbs, and this is the kind of phraseological phenomenon we inspect in this study. the foci of this study http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� analyses of the semantic features of the lexical bundle [(verb) preposition the noun of] language value 3 (1), 138–152 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 141 are: (a) to compare the distributions of nouns and verbs in the construction [(verb) preposition the noun of] when twenty-two different prepositions are involved; and (b) to display similarities of meanings among nouns and verbs in this construction. the ultimate goal is to propose a systematic way to analyze semantic features of nouns and verbs given a preposition-containing construction. two types of methodologies were employed, namely experimental analysis of semantic features, and computational calculation of semantic meanings by measuring the common hypernym, if any, found between any two nouns or verbs. both these methodologies complement each other and the results were cross-referred. ii. data from the corpus all data discussed in this paper were taken from the written portion of the bnc, retrieved through bncweb, a platform which allows access to the bnc through a search engine of its own (hoffmann et al. 2008). twenty-two prepositions (about, above, across, after, against, among, around, as, at, beside, by, down, for, from, in, into, like, of, off, on, onto, and with) were investigated. it was hypothesized that the groups of words that appear with a similar preposition would share some similarities in semantic features. in the following sections, the distributional patterns will first be discussed, followed by a semantic analysis by human subjects. finally, in section iii, a computational program will be discussed. ii.1. distributional patterns in the written portion of the bnc, 373,258 instances of [preposition the noun of] and 86,877 instances of [verb preposition the noun of] were found. these instances were analyzed according to the different types of verbs and nouns used in them. table 1, below, displays the most frequent patterns for each preposition, along with their frequencies and percentages. for example, about the nature of has a frequency of 225 and the percentage of nature in the construction of [about the noun of] is 4.5%. patterns with the same scores were all listed (as for among and onto). http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� siaw-fong chung, f. y. august chao, tien-yu lan and yen-yu lin language value 3 (1), 138–152 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 142 table 1. frequencies of [(verb) preposition the noun of] in the bnc. prep. four-word bundles [preposition the noun of] five-word bundles [verb preposition the noun of] most frequent nouns (freq., %) most frequent verb-noun pairings (freq., %) about about the nature of (225, 4.5%) set about the task of (11, 0.52%) above above the level of (57, 10.14%) shouted above the noise of (3, 2.01%) across across the top of (49, 5.85%) runs across the front of (3, 1.01%) after after the death of (270, 7.2%) look after the interests of (7, 1.29%) against against the background of (176, 6.22%) seen against the background of (10, 1.02%) among among the members of (36, 5.15%) discovered among the remains of was among the members of were among the beneficiaries of distribute among the members of was among the founders of are among the findings of be among the victims of (2, 1.36% each) around around the time of (90, 6.86%) was around the time of (5, 0.99%) as as the result of (183, 3.66%) used as the basis of (23, 1.24%) at at the end of (1086, 21.72%) is at the heart of (101, 0.98%) beside beside the bed of (4, 5.33%) lived beside the loch of (2, 10%) by by the end of (688, 13.76%) completed by the end of (56, 0.45%) down down the side of (89, 7.09%) turned down the offer of (12, 1.42%) for for the rest of (207, 4.14%) called for the establishment of (24, 0.40%) from from the point of (143, 2.86%) suffering from the effects of (24, 0.44%) in in the case of (259, 5.18%) was in the middle of (88, 0.44%) into into the hands of (247, 4.94%) fall into the trap of (37, 1.36%) like like the rest of (158, 7.57%) look like the sort of (14, 3.33%) of of the house of (70, 1.4%) is of the order of (25, 1.73%) http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� analyses of the semantic features of the lexical bundle [(verb) preposition the noun of] language value 3 (1), 138–152 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 143 off off the coast of (107, 10.3%) fallen off the back of (6, 0.98%) on on the basis of (357, 7.14%) was on the verge of (93, 0.76%) onto onto the surface of (15, 7.5%) screws onto the front of moves onto the carbon of tacked onto the end of built onto the end of (2, 2.56%, respectively) with with the help of (155, 3.1%) charged with the murder of (52, 0.67%) from table 1 it can be seen that higher percentages were generally found for the fourword bundles (without the verb) than the five-word bundles (with the verb). the percentages for the [verb preposition the noun of] patterns are all lower than 5%, except lived beside the loch of, although its frequency is only 2, further indicating that very few patterns were found matching this construction. for the four-word combination, higher percentages indicate that the top noun patterns are less varied (e.g. at the end of (21.72%), by the end of (13.76%), off the coast of (10.3%), and above the level of (10.14%). from table 1, the most frequent nouns (column 2) may not be the same as the verbnoun pairings (column 3) because the verbs added in column 3 might affect the most frequent nouns used under each combination. interestingly, in two of the prepositions (against and around), similar nouns were found in both fourand five-word lexical bundles. this shows that against the background of and around the time of are equally frequent with or without the verbs appearing before them, further indicating the strength of the occurrences of nouns with the prepositions.2 some prepositions (e.g. of, as, with, and about) have a wider range of nouns, as the most frequent nouns (the house, result, help, and nature, respectively) constitute less than 5% of the total number of nouns in the [preposition the noun of] patterns. thus, table 1 provides a general overview regarding the different prepositions when appearing in the [(verb) preposition the noun of] construction. in the following section, we discuss an experiment we conducted in order to code the semantic features of the nouns.3 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� siaw-fong chung, f. y. august chao, tien-yu lan and yen-yu lin language value 3 (1), 138–152 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 144 ii.2. semantic coding since there are twenty-two prepositions and each has its own instances to be analyzed, human subjects were trained to code the semantic features of this part of the analysis. two ph. d. experimenters were in charge of the experiment and the procedures that were followed are described in the following. in this experiment, one hundred instances of each of the twenty-two prepositions were analyzed. six english-major university subjects were paid to participate in the analysis process. among the subjects, two senior subjects were each responsible for six prepositions, two junior subjects each took responsibility for three prepositions, and two junior subjects were each made responsible for two prepositions. the task was assigned based on a student’s experience in coding the semantic features. two of these senior students had had training in coding semantic features for over six months. each preposition contained one hundred noun types to be analyzed. the selection of the noun types was based on the frequency of patterns in the whole bnc, from high to low percentages. in this experiment, the singular and plural forms of the nouns were counted as one, and the duplicate one was deducted if the percentage was lower, e.g. at the corner of (0.32%) and at the corners of (0.17%), so the latter one was deducted. the noun of the preposition was to be categorized by the subjects (e.g. of the bank of, of the history of). during the analysis process, the subjects were allowed to use dictionaries, but other documents or books, or having discussions with others were not recommended. the purpose of such restrictions was to avoid any distractions that could affect the subjects’ judgment. the categorization should be based on their instinct. the subjects were required to sort the nouns into categories based on similarity of semantic features. no exhaustive list was provided, but the generality of the category level was hinted at through the instructions. for instance, before starting, the subjects were given instructions such that bank, post office, library, and cottage should be categorized and tagged as “building”. the subjects were then asked to generate the category names by themselves. all data were distributed through excel files and subjects were allowed to work at their own pace. the subjects saw the nouns in excel files, exemplified in table 2 for the preposition of. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� analyses of the semantic features of the lexical bundle [(verb) preposition the noun of] language value 3 (1), 138–152 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 145 table 2. example of excel data used for semantic coding of nouns a b c d e f g h 1 of the * of bank 25 0.50% 2 of the * of history 23 0.46% 3 of the * of city 23 0.46% 4 of the * of law 23 0.46% 5 of the * of role 22 0.44% the subjects were required to analyze the nouns in column e, which originally occupied the asterisk (*) in the phrase but were moved to the end for the sake of convenience. the result of the analysis was tagged in column h. if a noun could be categorized into more than one category (e.g. bank, as in (1) a financial establishment, and (2) the land alongside or sloping down to a river), all categories would be provided. furthermore, the subjects were required to provide their own criteria for the categorization. an example of their definitions is displayed in figure 1.4 figure 1. definitions of semantic categories by subjects. the two experimenters in charge would then collect and standardize the results from all subjects. if inconsistency was detected, the subjects were required to carry out revisions. after the coding, one of the experimenters then went through each of the instances for all 22 prepositions and checked whether consistency had been achieved. with the criteria and the revisions, the analysis process was made more systematic. some parts of the final results of the subjects’ analysis are shown in the following snapshots as examples. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� siaw-fong chung, f. y. august chao, tien-yu lan and yen-yu lin language value 3 (1), 138–152 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 146 figure 2. sample of completed coding. based on the outcomes of the semantic coding, results such as the following tables 2 and 3 were obtained. since the lists are long, this paper only provides selective categories. twenty-two tables were prepared for twenty-two prepositions. table 2. selective semantic features of nouns in [on the noun of]. categories groups of noun collocates explanation 1 on the (edge, verge, side) of, on the (top, surface, end, point, back) of the nouns in on the * of usually denote positions. the first three (edge, verge, side) have similar meanings. the other five (top, surface, end, point, back) can be used to denote different location or positions on concrete subjects; moreover, point and end can also refer metaphorically to a temporal meaning. 2 on the (basis, grounds, floor) of the three nouns all refer to the base of something. however, on the basis of and on the grounds of tend to be followed by abstract nouns while on the floor of usually goes before concrete nouns. 3 on the (day, night, morning) of the three nouns refer to different periods of the day. 4 on the (face, outskirts, site) of the three are concrete (visible) nouns. 5 on the (role, subject, eve, future, development, use, number, question, nature, issue) of these are abstract nouns. the phrases with subject, question, or issue here are usually followed by different topics or themes for discussion. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� analyses of the semantic features of the lexical bundle [(verb) preposition the noun of] language value 3 (1), 138–152 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 147 table 3. selective semantic features of nouns in [at the noun of]. categories groups of noun collocates explanation 1 at the (end, top, back, bottom, centre, edge, base, side, front) of these are nouns denoting locations. 2 at the (beginning, start) of the nouns denoting different times also occur frequently in this construction. 3 at the (head, hands, heart, foot) of the nouns found here refer to different parts of the body. based on the semantic coding of the nouns, we further confirm that it is possible that the nouns that share the same construction reflect certain similar clusters of meanings. in order to examine further how far these similarities can be measured, the following computational process was undertaken. ii.3. automatic data extraction in order to calculate all the possible verbs and nouns that might fill the [verb] and [noun] slots of [(verb) preposition the noun of], a program was written to measure the combination of these verbs and nouns. the program consisted in the following steps: a) first, based on the retrieved data indicated in table 1 above, the occurrences of each verb or noun that appears with its respective preposition were recorded. for instance, for [preposition the noun of], the instance about the nature of would mark 1 occurrence for nature under the preposition of about. for [verb preposition the noun of], seen against the background of would mark 1 for seen as well as 1 for background for the preposition against. b) for both verbs and nouns, all lemmatized forms were counted as a similar group (e.g. seen was grouped under see and so were saw, sees, see, and seeing). the lemmatization process followed someya’s (1998) e-lemma list. c) a normalized score called the z-score was then used to measure the occurrences of verbs and nouns found in these two constructions. the z-score was selected because it reduces the problems that arise when a word is particularly high or low in frequency.5 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� siaw-fong chung, f. y. august chao, tien-yu lan and yen-yu lin language value 3 (1), 138–152 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 148 as our previous hypothesis assumed that all the verbs and nouns that occur with a similar preposition might share certain similarities, our program also included a calculation of similarities. this was executed through finding out the common shared hypernym(s) for any two verbs or nouns in a lexical resource called wordnet 3.0 (cf. fellbaum 1998). the following example shows two nouns for among in the [preposition the noun of] construction. (a) among the group of (b) among the world of in wordnet, we first found many different synsets (synonymous sets) for group and for world. these synsets indicate the different meanings of group and world. group has three synsets of nouns, whereas world has seven synsets of nouns. each of the three synsets from group were paired with each of the synsets from world to find any common hypernyms. the number of common hypernyms was then recorded, and presented as z-scores. the results are shown in table 5 below. a high z-score might mean the nouns or verbs of these prepositions possess a higher number of common hypernyms. a higher number of common hypernyms usually means that the meanings among the nouns or verbs might be closer to one another. this part of the analysis thus attempted to prove our hypothesis of semantic relatedness among the nouns or verbs in the [(verb) preposition the noun of] construction. table 5. total z-scores of different types of nouns. prep total z-score prep total z-score nouns verbs nouns verbs as 12.01 -1.5 off -0.17 1.22 with 11.72 -1.25 onto -0.42 -0.51 from 11.65 -2.41 above -0.73 0.14 of 10.25 -0.08 in -1.19 0.83 across 1.94 -0.7 down -1.8 -1.09 like 1.73 0.03 on -3.25 -1.66 around 1.49 1.60 about -4.36 -0.35 against 1.21 0.07 into -4.86 -2.21 among 0.97 0.31 for -5.35 -2.19 at -0.01 0.87 after -6.14 -0.51 beside -0.13 0.04 by -7.82 4.90 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� analyses of the semantic features of the lexical bundle [(verb) preposition the noun of] language value 3 (1), 138–152 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 149 the results in table 5 show that some prepositions (as, with, from, and of) co-appear with nouns with higher z-scores, but their verbs are not necessarily displaying higher zscores. these controversies demonstrate that the types of nouns co-occurring with these prepositions (as, with, from, and of) are more similar than their verbs are. for instance, a closer investigation through the semantic coding in the previous section shows that the nouns in [as the noun of] display semantic groups related to amount (such as amount, sum, majority, proportion, ratio, etc.) and point in time or space (such as end, beginning, center, start, last, first, etc.), and so forth. the verbs in [verb as the noun of] (e.g. regarded as, seen as, defined as, calculated as, etc.) are more varied and it is harder to generate a pattern for them.6 other than that, table 5 also shows a reverse pattern, i.e., some verbs in [verb by the noun of] seem to show a higher z-score than those of nouns in [by the noun of]. this indicates that constructions such as completed by the noun of, approved by the noun of, divided by the noun of, etc. might share greater similarities than those of [by the noun of]. from this example, too, we might assume that those possessing higher scores for verbs are likely to form stronger bonds for [verb+prep] than those of nouns. however, this part will need further investigation, as the measurement of bonding is not the current focus of this work but will be an interesting aspect to explore. to sum up this section, we used a computational program to calculate the similarities of meanings among the nouns or verbs in the constructions [(verb) preposition the noun of]. the results may help explain whether a noun behaves similarly with or without the presence of a verb in the construction [(verb) preposition the noun of]. as shown in table 5, the nouns may not behave similarly with the presence of the verbs under a similar construction. iv. conclusion unlike previous studies, our sequences of words contain two patterns – one with the presence of the head verb [verb preposition the noun of], and one without the head verb [preposition the noun of]. this paper analyzes the semantic features shared by all the verbs and nouns in the lexical bundle [(verb) preposition the noun of]. in order to ensure that the nouns are semantically related, an experiment http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� siaw-fong chung, f. y. august chao, tien-yu lan and yen-yu lin language value 3 (1), 138–152 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 150 was run in which subjects were asked to code the semantic features of the nouns in this construction. to compare the data, an automatic data extraction program was run to measure the shared meaning (their hypernyms) in a lexical resource. some limitations remain because the verbs in [verb preposition the noun of], especially the copula be (e.g. was among the members of), were not completely dealt with at the present stage. these copulas might cause problems as they do not possess a specific meaning, and they also tended to be dropped in the wordnet searches. the hypothesis-testing of semantic relatedness on the verbs, therefore, will need further inspection. notes 1 although more attention will be given first to the nouns. 2 in addition, some prepositions (among, around, at, in, of, and on) appear to be less likely to form verbparticle constructions, as their most frequent patterns collocate more often with a copula be, showing the tendency of the prepositions to become a single preposition rather than a verb-particle combination. 3 at present, only the nouns have been discussed because the analysis of the verbs was found to entail more difficulties than expected. in addition to removing the copula be, which contains no lexical meaning, there was also the problem of selecting suitable semantic features. 4 instructions and definitions were given in mandarin to avoid misunderstanding. the results in figure 1 might not represent the finalized code, as revisions and modification might have been undertaken. 5 more about the z-score can also be found in mcenery and wilson (1996) and hunston (2002). mcenery and wilson further mentioned that the z-score is particularly useful in “multi-word units” (p. 87). 6 when most of the verbs fell under a general category of ‘act’, this might mean a problem existed with the wordnet verb trees and it was not due to the methodology itself. however, an evaluation of the wordnet hierarchies is beyond the scope of the present work. references biber, d. 1988. variation across speech and writing. cambridge: cambridge university press. biber, d. 1992. “on the complexity of discourse-complexity: a multi-dimensional analysis”. discourse processes, 15, 133-163. biber, d. 2009. “a corpus-driven approach to formulaic language in english: multiword patterns in speech and writing”. international journal of corpus linguistics, 14 (3), 275-311. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� analyses of the semantic features of the lexical bundle [(verb) preposition the noun of] language value 3 (1), 138–152 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 151 biber, d. and conrad, s. 1999. “lexical bundles in conversation and academic prose”. in hasselgard, h. and s. oksefjell (eds.) out of corpora: studies in honor of stig johansson. amsterdam: rodopi, 181–189 biber, d., conrad, s. and cortes, v. 2004. “if you look at…: lexical bundles in university teaching and textbooks”. applied linguistics, 25 (3), 371-405. fellbaum, c. (ed.). 1998. wordnet: an electronic lexical database. cambridge, ma: mit press. hoffmann, s., evert, s., smith, n., lee, d. and prytz, y.b. 2008. corpus linguistics with bncweb – a practical guide. frankfurt am main: peter lang. hunston, s. 2002. corpora in applied linguistics. cambridge: cambridge university press. hyland, k. 2008a. “academic clusters: text patterning in published and postgraduate writing”. international journal of applied linguistics, 18 (1), 41-62. hyland, k. 2008b. “as can be seen: lexical bundles and disciplinary variation”. english for specific purposes, 27 (1), 4-21. levy, s. 2008. lexical bundles in professional and student writing: a study in linguistic variation. germany: vdm verlag dr. muller. luzón marco, m.j. 2000. “collocational frameworks in medical research papers: a genre-based study”. english for specific purposes, 19, 63-86. mcenery, t. and wilson, a. 1996. corpus linguistics, 2nd ed., edinburgh: edinburgh university press. silvestre, a.j. 2009. particle semantics in english phrasal and prepositional verbs: the case of in and on. saarbrücken: vdm verlag. someya, y. 1998. e-lemma list. (free online software available at <http://www.lexically.net/downloads/version4/downloading%20bnc.htm>). http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.lexically.net/downloads/version4/downloading%20bnc.htm� siaw-fong chung, f. y. august chao, tien-yu lan and yen-yu lin language value 3 (1), 138–152 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 152 received october 2011 cite this article as: chung, s.-f., chao, f. y. a., lan t.-y. and lin, y.-y. 2011. “analyses of the semantic features of the lexical bundle [(verb) preposition the noun of]”. language value, 3 (1), 138-152. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue. issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� cite this article as: issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors título language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2010, volume 2, number 1, 144-151 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors 144 multimedia review using english for academic purposes. a guide for students in higher education andre gillet, 2010 <http://www.uefap.com/> reviewed by mónica-stella cárdenas-clarós m.cardenasclaros@pgrad.unimelb.edu.au university of melbourne, australia i. introduction existing criteria for the evaluation of call materials have been mostly designed by language teachers and call scholars. not surprisingly, the components of such criteria mostly examine aspects to do with the potential that materials offer for language learning, teacher fit and learner fit (levy & stockwell, 2006). the components of such criteria rarely evaluate features of multimedia instructional design and visual design despite the influence that these play in shaping potential learning outcomes (mayers, 2009). given these limitations, the guiding criteria to evaluate the website using english for academic purposes (uefap) is nurtured by studies in call, visual design and multimedia instructional design. table 1 summarizes each of the components. following chapelle (2001) the evaluation of the uefap website is judgmental in nature and results from the interaction with all the sections of the website in several occasions. given the space limitations i will touch on the relevant aspects of each criteria component. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� using english for academic purposes. a guide for students in higher education by mónica-stella cárdenas-clarós language value 2, (1), 144–151 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 145 table 1. criteria for website evaluation criteria components studies 1 courseware conception sla principles learning theories jamieson, chapelle and preiss 2005, hubbard 2006, susser and robb 2004, iwabuchi and fotos 2004, reeder et al. 2004 2. courseware and multimedia instructional design interface navigation accessibility text quality graphics and sound susser and robb 2004, iwabuchi and fotos 2004, hubbard 2006, bastiaens and martens 2000, lynch and horton 2009, graham 2008 3.operational description timing/control options/ interactivity user input input judging feedback help options coalpert 2004, chapelle 2001, hubbard 2006, reeder et al. 2004, iwabuchi and fotos 2004, jamieson, chapelle and preiss 2005, lynch and horton 2009, ruiz-madrid 2006, susser and robb 2004 4. learner fit chapelle 2001, hubbard 2006, levy and stockwell 2006, susser and robb 2004, iwabuchi and fotos 2004 5.potential for language learning chapelle 2001, cummins, brown and sayers 2007, jamieson, chapelle and preiss 2005, susser and robb 2004 ii. overview using english for academic purposes is a free website addressed to learners of english as a second and/or foreign language in higher education. uefap has been primarily maintained and updated by its creator, dr. andy gillet, for over 10 years and it is supported by the british association of lecturers of english for academic purposes. the website is designed in three frames and is made up of 11 sections: ‘about’, ‘accuracy’, ‘assessment’, ‘background’, ‘links’, ‘listening’, ‘materials’, ‘reading’, ‘speaking’, ‘vocabulary’ and ‘writing’. each section is made up of a number of subsections that vary according to the language component or skill it addresses. thus, while the ‘accuracy section’ is made up of four subsections, the ‘writing section’ is made up of 14, as illustrated in figure 1. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� book and multimedia review language value 2, (1) 144–151 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 146 figure 1. subcomponents in the writing section most sections in uefap start with an introduction page where, in plain language, the author explains what learners will come across in that particular section. sections directly concerned with language learning offer a brief overview of theories informing the skill together with exercises for practice. the exercises are mostly presented in multiple choice format, completion exercises, gap-filling exercises and cloze dictations. iii. criterion 1: learning theories and sla principles underpinning the construction uefap is a good example of tutorial call underpinned in behavioristic approaches to language learning with some shades of constructivism. the website can be used as a self-access resource or it can be easily integrated to a language curriculum. learners are highly encouraged to complete the practical exercise always with a purpose in mind and this purpose is made clear in the introduction of each section. one can perceive a clear intention to help learners develop autonomy and for that the author has carefully crafted the contents in a way that learners understand the reasons why particular topics need to be addressed and how these should be developed. this is simply put one of the best features of the website. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� using english for academic purposes. a guide for students in higher education by mónica-stella cárdenas-clarós language value 2, (1), 144–151 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 147 iv. criterion 2: courseware and multimedia instructional design some principles of gestalt theory are apparent in the design of the website. for instance, the design in most pages is plain and consistent and this allows learners focus on content rather than get distracted by flashy animations. however, in some pages the selection of background color can be disturbing and not very eye-friendly. the navigation is consistent throughout the website and it is performed through buttons displayed on the left-hand frame of each interaction page. additionally, to help locate users in the website sections are presented in frames that use the same color of the selected button (figure 2). figure 2. frames in the website other principles of gestalt theory seem to be violated. there is no intuitive grouping of individual sections. i clearly understand that sections are listed in alphabetical order, but as a language learner and instructor this type of display did not seem intuitive. i would have expected to see language skills grouped in one section, thus, having the four language skills listed one after the other and sections such as ‘materials’, links’ and ‘background or references’ offered as last choices. at times, i felt stuck in some ‘exercises pages’ given the lack of navigation conventions and this is partly because there are no textual directions on how to navigate the site. the http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� book and multimedia review language value 2, (1) 144–151 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 148 directions are given in an eightminute video that can be only accessed through the ‘about section’. although quite informative, new generation of visual learners may find cumbersome having to spend such a long time watching the video tutorial to find out that individual pages link to the homepage through the website logo and that individual sections are not linked among them. accessibility issues in the website were simply overlooked. no alt attributes (alternate text, tags in pictures) were used in the construction of the website and the design in frames makes it difficult for learners with disabilities to access it (lynch & horton, 2002). media is limited to audio files and static pictures except for the video in the introduction. audio files are offered in different formats so they can be played in real player, windows media player, flash and quick time. this offering of options makes the website easy to use because learners do not need to download additional plug-ins to access the materials. v. criterion 3: operational description the feedback is corrective, but at times can be misleading. despite i did not enter any answers in some listening and vocabulary exercises the feedback reads: “good! you have some answers correct.” moreover, learners are unable to track results from previous exercises or get explanations for incorrect items, hence, they need to be constantly aware of their own progress if they want to focus on specific linguistic forms and expressions. as for help, the website does not seem to fully exploit the capabilities of the computer to offer input enhancements in the form of translations, transcripts, glossed words for learners to interact with the materials. in the listening and vocabulary sections of the website, the assistance provided for learners is only performed through hints that display the first letter of the word in the answer. this means that learners who experience difficulties in understanding aural or written texts are not assisted to ‘repair’ those problems for task completion and text comprehension. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� using english for academic purposes. a guide for students in higher education by mónica-stella cárdenas-clarós language value 2, (1), 144–151 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 149 vi. criterion 4: learner fit the language tasks presented in the website mostly resemble classroom tasks and primarily address visual learners with no much experience in multimodal environments. also, the drill-and-practice approach of the website and the repeated open-ended and multiple-choice cloze tests may fatigue even the most motivated learners. vii. criterion 5: potential for language learning the content in all the sections is relevant and comprehensive, but not up-to-date in particularly, the one in the listening section. although the website is constantly updated, some of the references seem rather old compared to the sheer volume of research produced in the last few years. i spent some time interacting with the rhetorical functions of the language summarized in the speaking and writing sections. each function was fully explained and key expressions that illustrate the function were provided. i found these materials quite relevant and i completely agree that even language learners at advance proficiencies would benefit from the interaction with such functions. however, the proposed exercises did not seem to capture the goal of the such functions. this in a way can be explained by the limitations of the website regarding multimodal input and the affordances of both learner-computer interaction and learnerlearner interaction. viii. conclusion using english for academic purposes is a valid resource of digitalized materials for the avid and self-directed language learner and for language teachers seeking to implement tutorial call in their lessons. however, the website does not fully exploit the capabilities of the computer to provide opportunities for learner-computer interaction, participation and collaboration, features available in current technologies. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� book and multimedia review language value 2, (1) 144–151 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 150 references bastiaens, th. and martens, r. 2000. “conditions for web-based learning with real events”. in abbey b. (ed.) instructional and cognitive impacts of web-based education. hershley, london: idea group publishing. chapelle, c.a. 2001. computer applications in second language acquisition: foundations for teaching, testing and research. cambridge: cambridge university press. coalpert, j. 2004. design of online interactive language courseware: conceptualization, specifications and prototyping. research into the impact of linguistic-didactic functionality on software architecture. doctoral dissertation. university of antwerp, antwerp. 14 december 2010 <http://www.didascalia.be/doc-design.pdf> cummins, j., brown, k. and sayers, d. 2007. literacy, technology, and diversity. boston: pearson education, inc. graham l. 2008. “gestalt theory in interactive media design”. journal of humanities and social sciences, 2 (1), 1-12. hubbard, p. 2006. “evaluating call software”. in ducate, l. and n. arnold (eds.) calling on call: from theory and research to new direction in foreign language teaching). san marcos, texas: calico monograph series. vol. 5, 313-338. iwabuchi, t. and fotos, s. 2004. “creating course specific cd-roms for interactive language learning”. in fotos, s. and c. browne (eds.) new perspectives on call for second language classrooms. mahwah, new jersey: lawrence erlbaum associates, 149-168. jamieson, j., chapelle, c. and preiss, s. 2005. “call evaluation by developers, a teacher, and students”. calico journal, 23 (1), 93-138. levy, m. and stockwell, g. 2006. call dimensions: options and issues in computer assisted language learning. mahwah, nj: lawerence erlbaum associates. lynch, p.j. and horton, s. 2009. web style guide: basic design principles for http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.didascalia.be/doc-design.pdf� http://www.didascalia.be/doc-design.pdf� using english for academic purposes. a guide for students in higher education by mónica-stella cárdenas-clarós language value 2, (1), 144–151 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 151 creating web sites. yale: yale university press. mayer, r. 2009. multimedia learning. new york: cambridge university press reeder, k., heift, t., roche, j., tabyanian, s., schlickau, s. and gölz, p. 2004. “toward a theory of evaluation for second language learning media”. in browne s.f.c. (ed.) new perspectives on call for second language classrooms. mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum associates, 255-278. ruiz-madrid, m.n. 2006 “designing call from a language learning autonomy perspective” les melanges crapel, 28 n° spécial: tic et autonomie dans l’apprentissage des langues, 89-99. susser, b. and robb, t. 2004. “evaluation of esl/ efl instructional websites”. in fotos, s. and c. browne (eds.) new perspectives on call for second language classrooms. mahwah, new jersey: lawrence erlbaum associates, 279-296. received november 2010 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� multimedia review iii. criterion 1: learning theories and sla principles underpinning the construction iv. criterion 2: courseware and multimedia instructional design v. criterion 3: operational description vi. criterion 4: learner fit vii. criterion 5: potential for language learning viii. conclusion references language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue july 2012, volume 4, number 1 pp. 118-123 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.7 118 book review macmillan phrasal verbs plus michael rundell (editor-in-chief) macmillan education: oxford, 2005. 522 pages. isbn: 978-1-405-06390-6 reviewed by yasutake ishii ishii@seijo.ac.jp seijo university, tokyo, japan i. introduction “phrasal verb” is a term that refers to those units of verbs and particles, i.e. prepositions and adverbs, that have more or less different meanings from those of the verbs alone. phrasal verbs are extremely significant in the english language. according to biber et al. (1999: 408-409, 415), more than 2,000 phrasal verbs, items consisting of a verb (and a complement) followed by an adverb in their definition, and over 5,000 prepositional verbs, items consisting of a verb followed by a preposition in their definition, are used in every one million words in fiction and conversations. macmillan phrasal verbs plus is a specialized dictionary of english phrasal verbs (“pvs”, henceforth) and other structurally similar phrases of verbs and particles. this dictionary is “specially designed to help learners of english deal confidently with phrasal verbs” (page vi). in this review, we will concentrate on three aspects of this dictionary: the coverage of its entry items, the effectiveness and uniqueness of the characteristic features adopted in this dictionary, and a problematic strategy found in the macrostructure of headword pv items. by considering these aspects, we will be able to see whether it is really an effective learning tool for learners. ii. coverage of pv items the reviewer compared the headword items in five pv dictionaries published by the “big five” efl dictionary publishers (ishii 2009). the targets of this survey were http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� mailto:ishii@seijo.ac.jp� book and multimedia review language value 4 (1), 118–123 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 119 cambridge phrasal verbs dictionary covering about 3,300 items, collins cobuild dictionary of phrasal verbs covering around 3,300 pvs, longman phrasal verbs dictionary covering some 3,800 entry items, macmillan phrasal verbs plus covering approximately 4,000 items, and oxford dictionary of phrasal verbs covering about 5,000 pv items. this survey found that about 7,000 types of pv items are covered in the five dictionaries, around 2,000 of which are covered in all five dictionaries, about 800 pvs are covered in four dictionaries, approximately 700 in three, another roughly 700 in two, and the remainder of some 2,700 are in only one. one reason why these dictionaries differ considerably in their coverage is the difficulty in defining pvs; we often have difficulty in deciding whether or not a unit of a verb and particle is a pv. pv dictionaries have their own criteria to distinguish pvs for inclusion from other units, which makes a big difference in the coverage of items. in order to look at the difference in more detail, the reviewer made a list of those pvs that are covered as headword items only in macmillan phrasal verbs plus. it contains about 400 pv items: absolve of, accommodate to, acknowledge as, act as, add on to, address as, address by, advise against, agonize about, and agonize over, to give the first ten items. some of the items listed here are given three stars, which means that they are among the most frequent pvs (see below). they are act as, combine with, connect to, do to, end with, and be known for. on the other hand, there are also some items that are covered as headword items in the other four dictionaries, but not in this dictionary: break in on, cast round (cast round for is included), catch up on, come forth, and dawn upon (dawn on is included), to give the first five items. although many of them are included as variant forms in macmillan phrasal verbs plus, it is true that some important items are missing altogether. there are also some highly frequent items that may well be covered in pv dictionaries, but not included in many dictionaries: adapt to, for example, is covered in oxford dictionary of phrasal verbs alone. this may be because the other dictionaries deem this item just a prepositional verb, not a pv. likewise, “be constituted of” (cf. consist of is covered in four dictionaries) and “start with” (cf. begin with is also covered in four) are not covered at all, although they are in the top 200 items of verb (+ http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� macmillan phrasal verbs plus by yasutake ishii language value 4 (1), 118–123 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 120 complement) + particle in web 1t 5-gram version 11, a huge collection of n-gram data offered by google. it is considerably difficult to rigidly and objectively distinguish among pvs, prepositional verbs, idioms, and mere combinations of verbs and particles, but all highly frequent composite phrases are important for learners irrespective of whether they are pvs or not. macmillan phrasal verbs plus’s claim that it “provides all the information that is needed to understand phrasal verbs and to use them well” (page vi) can well be justified in that it covers not only a fairly wide range of pv items, but also some frequent items that are usually classified as collocations. at the same time, however, it also has some room for improvement in terms of usefulness for learners; all highly frequent pv candidates should be considered for inclusion from the viewpoint of learners that would use this dictionary. iii. characteristic features there are a number of key features touted in the front matter and on the back cover of this dictionary. we will focus on some of them below: frequency markings, “menus”, collocations, special entries on the 12 most common particles, the index of single-word equivalents, and “language study” pages on metaphors. as frequency markings, three stars are given to “the most common and basic phrasal verbs”, two stars are for “very common” items, and one star for “fairly common” ones (inside back cover). each frequency band consists of about 350 verbs (the website for macmillan phrasal verbs plus2). this is unique to this dictionary; collins cobuild dictionary of phrasal verbs and longman phrasal verbs dictionary also have markings for frequent items, but they do not show more than one frequency band. when an entry has five or more senses, this dictionary gives a “menu” before the first sense; for instance, the entry for come over has a box giving brief summaries for each sense as follows: “1 be affected by a strong feeling, 2 react, 3 visit sb’s house, 4 travel to a place far away, 5 have a particular opinion of sb/sth, + phrase”. this feature is surely useful when searching through long entries, and this is also unique to this dictionary. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� book and multimedia review language value 4 (1), 118–123 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 121 another feature of macmillan phrasal verbs plus is collocation boxes, which show frequent objects and subjects of pvs. it is surely of value, but the problem is that the number of the boxes is too small; oxford dictionary of phrasal verbs and oxford’s other, more learner-friendly reference work, oxford phrasal verbs dictionary for learners of english, provide many more entries with collocations. at the end of the dictionary, macmillan phrasal verbs plus has a 7.5-page-long singleword index with pv equivalents. this is useful when we want to know synonymous pvs of single-word verbs. the number of verbs given in this list is about 550, which cannot be said to be sufficient for encoding purposes, but much more useful than cambridge phrasal verbs dictionary’s similar list of about 80 single-word verbs. one of the most effective features unique to this dictionary is special entries on the 12 most common particles (around, away, back, down, in, into, off, on, out, over, through, and up). although collins cobuild dictionary of phrasal verbs and oxford phrasal verbs dictionary for learners of english also contain special articles on various senses of common particles and give pvs based on each sense of the particles, only macmillan phrasal verbs plus depicts the development of figurative senses from the core literal meaning, which would help the users get overviews of each particle. this feature can be valuable especially for advanced learners. still another interesting feature of this dictionary is a special article on metaphors, which is closely related to the above-mentioned special entries on particles. this article by dr. rosamund moon is based on lakoff and johnson’s metaphors we live by (1980), and gives an essence of metaphors found in the meanings of particles. for example, the reason why up means ‘powerful’ is explained as follows: “… if two people fight and one of them is physically on top of the other, that person usually wins” (page ls6). this article would help learners understand the nuances underlying the particles in pvs. iv. problematic feature concerning headword items on the macrostructure concerning the headword items, there is a potential problem. when there is more than one stress pattern for a pv item, it is divided into different entries; for example, ˈcome to is followed by ˌcome ˈto. this is not user-friendly in http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� macmillan phrasal verbs plus by yasutake ishii language value 4 (1), 118–123 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 122 terms of accessibility; users might overlook the correct entry if it follows a different entry of the same form. giving numbers to those items, as in ˈcome to1 and ˌcome ˈto2, for example, would solve this problem. v. overall evaluation macmillan phrasal verbs plus is a good dictionary containing a wealth of essential and useful information not only on phrasal verbs but also on other verb-particle phrases, polysemy of particles, and metaphors found in phrasal verbs. it is also handy and easy to scan due to its two-color printing. although there is some room for improvement as described above, this dictionary is recommendable to all learners of english at intermediate and upper levels. references biber, d., johansson, s., leech, g., conrad, s. and finegan, e. 1999. longman grammar of spoken and written english. harlow: pearson education limited. cambridge phrasal verbs dictionary. 2006. 2nd ed. cambridge: cambridge university press. collins cobuild dictionary of phrasal verbs. 2002. 2nd ed. glasgow: harpercollins publishers. ishii, y. 2009. “making a list of essential phrasal verbs based on large corpora and phrasal verb dictionaries”. in kawaguchi, y., m. minegishi and j. durand (eds.) corpus analysis and variation in linguistics. amsterdam/philadelphia: john benjamins, 121-140. lakoff, g. and johnson, m. 1980. metaphors we live by. chicago/london: the university of chicago press. longman phrasal verbs dictionary. 2000. harlow: pearson education limited. 1 30 nov. 2011 <http://www.ldc.upenn.edu/catalog/catalogentry.jsp?catalogid=ldc2006t13> 2 30 nov. 2011 <http://www.macmillandictionaries.com/about/phrasal-verbs-plus/> http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.ldc.upenn.edu/catalog/catalogentry.jsp?catalogid=ldc2006t13� http://www.macmillandictionaries.com/about/phrasal-verbs-plus/� book and multimedia review language value 4 (1), 118–123 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 123 oxford dictionary of phrasal verbs. 1993. oxford: oxford university press. oxford phrasal verbs dictionary for learners of english. 2006. 2nd ed. oxford: oxford university press. received: 29 september 2011 accepted: 05 march 2012 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� microsoft word neely_cortes_1_1.doc language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue september 2009, volume 1, number 1 pp. 17-38 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors a little bit about: analyzing and teaching lexical bundles in academic lectures elizabeth neely and viviana cortes georgia state university abstract for english as a second language (esl) or english as a foreign language (efl) students, high academic listening skills are essential in order to succeed at the university level, and yet instructional materials in academic listening often lack authenticity (flowerdew and miller 1997). as corpus-based data has become more prevalent and corpus-based findings have become more and more accessible, esl/efl instructors are now in a position to investigate how language is actually used in the content classroom and to design lessons accordingly. the present study focuses on the use of lexical bundles, defined as recurrent word combinations, in academic lectures. a small group of lexical bundles which are frequently found in spoken academic language are examined in order to carefully analyze their function in this register, comparing the use of bundles by instructors to that of students. the findings of this comparison are used as the basis for the design of a series of academic listening lesson plans, focusing on those bundles that most often occur in academic lectures and the functions they perform in that context. keywords: lexical bundles, corpora, listening comprehension, english for academic purposes, authentic materials i. introduction for students learning english as a second language (esl) or as a foreign language (efl), there may be a moment of startling realization if they find that those language skills that were emphasized in the language classroom are not precisely the skills needed in an actual university environment. for instance, in his personal narrative about learning english as a foreign language and then attending school at an american university, tsai (2001: 138) writes, “…we learned grammar in depth and performed well in exams, but had no real experience…. most foreign students, including myself, struggled because we were in a real world – all lectures were given in english”. tsai’s narrative is but one example of what many esl/efl students experience when there is a noticeable gap between the language skills acquired in the classroom and those needed to successfully function in academic studies conducted entirely in english. especially noticeable, as tsai mentioned, is when there is a gap in the listening skills needed to comprehend academic lectures. according to flowerdew (1995: 7), “academic listening elizabeth neely and viviana cortes language value 1, (1) 17–38 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 18 skills are… an essential component of communicative competence in a university setting”, and yet morley (2001: 69) observes that “listening is still regarded as the least important skill”. for this reason, english for academic purposes (eap) instructors might wonder about the best way to teach academic listening skills so that students are adequately prepared for the demands of comprehending lectures in english. this is a valid concern of eap practitioners, and for many years a wide variety of research has been devoted to understanding classroom discourse and listening comprehension in academic settings. one research approach to the analysis of academic lectures that has recently become more widespread because of advances in technology is corpus-based research. “a corpus is a collection of texts, written or spoken, stored in machine readable form, which may be annotated with varied linguistic information” (mcenery et al. 2006: 345). once an electronic corpus has been compiled, computer programs such as concordancers can search for various linguistic features within the corpus texts. corpora are valuable tools for researchers and instructors alike; from the instructors’ perspectives, using a corpus as a resource or to inform their teaching with corpus-based findings may provide them with a sense of confidence. instead of relying on “intuitions and anecdotal evidence of how speakers and writers use language,” teachers can rely on a language corpus or the findings of corpora analyses to help them know how language is used in real life (biber et al. 2002: 10). further, conrad (1999: 3) states that “practicing teachers and teachers-in-training can learn a great deal from corpus-based studies and, in fact, owe it to their students to share the insights into language use that corpus linguistics provides”. corpus-based research is a valuable tool for classroom instruction and materials design; in the area of academic listening, one possible motivation for using corpus-based research is to better understand the type of language that is actually used in academic lectures, thus proving or disproving intuition. indeed, corpus-based studies on spoken academic language have revealed much about what type of language occurs in the classroom. one language feature that has come to light from such investigations is the lexical bundle. biber et al. (1999) define lexical bundles as sequences of three or more words that frequently occur in a particular register. biber et al. (2002: 443) add that these expressions “become ‘prefabricated chunks’ that speakers and writers can easily a little bit about: analysing and teaching lexical bundles in academic lectures language value 1, (1), 17–38 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 19 retrieve from their memory and use again and again as text building blocks”. in academic writing, frequent lexical bundles are expressions such as as a result of, on the other hand, and in the context of, among many others, and in academic speech, expressions such as a little bit about, i want you to, and if you look at. lexical bundles are identified empirically and determined by their frequency across a multitude of texts (biber et al. 2002). in this way, corpus based research, by permitting efficient examination of a large quantity of texts, has allowed for the discovery of bundles that otherwise would be nearly impossible to identify. other features of lexical bundles are discussed in more detail later in this paper in order to show that bundles can serve a wide variety of functions within discourse. the purpose of this paper is to examine five lexical bundles as identified by biber et al. (2004) and nesi and basturkmen (2006) that can be used to introduce new topics and organize the discourse in academic lectures. in order to illustrate how an eap instructor might go about using corpus data and concordance tools to better understand the function of these bundles and to design classroom materials, we survey the use of these bundles in micase, the michigan corpus of academic spoken english, which will be described in more detail in section 2. the following research questions were posed to guide our research: 1. how frequently do the topic-introducing/discourse organizing bundles if you look at, a little bit about, a little bit of, i want you to, and i would like you occur in the spoken production of instructors and students in the academic lectures of micase? 2. what are the teaching applications from the pattern of use of these bundles in academic lectures? thus, the current study is designed to show how eap practitioners can use the findings of current research along with available corpora and corpus-based research tools (e.g. concordancing programs) to not only analyze the use of linguistic features but also design lessons for the eap classroom. the rest of the paper is organized as follows. the next section describes how corpus-based research methods have contributed to the description of the language used to introduce new topics in academic lectures, focusing on lexical bundles that have been functionally classified as introducing or focusing on a topic. section three describes the methodology and the corpus used in this study. elizabeth neely and viviana cortes language value 1, (1) 17–38 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 20 section four presents the results of the analysis of lexical bundles and a discussion of those results. section five outlines the importance of lexical bundles in connection to academic listening comprehension. in the final section, the findings of this study are applied to the teaching of lexical bundles and listening comprehension by means of a series of activities that incorporate corpora and corpus-based research tools. ii. recurring phrases in academic lectures in this section we will present a brief review of the literature on lexical bundles in general and of the functions performed by lexical bundles in academic speech in particular. in addition, we will include a section on the relationship between lexical bundles and academic listening comprehension. ii.1. lexical bundles across registers: academic lectures within the field of research on academic lectures, special attention has been given to lexical phrases (e.g. de carrico and nattinger 1988: 91, 92). lexical phrases were defined as “‘chunks’ of language of varying length, phrases like as it were, that goes without saying, on the other hand,” and the assumption has been that knowledge of these chunks of language can “ease the problem of [listening] perception”. recently, with advances in technology and the prevalence of corpus-based research methodologies, lexical phrases within academic lectures have been revisited on a larger scale (rilling 1996). significantly larger numbers of transcribed lectures have been compiled into larger corpora, yielding a larger pool of information upon which to base findings. additionally, corpus-based research has allowed researchers to examine the lexical phrases in lectures without necessarily having pre-existing ideas of which phrases will be the most common. computer programs can be developed to search for commonly occurring three-, four-, or five-word (or longer) combinations. thus, corpusbased methodologies have allowed for a revelation of the frequently occurring lexical phrases in academic lectures that were not possible to identify before computers. this is the case of a particular type of word combination called lexical bundles (biber et al. 1999). according to biber and barbieri (2007) there are three characteristics of lexical bundles. the first one relates to their frequency: whether found in spoken or written a little bit about: analysing and teaching lexical bundles in academic lectures language value 1, (1), 17–38 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 21 discourse, lexical bundles are extremely common, as previously mentioned. the second characteristic is that they are not idiomatic but transparent in meaning. their final characteristic is that they are usually not complete phrases or clauses. biber et al. (2004) determined that in spoken registers, lexical bundles act as functional frames that signal to the listeners how they should interpret the coming information. taken together, these characteristics would imply that lexical bundles, while occurring frequently, are not always obvious to the listener or the speaker due to their being fragments of language that are often used simply to frame other information. in this way, it is evident that corpus-based research, which objectively searches for frequencies of occurrences in large corpora, has been crucial in allowing lexical bundles to come into clearer focus. two recent studies that have contributed significantly to our understanding of lexical bundles in spoken academic discourse are biber et al. (2004) and nesi and basturkmen (2006). in the first study, biber et al. (2004) start their study by explaining two important considerations when identifying lexical bundles in texts: frequency and range. frequency refers to how often a phrase recurs. as the cut-off point used to consider a recurrent word-combination a lexical bundle is somewhat arbitrary (10 or 20 times in a million words depending on the study), for this study they chose a very conservative frequency-cut off point at 40 times in a million words. additionally, the authors mention that a phrase must be used in a range of texts, at least five different texts in the corpus, to avoid idiosyncratic use by individual writers or speakers. this feature is particularly important when trying to determine the phrases that students will encounter across a wide variety of settings. in addition, biber et al. (2004) provide insights into how lexical bundles are structurally and functionally classified, introducing a comprehensive functional taxonomy. the functional categories of lexical bundles identified in their study included stance expressions, discourse organizers, and referential expressions, with several sub-categories under each of these groups. in a broad sense, stance bundles provide a frame for which one can interpret coming information, discourse organizers allow for introducing new topics and elaborate on given topics, and referential bundles specify an attribute of something as being important. some of the bundles classified as discourse organizers will be analyzed in the current study, specifically those that have been labeled topic introduction/focus bundles, elizabeth neely and viviana cortes language value 1, (1) 17–38 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 22 which “provide overt signals to the student that a new topic is being introduced” (biber et al. 2004: 391). similarly to biber et al. (2004), the work of nesi and basturkmen (2006) examined the use of lexical bundles in academic lectures. these authors used monologic university lectures from two different corpora searching for four-word lexical bundles. their findings indicate that classroom teaching uses a large number of lexical bundles. the authors compiled a list of the 20 most frequently occurring bundles, 17 out of which were also reported in the findings of biber et al. (2004). in sum, the findings of both of these studies implicate that lexical bundles are frequently used in academic discourse and lend support to the necessity of knowing how bundles operate in introduction/focus bundles in these studies were used as a starting point for data analysis for materials development, as will be shown in the following section. ii.2. lexical bundles and academic listening comprehension two terms commonly used to describe listening processing are bottom-up and top-down listening processing skills. according to morley (2001), bottom-up skills call for the listener to pay attention to every detail of language input while top-down skills involve the listeners’ ability to access previous knowledge in order to understand what they are hearing. it has long been believed that problems in listening comprehension can arise when students depend too heavily on bottom-up rather than top-down skills; in this way, students may understand every word of an utterance without grasping the overall meaning. in this vein, chaudron and richards (1986) examined the effect of using what they termed micro-markers in academic lectures on students’ comprehension. micro-markers such as “well,” “now,” and “so” were believed to signal lower-level information and macro-markers such as “what i’m going to talk about today” were believed to signal higher level information. it was hypothesized that students would better comprehend a lecture when both microand macro-markers were used rather than when one or the other was used alone. what the results of this study showed was that students actually did better on the comprehension checks after listening to the lecture that used macromarkers alone rather than in addition to micro-markers or with micro-markers alone. a a little bit about: analysing and teaching lexical bundles in academic lectures language value 1, (1), 17–38 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 23 possible explanation for the benefit of macro-markers was that they allowed for better top-down processing, as students were able to categorize information based on those cues. the authors further concluded that the micro-markers added little in the way of semantic meaning and were possibly overlooked due to their inessentiality of the overall meaning. in light of the current study, an important note here is that some of the macromarkers chosen by chaudron and richards are actually similar to those lexical bundles identified in academic lectures, as shown in corpus data. for instance, the phrases what i’m going to talk about today is something you probably know and and that’s all we’ll talk about today as chosen by chaudron and richards (1986) contain the bundles (or similar bundles) what we’re going to and going to talk about as seen in biber et al. (2004). thus, from chaudron and richards, one might indirectly conclude that introduction/topic lexical bundles in academic lectures may actually help students better understand the structure of the lecture and utilize top-down rather than bottom-up processing. in addition, in a more explicit examination of the presence and distribution of lexical bundles in university classroom talk, csomay and cortes (in press) found that lexical bundles seem to aid in allowing the listener to follow the macro-level structure of classroom talk. iii. data and methodology the comparison of biber et al. (2004) and nesi and basturkmen (2006) provided us with a corpus-generated list of lexical bundles used to introduce new topics in academic lectures. from this list, the bundles if you look at, a little bit about, a little bit of, i want you to, and i would like you were chosen to conduct the analysis of the present study. the use of these five bundles was examined in the online version of the michigan corpus of academic spoken english (micase) and the concordancer software built in on its website. the search criteria were restricted by speech event type and speaker attributes. first, in examining the speech of instructors, the search criteria was limited so that the results only came from large and small lectures which were either interactive or monologic. the speaker attributes were limited so that only speech by faculty was considered in the results. then, in examining the speech of students, the results were limited to student presentations and dissertation defenses, and the speaker attributes elizabeth neely and viviana cortes language value 1, (1) 17–38 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 24 were limited to speech by students. with these restrictions established, there were 62 lectures used to gather data about the speech of instructors and 15 student presentation and dissertation defenses to analyze student speech. each speech event had a different speaker. a search was conducted for each of the five topic-introducing bundles selected for this study: if you look at, a little bit of, a little bit about, i want you to and i would like you. as the list of instances of occurrences came up, each instance was examined to determine the bundle’s function in the context, and these functions were compared to those described in biber et al. (2004) and nesi and basturkmen (2006). special attention was given to those bundles that did not function in the expected way (i.e. whose function did not resemble those in the reviewed studies) in order to better understand the nature of the bundle. iv. lexical bundle function in micase in this section, we present the analyses of the lexical bundles selected for this study in the speech of instructors first and then in the speech of students as identified in micase in order to carefully review the function they perform in these registers. the bundles’ use is illustrated by examples taken from the corpus. iv.1. if you look at instructor’s speech: the phrase was found 54 times across 34 transcripts. of the 54 occurrences, in 17 instances (31%) the bundle was used as topic introduction. by examining the co-texts, some interesting patterns were discovered. for instance, the contrastive transition word but preceded the bundle in some instances. “…uh dissolve in a liter of water, but if you look at this one a very very small number of moles of mercury-two iodide…” in keeping with the tendency of academic speech to resemble conversation as well as academic prose, the word so, which has been found to be a frequent conversational linking adverbial (biber et al. 2002) preceded the bundle as well, often when the bundle acted as the introduction of a new topic: a little bit about: analysing and teaching lexical bundles in academic lectures language value 1, (1), 17–38 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 25 “…that’s those n-o-three-minus anions that are highly soluble, uh will not precipitate. okay so if you look at question number one, uh, in your handout…” additionally, references to present time or a present object were made with the use of words such as here and now, both preceding and following the bundle. “…and, what can you see here especially if you look at the eyes, the hollow of the eyes, and the um, and the way the skin looks like she stood up out of a swamp.” a final observation was that if you look at was often used in order to draw student’s attention to an object, a visual representation, or part of class materials. “…so if you look at that top figure…” it is necessary to point out that two-thirds of the bundle occurrences showed the bundle used for topic elaboration or clarification, which is the second function of discourse organizing bundles as explained by biber et al. (2004). of these instances, if you look at was used 54% of the time with the meaning of “if you consider.” for example: “…about six lines from the bottom of that page where gertrudis is making an argument about how, well this is true if you look at it one way but it could be true if you look at another way and so on.” thus, it would not be enough to teach the topic introduction/focus function of this bundle in an academic listening skills class; both this function and the topic elaboration function should be emphasized. student speech: if you look at occurred 10 times in 5 transcripts of student speech. nine of these tokens can be interpreted to mean “if you consider” as in the following example: “…you don’t all of a sudden see a slew of multicultural films coming out every year. if you look at all the oscar nominees, um, if you look at the top ten grossing film [sic] sometimes you have…” elizabeth neely and viviana cortes language value 1, (1) 17–38 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 26 student speech seems to follow instructor speech in the tendency to use if you look at as a topic elaboration/clarification bundle. this finding emphasizes the fact that the bundle should be presented to students in both of the functions it often performs. iv.2. a little bit of instructor speech: in the corpus, a little bit about had 40 tokens across 22 texts and in 11 of these occurrences it was used to introduce a topic. in four of these occurrences, the bundle was preceded by the word spend and immediately followed by the word time, creating a six-word recurrent expression, spend a little bit of time. furthermore, three out of these four occurrences were part of the longer expression spend a little bit of time talking about, as shown in the following example: “…so, lemme spend a little bit of time and i mean a little bit of time talking about um a little bit about the continuous methods…” another frequent collocate of the bundle was the word reading that occurred in three occasions. on the other hand, 27 occurrences of a little bit about (68%) did not show it as introducing a topic. in these cases, the bundle was used as a quantifier. “…the application of serotonin itself, and you get a little bit of inhibition for a short period of time.” thus, in the instructor speech examples from micase, a little bit of functioned more often as a quantifier than a discourse organizer. this use as a quantifier could be attributed to instructors hedging when not sure of exact statistics or to deemphasize an action. these pragmatic implications for a little bit of should also be introduced to students. likewise, the phrase spend a little bit of time talking/discussing should be presented as a topic introduction marker, as it occurs relatively often in the corpus as well. student speech: a little bit about occurred 13 times in 7 texts of student speech. in 62% of the cases, it acted as a quantifier, similar to the tendency in instructor speech. in a little bit about: analysing and teaching lexical bundles in academic lectures language value 1, (1), 17–38 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 27 the remaining occurrences, it was used as topic introduction/focus. the following examples illustrate these functions, respectively: “…so i think that really until you could get a little bit of information, from an oral rsome real data, it’s gonna be hard to do…” “…um, and let me, tell you a little bit of this article, encountering language and language…” iv.3. a little bit about instructor speech: interestingly, a little bit about, while just one word different from a little bit of, showed a much stronger preference for acting as a topic introduction bundle. this bundle was used 81% of the time performing this function and it was preceded or followed by some reference to time, such as the word today or next. “…we talked about medical ecology on monday and today we’re gonna talk a little bit about epidemiology” student speech: the bundle a little bit about was used 6 times in 5 texts. four out of these six occurrences showed the bundle functioning as a topic introduction/focus marker. “…alright, let’s talk a little bit about mindspeak.” both in instructor and student speech, this bundle was often preceded by a communication verb such as tell, talk, and show. iv.4. i want you to instructor speech: the bundle i want you to occurred 43 times in 18 texts. this bundle was used only five times as a topic introduction marker. true to its nature as a directive, it was used as a kind of downplayed command, as if giving instructions or guiding the student to notice something: “…um , alright. let me tell you a couple other things i want you to know. you can control…” elizabeth neely and viviana cortes language value 1, (1) 17–38 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 28 the other 38 occurrences of this bundle showed it functioning as a directive but not introducing a topic. in these cases, the expression was used to ask students to literally do something as in the following example: “…assume a level of knowledge and comfort with uh archeological terminology that i don’t expect you to have so i want you to email me and let me know when you come across terms or concepts that you don’t know.” student speech: there were only five tokens for i want you to in 4 transcripts of student speech. in all 5 occurrences, the bundle was functioning as a directive, much as in the instructor samples. “…so, if you think that this is still a problem today, i want you to, um (do we stand up?) maybe we should stand up everybody…” iv.5. i would like you instructor speech: i would like you was mostly used as a directive in instructor speech. the bundle appeared only 5 times in four texts and was never used as a topic introduction marker. “…they are not in order. i would like you to rank them, from one to twentytwo, with one being…” student speech: there was only one token of this bundle produced by students, in which it functioned as a directive. “…when she comes she’ll come in around two o’clock, she’ll stay until around, two fifteen and i would like you asking her questions…” v. discussion this small-scale corpus study exemplifies how to go about using corpora to examine how language features are used by both instructors and students in academic settings and how implications for the instruction of academic listening skills can be drawn in order to inform the eap classroom. for instance, the data show that the lexical bundles a little bit about: analysing and teaching lexical bundles in academic lectures language value 1, (1), 17–38 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 29 analyzed in this study have numerous functions in academic lectures; labeling a lexical bundle as a “discourse organizer” or a “topic introducer” may serve as type of broad categorization, but often lexical bundles serve more than one purpose, a finding which aligns with that of biber et al. (2004). students should be aware of this flexibility that bundles have and should therefore be exposed to multiple occurrences of lexical bundles used to express different functions. for example, if you look at, while not always used to introduce a topic in a lecture or student presentation, was often used to ask students to turn their attention to a new object in the classroom or to imagine or contemplate a topic already under discussion. therefore, teachers should discuss this bundle’s tendency to be used to direct one’s attention, whether it be to a new topic or to contemplate a current topic further. the data also showed that certain bundles do have lexical preferences. for example, a little bit about seems to have a clear preference for being a discourse organizer, specifically a topic introducing bundle, and it commonly occurs with reference to time. teaching students this tendency would be very valuable, considering the frequency with which a little bit about is used in this way. likewise, a little bit of has a tendency to occur in the expression spend a little bit of time talking about, which has several functions. one might be that the instructor is making an aside to introduce knowledge that he/she thinks is important but has not been mentioned beforehand; another implication might be that the instructor is recognizing the importance of the students’ time and is showing a sign of politeness or rapport-building. without discussion about these subtle meanings, eap students may miss nuances of a lecture. as can be seen from the above results and discussion, lexical bundles are frequently used in academic lectures, and lexical bundles are used in a variety of types of academic lectures, varying by style (interactive or monologic) and subject. in addition, while a lexical bundle can have a primary function, the same bundle can be used for different functions across the span of a lecture. obviously, it would be beneficial to teach lexical bundles in regard to listening comprehension, but in what way? taking into account what research about lexical bundles in general and their use in the teaching of listening comprehension in particular, the next section will present our view of possible pedagogical applications of the findings of our study to english for academic purposes teaching settings. elizabeth neely and viviana cortes language value 1, (1) 17–38 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 30 vi. pedagogical applications: corpus-based activities in the classroom several criticisms of corpus-based classroom activities are addressed by flowerdew (2005). one criticism is that concordance, most often used to pull key words from the texts in a corpus with a line or so of surrounding co-text, only allow for bottom-up processing instead of top-down. similarly, another criticism is that corpus-based activities do not account for contextual features, since concordance programs only allow one to see a small “clip” of the entire picture. in other words, it has been argued that the “decontextualized nature of certain corpus-based activities have actually created an inauthentic language learning experience. yet flowerdew contends that corpus-based activities can be better contextualized by the use of whole texts; she states that “…carefully-chosen and appropriately constructed texts do lend themselves to more top-down processing” (p. 329). other criticisms have been aimed at the fact that much of the attention given to corpusbased activities has been from the perspective of instructors and materials developers but not students themselves. yet yoon and hirvela (2004), in their evaluation of students’ attitudes toward corpus-based language learning activities, established that the students actually found corpus activities to be useful ways of learning some types of features, such as words in context. additionally, these authors concluded that those students who had a strong desire to improve their language skills (writing skills in this case) were the ones who found the corpus-based activities the most useful. likewise, other researchers (cortes 2007, lee and swales 2006, thurstun and candlin 1998) also found that students appreciate corpus-based classroom activities when they are wellaligned with the goals of the course. thus, the research suggests that corpus-based activities can be effective teaching and learning tools when proper planning and instruction takes place. students should be aware that corpora and concordance programs are simply tools for language learning and should be treated as such. therefore, the following lesson plans, which focus on lexical bundles and listening comprehension, strive to include corpus-based activities in such a way that that students are encountering features (lexical bundles) within their context (academic lectures). the following series of lessons could be used consecutively or periodically over the length of a course. while they were not designed for an actual class, the intended a little bit about: analysing and teaching lexical bundles in academic lectures language value 1, (1), 17–38 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 31 audience would be a course of english for academic skills, particularly academic listening, in an esl or efl setting with students at the high intermediate or advanced level. as we wanted to concentrate on expressions that are used to mark the introduction of a topic in speech, for the purpose of this paper, only the lexical bundles if you look at, a little bit about, and a little bit of were used in the design of these activities in order to allow students to investigate how they are used to introduce topics in academic lectures. in the case of if you look at, the function of elaborating upon topics was also included in the units, as this function was also found to be very frequent in academic lectures. vi.1. lesson 1: comparing the language of textbooks to micase the first lesson aims at simply raising students’ awareness to the fact that the way that textbooks present materials (through “textbook” or contrived lectures) uses very different transition / topic introduction expressions from an actual academic lecture. as rilling (1996) suggests, one way to raise this awareness is to have students compare a textbook lecture to a lecture taken from a corpus (such as micase). students can examine an entire lecture or just an excerpt from both registers and make note of where transitions occur, as shown in figure 1. this could lead to a whole class discussion about the language used to make such transitions; while this activity will not necessarily highlight all of the bundles under examination, it will certainly raise students’ awareness of the vast difference between contrived and actual lectures. directions: read the following excerpt taken from a micase lecture on river flooding and mark the language the speakers used when they are going to introduce a topic. which words/expressions are generally used? alright great. the topic for today’s lecture is river floodplains, and what we’re gonna be doing is first i wanna talk about, the larger picture what it means, a watershed is and what drainage basins are, and then we’ll look at some specific drainage patterns which are actually, on page ninety-five i think, yeah in your coursepack. and then we’ll talk about the different processes, that are, that go on surrounding a river, followed by the elizabeth neely and viviana cortes language value 1, (1) 17–38 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 32 specific landforms of the floodplain, the climate of the floodplain, soils, and vegetation of the floodplain, and then if we have time we’ll look at slides of, um last week’s lab, when we went to sharon hollow, okay, so the first thing, is talking about this idea of a… figure 1. awareness-raising activity based on lecture excerpt. vi.2. lesson 2: lexical bundles in academic lectures the purpose of this lesson is to explicitly introduce lexical bundles and their functions, which can be done through a variety of activities. similar to lesson one, students should be led to noticing the ways in which the instructors introduce new topics within academic lectures, but attention should be drawn specifically to lexical bundles as language features that can have the function of introducing new topics. in order to lead this activity in the most authentic manner, an audio excerpt from micase could be used and students could be asked to listen for ways in which the speaker introduces new topics within the lecture. in order to focus on a particular lexical bundle at a time, several excerpts in which the bundle is used performing the function of introducing a new topic should be used to help students draw conclusions on the function of the bundle in different contexts. the following excerpt has been selected from micase to illustrate the way in which a little bit about has been used to introduce a new topic in these lectures. it would be advisable to present students with several excerpts from different lectures that include the bundle for them to draw their own conclusions. …so the average is somewhere, from point-two to two centimeters per thousand years. that's not very fast. and so you can see, if it were say one centimeter per thousand years, somewhere in the middle there, if the oldest part of the ocean is like two hundred million years old, uh a thousand years is ten-to-the-third, a million is ten-to-the-sixth, so it'd be one times ten-to-the-third, centimeters thick, on the oldest part of the ocean. that's not very thick... so uusually on the average you expect to ffind, a few hundred meters, of sediment. and that is indeed what you do find. now let's talk a little bit about each of these types of sediment. and we'll start with the terrigenous, stuff. <pause:09> it's very difficult... to carry sediment, out into the ocean very far. if you think about it, what happens? the the rivers flow down to the ocean a little bit about: analysing and teaching lexical bundles in academic lectures language value 1, (1), 17–38 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 33 right? in general in most places not every place but in most places, as you come down, from the mountains down through the hills down through the coastal plain, the level or the or the um, the steepness of the slope of the river gets lower and lower, and then when it hits the ocean, in a way it's like, hitting a sa rock wall i mean that it can't go any deeper than that, and so the flow, stops, in terms of river flow. and other processes take over. currents, tidal flushing in and out, longshore currents, wave generated currents, things like that, will then take that sediment that's delivered by the rivers, and move it around a little bit. but it's hard to get it out, out, far into the ocean. so the terrigenous sediment just tends to pile up around the edges. unless it's carried by the winds. and, of course dust, in the in the atmosphere, can go a long long way. in fact, uh, people have traced dust storms uh via satellite, well clear across the atlantic. (oceanography lecture) figure 2. example of lexical bundle use from micase. vi.3. lesson 3: familiarization with form and function the purpose of this lesson is to familiarize students with the form and function of lexical bundles. to do this, corpus-based activities similar to those of thurstun and candlin (1998) can be created, as shown in the figures below. first, students are given a page of one-line concordances for each of the bundles under examination (see figure 2) taken from micase, and they are guided in how to interpret the handout. students are asked to look at the words directly before and after the bundle and pay special attention to lexical patterns as well as the function the bundle is performing (as well as can be perceived). for further practice with form and function, a set of “fill-in-the-blank” exercises can be designed for students to determine the most appropriate bundle to use in a give context from micase, as shown in figure 4. a final example of this sort should include listening to a sample lecture so that students can identify the appropriate bundle within the context of that lecture. directions: examine the concordance lines containing a little bit about. notice the words immediately preceding and following a little bit about. is there a pattern? what do you think the speaker’s purpose was in using a little bit about? elizabeth neely and viviana cortes language value 1, (1) 17–38 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 34 also. on page ninety-seven…okay…so the next thing, is to talk a little bit about how the climate is different in these into a larger cohort of mice. and then, to conclude, i wanna talk a little bit about how this works. so, there’s really two it’s just a brief outline of what i’m talking about first i’ll go into a little bit about stress, uh and the different types of it ’re gonna talk about in case, people really care we’re gonna talk a little bit about the phytase content, we’re gonna talks …how ‘bout the role of groups in politics? wanna tell us a little bit about that? politics isn’t, politics doesn’t just that means of course, that you know, remember when we talked a little bit about range of resources available? states tha t one that you start out with…so my, final topics i'm gonna talk a little bit about the honeycomb problem, which is the t nna be. and then before that nothing happened right? we talked a little bit about that the other night when we talked abo e gonna talk a little bit about delayed ripening, we’re gonna talk a little bit about the phytase content, we’re gonna talk figure 3. activity based on concordancing lines from micase. directions: in each of the following sentences, a lexical bundle is missing. using the context of the sentence, decide which bundle should go in each blank. choose between if you look at and a little bit of …it's a good time to get into some of this. um this is just in the us. but this is actually, world wide so i wanna spend ____________ time talking about the extent, or extant i guess the the, distribution, of biotech, around the world. …now consistent with that, argument, are just a few things, first is that,___________the facial neuro-muscular mechanisms, fun to say that three times they show continuity from higher primates to man. we could’ve seen it after the glaciers left okay so that’s ______________ the soil profiles, how they get formed and then there’s six major soil orders. and um there’s other ones too but these… but now you start to look at other kiother hallucinogens. so ____________ something like mescaline. you see mescaline, which is a hallucinogen shows cross-tolerance and l-s-d doesn't bind to the one five or seven family. figure 4. fill-in-the-blanks examples taken from micase. a little bit about: analysing and teaching lexical bundles in academic lectures language value 1, (1), 17–38 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 35 a follow-up for this activity could consist of providing students with opportunities to continue noticing lexical bundles in a variety of academic context and reporting their analysis afterwards. students could then be asked to attend a public academic forum on their university campus (e.g. a special presentation, a guest lecturer, or some type of published speaking setting). students should be asked to pay special attention to how speakers organize their speech, to see if there are any key words or lexical bundles used. ideally, the purpose of this last activity is to increase students’ awareness of the presence of discourse organizers in the academic discourse they hear inside and outside the classroom. vii. conclusion the present study showed how it is possible to use existing corpus-based research findings in conjunction with publicly available corpora and concordance programs in order to design lessons and materials for the esl/efl classroom. in examining the presence of the bundles analyzed in this study in academic lectures, it was found that bundles should be taught presenting the complete spectrum of their functions in context for students to analyze these functions in discourse similar to the one they encounter daily in their academic lives. the series of lessons presented attempt to align current research in listening comprehension with the findings of corpus-based research, enabling students to become familiar with corpus-based research tools such as concordancing software. as corpus-based research findings become more popular and as publicly available corpora continue to increase, it is hoped that eap instructors will feel empowered to use these resources to inform their teaching and in the process of designing their classroom materials. references biber, d. and barbieri, f. 2007. “lexical bundles in university spoken and written registers”. english for specific purposes, 26, 263-286. biber, d., conrad, s. and cortes, v. 2004. “if you look at…: lexical bundles in university teaching and textbooks”. applied linguistics, 25, 3, 371-405. elizabeth neely and viviana cortes language value 1, (1) 17–38 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 36 biber, d., conrad, s. and leech, g. 2002. longman student grammar of spoken and written english. harlow: pearson education limited. biber, d., conrad, s., reppen, r., byrd, p. and helt, m. 2002. “speaking and writing in the university: a multidimensional comparison”. tesol quarterly, 36 (1), 9-48. biber, d., johansson, s., leech, g., conrad, s., and finegan, e. 1999. longman grammar of spoken and written english. london: longman. chaudron, c., loschky, l. and cook, j. 1994. “second language listening comprehension and lecture note-taking”. in flowerdew, j. 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(ed.) teaching english as a second or foreign language. boston: heinle & heinle, 69-85. micase (n.d.) http://lw.lsa.umich.edu/eli/micase/research.html (see simpson et al.) nesi, h. & basturkmen, h. 2006. “lexical bundles and discourse signalling in academic lectures”. international journal of corpus linguistics, 11 (3), 283304. rilling, s. 1996. “lexical phrases as organizational markers in academic lectures: a corpusand computer-based approach to research and teaching”. ortesol journal, 17, 19-40. simpson r. c., briggs s. l., ovens j., and swales j. m. 2002. the michigan corpus of academic spoken english. ann arbor, mi: the regents of the university of michigan. thurston, j. and candlin, c. 1998. “concordancing and the teaching of the vocabulary of academic english”. english for specific purposes, 17 (3), 267280. tsai, m. 2001. “learning is a lifelong process.” in belcher, d. and u. connor (eds.) reflections on multiliterate lives. tonawanda: cromwell press ltd., 135-140. yoon, h. and hirvela, a. 2004. “esl student attitudes toward corpus use in l2 writing”. journal of second language writing, 13, 257-283. elizabeth neely and viviana cortes language value 1, (1) 17–38 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 38 received september 2009 cite this article as: e. neely and v. cortes. 2009. “a little bit about: analyzing and teaching lexical bundles in academic lectures”. language value, 1 (1), 17-38. servei de publicacions de la universitat jaume i: castelló, spain. http://www.erevistes.uji.es/languagevalue. issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors editorial language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2011, volume 3, number 1 pp. i-vi issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors i in memoriam the journal editors and the department of english studies at the universitat jaume i wish to pay tribute to our colleague, friend and teacher, dr. xavier campos vilanova who passed away earlier this year. xavier showed a passionate enthusiasm for the study of the history of the english language and literature, but also for everything he did. from taking photographs, researching on the meaning of the number seven, to studying the history of castelló – his home town –, he went deep into everything that touched his heart. xavier kindly accepted to supervise my doctoral thesis (campoy) on phrasal verbs many years ago even though it did not fit his plans at the moment, since he was then deeply engaged in the study of old english. i felt this issue on phrasal verbs would be a great opportunity to thank him for his generosity and open mindfulness. it is his wide smile and his distinctive laugh that could fill the room that we will always remember. mª carmen campoy and the editorial team castelló, 22 dec. 2011 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� from the editors articles are copyrighted by their respective authors ii from the editors multiword patterns: considering phrasal verbs and their underlying semantic systems (i) this is the first of two issues dealing with multiword patterns. the main focus of these issues is that of phrasal verbs with a special emphasis on the semantic patterns from which they arise. this first issue on this topic includes five articles related to the study of english particles as part of phrasal verbs and in lexical bundles. the issue tackles different perspectives in the analysis and use of phrasal verbs. most articles adopt a cognitive approach in their investigation of the use and analysis of these units. two of them, navarro and chung et al. also follow a corpus-based approach in their analysis. ruiz de mendoza and galera-masegosa’s article (going beyond metaphtonymy: metaphoric and metonymic complexes in phrasal verb interpretation) analyses how systematic combinations of metaphor and metonymy can play a crucial role in the interpretation of complex and opaque phrasal verbs. these scholars draw on previous insights on metaphor-metonymy interaction patterns, ranging from metaphtonymy (goossens 1990) to metonymic and metaphoric “complexes” (ruiz de mendoza and mairal 2007, 2011, ruiz de mendoza and pérez 2001). in this paper they focus particularly on two kinds of metaphoric complex: amalgams (metaphors that are integrated into the source-target structure of other metaphors, or double-source metaphoric mappings) and chains (complexes that make use of a single conceptual domain as both target and source to other domains). after the illustration of their postulates along a series of complex examples, ruiz de mendoza and galera-masegosa conclude that the conceptual makeup of phrasal verbs goes beyond compositionality in terms of meaning and interpretation. it is, nevertheless, largely “predictable and calculable”, when the interaction of metaphor and metonymy, for example, in terms of complexes, is taken into account. in the second article, towards an integrated model of metaphorical linguistic expressions in english, strugielska puts forth an alternative to conceptual metaphor theory in the form of an integrated – as opposed to an isolated – model for metaphorical expression. thus, her proposal presupposes that some expressions language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2011, volume 3, number 1 pp. i-vi issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors iii generally classified as metaphors can be seen as largely affected in relation to their figurativeness. her most important contention is that in the approach to metaphor proposed here conceptual primitives are seen as dialogical elements of semantic profiles, with their prominence relying mostly on the contrast between simple verbs and vpcs. both the analysis of particle verbs with in and out and the notion of strategic construal compose the common ground shared by the contributions of geld and geld and maldonado. by way of this notion, the authors relate langacker’s (1987) “construal” to the process of strategic thinking about the meaning of particle verbs (pvs) by two different groups of users of english as a l2 (l1 spanish vs. l1 croatian), and analyse the contribution of their elements to different degrees. the reader is advised to read these two articles in our “whole version” format, where it is possible to use links that relate one article to the other. geld adopts a general perspective in the analysis of a series of parameters involved in the process of making sense of a series of (relatively opaque) pvs with in and out by the aforementioned groups. her analysis derives from a language proficiency test and the reflections of the informants about 20 pvs portrayed in a research questionnaire. it shows how these parameters interact and affect meaning construal in l2, and leads her to conclude that the strategic construal of pvs varies mainly in terms of languageinternal factors like topological vs. lexical determination (the meaning of the particle overrides the meaning of the verbal element and vice versa) and compositionality (meaning derived from a balanced interaction of both elements), the degree of informativeness of the particle, the nature of the verbal element (light vs. heavy), in combination with typological factors such as l1-l2 interface (verb-framed vs. satelliteframed languages) and language-external factors like l2 proficiency, years of learning and even the learning environment. although the research conducted by maldonado and geld departs from the data obtained in the questionnaire employed in geld (see above), their focus of attention falls mainly onto the contribution of the particle in pv constructions (particularly how it is interpreted by learners of english as l2). in terms of specifics, their concern is to describe strategic construal of in and out in pvs by focussing on a particular set of the http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� from the editors articles are copyrighted by their respective authors iv aspects of meaning construal in l2 suggested by geld (see above), among which topological determination and compositional meaning become central. in their analysis, they describe the construals of both particles – including nine categories for in and ten for out – as derived from the data obtained in the questionnaire employed in geld –, which are schematic representations of the informants’ construals. the strategic construal of particles is analysed in relation to the meaning of the whole vps. the results of their study confirm their three initial hypotheses, namely: • l2 users are well aware of the symbolic nature of language even while dealing with highly schematic linguistic categories • the strategic construal of both particles is comparable to their cognitive linguistic description in english as l1 • the strategic construal of both particles shows a cognitively motivated path from the topological to the aspectual. navarro’s article, lexical decomposition of english spatial particles and their subsumption in motion constructions, is an innovative attempt to account for several aspects of spatial particle semantics within the framework of the lexical constructional model (lcm), a – relatively new, but well-grounded and increasingly expanding – semantic-syntactic system of representation of lexical units and constructions, that takes on both cognitive and functional tenets. the author first develops the logics for spatial particle semantics within the lcm in terms of the formalism of a lexical template (lt). then, with the help of the coca as a source of data, navarro exemplifies his claims by way of the semantic decomposition of seven prepositions. this allows him to take his last step and illustrate how these lts are subsumed (roughly, how they “fit” into particular constructions by way of a series of cognitive operations that assume semantic-syntactic and pragmatic/discursive constraints on each of the construction elements) into two kinds of motion constructions: caused motion and intransitive motion. the author concludes with a series of remarks concerning the contribution of particles to constructional meaning, and their possible interaction with different verbal aktionsart types. language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2011, volume 3, number 1 pp. i-vi issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors v chung, chao, lan and lin analyse the semantic features of the lexical bundle [(verb) preposition the noun of] including bundles where the verb plus particle is not a prepositional or adverbial verb and some bundles where a phrasal or prepositional verb appear. this five word bundle is contrasted with the four word bundle [preposition the noun of]. by contrasting these two lexical bundles they also investigate on the semantic features the intersection bundle shares. data for their analysis was obtained from the british national corpus. the book and multimedia review section of this volume ends with two reviews, the first one by pedro fuertes-olivera who goes over the main features of the macmillan collocations dictionary for learners of english. fuertes-olivera examines among other things the information the dictionary contains as regards typographical representation, collocational information and the dictionary guide. he pays close attention to the collocational patterns and further inspects the case of business collocational patterns. the second review analyses both termstar xv and wordsmith tools as terminology management systems. these are compared to similar software systems. a table comparing the main features of various tmss under analysis in the review is also provided. nuria edo’s review has the added value of considering these programmes for a very specific purpose: that of developing specialised dictionaries. she considers the potential of these systems in term extraction and term in-corpus analysis as well as regarding data processing, management and storage. their potential for the creation of terminological cards and for the retrieval of specific information as well as the userfriendliness of both export and import task management and environment design are considered. antonio josé silvestre lópez guest editor mª carmen campoy cubillo miguel f. ruiz garrido editors universitat jaume i, spain http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� from the editors articles are copyrighted by their respective authors vi references goossens, l. 1990. “metaphtonymy: the interaction of metaphor and metonymy in expressions for linguistic action”. cognitive linguistics, 1 (3), 323-340. langacker, r.w. 1987. foundations of cognitive grammar, vol. 1: theoretical prerequisites. stanford: stanford university press. ruiz de mendoza, f.j. and pérez, l. 2001. “metonymy and the grammar: motivation, constraints and interaction”. language and communication, 21 (4), 321-357. ruiz de mendoza, f.j. and mairal, r. 2007. “high-level metaphor and metonymy in meaning construction”. in radden, g., k-m. köpcke, t. berg and p. siemund (eds.) aspects of meaning construction. amsterdam/philadelphia: john benjamins, 33-51. ruiz de mendoza, f.j. and mairal, r. 2011. “constraints on syntactic alternation: lexical-constructional subsumption in the lexical-constructional model”. in guerrero, p. (ed.) morphosyntactic alternations in english. functional and cognitive perspectives. london, uk/oakville, ct: equinox, 62-82. references language value june 2020, volume 12, number 1 pp. 88-111 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es issn 1989-7103 language value, issn 1989-7103 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2020.12.5 88 english, spanish o los dos? teaching professional writing on the u.s.-mexico border theresa donovan theresa.donovan@upr.edu teresa quezada tquezada2@utep.edu isabel baca ibaca@utep.edu the university of texas at el paso, usa abstract in ―spanish for the professions and specific purposes: curricular mainstay,‖ doyle discusses how spsp is poised to become an ―adaptable signature feature of future spanish curricula‖ (2018: 96). for spsp to become a mainstay, doyle argues that it requires ―greater needs-grounded imagination (…) whose potential spsp portfolios will vary according to educational missions and contexts‖ and proposes certificate programs as responsive and adaptable programs to fit diverse curricular contexts (2018: 9697). in this paper, the authors discuss the development of a cross-disciplinary certificate program in bilingual professional writing (spanish/english) at a public university on the u.s./mexico border to meet the needs of our unique student body and to better prepare students as globally-minded writing professionals. this model values students’ home languages and echoes collier and thomas’ (2004) assertion that a bilingual and dual language approach can be astoundingly effective at the university level. keywords: professional writing programs, bilingual writing in higher education, language for specific purposes i. introduction ―english, spanish o los dos?‖ to faculty in the rhetoric and writing studies program at the university of texas at el paso (ut-el paso), the answer was unquestionably los dos when we began to redesign the curriculum for a professional writing certificate for undergraduate and graduate students. at the core of the certificate design is a curriculum that emphasizes written communication and strives to incorporate both spanish and english equally in the required courses. the redesigned curriculum was launched in fall of 2018 as the bilingual and professional writing certificate (bpwc) program. the bpwc is the first and perhaps only program of its kind in the u.s. to focus specifically on writing in spanish and english for professional contexts. in the bpwc, two languages are then used for the specific purpose of communicating professionally. this ut-el paso program attends to both local and global needs. at the mailto:theresa.donovan@upr.edu mailto:tquezada2@utep.edu mailto:ibaca@utep.edu english, spanish o los dos? teaching professional writing on the u.s.-mexico border language value 12 (1), 88–111 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 89 local level, it honors our students’ language assets and maximizes our university’s unique location on the u.s.-mexico border. at the global level, it prepares students for today’s workforce, which is quickly becoming more multilingual and globalized, and provides them the opportunity to become effective, ethical and dynamic bilingual professionals. our goal in this paper is to explain the significance of the program, the curricular design choices made by the founding instructors and its unique position at the crossroads of both language for specific purposes and rhetoric and writing studies. before entering into the particulars of the program, it is important to note why we situate the bpwc within the broader approaches of language for specific purposes (lsp) i and rhetoric and writing studies ii as we draw upon scholarship from lsp and our discipline, rhetoric and writing studies (rws). lsp curricula are interdisciplinary by nature, and draw upon the research and methods of the disciplines they serve. more often than not, lsp is part of a foreign language curriculum or departments; in our case, the bpwc is a joint effort with the translation program in the department of languages and linguistics but forms an administrative unit of the rhetoric and writing studies program within the department of english at ut-el paso. on a basic level, the primary goal of lsp is to prepare students for the practical application of a target language in professional environments (lafford 2012), while the primary goal of rws is to prepare students for the rigors of writing in professional and academic contexts. the key tenets of our disciplinary approach to teaching writing is that writing is a rhetorical, situational and social act, and values students’ own language or language varieties. thus the bpwc program allows students to embrace their english-spanish bilingualism, value their home languages and enrich their education while improving their workplace discourse. the present article focuses on both curriculum design and implementation of the bpwc and examines the topic in relation to a particular geographical context. the article is organized by first discussing the background of the university and its student body, the requirements for the certificate, and then the process of creating the courses and materials with particular emphasis on three trends in lsp and rws pedagogies: technology, ethics, and service-learning. in tandem with the discussion, we argue that the bpwc is an lsp-writing program and advocate for the advantages of using a rhetorical approach in lsp instruction. theresa donovan, teresa quezada and isabel baca language value 12 (1), 88–111 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 90 ii. geographic and demographic background the university of texas at el paso is a public, doctoral-granting institution located in one of the world’s largest bi-national and bilingual metropolitan areas which includes 840,000 residents of the far-west texas city, el paso, and 1.39 million residents of ciudad juárez, méxico. founded in 1914, the university began with an enrollment of 27 students and one degree program. today, ut-el paso offers 170 bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degree programs in 10 colleges and schools to its more than 25,000 students. as a commuter campus, the student body reflects the demographics of the binational region where it is located; 82% of ut-el paso students self-identify as hispanic and 78% of them further identify as being of mexican heritage (u.s. census bureau 2018). additionally, two-thirds of el paso households identify as spanish speakers (u.s. census bureau 2018). these statistics do not include the approximately 1,000 mexican nationals who also attend the university each semester—thus making ut-el paso a mexican-american majority student population that is highly bilingual and multicultural. apart from our student demographics, the geographic, cultural and economic ties between el paso and ciudad juárez provide prolific options for bilingual employment. geographically, the two cities share an international border and three ports of entry where millions of passenger vehicles and pedestrians cross annually iii , yet the relationship between the cities transcends this divide. the concept that is used often to describe the link between el paso and ciudad juarez is symbiosis (chamberlain 2007), and the interaction between the cities is, according to el paso city leaders, ―a unique and unbreakable historical, familial and economic connection that has resulted in a rich culture and vibrant economy...bolstered by $51.1 billion in trade‖ that ―account[s] for 18% of all trade between the two countries‖ (el paso city resolution 2010: 3). furthermore, every year ―juarenses spend $1.2 billion in the el paso economy and over 60,000 jobs in el paso are dependent upon economic activity in juarez‖ (el paso city resolution 2010: 3) iv . this brief snapshot of the relationship between the sister cities and the larger regional economy demonstrates the extraordinary business and job opportunities available for bilingual professionals on the border, and explains the impetus for the development of a english, spanish o los dos? teaching professional writing on the u.s.-mexico border language value 12 (1), 88–111 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 91 bilingual professional writing certificate program at ut-el paso. our unique situatedness and student body made it an obvious choice to implement a bilingual writing certificate. iii. the bilingual professional writing certificate housed in the rhetoric and writing studies (rws) program within the english department, the certificate program aims to prepare students: 1) to analyze the workplace situations that demand written responses in english, spanish or both 2) to ethically consider the audience and purpose when composing the certificate was also designed to enhance the students’ specific discipline rather than focusing on writing within a discipline. in other words, the certificate can complement any degree plan or be earned as a stand-alone certificate, and students have flexibility in choosing the courses required for the certificate from a limited menu of options, which will be discussed in a later section. although an administrative unit in the english department, the bpwc is a crossdisciplinary endeavor with the translation program in the department of languages and linguistics. however, it’s important to highlight the atypical nature of the program’s placement in the department of english and define it within the lsp framework. to do this, we draw upon national survey results on the state of lsp reported in 1990 and 2012 to demonstrate that this program is, based on the survey data, the only lsp that we know of that comes out of an english department and is the first of its kind to focus on the study of writing. in 1990, grosse and voght published the results from a mail-in survey v on the state of lsp in u.s. higher education which included information on the types of institutions that offer lsp; the number and types of lsp courses and degree tracks; the lsp partnerships among administrative units; the perceptions of administrators regarding lsp offerings and expected growth of the field, among others. two decades later, in light of advances and challenges to lsp, long and uscinski sought to understand how much the field had progressed since 1990 and ―deemed it fit to conduct a new survey modeled on grosse and voght’s work‖ (2012: theresa donovan, teresa quezada and isabel baca language value 12 (1), 88–111 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 92 174). the new survey incorporates and expands upon the questions used in grosse and voght (1990). in ―evolution of languages for specific purposes programs in the united states: 1990-2011,‖ long and uscinski present the results of their 2011 survey and compare and contrast them to the 1990 survey. much like grosse and voght, long and uscinski sent invitations to participate in the survey to department administrators of foreign languages. of the 1,435 survey invites, only 13%, or 183 departments responded (2012: 174). the researchers used the online platform, survey monkey, to administer the 53-question survey, ―27 of which came from the survey conducted by grosse and voght (1990)‖ (long and uscinski 2012: 175). the survey results reported are extensive, but we would like to focus on three areas that are pertinent to the current discussion: lsp partnerships, lsp courses taught by non-foreign language faculty, and lsp programs offering a degree track, minor or certificate. respondents were asked whether they partner with other academic units to provide lsp courses and to identify who they partner with across campus. twenty-four percent of foreign language departments answered ―yes‖ and indicated that partners included professional schools of business, nursing, public programs and education (long and uscinski 2012: 182) –that is disciplines with specialized language and vocabulary. the researchers also asked about the teaching of foreign languages by other (non-foreign-language) departments at their institution. ten percent of the respondents answered that other departments or units on campus taught their courses (long and uscinski 2012: 182). of all of the responses for departments or units that were involved in foreign language teaching, the department of english was not listed vi , nor was it listed in the original grosse and voght study in 1990 (long and uscinski 2012:182). given the data collected and the participants in both studies, ut-el paso’s bpwc, then, may be the first non-english lsp that emerges from a department of english. moreover, to assess the strength of lsp offerings at u.s. institutions of higher education, long and uscinki added a question not included in the original survey by grosse and voght (1990) regarding whether the lsp was part of a formal program such as a degree track, certificate or minor (2012: 181). at least 27% of the 183 departments responded that they offer at least one of the above (degree track, minor or certificate); the most common was a minor in spanish for business, followed by other degree offerings in spanish for translation (long and uscinski 2012: 181). long and uscinski, english, spanish o los dos? teaching professional writing on the u.s.-mexico border language value 12 (1), 88–111 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 93 however, provide a quick overview of the data on lsp programs and do not offer specific information on certificate programs. we believe that it is of great significance that certificate programs are not explained, and there is no mention of a bilingual certificate program. nevertheless, since the publication of the survey results (2012), there has been a call from scholars to deepen and expand lsp offerings, and specifically in the area of certificate programs. doyle (2018: 98) promotes certificate programs and their flexible nature and sees certificates becoming an ―adaptable signature feature of future spanish curriculum‖. although the bpwc is not strictly part of a foreign language curriculum or department, we agree with doyle that the certificate program is adaptable and relevant to diverse disciplines and degree plans. at this juncture, we would like to further define the bpwc within the lsp framework. we have discussed earlier that, because of the nature of the program, we have drawn upon literature in lsp to include english for specific purposes (esp) and spanish for the professions and specific purposes (spsp), yet our program does not fit into the traditional labels as it shares some commonalities with esp and spsp but its primary emphasis is written discourse in both languages. to determine how to situate the program within an lsp framework, we turn to doyle (2013). in ―continuing theoretical cartography in the lsp era,‖ doyle predicts that non-english lsp will undergo ―its fuller maturation process within american higher education‖ (2013: 3) and: the maturation will surely continue as all language use can be defined as lsp, one way or another, either narrowly…or more broadly and less traditionally (e.g. lsp-literature, i.e., the specific use of language for literary studies and criticism, or even the supposedly more general lsp of being able to engage in tourism…) (2013: 4). doyle’s emphasis on the future maturation of non-english lsp allows for ―all language use‖ to be defined as an lsp and includes ―broader‖ and ―less traditional‖ programs that focus on the specific use of language for diverse study areas. as such, we apply this broader definition to the bilingual certificate program and identify it as an lsp-writing program. finally, we should point out that there are different types of lsp programs. in ―languages for specific purposes business curriculum creation and implementation in the united states,‖ fryer (2012: 132) notes that some lsp programs focus on theresa donovan, teresa quezada and isabel baca language value 12 (1), 88–111 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 94 acquisition and proficiency of the target language while others, ―special collaborative programs,‖ such as the mexus vii program at san diego state u., ―requires a high degree of language proficiency in english and spanish, the target language‖. the bpwc program falls into the latter category, where students must take an entrance exam to demonstrate a high degree of language proficiency in both languages. ut-el paso’s program seems to be unique in its faculty’s expertise and orientation. while lsp programs aim to teach subject matter in the target language, the bpwc faculty are specifically trained to teach in two languages and to teach communication, both written and oral communication, with a partnership between rws and translation faculty. thus, the certificate program’s unique blend of rws and translation faculty and courses provides opportunities: learning opportunities for its students and research and pedagogical opportunities for its faculty not previously explored in the teaching of languages for specific purposes. undoubtedly, the fact that the certificate program at ut-el paso falls under the auspices of the rhetoric and writing studies program within the department of english has allowed for the flexibility to create curricula that are not bound by an english-only language policy. further, the cross-disciplinary collaboration among the faculty also allows for cross-pollination of teaching practices from one discipline to the other. we argue that this cross-disciplinary approach provides fertile ground for exploring themes from multiple perspectives. in the following sections, we present the course requirements for the certificate and discuss themes and practices that emerged from our collaboration to support our position. iii.1. certificate requirements as indicated in the ut-el paso academic catalog (2019), the bpwc program ―is intended to prepare students to communicate in print and digital environments ethically and responsibly in both english and spanish‖. ut-el paso’s program curriculum also emphasizes ―the practice of rhetoric, technology, and language as they apply to bilingualism and translation in professional settings.‖ the certificate is open to students enrolled at the undergraduate and graduate levels to enhance their degree plan or as a stand-alone certificate. the certificate comprises 12 credit hours and 4 courses: 2 courses in translation and 2 in rhetoric and writing studies. the courses include english, spanish o los dos? teaching professional writing on the u.s.-mexico border language value 12 (1), 88–111 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 95 introduction to translation, an elective in rhetoric and writing studies (either bilingual workplace writing or bilingual technical writing), an elective in translation (legal, business or healthcare translation), and a rhetoric and writing studies practicum course. students can choose from these pre-approved electives and enroll in the courses that most align with their career goals. this allows for a versatile and adaptable certificate that is applicable to numerous degree plans. so far, the majority of students who have completed the certificate have been from the translation program, but interest in the certificate program is growing as more students recognize bilingualism as a personal and professional asset. the certificate program not only honors students’ home/heritage language; it prepares them to write professionally in two languages regardless of their discipline. students who leave the borderland can boast an asset that no other university develops: bilingual composition in a professional setting. students who remain in the borderland region can demonstrate documented proficiency in written bilingualism in both languages. either way, proficiency in professional writing in both languages, according to an european union report on languages and employability, translates into increased employability as ―multilingualism is no longer a choice or an option; it has become a must for business growth‖ (european commission joint research centre 2015: 20). iii.2. theoretical foundations as mentioned previously, the certificate also emphasizes rhetoric, technology and ethics. all program instructors, regardless of departmental affiliation, have received targeted training in these three areas, including training in teaching bilingual writing as a requirement for their teaching in the program. the courses’ theoretical foundation is rhetoric since the certificate is aimed at the teaching of effective writing in professional contexts whether the resulting text is in english, spanish or both, the focus is on the written word. given its rhetorical orientation, the program looks to the national council of teachers of english’s position statement on understanding and teaching writing, guiding principles (2018) to guide the program’s teaching and course objectives. as the position statement explains, ―when it is effective, writing is rhetorical, i.e., it takes into account the values, ideologies, interests, needs, and commitments of the people, the theresa donovan, teresa quezada and isabel baca language value 12 (1), 88–111 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 96 audiences, for whom it is intended.‖ it is necessary to point out that we rely heavily on using the rhetorical situation as a means to teach students how to create effective messages for diverse audiences and contexts. scholars in rws have used the term rhetorical situation since bitzer defined it in 1968. loosely, we follow grant-davie’s characterization of the rhetorical situation ―as a set of related factors whose interaction creates and controls discourse‖ (1997: 265). the ncte position statement (2018) names the related factors of writers, purposes, audiences and contexts as key to informing the choices that writers make when composing. the related factors should guide writers’ (ncte 2018):  content (the subject or focus of the writing);  form (the shape of the writing, including its organization, structure, flow, and composition elements like words, symbols, images, etc.);  style/register (the choice of discourse and syntax used for the writing, chosen from among the vast array of language systems [often called ―dialects‖] that are available for the writer), and  mechanics (punctuation, citational style, etc.). particularly in the rws courses within the bpwc, students are asked to carefully consider how their specific audience will use their text. that audience analysis leads them to identify appropriately worded content, form, register and language, to include dialect. assignments are designed where students must consider the specific rhetorical situation of an assigned prompt in order to do well; for example, in the workplace writing course, students have a sensitive letter assignment that is scenario-based. students are provided with the assignment and important details that they will use when analyzing the writing situation. for example, one scenario asks students to respond to the president of the local chamber of commerce. the president requests free or reduced prices for a company’s services as a ―favor‖ because of his/her position. the student responds as the owner of the company where the services are requested. it is not enough for the student to craft a letter in the correct format or in ―good‖ english or spanish, for the letter to be effective students must carefully analyze the scenario and the interaction of the factors when crafting their response because the response must consider their standing in relation to the president of the chamber of commerce to choose the right tone. they have to weigh carefully their word choice because the letter could have real consequences (i.e., blacklisting from the chamber of commerce or alternately other business owners could expect the same ―deal‖). in the technical writing course, english, spanish o los dos? teaching professional writing on the u.s.-mexico border language value 12 (1), 88–111 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 97 students are asked to develop a set of instructions for a process or procedure of their choosing, and ideally in their field or future profession, and also prepare an accompanying memo that identifies the cultural elements that must be considered as the instructions are prepared for translation to be used in a specific spanish-speaking country. to complete the assignment successfully, students must demonstrate that they understand not only how the language must be tailored to the instruction set users, but what language, register, and cultural aspects must be considered when composing the instructions. this deliberate and explicit focus on rhetoric enhances what ruggiero alludes to in her ―graduate courses in languages for specific purposes: needs, challenges and models‖ (2014). ruggiero’s survey of graduate programs in the area of languages for specific purposes identified ―few opportunities for graduate students to gain the necessary experience, training and expertise to either teach or pursue non-academic interests in this area‖ (2014: 56). she thus recommends transforming graduate foreign language programs from their current focus on training future academics by developing courses ―that situate language within broader social, historical, geographic and cross-cultural perspectives‖ as advocated by the 2007 modern language association assessment of the state of foreign languages (2014: 59). her re-centered course ―presents a multicultural approach to the teaching of spanish for specific purposes (ssp) viii and civic engagement‖ (2014: 62). although ruggiero does not specifically address how she incorporates rhetorical studies or theory into her re-centered course, the 2nd section of her 5-part course focuses on ―the rhetorical view of specialized languages: effective communication in intercultural context‖ (2014: 64). ruggiero’s background and expertise is not rhetoric and writing rather a foreign language discipline, yet she has nonetheless woven rhetoric into her language teaching. her rhetorical approach emphasizes the need to communicate effectively for broad audiences and provides students the opportunity to develop cultural and intercultural competence. for the bpwc, both its graduate and undergraduate students can expect to incorporate rhetorical theory in their coursework that expectation is explicit in all program courses. our goal is to thus provide students with the opportunities ruggiero found lacking in graduate language education. theresa donovan, teresa quezada and isabel baca language value 12 (1), 88–111 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 98 we also believe in using bitzer’s (1992) formal exploration of rhetorical situations across the disciplines as a way to frame the intentional choices we made in curriculum design and instruction. also echoed in the ncte’s position statement, blitzer defined a rhetorical situation as one where ―a complex of persons, events, objects, and relations presenting an actual or potential exigence which can be completely or partially removed if discourse, introduced into the situation, can so constrain human decision or action as to bring about significant modification of the exigence‖ (1992: 6). our curriculum design and instruction both utilized this concept and included it as part of the curriculum. we understood that the certificate program involved: 1) people, that is, the university’s administration, both faculty departments teaching in the program, students desiring to augment their skill set to become more marketable in a burgeoning interconnected and global society; 2) events, in the sense of an increasing awareness of multilingualism as an asset in the border region, the appropriate mix of capable instructors; and 3) relations, meaning the complex of the people and circumstances identified. these interrelated factors allowed us to address the need to teach writing in two languages: the exigence. our curriculum is designed to help students recognize the exigence in situations that demand an appropriate response and then teach them to use appropriate rhetorical strategies to craft the appropriate response. along with our understanding of the rhetorical situation in which we developed the program, we also recognized trends in higher education that would also inform our pedagogies and practices in the program. we discuss those in the following section. iv. pedagogies and practices many scholars assert that students who take lsp courses tend to approach the courses as applied learning environments—meaning that they ―intend to use that knowledge on a frequent basis in their future work environments for the benefit of the enterprise for which they work and/or the clientele base with whom they will interact‖ (lafford 2012: 21). with that in mind, we knew that we had to approach course design by carefully considering both student and future employer expectations. three main trends emerged from faculty discussions and research that we believed had to be addressed in course english, spanish o los dos? teaching professional writing on the u.s.-mexico border language value 12 (1), 88–111 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 99 content, delivery, or as part of the final program outcomes to address student and industry expectations: digital technologies, ethics for writers and service-learning. iv.1. digital technologies in regards to digital technologies, we aimed to understand generation z, also known as igeneration. gen z are students born between 1995-2012 (see stillman and stillman 2017). general observations that can be made about gen z students may be helpful in informing teaching practices; they are the first generation, from birth, to have access to technology and the internet (seemiller and grace 2016), and they have been characterized as having short attention spans and expecting the use of up to date technology in their educational experiences. scholars such as hopkins et al. (2018) have suggested the use of social media and other web-based tools such as podcasts, youtube and facebook instead of traditional methods of teaching. arnó-macià (2012: 95) asserts, too, that online learning: ―seems to be especially appropriate for lsp given that it allows for the customization of learning to suit students’ needs…‖ for this reason, the bpwc was designed as a 100% online program where instructors could customize the learning experience albeit within the university-selected learning management system. our courses are conducive to an online environment because they are writing intensive, and students have to use writing as the primary means to communicate they are writing more in this delivery format than any other because much of the student-teacher, and student-student interaction must be in the form of written discussion boards or emails. the rws courses, as bilingual classes, are designed using a 50-50 model such that the content and assignments are divided equally between spanish and english. this may take on diverse structures in the online environment, but the most common format is alternating weeks between spanish and english. the determining factor in selecting the language for major assignments is the nature of the assignment and its fit into the overall course. in informal assignments, such as discussion board posts, students are also encouraged to use both languages. often, students are told they need to compartmentalize the use of different languages; our courses afford students the opportunity to choose the language/s that they have commonly used to write. further, while rws courses require writing as the principal mode of completing an assignment, not all assignments follow traditional print format. students may complete assignments theresa donovan, teresa quezada and isabel baca language value 12 (1), 88–111 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 100 that call for a twitter feed, a presentation deck, a podcast script or they may have to determine the most rhetorically effective mode to use for a specific scenario. the overall instructional design is one of a flipped classroom ix that incorporates a variety of educational sources from youtube videos, academic articles and other web content, and students engage in their learning through peer, teacher, team and external audience interactions. for example, for a module on writing an application letter (cover letter) and résumé for a current job or internship, in addition to readings in the textbooks, students learn about the different terms that are used to refer to a résumé in spanish (c.v., hoja de vida, etc.), read an academic article on ―translating politeness in bilingual english-spanish business correspondence‖ by fuertes-olivera and nielson (2008), watch youtube videos on tips for creating an effective cv and visit websites from diverse countries such as chile, mexico, and spain. students engage with the content in three discussion boards: a class, reading and team forum. discussion board questions foster debate, problem-solving and reflection so students gain a critical understanding of the rhetorical choices they make in communicating effectively with multicultural audiences. according to king de ramírez (2017: 68), ―...this is especially important for hls [heritage learners] who may assume that cultural practices learned at home are shared by all hispanics in their community‖. typical questions posed in the discussion forums are designed for students to consider the rhetorical situation to help them to understand and manage cultural differences, such as: what is the appropriate tone in professional writing contexts? are there differences in how appropriate tone is defined in english and spanish? what does goodwill mean? how do you create this in your writing? after the reading, explain what differences you found in the norms for writing résumés in spanish and english? did you identify any differences among the examples from spanish-speaking countries? by way of discussion boards and other collaboration tools, the courses foster engagement, and also teamwork. in the technical writing course, students complete their final project in teams and are expected to develop their own parameters and roles for group members to finalize their technical report. online and distributed collaboration is intended to mirror today’s globalized workforce environment and aligns with the english, spanish o los dos? teaching professional writing on the u.s.-mexico border language value 12 (1), 88–111 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 101 attributes that employers value most: ―problem-solving skills and an ability to work in a team‖ (national association of colleges and employers 2018). we recognize students are navigating different time zones, and personal, work and school schedules, so they are encouraged to use both the university’s learning management system and other communication technologies that foster collaboration and coordination as they produce a multi-step and complex text. the goal is to foster adaptability and awareness of various technology that allows for collaboration and coordination—the same adaptability that employers will expect our graduates to demonstrate when they join a global workforce. to reinforce concepts of external audiences, that is audiences other than the instructor, and foster intercultural sensitivities, we have laid the groundwork for collaboration between sections of technical writing at ut-el paso and the university of puerto rico, mayagüez campus. in a pilot study, students participated in peer reviewing a technical report and presentation and provided feedback on the process. the peer review is important because it allows students to appreciate the complexities of writing for a global audience while developing cultural sensitivity and intercultural competencies. donovan and quezada assert that the peer review brings to life the conference on college composition and communication (cccc) ―principles for post-secondary teaching of writing;‖ specifically our writing instruction ―considers the needs of real audiences,‖ ―recognizes writing as a social act [and] writing processes as iterative and complex,‖ and ―depends upon frequent, timely, and context-specific feedback to students…‖ (2015). the cross-cultural peer review added another audience to both the ut-el paso and upr-mayagüez students. they knew they were now writing not only for their respective instructors, but that other readers would be reviewing their work for overall understanding and clarity and that these new readers were culturally diverse. their peers would also be looking for ideas to strengthen their own writing since both sets of students were enrolled in technical writing courses. students were then asked to reflect on the process and comment on the strengths and weaknesses in the drafts they reviewed and consider how the review further informed their subsequent revision process. although there were challenges to conducting peer review digitally, across time zones, and with unique student populations, we believe that this is a sustainable theresa donovan, teresa quezada and isabel baca language value 12 (1), 88–111 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 102 pedagogical practice and important to lsp curriculum development for the 21st century. recognizing gen z’s desire to customize and have additional resources available to them at the push of a button, bpwc faculty have collaborated with ut-el paso library professionals and developed a library research guide (or libguide) that includes carefully curated additional electronic resources for all courses. the libguide provides both students and faculty with bilingual and monolingual resources for writing in different contexts as well as glossaries, and style and grammar handbooks. the libguide and an embedded course/program librarian, who has been a critical resource to the certificate program since its inception, provide students an organized reservoir that can further enhance their sources while managing the materials instructors must require or provide in individual courses. iv.2. ethics for writers an ongoing element of rws curriculum has been writers’ ethical considerations and the development of those considerations as students develop their assignments. recognizing that having the certificate program designation on student transcripts would increase prospective employers’ or graduate programs’ expectations of our graduates, we understood that ethics had to be foregrounded for students and incorporated into the overall program structure. the desire to infuse more general skills, such as leadership, in foreign language study was also forwarded in 2011 in the 21st century skills map by the american council on the teaching of foreign languages (actfl) and p21 (2011). other scholars such as uribe et al. (2014), long et al. (2014) and doyle (2017) propose developing leadership with integrity as a core value within the curriculum. the need for leadership skills is also seconded by the national association of colleges and employers study (2018) that lists leadership as the fourth most desirable attribute that employers seek. we agree, then, with derby et al. (2017: 85) that ―leadership as an educational notion is rising in importance throughout academe that we should ...find creative ways to incorporate this key concept into fl [foreign language] curricula as often as possible‖. english, spanish o los dos? teaching professional writing on the u.s.-mexico border language value 12 (1), 88–111 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 103 for the bpwc curriculum, we focused on one key attribute of leadership: the principle of ethics. following uribe et al. (2014) and doyle (2017), ethics was ―infused‖ into the curriculum, starting first with the program outcome statements and then into each of the course outcomes in the syllabi. for example, the bilingual workplace writing syllabus highlights in the outcomes statements that students will ―consider the ethical dimensions of composing and working within and with organizations as well as the ethical dimensions of translation in professional settings.‖ ethics instruction is supported in bpwc courses through specific modules that ask students to consider the ethical implications of their writing. while translation brings with it a specific ethical consideration usually found in professional associations’ codes of ethics (see american translators association code of ethics and professional practice 2019), students are not always aware of how ethics relates to their professional and technical communication. the rws faculty carefully considered the inclusion of ethics discussions in their textbook and instructional material selection; they provide specific discussions of ethical implications for student writing at the outset of the courses, and also weave those ethical considerations into subsequent assignments. in workplace writing, an ethics section is included in every weekly lecture. students are asked to explore the professional ethics-code of conduct on the association for business communication website (2019). they also discuss recent ethics’ scandals in the local, state or national government. in the technical writing course, students are introduced to the ethical considerations for technical writers as described in the society for technical communication ethical principles (2018). further discussion regarding specific scenarios through assignments helps students understand how their writing can result in or respond effectively to ethical dilemmas or ethical lapses. as we continue to refine the bpwc curriculum, we see ethics as a fundamental part of a curriculum that responds to the growing need to develop future leaders and professional, ethical writers. iv.3. service-learning in the rhetoric and writing studies practicum course, students are asked to work with a non-profit organization as bilingual, professional writers. the benefits that come from this experience are underscored by deans (2000) who argues how service-learning is one means by which we can emphasize how writing is a social act. he relates servicelearning to writing by showing us how service-learning exposes students to multiple theresa donovan, teresa quezada and isabel baca language value 12 (1), 88–111 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 104 discourses and asks them to write within these different nonacademic discourse communities. in addition, service-learning asks students to situate their work in wider non-academic communities, and it has students cross cultural and class boundaries by working with community organizations and their clients who often hold subject positions different from their own (deans, 2000). in short, service-learning can be viewed as the fruition of some of the most important contemporary theoretical claims of rhetoric and writing studies. furthermore, in the practicum course, deans’ paradigm of ―writing for the community‖ is used. by having students write in both english and spanish for the community, the primary site for learning is the nonprofit organization rather than the classroom, and workplace discourse becomes the most highly valued discourse. students work with the agency contact (their agency mentor) and the instructor becomes a facilitator of the process (deans 2000: 17). thus, students learn nonacademic writing practices and reflect on the differences between academic and workplace discourses, and students provide needed writing products for agencies, focusing on different audiences, purposes, and contexts. in addition, other benefits come from this service-learning experience. as king de ramírez (2017: 56) states: ―service learning allows students the opportunity to observe authentic language usage, network with individuals outside academia, and become familiar with sociocultural issues that affect their immediate community‖. the writing practicum begins by students selecting a community writing partner (a nonprofit organization who has partnered with the department of english for this type of service-learning experience) and developing a practicum contract with the agency mentor. students are informed ahead of time what the organization’s literacy, writing, and communication needs are, and these needs include the production of texts in english, spanish, and/or both (bilingual). based on these needs and the student’s academic background, skills, and interests, the student negotiates the projects to be completed with the agency mentor. the instructor must approve and sign off on this contract before the student begins working with the agency mentor. a major requirement is for students to produce texts in both languages, english and spanish. throughout the course, students provide progress reports to the course instructor where english, spanish o los dos? teaching professional writing on the u.s.-mexico border language value 12 (1), 88–111 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 105 they outline the status of their projects and how close they are to completion of the tasks listed in their contract. consequently, students, by the end of the practicum, have produced texts, in print and/or digital, in english and spanish, for their community. deliverables can include websites, newsletters, grants, recommendation reports, brochures, powerpoint presentations and other workplace and professional texts. at times, students will create these texts in english, spanish, or both. at other times, students may translate existing texts from one language to the other. but for the texts created and/or translated, students revise, edit, and proofread these texts before submitting them to the non-profit organization. the deliverables are evaluated by both the course instructor and the agency mentor; this way, as bacon (1997) advises, instructors call upon the expertise of the community writing partners (the agency mentors). students then benefit from the input of two experts—the writing instructor and the agency mentor. this practice helps instructors too in that it can support the teacher’s expectations of students in the classroom when the same expectations and standards are echoed by the agency mentor who represents the needs of real readers (1997: 39-55). in addition, students, through their writing practicum, are working now with professionals outside academia, and as long (2017) asserts, ―the most successful lsp programs include courses in a variety of approaches to several disciplines and put students into contact with experts in the field‖ (2017: 4). moreover, aside from being grounded in service-learning scholarship, the practicum course responds to wu’s lament that ―a limited number of foreign language programs in the united states...provide their students with experiential learning opportunities that require them to functionally use their linguistic and intercultural skills in professional contexts‖ (2017: 567). as students work with their agency and faculty mentors, they practice writing, in english and spanish, within a professional context and for an actual audience in the community. v. conclusion we asked english, spanish o los dos? the bpwc program most emphatically answers ―los dos‖. achieving los dos, however, in ways that meet current industry and student theresa donovan, teresa quezada and isabel baca language value 12 (1), 88–111 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 106 demands as well as meeting pedagogical and curricular trends presents both challenges and opportunities. as we developed the program, we considered ut-el paso and the program’s location, both geographically, interculturally and within the university structure. the program developed in response to the el paso community’s implicit and tacit need for bilingual communicators, but it also responds to the global and intercultural realities our students are expected to navigate once they graduate, certificate in hand. making the program attractive to students and effective as an online certificate meant we had to design the program with current trends in mind and operationalize those trends in each of the courses. we believe in doing so, we will become part of future lsp transformation and can contribute to the specific purpose by introducing rhetorical theory used in monolingual and general purpose composition courses. as the program grows, we anticipate we can evaluate individual courses, assess pedagogical practices, enhance digital technologies used and track our students’ successes while keeping our program’s goal, to develop ethical, bilingual, culturally sensitive and dynamic communicators, firmly in mind. notes i language for specific purposes is an approach most often applied to the teaching of english for professional contexts (english for specific purposes) although there is increasing demand and growth in spanish for professional and specific purposes (spsp) in the us. given the bilingual nature of the bpwc, we include lsp scholarship from all three of these areas. ii rhetoric and writing studies (rws) in the united states emerged from english departments and literary studies in an effort to study, initially, the traditional greco-roman concepts of rhetoric and how students learn and instructors teach composition. since about the mid-twentieth century, however, the discipline has grown to encompass multiple concepts of rhetoric and explores writing process(es) through various lenses. the discipline has continued to grow and is a separate field of study from its english department roots. degrees at undergraduate, graduate and doctoral levels are awarded by a number of programs. in many instances, rws programs have become independent academic departments within their universities. iii in 2011, the city of el paso international bridges department reported that ―more than 3.6 million passenger vehicles, 4.2 million pedestrians and 300,000 commercial vehicles crossed into ciudad juárez through the three bridges‖ (city of el paso 2020). iv see also el paso regional economic development corporation. redco (2005-2006 labor market assessment by the wadley donovan group). v the mail-in survey consisted of a two-sided questionnaire and was mailed to chairs of departments of foreign and classical languages at 4-year institutions in the u.s. the total surveys sent out were 3,093; 26%, or 790, responded (grosse and voght 1990: 37). vi in the 1990 survey, departments that taught foreign languages included continuing education, theology, religion, history, asian studies, native american studies, schools of law, engineering, social and behavioral sciences, education, foreign service and diplomacy. in 2011, long and uscinski added to this list: anthropology, biblical studies, business, humanities, linguistics, philosophy, and pan-african studies (2012: 182). vii undergraduate transnational dual degree program in the u.s. and mexico (office of postsecondary education 2007). english, spanish o los dos? teaching professional writing on the u.s.-mexico border language value 12 (1), 88–111 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 107 viii some scholars use spanish for specific purposes (sps); others use spanish for the professions and specific purposes (spsp). depending on the context and the material we are citing, we use both terms and acronyms in this article. ix flipped classroom model or inverted classrooms occur when instructors assign class content to students to be completed outside of traditional class time. the content may include traditional readings or multimedia content such as videos from multiple sources. the goal is to allow for more active learning during class time. class time is then 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2019-2020 academic catalog. 15 september 2019. <http://catalog.utep.edu/> — 2019. library research guide for the bilingual professional writing certificate program. 28 october 2019. <http://libguides.utep.edu/bpwc> uribe, d., leloup, j.w., long, s.s. and doyle, m.s. 2014. ―spanish at the united states air force academy: developing leaders of character as an lsp curricular focus‖. in doyle, m.s. and c. gala (eds.) cuadernos de aldeeu. about:blank about:blank about:blank https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ope/fipse/lessons4/sandiego.html about:blank about:blank about:blank english, spanish o los dos? teaching professional writing on the u.s.-mexico border language value 12 (1), 88–111 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 111 español para las profesiones y otros usos específicos. spanish for the professions and other specific purposes. 28 (otoño), 189–225. u.s. census bureau. 2018. american community survey. 28 september 2018. <https://www.census.gov/acs/www/data/data-tables-and-tools/> wu, s. 2017. ―the planning, implementation, and assessment of an international internship program: an exploratory case study‖. foreign language annals, 50 (3), 567–583. received: 28 november 2019 accepted: 23 may 2020 cite this article as: donovan, theresa; quezada, teresa and baca, isabel. 2020. ―english, spanish o los dos? teaching professional writing on the u.s.-mexico border‖. language value, 12 (1), 88-111. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.languagevalue.uji.es. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2020.12.5 issn 1989-7103 https://www.census.gov/acs/www/data/data-tables-and-tools/ http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ editorial language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue july 2012, volume 4, number 1 pp. i-v issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.1 i from the editors multiword patterns: considering phrasal verbs and their underlying semantic systems (ii) this is the second volume in language value that is thoroughly devoted to the issue of verb particle combinations (vpcs) also known and analysed under different linguistic trends and terms as phrasal/prepositional verbs, compound verbs, discontinuous verbs or multiword verbs, among others. for the sake of simplicity we will use the term verb particle combinations (vpcs) throughout this editorial. five articles present perspectives on the use of vpcs as used in different texts and contexts: that of animal-related vpcs in panther and thornburg, vpcs in child and adult interaction in data taken from the childes corpus in hampe’s article, economics and finance texts in breeze’s, vpcs in cartoons in kihr’s, and constructions made by l2 learners of the vpcs as reflected in a corpus of learner language in alejo’s article. as most authors in this issue, the study conducted by hampe is framed within the field of cognitive linguistics. in it, the author takes a construction grammar perspective in order to carry out a thorough multi-factorial analysis of transitive verb-particle constructions in english. hampe draws on the findings of previous studies like gries (2003, 2011) and diessel & tomasello (2005) and suggests that the two word-order alternatives found in this kind of constructions are actually members of two different construction networks, each with a different prototype; thus, while those realisations of the verb-particle-object (v-prt-o) alternative rank higher as instances of the transitive construction, realisations of the verb-object-particle (v-o-prt) template are closer to the caused-motion construction (cmc). her claims, however, go a step beyond by introducing the components of first-language acquisition and use; hampe proposes that, in early stages, “literal” realisations of transitive phrasal verbs fitting the v-o-prt alternative may be conceived of by the child, together with other expressions with, say, deictic adverbs, as instantiations of the same, http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� from the editors articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.1 ii primitive and simple cmc. these, all together, and among other factors, are assumed to act as precursors of non-literal and more complex realisations of the cmc. one of the aims of her study, accordingly, is to ascertain the role of v-o-prt phrasal verbs as one kind of possible precursors in the acquisition of the cmc, with a special focus on the resultative caused-motion network. in her research, hampe also takes into account the occurrence of either alternative in conjunction with spatial/non-spatial uses and the prevalence of either option in child and adult speech. her analysis is based on child and adult data extracted from different corpora: two age groups (3 and 5-7 year-olds) from the british part of the childes and a third age group (adults) from the spoken part of the ice-gb plus spontaneous spoken language and broadsheet newspaper texts from the bnc in order to also take into account genrespecific data. alejo explores the acquisition of vpcs by l2 learners from the perspective given by a usage-based approach to language. the article investigates an issue that has so far been nearly neglected in the area of vpc analysis: whether the syntactic distinction between particles and prepositions implies a difference in the way non natives learn them and whether the syntactic difficulty is really problematic or just something to be learnt without too much effort. in order to fill in this gap, alejo examines one particle –out – considering all its possible syntactic and grammatical realisations. the approach followed in this article is to first focus on particle use contrasting data between native and non-native speakers, and then go on with the analysis of how this use is allocated in the different syntactic and semantic possibilities in order to establish the extent to which out is used by l2 learners. the author carries out an extensive analysis in three corpora: the international corpus of learner english (icle) was used to establish l2 learners’ use of vpcs with out, and two other corpora were used to contrast learner english patterns of use for vpcs with native english patterns (the louvain corpus of native english essays (locness) and the university and school essay sections of the british national corpus (bnc)). language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue july 2012, volume 4, number 1 pp. i-v issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.1 iii in their paper, panther and thornburg analyse a series of verb-particle “critter” constructions (vpcs whose verbal component derives from an animal name) from a cognitive linguistic perspective. the authors propose a “conceptual schema” template combining a series of parameters (folk models, image schemata, aspectual categories, metaphoric and metonymic projections and sense specialization) that allows them to provide compelling explanations for each of the cases analysed. the notion of folk model becomes central in their explanations as it helps them to illustrate how cultural models like “negative rat”, “positive beaver” or “clam” bring a rich load of conceptual content that explains the lexico-grammatical structure of constructions like rat out, beaver away or clam up. the authors show that whereas the verbal component in this kind of constructions contributes with the folk model in hand, the spatial schema underlying the particle element allows for a metonymical association with an aspectual target. operations of metaphoric and metonymic nature allow for the necessary changes leading to the correct interpretation of the vpc in hand thanks to a final process of sense specialisation. the resulting semantic conception of these vpcs is therefore non-compositional and arises out of the combination of the factors mentioned above. in the next article, breeze explores the use of the particles up, down, ahead, back, out and off in vpc constructions in two economics and finance corpora. her analysis of the most frequent patterns is mapped out in the underlying conceptual metaphors of verb particle use in the field of financial reports. the prototypical cognitive schemata that lead to the different vpc senses by means of metonymy and metaphorisation are clearly identified and discussed. the author also finds out that vpc nominalisations, though not particularly frequent, are preferred to define various finance or business agreements (such as buying/selling) in the corpora studied. the descriptions of the schemas activated in the vpc combinations analysed in the corpora are employed in the design of classroom activities, presenting exercises based on cognitive linguistics postulates. thus, the article ends with contextualised examples http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� from the editors articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.1 iv for vpc teaching focusing on the use of specific particles and the patterns they appear in using data from the corpora and applying corpus analysis results to the proposed exercises. abdeljalil naoui khir examines how phrasal verbs are exploited in order to convey humour through the use of verbal and non-verbal cues in cartoons. he discusses how cartoon verbal and visual modes interact in the creation of different vpc interpretations (literal and idiomatic) thus originating the typical cartoon humour. khir suggests that the combination of puns and literal meanings provides teachers with situations and cultural aspects to which students can relate; this, together with the pictorial support, makes phrasal verb cartoons well worth exploiting in the english language classroom. the author also suggests that humour appreciation may also be introduced in the class as triggered by the combination of literal and metaphorical or idiomatic meaning in the situation depicted in the cartoon. moreover, the author discusses how the use of phrasal verbs in cartoons in an ambiguous way with other possible interpretation(s) may also be understood as a violation of gricean maxims. the volume ends with a review of macmillan phrasal verbs plus where yasutake ishii focuses on the entry items coverage and the special features that distinguish this dictionary from other phrasal verb dictionaries. the usefulness of dictionary macro and microstructure is also considered and compared to other dictionaries. antonio josé silvestre lópez guest editor mª carmen campoy cubillo miguel f. ruiz garrido editors universitat jaume i, spain references diessel, h. and tomasello, m. 2005. “particle placement in early child language: a multifactorial analysis”. corpus linguistics and linguistic theory 1 (1), 89-111. language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue july 2012, volume 4, number 1 pp. i-v issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.1 v gries, s.t. 2003. multifactorial analysis in corpus linguistics. a study of particle placement. london/new york: continuum. gries, s.t. 2011. acquiring particle placement in english: a corpus-based perspective. in guerrero, p. (ed.) morphosyntactic alternations in english. functional and cognitive perspectives. london, uk/oakville, ct: equinox, 235-263. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� references microsoft word vizenor_1_1.doc language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue september 2009, volume 1, number 1 pp. 51-80 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors constitution of the white earth nation gerald vizenor university of new mexico abstract the constitution of the white earth nation was ratified by sworn delegates on april 4, 2009. the constitution declares a separation from the current federal constitution that consolidated six anishinaabe or chippewa reservations in minnesota. this federal constitutional association has not served the specific interests of the citizens of the white earth reservation. the disposition of treaty land, for instance, and the uses of natural resources cannot equitably be decided by any other government or federation of reservations. forty citizen delegates were appointed to deliberate the appropriate formation of an independent reservation government. in the past two years after three two-day constitutional conventions on the white earth reservation, gerald vizenor was named the principal writer of the new constitution. the constitution of the white earth nation was ratified at the fourth constitutional convention. the ratified constitution will soon be presented to the citizens of the reservation as a referendum. keywords: white earth, anishinaabe, constitution, nation, minnesota. prelude to a native charter the white earth reservation is located in three counties, becker, clearwater, and mahnomen, in northwestern minnesota. the legal boundaries of the reservation were established by federal treaty on march 19, 1867. the reservation was first governed by federal agents, and with the unbidden counsel of native elders and representatives of the community. the federal agents, who were stony and unlikable, in the main, ruled the reservation as an occupied territory held in trust by the federal government. the agents of the trust were mainly capricious and corrupt in the administration of the reservation. the hundreds of original families on the reservation had been removed according to the treaty from a wide area of woodland settlements in the northern sections of minnesota. alas, federal legislation partitioned the reservation into individual allotments, and subsequent state and federal legislation separated many native families from each other and from the treaty land. separated by federal racialist policies, and from the land by gerald vizenor language value 1 (1), 51–80 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 52 legislation that favored the timber speculators of white pine and other natural resources on the reservation. the anishinaabe elders resisted for several generations the unreasonable partitions of ethnic and racial policies. the notion of arithmetic blood quantum was concocted as a measure to determine federal services, tribal membership, and identity. title 25 of the united states code names and describes the laws relevant to the services provided by the government, for instance, education, health care, housing, land claims, child protection, family justice, and graves protection and repatriation. the severe quarter blood requirements for federal services have been amended, in certain circumstances, to accommodate reservation governments. many natives both liberal and traditional have declared that family descent, not blood quantum, determines personal associations and identity. the minnesota chippewa tribe was established by federal legislation as a government on june 18, 1934. six reservations, white earth, leech lake, fond du lac, bois forte, mille lac, and grand portage, were consolidated by a master constitution as a federation with a single government. the purpose of the federation, according to the revised constitution of the minnesota chippewa tribe, “shall be to conserve and develop tribal resources and to promote the conservation and development of individual indian trust property; to promote the general welfare of the members of the tribe; to preserve and maintain justice for its members and otherwise exercise all powers granted and provided the indians, and take advantage of the privileges afforded by the act of june 18, 1934.” the revised constitution of the minnesota chippewa tribe was adopted by the assistant secretary of the interior on september 12, 1963, and equivocally ratified by voters on november 23, 1963. the minnesota chippewa tribe provides that membership includes those persons of “indian blood whose names appear on the annuity roll of april 14, 1941, prepared pursuant to the treaty with said indians as enacted by congress in the act of january 14, 1889.” anishinaabe children born between april 14, 1941, the date of the annuity roll, and july 3, 1961, the approval date of the “membership ordinance” by federal agents, “to a parent or parents, either or both of whose names appear on the basic membership role,” shall be members according to constitution of the white earth nation language value 1, (1) 51–80 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 53 provisions of an application. moreover, these contingencies persist today. children who are “at least one quarter degree minnesota chippewa indian blood born after july 3, 1961, to a member, provided that an application for enrollment” was properly filed, are considered members. the united states policies and provisions based on blood quantum as racial evidence of reservation enumeration association, separates families. this practice of blood quantum, or racial arithmetic, would in time terminate the people named the anishinaabe. the anishinaabe of the white earth reservation convey and demonstrate sanguine notions of citizens and families. “there was no single system for determining who was a part of the community and who was not,” observed jill doerfler in anishinaabeg today, the newspaper of the white earth reservation. “more importantly the anishinaabeg maintained their identity as they adapted to new ways of life at white earth. identity was flexible and depended on the choices of individuals. ultimately, little was agreed upon except that rigid racial designations of ‘mixed-blood’ and ‘fullblood’ pushed by the united states government investigators were unacceptable and in direct conflict with all anishinaabeg understandings of identity.” the anishinaabeg “continue to use their own definitions even though they demonstrate a clear awareness” of the ethnic and racial applications of these notions by the federal government. the constitution of the minnesota chippewa tribe was created and imposed by the federal government. the constitution, a charter federation of six reservations, established a strong executive, and with reservation advisory committees, but no separate reservation judiciary. there were no real divisions of power in the government. the tribal executive committee, for instance, “shall be authorized to manage, lease, permit, or otherwise deal with tribal lands, interests in lands or other tribal assets; to engage in any business that will further the economic well being of members of the tribe,” and borrow money from the federal government. the white earth reservation is one of the largest in the federation, and there are specific treaty, charter, and constitutional issues that should be the reserved powers of the reservation, and not decided by the federation. tribal executive committee decisions about individual reservation resources, for instance, and the actual division and distribution of land claims and settlements could be adverse to the citizens of the gerald vizenor language value 1 (1), 51–80 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 54 white earth reservation. for these, and many other reasons, a new constitution was proposed to separate the white earth reservation from the jurisdiction of the federated minnesota chippewa tribe. erma vizenor, chief of the white earth reservation, was reelected for a second fouryear term in 2008. she has clearly articulated a determination to create a new constitution that would provide a separation of powers, the executive, legislative, and judiciary, that would fairly protect the treaty resources and land claims of the reservation. the ratification of a new constitution would mean the separation from the federation of the minnesota chippewa tribe. chief vizenor invited reservation communities to nominate eligible citizens to serve as official delegates to the white earth constitutional convention. and, she provided for the nomination of two at-large delegates. erma, who is related by marriage, nominated me as a delegate, and later she named me the principal writer of the constitution of the white earth nation. the constitutional convention convened for the first time on october 19, 20, 2007, at the shooting star casino hotel, white earth reservation, mahnomen, minnesota. judge anita fineday presided over the oath, a solemn promise to serve as delegates. that evening and the following day the delegates convened in groups of five to consider the course and significance of discussions about the general content of the proposed constitution of the white earth nation. the delegates used the words “reservation” and “nation” in the same sense at the start of the convention. later, a distinction was made between the treaty reservation, cultural sovereignty, and the relevant constitutional declarations of a nation. the delegates eagerly pronounced their confidence in the inauguration the new constitution, and, at the same time, many delegates raised serious issues about the definition of a citizen, by blood quantum or by family descent. the word “member” was renounced in favor of “citizens” of a nation. i declared, in my introduction as a delegate, that i could imagine the day when the constitution of the white earth nation would be taught in public schools, and that i would carry in my pocket a reference copy of the new constitution. i was probably more idealistic than some delegates about the creation of an actual constitutional document, but, at the same time, i had my doubts about how constitution of the white earth nation language value 1, (1) 51–80 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 55 the diverse views of forty delegates, and some delegates espoused notions of racial separatism, could be reconciled by association, discussion, and inescapable compromises to create a document of individual rights, duties, and principals of governance and justice. robert dahl pointed out similar circumstances in the necessary compromises made by delegates to the convention of the united states constitution. “the delegates had to confront still another stubborn limit: the need to engage in fundamental compromises in order to secure agreement on any constitution at all,” dahl wrote in how democratic is the american constitution? “compromises were necessary because, like the country at large, members of the convention held different views on some very basic issues.” the second constitutional convention was held on january 4, 5, 2008. the shooting star casino hotel was a comfortable and convenient place to schedule the four conventions. delegates arrived in the early afternoon, convened for dinner, followed by general discussions, and stayed over night for a full day to exchange ideas. surely, some of the delegates were pleased to have the evening to gamble at the casino. the third convention was scheduled on october 24, 25, 2008. the number of delegates in attendance had slightly but steadily decreased with each convention. i demonstrated my concern that the attendance of delegates would be eroded to a bare majority if there were more than four conventions. erma vizenor was persuaded by my argument and declared that ratification would be considered on april 3, 4, 2009, at the last convention. erma named me the lead or principal writer of the proposed constitution, and with a committee of three advisors: jill doerfler, assistant professor of indian studies, university of minnesota, duluth; joanne stately, vice president of development for the indian land tenure foundation; and anita fineday, chief tribal court judge, white earth nation. erma convened one last committee discussion session on january 9, 2009, at the brenda café in minneapolis to discuss the final suggestions and changes to the draft constitution. i made the minor changes and prepared the proposed constitution for consideration and ratification by the delegates. gerald vizenor language value 1 (1), 51–80 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 56 the constitution of the white earth nation was ratified by the delegates on saturday, april 4, 2009. the ratification was by secret ballot of twenty-four delegates present. sixteen delegates voted for ratification, and eight delegates voted against ratification. the constitution of the white earth nation will now be presented to eligible citizen voters in a referendum. there are more than twenty thousand citizens of the white earth nation. i duly completed the changes approved by a majority vote of the delegates, including the addition of two elected members of the legislative council from outside the reservation community but in minnesota. the changes in the final version of the document were only minor. the constitution of the white earth nation was posted on several websites and published in the reservation newspaper, anishinaabeg today. presentation at the final convention the constitution of the white earth nation provides and ensures a continuation of the native practices of reciprocity, cultural survivance and sovereignty, and the foundations of native common law. the constitution, ratified on saturday, april 4, 2009, confirms in conscience and custom the principles of anishinaabe governance, common justice, and native continental liberty. the constitution of the white earth nation entitles the delegates and citizens to say with confidence, “i know my rights.” by this constitution we become a nation that advances the formal practices of governance, cultural sovereignty, liberty, suffrage, and the rights of citizens. by this constitution we exercise a new political power and communal duties derived from the traditional practices of the anishinaabe. these were the cultural practices of continental liberty, reciprocity, courage, and the survivance of our ancestors. and by the legacy of other constitutions, documents, and the perceptive ideas of liberty inspired by the magna carta, we become a new nation. the magna carta, the great charter of freedoms, was first issued almost eight hundred years ago in 1215. the magna carta is the foundation chronicle of liberty in england. this ancient, original document considers grievances over feudal land, capricious constitution of the white earth nation language value 1, (1) 51–80 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 57 taxation and the autocratic justice of the monarchy. the magna carta announced, for instance, that no person would be imprisoned, or exiled, without the lawful judgment of his peers. later, these principles of fundamental justice were provided in the habeas corpus act of 1679 in england. the magna carta declared that no monarch was above the law. this document became one of the most significant influences in the development of common law and subsequent constitutions around the world. the constitution of the white earth nation declares a solemn association of these native and occidental traditions of human rights and liberty. the second magna carta, an anonymous document, was published in 1771, sixteen years before the adoption of the united states constitution. notably, the second magna carta called for “forty-eight representatives from the american colonies (including some for the indian nations) to be allotted seats at the westminster parliament.” the american revolution concluded the inspired representation of native nations at the parliament. the united states constitution was proposed and adopted by unanimous consent and signed by thirty-nine delegates at the constitutional convention in philadelphia on september 17, 1787. seven articles, including the last article which is the “ratification of the conventions of nine states, shall be sufficient for the establishment of this constitution between the states so ratifying the same.” delaware was the first state to ratify on december 7, 1787. new hampshire, the ninth state, confirmed the ratification on june 21, 1788. the constitution was actually ratified by all thirteen states. the united states constitution created a government on march 4, 1789. george washington was elected the first president and took the oath of office on april 30, 1789. “the fact that we purport to follow and be bound by the constitution that was proposed in 1787, ratified in 1789, and formally amended just 27 times,” wrote laurence tribe in the invisible constitution, “is due, in large part, to the fact that it is a single and singular text, one writing, that memorializes the commitments defining us over the course of time in a ways that neither our physical territory nor the multiple ancestral origins of our nation can. indeed, the physical writing itself—from the parchment gerald vizenor language value 1 (1), 51–80 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 58 signed in philadelphia in 1787 and still carefully preserved at considerable expense in the national archives to the numbered copies of the original that circulated physically throughout the several ratifying states—is almost instinctively treated with a devotion ordinarily accorded only to an object of national veneration, rather than any mere statute.” the constitution of the white earth nation was conceived by the stance of resistance, by the shared sentiments and associations of continental liberty, and by the epitome of cultural sovereignty and constitutional governance. the declaration and protection of human rights is a universal sentiment, and that promise has been ratified by the delegates in the constitution of the white earth nation. the first ten amendments to the united states constitution, the bill of rights, provide the foundations of liberty, that no law respecting religion or prohibiting free expression thereof, the freedom of speech, assembly and petition of grievances, the right to keep and bear arms, no unreasonable searches or seizures, due process of law, speedy and public trial, no excessive bail, and powers not delegated to the united states by the constitution are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people. the bill of rights was ratified in 1791. the constitution has been amended only twenty-seven times in more than two hundred years. “the american commitment to freedom of speech and press is the more remarkable because it emerged from legal and political origins that were highly repressive,” observed anthony lewis in freedom for the thought that we hate. “the colonists who crossed the atlantic in the seventeenth century came from an england where it was extremely dangerous to utter a thought that differed from official truth. the state defined what was allowable in politics and, perhaps even more rigorously, in religion.” the fifth amendment, ratified in 1868, at the same time the white earth reservation was established by federal treaty, provides that “representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting whole numbers of persons in each state, excluding indians not taxed.” “indians not taxed!” now, by the stories of resistance, courage, political and artistic irony, and a sense of survivance, our ancestors and families of the fur trade anticipated this extraordinary constitution of the white earth nation language value 1, (1) 51–80 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 59 moment of continental liberty. the anishinaabe delegates to the four conventions, taxed or not taxed, considered, compromised, and ratified the constitution of the white earth nation. the white earth constitution provides in each chapter a crucial composition of checks and balances, a distinct organization of the powers, measures, limitations, and constraints of three branches of government, the executive, legislative, and judicial. the composition of these powers of governance would embrace the necessary advice of the community councils, the council of elders, and the youth council. “so the visible constitution necessarily floats in a vast and deep—and, crucially invisible—ocean of ideas, propositions, recovered memories, and imagined experiences that the constitution as a whole puts us in a position to glimpse,” wrote tribe in the invisible constitution. the constitution of the white earth nation contains two preambles, the first announces the sentiments of cultural sovereignty and continental liberty, and the second is a declaration of essential political sovereignty and inalienable rights. there are twenty chapters and one hundred eighteen specific articles on the branches of the government and the rights of the citizens. i declared at the first constitutional convention that one day we would carry in our pockets a printed copy of the ratified constitution of the white earth nation. the sworn delegates to the final constitutional convention have created by the ratification of this document, a great and memorable moment in the history of the white earth nation. the constitution ensures a continuation of compassionate reciprocity, cultural sovereignty, survivance, and entitles the delegates and citizens to say with confidence, “i know my rights.” gerald vizenor language value 1 (1), 51–80 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 60 the constitution of the white earth nation gerald vizenor university of new mexico preamble the anishinaabeg of the white earth nation are the successors of a great tradition of continental liberty, a native constitution of families, totemic associations. the anishinaabeg create stories of natural reason, of courage, loyalty, humor, spiritual inspiration, survivance, reciprocal altruism, and native cultural sovereignty. we the anishinaabeg of the white earth nation in order to secure an inherent and essential sovereignty, to promote traditions of liberty, justice, and peace, and reserve common resources, and to ensure the inalienable rights of native governance for our posterity, do constitute, ordain and establish this constitution of the white earth nation. chapter 1: territory and jurisdiction the white earth nation shall have jurisdiction over citizens, residents, visitors, altruistic relations, and the whole of the land, including transfers, conferrals, and acquisitions of land in futurity, water, wild rice, public and private property, right of way, airspace, minerals, natural resources, parks, and any other environmental estates or territories designated by and located within the boundaries of the white earth reservation, as established and described in the treaty of march 19, 1867, and over the reserved rights within the ceded waterways and territories of the treaty of 1855. the constitution of the white earth nation was duly ratified on april 4, 2009, at the shooting star casino hotel, mahnomen, minnesota. copyright © by gerald vizenor constitution of the white earth nation language value 1, (1) 51–80 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 61 chapter 2: citizens of the white earth nation article 1 citizens of the white earth nation shall be descendants of anishinaabeg families and related by linear descent to enrolled members of the white earth reservation and nation, according to genealogical documents, treaties and other agreements with the government of the united states. article 2 services and entitlements provided by government agencies to citizens, otherwise designated members of the white earth nation, shall be defined according to treaties, trusts, and diplomatic agreements, state and federal laws, rules and regulations, and in policies and procedures established by the government of the white earth nation. article 3 the anishinaabeg and their descendants shall have the right to appeal to the president and to the white earth court any decisions that deny citizenship in the white earth nation. article 4 no person or government has the privilege or power to diminish the sovereignty of the white earth nation. chapter 3: rights and duties article 1 the white earth nation shall make no laws that would establish a religion, or laws that would deny the free expression of religion, speech, or of the press and electronic communication. article 2 the white earth nation shall make no laws that deny the right of the people to peaceably gather or assemble for any reason, and shall make no laws that prohibit the right to petition the government for restitution, amendments, or redress of grievances, gerald vizenor language value 1 (1), 51–80 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 62 and no person shall be discriminated against for initiating or espousing an untimely or contrary petition about governance. article 3 the people shall not be denied the fundamental human rights of citizenship in the white earth nation. article 4 the people are equal under the law and no law, government policy, or agency practice shall discriminate in political, economic, social or cultural associations because of race, creed, sex, gender, disability, or social status. article 5 the freedom of thought and conscience, academic, artistic irony, and literary expression, shall not be denied, violated or controverted by the government. article 6 the secrecy of personal communication shall not be violated, and no censorship shall be practiced or maintained by the government. article 7 the right to own and transfer of private property is inviolable. the rights of property shall be protected, and private property expropriated for public use shall be according to due process of law and just compensation. article 8 no person shall be denied or deprived of life or liberty, except certain serious misdemeanors and felony convictions, and no criminal penalties shall be imposed without due process of law and judicial procedures. article 9 no person shall be apprehended by law enforcement officers without probable cause and due process of law or by warrant duly issued by a court. constitution of the white earth nation language value 1, (1) 51–80 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 63 article 10 the people shall have the right to possess firearms except for convicted felons in accordance with state and federal laws. article 11 the people shall be secure in their homes, personal papers and documents, against entries, electronic and material searches, without a specific, descriptive warrant for adequate cause issued by a court. each search and seizure shall require a separate, specific warrant issued by a court, except in cases of probable threats or potential emergencies. article 12 no person shall be obligated to testify or provide evidence in a court against himself or herself, and any confessions obtained under compulsion, torture, or threats, or after arrest and excessive detention, may not be admissible as evidence in court. no person shall be convicted or punished for a crime when the only evidence against him or her is a confession, except in cases of crimes that can be proven by other evidence. article 13 no person shall be subject to trial twice for the same criminal indictment or offence. article 14 no person shall be denied the right to be duly informed of the nature and cause of a warrant, indictment, or criminal proceeding, and shall not be denied the right to be represented by legal counsel. article 15 the people shall have the right to confront and challenge witnesses in a criminal court, and the legal option of a speedy court hearing or public jury trial shall not be refused or contradicted. article 16 citizens shall never be banished from the white earth nation. gerald vizenor language value 1 (1), 51–80 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 64 article 17 the constitution of the white earth nation is inspired by inherent and traditional sovereignty, and contains, embodies, and promotes the rights and provisions provided in the articles and amendments of the indian civil rights act of 1968, and the united states constitution. chapter 4: sovereign immunity the white earth nation declares sovereign territorial, political and cultural rights and powers as an independent government and immunity to civil law suits. the legislative council by certain formal policies and procedures shall have the right to waive the sovereign immunity of the government in the best interests of the white earth nation. chapter 5: board of elections article 1 citizens must be at least eighteen years old to vote in government referenda and elections. article 2 election and voting procedures shall be established by an election code and managed by an independent board of elections appointed by the legislative council. article 3 the board of elections shall consist of five eligible citizen voters of the white earth nation. the chief judge of the board of elections shall administer and supervise election regulations and procedures according to provisions of the election code. the chief judge shall not vote as a member of the board of elections. article 4 members of the board of elections shall ensure fair and impartial elections according to the election code and the constitution of the white earth nation. constitution of the white earth nation language value 1, (1) 51–80 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 65 article 5 the legislative council shall resolve any challenges or allegations of impropriety of election laws or procedures. article 6 citizens who become candidates for elected positions in the government shall not be members of the board of elections. the legislative council shall appoint the chief judge and replacements to the board of elections. chapter 6: governance article 1 the white earth nation shall be governed by a representative and elected legislative council. article 2 the legislative council shall consist of a president, or white earth chief, the secretary treasurer, and elected representatives of acknowledged communities of the white earth nation. article 3 the respective communities shall be entitled to one elected representative to serve on the legislative council. article 4 communities shall be established or changed by petition, by population, historic or totemic associations, and ratified by a simple majority of eligible citizen voters in a general referendum. article 5 the president and the secretary treasurer shall be elected at large by eligible citizen voters of the white earth nation. gerald vizenor language value 1 (1), 51–80 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 66 article 6 the president, secretary treasure, and representatives of the legislative council shall be elected for no more than two four year terms, and staggered elections shall be ordered every two years. article 7 two citizens of the white earth nation shall be elected at large to serve constituencies outside the white earth reservation in the state of minnesota. article 8 the legislative council shall have the authority to propose changes in the count of elected representatives based on changes in population or the number of acknowledged communities. proposals to change the count of representatives shall be subject to a majority vote of citizens in a referendum. article 9 candidates for elected government offices shall be citizens who reside within the treaty boundaries according to the treaty of march 19, 1867, of the white earth nation, except two citizen members of the legislative council who shall be elected at large in the state of minnesota. article 10 citizens who have been convicted of a felony may vote in elections and referenda but shall not be eligible to hold elected offices in the white earth nation. article 11 candidates for elected government office shall be at least twenty-five years of age at the time of the election. article 12 the legislative council shall appoint a new president in the event of the death, resignation, incapacity, or removal of the duly elected president. the appointed president shall serve the remainder of the elected term of the office. constitution of the white earth nation language value 1, (1) 51–80 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 67 article 13 the legislative council has the power to initiate impeachment proceedings of elected representatives of the government for specific allegations of misconduct, criminal indictments, or felony convictions. to initiate impeachment procedures requires at least a two-thirds vote of the legislative council. article 14 there shall be two distinct procedures of impeachment. the first is admonition of misconduct but no other action or decree, and the second procedure is impeachment and removal from elected office. article 15 the white earth nation shall obligate candidates for elected offices not to disburse in campaign services, promotion and advertising more than three times the amount of the annual national family poverty guidelines, for one person in the contiguous states, established and published in the federal register by the united states department of human services. article 16 candidates for elected office shall file a formal report no later than thirty days after the election with the chief judge of the board of elections. the report shall be an affirmation of total election contributions and disbursements of the candidate. article 17 the president and legislative council of the white earth nation shall maintain public records and documents for posterity. the president shall nominate an archive to secure the public records and documents. chapter 7: community councils the community councils shall be initiated and established in geographically based communities by citizens of the white earth nation. the community councils shall provide communal information, guidance, and recommendations to both the legislative council and the president on matters of concern to the citizens. the community gerald vizenor language value 1 (1), 51–80 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 68 councils shall promote, advance and strengthen the philosophy of mino-bimaadiziwin, to live a good life, and in good health, through the creation and formation of associations, events and activities that demonstrate, teach and encourage respect, love, bravery, humility, wisdom, honesty and truth for citizens. chapter 8: council of elders the council of elders shall be nominated by citizens and designated by the legislative council. the council of elders shall provide ideas and thoughts on totemic associations, traditional knowledge, cultural and spiritual practices, native survivance, and considerations of resource management, and advice the legislative council. the council of elders shall consist of twenty citizens of the white earth nation who are at least fifty-five years of age at the time of appointment. chapter 9: youth council the youth council shall be nominated by citizens and designated by the legislative council. the youth council shall provide information about matters that affect young people and advise the president and legislative council. the youth council shall consist of twenty citizens who are between the ages of twelve and eighteen, and who are residents of the white earth nation. chapter 10: separation of powers the white earth nation shall be divided into three separate branches of government. the executive branch is the elected president, the board of elections, council of elders, youth council, and other executive designations. the legislative branch includes the representatives elected to the legislative council. the judicial branch of government is the judiciary and white earth courts. the three respective branches of government shall have no authority over any other branch, except for certain nominations and other provisions specified in the constitution of the white earth nation. constitution of the white earth nation language value 1, (1) 51–80 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 69 chapter 11: the president article 1 the president, or white earth chief, shall be the official national and international elected representative of the white earth nation. article 2 the president shall have the authority to secure and accept grants, negotiate agreements with associations, foundations, organizations, institutions, corporations, municipal, state, federal, and local governments, and other states and nations in the world with the ratification of the legislative council. article 3 the president shall be responsible for the administration and management of the government, and shall implement and execute the laws, ordinances, resolutions, and other enactments of the legislative council. article 4 the president shall approve by signature the laws, ordinances, measures, resolutions and appropriations of the legislative council. article 5 the president shall have the power to veto proposed laws, ordinances, measures, and resolutions initiated by the legislative council. article 6 the president shall return within five days vetoed or rejected proposed laws, ordinances and measures with a required statement of objection. article 7 the legislative council may overcome any veto of proposed laws, ordinances and resolutions by a two-thirds vote of the elected representatives. article 8 the president shall have the authority to appoint executive branch administrators and other officials to serve the white earth nation. gerald vizenor language value 1 (1), 51–80 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 70 article 9 the president shall have the power to schedule and preside over sessions of the legislative council. article 10 the president shall not vote except in the case of a tie vote of the legislative council. article 11 the president shall deliver an annual address dedicated to the state of the white earth nation. article 12 the president shall be bonded as an elected official. article 13 the president may serve no more than two four year elected terms. article 14 the president shall promote, protect, and defend cultural and political sovereignty and the constitution of the white earth nation. article 15 the president shall have the authority to nominate honorary ambassadors, consuls, citizens, and to initiate and establish embassies of the white earth nation to serve the national and international concerns of native survivance and moral equity. chapter 12: the legislative council article 1 representatives of the legislative council shall propose and enact laws, codes, ordinances, resolutions, and statutes of the white earth nation. article 2 the legislative council shall have the authority to raise general revenue, levy and collect taxes for government services and operations, establish license and service fees, constitution of the white earth nation language value 1, (1) 51–80 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 71 and initiate other specific levies and taxes for the welfare of the citizens of the white earth nation. article 3 the legislative council shall have the authority to borrow money, issue public bonds, appropriate funds for the operation of the government, and to initiate other monetary policies in the interests of the white earth nation. article 4 the legislative council shall promote and protect the health, public welfare, safety, education, and the cultural and political sovereignty of the citizens of the white earth nation. article 5 the legislative council shall establish subordinate and secondary boards, appoint delegates, and reserves the right to review the initiatives and actions of the delegates and boards. article 6 the legislative council shall be responsible for the proper management of government programs, land, waterways, resources, commerce, public housing, transportation, casino operations, business enterprises, and other assets of the white earth nation. article 7 the legislative council shall have the authority to control the distribution and sale of alcoholic beverages within the treaty boundaries of the white earth nation. article 8 the legislative council shall not establish, support, or embody any covert political, military, or intelligence operations, without due process of law and legal warrants, against peaceable citizens of the white earth nation. article 9 the legislative council shall have residual powers, and the powers of governance provided, specified and entrusted in the constitution shall not be construed as the gerald vizenor language value 1 (1), 51–80 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 72 limitation of legislative power or authority. the powers of the government not specifically expressed or entrusted to the legislative council shall be reserved to the citizens of the white earth nation. chapter 13: the secretary treasurer article 1 the secretary treasurer shall be bonded and responsible for monetary and financial matters, resources, documents and records of the legislative council. government records shall be available for public inspection and review. article 2 the secretary treasurer shall schedule an annual audit of funds, monetary transactions and records, deposits and expenditures by a duly certified independent auditor. article 3 the secretary treasurer shall carry through official duties and responsibilities of the president and the representatives of the legislative council. article 4 the secretary treasurer shall be a voting member of the legislative council. article 5 the secretary treasure shall provide and publish an annual fiscal report and accounting of the white earth nation. chapter 14: the judiciary article 1 the judiciary shall consist of the white earth court, court of appeals, and other courts established by the legislative council. constitution of the white earth nation language value 1, (1) 51–80 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 73 article 2 the white earth court shall have the power of judicial review and jurisdiction over any legal matters, disputes, civil procedures and criminal laws, ordinances, regulations, codes and customs of family relations, protection, and dissolution, adoption, domestic violence, juvenile justice, and probate, housing and property, conservation, taxation, governance, the corporate code, election disputes, and constitutional issues of the white earth nation. article 3 the court of appeals shall have original and appellate jurisdiction. the court of appeals shall hear case appeals and issues initiated by the legislative council. decisions of the court of appeals are conclusive. chapter 15: powers of the white earth courts article 1 the courts shall have the authority to interpret and construe the laws, ordinances, and regulations of the legislative council and the constitution of the white earth nation. article 2 the courts shall issue legal decisions, injunctions, reviews, writs of mandamus, extradition, certiorari, writs of habeas corpus, and other legal orders, instruments and documents. article 3 the courts shall establish procedures, rules, legal forms, and review by formal requests of citizens the specific and comprehensive constitutional validity of laws, ordinances and codes initiated and passed by the legislative council. article 4 the courts shall ensure and practice restorative justice in civil actions, minor criminal offences, juvenile and family matters, whenever appropriate to resolve complaints and disputes of the white earth nation. gerald vizenor language value 1 (1), 51–80 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 74 article 5 the courts shall establish and publish a code of judicial ethics. chapter 16: the white earth judges article 1 the white earth court shall consist of a chief judge and associate judges. the chief judge shall be appointed and removed by the legislative council. article 2 the chief judge shall appoint the necessary number of associate judges for five-year terms with the consent of the legislative council. article 3 the court of appeals shall consist of three judges and shall be appointed by the legislative council in consultation with the chief judge. article 4 the chief judge shall not be a member of the court of appeals. article 5 judges of the court of appeals shall serve for five-years, and may otherwise practice law or be associated with a law firm. article 6 the judges of the courts shall be at least twenty-five years of age, of proven moral character, and who have not been convicted of a felony. article 7 the judges shall be graduates of a law school accredited by the american bar association. article 8 the judges shall be admitted to the bar to practice law in native communities, state, or federal courts. constitution of the white earth nation language value 1, (1) 51–80 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 75 article 9 the judges shall be experienced lawyers, magistrates, or judges. article 10 the judges shall have knowledge of anishinaabe culture, traditions, and general history. article 11 the judges shall recuse themselves, an assertion of judicial disqualification, as unsuitable to perform legal duties where there are possible conflicts of interest, or the appearance of personal interests, or potential challenges of partiality. article 12 the judges shall be impeached by the legislative council and removed from judicial practice for abuses of impartiality, bribery, political impropriety, or felony conviction. chapter 17: legislative council meetings article 1 the legislative council shall meet at least once each month to conduct government business. the time and place of each session shall be posted in advance. article 2 citizens of the white earth nation have the right to attend sessions of the legislative council. article 3 the president has the authority to schedule special and emergency sessions of the legislative council. article 4 the legislative council by a majority vote and written request shall have the authority to schedule a special session. gerald vizenor language value 1 (1), 51–80 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 76 article 5 the president shall be obligated to schedule a special session of the legislative council by an official petition of thirty percent of eligible citizen voters of the white earth nation. article 6 the president may schedule an emergency session of the legislative council without written notice to consider urgent matters, services, protection of the health, welfare and safety of the citizens and communities of the white earth nation. article 7 the legislative council shall conduct no other business than the specific stated purpose of an emergency session. article 8 the legislative council shall have the authority to meet in closed executive sessions with the president to discuss matters of litigation, proposed and discreet negotiations, and other concerns of confidentiality. article 9 the legislative council shall not decide actions on matters of litigation or confidentiality in closed executive sessions except when the outcome of the session has been fully reported in subsequent public sessions of the legislative council. the results of executive sessions shall be decided by vote at a public meeting. article 10 legislative council motions, votes, resolutions and decisions shall be noted and preserved in the official minutes of the sessions. article 11 legislative council actions, decisions, and enactments of record shall be available for inspection by citizens during normal business hours of the government. constitution of the white earth nation language value 1, (1) 51–80 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 77 article 12 the legislative council shall date and number each and every resolution, ordinance, law and statute, and cite the appropriate authority of the constitution of the white earth nation. article 13 the legislative council shall prepare a certificate for each resolution, ordinance, and statute that confirms the presence of a quorum and indicates the number of members voting for or against each enactment. article 14 the legislative council shall constitute a quorum by a simple majority of fifty-one percent of the elected members at a duly schedule session. chapter 18: ethics and impeachment article 1 elected members of the government may be impeached or removed from office by a recorded two-thirds vote of the entire legislative council. article 2 the legislative council may impeach or remove from office an elected member of government for a felony conviction in a court of competent jurisdiction. article 3 the legislative council may impeach or remove from office an elected member of the government for two misdemeanor convictions, including driving while intoxicated, but not including ordinary traffic violations. article 4 elected officials of the government may not be suspended or removed from office without due process of law. gerald vizenor language value 1 (1), 51–80 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 78 article 5 the legislative council may impeach for cause an elected member of the government. the impeachment may be a form of admonition, a warning or legal statement of charges, or the impeachment may be based on an indictment or conviction for a felony, and the forcible removal of an official of the government. article 6 the white earth nation shall provide for a recall election of an elected official of the government. citizens have the right to initiate a petition to recall an elected official. the petition shall secure at least two-thirds of the eligible voters for a recall election. the petition may be political and may include allegations, grievances, complaints and assertions of misconduct, nonfeasance, or mismanagement by an elected official of the government. chapter 19: petitions and referenda article 1 the legislative council may initiate a referendum by a vote of two-thirds of the elected representatives. article 2 citizens of the white earth nation may initiate a referendum by evidence of a vote of thirty percent of the eligible citizen voters. article 3 the legislative council and eligible citizens may present proposed laws, ordinances, and initiatives to a referendum vote of the electorate, according to certified evidence of the constitutional process. article 4 the referendum vote shall be held within one hundred and eighty days from the official receipt of the petition, unless the scheduled date of the referendum is within six months of a general election, in that event the referendum would be presented to the eligible voters in the general election. constitution of the white earth nation language value 1, (1) 51–80 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 79 article 5 scheduled referenda shall be conducted according to the rules and regulations of the board of elections and the election code. chapter 20: amendments to the constitution the constitution of the white earth nation may be amended by two-thirds of the recorded eligible votes in a duly called election or referendum to amend the constitution. eligible voters must be formally informed by written and published notices of the proposed amendment to the constitution of the white earth nation. ratification of the constitution the sworn delegates to the white earth constitutional convention hereby duly ratify for a citizen referendum the constitution of the white earth nation. the constitution of the white earth nation was duly ratified on april 4, 2009, at the shooting star casino hotel, mahnomen, minnesota. the ratification was by secret ballots of twenty-four delegates present. sixteen delegates voted for ratification, and eight delegates votes against ratification. gerald vizenor, distinguished professor of american studies at the university of new mexico, was a delegate to the constitutional convention and the principal writer of the proposed constitution of the white earth nation. the constitution proposal team included erma vizenor, president of the white earth nation, jill may doerfler, assistant professor, department of indian studies, university of minnesota, duluth, jo anne e. stately, vice president of development for the indian land tenure foundation, and anita fineday, chief tribal court judge, white earth nation. david e. wilkins, professor of american indian studies, university of minnesota, was a special consultant to the constitutional convention and the proposal team. gerald vizenor language value 1 (1), 51–80 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 80 anton treuer, professor, american indian resource center, languages and ethnic studies, bemidji state university, was the translator of the preamble to the constitution. received may 2009 cite this article as: vizenor, g. 2009. “constitution of the white earth nation”. language value, 1 (1), 51-80. servei de publicacions de la universitat jaume i: castelló, spain. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue. issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors language value june 2020, volume 12, number 1 pp. 56-87 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es issn 1989-7103 language value, issn 1989-7103 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2020.12.4 56 emi teacher training with a multimodal and interactive approach: a new horizon for lsp specialists teresa morell mt.morell@ua.es universitat d’alacant, spain abstract the growing use of english as the medium of instruction (emi) in non-anglophone universities has provided specialists in languages for specific purposes (lsp) with a broader scope for research and teaching. esp experts are now called upon not only to carry out research to support emi teacher training, but also to be the teacher trainers. in this study, an esp scholar explores what constitutes successful interactive lecturing according to academics who have taken part in her interdisciplinary emi teacher training workshop. this was done by analyzing the engaging, verbal and non-verbal discourse of participants‟ video recorded exemplary mini-lessons. it was found that the mini-lectures that had been voted as successful made greater use of questions and had a higher concentration of verbal and nonverbal modes of communication in comparison to the lesser effective ones. the findings lend support to emi training with an interactive and multimodal approach. keywords: english-medium instruction (emi); language for specific purposes (lsp); teacher training; multimodality; interaction; discourse analysis i. introduction the growing global phenomenon of english-medium instruction (emi) (dearden 2015) in the broad range of disciplinary subjects of countless non-anglophone universities has brought numerous challenges for stakeholders policy makers, teachers and students. among these trials are those faced by teachers and researchers of languages for specific purposes (lsp). the increasing number of content teachers who have switched from using their mother tongue to english has had an effect on specialists of english for specific purposes (esp). as recent research has indicated (e.g. aguilar 2018, ball and lindsay 2012, dafouz-milne 2018, morell 2018, sánchez-garcía 2019, sancho guinda 2013), lsp specialists are needed to train content specialists and to do research to support „best practice‟ in classrooms of the ever-increasing and diverse emi scenarios. in this study, an example of how lsp specialists can use their expertise to train emi instructors and carry out research to explore effective classroom discourse will be provided. the training and the research take into account interaction and multimodality, two essential competences for improving emi classroom communication and learning. mailto:mt.morell@ua.es emi teacher training with a multimodal and interactive approach: a new horizon for lsp specialists language value 12 (1), 56–87 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 57 i.1. interaction in emi teacher training classroom interactional competence (cic), “teachers and learners‟ ability to use interaction as a tool for mediating and assisting learning” (walsh 2011:158), has been put at the forefront for effective teaching in emi university contexts (airey 2011, bjorkman 2010, 2011, hellekjaer 2010, klaasen 2001, morell 2018, suvinity 2012, tazl 2011). these studies claim that effective lecturing behavior is considered a necessity for information processing in second language instructional contexts. klassen (2001), for example, asserted that good classroom teaching performances depend on lecture structuring and the use of interaction supported by appropriate non-verbal behavior and well-prepared visuals. in addition, she discovered that lecture quality had a much greater effect on how students experienced lectures than the language used. similarly, suviniitty (2012) found, in her doctoral study comparing finnish university students‟ outcomes in emi and l1 classes, that students were better able to understand lectures with a higher degree of interaction, regardless of the language of instruction. the amount of classroom participation has much to do with the use of questions (brock 1986, chang 2012, crawford camiciottoli 2008, fortanet-gómez and ruiz-madrid 2014, morell 2004, 2007, sánchez-garcía 2019). according to these studies, classroom questioning and negotiation of meaning (i.e. comprehension checks, confirmation checks and clarification requests) are potential enhancers of students‟ engagement. the use of referential questions, those that ask for audience‟s contributions from their own experiential knowledge or perspectives, have proven to promote more and longer responses in language classrooms (brock 1986) and in interactive lectures (morell 2004). in lecture discourse studies that have drawn from english l1 corpora (chang 2012, crawford camiciottoli 2008, fortanet-gómez and ruiz-madrid 2014), questions have been classified as either audience-oriented, which elicit responses, or content-oriented, which are often rhetorical questions. in addition, these studies have explored lecture corpora to find out how many questions per 1000 words lecturers use in their discourse. chang (2012) found that l1 lecturers‟ questions in the humanities, social and technical sciences had more similarities than differences and concluded that they are not discipline specific, but lecture genre specific. this entails that questions and teresa morell language value 12 (1), 56–87 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 58 negotiation of meaning can be used to support students‟ understanding in lectures of any discipline. in addition, they are precisely the types of interactive features acclaimed by research on effective lecturing in english as a lingua franca (elf) settings. in the words of bjorkman (2011: 196): “elf settings are by nature challenging settings for all speakers involved, and without opportunities to negotiate meaning, there is an increased risk of disturbance in communication. it is, therefore, highly recommended that lecturers in lingua franca settings create as many opportunities as possible for the deployment of pragmatic strategies through which they can increase interactivity in lectures”. i.2. multimodality in emi teacher training multimodality, the representation and communication of meaning through a multiplicity of modes, as defined by gunther kress et al. (2005, 2010) – the father of multimodal studiesalso plays a crucial role in emi contexts. this is true in light of the fact that content specialists are often not fully proficient in the language and need to rely on written words, visual materials and body language in combination with their speech to convey and elicit meaning (morell 2018). until recently, improving oral expression constituted developing speakers‟ linguistic and communicative competences, that is, their knowledge and use of the language. however, a broader view on language, and the semiotic resources we use to communicate and represent meaning, calls for the development of “multimodal competence”. this competence has been defined by royce (2002: 193) as “the ability to understand the combined potential of various modes for making meaning so as to make sense of and construct texts”. developing students and teachers‟ multimodal competence has proven to be instrumental for improving comprehension and expression in language (choi and yi 2016, norte fernández-pacheco 2018, sueyoshi and hardison 2005) and content (airey and linder 2009, morell 2018, morell and pastor 2018, tang, 2013) learning and teaching contexts. studies based on cognitive theories of learning that have examined interactive multimodal learning environments (e.g. moreno and mayer 2007) claim that student understanding can be enhanced by the addition of non-verbal knowledge representations to verbal explanations. ainsworth (2006: 185), who asserts that combinations of auditory and visual representations may complement, constrain or emi teacher training with a multimodal and interactive approach: a new horizon for lsp specialists language value 12 (1), 56–87 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 59 construct learners‟ deeper understanding, states “it is not sufficient to consider each type of representation in isolation representations interact with one another in a form of „representational chemistry”. furthermore, airey and linder (2009) suggest that meaning is distributed across modes and that there is, therefore, a critical constellation of modes that needs to be mastered by students for appropriate disciplinary understanding. thus, it follows that if lecturers are aware of the potential, or affordances, of each individual representation (mode), they will be better able not only to combine them so as to facilitate students‟ comprehension, but also to support students‟ learning. with regard to multimodality and university academic oral discourse, studies have examined speakers‟ use and combination of semiotic resources in presentations and in lectures (e.g. crawford camiciottoli and fortanet-gómez 2015, morell 2015), but with the exception of morell (2018), very few studies if any have looked at the development of emi lecturers‟ interactive and multimodal competence. i.3. an emi teacher training workshop with a multimodal and interactive approach in the large public spanish university, where this study took place, there has been a continuous growth of emi subjects in all disciplines and for the past decade lecturers have been offered 20-hour emi training workshops with a multimodal and interactive approach. to date, 220 academics from a wide range of university departments have voluntarily taken part in one of its 12 editions. in each of the sessions of the workshops between 15 and 20 participants of a wide-range of disciplines work in pairs and in groups to reflect on, become aware of and practice: a) verbal and non-verbal communication, b) varying interactive teaching methodologies and c) planning a multimodal and interactive mini-lecture i . in the final two sessions each participant puts into practice what they have learned by carrying out a 10 to 20-minute mini-lesson on a basic concept of their field of study. these mini-lessons, which are constructively coevaluated by workshop peers, using the criteria in morell (2015), are video-recorded and used for research purposes with the consent of the participants. teresa morell language value 12 (1), 56–87 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 60 the main objective of this mixed method study was to explore what constitutes successful interactive lecturing, according to academics who have taken part in the aforementioned interdisciplinary emi teacher training workshops. this aim was fulfilled by analyzing the video recorded interactive and multimodal discourse of participants‟ exemplary mini-lessons. ii. methodology and materials to determine what characterizes effective interactive lecturing according to experienced academics, the participants of diverse editions of the emi workshops, described above, were asked to vote for what they considered to be the two most effective mini lectures they had observed and participated in during their training sessions. the two most voted for mini-lectures of three emi workshop editions, i.e. a total of 6 highly rated video recorded lessons, were the object of study. as indicated in table 1, the lecturers of these mini-lessons had varying degrees of english competence level (from b1-b2 to c1), teaching experience in their mother tongue (1 – 17 years), and only one had previous experience using emi. in addition, they each taught content subjects in a different field (i.e. chemical engineering, business administration, architecture, sociology, mathematics and biology). table 1. description of emi workshop participants‟ background and their mini-lectures‟ subject, topic, duration and words per minute (wpm). minilecture english competence level (cefr) teaching experience in higher education (yrs) experience in english as a medium of instruction degree teaching in minilecture topic duration mini lecture/ words per minute (wpm) 1 b1-b2 7 no chemical engineering management systems in chemical industry 11 min 59 sec / 90 wpm 2 b2-c1 17 no business administration what is marketing? 17 min 08 sec / 99 wpm emi teacher training with a multimodal and interactive approach: a new horizon for lsp specialists language value 12 (1), 56–87 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 61 3 c1 4 yes architecture construction of domestic imaginaries 20 min 33 sec / 108 wpm 4 b2 10 no sociology survey interpretations 09 min 39 sec / 143 wpm 5 b2-c1 1 no mathematics applications of derivatives and integrals 15 min 07 sec /129 wpm 6 c1 2 no biology seafood: do we know what we are eating? 17 min 11 sec /125 wpm these 6 samples of study, which together entail 1 hour, 31 minutes and 38 seconds of video streaming and a total of 10, 448 words, were used to carry out the audio-visual discourse analysis that was done in two phases. in the first phase, the spoken discourse was transcribed verbatim and then tagged for questions to determine the quality and quantity of interactive verbal discourse. in the second phase, the written (w), the nonverbal materials (nvms) and the body language (b) modes together with the spoken language (s) were annotated with the support of elan ii (the european distributed corpora project eudico linguistic annotator), a professional linguistic annotation tool. in the following results section, the verbal interactive and multimodal discourse analysis of the 6 mini lessons is presented. then, the combined audio-visual analysis of one of the mini-lessons is illustrated. finally, a comparison is made between the highly rated mini lessons with 6 other less effective ones. iii. results and discussion iii.1. results of the interactive discourse analysis teresa morell language value 12 (1), 56–87 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 62 the verbal (auditory) discourse of the 6 video-recorded mini-lessons was first transcribed verbatim and tagged for content and audience-oriented questions. as in chang (2012), the questions were categorized as content-oriented or audience-oriented. the content-oriented questions are the rhetorical questions (i.e. responded to by the teacher or used to structure the discourse), whereas the audience-oriented questions are those that elicit a response. the audience-oriented questions (defined below) include display and referential types, as well as the sub-questions for negotiation of meaning (i.e. comprehension checks, confirmation checks and clarification requests), which maintain the interaction initiated by previous questions (i.e. display or referential) and ensure that the lecturer and the students share the same assumptions and identification of referents (morell 2000, pica, young and doughty 1987). display questions check the audience‟s knowledge or familiarity (e.g. do you know what surveys are?) referential questions ask for audience‟s contributions from their own experiences or perspectives (e.g. when you go to the fish market, which do you prefer, fish from aquaculture or fishing?) sub-questions for negotiation of meaning: o comprehension checks – check for receivers‟ understanding of message (e.g. do you understand? o confirmation checks – ask to confirm previous message (e.g. did you say…?) o clarification requests – seek understanding (e.g. i don’t understand, could you explain?). it is important to highlight that display questions, those that ask for students‟ recall of factual information at a low cognitive level, have been found to be more often used in classrooms than referential questions, those that ask for students‟ evaluation, judgement or offering of new ideas at a higher cognitive level. in addition, referential questions have been proven to promote more and longer responses with more complex syntax (brock 1986, lendenmeyer 1990, morell 2004). furthermore, episodes of interaction usually initiated by either display or referential questions are often followed by emi teacher training with a multimodal and interactive approach: a new horizon for lsp specialists language value 12 (1), 56–87 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 63 comprehension or confirmation checks and sometimes clarification requests (see section iii.3). the number of specific questions, instances of negotiation of meaning (i.e. comprehension checks, confirmation checks and clarification requests) and the total number of questions (qs) per 1000 words of each mini lesson can be found in table 2. table 2. questions, and negotiation of meaning in mini-lessons 1-6 (t= teacher, s= student). audience-oriented questions content-oriented negotiation of meaning total questions qs per 1000ws minilesson rhetorical questions display questions referential questions comprehension checks confirmation checks clarification requests 1 5 5 10 2 1t; 2s 0 25 23 2 3 10 10 0 2t; 2s 1t 28 16.5 3 0 6 2 0 0t; 3s 1t; 1s 13 5.8 4 1 3 4 0 4t 0 12 8.8 5 7 6 6 11 3t; 1s 2t; 1s 37 19 6 4 1 10 3 4t; 2s 5s 39 13.6 total 20 31 42 16 14t; 10s 4t; 7s 154 avg 14.6 in each case, the lecturers made greater use of audience-oriented than content-oriented questions. the most often used questions were the referential ones, those that elicit students‟ contributions based on their own experiential or logical representation of the world and that contain more features characteristic of genuine communication. here are examples of referential questions taken from the mini-lessons that ask students to evaluate (d), judge (a, f) or offer new information (b, c, e): a. what is the first thing that i can do with all these belts? what do you think? (mini-lecture 1) b. have you studied marketing before? (mini-lecture 2) c. what does this photograph communicate to you? (mini-lecture 3) d. what do you think this person would feel about it? good? bad? (mini-lecture 4) e. have you ever seen a derivative in real life? (mini-lecture 5) teresa morell language value 12 (1), 56–87 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 64 f. when you go to the fish market, which do you prefer, fish from aquaculture or fishing? (mini-lecture 6) it is also interesting to note that the negotiation of meaning or sub-questions that served to check or confirm comprehension and to clarify meaning, which occurred after the teachers‟ display or referential questions, was carried out by both the teachers (t) and the students (s). although referential questions have proven to be the most effective, in so far as promoting more and longer students‟ responses (morell 2004, brock 1986), there is no specific mention of them in other studies that have focused on questions in lectures (e.g. crawford-camiociottoli 2008 and chang 2012). chang (2012: 106) describes eliciting response questions as those that “invite students to supply a piece of information related to the course content” and gives two examples of what has been referred to as display questions (those that check what students know). the fact that no distinction is made between display and referential questions in lecture discourse studies may be an indication of the lack, or limited degree, of overt student participation found in the lecture corpora studied. another distinguishing characteristic of these effective mini-lectures is that they have a greater number of questions per 1000 words (14.45) than the l1 physical science (9.9) and social science (8.6) lectures analyzed in chang (2012), which also indicates a higher degree of interactivity in the samples studied. the degree of interactivity (table 3) in this study was estimated by calculating the number of tokens used to engage in the questions and negotiation of meaning. thus, the percentage of interactive discourse is the estimation of the tokens used by both the lecturer and the participants while asking and responding to or elaborating on the audience-oriented questions (i.e. display and referential questions, comprehension checks, confirmation checks and clarification requests) divided by the total number of verbal discourse tokens and multiplied by 100. table 3. the degree of interactivity in mini-lessons 1-6. minilecture interactive discourse tokens verbal discourse tokens percentage interactive discourse 1 496 1090 45% emi teacher training with a multimodal and interactive approach: a new horizon for lsp specialists language value 12 (1), 56–87 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 65 2 762 1698 45% 3 442 2225 19% 4 171 1365 13% 5 440 1940 23% 6 804 2130 38% the verbal discourse analysis of the mini-lessons revealed a relatively high usage of audience-oriented questions and, thus, an overall high percentage of interactive discourse. mini-lessons 1 and 2 that made greater use of referential questions had a greater degree of interaction. in both cases, nearly half the time was spent in collaborative discourse. it is also interesting to note that these two mini-lectures had the lowest rate of words per minute. as is indicated in table 3, mini-lecture 1 had 90 words per minute and mini-lecture 2 had 99 words per minute. these rates of words per minute in lecture discourse are considered slower than normal according to tauroza and allison (1990: 102). consequently, it seems that more interactivity implies more time or pauses, which have been claimed favorable for facilitating comprehension (griffiths 1990: 311). this raises the question on the amount of content that can be delivered and the amount that can be understood by learners during a lecture session. apparently, the extra time spent in interaction will reduce the quantity of material covered, but will provide students with the time needed for comprehension. iii.2. results of the multimodal discourse analysis the multimodal discourse (auditory + visual) was analyzed with elan. this tool allows users to analyze the orchestration of modes in captured digitalized audiovisual data by making linguistic annotations in tiers to describe the performance of modes during specific times. a 5 tier template was designed with the transcribed spoken discourse (s) in the first tier, and the linguistic annotations of the written (w), nonverbal materials (n), body language (b) and their multimodal combinations in the subsequent tiers (see figure 1). teresa morell language value 12 (1), 56–87 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 66 figure 1. sample elan window with 5 tiers the main characteristics of the teachers‟ use of each mode and their combinations is found in table 4. besides the aforementioned common use of audience-oriented questions in the spoken discourse, the mini-lessons also shared the following characteristics: stressed key words and simple syntactic structures through the spoken and written modes, implemented illustrative non-verbal materials (realia, images, diagrams, tables, or charts) on the screen, made use of eye contact, body and facial gestures to accompany speech, written and non-verbal materials (nvms), and combined 4 modes (sp + w + nvms + b) throughout the greater part of the lessons. emi teacher training with a multimodal and interactive approach: a new horizon for lsp specialists language value 12 (1), 56–87 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 67 table 4. multimodal discourse description of mini-lessons 1-6. minilessons spoken (sp) written (w) non-verbal materials (nvms) body language (b) multimodal combinations (percentage of time) 1 simple syntactic structures, stressed key words, some linguistic inaccuracies key words and simple syntactic structures on slides and board accompanying speech images, diagrams, tables on slides and realia accompanying speech eye contact and gaze towards audience, screen and realia, hand gestures and body movements referring to content and realia sp + b – 10% sp + b + nvms sp + b + w – 13% sp + w + nvms + b – 67% 2 combinations of simple and complex syntactic structures, stressed key words, accurate speech key words and simple syntactic structures on slides and board accompanying, before and after speech images and diagrams accompanying and before speech eye contact and gaze towards audience, screen and board. hand gestures, body movements, and shifting positions walks around class to ensure students‟ participation sp + w + b sp + w + nvms w + nvms + b -10% sp + w + nvms + b 90% 3 combinations of simple and complex syntactic structures, stressed key words, accurate speech key words and simple syntactic structures on slides and board accompanying speech many images on slides accompanying speech at all times eye contact and gaze towards audience, screen and board. hand gestures and facial expressions to emphasize ideas and express opinions. sp + nvms + b 1% sp + w + nvms + b – 99% 4 combinations of simple and complex key words and simple syntactic structures on images and tables on slides accompanying eye contact and gaze towards audience and sp + w + b sp + w + nvms – 25% teresa morell language value 12 (1), 56–87 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 68 syntactic structures, stressed key words, accurate speech slides accompanying speech speech screen. continuous hand and arm movements. sp + w + nvms + b – 75% 5 simple syntactic structures, some linguistic inaccuracies key words and simple syntactic structures on slides and board accompanying speech images, graphs and tables accompanying speech eye contact and gaze towards audience, screen and board. facial gestures 6 simple syntactic structures, stressed key words, some linguistic innacuracies key words and simple syntactic structures on slides accompanying, before and after speech images, diagrams, graphs, tables and charts accompanying and before speech eye contact and gaze towards audience and screen. continuous body movements. w – 4% w + nvms sp + w sp + b 13% sp + w + nvms sp + w + b 30% sp + w + nvms + b – 53% as is indicated in the last column of table 4, the multimodal combinations or ensembles that included the four modes were prevalent throughout each of the mini lessons. in fact, the percentage of time in which the teachers combined the spoken, written, nonverbal materials and body language modes together to communicate, ranged from 53% in mini-lesson 6 to 99% in mini-lesson 3. nevertheless, a closer look at how the speakers orchestrated the modes (kress 2010: 162), moment by moment, to create the specific multimodal ensembles reveals that they were arranged either simultaneously or consecutively. for example, the lecturer in mini-lesson 2 (see table 5) at times used the written slides or the ones with nvms at the same time as he spoke, but at other moments he either spoke before or after having shown the written or nvms. in other words, teachers can choose to use other modes at the same time as they are speaking or to use them before or after having spoken. consequently, we may state that the 6 miniemi teacher training with a multimodal and interactive approach: a new horizon for lsp specialists language value 12 (1), 56–87 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 69 lessons coincide in so far as the tendency to use 4 mode ensembles, but not in their orchestrations or organization of modes. another distinguishing characteristic of the mini-lessons worth-mentioning, which is positively influenced by the use of multimodal ensembles, is the spoken linguistic inaccuracies and complexities. in mini-lessons 1, 5 and 6 a number of linguistic inaccuracies concerning pronunciation, intonation and syntactic structures were found. in contrast, some complex syntactic structures were used in mini-lessons 2, 3, and 4. nevertheless, the spoken inaccuracies and complexities were nearly all accompanied by clarifying written or non-verbal materials. thus, the co-occurring reiteration of meaning through visual modes allowed the audience, with varying degrees of proficiency, to understand what the speaker was trying to convey despite the inaccuracies or complexities. iii.3. a sample multimodal interactive discourse analysis of a mini-lecture now that the mini-lessons have been examined, we will have a closer look at the verbal and visual transcription of mini-lesson 2 (see table 5), the most interactive and multimodal of the six lessons explored (as indicated in tables 2, 3 and 4). the aim of this lesson was to introduce marketing and it was given by a lecturer of the department of business administration, who had between a b2 and a c1 english proficiency level and had never used emi in his 17 years of teaching experience. in this lesson, as in most of the others analyzed, the instructor began by greeting and then attempting to attract the students‟ attention. this was done by projecting images of controversial marketing campaigns and asking if they were familiar with them. then, the participants were asked to work in pairs for 2 minutes to discuss and define marketing. the instructions were given verbally and also projected on the screen. while the pairs were working, the instructor went around monitoring the discussions. once the time was up, each pair was encouraged to contribute their definitions, whose keywords were written on the board by the teacher. the given responses led to a series of interactions, or instances of negotiation of meaning, that allowed several students to bring their experience and perspective to the class. the remaining part of the mini-lesson was dedicated to the interpretation of a published definition on marketing. the definition teresa morell language value 12 (1), 56–87 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 70 was projected on the screen and visually supported by gradually highlighting key points in red, which were illustrated through images of marketing campaigns and a final mind map. the three columns of table 5 illustrate how this lecturer combined verbal and visual modes to carry out pedagogical interpersonal functions in the first 13 minutes of this 17 minute long mini-lesson. the first column indicates the interpersonal pedagogical function carried out during each of the timed frames. the second column contains a snapshot taken during the performance of the pedagogical function that allows us to observe the lecturer‟s constantly changing body language and use of slides and blackboard. the third one permits us to read the spoken discourse and to take note of the labeled questions and negotiation of meaning highlighted in boldface. a combined view of columns 2 and 3, that is of the visual and the verbal, for each of the frames (rows), where students are given opportunities to participate (see frames 1, 3, 4, 5, 7 and 9), reaffirms the multimodal and interactive characteristics of classroom interpersonal communication. on the one hand, if we explore this mini-lecture from a visual multimodal perspective by having a close look at the lecturer‟s use of body language, non-verbal materials and written content, it becomes apparent that this instructor uses many more semiotic resources besides the spoken in his performance. each of the interpersonal pedagogical functions is realized through the orchestration of facial gestures, arm-hand movements, changing body positions, writing on board and specific slides that contain concise written texts or illustrative images together with the verbal discourse. on the other hand, if we examine it from the verbal discourse perspective, we note that the minilecture starts with interactive discourse during the first 13 minutes and ends with expository discourse in the remaining 4 minutes. the interactive discourse consists of a number of questions, or elicitation markers, that entail a broad range of interpersonal pedagogical functions such as: greeting (i.e. how are you doing today?), announcing objectives (i.e. what is exactly marketing?), attracting attention (e.g. have you ever seen this picture before?) emi teacher training with a multimodal and interactive approach: a new horizon for lsp specialists language value 12 (1), 56–87 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 71 setting up activity (e.g. working in pairs . . . two minutes maximum, what is marketing for you? eliciting information (when you don’t know the meaning of a word, what do you do?). all the questions in this mini-lesson (10 referential and 10 display questions) were answered by the students. consequently, we can claim that this instructor has been successful in engaging the students in co-creating the discourse of this multimodal interactive mini-lecture. table 5. verbal and visual transcription of mini-lesson 2. interpersonal pedagogical functions (time sequence) visual representation (body language, writing on slides and board, and images) verbal representation (spoken interactive and expository discourse) question types: d=display, r=referential, rh=rhetorical negotiation of meaning: conf=confirmation check, comp=comprehension check, clar=clarification request 1. greets & announces topic 0-0.35” twell, good morning everybody. how are you doing today?(r) ssfine, thank you. twell, today, this morning we are going to talk about what is marketing?(d) 2. projects (on slide), announces & reformulates objective announces show of images first, the main goal of this subject, of this mini lesson is to understand what is exactly marketing, what does marketing means? (d) and the second objective of this mini lesson is that you are able to answer the question to: which is the scope or what is the scope of marketing? (d) first of all, i would like you to see some teresa morell language value 12 (1), 56–87 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 72 0.35-1.06” images that perhaps you have seen before and think about about them. 3. motivates by showing 3 controversial images of marketing campaigns and asks students if they are familiar with them 1.06-2.02 have you ever seen this picture before?(r) ssno. tis a marketing campaign from benetton. you know this brand?(r) ssyes. tvery controversial. have you ever seen this picture before?(r) ssyes. no. tis also a brand. it‟s a clothes' brand, textile brand. and the last one, another marketing campaign from dolce & gabbana. have you seen this picture before?(r) ssyes. no. tsome common marketing campaigns that arrived to the mass media because they are very controversial and many people breaks their beliefs when they see this images 4a. gives assignment on slide. asks to work in pairs 4b. writes outline on board 4c. circulates among pairs well, after that, i would like you to work in pairs and from your previous experience i would like you to, working in pairs, to try to define, one minute, one minute and a half, two minutes maximum, what is marketing for you? (r) what do you think marketing is from your previous experience? (r) ssinaud ss (working in pairs) emi teacher training with a multimodal and interactive approach: a new horizon for lsp specialists language value 12 (1), 56–87 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 73 2.02-5.00 5a. elicits information from students through questions negotiates meaning 5b.fills-in outline on board according to students‟ responses 5c. evaluates student‟s response 5d. praises student‟s comments tyou have a limited time, so i would like to continue, please. well, what is marketing for you? what do you think marketing is? (r)which is the main activity marketing does?(d) s1the main objective is to sell. tto sell. yes. everybody and i was sure that most of you, in your definitions is to sell, money, profits, inaud t and i was sure that most of you, in your definitions have a word... like this. s2we defined like the process that you can sell your best image of your company or our professional project, in global. tin global, but to sell your image? (clar) s2to sell everything that you have. your structure, your quality, for your global service, everything that you have. no, no... at the end no is for... the activity is not to sell something by money. maybe, i don't know... tthat‟s a very accurate definition of marketing, but who does this activity?(d) who applies marketing?(d) s3but, i'm… i not agree with this definition. why? and the section what? sometimes when the government want change something or sell, not sell exactly, “sell” a project, they use teresa morell language value 12 (1), 56–87 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 74 5e. reformulates to elicit classifying term 5f. shows activity slide with keywords filled-in 5.00-7.49 marketing. tyes. s3for example, hacienda somos todos, i think is marketing 100%. (laughter) thave you studied marketing before? (r) or you have read something about marketing before? (r) s3no, nothing. tno? hacienda somos todos and the campaigns we saw before, which is, which is the technique employed here? (d) s4visual? visual impact. tvisual impact, but the technique, how do we call... which is the name of this...? (d) s5pictures? tpictures? (conf) no, yes they are pictures but... s6advertisement. tadvertisement. promotion. publicity. promotion. most people relate advertisement, publicity, promotion, commercial adds as an activity, as a marketing activity, no? and who does this activity? (d) who applies marketing? (d) s7companies. tcompanies, firms. s1institutions, public institutions, states, governments. sometimes, individuals. tindividuals, you can also apply marketing. most of people when try to think about marketing and try to define marketing, employ this words in their emi teacher training with a multimodal and interactive approach: a new horizon for lsp specialists language value 12 (1), 56–87 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 75 definitions: promotion, advertisement, firms, also companies, institutions, and most people think or believe that the main objective of marketing is to improve the sales, the revenue of firms to earn money. this is a very applied definition of marketing, but this is marketing as was understood in the sixties. and today, as i have realized, you have a good idea of what marketing is. the scope of marketing is larger, and this is very narrow definition of what marketing is. at the present, nowadays, marketing has two main problems. first, is that marketing has become a very popular term, and this is a problem. 6. shows google search of marketing 7.49-8.55 most people when try to know what is marketing, go to the google search engine, and write the term marketing, and marketing gives us on this search engine up to five hundred millions of web pages talking about marketing. and most of them make a bad connotation of marketing and don't employ the term marketing in a proper way. 7. uses humor to demonstrate popularity & elicit what is done to find definitions the second problem with marketing is that has become very popular, especially due to the digital environment, and most people when applies or try to know what marketing is, begin as homer simpson does, (laughter) with the most advanced techniques, and forget the basics, and forget the basics. they want to know the most updated techniques, and forget the basics of marketing. when you don't know the meaning of a word, what do teresa morell language value 12 (1), 56–87 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 76 8.55-9.32 you do? (d) s5to go to the dictionary. 8. shows and reads definition of marketing 9.32-10.22 tyou go to the dictionary and this is what i did, go to the dictionary and read the definition of marketing. i did not go to any dictionary, but the dictionary of the american marketing academy. (laughter) this is a best dictionary in marketing field. and this is the definition that the american marketing association, which is also a definition adopted by the european marketing academy. this is how this association defines what marketing is. in this definition as we can read, marketing is a process, is a process, as you stated, very well, of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion and distribution of ideas, goods and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual needs, organizational objectives and society at large. this is the mostup-today definition of marketing. 9a. highlights the keypoints in definition 9b. elicits example of commercial and non-commercial exchange 9c. relates present teaching activity with „exchange‟ 10.22-11.25 from this definition, i would like to highlight three points. first, which is the goal of marketing and who does marketing? (d) if we carefully read this definition, the goal of marketing is to create exchange. if we think in exchange, we can have, of course, commercial exchange. an example of commercial exchange?(r) s8when you go to a shop. inaud st twhen you go to a shop and buy a mobile phone. but we can also have non-commercial exchange. any example of non-commercial emi teacher training with a multimodal and interactive approach: a new horizon for lsp specialists language value 12 (1), 56–87 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 77 exchange? (r) you said it before. s1when you try to change the way of thinking of some person or…. tfor example, now. teaching, the teacher and the students. there is an exchange, and i am trying to transmit my knowledge, i am trying that you learn, and you are here making an effort to hear me. so, wherever there is a exchange, marketing can be applied. wherever there is a exchange, marketing can be applied. in this definition, we don't have the word firm, we don't have the word company, we don't have the word enterprise. we have the word exchange, and wherever there is exchange, commercial or noncommercial, we can apply the word marketing. 10. illustrates political marketing 11.25-12.45 as pablo said very well before, politicians can apply marketing. most people agree that when barack obama won or became president of the united states of america, it employed or he employed marketing techniques very well. it is a branch of marketing which is called political marketing. there is a exchange, he is a politician, people who vote him, and they want to make an exchange. i am inaud t your vote, and i tell you what i say if you vote me. there is an exchange of marketing can be applied. 11. highlights the goal of marketing which is the second idea i would like to highlight from this definition? (rh) why people or why organizations can apply and which is the goal of marketing. (rh) the goal of marketing teresa morell language value 12 (1), 56–87 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 78 12.45-13.20 is to satisfy individual needs, organizational objectives, and society at large. nowadays, because of the media, most people have a bad connotation of marketing, because the most controversial marketing campaigns arrive to the media, and this is what most people can see on tv related to marketing. but marketing should also take care about society, and most firms that apply marketing strategies take into account this concern. 12. illustrates causerelated marketing 13.20-14.12 for example, we have here a marketing campaign which is a cause-related marketing campaign. in this case, one firm, kentucky fried chicken concerns about breast cancer, and every time they make an exchange with the consumer, every time we buy a chicken bucket, they give an amount of money to research against this breast cancer. because marketing also concerns about the society and that. of course, they want to earn money, but they can't forget that the consumers could ever have a problem like this, and they concern about the individual needs with which they relate. 13. highlights what marketing does 14.12-15.05 and the last point i would like to highlight from my definition, well, not my definition, from the american marketing academy association definition is what marketing does. marketing has a lot of techniques, a lot of variables, and most people think that only promotion is a variable that marketing can be applied, and, we can see, sorry, in this definition there are emi teacher training with a multimodal and interactive approach: a new horizon for lsp specialists language value 12 (1), 56–87 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 79 four marketing variables which are employed to define the marketing strategy of a firm, of an organization, which are: the conception of the product, the idea, good or service; the price; the promotion; and distribution. 14. explains and illustrates 4 main points involved in marketing 15.05-16.43 when we think in a marketing strategy, when we think about marketing, we should think in the four variables all together. maybe, the most non variable is promotion, but before to promote you need the product. you have to put the product available to the consumer, and then you have to price the product. because in the exchange, you give the product and obtain the price. and also you have to consider this variable when you define your marketing strategy. to think that marketing is promotion, is a very narrow definition of marketing. of course, promotion is a variable of marketing, but is not the only, and is not the most important variable. 15a. reviews definition 15b. ends with final message 16.43-17.08 and this is what marketing is. i hope that after this class, you have a better knowledge of what marketing is, and i hope that the next time you think about marketing you forget the bad connotations that usually marketing has for most of the consumers. and thank you very much. iii.4. a comparison of the more and less effective lessons besides exploring the common interactive and multimodal aspects of the 6 highly rated mini-lessons, 6 other recordings that had not been selected as effective were also reviewed to determine if they had similar characteristics. it was found that in most cases teresa morell language value 12 (1), 56–87 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 80 these lecturers used a limited number of questions and that little or no negotiation of meaning occurred. concerning their use and combination of modes, they shared some similar aspects, especially in terms of the written and non-verbal materials, with the ones that had been voted for as being effective. the written mode on their slides also made use of key words and simple syntactic structures. similarly, their non-verbal materials consisted of illustrative images, tables and diagrams, though they were used to a lesser extent. unlike the highly rated lessons, these less effective ones foregrounded speech throughout a greater part of the session and had much lower percentages of time in which 3 or 4 modes were combined to represent and communicate meaning. in summary, the less effective ones were not as interactive or as multimodal as the more effective ones. iv. conclusion and implications the main objective of this study was to explore the characteristics of lessons considered to be effective according to trained emi instructors. this was achieved by carrying out a verbal and multimodal analysis of 6 highly rated mini-lectures, then having a closer look at one of them, and finally comparing the more effective with the lesser ones. what follows is a summary of the findings and their pedagogical implications. the verbal interactive discourse analysis revealed that the more highly evaluated lessons had a greater use of audience than of content-oriented questions. in addition, there were more referential than display questions, both of which were in many cases followed by instances of negotiation of meaning (i.e. comprehension and confirmation checks) initiated by teachers and students. these lessons had more questions per 1000 words and higher percentages of interactive discourse in comparison to those in other corpora (e.g. chang, 2012). it was also found that these lessons had lower rates of words per minute than other less interactive lectures. thus, in terms of training emi instructors in the use of verbal interactive discourse, the study points to the need to a) teach the differences among types of questions, b) practice formulating referential type questions, and c) encourage and give students time to negotiate meaning. the multimodal discourse analysis of the chosen lessons showed that the emi instructors‟ spoken and written language was made up of stressed key words and simple emi teacher training with a multimodal and interactive approach: a new horizon for lsp specialists language value 12 (1), 56–87 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 81 syntactic structures. they each made use of diverse non-verbal materials that illustrated concepts. in all cases, the speech, writing and nvms were accompanied by eye contact and gestures. in fact, the 6 mini-lessons were highly multimodal because they made use of four modes (i.e. speech, writing, nvms and body language) throughout most of the lessons, unlike 6 other mini-lessons that had not been selected and that foregrounded speech and accompanying body language most of the time. the findings of the multimodal analysis highlight the importance of raising awareness among emi instructors of modal and multimodal affordances. in other words, emi trainers should dedicate time with their trainees to make clear how modes or semiotic resources can be used and combined to facilitate students‟ comprehension. the combined verbal interactive and multimodal discourse analysis of mini-lesson 2, represented in table 5, gives further support to the benefits of instructors‟ conscious use of interactive and multimodal discourse. in this exemplary lesson, the instructor‟s use of audience-oriented questions and combinations of varied semiotic resources allowed him to carry out interpersonal pedagogical functions that engaged the audience. detailed analysis, as this one, of other successful emi lessons in diverse fields should not only be object of study for esp specialists, but also a resource for their teacher training in general terms, a number of implications emerge with regard to training lecturers who switch from teaching in their l1 to english. first, in line with morell (2004) and (2007), audience-oriented questions, especially referential questions, will enhance interaction that will not only promote students‟ engagement, but also allow for negotiation of meaning. second, in line with morell (2015) and norte fernández pacheco (2018), cooccurring reiteration of meaning through visual modes allows the audience, with varying degrees of proficiency, to understand what the speaker is trying to convey despite linguistic inaccuracies or complexities. finally, it is important to point out, in line with klaassen (2001), hellekjaer, (2010) and bjorkman, (2011), that effective lecturing skills are not directly proportional with high linguistic proficiency. as far as research to improve emi classroom instruction is concerned, there is much to be done to begin to determine „best practices‟ and to ensure quality in emi teaching contexts of diverse disciplines. here i have only explored the discourse of 6 well-rated mini-lectures, albeit of distinct fields, and i have found that they all have a high degree teresa morell language value 12 (1), 56–87 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 82 of interactivity and multimodality. through this study as in others cited, it seems quite clear that effective emi instruction involves students in the language and the content. and, in terms of the verbal mode we know that this is done through a deployment of engaging questions and negotiation of meaning. however, in terms of the visual modes and their combinations, it is not so clear. in line with ainsworth (2006), it is not enough to consider each representation (mode) in isolation, we need to explore how representations interact to form “chemical representations”. in other words, research needs to look into how emi instructors of specific disciplines use multimodal ensembles to effectively represent and communicate the particular inherent meanings of their fields. consequently, to start to corroborate best practices in each of the many fields that have adapted emi, lsp specialists need to analyze characteristic multimodal ensembles found in larger lecture corpora. in this study, i have provided an example of how lsp specialists can use their expertise to train teachers and to do research in emi. however, and more importantly, this study provides further evidence of the many new teaching and research avenues open to the specialists of languages for specific purposes as a consequence of the ever-increasing university emi scenarios. notes i in this paper the term „interactive mini-lecture‟ is used interchangeably with „mini-lesson‟ and it refers to a short university classroom session that incorporates student overt participation by means of engaging activities such as group brainstorming, pair work or debates. ii http://tla.mpi.nl/tools/tla-tools/elan references aguilar, m. 2018. integrating intercultural competence in esp and emi: from theory to practice. esp today, 6 (1), 25–43. https://doi.org/10.18485/esptoday.2018.6.1.2 ainsworth, s. 2006. “deft: a conceptual framework for considering learning with multiple representations”. learning and instruction, 16 (3), 183–198. https://doi.org/doi:10.1016/j.learninstruc.2006.03.001 http://tla.mpi.nl/tools/tla-tools/elan/ https://doi.org/10.18485/esptoday.2018.6.1.2 https://doi.org/doi:10.1016/j.learninstruc.2006.03.001 emi teacher training with a multimodal 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in second language listening comprehension”. language learning, 55 (4), 661– 699. suviniitty, j. 2012. lectures in english as a lingua franca: interactional features. doctoral thesis. university of helsinki. tang, k.-s. 2013. “instantiation of multimodal semiotic systems in science classroom discourse”. language sciences, 37, 22–35. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j. langsci.2012.08.003 tauroza, s. and allison, d. 1990. “speech rates in british english”. applied linguistics 11 (1), 90–105. tazl, d. 2011. “english-medium masters‟ programmes at an austrian university of applied sciences: attitudes, experiences and challenges”. journal of english for academic purposes, 10, 252–270. https://doi.org/doi:10.1016/j.jeap.2011.08.003 walsh, s. 2011. exploring classroom discourse language in action. london: routledge. received: 08 november 2019 accepted: 23 may 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2013.5.5 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.%20langsci.2012.08.003 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.%20langsci.2012.08.003 https://doi.org/doi:10.1016/j.jeap.2011.08.003 emi teacher training with a multimodal and interactive approach: a new horizon for lsp specialists language value 12 (1), 56–87 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 87 cite this article as: morell, teresa. 2020. “emi teacher training with a multimodal and interactive approach: a new horizon for lsp specialists”. language value, 12 (1), 56-87. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.languagevalue.uji.es. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2020.12.4 issn 1989-7103 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ review of michael rundell (editor-in-chief) language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2011, volume 3, number 1 pp. 153-161 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors 153 book review macmillan collocations dictionary for learners of english michael rundell (editor-in-chief) macmillan publishers: oxford, 2010. 911 pages. isbn: 978-0-230-72403-7 reviewed by pedro a. fuertes-olivera pedro@tita.emp.uva.es universidad de valladolid, spain 1. introduction the macmillan collocations dictionary for learners of english (mcd) is a monolingual print dictionary aimed primarily at helping upper-intermediate to advanced students in productive use situations, such as taking english exams (especially the ielts exams) and working in academic or professional environments. it has over 121,000 collocational phrases, a figure that leads coffey to claim that the mcd attaches more collocates to each headword than competing dictionaries, for example, the oxford collocations dictionary for students of english (ocd) (coffey 2011: 329). a review of the dictionary cover, the introduction and the outer text “using the dictionary in ielts”, written by sam mccarter, makes it possible to summarise some of the main lexicographical characteristics of this dictionary as follows: • it is a dictionary of common word combinations that has been compiled using leading-edge collocation-finding software and a 2-billion word corpus of modern english. • it focuses on students’ productive needs, with collocations for over 4,500 carefullyselected key words. the term ‘collocation’ used in this dictionary refers to the “property of language whereby two or more words seem to appear frequently in each other’s company” (hoey, cited in the introduction, p. vii). mccarter summarises the frequently-stated view that collocations are very useful for production by indicating that there is a direct correlation between frequency and coverage, and between frequency and collocation. the rationale for both http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� mailto:pedro@tita.emp.uva.es� macmillan collocations dictionary for learners of english language value 3 (1), 153–161 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 154 assumptions stems from the often-quoted assumption that maintains that a wordlist of around 2,500 headwords should account for around 80% of all texts, and 7,500 accounting for 90% (p. ix). • the dictionary divides up the collocations according to the meaning(s) they express, i.e., collocations are grouped in semantic sets within each entry. • the examples included are authentic and show how collocations are used in context. • the dictionary offers an easy-to-use layout with all headwords printed in red, as well as grey and pink usage boxes with grammatical notes, synonyms and alternative expressions. grey boxes are used “when there is a common way of expressing the same idea using a phrase rather than a collocation” (p. xii). and pink usage notes are used “when a collocation needs to be used in a particular way, for example when a verb is often in the passive or a noun usually in the plural” (p. xiii). 2. headwords the headwords in the mcd are nouns, adjectives or verbs. coffey (2011: 329) indicates that the figures for nouns, adjectives and verbs are 55%, 24%, and 21% of the headwords respectively, that almost all headwords in the mcd are single words (the only exceptions being compound nouns such as credit card), that verbs can be singleitem words or phrasal verbs (in the usual linguistic sense of the term) and that there are “no semantic divisions of homographs at headword level, except where they constitute different parts of speech”. for example, there is one entry for the noun crash, with subentries for crash (accident) and crash (noise), but separate entries for the verb cough and the noun cough (example 1): cough v to make a sudden noise by forcing air up through your throat (…) cough n the action of coughing or an illness in which you cough example (1). the treatment of homographs in the mcd. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� book and multimedia review language value 3 (1), 153–161 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 155 3. lexicographical data and typographical representations a sample page from the dictionary is reproduced in appendix i. as with other macmillan learners’ dictionaries, headwords and circular and triangular symbols are in red. headwords are followed by an indication of the part of speech. on the line below, there is a brief definition of the headword worded in an easy-to-decode phrase-like style (for example, employ is defined as “use something for a particular purpose”). red circular dots signal the beginning of each lexico-grammatical group (for example, adj + n for employee), whereas the red triangular symbol begins a new line and indicates a new semantic set in the same grammatical group. for instance, the lexico-grammatical structure adj + n in employee has two semantic sets, each labelled “working for a particular time” and “in the past/present/future” respectively. then a new red circular dot precedes the lexico-grammatical structure n + n of employee, which is followed by a list of eight collocates in bold and an example in italics (e.g. n + n benefits, contributions, involvement, morale, productivity, relations, representative, satisfaction are your pension costs affecting your ability to offer other employee benefits?). when the lexico-grammatical structure has only one semantic set, this is not preceded by a semantic label, as shown in the lexico-grammatical structure for employee (n + n) above. coffey (2011: 333) summarises the main structural patterns, i.e., lexico-grammatical structures, in the mcd (table 1). table 1. collocation patterns in the mcd (coffey 2011: 333). noun-based patterns examples adjective + noun strong desire noun + noun city centre noun + noun design concept verb + noun express a desire noun + verb counsel argued noun + prep. + noun advance in design, immunity against infection noun + prep + noun issue of gender, countries across the globe verb + prep. + noun arise from desire, collapse into giggles coordinated nouns alcohol and gambling, goods or services http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� macmillan collocations dictionary for learners of english language value 3 (1), 153–161 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 156 verb-based patterns adverb + verb fully deserve, peer about verb + noun deserve applause noun + verb injuries heal verb + adjective gleam white verb + verb seek to illustrate verb + prep. + noun disagree with a conclusion, act on advice coordinated verbs relax and unwind, inspire and motivate adjective-based patterns adverb + adjective eminently desirable verb + adjective become desirable adjective + noun desirable attribute adjective + infinitive glad to hear adjective + adjective pale green adjective + prep. + noun grateful for assistance, generous with time coordinated adjectives, adjectives used together desolate and lonely, cosy little, glossy black the guide to the dictionary (pp. xii-xiii) informs potential users that the lexicogrammatical structures above show a grammatical relationship between headwords and collocates. for instance, ‘adjective + noun’, which is coded as ‘adj. + n’ in the dictionary, means the noun (n) employee often occurs with the adjectives listed: fulltime, part-time, permanent and temporary. and ‘verb + noun’, which is coded as ‘v + n’, means the noun employment is often the object of the verbs listed in five semantic sets: (i): look for and seek; (ii) find, gain, get, obtain and secure; (iii) terminate; (iv) give up and leave; (v) create, generate, guarantee, increase, promote and provide. the guide to the dictionary also indicates that when a word has more than one meaning, each meaning is shown by a number (empire has two meanings “1 a number of countries ruled by one government” and “2 a group of companies controlled by one company”). in a similar manner, it also points out that when a word is often followed by a particular preposition, the dictionary highlights this using bold type in the example http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� book and multimedia review language value 3 (1), 153–161 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 157 (e.g. the programme also provides the opportunity to study part-time while in full-time employment). 4. lexical coverage coffey (2011: 336) claims that the mcd is a ‘general collocations dictionary’, a dictionary with a wide lexical coverage, particularly by giving prominence to some areas of meaning and types of communication. one broad area given priority is that of academic and professional writing. in the introductory text “using the dictionary in ielts” (pp. ix-xi), sam mccarter writes that the purpose of ielts is to test students’ competence in using english and therefore the mcd aims primarily at covering the kinds of combinations that fluent speakers would produce naturally in, say, an academic and professional context. coffey (2011: 336-338), for example, examines whether the academic and professional vocabulary included in the mcd agrees with coxhead’s (2000) academic word list (awl), a list that includes relatively high-frequency words in academic texts. coffey’s analysis reports that 16.2% of the mcd headwords are in the awl, a proportion that is higher than in the case of the ocd, which stands at 13.5%. the analysis also adds that the proportion would rise to 40-45% if the examination were extended to cover impressionistic data, for instance, the whole entry and not only the headword. following suit, i have carried out an empirical analysis of the lexicographical treatment of the academic and professional words used in business included in the mcd. by extracting 20 business words from nelson’s (2000) business word list, it was possible to assess whether the above claim on coverage of academic and professional words merits respect or not. the analysis focuses on ten nouns, five verbs, and five adjectives, i.e., here the percentages reported by coffey (see introduction, above) were followed, with the aim of evaluating both the number of frequent business words included and their lexicographical treatment, especially their lexico-grammatical structures, and number of meanings for each structure (table 2). the 20 words were chosen at random. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� macmillan collocations dictionary for learners of english language value 3 (1), 153–161 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 158 table 2. business collocational patterns in the mcd. nouns mcd customer: one meaning and 23 semantic sets 1. adj + n: 10 semantic sets, e.g. delighted customer 2. v + n: 5 semantic sets, e.g. deal with a customer 3. n + n: 8 two semantic sets, e.g. customer satisfaction capitalisation not found brokerage not found ceo not found seller not found deregulation not found outlet: one meaning and 7 semantic sets 1. v + n: 3 semantic sets, e.g. want an outlet 2. n + for: 4 semantic sets, e.g. outlet for our frustration business: 22 semantic sets in two senses: 1 to 5: the work of buying and selling things; 6 to 8: a commercial organization 1. adj + n: 3 semantic sets, e.g. big business 2. v + n: 4 semantic sets, e.g. attract business 3. n + v: 1 semantic set, e.g. business flourish 4. n + n: 4 semantic sets, e.g. business plan 5. v + in + n: 2 semantic sets, e.g. stay in business 6. adj + n: 3 semantic sets, e.g. family business 7. v + n: 3 semantic sets, e.g. develop a business 8. n + v: 2 semantic sets, e.g. business collapse competitor: one meaning and 5 semantic sets 1. adj + n: 3 semantic sets, e.g. important competitor 2. v + n: 2 semantic sets, e.g. overtake competitors price: one meaning and 24 semantic sets 1. adj + n: 13 semantic sets, e.g. good price 2. n + n: 1 semantic set, e.g. admission price 3. v + n: 9 semantic sets, e.g. offer a price 4. n + in + n: 1 semantic set, e.g. drop in price verbs incur: 7 semantic sets in two senses: to have to pay something and experience something unpleasant as a result of your actions 1. v + n: 3 semantic sets, e.g. incur expenses (usually passive) 2. v + n: 4 semantic sets, e.g. incur a risk include not found employ: 1 semantic set 1. v + n: 1 semantic set, e.g. employ means downgrade not found earn: 6 semantic sets 1. v + n: 6 semantic sets, e.g. earn a name adjectives global: 14 semantic sets 1. adv + adj: 1 semantic set, e.g. truly global 2. adj + n: 12 semantic sets, e.g. global business 3. v + adj: 1 semantic set, e.g. go global overseas not found leveraged not found financial: 8 semantic sets 1. adj + n: 8 semantic sets, e.g. financial management domestic not found http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� book and multimedia review language value 3 (1), 153–161 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 159 table 2 shows that the dictionary contains frequent collocational patterns of typical academic and professional words used in business. the words not included are very specific business words and their absence can be considered congruent with the stated aim of the dictionary. furthermore, the coverage of both lexico-grammatical structures and semantic sets must be considered adequate for production purposes. 5. overall evaluation i agree with coffey (2011: 339-340) that the macmillan collocations dictionary is a well-planned pedagogical dictionary which aims to help learners find suitable collocations. to this end, the “majority of collocating items have been grouped into semantic sets, each of which is preceded by an indication of meaning”. they are especially aimed at helping learners of general academic and professional english. my main contention is that the structural labels, i.e., the grammatical codes, are not explained, which hinders its usability in some teaching/learning situations, e.g. spanish universities, in which students are unfamiliar with grammar information. coffey (2011: 338) also indicates a number of inaccuracies, mainly involving categorisation and labelling. for instance, get across should be presented as v + n (get across facts) instead of v + across. in spite of the above inaccuracies, i found that the mcd does a very good job and is a useful addition to the english learners’ collocation dictionary market, which is characterised by using the term collocation or referring either to a type of phraseological unit, e.g. a lexical collocation, or to an umbrella term for designing word combinations or multi-word expressions. both views are connected with an interest in phraseology, s manifested in the publication of the mcd, which is greatly indebted to scholars from russian and german traditions and to the distributional approach or frequency-based approach originated in the english tradition (see cowie (1998) and granger and paquot (2008) for a review on phraseology; see also fuertesolivera et al. (2012) for a different view of the term ‘collocation’). http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� macmillan collocations dictionary for learners of english language value 3 (1), 153–161 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 160 references coffey, s. 2011. “a new pedagogical dictionary of english collocations”. international journal of lexicography, 24 (3), 328-341. cowie, a.p. (ed.) 1998. phraseology: theory, analysis and applications. oxford: oxford university press. coxhead, a. 2000. “a new academic word list”. tesol quarterly, 34 (2), 213-238. fuertes-olivera, p.a., bergenholtz, h., nielsen, s. and niño amo, m. 2012. “classification in lexicography: the concept of collocation in the accounting dictionaries”. lexicographica, 28. granger, s. and paquot, m. (eds.) 2008. phraseology. an interdisciplinary perspective. amsterdam/philadelphia: john benjamins. nelson, m. 2000. business english lexis site. 7 november 2011 <http://users.utu.fi/ micnel/business_english_lexis_site.htm>. received november 2011 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://users.utu.fi/%20micnel/business_english_lexis_site.htm� http://users.utu.fi/%20micnel/business_english_lexis_site.htm� book and multimedia review language value 3 (1), 153–161 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 161 appendix i a sample page from the macmillan collocations dictionary http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� book review language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2010, volume 2, number 1 pp. 51-67 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors 51 sounding natural: improving oral presentation skills maria grazia busà mariagrazia.busa@unipd.it university of padua, italy abstract this paper discusses how multimodal resources can be used to teach oral communication strategies, as exemplified in a course taught at the university of padua, italy. the course focused on lexicon and language structures in use, pronunciation and intonation, body language, and cultural awareness. a variety of multimedia resources were used, including: pictures and illustrations; digital slides; audio files for pronunciation exercises and for audio-video feedback with the speech analysis software praat; video clips from online english courses and other youtube videos of authentic interviews, talk shows, news, monologues, and presentations. the main class activities were: listening and watching video clips; metalinguistic discussions on the use of verbal and non-verbal language in different linguistic situations; pronunciation practice; and speaking. students were filmed while speaking and received feedback on their oral and communicative skills. overall, the course appeared to be highly effective in raising students’ awareness of facts about english communication and its workings. keywords: oral communication, student awareness, multimedia, intonation, non-verbal language, feedback i. introduction proficiency in oral communication is increasingly required both in academic and professional settings. for this reason, an increasing number of courses, taught in both public and private institutions, are addressing oral communication skills. with globalization, the number of opportunities for interactions in english has increased and so has the need to learn strategies for successful oral communication in english. in the field of elt, research is being carried out with the aim of testing and comparing approaches and methods for enhancing the learning and acquisition of successful communication skills in the classroom. in this perspective, this paper illustrates the experience carried out in a class of intermediate speakers of english (b1-b2 level) at the university of padua, italy. the paper discusses how various multimodal resources were used to teach communication strategies in the course and how they contributed to meaning-making. on the one hand, they were used to present real-life situations, reconstruct context, and aid the comprehension of texts, and on the other hand they http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� mailto:mariagrazia.busa@unipd.it� maria grazia brusà language value 2, (1) 51–67 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 52 contributed to stimulating students’ interest and participation in the classroom by providing fun and enjoyable material for the learners to work with. finally, the paper discusses how in both cases these resources contributed to enhancing language learning. ii. oral communication oral communication is an essential aspect of social interaction. being able to communicate well is not only an important skill in itself, but also contributes significantly to the success of a person’s personal and professional life. speaking is used to engage in conversations, transmit information, express opinions, and contribute to discussions. speaking also has an enormous impact on the impression we make on people, because when we speak we communicate both personal information about ourselves (such as age, origin, social status, education) and paralinguistic information about what we are saying (intentions, attitudes, emotions) (ladefoged 1967: 104). but speaking is not the only element involved in communication. listening is also involved, as understanding is as essential to communication as speaking. communication cannot take place if the receiver does not understand the speaker’s message. in addition, other modalities such as intonation, facial expressions, hand gestures and body movements combine to convey meaning along with the verbal message, and naturally influence both the speaker and the receiver. in fact, communication is multimodal, that is, it combines and integrates the meaning-making resources of various semiotic modalities to create meaning (baldry and thibault 2006a, 2006b, bateman 2008, o’halloran 2011 in press, ventola et al. 2004). finally, successful communication does not only involve being competent in language structures, lexicon, and phonology, but also implies a knowledge of the socio-linguistic norms and conventions of the community where the language is spoken (halliday 1978, 1994, halliday and hasan 1991, hymes 1974). this knowledge is at the basis of speakers’ language usage, and conditions speakers’ behavior in all communicative situations. thanks to this knowledge, speakers know how to greet, express gratitude, apologize, when to talk and when it is best to remain silent, and when it is appropriate to use formal or informal language, for example (gumperz 1982a, 1982b, kress 1988, martin and rose 2003, widdowson 1978). in elt instruction, both speaking and listening are targeted as abilities that learners http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� sounding natural: improving oral presentation skills language value 2, (1) 51–67 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 53 need to acquire. however, learners’ input is often limited to a restricted range of examples of oral language, the main linguistic reference for spoken language being the teacher herself, frequently aided by audio (or video) material presenting short conversations from some pseudo-real situation purposely created for learners in a rather artificial way. typically, learners are asked to focus their attention on linguistic elements (such as words or sentence structures) which become the main source of information about language use, constructions or pronunciation. generally, learners manage to master basic listening and speaking skills, with some students being far more effective in their oral communication than others, possibly because of a natural predisposition to communication (allen et al. 2007). this traditional approach to learning oral communication skills presents several shortcomings. first of all, it may suggest to learners that the information that is essential to communication in the target language be conveyed only by means of what is spoken and not in what accompanies speech (ackerley and coccetta forthcoming). secondly, by focusing students’ attention on one modality (speech), this approach limits learners’ ability to produce and cope with the real language to be used in real-life situations. as mentioned above, non-verbal elements such as intonation, gaze, facial expressions, body movements and posture play an absolutely crucial role in the creation of a text’s meaning (see also mehrabian 1972) and cannot be neglected if the aim of instruction is to achieve successful communication (kellerman 1992, kelly 1999, mueller 1980, sueyoshi and hardison 2005, von raffler-engel 1980). finally, instruction that does not provide students with some awareness of languagespecific socio-cultural conventions may lead learners to adopt inappropriate culturallinguistic models, and thus contribute to the speaker’s failure to communicate. for example, it is argued that the inability of second language speakers to use the grammatical structures of the second language in accordance with the pragmatic and discourse norms of the l2 may lead to intercultural misunderstandings, often interpreted as instances of impoliteness (barron 2003). yet, the skills that can make the difference between minimal and effective communication can be taught, practiced, and improved. in particular, as this paper will discuss, the shortcomings of an elt approach that focuses on distinct abilities can be http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� maria grazia brusà language value 2, (1) 51–67 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 54 overcome with an approach to language instruction which is multimodal, that is, an approach that views communication as the result of the integration of multiple expressive resources. iii. a multimodal approach to teaching oral communication as seen above, one of the problems encountered in traditional elt is that students are presented with a restricted variety of oral texts, which are often void of reference to a real context. texts which make little reference to a context of situation may be extremely hard for learners to comprehend, because it puts them in the condition of having to rely solely on their linguistic knowledge – which may not be advanced enough – to understand a message. instead, providing students with the context of situation in which communication takes place means providing them with information about the meanings being exchanged, thereby adding important clues to help understand language. the interplay of different semiotic resources may help disambiguate possible unclear expressions by adding redundancy to the text. in either case, the presence of multiple modalities can help the learner get to the essence of the message. today, thanks to advances in technology, teaching oral communication can benefit greatly from the availability of a variety of forms of support. multimedia texts are now easy to find in the form of video and audio files on the internet. inexpensive, easily accessible and user-friendly technology can provide stimulating material, suitable to present authentic and varied communicative situations, for use in the classroom or at home. though the use of multimedia and online technologies does not automatically mean enhanced materials and enhanced learning (hewson and hughes 2001: 78; kaltenbacher 2004: 119-120), careful course design and a controlled use of multimedia resources can ensure that meaning is acquired multimodally, with a positive effect on language acquisition (ackerley and coccetta forthcoming). in addition, the use of authentic material can enhance students’ interest in classroom activities and increase their motivation to listen, understand, and learn. “listening to real people speaking about real-life experiences and interacting with other speakers in a natural way may be considered more stimulating than listening to actors reading scripts elaborated by efl writers” (ackerley and coccetta 2007). http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� sounding natural: improving oral presentation skills language value 2, (1) 51–67 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 55 one of the great advantages of introducing support forms in elt is that it allows teachers to provide a context for discourse participants, by combining and integrating various modes of communication. this helps teachers situate linguistic events in their socio-cultural settings, reduce the distance from unfamiliar situations, and make their comprehension easier for learners (donato and mccormick 1994). language learning can also be enhanced through the use of visual cues – which may help students organize relevant information in stored memory and aid the comprehension process (mueller 1980) – as well as body gestures and facial expressions (sueyoshi and hardison 2005), which seem to help contextualize language and facilitate the understanding of the role relations between speakers, thus stimulating learners to make a greater effort to comprehend. as has been claimed (ackerley and coccetta forthcoming, kellerman 1992), raising learners’ awareness of the multimodal nature of communication is a way to increase the strategies they have available for comprehending and dealing with texts in the l2. iv. the present study this paper reports on the experience of teaching english communication skills in a class of intermediate speakers of english (b1-b2 level) at the university of padua, italy. the course was offered to prepare students to use language in real-life situations, in academic, social or professional contexts. the course aimed to increase the students’ overall communicative competence by raising their awareness of the many levels at which communication works, based on the idea that social and linguistic meaning is constructed through the interplay of different semiotic resources. participation in the course was limited to 20 students, and classes were taught in a multimedia lab over a period of 12 weeks. iv.1. syllabus and material the course syllabus covered the following areas: lexicon and grammatical structures, as they are frequently used in a variety of http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� maria grazia brusà language value 2, (1) 51–67 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 56 different communicative situations (for example: ‘introducing yourself’, ‘small talk’, ‘what do you do for fun?’); text types and structures used in various kinds of discourse (e.g.: telling stories in casual conversation, telling jokes while delivering a speech); english pronunciation, with an emphasis on stress, intonation, discourse pauses, and explanations; basic notions of body language, with an emphasis on the meaning of particular hand gestures (contrasting italian and english), gaze and posture; ‘cultural awareness’, that is, an analysis of the language used in various types of discourse and reflecting the speakers’ sensitivity with regard to particular subjects (e.g., political correctness and/or taboo words; topics/questions to be avoided in conversational english); furthermore, the study of differences in the content and style of delivery of particular discourse types (e.g., when it is considered appropriate to use humor/to be quiet in formal situations). throughout the course, emphasis was placed on contrasts existing between the italian and british/american language and linguistic behavior (for obvious reasons, since the course was taught in italy), due the general interest of the students in these varieties of english and the availability of online material. the material for the course was partly created by the teacher (digital slides, pronunciation samples and practice with praat (www.praat.org) – see below), and partly retrieved online. all the video (and audio) clips were found online. youtube was the main source for the retrieval and use of authentic real-life speech and video material that provided most of the information on language and linguistic behavior for the learners. videos from youtube were used to introduce the lesson topics (e.g. what is ‘small talk’ and how is it used?), create listening exercises, show the dynamics of communication, and exemplify the language occurring in all the different types of linguistic situations examined in class (interviews, talk shows, news, monologues, presentations). some of the videos were part of web-based english courses and exercises (see below). these were used because, by showing a good degree of authenticity as compared to material that is generally available on other supports, these online courses appeared to be compatible with the approach adopted in this course. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.praat.org/� sounding natural: improving oral presentation skills language value 2, (1) 51–67 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 57 iv.2. methods and tools in order to teach and stimulate the learning of oral communication, a variety of methodologies and tools were used, as described below. iv.2.1. unit introduction the teacher introduced the main topic of the unit in the traditional fashion, i.e., with digital slides. the aim of this was to draw attention to the lesson topic, as well as to satisfy the students that require a formal approach to learning. after this formal introduction, the students were shown a video, where the same topic was presented by a native speaker. for this purpose, advantage was often taken of the availability of videos in online english courses. these videos often present a controlled linguistic situation, with a transcription of what the speaker(s) say(s), and thus provide a type of listening activity that is easier than authentic speech, in which many contextual factors may make listening comprehension more difficult (see iv.2.2. below). some of the courses that were used, and that became popular among the students, are reported in table 1. table 1. web-based courses used in class. learning english with mr. duncan general topics such as: introducing yourself, ‘small talk’, talking about the weather http://www.youtube.com/user/duncaninchina real english use of formulas used in real conversations http://real-english.com/ english meeting pronunciation of single sounds and of formulas, such as those used in greetings http://www.youtube.com/user/englishmeeting public speaking tips: delivering a great speech guidelines and advice on how to speak in public http://www.ehow.com/video_4959559_public-speaking-tips-delivering-great.html the purpose of watching a person on a video presenting the same topic that had been introduced formally by the teacher had the effect of adding a dimension of ‘reality’ to what the teacher had said and of presenting a different perspective on the topic in focus. the videos were also used to introduce explanations on linguistic structures, idioms, ways to say words, and convey meaning. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.youtube.com/user/duncaninchina� http://real-english.com/� http://www.youtube.com/user/englishmeeting� http://www.ehow.com/video_4959559_public-speaking-tips-delivering-great.html� maria grazia brusà language value 2, (1) 51–67 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 58 in addition to videos, at this stage in the lesson, pictures and other graphic materials were used to introduce students to the basics of body language and to illustrate the meaning of particular postures, and of hand, eye, head movements, as well as to stimulate discussions on cultural differences in body language during interactions and presentations (see figure 3). iv.2.2. watching, listening and reflecting after the lesson topic had been introduced, videos were used to show students examples of real-life communication in english, as well as to start up metalinguistic discussions on the speakers’ use of language (e.g., level of formality, expressions used, use of humor, use of emphatic stress and intonation, use of body language). where applicable, attention was drawn to the differences between each speaker’s communication strategies as compared to the expected italian communication strategies in similar contexts, as well as to the differences in discourse practices. for example, there are relevant differences between italian and english at the level of linguistic and discourse formality in many interactions. thus, it is customary for a person giving a talk or a lecture in front of a british/american audience to add a joke here and there to get the audience to laugh. this behavior would be considered inappropriate or at least unusual in italy in a similar situation, yet it is a behavior that should be learned as it is part of english discourse conventions. in this part of the lesson, the videos, featuring native speakers speaking to other fellow native speakers, presented greater comprehension problems for students than the videos which are part of english courses used in the first part of the lesson (see iv.1.1. above). for this reason, this session was preceded or followed by listening-comprehension activities, often based on the video transcriptions (prepared by the teacher beforehand), such as the introduction and explanation of key words, questions on the text, and fill in the blanks. the students then watched the videos, and worked on the listening comprehension exercises. the whole class was involved and the students were engaged in questions and answers about the content of the videos. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� sounding natural: improving oral presentation skills language value 2, (1) 51–67 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 59 iv.2.3. acting out in the final part of each class, after watching, comprehending and discussing the videos, the students had to prepare a short oral text with the same characteristics as the one watched in class. this involved using the same type of language and discourse strategies as those used in the model video. in the case of interactions (interviews, conversations and the like), the students had to work in pairs or groups. they then had to act out their speech, in front of the class, while being filmed by the class technician. in each case, the participants received oral or written feedback from the teacher. being filmed while speaking, english was a very important part of the course. the students received copies of their video-recordings at the beginning and at the end of the course. as part of their home assignments, the students prepared a youtube video, enacting a real-life situation similar to those analyzed in class. lastly, as a final assignment, they gave a formal presentation in front of the class to show their awareness of all the english language structures, intonation patterns, body language and communication strategies studied in class. for this presentation the students were also filmed and received written comments from the teacher, while the rest of the class would make comments on each individual’s presentation style. the course emphasis on filming students while speaking and giving them feedback on presentation styles was aimed at maximizing the students’ awareness about the multimodal nature of communication, based on the belief that raising students’ awareness enhances l2 learning (ackerley and coccetta forthcoming, kellerman 1992, kelly 1999, mueller 1980, sueyoshi and hardison 2005). v. the importance of teaching non-verbal language v.1. prosody and intonation having an l2-appropriate prosody and intonation is important for successful communication, because non-native use of speech pauses, volume, pitch and intonation have important pragmatic effects on how the speaker’s message is received by the listener. a great deal of emphasis was placed on pronunciation, and particularly sentence http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� maria grazia brusà language value 2, (1) 51–67 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 60 and discourse intonation, in the course. italian and english present major differences in their phonological and phonetic systems. it has been shown (e.g., busà 1995, flege et al. 2003, piske et al. 2002) that vowel production, a well-known pronunciation problem for italian learners of english, both correlates with the italian speakers’ perceived degree of accent in english and affects their intelligibility and successful communication in english. but vowel production is only part of a wider issue involving the way in which italian speakers of english produce english rhythm and prosodic patterns, which have been shown to have a major effect on speakers’ intelligibility and successful communication (e.g., kormos and dénes 2004, munro 2008, munro and derwing 2001, pickering 2002, 2004, wennerstrom 2000). in fact, pilot studies (busà 2007, 2010) suggest that italian intonation in english may be characterized by an overall flat contour, with no clear sentence stress or pitch peak, and with intonation patterns that are unvaried across different sentence types. this is unlike native intonation, which is characterized by the presence of strong sentence stress and pitch peaks, and by different intonation contours for different sentence types. the different intonation contours by italian speakers of english, resulting from processes of interference and transfer of phonological rules from italian into english, may lead to communication problems. because italian intonation in english does not cue the listener to salient information, given vs. new information, emphasis, and contrast through stress and pitch, it does not reflect an english-appropriate discourse information structure. moreover, because a level intonation is used in english to signal detachment, lack of interest or participation, the use of inappropriate intonation contours may also have paralinguistic effects, by contributing to the creation of a distorted image of the speakers’ levels of engagement in the proposition (busà 2007, 2010). the idea that intonation and prosody carry important meaning in communication led the teacher to draw continuous attention to speech sentence stress and intonation patterns. to raise the students’ awareness of the differences in their english intonation patterns as compared to native speakers’ intonation, praat (www.praat.org) was used. praat, a freeware tool which is widely employed to carry out acoustic analysis, was used to allow students to visualize their own sentence pitch patterns and compare them with http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.praat.org/� sounding natural: improving oral presentation skills language value 2, (1) 51–67 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 61 native speakers’ pitch patterns, following a method reviewed by chun (1998) and shown in figures 1-2 below. practice with this tool was encouraged at home as a means to improve overall intonation and expressiveness in english. figures 1 and 2. exemplification of the use of the software for speech analysis praat as a tool to aid pronunciation. figure 1 (left) shows the sound wave and pitch pattern, as visualized with praat, of the utterance ‘bye!’ spoken by an italian speaker before audiovisual feedback with a native speaker’s model. figure 2 (right) shows another utterance produced by the same italian native speaker after audiovisual feedback with a native speaker’s model, revealing great improvements in both the duration and pitch contour. v.2. body language in the process of communication, the human body contributes significantly to conveying important information about the speaker, his/her feelings and attitudes. when speaking a second language, it is important to be aware of what the body communicates when particular postures, gestures or facial expressions are used, as they may convey unintentional meaning and thus affect the outcome of l2 communication. in general, speakers may move too much or too little while speaking and this may affect the message they want to convey. italians are well known for using their hands a lot when they speak. some of the gestures commonly used by italians are so dense in meaning that italians assume they are also understood by other language speakers, though they may be meaningless to a non-italian. other gestures may carry a completely different meaning in a different language and the italian needs to be made aware of that. the students gained awareness of the meaning conveyed by major body postures and hand movements, as well as the importance of gaze in communication. figures and pictures were used to aid the description of the gestures presented in class. pictures of http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� maria grazia brusà language value 2, (1) 51–67 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 62 well-known figures from the world of politics were also used to exemplify how body language is associated, sometimes unconsciously, with a person’s position or personality (figure 3). the notions taught to the students were then discussed in all the videos watched in the course, and the students were encouraged to try to monitor their own gestures and gaze, and to use them appropriately as a means of emphasizing, and directing attention to the important parts of their speeches. figure 3. examples of pictures used to illustrate body language. vi. considerations on the teaching method and conclusions the course appeared to be highly effective in raising students’ awareness of facts about english communication and its workings. the students showed a definite improvement in their ability to structure different types of discourse (e.g., greetings, interviews, presentations) and to use common expressions and formulas that were suitable for different situations. they also showed an awareness of the meaning of body language, which surfaced as a visible and persistent attempt at controlling their italian-style hand movements, and to use english-like gestures instead, which became particularly evident when they used a non-italian way of counting from one to three (i.e., with palms facing the audience, rather than the speaker). as regards prosody, students did appear to try to use english-like intonation patterns, though the duration of the course (12 weeks) was http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� sounding natural: improving oral presentation skills language value 2, (1) 51–67 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 63 not enough to bring about a real change. overall, the experience with this course shows that it can be a useful (and indeed extremely effective) way to raise students’ awareness of english communication skills, and that an integrated multimodal communicative approach works well for teaching oral communication. to communicate successfully, the speaker needs to be aware that there are several elements of oral communication which can and should be used. traditional instruction in (first and) second language focuses on linguistic levels and verbal skills, the result being that students may not be able to deal effectively with real-life communication. restricting instruction to simple spoken texts is limiting and does not reflect real-life situations. instead, skills such as eye contact, body language, style, understanding the audience, adapting to the audience, active and reflexive listening, using formulas, conventions and discourse strategies as is appropriate in different linguistic situations and social interactions are as important to communication as language itself and should be integrated in classes focusing on spoken language. in fact, the complexity involved in oral communication requires a teaching method that includes all the elements that contribute to the meaning of the message. oral communication fulfills a number of general and discipline-specific pedagogical functions, and successful communication skills are in demand both in the private and the professional sphere. while becoming an outstanding speaker requires years of practice, students can improve their communication skills during a course if oral communication is a regular feature in elt enhanced by the use of multimodality/multimodal resources. references ackerley, k. and coccetta, f. forthcoming. “multimodality in an online english course”. in baldry, a. and e. montagna (eds.) interdisciplinary perspectives on multimodality: theory and practice. campobasso: palladino 1, 552-571. ackerley, k. and coccetta, f. 2007. “multimodal concordancing for online language learning: exploring language functions in authentic texts”. in baldry, a., m. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� maria grazia brusà language value 2, (1) 51–67 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 64 pavesi, c. taylor torsello and c. taylor (eds.) from didactas to ecolingua: an 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(eds.) 2004. perspectives on multimodality. amsterdam: john benjamins. wennerstrom, a. 2000. “the role of intonation in second language fluency”. in riggenbach h. (ed.) perspectives on fluency. ann arbor, mi: university of michigan press, 102-127. widdowson, h.g. 1978. teaching language as communication oxford: oxford university press. received october 2010 cite this article as: busà, m.g. 2010. “sounding natural: improving oral presentation skills”. language value, 2 (1), 5167. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue. issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� language value june 2020, volume 12, number 1 pp. 112-147 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es issn 1989-7103 language value, issn 1989-7103 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2020.12.6 112 maps of student genres in engineering: a didactic model for teaching academic and professional spanish language enrique sologuren insúa enrique.sologuren@uchile.cl universidad de chile, chile abstract textual genres written by university students have become the focus of attention due to their importance within disciplinary learning (parodi 2010). this paper has been developed in the field of study called student genres (navarro 2018) and it uses the analysis of situated genre (swales 2018, pérez-llantada 2015) as its methodological platform. this study has two main objectives: a) to create a map of student genres from a learner corpus of the engineering field and b) to propose a didactic model for teaching academic and professional spanish language using this map. hence, linguistic research and description are linked to students‟ pedagogical needs (breeze and sancho guinda 2017ab) and take into account the actual practice in the communities as well as the writers in these disciplines (curry and hanauer 2014). finally, implications for configuring specific didactics in lsp are discussed. keywords: discourse genres, writing in stem, academic and professional spanish language, genre pedagogy, genre maps, analysis of situated genre i. introduction i.1. student genres in engineering field this research addresses the field of academic writing in university education, specifically, the genres found in undergraduate academic training, through the description and analysis of a text corpus and of the thinking expressed by academics and students in the context of different stages and trajectories of disciplinary and professional learning. textual genres written by university students have become the focus of attention due to their importance, and the recognition that they have a wide range of functions within disciplinary learning (parodi 2010). this paper is concerned with the emergent field of study around “student genres” (navarro 2018) and seeks to provide more information about teaching languages for specific purposes at the rhetoricdiscursive level, reporting innovative practices in teaching spanish for academic and professional purposes. another motivation is to obtain deeper understanding of the dynamics, complexity and nature of the relations between discursive communities and the genres involved. by mailto:enrique.sologuren@uchile.cl maps of student genres in engineering: a didactic model for teaching academic and professional spanish language language value 12 (1), 112–147 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 113 probing this area, it will be possible to understand the interconnections and tensions between academia and the profession through the study of the communication patterns in the disciplinary knowledge in specific learning communities. hence, the study of academic cultures and genres can contribute to our knowledge of the trajectories of learners or new students when learning engineering related genres, and facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration between teachers of language for specific purposes (lsp) and the disciplinary communities in engineering and sciences. in this context, this research seeks to answer the following question: how can teachers and researchers in languages for specific purposes take full advantage of contemporary trends in higher education (in this case engagement with professional communities) to develop innovative pedagogies and practices? in this respect, mapping student genres (navarro 2014) is proposed using the analysis of situated genres (dressen-hammouda 2014, pérez-llantada 2015) informed by swales‟ notion of textography (1998, 2018). swales developed this idea from his research from the university herbarium located on the second floor in the biology building: “something more than a disembodied textual or discoursal analysis, but something less than a full ethnographic account” (swales 1998: 1). in this way, the analysis of the corpus (identification and definition) is complemented with ethnographic information collected from interviews with teachers and students who are part of the community of practice, as well as curricular documents related to the plan of studies or learning community that is being studied. the purpose of this analysis is to propose a way for this map of student genres to be valuable to develop innovative methodologies as well as collaborative and interdisciplinary practices between teachers of language for specific purpose (lsp) and teachers of the different disciplines of engineering. viewed from this perspective, the present article is organized as follows: firstly, theoretical statements that support the research are presented. secondly, the theoretical-methodological platform used is detailed. thirdly, results are introduced and discussed in the light of the research question above proposed. finally, a didactic model for teaching academic spanish in the engineering area is designed and conclusions and pedagogical implications for lsp are provided. enrique sologuren insúa language value 12 (1), 112–147 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 114 i.2. classification of student genres research carried out in the past decades has revealed that some discursive genres may show a significant intra and interdisciplinary variation (bhatia 1993, 2004, parodi 2007, 2008, 2015a, 2015b, kanoksilapatham 2015, venegas, núñez, zamora and santana 2015), while other genres may remain very stable and are homogeneous across different scientific fields (venegas 2006, 2007). in this respect, notions of genre sets and systems (bazerman 1994), genre colonies (bhatia 2004), genre families or macro-genres (martin and rose 2008) are highly productive. they specify the relations and overlap between genres, circulation field and comprehension and production from different disciplines: “any text is best understood within the context of other texts‟‟ (devitt 1991: 336). the concept of set of genres was introduced in research conducted by devitt (1991, 2004) on the work of tax accountants. she focuses on a limited group of genres, twelve in total, that interact with each other to develop the activities in the tax department where each genre “is aimed at carrying out particular work with specific audiences, such as clients or the tax system” (andersen, bazerman and schneider 2015: 306). thus, a set is conceived as a group of genres used by a person in his/her role within a community, for example, an undergraduate student. bazerman (1994) broadened the notion from group to genre system, linking it to the concept of activity system proposed by russell (1997). this idea is intended to emphasize that the relation between genres is part of a circulation system “where documents were produced in orderly sequences, responsive to each other” (andersen et al. 2015: 306). since text linguistics was born, the interest in classifying and organizing text reality has been a recurrent concern for researchers, analysts, and language professionals. classification of texts written by students during their academic training has become a main research task for a number of research studies recently (parodi 2010, gardner and nesi 2013). in the specific field of civil engineering, callut (1990) identifies seven genres particular to this field, described as scientific-technical genres, as seen in table 1. table 1. discursive genres in engineering. scientific-technical genres in engineering 1) technical brochure maps of student genres in engineering: a didactic model for teaching academic and professional spanish language language value 12 (1), 112–147 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 115 2) technical memoranda 3) contact 4) technical manual 5) product specification 6) report 7) tender basis conrad (2017), in research on the civil engineering writing project corpus based at portland state university, identified at least ten discursive genres written by students and practitioners of civil engineering. genres selected in this project applied to the teaching of the disciplinary writing are listed in figure 1: figure 1. identified genres in the civil engineering writing project corpus (conrad 2017) as observed, some of the genres identified by callut (1990) such as proposals, technical memoranda and reports are found in the map drawn by conrad (2017). in addition, four report types are highlighted in the list: reports, cover letter with reports, lab reports and site visit reports. this demonstrates the importance of the „report‟ in the field of engineering. genre instances linked to the work and professional world of engineering are also underlined: tender basis, projects, e-mails, plan sheet notes and regulations. finally, the „essay about engineering topics‟ emerges as an exclusive academic genre that can have a wide circulation. it is written by engineering students only, showing the continuity of enrique sologuren insúa language value 12 (1), 112–147 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 116 its high educational value in education in usa, even after high school years and freshman level in university (harvey 2009). all the reviewed research studies point to the importance of making reading and writing maps in university education. by doing this, it is possible to access the preferred discursive genres in different areas and the ones used for transmitting, producing and spreading specialized knowledge and tools for learning in the different fields. this research seeks to better understand the discursive genres of academic training in spanish, specifically in a sub discipline of civil engineering. in this respect, the aim is to deepen the findings stated above in the links established with the practice of writing, organization of the curriculum, challenges and obstacles in the process of academic and disciplinary literacy. consequently, these results will provide empirical data sustained in linguistic corpora to guide and provide feedback on teaching efforts in academic reading and writing in the institutions studied, and with projections to promote pedagogical devices in other contexts, either within chile or in latin america as a whole. ii. methodology ii.1. analysis of situated genre research is based on a qualitative multi-stage approach that considers a concurrent triangulation (creswell & creswell, 2018) of the methodological strategies that will be conducted in order to accomplish the objectives. these are: stage 1: interview analysis, stage 2: corpus analysis and stage 3: data integration and didactic proposal. this study has a descriptive exploratory scope, a non-experimental and cross-sectional design (pagano 2012), that is to say, ex post facto single-time design: research developed in a determined time frame (2016-2019). it will be a basic-applied approach (perry 2010), focused on exploration and description. qualitative techniques (creswell, 2014) and methods of ethnographic nature are used to cover the complexity of the teachinglearning process in academic writing. the situational variables chosen are the discursive genre, as a relevant written communicative activity for acquiring and confirming maps of student genres in engineering: a didactic model for teaching academic and professional spanish language language value 12 (1), 112–147 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 117 knowledge, curriculum as a key academic and social organizer, and computer science civil engineering as a subdiscipline. the qualitative element of this research will provide perspectives from the participants in the discourse community in detail (academics and students) in order to enrich the genre studies field. a qualitative phase helps to listen to the participants, that is, to incorporate an emic perspective (creese 2010) or obtain insights from inside the communities. it provides valuable contextual information that allows for understanding the phenomenon studied in a comprehensive way, related to the practice in the university classroom in computer science civil engineering in three chilean universities: pontificia universidad católica de valparaíso, universidad técnica federico santa maría and universidad de chile. this last factor helps us to give meaning to the wider production of academic genres in the practice of the writing and production of knowledge, as well as pedagogical interaction in the micro and in the macrocurricular level focusing on the singularity (stake 2008) of the subject of study. this study, given the above, considers three approaches to genre studies, focusing on academics, students and texts, that is, the product. an informed ethnographic approach (gardner 2008) is assumed, using some ethnographic research tools (sheridan 2012). in the following table 2, techniques and instruments for collecting information and participant selection criteria are specified: table 2. tools and selection criteria for interviews and focus groups. data collection tool selection criteria number 1) in-depth interviews academics/faculty members of each study program where teaching is developed in the capstone cycle. 4 academics per studies program 1 head teacher or director 3 academics of the cycle total participants: 14 academics 2) focus group students in the capstone cycle (seven to twelve semester accordingly). 5 to 8 students per program study, from each university total participants: 37 students. total participants in interviews and focus group 51 participants enrique sologuren insúa language value 12 (1), 112–147 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 118 guideline questions for the in-depth semi-structured interview are shown in table 3: table 3. protocol with main questions and probes for interview and focus group. in-depth and semi-structured interview questions main question what do students write in the capstone cycle in computer science civil engineering? probes what texts are requested to be written? how are they called? what is the structure of these texts? who are the recipients? what are the differences with other texts? what topics do they cover? what are the most difficult texts to write? why? what are the difficulties of these texts? ii.2. learner corpus hélice 2017 in order to describe student genres written by students of the capstone cycle of computer science civil engineering as part of the requirements of the specialization courses, a learner corpus was developed, called hélice 2017. this multigenre corpus includes 467 texts from three study programs in civil engineering from the three afore-mentioned prestigious chilean universities (quacquarelli symonds 2019), written from 2015 to 2019. it contains 1,413,437 words, exceeding the minimum of one million recommended for specialized corpora (pearson 1998, rea rizzo 2010). this description will contribute to understanding the formative role of these genres in the teaching-learning context in the classroom of computer science civil engineering. thus, through an ascending-descending approach, as a starting frame the proposal of parodi et al. (2008, 2010, 2015a) will be used. these genres were identified in a corpus of 467 texts from 2016 to 2019, and later characterized and defined under criteria such as communicative purpose, discursive organization, semiotic mode, circulation context, relation between participants and learning objective. for this an identification of discursive genres matrix (migd in spanish) was developed using parodi et al. (2008). a non-probabilistic purposive sample (pagano 2012) by convenience (corbetta 2006, pagano 2012) was obtained for the corpus. given they are occluded genres (swales 1996), and difficult to gather, a collection strategy was followed consisting of asking the maps of student genres in engineering: a didactic model for teaching academic and professional spanish language language value 12 (1), 112–147 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 119 students of the capstone cycle for the largest possible number of pass-grade written assignments (>=5.5) i . therefore, the corpus was formed by the students‟ selection of their own work in these courses; effectively, this presents some characteristics of selfcompiled corpora (lee and swales 2006). additionally, a small portion of the assignments were collected in the academic office or requested by e-mail to each academic. in this sense, it is a learner corpus (university capstone students). the courses of this cycle in each study program is detailed in appendix 1. a total of 103 students provided texts for the student text corpus, and each student contributed an average of 5 texts. iii. results and discussion iii.1. genres in the disciplinary discourse: genre system in the capstone cycle in computer science civil engineering (ici) iii.1.1. description by the teacher and student discourse each of the academic and disciplinary cultures possesses a potential genre group or genre system (martin and rose 2008) recognizable by their own members. in this section, a summary of discursive genres selected by academics and students from the practice communities of ici will be presented. as genre analysts have outlined (parodi et al. 2019), in order to tag genres written by student engineers, it is necessary to reconcile a wide range of terminology used to describe the texts, as in the case of the paper and the article or report, among others. genres identified in the capstone cycle of ici that students must write as part of the disciplinary training and integration are included. through the interviews and focus groups, 32 genres emerged, ascribed to the training stage as observed in table 4. table 4. student genres described by academics and students with code and number. nº code genre nº code genre 1 aic research article 18 ica case report 2 cas case of use 19 inf technical report 3 cer exam 20 lic tender basis 4 cod code 21 mai implementation manual enrique sologuren insúa language value 12 (1), 112–147 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 120 5 com commentary 22 map procedure manual 6 cu questionnaire 23 met methodology 7 defo oral defense graduate project 24 mod model 8 dt technical description 25 pw webpage 9 esc scenario of use 26 pn business plan 10 ea state of the art 27 pos poster 11 for forum 28 req requirement 12 tfg-a progress report of graduate project 29 erp problem solving 13 ilab lab report 30 res abstract 14 ipp internship report 31 taic paper translation 15 ipro project report 32 tfg undergraduate project report 16 inv research report 17 ial algorithm report as seen in the venn diagram in figure 2, academics identified a greater number of genres (30 in total) whilst students identified 18 genres. from these 18 genres, 15 of them were identified by academics and only three were exclusively named by students: code (cod), algorithm report (ial) and research report (inv). this conforms to the extensive discussion in the literature about the low degree of transparency when teaching genres to students (shaver 2007, graves, hyland and samuels 2010, navarro 2013, navarro et al. 2019). maps of student genres in engineering: a didactic model for teaching academic and professional spanish language language value 12 (1), 112–147 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 121 figure 2. genres identified by teachers and students of computer science civil engineering program studies. within the genres shared by both groups, the research article (aic) is outlined as it behaves as a macrogenre and can eventually subsume training genres such as state of the art (ea) and methodology (met), given their relation with prototypical sections of an aic (venegas 2006, sabaj 2012). thus, different specific varieties of reports are described: technical report (inf), internship report (ipp), project report (ipro), lab report (ilab), including the oral report as part of a genre chain (swales 2004). in effect, the report is articulated as a macrogenre (parodi et al. 2018) or family of genres that gathers specific genres together. in the economics and business field, descriptions of these genre forms for spanish language are found, such as the monetary policy report (parodi et al. 2015, vásquez-rocca and parodi 2015, vásquez-rocca 2016) and the financial stability report for spanish and german (gonzález and burdiles 2018), enrique sologuren insúa language value 12 (1), 112–147 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 122 while research on the civil engineering field is more scarce (marinkovich, sologuren and sahwy 2018, sologuren 2019; sologuren and castillo 2019). another of the student genres mentioned by students and teachers is the dissertation, bachelor‟s degree thesis or thesis, according to the name assigned by the academic unit, or undergraduate graduation project (tfg or “trabajo fin de grado”). a member of the faculty commented: “i usually ask my students not to be satisfied with what they wrote, but i ask them to think about other work that can result from what they already did. i, at least, demand that they write” (p06_dcc_05-1) thus, research writing emerges in the curriculum as a key component for developing complex thought. therefore, the tfg becomes a macrogenre (venegas 2010) inside which it is possible to find subgenres or genre resources that can be parts of a genre or can act independently such as ea and met. from there it is possible to see the necessity of describing student genres on their own, because “there is no systematic engagement between a potential genre expert and his/her own training „version‟” (ávila and cortés 2017: 165-166). in effect, student genres mutate dynamically depending on the perceived pedagogical necessities and according to social teaching motivations and knowledge credentials (dias et al. 1999, ávila and cortés 2017, bazerman 2017). in figure 1 it can be observed that teachers and students recognize two curricular genres (anson 2008): exam (cer) and abstract (res). in relation to the first genre, one of the interviewed academics who identified it quickly commented: “that‟s what they read, but they write very few documents, in general, as far as i know they answer exam questions and it‟s not uncommon when asked something they answer something completely different because they didn‟t understand the question, and that‟s a problem because they sometimes know the answer” (p02_inf_06-3) from the perspective of the teacher, this genre would be one of the most frequent, and one where students show comprehension and approach production problems. it seems to be a projection of general school genres (parodi et al. 2015). in the same way, the abstract genre (parodi, ibañez and venegas 2014) emerges as a genre resource that is highly valued from the textual production field. it is considered for the development of maps of student genres in engineering: a didactic model for teaching academic and professional spanish language language value 12 (1), 112–147 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 123 the ability to synthesize and for its enabling function when it is a supporting genre oriented to the realization of other genres guided by academic purposes of knowledge acquisition, such as the poster (pos): “that‟s different, the ability to synthesize is not well developed, like writing and speaking, and if you give the task of producing a poster they will write everything that comes to their minds, that‟s why they need to be given the format” (p07_ici_009-10). the interrelation of the written and the oral mode and the importance given to orality is also manifested in the poster genre (pos). it is defined as “a multimodal communicative genre, with text, graphics, colour, speech, and even gesture used to convey meaning” (kress and van leeuwen 2001). it is often labelled as a less prestigious genre among the constellation of academic genres (swales 2004) and it is perceived as second-class (macintosh-murray 2007) compared to oral presentations (swales and feak 2000). however, the situation is changing nowadays because posters “are an increasingly important part of scientific conferences and constitute a valid and interesting alternative to paper presentations at conferences” (d‟angelo 2010). now, the relevance of the sociodiscursive practice of innovation (sabaj 2017, 2019) is added, as well as entrepreneurship, especially in engineering, that has promoted new genres and the revaluing of discursive practices that help the display and development of an idea from conception until completion. finally, among genres recognized by both groups, there is a set of student genres colonized (bhatia 2002) by the professional discourse (bolívar and parodi 2015) or defined in another way, namely as genres belonging to non-academic professional discourse (navarro 2012), of an instructional or educational nature. they are the genre forms named here as tender basis (lic), webpage (pw), requirement (req) and commentary (com). meanwhile, lic can be classified as an imported genre (parodi 2014, bolívar and parodi 2015) widely shared within the engineering discipline (callut 1990 for an early classification of the types of texts in engineering, req and com). they are genres that future computer science civil engineer will have to produce when working. enrique sologuren insúa language value 12 (1), 112–147 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 124 table 5. genres, requirements and comments emerged by academics and students of ici. req selection criteria “yes, i think we know how to identify the requirements the best and, therefore, to know how to express them better and write them in a document” (e11_dcc_21-24). “reports titled under a required specification and a required design. they have a narrative portion and many graphics of nomenclature portions that we use to identify systems” (p09_inf_004-1) “our program studies work with too many softwares, they have requirements we need to meet and we are experts reading a document, to take the requirements of the software asked and then write it in a report under a requirement 1, requirement 2 and explain and explain it again in detail” (e12_dcc_21-25). “it is ironic because in programming we are taught alt command to comment a code and we write a commentary and the commentary doesn‟t affect you what the program has to do or the person reading it, it helps us, but when we write it down in the test, i say this because i didn‟t think about it or because i did it so, we are not given point, not because we are commenting if i want the code, then why do they teach us that if they don‟t want that” (e10_ici_22-6). “for example, in a code we write a commentary about the function it receives, stays there and what it does and everything explained in few lines so later one week reading codes” (e09_ici_23-8). “for example in computer science, in programing there is a topic that… commentaries, i don‟t know, i have a program and i should have commentaries, then what commentary level should i have, to be understood, because if no one will use this program why i am commenting, but maybe in the future somebody will have to change something here or they will use it as a base for another one, then i should leave commentaries” (p07_inf_004-5). for req, teachers and students agreed to point out the disciplinary relevance of this resource as part of the typical work in computer science civil engineering, emphasizing a narrative, explanatory and descriptive element in the explanation. for its part, com is also a typical genre in computer science. students e09 and e10 in table 4 explain the utility of this genre form in programming, but they express a mismatch in the teaching and evaluation of this genre. for teachers, commenting involves considering the development of future programming experts, as observed in table 2,the idea being that their programming notes can be used, improved and adapted by other professionals of the field. maps of student genres in engineering: a didactic model for teaching academic and professional spanish language language value 12 (1), 112–147 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 125 iii.1.2. student genres in the hélice-2017 learner corpus for bhatia (2004, 2016) genre theories can be defined in different ways, since they have an ongoing life in “the real world of discourse”. in this sense, we face a challenge in the process of analysing the interrelations and connections between different genres. in fact, relations and connections between genre forms is for swales (2016) one of the most important current topics for lsp. in this context, it is necessary to consider the notions of macrogenre and microgenre as relevant analytic categories to understand the complex relations between genres. a macrogenre is defined as “a genre unit of higher hierarchy formed by genres” (venegas, zamora and galdames 2016: 252) where varied genres can be included. additionally, a microgenre can work as an element of a macrogenre, as „embedded‟ in terms of martin and rose (2012), as part of a genre (breeze 2016) or as functional rhetoric segments (cotos and chung 2019). based on these ideas, my results from the identification, delimitation and characterization of student genres from a double perspective (typological and topological) will be expounded and discussed in the following sections. the analysis results in the identification of 33 gefics, as seen in table 3, meaning that there is great diversity in this subdiscipline of civil engineering. figure 3 shows the genres identified and the percentages of texts that belong to each genre. enrique sologuren insúa language value 12 (1), 112–147 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 126 figure 3. configuration of hélice-2017 multigenre corpus. table 6 contains the 33 student genres in computer science engineering with the access number to the text corpus and the identification code: table 6. list of the 33 discursive genres identified from the text learner corpus hélice-2017. nº code genre nº code genre 1 ipro project report 18 iev evaluation report 2 pn business plan 19 ea state of the art 3 glo glossary 20 ian business analysis report 4 lic tender basis 21 tfg-a progress report of tfg 5 erp problem solving 22 tfg-p exam proposal report 6 tfg undergraduate project report 23 met methodology 7 isoft software report 24 en essay 8 ilab lab report 25 esc scenario of use 9 ipp internship report 26 fi card of state 10 icas case report 27 idiag knowledge evaluation 11 cu questionaire 28 pent protocol of interview 12 cas use of case 29 ef financial statement 13 mod model 30 icon consultancy report 14 ial algorithm report 31 irreflex reflexive report maps of student genres in engineering: a didactic model for teaching academic and professional spanish language language value 12 (1), 112–147 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 127 15 dt technical description 32 iterr field report 16 res abstract 33 iev evaluation report 17 inv research report 18 iem market research report the overview of the genre composition of this corpus shows the appearance of the report macrogenre with an appreciable variety of genre instances (15), the emergence of professional oriented genres, and other mostly didactic ones. in addition, genre resources linked to processes of scientific research and to genres of discourse on economics are noted. in this respect, the genre conformation of this corpus is similar, as expected, to that for the academic discourse in civil engineering and industrial chemistry engineering (parodi 2008), physics and chemistry (parodi 2012, 2014) and economics (parodi et al. 2015). other genres linked to social sciences, information sciences and other disciplinary specific genres from the computer science field have also emerged. furthermore, genre forms in the professional world surface, displaying a diverse intertwine (flowerdew 2003, bolívar and parodi 2015) between academic discourse and professional discourse. in this perspective, we find overlaps with innovation (sabaj 2017) and entrepreneurship (varas 2017) discourses. this wide diversity of identified genres shows the interdisciplinary nature and considerable hybridization in this subdiscipline of civil engineering. the results of my characterization of student genres in computer science civil engineering make it possible to group genres into seven macrogenres or genre families as defined in table 7. table 7. macrogenres identified from text corpus and the definition. nº macrogenre or genre family code genre 1 technical report mgitec genres that belong to this category share the macropurpose of writing the state of a procedure, an experiment work, a development or a project. genres that belong in this category are the following 15 student genres: ipro, isoft, ilab, ipp, icas, ial, inv, iem, ieval, ian, idiag, icon, iterr enrique sologuren insúa language value 12 (1), 112–147 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 128 and irreflex. in addition, this family takes into account the microgenre: ef 2 plan mgpla n the genre resources that belong to this genre family share as a communicative macropurpose persuading a professional audience about a determined proposal in a work context. genres that belong to this category are: pn and lic. 3 requirement mgreq u this macrogenre integrates genres that share the communicative macropurpose of guiding a specialized audience about the criteria to start or to hold a process. macrogenres that belong to this category are: cas, esc and fi. 4 model mgmo d genres that belong to this collection share the communicative macropurpose of representing a procedure, a phenomenon or an entity to emerge the meaning within a determined process. macrogenres that belong to this category are: mod and dt. 5 methodology mgmet this genre family is formed by discursive genres which communicative macropurpose is to describe the procedures developed by the academic writer in a determined research or innovation project. the represented microgenres in this category are: met and pent. 6 didactic exercise mgeje d the macrogenre is formed by genres that share the communicative macropurpose of instructing about a specific disciplinary topic. they are genres that “display didactic resources with a clear emphasis on teaching/learning processes” (parodi et. al 2015: 183). this intends to favor an autonomous learning of the students and to strengthen the knowledge of disciplinary key concepts. discursive genres that belong to this genre family are: cu, glo and res. 7 undergraduate project report mgtfg genres in this category answer to a “research written report of evaluative accreditative nature, submitted by university students as the dissertation, a requirement to obtain a such as a bachelor degree, a master‟s degree maps of student genres in engineering: a didactic model for teaching academic and professional spanish language language value 12 (1), 112–147 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 129 or a ph.d., and it must be presented and orally defended before a commission of experts to be approved” (venegas 2010: 13). the shared communicative macropurpose is persuading about a particular research or development. genres that belong to this genre family are: tfg-p and tfg-a. moreover, it is possible to understand from this text analysis how each macrogenre is situated on a continuum from a prominently professional academic nature to a professional non-academic nature that connects training with work areas (figure 4). figure 4. continuum of macrogenre conforming disciplinary discourse in undergraduate studies for computer science civil engineering program. it can be observed on this continuum that the predominance is given by intertwining and overlapping (flowerdew 2003, bolívar and parodi 2015) between what is known as „academic‟ discourse (+academic) and „professional‟ discourse (+no academic) showing hybridization as a characteristic phenomenon of the genres produced by students of computer science civil engineering. in effect, three out of the seven genre families are located in the middle of the continuum: mgitec, mgmet and mgmod. this occurs because the genre resources do not correspond exclusively to either of the poles, but the genres conforming them are either related to a strictly academic field, a strictly professional field or they are hybrid genre instances that facilitate the disciplinary learning. enrique sologuren insúa language value 12 (1), 112–147 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 130 mgtfg is situated at one end of the continuum, representing the final episode of the program studies in which the author submits a text that evaluates his/her knowledge of the field (montemayor-borsinger 2014: 268). on the other end, the mgrequ family gathers those defining genres of the work sphere of any computer science civil engineer and that characterize their daily duties. as seen in figure 3, the mgplan family is situated slightly further away from the no academic end. although it contains strongly professionally oriented genres, its focus on academic training has assisted in surfacing situated variations of the genre, which: “plays a key role in entrepreneurship and is used in educational settings” (navarro 2015b: 150). additionally, closer to the academic end, the mgejd family appears in the university undergraduate training of this discipline gathering curricular genres (christie 2002), genres that for this author are realized in a regulatory register related to instructions and educational objectives to be covered, and an instructional register connected to curricular content and cognitive abilities to be developed. in this sense, they respond to the sociosemiotic process (mathiessen 2007, 2015) of enabling, which, in a secondary degree of delicacy, established in the register cartography (mathiessen 2007), considers instruction and regulation. iii.3. didactic model for teaching academic and professional spanish in civil engineering a group of phases and criteria is proposed from this mapping, thus facilitating the articulation of a model to teach academic spanish language and to develop a didactic proposal based on textual genres which are important for training and for professional performance, including genres which are actually used in the scientific, academic and professional fields of civil engineering. phase 1: diagnostic knowledge evaluation of requirements and difficulty in writing different genres in the capstone cycle of civil engineering study programs. this phase aims to understand the characteristics that academics and students identify in genres that must be written as part of the different courses in order to efficiently achieve the informative-evaluative function of academic discourse. moreover, it is intended to maps of student genres in engineering: a didactic model for teaching academic and professional spanish language language value 12 (1), 112–147 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 131 evaluate the main difficulties experienced by academics and students during the academic writing process of each genre. phase 2: description of discursive genres in the civil engineering field the focus of this phase is to describe genres based on lexical grammar, semanticdiscursive, rhetoric and stylistic features (manrique, zapata and venegas 2019), and at the same time, to relate the student genre map to the communicative purposes of the genres, the key courses in the curriculum and the functions for which the genres are used. phase 3: collaborative and interdisciplinary work with teachers in the engineering field (bauerle, hatfull and hanauer 2014). this phase is based on a group of steps that may help the curricular insertion of discursive abilities in spanish in courses on computer science civil engineering. 1) validation of the genre description together with academics of the engineering field in order to develop a verification process with the specialist (bhatia 2002) and to enrich the possible use of the genre. 2) presentation and analysis of genres organized in macrogenres, genre families or colonies (bhatia 2004, luzón 2005) considering the communicative macropurpose and the disciplinary learning unit where it is inserted. at this stage it is also important to consider more or less specialized possible contexts in which each genre is used. from the results obtained, an explicit teaching of the seven identified and defined macrogenres is proposed, so that the students will strengthen their genre knowledge, and they will be ready to approach emerging genres that enter the system or genre colony. 3) design of writing tasks with the collaboration of lsp teachers and professors of engineering that help students to display their genre skills, paying attention to the communicative purposes in the diverse discursive communities where these genres are used and analysis of lexicogrammar and rhetoric-discursive features. enrique sologuren insúa language value 12 (1), 112–147 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 132 4) specification of the relations between discursive genres, and, in particular, pedagogical activities promoting analysis and development of genre chains that involve the development of discursive trajectories not only displaying writing skills, but also oral and reading skills, such as the business plan (pn), tender basis (lic) or internship report (ipp). 5) comparison of different genres with similar communicative purposes, for example, knowledge evaluation (idiag) and evaluation report (ieval), in order to observe the communicative and linguistic differences produced in terms of communicative function, writing objective and target audience. in addition, it is relevant to observe how they are integrated, and how different genres and microgenres from the corpus can be used, e.g., the abstract (res), state of the art (ea), problem solving (erp), the case of use (cas), scenario of use (esc), model (mod), financial statement (ef). these can behave as embedded genres or parts of a genre (breeze 2016). iv. closing comments progressive analysis of genres that are situated in and connected to the community of practice and the learning community allows for a gradual development of more comprehensive rhetoric knowledge. this knowledge will be fundamental to successfully address multiple communicative contexts and problems that engineering students will face throughout their undergraduate years, as well as in their future work, either in the industry or in other organizations. additionally, the use of a sound theoretical background and the incorporation of research resources (such as the learner corpus hélice-2017) are likely to assist students in discovering the academic and specialized spanish language used in computer science civil engineering, so they can become language „detectives‟ (since “every student [is] a sherlock holmes” (johns 1997: 101)). this learning process will equip them with a more nuanced metadiscursive awareness and strategies of text metaproduction. their heightened level of awareness of texts and textuality is bound to maps of student genres in engineering: a didactic model for teaching academic and professional spanish language language value 12 (1), 112–147 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 133 enhance writing quality in a given subdiscipline, being an element of great importance for transmitting and proving knowledge. in this sense, and trying to answer the research question: how can teachers and researchers in languages for specific purposes take full advantage of contemporary trends in higher education (in this case engagement with professional communities) to develop innovative pedagogies and practices? lsp teachers may use reading and writing maps as a valuable input to negotiate processes with academics, to increase students‟ rhetorical sensitivity (guerra 2016), and to help them build knowledge about professional discourse and its diverse forms since: “they also build bridges between higher education and the real world, by motivating learners with authentic documents from their fields of expertise and improving their information literacy and communicative abilities” (breeze and sancho-guinda 2017: 215). finally, and as a projection, one of the future challenges lies in organizing the transition from the discursive genres produced during the formative stage in the faculty of engineering, to incorporate specificities about all the subdisciplines such as geology, and produce didactic resources for the curricular insertion of genres in the reports written in each key course of the engineering field. this process will contribute to developing a situated and contextualised support system, as well as providing more informed feedback on academic and professional writing. this will also lead to an update of the curricular tools in engineering education. owing to the above initiatives, a refined model of text production will emerge that considers all the stages and strategies necessary for genre-based didactics in the stem field. notes i according to the university grading system of chile. acknowledgements i would like to thank the three departments of computer science civil engineering that participated in this research: escuela de ingeniería informática (pucv), departamento de ingeniería informática (usm) y departamento de ciencias de la computación enrique sologuren insúa language value 12 (1), 112–147 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 134 (uchile). also, the projects of consorcios ingeniería y ciencias para el 2030 (corfo): 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(ed.) lingüística de corpus y discursos especializados: puntos de mira. valparaíso: euvsa, 411–433. — 2010. caracterización del macro-género trabajo final de grado en licenciatura y magíster: desde los patrones léxico-gramaticales y retórico-estructurales al andamiaje de la escritura académico disciplinar. informe proyecto fondecyt 1101039. venegas, r., núñez, m. t., zamora, s. and santana, a. 2015. escribir desde la pedagogía del género. guías para escribir el trabajo final de grado en licenciatura. valparaíso: pucv. enrique sologuren insúa language value 12 (1), 112–147 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 146 venegas, r., zamora, s. and galdames, a. 2016. “hacia un modelo retóricodiscursivo del macrogénero trabajo final de grado en licenciatura”. revista signos, 49 (1), 247–279. appendix 1 table 8. courses in applied engineering. nº code university 1 code university 2 code university 3 1 ici5240 sem 9 artificial intelligence ili225 sem 7 software engineering cc5401 sem 9 software engineering ii 2 ici5440 sem 9 human factors in software projects ili255 sem 7 introduction to computer theory cc5402 sem 10 software project 3 ici5540 sem 9 database workshop ili256 sem 7 computing networks cc4102 sem 8 algorithm design and analysis 4 ici5341 sem 10 distributed systems ili264 sem 8 systems and organizations cc4302 sem 8 operating systems 5 ici5544 sem 10 business engineering ili285 sem 7 scientific computing i cc4303 sem 8 networks 6 ici6440 sem 11 new technologies in organization inf293 sem 7 operation research in3301 sem 9 project evaluation 7 ici6441 sem 11 administration of computing projects inf322 sem 8 interface design cc5901 sem 9 professional internship 8 ici6442 sem 11 business intelligence inf295 sem 8 artificial intelligence cc5601 sem 10 preparation and evaluation of projects ti 9 ici6540 sem 11 bachelor‟s degree seminar inf343 sem 8 distributed systems cc6908 sem 10 introduction to thesis project 10 ici6541 sem 12 thesis project inf266 sem 8 administrative systems cc6909 sem 11 thesis project 11 iciprac sem 10 internship 2 inf228 sem 10 workshop of computing project development cc5206 sem 10 elective class 12 ici5542 sem 9 computer project design inf309 sem 10 thesis project 1 13 ici6003 sem 12 elective class inf310 sem 11 thesis project 2 maps of student genres in engineering: a didactic model for teaching academic and professional spanish language language value 12 (1), 112–147 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 147 14 ici5142 sem 10 research of advanced operations icn270 sem 7 information and financial mathematics received: 06 november 2019 accepted: 30 may 2020 cite this article as: sologuren insúa, enrique. 2020. “maps of student genres in engineering: a didactic model for teaching academic and professional spanish language”. language value, 12 (1), 112-147. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.languagevalue.uji.es. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2020.12.6 issn 1989-7103 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ review of some terminology management systems for the development of (specialised) dictionaries: a focus on wordsmith tools and termstar xv language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2011, volume 3, number 1, 162-173 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors 162 multimedia review terminology management systems for the development of (specialised) dictionaries: a focus on wordsmith tools and termstar xv mike scott, 2011 <http://www.lexically.net/downloads/version6/html/index.html> star servicios lingüísticos, 2011 <http://www.star-spain.com/es/tecnologia/term.php> reviewed by nuria edo marzá nedo@ang.uji.es universitat jaume i, spain this review aims to focus on the analysis of the technical possibilities offered by two of the main terminology management systems (tmss) – the corpus-query program wordsmith tools (currently in its 6.0 version) and the multilingual terminological database termstar xv. subsequently, they will be compared with other similar systems that are currently available, as well as in terms of their potential for the development of (specialised) dictionaries. terminology management includes a series of activities ranging from terminology extraction to the creation and validation of terminology, including the classification, retrieval and exchange of such terminology (mesa-lao 2008). therefore, being aware of the most appropriate tms according to one’s particular needs is paramount for three main types of users: terminologists, translators and authors. in this review, our attention will be focused on terminologists’ needs. consequently, the software tools or tmss analysed here were chosen because of their potential in the two main stages generally involved in the dictionary-making process: 1) term extraction and term in-corpus analysis, and 2) data processing, management and storage. for the first main stage, a closer look will be taken at wordsmith tools (wst), monoconc pro and antconc, some of the more readily available and reasonably priced packages for working with corpora, with the aim of contrasting the different options they provide. then, for the second big stage mentioned, termstar xv will be analysed http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.lexically.net/downloads/version6/html/index.html� mailto:nedo@ang.uji.es� book and multimedia review language value 3 (1), 162–173 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 163 and compared with other similar software systems such as anylexic, sdl multiterm, multitrans termbase, déjà vu x termbase and gesterm. the main aspects of these software tools that will be reviewed will be mostly those related with the possibilities offered as regards their functionality and management, their potential for the creation of terminological cards and for the retrieval of specific information (specific searches or data filters), the management of export and import tasks, and the user-friendliness of the environment, among others. the first main stage in the development of any specialised dictionary, i.e. that of term extraction and term in-corpus analysis, is normally carried out by means of corpusquery programs or software concordance programs like wordsmith tools. wst is an integrated suite of programs for looking at how words behave in texts (scott 2011), apart from providing varied corpus counts which may be useful for different purposes. hence, wst is a corpus-query program capable of processing large numbers of texts with the aim of identifying characters or chains of characters that could be potential terms. term extraction is thus “an operation which takes a document as input and produces a list of term candidates as output” (streiter et al. 2003: 2). those terms are then analysed in context in order to verify or revoke their “term status” in real use. the software concordance program wordsmith tools is a collection of three programs or applications: wordlist, concord and keywords. with wordlist the user can create frequency and alphabetical lists and even a combination of the two; it also reveals relevant statistical and numerical data, and different wordlists can be compared. furthermore, wordlist offers the possibility of easily showing how many of our texts each word occurred in. this is important because frequency does not always imply importance or relevance in discourse – it may simply be due to some author’s idiosyncrasies – and this is easily noticeable if we check that a top frequency word is top-frequent only in a given text from the corpus. wordlist also allows the user to lemmatise and to make a word list with pairs or triplets of words (n-grams), for which he/she will first need to compute an index file. concord is the pure concordance application of wst and thus the one in charge of generating lists of concordance lines (also known as key word in context – kwic), apart from automatically identifying words that appear jointly a given number of times: http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� terminology management systems for the development of (specialised) dictionaries: a focus on wordsmith tools and termstar xv by nuria edo marzá language value 3 (1), 162–173 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 164 collocations, clusters (groups) and patterns (structures). for instance, concord enables researchers to find recurring clusters, i.e. multi-word units, from within the entire corpus. it also allows users to perform multi-word queries and provides the plots (or distributions across the corpus) of the lexical units analysed. the concord application concordance also generates polylexical lists in which the degree of interdependence or the degree of the link or relation between words is established through the measure “mutual information”. concord also has sort functions that allow users to sort concordance lines in several ways with respect to the search word, which can provide insights on word uses and senses. finally, the keywords application retrieves a series of key words from the corpus and this keyness is established by determining those words from the corpus which occur unusually frequently in comparison with some kind of reference corpus. collocates, plots, patterns and clusters can also be analysed with keywords. nonetheless, apart from wst, nowadays there are many other alternative corpus query programs with similar applications and possibilities. antconc and monoconc pro are just a couple of examples from the many software packages currently available to carry out corpus-based research. all of them offer the basic functions expected of any concordance software program: frequency and kwic lists generation, clusters and collocates retrieval, concordance plots generation, different sorting possibilities, and so forth. the differences have mainly to do with the user-friendliness of the programs, the displays of data offered and their specific ability to carry out certain tasks. in general, the three programs mentioned here for term extraction and term in-corpus analysis are valid and reliable, even when wst seems to show a greater potential with respect to the other two in terms of the number of functions it is able to perform. monoconc pro is a fast concordance program with a really good user-interface. apart from the intuitive nature of its interface, monoconc pro also presents a feature not shared by the other two that makes it particularly attractive for researchers, namely: the split screen which allows users to expand the context of an entry line when highlighting it, the fuller context being displayed in the upper window. as reppen (2001) states, in wst, the entire display must be expanded or reduced, so the context is expanded for all of the entries being viewed rather than for a single highlighted entry. monoconc http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� book and multimedia review language value 3 (1), 162–173 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 165 pro is thus easy to use (in fact it is the program that is generally used nowadays for language learning purposes) but it also comes with a range of powerful features such as context search, regular expression search, part-of-speech tag search, collocations and corpus comparison. its simplified version, monoconc easy, however, has many of the features of monoconc pro, but does not include some of the advanced features such as the advanced sort and corpus comparison. monoconc pro is known for its intuitive interface but monoconc easy is even easier to use, as its name indicates, and is therefore a good choice for less experienced concordance users. it is thus very useful for general concordancing and for use in computer labs, but it is probably not the best option for terminologists and terminographers, since the program is targeted more towards student and teaching use than for in-depth, professional corpus research. therefore, the main advantage of monoconc pro over wordsmith tools is that it is much easier to use. for example, when monoconc pro is launched, a clear easy-to-use screen appears with a bar across the top, providing the options available. the screens are clearer, and since they resemble the screens of many word processing programs, users, especially those starting out in corpus analysis, may feel more comfortable. nevertheless, when wordsmith is launched there are many screens that appear, and it may be more time-consuming and a bit challenging until the user becomes familiar with the program. however, in addition to the functions that these programs have in common, wordsmith is able to perform a number of useful tasks that monoconc pro and antconc are not, apart from providing a greater range of features and possibilities in terms of establishing and working with personalised settings: for example, wordsmith can provide information about the distribution of a feature in a single text or across texts. distributions are shown with a graph that plots the occurrences of the target item in the text or corpus […]. the distribution of a particular lexical or grammatical feature across a text or series of texts can provide interesting information about the text structure and also about how the feature functions across various texts (reppen 2001: 34). to sum up, all three programs – wst, monoconc pro and antconc – include many of the same features, such as the ability to create word lists (in both alphabetical order and order of frequency), generate concordance output and give collocation information. in addition, they can all easily handle large corpora and work with either tagged or untagged texts. however, the three programs have different strengths: antconc and http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� terminology management systems for the development of (specialised) dictionaries: a focus on wordsmith tools and termstar xv by nuria edo marzá language value 3 (1), 162–173 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 166 monoconc pro have the added advantage of being free software packages that are quite easy to manage and conceptually, for users who feel less comfortable with computers, antconc’s and monoconc pro's interfaces are far more user-friendly than that of wordsmith. in fact, antconc is probably the simplest to use and performs the basic functions, but has the shortcoming of not offering many ways of saving the results. however, despite the fact that wst may seem less user-friendly at first sight, it is also easy to use once you have spent a little time with it and its potential – in terms of the number of features offered and options available – is much bigger than that of the other two programs. obviously, it is the terminographers themselves who have to make the final choice as to which one best suits their needs but, in general, wst would be the best choice for terminologists and for the more professional researcher and terminologist. austermühl (2001: 102) defined terminology management as 'the documentation, storage, manipulation and presentation' of terminology, which could at the same time be defined as the specific vocabulary of a specialised area. accordingly, terminologists grant a great deal of importance to the necessary creation of multilingual terminological databases, also understood here as tmss. such databases for managing and storing terminology are mainly assessed on the basis of their compatibility with various languages and alphabets, on the possibility of carrying out global changes, and on the flexibility of management tasks. therefore, the very definition of terminological database may help us understand its importance for terminological tasks: a computerised storage system of lexical elements that are structured according to a series of criteria (alphabetical order, conceptual hierarchy, etc.), according to the users and according to the purpose of the terminological compilation, which must be flexible and accurately reflect the relationships between the hierarchies of information, making the loading of all the pertinent data and their rapid retrieval with varied possibilities of presentation feasible (gómez gonzález-jover and vargas sierra 2003). it is a fact that the easiest way to store terminological data is to do it in software tools or databases that do not require much training or significant expense. they must also allow data storage or simple import and export tasks to be performed using applications like a word-processor such as ms word, a spreadsheet application such as ms excel or a database management system such as ms access. however, the potential of these tools is not comparable with that offered by other tmss, such as termstar, or other similar http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� book and multimedia review language value 3 (1), 162–173 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 167 software products such as anylexic, sdl multiterm, multitrans termbase, déjà vu x termbase or gesterm. in this review and for the second big stage pointed out here in the dictionary-making process (i.e. data processing, management and storage), termstar xv was the point of departure for analysis and comparison. termstar xv is a terminological database, a system of multilingual terminological management oriented towards the concept. this implies that termstar is completely focused on meaning and not on the terms of each language. it allows the user to open a new register (terminological card) for each concept, not for each term, since a concept may contain different terms and linguistic variants for a single object, characteristic or action. an example of this could be the term “mouse”, either as a computer device or an animal: the term is the same but the concepts are different. accordingly, with termstar xv, different registers may be created for different concepts denominated by the same terminological unit. termstar allows for more than 50 different fields in each register, some of them assigned by default by the program and some others which can be defined according to the users’ needs and the final objective(s) of the work. in this way, a personalised distribution model of the fields (layout) may be enhanced so that the terminologist can optimise his/her work and find it easier to focus on the target aimed at. figure 1 shows an illustrative register under development from termstar, designed according to the terminographer’s needs for a prospective specialised bilingual dictionary of the ceramics industry. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� terminology management systems for the development of (specialised) dictionaries: a focus on wordsmith tools and termstar xv by nuria edo marzá language value 3 (1), 162–173 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 168 figure 1. register under development from termstar and showing a personalised layout. as indicated on the star group webpage (http://www.star-spain.com/es/inicio/), termstar can be accessed as an integrated part of the translation memory and editor transit, as a macro module of several common text-processing software products (e.g. microsoft word), or as a stand-alone dictionary application, which is the option presented here. termstar also offers the possibility of quickly and easily creating registers and having immediate access to them. in the same way, the management carried out by the database management system allows the user to gain rapid and easy access to the data, to have these data ordered according to different criteria, to relate the different data items to each other, and so forth. apart from the ones already mentioned, gómez gonzález-jover (2005) points out some other technical features that make termstar an overall satisfactory system – despite its price – for the management of terminological data:  the number of databases which can be created with termstar is unlimited, as well as offering the possibility of opening them all at the same time if desired. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.star-spain.com/es/inicio/� book and multimedia review language value 3 (1), 162–173 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 169  the number of registers/terminological cards in each database is also unlimited.  the structure of registers/terminological cards is fixed but dynamic.  the register/terminological card contains more than 50 fields, some of them predetermined, with administrative information (for instance the number of the concept, graphics, images, entry date, etc.) and some others of a terminological nature that can be repeated in the card/register in each of the working languages.  the number of working languages is also unlimited.  it is possible to perform searches of truncated words with the character asterisk, as well as to specify the fields to search (term, abbreviation, synonyms, etc.).  in addition to the search function, the program also provides, by means of filters, another way of searching for terms.  cross references in the form of hyperlinks can be created either manually or automatically (this option allows the terminographer to go from one card to another instantly).  it allows the user to include non-linguistic fields (such as graphics or images) which, in spite of having no direct correspondence with the kind of information to be contained by the lexical entries of conventional dictionaries, may be useful and enlightening.  it offers a flexible selection of sorting criteria. terminological databases are employed by a wide range of users with very different profiles so that their information needs are, normally, also diverse. in this sense, termstar provides a high degree of flexibility that allows it to be adapted to the needs of each user, apart from offering various modes of data retrieval. however, it is quickly noticeable that the import/export processes in termstar are rather complicated, since several commands from more than one menu are required. missing a step or making a small mistake in the process implies that the whole import/export procedure fails, which is frustrating, especially for the new user or for the non-professional. nonetheless, updating data is very user-friendly within termstar, as is adding a new entry, since the whole procedure follows an intuitive logic which anyone familiar with computers can grasp. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� terminology management systems for the development of (specialised) dictionaries: a focus on wordsmith tools and termstar xv by nuria edo marzá language value 3 (1), 162–173 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 170 termstar is thus an excellent repository for huge amounts of terminological data, since it allows numerous databases to be created, each capable of housing several bilingual and multilingual dictionaries supporting different languages. termstar also allows the user to personalise the prospective microstructure of the dictionary through “entry arrangement codes”, something that is especially useful for dealing with compound terms and multi-word units. the codified category “category” (together with the category “headword”) in termstar may be configured, for instance, to offer four main arrangement categories: category 1x shows that the term in the entry has no abbreviation and has to be considered a main entry in the final dictionary layout, whereas category 1 indicates the same main entry status but referred to a terminological unit with abbreviated form(s). on the other hand, the “subentries” in the dictionary are assigned categories 2 or 2x, depending on whether they have an abbreviation or not. in the case of 2 or 2x category terms, the headword that these subentries belong to must also be specified for a correct subsequent arrangement of final dictionary entries and subentries. for instance, when creating the entry “abrasion”, if the user wants “abrasion/abrasive hardness (ah)” to become a subentry of the headword (main entry) “abrasion” (category 1x), “abrasion/abrasive hardness (ah)” will be assigned to category “2” because of its abbreviated form, whereas “abrasion resistance” will be assigned to category “2x”, since it does not have an abbreviation (see figure 2). filling in these fields correctly is the key to obtaining a successful final arrangement of dictionary entries and subentries, both with simple terms and multi-words units, and the possibilities offered by termstar in this respect are very operative and practical. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� book and multimedia review language value 3 (1), 162–173 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 171 figure 2: example of entry and subentry arrangement through codes in termstar. the huge potential of termstar, despite some of the shortcomings mentioned above, makes it a good and complete option for the second broad stage of the dictionarymaking process. this may be clearly observed in table 1, which, owing to space limitations, shows only a graphic comparison between termstar and anylexic, sdl multiterm, multitrans termbase, déjà vu x termbase and gesterm. it can be seen that termstar accomplishes all the functions and possesses all the features included in the table. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� terminology management systems for the development of (specialised) dictionaries: a focus on wordsmith tools and termstar xv by nuria edo marzá language value 3 (1), 162–173 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 172 table 1. table comparing the main features of the tmss under analysis (adapted from mesa-lao 2008). therefore, among the basic functions to be taken into account in order to decide on the suitability of any tms, the terminologist should consider mainly the possibilities http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� book and multimedia review language value 3 (1), 162–173 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 173 offered as regards their functionality and management, their potential for the creation of terminological cards, and the data-filtering options, as well as the feasibility of export and import tasks and the user-friendliness of the environment. however, as reppen (2001: 32) states “as with software purchase, the needs of the user should play a key role in deciding which program is most appropriate”, since the value of such tools varies greatly depending on individual needs and circumstances. references austermühl, f. 2001. electronic tools for translators. manchester: st. jerome. gómez gonzález-jover, a. 2005. terminografía, lenguajes profesionales y mediación interlingüística. aplicación metodológica al léxico especializado de la industria del calzado y las industrias afines. ph. d. dissertation, alicante: departamento de filología inglesa, universidad de alicante. gómez gonzález-jover, a. and vargas sierra, ch. 2003. “metodología para alimentar una base de datos terminológica desde las necesidades del traductor”. proceedings of the i congreso internacional de la asociación ibérica de estudios de traducción e interpretación. mesa-lao, b. 2008. “catàleg de gestors de terminología”. revista tradumática. traducció i tecnologies de la informació i la comunicació, 6. reppen, r. 2001. “review of monoconc pro and wordsmith tools”. language learning & technology, 5 (3), 32-36. scott, m. wordsmith tools. version 6. online manual. 10 september 2011 <http://www.lexically.net/downloads/version6/html/index.html> star servicios lingüísticos. 9 september 2011. <http://www.star-spain.com/es/inicio/> streiter, o., zielinski, d., ties, i. and voltmer, l. 2003. “term extraction for ladin: an example-based approach”. in proceedings of tanl 2003 workshop on natural language processing of minority languages with few computational linguistic resources. batz-sur la mer, france. received october 2011 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.lluisvives.com/fichaobra.html?ref=22151&portal=1� http://www.lluisvives.com/fichaobra.html?ref=22151&portal=1� http://www.lluisvives.com/fichaobra.html?ref=22151&portal=1� http://www.lexically.net/downloads/version6/html/index.html� http://www.star-spain.com/es/inicio/� multimedia review multimodality in discussion sessions: corpus compilation and pedagogical use language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2010, volume 2, number 1 pp. 1-26 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors 1 multimodality in discussion sessions: corpus compilation and pedagogical use1 mercedes querol-julián universitat jaume i, spain querolm@ang.uji.es abstract discussion sessions of conference paper presentations are spontaneous and unpredictable, in contrast to the prepared lecture that precedes them. these can be challenging, especially for novice presenters whose worst fear is to fail to understand the second meaning of a question or comment, and who know it is not only the quality of the research that is judged but also their prestige and worth. additionally, spoken academic genres have traditionally been explored by focusing on the transcription of speech and disregarding the multimodal nature of spoken discourse. this study offers a comprehensive account of the design of a multimodal corpus of discussion sessions, where audio, video, transcriptions and annotations are time-synchronised. this multilayer analysis provides examples (not only of linguistic utterances of rhetorical moves and multimodal evaluation, but also of how they are actually expressed paralinguistically and kinetically), which can be used in the classroom and to design learning-teaching materials. keywords: english for academic purposes, discussion sessions, multimodal corpora, multilayer annotation, research-based pedagogical materials i. introduction the study of academic spoken research genres has received the attention of scholars in the last decade. they have focused primarily on conference paper presentations (ventola et al. 2002) and particularly on lectures, where the outcomes of the research are presented. to date, however, discussion sessions (hereafter dss) that follow lectures, and that round off conference paper presentations (cps), have not received much attention. however, it is in this face-to-face forum that the scientific community can question, criticize and praise, or share knowledge and experience with presenters, who have to know how to respond and react to discussants’ comments and questions in a clear and effective way. therefore, dss are inherently evaluative as proven by wulff et al. (2009). these scholars identify considerable differences between the language used in the lecture and in the discussion session, which is characterised by patterns of evaluative language. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� mercedes querol-julián language value 2, (1), 1–26 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 2 discourse analysis of academic spoken research genres has in general adopted the traditional exploration of written genres, paying attention almost exclusively (hood and forey’s (2005) work is one exception) to the transcription of speech. however, the complex multimodal nature of spoken discourse cannot be captured in a verbatim transcription of audio recordings; sometimes analysts also make prosodic or phonetic transcriptions and take notes of contextual aspects. spoken discourse can roughly be described as the co-expression of verbal modes and non-verbal modes; hence, verbatim transcriptions and even transcriptions of paralanguage (prosodic or phonetic) are only a partial representation of the original event (thompson 2005). the process to register spoken data can be more problematic when we want to capture non-verbal features, such as the visual. video recording of the events allows the analyst to explore verbalvisual (visible bodily motion, kinesics) or multimodal functions of linguistic patterns. therefore, the analysis of speech events cannot be performed on the same basis as written discourse since they use different modes of expression. the difficulty arises because oral communication is multimodal, it is embodied and combines both verbal and non-verbal elements (adolph and carter 2007). in addition, most of the work on kinesics, and on paralanguage, is done on conversation analysis, an area of interpersonal interaction widely explored by scholars who generally belong to multidisciplinary backgrounds such as anthropology, psychology, psychiatry, and sociolinguistics. gesture is one of the kinesic features that has received most attention. the most influential approaches to the study of gesture are those by efron (1941), ekman and friesen (1969), kendon (2004) and mcneill (1992). these works see gesture as an activity of major importance to the understanding of the speaker’s speech, which has a significant social meaning. this paper is part of a study that aimed at making a cross-disciplinary analysis of the presenter’s expression of evaluation in the dss of two cps in linguistics and chemistry. i set out to investigate evaluation in spoken academic discourse beyond the traditional linguistic approach. thus, a multimodal approach, drawn mainly from conversation analysis studies, was followed to foreground kinesics and paralanguage that co-occur with the linguistic expression of evaluation. the theoretical framework of the study, in which the design of the corpus was underpinned, was embedded in techniques of genre analysis (swales 1990) and http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� multimodality in discussion sessions: corpus compilation and pedagogical use language value 2, (1), 1–26 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 3 discourse analysis, including the theoretical orientations of systemic functional linguistics (halliday 1985), conversation analysis (schegloff and sack 1973), pragmatics (brown and levinson 1987), and multimodal discourse analysis (kress and van leeuwen 2001). conversely, corpus linguistic techniques enabled me to make the application of the multimodal approach feasible. i used computer techniques for automated analytical procedures and qualitative techniques for the interpretation of the corpora. more precisely, i collected a video corpus, took part in the process of transcription, and annotated it. i used the multilayer annotation tool to time synchronise transcriptions (verbatim or orthographic, paralinguistic, and kinesic) and annotations (semantic evaluation and generic moves). without this tool, it would not have been feasible to analyse evaluation on the comprehensive multimodal level as was done in the study. nonetheless, a qualitative interpretation of the data was necessary to foreground the salient features that define evaluation in dss. the interpretation of findings and the multilayer annotation enabled me to see the potential of this material for pedagogical purposes. the multimodal annotated corpus that i introduce in this paper can provide real examples of the rhetorical moves in which the interaction is organised to express specific communicative purposes, and the linguistic and multimodal expression of evaluation that articulates the rhetoric of the interaction. these multimodal instances can be retrieved to be used in the classroom and in the design of learning-teaching materials. students will be provided not only isolated linguistic utterances but also how these are expressed during the interaction enabling them to identify changes in paralinguistic features and kinesic features (gesture, head movement, facial expression, and gaze). this would be a significant contribution to the virtually non-existent pedagogical materials based on multimodal corpora research to learn-teach academic spoken genres. currently, there is only one work (ruiz-madrid and querol-julián 2008) that devotes a few activities to discussion sessions, which design was based on the study of natural language from a multimodal approach. the paper is structured in three sections. first, the design of the corpus is presented. i describe the data and give a detailed account of the steps followed to get the corpus ready for the analysis. then, i suggest some pedagogical applications of the multimodal corpus in the design of activities and the use of the corpus in the classroom. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� mercedes querol-julián language value 2, (1), 1–26 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 4 ii. corpus design the corpus was designed and compiled within the framework of a major project, the compilation of the multimodal academic and spoken language corpus (masc) (fortanet-gómez and querol-julián 2010). masc is a multidisciplinary collection of spanish and english spoken academic events at university (i.e. lectures, seminars, guest lectures, students’ presentations, dissertation defences, plenary lectures, and conference paper presentations), collected by the research group grape (group for research on academic and professional english) at the universitat jaume i. the multimodal nature of masc is given by the five different types of data, gathered during the video recording of the events: slides, transcripts, handouts, and video and/or audio recordings there are several aspects that need to be considered when designing a spoken corpus, such as the size, variety of language, level of proficiency, text types, and genre among others (campoy and luzón 2007). prioritizing one aspect over another depends on the purpose of the research that is going to be conducted on the corpus. hence, the aim of the analysis determines the compilation of the corpus, how the corpus is collected, transcribed, and annotated. the criteria followed in the design of the corpus used in the study were based on the main objective of masc, the multimodal discourse analysis of academic spoken genres (the criteria will be described below). additionally, a crossdisciplinary approach was adopted in the study which has also determined the design of the corpus. in this respect, a contrastive study should compare items that are comparable; to put it in other words, the two corpora of linguistics and chemistry should have similarities to make the comparison possible. a close look to the factors that may influence the rhetoric and the performance (linguistically and non-linguistically) of the dss of cps might help to shed light on the tertium comparationis of the two corpora. i have identified six different aspects that may affect interpersonal meaning in discussion and therefore might influence in the expression of evaluation: the purpose of the conference, the relationship among the participants, cultural and personal features, environmental factors, others’ turns, and the discipline. these factors, however, do not operate individually but function as a whole. first, the purpose of the conferences was to create a site for bringing together specialists in a field of research to share http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.grape.uji.es/� http://www.grape.uji.es/� multimodality in discussion sessions: corpus compilation and pedagogical use language value 2, (1), 1–26 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 5 investigation results and to open a forum for discussion. in the discussion sessions, as well as in the lectures, the major concerns of the speakers in both conferences were to present their views and to persuade the audience of the relevance and value of their research. concerning the relationship among the participants, both were small focused conferences, with no parallel sessions; thus, the audience size was similar in all the presentations, around 50 people. small conferences may help presenters to establish a good rapport with the audience. some participants in the conference in linguistics, as well as the organisers of the conference in chemistry were interviewed to find out the relationship between the participants and its possible influence on the discussion sessions. they maintained that most of the participants already knew each other before the conference, as they were international communities of experts with specific and common research interests. the use of first names to address them can linguistically confirm this affirmation. they also note that the ds in cps could be considered the most stressful stage. the main reason they gave was that after presenting their research, presenters are fully exposed to an audience of experts (in these conferences most of them were senior researchers), who during approximately 20 minutes have been evaluating the presentation and comparing it with their previous knowledge and experience. presenters should be ready to respond tricky questions and challenging comments, obviously easy questions and nice comments do not pose major problems; but the difficulty lies in the uncertainty of the audience reaction. in view of this, the relationship among the participants can play a crucial role to create a relaxed atmosphere for discussion. the main characters of the discussion are the presenter and the discussant; consequently, the relationship between them would be the most influential one to formulate their questions, comments, and responses. however, the discussion opened between them is not an isolated exchange. the relationship that the presenter and the discussant have with the rest of the participants may also constrain their performance. of major interest to the contrastive study, however, is that the informants argued that the rhetoric and performance of the discussion did not differ from those adopted in other conferences on the same academic discipline. so far, i have shown that the purpose of the meetings and the relationship among the participants of these specialised conferences seem to be the same. however, there are other factors that may influence these comparable corpora of dss which are variables http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� mercedes querol-julián language value 2, (1), 1–26 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 6 rather than constants. in this respect, cultural and personal features may affect discussants’ questions and comments, and presenters’ responses. however, i am neither a biographer nor interested in adopting an ethnographic approach to go into what could be a fascinating analysis. my final objective in the study was to find out a new methodology of analysis from a multimodal perspective; that is the reason why i primarily focused on the linguistic and non-linguistic features of the speech, not putting much emphasis on the cultural and personal backgrounds of the speakers. on the other hand, dss are organised around a dialogic exchange structure where discussant’s and presenter’s turns follow each other or overlap. certainly, the others’ turn, its meaning and how it is performed, will constrain the response to the questions and comments. this is the way the discussion is constructed. turns are central in the exchange structure, since it is by turn taking that participants take part in the discussion. nonetheless, as stated above, the factors that may affect discussion do not do it individually but their spheres of influence overlap. how others’ turns are performed depends on the rest of the factors already noted: the purpose of the conference, the relationship among the participants, cultural and personal features, environmental factors (such as problems with microphones), and the discipline. regarding the discipline, cross-disciplinary differences have been a common topic of analysis from different perspectives in the studies of evaluation in academic written genres (hyland 2000, 2004). as regards spoken academic genres, whereas a considerable number of studies have focused on the description and interpretation of a genre in a particular discipline (flowerdew 1992, olsen and huckin 1991), not much work has been done to bring to the fore neither differences between two or more disciplines nor disciplinary differences concerning evaluation. an exception is the work of poos and simpson (2002) who explore the use of hedging in a corpus of academic spoken english. these scholars found disciplinary differences; however, neither attention has been paid yet to evaluation in discussion sessions of conference paper presentations, nor a multimodal approach has been adopted to the study of this interpersonal meaning in academic spoken genres. the tertium comparationis of the two corpora is essential to conduct a scientific contrastive study. nonetheless, although the factors discussed above might influence in the expression of evaluation, they are beyond the corpus designer’s control, since they http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� multimodality in discussion sessions: corpus compilation and pedagogical use language value 2, (1), 1–26 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 7 are inherent to the event and the people that take part in it. there are other aspects, however, that can be controlled in the design of comparable corpora such as corpus size. the size of the present corpus has been determined by the approach adopted in the analysis, the multilayered exploration of evaluation. this type of analysis requires small corpora that enable to carry out a qualitative examination. the purpose of the study was to describe evaluation in both disciplines, rather than to make generalisations of linguistic and non-linguistic patterns, where a larger corpus would be required. ii.1. corpus description as noted above, two corpora of cps, lectures and discussion sessions, of two different academic disciplines were collected for the study. the chemistry conference brought together leading scientists from all over the world, where a total of 36 papers were presented across a range of areas on the science of isotopes. conversely, all contributions to the linguistics conference, 24 in total, dealt with the topics of genre analysis and discourse analysis. participants were international experts in the field of applied linguistics. for the investigation, however, only the discussion sessions were of interest, thus a subcorpus of ten dss from each conference was selected. two criteria were considered in the selection of these dss. the first criterion was the number of presenters. only one speaker should have presented the paper, and thus he or she should be the only one responsible for responding the audience’s questions and comments. a preliminary analysis showed that when there is more than one presenter, speakers share responsibilities; in the sense that, presenters can give and seek for their colleague’s support and even negotiate who is going to respond, using verbal and non-verbal language. thus, turn-taking organization and rhetoric would be more complex. it is not only the interpersonal meaning between presenter and discussant/s that would come into play, but also the interpersonal meaning between presenters. the second criterion adopted in the selection was the number of turns. a turn is counted when a participant in the discussion (chair, presenter, or discussant) takes the floor. this criterion can give a tentative idea of the level of interaction in the discussion, which should be as similar as possible in both disciplines. eventually, the linguistics dss corpus consists of nearly 12,000 words, 71 minutes, and 39 dialogic exchanges. whereas, the chemistry dss http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� mercedes querol-julián language value 2, (1), 1–26 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 8 corpus amounts to nearly a total of 8,500 words, 59 minutes, and 34 dialogic exchanges. the analysis of the corpus of dss was done at the macrostructure level. this analysis revealed the identification of patterns of dialogic exchanges in the two disciplines. accordingly, two sub-corpora of dialogic exchanges were selected for the study of evaluation and the generic structure (moves). sinclair et al. (1972) define exchange as the basic unit of the interaction, because it consists of the contribution of at least two participants. in the study, i have followed this definition and categorised what i have called dialogic exchanges. these types of exchanges refer to the dialogue held between discussant and presenter to make comments and questions, and to respond to them. the definition of this type of exchanges is necessary to distinguish them from other types of interaction where participants aim at organising the discussion rather than at engaging in a dialogue. additionally, the concept of dialogic pattern is used to go beyond the concept of adjacency pair postulated by schegloff and sacks (1973), where a question is followed by an answer, to embrace more complex structures; for example, discussant’s comment is followed by a question which is responded by presenter, rather than the adjacency pair question – response. the criterion followed for the selection of the dialogic exchanges that form the subcorpora was to share similar dialogic patterns. results show that only 4 and 3 dialogic exchange patterns were recurrent in linguistics and chemistry respectively, and only those performed in two turns were common in both disciplines: comment – comment, question – response, and comment + question – response. on the other hand, it is worth noting that these three patterns are the most frequent “openers” of longer exchange patterns in the corpora with more than two turns. these data prove that participants in the discussion sessions in the small corpora analysed commonly follow these three dialogic exchange patterns (63% of the exchanges in linguistics and 71% in chemistry) to open discussion. the sub-corpora of dialogic exchanges were constituted by four exchanges of each pattern from each discipline. the subcorpora of linguistics was formed by a total of about 2300 words and 15 minutes, and around 2000 words and 14.30 minutes shaped the one of chemistry. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� multimodality in discussion sessions: corpus compilation and pedagogical use language value 2, (1), 1–26 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 9 ii.2. getting the corpus ready the corpora were compiled in three stages: data collection, transcription, and annotation. the several types of transcriptions and annotations were done in the following order: first, a verbatim transcription of the corpus of cps (lectures and dss); then the annotation of the generic structure (moves) and the semantic evaluation of the corpus of dialogic exchanges of dss; and finally, the transcription of kinesic and paralinguistic features that co-express with the semantic evaluation already annotated. in following sections, i give an account of the process of collecting, transcribing, and annotating data; as well as of the multilayer annotation of the corpus. figure 1, in the next page, gives a synoptic view of the design of the corpus that makes possible to carry out a multimodal approach for the exploration of evaluation in dss, which is described throughout the section. ii.2.1. collecting the data the first stage in the compilation of a corpus is the collection of the data. however, there is a previous stage before collecting the data. we need presenters to give their permission to be video recorded. as commented, the corpus is part of a major project masc. the procedure we follow to collect the data in masc is first to contact the organisers of the events. in many cases, the organisers give us the go-ahead to email the speakers. but it can also happen that the organisers become mediators. in both cases, we write a formal email explaining the project they are going to be involved in. we only tape those speakers who give a positive reply to our request. in addition, the data are initially compiled for research purposes; however, participants also sign a consent form when part of the data is going to be published. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� mercedes querol-julián language value 2, (1), 1–26 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 10 figure 1. design of a multimodal corpus of dss. for the present study, the original corpus (lectures and discussion sessions) was video recorded and the organisers of both conferences played the role of mediators. however, sometimes the use of go-betweens entails a risk. an example of the difficulties that may checking & edition video & audio edition video & audio recording of cps corpus of dss corpus of lectures corpus of dialogic exchanges contact organisers and presenters verbatim transcription of cps verbatim transcription audio recording video recording multilayer time synchronisation multidisciplinary team work researcher takes notes annotation of dss macrostructure annotation of semantic evaluation annotation of generic structure (moves) paralinguistic transcription kinesic transcription http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� multimodality in discussion sessions: corpus compilation and pedagogical use language value 2, (1), 1–26 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 11 appear when researchers do not contact directly with the speakers is what happened in the chemistry conference. the organisers informed us that we only had permission to tape 11 out of the 36 presentations and discussion sessions; however, when the conference was over some of the speakers complained about not having been video recorded. a major obstacle to compile data for a multidisciplinary specialised academic spoken corpus is to have access to other areas of knowledge different from ours, since neither the organisers nor the participants in the event are familiar with the methodology we use. in those cases, it is essential that once the organisers green-light our project we try to personally contact speakers to avoid misunderstandings. several aspects should be taken into account before and during the recording to guarantee the quality of the data. special mention should be made of those aspects related to the physical context and the speakers’ performance. before setting up the camera one should consider the size of the room, as well as the distribution of tables, computer/ohp, aisles, window/s and door/s. on the one hand, the intrusion of the camera should cause as little trouble as possible to the presenters in the sense that, they should not feel threatened by it, otherwise their behaviour could change. the smaller the room, the more difficult it is to create a comfortable environment and at the same time focus on the speaker. moreover, the camera should neither prevent the audience from seeing the speaker, nor distract them from the presentation and discussion. on the other hand, a video recording can become a valuable source of data for the analysis, and for the design of pedagogical materials, if the quality of the image and the sound is good. light conditions are essential for the quality of the image, an aspect that has to be negotiated with the organisers of the event beforehand. regarding the sound, external microphones may help to improve it. the speakers’ performance should also be taken into account when setting up the camera to be able to focus on them all the time. presenters may be sitting or standing up, but they can also move around. accordingly, it is a matter of extreme importance to be careful in this issue, otherwise we could lose relevant data for a multimodal approach. the conference paper presentations that shape the data for the study were video recorded with a mini-dv digital video camera and an external unidirectional microphone plugged in the camera. one of the advantages of unidirectional microphones is that they seem to reduce ambient noise and to capture the sound of the http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� mercedes querol-julián language value 2, (1), 1–26 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 12 image that is in focus. in the corpus, presenters were in focus during the presentations and the discussion sessions. in the conference on linguistics we were able to use two cameras which also allowed us to record the audience. this is an important difference in the data collection that has determined that only the presenters’ performance should be the centre of the contrastive analysis. the external microphones helped to get an acceptable sound quality of the presenters’ speech. however, the sound quality of the discussants was lower, which sometimes made the transcription hard. in the chemistry conference, it was so because although the camera was set up in the middle of the room, among the discussants, the presenter was the one always in focus. in the linguistics conference, the second camera was set up at the front of the room to focus on the audience; however, the quality of the audio recordings of those discussants sitting at the back was also reduced. regarding the image, quality was good in the linguistics conference, but in the conference on chemistry it was a bit dark because, during the presentation and discussion session, lights were off on behalf of an excellent slide show and only light coming in from back windows illuminated the room. light condition was a fruitless negotiation with the organisers of the conference. unfortunately, this reduced the quality of the video recordings which will affect the analysis of kinesics, particularly of face expression and gaze. in addition, in linguistics during few seconds in four exchanges the presenter was not on focus. these problems can be attributed principally to the inexperience of collecting a multimodal corpus at that time, that was the first contribution to the masc, and therefore we were not so sensitive to those particular aspects of the recording and the consequences for this type of research. the next step in the collection of data is the edition of the recordings. i used the video editing software avid liquid 7.0 to create .avi files. this format allowed me to manipulate the data creating audio files (.wav) to improve quality with the audio editor available in the program. in addition, after the analysis of the macrostructure of the dss, i created the sub-corpora of dialogic exchanges making audio and video clips from the original recordings of the whole events. the format of these clips enabled me to export them to the multimodal annotation tool. the collection of data involved the audio and video recording, but also the collection of contextual information. we observed how the paper presentations and the discussion sessions were performed and made a register in a form during the observation about http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� multimodality in discussion sessions: corpus compilation and pedagogical use language value 2, (1), 1–26 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 13 different aspects such as the type of event and communicative act (e.g. title, field of knowledge, duration), the speaker (academic status, nationality, mother tongue, age, and sex), the room (type of room and we sketch the distribution of participants, recording devices, furniture and props), the audience (type and number), the speaker resources (ppp, ohp, handouts, microphones, etc), the speaker/s’ performance (mode of presentation (if explaining, reading or both) and posture adopted (if moving, sitting or standing up), the discussion (if there is discussion or not, when (during or after the presentation) and audience’s turns (number, language, and sex), the recording (time and equipment), and any incident that occurs during the communicative act. the observation aims at fulfilling aspects that one cannot capture with the camera or the microphone and may help to understand the communicative act. ii.2.2. transcribing the data once the audio and video recordings were edited, the next step was to transcribe what was said, that is, to create a verbatim transcription. the transcription was done for the corpus of cps (lectures and discussion sessions) in a collaborative work between the grape and the english language institute (eli), at the university of michigan. transcriptions followed the established micase conventions, where some contextual data were also represented (i.e. xml tags and symbols were utilized to annotate potentially relevant features like speaker identity, speaker turns, speech overlap, laughter, backchannels and pauses2). transcribers were native speakers of english who were previously trained. the process was implemented by checking and editing the transcriptions, a task that was accomplished by a multidisciplinary team since the help of an expert in the field was necessary to check the chemistry transcripts. the transcripts of the conference in linguistics were transferred to the eli and gathered in a single corpus which was named john swales conference corpus (jscc), a project that aims at complementing micase. as micase, transcripts of jscc are also publicly available at the eli corpora website3. the other two types of transcriptions, kinesic and paralinguistic, were exclusively done for the analysis of evaluation in the corpora of dialogic exchanges when linguistic evaluation is expressed. therefore, it was done after the orthographic transcription and http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.elicorpora.info/� mercedes querol-julián language value 2, (1), 1–26 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 14 the annotation of semantic evaluation. changes in kinesics and paralanguage that cooccur with semantic evaluation were identified and data were registered in the corpus with the help of the multimodal annotation tool elan (see detailed description in section ii.2.4.). the scope of analysis of kinesics covered changes of: arms and hands gestures, facial expression, gaze direction, and head movement. transcription of kinesics was a laborious job since the identification of the co-expression with linguistic evaluation was only possible by slowing down the video recording repeatedly to reveal any change, any micro expression (ekman and friesen 1969), not only of the face but of any of the kinesic aspects considered in the study, that are not observable in normal examinations. for example, in one of the exchanges in linguistics the presenter used the expression “how it’s often taught” in her response to a discussant’s question, where the evaluative adverb “often” co-expressed with a kinesic feature of raising eyebrows that lasted 114 milliseconds. that would be difficult to capture without the annotator program. in chemistry, it was not always possible to determine the exact direction of eye gaze. as a result, assumptions had to be made on body and head orientation. on the other hand, the transcription of gestures was made broadly, in the sense that in the study i was not interested in the gestures themselves, but in how they co-expressed with evaluative semantics. for this reason, i did not use an accurate identification of the three phases of prototypical gestures, i.e. preparation, stroke, and retraction4 (kendon 1980). nonetheless, a preliminary study showed preparation and stroke commonly co-occur with linguistic evaluation. regarding paralanguage, as the starting point of the analysis was semantic evaluation, its examination was limited to changes in the pronunciation of discrete words. this approach narrowed the transcription to changes in the speaker’s voice quality, i.e. loudness, and voice qualifier, i.e. syllabic duration (after poyatos 2002). the identification of loudness was done by the comparison with the surroundings. sound waveforms available in elan were essential at this stage, since waveforms reach the highest peaks when loudness goes up and the lowest peaks when it gets down. figure 2 shows a sample of identification of loudness-up in elan of a fraction of clip in chemistry, where the maximum amplitude of the waveform of the evaluative word problems corroborates the phonetic perception of the stressed noun. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� multimodality in discussion sessions: corpus compilation and pedagogical use language value 2, (1), 1–26 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 15 figure 2. sample view of identification of paralanguage voice quality. as for voice qualifier, changes in the syllabic duration refer to whether the word is pronounced faster or slower than expected in the discourse, that is, in comparison with the pronunciation of surrounding words. figure 3 shows a sample of identification of long syllabic duration of a portion of a linguistics exchange. by comparing duration of the evaluative utterance tends to be more broad, it can be observed that the adjective broad is attributed with the paralinguistic feature of long duration. whereas the verb tends to be is pronounced in 582 ms and more in 222 ms; the adjective, despite being a monosyllabic word similar to more, lasts 594 ms, a duration even longer than the pronunciation of tends to be. figure 3. sample view of identification of paralanguage voice qualifier. in addition, i have also included in the analysis the transcription of laughter, a type of differentiator or of voice qualificator. i have considered the speakers’ instances of individual laughter in contrast to episodes of general laughter, because i understand them as the expression of the speakers’ attitude towards what they are saying. i cannot obviate the fact that this is a non-linguistic vocal effect which shows emotional reactions. other paralinguistic aspects, such as intonation, would appear in holistic analysis rather than in the exploration of paralanguage of discrete items, as done in the study. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� mercedes querol-julián language value 2, (1), 1–26 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 16 ii.2.3. annotating the data annotation differs from transcription in its content. rather than capturing overtly observable aspects, annotation focuses on more abstract relationships. annotation, as the collection and the transcription of the data, is determined by the purpose of the study. in view of that, a pragmatic or functional annotation was done on the verbal language to examine the structure of the discussion session and the linguistic evaluation. regarding the annotation of the structure, it is important to observe that the analysis conducted was corpus driven. therefore, all the tags used in the annotation were not pre-selected before the analysis, but drawn from the findings. the macrostructure of the corpus of dss was annotated to shed some light on the flow of the discussions, to see how turn-taking operates in dss of specialised cps. three different types of tags were used for this aim: the identification of the participants (speaker and addressee), the type of turn and its position in the discussion. all three were assembled in the following string which identifies each of the turns taken and overlapping: speaker : type of turn _ position of the turn ~ addressee regarding the identification of the participants, even though it has been said that the identity of the speakers was already captured in the verbatim transcription, i have adapted micase conventions to identify the role the participants play in the interaction5. that is, rather than identifying the participant by the order they speak (s1, s2, etc.), i identified them by the primary role they play as: chair (ch), presenter (p), discussant (d), or audience (aud). besides, discussants were also assigned a number that shows the order in which they speak. i maintained unknown speaker/s (su) and two or more speakers (ss) tags. moreover, the name used for the tag was participants rather than speakers (as in the micase) since i aimed at identifying a further functional level, if they were speakers or addressees. as regards the type of turn, the function that each turn had in the ds was tagged as: comment (c), question (q), and response (r). the third tag identifies the position of the discoursal turn in the discussion. the dialogue between discussant and presenter can occur in two turns or in several turns. in order to trace the complexity of the sequence it has been annotated when the discussant’s and presenter’s turn starts the exchange (s), or when http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� multimodality in discussion sessions: corpus compilation and pedagogical use language value 2, (1), 1–26 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 17 it is a follow-up turn (fu). follow-up turns have also been numbered. when there is not follow-up, only start turns were tagged even though they started and finished the exchange. the following example, taken from a linguistics dialogic exchange, illustrates how the exchange between the first discussant in the ds and presenter was annotated in the corpus. the discussant formulates a question to the presenter to start her turn <d1:q_s~p> and the presenter responds <p:r_s~d1>. however, the discussant does not consider the interaction is finished after the presenter’s response and goes on with a follow-up question <d1:q_fu1~p> which is also responded by the presenter <p:r_fu1~d1>, with first attempt in overlap and then in his turn. d1:q_s~p: um, (were these others) that worked in these (fields) were guest editors or were they all the official editors p:r_s~d1: um, both both kinds. uh um and the_ in in linguistic and in medsin medical uh journals yes d1:q_fu1~p: cuz i just wondered if they might get kind of a different, um, well different kind of type of editorial from a guest editor, who doesn’t usually get the floor <p:r_fu1~d1><overlap> absolutely, mm </overlap> and might use the opportunity to say things uh_ you know, put forward their views and... p:r_fu1~d1: yep, yep. certainly, there’s lot of variation from one journal to another, so that they seem to have their <su-m><overlap> in-house style </overlap> in-house customs and perceptions of the genre, but also according to the the author. […] the annotation of the corpus of dss allowed to identify, among other aspects, the sequence of the dialogues held in the exchanges (i.e. a question is followed by a response, a comment is followed by a comment and the like). this analysis has determined the selection of the recurrent patterns of the dialogues that make up the subcorpora of dialogic exchanges to conduct the analysis of evaluation. the two subcorpora (of linguistics and chemistry) were also functionally annotated in terms of the moves that shape the dialogic patterns and also in terms of linguistic evaluation. the generic structure of the exchanges was annotated to confirm the hypothesis that it is evaluation, both linguistic and non-linguistic, that articulates it. the tags used to mark the moves were also driven by the corpus. conversely, the annotation of linguistic evaluation follows an abridged version of the appraisal model postulated by martin and white (2005). i considered it interesting for the cross-disciplinary study to tag whether http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� mercedes querol-julián language value 2, (1), 1–26 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 18 the semantic resources expresses one or more than one of the three domains of evaluation in the model: attitude, engagement, and graduation6. in the next section i describe how these annotations and the transcriptions were incorporated to the corpus to carry out the analysis. before moving to the description of how the multimodal annotated corpus was created, i would like to note the importance of tagging not only by the examination of the verbatim transcription but, even at this stage, by the consideration of the whole performance, that is, audio and video recordings. the multimodal approach might help the analyst to make a more accurate interpretation of the original event, closer to reality. it is important to bear in mind that, in the interaction, participants interpret their interlocutors’ speech on the basis of what they hear, the content and the way it is said (that is, linguistics and paralanguage), and what they see (kinesics, visual aids, and any physical interaction with the surroundings). i consider thus, that the study of certain aspects of interpersonal meaning in spoken discourse (like those examined in the study), which were based exclusively on the analysis of verbatim transcripts could cause analysis inaccuracy, because a significant part of the modes of expression that speakers use are disregarded. ii.2.4. creating a multimodal annotated corpus as described in previous sections, the study conducted with the corpus analysed the data from two approaches. first, i focused on the macrostructure of dss from a topdown approach. at this level, the analysis was conducted on the corpus of dss. then, i explored moves and multimodal evaluation in the subcorpora of exchanges. the examination of moves similarly followed a top-down approach, but the exploration of multimodal evaluation followed a bottom-up approach. at this level of analysis the use of a multimodal annotation tool made the work easier, since it was necessary to timesynchronise the different levels of transcriptions (verbatim or orthographic, kinesic, and paralinguistic), annotations (moves and evaluative semantics), and the audio and video data. i used the multimodal annotation tool elan7 (eudico linguistic annotator) (wittenburg et al. 2006) to accomplish this task. this tool enabled me to create as many layers or tiers (as the program calls them) as needed for the different types of transcriptions and annotations. i use ten tiers in this corpus: two for verbatim http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� multimodality in discussion sessions: corpus compilation and pedagogical use language value 2, (1), 1–26 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 19 transcriptions (discussant’s and presenter’s), two for linguistic evaluation (discussant’s and presenter’s), one for moves, one for paralanguage, and four for kinesics (gesture, head movement, gaze, and facial expression). figure 4. sample view of multimodal annotation in elan. figure 4 shows a sample of multimodal annotation view in elan of a portion of a orthographic transcription annotation of linguistic evaluation annotation of generic moves paralinguistic transcription kinesic transcription video viewer time position viewer waveform viewer annotation density http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� mercedes querol-julián language value 2, (1), 1–26 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 20 chemistry exchange. i have enlarged in the figure the four viewers that work in elan: video, waveform, annotation density, and time position. all viewers are synchronised and thus displayed at the same point(s) in time. the first stage was to introduce the plain verbatim transcriptions and synchronise them with audio and video data. sound waveforms were a useful aid at this point. then, i annotated moves and linguistic evaluation of presenter and discussant. finally, the transcriptions of kinesics and paralanguage were done on the grounds of the semantic evaluation. once all the data were introduced, i could start the analysis with the aid of a search tool also available in the program. manual extraction of data was necessary in the qualitative approach of the study. iii. pedagogical applications as noted, the compilation of the corpus described in the previous section was done to study presenters’ multimodal expression of evaluation in dss of two academic disciplines. however, although the results of the study can find applications in english for academic purposes courses that focus on communicative skills, the multimodal annotated corpus itself can also be used as a pedagogical tool in the classroom, and as a valuable source of instances to create teaching and learning material to understand this academic research genre and the interpersonal feature that characterises it. in this section, i make some suggestions of the pedagogical potential of the annotated corpus, which due to the newness of the research i have not yet had the opportunity to put it in practice. elan offers many possibilities to retrieve multimodal data, which can be used in the classroom or in the design of activities. there are two ways to access the annotated corpus. the focus could be on the analysis of a single dialogic exchange and all the aspects transcribed and annotated in it. that is, it could be interesting to show students instances of: semantic evaluation semantic evaluation + audio semantic evaluation + audio + video semantic evaluation and co-expression with kinesic and/or paralinguistic features http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� multimodality in discussion sessions: corpus compilation and pedagogical use language value 2, (1), 1–26 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 21 generic moves figure 5 illustrates the exploration of a dialogic exchange from chemistry. you can select from the list of the ten tiers the feature that you are interested in. in the example, i have selected “gesture” as one of the kinesic features. once the selection is done, you access to a list of all the instances of gestures that co-express with semantic evaluation. in the dialogic exchanges below there are 13 instances. for the annotation, i have used different tags to simplify the reference to the gestures. in the example, i have selected “cpu” that stands for “closing palms up”. a click on it, gesture nr 2, and one has access to the video, audio, and annotation density where that gesture is performed. figure 5. sample view of the exploration of a dialogic exchange in elan. the other way to retrieve data is using the searching tool. this allows me to focus on http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� mercedes querol-julián language value 2, (1), 1–26 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 22 one annotation (this is the general term used in the program, but it embraces both annotations and transcriptions) to find all the instances of it that appear in the corpus. in figure 6, i illustrate the example of the move “opt”, “opening the turn” that is used in the two corpora 14 times (6 in chemistry and 8 in linguistics). if i click on instance nr 6, elan opens a new window to display the video, audio, and annotation density viewer where this move is expressed in the exchange. figure 6. sample view of searching an annotation in elan. the potential of these small corpora is significant. to mention a few data, 521 evaluative utterances have been annotated (373 expressed by presenters and 188 by http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� multimodality in discussion sessions: corpus compilation and pedagogical use language value 2, (1), 1–26 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 23 discussants) where the identification of the three appraisal categories has been done (attitude, graduation, and engagement). in addition, 276 kinesic features and 56 paralinguistic features where co-expressed with presenters’ semantic evaluation and transcribed. regarding the generic structure, 90 moves were annotated. in this paper, i have described the aspects that need to be considered when compiling an interactive spoken academic genre for the study of evaluation. as proven, the use of multimodal corpora represents a major breakthrough in the field of corpus linguistics and academic spoken discourse analysis; since, taking into account the multimodal nature of oral communication provides a more comprehensive picture of the events. the corpus linguistics techniques used here open a new line of research to explore academic spoken discourse and to provide multimodal material for teaching and learning english for academic purposes. notes 1 the work described in this paper was supported by universitat jaume i (grant cont/2010/08). 2 for a detailed documentation of the micase transcription conventions, cf. the micase manual at <http://micase.elicorpora.info/micase-statistics-and-transcription-conventions/micase-transcription-andmark-up-convent> 6 november 2010. 3 <http://www.elicorpora.info/> 6 november 2010. 4 the phase of the movement that is closer to the apex, the main part of the gesture, is called stroke. the phase of movement leading to the stroke is named the preparation. and the phase of movement that follows the stroke is referred to as the recovery or retraction. 5 micase transcription conventions identify speakers as: speaker ids assigned in the order they first speak (s1, s2, etc); unknown speaker, without and with gender identified (su); probable but not definite identity of speaker (su-1); two or more speakers, in unison (ss). 6 the attitudinal system has to do with ‘evaluating’. engagement has to do with the negotiation of other voices in the text apart from the authorial voice. the third dimension in the appraisal model is graduation. a distinctive feature of attitudes is that they can be gradable. 7 <http://www.lat-mpi.eu/tools/elan/> 6 november 2010. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://micase.elicorpora.info/micase-statistics-and-transcription-conventions/micase-transcription-and-mark-up-convent� http://micase.elicorpora.info/micase-statistics-and-transcription-conventions/micase-transcription-and-mark-up-convent� http://www.elicorpora.info/� http://www.lat-mpi.eu/tools/elan/� mercedes querol-julián language value 2, (1), 1–26 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 24 references adolph, s. and carter, r. 2007. “beyond the word. new challenges in analysing corpora of spoken english”. european journal of english studies, 11 (2), 133146. brown, p. and levinson, s. 1987. politeness: some universals in language usage. cambridge: cambridge university press. campoy, m. c. and luzón, m. j. (eds.). 2007. spoken corpora in applied linguistics. bern: peter lang. efron, d. 1941. gesture and environment. morningside heights: king’s crow press. ekman, p. and friesen, w.v. 1969. “the repertoire of nonverbal behavioral categories: origins, usage, and coding”. semiotica, 1, 49-98. flowerdew, j. 1992. “the language of definitions in science lectures”. applied linguistics, 13, 202-221. fortanet-gómez, i. and querol-julián, m. 2010. “the video corpus as a multimodal tool for teaching”. in campoy, m. c., b. bellés and ll. gea (eds.) corpus-based approaches to english language teaching corpus and discourse. london & new york: continuum, 261-270. halliday, m.a.k. 1985. an introduction to functional grammar. london: arnold. hood, s. and forey, g. 2005. “introducing a conference paper: getting interpersonal with your audience”. journal of english for academic purposes, 4, 291-306. hyland, k. 2000. disciplinary discourses: social interactions in academic writing. london: longman. hyland, k. 2004. “engagements and disciplinarity: the other side of evaluation”. in del lungo camiciotty, g. and e. tognini bonelli (eds.). academic discourse. new insights into evaluation. bern: peter lang, 13-30. kendon, a. 1980. gesticulation and speech: two aspects of the process of utterance. in key, m. (ed.). the relationship of verbal and non-verbal communication. the hague: mouton, 207-227. kendon, a. 2004. gesture. visible action as utterance. cambridge: cambridge http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� multimodality in discussion sessions: corpus compilation and pedagogical use language value 2, (1), 1–26 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 25 university press. kress, g. and van leeuwen, t. 2001. multimodal discourse. the modes and media of contemporary communication. london: edward arnold. martin, j.r. and white, p. 2005. the language of evaluation: appraisal in english. london: palgrave macmillan. mcneill, d. 1992. hand and mind: what gestures reveal about thought. chicago & london: the university of chicago press. olsen, l. and huckin, t. 1991. “pint-driven understanding in engineering lecture comprehension”. english for specific purposes, 9, 33-47. poos, d. and simpson, r.c. 2002. “cross-disciplinary comparisons of hedging: some findings from the michigan corpus of academic spoken english”. in reppen, r., s. fitzmaurice and d. biber (eds.). using corpora to explore linguistic variation. philadelphia: john benjamins, 3–21. poyatos, f. 2002. nonverbal communication across disciplines. volume ii. paralanguage, kinesics, silence, personal and environmental interaction. amsterdam: john benjamins. ruiz-madrid, n. and querol-julián, m. 2008. grape online activities for academic english. 6 november 2010 <http://www.grape.uji.es/activities/ pagina%201/index.html> schegloff, e.a. and sacks, h. 1973. “opening up closings”. semiotica, 8, 289-327. sinclair, j., forsyth, i.m., coulhard, r.m. and ashby, m. 1972. the english use of teachers and pupils. final report to ssrc. university of birmingham. swales, j.m. 1990. genre analysis: english in academic and research settings. cambridge: cambridge university press. thompson, p. 2005. “spoken language corpora”. in wynne, m. (ed.). developing linguistic corpora: a guide to good practice. oxford: oxbow books, 59-70. 6 november 2010 <http://www.ahds.ac.uk/creating/guides/linguisticcorpora/index.htm> ventola, e., shalom, c. and thomson, s. 2002. (eds.) the language of http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.grape.uji.es/activities/%20pagina%201/index.html� http://www.grape.uji.es/activities/%20pagina%201/index.html� http://www.ahds.ac.uk/creating/guides/linguistic-corpora/index.htm� http://www.ahds.ac.uk/creating/guides/linguistic-corpora/index.htm� mercedes querol-julián language value 2, (1), 1–26 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 26 conferencing. frankfurt: peter lang. wittenburg, p., brugman, h., russel, a., klassmann, a. and sloetjes, h. 2006. “elan: a professional framework for multimodality research”. proceedings of language resources and evaluation conference. 6 november 2010 <http://www.mpi.nl/publications/escidoc-60436/@@popup> wulff, s., swales, j.m. and keller, k. 2009. “‘we have seven minutes for questions’: the discussion sessions from a specialized conference”. english for specific purposes, 28, 79-92. received september 2010 cite this article as: querol-julián, m. 2010. “multimodality in discussion sessions: corpus compilation and pedagogical use”. language value, 2 (1), 1-26. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.erevistes.uji.es/languagevalue. issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.mpi.nl/publications/escidoc-60436/@@popup� http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� ii. corpus design ii.1. corpus description ii.2. getting the corpus ready ii.2.1. collecting the data ii.2.2. transcribing the data ii.2.3. annotating the data ii.2.4. creating a multimodal annotated corpus iii. pedagogical applications notes references marcadores de word note1text note2text note3text note4text ole_link3 note5text note6text note7text note1 note2 note3 note4 note5 note6 note7 vpcs in the language of business and finance language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue july 2012, volume 4, number 1 pp. 84-96 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.5 84 verb-particle constructions in the language of business and finance ruth breeze rbreeze@unav.es universidad de navarra, spain abstract although verb-particle combinations are generally relatively uncommon in formal english, they occur with a certain frequency in texts related to the economy, and specifically in journalism and academic analysis focusing on the financial markets. the first part of this paper consists of a corpus study of the verb-particle combinations found in two 200,000 word corpora of business english, one consisting of market reports from the financial times, the other of academic research papers on economics from a series of peer-reviewed journals. the particles up, down, off, out, back and ahead are found to be particularly frequent, in combination with a wide range of verbs, mainly verbs of motion. the last section of the paper provides some models for creating exercises for teaching purposes, which start from an analysis of the metaphors associated with each particle and progress to comprehension of real examples from market reports published in the financial times. keywords: verb-particle constructions, phrasal verbs, cognitive metaphor, financial english, business english i. introduction traditional semantic approaches to the meaning of verb-particle constructions often consider them to be arbitrary. however, research in the area of cognitive metaphor has shown that particles may operate in a more systematic way than is initially apparent, reflecting the logic of what has been termed “spatial grammar” (lindner 1983, morgan 1997). this approach appears to offer considerable pedagogical benefits (alejo 2011). unfortunately, progress in this area has been limited, partly because of the complexity of the phenomenon of the verb-particle construction (vpc) itself, which resists categorical delimitations (lipka 1972), and partly because verb-particle usage is chiefly found in the spoken language, where it is highly idiomatic and subject to many regional and other sociolinguistic variations. for this reason, it could be argued that specialised language offers a particularly useful scenario for exploring cognitive approaches to teaching vpcs (campoy 2002, porto and pena 2008), since the lexical range is more constrained and the vpcs may be more likely to conform to a particular set of http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� mailto:rbreeze@unav.es� ruth breeze language value 4 (1), 84–96 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 85 metaphorical meanings. within this limited framework, it may be possible to provide some cognitive scaffolding which will help readers to identify the metaphors that are being activated by specific particles, with a view to facilitating comprehension of specialised texts. this paper makes a contribution to the study of verb-particle combinations by focusing on phrasal verb use within a specialised area of formal written english. although vpcs are generally quite uncommon in formal english, they occur with a certain frequency in texts related to the economy, and specifically in journalism and academic analysis focusing on the financial markets. the vpcs that occur most frequently in financial writing are studied here using corpus techniques, and then analysed in terms of cognitive metaphor. ii. corpus study ii.1. corpus and method two 200,000-word corpora were constructed from different genres in the general area of financial english. the first of these consisted of texts from the “market report” section of the financial times. all the texts available on the online version of this newspaper were downloaded on two days each week from january to september 2007, and stored as text files. the second corpus consisted of the same number of words taken from academic articles relating to the discipline of business and finance from the business and economic journal and the british journal of management, published in the years 2007-2009. wordsmith tools were used to identify a wide range of vpcs. in particular, searches were conducted using the wordsmith concordance tool to obtain all the combinations of verbs with prepositions, and the concordance files were then scanned manually in order to collect the relevant examples. these were then analysed and sorted into categories based on the possible underlying cognitive metaphors. basic or prototypical meanings were mapped out and, where possible, metonymic or metaphorical extensions of these were suggested for the non-prototypical vpcs. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� verb-particle constructions in the language of business and finance language value 4 (1), 84–96 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 86 ii.2. results and analysis particles were found to be much more frequent in the ft corpus than in the academic corpus. the most frequent particles in both corpora were in and to, but on consultation of the concordance lists it was found that these were not as generative of vpcs as some other particles, since in was generally used to denote position, and to was usually part of the infinitive. in the ft market reports corpus, the particles up, down, off, out, back and ahead were found to be particularly frequent, and were used in combination with a wide range of verbs, many of which belong to the field of motion. table 1 shows the relative frequency of these particles in the two corpora (raw figures were normalised to frequency per 10,000 words). table 1. frequency of particles in the academic and the ft corpus (per 10,000 words). academic corpus ft corpus ahead 0.1 9.2 back 0.6 6.6 down 1.5 19.1 off 2.2 10.6 out 5.9 8.9 up 5.1 33.4 it is evident from these figures that a study of vpcs is particularly useful and interesting in the context of financial journalism. the frequent use of vpcs appears not to be a feature of economic language as such, but to be dependent on genre. it is generally accepted that academic genres make little use of vpcs. it is less widely recognised that vpcs play a significant role in written media genres, and that this holds even for publications that are considered to use a relatively formal level of language. in what follows, the majority of the examples are drawn from the ft corpus, because of the abundance of data from this source. first, a number of cognitive schemata were identified which started from a prototypical meaning and then gave rise to semantic extensions by metonymy or metaphorisation. an overview of the different cognitive schemata identified in the context of these particles is provided in tables 2 to 7 below. for example, the primary metaphor up is http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� ruth breeze language value 4 (1), 84–96 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 87 more and down is less was found to be expressed in many different ways, often through a manner of motion verb in combination with up and down. a total of 13 verbs were used with up and 16 with down, which referred to upward/downward movement or position to convey an increase or decrease. the most frequent examples were manner-of-motion verb combinations such as “move up/down”, “shoot up” or “go down”. however, it was notable that transitive verbs implying the influence of external forces were also commonly used, and were particularly frequent in combination with down, an example being “push up/down”. there were also many combinations implying negative use of force, such as “beat down”, “drag down” and “weigh down”. however, these schemata were not the only cognitive metaphors associated with these particles, since up was also associated metonymically with greater visibility (“came up with”), with intensification (“hot up”), with the forging of a link (“join up”, “team up”, “link up”, “make up”) and with a perfective sense implying the definitive completion of an action (“break up”). the range of uses for up in these texts thus extends beyond those defined by lee (2001) and neagu (2007), and involves a wide and somewhat contradictory range of metaphors. in the case of the particles ahead and back, the dominant schema up is more and down is less was mirrored by typical uses of the path metaphor forward is more and backward is less. examples of this included “race ahead” and “go ahead”, for positive stock movements, and “fall back”, “drop back” and “edge back” for a decline in share prices. however, the implications of this second metaphorical schema were found to be slightly more complex than might appear at first sight, since they sometimes had the additional connotation of progress in the face of adversity (forward), as in the example “press ahead”. moreover, the particle back was found to have two contradictory uses, since it sometimes indicated regress to an earlier low point, as in the example “fall back”, while it sometimes denoted recovery or resurgence, as in the case of “bounce back”. the particles out and off were more challenging to analyse. the vpcs including these particles tended to rely on an underlying container metaphor, and most of the uses found in the texts appear to reflect some aspect of this. of the two, off offers the simpler schema, since off generally reflects separation from the container, and is used http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� verb-particle constructions in the language of business and finance language value 4 (1), 84–96 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 88 with a wide range of verbs to this effect (e.g. “split off”, “shrug off”, “hive off”, “brush off”, “dust off”). however, the case of out was more complex. the most obvious set of vpcs contain out used to denote escaping from containment (“go out”, “break out”) and out used with transitive verbs to indicate removal from containment (“strip out”, “squeeze out”), both of which have their basis in the schematic meaning of “out” which can be visualised from the mental image of the container (tyler and evans 2003). nevertheless, these are harder to reconcile with out as gradual transition into nonavailability (“peter out”, “die out”), which arguably relates to out as expansion (“spread out”, “draw out”) or distribution (“eke out”) (morgan 1997, rudzka-ostyn 2003). although all of the schemata seem to be loosely related to the containment metaphor, the resulting vpcs do not follow a consistent pattern, since in some cases out indicates being or going out of containment (“break out”), while in other cases, out indicates being or going out of existence (“peter out”). furthermore, this material also contained some atypical combinatory uses of out such as “point out”, which is hard to place within the available schemata, although it has been suggested that the underlying pattern is still a variant on the container metaphor, but that the kind of containment indicated here reflects accessibility to cognition, rather than physical availability (lindner 1983). as neagu (2007) notes, the range of meanings associated with out tends to reflect two opposing tendencies. in one of these, the metaphorical landmark is existence, knowledge, availability, and so on, and out adds to the verbal meaning by indicating escape from concealment (“break out”) or extension over space or time (“eke out”). in the other tendency, out indicates disappearance or unavailability (“go out”, “die out”), that is, out in the sense of making an exit from existence or consciousness. to a certain extent, the range of use of out seems to mirror the applications of the prefix “ex” in verbs derived from latin: for example, “extend” is “spread out”; “exit” is go out, “extinguish” is “put out”, “extinct” is “died out”, and so on. perhaps the simplest explanation of the behaviour of out is that it usually indicates that a border is being crossed, between what is available and what is not, or what is contained and what is not. the problem is that in the case of an unfamiliar combination, it is not easy to determine which way the transition goes. as in the case of the prefix “ex”, it is clear that out denotes the crossing of a border between accessibility and inaccessibility, but it is not clear in which direction. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� ruth breeze language value 4 (1), 84–96 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 89 table 2. vpcs with up. up up is more – movement (“go up”/ “put up”) or position (“be up”) up is accumulation (“build up”) up is visible (“turn up”) up is more intense (“heat up”) up is resistance – maintaining strength (“face up”) up is continuity (“keep up”) up is link – union with others (“join up”) up is perfective – action is completed (“finish up”) up is disintegration (“break up”) table 3. vpcs with down. down down is less – movement (“go down”/ “push down”) or position (“be down”) down is less intense (“calm down”) down is foundation – basic or permanent (“settle down”) down is perfective – action is completely finished (“break down”) table 4. vpcs with ahead. ahead ahead is more – path metaphor (“go ahead”) ahead is overcoming resistance (“press ahead”) ahead is future (“look ahead”) table 5. vpcs with back. back back is less – path metaphor (“drop back”) back is return – (“bounce back”) table 6. vpcs with off. off off is separation – part/whole metaphor (“split off”) off is defence – (“fend off”) off is negation – (“call off”) off is perfective – action is completed (“finish off”) table 7. vpcs with out. out out is escape from containment – inside/outside metaphor (“break out”) out is removal from containment – (“throw out”) out is transition to non-availability – (“fizzle out”) out is expansion – (“spread out”) http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� verb-particle constructions in the language of business and finance language value 4 (1), 84–96 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 90 out is transition to availability – (“point out”) out is resistance – (“hold out”) out is rescue – (“help out”) out is order – (“sort out”) out is perfective – action is completed (“buy out”) the generation of substantive forms involving a verb and particle (sell-off, buy-out, spin-off) is a particular feature of financial english. in the present corpus, it appears that this is only generative in certain cases, particularly those involving verbs indicating financial transactions related to buying, selling or rescuing companies. the vast majority of vpcs which occur in these corpora are not found in substantive form, and seem not to offer this potential. table 8 provides a list of the verb-particle combinations used as nouns found in the present corpus. in the corpus, various orthographic variants occurred (e.g. “crackdown”, “buy out”), but for reasons of style, all the examples are presented here with hyphens. table 8. substantives formed with vpcs. up break-up, build-up, catch-up, pick-up, tie-up down crack-down ahead go-ahead back buy-back, set-back, claw-back, cut-back off sell-off, spin-off, split-off out bail-out, buy-out, clear-out, stand-out iii. implications for teaching in this section, the implications of these findings for teaching are discussed, and some exercises are presented which exploit the potential offered by cognitive linguistics in this area (alejo 2011). the notion that cognitive metaphor could be used to shed light on the meaning of vpcs for the benefit of learners is not new (kövecses and szabó 1996, kurtyka 2001, dirven 2001, rudzka-ostyn 2003, pavlović 2010). if the underlying notion is that “prepositions encode mental idealisations of spatial scenes whose meanings, through a process of http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� ruth breeze language value 4 (1), 84–96 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 91 abstraction, can be extended to other domains to express more abstract concepts” (porto and pena 2008), then these “idealisations” may be accessible to second language learners as well as to native speakers. some studies have shown promising results (nhu and huyen 2009), while others found little difference in terms of outcomes between teaching methods designed to exploit the potential of metaphor and those that did not, particularly in studies which focused on productive language use rather than comprehension (juchem-grundmann 2009). the examples offered here are underpinned by the notion that it is pedagogically useful to find means of sensitising students towards the ways in which certain particles modify the meaning of the verb. they follow the principle that students should be encouraged to learn vpcs in groups that follow a similar pattern, rather than groups which simply share the same verb or particle. example 1. sensitising students to the function of certain particles. a. when a verb is used with the particle up, we often expect it to indicate upward movement or a high position, because we associate up with more: if a number increases, it goes up. look at the following examples from market reports that contain the particle up. which of the examples follow this pattern? which do not? a. mcdonalds edged up 0.9%, reaching its highest point of the week. b. tullow oil moved up 3.5% to 409p amid speculation about a take-over bid. c. falling equity markets pushed up short-term bond prices. d. the online poker company shot up to 42p to a record high. e. there were rumours that news of the world had teamed up with a high street retailer to offer an exclusive package. f. m&s are believed to be planning to link up with a dutch company to facilitate european expansion. g. the consortium is likely to break up abn if its bid is successful. h. the two companies appear to have reached an agreement to carve up the utility between them. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� verb-particle constructions in the language of business and finance language value 4 (1), 84–96 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 92 b. look at the examples which do not follow the pattern up is more. can you see any other patterns? what functions does up have in these examples? c. now look at the examples below. these new examples follow the same patterns as some of the examples in a-h. can you identify them and match them with similar examples in a-h? i. the two companies’ decision to join up was confirmed by management spokesmen today. j. there were fears that politicians would rip up the eurozone’s current policy agreements. d. which of the following patterns is exemplified by each example? up is link up is disintegration e. what would happen in the case of examples g, h and j if the particle up were removed? would the meaning of the sentence be changed in any way? example 2. presenting patterns of vpc use. a. look at the following examples. the particle out is often used to indicate that something has crossed a border or made a transition. what kind of transition can you conceptualise in each case? a. oil prices will rise if war breaks out. b. economic coordination has gone out of fashion. c. the prime minister ruled out a possible intervention. b. another idea that is often associated with out is the notion that something is being spread or extended over time or space. look at the following examples to see how this works. a. the construction work may well stretch out beyond the first half of the year. b. the nikkei managed to eke out a small rise on monday. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� ruth breeze language value 4 (1), 84–96 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 93 c. one further idea that is sometimes conveyed by out is that something crosses the border into unavailability or disappears. here are two examples to illustrate this. a. a two-day rally petered out despite heavy bidding. b. mmo2’s early gains fizzled out, leaving the stock lower than last week’s prices. we can summarise the three patterns described in a, b and c as: out is leaving a space out is extension out is disappearance d. which role of out is found in each of these examples? a. all 120 000 tickets were sold out in the first few hours. b. the acquisition process was drawn out over several months. c. stocks flicked in and out of positive territory. example 3. reading comprehension exercise. read the market report from the financial times, and complete the tasks below. wall street draught cools tokyo rally 1. tokyo shares fell on thursday as the momentum behind a two-day rally petered out in spite of continued bullishness in the banks sector. 2. the nikkei average lost 64.51 points, or 0.7 per cent, to close at 8,599.66, while the topix index closed down 0.5 per cent at 853.01. analysts said the market pulled back as there was little good news to justify an extension of the rally which lifted shares by 2.5 per cent on either side of the tuesday holiday. electronics exporters were knocked back by an overnight fall on wall street that brought us shares to their lowest level since october. toshiba and fuji photo film both lost 1.9 per cent, falling to ¥364 and ¥3,650 respectively, while sony dropped 1.7 per cent to ¥4,620. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� verb-particle constructions in the language of business and finance language value 4 (1), 84–96 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 94 3. a more precipitous fall was averted by further gains in the topix banks index, which has risen 4.4 per cent since the start of the week. the sector has been buoyed by capital raising plans at japan's big four banks which investors believe will ward off the need for government financial support. 1. what is the general picture of the tokyo stock exchange painted by paragraph 1? what happened to the “two-day rally”? what can we infer from the context about the meaning of the verb “to peter out”? what metaphorical meaning is conveyed by the particle out? 2. what is the general trend reported in paragraph 2? what relationship is established between wall street and japanese electronics exports? how can we picture the meanings of the verbs “to pull back” and “to knock back”? in what way do the two verbs differ in this paragraph? what metaphorical meaning is conveyed by the particle back? 3. unlike paragraphs 1 and 2, paragraph 3 reports some positive news: the biggest japanese banks will probably not need government support. which words tell us this in the text? what metaphorical meaning is conveyed by the particle off? 4. now that you have understood the general meaning of the text, look at the headline. the headline is also metaphorical: a “draught” is a current of cold air, which might “cool” someone who is sitting in the wrong place. how does this reflect the ideas in the text? can you draw this metaphor? iv. concluding observations this paper identifies the vpcs with up, down, ahead, back, out and off that appear in two corpora of texts related to economics and finance, and maps out the principal conceptual metaphors associated with these particles in the language domain of financial reports. this information is then used to develop pedagogical activities to raise students’ awareness of the different metaphors associated with some of these particles. this theoretically-grounded approach to the teaching of phrasal verbs offers http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� ruth breeze language value 4 (1), 84–96 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 95 an improvement on the random approximations offered by many current textbooks, and provides a model for further work. this makes a small contribution towards the ultimate aim of developing a comprehensive explanation of phrasal verbs that is wholly satisfactory to non-native students. references alejo, r. 2011. “making sense of phrasal verbs: a cognitive linguistic account of l2 learning”. aila review 23, 50-71. campoy cubillo, m.c. 2002. “phrasal and prepositional verbs in specialised texts: a creative device”. ibérica 4, 95-111. dirven, r. 2001. “english phrasal verbs: theory and didactic application”. in pütz, m., s. niemeier and r. dirven (eds.) language pedagogy. berlin/new york: mouton de gruyter, 3-28. juchem-grundmann, c. 2009. “dip into your savings. applying cognitive metaphor theory in the business english classroom. an empirical study”. ph. d. dissertation, koblenz-landau, germany: university of koblenz-landau. kövecses, z. and szabó, p. 1996. “idioms: a view from cognitive semantics”. applied linguistics 17 (3), 326-355. kurtyka, a. 2001. “teaching english phrasal verbs: a cognitive approach”. in pütz, m., s. niemeier and r. dirven (eds.) language pedagogy. berlin/new york: mouton de gruyter, 29-54. lee, d. 2001. cognitive linguistics: an introduction. oxford: oxford university press. lindner, s. 1983. a lexico-semantic analysis of verb-particle constructions with up and out. bloomington, in: university of indiana linguistics club. lipka, l. 1972. semantic structure and wordformation: verbparticle constructions in contemporary english. munich: wilhelm fink verlag. morgan, p. 1997. “figuring out “figure out”: metaphor and the semantics of the english verb-particle construction”. cognitive linguistics 8 (4), 327-358. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� verb-particle constructions in the language of business and finance language value 4 (1), 84–96 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 96 neagu, m. 2007. “english verb particles and their acquisition: a cognitive approach”. resla 20, 121-138. nhu, n. and huyen, p. 2009. conceptual metaphor and its application in teaching phrasal verbs to english majors at thuc hanh high school, hcmc. dissertation, ho chi minh, vietnam: ho chi minh city university of education. pavlović, v. 2010. “cognitive linguistics and english language teaching at english departments”. facta universitatis, linguistics and literature 8 (1), 79-90. porto, d. and pena, c. 2008. “a cognitive approach to some phrasal verbs in english for specific purposes”. ibérica 16, 109-128. rudzka-ostyn, b. 2003. word power: phrasal verbs and compounds. a cognitive approach. berlin/new york: mouton de gruyter. tyler, a. and evans, v. 2003. the semantics of english prepositions: spatial scenes, embodied meaning and cognition. cambridge: cambridge university press. received: 17 october 2011 accepted: 02 december 2011 cite this article as: breeze, r. 2012. “verb-particle constructions in the language of business and finance”. language value 4 (1), 84-96. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.erevistes.uji.es/languagevalue. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.5 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� the phraseology of intertextuality in english for professional communication language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2010, volume 2, number 1 pp. 27-50 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors 27 an approach to corpus-based language and multimodal features in communicative exchanges at an early age for adapted hypermedia content design alejandro curado fuentes acurado@unex.es university of extremadura, spain abstract this paper describes the results from the analysis of english and spanish corpora from the childes database for the design of adapted hypermedia (ahs) content in english at the pre-elementary school level. in general, linguistic and paralinguistic information from selected childes transcripts can contribute to the organisation of pedagogical content. in the corpus analysis, it is found that many conversational patterns in children’s l1, mainly collaborative situations, present significant multimodal aspects, which are often correlated with meta-discursive items and markers. the integration of specific multimodal traits in the ahs lessons can be useful for the learners’ l2 development. the use of ahs serves as a naturally resulting resource for multimodality and interactiveness in children’s l2 communicative development. keywords: corpus analysis, early age, language learning, collaborative exchanges, multimodality, adaptive hypermedia. i. introduction the integration of foreign languages (fl) and information technologies (it) in preelementary school (years 3 through 5) in extremadura has led to the design of curriculum material based on surveys and observations of children’s learning styles and patterns (cf. “curriculum de infantil”, published in the bulletin of extremadura 2003). during these years, the fl curriculum has seemed to demand a closer look into the way children ought to learn languages. following professional advices and methods (cf. wintergest et al. 2003, ellis 2004), it is found that many specific traits can be observed by analysing real situations where children communicate in their l1 (first language), “practising new words and structures in a way that sounds like a student in some foreign language classes” (lightbrown and spada 2006: 12). the cognitive development that takes place in the child’s brain is specific and restrained to the use of cognitive skills in those particular domains. his or her “interactions are not restricted to the second language, but affect the native language as well” (kroll et al. 2008: 109). language http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� mailto:acurado@unex.es� alejandro curado fuentes language value 2, (1), 27–50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 28 form evolvement mirrors this type of cognitive development, and the same process takes place in early age fl. to explore communicative exchanges at early age, childes (child language data exchange system) is managed as a corpus provider (see section 2 below for the database structure description). a direct and practical approach to natural language analysis is thus sought, derived from our research group’s aim to design adaptive hypermedia system (ahs) (cf. brusilovski 1996, 2001) lessons in pre-elementary courses (see web page in bibliography for our group gexcall). in this paper, the aim is to describe the main corpus-based results that determine the key linguistic and paralinguistic items in the children’s situations observed, and to correlate these items with multimodal information from the corpus for the design of the l2 lessons in the ahs. repetition and frequency are two key factors in the collaborative exchanges analysed, while the verbal and non-verbal communicative traits examined involve multimodal elements to take into account in the learning/communicative process. ii. theoretical framework the corpus is compiled by selecting specific directories and folders in the childes database. a directory is a group of speakers from a certain country, while the folders contain the number of transcripts recorded for that directory. table 1 displays the folders for the database directory “usa english”, as children speaking english (with adults and/or other children) as l1 are a main target group. table 1. folders selected for the “usa english” directory in the childes database. corpus folder age range comments bates on page 3 1;8 and 2;4 two sessions at 1;8 and two at 2;4 bernstein-ratner on page 5 1;1–1;11 mother child dyads during the earliest stages of language with play sessions bliss on page 7 3–10 control participants for a study of sli bohannon on page 12 nat 2;8 and 3;0 baxter 3;0 interactions in a laboratory setting of different adults with two children brown on page 14 adam 2;3–4;10 eve 1;6–2;3 sarah 2;3–5;1 large longitudinal study of three children warren-leubecker on page 74 1;6–3;1 4;6–6;2 parent–child interactions http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://childes.psy.cmu.edu/� http://childes.psy.cmu.edu/� an approach to corpus-based language and multimodal features in communicative exchanges at an early age for adapted hypermedia content design language value 2, (1), 27-50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 29 the folders are selected according to the age ranges and types of participants in the studies. the folder name usually corresponds to the researcher’s or analyst’s who recorded and transcribed the corpus. the hyper-linked page number in the corpus folder directs the user to the contents for that folder on the web, retrievable free of charge. for other languages and nationalities, childes offers many other directories (e.g., english from uk, spanish from spain, catalan, etc). in addition to the six folders from usa english, seven folders were chosen for spanish from spain, and four other folders from bilingual speakers of english and spanish in usa, as described below. in all corpus-based analyses, lexical repetition and frequency are two key factors, but for child language, this premise is core not only for lexical analysis but also for the observation of communicative development and strategies, in agreement with previous works (e.g., langacker 2000, lightbrown and spada 2006, bybee 2006, 2008, hudson 2008). this approach is feasible in children’s l2 learning. for instance, hudson (2008: 103) claims that “language is learned (...) rather than ‘acquired’ by the triggering of innate concepts (...) l2 can be viewed as a body of knowledge like any other, to be learned and taught by experience”. this view is “controversial in linguistics” (hudson 2008: 103), but it is held as convincing in much research. the point is that small children, being exposed to a wide range of conversational input (i.e., child directed language—cdl—cf. buttery and korhonen 2005, brodsky et al. 2007), may come across similar or different linguistic/paralinguistic forms, used in collaborative situations. one example is direct request, manifested in the extended use of transitive verbs, like want and like. the correlation of “visual-spatial stimuli” conveyed with the functional and pragmatic items uttered would help to better analyse and understand the communicative exchanges (in agreement with coventry and guijarro-fuentes 2008: 133). to observe such patterns, childes integrates, as mentioned above, a vast collection of recordings and transcripts. our analysis of the data focuses on selected transcripts that are then edited with a specialised tool (called clan—corpus language annotator—) for the labelling of linguistic and extra-linguistic information. the amount of text in the childes database is heterogeneous because it is intended for different research aims (e.g., linguistic, pedagogical, psychological, etc –cf. macwhinney 2000). in agreement http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� alejandro curado fuentes language value 2, (1), 27–50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 30 with biber et al. (1998: 246), and bowker and pearson (2002: 104), text selection in this kind of database should be done according to specific purposes for empirical language study and curriculum, and by also using sub-corpora or text categories (cf. hunston 2002, flowerdew 2004). for our corpus selection we mainly aim to be able to contrast socio-linguistic traits in english and spanish, and also different backgrounds, so as to enrich contexts “in the extent to which their linguistic characteristics may be similar” (biber 2006: 12), and to seek/identify differentiation from other groups (nortier 2008: 38). thus, three categories of recordings are needed: native english speakers in usa, native spanish in spain, and spanish used as the dominant language in bilingual contexts of usa. childes includes many examples of multimodal references in the transcripts, as tokowicz and warren (2008: 228) explain: “childes is particularly useful for investigating questions about the kind of input a learner receives, as it provides large samples of actual input”. children’s production is not thus the only scope in the analysis, but also their different types of context (cdl annotations) in the learning process (cf. robinson and ellis 2008: 501). in the childes texts analysed, multimodality occurs in the form of direct visual references during the conversations that the participants are sharing and interacting with, e.g., drawing objects, animals or people, playing with cards, toys, etc. there are also some auditory references that are considered multimodal (e.g., onomatopeias for animals and things, e.g., mooing, mewing, knocking, thumping, and thundering). the conversations in the corpus tend to develop spontaneously, as the children participate in games and tasks, reacting to instructions, questions and feedback. annotating and classifying this word usage appropriately can help to make observations of communicative procedures. carter (2004: 76) refers to “the creation of fictional worlds and imaginative entry to those worlds (...) regarded as essentially the domain of the growing and developing child”. these socially bonding elements in the tasks connect worlds and words: “for example, the speakers use each other’s words, employ parallel syntactic forms and generally pattern question and answer replies in such a way as to suggest high degrees of affective connection and convergence” (carter 2004: 101). lexical and grammatical usage result from these connections, i.e., “cognitive http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� an approach to corpus-based language and multimodal features in communicative exchanges at an early age for adapted hypermedia content design language value 2, (1), 27-50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 31 development, including language development, arises as a result of social interactions” (lightbrown and spada 2006: 47). lexical repetition is quite important in the process. the quantitative view of the data establishes the fieldwork for classification and contrastive study. lower lexical frequency can be also relevant in the situations observed (bybee 2008: 231), as the qualitative examination of the data leads to “observation and awareness of what happens” (mccarthy 1998: 59); for example, some repetitions overlap due to “language-in-action collaborative tasks (...) seen as practical and goal-facilitating” (mccarthy 1998: 59). the processing of the linguistic items, when done in a learningbased context, tends to be positive for the enhancement of “communicative competence” (fulcher and davidson 2007: 38). in our study, as stated above, the double-fold research question is whether there are distinctively frequent and widely used linguistic-discursive items in the corpora, and then whether these items can be correlated statistically with multi-modal references in the corpora. the results should be valuable as important verbal and non-verbal information to include in the ahs lessons, items that the learners should master to move across units. section 3 below will describe the corpus-based analysis done to obtain the most salient (frequent and distributed) linguistic-discursive information. section 4 then explains how this categorised information is correlated with relevant multi-modal items, pointed out in the corpora. section 5 includes a description of the inclusion of such salient linguistic and multi-modal data in the ahs lessons, giving some examples. finally, some conclusions on the most important findings in the study are included. iii. the corpus-based study the conversations were selected from the childes folders according to age and nationality, and whether they suited the situational/communicative purposes of the research. figure 1 gives a general view of the corpus sources and folders selected. some texts from years other than 3 to 6 (e.g., 0 to 2, and 7) were included for contrastive aims. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� alejandro curado fuentes language value 2, (1), 27–50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 32 figure 1. number of sources and folders in the corpus. the transcripts were edited to annotate speakers’ names and adults’ input as co-textual and directed, i.e., as cdl input. some common directing strategies by adults are questions, commands, prompts, pauses, connectors, and tags. some other annotations were also made for the identification of characteristic linguistic-discursive items, examined below. the three categories (english, spanish, and bilingual) total 6,077,574 words. most transcripts include recording sessions that last an average of one hour and 20 minutes. the high repetition of words leads to a low lexical density, measured as distinct words per 1,000 running tokens (standardised type-to-token ratios). native english has the highest degree of word repetition, as seen in figure 2, whereas the highest lexical densities found are for spanish fiveand six-year olds. figure 2. contrastive view of standardised type-to-token ratios in corpus. 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 folders (3-6 yr.) folders (other yrs.) sources (3-6 yr.) sources (other yrs.) english spanish bilingual 0 10 20 30 3-year old 4-year old 5-year old 6-year old nº w o rd s p er 1 00 0 to ke ns s standard ratios a. english s. spanish b. spanish http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� an approach to corpus-based language and multimodal features in communicative exchanges at an early age for adapted hypermedia content design language value 2, (1), 27-50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 33 sentence and word lengths also provide interesting contrastive data. while the bilingual context produces the longest sentences (especially in 4and 5-year old contexts—up to 90 words for the longest—), native english speakers use short sentences (an average of 18 words in 3-year olds’ contexts). words tend to have similar lengths. word frequency is contrasted with the type of speaker and age level involved. word lists are arranged in detailed consistency lists (dcl),1 and then run with the concordance software. the four age divisions produce four different word lists for each of the three nationalities. table 2 is an example with the 20 most frequent and dispersed items in the dcls. the american english dcl presents the highest rate of word repetition; this aspect is coherent with its lower lexical density. the bilingual dcl presents spanish words as the most frequent and widespread data. table 2. frequencyand range-based analysis by using dcls (words are taken as transcribed from the oral texts). american english (monolingual) spain’s spanish (monolingual) spanish/english (bilingual) you 30921 word total i 27118 a 23615 be 23388 the 20701 it 20222 what 16925 to 15343 do 14944 that 14056 dem 10622 not 9415 and 8774 go 8507 this 7871 in 7848 no 7597 on 7351 one 7227 have 7128 a 25204 word total no 23096 que 19932 la 16372 el 16303 es 13580 se 12636 qué 12477 de 10391 sí 10365 éh 8511 lo 7069 en 6673 o 6071 me 5999 aquí 5951 está 5317 mira 5298 los 5201 mí 4610 no 3485 word total a 3468 y 3209 que 2843 el 2162 la 2010 sí 1723 es 1609 eh 1482 aquí 1386 lo 1272 un 1261 de 1226 se 1191 me 1111 cómo 1078 te 1076 ya 1047 está 946 yo 889 short words (i.e., with few graphemes) repeat the most, being used in dynamic interpersonal exchanges. in many cases children produce such utterances without repeating or emulating adults’ words. the age-located instances of children’s personal use without intervening adults (i.e., non-cdl) demonstrate that there is a period when http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� alejandro curado fuentes language value 2, (1), 27–50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 34 particular expressions are uttered individually (e.g., i want ta go, or a mí no me gusta, both at the 4-year level). this production autonomy hints at the existence of an in-built lexicon in the child’s cognitive system (e.g., “go”, “want”, “like”, “gustar”, etc.), in agreement with buttery and korhonen (2005), hudson (2008), and coventry and guijarro-fuentes (2008), among others. interpersonal language is common in all the contexts, and the children’s utterances reflect every day words and worlds, i.e., common semantic-pragmatic references to activities and actions done in collaboration with adults and/or other children. an example is the great reliance made on third person references by the spanish-speaking children, paralleled by the first and second person forms preferred by the english speakers. long stretches of conversation tend to take place in the spanish and bilingual contexts, with a consequent production of longer sentences, and the exchanges are shorter and more dynamic in english. for the inspection of these linguistic-communicative traits in the categories, various tables have been built. an example is table 3, where the comparison is made between 3and 4-year old levels in the american english context. linguistic and paralinguistic information is recorded to check if there is ageor nationality-based variation. for instance, one difference at age 4 is that questions are not only posed by adults but also quite often by the child. in turn, at age 3, the adults ask most questions to direct the collaborative exchanges. thus, to introduce children to simple every day words and sentences may constitute, together with attractive audio-visual stimuli, a sound pedagogical path (in agreement with hudson 2008, and coventry and guijarro-fuentes, 2008, among others). table 3. items arranged according to age level within a nationality category. 3 and 4 freq. field – year 3 field – year 4 1 do you have... / would you like (cdl) / where did you ... (cdl) / what else did you... (cdl) / why don't you... (cdl) / what do you call... (cdl) i don't (want) / i don't see (no birds) / i'm finished 2 i don't know / i don't think you (cdl) / i want to (go) / i going to / i don't want to / i want some (more) / mommy, i want (a) you have to / mommy, you... / how you do it / how do you do it / where you going 3 chug a chug a chug / make a (dog) (cdl) / make a (plane) / it looks like a / dis is a / i never heard of a / it's gonna be a 4 oh yeah? oh look it what does it say / you turn it / 5 what kind of... (cdl) i like to / would you like to (cdl) 6 play with (+toy) what is dis / what is that (cdl) http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� an approach to corpus-based language and multimodal features in communicative exchanges at an early age for adapted hypermedia content design language value 2, (1), 27-50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 35 the other type of table is built by contrasting the statistically significant clusters found at similar relative frequency levels. table 4 lists the frequent pragmatic forms analysed according to nationality (with added age levels when the expression is distinctly used). table 4. frequency-based expressions according to nationalities, derived from dcl data. american english (monolingual) spain’s spanish (monolingual) i don’t know spanish/english (bilingual latin american in usa) i’m goin(g) to (5 & 4 years) mommy, you… (all) i’m not gonna (5 years) i want ta go (4 years) you want to…? (4 & 3 years) i’m gonna (6 years) you have to you open it i not going to (3 years) a ver si a lo mejor no sé qué es (6 & 5 years) es que como no… (6 years) porque no + verb (6 & 5 years) a mí no me gusta (6, 5 & 4 years) mira lo que + verb (4 years) pues creo que lo tienes que y luego (5, 4 & 3 years) y ya está y lo pone en y luego (6 & 5 years) me voy a + verb (all) no me acuerdo (all except 6 years) no se puede me parece que (4 years) sí es eso y yo también (all) mamita, el de… (3 years) a salient feature is the verb go in the progressive form (e.g., be + going to or be + gonna). it is found that these structures are produced by children at age 4 and above, but not earlier. this observation coincides with the findings in goldberg and casenhiser (2008) from a childes selection of two year olds’ transcripts, where mothers use go in 39 percent of the [subject + verb + object] structures recorded. the pattern is also common in adults’ speech with three-year old children, but these children do not use it autonomously in the collaborative exchanges. in spanish, children after the age of 4 begin to explain ideas in longer clauses (e.g., es que como no…). the same holds true for bilingual children after age 4, when they state more opinions (e.g., me parece que…). this fluidity is not detected earlier. slobin (2000) refers to an example of this lengthy statement usage in spanish as a “richer imagery” for movement clauses when places are described (cadierno 2008: 254). again, the implications for efl in our pre-elementary context point to the need for verbal simplification and audio-visual stimuli to formulate ideas.2 in addition, significant vocative expressions and personal preferences/inclinations form a major feature of interpersonal oral discourse in collaborative tasks (koester 2006: 86), by which children often ask concrete things in the transcripts in all languages, and use negative forms (e.g., not, don’t, no, etc) in significant pragmatic functions (e.g., stating likes and dislikes, lack of interest, or being told by adults what they cannot do). http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� alejandro curado fuentes language value 2, (1), 27–50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 36 both linguistic-discursive variation and similarity can be inferred from the relative frequency data analysis. to confirm or refute such observations, a quantitative examination of age-based and nationality-based features should come from a key item computation based on variance and standard deviation. these two parameters can work as a sort of statistical yardstick with which to compare the dispersion of scores around given means (cf., bachman 2004). the top 60 expressions from each age category can establish means from which variance and standard deviations are calculated. next, the age categories are run in pairs to contrast the information (e.g., year 3 with 4, 3 with 5, and so forth). this comparison enables the calculation of t-values, which then indicate the degrees of statistical probability that two age categories may have for the use of similar or different linguistic features.3 table 5 displays the three most salient features or dimensions measured in the english and spanish corpora: 1. interpersonal (use of first and second person pronouns, vocative words, and commands); 2. declarative (demonstrative pronouns and adjectives, third person statements, and expressions for preferences and dislikes); and, 3. markers (discourse connectors, interjections, and gambits). the bilingual category is excluded here because we want to focus on the monolingual data to be extrapolated to the spanish monolingual learners’ context alone. in addition, to my knowledge, a large general bilingual corpus for the comparative analysis is not available.4 table 5. probability statistics for three discourse features examined in the children’s speech. nationality/ age comparison interpersonal declarative markers american english 3 <> 4 ,4583 ,0057 ,0593 3 <> 5 ,0003 ,4923 ,5289 3 <> 6 ,4660 ,2085 ,0002 4 <>5 ,0000 ,0311 ,0968 4 <> 6 ,0252 ,0003 ,0000 5 <> 6 ,5989 ,0629 ,0062 spain’s spanish 3 <> 4 ,3617 ,1213 ,9714 3 <> 5 ,7595 ,0052 ,1917 3 <> 6 ,9027 ,0794 ,0398 4 <>5 ,4110 ,9072 ,2047 4 <> 6 ,3279 ,5768 ,0434 5 <> 6 ,7979 ,2432 ,4016 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� an approach to corpus-based language and multimodal features in communicative exchanges at an early age for adapted hypermedia content design language value 2, (1), 27-50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 37 usage probability derives from the calculation of t-scores for each pair set, and these scores have different degrees of freedom. fisher’s and yates’ table iii (bachman 2004: 336) provides the critical values of t according to such degrees of freedom. a score equal to or over 0.5 would mean that the difference between the two items is due to chance. in table 5, few contrasted items are different due to chance: 11.2 percent of the cases in american english and 33.4 percent in spanish. for english, such a distinction is acute (22.2 percent more than for spanish), i.e., there are markedly objective differences between age levels. in the english conversations, the age 4-level appears as the recorded period at which a wider use is made of all three discursive dimensions. needless to say, this difference should not be interpreted as a sign of little or irrelevant linguistic use in the other age categories. quite the opposite, this information reveals the time when children are most likely to use certain items that characterise overall pre-elementary age conversation in collaborative exchanges. the score differences can also point to pair set proximity for certain age levels. in other words, the different speakers may produce a similar proportion of discourse features. for example, in american english, age 3 comes quite near year 4 in the use of interpersonal statements (cell 3 <> 4 in table 5). the production of discourse markers is as significant at age 5 as it is at age 3 (3 <> 5), and the proportion of interpersonal statements is similar at years 5 and 6 (cell 5 <> 6). iv. multimodal features the data from the linguistic analysis can be correlated with the various visual-spatial stimuli and auditory features that prompt, direct, and/or engulf the conversations. this correlation should form a better image of linguistic and paralinguistic items (cf. coventry and guijarro-fuentes 2008). the spontaneous fictional, imaginative worlds that develop in the conversations are the speakers’ own, enhanced by their interaction with other children and adults in playful and collaborative tasks, while cognitive development unfolds as a result (cf. lightbrown and spada 2006). the multi-modal http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� alejandro curado fuentes language value 2, (1), 27–50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 38 items are projected in a learning context, and contribute to fostering “communicative competence” (cf. fulcher and davidson 2007). table 6 displays the percentages of the correlated multimodal features in the three salient dimensions. obviously enough, there may exist other types of linguisticdiscursive items that include multimodal references in the transcripts. our concern is only with the significant features drawn from the quantitative analysis because we want to apply the most relevant communicative traits to the learning/pedagogical process. table 6. percentages in the correlation of dimensions with multimodality in the two corpora. corpus interpersonal declarative markers english 10 36 54 spanish 18 35 47 most multimodal information (e.g., 54 percent in the english corpus) is correlated with short phrases and gambits that convey the use of markers and meta-discursive items. these gambits include (in english) uptakers like “ok” and “there”, starters like “now” and “then”, and appealers such as “isn’t it?” or “ok?” (based on a classification by thomas 1983). a common example is the use of there (by both adult and child) to signal transition and progress. in spanish, the percentage for markers is a bit lower but still the majority, with a similar proportion for declarative statements, but a slightly higher percentage for interpersonal items with multimodal information than in english. the annotation of the multimodal references is done semi-automatically. the frequency-based features are automatically extracted from the concordance (e.g., all the annotated lines with the interpersonal label, or all the cdl lines from a given age period where more declarative statements are recorded). the key is to observe examples to which the previous quantitative analysis can hint and direct. sample 1 is an excerpt of an extracted concordance for age 4 in the english corpus according to the condition “declarative” (produced and received by the child), to be later assigned multimodal features. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� an approach to corpus-based language and multimodal features in communicative exchanges at an early age for adapted hypermedia content design language value 2, (1), 27-50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 39 1. should we use this time ? *decl: 3.867 c:\texts\childr~2\english\blissu~1\4-norj~1.cha concordance set tag word no. file 2. called yolk . den, this be *decl 1.913 c:\texts\childr~2\english\blissu~1\4-nort~1.cha 3. i looked at this and it goes just like *decl 2.324 c:\texts\childr~2\english\blissu~1\4-norj~1.cha 4. i'm gonna take this up like a ball *decl 3.327 c:\texts\childr~2\english\blissu~1\4-nort~1.cha 5. we'll take this spatula and use it +cdl *decl 2.067 c:\texts\childr~2\english\blissu~1\4-nort~1.cha 6. this is the hard part *decl 1.727 c:\texts\childr~2\english\blissu~1\4-norj~1.cha 7. this one is hard *decl 945 c:\texts\childr~2\english\blissu~1\4-nort~1.cha sample 1. excerpt of a concordance to be added multimodal labels. in sample 1, multimodality can be annotated with metadiscourse features in some lines (e.g., lines 3, 4 and 5). however, the rest of the lines may be harder to interpret. in such cases, it is useful to go to the transcripts where the amount of dimensions with possible multimodal traits is greater (e.g., the bliss folder for age 4, according to the file name appearing in sample 1). this qualitative examination may illustrate and aid the overall analysis. the following dialogue excerpt (sample 2) includes a mother and her four-year-old child. the presence of the three linguistic-discursive dimensions described is high. the conversation is part of a collaborative task where short exchanges of information take place in the form of direct questions/answers, commands, markers, and meta-discursive items. such items have been annotated within brackets, and the presence of multimodality is highlighted. *mot: want to take it apart first ? [interpersonal question] *chi: right here +... [marker / metadiscourse / production] *mot: how do you get it out ? [interpersonal question] *mot: how do you get the pieces out ? [interpersonal question / repetition] *mot: like this ? + [question / metadiscourse / repetition] *chi: yeah . *mot: ok . [answer / marker] *chi: are ya gonna talk to it without the puzzles out of it ? [interpersonal question / production] *mot: yeah . *mot: <you can just put> [//] why don't you put a piece and then i'll put a piece . [interpersonal command / question] *chi: ok . http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� alejandro curado fuentes language value 2, (1), 27–50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 40 *mot: this looks like mickey's head . + [declarative / naming] *mot: is that his head ? + [question / repetition] *chi: yep . *mot: ok . [answer / marker] *chi: there . + [metadiscourse / production] *mot: now it's your turn . [interpersonal prompt] *chi: um . *mot: ok. [answer / marker] *chi: there. + [metadiscourse / production] *chi: it’s your turn . [interpersonal prompt / repetition / production] sample 2. conversational excerpt (*mot—mother— / *chi—four-year-old child—). the multimodal elements of communication with the child are visual in sample 2. most are connected with the child’s own production of metadiscourse, while both directing and being directed in the conversation. in turn, the items chosen by the adult are declarative, pointing to specific objects and drawings. in the spanish corpus, as mentioned, the interpersonal stage is more significant at age 4, while age 5 goes first in the use of markers (see table 5 above). it would seem then that the young speakers of spanish tend to move into discursive interactions a bit more slowly (at age 5) than their english counterparts. in sample 3, this tendency can be observed. the girl is five years and 6 months old, and is able to answer with clear information, establishing a rapport based on discourse identities with the observer, through which the child is already claiming her position in the socio-cultural/ educational scale (cf. koester 2006: 6). *obs: a ver # me dices como te llamas . [interpersonal question] *cri: cristina perez perez . *obs: cristina perez perez ? [question / repetition] *obs: oye que estabas haciendo ahora en clase ? [marker / interpersonal question] *cri: estaba escribiendo y pintando . *obs: y que estabas escribiendo y pintando ? [interpersonal question / repetition] *cri: escribiendo en el cuaderno azul . [answer / declarative / production] *obs: si # oye y que es el cuaderno azul ? [marker / interpersonal question / repetition] *cri: uno que tiene cuadrados rojos y lo voy a terminar . [answer / declarative / production] *obs: si y que te ha dicho la sor # que lo haces bien ? [marker / interpersonal question] *cri: si . *obs: y tambien pintas en ese ? + [marker / metadiscourse / question] *cri: &=afirma . *obs: y que pintas ? [marker / interpersonal question] *cri: pin [/] pinto cuadros . *obs: de muchos colores de que colores . [answer / question / repetition] *cri: rojo # marron # amarillo # rosa # morado y # y verde . http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� an approach to corpus-based language and multimodal features in communicative exchanges at an early age for adapted hypermedia content design language value 2, (1), 27-50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 41 *obs: hala # + si te sabes todos los colores . [marker / interpersonal statement] *cri: sí, verde de la vaca [answer / declarative / production] *obs: ah sí, y y que mas hace la vaca? [marker / interpersonal question] *cri: mm . [answer / production] *obs: la vaca hace muu sí y que más pintas?+ [interpersonal statement / repetition / prompt] sample 3. conversational excerpt (*obs—adult observer— / *cri—cristina, five-year-old child—). discourse markers are quite common in this case. their use reproduces an analysed aspect of discourse, the “interpersonal and the textual functions” (ädel 2006: 17). the observer motivates the child’s responses and actions by relying on many discourse markers, and leads her to demonstrate her knowledge. the interaction is also done through direct questioning/answering turns. sound and visual items are pointed out by the researcher in this case (cdl). undoubtedly, together with the age variable, such independent (socio-cultural) variables entail proportional differences in the dimensions described. the corpus-based information may work as positive feedback for children’s efl teaching/learning at early age. the communicative items pinpointed may differ not only depending on the type of topics and collaborative tasks being carried out, but also on whether the children must interact with familiar adults, unfamiliar people, teachers, or other children. in the corpus, the participants exchange information and communicate by activating sociocultural variables (e.g., what the situation is like, who the other speakers are or what they represent, what they must use the lexical item for, etc). in this way, in social, cultural and educational contexts, communication is at least aided in its processing thanks to much visual-spatial input data favoured (much in cdl form). v. teaching implications the most salient verbal and non-verbal information in the corpora serves to lead the selection of linguistic items and the design of audio-visual resources for the ahs (adaptive hypermedia system) lessons. the material and the different access channels to knowledge, e.g., verbal, visual, repetitions, gestures and interaction, etc., can be defined and specified for the efl activities in the hypermedia form, attempting to adapt http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� alejandro curado fuentes language value 2, (1), 27–50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 42 to the child’s learning preferences and demands. thus, as described below, the ahs course contains audio-visual material that includes colourful characters and units, but also adequate means of access and interaction at the age levels. these devices in the system challenge the learners’ communicative competence by leading them through a three-phase approach in the situations: introduction of topic, interaction/ reinforcement, and evaluation. the verbal skills to be tested include both recognition and production of corpus-based lexical items, whereas the non-verbal skills include their reception and activation of frequent audio-visual elements, taken from the corpora. in particular, each lesson runs on a specific topic and set of tasks/activities with which children are familiar at that age level. the units contain key forms of exchange and language derived from the analysis of the childes transcripts. for example, the simple and concise sentences with everyday words imitate the generally short and clear functional-pragmatic items examined. the contrasted spanish and bilingual material can also give insights of similarities and variation to take into account for the sequencing of the pedagogical content. for instance, in unit 1, “greetings and introductions” (table 7), the characters use many declarative statements with first and second person pronouns; this input works as basic reference material at age 3. table 7. linguistic and conceptual units in the ahs lessons. concepts 3 4 5 linguistic content 3 4 5 unit 1: greetings and introductions simple descriptions x x x personal pronouns/ declarative statements x x x greetings/ introductions x x x prepositions / interpersonal questions x x unit 2: the family simple descriptions of people and objects x x x third person pronouns/ possessive pronouns x x family members x x x these is/are x x unit 3: the house simple descriptions of objects and people x x x common and proper nouns / it is … x x specific vocabulary; numbers x x to have / to be going to x x unit 4: the toys feelings (love, hate …) and likes (i like …) x x x direct questions: are you…? / what is this? x x colours x x like/ dislike x x x unit 5: the food http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� an approach to corpus-based language and multimodal features in communicative exchanges at an early age for adapted hypermedia content design language value 2, (1), 27-50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 43 types of food / meals x x x wh/ open questions interrogative pronouns x x daily routines (wash one’s hands, have breakfast…) x x to be / to be going to x x unit 6: the school actions (read, jump, run) x x adjectives comparative and superlative x x sizes and shapes / numbers x x commands (make… / don’t make…) x x x unit 7: the holidays space /time orientation (up, down, near ...) x x x can/could would you like … x sensations, states of mind (happy, bored, i am cold…) x x x do/does yes/no questions x x at age 3, written words are kept to a minimum and the focus is placed on the general pictures / characters pointed out, while at later years, more details are shown (see an example in figure 3). the main verbal difference in this case is the larger number of proper and concrete nouns for years 4 and 5. in the children’s interaction with the ahs input, attractive audio-visual and multimedia stimuli must accompany the verbal content. information technology (it) suitability for early age education is the result of implementing key aspects for motivation, adaptability, and friendliness. figure 3 illustrates how such ideas can guide the design of activities that integrate the computer input/output devices for specific recognition (the captions in figure 3 are sound files in the ahs). by recognising pictures with sounds, the young learner may communicate with key language in the topic or situation, which demands some specific knowledge. in this case, the nouns are more specific for parts of the face (unit 5). the content is here made available after the second level (age 4), in agreement with corpusbased information about noun use after that age. thus, the l2 progress parallels l1 development. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� alejandro curado fuentes language value 2, (1), 27–50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 44 figure 3. example of hypermedia-based identification. therefore, multimodality varies across the different units and levels. the use of gambits such as “ok”, and “there” for age 3, or others, like “great”, and “this is good” at later years, is recurrent to confirm that something has been done right (together with pop-up multimedia effects of flowers and applause, medals, trophies, etc). other expressions, e.g., “nope”, “oops”, and “that’s not it”, underline mistakes, accompanied by pictures of tomatoes, eggs, or raindrops, and disapproval effects like booing, mumbling, etc. socio-cultural traits are equally important for the ahs design. these factors correspond to main ideas gathered in surveys and questionnaires (cf. cumbreño et al. 2006). the characters, for instance, are the result of most children’s preferences; even the choice for colour is based on direct observation of children’s drawings in some schools. the topics (“the family”, “the house”, “food”, etc) are taken from most teachers’ material selections in the teaching curriculum, but they also agree with the type of situations explored in childes (e.g., playing with toys, counting things in the house, naming animals, etc). figure 4 shows a sequence for a basic oral exchange between some characters, with captions included here but, obviously, not in the lessons. the elephant is chosen as a “less smart” animal for the playful excuse of linguistic repetition and knowledge confirmation. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� an approach to corpus-based language and multimodal features in communicative exchanges at an early age for adapted hypermedia content design language value 2, (1), 27-50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 45 figure 4. a sequence of basic interaction in the ahs presentation unit. vi. conclusions the corpus-based analysis has served as an engine for linguistic-discursive content identification. it is found that the young efl students’ learning context can benefit from the examination of linguistic, paralinguistic, and multimodal input in the exchanges. the evaluation phase of the ahs system is currently going on in various schools of extremadura, and the overall results already point to significant vocabulary gain and phrase production at the basic levels of simple direct questions and answers, personal statements, object identification, and declarative knowledge. another significant finding is that the teachers find that the ahs interactive lessons are flexible and useful to adapt to age levels in terms of both verbal (e.g., vocabulary, sentences) and non-verbal (e.g., cursor, mouse buttons) skills. this is a key educational challenge for children’s efl learning via the ahs lessons. the adaptation involves the effective understanding and use of english words and phrases without translation into l1, the use of concise lexical constructions taken from real conversations, and the control and command of multimodality via pictorial and sound media. it is also concluded that the salient linguistic/paralinguistic traits observed in the corpus have positive effects on the identification of productive content for communication. in the case of children from age 3 to 5, distinguishing age period-based input data is quite relevant to determine key content and preferred ways of interaction (e.g., a focus on everyday words, the use of concise statements, importance of context-based references, familiar socio-cultural aspects, collaborative interaction, and so forth). the hypermedia distribution of the content enables the easy-to-follow process, while the intelligent tutor in the ahs directs the students to the appropriate learning stages and levels. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� alejandro curado fuentes language value 2, (1), 27–50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 46 notes 1 detailed consistency lists (dcl) are the result of combining frequency and range across the corpora. therefore, the order of the items is listed not only according to their higher frequency but also to their wider distribution over the texts in the given corpus. 2 it is found in most examples that the bilingual speakers use many words in the sentences, including abstract thinking in their conversations (e.g., telling opinions about topics, people, games, etc); in contrast, the excerpts checked for the other two categories reflect this abstract level less intensively, and probably focus on more everyday references (naming of things, people, animals, etc). this general observation cannot be investigated further at this point, but may be left open for possible contrastive probing. 3 this classification is based on a keyness-based measurement of the items in relation to other corpora frequency lists (the british national corpus [2001], and the spanish web corpus [sharoff 2006]), each having more than 100 million words. 4 the only bilingual corpus found contains literary texts and is intended for code-switching study (callahan 2004). needless to say, the code-switching phenomenon is beyond the scope of this research. references ädel, a. 2006. metadiscourse in l1 and l2 english. amsterdam/philadelphia: john benjamins. bachman, l. 2004. statistical analyses for language assessment. cambridge: cambridge university press. biber, d. 2006. university language. a corpus-based study of spoken and written registers. amsterdam/philadelphia: john benjamins. biber, d., conrad, s. and reppen, r. 1998. corpus linguistics: investigating language structure and use. cambridge: cambridge university press. bowker, l. and pearson, j. 2002. working with specialized language. a practical guide to using corpora. london: routledge. british national corpus, version 3 (bnc xml edition). 2007. distributed by oxford university computing services on behalf of the bnc consortium. <http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/> brodsky, p, waterfall, h.r. and edelman, s. 2007. “characterizing motherese: on the computational structure of child-directed language”. in mcnamara, d.s. and j.g. trafton (eds.) proceedings of the 29th cognitive science society conference. austin, tx: cognitive science society, 833-838. 20 august 2010 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/� an approach to corpus-based language and multimodal features in communicative exchanges at an early age for adapted hypermedia content design language value 2, (1), 27-50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 47 <http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.65.5957&rep=rep1& type=pdf> brusilovsky, p. 1996. “methods and techniques of adaptive hypermedia”. user modeling and user adapted interaction, 6 (2-3), 87-129. brusilovsky, p. 2001. “adaptive hypermedia”. user modeling and user-adapted interaction, 11 (2-3), 87-110. buttery, p and a. korhonen. 2005. “large scale analysis of verb subcategorization differences between child directed speech and adult speech”. verb workshop 2005, interdisciplinary workshop on the identification and representation of verb features and verb classes. saarland university. 20 august 2010 <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~pjb48/butterykorhonen.pdf> bybee, j. 2006. “from usage to grammar: the mind’s response to repetition”. language, 82, 711-733. bybee, j. 2008. “usage-based grammar and second language acquisition”. in robinson, p. and n.c. ellis (eds.) handbook of cognitive linguistics and second language acquisition. london: routledge, 216-236. cadierno, t. 2008. “learning to talk about motion in a foreign language”. in robinson, p. and n.c. ellis (eds.) handbook of cognitive linguistics and second language acquisition. london: routledge, 239-275. callahan, l. 2004. spanish/english code-switching in a written corpus. amsterdam: john benjamins. carter, r. 2004. language and creativity. the art of common talk. london: routledge. childes. child language data exchange system. 12 august 2010 <http://childes.psy.cmu.edu/> coventry, k.r. and guijarro-fuentes, p. 2008. “spatial language learning and the functional geometric framework”. in robinson, p. and n.c. ellis (eds.) handbook of cognitive linguistics and second language acquisition. london: routledge, 114-138. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.65.5957&rep=rep1&type=pdf� http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.65.5957&rep=rep1&type=pdf� http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~pjb48/butterykorhonen.pdf� http://childes.psy.cmu.edu/� alejandro curado fuentes language value 2, (1), 27–50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 48 cumbreño espada, a.b., rico garcía, m., curado fuentes, a. and domínguez gómez, e. 2006. “developing adaptive systems at early stages of children’s foreign language development”. recall journal, 18 (1), 45–62. curriculum de infantil. 2003. diario oficial de extremadura. 11 april 2006 (pp. 4505-4515) <http://doe.juntaex.es/> ellis, r. 2004. the study of second language acquisition. oxford: oxford university press. flowerdew, l. 2004. “the argument for using english specialized corpora to understand academic and professional language”. in connor, u.and t.a. upton (eds.) discourse in the professions. perspectives from corpus linguistics. amsterdam: john benjamins, 11-36. fulcher, g. and davidson, f. 2007. language testing and assessment. london: routledge. gexcall group. extremadura’s group for computer assisted language learning. 12 september 2010 <http://gexcall.unex.es> goldberg, a.e. and casenhiser, d. 2008. “construction learning and second language acquisition”. in robinson, p. and n.c. ellis (eds.) handbook of cognitive linguistics and second language acquisition. london: routledge, 197-225. hudson, r. 2008. “word grammar, cognitive linguistics, and second language learning and teaching”. in robinson, p. and n.c. ellis (eds.) handbook of cognitive linguistics and second language acquisition. london: routledge, 89-113. hunston, s. 2002. corpora in applied linguistics. cambridge: cambridge university press. koester, a. 2006. investigating workplace discourse. london: routledge. kroll, j.f., gerfen, c. and dussias, p.e. 2008. “laboratory designs and paradigms: words, sounds, and sentences”. in wei, l. and m.g. moyer (eds.) the blackwell guide to research methods in bilingualism and multilingualism. oxford: blackwell publishing, 108-131. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://doe.juntaex.es/� http://gexcall.unex.es/� an approach to corpus-based language and multimodal features in communicative exchanges at an early age for adapted hypermedia content design language value 2, (1), 27-50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 49 langacker, r. 2000. “a dynamic usage-based model”. in barlow, m. and s. kemmer (eds.) usage-based models of language. stanford: csli, 1-63. lightbrown, p.m. and spada, n. 2006. how languages are learned. oxford: oxford university press. macwhinney, b. 2000. the childes project. tools for analyzing talk. mahwah, new jersey: lawrence erlbaum associates. mccarthy, m. 1998. spoken language & applied linguistics. cambridge: cambridge university press. nortier, j. 2008. “types and sources of bilingual data”. in wei, l. and m.g. moyer (eds.) the blackwell guide to research methods in bilingualism and multilingualism. oxford: blackwell publishing, 35-52. robinson, p. and ellis, n.c. 2008. “conclusion: cognitive linguistics, second language acquisition and 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http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://trac.sketchengine.co.uk/wiki/corpora/spanishwebcorpus� alejandro curado fuentes language value 2, (1), 27–50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 50 cite this article as: curado fuentes, a. 2010. “an approach to corpus-based language and multimodal features in communicative exchanges at an early age for adapted hypermedia content design”. language value, 2 (1), 27-50. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue. issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� figure 2. contrastive view of standardised type-to-token ratios in corpus. spain’s spanish notes marcadores de word note1text note2text note3text note4text note1 note2 note3 note4 in their assessment of the cognitive linguistics enterprise, evans and green (2006: 779) note that one of the challenges the paradigm has yet to face is the problem of competing explanations offered to account for the same, or closely related, phenomena language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2011, volume 3, number 1 pp. 30-48 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors 30 an integrated model of metaphorical linguistic expressions and its implications for the semantics of verb-particle constructions ariadna strugielska ariadnas@umk.pl nicolaus copernicus university, poland abstract the aim of this article is threefold. firstly, in line with the current tendencies in cognitive linguistics, which direct research toward convergence, integration and a uniform theoretical perspective, recent developments in research pertaining to metaphorical linguistic expressions (mles) are discussed against explorations into the semantics of verb-particle constructions (vpcs) in order to demonstrate that these methodologies converge on both the type of questions asked and the kind of solutions proposed. thus, the second aim of the present exposition is to propose an exemplar-based model of analysis which could be applied to the meaning profiles of both mles and vpcs. finally, in view of the fact that previous approaches to metaphorical language have rather consistently downplayed the role of grammatical categories in meaning disambiguation, the article seeks to establish the function of vpcs in the meaning profiles of mles. keywords: mles, vpcs, cognitive linguistics, usage-based approach, isolating and integrating models, meaning profiles i. introduction in their assessment of the cognitive linguistics enterprise, evans and green (2006: 779) note that one of the challenges the paradigm has yet to face is the problem of competing explanations offered to account for the same, or closely related, phenomena. as the authors further argue, conceptual projection constitutes a par excellence instantiation of competition among theoretical perspectives embedded in the cognitive commitment. indeed it seems that conceptual metaphor theory (henceforth also cmt), proposed by lakoff and johnson (1980) and developed by kövecses (2000, 2002), deignan (2005) and stefanowitsch (2006), among others, has engendered some of the most heated debates within the community. as a result of the criticism the approach has received, cmt, at least in its classic version, is now placed outside cognitive linguistics (see, for instance, givón 2005, haser 2005). to be more specific, the tendencies within the standard metaphor model which go against mainstream research in cognitive linguistics http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� an integrated model of metaphorical linguistic expressions and its implications for the semantics of verbparticle constructions language value 3 (1), 30–48 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 31 can be formulated as its overgeneralization and de-contextualization commitments. consequently, it can be further argued that conceptual metaphor theory is an isolating methodology, whereby the number of contexts competing for salience in the process of meaning interpretation is limited (cf. geeraerts 2003). ii. cmt as an isolating model the specific concerns related to the cognitive validity of lakoff and johnson’s proposal concentrate on two aspects of cmt, which, as argued above, constitute the isolating commitment of the methodology. firstly, the degree of detachment between conceptual schemas and their linguistic realizations is taken as evidence against the plausibility of the generalizations proposed. this entails that a predetermined route of conceptual integration posited in cmt, i.e., a cognitive path that leads via the main meaning focus of the source category, is considered unmotivated. the second major criticism which conceptual metaphor theory has stimulated pertains to the role of context in meaning interpretation. to be more specific, if we assume that cognitive linguistics is a usage-based model, it must be concluded that the linguistic evidence quoted in support of cmt does not, on the whole, conform to this requirement. indeed, a systematic overview of metaphorical language shows that there is still an urgent need within metaphor research to develop a methodology which would be more compatible with the usage-based postulate of cognitive linguistics. ii.1. metaphorical linguistic expressions the construct of a metaphorical linguistic expression was coined by kövecses (2002: 251), who defines it as “… words or other linguistic expressions (e.g. idioms) that come from the terminology of the conceptual domain that is used to understand another conceptual domain”. this definition of metaphorical language, derived from lakoff and johnson’s (1980) proposal, entails numerous methodological ambiguities that are discussed, for instance, http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� ariadna strugielska language value 3 (1), 30–48 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 32 in stefanowitsch (2006). for the sake of the current exposition, two interconnected limitations inherent in metaphorical expressions will be analyzed: their linguistic scope, i.e., the amount of syntagmatic context considered as relevant in the process of meaning interpretation, and their conceptual scope, i.e., the number of domains a particular linguistic unit is considered to evoke, both of which are discernible in examples (1)–(7) below (cf. kövecses 2002). (1) he’s without direction in life. (2) i’m where i want to be in life. (3) she’ll go places in life. (4) he’s never let anyone get in his way. (5) she’s gone through a lot in life. (6) i’m starved for affection. (7) he thrives on love. clearly, on the basis of the above data, metaphorical linguistic expressions, i.e., the underlined fragments in examples (1)–(7), are either content words, e.g. thrives, or collocations, e.g. go places, often arbitrarily limited, e.g. go through rather than go through a lot. what is of particular interest here is the role of vpcs, particles, and prepositions in the scope of mles. on the one hand, in examples (1)–(7), prepositions are not consistently included within metaphorical language. on the other hand, though, the mappings proposed are supported primarily by particles. for instance, the happy is up metaphor is instantiated by four linguistic expressions, three of which, i.e., the underlined fragments in examples (8)–(10), are isolated particles: (8) we had to cheer him up. (9) lighten up! (10) she lit up. (11) they were in high spirits. (kövecses 2002: 85) all in all, then, it seems that mles are limited rather arbitrarily, which, in some cases, results in positing expressions whose frames do not include the metaphorical focus. for example, kövecses (2000: 75), discussing she was consumed by passion or i am burning with emotion, as instances of the emotion is fire/heat mapping, claims that “[i]t is the prepositions with and by that indicate that there is a causal link between http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� an integrated model of metaphorical linguistic expressions and its implications for the semantics of verbparticle constructions language value 3 (1), 30–48 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 33 certain emotional responses and emotion as fire”. however, the prepositions, as the underlined fragments indicate, are excluded from the scope. in the same vein, steen’s procedure of metaphor identification does not incorporate prepositions and particles into the analysis because “… they are somewhat less easy to handle [since] [m]any prepositions are delexicalized, which presents special problems for analysis and hence identification” (steen 2002: 25). related to this, stefanowitsch’s (2006: 73) proposal to capture metaphorical language in the form of patterns which “… are presented in a form that is somewhat abstracted from the actual citations: verbs are shown in the infinitive, slots for participants are shown as x or y, and similar patterns are collapsed into compact form using slashes for alternatives and parentheses for optional elements” eliminates grammatical elements from the syntagmatic context. not unexpectedly, prepositions and particles are among the most frequently omitted categories, as illustrated by the following examples: anger boil (up)/simmer (inside x/beneath surface), x vent anger (against y), anger spark/flare (in x’s eyes), x arouse anger (in y) (stefanowitsch 2006: 74, 76). to sum up, the examples of mles discussed above confirm the isolating character of cmt through the imposition of unmotivated constraints on the number of possible contexts influencing the construal of the target concept. as a result, not only are abstract categories, e.g. emotions, defined in a monolithic way but also sense relations among concepts are presented in a manner which induces identity. importantly, categories whose status within mles is particularly problematic are function words and constructions, including vpcs. consequently, the role of grammatical categories in meaning interpretation should be one of the central questions addressed in a usagebased, or integrated, approach to metaphorical language. iii. toward an integrated model of metaphorical linguistic expressions in the previous section, i have demonstrated that classifying cmt within a usage-based cognitive linguistics is debatable on account of the fact that the methodology is consistently detached from the influences of the linguistic context, which naturally http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� ariadna strugielska language value 3 (1), 30–48 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 34 entails that its conceptual commitment is rather limited. in an attempt to re-attach cmt to mainstream research within the cognitive paradigm, two avenues of exploration have been followed. the first one is a theory-driven attempt to reformulate conceptual metaphors as detailed mappings, while the other one aims at re-contextualizing mles. the two tendencies can thus be discussed as integration through specification and integration through re-contextualization, respectively. iii.1. integration as specification the first line of research guided by the principles of a usage-based perspective has sought to remedy the problems of unmotivated generalizations by positing detailed conceptual mappings. the resulting proliferation of source and target domains, however, has immediately prompted the question of a motivated connection between a linguistic unit and its domain matrix. in other words, as haser (2005: 245) rightly observes, if “… every metaphorical expression could be ‘accounted for’ by different conceptual metaphors, … not a single metaphorical concept is supported by the available data”. a similar idea is noted by givón (2005: 80), who argues that conceptual primitives are activated by the categories within the utterance itself rather than metaphorical schemas. apparently, then, attempts at overcoming the problem of metaphorical generalizations have provided evidence for the direct access view upon linguistic metaphors (cf. gibbs 2002). consequently, the meaning potentials of words and constructions constituting an mle have been considered with reference to their most salient parameters, which could act as profile determinants. in search for the relevant aspects of meaning potentials, hanks (2006) argues that the most prominent features are those which are important from the human perspective, and thus, “… mountains are high, deserts are dry, jungles are impenetrable, seas and oceans are vast expanses, heaven is nice, hell is nasty; storms are violent, attacks are damaging, drowning is slow death, burning is quick destruction, orgies are unrestrained” (hanks 2006: 20). moreover, hanks argues that these attributes are preserved in cross-domain mappings. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� an integrated model of metaphorical linguistic expressions and its implications for the semantics of verbparticle constructions language value 3 (1), 30–48 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 35 at this stage, one cannot fail to notice an interesting parallelism between research into vpcs and investigations into the semantics of mles, which is constituted by the notion of the functional attributes of complex primitives. indeed hanks’ observations are consistent with navarro’s (2006: 171) proposal, whereby “… the functional patterns conceptualized on the basis of human interaction are also used for the conceptualization of spatial relationships between other entities”. in other words, both lines of research seem to converge on the cognitive supremacy of human-calibrated representations. all things considered, it seems that a direct access approach to metaphorical language has led to the extension of the conceptual commitment adopted by the methodology. still, increasing the conceptual scope of one category, i.e., the source domain, does not seem to have solved the problem of a (postulated) usage-based orientation of the model. obviously, the remaining conundrums pertain to the potential influences of other categories to be found within the scope of a metaphorical linguistic expression, and are thus closely related to the other avenue of research aimed at re-establishing the position of cmt within cognitive linguistics, i.e., studies highlighting the role of context in meaning interpretation. iii.2. integration as re-contextualization as announced above, attempts to re-formulate metaphorical mappings have been accompanied by research into the quantity and quality of the syntagmatic scope of mles. importantly, a systematic study of natural contexts has revealed a number of mechanisms that are inaccessible through other perspectives, e.g. introspection. first of all, deignan’s (2005) analysis of linguistic metaphors provides evidence for the conceptual salience of the target category, which is consistently reflected in the morphosyntactic patterns typical of the non-literal uses alone. likewise, glynn’s (2002) study shows that numerous details pertaining to the conceptual structure of an abstract category can be revealed if a lexical approach is complemented by grammatical evidence. related to this, stefanowitsch’s (2006: 66) construct of a metaphorical pattern, defined as “… a multi-word expression from a given source domain… into which a specific lexical item from a given target domain… has been inserted” highlights http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� ariadna strugielska language value 3 (1), 30–48 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 36 the importance of a coherent scope. finally, janda and solovyev’s (2009: 376) notion of a constructional profile of a lexeme which refers to “… the distribution of relative frequencies of constructions associated with a given word” places research into the structure of abstract concepts firmly within a family of usage-based methodologies including, for instance, evans’ (2006) lexical profiles or the co-occurrence patterns discussed by svanlund (2007). basically, then, recent approaches toward metaphorical language highlight the role of the linguistic (and conceptual) scope in a comprehensive description of a particular unit since “[a] word’s constructional profile is [taken as] unique and representative of its meaning” (janda and solovyev 2009: 376). simultaneously, it is important to note that the developments in the study of mles presented above are again consonant with recent proposals within research on vpcs. for instance, silvestre (2008: 396–397) observes that: [t]he specific senses that linguistic units in general, and relational particles in particular, take in discourse are influenced by the linguistic and extralinguistic context in which they are employed. hence, the uncovering of the nature of contextual elements, like sets of trs and lms typically occurring with specific vpcs, helps to better understand the semantics of these constructions. the profiles, or scopes, of mles or vpcs are thus aggregates of categories whose meaning potentials cannot be ignored in the process of conceptual integration. in the same vein, dobrovol’skij and piirainen (2005: 155) claim that “… idioms related to the fear is cold metaphor render ambivalent interpretations. thus, it is vital to consider not just the actual figurative meanings but also the conceptual structures behind them.” consequently, dobrovol’skij and piirainen define fear through a number of (functional) aspects revealed through the study of syntagmatic settings, e.g. “for a long time”, “suddenly”, “immediately”, or the “degree of acceptability of the subject’s emotional state from the perspective of the speaker”. to illustrate, examples (12)–(13) are considered to highlight “personal” as opposed to “non-personal” aspects of the emotion (cf. dobrovol’skij and piirainen 2005: 155). (12) i had my heart in the mouth when i went to ask the bank for more money. (13) all those watching the attempt to save the drowning child had their hearts in their mouths. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� an integrated model of metaphorical linguistic expressions and its implications for the semantics of verbparticle constructions language value 3 (1), 30–48 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 37 evidently, dobrovol’skij and piirainen’s proposal offers a much-needed extension of the metalanguage (of standard cmt) and makes it possible to highlight connections within and across target domains which cannot be explained in terms of relations in (apparently co-activated) source categories. interestingly, this line of research has also been pursued with reference to vpcs. in her study of the contextual realizations of the up schema, hampe (2005: 104) claims that it is instructive to consider the conceptual structures behind the actual linguistic expressions rather than “… introducing an axiological orientation of its own [since] the particle is indeed capable of emphasizing or enhancing the evaluative aspects already inherent in the respective scenarios expressed by the verbs and their complements”. moreover, hampe draws attention to one problem within vpc studies which is also relevant in the case of mles, i.e., the issue of competition among categories within a specific syntagmatic context. to be more specific, in view of the fact that vpcs, and also mles, have been associated with particular aspects in isolating methodologies, it is important to check the validity and/or stability of these features from a usage-based perspective. i believe that the above-mentioned concerns pertaining to the cognitive salience of aspects predicated of isolated categories need to be interpreted against a general discussion in cognitive linguistics on the plausibility of the notion of profile determinance. while details of the dispute can be found in croft (2001), langacker (2008), and taylor (2002), what is of utmost importance for the current exposition is the relation between a unit’s prominence and its likelihood of functioning as the head within a complex assembly. to begin with, ungerer and schmid (1996) argue that the head/modifier asymmetry is related to the cognitive salience of categories. salience, in turn, means that a given construct is “… particularly vital for human concerns” (1996: 92). for instance, in the case of shoelace, the category shoe is seen as more important for human purposes than that of lace, and consequently the former is the head. not unrelated to this, croft (2001: 259) claims that the head is “… the primary information-bearing unit, that is, the most contentful item”. on the other hand, according to taylor (2002: 349–350), in a nominal “… the profile of the composite expression is inherited from the determiner, http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� ariadna strugielska language value 3 (1), 30–48 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 38 not from the bare noun. … the bare noun is therefore the complement of the determiner”. langacker’s (2008: 192, 194) approach to profile determinance in fact sanctions both the structural and the semantic definition of the construct, while tuggy (2007: 115) points to a possible irresolvability of the grammatical/lexical primacy. clearly, then, a unit’s salience depends on its class membership and it seems that grammatical words and at least some content items are potential candidates for prominence within a syntagmatic context of a metaphorical linguistic expression. to continue, goldberg and casenhisher (2006) argue that, depending on their respective degrees of entrenchment, it is either the construction or the main verb that determines the interpretation of the sentence. for instance, in mike gave her a pencil, the understanding is assumed to come from the verb give rather than the ditransitive construction. another tendency is noted by fillmore (2003), who refers to give in give her a kiss as a “ditransitive support verb”. the particular context in which give occurs renders it non-salient and hence, according to fillmore, the semantic determinant is the direct object. what transpires from the above overview is an inference that since a unit’s salience is relative, profile determinance seems best defined as a dialogical notion. consequently, it may well be the case that a number of salient categories are characteristic of a particular context, none of which can be felicitously proposed as a profile determinant. this idea is reinforced by the fact that isolated meaning potentials undergo transformations in the process of conceptual integration to such a degree that their purports become mere ingredients of the whole (cf. croft and cruse 2004: 101). therefore, i postulate the context of (at least) an utterance to function as a complex primitive, i.e., a locus of functional attributes. this suggestion is based on croft’s model of exemplar-based grammar, which takes: [e]ach situation/scene as a whole [as] a primitive element in the representation, i.e., a point in conceptual space. to put it another way, each semantic frame is a semantic primitive. likewise, each construct is a primitive element in the representation, a point in syntactic space. (croft 2007: 27) as a result of adopting an exemplar-based approach to mles, units within a context can be evaluated with reference to their relative salience and, consequently, meaning profiles of mles can be developed, which, in essence, consist of recurrent aspects http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� an integrated model of metaphorical linguistic expressions and its implications for the semantics of verbparticle constructions language value 3 (1), 30–48 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 39 attracted by a particular collostruction. further details of the proposal are presented below and these, in view of the systematic convergences highlighted throughout this article, could be pertinent to research concerning the semantics of vpcs. iv. metaphorical linguistic expressions in the integrated model as already argued above, the integrated methodology assumes the context of an utterance as the starting point and, hence, the global complex primitive is an exemplar. within each exemplar, local loci of functional attributes can be distinguished, which are predominantly conveyed via grammatical words and constructions. a metaphorical linguistic expression is thus only one of the many complex primitives which can be found in an utterance. consequently, its salience is relative and depends on the prominence of the other elements within an exemplar. therefore, the aspects proposed as highlighted by a given mle in the isolating approach are likely to be, at least qualitatively, different in the integrated model. moreover, building on the assumption that conceptual integration involves establishing correspondences, even the most schematic ones, among the participating elements, it is assumed that the components underscored in the meaning profiles of mles are at least as relevant to their semantics as those posited in the isolating approach. the specific assumptions of the model are formulated below. to begin with, as argued in section ii.1, the very definition of a metaphorical linguistic expression requires elaboration and, thus, i assume that an mle is a collostruction composed of two units, one of which designates a concrete concept and the other an abstract one. moreover, since the function of mles is to reveal the underlying semantic potential of abstract concepts e.g. emotions, which, in turn, are conveyed via nouns, i take mles realized by noun phrases, e.g. cold fear, bitter anger or source of sadness as prototypical members of the category. next, mles are presumed to be ambiguous since, first of all, the very notion of metaphoricity implies multiple, and often competing, interpretations (cf. haser 2005: 170). this assumption is reinforced by the fact that mles are isolated phrases whose meanings, as boas (2003) rightly notes, are http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� ariadna strugielska language value 3 (1), 30–48 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 40 unlikely to be determined due to a lack of contextual clues. in the same vein, stern (2000: 179) claims that “… metaphors are never expression types per se but interpretations (or uses) of expression tokens in contexts”. consequently, i propose that both the salient aspects of meaning potentials and the degree of cognitive distance between the elements of an mle can be reliably established on the basis of an integrated, i.e., exemplar-based, approach. in order to illustrate the workings of the methodology, let us first of all look at hanks’ (2006) examples of mles, whose metaphoricity is motivated by the degree of resonance between the primary and secondary subjects, which hanks defines as the number of semantic features shared by the two categories. consequently, sea of faces is an unprototypical mle, while sea of trouble is far more representative of the category. moreover, hanks posits that in the case of the sea of n construction, the salient functional attribute is vastness, which is consistently inherited by the complex assembly. if this speculation is confirmed by means of an integrated methodology, it will be concluded that a usage-based approach is redundant since it, on the whole, confirms the aspects already revealed in an isolating model. if, on the other hand, syntagmatic contexts were to show functional attributes other than those posited in cmt, the validity of the methodology would be increased. as a result of verifying hanks’ examples, the aspect of vastness has been partly confirmed in the syntagmatic settings of sea of faces, since of the 19 corpus citations checked, seven co-occur with contexts related to unboundedness, which is illustrated by examples (14)–(20). (14) she looked down upon a sea of faces, rows and rows of black-stockinged legs, and a long line of mistresses sitting on their chairs. (15) for a second she blacked out, not from pain but from the shock of it all, and when she opened her eyes she was looking into a sea of faces all staring down at her. (16) she’d deliberately looked into the sea of faces, looked unerringly to the rear of the crowded room. (17) she glanced up with dread and peered into the sea of faces that was watching her with curiosity. (18) she ignored his lecherous gaze and scanned the sea of faces for stephen. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� an integrated model of metaphorical linguistic expressions and its implications for the semantics of verbparticle constructions language value 3 (1), 30–48 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 41 (19) now she reached the main doors and walked in, eyes flicking over the sea of faces in search of mahoney. (20) obediently the noise level dropped to a whispered exchange, and larsen ran his eye over the sea of faces packing the long corridor on either side, trying to pick out his daughter karen. in the case of sea of troubles, however, the corpus examples point to a connection between the phrase and the control schema, as illustrated by examples (21)–(22). (21) whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them? (22) had it not been for that publication sally might have avoided that almost overwhelming sea of troubles which resulted from harmlessly intended praise. finally, the contexts of sea of life present the following picture: (23) much better to get involved with someone who had plunged fully into the sea of life than with someone who had stood wimpishly on the edge, afraid to dip in so much as a toe. (24) it is someone who is not afraid of responsibility or commitment, whose daily disciplines provide an anchor in the rough sea of life, who does not switch his allegiance, whatever the cost. (25) now you’ve been patched up, your hull’s been scraped, a lick of paint and you’re ready to get back into the great sea of life. thus, sea of life may well be associated with such concepts as excitement, danger or even war. however, the link is not as obvious as in the case of, for instance, sea of faces. for one thing, more context, probably as extensive as the underlined fragments in examples (23)–(25), is needed in order to discover the salient aspects. two important implications emerge from our discussion so far. firstly, mles are ambiguous collostructions whose meaning potentials only partly confirm the aspects proposed in isolating approaches. this is not to say that vastness/unboundedness is not a possible element of the meaning potential of, for instance, sea of trouble. however, it is to say that this aspect is not revealed in the meaning profile of the cluster. consequently, sea is seen as a complex primitive which competes for salience with http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� ariadna strugielska language value 3 (1), 30–48 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 42 other loci of functional attributes within an exemplar, e.g. vpcs. simultaneously, let us recall that the complex primitives within a context can be realized by linguistic means of varying prominence. for instance, goldberg (2006: 104–119) argues that although the cue validity of words and constructions is roughly the same, it is nevertheless the latter that have a more significant predictive potential. related to this, grammaticalization theories postulate the role of high-frequency lexical words and expressions, e.g. body part terms, verbs expressing physical states or processes, e.g. sit, lie or go, or verbs expressing core human activities such as make, do, have or say in meaning interpretation (cf. heine et al. 1991: 32–35). in view of the above, i propose a grammar-based metalanguage for the description of the meaning profiles of mles, whose validity is further supported by research into simulation semantics. to be more specific, abstract categories, which constitute the core of mles, are highly attenuated simulations of engaged experience. thus, in consonance with the mechanics of conceptual integration, the meaning profiles of mles are expected to display features which are consistent with those anticipated by the cluster. consequently, the metalanguage applied for the representation of abstract concepts is supposed to include categories which transcend immediate experience, i.e., grammatical meanings (cf. langacker 2008: 540). all in all, basic concepts derived from grammatical categories, e.g. conjunctions, prepositions, determiners, vpcs or syntactic patterns, are taken as par excellence complex primitives. an inventory of basic concepts for the representation of the meaning profiles of mles includes both object-based schemas, e.g. experiencer, co-object or expression, and relations, e.g. availability to others, control, penetration, persistence or contribution (for a comprehensive set, see strugielska forthcoming). these complex primitives occur within the contexts of metaphorical linguistic expressions, as illustrated by examples (26)–(29), where mles are represented by x and the underlined fragments are the approximate linguistic realizations of the basic concepts proposed. (26) (nuadu did not move,) but the icy fear closed about him again. (persistence, x, experience/control, persistence) http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� an integrated model of metaphorical linguistic expressions and its implications for the semantics of verbparticle constructions language value 3 (1), 30–48 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 43 (27) the icy fear which showed in the older man’s eyes cut through vologsky’s mild concern like a knife, chilling him to the bone. (x, availability to others, experiencer/expression, penetration, penetration) (28) (as he dressed for dinner in his room, dorian remembered what he had seen) and cold fear ran through him like a knife. (result, x, penetration, penetration) (29) she struggled with the cold fear that had laid its hand on her. (resistance, x, control) according to cmt, the aspect highlighted by cold/icy fear is a negative valuation. however, the integrated approach shows that there are a number of other attributes relevant to the meaning of the cluster. importantly, these aspects, e.g. penetration, result, or control, are, in my view, prototypically functional since they facilitate the construal of the emotion from the human perspective, i.e., as regards its intensity. finally, let us consider deep sadness and deep fear in order to highlight further advantages of the integrated model. the cluster deep sadness consistently features three aspects within its meaning profiles: expression, experiencer and availability to others, as demonstrated by examples (30)–(35). (30) it was, however, obvious that there was some deep sadness within him. (31) little by little his shoulders bent forward, and his face showed deep sadness. (32) on his face was a look of deep sadness, but also of evil. (33) on his face was an expression of deep sadness. (34) (montgomery had expected an air of authority from this venerable man, who had spent most of his seventy-odd years lecturing students,) but aubrey st john goth seemed distant, distracted, his grey eyes veiled by a deep sadness. (35) he felt a deep sadness in this thin, weak creature. on the other hand, the meaning profiles of deep fear are not only quantitatively but also qualitatively different (see examples 36–42). (36) the need for excessive control in conversation can come from a deep fear that other people’s ideas are threatening. (cause, x, co-object/cause) http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� ariadna strugielska language value 3 (1), 30–48 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 44 (37) one more guilty secret that maggie felt obliged to keep from everyone was the deep fear and disgust that she felt at the thought of sexuality. (social acceptability, non-availability to others, x, cause) (38) in england the desire for an “english” tradition is said to hide a deep fear of our present multi-cultural society, a determination to maintain our present class structure, the hierarchies of power which give oxbridge dons their privileged and cushioned existence. (social acceptability, non-availability to others, x, experiencer) (39) the colour left her skin, her pale face showing a deep fear at the way he was crushing her to his body. (expression, availability to others, x, cause) (40) in no way had he been consciously sadistic over the earlier years, but he had a deep fear of women who took over, as his mother had done. (availability to self, experience, x, co-object/cause) (41) the warm, soft-seeming lead beneath her feet and the sharp-knapped flint and stone under her hand only partially secured her against the deep fear of falling. (protection, x, co-object/cause) (42) a general war weariness, grievances over high taxation, and a deep fear amongst the anglican majority of the population that the church was now in greater danger from protestant nonconformists than it was from popery, all worked to the tories’ advantage. (x, experiencer, co-object/cause, contribution) the meaning profiles of mles presented above point to two important implications of the model proposed here. to begin with, an exemplar-based analysis highlights aspects of meaning potentials of collostructions which are unavailable through an isolated perspective. however, these features are important for the semantics of mles on a few counts. firstly, a systematic analysis of meaning profiles facilitates ambiguity/conventionality distinctions, which can be accomplished on the basis of the number and productivity of aspects. consequently, deep sadness seems a less ambiguous, i.e., metaphorical, cluster than deep fear. related to this, sense relations among mles can be established on the basis of meaning profiles, which will inevitably result in delimiting the rampant synonymy position of cmt. next, depending on the degree of attenuation of aspects within exemplars, mles could be placed along the concrete/abstract continuum in a motivated way, whereby highly schematic concepts, http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� an integrated model of metaphorical linguistic expressions and its implications for the semantics of verbparticle constructions language value 3 (1), 30–48 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 45 e.g. co-object, would indicate a greater degree of abstraction than categories such as resistance or penetration. the second implication of the model pertains to the role of grammatical categories, e.g. vpcs, in the profiles of mles. as amply illustrated above, the uncertain status of function words posited in cmt is not confirmed in the integrated model, where the functional attributes are predominantly derived from grammar. to be more precise, i posit that aspects inherent in the cognitive models behind particular mles are conveyed via grammatical categories, while less intrinsic ones, e.g. social acceptability or valuation, are realized by content words. consequently, vpcs, which refer to the central attributes of the mles discussed above, e.g. control, penetration, availability to others or cause, can, on the whole, be seen as indispensable in the meaning profiles of metaphorical linguistic expressions. v. conclusions three main conclusions arise from the current exposition. firstly, and perhaps most importantly, there are theoretical implications, which clearly show points of convergence between the vpc and mle methodologies as well as their unquestionable position within a usage-based cognitive linguistics. consequently, the article addresses one of the remaining challenges of the paradigm, which is to forge a uniform theoretical position that could be shared by the multifarious proposals classifying themselves as “cognitive”. secondly, and related to this, an integrated model of mles has been proposed, and its relevance for vpcs has been highlighted. finally, it has been evidenced that the meaning profiles of mles are predominantly composed of grammarbased conceptual primitives 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http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue. issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� references cite this article as: strugielska, a. 2011. “an integrated model of metaphorical linguistic expressions and its implications for the semantics of verb-particle constructions”. language value, 3 (1), 30-48. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.e-revistes.u... issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors klaus-uwe panther language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue july 2012, volume 4, number 1 pp. 63-83 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.4 63 conceptualizing humans as animals in english verb particle constructions klaus-uwe panther panther@uni-hamburg.de nanjing normal university, china, and university of hamburg, germany linda l. thornburg lthornburg@alumni.usc.edu nanjing normal university, china abstract verb particle constructions with animal names used as verbs (‘vprt critter constructions’), such as horse around, clam up, and rat out, are interesting because of their (i) grammatical structure, (ii) pragmatic function, (iii) conceptual content, and (iv) the cultural knowledge they reflect. this chapter focuses on the latter two aspects of critter constructions. more specifically, we assume that an adequate analysis of critter constructions requires folk or cultural models of the animals in question, spatial schemas for the particle, metaphorical mappings and metonymic inferences, and aspectual categories in the sense of vendler (1957). we place our findings in the larger context of the status of cultural and cognitive models in general. such models (including animal folk models) are often outdated and reflect centuries-old beliefs that have left their traces in lexico-grammatical structure, in this case, critter constructions. keywords: aspect, critter construction, cultural model, metaphor, metonymy, noun-verb conversion i. introduction the conceptualization of humans and even divinities in terms of animals is a plausible candidate for a cultural universal. in many cultures, e.g. in ancient egypt, gods and goddesses were pictorially and sculpturally represented as animals (or hybrids of humans and animals) such as falcons, cows, rams, lions, and crocodiles. their visual representation as animals does not mean that they were categorized as animals but that they possessed certain characteristics rightly or wrongly attributed to the animals in question (ris-eberle 2004: 50). goatly (2006: 32) distinguishes among three interpretations of the formula human is animal. it may be a statement of hyponymy, i.e. ‘a human is a kind of animal’, one of near-identity, i.e. ‘humans are more or less like animals’, or a metaphor, i.e. ‘humans are like animals’. the metaphoric interpretation presupposes similarity but also http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� mailto:panther@uni-hamburg.de� mailto:lthornburg@alumni.usc.edu� conceptualizing humans as animals in english verb particle constructions language value 4 (1), 63–83 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 64 distinctness of conceptual domains. it entails that humans are essentially different from animals; otherwise, it would make no sense to assume cross-domain mappings linking presumed animal properties with human characteristics. in the western judeo-christian tradition, on which many folk models of animals are at least partially based, animals are indeed – in contrast to humans – typically regarded as lacking a soul or lacking reason. this conception is still found in the 17th century in descartes’ discours de la méthode, where it is claimed that animals have no “âme raisonnable” and are ontologically comparable to clockworks (horloges) (bridoux 1953: 166). in the domain of literature, animals occupy a prominent position, e.g. in fables, a genre that, in the western tradition, goes back at least to the greek poet aesop (6th century b.c.). fables are usually short narratives with animal characters that end with a moral lesson for humans. jean de la fontaine (1621–1695) is often praised as “the greatest of all modern fable writers” (drabble 2000: 344), and his second fable le corbeau et le renard (english translation by elizur wright (1804–1885)) is a prime example of the narrative structure of fables and the moral lessons they convey:1 le corbeau et le renard maître corbeau, sur un arbre perché, tenait en son bec un fromage. maître renard, par l'odeur alléché. lui tint à peu près ce langage: « hé! bonjour, monsieur du corbeau. que vous êtes joli! que vous me semblez beau! sans mentir, si votre ramage. se rapporte à votre plumage, vous êtes le phénix des hôtes de ces bois. » a ces mots le corbeau ne se sent pas de joie, et, pour montrer sa belle voix, il ouvre un large bec, laisse tomber sa proie. le renard s'en saisit, et dit: « mon bon monsieur, apprenez que tout flatteur vit aux dépens de celui qui l'écoute. cette leçon vaut bien un fromage, sans doute. » le corbeau, honteux et confus, jura, mais un peu tard, qu'on ne l'y prendrait plus. the raven and the fox perch'd on a lofty oak, sir raven held a lunch of cheese; sir fox, who smelt it in the breeze, thus to the holder spoke: – "ha! how do you do, sir raven? well, your coat, sir, is a brave one! so black and glossy, on my word, sir, with voice to match, you were a bird, sir, well fit to be the phoenix of these days." sir raven, overset with praise, must show how musical his croak. down fell the luncheon from the oak; which snatching up, sir fox thus spoke: – "the flatterer, my good sir, aye liveth on his listener; which lesson, if you please, is doubtless worth the cheese." a bit too late, sir raven swore the rogue should never cheat him more. 1 the source of the original fable, the english translation, and the illustration is: http://chefdoeuvre.blogspot.com/2007/04/le-corbeau-et-le-renard.html (accessed december 27, 2011). http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� klaus-uwe panther and linda l. thornburg language value 4 (1), 63–83 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 65 figure 1. the sly fox “outfoxes” the raven. the fox is a skilled rhetorician, who showers the raven with insincere and excessive praise and as a result of his cunning gets the desired cheese. despite this unfortunate outcome for the raven, the bird grasps the moral lesson ‘never trust a flatterer’ and vows to adjust his future behavior accordingly. the moral lesson easily transfers to human affairs and it is describable in terms of metaphorical mappings from the animal domain into the human domain (see section iii). the interpretation of the fable draws heavily on a folk model or cultural model of foxes. in a nutshell, this cultural model is captured and evoked in expressions such as sly fox and verbs such as to fox or to outfox (see figure 1). the present chapter is concerned with a subclass of verb-particle (vprt) constructions, such as rat out, beaver away, and horse around that reflect “frozen” cultural models, in the sense described in the preceding paragraph. these constructions consist of a verb converted from an animal noun and a particle, which, in its source sense, denotes a spatial schema that is metonymically linked to an aspectual target sense.2 to conclude this part of the discussion, we claim that diverse phenomena like religious and philosophical schools of thinking, literary genres, and, on a micro-level, lexico in what follows we use the term ‘critter constructions’ as shorthand for ‘vprt critter constructions’. 2 related to vprt critter constructions are critter constructions with a preposition (e.g. rat on ‘inform on’) and transitive critter constructions (e.g. fox sb. ‘deceive, baffle’); these are not considered in the present chapter. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� conceptualizing humans as animals in english verb particle constructions language value 4 (1), 63–83 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 66 grammatical codings such as critter constructions have more in common than meets the eye. indeed, a deeper understanding of their meaning has to be sought in the larger context of human thinking (cognition), and how it relates to culture and language. figure 2 is an attempt to diagram some aspects of this relationship. figure 2. language and cognition (adapted from panther and radden 2011: 2). following panther and radden (2011), cognition is here understood as a cover term for the higher human faculties of reasoning, e.g. drawing inferences, constructing and interpreting cognitive models, linking concepts associatively (metonymy), and drawing analogies between distinct conceptual domains (metaphor). these faculties interact with ‘peripheral’ systems such as emotion, bodily experience, perception, action, culture, social interaction, and language. our understanding of the notion of cultural model, which we use interchangeably with the term ‘folk model’ in this chapter, follows quinn and holland (1987: 4): cultural models are presupposed, taken-for-granted models of the world that are widely shared (although not necessarily to the exclusion of other, alternative models) by the members of a society and that play an enormous role in their understanding of that world and their behavior in it. this chapter is organized as follows. in section ii we briefly note the use and the meaning of animal terms in a variety of lexico-grammatical constructions. section iii http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� klaus-uwe panther and linda l. thornburg language value 4 (1), 63–83 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 67 investigates the semantics of critter constructions in more detail. section iv summarizes the results and concludes with some reflections on folk models and linguistic coding. ii. some constructions involving animal terms given the hypothesized universal that humans are conceptualized or represented as animals, it does not come as a surprise that animal terms are in fact used in various lexical, morphological, and syntactic environments: (1) john really made a pig of himself at the party. (ldae) (lexical construction) (2) john is a pig. (predicate nominal construction) (3) you pig! (epithet construction) (4) she is pig-headed. (compound construction) (5) john pigged out at the party. (vprt critter construction) it is the type of construction illustrated in (5) that is examined in more detail in section iii. one important fact about the use of pig in sentences (1)–(5) is that its respective meanings vary from context to context. while pig in (1) and (5) may refer to a person who overindulges in food, in (2) and (3) pig could be interpreted as a despicable person holding sexist or racist views, and in (4), according to the new oxford american dictionary, pig-headed means ‘stupidly obstinate’. similarly, while a critter construction like monkey around means ‘behave in a silly and playful way’, the prepositional verb monkey with has the sense ‘to touch, use, or examine […] without skill and so possibly causing damage’ (ldae). the lesson to be learned from examples (1)–(5) and the various uses of monkey as a verb is that the figurative meanings of animal terms are not predictable but rather are contextand construction-specific. however, non-predictability does not entail ‘arbitrariness’. indeed, we claim that the use of animal terms as verbs is motivated, in that it can be traced back to a folk model of the animal in question, from which certain components are selected and eventually end up as conventionalized senses in individual constructions. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� conceptualizing humans as animals in english verb particle constructions language value 4 (1), 63–83 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 68 iii. critter constructions in english to begin, critter constructions tend not to be used literally, due to a principle of redundancy avoidance. formulations such as *the squirrel squirreled away some acorns, *those pigs are pigging out again today, and *don’t let that cat cat around! are infelicitous.3 table 1. some critter constructions in english and their equivalents in german and french.* moreover, critter constructions seem to be more frequent in english as compared to languages like german and french. table 1 lists a number of such constructions (in alphabetical order), commonly found in english, and their translations into german and french. animal english german french eng ger fr beaver biber castor beaver away (at) schuften travailler d’arrache pied eng ger fr cat katze chat cat about/around herumtreiben, anmachen draguer eng ger fr chicken küken poulet chicken out kneifen, aussteigen se dégonfler eng ger fr clam muschel moule clam up keinen piep mehr sagen ne plus piper mot eng ger fr ferret frettchen furet ferret about ferret out herumstöbern jm. aufspüren fureter (dans) découvrir, dénicher eng ger fr fish fisch poisson fish around (for) fish out sb. kramen (nach) etw. etw. herausholen farfouiller sortir qch. de eng ger fr fox fuchs renard fox sb. out (of) jm. täuschen, jm. hereinlegen dérouter, désarçonner qn. eng ger fr horse pferd cheval horse around/ about herumalbern chahuter eng ger fr hound jagdhund chien de chasse hound sb. out (of) hound sb. down jm. hinausjagen, vertreiben jm. zur strecke bringen chasser qn. (de) débusquer qn. eng ger fr monkey affe singe monkey around herumalbern faire l’idiot eng ger pig schwein pig out (on) sich den bauch vollschlagen (mit) se goinfrer, s’empiffrer (de) 3 the principle of redundancy avoidance is also operative in constructions with subject incorporations such as *the dog dog-paddled across the pond, *the birds bird-chirped all morning, and *look, the bear is bear-hugging the trainer (see thornburg and panther 2000). http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� klaus-uwe panther and linda l. thornburg language value 4 (1), 63–83 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 69 fr cochon eng ger fr rat ratte rat rat sb. out rat around jm. verpfeifen herumlungern dénoncer, moucharder qn. glandouiller eng ger fr squirrel eichhörnchen écurueil squirrel sth. away aufbewahren, einlagern mettre qch. de côté eng ger fr weasel wiesel belette weasel sb. out of sth. weasel out of sth. jm. etw. ablisten sich drücken vor soutirer qch. de qn. se défiler eng ger fr wolf wolf loup wolf down sth. etw. hinunterschlingen dévorer qch. * abbreviations: english: sb. = somebody, sth. = something; german: jm = jemand(en) ‘somebody’, etw. = etwas ‘something’; french: qn. = quelqu’un ‘somebody’, qch. = quelque chose ‘something’ interestingly, the english critter constructions in table 1 have no literal counterparts in german and french. for example, chicken out ‘lose one’s courage (in the face of an enemy, or a dangerous situation)’ (cowie and mackin 1975) translates as kneifen (lit. ‘feel a pinch’) in german, and se dégonfler (lit. ‘deflate oneself’) in french. the only exception in the table is ferret about, which has a more or less literal counterpart in french: fureter (dans) (lit. ‘ferret in’). critter constructions thus seem to be more frequent in english than in german and french.4 4 there are, however, german verbs derived from animal nouns that have no literal equivalents in english: e.g. büffeln (lit. ‘to buffalo’) ‘cram’, ochsen (lit. ‘to ox’) ‘work hard’, wurmen (lit. ‘to worm’) ‘rankle’. in other words, the claim that english has more critter constructions than german must be supported by further evidence. it is unlikely that this skewing is caused by cultural differences, since the same or similar cultural models involving animals are available for german and french language users. we assume here that the reasons for this asymmetry between english, on the one hand, and german and french, on the other, are due to grammatical differences. english is a language with little inflectional morphology, and it allows conversion from nouns to verbs more easily than languages with richer morphology, like german and french. as is well known, conversion is an extremely productive word-formation process in english (clark and clark 1979, dirven 1999). http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� conceptualizing humans as animals in english verb particle constructions language value 4 (1), 63–83 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 70 iii.1. general characteristics of critter constructions the general conceptual schema for critter constructions that we use as a template for the discussion of individual cases is given in figure 3. n noun v verb → converts to sign relation metonymy metaphor sense specialization conceptual motivation of conversion animal folk model rank on ontological hierarchy character typical behavior social organization physical appearance diet habitat . . . . meaning: person’s action [non-compositional] human behavior animal behavior animal term n→v aspect prt spatial figure 3. conceptual schema for critter constructions. the descriptive apparatus diagrammed in figure 3 includes an animal folk model, i.e. more or less entrenched beliefs about animals, their character, their typical behavior, and their value on an ontological hierarchy or on the ‘great chain of being’, in the terminology of lakoff and turner (1989: ch. 4). for example, one can safely assume that humans are universally higher-ranked than domesticated animals like dogs and cats, which, in turn, are higher-ranked than, say, rats and cockroaches. the ranking may however differ from culture to culture. in western mythology, dragons are monstrous reptiles that have to be slain by valiant knights, whereas in the chinese tradition the dragon is considered to be a friendly and benevolent animal. rats, which are generally regarded as despicable and unclean creatures in western culture, enjoy, according to wikipedia, a much better reputation in china, and are endowed with mostly positive http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� klaus-uwe panther and linda l. thornburg language value 4 (1), 63–83 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 71 character traits. the rat is the first animal (of twelve) in the chinese zodiac and “[p]eople born in [the year of the rat] are expected to possess qualities associated with rats, including creativity, intelligence, honesty, generosity, ambition, a quick temper and wastefulness.”5 we assume that folk models of the sort described in the preceding paragraph feed into the semantic reading of the animal term used as a verb in critter constructions, as depicted in figure 3. the diagram should be read from bottom to top. first, the animal term and the prt are linked via double-headed arrows (representing the sign relation) to their respective meanings, rendered in small capital letters. second, the animal term evokes a cultural model, represented by propositional information inside the ‘cloud’. third, a salient behavioral component of the folk model is selected as the crucial meaning element of the semantic representation (viz. animal behavior). this selection process can be called metonymic because it is brought about by a whole-part operation (whole animal folk model for some element of the animal folk model). thus the change of word class from noun to verb in critter constructions is motivated by metonymy, not by metaphor (as assumed by deignan 2006). fourth, the component animal behavior is metaphorically mapped into the human domain via the metaphor humans are animals or, more specifically, behavior of humans is behavior of animals. this metaphor is then applied to a particular situation to describe an animal-like action of a person (or group of persons). a final point to be made with regard to models is that, intraculturally, beliefs about animals (as about anything else) may change, and it is an interesting question if, when, and how such changes in a cultural model affect the linguistic system as such. this issue is briefly touched upon in section iv. as to the particle prt, its source sense starts out as a spatial image schema and develops, via metonymic chaining, into an aspectual meaning (brinton 1988: ch. 4), i.e. it determines whether the behavior denoted by the critter verb is to be interpreted as an activity, an accomplishment, or an achievement, in the terminology of vendler (1957). we elaborate the metonymic chaining leading to the aspectual target sense of the particle in section iii.2. 5 source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/rat#in_asian_cultures http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/rat#in_asian_cultures� conceptualizing humans as animals in english verb particle constructions language value 4 (1), 63–83 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 72 to conclude, we emphasize again that the overall meaning of a critter construction is not determined compositionally. rather, the construction of its meaning involves an operation of ‘sense specialization’, which provides for the idiosyncratic, non-predictable but motivated meaning of the verb+particle ‘gestalt’. this point is taken up again in section iii.2, where specific critter constructions are discussed. iii.2. three case studies in the following three subsections we analyze three critter constructions in more detail, by applying the template presented in figure 3. iii.2.1. rat out a good starting-point for the analysis of the critter construction rat out is a cartoon from the new yorker, shown in figure 4.6 “i love your work.” figure 4. humor based on a negative rat model. animal cartoons are a rich source for the identification of underlying animal folk models because their humorous effects often rely on a stereotypical conception of the animal in question. in figure 4, one despicable animal, the rat, addresses perhaps an 6 source: gc.allpostersimages.com/images/p-473-488-90/60/6010/6j5b100z/posters/ danny-shanahan-ilove-your-work--new-yorker-cartoon.jpg http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� klaus-uwe panther and linda l. thornburg language value 4 (1), 63–83 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 73 even more despised critter, a cockroach, praising its ‘work’. both critters have traditionally been ranked very low on the great chain of being. with respect to the particle verb rat out ‘inform on’, it comes as no surprise that its meaning is pejorative; morally reprehensible actions such as informing on somebody are committed by morally depraved persons – and rats are believed to embody vile character and behavioral traits. the description of such vile actions as rat out is therefore highly motivated (although not predictable; see section iii.1). figure 5 diagrams the conceptual structure of rat out. n noun v verb → converts to sign relation metonymy metaphor sense specialization conceptual motivation of conversion negative rat model low rank on ontological hierarchy vile behavior lives in groups carries disease eats garbage filthy habitat ..... achievement/accomplishment ‘inform on’ (x, y) immoral behavior (human (x)) vile behavior (rat) rat n→v out motion out of nonvisible region (y) known (y’s location, etc.) known (y) visible (y) telic figure 5. conceptual structure of rat out. the analysis of rat out proposed in figure 5 reads as follows. we begin with the meaning contribution of rat. the relevant component of the rat model for the interpretation of rat is the attribute vile behavior. this negative rat attribute is metaphorically mapped onto the human property immoral behavior. the final operation (sense specialization) narrows down the general sense immoral behavior of a human to the specific immoral action of informing on some fellow human. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� conceptualizing humans as animals in english verb particle constructions language value 4 (1), 63–83 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 74 the spatial source sense of the particle out contributes an aspectual value to the overall meaning of rat out via a series of metonymies. in its source sense, out designates the motion of some object y (here, the patient y) from a non-visible region into a region where y can be seen by some third party; visibility of y is then, via metonymic inference, linked to knowledge about y; and finally, there is an inference from known (y) to known (y’s location, intentions, etc.), i.e. the patient’s location, plans, etc. are revealed to some third party by the informer x.7 the final product of the above metaphoric and metonymic mechanisms is a specialized idiosyncratic meaning. the particle out contributes to the construction a telic aspect and the aspectual meaning achievement or accomplishment. 8 note that what is coded in the critter construction rat out is one salient negative aspect of the rat model. but, in fact, in other constructions rat can also have a more positive connotation, e.g. in compounds such as rugrat ‘toddler, child crawling on the floor’, which evokes a potentially more endearing model of rats than the one conveyed by rat out. we return to this point in section iv. the specific verbal meaning ‘betraying someone by informing a third party on someone’s location, plans, etc.’ is motivated by the vile and morally depraved behavior of the informer, but is not strictly predictable from the cultural model of rats. iii.2.2. beaver away the critter construction beaver away evokes a folk model of beavers as industrious, hard-working animals. the cartoon in figure 6 presupposes such a model and exploits it for humorous purposes. 7 as proposed by various scholars, e.g. barcelona (2000), radden (2002), panther (2006), the relation between visibility and knowledge is basically metonymic rather than metaphoric (as assumed by sweetser 1990: 37–40). 8 rat out can be used as an achievement in sentences like at midnight he ratted out his accomplices (punctual interpretation) or as an accomplishment in within three days he ratted out all his accomplices. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� klaus-uwe panther and linda l. thornburg language value 4 (1), 63–83 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 75 “not up the way, you idiot, across the way!” figure 6. the industrious (but stupid) beaver. the conceptual structure of beaver away is diagrammed in figure 7. n noun v verb → converts to sign relation metonymy metaphor sense specialization conceptual motivation of conversion positive beaver model medium rank on ontological hierarchy industrious behavior fells trees builds lodges/dams cooperative . . . . activity work hard (x) industrious behavior (human (x)) industrious behavior (beaver) beaver n→v away motion along unbounded path (x) durative figure 7. conceptual structure of beaver away. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� conceptualizing humans as animals in english verb particle constructions language value 4 (1), 63–83 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 76 the feature selected from the beaver model in beaver away is industrious behavior, which is metaphorically mapped into the human domain and used to conceptualize the human activity of working hard. the particle away marks the aspect of the event coded by beaver as durative. how is it possible for away to code the durative aspect? we propose that it has a dynamic meaning, evoking the motion of some x (the agent of the activity) along an unbounded path. in figure 7 we again interpret the relationship between the spatial particle, in this case away, and its aspectual target meaning as metonymic. in other words, the movement of an object along a path invites the metonymic inference of (unbounded) temporal extension. an alternative way of interpreting the relation between the source and target sense of away would be to regard it as a metaphor that establishes correspondences between the movement of x along an unbounded path and an unbounded activity of x. in our view, however, conceptual metonymy is the more basic cognitive mechanism to account for the relationship between source and target meanings of away in beaver away. given our knowledge of the world, we have an immediate spontaneous association between the motion of an object along a trajectory and its temporal extension. this associative linking is a typically metonymic process (see figure 2). iii.2.3. clam up the folk model of clams that is relevant to the source meaning of clam up is nicely illustrated by the cartoon in figure 8: http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� klaus-uwe panther and linda l. thornburg language value 4 (1), 63–83 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 77 figure 8. clam issuing a warning to take protective action (i.e. close shells). the target sense of clam up, i.e. ‘abruptly stop talking’, is diagrammed in figure 9. n noun v verb → converts to sign relation metonymy metaphor sense specialization conceptual motivation of conversion figure 9. conceptual structure of clam up. achievement abruptly stop talking (x) close (human (x), lips (y)) close (clam,shells) clam n→v up vertical motion (y) stop talking (x) endpoint of vertical motion (y) clam model low rank on ontological hierarchy sea creature housed in two shells opens and closes shells edible . . . . telic http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� conceptualizing humans as animals in english verb particle constructions language value 4 (1), 63–83 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 78 being a bivalve mollusk, the clam is presumably low on the ontological hierarchy; however, unlike rats and cockroaches, it is not associated with any particular negative attributes. the feature in the folk model that has become conventionalized in clam up is the capability of clams to close their shells instantaneously when under threat, and it is this attribute that is likened to the action of a person suddenly closing his or her lips. this action stands metonymically for ‘stop talking’ or ‘falling silent’. the aspectual meaning of clam up is contributed by the particle up, which evokes vertical movement (of x) toward a completion point (marked as telic in figure 9). since clam up is conventionally interpreted as ‘abruptly stop talking’, it has the aspectual feature punctual, which accounts for its achievement sense or, more generally, perfective meaning. the punctual aspect of clam up is depicted in detail in figure 10. c h a n g e clam up t te te time of event t time axis figure 10. punctual aspect of clam up. in figure 10, the sloped dashed line represents a backgrounded (or presupposed) phase of the clam up event, namely talking. the large dot marks the moment (te) at which talking ceases. it is this point of change that is actually coded by the expression clam up. after this culmination point, a state of silence ensues, which is marked in figure 10 by an indefinitely extended horizontal line. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� klaus-uwe panther and linda l. thornburg language value 4 (1), 63–83 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 79 iv. conclusions in this chapter we have shown that the meanings of the converted animal terms in critter constructions are not predictable, but are motivated by animal folk models. one behavioral component of an animal folk model is metonymically selected and metaphorically projected into the human domain as human behavior. thus the change of word class (n → v) in critter constructions is motivated by metonymy, not by metaphor. the particle in critter constructions has an aspectual value, e.g. telic, durative, or punctual. it is derivable via metonymic inference(s) from a spatial image schema. the aspectual value of the particle thus motivates the lexical aspect of the whole critter construction as activity, achievement, or accomplishment, for example. the folk models that are evoked by vprt critter constructions (at least the ones investigated herein) appear to be extremely conservative. they are susceptible to ‘cultural lag’, that is, they are neither immediately influenced by new scientific insights nor by innovative cultural developments leading to changes in the attitudes toward animals. to limit our discussion to just one example, rats could plausibly be characterized as very industrious (just like beavers) and one might expect that rat away could mean, in some contexts, ‘work industriously’. although one could argue that rat away is ‘blocked’ by the pre-existing beaver away, that does not preclude the possibility that there exists another blocking factor, namely the negative cultural model of rats. likewise, scientific models of rats characterize these rodents as being smart and resourceful, in fact capable of finding their way out of complicated mazes. given that many educated speakers are most likely familiar with such studies popularized in the media, one might expect that sooner or later the linguistic community would coin the expression rat one’s way out meaning ‘find a solution to a difficult problem’, which in fact has not happened. likewise, the creation of a related particle+verb expression outrat in the sense of ‘outfox’ or ‘outsmart’ seems to be highly unlikely. in its usage as a verb, the semantics of rat seems to be constrained by the negative folk model discussed in section iii.2.1. yet, as also noted in section iii.2.1, constructions other than the vprt critter construction – specifically, compounds with rat(s) functioning as the morphological http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� conceptualizing humans as animals in english verb particle constructions language value 4 (1), 63–83 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 80 head in the previously mentioned rugrats (‘toddlers/young children who play on the floor’) – seem to be a linguistic vehicle through which a less negative image of rats may be conveyed. similar neologisms are mallrats (‘adolescents/teenagers hanging out at the mall’ and sprawlrats (‘college students who share suburban housing’). in its function as the head in compounds, rat(s) evokes the social organization of rats (living in groups) while the modifier (rug, mall, and sprawl – ‘sprawling suburban neighborhood’) references the habitat where the metaphorized ‘rats’ spend large amounts of their time. ‘group’ and ‘habitat’ per se are relatively neutral meaning components in these compounds despite their origin in the rat model. in contrast, when rat functions as a modifier in compounds, e.g. rat-infested, rat-hole (‘squalid habitat/hiding place’), rat race (‘fiercely competitive struggle for wealth/power’), and rat bag (br. ‘unpleasant/disliked person’), to name but a few, extremely negative components of the rat model, like ‘squalid’, ‘vile, ‘diseased’, and ‘fiercely combative’, are evoked. these observations show that different types of grammatical constructions containing rat as a noun or verb interact differentially with the rat folk model (see also the discussion of sentences (1)–(5) in section ii). exploring this question would constitute an interesting line of research. in general, however, we hypothesize that linguistic codings have a tendency to ‘freeze’ cultural models, sometimes from centuries past, and thus quite often reflect outdated worldviews and theories – including biological models. in contrast, in other semiotic systems, e.g. the visual arts, new cultural models may be adopted and implemented more readily than in the language system. to see this, consider figure 11, which shows a lab rat ‘out of work’. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� klaus-uwe panther and linda l. thornburg language value 4 (1), 63–83 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 81 figure 11. a empathetic rat model. the rat image in figure 11, a beatrix potter-like depiction of the animal, empathetically represents a situation with which humans, in a period of economic stress, can readily identify. the cartoon captures an aspect of the 21st century human condition (the desperate search by many people for any kind of work, even if it is inhumane, unpaid, and humiliating) and, in so doing, stands the centuries-old folk model of rats on its head. references barcelona, a. 2000. “on the plausibility of claiming a metonymic motivation for conceptual metaphor”. in barcelona, a. (ed.) metaphor and metonymy at the crossroads: a cognitive perspective. berlin/new york: mouton de gruyter, 31– 58. bridoux, a. (ed.) 1953. oeuvres et lettres de descartes. paris: gallimard. brinton, l.j. 1988. the development of english aspectual systems. cambridge: cambridge university press. clark, e.v. and clark, h.h. 1979. “when nouns surface as verbs”. language 55, 767–811. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� conceptualizing humans as animals in english verb particle constructions language value 4 (1), 63–83 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 82 deignan, a. 2006. “the grammar of linguistic metaphors”. in stefanowitsch, a. and s.t. gries (eds.) corpus-based approaches to metaphor and metonymy. berlin/ new york: mouton de gruyter, 106–122. dirven, r. 1999. “conversion as a conceptual metonymy of event schemata”. in panther, k.-u. and g. radden (eds.) metonymy in language and thought, amsterdam/philadelphia: john benjamins, 275–287. drabble, m. (ed.) 2000. the oxford companion to english literature. oxford/new york: oxford university press. goatly, a. 2006. “humans, animals, and metaphors”. society and animals 14 (1), 15– 37. lakoff, g. and turner, m. 1989. more than cool reason: a field guide to poetic metaphor. chicago: the university of chicago press. longman dictionary of american english (ldae). 1983. white plains, ny: longman. new oxford american dictionary. 2010. stevenson, a. and c.a. lindberg (eds.). oxford: oxford university press. oxford dictionary of current idiomatic english. vol. 1: prepositions & particles. 1975. cowie a.p. and r. mackin (eds.). london: oxford university press. panther, k.-u. 2006. “metonymy as a usage event”. in kristiansen, g., m. achard, r. dirven, and f.j. ruiz de mendoza ibáñez (eds.) cognitive linguistics: current applications and future perspectives. berlin/new york: mouton de gruyter, 147–185. panther, k.-u. and radden, g. 2011. “introduction: reflections on motivation revisited”. in panther, k.-u. and g. radden (eds.) motivation in grammar and the lexicon. amsterdam/philadelphia: john benjamins, 1–26. quinn, n. and holland, d. 1987. “culture and cognition”. in holland. d. and n. quinn (eds.) cultural models in language and thought. cambridge: cambridge university press, 3–40. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� klaus-uwe panther and linda l. thornburg language value 4 (1), 63–83 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 83 radden, g. 2002. “how metonymic are metaphors?”. in dirven, r. and r. pörings (eds.) metaphor in comparison and contrast. berlin/new york: mouton de gruyter, 407–434. ris-eberle, s. 2004. “tiere in der religion ägyptens: tiere als götter im alten ägypten?” unipress 122. bern: universität bern, abteilung kommunikation, 50– 53. sweetser, e.e. 1990. from etymology to pragmatics: metaphorical and cultural aspects of semantic structure. cambridge: cambridge university press. thornburg, l.l. and panther, k.-u. 2000. “why we subject incorporate (in english): a post-whorfian view”. in pütz, m. and m.h. verspoor (eds.) explorations in linguistic relativity. amsterdam/philadelphia: john benjamins, 319–343. vendler, z. 1957. “verbs and times”. the philosophical review 66, 143–160. received: 05 february 2012 accepted: 04 march 2012 cite this article as: panther, k.-u. and thornburg, l.l. 2012. “conceptualizing humans as animals in english verb particle constructions”. language value 4 (1), 63-83. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.4 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� ii. some constructions involving animal terms iii.1. general characteristics of critter constructions iii.2. three case studies iii.2.1. rat out iii.2.2. beaver away iii.2.3. clam up iv. conclusions a semantic and pragmatic approach to verb particle constructions used in cartoons and puns language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue july 2012, volume 4, number 1 pp. 97-117 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.6 97 a semantic and pragmatic approach to verb particle constructions used in cartoons and puns abdeljalil naoui khir virginia military institute, usa naouikhira@vmi.edu abstract the aim of this paper is to discuss a special type of verb particle construction in english; namely, phrasal verbs used in cartoons and puns. granted that the meaning of phrasal verbs may range from literal to idiomatic, their use in cartoons is artistically and linguistically exploited through a combination of verbal and non-verbal cues to convey humor, satire and fun. our assumption is that this combination rests on the premise that a double reading of phrasal verbs in certain cartoons and puns is possible. to illustrate this, a sample of cartoons using phrasal verbs and puns (taken from www.ecenglish.com, english teacher online llc) will be analyzed showing how the correspondence between the cartoon as a visual mode and the phrasal verb as a linguistic form can yield both literal interpretations and idiomatic ones. phrasal verbs are also shown to violate gricean maxims and to depend largely, in their interpretation, on extra linguistic factors. keywords: cartoons, puns, phrasal verbs, gricean maxims, (un)marked i. introduction there is an extensive body of literature dealing with phrasal verbs. moreover, the manifold approaches towards such constructions seem to be controversial. yet, it must be pointed out that in the treatment of phrasal verbs two major points should be stressed: 1) the problem related to their grammatical status and 2) the problem of their idiomaticity. some1 1 see leila ranta‘s 2008 article “figuring out phrasal verbs: practical ideas from research” where she states that “many esl textbooks make no distinction between phrasal and prepositional verbs calling them both ‘phrasal verbs’. unfortunately, this simplification may lead to greater confusion in the long run because phrasal and prepositional verbs have different characteristics” p. 1. and for a more elaborate and detailed discussion see biber et al. 1999; especially section 5 on multi-word lexical verbs pp.360-402, and section 13 on idiomatic phrases and free combinations pp. 9901028. consider that phrasal verbs are very different from verbs with prepositions both semantically and syntactically’. they see that in phrasal verbs the particle is intrinsically connected to the verb to form a single semantic unit. with verbs followed by prepositions, the preposition is part of a prepositional phrase and does not change the http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� mailto:naouikhira@vmi.edu� http://www.ecenglish.com/� abdeljalil naoui khir language value 4 (1), 97–117 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 98 meaning of the verb. others2 if some linguists disagree on what elements constitute a phrasal verb, what they seem to disagree more about is whether to include those constructions having a literal meaning within the sphere of phrasal verbs or to consider them otherwise. , however, include both the adverb and the preposition as constituents of a phrasal verb. they have adopted two main positions with regard to the nature and use of phrasal verbs: they see that the literal use of a form like lift up, put down and a host of others do not constitute a phrasal verb as such, but a verb operating with a particle and that the term phrasal verb should properly be reserved for figurative and idiomatic uses (cf. martha j. kolln, and robert w. funk 2008: 35).3 our aim in this paper is not to examine the problems in detail or to review the literature. since this paper is concerned primarily with phrasal verbs used in cartoons and not with the theoretical aspects of phrasal verbs, our discussion will thus be related only to a clarification of points and concepts required for an understanding of the topic. we shall, therefore, focus on relevant points and mainly the transparency and idiomaticity of phrasal verbs and the role that contextual factors can play. let us begin by the first element, the label phrasal verbs. for us, this term covers both the literal and figurative/idiomatic uses, and therefore includes syntax, morphology, and semantics. others would consider that phrasal verbs may range from totally transparent to totally opaque. (cf. mcarthur 1992: 773). based on their approach, linguists refer to the combination of a basic verb and another word or words by using various labels, the most widely used of which is phrasal verb, the term we will be using in our analysis. other labels used are compound verbs, verbadverb combinations, verb-particle constructions (vpcs), or two-part verbs and threepart verbs (depending on the number of particles used). 4 it is also commonly thought that almost every phrasal verb has a corresponding equivalent single verb. for example, search could be used instead of look for, as could 2 cf. mcarthur, t. (1992) the oxford companion to the english language. oxford university press. 3 martha kolln and robert funk (2008: 35) suggested that “phrasal verbs define only those combinations that form an idiom, a phrase whose meaning cannot be predicted from the meaning of its parts.” 4 cf. mcarthur (1992:pp.72-76) http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� a semantic and pragmatic approach to verb particle constructions used in cartoons and puns language value 4 (1), 97–117 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 99 extinguish be used instead of put out and continue as an equivalent to carry on and the list of examples is long. however, the status assigned to phrasal verbs is somewhat prejudiced: they are said to be “informal, emotive and slangy” (mcarthur 1992: 774), and are “extremely common, especially in spoken english. they are used more informally than their latinate synonyms”. fletcher (2005: 11) considers this to be an oversimplification and he considers that phrasal verbs, (which he calls multiple word verbs) are used across all types of text, even when the writer or speaker has the option of choosing a single-word alternative. they tend to enter the language through casual speech, but gradually become accepted across a wider range of texts, reaching even the most technical or conservative text types. dwight bolinger (1971) also notes that phrasal verbs are more expressive than the synonyms they replace. he contrasts insult with jump on; exult with jump up and down with joy; and assault with jump at (cf. also claridge5 it is not really true anymore to say that a phrasal verb always has a formal equivalent. the form you use or choose often depends on the context. there are now many phrasal verbs such as check in, plug in or log on that have come into english over the last years from science, technology and computing and they are known to have no alternative forms expressed in simple verbs. so when you use any of these phrasal verbs above you are not using a slang word that should be replaced by a formal verb since the phrasal verb is the only way of describing these actions. 2000, quoted in lary ceplair 2008, for a similar point). hence, it is simply not true to say that phrasal verbs are always slang and poor-quality english, since, as shown above, they may be the only way to express an idea. a wide range of phrasal verbs are metaphorical and ambivalent and therefore prone to diverse interpretations, which makes them more appropriate and playful in particular contexts and situations, as in jokes and cartoons. 5 in her article “multi-word verbs in early modern english” (2000), quoted in larry ceplair 2008, claudia claridge cites several phonic and syntactical reasons for the shift from single verbs to phrasal verbs. first, there was the lack of a fitting, one-word synonym for the thought to be expressed.: “take advantage of” by “exploit”; “find fault with” by “criticize”; “fall short of” by “fail”; and “lay about” by “loll”. second, phrasal verbs are more precise and to the point. her third reason is that phrasal verbs provide additional meaning. and her fourth reason is that phrasal verbs are more expressive, emphatic, playful, and metaphorical. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� abdeljalil naoui khir language value 4 (1), 97–117 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 100 phrasal verbs may range from totally transparent constructions to totally opaque ones with those at the opaque end of the scale as pure idiomatic phrasal verbs. the categorization of phrasal verbs as transparent or opaque depends on the contribution of the verb and particle to the overall meaning. when both of these keep their original concrete meaning, the phrasal verb is considered literal (frazer 1976). if it is only the verb that retains its original meaning, however, it is then called semi-idiomatic (spasov 1966). finally, when neither verb nor particle keep their basic meaning, and a new meaning is assigned to the combined elements of the phrasal verb, it is known as idiomatic. a different categorization also based on the combination and contribution of verb and particle yields four categories rather than just three. this alternative way of classifying such elements was suggested by bannard et al. (2003), and quoted in patrick and fletcher (2006: 6), who see that phrasal verbs “can be sub-classified into four compositionality classes based on the independent semantic contribution of the verb and particle”. they roughly categorize them in the following way (examples from barnard et al. 2003): (1) both the verb and particle contribute semantically. for example, peter put the picture up. (2) only the verb contributes semantically. for example, susan finished up her paper. (3) only the particle contributes semantically, as when you say: the thief made away with the case. (4) neither the verb nor the particle contributes semantically. for example, barbara and simon made out. yet, the problem with these categorizations is that idiomaticity in phrasal verbs is more complex than that. quite often, one and the same phrasal verb may have both a literal and a figurative meaning, depending on context, as the following examples can show: http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� a semantic and pragmatic approach to verb particle constructions used in cartoons and puns language value 4 (1), 97–117 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 101 literal meaning she put down the book figurative meaning the army could not put down the rebellion in libya. she looked into a mirror we will look into the problem together. they live on the fourth floor. they are poor and live on rice and beans. ambivalence is another characteristic of phrasal verbs. some may have a wide range of different meanings depending on their use in the context. one notorious example is the phrasal verb pick up, which is frequently listed with around 20 different meanings in dictionaries: (understand/comprehend, retrieve from the ground, etc.). so it seems that the variety of meanings of a phrasal verb has more to do with contextual factors than with the construction itself. how can we then draw a line between literal and figurative/ idiomatic uses of phrasal verbs and is it possible to do so? the answer seems to be far from positive because, as shown above, the same phrasal verb may have multiple meanings and may once be used literally and on other occasions metaphorically or idiomatically. another reason is to be found in the semantic meaning of the parts that constitute the phrasal verb (verb + particle) and their contribution to the overall meaning (barnard et al. 2003). other contextual factors may also be involved when uttering the phrasal verb, as in cases of irony, jokes and cartoons. this continuum from literal (transparent) to idiomatic (opaque) illustrated in the phrasal verbs above and the multiplicity of meanings of one and the same phrasal verb make them an interesting linguistic phenomenon. phrasal verbs are exploited in diverse domains of language use, mainly in advertising and cartoons to convey double messages. for example, the phrasal verb “you can count on us” used to advertize calculators shows that this phrase could be interpreted literally and/or metaphorically. also in cartoons a double message is conveyed through the visual image presented through caricature and the linguistic message presented in the caption accompanying the cartoon. let us then see how these are illustrated in cartoons. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� abdeljalil naoui khir language value 4 (1), 97–117 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 102 ii. phrasal verbs in cartoons in cartoons, meaning is conveyed through the verbal and the visual. due to this interaction between what is said and what is seen, between language and image, attention should be paid to the visual message and to exaggeration, contradiction, and metaphor as mechanisms to create humor. cartoons, like jokes, are often based on a deliberate confusion of phrasal-verb meanings. they are widely used as a means of social satire to comment on political events, domestic or family matters, and undesirable behaviors such as cheating and immorality. phrasal verbs can also be used to enhance teaching. among the possible reasons for using cartoons as authentic material in teaching, one can cite the following: since phrasal verbs are highly used in informal situations by native speakers, their teaching/ learning through the visual context of cartoons would allow teacher and students to deal with them easily as they are used to represent concrete and authentic situations. consequently, students would comprehend them better and could use them in real-to-life situations with much ease. also, given that cartoons are usually humorous, dealing with them in such contexts would surely make learning fun and would help and stimulate students to learn. the visual context within which phrasal verbs appear in cartoons would probably help students to memorize and recall such structures better than when they are merely presented as lists. additionally, cartoons, in general, thanks to their visual property, illustrate aspects of culture and values of the targeted people and language (the way people are clad, proximity and many other non-linguistic features). another important component that cartoons as visuals can provide is their ability to show non-verbal aspects of communication: facial expressions, body postures and relevant gestures. all these can be exploited along with the linguistic components and can help students develop an accurate communicative competence. the phrasal verbs used in cartoons in this paper can help students perceive the ambiguity and contrast between the literal and metaphorical uses of phrasal verbs and in what situations they are appropriately used. some other possible ways of how to use them in teaching is to elicit the possible meaning of a phrasal verb based on the visual information in the cartoon, and if used for a review, to ask the students to match nonhttp://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� a semantic and pragmatic approach to verb particle constructions used in cartoons and puns language value 4 (1), 97–117 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 103 captioned cartoons with the phrasal verbs that would go with them. obviously, the choice of the cartoon and the phrasal verb should match the level of the students and the targeted skill(s). the samples of cartoons discussed in this paper represent a clash between the conventional/metaphorical and/or idiomatic meaning of a phrasal verb and the meaning provided by the visual information in the cartoon, which is a literal one. students with an advanced level could be taught or asked to detect such a difference based on the information of what is linguistically said in the phrasal verb and the plausibility of what is illustrated or inferred from the message/illustration in the cartoon. for example, situation number one, where in the cartoon a policeman is shown as physically holding a car in his hand, is implausible. therefore, it is not a likely expected interpretation of the phrasal verb, but one that is meant to be a joke since, in this case, it is taken literally. this will help students develop their competencies to understand literal and metaphorical uses of language thanks to the context of use of phrasal verbs and the extra linguistic context provided by cartoons. humor is of paramount importance to cartoons, and both the verbal and the visual cues in cartoons are fertile grounds for such humor. cartoons also materialize conceptual metaphors. to illustrate this, i have selected instances of phrasal verbs used in cartoons and puns taken from the web site www.ecenglish.com and english teacher online llc, respectively. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� abdeljalil naoui khir language value 4 (1), 97–117 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 104 situation 1: “hold up” copyright © www.ecenglish.com in the interaction of this cartoon (situation 1) a question is posed asking about when traffic police are strong. the given reply “when they hold up cars with one hand” evokes two images: one based on our experience with traffic police, who with their authority can raise their hand as a signal for a driver to stop and the latter has to obey the traffic police (hence their authority). the second image is the ‘distorted’, funny image in the cartoon representing a policeman physically and literally holding a car in his hand (hence his physical strength). so, here, the cartoon enhances the literal meaning of the phrasal verb making the situation funny due to its unusualness. situation 2: “pick up” copyright © www.ecenglish.com http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.ecenglish.com/� http://www.ecenglish.com/� a semantic and pragmatic approach to verb particle constructions used in cartoons and puns language value 4 (1), 97–117 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 105 here again we find that the question being asked is about the best job to have when the economy is bad. it is taken in a humorous way when the answer “pick up” does not refer, as we expect, to improvement of the bad situation (an idiomatic meaning). rather, it refers to the literal meaning of “pick up” which is “lifting up” and this meaning is contrary to our expectations, but is supported by the image in the cartoon representing a man lifting up (raising from the ground) a garbage can. situation 3: “step on” copyright © www.ecenglish.com the customer’s question “i asked you to bring my order quickly, but why is all the food on my plate squashed?”, is a reproach that is made clear by the juxtaposed statement emphasized by the use of the word ‘but’, as well as by the expression on his face, which is clearly depicted in the cartoon, and which shows the customer’s anger. all these extra linguistic factors make it clear that the waiter misunderstood the meaning of “step on”. his reply “well sir, when you ordered your food, you told me to step on it” shows that he understood the phrasal verb literally and thus pressed his foot on the food rather than doing his best to bring it quickly. once again, fun and humor are the result of taking the idiomatic phrasal verb literally. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.ecenglish.com/� abdeljalil naoui khir language value 4 (1), 97–117 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 106 situation 4: “put down” copyright © www.ecenglish.com the phrasal verb “put down” is usually employed in the negative form and is commonly collocated with books or reading matter. so, to express that we get so engrossed with what we are reading that it was difficult to stop reading it, we usually say that it is so interesting that we cannot put it down. in the cartoon, the man’s use of “glue” and the depicted image of the man’s hand glued to the book both emphasize the literal interpretation “to physically stop holding what we have in our hand”. here again, from the visual elements in the cartoon, it becomes clear that the idiomatic phrasal verb has been interpreted literally. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.ecenglish.com/� a semantic and pragmatic approach to verb particle constructions used in cartoons and puns language value 4 (1), 97–117 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 107 situation 5: “stand in the way” copyright © www.ecenglish.com this phrasal verb has two basic interpretations: one purely literal in the sense that to stand in someone’s way could mean to be placed physically as an obstacle in someone’s pathway. so if you stand in my way, you prevent me from moving past you or getting through somewhere. the other meaning is metaphorical and refers to preventing an event from happening, such as attempting to prevent someone’s plans from taking place by refusing or causing problems. based on the information in the cartoon and since it is a child who expresses his future desire to drive an army tank, the father’s statement sounds more of a self-assurance than a promise not to intervene with the child’s wish. what also emphasizes this idea is the presence of extra linguistic factors; namely, the physical presence of individuals in the cartoon portrayed as standing in front of vehicles: a car and a tank. the purpose is to emphasize the literal meaning. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.ecenglish.com/� abdeljalil naoui khir language value 4 (1), 97–117 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 108 situation 6: “see through” copyright © www.ecenglish.com in this cartoon, there is a picture of a woman and a ghost. they are depicted as having a conversation. ghosts are assumed to be transparent so that we can see through them. therefore nothing on the other side can be hidden. we can see through ghosts, fake things and lies, just as we can see what is on the other side of a piece of glass by looking through it. hence the woman’s statement “we can see through them”, refers to being able to detect a lie when we hear one because it is poorly disguised: the pun revolves around “them” in this case because, depending on whether we choose to interpret it as “ghosts” or “lies”, we interpret the phrasal verb accordingly. because such cartoons seem to show exactly what those phrasal verbs literally say, not what they metaphorically mean, and because such an interpretation is implausible, they create fun and humor. humor is pragmatically the result of a violation of our expectation of how the real world is. the depiction of a policeman holding a car (situation 1) or a waiter stepping on food (situation 3) is incompatible with our knowledge of the real world just as any other humorous situation may be. thus, a comprehensive understanding of phrasal verbs in cartoons as those illustrated above necessitates a consideration of what is linguistically said, and what is illustrated: the visual context. when these two are put together, we have a combination of the linguistic context, which is the phrasal verb with its syntactic form and its conventional or metaphorical meaning, and the presence of an unexpected or forced literal meaning brought forth in the cartoon. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.ecenglish.com/� a semantic and pragmatic approach to verb particle constructions used in cartoons and puns language value 4 (1), 97–117 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 109 another means of humor is the use of puns. a pun is defined as: “a humorous use of a word in such a way as to suggest two or more of its meanings or the meaning of another word similar in sound” (source: merriam webster’s dictionary online: http://www.meriam-webster.com/dictionary/pun ). humor here is based on the wrong assumption that sounding alike means being alike. a combination of puns and cartoons is possible as the following example can illustrate: situation 7: “go on strike” copyright © 2010 english teacher online llc. “to go on strike” is employed to make a pun in this example where a young baseball player is depicted as addressing the question to his coach, asking him “when do we learn how to go on strike?” thereby evoking two different meanings: on the one hand, a strike in baseball results when a batter: a) swings at and misses a pitch, b) doesn’t swing at a pitch in the strike zone or c) hits a foul ball that is not caught http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.meriam-webster.com/dictionary/pun� abdeljalil naoui khir language value 4 (1), 97–117 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 110 (source: online sports dictionary: sportsdefinitions.com http://www.sportsdefinitions.com/baseball/strike.htlm) on the other hand, “to go on strike” is “a period of time when workers stop work in order to force an employer to agree to their demands” (source: merriam webster’s learner’s dictionary http://www.learnersdictionary.com/com/search/strike2). obviously, without the visual presentation depicted in the cartoon, which evokes the meaning associated with a strike in baseball, the linguistic message ( the caption) would hardly yield a double meaning and so, no pun would take place in this case mainly because of the nature of the structure “to go on strike”, which is idiomatic. this double interpretation in each of these cartoons leading to fun and humor is due to the use of phrasal verbs which can have more than one interpretation and to the contribution of the image(s) in the cartoon. yet, it is the visual content of the cartoon which conveys humor and fun. many comic situations conveyed by cartoons owe their capacity to amuse more to the visual context in which they appear than to purely linguistic reasons. the phrasal verbs above used in cartoons would, out of that specific context, be most likely interpreted in their metaphorical or idiomatic meanings. although phrasal verbs are ambivalent and sometimes have multiple meanings to the extent that they can be used literally or metaphorically, they usually have a primary conventional meaning. this meaning can be the literal one or the metaphorical / idiomatic one. so, to say that traffic police can hold up cars, or that with certain jobs business is always picking up when the economy is bad, or to order someone to bring food and to step on it, or it’s impossible to put down a book you are reading, etc. outside the cartoon context would hardly make you think of another interpretation than the one these phrasal verbs are usually associated with, namely, their primary conventional meaning. the role of the cartoons is to exploit these phrasal verbs with their metaphorical or idiomatic meanings and to use them in a context where a literal interpretation is made possible. this is in a sense just like when in conversation people use utterances in an indirect way only to find out that their addressees take them literally, that is, as direct speech acts. for example, if, to the conventional indirect request “can you pass the salt?”, you get no compliance or action, but a mere response http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.sportsdefinitions.com/baseball/strike.htlm� http://www.learnersdictionary.com/search/strike%5b2%5d� http://www.learnersdictionary.com/search/strike%5b2%5d� http://www.learnersdictionary.com/com/search/strike2� a semantic and pragmatic approach to verb particle constructions used in cartoons and puns language value 4 (1), 97–117 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 111 of the type “sure, i can”, you realize that your addressee is interpreting a request for action as if it were a mere question asking for information, just as anyone would use an idiom or metaphorical phrasal verb with its literal interpretation. the questions concerning why phrasal verbs are exploited in this fashion in cartoons and why a metaphorical or idiomatic meaning is used to convey a literal meaning arise naturally at this point. a possible answer to these questions may be that phrasal verbs, in general, with sufficient context, can convey a literal interpretation even when their primary meaning is metaphorical or idiomatic. it is basically almost always possible to twist the meaning of an utterance that is taken as non-literal-metaphorical or idiomatic, and make it sound literal. only, in doing so, fun or humor may be intended, and it becomes more striking, more humorous and more common if it is enhanced by its use within the framework of a cartoon. second, cartoons are used, regardless of their domain of use, to make fun, to entertain and even to criticise. to do so, they have to alter reality or exaggerate it. this is why a lot of caricature is used in cartoons. finally, cartoons allow us to use our imagination and to think of alternative views and interpretations of what we see, read or even know. iii. grice’s cooperative principles and maxims grice (1975) saw that conversation held between people is based on a shared principle of cooperation. he formulated it in the following way: “make your contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged.” the cooperative principle is intended as a description of how people normally behave in conversation. observing it serves to enhance effective communication. it consists of four maxims, which should be taken as assumptions about the way people will talk, rather than prescriptions for how they ought to talk. when these maxims are violated, people make inferences which grice called implicatures. conversationalists can assume that when speakers intentionally flout a maxim, they do so with the aim of expressing some thought or idea. thus, the gricean maxims serve a http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� abdeljalil naoui khir language value 4 (1), 97–117 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 112 purpose both when they are followed and even when they are flouted. speakers who deliberately flout the maxims usually do so with the intention of getting their listener(s) to understand their underlying implication(s). the gricean maxims are therefore often purposefully flouted by comedians and writers as well as by cartoonists, who may use linguistic devices such as metaphor, irony and puns, and manipulate their words for specific effects, depending on their readers or audience. seana coulson (in print) says in this respect: (t)he cartoon presents itself as a puzzle for the viewer to solve. the challenge, it seems, is to activate the appropriate information in response to the imagery and the verbal cues, and to integrate it with abstract narrative structure….because the cartoonist must provide the viewer with just enough information to reconstitute the input spaces, humorous examples necessarily depend on viewers having relevant knowledge and shared understandings about these domains. conversational implicatures are always indirect: we imply one thing by saying or communicating another. cartoons using phrasal verbs work in this way. what is said has a meaning and what is implied has a different meaning when enhanced by the visual images in the cartoon. grice’s maxims and rules of conversation: • maxims of quantity: 1. “make your contribution as informative as is required” (for the current purposes of the exchange) 2. “don’t make your contribution more informative than is required” in other words, do not say more or less than what you should. do not state the obvious. • maxims of quality: be truthful 1. “don’t say what you believe to be false” 2. “don’t say that for which you lack adequate evidence” that is, do not lie or advocate what you are not sure about. • maxim of relation: “be relevant” http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� a semantic and pragmatic approach to verb particle constructions used in cartoons and puns language value 4 (1), 97–117 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 113 • maxims of manner: “be perspicuous” 1. “avoid obscurity of expression” 2. “avoid ambiguity” 3. “be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity)” 4. “be orderly” in the cartoons above, there is, for each phrasal verb as a construction, a “logical”/ common interpretation and an “implied” one, that is to say, one that is specifically dependent and based on the visual context. for example, upon hearing me say “i really could not put down that book”, the first thought you would have is the idiomatic meaning of my statement which amounts to saying “the book is so interesting that i cannot put it down”. however, if i wanted to convey the literal interpretation of “i could not put it down” roughly meaning something like “i could not stop holding it, it has to be glued to my hand” (see cartoon above, situation 4) that would be a literal expression. in a similar way, the idiom “kick the bucket” would be highly likely to be interpreted as “die”. yet, it is not impossible to use it literally and to mean ‘hitting a bucket with one’s foot’ as in saying ‘he kicked the bucket nervously and hurt his foot’. here it is used literally and not as meaning “he died”. only context would make it clear which of the two interpretations is meant, though it is the conventional meaning that we think of first. in terms of grice’s theory of conversation when people are interacting, they have expectations that amount to understanding and being understood. when someone asks you about the time, they expect you to tell them the time, but, of course, a different answer may be given for some reason. this different, unexpected answer is a breach, a violation of one of grice’s maxims. in our view, the use of phrasal verbs in cartoons in an ambiguous way with other possible interpretation(s) is also a violation of grice’s maxim. this other interpretation is supported by the image(s) in the cartoon: the visual context. for example, (see cartoon above, situation 5), the father’s statement that he would not stand in the way of his child’s wish to drive a tank may be ambiguous in the sense that the child understands it one way (idiomatically): that his father would not interfere and the father means another way (literally). this is a violation of the maxim of manner, due to the ambiguity in the father’s utterance. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� abdeljalil naoui khir language value 4 (1), 97–117 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 114 moreover, when it comes to phrasal verbs themselves, a good range of them have a redundant particle. fowler (1996: 594) notes that “one of the main objections raised to phrasal verbs is that they are used when the simple verb alone would suffice” (see also beecher 2008 for a similar point). the examples below, quoted from fowler (1996: 594), illustrate the redundancy of some phrasal verb combinations to the extent that the phrasal verb with or without the particle would be understood in the same way. meet up with = meet lose out = lose miss out on = miss visit with = visit rest up = rest drop off = drop, fall divide off/up = divide measure off/out = measure select out = select so here again there is a violation of grice’s maxims and mainly the maxim of quantity, which states that one should not say more than what is required: 1) make your contribution as informative as is required 2) do not make your contribution more informative than is required. so, if i can say any of the phrasal verbs above without a particle and mean the same thing i am being redundant, and from a gricean perspective, being intentionally redundant is not cooperative. therefore, the unnecessary presence of a redundant particle makes the speaker’s contribution more informative than is required, thereby violating the gricean maxim of quantity. the contrast between phrasal verbs used by native speakers in normal situations: as in a conversation and many other types of discourse and their use in cartoons could also be explained in terms of “marked” and “unmarked” concepts. a lot of words in language stand in binary opposition. for example, there is “old” and “young”; there is “tall” and “short”; there is “deep” and “shallow” etc. just as there are direct and indirect speech acts and literal and non-literal phrasal verbs. the choice of one or the other depends on which is appropriate in the given context of use. for example, when we ask people about their age or their height, we say “how old are you?” rather than “how young are you?” even for babies’ age we ask how old they are. we also use “how tall rather than how short to ask for height. this is because “old”, “tall” and “deep” are unmarked http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� a semantic and pragmatic approach to verb particle constructions used in cartoons and puns language value 4 (1), 97–117 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 115 (neutral), while their opposites are marked. they require a specific reason or context to be used. obviously, there could always be a reason why we would do the reverse and ask how young or how short someone is. context and other extra linguistic factors may determine which choice is appropriate. people can use “how young” to ask about age as in the following situation: “how young do people get married in x country?” similarly, some speech acts may be issued directly and be considered normal like the use of some directives to children. yet, if context requires that we be polite, we may have to formulate them indirectly. as for phrasal verbs that may be literal or non-literal, the tendency with those phrasal verbs above is to use them metaphorically; that is, as non literal. yet, the context within which they were analyzed favors the literal interpretation; partly because of their contextual setting, the cartoons, and partly because humor is sought. an essential part of jokes, punning and humor in general is surprise. markedness sometimes carries this aspect of surprise. so, i believe that the phrasal verbs above, as used in cartoons, may be considered as marked because of the humor and surprise they display. iv. conclusion phrasal verbs used in cartoons represent a special class of verb particle construction in the sense that they have to be able to express at least two meanings, one literal and the other metaphorical or idiomatic. this is because cartoons play on the existence of a double context: a linguistic one, expressed verbally through the caption and a visual context represented through the image(s) or caricature used. based on these two elements of context, which are usually in contrast, cartoonists draw the strings and send messages that create fun, humor and may even serve to criticize. this dichotomy of what is said and what is illustrated with its double message –one stated and one implied– gives room for the flouting of grice’s maxims, that of quality in this case. we have suggested that phrasal verbs used in ordinary interactions are common and unmarked; whereas their special use in cartoons may be considered as marked because the purpose here is occasional and specific and aims at joking and humor in general. additionally, there is a category of phrasal verbs, the particle of which can be redundant (see pg. 114 in this article for examples), and which in turn also flouts grice’s maxim of http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� abdeljalil naoui khir language value 4 (1), 97–117 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 116 quantity. this type of phrasal verb did not appear in any of our cartoon examples but it is worth further investigating in a separate paper since although we may admit that the particle seems to be redundant, there must be a reason why it is used. in my view, the case of redundant phrasal verbs can better be explained in terms of the “marked/ unmarked” dichotomy. this point of redundant particles and (un)markedness is worth further investigation. references bannard, c., baldwin, t. and lascarides, a. 2003. “a statistical approach to the semantics of verb-particles”. in proceedings of the acl-2003 workshop on multiword expressions: analysis, acquisition and treatment, japan, sapporo, 6572. beecher, h. 2008. “pragmatic licensing of redundant vpcs”. uscd. linguistics department. <www.docin.com/p-114154131.html> biber, d., johansson, s., leech, g., conrad, s., and finnegan, e. 1999. longman grammar of spoken and written english. harlow: pearson education limited. bolinger, d. 1971. the phrasal verb in english. harvard, usa: harvard university. ceplair, l. 2008. “linking up (combining) words: phrasal verbs usage”. the unpublished manuscripts of larry ceplair. <www.larryceplair.com/ articles/ phrasals.php> claridge, c. 2000. multi-word verbs in early modern english: a corpus based study. amsterdam/atlanta: rodopi. coulson, s. in press. “what’s so funny: conceptual blending in humorous examples”. in herman, v. (ed.) the poetics of cognition: studies of cognitive linguistics and the verbal arts. cambridge: cambridge university press. <http://cogsci.ucsd.edu/%7ecoulson/funstuff/funny.html> fletcher, b. 2005. “register and phrasal verbs”. med magazine 33, sept. <http://www.macmillandictionary.com/med-magazine/september2005/33phrasal-verbs-register.htm> http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.larryceplair.com/%20articles/%20phrasals.php� http://www.larryceplair.com/%20articles/%20phrasals.php� http://cogsci.ucsd.edu/~coulson/funstuff/funny.html� http://www.macmillandictionary.com/med-magazine/september2005/33-phrasal-verbs-register.htm� http://www.macmillandictionary.com/med-magazine/september2005/33-phrasal-verbs-register.htm� a semantic and pragmatic approach to verb particle constructions used in cartoons and puns language value 4 (1), 97–117 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 117 fowler, h.w. 1996. the new fowler’s modern english usage. 3rd ed. r.w. burchfield (ed.). oxford: clarendon press. frazer, b. 1976. the verb-particle combination in english. new york: academic press. grice, p.h. 1975. “logic and conversation”. in cole, p. and j.l. morgan (eds.) syntax and semantics iii: speech acts. new york: academic press, 41-58. kolln, m.j. and funk r.w. 2008 understanding english grammar. longman publishing group. mcarthur, t. ed. 1992. the oxford companion to the english language. oxford/new york: oxford university press. mccarthy, d., keller, b. and carroll, j. 2003. “detecting a continuum of compositionality in phrasal verbs”. in proceedings of the acl-2003 workshop on multiword expressions: analysis, acquisition and treatment, japan, sapporo, 6572. patrick, j. and fletcher, j. 2004. “differentiating types of verb particle constructions”. in proc. of australasian language technology workshop, 2004 (altw2004). <http://aclweb.org/anthology-new/u/u04/u04-1022.pdf> spasov, d. 1966. english phrasal verbs. sofia, bulgaria: naouka izkoustv. received: 17 october 2011 accepted: 02 december 2011 cite this article as: khir, a.n. 2012. “a semantic and pragmatic approach to verb particle constructions used in cartoons and puns”. language value 4 (1), 97-117. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.6 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� lexical decomposition language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2011, volume 3, number 1 pp. 114-137 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors 114 lexical decomposition of english spatial particles and their subsumption in motion constructions1 ignasi navarro i ferrando navarroi@uji.es universitat jaume i, spain abstract in this paper, we firstly present a tentative formalization of a lexical template (lt) and a meta-language for spatial particle semantics within the framework of the lexical constructional model (lcm). the semantic module consists of a set of lexical functions, which operate on a semantic primitive in order to produce a hyponym by elaborating topological, dynamic and functional information. the syntactic module expresses situations (positions or states) plus the argument structure. secondly, we illustrate and discuss several lts with the purpose of exploring spatial particle subsumption constraints with constructions such as caused motion and intransitive motion, as well as the types of verbal aktionsart that might fuse with them. the coca is used as a data source. we conclude that spatial particles contribute meaning to the extent that they partially determine the type of aktionsart of the verb licensed by the motion construction. keywords: spatial particle, lexical template, motion construction, subsumption, aktionsart i. introduction the first aim of this paper is to explore the lexical decomposition of spatial particles so as to introduce their lexical templates within the framework of the lexical constructional model (henceforth lcm). secondly, we discuss the semantic contribution of spatial particles to motion constructions, more precisely, to the intransitive motion construction and the caused motion construction. the current approach in construction grammar (goldberg 1995: 164ff) avoids going into details about spatial particle meanings and holds that finite verbs fuse into constructions, so that whenever their semantic specifications do not match, the construction overrides the semantic value of the verb, thereby subsumed on the basis of the coercion principle. nothing is said about other lexical units participating in the construction, like spatial particles. particle semantics is ignored, since the path is considered part of the constructional meaning: “the location encoded by the locative phrase is interpreted to be the endpoint of a path to that location” (goldberg 1995: 159). conversely, we claim that http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� lexical decomposition of english spatial particles and their subsumption in motion constructions language value 3 (1), 114-137 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 115 at least part of the semantic value attributed to the construction is contributed by spatial particles. to provide evidence of our claim, that is, to show the meaning contributed by the particle and how that meaning matches the construction, we have carried out lexical decomposition in the form of lexical and constructional templates within the framework of the lcm. the lcm (butler 2009, mairal and ruiz de mendoza 2008, 2009, ruiz de mendoza and mairal 2007a, 2007b, 2008) proposes a semantic-syntactic system of representation of both lexical units and constructions. the use of a predicate, i.e., a lexical unit, in a particular construction is defined by a cognitive operation called subsumption (peña 2009), which assumes both internal (semantic-syntactic) and external (pragmatic and discursive) constraints. the descriptive tools used for the formalization of subsumption processes are called lexical templates (henceforth lts) and constructional templates (henceforth cts), which share a common meta-language. lts are semantic representations of the syntactically relevant content in the meaning of a lexical unit plus pragmatic and semantic information relevant to that meaning. cts are similar formalizations of constructional meaning. therefore, semantic decomposition of lexical predicates becomes necessary so as to determine the elements required in their semantic representation. in its attempt to provide a more adequate explanation for the syntactic-semantic interface, the lcm has a twofold goal: 1) firstly, to identify the aspects of meaning which determine alternate usage of lexical units belonging to the same class, as well as to investigate why certain classes of lexical units participate in a given set of constructions while others do not. 2) secondly, to provide a set of rules that regulates the fusion process (subsumption) considering semantic motivation at its basis. contrary to most theories of lexical representation, the lcm claims that “a lexical rule should not only capture those idiosyncratic regularities that hold in the lexicon, but it should also explain the linguistic motivation that exists behind the generation of a given syntactic construction” (mairal 2004: 11). http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� ignasi navarro language value 3 (1), 114–137 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 116 within this framework, our goal is to unravel the semantic role of particles both in the intransitive motion construction and, especially, in the caused motion construction. we provide evidence that shows the kind of meaning contributed by the particle and how that meaning matches the construction. ii. the structure of lexical and constructional templates lts are low-level semantically-enriched representations of the syntactically relevant content of a predicate meaning, plus pragmatic and semantic information relevant to that meaning. the structure of these formulaic representations emerges from the formalism developed in role and reference grammar (rrg) for logical structures (van valin 2005). in lcm, however, these representations are enhanced by means of lexical functions and lexical domain decomposition (mairal and faber 2005, 2007). in other words, what the templates provide is a semantic specification of a logical structure. the goal of that construct in the lcm framework is to stretch the chain of semantic decomposition as much as possible, as well as to develop a universal metalanguage that supplies typologically valid representations. with that purpose, semantic decomposition in lcm observes the following components: a) lexical inheritance hierarchy: lts are interrelated through domain-subdomain hierarchies (faber and mairal 1999). b) a set of semantic primitives of the be, happen, become, have, etc. type (wierzbička 1996). c) a set of lexical functions of the f(x) = y type (mel’čuk et al. 1995). lexical functions (e.g. magn, culm, manner, cont, cause, instr, etc.) can account for lexical domain-specific relationships and elements of world knowledge that relate in a specific way to the predicate defined by the lt. d) aktionsart distinctions that result in a classification of event types which distinguishes among states, activities, achievements, semelfactives, accomplishments, active accomplishments, and causative accomplishments (vendler 1967, van valin 2005). these distinctions are based on event parameters such as +/static, +/dynamic, +/telic, and +/punctual). states (e.g. know) and activities (e.g. run) are considered http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� lexical decomposition of english spatial particles and their subsumption in motion constructions language value 3 (1), 114-137 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 117 primitive kinds of durative, non-telic events, static or dynamic, respectively. semelfactives (e.g. sneeze) are punctual, non-telic events, i.e., events without a change of state. achievements (e.g. shatter) and accomplishments (e.g. melt, get) imply a change of state (become). e) argument structure: predicate arguments (x, y, etc.). in accordance with the parameters set out above, enhanced formalism, as outlined by mairal and faber (2005, 2007), includes a semantic module (lexical inheritance and lexical functions) plus a syntactic module (aktionsart and argument structure). semantic primitives and lexical functions characterize the semantic component of the language lexicon. the inventory of primitives is systematic, finite and internally consistent. that inventory defines a set of lexical domains that determine the architecture of the lexical system. thus, each lexical domain is defined by a superordinate term called a nuclear term (e.g. the domain of verbs of existence is defined by the superordinate be or happen, the domain of change verbs is defined by become, the domain of possession verbs is defined by have, and so on: domain nuclear term existence be, happen change become possession have speech say emotion feel action do, make cognition know, think movement move, (go/come) physical perception see, hear, taste, smell, touch manipulation use each superordinate term can be used for the formulation of more specific lexical items or hyponyms, which in turn inherit information from the superordinate unit. thus, see may be used as a prime in the lexical templates of verbs like look, watch, observe, glimpse, etc. this proposal of a set of primitive terms coincides to a great extent with wierzbička’s http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� ignasi navarro language value 3 (1), 114–137 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 118 natural semantic metalanguage (nsm), which has been shown to be valid for over a hundred languages (wierzbička 1996). the semantic component of the lcm lexicon also includes a set of operators based on the notion of lexical function as propounded by explanatory and combinatorial lexicology (mel’čuk et al. 1995). a large set of such semantic operators have also been shown to have universal status. in mel’čuk’s theory, lexical functions operate syntagmatically, so that a lexical unit may combine with certain collocates when a function is applied to it. for example, the function “intensification”, expressed as <magn>, can be applied to different lexical units, for instance to the unit smoker. as a result, the expression ‘heavy smoker’ emerges in the language, with the consequence that the unit “heavy”, as collocate of “smoker”, expresses that particular lexical function. in lcm, the notion of lexical function is applied paradigmatically in the lexicon, with the purpose of describing the semantic relationship between different lexical units in a lexical hierarchy. thus, a hyponym is described as a hyperonym incorporating one or more lexical functions into the semantic module of its lt. thus, in f(x) = y, f represents the function, x represents the hyperonym, and y stands for the hyponym. the meaning associated with a lexical function is abstract and general, and can produce a relatively high number of values. in lcm, therefore, lexical functions are essentially paradigmatic – instead of syntagmatic – operators, and capture those pragmatic and semantic parameters that are idiosyncratic to the meaning of a word, which allows for distinctions of different words within the same lexical hierarchy. the following formula shows the schematic form of an lt: predicate: [semantic module <lexical functions>] [aktionsart module <semantic primes> (thematic frame)] to illustrate the notion of lt, let us look, by way of example, at the following hierarchy of visual perception verbs: superordinate term: see (x, y) hyponymy hierarchy: distinguish > [id 12 and eff] [see’ (x, y)] look> [intent, cont] see’ (x, y) http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� lexical decomposition of english spatial particles and their subsumption in motion constructions language value 3 (1), 114-137 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 119 watch > [magn and intent, cont lng] see’ (x, y) observe > purp and [magn and intent, cont lng] see’ (x, y) in these lts, see, distinguish, look, watch and observe stand for the predicates under description; id, eff, intent, cont, magn, and purp stand for the lexical functions identification, effort, intentionality, continuity, intensification and purpose; the subscript figures 12 stand for the transitive character of the identification function, which affects the two arguments; see’ stands for a visual perception stative primitive; and, finally, (x, y) stands for an argument structure including two arguments. we have illustrated the structure of lts and the meta-language employed in their semantic decomposition. the same kind of configuration and meta-language is used in the semantic description of constructions. cts are present in different forms (e.g. argumental and idiomatic) at all levels of linguistic description (propositional, inferential, pragmatic and discursive). thus, a ct is viewed as a high-level or abstract semantic representation of syntactically relevant meaning elements that are abstracted away from multiple lower-level representations, as in: intransitive motion: [do’ (x) [become be-loc’ (x, z)] (1) paul walked into the room caused motion: [do’ (x, y)] cause [become be-loc’ (y, z)] (from pérezhernández and peña-cervel 2009) (2) paul put the napkin in the drawer the cts above encode motion constructions, so that, firstly, an entity (x) does an action (do). moreover, in the intransitive motion construction, that entity (x) ends at location (z) by the effect of the action (do). the expression become be-loc’ encodes the meaning ‘change of location’. in the case of the caused motion construction, the action performed by (x) on another entity (y) causes that entity (y) to change its location. iii. lts of spatial particles in the following subsections, we introduce a characterization of the components in an lt of a spatial particle. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� ignasi navarro language value 3 (1), 114–137 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 120 iii.1. argument structure in cognitive grammar (langacker 1987), spatial particles are considered lexical units of a relational nature, as are verbs: … a relationship is conceptually dependent on its participants. for example, we cannot conceptualize a spatial relation (like on, under, or near) without to some extent (if only schematically) invoking the entities that participate in it. as the term suggests, apprehending a relationship resides in conceiving entities in relation to one another. thus it does not exist independently of those entities. (langacker 2008: 200) english spatial particles are relational expressions, so that the speaker’s conceptualization profiles interconnections among conceived entities. interconnections are cognitive operations that assess the relative positions of entities within the scope of predication. as relational predicates, spatial particles profile a spatial relation on the basis of two other entities in the spatial domain. in the speaker’s conceptualization, these two entities – trajector and landmark – display an asymmetrical relationship in the same construal event as the relational concept as such. spatial particles express the construal of a situation where two entities are conceived as related to each other, and consequently can be regarded as the arguments of that predication. in that construal, the trajector is more salient once perceived and more dynamic than the landmark, which is secondary and more static. the former is the localized or foregrounded entity, and is construed as the movable element in the relationship. on the other hand, the landmark functions as a localizer, background or referential entity, construed as the static element or reference point in the relationship. in terms of thematic frame, we say that the logical structure of spatial particles consists of two roles that are instantiated by the trajector and the landmark of the construal event. the term logical structure has been used in formal models of language to refer to verbal argument structure. the arguments of spatial predicates (x, y) designate the roles played by the trajector and the landmark. it is important to notice here that the terms trajector and landmark designate two participants in a construal event configuration, whereas arguments (x, y) are constructional functions of those participants. thus, in the context of the lcm it is realistic to represent the argument structure of spatial relational predicates as a combination of two arguments. in the lcm, therefore, http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� lexical decomposition of english spatial particles and their subsumption in motion constructions language value 3 (1), 114-137 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 121 lts of spatial relational predicates include the argument structure (x, y). let us consider the preposition at as an example: at (x, y): the train at the station at (train, station) spatial relations are, therefore, instantiated in language usage in the form of predications where the spatial predicate takes two arguments instantiated by the construed trajector and landmark, both being necessary for the conceptualization of the relationship expressed. iii.2. semantic primitive the nsm (wierzbička 1996) provides a set of primitives that we adopt as a departure set in order to define the top of the conceptual hierarchy in the lexical domain of spatial relations. the nsm holds the following distinctions for spatial meaning: space  where/place, here above, below, far, near, side, inside, touching movement  move intensifiers  very, more some of these terms express typologically-proven primes that can be represented by generic denominations. thus, where/place can be designated by the term “place”, here can be designated by “speaker’s location”, above and below by “higher level than” and “lower level than”, and touching by “contact”.2 in the context of lcm formalization, the primitive move can be identified with the expression [become be-loc’ (y, z)], which expresses the fact that an entity y changes its location with respect to a place z. the intensifier very can be identified with the lexical function magn, which expresses intensification. the form “more” can be identified with the plus lexical function, which expresses a higher degree in relation to a reference point. in sum, each prime defines a subdomain of the lexical domain of spatial particles, which is represented in the syntactic module of an lt. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� ignasi navarro language value 3 (1), 114–137 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 122 iii.3. lexical hierarchy it is not assumed as an initial hypothesis that english has a particular word for each one of the primitives described above. we use the nsm list as our initial set of semantic primitives, i.e., as nuclear terms from which other terms can be defined by means of lexical functions. iii.4. aktionsart distinctions aktionsart distinctions provide a characterization of the trajector/landmark asymmetric construal in terms of situation types (dik 1997). with regard to this issue, extensive corpora analysis (navarro 2003, silvestre 2009) shows that, for some particles, the trajector is conceived as the controller of the spatial relationship (at, on), whereas in other cases it is the landmark that prototypically controls or constrains the trajector’s potential motion (in, under). that evidence leads to the postulation of two possible aktionsart role configurations, or situation types, of the tr-lm relationship: a. position: positioner (tr) and location (lm) b. state: experiencer (tr) and location (lm) one of these aktionsart configurations is assigned to a spatial particle lt, depending on which argument of the predication exerts control, according the construal configuration of the situation. some spatial predicates express a first argument position, in the sense that the entity holds control of the relationship, like at or on, as in examples (3) and (4). (3) the fly at the piece of melon (4) the fly on my hand other spatial relation predicates express a situation where the first argument undergoes a state of affairs, in the sense that it is the second argument (lm) that controls the spatial relationship and the potential motion of the first argument (tr), as in examples (5) and (6). (5) the fly in my hand (6) the fly under the piece of melon http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� lexical decomposition of english spatial particles and their subsumption in motion constructions language value 3 (1), 114-137 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 123 iii.5. lexical functions lexical functions represent world knowledge and specify differences between lexical items in the same domain. world knowledge about space (clark 1973, piaget and inhelder 1956, talmy 2000, vygotsky 1986) seems to conform to merleau ponty’s (1945) phenomenology of perception, where perception, self-motion and interaction cooccur as a single phenomenon. figure 1 elaborates on this conception of human experience, by incorporating two subtypes of interaction, as humans accommodate to the environment or modify it so as to assimilate it to their needs. perception body motion−action human experience interaction (accommodation/assimilation) figure 1. components of human experience (from navarro 2006). in this line, deane (1993, 2005) proposed the multidimensional character of the semantic structure of spatial relations. according to that view, navarro (2006) points out that a preposition expresses not only the mere location of the trajector with respect to the landmark, but rather a locative configuration, with a particular orientation for movement, for some kind of purpose. that author’s multimodal semantic networks distinguish three aspects of meaning for the construal of spatial relations: a) topology: the perception of topological arrangements, determined by human perceptual capacities, which in the case of spatial semantics are mainly visual capacities. b) kinetics: sensory-motor experience about the kinetic action of objects determined by human motor capacities. c) function: in order to facilitate survival, assimilation of the environment, as well as accommodation of the body to it, determine our interaction with other people and locations ‒ social and physical interaction. we assume that every lexical function within an lt will correlate with one of these three experiential dimensions, as illustrated in figure 2. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� ignasi navarro language value 3 (1), 114–137 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 124 topology dynamics spatial relationships function figure 2. components of human experience of spatial relationships. iv. some examples of spatial particle lts in this section we introduce and discuss some lts of spatial particles. let us begin with the lt of the preposition at: at: [t-magn, d-intent1, f-purp1, f-instr2] [position <(*[become be-loc (x)]) near>] (x, y) semantic decomposition of this lexical unit (navarro 2002) encompasses the following specifications: argument structure including two arguments x and y. the former refers to the antecedent of the preposition and the latter to its complement (semantically construed as trajector and landmark, respectively). the semantic prime near, expressing the fact that this preposition belongs to a lexical subdomain of relational predicates where the relationship designates proximity between the arguments. the expression (*[become be-loc (x)]) indicates that this preposition may participate in constructions where motion of argument x is expressed. the asterisk outside the square brackets and encircled between round brackets indicates that the predicate is compatible with constructions and other lexical items that express change of location, or movement, of the argument x, but this motion is not expressed by this particular predicate on its own. the term ‘position’ shows the situation type or interaction type expressed by this preposition. particularly, it indicates that the first argument (x) is construed as a positioner in relation to the landmark (y), i.e., that the semantics of this particle implies certain control on the part of the trajector. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� lexical decomposition of english spatial particles and their subsumption in motion constructions language value 3 (1), 114-137 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 125 lexical functions in the semantic module specify the semantics of the particle more precisely. contiguity of trajector and landmark is indicated by magn, which is an intensifier function of the topological aspect (t-) expressed by near (proximity). the function d-intent1 indicates dynamic intentionality of the first argument (x). the function f-purp1 indicates that the first argument is functionally oriented for some purpose. finally, the function f-instr2 indicates that the second argument is functionally conceived as an instrument or some manipulated entity. (7) laura (sat down) at the piano stretching her hands. in (7) we can observe the prototypical meaning of this preposition as depicted in the lt above. the trajector (x = laura) takes (d-intent1) position near and contiguous (magn) to the landmark (y = the piano), with the purpose (f-purp1) of playing it (finstr2). the verb sat down may express movement or a stative situation. the same expression without any verb expresses a vague stative situation. on the other hand, the same context allows for verbs of movement such as run, rush, etc. secondly, we propose the lt of the preposition on in the following terms: on: [d-cont, f-control1, f-instr2] [position <(*[become be-loc (x)]) contact> (x, y) in the case of on, the contact semantic primitive defines the lexical subdomain, which corresponds to touching in nsm terminology. the situation type is a position, indicating that the trajector (x) controls the spatial relationship with the landmark (y). again, as in the previous lt, the asterisk indicates that the predicate on is compatible with constructions and lexical items where motion of the argument (x) is expressed, but on does not express this meaning on its own. the lexical function d-cont expresses a dynamic aspect of continuity. the lexical function f-control1 expresses the idea that the trajector (x) exerts functional control of the situation. finally, the function f-instr2 expresses the fact that the landmark is instrumentalized. the three functions together constitute the meaning of support, which implies that the trajector uses the landmark to maintain its position, contrarily to previous accounts of the concept “support” that confer a controlling character upon the trajector (vandeloise 2003). (8) the cat is on the mat http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� ignasi navarro language value 3 (1), 114–137 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 126 in (8) there is contact between the cat (x) and the mat (y). the cat is in a controlled (f-control1), continuative (d-cont) position, where it uses the mat (f-instr2). the context allows for verbs of motion such as land, fall, etc. the lt of the preposition in differs from the previous ones in several respects. in the meaning of this preposition the central role of a control parameter has been pointed out in previous research (navarro 2000, vandeloise 1994, 2005). in: [f-control2] [state <(*[become be-loc (x)]) inside> (x, y)] the semantic prime inside defines the lexical subdomain, expressing that the trajector (x) bears a spatial relationship with the inner side of the landmark. motion is not expressed by the predicate itself, though it is compatible with dynamic contexts, as indicated by the asterisk. the situation type is a state where the trajector has no control, or position, but suffers instead, as an experiencer, the consequences of its location. the lexical function fcontrol2 expresses the idea that the second argument is viewed as a control factor over the trajector. semantic shifts could result in pragmatically inferred senses such as protection, seclusion or others, which define the extensions of the semantic category. (9) the present is in the box in (9) the conceived construal establishes a relationship between the trajector (present) and the inner side of the landmark (box). the relationship implies the limited or controlled mobility of the affected trajector (state), as effected by the landmark (f-control2). the particle under presents a compound element in the slot for the nuclear term or primitive: near + below. under: [f-constraint2] [state <(*[become be-loc (x)]) near below> (x, y) ] the lt of the particle “under” incorporates two primitive concepts. on the one hand, near implies a proximity relationship whereas, on the other hand, below indicates that the trajector is located at a lower level than the landmark. the asterisk preceding the expression [become be-loc (x)] expresses the compatibility of the particle with motion predicates. the situation type “state” signals the trajector’s role as the experiencer. the http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� lexical decomposition of english spatial particles and their subsumption in motion constructions language value 3 (1), 114-137 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 127 lexical function [f-constraint2] shows that the relationship is functionally construed in such a way that the trajector is constrained by the landmark, either physically or otherwise. (10) the man was caught under the log in (10) the entity “man” bears a relationship with the entity “log” so that the former is topologically near and below the latter. functionally, “man” is seen as being in a state of constraint or restricted motion. it could be argued that the primitive “contact” is also an attribute of the concept. however, not all contexts where this particle is used show contact between the participants. the lexical function of constraint accounts for a wider range of uses, including all those where contact is also part of the conceptualization. next, we briefly discuss the contrast between onto and into versus on and in, respectively. onto: [f-control1, f-instr2] [position <[become be-loc (x)] contact> (x, y) into: [fcontrol2] [state <[become be-loc (x)] inside> (x, y)] as we can observe, the lt for these two particles have no asterisk accompanying the expression “[become be-loc (x)]”. therefore, the motion meaning is intrinsic to these particles, which must lead to the conclusion that no other motion predicates in the same construction are needed in order to express motion. in most other respects, the lts coincide with on and in, respectively. the only difference between onto and on resides in a lexical function d-cont that indicates the continuity of contact. (11a) the dogs ran onto the street (11b) let the dogs onto the street (12a) the dogs ran into the house (12b) let the dogs into the house as we see in (11b) and (12b), the sense of motion is contributed by the particle, and the role of the verb in (11a) and (12a) is reduced to express the manner of motion. following cg postulates, semantic properties specified for each parameter in these lts are prototypical rather than requirements for each lexical unit or predicate. this fact implies that once we have determined the information in each of the components of the lt for a particular lexical unit or predicate, the result would represent the prototypical http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� ignasi navarro language value 3 (1), 114–137 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 128 semantics of that predicate, without taking into consideration partial sanction, semantic elaborations, shifts, or metaphorical extensions of that predicate category. v. lexical subsumption the lts described above show the compatibility of particles with motion constructions. in some cases, the motion meaning is required from other linguistic units (either lexical units or constructions), and in some other cases it is contributed by the particle itself (into, onto). according to the principle of semantic coherence (goldberg 2006: 40), verb and argument must be semantically compatible. furthermore, profiled participant roles of the relational lexical items (verbs and particles) must be encoded by profiled argument roles of the construction, with the exception that, if a verb has three profiled roles, one can be represented by an unprofiled argument role, according to the principle of correspondence (goldberg 2006: 40). the participants that are highly relevant to a verb meaning are likely to be the ones that are relevant or important to a particular linguistic use, since this particular verb was chosen among other alternatives. in view of these remarks, we expect constructions to match the lexical specifications expressed by the lts, either of verbs or particles, or both; otherwise the construction must override some of the predicate semantic specifications (override principle). in addition to the general principles stated above, some cases of subsumption may require further constraint principles, as described by mairal and ruiz de mendoza (2009: 188-192) and peña (2009: 746): full matching: there must be full identification of variables, subevents, and operators between lts and cts. event identification condition: correspondence is required between the various subevents (i.e., bundles of operators and variables) into which a lexical and constructional configuration can be segmented. lexical class constraint, i.e., restrictions due to class ascription (e.g. change of state – break – versus existence – destroy – in the inchoative construction). lexical blocking: one of the components of the lt can block the fusion with a certain construction given that this component is a suppletive form (e.g. kill, die). http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� lexical decomposition of english spatial particles and their subsumption in motion constructions language value 3 (1), 114-137 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 129 predicate-argument conditioning: co-instantiation of a verbal predicate with one argument places restrictions on the kind of instantiating element that we can have for other constructional arguments. internal variable conditioning: the internal predicate variables place constraints on the nature of both the predicate and constructional arguments. apart from these constraints, a process of accommodation or coercion may take place. coercion is only possible when a construction requires a particular interpretation that is not independently coded by particular lts. the entire expression is judged grammatical to the extent that the occurring lexical items can be coerced by the construction into having a different but related interpretation to the one specified in their lts. therefore, the construction is able to coerce the locative term into a directional reading. in this line, according to goldberg, locative terms are coerced by the intransitive and the caused motion constructions into having a directional meaning related to their meaning, and “the location encoded by the locative phrase is interpreted to be the endpoint of a path to that location” (goldberg 1995: 159). conversely, our data show that it is not always the construction that coerces the spatial particle into having a directional meaning, but some particles contribute that meaning themselves. interestingly enough, directional particles occur with much more frequency in motion constructions than nondirectional particles. in the following section, we show patterns of occurrence of directional and non-directional particles in the constructions under scrutiny, i.e., intransitive motion and caused motion, as depicted above (see section 2). vi. spatial particles in the intransitive motion and the caused motion construction with the purpose of testing the degree of semantic relevance of the spatial particle in the subsumption process, we researched the co-occurrence of eight english prepositions – at, in, on, under, behind, over, onto, into – in the intransitive motion construction [do’ (x) [become not be-loc’ (x, z)] and in the caused motion construction [do’ (x, y)] cause [become not be-loc’ (y, z)]. in order to guarantee a fair representation of http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� ignasi navarro language value 3 (1), 114–137 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 130 different types of verbs, a prototypical verb was chosen from each one of the aktionsart types, as distinguished in lcm. the data source used was the corpus of contemporary american english (coca© mark davies). for each verb-preposition pair, 200 instances of intransitive motion or caused motion expressions were analysed in context. the data obtained show evidence in the following directions, as summarized in tables i and ii: 1. stative verbs do not occur in motion constructions. however, certain spatial particles, like onto and into license causative stative verbs (e.g. scare) into the caused motion construction. (13) …, to scare the kid onto the sidewalk. (14) i think someone scared him into hiding. 2. all particles co-occur with active accomplishment verbs (e.g. come, get, put) in both constructions. 3. only over and into co-occur with achievement verbs (e.g. shatter), in motion constructions in our sample. (15) glass shatters loudly all over the sink (16) … it isn't the candy that has shattered into rocky rubble, but my back molar (17) crane shatters the glass bottle over the table (18) … rocket-propelled grenades shattered the column into a hysterical mob 4. semelfactives (e.g. sneeze, glimpse) do not occur in motion constructions. though into does occur in some intransitive expressions, the construction does not imply change of location of argument (x). (19) teach your child to cough or sneeze into his elbow 5. all particles except on co-occur with activity verbs in both constructions. though on co-occurs with activity verbs (e.g. run), it does not, however, express the end of a path, but a location where the activity takes place. (20) … a set of vines had started to run on the wall (21) the woman ran her hand on the sill 6. onto, into and over co-occur with accomplishments (e.g. melt) in intransitive motion constructions. in the caused motion construction, in is also used. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� lexical decomposition of english spatial particles and their subsumption in motion constructions language value 3 (1), 114-137 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 131 table 1. spatial particles and aktionsart classes in the intransitive motion construction.3 verb aktionsart state know activity run achievement shatter semelfactive sneeze /glimpse accomplishment melt active accomplishment come / get particle at no yes no no/ no no yes / yes under no yes no no / no no yes / yes on no ? no no / no ? yes / yes behind no yes no no /? no yes / yes in no yes ? no / no no yes / yes onto no yes no no / no yes yes / yes over no yes yes no / no yes yes / yes into no yes yes ? / ? yes yes / yes table 2. spatial particles and aktionsart classes in the caused motion construction. verb aktionsart class causative stative scare causative activity run causative achievement shatter causative semelfactive sneeze / glimpse causative accomplishment melt causative active acc. put particle at no yes? no no / no no yes under ? yes no no / no no yes on no ? no no / no ? yes behind no yes no no / no no yes in ? yes? no no / no yes? yes onto yes? yes no no /no yes yes over no yes yes no / no yes yes into yes yes yes ? / ? yes yes vii. discussion in light of the results shown above, we may suggest some hypotheses about the semantic contribution of some particles in motion constructions. the spatial particles into, over and onto contribute the semantic prime move or [become be-loc (x)], that is, they express a trajector’s change of location. this fact is reflected in the lts of these particles and has also been proven by the examples in our http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� ignasi navarro language value 3 (1), 114–137 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 132 sample. as a consequence, these particles make it possible for the intransitive motion construction to license non-dynamic verbs (achievements and accomplishments), because these are telic. on the other hand, into, over and onto make it possible for the caused motion construction to license causative verbs, even if these do not contribute the semantics of motion, or ‘change of location’ (causative stative, causative achievement, causative accomplishment). on the other hand, achievements (shatter) and accomplishments (melt), or their causative uses, do not occur in motion constructions with other particles that do not contribute the motion sense. in these cases, no lexical item contributes the ‘change of location’ sense, and neither does the construction. the construction alone cannot coerce a lexical item into subsumption. conversely, it is the spatial particle (into, onto, over) or the lexical verb (put, come, get) that contributes the ‘change of location’ sense. thus, if we find a spatial particle like at, on or under following a non-telic verb like shatter or melt, the intransitive motion construction, or the caused motion construction, cannot occur, as can be seen in examples (22) and (23): (22) in the oven, melt cheese on the croutes (23) the ice melted under the lamp nor can causative stative verbs occur in caused motion constructions if no ‘change of location’ sense is brought in by the spatial particle, as we see in the contrast between (24) and (13), reproduced here as (25): (24) don't scare people at the mall (25) …, to scare the kid onto the sidewalk activity verbs (run), active accomplishment verbs (come, get), and their causative correspondents (run, put) license most of the spatial particles into both the intransitive motion construction and the caused motion construction. these verb types are those that express durative dynamic events. in these cases, verb semantics contributes the agentive character of the mover or causer. thus, activity verbs can usually occur in motion constructions with most particles. however, the pairs in vs. into and on vs. onto do not behave likewise in co-occurrence with activity verbs. whereas into and onto occur normally in motion constructions with activity verbs, as it is to be expected from their own semantics, in and on only occur with activity verbs in motion constructions where http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� lexical decomposition of english spatial particles and their subsumption in motion constructions language value 3 (1), 114-137 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 133 ‘change of location’ is ambiguous, or ambiguity results between motion and locative constructions, as illustrated in the following examples ‒ (20) and (21) as (26a) and (27a): (26a) … a set of vines had started to run on the wall (26b) … a set of vines had started to run onto the wall (27a) the woman ran her hand on the sill (27b) the woman ran her hand onto the sill (28a) we saw people run in (and out of) the house (28b) we saw people run into (and out of) the house (29a) photographs of them were run in all the newspapers (29b) photographs of them were run into all the newspapers in view of these facts, we may suggest that spatial particles might be considered lexical entries that contribute some semantic content to the constructions they occur in, rather than just mere formal devices marking a locative argument. viii. final remarks the proposal presented here for a formalization of spatial particle lts is rather tentative, given that no universal semantic meta-language has yet been established for topological, dynamic and functional spatial configurations. further research points at the consolidation of a meta-language that expresses lexical functions of spatial particles in diverse languages. the relevance of semantic descriptions of spatial particles may turn out to be more important than has been considered to date in cognitive functional models. a further step is the investigation of subsumption constraints of spatial particle predicates in different constructions, since constructions like the caused motion construction do not license all verbs. we could start by checking which spatial particles occur and which ones do not occur in the caused motion construction, for instance, and then see whether a particular preposition licenses the use of certain verbs in the construction. for example, preliminary observations through corpus analyses suggest http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� ignasi navarro language value 3 (1), 114–137 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 134 that into and onto license some stative verbs in the caused motion construction (e.g. she scared him into a depression). since spatial particles contribute meaning and are relational predicates (like verbs), we could account for some constructions as encompassing two predications, one as the main predication and the other as a secondary one. each predication can be described in terms of argument structure. according to our view, spatial particles are predicates that relate two arguments, trajector and landmark, which may be shared by other relational predicates occurring in the same construction. finally, the metaphorical and figurative uses of spatial particles could also be studied as instantiations of external constraints in lcm. notes 1 financial support for this research has been provided by the fundació bancaixa castelló – universitat jaume i, grant p1 1a2010-14 and the spanish ministerio de ciencia e innovación, grant ffi2010-17610. 2 this is a terminological issue that we do not tackle here due to lack of space. 3 for a proper understanding of table 1 and table 2, the reader should take into account the following specifications: no = no instances have been found; ? = only one (or a few) dubious instances have been found; yes? = only one instance has been found; yes = some instances have been found; yes = the co-occurrence of the pair in the construction is very frequent. references butler, ch.s. 2009. “the lexical constructional model. genesis, strengths and challenges”. in butler ch.s. and j. martín arista, (eds.) deconstructing constructions. amsterdam: john benjamins, 117-151. clark, h.h. 1973. “space, time, semantics and the child”. in moore, t.e. (ed.) cognitive development and the acquisition of language. london: academic press, 27-64. davies, m. © coca. corpus of contemporary american english. <http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/> http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/� lexical decomposition of english spatial particles and their subsumption in motion constructions language value 3 (1), 114-137 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 135 deane, p.d. 1993. “at, by, to, and past: an essay in multimodal image theory”. bls, 19, 112-124. deane, p.d. 2005. “multimodal spatial representation: on the semantic unity of over”. in hampe, b. (ed.) from perception to meaning. image schemas in cognitive linguistics. berlin: mouton de gruyter, 235-284. dik, s.c. 1997. the theory of functional grammar: the structure of the clause. berlin: mouton de gruyter. faber, p. and mairal, r. 1999. constructing a lexicon of english verbs. berlin: mouton de gruyter. goldberg, a.e. 1995. constructions. a construction grammar approach to argument structure. chicago: the university of chicago press. goldberg, a.e. 2006. constructions at work. the nature of generalizations in language. oxford, uk: oxford university press. langacker, r.w. 1987. foundations of cognitive grammar. volume i, theoretical prerequisites. stanford ca: stanford university press. langacker, r.w. 2008. cognitive grammar. an introduction. oxford, uk: oxford university press. mairal, r. 2004. “reconsidering lexical representations in role and reference grammar”. proceedings of xxvii international aedean conference. universidad de salamanca. mairal, r. and faber, p. 2005. “decomposing semantic decomposition”. proceedings of the 2005 international conference on role and reference grammar, taiwan: academia sinica, 279-308. mairal, r. and faber, p. 2007. “lexical templates within a functional cognitive theory of meaning”. annual review of cognitive linguistics, 5, 137-172. mairal, r. and ruiz de mendoza, f.j. 2008. “new challenges for lexical representation within the lexical-constructional model”. revista canaria de estudios ingleses, 57, 137-158. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� ignasi navarro language value 3 (1), 114–137 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 136 mairal, r. and ruiz de mendoza, f. j. 2009. “levels of description and explanation in meaning construction”. in butler, ch.s. and j. martín arista (eds.) deconstructing constructions. amsterdam/philadelphia: john benjamins, 153 – 198. mel’čuk, i., clas, a. and polguère, a. 1995. introduction à la lexicologie explicative et combinatoire. louvain-la-neuve (be) and aupelf: duculot–uref. merleau-ponty, m. 1945. phénoménologie de la perception. paris: gallimard. navarro, i. 2000. “a cognitive–semantic analysis of the english lexical unit in”. cuadernos de investigación filológica, 26, 189-220. navarro, i. 2002. “towards a description of the semantics of at”. in cuyckens, h. and g. radden (eds.) perspectives on prepositions. tübingen: niemeyer, 210–230. navarro, i. 2003. a cognitive semantics analysis of the english lexical units at, on, and in in english. cesca. < http://www.tdx.cesca.es/tdx-0804103-133233/> navarro, i. 2006. “functional contrasts in spatial meaning”. studia universitatis petru maior. series philologia, 5, 133–144. peña, s. 2009. “constraints on subsumption in the caused-motion construction”. language sciences, 31, 740-765. pérez-hernández, l. and peña-cervel, s. 2009. “pragmatic and cognitive constraints on lexical-constructional subsumption”. atlantis, 31 (2), 57-73. piaget, j. and inhelder, b. 1956. the child’s conception of space. london: routledge and kegan paul. ruiz de mendoza, f.j. and mairal, r. 2007a. “challenging systems of lexical representation”. journal of english studies, 6, 325-356. ruiz de mendoza, f.j. and mairal, r. 2007b. “levels of semantic representation: where lexicon and grammar meet”. interlingüística, 17, 26-47. ruiz de mendoza, f.j. and mairal, r. 2008. “levels of description and constraining factors in meaning construction: an introduction to the lexical constructional model”. folia linguistica, 42 (2), 355-400. silvestre, a.j. 2009. “topology, force-dynamics, and function in the semantics of in and on as the prepositional component of english prepositional verbs”. in http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.tdx.cesca.es/tdx-0804103-133233/� lexical decomposition of english spatial particles and their subsumption in motion constructions language value 3 (1), 114-137 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 137 valenzuela, j., a. rojo and c. soriano (eds.) trends in cognitive linguistics: theoretical and applied models. frankfurt am main: peter lang, 51-64. talmy, l. 2000. “how language structures space”. in talmy, l. toward a cognitive semantics. cambridge, ma: mit press, 177-254. vandeloise, c. 1994. “methodology and analyses of the preposition in”. cognitive linguistics, 5 (2), 157–184. vandeloise, c. 2003. “containment, support, and linguistic relativity”. in cuyckens, h., r. dirven and j.r. taylor (eds.) cognitive approaches to lexical semantics. berlin: mouton de gruyter, 393-426. vandeloise, c. 2005. “force and function in the acquisition of the preposition in”. in carson, l. and e. van der zee (eds.) functional features in language and space. oxford: oxford university press, 219–231. van valin, r.d. jr. 2005. the syntax-semantics-pragmatics interface: an introduction to role and reference grammar. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. vendler, z. 1967. linguistics in philosophy. ithaca and london: cornell university press. vygotsky, l.s. 1986. (1st ed. 1934). thought and language. cambridge, ma: mit press. wierzbička, a. 1996. semantics: primes and universals. oxford, uk: oxford university press. received october 2011 cite this article as: navarro, i. 2011. “lexical decomposition of english spatial particles and their subsumption in motion constructions”. language value, 3 (1), 114-137. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue. issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� (7) laura (sat down) at the piano stretching her hands. (8) the cat is on the mat in (8) there is contact between the cat (x) and the mat (y). the cat is in a controlled (f-control1), continuative (d-cont) position, where it uses the mat (f-instr2). the context allows for verbs of motion such as land, fall, etc. references cite this article as: navarro, i. 2011. “lexical decomposition of english spatial particles and their subsumption in motion constructions”. language value, 3 (1), 114-137. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue. issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors going beyond metaphtonymy: metaphoric and metonymic complexes in phrasal verb interpretation language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2011, volume 3, number 1 pp. 1-29 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors 1 going beyond metaphtonymy: metaphoric and metonymic complexes in phrasal verb interpretation1 francisco josé ruiz de mendoza ibáñez and alicia galera-masegosa francisco.ruizdemendoza@unirioja.es / alicia.galera@unirioja.es university of la rioja, spain abstract a metaphor can combine with another metaphor, or a metonymy with another metonymy, into a single meaning unit, thus giving rise to either a metaphorical or a metonymic amalgam. the combination of a metaphor and a metonymy, as discussed in goossens (1990) and ruiz de mendoza and díez (2002), gives rise to so-called “metaphtonymy”. amalgams and metaphtonymy are cases of conceptual complexes. several such complexes have been identified in previous studies (e.g. ruiz de mendoza and díez 2002, ruiz de mendoza and mairal 2011). here we revisit such studies and postulate the existence of metaphoric chains as an additional case of metaphoric complex in connection to the semantic analysis of phrasal verbs. metaphoric chains, unlike amalgams (ruiz de mendoza and mairal 2011), do not involve integrating the conceptual structure of the combined metaphors. instead, metaphoric chains involve a mapping sequence in which the target domain of a first metaphoric mapping constitutes the source domain of a subsequent metaphor. keywords: metaphor, metonymy, metonymic chains, phrasal verb, metaphoric amalgams, metaphoric chains i. introduction phrasal verbs can be studied from a constructional perspective as form-meaning pairings where form cues for meaning activation and meaning is non-compositional (dirven 2001). because of their formally fixed and (at least partially) non-compositional semantic nature, phrasal verbs can be considered a special category of idiomatic expression, and their analysis has consequently been regarded as subsidiary to that of idiomatic expressions (cf. kuiper and everaert 2004, makkai 1972). the cognitive linguistics approach to metaphor and metonymy provides an explanatorily elegant framework to account for much of the meaning underlying idiomatic interpretation (cf. hampe 2000). in this framework, the point of departure is the assumption that the meaning of phrasal verbs is mostly non-arbitrary but largely predictable and therefore sensitive to the use of cognitive operations in their interpretation (cf. galera-masegosa 2010, langlotz 2006). kövecses and szabó (1996) http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� mailto:francisco.ruizdemendoza@unirioja.es� mailto:alicia.galera@unirioja.es� francisco josé ruiz de mendoza and alicia galera-masegosa language value 3 (1), 1–29 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 2 offer an insightful contribution to the analysis of idiomatic expressions through metaphor. however, there are many cases in which idiomatic interpretation –including phrasal verb interpretation– often requires more complex analytical machinery than simply postulating single metaphors. for much idiomatic use, it may prove fruitful to study patterns of interaction involving metaphor and metonymy. these interactions were firstly addressed in goossens’ (1990) pioneering work. more recent studies have provided more refined and systematic patterns of interaction between metaphor and metonymy (cf. ruiz de mendoza and díez 2002). however, our corpus of analysis suggests that further developments are needed in order to fully account for the complexities of phrasal verb interpretation. we thus incorporate into our set of explanatory tools the following conceptual interaction phenomena involving metaphor and metonymy: a. metaphor-metonymy interaction patterns b. metonymic complexes c. metaphoric complexes: amalgams and chains we argue that the phenomena in (b) are essentially lexical although they may also motivate some grammatical phenomena (e.g. categorial conversion of a noun into a verb). only the phenomena in (a) and (c) can underlie idiomatic expressions: while those in (a) account for situational idiomatic expressions, the ones in (c) seem to be specific to the meaning make-up of phrasal verb constructions. within this framework, we aim to provide a detailed picture of the various conceptual interaction phenomena identified above. section ii revisits the most relevant approaches that regard metaphor and metonymy as conceptualizing mechanisms. in section iii we account for the different ways in which metaphor and metonymy may interact with each other. we also identify several metonymy-metonymy and metaphor-metaphor combination patterns. we critically review existing accounts and make new proposals on the topic. in addition, we present metaphoric chains as a new way in which two metaphors may combine, which has proved to be essential in phrasal verb interpretation. in this pattern of interaction the target of a first metaphor constitutes the source of a new metaphoric mapping whose target domain reveals the overall meaning of the expression. section iv summarizes the main findings of our study. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� going beyond metaphtonymy: metaphoric and metonymic complexes in phrasal verb interpretation language value 3 (1), 1–29 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 3 ii. metaphor and metonymy revisited ii.1. conceptual metaphor theory (cmt) ii.1.1. earlier version conceptual metaphor theory (cmt) was first proposed by lakoff and johnson (1980) and developed by lakoff and a number of associates (e.g. gibbs 1994, gibbs et al. 1997, kövecses 1990, 2000, 2002, 2005, lakoff 1987, lakoff and johnson 1999, lakoff and turner 1989). challenging traditional views of metaphor as an embellishing device mainly used within the realms of literature, cmt claims that metaphor is not primarily a matter of language but of cognition: people make use of some concepts to understand, talk and reason about others. in this context, metaphor is described as a “conceptual mapping” (a set of correspondences) from a source domain (traditional vehicle) to a target domain (traditional tenor). the source is usually less abstract (i.e. more accessible to sense perception) than the target. at the first stages of development of cmt, some preliminary efforts were made to classify metaphors. lakoff and johnson (1980) put forward a division between ontological, structural, and orientational metaphor. a few years later, lakoff and turner (1989) added image metaphors and redefined ontological in terms of a folk model about nature called the great chain of being, which specifies physical and behavioral attributes of human beings, animals, plants, natural objects, and artifacts. here are some examples of well-known conceptual metaphors together with a specification of their main correspondences, as discussed in the cognitive linguistics literature: love is a journey: lovers are travelers; the love relationship is a vehicle; lovers’ common goals are the destination; difficulties in the relationship are impediments to motion; etc. (e.g. but even without such problems, we often find ourselves spinning our wheels in dead-end relationships2). anger is heat: an angry person is a (generally pressurized) container that holds a hot substance (the anger) in its interior; the pressure of the substance on the container is the force of the emotion on the angry person; keeping the substance inside the container is controlling the anger; releasing the substance is the expression of anger; external signs of heat are external signs of anger (e.g. i find http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� francisco josé ruiz de mendoza and alicia galera-masegosa language value 3 (1), 1–29 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 4 that my blood starts to boil when a person complains about the state of the local economy and has two foreign cars in their driveway?3). theories are buildings: theories can be built, pulled down, demolished, buttressed, etc.; building tools are instruments to formulate a theory; building materials are elements in the theory (e.g. yet his longer addresses depended upon powerfully built paragraphs to construct rock-solid arguments4). argument is war: we see arguing as engaging in battle, people arguing as enemies, arguments as weapons, and winning or losing as military victory or defeat respectively (e.g. you're going to have to defend your theory rather than getting on the offensive5). ii.1.2. later version in recent years, lakoff and johnson (1999) have argued for the integration of christopher johnson’s (1999) theory of conflation, grady’s (1997) theory of primary metaphor, narayanan’s (1997) neural theory of metaphor, and fauconnier and turner’s (1996, 2002) theory of conceptual blending. in grady’s theory, complex metaphors (e.g. love is a journey, theories are buildings) are made up of primary metaphors that develop through conflation (the experiential association of discrete conceptual domains). in this theory, journey metaphors are complex forms of the primary metaphor purposes are destinations, and theories are buildings is the complex form of the more basic metaphors organization is physical structure and persisting is remaining erect. ruiz de mendoza and pérez (2011) suggest that an account based on primary metaphors presents two main advantages. first, it has a stronger generalizing power. thus, the multiplicity of “journey” metaphors (e.g. love/a business/a career/a task, etc., is a journey) is better explained in terms of purposes are destinations. consider, in this respect, the expression this is getting nowhere, in different contexts of use, such as a problematic business, excessively difficult schoolwork, a failing lab experiment, a couple in crisis, or a debate on a controversial topic, among many other possibilities. what these contexts have in common is the existence of goal-oriented activities, which are seen as steps taken to reach a destination. by accounting for this is getting nowhere http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� going beyond metaphtonymy: metaphoric and metonymic complexes in phrasal verb interpretation language value 3 (1), 1–29 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 5 on the basis of the primary metaphor purposes are destinations we avoid postulating specific metaphors for every possible target. second, this more general account traces the source of metaphorical thinking back to the conflation of concepts arising from cooccurring events in experience. this gives metaphor theory pride of place within psychology and the brain sciences (cf. grady and johnson 2002). thus, purposes are destinations is a primary metaphor that arises from our experience of going to places that we plan to reach. other examples of primary metaphors (lakoff and johnson 1999) are affection is warmth (based on feeling warm while being held affectionately; e.g. i accepted the warmth of her kiss letting it carry me away6), understanding is grasping (holding and touching an object allows us to get information about it; e.g. he was very good at catching concepts7), and change is motion (based on our correlation of certain locations with certain states, such as being cool in the shade, hot under the sun, and safe at home; e.g. she went from sadness to joy as people shared her pain8). ii.2. conceptual metonymy metonymy is a cognitive process in which one conceptual entity, the vehicle, provides mental access to another conceptual entity, the target, within the same conceptual domain (kövecses and radden 1998: 39). ruiz de mendoza (2000) distinguishes two basic types of metonymy: (a) target-in-source (based on target-source inclusion): a whole domain, the matrix domain, stands for one of its subdomains (e.g. she’s taking the pill, where ‘pill’ stands for ‘contraceptive pill’); (b) source-in-target (based on source-target inclusion): a subdomain stands for its corresponding matrix domain. for example, the expression all hands on deck is a call for all sailors aboard a ship to take up their duties. in this context, “hands” stands for the sailors who do hard physical work on the ship in virtue of the hands playing an experientially prominent role in the domain of labor. traditionally accounts of metonymy have taken for granted that there is additional partfor-part relationship, according to which one subdomain within a domain can stand for another subdomain within the same domain. one purported example of this metonymy is ruler for army (e.g. nixon bombed hanoi; napoleon lost at waterloo; hitler http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� francisco josé ruiz de mendoza and alicia galera-masegosa language value 3 (1), 1–29 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 6 invaded poland). in this metonymy, the ruler and the army are subdomains of the domain of war. however, it may also be argued that the military forces under a ruler’s command are a subdomain of our knowledge about the ruler. another purported case of part-for-part metonymy is provided by the domain of production, in which we have workers and companies as subdomains. for example, in the sentence the company has decided to re-brand itself, it is not the company but some its workers (probably members of a directive board) that have made the decision to give a new name to the company itself. the problem here is that the workers (the metonymic target) are themselves part of the company (the metonymic source), so this metaphor actually qualifies as an example of a target-source inclusion. a well-known example of apparent “part-for-part” metonymy is customer for order. according to taylor (1995: 123), in the sentence the pork chop left without paying, the notions of ‘pork chop’ and ‘customer’ are related to each other as parts of the restaurant cognitive model; that is, the two notions are subdomains of the ‘restaurant’ domain. on the face of it, this explanation of the customer-order relation is convincing. however, setting up one kind of relationship within a broader frame does not mean that there cannot be others. note that, once placed, an order can be considered part (i.e. a subdomain) of what we know about a customer. for this reason, “the pork chop” in the example above does not stand for any customer but for ‘the customer that has ordered a pork chop’. a parallel example is supplied by the usual practice, in hospital contexts, of referring to patients by their medical conditions, the procedures performed on them or the bodily organ that is affected by disease (e.g. the broken arm in the waiting room, the hysterectomy in room 2, the gallbladder in room 241). there is no way in which we could argue that these are cases of “part-for-part” metonymies since a patient’s medical condition and his or her treatment are a subdomain of what we know about the patient. the validity of the source-in-target/target-in-source division has received support from the field of metonymic anaphora (ruiz de mendoza and díez 2004) and zone activation (geeraerts and peirsman 2011). ruiz de mendoza and díez (2004) have noticed the existence of a correlation between (i) target-in-source metonymies and cases of metonymic anaphora where there is gender and number (i.e. grammatical) agreement between the anaphoric pronoun and its antecedent, and (ii) source-in-target metonymies and conceptual anaphora (where there is no such gender and number agreement). for http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� going beyond metaphtonymy: metaphoric and metonymic complexes in phrasal verb interpretation language value 3 (1), 1–29 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 7 example, compare the broken arm in the waiting room says he (*it) needs another painkiller urgently (which instantiates the source-in-target metonymy medical condition for patient with medical condition) and hitler invaded poland and he (*it/they) paid for it (which instantiates the target-in-source metonymy ruler for army). in view of these examples, the source-in-target mapping calls for conceptual anaphora, while the target-in-source one requires grammatical anaphora. however, as amply shown in ruiz de mendoza (2000) and ruiz de mendoza and díez (2004), this correlation is merely epiphenomenal. research has shown that there are a number of principles that interact to account for all cases of metonymic anaphora, among which the most prominent is the domain availability principle (dap). this principle states that only the matrix (i.e. most encompassing) domain of a metonymic mapping is available for anaphoric reference. in the patient example, the patient, which is the metonymic target, is the matrix domain, whereas in the ruler example, the matrix domain is the metonymic source. both matrix domains, the patient and the ruler, are the antecedents for the anaphoric operation. stated in more simple terms, this simply means that metonymic anaphora is always conceptual. interestingly enough, geeraerts and peirsman (2011) have found that source-in-target metonymies do not allow for zeugma, while target-in-source metonymies do. zeugma is the possibility to assign to the same lexical expression two or more predications that carry different senses. for example, as geeraerts and peirsman (2011) observe, “red shirts” in *the red shirts won the match stands for the football players wearing such an outfit as a salient part of their uniform. this is a source-in-target metonymy that cannot be used zeugmatically: *the red shirts won the match and had to be cleaned thoroughly. by contrast, the sentence the book is thick as well as boring allows for zeugma based on two different senses of “book”: one, its central (non-metonymic) characterization as a physical object; the other, its noncentral metonymic sense referring to the ‘contents of the book’. to us, this analysis additionally suggests that metonymy-based zeugma is also a conceptual phenomenon that combines matrix domain availability and consistency with the metonymic target. in the “red shirts” example, only the “players” domain is available for predication since it is both the matrix domain and the metonymic target. but in the “book” example, where the matrix domain is not a metonymic target, it is possible to set up predications http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� francisco josé ruiz de mendoza and alicia galera-masegosa language value 3 (1), 1–29 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 8 involving not only the matrix domain (which supplies the central sense) but also any target subdomain. the solvency of the source-in-target/ target-in-source distinction, which involves disregarding the existence of “part-for-part” metonymies, is relevant for the ensuing analysis of interaction patterns, where only either of these two metonymic types plays a role. iii. metaphor and metonymy in interaction iii.1. metaphtonymy as we advanced in the introduction section, goossens (1990) was the first scholar to enquire into the interaction between metaphor and metonymy. note that fauconnier and turner’s (2002) blending theory, which is about conceptual integration, was originally postulated as a question of multiple mental space activation to account for metaphor, analogy and other cognitive phenomena. metonymy was not explored in its interaction with metaphor but simply postulated as an optimality constraint (because of its associative nature) on the blending of mental spaces termed the metonymy projection constraint: “when an element is projected from an input to the blend and a second element from that input is projected because of its metonymic link to the first, shorten the metonymic distance between them in the blend” (turner and fauconnier 2000: 139). for instance, it is generally accepted that the connection between death and a priest’s cowl is large. however, in the representation of death as a skeleton wearing a priestly cowl, the metonymic connection between the cowl and death is direct and the two spaces can be straightforwardly integrated. let us now discuss the different types of metaphor-metonymy interaction or “metaphtonymy” initially put forward by goossens (1990): (i) metaphor from metonymy, where an original metonymy develops into a metaphor (e.g. to beat one’s breast). (ii) metonymy within metaphor, as in to bite one’s tongue, where the tongue stands for a person’s ability to speak; http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� going beyond metaphtonymy: metaphoric and metonymic complexes in phrasal verb interpretation language value 3 (1), 1–29 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 9 (iii) demetonymization inside a metaphor, as in to pay lip service, where ‘lip service’, which stands for ‘speaking’, loses its metonymic import so that the expression makes sense; (iv) metaphor within metonymy, which occurs when a metaphor is used in order to add expressiveness to a metonymy, as in to be on one’s hind legs, where “hind” brings up the metaphor people are animals. even if we acknowledge the originality and elegance of goossens’ work, some remarks need to be made. in the first place, we argue that cases of metaphor from metonymy are in fact cases of metonymic development of a metaphoric source. for example, beating one’s breast is a way of making an open show of sorrow; this scenario maps onto other situations where people show sorrow without actually beating their breasts. in the same way, biting one’s tongue, rather than a metonymy within a metaphoric framework, is part of a scenario in which someone bites his or her tongue to refrain from revealing a secret or otherwise speaking his or her mind. the expression thus stands for the complete scenario that can then be used as a metaphoric source for other situations where people refrain from speaking without actually biting their tongues. the interaction pattern is the same as the one for beat one’s breast. evidently, both the breast and the tongue are chosen because of their saliency in the domains of emotions and speaking respectively. however, in the expressions under scrutiny neither of these body parts stands for such domains independently of the rest of the expression and their associated scenarios. we also contend that in pay lip service the metaphor has the idea of ‘giving money in return for service’ in the source and of ‘supporting someone’ in the target (cf. that old style bulb has paid service to me for 5 years). since “lip service” is ‘service with the lips’, where the lips stand for speaking through their salient instrumental role in such an action, “paying lip service” is resolved metaphorically as “supporting someone (just) by speaking” with the implication that service is not supported by facts. the metonymy is thus part of the metaphoric source (paying service with the lips maps onto promising support without the intention of actually giving it), so there is no loss of the metonymic quality of “lip”. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� francisco josé ruiz de mendoza and alicia galera-masegosa language value 3 (1), 1–29 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 10 finally, we claim that to be on one’s hind legs is not a metaphor within a metonymy, but again another case of metonymic development of a metaphoric source in preparation for it to be mapped onto its corresponding target. the source has a situation in which a horse rears up on its hind legs to attack another animal usually out of fear or in selfdefense. the target has a person that defends his or her views emphatically, usually by standing up while gesturing aggressively with his or her hands and fists. the difference with other cases of metonymic development of a metaphoric source is in the linguistic cueing of the metaphorical scenario, which is based on the non-situational metonymic link between “hind legs” and “horse”, which initially activates the ontological metaphor people are animals. the activation of this metaphor facilitates the metonymic creation of the situational metaphor described above. in sum, all examples of goossens’s metaphtonymy are essentially metonymic developments of a situational metaphoric source. however, there are other ways in which metaphor and metonymy interact. basically, metonymy is subsidiary to –and thus part of– metaphor. since there two basic metonymic schemas: part-for-whole (sourcein-target) and whole-for-part (target-in-source), this yields four basic interactional patterns: (i) metonymic expansion of a metaphoric source (ii) metonymic reduction of a metaphoric source (iii) metonymic expansion of a metaphoric target (iv) metonymic reduction of a metaphoric target these patterns, which were originally proposed and discussed in ruiz de mendoza (1997) and then in ruiz de mendoza and díez (2002), have been productively applied in several recent case studies in the context of multimodality (cf. hidalgo downing and kraljevic mujic 2011, urios-aparisi 2009). other conceptual interaction patterns involve combinations of metonymies (cf. ruiz de mendoza 2000, ruiz de mendoza and mairal 2007, ruiz de mendoza and pérez 2001) and of metaphors (ruiz de mendoza and galera-masegosa, 2012ruiz de mendoza and mairal 2011). in what follows, we address each of these interaction patterns in turn. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� going beyond metaphtonymy: metaphoric and metonymic complexes in phrasal verb interpretation language value 3 (1), 1–29 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 11 iii.2. metaphor-metonymy interaction patterns this section provides an overview of the patterns of conceptual interaction between metaphor and metonymy originally identified in ruiz de mendoza and díez (2002). (i) metonymic expansion of metaphoric source. the metonymy provides a cognitively economical point of access to a complex scenario. therefore, the metonymy has the function of developing the point-of-access subdomain to the extent required for the metaphor to be possible. consider the following sentence: he beat his breast and said, ‘god, have mercy on me, a sinner’9. here, the brestbeating action in the metaphoric source domain is metonymically expanded onto a situation in which a person beats his breast in order to show his regret about his actions. the target domain of this metonymy is metaphorically mapped onto a situation in which the speaker regretfully shows his sorrow in order to avoid punishment or any other undesired consequences of his behavior. source metaphor target scenario in which someone openly shows his/her guilt real situation in which and sorrow a person makes his/her sorrow metonymy apparent in an ostensive way someone beating his/her breast figure 1. to beat one’s breast. (ii) metonymic expansion of metaphoric target. the metaphoric source has the function of enhancing the meaning impact of a selected aspect of the target. the metonymy serves to obtain the full range of meaning implications to be derived from the metaphor. for example, the interpretation of the sentence this would already make one knit his eyebrows in suspicion10 requires setting up a metaphorical correspondence between a person that is knitting articles of clothing (for the source domain) and a person that puts his eyebrows tightly together (for the target domain). the result of this metaphoric mapping needs to be metonymically developed into a situation in which a person frowns as a sign of http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� francisco josé ruiz de mendoza and alicia galera-masegosa language value 3 (1), 1–29 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 12 anger. the metonymy that operates within the metaphoric target domain is sign for state. source metaphor target a person puts his a person eyes closely together knits articles of clothig metonymy situation in which a person frowns because he is angry figure 2. to knit one’s eyebrows. (iii) metonymic reduction of metaphoric source. the metonymic reduction is a consequence of highlighting the most relevant elements of the metaphoric source, which, in virtue of the mapping, bring our attention to the most relevant aspects of the target, which are seen from the perspective of their corresponding source elements. the sentence to be the life and soul of the party calls for the right attitude and the right actions11 calls for an analysis in which one of the aspects within the source domain (‘the person’) is straightforwardly mapped onto ‘the party’ in the target domain while ‘the life and soul’ needs to undergo two consecutive metonymic operations in ordered to be mapped onto ‘the most entertaining character of a party’ in the target domain. person party life and soul metonymy the most cheerful and consequently lively behavior entertaining character metonymy of the party entertainment figure 3. the life and soul of the party. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� going beyond metaphtonymy: metaphoric and metonymic complexes in phrasal verb interpretation language value 3 (1), 1–29 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 13 a special case of metonymic expansion of the metaphoric source is that of paragons. e.g. humboldt is the shakespeare of travelers –as much superior in genius to other travelers as shakespeare to other poets (cf. brdar 2007: 111). source metaphor target shakespeare as ideal humboldt as ideal poetry writer traveler metonymy superior skills superior skills in writing in travelling writing poetry travelling goals as a poet goals as a traveller figure 4. humboldt is the shakespeare of travelers. (iv) metonymic reduction of metaphoric target. the reduction process allows us to see a target element not only in terms of its corresponding source element but also in terms of the matrix domain against which it is put in perspective. consider the sentence over the years, this girl won my heart12. in this case, the ‘love’ scenario is conceptualized as the ‘winning’ scenario. two straight-forward correspondences are set between ‘winning’ and ‘the winner’ in the source domain and ‘obtaining’ and ‘the lover’ in the target. however, once we mapped ‘the prize’ in the source domain onto ‘someone’s heart’ in the target, a metonymic reduction makes ‘someone’s heart’ to stand for ‘someone’s love’. source metaphor target winner lover winning obtainer prize someone’s heart metonymy love figure 5. win someone’s heart. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� francisco josé ruiz de mendoza and alicia galera-masegosa language value 3 (1), 1–29 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 14 the sentence he gave me a kick is also interpreted in terms of a metonymic expansion of the metaphoric target. ruiz de mendoza (2007) provides an elegant account for the meaning of this expression by postulating that the metonymy cause for effect operates within the target domain of the metaphor actions are transfers of possession. in this metaphor, the receiver figuratively “possesses” (i.e. is affected by) the effects of being kicked. the effects are seen as if they were a possession (thus suggesting that the receiver’s experience of the effects is not momentaneous). this interpretation overrides lakoff’s (1993) assumption that, since the receiver of the kick is not the possessor of the ‘transferred’ object, the possession element in the source domain is cancelled out. source metaphor target giver kicker receiver kickee object kick giving kicking metonymy possession effects of kicking figure 6. to give a kick iii.3. metonymic complexes this section is devoted to the study of the different ways in which two or more metonymies may interact. following the analysis in ruiz de mendoza (2000, 2007), we distinguish four patterns of metonymic interaction: (i) double domain reduction: place for institution for people, as in wall street is in panic. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� going beyond metaphtonymy: metaphoric and metonymic complexes in phrasal verb interpretation language value 3 (1), 1–29 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 15 figure 7. place for institution for people. this metonymy, which is an extension of place for institution (e.g. wall street has always been part of our economy and always will be13), is used for economy purposes to identify the people that are associated with an institution that is in turn identified by the place in which it is known to be located. as a consequence of domain reduction both the institution and the people are given prominence (croft (1993) has referred to such a process by the term “highlighting”, which involves giving primary status to a noncentral subdomain of a cognitive model). (ii) double domain expansion: head for leader for action of leading, as in his sister heads the policy unit. figure 8. head for leader for action of leading. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� francisco josé ruiz de mendoza and alicia galera-masegosa language value 3 (1), 1–29 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 16 this metonymy underlies a category conversion process of the kind discussed in ruiz de mendoza and pérez (2001). note that “head” can ultimately stand for the action of leading because of its crucial instrumental role in such an action (the head is prominent in the domain of thinking, which is essential for leadership to be possible). (iii) domain reduction plus domain expansion: author for work for medium, as in shakespeare is on the top shelf. figure 9. author for work for medium. this metonymy is but an extension of author for work (e.g. i love reading shakespeare) where the focus of attention is the literary work, which is understood against the double background of its author and its medium of presentation (e.g. a book). (iv) domain expansion plus domain reduction: instrument for action for ability to perform the action, as in he has too much lip. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� going beyond metaphtonymy: metaphoric and metonymic complexes in phrasal verb interpretation language value 3 (1), 1–29 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 17 figure 10. instrument for action for ability to perform the action. a person’s lips are prominently instrumental in quickly (and thus deftly) speaking. this instrumental role is the starting point for the first metonymy in the complex. the second metonymy highlights the ‘ability’ element that is essential to understand the full meaning impact of the expression. iii.3. metaphoric complexes: amalgams and chains metaphoric complexes may or may not involve the integration of conceptual structure: metaphoric amalgams require the integration of selected aspects from the metaphors that play a role in the process, while in metaphoric chains there are two subsequent metaphoric mappings such that the target of the first mapping becomes the source of the second (cf. ruiz de mendoza and galera-masegosa 2012, ruiz de mendoza and pérez 2011). let us see each of them in turn. iii.3.1. metaphoric amalgams the notion of metaphoric amalgam was initially discussed in ruiz de mendoza (2008) – who simply referred to them as metaphoric complexes – but it has been subsequently developed in ruiz de mendoza and mairal (2011). this kind of metaphoric complex, unlike metaphoric chains, involves the integration of the conceptual material of the http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� francisco josé ruiz de mendoza and alicia galera-masegosa language value 3 (1), 1–29 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 18 metaphors that participate in the interaction process. two types of metaphoric amalgam have been identified so far: single-source metaphoric amalgams and double-source metaphoric amalgams (cf. ruiz de mendoza 2007, ruiz de mendoza and mairal 2011). let us see each of them in turn: (i) single-source metaphoric amalgams. these are metaphoric complexes in which the internal structure of one of the metaphors involved merges into the structure of the other. as a result, one of the metaphors becomes part of the source-target structure of another metaphor. an instance of single-source metaphoric amalgam can be found in the sentence she got the idea across to me, which involves two metaphors, ideas are (moving) objects and understanding an idea is perceptually exploring an object, where the latter is used to enrich the former. this is necessary in order to account for all the meaning implications of the expression since on the basis of ideas are (moving) objects alone we can only derive the implication that there has been an act of communication whereby the addressee has had access to an idea, but not that he has understood idea. this additional implication is provided by the second metaphor, as captured in figure 11 below. source  target causer of motion communicator causing motion communicating object of caused-motion (moving object) idea destination of motion (receiver of the moving object) addressee receiving the moving object having access to the idea perceptually exploring the object understanding the idea figure 11. she got the idea across to me. consider another example of single-source metaphoric amalgam. in the sentence he traced my symptoms back to the cause of my disease, there are two metaphors that interact: a disease is a moving object and retracing a moving object is explaining the cause of a disease. the metaphor a disease is a moving object allows the conceptualization of an illness as an object traveling along a path. the structure of this metaphor is developed through the integration of the second, which http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� going beyond metaphtonymy: metaphoric and metonymic complexes in phrasal verb interpretation language value 3 (1), 1–29 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 19 specifies the conditions of motion, i.e. the moving object leaves a track that an external observer can retrace in order to identify the origin of motion. source  target moving object disease motion of object progress of disease source of motion cause of disease destination of motion outcome of disease observer of motion of object (tracer) monitor of progress of disease (e.g. physician) traces left by moving object symptoms of disease retracing a moving object explaining the cause of disease figure 12. he traced my symptoms back to the cause of my disease. the same metaphoric interaction operates in the interpretation of he beat me into silence. the metaphor a change of state is a change of location is made part of the architecture of the main metaphor, an effectual action is caused motion. the subsidiary metaphor is activated as a requirement of the target domain, which contains a change of state specification (being silent). source (caused motion)  target (effectual action) causer of motion effector object of motion effectee source (change of location) target (change of state) source of motion initial state destination of motion resultant state figure 13. he beat me into silence. (ii) double source metaphoric amalgams. in this case the participating metaphors are at the same level, that is, there is no main-subsidiary relation. the two metaphoric sources are mapped simultaneously onto the same target domain, as in the sentence he beat silence into me. the interpretation of this sentence calls for the interaction of the metaphors acquiring a property is caused-motion and acquiring a property is possessing an object. these two metaphors intertwine in such a way that the effectee (‘me’) is conceptualized both as the destination of motion and the new possessor of a transferred object. in turn, the new property (‘silence’) is seen as a moving object that initially belonged to the causer of motion (the effector) and whose final destination is the effectee. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� francisco josé ruiz de mendoza and alicia galera-masegosa language value 3 (1), 1–29 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 20 source  (caused motion) target  source (possession) causer of motion effector (‘he’) causing motion effecting (‘caused to acquire’) destination of motion effectee (‘me’) new possessor of an object object of causedmotion (moving object) new property (‘silence’) resultant state (‘acquiring the new property of silence’) gaining possession of an object manner of causing motion manner of effecting (‘beating’) figure 14. he beat silence into me. there are certain cases in which a metonymy is built into the target domain of a doublesource metaphoric amalgam, as in he burst into tears. the interpretation of this phrasal verb involves the integration of two metaphors, namely emotional damage is physical damage and emotional damage is motion. here, we conceptualize the process of experiencing emotional damage both in terms of suffering physical damage (‘bursting’) combined with motion (moving into a given place), which is used to indicate a change of state on the basis of the primary metaphor (cf. grady 1997) a change of state is a change of location. the outcome of the process of bursting is mapped onto the symptoms of emotional damage, namely tears. then, through the effect for cause metonymy the tears (the effect) are made to stand for the final state of emotional damage (the cause). additionally, the initial state (in which the person has not suffered emotional damage) and the final state (in which the person has suffered emotional damage) are identified with the source and destination of motion respectively. source  (bursting) target (change of state)  source (change of location) process of suffering physical damage (bursting) process of experiencing emotional damage motion initial state (no emotional damage) source of motion final state (emotional damage) symptoms of emotional damage (tears) destination of motion broken pieces figure 15. he burst into tears. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� going beyond metaphtonymy: metaphoric and metonymic complexes in phrasal verb interpretation language value 3 (1), 1–29 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 21 iii.3.2. metaphoric chains as we advanced in the introduction section, a metaphoric chain is an interactional pattern between two metaphors in which the target domain of one metaphor becomes the source of a subsequent metaphor. let us examine the interpretation of some phrasal verbs using this pattern of interaction. consider the sentence [when] they broke away from our church, i stuck to my own14. the source domain of the first metaphoric mapping is provided by the semantics of the phrasal verb break away: an object is broken into two or more pieces, and these pieces become separated from one another. this first metaphoric domain is mapped onto a target domain in which two people (or a person/some people and a given institution) become physically separated. the target domain constitutes the source of a second metaphor, whose target domain is the nonphysical separation. the last metaphoric mapping is grounded in experiential conflation: the fact that two people or a person and an institution are no longer together (either in a relationship or in institutional terms) generally correlates with physical separation. source target/source target figure 16. [when] they broke away from our church, i stuck to my own. we also need the use of a metaphoric chain in the interpretation of the phrasal verb ‘break down’ as in the sentence when she died papa broke down and cried15. the source domain of the first metaphorical process arises from the combined semantic structure of the verb and the particle, that is, physical fragmentation (‘break’) and loss of functionality (‘down’). this conceptual material is mapped onto another domain in which there is no physical fragmentation, but there is an object that becomes dysfunctional (as in my car broke down). the implication of dysfunctionality in the first target domain maps onto a situation in which a person becomes emotionally distressed and therefore looses control over himself. this process is schematized as follows: an object becomes fragmented (‘broke’) and separated (‘away’) two people separate physically nonphysical separation http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� francisco josé ruiz de mendoza and alicia galera-masegosa language value 3 (1), 1–29 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 22 source target/source target physical fragmentation an object a person who is leads to loss of becomes emotionally distressed functionality dysfunctional loses control over himself figure 17. when she died papa broke down and cried. our corpus of phrasal verbs has revealed that some of them may have different (although related) interpretations. this is the case of ‘give away’. the default interpretation of this phrasal verb is to give an object that one possesses to someone else for free, and not caring much about the future of the donated object (as in she gave everything away, including her home16). the idea of getting rid of an object (or a number of them) is found in the source domain of the first metaphor, which is mapped onto the target domain in which someone gets rids of a person as if he/she were an object. this idea is then mapped onto a final target domain that contains the action of betraying a person. this last metaphoric mapping is conceptually reinforced by the negative feelings that a person would develop towards the person who would ‘give him away’ as if he/she actually were an object. source target/source target getting rid getting rid betraying of an object of a person a person figure 18. well, how soon we were betrayed, your sister gave us away17. an alternative interpretation of this phrasal verb arises when the person given away is the bride in the context of a wedding. in this case, the bride is generally walked down the aisle (in order to be “given away”) by her father. this particular interpretation does not convey the idea that the initial possessor of the object donates it to whoever may take it, not caring about it anymore (which is the base for the negative feeling that gives rise to the ‘betraying’ interpretation). in the case of the bride, his father transfers the responsibility of taking care of her to the husband-to-be (e.g. the father of the bride was http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� going beyond metaphtonymy: metaphoric and metonymic complexes in phrasal verb interpretation language value 3 (1), 1–29 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 23 absent on duty with the merchant marine, so the bride was given away by his friend harry gibson of san francisco18). our last example shows that metaphoric chains may also interact with metonymy. consider the sentence eventually someone got fed up with her behavior and called the cops19. a first step in the interpretation of the phrasal verb to be fed up with is the application of the basic metaphors full is up, which is combined with the imageschema the human body is a container. these two underlying metaphors allow us to map ‘to be fed up’ onto ‘to be filled to the top with food’. then we need to metonymically expand this target domain onto a more complex situation in which a person cannot have more food or will get sick. this elaborated target domain constitutes the source of another metaphor whose target domain is a situation in which a person cannot stand someone else’s behavior (see figure 19 below). source target/source target to be in a situation to be in a situation in which one cannot in which one cannot have more food or will stand someone else’s get sick behavior metonymy to be fed up to be filled full is up with food + the human body is a container figure 19. eventually someone got fed up with her behavior and called the cops. iv. conclusions phrasal verbs are idiomatic constructions consisting of fixed and variable parts where the fixed part can take a degree of variation that stems from the general ability of verbal structure to be fused into various argument structure constructions (e.g. x breaks away with y; x and y break away) and to take tense, aspect and other grammatical markers. the conceptual make-up of phrasal verbs goes beyond the combination of verbal meaning (whether propositional or image schematic) and the image schematic meaning associated with the adverbial particle or the preposition. it may require the combination http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� francisco josé ruiz de mendoza and alicia galera-masegosa language value 3 (1), 1–29 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 24 of two metaphors (which in turn may include cases of metonymic activation) either in the form of amalgams or chains. such combinations account for an essential part of the conventional implications derived from phrasal verbs. in turn, such implications are what renders the meaning of phrasal verbs, like the meaning of other idiomatic constructions, fundamentally noncompositional although largely predictable and calculable. notes 1 center for research in the applications of language (www.cilap.es). financial support for this research has been provided by the spanish ministry of science and innovation, grant no. ffi2010-17610/filo. 2 http://www.lifescript.com/life/relationships/hang-ups/6_reasons_you_cant_leave_a_loser.aspx. accessed on november 19, 2011. 3 http://www.survivalistboards.com/showthread.php?t=77704. accessed on november 19, 2011. 4 www.alplm.org/abraham-lincoln-greatest-paraphrases/ accessed on november 19, 2011. 5 http://scientopia.org/blogs/goodmath/2011/02/11/another-crank-comes-to-visit-the-cognitive-theoreticmodel-of-the-universe/. accessed on november 19, 2011. 6 http://www.nicestories.com/unreg/s/story.php?id=6975. accessed on november 19, 2011. 7 http://lifenetintl.org/pdfs/rayford.pdf. accessed on november 19, 2011. 8 http://covenant-hopeliveshere.blogspot.com/2008/06/god-speaks-to-his-children.html. accessed on december 3, 2011. 9 http://bible.cc/luke/18-13.htm. accessed on november 23, 2011. 10 http://www.amazon.ca/product-reviews/1586632043. accessed on november 23, 2011. 11 http://www.hypnosisdownloads.com/enjoy-life/life-soul. accessed on november 23, 2011. 12 http://www.lomography.es/magazine/reviews/2011/03/22/for-the-ahem-love-of-lomography-black-andwhite-120-film. accessed on november 23, 2011. 13 http://nycapitolnews.com/wordpress/2011/10/occupied-or-not-wall-street-is-sagging/. accessed on december 3, 2011. 14 http://books.google.es/books?id=l3c97gdnz9ocandpg=pa44andlpg=pa44anddq=%22when+they+ broke+away%22andsource=blandots=1pajl7oe_aandsig=jqt6hm8pbgkeue6orluv00bn6wcandhl=e andei=w-lltr3ukmrc8ap0sikhandsa=xandoi=book_resultandct=resultandresnum=2andved= 0ccuq6aewatgk#v=onepageandq=%22when%20they%20broke%20away%22andf=false. accessed on november 23, 2011. 15 http://lyricsplayground.com/alpha/songs/p/papa.shtml. accessed on november 23, 2011. 16 http://www.comeandseeicons.com/w/drz05.htm. accessed on november 23, 2011. 17 http://www.metrolyrics.com/o-valencia-lyrics-decemberists.html. accessed on november 23, 2011. 18http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1970anddat=19431007andid=oduyaaaaibajandsjid=zem faaaaibajandpg=2821,491682. accessed on november 23, 2011. 19 http://www.canada.com/story_print.html?id=e33c79ba-e5ef-479d-a59a-43bd5e9e6b52andsponsor=. accessed on november 23, 2011. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.cilap.es/� http://www.lifescript.com/life/relationships/hang-ups/6_reasons_you_cant_leave_a_loser.aspx� http://www.survivalistboards.com/showthread.php?t=77704� http://www.alplm.org/abraham-lincoln-greatest-paraphrases/� http://scientopia.org/blogs/goodmath/2011/02/11/another-crank-comes-to-visit-the-cognitive-theoretic-model-of-the-universe/� http://scientopia.org/blogs/goodmath/2011/02/11/another-crank-comes-to-visit-the-cognitive-theoretic-model-of-the-universe/� http://www.nicestories.com/unreg/s/story.php?id=6975� http://lifenetintl.org/pdfs/rayford.pdf� http://covenant-hopeliveshere.blogspot.com/2008/06/god-speaks-to-his-children.html� http://bible.cc/luke/18-13.htm� http://www.amazon.ca/product-reviews/1586632043� http://www.hypnosisdownloads.com/enjoy-life/life-soul� http://www.lomography.es/magazine/reviews/2011/03/22/for-the-ahem-love-of-lomography-black-and-white-120-film� http://www.lomography.es/magazine/reviews/2011/03/22/for-the-ahem-love-of-lomography-black-and-white-120-film� http://nycapitolnews.com/wordpress/2011/10/occupied-or-not-wall-street-is-sagging/� http://books.google.es/books?id=l3c97gdnz9ocandpg=pa44andlpg=pa44anddq=%22when+they+%20broke+away%22andsource=blandots=1pajl7oe_aandsig=jqt6hm8pbgkeue6orluv00bn6wcandhl=e%20andei=w-lltr3ukmrc8ap0sikhandsa=xandoi=book_resultandct=resultandresnum=2andved=%200ccuq6aewatgk#v=onepageandq=%22when%20they%20broke%20away%22andf=false� http://books.google.es/books?id=l3c97gdnz9ocandpg=pa44andlpg=pa44anddq=%22when+they+%20broke+away%22andsource=blandots=1pajl7oe_aandsig=jqt6hm8pbgkeue6orluv00bn6wcandhl=e%20andei=w-lltr3ukmrc8ap0sikhandsa=xandoi=book_resultandct=resultandresnum=2andved=%200ccuq6aewatgk#v=onepageandq=%22when%20they%20broke%20away%22andf=false� http://books.google.es/books?id=l3c97gdnz9ocandpg=pa44andlpg=pa44anddq=%22when+they+%20broke+away%22andsource=blandots=1pajl7oe_aandsig=jqt6hm8pbgkeue6orluv00bn6wcandhl=e%20andei=w-lltr3ukmrc8ap0sikhandsa=xandoi=book_resultandct=resultandresnum=2andved=%200ccuq6aewatgk#v=onepageandq=%22when%20they%20broke%20away%22andf=false� http://books.google.es/books?id=l3c97gdnz9ocandpg=pa44andlpg=pa44anddq=%22when+they+%20broke+away%22andsource=blandots=1pajl7oe_aandsig=jqt6hm8pbgkeue6orluv00bn6wcandhl=e%20andei=w-lltr3ukmrc8ap0sikhandsa=xandoi=book_resultandct=resultandresnum=2andved=%200ccuq6aewatgk#v=onepageandq=%22when%20they%20broke%20away%22andf=false� http://lyricsplayground.com/alpha/songs/p/papa.shtml� http://www.comeandseeicons.com/w/drz05.htm� http://www.metrolyrics.com/o-valencia-lyrics-decemberists.html� http://www.canada.com/story_print.html?id=e33c79ba-e5ef-479d-a59a-43bd5e9e6b52&sponsor� going beyond metaphtonymy: metaphoric and metonymic complexes in phrasal verb interpretation language value 3 (1), 1–29 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 25 references brdar, m. 2007. metonymy in grammar. towards motivating extensions of grammatical categories and constructions. osijek: faculty of philosophy, josip juraj strossmayer university. croft, w. 1993. “the role of domains in the interpretation of metaphors and metonymies”. cognitive linguistics, 4, 335–370. dirven, r. 2001. “english phrasal verbs: theory and didactic application”. in pütz, m., s. niemeier and r. dirven (eds.) applied cognitive. linguistics ii: language pedagogy. berlin/new york: mouton de gruyter, 3-28. fauconnier, g. and turner, m. 1996. “blending as a central process in grammar”. in goldberg, a. (ed.) conceptual structure, discourse, and language. stanford: cambridge university press, 113-130. fauconnier, g. and turner, m. 2002. the way we think: conceptual blending and the mind’s hidden complexities. new york: basic books. galera-masegosa, a. 2010. “a cognitive approach to the analysis of simile-based idiomatic expressions”. círculo de lingüística aplicada a la comunicación, 43, 3-48. geeraerts, d. and peirsman, y. 2011. “zones, facets, and prototype-based metonymy”. in benczes, r., a. barcelona and f.j. ruiz de mendoza (eds.) defining metonymy in cognitive linguistics: towards a consensus view. amsterdam: john benjamins, 89–102. gibbs, r. 1994. the poetics of the mind. cambridge: cambridge university press. gibbs r., bogdonovich, j., sykes, j. and barr, d. 1997. “metaphor in idiom comprehension”. journal of memory and language, 37, 141-154. goossens, l. 1990. “metaphtonymy: the interaction of metaphor and metonymy in expressions for linguistic action”. cognitive linguistics, 1 (3), 323-340. grady, j. 1997. foundations of meaning: primary metaphors and primary scenes. ph. d. dissertation, berkeley: university of california. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://benjamins.com/#catalog/books/hcp.28� francisco josé ruiz de mendoza and alicia galera-masegosa language value 3 (1), 1–29 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 26 grady, j. 1999. “a typology of motivation for conceptual metaphor: correlation vs. resemblance”. in gibbs, r. and g. steen (eds.) metaphor in cognitive linguistics. amsterdam/philadelphia: john benjamins, 79-100. grady, j. and johnson, c. 2002. “converging evidence for the notions of subscene and primary scene”. in dirven, r. and r. pörings (eds.) metaphor and metonymy in comparison and contrast. berlin/new york: mouton de gruyter, 533-553. hampe, b. (2000): “facing up to the meaning of ‘face up to’: a cognitive semanticopragmatic anaysis of an english verb-particle construction”. in foolen, a. and f. van der leek (eds.) constructions in cognitive linguistics. amsterdam/ philadelphia: john benjamins, 81-101. hidalgo downing, l. and kraljevic mujic, b. 2011. “multimodal metonymy and metaphor as complex discourse resources for creativity in ict advertising discourse”. in gonzálvez-garcía, f., s. peña and l. pérez (eds.) metaphor and metonymy revisited beyond the contemporary theory of metaphor. amsterdam/philadelphia: john benjamins, 153–178. kövecses, z. 1990. emotion concepts. new york: springer-verlag. kövecses, z. 2000. metaphor and emotion: language, culture, and body in human feeling. cambridge/new york: cambridge university press. kövecses, z. 2002. metaphor. a practical introduction. oxford/new york: oxford university press. kövecses, z. 2005. metaphor in culture. universality and variation. cambidge/new york: cambridge university press. kövecses, z. and radden, g. 1998. “metonymy: developing a cognitive linguistic view”. cognitive linguistics, 9, 37-77. kövecses, z. and szabó, p. 1996. “idioms: a view from cognitive semantics”. applied linguistics, 17 (3), 326-355. kuiper, k. and everaert, m. 2004. “limits on the phrase structural configurations of phrasal lexemes”. europhras 2000. tübingen: stauffenburg verlag, 257-262. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� going beyond metaphtonymy: metaphoric and metonymic complexes in phrasal verb interpretation language value 3 (1), 1–29 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 27 lakoff, g. 1987. women, fire, and dangerous things: what categories reveal about the mind. chicago: university of chicago press. lakoff, g. 1993. “the contemporary theory of metaphor”. in ortony, a. (ed.) metaphor and thought, 2nd ed., cambridge, mass.: cambridge university press, 202-251. lakoff, g. and johnson, m. 1980. metaphors we live by. chicago: chicago university press. lakoff, g. and johnson, m. 1999. philosophy in the flesh. new york: basic books. lakoff, g. and turner, m. 1989. more than cool reason. a field guide to poetic metaphor. chicago and london: the university of chicago press. langlotz, a. 2006. idiomatic creativity: a cognitive-linguistic model of idiomrepresentation and idiom-variation in english. amsterdam/philadelphia: john benjamins. makkai, a. 1972. idiom structure in english. the hague: mouton de gruyter. narayanan, s. 1997. embodiment in language understanding: sensory-motor representations for metaphoric reasoning about event descriptions. ph. d. dissertation, departments of computer science, berkeley: university of california. ruiz de mendoza, f.j. 1997. “metaphor, metonymy and conceptual interaction”. atlantis, 19, 281 – 295. ruiz de mendoza, f.j. 2000. “the role of mappings and domains in understanding metonymy”. in barcelona, a. (ed.) metaphor and metonymy at the crossroads. berlin/new york: mouton de gruyter, 109-132. ruiz de mendoza, f.j. 2007. “high level cognitive models: in search of a unified framework for inferential and grammatical behavior”. in kosecki, k. (ed.) perspectives on metonymy. frankfurt/main: peter lang, 11-30. ruiz de mendoza, f.j. and díez, o. 2002. “patterns of conceptual interaction”. in dirven, r. and r. pörings (eds.) metaphor and metonymy in comparison and contrast. berlin/new york: mouton de gruyter, 489-532. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� francisco josé ruiz de mendoza and alicia galera-masegosa language value 3 (1), 1–29 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 28 ruiz de mendoza, f.j. and díez, o. 2004. “metonymic motivation in anaphoric reference”. in radden, g. and k.-u. panther (eds.) studies in linguistic motivation. berlin and new york: mouton de gruyter, 293-320. ruiz de mendoza, f.j. and galera-masegosa, a. 2012. “metaphoric and metonymic complexes in phrasal verb interpretation: metaphoric chains”. in eizaga rebollar, b. (ed.) studies in cognition and linguistics. frankfurt: peter lang, 161-190. ruiz de mendoza, f.j. and mairal, r. 2007. “high-level metaphor and metonymy in meaning construction”. in radden, g., k-m. köpcke, t. berg and p. siemund (eds.) aspects of meaning construction. amsterdam/philadelphia: john benjamins, 33-51. ruiz de mendoza, f.j. and mairal, r. 2008. “levels of description and constraining factors in meaning construction: an introduction to the lexical constructional model”. folia linguistica, 42 (2), 355-400. ruiz de mendoza, f.j. and mairal, r. 2011. “constraints on syntactic alternation: lexical-constructional subsumption in the lexical-constructional model”. in guerrero, p. (ed.) morphosyntactic alternations in english. functional and cognitive perspectives. london, uk/oakville, ct: equinox, 62-82. ruiz de mendoza, f.j. and pérez, l. 2001. “metonymy and the grammar: motivation, constraints and interaction”. language and communication, 21 (4), 321-357. ruiz de mendoza, f.j. and pérez, l. 2003. “cognitive operations and pragmatic implication”. in panther, k.-u. and l. thornburg (eds.) metonymy and pragmatic inferencing. amsterdam/philadelphia: john benjamins, 23-50. ruiz de mendoza, f.j. and pérez, l. 2011. “the contemporary theory of metaphor: myths, developments and challenges”. metaphor and symbol, 26, 161-185. taylor, j. 1995. linguistic categorization. prototypes in linguistic theory. oxford: clarendon press. turner, m. and fauconnier, g. 2000. “metaphor, metonymy, and binding” in barcelona, a. (ed.) metaphor and metonymy at the crossroads. berlin: mouton de gruyter, 133-145. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� going beyond metaphtonymy: metaphoric and metonymic complexes in phrasal verb interpretation language value 3 (1), 1–29 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 29 urios-aparisi, e. 2009. “interaction of multimodal metaphor and metonymy in tv commercials: four case studies”. in forceville, c. and e. urios-aparisi (eds.) multimodal metaphor. berlin/new york: mouton de gruyter, 95-118. received november 2011 cite this article as: ruiz de mendoza, f.j. and galera-masegosa, a. 2011. “going beyond metaphtonymy: metaphoric and metonymic complexes in phrasal verb interpretation”. language value, 3 (1), 1-29. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue. issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� scenario in which someone this metonymy, which is an extension of place for institution (e.g. wall street has always been part of our economy and always will be13), is used for economy purposes to identify the people that are associated with an institution that is in turn iden... the same metaphoric interaction operates in the interpretation of he beat me into silence. the metaphor a change of state is a change of location is made part of the architecture of the main metaphor, an effectual action is caused motion. the subsidia... notes references cite this article as: ruiz de mendoza, f.j. and galera-masegosa, a. 2011. “going beyond metaphtonymy: metaphoric and metonymic complexes in phrasal verb interpretation”. language value, 3 (1), 1-29. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/l... issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2013, volume 5, number 1 pp. i-iv issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2013.5.1 i from the editors clil at university: research and developments in recent times, the relevance of clil (content and language integrated learning) at most educational levels, especially in the university world, has experienced an exponential increase, as recent publications show (doiz et al. 2013, fortanet-gómez 2013, llinares et al. 2012, or smit and dafouz 2012a, among others). teaching in english seems to be a popular topic nowadays, but it is also a need. the articles included in this issue show three main common features of clil and its role in today’s higher education: the process of internationalization of the educational system, the need for a language policy, and the fact that english for specific purposes (esp) as a field of research and teaching as well as esp practitioners are all very much concerned with clil. the internationalization of the university is one of the reasons pointed out by much of the research conducted on the topic, as can be seen in the present volume. becoming an international university requires attracting foreign students and this can only be implemented by using a lingua franca for communication; this is the case of the english language, though any other language should also have the same opportunity. a second issue which seems to be closely connected to the integration of english as the language of instruction is the need to develop a university language policy. apparently, this seems to be already happening in most universities, but clil appears to have been implemented in the spanish university before such a policy is established. a third interesting common key issue which can also be appreciated in the following articles is that applied linguists and esp (english for specific purposes) practitioners are especially concerned with the teaching of content subjects in english as well as in the teacher training of content teachers. through the following articles, an explicit connection between clil and esp (in any of its variants) seems to be clear. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� from the editors articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2013.5.1 ii as a whole, this issue on clil at university tries to provide more insights on the topic and become a contribution to the field, which is in continuous evolution and development. the term clil is understood as a synonym for emi (english as the medium of instruction) all through this issue, although our deciding on the first one was because it is probably the most widely used term among teachers regardless of the educational level they belong to. nonetheless, we do admit that the term which is becoming more popular in higher education settings is emi (see smit and dafouz 2012b: 4-5 for further terminological considerations), and that is the reason why we have accepted both terms in the research articles included in this issue, respecting each author’s decision. as dafouz milne and sánchez garcía say in their article (2013: 130), there is a “diversity of interests and concerns amongst scholars and practising teachers […] from studies on classroom discourse and school practices, teacher cognition and beliefs, to the role of english as an international language or lingua franca in multilingual institutions”. this is shown in this fifth issue of language value. the six articles included deal with beliefs and concerns that clil teachers and practitioners have, as well as collaboration between language and content teachers, or the analysis of some specific aspects of the language used in the classroom. the first article, written by gonzález and barbero, makes a thought-provoking proposal of ideas higher education teachers should bear in mind in order to implement a clil programme. their proposal is based on a research project developed with preuniversity teachers who had wide experience in clil settings and, therefore, in clil pedagogical features. in the second article, gonzález ardeo deals with a common question many esp practitioners have frequently considered. through an exploratory study carried out at the university of the basque country, he tries to explain whether clil and esp are compatible or not. although the study focuses only on engineering degrees, it can be taken into consideration for further research in order to prove the possible compatibility of both teaching models. language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2013, volume 5, number 1 pp. i-iv issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2013.5.1 iii following an esp perspective, argüelles álvarez presents a holistic experience in telecommunication engineering degrees. she shows how initially conceptualized esp courses have been moved into a course integrating not only language and (professional and academic) content, but also other skills and capacities, such as it literacy and the development of the learner’s autonomy. teacher education is the focus of sancho guinda’s contribution. she moves into teacher training and how clil teachers face it. by analysing engineering teachers’ perceptions and their performances, she shows the mismatch that exists between what teachers believe and know and what they actually do in their own teaching. sancho guinda concludes by proposing a teacher-target model which makes the reader aware of the different discourses involved in a clil setting, complemented by the recommendation to clil teachers to prepare their classes from a didactic and a linguistic standpoint. also dealing with teachers’ perception and the experience of clil teachers, wozniak presents a study carried out within the context of a pharmacy degree. she identifies the impressions, expectations, concerns and needs of more and less experienced content teachers in the degree in pharmacy. in her article, wozniak proposes a close and continuous collaboration between content teachers and language teachers as a complement to the teacher training implemented in many universities. finally, dafouz milne and sánchez garcía focus on a different ‘macro research concern’, as they call it, which is teacher discourse. in fact, considering that interaction is one of the promoted aims of clil, dealing with questions in the clil classroom is an essential tool. they analyse some lectures from different disciplines and look at the kind of questions used, their discourse functions, if there are differences between disciplines and how those questions promote students’ participation. their main objective is to raise awareness of teachers’ questions in emi settings. this issue finishes with a couple of reviews of books related to clil and a multimedia material review on a tool for translators. the first review of multilingual higher education. beyond english medium orientations by ana bocanegra-valle shows how that volume can illustrate the intricacies of learning and teaching in multilingual higher http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� from the editors articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2013.5.1 iv education settings. simone smala, the author of the second review, clil in higher education. towards a multilingual language policy, highlights the excellent contribution to the field made by this book and its suggestions for further research areas. finally, laura ramírez polo goes over one of the most widespread tools for professional translators, sdl trados studio 2011. she focuses on its use within the world of translation throughout the whole translation process, and provides some alternatives to this tool and adds some final suggestions for teaching purposes. miguel f. ruiz-garrido mª carmen campoy-cubillo editors universitat jaume i, spain references doiz, a., lasagabaster, d. and sierra, j.m. 2013. english-medium instruction at universities. global challenges. bristol: multilingual matters. fortanet-gómez, i. 2013. clil in higher education. towards a multilingual language policy. bristol: multilingual matters. llinares, a. morton, t. and whittaker, r. 2012. the roles of language in clil. cambridge: cambridge university press. smit, u. and dafouz, e. (eds.) 2012a. integrating content and language in higher education. gaining insights into english-medium instruction at european universities. special issue of aila review 25. smit, u. and dafouz, e. 2012b. “integrating content and language in higher education. an introduction to english-medium policies, conceptual issues and research practices across europe”. in smit, u. and e. dafouz (eds.) integrating content and language in higher education. gaining insights into english-medium instruction at european universities. special issue of aila review 25, 1-12. topological vs language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2011, volume 3, number 1 pp. 49-75 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors 49 topological vs. lexical determination in english particle verbs (pvs) renata geld university of zagreb, croatia geldrenata@gmail.com abstract the central aim of this work is to describe semantic determination, i.e., topological vs. lexical determination, by investigating aspects of construal (langacker 1987) in english pvs with in and out. the paper focuses on l2 processing related to what we might call strategic thinking about linguistic meaning. more specifically, it attempts to demonstrate the following: a) how the nature of verbs affects the overall semantic determination of particle verb constructions, and b) if/how the users of english make sense of particle verbs, and how much they rely on topological/grammatical components in the process of constructing meaning. the results suggest that the nature of verbs does affect the users’ strategic meaning construal – it differs in terms of their tendency towards one of the following types of semantic determination: a) topological, b) lexical, and, c) compositional. keywords: particle verbs, strategic construal, in, out, lexical, topological i. introduction for the purpose of this paper, particle verbs (pvs) will be defined as those verb-plusparticle combinations in which the particle is semantically more closely linked with the verb and not with the noun that follows (see e.g. biber et al. 2002, cappelle 2002, 2005, dehé 2002, fraser 1970, lindner 1981, lipka 1972, talmy 2000). the key condition for a word to be called a particle is that it is not being used as a preposition. in discussing patterns in the representation of event structure, talmy calls them satellites in order to “capture the commonality between such particles and comparable forms in other languages” (talmy 2000: 103). typologically, there are two basic language groups in terms of how the conceptual structure is mapped onto syntactic structure: a) verb-framed languages, and b) satellite-framed languages (ibid 221). broadly speaking, the basic difference lies in whether the core schema is expressed by the main verb or by the satellite. the satellite can be either a bound affix or a free word. thus, its category includes a variety of grammatical forms: english verb particles, german separable and http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� mailto:geldrenata@gmail.com� topological vs. lexical determination in english particle verbs (pvs) language value 3 (1), 49–75 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 50 inseparable verb prefixes, russian verb prefixes, chinese verb complements, etc. verbframed languages map the core schema onto the verb and the verb is called a framing verb. satellite-framed languages map the core schema onto the satellite (ibid 222). let us consider talmy’s example contrasting english and spanish: (1) a. the bottle floated out. b. la botella salió flotando. ‘the bottle exited floating’ in (1a), the satellite out expresses the core schema (the path), whereas the verb float expresses the co-event. in the spanish la botella salió flotando, the verb salir ‘to exit’ expresses the core schema and the gerundive form flotando ‘floating’ expresses the coevent of manner. apart from the motion event exemplified above, an important framing event related to english particles is temporal contouring (or aspect). according to ample linguistic evidence, temporal contouring is conceptually, and thus syntactically and lexically, analogical with motion. as stressed by talmy (ibid 233), even though probably all languages express aspectual notions both with lexical verbs and with constituents adjoined to the verb, one or the other tends to predominate. english, for example, has a number of aspectual verbs borrowed from romance languages (e.g. enter, continue, terminate), but it still seems to lean towards the satellite side. i.1. prefixes as satellites as proposed by tabakowska in her analysis of polish, the “intimidating complexity” of the phenomenon of verbal prefixation results in its categories being placed in “the border area between two morphological processes, derivation and flexion” (2003: 155). when prefixes are associated with a particular lexical content, their meaning is considered relatively transparent and regular. however, when they are categorized as flexion, i.e., when they code aspect, their meaning is viewed as abstract and much less transparent. tabakowska’s attempt to give a systematic account of polish prefixation initiates an important question of verbal prefixes being semantically related to prepositions. in order to substantiate the above-mentioned semantic motivation, the author analyses and compares the usage of the preposition za and the prefix –za1. having embraced the cognitive linguistic view of semantic structure, tabakowska http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� renata geld language value 3 (1), 49–75 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 51 assumes that prefixes are never semantically empty or redundant, and even though the process of grammaticalization renders them semantically bleached, they tend to reveal their old meanings. for example, za is most frequently followed by a nominal (nom) in the instrumental (instr) or in the accusative (acc) case: (2) a. (siedzieć) za drzewem (to sit) behind tree: inst ‘to sit behind the tree’ b. (iść) za drzewo (to walk) beyond tree: acc ‘to walk beyond the tree’ (taken from tabakowska ibid.: 159-160) sentence (2a) expresses a static relation and (2b) a dynamic one, which is lexicalized by the different case markers. structures with the instrumental are used to locate a trajector (tr) behind or beyond a landmark (lm), whereas structures with the accusative are used to denote adlative motion. both usage types have metaphorical extensions, such as: (3) a. (mieszkać) za granicą (live) over border: instr ‘live abroad’ b. (wyjechać) za granicę (go) over border: acc ‘go abroad’ c. (schować coś) za murem (hide something) behind wall: instr ‘(hide something) behind the wall’ d. (schować się) za mur (hide oneself) behind wall: acc ‘(hide) behind the wall’ (taken from tabakowska ibid.: 164) the extension in (3a) and (3b) is defined as ‘passability’ – the lm is conceptualized as a boundary that separates the tr from the observer. the other extension, exemplified in (3c) and (3d), has been called ‘the sense of curtain’. the lm “blocks the view of an http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� topological vs. lexical determination in english particle verbs (pvs) language value 3 (1), 49–75 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 52 area so that it cannot be seen by the observer” (weinsberg 1973: 57, as cited in tabakowska 2003). the correlates of these two extensions are the two main extensions from the prototype of –za: the notion of passable borderline extends into an abstract boundary. this passage from non-being into being, or non-action into action, is related to the occurrence of zawith intransitive inchoative verbs: (4) za-plonąć za-kwitnąć za-śpiewać za-burn za-blossom za-sing ‘to begin burning’ ‘to begin blossoming’ ‘to begin singing’ (taken from tabakowska ibid.: 168) the same kind of extensions may be claimed for croatian. for example, it is reasonable to assume that the following two examples are similar to (3d) and (4) respectively: (5) a. (sakriti se) za brdo (hide oneself) behind hill: acc ‘(hide) behind the hill’ b. za-paliti za-blistati za-pjevati za-burn za-shine za-sing ‘to begin burning’ ‘to begin shining’ ‘to begin singing’ even though traditional croatian grammars do not describe prefixes in a semantically motivated manner, there have been some recent attempts (see for example silić and panjković 2005) to make an initial step towards recognizing that prefixes are not “semantically empty”. let us consider the following meanings of the prefix u-, which appears to be related to the corresponding u ‘in’: a) ‘to put something into something else’ (as in for example umetnuti ‘put in’, unijeti ‘bring in’, ugraditi ‘fit in’, etc.; b) ‘go in’ and ‘go into something’ (as in for example ući ‘go in’, uroniti ‘dive in’, uskočiti ‘jump in’, uploviti ‘sail in’, etc.; c) ‘join’ (as in for example uključiti se ‘join (in)’, učlaniti se ‘join’, ‘become a member’) (based on silić and pranjković 2005: 149, my translation). it is this particular tendency towards satellites in the form of prefixes that is going to be discussed later in relation to language-internal factors determining specific meaning construal exhibited by croatian learners of english. we are going to speculate that the http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� renata geld language value 3 (1), 49–75 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 53 fact that slavic languages, unlike romance ones, often tend to express the core schema by the satellite facilitates learners’ recognition of compositionality and the role of the particle in english pv constructions2. on the other hand, we are going to suggest that this recognition is less frequent with mexican learners of english, since spanish expresses the core schema by the main verb. i.2. the nature of verbs there is a specific group of verbs whose basicness makes them particularly good material for idiomatic and grammaticalized usages. they have been called basic, light, delexical, high-frequency, easy, simple, semantically vague, schematic, etc., and they have been studied by a considerable number of authors, in various contexts, and with emphasis on different aspects of their nature and behaviour (see for example altenberg and granger 2001, bybee et al. 1994, heine et al. 1991, heine et al. 1993, lennon 1996, newman 1996, 1997, 1998, 2004, norvig and lakoff 1987, sinclair 1991, svartvik and ekedhal 1995, svorou 1993, sweetser 1990, viberg 1996, wierzbicka 1988)3. the most relevant aspect for this work is related to their role in the process of the construction of meaning in l2. discussing high-frequency verbs, such as put and take, lennon suggests that even though learners may have a “broad outline of word meaning”, they still have a rather unclear and imprecise lexical knowledge of polysemous items and constructs such as phrasal verbs (1996: 35). their specific nature results in two seemingly contradictory tendencies in l2 processing and meaning construction – overuse and underuse. overuse has been attributed to their basicness and the fact they are learnt early and widely used (see for example hasselgren 1994), and underuse has been discussed in relation to a delexicalization process which renders them vague and superfluous when used with nouns as their object (as in for example take a step or make a fortune) (see altenberg and granger 2001). in the course of this work, we are going to offer evidence that supports the characterization of these basic and schematic verbs outlined above. more specifically, we are going to show that, in the process of strategic construal and processing of english particle verbs, a semantically light verb tends to provide grounds for grammatical/topological determination by yielding under the semantic “strength” of the http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� topological vs. lexical determination in english particle verbs (pvs) language value 3 (1), 49–75 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 54 particle. on the other hand, a semantically heavier verb tends to override the contribution of the particle, which results in lexical determination. ii. particle verbs and l2 research the theoretical aspects of the syntactic and semantic properties of particle verbs have been discussed and described by a considerable number of authors (see for example bolinger 1971, brinton 1988, cappelle 2002, dehé 2002, gries 1999, lindner 1981, lipka 1972, mcintyre 2002, quirk et al. 1985, and many others). their discussions clarified various facets of particle verb constructions and established a solid theoretical grounding for further investigation into applied particle verb matters, especially into the complexity of their use in l2. even though (at least to the author’s knowledge) there are no studies which are tightly related to the topic of this paper, there is a body of applied research concerned with the avoidance of particle verbs that is directly relevant for some of our hypotheses. dagut and laufer (1985) were the first to tackle the issue of avoidance of particle verbs in a study in which they investigated hebrew-speaking learners of english. the authors attributed the process of avoidance to the fact that hebrew does not have particle verbs. it is also important to add that the use of particle verbs depended on their semantic nature, i.e., opaque, idiomatic verbs were used least often, literal particle verbs most frequently, and the use of aspectual (completive) verbs comes somewhere between the two. however, the semantic nature of the verbs was not considered as a factor affecting their avoidance. following dagut and laufer’s conclusions, hulstijn and marchena (1989) hypothesized that learners with a germanic l1 would not avoid particle verbs. furthermore, they assumed that non-avoidance would correlate with learners’ language proficiency. the results showed that: a) dutch intermediate learners used fewer particle verbs than advanced students, and b) both intermediate and advanced learners used more particle verbs than the hebrew learners from hulstijn and marchena’s study4. furthermore, the participants in the study used idiomatic particle verbs less frequently than those verbs whose meaning is less specialized and more literal. finally, both intermediate and advanced learners avoided both idiomatic and aspectual verbs that were similar to their http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� renata geld language value 3 (1), 49–75 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 55 dutch equivalents, which indicated that similarities between l1 and l2 may function as constraints rather than facilitators. unlike previous researchers, liao and fukuya (2004) also concentrated on the semantics of the verbs, and their results showed the following: a) chinese intermediate learners of english used fewer particle verbs than advanced learners, b) advanced learners used nearly as many phrasal verbs as native speakers, c) both groups of learners used literal phrasal verbs more frequently than idiomatic ones, and d) intermediate learners used even fewer idiomatic verbs than advanced learners. the most recent study on particle verb avoidance is waibel (2007). the empirical strength of this study lies in the fact that the author used learner corpora. the results showed that, contrary to expectations, particle verbs are not “universally underused” (ibid 77). the data showed that learners with a germanic l1 performed like native students. finnish learners and those with a slavic l1 used around 300 phrasal-verb tokens less than native students, and learners with a romance l1 used only about half as many phrasal verbs as native students. while discussing reasons for differences in performance in the three groups, the author stresses typological similarities and differences between english and other germanic languages, and between english and romance and slavic languages. the fact that the extent of underuse is more prominent in the writing of students with a romance l1 is explained by the lack of particle verbs or any similar verb types in french, italian and spanish. however, even though the author stresses that the same is the case with slavic languages, and adds that verb aspect and aktionsart are marked by preor suffixation, she seems to neglect the fact that slavic and germanic languages typologically belong to the same group of languages in terms of how they map the core schema (see section i.1.). more specifically, it is reasonable to assume that the existence of a satellite, be it a bound affix or a free word, plays a very important role in meaning construal and use of particle-verb constructions. as suggested in section i.1., aspectual meaning is just one of many semantic contributions made by prefixes as verb satellites. thus, the fact that slavic learners underuse particle verbs less than learners from a romance background is not that surprising. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� topological vs. lexical determination in english particle verbs (pvs) language value 3 (1), 49–75 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 56 the results obtained using german and italian sub-corpora support the above-mentioned results, i.e., when compared to native students, german learners used more and italian learners fewer particle verbs in relation to the overall number of verbs (ibid.: 84). furthermore, german students used more germanic-based verbs, whereas italian students used more romance-based verbs5. in this section, we have selected and outlined several findings related to studies focusing on the avoidance of particle verbs. in the section that follows, we give a brief description of the scope of the present study in relation to the above-mentioned findings and the overall research procedure. iii. the scope of the present study what we sought to establish was if/how the users of english make sense of pvs and how much they rely on topological components in the process of constructing meaning. given the nature of verbs that form pvs (light vs. heavy) and the nature of our participants’ l1 (spanish being a prototypical verb-framed language vs. croatian containing both verb-only and verb-plus-satellite structures), the following hypotheses were formulated: 1) topological determination is expected with pvs containing light lexical parts. 2) lexical determination is expected with pvs containing heavy lexical parts. 3) a more “balanced” determination (= compositionality) is expected with pvs containing heavy lexical parts. 4) topological determination and higher frequency of compositional meanings are expected in croatian users of english. 5) lexical determination and lower frequency of compositional meanings are expected in mexican users of english. iii.1. the instrument the instrument used was a questionnaire that consisted of 20 particle verbs. the criteria used to choose these particular examples were as follows: a) particle verb constructions with both heavy and light lexical parts, b) similar number of meanings in the two http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� renata geld language value 3 (1), 49–75 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 57 groups, and c) all meanings validated as metaphoric/obscure. three light and seven heavy verbs were selected: go, take, put and call, cut, break, draw, pull, shut, write. all verbs had to be semantically productive with both in and out. after the particle verbs had been selected, we designed a questionnaire using all the meanings listed in three phrasal verb dictionaries. in order to obtain metaphoric meanings we used a simple triangulation test – the meanings were judged by two linguists, 5 native speakers and 40 english majors (final year of study). they were all asked to place each meaning on a scale from 1 to 5, 1 being “the most literal” and 5 being “the most abstract/metaphoric” meaning. the result was the 45 meanings used in the research. iii.2. the sample and the procedure the sample consisted of 100 users of english – proficient english majors from croatia and mexico: 68 students from the faculty of philosophy, university of zagreb (filozofski fakultet, sveučilište u zagrebu), and 32 students from the faculty of philosophy at unam (facultad de filosofía y letras, universidad nacional autónoma de méxico, mexico city). they were tested separately at their respective universities. our primary aim was to have two groups of experienced learners of english with similar educational backgrounds and language proficiency but a different first language. what we had not expected was to find that there were almost three times fewer english majors at unam than at the university of zagreb. furthermore, the year of study in mexico, as opposed to croatia, does not guarantee a particular level of language proficiency. thus, it was decided that in croatia we would work with the 3rd and 4th year students, whereas in mexico participants would be a group of students attending the last level of their academic language courses. the first step in the final stage of the research was to test their language proficiency. after the proficiency test, the participants were scheduled to attend two separate sessions to complete the research questionnaire. in order to conduct both quantitative and qualitative analyses, all the answers were first copied, grouped and sequenced alphabetically. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� topological vs. lexical determination in english particle verbs (pvs) language value 3 (1), 49–75 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 58 iii.3. the data after the data (2207 answers for out and 1991 for in) had been copied, grouped and sequenced, each answer was coded6 with one of the following codes: 1) top for topological determination (the answers in which the meaning of the particle overrides the meaning of the lexical part of the construction); 2) lx for lexical determination (the answers in which the meaning of the lexical part overrides the meaning of the particle); 3) cmp for compositional meaning; 4) pph for paraphrase; 5) opp for basic opposition (e.g. go in explained in terms of being opposite to go out, or in being explained in terms of being opposite to out); 6) mis for misinterpretation (examples where the answer is in no way related to the pv construction); 7) ctx for examples where situational context is provided without the pv itself being used or explained; 8) lxd for examples with pv constructions being lexicalized, that is, a latinate verb offered as an explanation. let us briefly illustrate the three categories that are crucial for this paper. the particle verb and its meaning are followed by a few examples of the participants’ answers. a) topological determination: break out (‘become covered in something, like in sweat or rash’) – “something goes out of you and you cannot control it, it is out and you cannot put it back in by will”; put in (‘elect a political party as the government’) – “the government is a place in which you put the elected political party to do something”. b) lexical determination: draw out (‘make something last longer’) – “draw indicates that the action is prolonged, it means to stretch, to extend”; call in (‘make a short visit usually on the way to another place’) – “when you want to visit somebody you usually call them to see if they are home’). c) compositional meaning: http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� renata geld language value 3 (1), 49–75 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 59 break out (‘become covered in something like in sweat or rash’) – “out – something gets out in the open, it is visible to everybody, break – a sudden, unexpected act”; call in (‘make a short visit usually on the way to another place’) – “call – because it is a short visit just like a phone call, and in is the place that you visit”. the final step towards obtaining an initial set of quantitative results was to feed all the information into a statistical program. the program used was spss and the information processed consisted of the following data: the participants’ research number, year of study, years of learning english, score on the proficiency test, all the answers, and all the accompanying codes. iv. results iv.1. type of determination: light vs. heavy there were three hypotheses related to the type of determination: 1) topological determination7 is expected with pvs containing light lexical parts. 2) lexical determination is expected with pvs containing heavy lexical parts. 3) a more “balanced” determination (=compositionality)8 is expected with pvs containing heavy lexical parts. iv.1.1. results for out for particle verb constructions with out, the analysis of the data revealed that there is a statistically significant difference between aspects of strategic construal with pvs containing light lexical parts and pvs containing heavy lexical parts. more specifically: a) there is more topological determination with pvs with light lexical parts (m = 29.47) than with pvs with heavy lexical parts (m = 10.48) (see tables 1 and 2). the numbers show that 29.47% of participants explained the meaning of particle verb constructions with light verbs in such a way as to refer to topology, whereas only 10.48% of participants did the same while describing particle verb http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� topological vs. lexical determination in english particle verbs (pvs) language value 3 (1), 49–75 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 60 constructions with heavy verbs. the difference proved to be statistically significant (t = 7.073; p < .01) (see table 3). table 1. average occurrence of particular answers (codes) for light verbs in the whole sample. alig_ top alig_ lx alig_ cmp alig_ pph alig_ opp alig_ mis alig_ ctx alig_ lxd n valid 62 62 62 62 62 62 62 62 missing 38 38 38 38 38 38 38 38 mean .2947 .0147 .2023 .2522 .0469 .1950 .0411 .0293 mean % 29.47 1.47 20.23 25.22 4.69 19.50 4.11 2.93 table 2. average occurrence of particular answers (codes) for heavy verbs in the whole sample. ahea_ top ahea _lx ahea_ cmp ahea_ pph ahea_ opp ahea_ mis ahea_ ctx ahea_ lxd n valid 70 70 69 70 70 69 70 70 missing 30 30 31 30 30 31 30 30 mean .1048 .1429 .2947 .2821 .0512 .1280 .0381 .0381 mean % 10.48 14.29 29.47 28.21 5.12 12.80 3.81 3.81 table 3. paired samples comparison of average occurrence of particular answers (codes) for light and heavy verbs in the whole sample. mean n std. deviation t-test p pair 1 alig_top .2933 53 .22526 7.073 < .01 ahea_top .1053 53 .11341 pair 2 alig_lx .0086 53 .03221 -7.400 < .01 ahea_lx .1557 53 .13967 pair 3 alig_cmp .2230 53 .28613 -3.743 < .01 ahea_cmp .3286 53 .29527 pair 4 alig_pph .2607 53 .19452 .440 > .01 ahea_pph .2516 53 .19982 pair 5 alig_opp .0497 53 .06567 .489 > .01 ahea_opp .0550 53 .07113 pair 6 alig_mis .1836 52 .12918 2.754 < .01 ahea_mis .1266 52 .14338 pair 7 alig_ctx .0326 53 .09280 .258 > .01 ahea_ctx .0299 53 .08662 pair 8 alig_lxd .0292 53 .04640 .280 > .01 ahea_lxd .0267 53 .05364 b) conversely, as many as 14.29% of the participants (see table 2) implied lexical determination while describing pvs with heavy lexical parts, whereas only 1.47% of the participants did so while describing pvs with light lexical parts (see table 1). the difference is statistically significant (t = -7.400; p < .01). c) furthermore, 29.47% of the participants described the pv constructions with heavy lexical parts by implying compositionality of meaning, whereas only http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� renata geld language value 3 (1), 49–75 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 61 20.23% of the participants (see tables 1 and 2) did so while explaining the meaning of pv constructions with light verbs. the difference in usage is significant (t = -3.743; p < .01) (see table 3). the results show that the semantic weight of both verbs and particles plays a significant role in the process of meaning construction in l2. on the one hand, semantically light verbs are delexicalized and schematic and, thus, they are likely to be construed as vague and superfluous. on the other hand, particles such as in and out are omnipresent and highly productive, they are the most immediate conceptual tool for mental structuring of space, they build paths and temporal contouring of events, they code change in state of existence, and so forth. hence, learners’ reliance on particles is not surprising. it is also important to mention that the results support previous findings associated with the underuse of high-frequency verbs in l2 processing. furthermore, the nature of the contribution of light and heavy verbs is also evident in the results related to compositionality. it seems easier for learners to find a semantic relation between a heavy verb and the meaning assigned to the whole construction than between a semantically vague verb and its construction. in more general terms, this is another piece of evidence showing that meanings are subjective and dynamic. even though we may claim that the tendency described above is a predictable pattern, the overall semantic picture for l2 is the following: compositionality is partial and gradient. what this means is that: a) the relation between a pv composite structure and its components is not arbitrary, b) a composite structure is not constructed out of its components, nor is it fully predictable, and c) the continuum of compositionality is likely to have various stages, with each stage corresponding to a particular aspect of strategic construal. in other words, the only cognitively realistic description of the construal of the meaning of pvs in l2 is the one that accounts for all the data obtained. what the data show is that the extent to which learners are cognizant of the semantic contribution of component elements, i.e., the analysability of pv constructions, varies considerably in the whole sample. discrepancies between the expected compositional meaning and the actual meaning lessen the degree of analysability, which results in a variety of strategic construals with salience being shifted from one aspect to another. thus, in the same http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� topological vs. lexical determination in english particle verbs (pvs) language value 3 (1), 49–75 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 62 manner that is claimed for native speakers, learners use the components as some sort of “scaffolding” that helps one “reach” the composite structure (langacker 2000: 152, original emphasis). sometimes it seems easier to reach a particular pv via its verb, on some other occasions via its satellite, and sometimes both components seem to correspond to certain aspects of the composite structure. the only logical conclusion is that the semantic continuum of strategic construal of pvs runs from learners relying exclusively on semantically heavy verbs to finding primary motivation for meaning in highly grammaticalized particles. in between the two extremes relating to either lexical or topological/grammatical determination, there are a number of intermediate cases involving gradient and partial compositionality (see figure 1). figure 1. semantic determination in the strategic construal of particle verbs. iv.1.2. results for in for particle verb constructions with in, the analysis of the data revealed the following: a) there is more topological determination with pvs with light lexical parts (m = 29.78) than with pvs with heavy lexical parts (m = 7.06) (see tables 4 and 5). only 7.06% of the participants referred to topology while explaining the pv constructions with semantically heavy lexical parts, whereas as many as 29.78% of the participants referred to the topological part of the construction while explaining the meaning of pvs with light lexical parts. the difference is statistically significant (t = 7.785; p < .01) (see table 6). b) conversely, there is more lexical determination with pvs with heavy lexical parts (m = 17.66) than with pvs with light lexical parts (m = 1.54) (see tables 4 and 5). in the process of constructing the meaning of pvs with heavy lexical parts, as many as 17.66% of the participants relied on the meaning of the lexical part of the construction, and only 1.54% of the participants did so while constructing the meaning of pvs with light lexical parts. the difference is statistically significant (t = 7.266; p < .01) (see table 6). lexical determination gradient and partial compositionality topological determination http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� renata geld language value 3 (1), 49–75 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 63 c) finally, there is a higher frequency of compositional meanings with pvs containing heavy lexical parts (m = 36.86) than with pvs containing light lexical parts (m = 22.69). the numbers show that 36.86% of the participants attended equally to both parts of the construction while constructing the meaning of the particle verbs containing heavy verbs, whereas they attended significantly less to both parts of the construction in the process of constructing and explaining the meaning of the particle verbs with light verbs (t = -4.507; p < .01) (see table 6). table 4. average occurrence of particular answers (codes) for light verbs in the whole sample. alig_ top alig_ lx alig_ cmp alig_ pph alig_ opp alig_ mis alig_ ctx alig_ lxd n valid 72 72 72 72 72 72 72 72 missing 28 28 28 28 28 28 28 28 mean .2978 .0154 .2269 .2469 .0077 .1543 .0448 .0139 mean % 29.78 1.54 22.69 24.69 .77 15.43 4.48 1.39 table 5. average occurrence of particular answers (codes) for heavy verbs in the whole sample. ahea_ top ahea_ lx ahea_ cmp ahea_ pph ahea_ opp ahea_ mis ahea_ ctx ahea_ lxd n valid 59 59 59 58 58 59 59 59 missing 41 41 41 42 42 41 41 41 mean .0706 .1766 .3686 .1983 .0101 .1441 .0410 .0042 mean % 7.06 17.66 36.86 19.83 1.01 14.41 4.01 .42 table 6. paired samples comparison of the average occurrence of particular answers (codes) for light and heavy verbs in the whole sample. mean n std. deviation t-test p pair 1 alig_top .3072 51 .21953 7.785 < .01 ahea_top .0784 51 .09634 pair 2 alig_lx .0153 51 .04979 -7.266 < .01 ahea_lx .1797 51 .16863 pair 3 alig_cmp .2462 51 .25074 -4.507 < .01 ahea_cmp .3840 51 .24893 pair 4 alig_pph .2533 50 .22564 2.477 > .01 ahea_pph .1817 50 .19099 pair 5 alig_opp .0065 51 .02640 -.852 > .01 hea_opp .0114 51 .02896 pair 6 alig_mis .1481 51 .16875 .046 > .01 ahea_mis .1471 51 14962 pair 7 alig_ctx .0305 51 .07723 .124 > .01 ahea_ctx .0294 51 .08948 pair 8 alig_lxd .0022 51 .01556 -.340 > .01 ahea_lxd .0033 51 .01634 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� topological vs. lexical determination in english particle verbs (pvs) language value 3 (1), 49–75 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 64 the results show that the semantic determination for pvs with in is consistent with the one found for out. furthermore, the participants used the same avoidance strategies. the only difference found is that there is no significant difference in the frequency of misinterpretations in relation to pvs with light or heavy verbs, i.e., all strategies are equally frequent with both kinds of constructions (see table 6). this may be attributed to the fact that in was generally found to be much less informative for learners than out (see the second part of the chapter dealing with the strategic construal of particles), and in combination with heavy verbs it often produces very specialized meanings that are difficult to predict. iv.2. type of determination and l1 iv.2.1. pvs with out: semantic determination and l1 given the typological differences between spanish and croatian, as well as the abovediscussed differences in the nature of the verbs forming the pvs selected for this research, our hypotheses were: a) topological determination and higher frequency of compositional meanings are expected in the croatian learners of english; b) lexical determination and lower frequency of compositional meanings are expected in the mexican learners of english. several observable differences between mexicans and croats were found: a) with light table 7. average occurrence of particular answers (codes) for light verbs in the group of croats. verbs with out, compositionality is significantly more frequent in the group of croats. tables 7 (croats) and 8 (mexicans) show average frequencies of the three types of determination and other strategies in the process of meaning construal. table 9 shows statistically significant differences between the two groups: alig_ top alig_ lx alig_ cmp alig_ pph alig_ opp alig_ mis alig_ ctx alig_ lxd n valid 36 36 36 36 36 36 36 36 missing 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 mean .3384 .0051 .2702 .2273 .0505 .1692 .0076 .0328 mean % 33.84 0.51 27.02 22.73 5.05 16.92 .76 3.28 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� renata geld language value 3 (1), 49–75 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 65 table 8. average occurrence of particular answers (codes) for light verbs in the group of mexicans. alig_ top alig_ lx alig_ cmp alig_ pph alig_ opp alig_ mis alig_ ctx alig_ lxd n valid 26 26 26 26 26 26 26 26 missing 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 mean .2343 .0280 .1084 .2867 .0420 .2308 .0874 .0245 mean % 23.43 2.80 10.84 28.67 4.20 23.08 8.74 2.45 table 9. descriptive statistics and mean differences for average occurrence of particular answers (codes) for light verbs (mexicans vs. croats). n mean std. deviation t-test p alig_top croats 36 .3384 .22013 1.876 > .01 mexicans 26 .2343 .20917 alig_lx croats 36 .0051 .02112 -2.203 > .01 mexicans 26 .0280 .04992 alig_cmp croats 36 .2702 .32560 2.714 < .01 mexicans 26 .1084 .12602 alig_pph croats 36 .2273 .19007 -1.259 > .01 mexicans 26 .2867 .17381 alig_opp croats 36 .0505 .06678 .522 > .01 mexicans 26 .0420 .05881 alig_mis croats 36 .1692 .12129 -1.825 > .01 mexicans 26 .2308 .14370 alig_ctx croats 36 .0076 .02548 -2.562 > .01 mexicans 26 .0874 .15742 alig_lxd croats 36 .0328 .04933 .704 > .01 mexicans 26 .0245 .04112 b) with heavy table 10. average occurrence of particular answers (codes) for heavy verbs in the group of croats. verbs with out, compositionality is significantly more frequent in the group of croats and lexical determination is significantly less frequent in the group of croats than in the group of mexicans. tables 10 and 11 show average frequency of determination and table 12 shows statistically significant differences. ahea_ top ahea_ lx ahea_ cmp ahea_ pph ahea_ opp ahea_ mis ahea_ ctx ahea_ lxd n valid 46 46 46 46 46 45 46 46 missing 22 22 22 22 22 23 22 22 mean .1105 .1069 .3605 .2663 .0507 .0981 .0326 .0562 mean % 11.05 10.69 36.05 26.63 5.07 9.81 3.26 5.62 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� topological vs. lexical determination in english particle verbs (pvs) language value 3 (1), 49–75 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 66 table 11. average occurrence of particular answers (codes) for heavy verbs in the group of mexicans. ahea_ top ahea_ lx ahea_ cmp ahea_ pph ahea_ opp ahea_ mis ahea_ ctx ahea_ lxd n valid 24 24 23 24 24 24 24 24 missing 8 8 9 8 8 8 8 8 mean 0.0938 .2118 .1630 .3125 .0521 .1840 .0486 .0035 mean % 9.38 21.18 16.30 31.25 5.21 18.40 4.86 .35 table 12. descriptive statistics and mean differences for average occurrence of particular answers (codes) for heavy verbs (mexicans vs. croats) hr_mex n mean std. deviation t-test p ahea_top croats 46 .1105 .12675 .563 > .01 mexicans 24 .0937 .09925 ahea_lx croats 46 .1069 .12989 -3.267 < .01 mexicans 24 .2118 .12282 ahea_cmp croats 46 .3605 .30381 2.805 < .01 mexicans 23 .1630 .20640 ahea_pph croats 46 .2663 .22813 -.864 > .01 mexicans 24 .3125 .17763 ahea_opp croats 46 .0507 .07345 -.075 > .01 mexicans 24 .0521 .06869 ahea_mis croats 45 .0981 .13211 -2.512 > .01 mexicans 24 .1840 .14112 ahea_ctx croats 46 .0326 .10165 -.597 > .01 mexicans 24 .0486 .11504 ahea_lxd croats 46 .0562 .07039 4.814 < .01 mexicans 24 .0035 .01701 iv.2.2. pvs with in: semantic determination and l1 a) with light table 13. average occurrence of particular answers (codes) for light verbs in the group of croats. verbs with in, no significant differences were found between the two groups of learners (see tables 13 and 14 for average frequency of types of determination and table 15 for significant differences). alig_ top alig_ lx alig_ cmp alig_ pph alig_ opp alig_ mis alig_ ctx alig_ lxd n valid 47 47 47 47 47 47 47 47 missing 21 21 21 21 21 21 21 21 mean .3002 .0142 .2175 .2648 .0095 .1631 .0378 .0024 mean % 30.02 1.42 21.75 26.48 .95 16.31 3.78 .24 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� renata geld language value 3 (1), 49–75 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 67 table 14. average occurrence of particular answers (codes) for light verbs in the group of mexicans. alig_ top alig_ lx alig_ cmp alig_ pph alig_ opp alig_ mis alig_ ctx alig_ lxd n valid 25 25 25 25 25 25 25 25 missing 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 mean .2933 .0178 .2444 .2133 .0044 .1378 .0578 .0356 mean % 29.33 1.78 24.44 21.33 .44 13.78 5.78 3.56 table 15. descriptive statistics and mean differences for average occurrence of particular answers (codes) for light verbs (mexicans vs. croats). n mean std. deviation t-test p alig_top croats 47 .3002 .22572 .128 > .01 mexicans 25 .2933 .20000 alig_lx croats 47 .0142 .04406 -.308 > .01 mexicans 25 .0178 .05251 alig_cmp croats 47 .2175 .25690 -.440 > .01 mexicans 25 .2444 .22906 alig_pph croats 47 .2648 .21178 .988 > .01 mexicans 25 .2133 .20767 alig_opp croats 47 .0095 .03134 .709 > .01 mexicans 25 .0044 .02222 alig_mis croats 47 .1631 .16521 .633 > .01 mexicans 25 .1378 .15476 alig_ctx croats 47 .0378 .09347 -.766 > .01 mexicans 25 .0578 .12472 alig_lxd croats 47 .0024 .01621 -1.503 > .01 mexicans 25 .0356 .10981 b) with heavy table 16. average occurrence of particular answers (codes) for heavy verbs in the group of croats. verbs with in, compositionality is significantly more frequent in the group of croats, and lexical determination is significantly less frequent in the group of croats than in the group of mexicans (see tables 16, 17 and 18). ahea_ top ahea_ lx ahea_ cmp ahea_ pph ahea_ opp ahea_ mis ahea_ ctx ahea_ lxd n valid 39 39 39 38 38 39 39 39 missing 29 29 29 30 30 29 29 29 mean .073 .107 .440 .213 .013 .137 .030 .006 mean % 7.265 10.684 44.017 21.272 1.316 13.675 2.991 .641 table 17. average occurrence of particular answers (codes) for heavy verbs in the group of mexicans. ahea_ top ahea_ lx ahea_ cmp ahea_ pph ahea_ opp ahea_ mis ahea_ ctx ahea_ lxd n valid 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 missing 12 12 12 12 12 12 12 12 mean .0667 .3125 .2292 .1708 .0042 .1583 .0625 .0000 mean % 6.67 31.25 22.92 17.08 .42 15.83 6.25 .00 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� topological vs. lexical determination in english particle verbs (pvs) language value 3 (1), 49–75 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 68 table 18. descriptive statistics and mean differences for average occurrence of particular answers (codes) for heavy verbs (mexicans vs. croats). hr_mex n mean std. deviation t-test p ahea_top croats 39 .0726 .09782 .233 > .01 mexicans 20 .0667 .08377 ahea_lx croats 39 .1068 .13238 -5.232 < .01 mexicans 20 .3125 .16194 ahea_cmp croats 39 .4402 .25503 3.346 < .01 mexicans 20 .2292 .16639 ahea_pph croats 38 .2127 .20930 .770 > .01 mexicans 20 .1708 .16987 ahea_opp croats 38 .0132 .03079 1.193 > .01 mexicans 20 .0042 .01863 ahea_mis croats 39 .1368 .14369 -.541 > .01 mexicans 20 .1583 .14784 ahea_ctx croats 39 .0299 .08862 -1.127 > .01 mexicans 20 .0625 .13211 ahea_lxd croats 39 .0064 .02250 1.780 > .01 mexicans 20 .0000 .00000 iv.2.3. discussion and conclusions for semantic determination and l1 if we compare the data for out, discriminating light and heavy verbs in the whole sample (see section iv.2.) with the data relating to the participants’ l1, we can see that compositionality is again an important aspect of meaning construal. in the whole sample, compositionality was a significantly more predictable pattern in pvs with heavy verbs, whereas in the croatian sample it is more frequent in the strategic construal of both light and heavy pvs (in comparison to the mexican sample). furthermore, in the whole sample, lexical determination was found to be significantly more frequent with heavy pvs. however, the data comparing croatian and mexican samples show that lexical determination is significantly less frequent in the group of croats than in the group of mexicans. as for the data for in, no significant differences between the two groups were found in the construal of light pvs, whereas the construal of heavy pvs shows the same tendencies that were found for the heavy pvs with out, i.e., compositionality is significantly more frequent and lexical determination significantly less frequent in the croatian sample. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� renata geld language value 3 (1), 49–75 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 69 the reason why no significant differences were found between the croats and mexicans in their strategic construal of light pvs with in could be attributed to the following two factors: a) the particle in has proved to be generally less informative than out9; b) the schematicity of light verbs is less likely to lead to a more compositional meaning construal. thus, irrespective of potentially compositionality-biased l1 elements, such as the existence of meaningful verbal prefixes in croatian, the vagueness of the verb and the non-informativeness of the particle make the composite whole equally “complex” for both groups. however, with heavy verbs with both in and out, and with light verbs with out, the croatian participants seem to construct meaning differently. they tend to attend to both parts of the composite whole much more frequently than their mexican counterparts and they rely less on the lexical part of the pv construction. what we wish to suggest is that one of the key factors affecting and shaping this kind of tendency in their strategic construal is the fact that the croatian language exhibits duality in terms of how it expresses the core schema, i.e., it uses satellites in the form of prefixes, even though it often behaves like a verb-framed language such as spanish. in the case of the strategic construal of pv constructions, croatian prefixes functioning as satellites are likely to facilitate meaningful recognition of the role of particles in english. even though various avoidance issues have been discussed in sla research, typological similarities pertaining to the event structure between slavic and germanic languages seem to have been ignored. v. conclusion as already proposed by geld and letica krevelj (2011), it would be scientifically irresponsible to tackle the question of english pvs and their meaning construction in l2 without acknowledging at least two major groups of factors shaping the nature of their construal: a) language-internal factors pertaining to l2 (light vs. heavy verbs, and the degree of informativeness of particles), and language-internal factors pertaining to both l1 and l2 (verb-framed vs. satellite-framed languages); http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� topological vs. lexical determination in english particle verbs (pvs) language value 3 (1), 49–75 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 70 b) language-external factors (general language proficiency, years of learning l2, and various aspects of the learning environment conducive to developing learning strategies, e.g. an early start and continuity in learning, etc.). even though this paper has dealt only with the first group of factors, we wish to conclude with the model offered by geld and letica krevelj (2011: 164) (see figure 2). figure 2. factors affecting the strategic construal of particles in pv constructions (taken from geld and letica krevelj 2011: 164). in the middle of the model shown in figure 2 there is a formula representing two component structures forming a composite whole (cf. langacker 2000: 94). as stressed by langacker, the composite structure (c) should not be taken as merely the union of [a] and [b], nor [a] and [b] as unmodified in (c). in our case, the formula represents pv constructions, and two aspects of component structures are singled out as important for this research: a) their degree of schematicity, and b) their degree of informativeness. but, in addition to the nature of the component structures, the construal of the composite whole in l2 is affected by the learners’ l1, that is to say, their cognitive strategies in dealing with pv constructions are related to structures they encounter and use in their l1. metaphorically speaking, the semantic battle between the particle and the verb will depend on what kind of structures are favoured in l1. thus, for example, the users of ([a] + [b])c degree of schematicity degree of informativeness l2 l1 verb-framed vs. satellite-framed language proficiency cognitive strategies other factors years of learning learning environment metacognitive strategies http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� renata geld language value 3 (1), 49–75 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 71 spanish as l1 are more likely to rely on verbs than on particles. however, the relationship between the two component structures and the overall meaning construal will also depend on language-external factors such as learners’ language proficiency, their educational background, their age when they started learning english, the number of years of learning, the type of schools they attended, etc. in sum, meaning construal in l2 is tremendously complex and dynamic. its exploration demands an approach encompassing multiple factors, especially when investigating highly idiomatic structures such as pvs. notes 1 see also janda’s (1986) analysis of -za in russian. 2 croatian is certainly not a (proto)typical satellite-framed language. it actually exhibits both lexical and satellital strategies in expressing the core schema. 3 in this paper, all schematic verbs will be called light verbs even though some are lighter than others and not all of them would be traditionally classified as light. thus, the term light is used in a broader sense, and it is contrasted with heavy verbs, i.e., the verbs whose meaning is more specific and more transparent. 4 hulstijn and marchena replicated dagut and laufer’s study. thus, their results were entirely comparable. 5 the etymology of the verbs was checked in both learner corpora using the online version of the oxford english dictionary (oed) (ibid.: 84). 6 the data were independently validated by a linguist and a non-linguist validator. their judgements were processed and compared to the author’s, and the results did not show any significant differences. 7 the terms t o p o l o g y and t o p o l o g i c a l d e t e r m i n a t i o n are used (metaphorically and metonymically) to denote all the cases where the meaning of the particle seems to override the meaning of the verb. 8 the term “balanced determination” is identified here with the concept of compositionality inasmuch as it implies how closely an expression approximates the result predicted on the basis of particular component structures. by default, it is assumed that both components contribute to the semantic value of the composite whole. 9 see geld and maldonado this volume. references altenberg, b. and granger, s. 2001. “the grammatical and lexical patterning of make in native and non-native student writing”. applied linguistics, 22 (2), 173-195. biber, d., conrad, s. and leech, g. 2002. longman student grammar of spoken and written english. harlow: longman. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� topological vs. lexical determination in english particle verbs (pvs) language value 3 (1), 49–75 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 72 bolinger, d. 1971. 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a design-based research approach was implemented in this study in order to enable a dialogue between theory and practice. the students attending the reading comprehension course described in the article were advanced university students from various european countries, who studied finnish as a second language. in comparison to traditional reading comprehension courses, it seems that l2 learners benefit from reading digital texts and using a web-based learning platform. the digital environment enabled the learners to read meaningful texts and to actively learn through texts and assignments. moreover, the web-based learning environment enhanced the flexibility of the learning event – flexibility in terms of time, place, course content, and the learners’ language proficiency. however, the course feedback did not support the view that students would automatically be on the “better” side of the digital divide. instead, they do need assistance in order to understand the new learning mindsets and especially learner autonomy. keywords: reading comprehension, second language learning, pedagogical design, finnish as a second language, multimodality i. introduction what happens when one reads in a foreign language? what factors affect the text comprehension process in a multimodal environment? we need a text, possibly pictures, headings, sub-headings, a reader or readers, and a tool with which to process the text, for example, a computer, phone or an electronic reading device. the learners reading http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� mailto:heidi.vaarala@jyu.fi� mailto:juha.jalkanen@jyu.fi� changing spaces, expanding mindsets: towards l2 literacies in a multimodal reading comprehension course language value 2, (1), 68-99 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 69 the texts often come from different cultural backgrounds, which affects their reading. one of the elements of multicultural reading is dialogism, which is why one of this article’s standpoints is an understanding of dialogism in which language and a person’s existence are viewed as interactive (e.g. bahtin 1991, linell 1998, 2009). linell (1998) emphasises the close connections between the structure and use of language. textual comprehension is not seen as something that occurs in the form of an individual’s actions, in his/her own mind; instead, it conjoins with the reader’s previous experiences and social environment. even when reading alone, the reader is, in fact, never alone. language – and from the perspective of this article, also the meaning given to words and texts – is born and develops in the continuous flow of interaction in which a person lives. languages are not seen as systems of neutral and abstract structures of words, as is traditionally the case in monological approaches; rather, language belongs to its users and is born in the situations in which it is used. language is, thus, temporo-spatially dependent and it cannot exist without a context. (cf. linell 1998: 7–8.) throughout time, literacy has been a manifestation of power and education; the ability to read different texts has provided a limited number of people with access to information. in our networked and multimodal world, virtually anybody can access information – but, at the same time, the nature of authorship and ownership of information has changed. new forms of participatory online publishing are continuously being developed. they are based on sharing, cooperation, feedback, increased interaction and evaluation. the utilisation of multiple media in the surrounding world has also created a new environment for language teaching (svensson 2008, lankshear and knobel 2006). typical to teaching text comprehension in the context of a foreign/second language is that the teaching begins from texts that are lexically and syntactically simple. it has traditionally been held that, before comprehensively understanding a text, a language’s system must be mastered. moreover, in the case of learners with reading difficulties, it is quite common that easier texts be given. this is somewhat of a contradiction when we consider that learners encounter complex texts in their everyday lives and have a pressing need for strategies for dealing with such texts. in our view, literacy skills rise to the fore in the context of second language learning. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� heidi vaarala and juha jalkanen language value 2, (1), 68-99 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 70 the interpretation of texts requires cultural knowledge, as texts are always connected to their social, cultural, political, and historical contexts. in a similar way to linell, and according to hasan (1996: 417), the structures of language should not be separated from their intended social uses. likewise, teaching vocabulary separately from the context is not effective, as words have different meanings in different contexts, which can, indeed, be numerous (gee 2008). this article is based on the theories of literacy research that see literacies as social practices. the background of this paradigm is located in a socio-cultural approach to language and its related processes. instead of an individual’s activities, focus is thus on interaction and social activities. a point of particular interest is the kind of literacy that has been influenced by new technologies. (kress 2003, 2010, lankshear and knobel 2006). a more recent view, which differs from the former skills theories, maintains that literacy consists of a number of different practices related to specific events. barton and hamilton (2000: 6) define literacy practices as activities taking place around texts. the term ”literacy event” refers to all events that are in some way connected to a text (heath 1983: 93, barton 1994: 35, barton and hamilton 2000: 7). street (2001: 11) notes that literacy practices are particular ways of thinking, reading, and writing, and that these are situated within cultural contexts. the practices also fluctuate between different individuals’ domains. reading can be examined from the perspectives of both dialogism and literacy research. these approaches share some similar qualities, in particular: the social starting point of activities (bahtin 1996: 293, linell 1998: 7–8, barton et al. 2000: 8–9), the central role of interaction (bahtin 1996: 36, barton and hamilton 2000: 9), the tendency to view language as action (street 1993: 829), dynamism (bahtin 1991: 99, barton and hamilton 2000: 7) and reflection on cultural backgrounds (barton and hamilton 2000: 7). all of these qualities come powerfully to the fore also in examining teaching and learning of text comprehension in new multimodal learning environments. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� changing spaces, expanding mindsets: towards l2 literacies in a multimodal reading comprehension course language value 2, (1), 68-99 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 71 ii. the multimodality of reading the internet has shaped the ways in which we read: moving from a linear towards a more multimodal direction (eagleton and dobler 2007). the traditional text is no longer the only constructor of meaning, as videos, music, social media, and multidimensional hypertexts carry the reader along meandering paths of meaning construction, in which the reader is an active agent. these processes, in which texts are mixed and reconstructed, blur the boundaries of textual ownership and authorship (kress 2010). let us examine this by means of a short example: “the point of books is to combat loneliness,” david foster wallace observes near the beginning of “although of course you end up becoming yourself,” david lipsky’s recently published, book-length interview with him. if you happen to be reading the book on the kindle from amazon, mr. wallace’s observation has an extra emphasis: a dotted underline running below the phrase. not because mr. wallace or mr. lipsky felt that the point was worth stressing, but because a dozen or so other readers have highlighted the passage on their kindles, making it one of the more “popular” passages in the book. (johnson 2010.) the textual and media landscape is noticeably more complicated than has previously been the case. texts are significantly more multimodal and integrate different ways of creating meanings. with regard to textual activities, this means, for example, that social media has adopted a central role. furthermore, textual activities are typically part of a culture of participation (jenkins et al. 2006) and sharing. let us examine this matter via a small vignette. a facebook-user recommends a journal article. this either happens by reading the articles online and then clicking on the facebook recommend button or by posting a direct link to the article on the facebook wall feature. it is then possible to comment on the recommendation – it can be “liked” and the recommendation can be forwarded to other people. in addition, the reader can go to the journal’s website and take part in conversations pertaining to the article. a blog may also function as a channel for sharing such material. the reading process no longer needs to stop with reading and discussing a text. instead, reading can produce, for example, a video in which the reader brings to the fore his or her own interpretations of the text. a video uploaded to youtube might even receive a momentary burst of attention in the form of view and comments. the video might even go on to be disseminated via other social media channels, with new versions in the form http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� heidi vaarala and juha jalkanen language value 2, (1), 68-99 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 72 of “responses”. in teaching literature, a student may upload to a web-platform a music video that is in an intertextual relation to a short story or novel. twitter allows a reader to follow the status updates of an author, which possibly open new windows onto the author’s way of thinking and make it possible for new interpretations to be made. for example, paulo coelho actively updates his twitter status and has, in so doing, made contact with his readers. never before has it been possible for a reader and a writer to have such a close relationship. indeed, every reader can share his or her reading experiences on a global scale, for everyone to read. in some cases, social media may even open up a direct route for conversation between author and reader. in this way, new media forms facilitate a dialogue in which different cultures mix and go on to form new operational cultures. this kind of intercultural dialogue is particularly interesting from the perspective of teaching, as it challenges education to participate in the dialogue. the bringing of new textual syntheses into the classroom necessitates new pedagogical practices. indeed, teachers are faced with a new challenge; namely, that students’ backgrounds are increasingly varied – regarding their culture, identity, prior knowledge, and the ways of thinking and behaving. in these new environments, students develop their identities and new ways of thinking and operating. (see figure 2.) iii. research questions in this article we discuss the benefits and challenges of teaching l2 reading comprehension in a multimodal learning environment from the perspective of course design. in addition, we attempt to find answers to the following questions: what kinds of assignments are meaningful from the learner’s perspective, and what added value does multimodality bring to a learning situation? iv. method the design-based research approach was implemented in this study (see e.g. barab 2006, design-based research collective 2003). design-based research attempts to http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� changing spaces, expanding mindsets: towards l2 literacies in a multimodal reading comprehension course language value 2, (1), 68-99 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 73 understand the connections between theory and practice, as well as between different activity tools. according to collins et al. (2004), design-based research is typified by the research being situated in a real-life learning environment; a lack of prior knowledge of all the research variables, which, instead, become apparent during the research; and flexible methods, which are specified as the research advances. the object of such research is often a learning situation in which different complex factors interact and affect the design of the research. these qualities are also typical of the present research. nonetheless, it should be noted that the present research does not attempt to develop any specific theory, but to contribute to the field of multimodality in l2 language teaching, and furthermore, develop understanding of the literacy practices that become apparent as the new technologies emerge. figure 1. concept of design used in this article. with figure 1 we aim to illustrate the divisions of the concept of design approach as it is understood in this article. research design refers to the design-based research approach. pedagogical design refers to a new way of thinking in language teaching and learning, where the shift in role of a learner’s agency takes place as the learner creates his or her own learning environment. the research-based course design was an essential part of the research. the design process was documented and analysed, as were the products of the students in learning tasks. the aims of the analysis were twofold: on the one hand, we wanted to create a model of the course that can be applied to other contexts, and on the other, understand how to support the students’ agency in a multimodal environment. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� heidi vaarala and juha jalkanen language value 2, (1), 68-99 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 74 v. participants the course considered in this article is part of the finnish as a second language (f2) curriculum offered at the university of jyväskylä language centre. the course’s learning outcome is that, upon completion, students will have more confidence in reading finnish texts and finding information even from difficult texts, as well as having developed their reading strategies. in addition, the students will improve their knowledge of finnish vocabulary and structures. the pedagogical challenge that we attempt to address in this article stems from the short duration of the course, which is why it is particularly important to build a pedagogical progression that crosses course boundaries. the course participants consisted of twelve f2 students from across europe and japan. their language proficiency level varied, but nevertheless floated at around the b1-b2 level. some of the students were in finland for a six-month exchange period, whereas others had lived in finland for several years. the proficiency levels of the students were also affected by how much they had previously studied finnish and how many finnishspeaking contacts they had acquired. the main subjects of the students were economics, educational science, intercultural communication, or languages. vi. broadening the ways of thinking a change in the way of thinking is a central factor in the transition process of teaching and learning text comprehension. a long-held view within research into reading regards reading as the decoding of texts, which can still be noticed within many learners’ learning cultures. even though a social perspective on working with texts has indeed been part of the discourse surrounding literacy research for some time, engineering change within teaching practices is still a pedagogical challenge. lankshear and knobel (2006) describe the change in operational practices via two mindsets. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� changing spaces, expanding mindsets: towards l2 literacies in a multimodal reading comprehension course language value 2, (1), 68-99 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 75 table 1. mindsets 1 and 2. mindset 1 mindset 2 predictability unpredictability materiality immateriality individual’s knowledge and skills community’s knowledge and skills knowledge within institutions knowledge within individuals control openness one-time occurrence continuity monomodality multimodality instrumental value of technology technology as operating culture among other things, typical of mindset 1 is a view of the world as being more technological even though the operational methods have remained the same as before. here, individuals are the central units of activity, and expertise and authority concentrate on individuals and institutions. moreover, learning spaces are closed and are intended for specific purposes, and books constitute the core literary media. according to mindset 2, the world is significantly different from what it has previously been. this change is primarily associated with the development of new technologies and new ways of doing things as a result of this development. tools are used in processing information, creating meaning, and in communication. expertise and authority are shared and collective. moreover, learning environments are seen as open, continuous, and flexible. in this view, texts are increasingly digital in nature. the mindsets can be adapted for the purposes of teaching textual comprehension. in this process, the teacher may think that the lesson and the matters addressed therein should be predictable. in fact, the lesson plan may be oriented at this – what elements in the texts being addressed are probably new to the students and are likely to be examined within the lesson. the lesson may indeed be demarcated as a one-time entity, in which, aside from the teacher’s knowledge and skills, the knowledge and skills of the individual students are emphasised. the means of exchanging information during the textual comprehension lesson easily follows the traditional irc model. after all, we are dealing with “text” here. therefore, students go to class with handouts under their arms, having clarified some difficult points in the text in advance; they may bring along some copies of grammar exercises to enhance their confidence and fill the time potentially left over from “actual text processing”. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� heidi vaarala and juha jalkanen language value 2, (1), 68-99 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 76 nevertheless, teachers are people who want to develop themselves and their own teaching. the teacher wants to be a good teacher both now and in the future. the everchanging world requires that teachers become conscious of new ideas and continuously reflect on their own activities. how can one respond to students’ changed idea of communality and, for example, sharing? their knowledge and actions are not confined to institutions – rather their knowledge is that which they can find from their ipods, in open, social media information sources. however, learners’ critical thinking and, overall, that which they consider to be information/knowledge, is not necessarily fully developed; instead, it is precisely in regards to this matter that they need guidance and counselling. students should be provided with an idea about what matters they should focus on and what is advisable for them to know and understand. the task of the teacher is to mediate and to orientate the activities between the two aforementioned ways of thinking (mindsets 1 and 2). this is not easy; however, it is much easier to walk to the lessons when one does not need to drag along texts, photocopies, dictionaries, and so forth. instead, everything that may be required can be found online. it may in fact come as somewhat of a relief for the teacher him/herself to realise that s/he is not required to know everything; instead, s/he can think just as the learners do – no matter what, the answer can probably be found via google! from the perspective of a school, the challenge stems from the fact that both of the aforementioned ways of thinking are simultaneously present in the classroom. most classrooms probably share a number of practices originating from both of these mindsets (figure 2). the practices are in continuous interaction, with each shaping the other. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� changing spaces, expanding mindsets: towards l2 literacies in a multimodal reading comprehension course language value 2, (1), 68-99 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 77 figure 2. traditional mindset and new mindset in a classroom setting. in the figure above, we attempt to illustrate a new learning space in which elements of both ways of thinking are present (mindsets 1 and 2). in bringing together both 1 and 2, a hybrid way of thinking is born, in which characteristics of both ways of thinking can be detected, but which is nonetheless clearly different from either of the two original forms. both participation and sharing are made possible in this space, in which the learner and the teacher are actors on equal footings. as figure 2 illustrates, the learning situation is complex, and different kinds of variables are also present in the course at hand. vii. what kind of course design can efficient learning in a multimodal environment be supported with? in recent times, there has been clear increase in research interest in learning environments and their role in supporting learning processes. underlying here is the concept of learning by design (see e.g. kalantzis and cope 2004, gee 2005, healy http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� heidi vaarala and juha jalkanen language value 2, (1), 68-99 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 78 2008). according to our perspective, a course design includes contents, feedback-giving and evaluation practices, as well as operational methods and tools. the personal learning environment (ple)1 is one of the most interesting solutions for current education researchers. attwell (2007: 1) has stated that the issue here is not one of a new programme but rather of a new approach to using technology in learning. we find this an intriguing approach, because attention to the pedagogical aspects is still somewhat scarce even if the amount of technology in schools has steadily increased (cuban 2001, taalas 2005). so the new media have not reformed the actual study processes. the formal learning environment for this course was constructed as a combination of a virtual and a physical space. the moodi learning environment, developed by the centre for applied language studies and the language centre at the university of jyväskylä, served as the virtual space. moodi is used at the university of jyväskylä primarily in language learning and teacher education courses. the idea underlying the development of moodi is one of a personal learning environment in which making use of different media and working practices enables different learner’s paths, rather than the course content being hierarchically divided and teacher-driven. instead, the aim is that the learning environment should, if anything, be the learners’ own space, in which studyrelated activities (e.g. student-initiated discussions) have a place of their own. according to taalas (2005: 20), a pedagogical design must offer a space for different types of communities, allowing them to participate in negotiations regarding the aims and meanings of the tasks at hand. such communities also need tools both for constructing their own design and then sharing it. taking leave from tradition, we wanted to implement the tasks in such a way that they would not specifically test how well a learner has understood a text, but rather what the learner is able to accomplish after having read the text. the follow-up task after the text had been read was thus primarily intended to offer multi-faceted information about the learner’s level and, possibly, any support needs. in this way, each student could be provided with individually tailored and scheduled support (scaffolding). the course was initiated by a consideration of what the desired teaching would be and in what form it would be recommendable to teach. in this way, the very core content of http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� changing spaces, expanding mindsets: towards l2 literacies in a multimodal reading comprehension course language value 2, (1), 68-99 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 79 the course was at the fore. it was decided that the course would be divided into nine themes, of which two would be left open. the open themes were determined on the basis of current affairs. the final themes were: 1) consumer behaviour 2) musical taste 3) educational exports 4) comic strips 5) blogs 6) information search 7) working life and job-seeking the current affairs were chosen to be the finnish winter and climate change. the intention here was that the course contents would be situated in the students’ own world, in order that they would be meaningful for them. each of the themes was assigned a text or texts and assignments, the focus of which was language in practice, as well as assignments about vocabulary and structures. the structure and vocabulary assignments were intended to offer tools for analysing language adopted in formal and informal situations. attempts were made to strengthen the sense of community on the course via the discussion forums for each of the themes, which were also intended to direct the learners towards a culture of more equal participation. the aim was to provide the students with the tools needed to analyse prior learning, to promote their ability to take responsibility for their own learning, and to direct them in benefitting more effectively from affordances facilitated by the language learning environment. the concept of affordance also offers an interesting approach to the planning of learning objects (see kuk 2003). in this context the concept of affordance is understood in such a way that the design of the course in question provides learners with an opportunity to become better aware of those language elements that are available to them, for example, via different media. in a more concrete sense, this means that the learners were directed towards going beyond the classroom and exploring their environments, and towards discussing with native speakers of finnish. during the contact teaching lessons, these elements of student-directed exploration were analysed http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� heidi vaarala and juha jalkanen language value 2, (1), 68-99 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 80 and their contextual dependency was discussed on the basis of the learners’ own observations. figure 3. course design (f2f = face-to-face), edited from taalas (2005). definitions of the learners’ language skill profiles were made at the beginning of the course, with the aim that the learners themselves would become more aware of their own language proficiency level and development needs. one of the aims of using the moodi learning environment was to facilitate different learner pathways on the basis of each of the learners’ needs. the definition of the proficiency levels was conducted in accordance with the level descriptions of the common european framework of reference (cefr). the learners familiarised themselves with these descriptions during the first course meeting and thereafter used their blogs to write about what, in their own opinions, were their development needs regarding their language skills, as well as about the ways in which they could develop these areas. in addition, we asked the learners to describe themselves as readers and to reflect on their relation to texts and reading. with the help of an image describing different types of texts, the learners were challenged to reflect on their own idea of what a text is. in reviewing the answers to this question, the learners’ http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� changing spaces, expanding mindsets: towards l2 literacies in a multimodal reading comprehension course language value 2, (1), 68-99 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 81 concepts of what constitutes a text were shown to be very traditional: according to many of them, a text is a written whole consisting of words and sentences. in addition to written texts, we wanted to focus the learners’ attention on other kinds of semiotic systems which, to an increasing extent, connote meanings (kress and van leeuwen 1996). images are not haphazard decorations, rather they are often specifically chosen, and their significance in directing the reading and interpretation process cannot be ignored. in the image task, we asked the learners to choose the best news image related to the theme and then justify their choice in the discussion forum. there were various types of images, and the choices were diverse indeed. the same image was often chosen for various reasons. among the reasons given were the information offered by the image and the feelings and/or associations it evoked. all in all, the choices were very conscious, and no real problems presented themselves in offering reasons for them. the open design was intended to facilitate different learner pathways. by ‘open design’, we mean that it was usually possible to complete the assignments on the basis of one’s own interests, in terms of content, but also at different language proficiency levels. in addition, the support and accompanying extra resources were individualised. we attempted to guide the learners towards finding materials that were suitable for them, with the intention of committing them to the idea of over-arching learning outcomes. checkpoints were used during the course in order that the learners would stop at regular intervals to examine what they had learned up until then, what they still wanted to learn, and with which methods they could achieve their goals. viii. which kinds of tasks are meaningful from the perspective of the learners? on the basis of sociocultural theory, an assignment is defined as an activity that the participants construct when completing a task. the sociocultural approach emphasises the dialogical processes associated with the completion of an assignment (e.g. scaffolding) and the ways in which these affect language use and learning. (ellis 2000: 193). ellis (2000: 199–200) also notes that assignments which lead to negotiations about meaning are efficient from the point of view of learning. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� heidi vaarala and juha jalkanen language value 2, (1), 68-99 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 82 earlier studies indicate that tasks that promote a learner-centred approach and encourage negotiations about meaning share certain factors. among these factors, our article highlights the following: 1. tasks without a predefined answer 2. tasks requiring multifaceted working methods 3. tasks in which meaning occupies the prime position 4. tasks directed at a specific goal 5. tasks in which the activity is evaluated on the basis of output 6. tasks connected to the real world 7. tasks with a required information exchange 8. tasks involving a two-way (as opposed to one-way) exchange of information 9. tasks that are not familiar to the interactants 10. tasks involving a human/ethical type of problem 11. tasks without a context (in the sense that the task does not provide contextual support for communication), involving considerable detail. (statements 3-6, cf. skehan [1998: 268], statements 7-11 ellis [2000: 200]) instead of only focussing on the production of an intelligible output, teaching should offer students the possibility to learn how to act in situations that they might encounter outside of the classroom. our aim was to increase the learners’ awareness of their own reading practices and to become actively aware of the study and free-time literacy events to which different literacy practices are closely attached. we asked the course participants to keep a blog for the period of one week, using the moodi learning environment. the intention here was that the students would be able to access each other’s blogs and above all else we, as the course teachers, would gain knowledge of what the students read in their free time. to our surprise, we noticed that the participants linked the online texts that they had read to the blogs, e.g. different newspaper articles, links to articles in their own fields, and points of personal interest. as a task, the reading blog fulfilled many of the good task criteria: it did not typically have a predefined outcome. moreover, the task was connected to the reader’s real world and the outcome – links to the texts read by each of the students – which gave the other learners genuinely new information. for their part, the numerous links to online texts http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� changing spaces, expanding mindsets: towards l2 literacies in a multimodal reading comprehension course language value 2, (1), 68-99 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 83 consolidated our original thought regarding the need for dealing with online texts in f2 teaching. ix. the significance of the tasks the use of authentic texts in second/foreign language teaching still appears to be a subject for debate (see e.g. gilmore 2007). ultimately, the choice of texts depends on what kinds of textual conventions we want the learners to focus on. nevertheless, we would like to focus attention on another area – that of the authenticity of the activity. furthermore, rather than authenticity, we would like to address the significance of the activity. in asking whether the learners understand what, and above else, why they study certain things, we can come closer to the aim of significant activity. we illustrate this matter via two examples: a student who has not had any problems in reading seldom understands why reading strategies need to be taught. similarly, if a student needs to read texts the understanding of which requires some familiarity with the subject matter, which the student does not possess, or, alternatively, is not even interested in the subject, reading may be seen to lack significance. in other words, significance may be learner-based, with his or her life situation, for example, adding significance to a certain subject. nevertheless, particularly in education, attention should be paid to the fact that signification sometimes requires a pathway including different stages via which the learner becomes committed to understanding the matter at hand. during the course, texts were examined in many different ways and via many different tasks. in the following, we explore the significance of these tasks from the perspective of the learners. as a set of exemplary tasks, two themes were selected from the aforementioned nine thematic wholes: 1) climate change (non-fiction text) 2) working life and job-seeking ix.1. climatic change reading non-fiction texts was practiced with the aid of an online article entitled “information about climate change”. climate change is the most serious threat of our http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� heidi vaarala and juha jalkanen language value 2, (1), 68-99 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 84 time”. the article is available in the “c02 report” journal,2 which is an independent online news publication founded in 2008. the journal reports on news connected to climate change and energy. the long article contains basic information about climate change, images, figures, and, in conclusion, instructions on how the reader can have an effect on climate change. the students began familiarising themselves with the subject via a task in which they completed an online carbon footprint test. upon completion of the test, the students shared their results by completing a poll with the others and also got to see the size of the other students’ carbon footprints. polls were commonly used in introducing students to modules. afterwards, the students had to scan through the text and think about under which headings they could find information on a) what climate change means b) what causes it c) what are its consequences the answers were written, briefly and in the students’ own words, into a chart. for the next stage in this learning assignment, the students chose three images from the article and then told what, in their opinion, the images communicated about climate change. in the vocabulary task, the learners had to build sentences around words separated from the article, for example: ________________ the most serious threat _______________ on the moodi learning platform, the students have the opportunity to see their peers’ answers already before they have begun to write their own. on the one hand, this supports the less advanced students in completing the assignment, but it may also encourage students to tell about their personal experiences and spark an interest in unpredictable solutions. for example, one student offers a vision of the consequences of climate change and adds his/her own comment: “there is a great ice-age, just as was the case in roland emmerich’s disaster movie the day after tomorrow”. when the students choose three images from the article and explain their connections to climate change, they complete an assignment in which the answer is not predefined and is, instead, genuinely open. in doing this assignment, the students get to practice using vocabulary related to climate change. they can also present their prior knowledge about the subject from outside of the text, as well as expressing their opinions about climate http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� changing spaces, expanding mindsets: towards l2 literacies in a multimodal reading comprehension course language value 2, (1), 68-99 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 85 change, and thus fulfil one of the criteria of a good task by considering ethical questions. moreover, the vocabulary task does not have either correct or incorrect solutions; instead, the students write different kinds of statements around the key words. the most serious threat student a: humans are to nature and animals student b: for the glacier, is climate change. student c: nuclear power can be/might be to the environment. student d: it is said that climate change is for people, the planet, and health. student e: terrorism is to humanity. sample 1. students’ statements. in this way the task enables the students to write about the matters that are significant to them. ix.2. working life and job-seeking literacy skills associated with working life and employment are vital to students who require guidance in applying for work during their studies – this topic was taken up on the course upon the specific request of the students. in other words, the whole assignment had an explicit connection to the real world. as usual, the set of assignments started with a poll. the students told whether they had been in work and how they had been treated as foreign employees. in this way the students had already formulated a general idea of each other’s work experience before the contact teaching sessions. the text used in the assignment was the employment and economic development office’s job search web pages, on which the students searched for summer work according to criteria suitable to themselves. the students were not given any direct links but, instead, they navigated the finnish web pages, looking for new information. afterwards, the students had to complete the form below: http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� heidi vaarala and juha jalkanen language value 2, (1), 68-99 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 86 what does the job advertisement state… write here what you would say about the matter in your application about the salary? about the period of employment? (duration) about the working hours? about work experience? about education? sample 2. students’ form. in a continuation assignment, the students completed a profession choice task on the office’s web pages. they were required to first read and then answer 72 questions, the intention of which was to suggest a few professions suited to them. after this, they commented on the professions that the programme had suggested for them. one student commented, for example: subject teacher (history, languages, home economics, sport, mathematics, music, industrial arts, crafts, or mother tongue), class teacher, driving instructor – nice that i’ve chosen the right profession. in other words, according to the avo test, i could become whatever kind of teacher. certainly not a music teacher or driving instructor, but all of the others are possibilities. i’ll hopefully become a class teacher. i like working with children and with different types of people. i’m calm and a good listener. but i also like talking. this usually works out better with children. i think that it’d be fun with them at school, because children are nice. of course, there are also lots of problems, but i’m of the opinion that there’s a solution to everything. in this assignment the focus is on significance and not on linguistic structures. the task is directed at a specific goal, i.e. towards the student being prepared for job application. the learners’ work is then evaluated on the basis of how they react to the job application and how they comment on the profession that the programme proposes for them; in other words, it is grounded in the learners’ own output. in addition, the task is connected to the real world: it increases the students’ readiness for applying for jobs. as such, the set of assignments is significant for the learners and meets the aforementioned criteria of a good task. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� changing spaces, expanding mindsets: towards l2 literacies in a multimodal reading comprehension course language value 2, (1), 68-99 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 87 ix.3. new literacies in the assigments the new literacy skills can be examined from two perspectives in the assignments. first and foremost, in many cases the text at hand did not take the form of a traditional, written text; instead, it was, for example, an image, comic/cartoon, video, voice recording, or a hypertext. secondly, the work on the texts addresses activities such as information searches and textual intervention. videos were also used to aid the text comprehension: for example, an interview with an author might have opened up alternative perspectives on a text. ix.4. blogs a blog is a form of participatory publishing, which is clearly connected to the media culture revolution. anyone at all can start to write a blog about whichever subject he/she likes, and do so either in his/her own name or under a pseudonym. an abundance of blogs have appeared in recent years, about different themes (e.g. fashion, music) and hobbies (e.g. reading, equestrianism). in addition, autobiographical, diary-type and social (e.g. written by politicians) blogs have maintained a presence in the ‘blogosphere’. some of the newcomers to the scene are the different types of video and image blogs. similarly, the limits between specific forms and formats are blurred in such a way that blog texts have also been published in book form. (more specifically on blogs in e.g. lankshear and knobel 2006.) we wanted to incorporate blogs into the textual content of our course also because of their content-related and linguistic diversity. for the blog tasks, we asked the students to familiarise themselves over the course of a week with some finnish blogs that they found interesting. in other words, the students got the opportunity to choose the blogs themselves. we did, however, provide some guidance regarding finding blogs in thematic lists/directories. after the familiarisation period, the task was to answer some questions relating to the blogs. these questions concerned the blogs’ themes, style, content, and visual aspects. the answers then provided the bases for the conversations held during the contact teaching sessions, in which each student got the opportunity to present the blogs that they had read. to our surprise, it became apparent that only a few http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� heidi vaarala and juha jalkanen language value 2, (1), 68-99 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 88 of the students had previously read blogs. in the blog-related vocabulary tasks, the learners analysed, among other things, the productivity of coining verbs used in social media (to tweet -> tweetata, to facebook -> facebookata). ix.5. text types and intervention the blurring of boundaries between different text types is a central phenomenon in the textual world of the 2000s. it is precisely for this reason that we wanted to see how the learners dealt with the relationship between traditional and newer text types. the task was realised in the form of a textual intervention, in which the learners were split into three groups, with each group given its own text to discuss. the first text was a piece of radio news written in the form of an online text, which was also available as an audio file. the text had to be developed into a letter to the editor in a youth magazine. the second text was a discussion thread from an internet forum, and this had to be changed into a piece of news. the third text was a letter to the editor published in a newspaper, which had to be transformed into an online discussion text. the group work was conducted on the etherpad platform, which allowed each of the groups’ members to edit a joint text in real time and in a different colour. a chat feature was also available in the programme, and this was used by the writers to engage in a meta-discussion process. the intervention task proved to be a challenge. this was, in part, due to the word-processing software, which was new to all of the students. moreover, the specificities of the text types and switching between them were also seen to bring about difficulties. negotiation was also required regarding the content and aims of the tasks at hand. with enough guidance, the text editing succeeded, and, in the end, the changes made in the texts were discussed in class. the most significant changes were made regarding language (spoken–written language, signs, smileys), but structural changes were also made in the texts. for example, the group responsible for developing the letter to the editor into an internet discussion text clearly attempted to break with the singular argumentative voice of the original, transforming it into a multi-voiced conversation. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� changing spaces, expanding mindsets: towards l2 literacies in a multimodal reading comprehension course language value 2, (1), 68-99 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 89 ix.6. information search in addition to the new texts, the focus was also on textual activities. one core activity is searching for information, which is not quite the same thing in the context of a second language as in that of a mother tongue. how do learners find the information they need on finnish websites? what kinds of skills does a learner need in order to be able to navigate these sites? particularly with novice learners, such reading strategies as scanning and skimming play an important role in helping the learner to find the essential information even in long and complex texts. but can strategies for information searching be taught to l2 learners? if they can, then how and, above all else, is it even necessary? we decided to elucidate on this matter. in one round of questions, we asked the learners for what purpose they use search engines. the most commonly stated uses were 1) searching for study-related information, 2) the need to find a quick answer to something, 3) looking for items of news. in relation to their studies, the students cited books as being the most common sources of information, after which came search engines and e-journals from their own fields. in their free time, however, search engines were cited as the most important tools for information retrieval; with different kinds of online resources, which they directly accessed without the need for a search, being cited as the second-most important. in the information search task, the students had to look for information about sleep as a resource (cf. kiili et al. 2008). in selecting the subject, we went over many options before settling on this because it was a suitably abstract subject. the google search does not yield results with the exact phrase. in other words, the learner has to break down the subject into smaller pieces: what is meant by the word resource, and what about sleep as a resource? the type of knowledge that a learner needs is determined by his or her individual conceptions and preconceptions about the subject. in other words, the end result in this kind of a task is very open. precisely because students may come to a specific conclusion by following very different pathways, we wanted to phase the task in such a way that these pathways, or at least certain points of reference, would become visible. this occurred via the implementation of pauses between the phases, during which the learners had to stop and communicate what they intended to do next, and why. the pauses were organised as follows: http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� heidi vaarala and juha jalkanen language value 2, (1), 68-99 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 90 1) list the search terms that you intend to use to look for information 2) list the web pages that you have chosen and explain what makes them good 3) become more closely acquainted with the pages and then report on some details: who publishes the site, what is the appearance of the pages like, is it easy to navigate the pages? the results of the first stage were mostly as expected. the searches were performed with the inflected forms of the finnish word uni (meaning ‘sleep’), e.g. unen, unta, unet; with its synonyms (e.g. lepo, nukkuminen, meaning ‘rest’, ‘sleeping’), and with different combinations of the elements in the original phrase (e.g. uni voimavarana/ voimavarana uni). the first part of the compound voima+vara was also used separately as a search term, which demonstrated strong deductive skills in linguistics. in addition, other words were used as search terms; for example, terveys, elämäntavat, liikunta and psyyke (health, way of life, sport, and psyche), which demonstrated the learners’ skills to conjoin related concepts to the theme. of interest, here, is the fact that one student’s search words included an academic article and research finding, demonstrating the learner’s attempts to find scientific information. on the whole, the search terms were very informative insofar as they revealed why some students’ sources of information differed so much from those of the others. indeed, the sources varied between leisure portals and scientific articles published by universities. x. student feedback after the planning and implementation stages of design-based research, focus is on local-level impact assessment, on the basis of which a broader, general-level evaluation is conducted. the role of the participants (subjects) is also seen as active in designbased research. in the current research, detailed feedback was collected from the participating students for the purpose of developing the texts in finnish 2 course: they completed a broad-ranging feedback form, from which we then selected a few key items to investigate. the students were asked, among other things, whether they had used other web-based learning environments during their studies. contrary to our expectations regarding the answers, it became apparent that half of the students had only seldom used web-based http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� changing spaces, expanding mindsets: towards l2 literacies in a multimodal reading comprehension course language value 2, (1), 68-99 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 91 learning environments. hence, we cannot always expect that students would be on the better side of the “digital divide” and would master the use of new learning environments. the students also gave feedback on the supervision offered during the course. not all of the assignments uploaded to the net by the l2 students were looked over in detail; the primary and most important focus of the course was not on the form of language used but, instead, on developing textual comprehension and understanding the different functions of language. feedback on the tasks completed by the students was usually given during the contact teaching sessions, during which attention was paid to a specific problem that was clearly common to all of the group members or, alternatively, a particularly good outcome. according to the collected feedback, however, the students did not deem this as sufficient and would have hoped to receive more specific feedback on their answers/texts. due to the sheer volume of the texts produced by the students during the course, and the limited time available to the teachers, it is impossible to comment on all of the students’ work. in the future, the course design should include “check points”, at which students receive feedback on their output, as agreed in advance. generally speaking, the students gave positive feedback about the course assignments – they regarded the text selection on the course as successful, the texts as suitably challenging, and the questions relating to the texts as relevant. the overall structure of the course assignments – the poll section, the text and question section, the form and meaning section, and the words section – was also regarded as successful. when the students were asked whether they would make use of the course materials at a later date, there was a degree of uncertainty in their answers. it is interesting to consider the ways in which the students conceptualise ‘course material’ – does it only refer to material produced by the teacher, or do they also regard the material they themselves have uploaded to the learning environment as learning material? indeed, one of the key ideas behind the course was that the students would be able to make use of the course material after the course, for example, in looking for jobs. the following things were mentioned by the students as having provided support in completing the assignments: dictionaries (4 mentions), online dictionaries (3 mentions), http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� heidi vaarala and juha jalkanen language value 2, (1), 68-99 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 92 google, grammars, web links, and material from previous courses. some students had also used academic articles, online journals, and doctoral dissertations. the problem with using dictionaries arises from the lack of context and the fact that some of the dictionaries used by the students were hopelessly outdated. on a text course, the idea is actually to prompt students to also read texts other than those handled on the course. when the students were asked what they had learned during the course, they responded that they had learned a lot about matters pertaining to the use of language. this complied with the aims of the course. furthermore, they mentioned that they had received a lot of useful information regarding different topics, for example, applying for a job. they had learned how to search for information and become aware of different text types. one of the students mentioned that the most important thing he had learned was the observation that texts occupy a major role in his own learning process. in commenting on the working methods used on the course, some of the students drew attention to the fact that, during the contact teaching sessions, there were learners of different levels in the groups. in their opinion, the task at hand would have been completed better if the groups had consisted of learners of the same level. situating students of different levels in the same group was, however, a deliberate act, with the intention of promoting the learners’ well-timed support to each other (scaffolding). on the whole, the students gave the course good or extremely good feedback. they noted that the course was not timeand space-dependent, as it could be completed at home, with not even trips abroad preventing or disrupting course participation. one student noted: “it didn’t seem so much like university and was a little nicer.” xi. how did the use of the online learning environment change the learning process? during the course, new literacies became a clearly more visible part of the learning activities. one example of this is the internet, which became the key media for learning. the different types of text offered via the internet and the different ways of working with them made the course content more multifaceted. the learners were guided towards making use of, for example, google as a corpus, and they did indeed quickly adopt search engines as a resource. among other things, they commented on the ways in http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� changing spaces, expanding mindsets: towards l2 literacies in a multimodal reading comprehension course language value 2, (1), 68-99 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 93 which they had made use of discussion forums and blogs in studying new words and their meanings. the multimodal design of the course was intended to achieve controlled flexibility. this flexibility was indeed realised regarding the time, place, content, and language proficiency level. hence the students were able to relatively freely affect their own schedules in completing the assignments. the only temporal constraints imposed on the students stemmed from the contact teaching sessions: the assignments had to be completed before the sessions. this nonetheless raised a few problems, as some students returned their assignments just before the start of the sessions. due to the fact that the content of the contact sessions was structured around the work uploaded by the students to the learning environment, this usually resulted in the teacher having to hurriedly go over the last few replies before going to teach, and making any necessary changes to the content. in their feedback, the students remarked on having spent many hours completing each of the tasks. one explanation for the late handing in of the tasks might be the fact that draft-stage work cannot be saved in moodi. once a task had been responded to, the response could no longer be altered. the students were also granted freedom regarding space. the contact teaching sessions committed the students to being in a specific place once a week, but the assignments could be completed wherever there were suitable technological resources. in principle, the contact teaching sessions also allowed a certain degree of flexibility, insofar as each of the students was able to see and learn from the others’ answers in moodi. after all, the learners did not make much use of this feature. with regards to the content, the open nature of the assignments enabled a flexible approach. particularly in tasks related to language knowledge, the learners could write about subjects that they found meaningful. flexibility in terms of language proficiency level was yet the most significant feature. the assignments completed via the online learning environment allowed the students to demonstrate their language skills almost without limits. moreover, even the less advanced students were able to shine and demonstrate the kind of expertise that might not have otherwise come to light. this was essential in relation to both evaluation and supervision. nevertheless, on the basis of this research, the need to develop new types of guidance, feedback giving, and assessment methods was identified, in order to take into account the character of working in a multimodal environment. (see also figure 2.) http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� heidi vaarala and juha jalkanen language value 2, (1), 68-99 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 94 the learning environment opened up the learning process to the world outside of the academic setting, and vice-versa. xii. summary in this article we have discussed the benefits and challenges of teaching l2 reading comprehension in a multimodal learning environment, from the perspective of course design. one of the central outcomes of this study is the design model of a multimodal course presented in figure 3. when learners are directed towards going beyond the classroom and to utilise language used in informal settings as a learning resource, it is vital that support is provided. therefore, checkpoints are essential; learners need to pause at crucial points in the course to revisit their learning objectives and to rethink the ways in which they accomplish them. in this particular case, the face-to-face lessons functioned as secondary level checkpoints. in addition, our aim was to find out what kinds of assignments are meaningful from the learner’s perspective. our data reveals that l2 learners read mainly for functional purposes (e.g. work-related texts) and the informal textual landscape is primarily digital. it is important, then, that tasks assigned to students meet these needs. it seems that motivation is related to the meaningfulness of the task. in some cases, it might make more sense that the teacher makes decisions on the materials chosen, and in such cases it is important that attention is paid to designing activity paths that make the task meaningful to a learner. our third aim concerned the added value that multimodality brings to a learning situation. as we have argued, multimodality introduces a great deal of new elements to a learning setting. it is, however, important to note that multimodal course design allows learners to take different paths, and in doing so, choose the resources and tools that promote one’s own learning. moreover, the multimodal course design allows flexibility in terms of time, place and language proficiency level. in comparison to traditional reading comprehension courses, it seems that l2 learners benefit from reading digital texts and using a web-based learning platform. the digital environment enabled the learners to read relevant texts and to actively learn through texts and assignments. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� changing spaces, expanding mindsets: towards l2 literacies in a multimodal reading comprehension course language value 2, (1), 68-99 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 95 however, the course feedback did not support the view that students would automatically be on the “better” side of the digital divide. instead, they do need assistance in order to understand the new learning mindsets and especially learner autonomy. xiii. conclusions reading is in a transition state. the way of reading and understanding reading is changing. the reader has previously been thought to be alone in the action of reading. now the reader is seldom alone: texts can be read and commented on simultaneously, and even in such a way that all of the readers are aware of this. reading is becoming an online activity, and the ways in which we read are transforming from linear to intertextual. the concept of a text has also changed – texts no longer exist merely in printed form; instead, a text is constituted by every social act associated with reading. multimodality further blurs the boundaries of individual texts. the change in the very nature of reading poses a wealth of challenges for l2 literacy pedagogy. it requires us to consider the criteria of a good task from a new perspective, for example, that of how to create a task that genuinely encourages interaction. the learners also have easier access to texts that are meaningful for them – and this blurs the roles of teacher and learner. another interesting aspect is that the accessibility of texts has changed. no matter where we are, the repertoire of texts available to language learners is almost unlimited. it is possible to define the internet as a language environment. this puts the concepts of second language and foreign language in a whole new light, as they have traditionally been defined by the surrounding language environment. in this article, we have examined new multimodal literacies from the perspective of teaching textual comprehension. the roles of the teacher and student are in a state of continuous change as new, multimodal learning environments are being adopted. nonetheless, the change is a process and not an individual event. the expanding of learning spaces onto the web is just the first step in the pedagogical shift in second language teaching. negotiating new working methods and objectives therein is vital. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� heidi vaarala and juha jalkanen language value 2, (1), 68-99 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 96 notes 1 the concept of ple in higher education, see laakkonen (forthcoming). 2 co2-raportti online journal. 9 april 2010 <http://www.co2-raportti.fi/index.php?page=ilmastonmuutos> references attwell, g. 2007. “personal learning environments the future of elearning?” elearning papers, 2 (1), 1-8. bakhtin, m. 1991. dostojevskin poetiikan ongelmia. helsinki: orient express. bakhtin, m. 1996. “discourse in the novel”. in bakhtin, m. the dialogic imagination: four essays. slavic series no. 1. austin, texas: university of texas press, 259442. barab, s. 2006. “design-based research. a methodological toolkit for the learning scientist”. in sawyer r.k. (ed.) the cambridge handbook of the learning sciences. new york: cambridge university press, 153-169. barton, d. 1994. literacy. an introduction to the ecology of written language. oxford: brackwell. barton, d. and hamilton, m. 1998. local literacies: reading and writing in one community. london: routledge. barton, d. and hamilton, m. 2000. “literacy practice”. in barton, d., m. hamilton and r. ivanič (eds.) situated literacies. reading and writing in context. london: routledge, 7-15. barton, d., hamilton, m. and ivanič, r. (eds.) 2000. situated literacies: reading and writing in context. london: routledge. collins, a., joseph, d. and bielaczyc, k. 2004. “design research: theoretical and methodological issues”. journal of the learning sciences, 13 (1), 15-42. cuban, l. 2001. oversold and underused: computers in the classroom. cambridge: harvard university press. design-based research collective. 2003. “design-based research: an emerging paradigm for educational inquiry”. educational researcher, 32 (1), 5-8. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.co2-raportti.fi/index.php?page=ilmastonmuutos� changing spaces, expanding mindsets: towards l2 literacies in a multimodal reading comprehension course language value 2, (1), 68-99 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 97 eagleton, m. and dobler, e. 2007. reading the web: strategies for internet inquiry. london: the guilford press. ellis, r. 2000. “task-based research and language pedagogy”. language teaching research, 3 (4), 193-220. gee, j.p. 2005. “learning by design: good video games as learning machines”. elearning, 2 (1), 5-16. gee, j.p. 2008. social linguistics and literacies: ideology in discourses (3rd ed.). london: falmer press. gilmore, a. 2007. “authentic materials and authenticity in foreign language learning”. language teaching, 40 (2), 97-118. hasan, r. 1996. “literacy, everyday talk and society”. in williams, g. and r. hasan (eds.) literacy in society. london: longman, 377-424. healy, a. 2008. “expanding student capacities: learning by design pedagogy”. in healy, a. (ed.) multiliteracies and diversity in education: new pedagogies for expanding landscapes. oxford: oxford university press, 2-29. heath, s. b. 1983. ways with words: language, life and work in communities and classrooms. cambridge: cambridge university press. jenkins, h. 2006. confronting the challenges of participatory culture: media education for the 21st century. macarthur foundation white paper. johnson, s. 2010. “yes, people still read, but now it’s social”. the new york times, june 19th 2010. kalantzis, m. and cope, b. 2004. “designs for learning”. e-learning, 1 (1), 38-93. kiili, c., laurinen, l. and marttunen, m. 2008. ”students evaluating internet sources: from versatile evaluators to uncritical readers”. journal of educational computing research, 39 (1), 75-95. kress, g. 2003. literacy in the new media age. london: routledge. kress, g. 2010. multimodality: a social semiotic approach to contemporary communication. new york: routledge. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� heidi vaarala and juha jalkanen language value 2, (1), 68-99 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 98 kress, g. and leeuwen, t. 1996. reading images: the grammar of visual design. london: routledge. kuk, g. 2003. e-learning hubs: affordance, motivation and learning outcomes. the best conference: creativity and innovation in academic practice. brighton, england. laakkonen, i. forthcoming. “personal learning environments in higher education language courses: an informal and learner-centred approach”. in thouësny, s. and l. bradley (eds.) second language teaching and learning with technology. lankshear, c. and knobel, m. 2006. new literacies: everyday practices and classroom learning (2nd ed.). maidenhead: open university press. linell, p. 1998. approaching dialogue. talk, interaction and contexts in dialogical perspectives. impact: studies in language and society. 3. amsterdam, philadelphia: john benjamins. linell, p. 2009. rethinking language, mind, and world dialogically: interactional and contextual theories of human sense-making. charlotte (n.c): iap-information age. skehan, p. 1998. “task-based instruction”. annual review of applied linguistics, 18, 268-286. street, b. 1993. “the new literacy studies, guest editorial”. journal of research in reading, 16 (2), 81-97. svensson, p. 2008. språkutbildning i en digital värld. informationsteknik, kommunikation och lärande. stockholm: norstedts akademiska förlag. taalas, p. 2005. change in the making. jyväskylä: centre for applied language studies. received july 2010 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� changing spaces, expanding mindsets: towards l2 literacies in a multimodal reading comprehension course language value 2, (1), 68-99 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 99 cite this article as: vaarala, h. and j. jalkanen. 2010. “changing spaces, expanding mindsets: towards l2 literacies in a multimodal reading comprehension course”. language value, 2 (1), 68-99. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue . issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� notes marcadores de word note1text note2text note1 note2 language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2013, volume 5, number 1 pp. 152-155 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2013.5.8 152 book review multilingual higher education. beyond english medium orientations christa van der walt multilingual matters: bristol, 2013. 204 pages. isbn-13: 978-1-84769-918-3 reviewed by ana bocanegra-valle ana.bocanegra@uca.es universidad de cádiz, spain multilingual higher education. beyond english medium orientations deals with the complexity of learning and teaching in multilingual higher education (he) environments. multilingual matters has included this volume in the series “bilingual education and bilingualism”, the same series that includes the latest books published on content and language integrated learning (clil) (see fortanet-gómez 2013) or english-medium instruction in he (see doiz et al. 2013). however, rather than furthering the discussion on clil or english-medium programmes, what this book does is to challenge the view that clil programmes are supportive of multilingual education. as the author herself explains, the implementation of clil predominantly at the primary and secondary school levels in europe is often understood as the introduction of english alongside local languages, and this trend addresses a bilingual, rather than a multilingual, dimension of language education. this is very probably the main contribution of this publication to the field: the advocacy of a new conception of multilingualism beyond “english-only multilingualism” so that to succeed at the internationalised he level students should be required to develop literacy in academic english plus other languages. even though this volume may be of interest to teachers and researchers around the globe (84 different countries are mentioned throughout the book), it is a timely publication of particular relevance for european readers. with the backdrop of the european union and for more than fifty years, the council of europe has been promoting educational policies that strengthen multilingualism, linguistic diversity and language rights. multilingualism has become an eu policy in its own right, which as a result enhances http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� mailto:ana.bocanegra@uca.es� multilingual higher education. beyond english medium orientations language value 5 (1), 152–155 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 153 its relevance. the council commits eu member states to (i) promoting linguistic diversity in the belief that europe is multilingual and that all languages in the european area are equal and necessary to deepen mutual understanding; (ii) maintaining valuable modes of communication and expressions of identity; and (iii) consolidating democratic citizenship and sustaining social cohesion. the council of europe has taken the position that the maintenance of linguistic diversity should be pursued and, hence, prioritises multilingualism as a key policy goal; it promotes the development of multilingual education policies to strengthen the european heritage of cultural and linguistic diversity and increases public awareness of the part played by languages in forging a european identity. examples of this policy are the guiding principles, the recommendations and other initiatives launched by the council and summed up in the contributing paper to the 50th anniversary of the european cultural convention (council of europe 2006). this book is divided into five chapters. chapter 1 “the special place of higher education” is a general introduction to the whole book and portrays he as a specific case in education. van der walt acknowledges “language as a resource” and claims the need to reconceptualise he worldwide in terms of multilingualism and balancing local and global interests. in this chapter, two innovative constructs emerge: on the one hand, “vertical mobility”, or the way school education contributes to widen the participation of minoritised learners and students in he and its rapid expansion, and on the other, “horizontal mobility” (also “transnational mobility”) or the movements of students between countries for the provision of education to linguistically diverse students. in chapter 2 “linguistic diversity in higher education: official and unofficial multilingual settings”, van der walt pays a closer look at he institutions in the five continents to, among other things, “invoke the concept of ecology as a conceptual lever to destabilise monolingual orientations to language planning, policy and practices in he” (p. 49). indeed, the most interesting point raised in this chapter is the discussion on worldwide multilingual education, which is not meant to provide a thorough review of countries and their language policies but “a sense of the ubiquity of multilingualism in the he contexts” (p. 49). in line with this, seven multilingual he contexts are discussed, particular attention being paid to the historical, socio-cultural, cultural, ideological and socio-psychological factors that determine the development of http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� book and multimedia review language value 5 (1), 155–152 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 154 bi-/multilingual education: africa, latin america and the caribbean, northern america, asia, the russian federation and eastern europe, western europe and the middle east. chapter 3 “managing the consequences of english-plus multilingualism: the development of multiliteracies” focuses on the fields of english for specific and academic purposes (esp/eap) and the “academic literacies” movement as responses to the demand for language support to be offered particularly in english. here, the author explores the influence of language learning and teaching paradigms on the acquisition of academic literacy, discusses the hegemony of english as the main and most popular language of science, and examines the possibilities of situated learning for academic literacy development in the terms described by lave and wenger (1991). the main argument underlying chapter 4 “multilingual pedagogy in higher education classrooms: approaches and techniques” is that “planning of multilingual practices needs to happen at classroom level by thinking beyond institutional language policies” (p. 161). this is a practical chapter in which multilingual pedagogy is conceptualised as a result of the tensions between institutional practices and prevailing classroom practices. throughout this chapter van der walt elaborates on four of the strategies proposed by garcía (2009) for bilingual primary and secondary school contexts and shows examples of how these can be achieved in he classrooms. such strategies are: institutional code-switching, co-languaging, translanguaging, preview-view-review; together with a fifth strategy added by the author herself: simultaneous translation. the last chapter “from mono to multi: new thinking about higher education” is a final reflection on multilingual he and addresses the perspectives of “language as a tool for learning” and “language as an identity marker” as contributors to enhancing multilingual literacies in he contexts. these imply a complex two-way relationship in which “language is a tool that enables/prevents the development of an academic (even professional) identity” and “language is an identity marker that enables/prevents the successful use of language as a tool to become a member of a particular academic community in the process of qualifying for a particular profession” (p. 165). this chapter contains an interesting section of future directions for research in multilingual he, namely: the effects of multilingual strategies on learning, multilingual texts as images, and mobile learning and electronic learning support. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� multilingual higher education. beyond english medium orientations language value 5 (1), 152–155 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 155 as an original contribution to the field, this volume makes excellent use of practical cases (“a case in point”, included in all chapters) to further the author’s discussion and illustrate the complexities of learning and teaching in multilingual environments. it also provides a very useful summary of the most important challenges faced by multilingual he contexts around the world. i strongly recommend it to teachers in multilingual he settings and researchers in bi-/multilingual education. references council of europe 2006. plurilingual education in europe. 50 years of international co-operation. strasbourg: council of europe. 14 june 2013 <http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/source/plurinlingaleducation_en.pdf> doiz, a., lasagabaster, d. and sierra, j.m. 2013. english-medium instruction at universities. global challenges. bristol: multilingual matters. fortanet-gómez, i. 2013. clil in higher education. towards a multilingual language policy. bristol: multilingual matters. garcía, o. 2009. bilingual education in the 21st century: a global perspective. malden, ma: wiley-blackwell. lave, j. and wenger, e. 1991. situated learning: legitimate peripheral participation. cambridge, ma: cambridge university press. received: 23 september 2013 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/source/plurinlingaleducation_en.pdf%20retrieved%20june%2014� http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/source/plurinlingaleducation_en.pdf� book review language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2012, volume 4, number 2 pp. 107-116 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.8 107 a poet speaks about… the use and abuse of language by a chicano from aztlán (both words unknown) nephtalí de león nephtali3000@hotmail.com when the rich steal from the poor it is called business, when the poor protest it is called violence. when the natives follow their millennial migrations across america, they are called undocumented illegal aliens. when the europeans, invade, commit genocide and steal america, they call themselves immigrants and pilgrims. the united nations and the red cross are concerned and sometimes respond to atrocities throughout the world, never to atrocities in the united states of america and its borderland wall of death more than 1000 miles long, so long the boundaries can be seen from outer space! language is the most important tool of humankind, and by the act of genesis, of all life. after all, before we became human there was language, as it continues to be present in creation itself. we hear that dogs communicate or emit what could be language: “au au” in brazil, “ham ham” in albania, “wang wang” in china, “guau guau” in mexico, and “bow wow” in the united states. a variant of their language is “grrr…” metaphorically we say there is the language of music, poetry, art, science, mathematics, and that there is a family of languages. academically this most complex human system of communication is broken down into philology, etymology, grammar, phonetics, diction, verbs, nouns, gerunds, adjectives, possessives, past, and present tenses. to delve into language minutiae gets extremely mind boggling, mysterious, and either headachy or rapturous depending on your love or hate for insights on language. leaving the origins, extensions, variants, dialects, specific language branches, and evolution of nationally collective forms of expression to scientists, poets and dreamers, i shall focus here on a very specific use and abuse of language: how language has http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� mailto:nephtali3000@hotmail.com� a poet speaks about ... the use and abuse of language by a chicano from aztlán (both words unknown) language value 4 (2), 107–116 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 108 identified, trapped, occupied and liberated a specific people in the world: the chicano people of the nation of aztlán. the mere declaration of such a purpose and the use of the words “chicano” and “aztlán” is already a statement of mystery, ambiguity, an ipso facto truth of the unknown, of the destruction of knowledge, of an occupation, unknown elements (chicanos, aztlán) to be deleted. i refer to language here as a tool of occupation or liberation, of validation or elimination. when i say that i am chicano to people in china, they say, chicago? i tell them that i am a person, not a town. and the question follows – what is chicano? the irony is that the same question is echoed in the land of my own origins. chicanos in my homeland do not know they are chicanos. those that do know find themselves in the minority. aztlán? it is a millenial nation-land that still does not exist! even fewer natives of aztlán have even heard of an aztlán ! by contrast and contradiction, both chicanos and aztlán bear an influence way out of proportion to their self-awareness and acknowledged numbers. chicanos of aztlán shake the roots of the most powerful nation in the world, the united states of america. on the immediate surface one might think; this is politics, not language. just as thought is action, all life interaction is transmitted and sieved through and with language. we are the collective result of what language permits us or binds us to be, in freedom, or bondage; autonomy, misery or joy. chicanos are native americans often referred to as latinos, hispanics, mexican americans, and a host of other internal denominations such as mestizos, cholos, and raza. chicanos are the descendants of the people that lived and continue to live in their homeland, aztlán. many of their ancestors left the place to migrate into and settle in the central valley of mexico destined to become the aztec capital tenocthitlan, today´s mexico city. chicanos are the people left in limbo while european nations warred with each other for control of the land, totally ignoring when they could, destroying when they met, the native people of the americas. chicanos are the original mexica tribes that would give the name to mexico – mexicanos, while they themselves remained xicanos written more popularly today as chicanos. the native language of chicanos is neither english nor spanish, but was and is – azteca náhuatl. today´s chicanos speak all three http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� nephtalí de león language value 4 (2), 107–116 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 109 languages, with their native language so suppressed that they often are unaware they speak it. the fact that we as chicanos semi-exist is a direct result of the use and abuse of language. as extraordinary as it may seem, we are in the throes of surviving the last hurrahs of the days of an outdated but real empire colonization. through a series of well established government plans, the united states of america has pursued a policy of genocide, the total extermination of natives, especially those advocating for the deoccupation of their homelands, or at least, for the present, a negotiated co-existence planning for mutual autonomy. the most concentrated and focused use of language was placed in motion – a language that would justify, validate and install the ultimate masquerade to morality, democracy, fairness, freedom and justice. among other examples of this, is the pivotal one called the constitution of the united states, the bible of democracy, and freedom in america. it holds the most preposterous, outlandish and irreverent hyperboles, such as “we hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal”. it then declared that black people were 3/5 human and natives were savages, the ownership of their land preempted and “extinguished” – actual language to rephrase “invasion” and “highway robbery”. the language that replaced “colonization” was “democracy”. the greatest malefactor of the great american theft is the bugled hero supreme court chief justice john marshall (1801-1835) who declared that america had inherited ownership of the americas from great britain. he also wrote of the rights of preemption (replace the word here with “theft” ) by virtue of the rights of discovery and conquest. this was to be the base of the masqueraded “rule of law” still flaunted to this day. to the euro-illegals, to accidentally run into a populated civilized continent is “discovery”. they immediately struck with the sword, the cross and the power of language by labeling the populations , “unchristian, heathen and savage”. these were our ancestors, many with magnificent temple cities, paved walkways, balustrades, intrically carved statues and earthly placed buildings to reflect the heavens and the moving stars. john marshall´s use of language to declare legal what was totally on prima facie evidence, illegal, became the basis for “american constitutional law”, and made the supreme court a co-equal branch of government; that is, the government could not stand without its word-master thief to rubber stamp its government thefts. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� a poet speaks about ... the use and abuse of language by a chicano from aztlán (both words unknown) language value 4 (2), 107–116 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 110 historical facts abound that this was and has always been our homeland. mayan ruins, from our other large half of our brethren have been discovered in florida, while very recently, in the last few months of this year 2012, more mayan pyramid ruins have been found in the state of georgia, traditional base, like the state of alabama, of racism of the deep south of the united states. the abuse of language was instituted when the mexican people (so confused and mixed, natives with european spanish) were seen as a blurred race to be despised and condemned, destroyed if possible. referred to as greasers, wets, and dirty messcans, they were shot on the range, haunted in their homes and hung on the nearest tree, as black slaves who stood up for their freedom, or who dared to look at a white woman. such brutality would give rise to many a local hero such as jacino treviño, from southtexas, who became a legend in his own time, by defying all white attempts to kill him and foiled many a posse attempt to capture him including his running circles around the infamous texas rangers. he shot a local sheriff who murdered his brother over language confusion regarding a horse. the question was – do u have a horse ? a caballo repeated the sheriff. the true answer was no. jacintos´s brother had a “llegua”, ( a mare). the sheriff called him a liar and shot him. jacinto shot the sheriff. from then on jacinto treviño shot many a sheriff and many a texas ranger who came to hunt him down. there are songs and corridos about his “asañas” (exploits). américo paredes immortalized him in his book titled, with a pistol in his hand. during the later part of the depression era 1929-1944, the government began massive deportations of mexican people, estimated to be about 2 million; they were accused of taking american jobs. it is estimated that some 400,000 of them were u.s. citizens and/or legal residents. a recent article in the los angeles times, february 21, 2012, states that “families were forced to abandon their homes, or were defrauded of personal and real property, often sold by local authorities as ‘payment’ for the transportation expenses incurred in their removal”. in february of the year 2012, governor arnold schwarzenegger, born in austria, signed a law to apologize for the inhumane deportation of such masses. a memorial has been placed in la plaza on main street in the city of los angeles, california. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� nephtalí de león language value 4 (2), 107–116 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 111 so real and so extreme is this established policy of extermination that a 50 page manual exists today issued by the department of the interior officially titled “endgame” (remember the use and abuse of language?). the direct perversity of intent, said in a mocking terminology cannot be missed. endgame. this manual details ways and means to find, arrest, and deport 10 million people of our kind, to be removed out of the united states of america, that is, from the heart of aztlán, our ancient and native homeland. the genocide and removal of the native people, the destruction of their infrastructure and means of survival have been a game from hell to the invading euro-american illegals. in this very day, the daily television news can break your heart to see the tears and anguish of families broken apart, children left alone to criminals who sometimes rape them, parents removed unable to defend them. as if to drive the unwelcome fact home, the linguistic nails hammered on the cross of our chicano golgotha are various. the extreme xenophobia about our presence, and the memory of our belonging home, has driven the foreign euro-americans to dehumanize us in order to treat us as “others”. the government has labeled many of us, that migrate back and forth in our homeland, as illegals, undocumented, and aliens. these 3 words are the language of the day, -officially instituted in order to stop, abuse, harass, arrest, imprison, and deport many of our kind. it does not matter that families are broken up, that children are left without parents, wives without husbands and vice versa. it does not matter that this community is not breaking any laws but quite the contrary doing its best to uphold morality, humanity and the economy by being consumers and doing the most dangerous and difficult jobs. as if they were criminal offenders my community is arrested while doing its job. the prisons where they are incarcerated are called “detention centers”. in america, language is used to cloak, to deceive, to distract and to euphemize what has been a constant realpolitik of destruction meant to annihilate my people, community and ancestral memory. this has been going on for centuries where our communities are shuffled back and forth worse than cattle. cattle are fed and taken care of – even if slaughtered. we are only slaughtered. in addition to the fact that our color and physical native appearance is enough reason to be suspect and detained for deportation, the worst damage is done to our minds – as with the death of our minds, so goes the extermination of our identity and presence as native americans. in the case of language, when a http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� a poet speaks about ... the use and abuse of language by a chicano from aztlán (both words unknown) language value 4 (2), 107–116 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 112 language is erased, so are the tools of expression and maintenance of autonomous memory, and ancestral ways. in tucson, arizona, as of this writing in the middle of the month of january in the year of our lord, 2012, when, according to maya prophecy, an era is to come to an end and a new more enlightened one begin, an auto da fé, has just been executed; the public burning of knowledge of our history by the u.s. government. an inquisition was instituted by a state of the union. all that was needed was for the torch to be set to the burning of the books. some fifty books were banned and physically confiscated from the successful program of mexican american studies (mas). not only was the program declared “unconstitutional”, but the books that served that program were banned and physically removed, this action in front of the students who used them. some of the books banned and confiscated in this 21st century inquisition are: critical race theory, by richard delgado and jean stefancic 500 years of chicano history in pictures, edited by elizabeth martinez message to aztlán, by rodolfo corky gonzales chicano! the history of the mexican civil rights movement, by f. arturo rosales occupied america: a history of chicanos, by rodolfo acuña pedagogy of the oppressed, by paulo freire rethinking columbus: the next 500 years, by bill bigelow cantos al sexto sol, an anthology of aztlanahuac writing, edited by cecilio garcía-camarillo, roberto rodriguez, and patrisia gonzales this last book banned and prohibited, cantos al sexto sol (songs to the sixth sun), is an anthology of aztlanahuac writings, reflecting a great number of chicano activists from the heyday of the 70´s and 80’s. the poetry and words of my fellow chicano authors are there, including some of my own. as if to underline the perversity of control over our hearts and minds some of our own native people were instruments of this public auto da fe. the words of san antonio, texas, 1950´s organizer, emma tenayuca, ring true, “a people cannot be oppressed without the help of some of the oppressed”. when students from cholla high school walked out and marched a distance of 5 miles to tucson http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� nephtalí de león language value 4 (2), 107–116 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 113 unified school district, they were met by “burrocrats” including administrator lupita garcía. she told the students that racism had nothing to do with the action and that mexico should be taught in mexico not in america. an earlier bill passed in the state upon which she based her words was hb (house bill) 2281 that suspended mexican american studies not mexican studies. when asked why european studies had not been banned, no one, including lupita garcía, had a response. those students that protested were directed to perform janitorial duties on the weekend without any kind of hearing regarding their actions. this is all too reminiscent of the fact that “ethnic studies” did not exist until the europeans came to invade and occupy our homelands. the apartheid fact also exists in that in tucson more than half of the students are of native origin. it is a minority of white immigrant invaders that establish the rules of conduct and what will be taught and reflected in the colonial schools. the irony and abuse of language lies in the fact that “ethnic studies” bases itself on the “racialization” in the americas. its mission statement (of ethnic studies) is to focus on the histories, literatures and politics of minorities and how such impact upon the social, political, and cultural factors that shape these minorities. as long as this interdisciplinary verbiage does not declare openly that we are an occupied people, but rather fulfills the job of telling minorities how they should interact with their occupiers, ethnic studies is grudgingly accepted in some schools. accept the fact and study how messed up we are. all this can go on in an academic classroom while the streets are haunted by bodies armed with the latest high tech equipment to terminate us. all this is executed and put into effect by language. this is the tricky abuse and cunning of a perverse mentality to enforce an advantage of power, this through politics and warfare. some intent to portray the politics as benign is so absurd that there is a billboard that runs across the internet. “ice establishes toll-free hotline for detainees claiming u.s. citizenship (855) 448-6903”. rather than absolve the armed force of wrong doing, it fully establishes that this wrong doing is so prevalent that those that claim allegiance to white pure blue blood but do not looks so are picked up for deportation and imprisonment daily. it also establishes that any hope of being freed is directly bound to a proclaimed allegiance and fealty to being occupied and invaded – http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� a poet speaks about ... the use and abuse of language by a chicano from aztlán (both words unknown) language value 4 (2), 107–116 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 114 claim u.s. citizenship. what is this ice i have mentioned? it is the arm that triggers the guillotine: immigration and customs enforcement. immigration is the act of foreigners passing or coming into a country for the purpose of permanent residence. customs is usage, frequency of same acts, habitual. we all know what enforcement is. what is ice enforcing? the contradiction is real easy to see. the real immigrants are the white people that came from the old world of europe. ice is either enforcing that the customs of the new european immigrants be the law of the land – or that the customs of the natives be extinguished, especially their insistence that they are amerindian natives. to deport native peoples from their homeland is more than ethnic cleansing, it is a war of termination. only time and history can record the outcome and clash between natives and colonization. language continues to be central to the on-going battle for control of how anyone will be classified as a member of the world community. the fact that ice exists is an orwellian concept plucked from the pages of huxley’s brave new world. it is a vini vidi wiki, (i came i saw i conquered) aryan supremacy mentality that still polices the world in a tweedlee and tweedledom society. the people that once came uninvited to trespass and steal america from the natives now refer to themselves as “nativists”. what are we to think of a people that impose a nation with the words, “we hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal”, while invading and occupying people´s homelands, and dragging their slaves in chains? in present times the inhumanity of this is reflected in the young men and women sacrificed to be warriors; minorities to the war front in droves! many who survive remain in shock forever as they learn that humanity is not meant to create carnage one upon the other. chicanos exist by the power of ancestral legacy. the denomination itself, the name, has floated in the misty past of myth and legend. the appellation itself, “chicanos” has had its own uphill struggle to become itself, that is, to be established as an accepted denomination for a people. the mexicans from mexico said it sounded nasty, like chiquero (a pigsty), until they were reminded that part of their (our) tribes were called “chichimecas”. the euro-illegal americans said it was dirty and sounded like “chicanery” (deception, trickery, artifice). the native community was so confused that http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� nephtalí de león language value 4 (2), 107–116 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 115 in the beginning the word “chicano” was used in hushed whispers and mostly in the backstreets and narrow alleys where chicanos were surviving. the community itself was leery of those that used the word and community members were defensive about being called chicanos themselves. in the beginning there was almost universal rejection of the use of the word chicano. in the early mist of time chicanos and the mexica tribes they come from, had their homeland named aztlán. it was their ancestors, the mexica tribe that gave them their name: mexicanos to the south (mexico) and chicanos to the north (usa). their world of language allowed them group communication, group survival, and with a certain surplus of confidence in sheltered safety, the time and space to transcend language applications. it was through language that chicanos discovered a reflection of their identity, doubted it, questioned it, and sealed it in their customs, traditions and ways. then came the inequity of invasion and colonial occupation that persists to this day just as the moors remained holding spain hostage for 800 years. giuseppe mazzini states: “without a country you have neither name, token, voice, no right, no admission as brothers into the fellowship of the peoples”. chicanos have no language of their own, no homeland of their own, no flag, no written statement of their identity or rights as a people, or as a nation. there is no one to advocate for, protect or guarantee the human rights of chicanos as a people, as a nation or even as a conglomeration of tribes. nonetheless, chicanos have emerged in the 20th / 21st centuries as living fossils that carry their own rebirths. there exists no weapon, nation, force, government or flag that can defeat or destroy such persistence of presence which translates into an indomitable sense of greatness. in spite of all that chicanos do not have, they have the most important element in their dna, in their ancestral roots and in their memory of themselves; they have myth, they have legend and the knowledge that they descend from a people of awesome and mythic proportions. that is why the united states government has burned its wits to withhold, contain and extinguish the flame of freedom and liberty that beats a great rhythm in every barrio across the length and width of america. aztlán has grown and continues to grow day by day. it has neither diminished nor lessened. the land of the dead, mictlán, has a greater http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� a poet speaks about ... the use and abuse of language by a chicano from aztlán (both words unknown) language value 4 (2), 107–116 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 116 voice than the thunder of american weapons and arms. in the year 2012 the prophecy comes to pass. aztlán is reborn with the splendor, wisdom and strength of all our generations past. the language and voice of aztlán is reborn to liberate our colonized home. all the king´s horses and men can never pretend to be legal resident citizens of someone else´s stolen land – ever again. those euro-illegals that have, in spite of their own government, acquired a sense of humanity are now occupying wall street, a movement that has spread throughout the world. language is once more being applied toward the liberation of a humanity held hostage through the use and abuse of language. received: 8 april 2012 accepted: 25 september 2012 cite this article as: de león, n. 2012. “the use and abuse of language by a chicano from aztlán (both words unknown)”. language value 4 (2), 107-116. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.8 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.8� a poet speaks about… cite this article as: de león, n. 2012. “the use and abuse of language by a chicano from aztlán (both words unknown)”. language value 4 (2), 107-116. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/lang... issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2012, volume 4, number 2 pp. 23-37 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.3 23 jacqueline woodson’s narrative style in the other side: an african american picture book for children agustín reyes torres agustin.reyes@uv.es universitat de valència, spain abstract the other side (2001) is a children’s story with multicultural characters and themes that can be regarded as an aesthetic exploration of the human experience in the process of the acquisition of knowledge. following the black arts movement, jacqueline woodson’s work portrays many of the issues that are present in the real world but seldom appear in children’s literature, such as racial division or interracial relationships. using the metaphor of a fence, this african american author reveals issues of loneliness and friendship, inclusion and exclusion, and the overcoming of prejudice and segregation through the wisdom of clover and annie, an african american and a white girl, who become friends. the story is told from the point of view of clover who is both the protagonist and the first person narrator. the reader, thus, gets to see and understand the world through her eyes. keywords: african american, jacqueline woodson, picture book, children, segregation “the content of a story and how it is told are inseparable” henry james writers who make powerful statements in their stories communicate their ideas through the artistic and skillful use of language. while there is considerable controversy among literary theorists and critics as to how to define literature, there is common agreement regarding the crucial role that language plays in it. as gillian lazar’s puts it, literature can be understood as “those novels, short stories, plays and poems which are fictional and convey their message by paying considerable attention to language which is rich and multi-layered” (1993: 5). it is through language that literature provides relevant source material for identifying and examining human motives; readers can see into the mind of the character or even into the subconscious that the very same character does not know. through the writer’s careful choice of language we come to see the current environment, the details from the past and the imaginary world of the character, in other words, the character’s motivation for action. literature thus, through language, gives http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� mailto:agustin.reyes@uv.es� jacqueline woodson’s narrative style in the other side: an african american picture book for children language value 4 (2), 23-37 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 24 form to the experience of the ongoing cycle of life; it explores the nature of human beings and their particular circumstances. what happens then when the nature and the circumstances of some cultural minorities differ from those consistently represented in mainstream literature? how does literature represent the voices of the so-called cultural minorities, their values and perspectives? the aim of this article is to study how the african american writer jacqueline woodson makes use of her narrative style to represent in children’s terms the experience of a black girl growing up in the united states and coming to terms with the racial reality. in her book the other side (2001), she reorients children’s literature, raising racial concerns and eliciting strong emotional responses in the reader. woodson’s work includes many of the issues that are present in the real world but seldom appear in children’s literature, such as racial division, child abuse or interracial relationships. like many other black american authors, she shares the experience of being a member of a society in which race matters a great deal. in this sense, her writing for children is clearly rooted in an african american and american social and literary history that can be traced all the way back to the 19th century. since then, as rudine sims bishop argues, “the racist [and] stereotypical books about blacks, created by benighted white writers and artists, made it imperative to create an african american literature to contradict and counteract such imagery” (2007: xiv). african american children’s literature developed thus as a literature of social action. it emerges from the very oral culture (songs, stories, rhymes, etc) created by enslaved africans to form and pass on a set of moral and spiritual values, to instruct each other, to build community and to entertain themselves. as bishop puts it, african american children’s literature has roots in african american’s determination to maintain a sense of themselves as fully human in the face of their legal status as property and to maintain some control over their own lives. where literacy was forbidden and denied to african americans, story and song flourished and served to entertain, to discipline, to provide information, to subvert slaveholders’ intentions, and to transmit to children the values and attitudes that the community deemed necessary for its survival. (2007: 4) gradually, as the number of african americans that had access to freedom and literacy increased throughout the 19th century, some newspapers and periodicals launched by black religious people appeared as vehicles for self-definition, self-determination and self-expression. some of them such as the recorder (1852) included readings for children. these publications, along with others created towards the end of the century in http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� agustín reyes torres language value 4 (2), 23–37 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 25 which the participation of black women became highly significant such as our women and children magazine (1888), shared a similar goal, making evident their concern for children’s literary and education, and most importantly, like woodson does in the other side, establishing their determination to create and display their own african american perspective. this interest in children’s literature among african americans would be cultivated and strengthened during the first half of the 20th century with the emergence of intellectuals and writers such a w.e.b. du bois, mary effie lee, langston hughes, and arna bontemps among others. while du bois created the renowned magazine for black children, the brownies’ book (1920-1921), and lee and hughes published in it their first poems, bontemps became one of the most important authors that the harlem renaissance left to african american children’s literature (bishop 2007: 45). over the course of his prolific forty-year career from the 1930s to the late 1960s, his work not only developed and refined some of the traditions that had begun with the brownies’ book (a focus on fostering black children’s education and see themselves as normal), but also took them a step further. as bishop highlights, bontemps interjected a black perspective on black subjects, black themes, and black traditions, many of which were carried over from adult african american literature into american children’s literature, an arena in which such a perspective was sorely needed. (2007: 52). this approach set up the basis for the growth and national recognition of other upcoming african american writers and picture book illustrators such as jacob lawrence’s with harriet and the promised land (1968), john steptoe with stevie (1969) or jacqueline woodson, who also instilled a black perspective in their work and their characters. in one interviewed in 1987, steptoe observed: “what i try to create are all the things i didn´t have as a kid that i would have liked to read” (natov and deluca 1987: 126). as we will see, these words coincide with woodson’s ideas and aims for herself as a writer. in this case, both authors agree on the need of more children’s books through which african american young readers can relate to the protagonists. in words of neal lester, “all children need to see possibilities and to see themselves in all possibilities” (smith 2008). self-validation for them comes from seeing themselves and acknowledging difference in the pages of the books they read. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� jacqueline woodson’s narrative style in the other side: an african american picture book for children language value 4 (2), 23-37 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 26 certainly, one of the characteristics of woodson’s books is that her main characters are african american children, so we get to see and understand the world from their particular perspective. as rose casement points out, “in many books that include relationships across races, the white child is in a position of social power. that is not the case in many of woodson’s stories, where the black child is generally situated in the more powerful position within the relationship” (2003: 81). in an interview with the author, she commented: “sometimes people are surprised that the relationships and situations aren’t stereotypical. i wanted to write my side of the story. i grew up reading the white side, which surprisingly to some people, isn´t the only side” (casement 2003: 81). like many other black writers and critics such as w.e.b. du bois, arna bontemps, john steptoe, violet j. harris, patricia hill collins, bell hooks, cornell west and laretta henderson among others, jacqueline woodson considers that literature and politics have always been linked for the african american community. in her essay “fictions” she states “…as a woman who is african american, my whole world is political so of course my writing is. […] it become writing where a reader recognizes a part of themselves and because of this, knows that they are not alone in the world. writing where the reader’s life is legitimized and by extension, the reader is legitimized” (woodson 2001b: 48). woodson clearly labels her work political, yet not the kind of didactic political writing that discourages the reader from recognizing himself or herself. her books for children enable many young african american readers to free their minds of the idea that they are not alone. she articulates the stance that literature can be uplifting and heal the individual. in the past, despite the effort of many african american intellectuals to change it, numerous white authors created novels that contributed to institutionalize the image of blacks as infantile, unintelligent, comical, and ugly (bishop 2007, harris 2007, hooks 2003, manuel 2009, tolson 2008). many black children found themselves thus surrounded by children’s literature dominated by white representation in books written and illustrated by white authors and illustrators. for woodson, that must change and there is still much work to be done. like her african american predecessors, she believes that literature for young black readers should uplift and elevate rather than degrade. that is why her books portray values that promote acceptance of oneself, acceptance of others, pride, moderation, and commitment to family and community. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� agustín reyes torres language value 4 (2), 23–37 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 27 according to laretta henderson, children’s literature written by african americans should follow the critical discourse and canon created by the black art movement that focuses its attention on the black community as the audience of black art (2005: 301). although a final ideology is always a compendium of different voices, this movement, which arose in the late 1960s, “moves toward educating the african american community to its collective and differing histories; reflects the community and its culture and concerns; and addresses their social, spiritual and physical needs” (henderson 2005: 301). jacqueline woodson’s, in this way, aligns herself with the african american literary tradition and follows the combination of political orientation, audience, content, literary elements and style that defines the black aesthetic. however, she does not fall in the controversial issue of afrocentrism placing african and african american culture at the center of knowledge. as patricia collins, cornel west and bell hooks criticize, afroncentricity sometimes may lead to essentialize blackness and engage as a result in reverse racism. woodson does not do this. as it will be shown, in the other side, she embraces w.e.b. du bois’ idea of double consciousness highlighting throughout the story the importance for black children of being aware of both their african ancestry and their purely american identity. moreover, she pursues the maxim expressed by du bois when he conceived the brownies’ book by which he called for a literature that would be “adapted to colored children, and indeed to all children who live in a world of varied races” (cited in bishop 2007: 35). the other side is a picture book in which woodson shows the many discoveries that children can make through literature. it is a story made real through the inclusion of universal complexities within the specific cultural experiences that impact young readers. using the metaphor of a fence, she reveals issues of loneliness and friendship, inclusion and exclusion, and the overcoming of prejudice and segregation through the wisdom of clover and annie, an african american and a white girl, who become friends. the author raises simple questions such as: what is the purpose of a fence? what are people like? why are they like that? what make white and black people do what they do? can you be friends with a person of a different race? a glimpse of answers to these questions are made visible through woodson’s poetic language and narrative style by the elements of plot, character, point of view, setting, and tone of an http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� jacqueline woodson’s narrative style in the other side: an african american picture book for children language value 4 (2), 23-37 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 28 imaginative work. the other question remaining to be discussed is who is the target audience of this book? is the other side a reading only intended for black children? as many of the picture storybooks written for younger readers, the other side depicts children facing situations and problems that are common to all young children. in spite of its brevity, only twenty-nine pages, woodson manages to create an engaging plot, to develop clover’s full character, and to show with words and pictures an integral setting in which a number of relevant themes are revealed such as children’s curiosity, friendship, family, race and prejudice. the other important aspect to be considered is that the story is told from the point of view of a young african american girl: clover. she is both the protagonist and the first person narrator. the reader, thus, gets to see and understand the world through her eyes. this is important not only because as a black girl she represents the figure of the “self” and not the “other”, but also because as we will see, she breaks old stereotypes regarding the traditional portrayal of african american characters. to begin with the analysis of the narrative style, let us examine the plot and how the author’s choice of words introduces the reader in the story and the character’s reality. the plot revolves around the presence of the fence that separates the town where clover lives. woodson portrays clover’s growing awareness of the world that surrounds her and how she gradually becomes more observant. the opening line of the book is: “that summer the fence that stretched through our town seemed bigger” (woodson 2001a: 2). by using the demonstrative pronoun “that” at the beginning of the sentence, emotional meaning and attention are draw to the fact that that particular summer was a crucial one in her childhood. the structure pattern of starting a phrase with the words “that summer” is repeated later throughout the story adding significance and impact to the term. it was that summer, we can then interpret, when clover discovered, and experienced for the first time, that there was racial tension between black and white people and that they were expected to occupy different spaces in society. in the same way, within the very first page the reader has also access to the setting as well as the initial conflict of the story: clover is a young african american girl between the ages of eight and ten who lives with her family on one side of that fence; on the other side lives a white family. to create tension, we hear clover’s mom saying: “don´t http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� agustín reyes torres language value 4 (2), 23–37 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 29 climb over that fence when you play” (woodson 2001a: 2). but to clover, the reason for this is not so clear. we can imagine her young mind wondering why if there are white people on that other side, she cannot go there. her mom does tell her that it is not safe, but this (the unknown) only spurs more intrigue and perplexity. why is it not safe? this is the question that any young reader may ask himself or herself when reading the beginning of this book. as the story line progresses, the conflict and the tension increases when clover sees a young white girl sitting on that fence. the latter even shows interest in playing with her and her african american friends, but to them this white girl, who lives on the other side of the fence, only represents a mysterious threat so they feel afraid of her. they have been taught to keep a distance from that world on that other side so they continue to do so. clover, however, feels more and more intrigued. woodson’s style holds the reader’s interest by creating suspense regarding the action that will arouse the subsequent characters’ reactions. if in literary terms the conflict is defined as the struggle against opposing forces, it is significant that in this case those opposed forces embody black children against white children. is it possible for them to be friends? the conflict as a result is twofold: on the one hand, we find clover’s own internal conflict about overcoming her fears and talking to the white girl. on the other, there is the conflict of person-against-society: can clover defy social and racial historical conventions? can she climb over that fence and overlook the barriers between black and white people? in fact, what clover and annie eventually do by becoming friends is to disregard the old beliefs and take a first step towards putting an end to that fence that keep people apart. in the other side we find that conflict is mainly caused by social and racial issues, but also by the natural growth of a young girl. clover is a full developed character with the complexities of an african american child maturing in the united states some time presumably in the 1960s or 1970s. these decades are characterized by tension and despair among african americans. although the 1950s had been a decade marked by historic progress in the campaign for racial justice, in much of the country, as walter r. allen and reynolds farley indicate, “blacks could not attend the same schools, eat at the same restaurants, or stay at the same hotels as whites. black americans were also http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� jacqueline woodson’s narrative style in the other side: an african american picture book for children language value 4 (2), 23-37 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 30 denied opportunities in education and employment and, in southern states, their voting rights” (1986: 278). thus, the struggle to build a society free of persecutions and discrimination against blacks was far from finished and it would carry on into the 1960s. thanks to the emergence and the influence of prominent leaders such as president john f. kennedy and martin luther king, jr., the african americans’ demands for equality and change came to be recognized as the nation’s pre-eminent challenge (rosenberg 2006: 212). however, both leaders were murdered and by then, malcolm x was proclaiming that a more militant approach could be used to gain civil rights. soon after, the civil rights movements took place and in the 1970s students’ protest and the black power movement expanded. while woodson does not explicitly portray any social or political issue, she makes clover’s traits and experiences believable and as the story goes by, we come to know her well through the words she says, her thoughts and her actions. woodson relies on imagery, appealing to the reader’s senses, to give us different impressions of the protagonist’s personality. based on her tone and her choice of details, she stirs the reader’s imagination. in this way, we can sense clover’s growth throughout the story. whereas at the beginning we infer her young mind through her observations, her childish use of the language and her way of recalling her mom’s warnings; at the end of the book her actions and comments demonstrate her development as a character. to illustrate these points, we see how clover at first expresses her thoughts through sentence structure that reflect her young age. she says, for instance: she never sat on that fence with anybody, that girl didn’t. (woodson 2001a: 4) or she looked sad sometimes, that girl did. (woodson 2001a: 8) through these statements not only is she articulating her thoughts in order to reaffirm herself, but also revealing her concern about that unknown white girl who seems lonely and blue. furthermore, this same concern brings to light clover’s warm heart, inner curiosity and feeling of uncertainty on how to act. this is evident again when she recalls the time when they were jumping rope and annie asked if she could play: and my friend sandra said no without even asking the rest of us. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� agustín reyes torres language value 4 (2), 23–37 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 31 i don’t know what i would have said. maybe yes. maybe no. (woodson 2001a: 6) clover’s words invite the reader to reflect with her about her dilemma. she is having a hard time understanding the whole racial issue. some of the questions she might want to answer could be: would you play with a person from the other side of the fence? or rather, why would you not play with a person who has a different skin color? and why is there such a distance between black and white people? the fact that clover feels bothered by her friend sandra’s reply reveals that she does not necessarily agree with the group’s decision and she is an independent thinker. clover’s initial way to sort out her problem is to ask her mom. woodson again portrays a typical reaction in any given child, not just an african american one. and it is here when the writer makes an explicit critique of the history of segregation in america through the mother’s response to her daughter: “…that’s the way things have always been” (woodson 2001a: 8), she says. this simple statement can be subject to different interpretations. as a child, clover might infer that this is one of those complicated matters about which grown-ups avoid talking. however, as the curious girl that she is, there is another question that it is still pending even though she does not utter it: why? why have things always been that way? one of woodson’s achievements is her ability to trigger questions in the young reader’s mind regardless of his or her cultural background or skin color. another achievement is her subtle way of pointing out the past of injustice and discrimination that many african americans suffered. in fact, she does this without even mentioning it. this is something that the adults know and what we are more likely to interpret out of the mother’s statement. certainly, we understand that the mother’s first reaction is to protect her daughter. she does not want to tell her, at least not yet, that there is distance between blacks and whites because in the past blacks were taken as slaves by whites; there is distance because blacks were disregarded as human beings and considered inferior. ultimately, there is distance because there are old wounds that still have not healed and possibly too because blacks themselves now choose to have that distance as a way to feel safe. again, this is a significant reflection for every reader to make, not just an african american one. but woodson’s story goes further than that. it is not her intention to instigate hatred or accuse anybody. on the contrary, the message in her picture book is one of optimism. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� jacqueline woodson’s narrative style in the other side: an african american picture book for children language value 4 (2), 23-37 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 32 as cindy giorgis and nancy johnson indicate, the author’s “hopeful child’s voice [and the illustrator] e.b. lewis’ watercolors capture the powerful mood of the story, the longing for friendship revealed by the girls’ body language” (2001a: 310). as already mentioned, woodson’s message echoes du bois’ philosophy that considers that “the history of the american negro is the history of his strife. […] he simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a negro and an american, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of opportunity closed roughly in his face” (1903: 5). there is no doubt that among the themes of the book are attempts to support the ongoing struggle for equality, racial pride, strength and self-definition, but also interracial relationships, the role of the family and the community in the shaping of identity, and the role of education for both black and white children. for du bois, african american people are gifted with a second-sight. they can develop a double consciousness that allow them to be proud of their heritage while at the same time be american; that means living in the united states together with everybody else no matter the racial designation. for clover, annie is like an enigma that she wants to decipher but does not know how to start. the important thing is that she is willing to try. she narrates how that summer (o)n rainy days that girl sat on the fence in a raincoat. she let herself get all wet and acted like she didn’t even care. sometimes i saw her dancing around in puddles, splashing and laughing. (woodson 2001a: 9) clover is puzzled about how someone who lives so close can feel so distant and foreign to her. here the author portrays a contrast between the two girls, and how clover is in the process of developing that double consciousness that would let her figure out the white girl. it is significant that annie is portrayed as the other, that is, the different one. on the contrary, clover, as the self, appears inside her house looking out through the window. the watercolor illustrations are also crucial at this point. they set a tone of warmth, happiness and love. e.b. lewis gives the reader a glimpse of clover’s home paying attention to details such as the four-tray shelf full of books, the book on the ottoman next to the armchair as if someone is currently reading it, the xylophone on the floor, and the picture frames. they symbolize knowledge, dignity, creativity, selfesteem, and most importantly, they break old stereotypes about black people related to http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� agustín reyes torres language value 4 (2), 23–37 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 33 their lack of interest in reading and learning or their poor living conditions. in the other side, home is a comfort zone. on the other hand, it is necessary to pay attention to clover’s words on this page. as nancy d. tolson puts it, “a good picture book for children consists of illustrations that validate the words and vice versa, creating a much fuller understanding for the child” (2008: 38). clover says: mama wouldn’t let me go out in the rain. “that’s why i bought you rainy-day toys”, my mama said. “you stay inside here – where it’s warm and safe and dry”. but every time it rained, i looked for that girl. and i always found her. somewhere near the fence. (woodson 2001a: 12) the author’s use of language here illustrates the previous ideas about clover’s mom taking good care of her but also the child’s restless mind and desire to go outside. the use of “but” at the beginning of the fourth sentence reveals clover’ slight rebellious attitude. her mom’s words do not comfort her at this moment. it seems as if there is something else in her head, as if she could not stop thinking about that girl on the other side of the fence. the rain is both outside and in her own thoughts. woodson’s language style in this excerpt can be related to henry louis gates, jr’s theory of signifyin(g), a uniquely black rhetorical concept, entirely textual or linguistic, rooted in the black vernacular tradition by which a second statement or figure repeats, or tropes, or reverses the first (gates 1987: 49). in black vernacular, signifying is verbal play. it is a rhetorical strategy, a sign that words cannot be trusted, that even the most literal utterance allows room for interpretation. in other words, what is said by a person must be understood in terms of context and other factors, rather than in and of itself. in this case, the fence stands up as a barrier that separates people but further than that, as an obstacle that also impedes access to knowledge. clover becomes aware of her lack of understanding and every time she is confused (every time it rains), she tries to find an answer (she looks for that girl), and that answer is always near the fence. as a result, she realizes that the fence is the key and therefore, she has a strong desire to overcome it. rising above the fence means defeating separation and inequality but over all, defeating ignorance. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� jacqueline woodson’s narrative style in the other side: an african american picture book for children language value 4 (2), 23-37 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 34 similarly, a double reading can also be done on the following page of the book when clover narrates: someplace in the middle of the summer, the rain stopped. when i walked outside, the grass was damp and the sun was already high up in the sky. and i stood there with my hands up in the air. i felt brave that day. i felt free. following gates’ theory of signifying, the fact that the rain stopped and the sun began to shine can be read as the end of clover’s conflict. she has made up her mind. now she feels free to do what she wants to do. for that reason, it is not without significance, that on the next page the climax of the story takes place: clover gathers her courage, approaches the fence and talks to annie for the first time. as the story progresses, in the last part of the book, clover shows her growth and mental development. she becomes friends with annie, sits on the fence with her, dares to disregard sandra and her other african american friends and even succeeds eventually in integrating annie to the group by playing all together. in the very end, what was originally a barrier becomes a link between the two sides. the author leaves a final hopeful message for the reader through annie and clover’s words: “someday somebody’s going to come along and knock this old fence down”. annie said. and i nodded. “yeah”, i said. “someday”. (woodson 2001a: 29) from a literary point of view, when the reader is assured that all is well and will continue to be, we can say that the denouement is closed, or that the plot has a closed ending. in this case, the tying of the loose ends is thoroughly optimistic. there is no anxiety for black or white children on the last page of the story. it ends with clover and annie imagining a fenceless world. both of them agree on the idea of knocking the fence down, assuming that it is old, from a different era and not from their own. likewise, it is important that it is annie the one who stated the idea first and not clover showing thus a similarity between the viewpoints of the two girls. along this line of argument, we see how the first conflict in the story has been solved. clover has come to terms with the racial reality in which she lives, she has acquired a new outlook on life –she has been brave to become friends with annie and sit on the fence; all that means new knowledge. by contrast, the second conflict, the social and racial issues are still pending. the idea of sitting on the fence symbolizes the girls http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� agustín reyes torres language value 4 (2), 23–37 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 35 coming to terms with the fact that racism exists. knocking the fence down would symbolize the end of it. the pictures here show us that clover and annie are not alone. there are four more girls sitting on the fence or playing around it. this issue is one that affects them too. as clover and annie talk, their friends listen to them. they all hope for the fence to be demolished some day. to sum up, it is evident that woodson’s narrative style aligns with the black arts movements and aesthetic. while as violet j. harris points out “a single black aesthetic does not exist [and] rather, some core tenets can be found in the philosophies espoused by individuals” (2007: 1018); in the other side it is evident how the author’s political views lead her to the literary objective of enveloping black children in a sense of respect, pride and love throughout the story. in consequence, woodson’s story not only is grounded in the african american experience but also attempts to deconstruct and reconstruct what it means to be a black person in a white society. in addition, the plot, representation of characters, point of view, setting, and tone aim to encourage and agitate positive thoughts and actions into black children’s lives. as we have seen, the other side portrays the initiation of a child’s racial reality in the united states. it presents a story that is necessary in order for black children to receive a more realistic view of the world that surrounds them. in this way, woodson’s book educates african american children who in the past often “felt ignored, mentally abused and confused from exposure to books that are invisible to their child’s identity” (tolson 2008: 2). the next question then that needs to be addressed is why it should be implied that the target audience of the other side is only african american young readers. why should not european and american white children read it? this book is a tool of reflection and enrichment that demonstrates racial and cultural understanding for all children. it portrays themes that affect all human beings no matter the racial designation. by reading a book written from the perspective of an african american girl in children’s terms, young white readers also could gain an understanding of how all children have similar concerns as they grow up. european and american white children could thus begin to reflect on the past of oppression and discrimination that black americans endured. clove and annie represent a new generation of children who are brave to disregard the skin color historical differences and forge a friendship. the other side is thus a book with multicultural characters and themes that can be regarded as an http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� jacqueline woodson’s narrative style in the other side: an african american picture book for children language value 4 (2), 23-37 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 36 aesthetic exploration of the human experience in the process of the acquisition of knowledge. that is what makes it universal. references allen, w.r. and farley r. 1986. “the shifting social and economic tides of black america, 1950-1980”. annual review of sociology 12, 277-306. bishop, r.s. 2007. free within ourselves: the development of african american children’s literature. westport, conn: greenwood press. casement, r. 2003. “jacqueline woodson: real characters, real voices”. language arts 81 (1), 81-83. du bois, w.e.b. 1996. the souls of the black folk. (1903). new york: penguin books. gates jr., h.l. 1987. figures in black. words, signs and the “racial” self. new york: oxford university press. giorgis, c. and johnson n. 2001. “children’s books: finding a place”. the reading teacher 55 (3), 304-311. harris, v.j. 2007. “master narratives and oppositional texts: aesthetics and black literature for youth”. in bresler, l. (ed.) international handbook of research in arts education, vol. 2. dordrecht, netherlands: springer, 1007-1020. henderson, l. 2005. “the black arts movement and african american young adult literature: an evaluation of narrative style”. children’s literature in education 36 (4), 299-323. hooks, b. 2003. rock my soul: black people and self-esteem. new york: washington square press. lazar, g. 1993. literature and language teaching. cambridge. cambridge university press. manuel, c. 2009. “bell hooks’s children’s literature: writing to transform the world at its root”. in davidson m.g. and g. yancy (eds.) critical perspectives on bell hooks. new york and london: routledge, 95-107. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� agustín reyes torres language value 4 (2), 23–37 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 37 natov, r. and de lunca g. 1987. “an interview with john steptoe”. the lion and the unicorn 11, 1, 122-129. rosenberg, j. 2006. how far the promised land? princeton: princeton university press. smith, c.l. 2008. “author interview: neal a. lester on once upon a time in a different world”. 22 march 2012 <http://cynthialeitichsmith.blogspot.com.es/ 2008/06/author-interview-neal-lester-on-once.html> tolson, n.d. 2008. black children’s literature got the blues: the creativity of black writers and illustrators. new york: peter lang. woodson, j. 2001a. the other side. new york: the penguin group. woodson, j. 2001b. “fictions”. obsidian iii 3 (1), 49. received: 19 september 2011 accepted: 10 may 2012 cite this article as: reyes torres, a. 2012. “jacqueline woodson’s narrative style in the other side: an african american picture book for children”. language value 4 (2), 23-37. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/ languagev.2012.4.2.3 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/%20languagev.2012.4.2.3� http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/%20languagev.2012.4.2.3� references cite this article as: reyes torres, a. 2012. “jacqueline woodson’s narrative style in the other side: an african american picture book for children”. language value 4 (2), 23-37. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue. doi: h... issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2013, volume 5, number 1 pp. 156-160 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2013.5.9 156 clil in higher education. towards a multilingual language policy immaculada fortanet-gómez multilingual matters: bristol, 2013. 285 pages. isbn-13: 978-1-84769-935-0 reviewed by simone smala s.smala@uq.edu.au the university of queensland, brisbane, australia immaculada fortanet-gómez's monograph clil in higher education. towards a multilingual language policy is an impressive contribution to the growing literature on clil. setting her research in higher education, and specifically at the universitat jaume i in castelló in the valencian community autonomous region in spain, the author opens a discourse on the role of second, additional and foreign languages as the media of instruction for tertiary settings. in particular, she looks at the implementation of english and valencian, a variety of catalan, as media of instruction at the universitat jaume i. as a consequence, the book is an excellent resource and case study for academic researchers and university administrators seeking to understand the background of clil and multilingual education in tertiary settings. part 1 of fortanet-gómez's book focuses on aspects of multilingualism and multilingual education as part of societal and individual practices, taking into account how cultural identities and language planning shape the social status and geographical use of languages. the author reviews the existing literature extensively, and provides an overview of worldwide examples. one interesting concept referred to during this first part of the book is the m-factor. a relatively new term coined by herdina and jessner (2002) to capture the specific characteristics of multilinguals, it is revisited here at different points in the book to continue a conversation about what is special about multilingual individuals and their metalinguistic awareness. while much of the multilingualism debate explores the political, societal and individual relationships to different local languages, english stands out in the book as a priority language based on its lingua franca status worldwide. interestingly, the author analyses how english was for a long time a sign of elite multilingualism in spain, and only in recent decades has been adopted as the major non-local language learnt in schools. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� mailto:s.smala@uq.edu.au� clil in higher education. towards a multilingual language policy language value 5 (1), 156–160 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 157 fortanet-gómez then introduces her chapter on multilingual education with the statement that “multilingual education develops in response to a conscious policy within the language planning of a society” (p. 22) to build or maintain societal multilingualism in a world characterised by global flows of people and ideas. she engages with different influencing factors for multilingual education, from the “ethnic revolution” (fishman 1977, quoted here) to individual factors such as socio-economic background and academic ability, and questions of pedagogy and achievement outcomes (language, literacy, content). an interesting contribution of this book is the continuation of a “mapping-out” of differences between different multilingual education approaches, in the spirit of the differentiation between clil and immersion as proposed by lasagabaster and sierra (2010). fortanet-gómez situates the beginnings of awareness of ‘language’ in education in the language across the curriculum approach advocating the inclusion of first language instruction across all school subjects. the author then examines how english for academic purposes (eap) is an example for second language instruction supporting content studies across the academic spectrum for students studying through the medium of english as a second or foreign language. a related concept, content based instruction, was developed to help limited english proficiency students in american schools, whereas the immersion concept usually assumes that the second language is only used in the classroom. clil is introduced as serving the european need to produce multilingual speakers who can communicate proficiently, rather than necessarily aiming for balanced bilingualism. the author goes into much detail to delineate the origins and approaches of clil and contributes to the debate by developing an argument of where and how clil can work in higher education. in part 2, the book then moves on to multilingualism in higher education. her case study, the universitat jaume i, while specific in some aspects, is typical for many other higher education institutions set in multilingual contexts across europe and beyond, often catering for a state language, a regional language and an international language. fortanet-gómez examines policy development in a multilingual socio-political context, taking into account linguistic imperialism, linguistic human rights, and language and http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� book and multimedia review language value 5 (1), 156–160 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 158 power. her examples from european, asian and southafrican universities show the complexities of different language demands when clil is introduced into the tertiary setting. the book also engages with the questions of what types of language, and language functions, clil in higher education needs to incorporate. the author investigates the roles of language as medium of instruction, as well as target of education, and considers the different discourses students and teachers are developing in tertiary clil classrooms, and as researchers faced with the overwhelming dominance of english. this is followed by a general overview of pedagogy in higher education, and how clil interacts with this context, for example by influencing if and how students engage verbally in lectures and seminars. quoting snow et al (1989), fortanet-gómez concludes, for language as a target of education, that “academic discourse is what is needed to participate in classroom activities, so the use of the target languages as media of instruction provides the motivation and opportunity for meaningful communication” (p.149). part 2 finishes with a look at the “human factor” , examining the background of contemporary students and lecturers in tertiary settings, and pointing out that universities have become a mass education system with highly diverse, including linguistically diverse, student populations. the author points out that while academics needs to consider different pedagogical approaches in higher education, in clil they are also always language teachers – just like primary or secondary teachers in clil programmes. interestingly, the author also considers the role of administrative staff, alerting the reader to the reality that internationalisation efforts like clil involve the whole university. in the third part of her book, fortanet-gómez introduces her own study of the universitat jaume i, which focuses on the new multilingual language policy at the university. the author sets out to investigate the conditions for this new policy, and includes profiles and interviews of university community members, as well as an analysis of the institutional context and other internal and external factors impacting on the implementation of the policy. in her study, she found that only about one third of the undergraduate students report being able to do highly demanding tasks in english, with http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� clil in higher education. towards a multilingual language policy language value 5 (1), 156–160 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 159 most of them having spanish or valencian as their first language. chapters 7 and 8 of the book are, in general, dedicated to offering a detailed description of the language situation in spain and how this influences local practices and attitudes at the universitat jaume i. in chapter 9, the author then assesses her findings in the context of clil theories and the socio-political factors presented earlier, and proceeds to recommend policy steps and strategies to support the successful implementation of clil at the universitat jaume i. the conclusion at the end of the book is, at least in parts, a summary and justification of the chapters. however, there are also some important conclusions drawn from the study. among these is the observation that language skills in valencian, largely used as a family language only, might actually increase if more attention were given to it through clil and immersion programmes. related to this observation is her emphasis on the relevance of building an ethos of multilingualism that accepts the same status for all languages in use, particularly in times when economic difficulties might infringe on material costs and benefits. furthermore, there is a strong statement in the author’s conclusions that the development of cognitive academic language proficiency (calp) in english needs more attention through dedicated preparatory courses, potentially for students, academics, and administrative staff alike. at the end of the book, fortanet-gómez informs the reader that in her capacity as vicerector of the universitat jaume i, she implemented a multilingual language plan for the university, parallel to writing the book. i can fully support her suggestion that the book will be inspiring “to those who are responsible for the design and implementation of multilingual language policies” (p. 246). furthermore, as an academic and researcher, i found this book an exciting new contribution to the research field of clil, convincingly filling an epistemological gap, i.e. the use of clil in tertiary settings, and mapping and designating the areas this research focus can explore in the future. references fishman, j.a. 1977. “language and ethinicity. in giles, h. (ed.) language, ethnicity and intergroup relations. london: academic press, 15-57. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� book and multimedia review language value 5 (1), 156–160 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 160 herdina, p. and jessner, u. 2002. a dynamic model of multilingualism. perspectives of change in psycholinguistics. clevedon: multilingual matters. lasagabaster, d. and sierra, j.m. 2010. “immersion and clil in english: more differences than similarities”. elt journal 64 (4), 367-375. snow, m.a., met, m. and geneese, f. 1989. “a conceptual framework for the integration of language and content in second/foreign language instruction”. tesol quarterly 23, 201-217. received: 30 october 2013 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2012, volume 4, number 2 pp. i-xvi issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.1 i from the editors special issue: language value in minority literatures in the wake of nigerian independence and in contrast to african writers who took an essentialist view that equates language with cultural identity (ngugi wa thiong’o, for example), chinua achebe declared that “[a] language spoken by africans on african soil, a language in which africans write, justifies itself” (1975: 67). according to his vision, the colonizers’ languages, english and french, even if they were not african languages, because of their grasp on african history, were part and parcel of african experience. yet, for achebe, this did not mean that, through the use of these historically imposed linguistic systems, african authors were simply mimicking the colonizers’ weltgeist, but rather they were using them to empower themselves and fashion them to represent their experience. in this sense, their writings constitute what gilles deleuze and felix guattari describe in kafka: toward a minor literature as a “minor literature”, that is, a literature which is produced by a minority in a major language in order “to express another possible community and to forge the means for another consciousness and another sensibility” (1986: 17). “minor literature” includes three characteristics: “in it language is affected with a high coefficient of deterritorialization”; “everything in it is political”; and “in it everything takes on a collective value” (1986: 16). the first characteristic enlightens the language question surrounding the discussions of some of the writers studied in this issue of language value. historically dispossessed of their original languages, they turn to english and discover minor usages that open and unsettle the language by creating new meanings. in the same way as kafka used german, these writers’ deterritorialization of english becomes a strategy to deal with the dilemma of deploying english, the master’s tongue. these writers have become “minor”, then, not out a personal choice, but out of historical political impositions that deprived them of their native tongues. this is shown in contemporary scholarship in the history of literary writing in the united states. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� from the editors articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.1 ii unlike other countries with a clear national linguistic policy secured by their constitutions, recently revised histories of the beginnings of the united states highlight the fact that the language of the united states was never english only. the multilingual anthology of american literature: a reader of original texts with english translations (2000), edited by marc shell and werner sollors, and multilingual america: transnationalism, ethnicity, and the languages of american literature (1998), edited by werner sollors, argue for the acceptance of an early multilingual and multicultural country. viewing english-written literature as the sole dominion for literary american expression is to displace and marginalize a vast array of legitimate american multilingual articulations. in time and narrative, paul ricoeur explains that “[w]e tell stories because in the last analysis human lives need and merit being narrated. this remark takes on its full force when we refer to the necessity to save the history of the defeated and the lost. the whole history of suffering cries out for vengeance and calls for narrative” (ricoeur 1984: 175). the united states is, according to political theorist michael walzer in his what it means to be an american, “a political nation of cultural nationalities”, where “citizenship is separated from every sort of particularism: the state is nationally, ethnically, racially, and religiously neutral” (1992: 9). this issue of language value aims at studying how writers belonging to some of these american cultural nationalities have questioned this ideal of neutrality and have used literature to express their experience as part of a history of the defeated and the lost. to such an end, they have used the english language to dismantle the shortcomings of their abused representations and have secured new, although sometimes problematic and controversial, visible textualities. for antonio gramsci, “[e]very time the question of the language surfaces, in one way or another, it means that a series of other problems are coming to the fore: the formation and enlargement of the governing class, the need to establish more intimate and secure relationships between the governing groups and the national-popular mass, in other words to reorganize cultural hegemony” (1991: 183–84). his words clarify the fact that speaking about language is always a political question, and that national languages are language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2012, volume 4, number 2 pp. i-xvi issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.1 iii bearers of power relations which affect minority communities in processes of adopting, passively or actively, the dominant culture. in “american citizenship and minority rights”, pierre-luc dostie proulx explains the complex interplay of diversity and homogeneity that characterizes american life, and how the main reason for its “political stability, in spite of the strong polyethnic constitution of the country”, is due to diverse processes of voluntary integration (1984: 44). in multicultural citizenship, canadian political philosopher will kymlicka argues that before the period of the civil rights movement, immigrants were expected to assimilate following what is known as the “anglo-conformity” model of immigration. assimilation was considered “essential for political stability, and was further rationalized through ethnocentric denigration of other cultures” (1995: 14). kymlicka makes a distinction between national and ethnic communities, and claims that, when minorities integrate into a larger community, they shape their political status, following two broad patterns of cultural diversity – national minorities and ethnic minorities. for kymlicka, a nation is “a historical community, more or less institutionally complete, occupying a given territory or homeland, sharing a distinct language and culture. a ‘nation’ in this sociological sense is closely related to the idea of a ‘people’ or a ‘culture’” (1995: 11). these national minorities may have undergone a process of forced conquest or voluntary assimilation. native americans and chicanos (hispanics in the southwest who were annexed after the mexican war of 1846-1848 and who had previously formed part of the northern provinces of mexico) would come under the first categorization. ethnic minorities, on the other hand, would include immigrants, whose cultural heritage (even with rights to be respected) must not thwart their expected integration into the larger community. for kymlicka, however, the main obstacle hindering the creation of “a fluid conception of american multiculturalism remains the disadvantaged and stigmatized status of african americans” (1998: 73). this is so because “being ‘black’ is an ascribed identity that is difficult for most african americans to escape or renounce”, and the main challenge is to reduce this stigmatized element, so that being black can come to resemble other ethnic identities in america. in mixedblood messages: literature, film, family, place, louis owens declares that human beings have “the power to heal our tongues and learn to speak in any language http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� from the editors articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.1 iv on earth or to imagine a new one”. furthermore, we have “the ability to appropriate and liberate the other’s discourse. rather than merely reflecting back to him the master’s own voice, we can, in an oft-quoted phrase, learn to make it bear the burden of our own experience” (1998: xiii). in the contributions to this issue, their authors study how the colonizer’s language in the hands or, better, in the tongues of native american, african american, japanese canadian, chicano, panlatino and catalan writers articulate worlds that, paraphrasing owens’s terminology, “find themselves whole” (1998: xiii). kalenda eaton and agustín reyes torres focus on how african american writers have redefined their histories of slavery and racism through the neo-slave genre and children’s literature. nephtalí de león and maría henríquez-betancor address the situation of chicanos and latinos as national and immigrant groups from different perspectives that shatter the image of a monolithic approach by peoples of hispanic descent in the united states when confronted by the ongoing attacks to disempower them and eliminate their sense of a distinct national identity. anna brígido-corachán analyses how american indian writers make a claim for the distinctiveness of their cultural and historical differences through performative uses of language that go back to native traditions of storytelling. eva pich ponce studies canadian nationalism as it appears linked to the questionings of ethnic minority groups. unlike the american anglo-conformity model of assimilation, which advocates a kind of immigrant integration that entails the loss of the different ethnical distinctive cultural elements, canadian society has created the “multicultural mosaic” metaphor. this multiculturalist policy, adopted in 1971, conveys the image of a country in which different races, cultures and religions live together on an equal footing. it treats “immigrant ethnocultural affiliation as voluntary and encourages the members of the different immigrant groups to interact, to share their cultural heritage, and to participate in common educational, economic, political, and legal institutions” (kymlicka 1998: 74). however, pich ponce focuses on hiromi goto, a japanese canadian writer, to show how authors writing from within that cultural minority experience denounce this contradiction. last but not least, dídac llorens cubedo delves into the literary correspondence between salvador espriu and african american cyrus cassells and how cassells, from his own liminal condition of being language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2012, volume 4, number 2 pp. i-xvi issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.1 v black and gay, has felt inspired by the plight the catalan poets living in linguistic and political borderlands of fascist spain. these scholars show, then, how authors belonging to the american minorities analysed here confront american and canadian processes of assimilation through an energetic reclamation of the english language to shake the embedded principles of cultural and political hegemony. english is undoubtedly a tool that can be used to oppress and dominate, but it is also their most powerful instrument for self-definition and communal resistance. *** in “diasporic dialogues: the role of gender, language, and revision in neo-slave narrative”, kalenda eaton studies how, throughout the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first, two black authors, ishmael reed and maryse condé, have rerewritten early african diasporic experience through the genre of “neo-slave narratives”. in neo-slave narratives: studies in the social logic of a literary form (1999), ashraf h.a. rushdy defined the genre as composed of “contemporary novels that assume the form, the conventions, and take on the first-person voice of the antebellum slave narrative” (1999: 3). these works allowed him to study the social logic of the literary form of the neo-slave narrative: its origins, in the social, intellectual and racial formations of the sixties, its cultural politics as these texts intervene in debates over the significance of race, and its literary politics as these texts make statements on engagements between texts and between mainstream and minority traditions” (1999: 3). taking into account this previous scholarship, eaton explains that, unlike the slave narratives composed during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, reed’s flight to canada (1976) and condé’s i, tituba, black witch of salem (1992) tell palimpsest narratives deploying new uses of form and style that afford them the ability to re-create, re-member, and re-historicize their texts, in a process that renders their narratives liberated from the static representations of slave experience. without obviating the seriousness of struggling with the plight of slavery conditions, reed and condé confront the reality of chattel slavery in the americas through narrative experimentation using parody or satire, “a survival technique and a weapon of the weak http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� from the editors articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.1 vi against the strong” (jones 1969: 3) and black humour, to come to terms with the suffocating and annihilating historical circumstances surrounding slaves’ lives. at the same time, eaton promptly readdresses her analysis to the ways the empowering use of satire in the neo-slave narrative might reinforce the gender and racial stereotypes reed and condé are attempting to subvert. yet, as she explains, ishmael reed’s flight to canada (1976) and maryse condé’s i, tituba, black witch of salem (1992) go beyond a mere depiction of dynamics of masters and slaves, and delve into the intricacies of black slave experience, africans in the diaspora, capitalism, and gender relationships. eaton discusses the controversies generated around reed’s negative deployment of black female characters in his text. the language of satire, though, provides his characters with an agency to decide their fate, which in the case of mammy barracuda apparently parodies the traditionally idealized mammy figure, a construct of white sentimentalization that ignored the humanity and womanhood of black women. yet, for all his good intentions, reed’s use of satire as a playful style does not address the issue of gender imbalance in the text. whereas his male slave characters seem to subvert the myths about black male experience in slavery through the textual opportunities granted to them in the text to redeem their previously silenced voices, his female slave characters remain a caricature, cornered in the interstices of history. unlike reed’s flight to canada, condé, according to eaton, plays with conventions but steers clear of the caricatures of his text. conde’s i, tituba, black witch of salem makes full and explicit use of comic irony and satire to refashion the female protagonist’s servitude in new england and her role in the cause of the seventeenth-century witchcraft hysteria. this neo-slave narrative transforms the flimsy existence of tituba as a mere footnote in historical records into a full-fledged character, whose voice was always a matter of speculation. to do so, condé manipulates western concepts of speech and projects tituba’s voice through alternate means of communication and parodies of various episodes of historical collective consciousness. playing with the title of one of audre lorde’s celebrated essays (1984/2007), condé uses the master’s tools to dismantle the master’s house and attempts to recreate the colonized language in a new context. thus, for eaton, i, tituba, acknowledges the issue of an authoritative language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2012, volume 4, number 2 pp. i-xvi issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.1 vii presence that attempts to erase the voice of the subject while at the same time, through imitation and parody, condé revises the silencing tropes of the nineteenth-century slave narrative and disrupts any serious imaginings of the character. for eaton, both flight to canada and i, tituba might be considered examples of what linda hutcheon (1988) labelled as “historiographic metafiction”, and thus problematize history’s objectivity and the possibility of knowing the past through historical fiction. as such, both novels are self-reflexive, lay claim to historical characters and events, and manifest a theoretical self-awareness of history and fiction as human constructs that question historical discourse as a discourse of power. both works then use language with a postmodern reliance upon textual play, parody and historical re-conceptualization. the question of how literature, through the values encapsulated in language use but also through visual images, gives form to the experience of the cycle of life and how this process needs exploring in accordance with the particular historical circumstances of human beings is studied by agustín reyes torres in “jacqueline woodson´s narrative style in the other side: an african american picture book for children”. reyes torres analyses the other side (2001), a children’s picture book written by jacqueline woodson and beautifully illustrated by e.b. lewis’s evocative watercolours. the plot of the book brings to mind robert frost’s famous poem, “mending wall”. frost published this metaphorical piece written in blank verse in his north of boston, his second collection of poetry. the poem tells about a man who asks why he and his neighbour must rebuild the stone wall dividing their farms each spring. as if offending nature, the wall stones crumble every year and the wall needs rebuilding. “good fences make good neighbours”, insists his neighbour rejecting any possibility of destroying the border dividing their properties. for reyes torres, the other side is articulated around the central metaphor of the fence that divides blacks from whites, and makes use of children’s literature to delve into the experience of what it means for a young black girl to grow up in the united states and to come to terms with a racial reality that stubbornly builds and, if ever broken, mends dividing walls. reyes torres highlights how african american children’s literature was from its inception a radical site of representational resistance and “has its roots in african http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� from the editors articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.1 viii americans’ determination to maintain a sense of themselves as fully human in the face of their legal status as property and to maintain some control over their own lives” (bishop 2007: 4). thus, woodson firmly establishes herself within a tradition strengthened during the first half of the twentieth century to counteract the pernicious effects of black representation by white culture, in an attempt to foster a dignified view of blacks maligned by both written and visual exclusionary practices. the other side caters for the need to have more children’s books through which young african american readers can relate to the protagonists. as in other textual practices, children’s literature has always been part and parcel of the process of colonization, where the language of racialization implemented by the colonizing power was imposed on the black community through legal and educational measures. in the other side, both woodson and lewis try, through words and pictures, to break black children’s isolationism, promote acceptance of themselves and others, and foster commitment to family and community. woodson’s language is enhanced by lewis’s watercolour illustrations, which set a tone of warmth, happiness and love, and symbolize knowledge, dignity, creativity and self-esteem. furthermore and in the same way as the written plot, lewis’s expertise and proficiency break old stereotypes about the visual representation of black people. from the tandem struggle against linguistic homogenization and essentialism encapsulated in traditional children’s literature, reyes torres concludes that the other side portrays the initiation of children’s racial reality in the united states and teaches them to be brave and overlook differences in skin colour in favour of friendship, knowledge and solidarity. nephtalí de león, one of the most important contemporary chicano authors, honours this issue with “the use and abuse of language by a chicano from aztlán (both words unknown)” in a poet speaks about... his piece is not an academic article but a manifesto about what it means to be a chicano in the united states of the third millennium. de león, who calls himself “the gypsy vagabond poet of his community”, grew up as a migrant worker and lives his life in a territory that might undoubtedly be dubbed as physical, spiritual and linguistic borderlands. self-taught, his approach to his craft is non-academic and, as he himself highlights, it is the result of his multilingual and multicultural dialogue with immigrants and natives. this has also encouraged him language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2012, volume 4, number 2 pp. i-xvi issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.1 ix to freely practise “the visual and literary arts that have a resonance and relation to the community he comes from”. he is also the author of one of the first books to come out in the early 70s that theorize about the creative force of the chicano community and tackle the issue of their bilingual and bicultural identity: chicanos: our background & our pride (1972, reissued by puv in 2010), a volume that traces the origins and traditions of chicanos and pays homage to their struggle for dignity in anglo-american territory. as a manifesto, his article celebrates the importance of language as the most relevant tool of humankind, and focuses on a very specific use and abuse of it: how it has identified, trapped, occupied and liberated the chicano people of the nation of aztlán. de león explains that chicanos are those native americans often referred to as latinos, hispanics, mexican americans, mestizos, cholos and raza. in fact, they are the descendants of the people that once lived and continue to live in their homeland, aztlán. as such, their native language is neither english nor spanish, but azteca náhuatl, a language suppressed to such a degree that very few chicanos are even aware of it. the political oppression exercised by the united states government on chicanos through the exercise of a policy of genocide, based on the use and abuse of language, is responsible for what de león calls the life of semi-existence of chicanos. the abuse of language originated the blurring of the race and triggered an extreme xenophobia about their presence that has historically brought about the dehumanization of chicanos through a process of their being labelled as “illegals”, “undocumented” and “aliens”. in america, claims de león, the possessors have ignored the language of the dispossessed, have used language politics to mask unbalanced power relations which cloak, deceive, distract and euphemize “what has been a constant realpolitik of destruction meant to annihilate my people, community and ancestral memory”. political violence exerted on the chicano community has, according to de león, succeeded in erasing their language. yet, constant aggressions have failed to obliterate the most important element in their ancestral roots and in the memory of themselves, namely, their knowledge that they descend from a people of mythical proportions. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� from the editors articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.1 x similarly to nephtalí de león, maría henríquez-betancor devotes her article to the chicano experience, yet with a focus on gloria anzaldúa’s construction of identity as “the new mestiza” in borderlands/la frontera (1987), a turning point in the studies of race, class, gender and sex in the 1980s. henríquez-betancor analyses how, in the seventh essay of anzaldúa’s borderlands/la frontera, entitled “la conciencia de la mestiza: towards a new consciousness”, the author contests and revises inherited gender and cultural roles. anzaldúa rejects the dual personality that classifies her as a mexican-american and embraces the “new mestiza’s” plural identity in order to break alienating dichotomies of thought. the “new mestiza” is a survivor who has overcome the rupture with cultural patriarchal patterns and the limitations of gender. for henríquez-betancor, the consciousness of anzaldúa’s “new mestiza” is “a structural process of change in which the acceptance of cultural and personal problems, the meeting and intermixing of different groups with which anzaldúa identifies, and the possibility of reconciliation with the white society conflate in a linear and non-linear fashion”. she questions the concept of masculinity in the chicana community to finally return to her homeland, but carrying out a transformation. henríquez-betancor explains how anzaldúa traces the journey towards the mestiza consciousness and how anzaldúa represents three voices – the “i”, the “we” and the “she” – as her strategies to explore what she deems as her collective identity as a chicana and as a “new mestiza”. this positioning of herself in three different voices bespeaks the complexity of her identity. when she uses the “i”, she links herself with her personal identity, defines her feminism and creates a new culture as a “new mestiza. her “i” is a new hybrid identity that transcends her origins to become a critical being. when she uses the third person singular, “she” (“the new mestiza”), she adopts a chosen subject with the purpose of triggering change, and it becomes a potential “we” since it invites the collectivity of chicana women, but also homosexual men of all races and nationalities together with lesbians, to join in the regenerative process of establishing a new and powerful identity. for henríquez-betancor, anzaldúa creates what she calls “a collective and cultural self-definition as she mixes the personal with meaningful shared cultural elements” in a process that is non-linear and progressive, fluid and concrete. this multiplicity of identities resists exclusionary linguistic practices and aims at a real language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2012, volume 4, number 2 pp. i-xvi issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.1 xi representation of transnational historical memories, forging solidarity across experiential borders. anna m. brígido-corachán’s “wordarrows: the performative power of language in n. scott momaday’s non-fiction work” analyses how contemporary native american literary works, mostly written in english, reflect on the role of tribal native languages as part of their legacy, taking into account the fact that out of the two hundred indigenous languages spoken in united states now, only twenty are taught at home as a first language. brígido-corachán argues how the unstoppable erosion of tribal languages by the overwhelming presence and historical educational imposition of english on native americans explains why most contemporary authors use english and exhibit very little command of the languages once spoken by their ancestors. that being the case, native american writers, if interested in contributing to reverse the colonial imbalance, must necessarily subvert the language of historical subjugation and dominion, and deploy new language strategies to rewrite their personal and communal histories. her essay then focuses on momaday’s non-fiction piece the way to rainy mountain (1969/2001) and on his seminal essay “the man made of words” (1997), as examples of orality and performative conceptions of language in the kiowa storytelling tradition. in “the man made of words”, momaday declares: “we cannot exhaust the power of words; that power is intrinsic”. this is further explained in his essay “the native voice in american literature”, where he defines what language stands for in the indian tribal worlds: “words are intrinsically powerful. they are magical. by means of words one can bring about physical change in the universe”. momaday holds a relevant position within what, in 1983, kenneth lincoln baptized as the native american renaissance. in fact, the crucial event that marked its origin was the awarding of the 1968 pulitzer prize to momaday, a kiowa writer, for his novel house made of dawn. after his national and international recognition, other native american writers followed. yet, the division of native american traditions into two stages has been opposed by some critics, since the period inaugurated by momaday obscures not only the written work of previous nineteenth-century authors, but also the extraordinary legacy of oral works created in the different tribal languages spread around the north american continent. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� from the editors articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.1 xii for brígido-corachán, the way to rainy mountain – thematically divided into three blocks having to do with the momaday’s personal spatial dis-locations – traces the movement of his affiliation strategies into tribal culture from his academic studies in california. this journey back into the heart of his indigenous community is shaped by juxtaposing not only words (the mythical, the historical/anthropological, the family version of stories and reminiscences) but also his father’s drawings, and creates a polyphonic version of kiowa historiography that breaks the boundaries between fact and fiction, history and myth. thus, for brígido-corachán, the way to rainy mountain becomes a resisting text that questions the authority of the written word and echoes the structural and aesthetic traits that conform traditional native storytelling, boldly recreating its performative aspects as it reproduces an audience, a place, a particular oral rhythm and the voices from the past. as a native american storyteller, momaday develops what brígido-corachán calls “a sort of cartographic language” in this work. he facilitates a map for readers with the paratextual pieces wrapping up the text, thus allowing them to infer ultimate meaning out of the active weaving of the passages in their minds. taking into account gerald vizenor’s new coinages and the way they construct a new vision of the world that moves away from the hackneyed language of victimry, brígido-corachán concludes that momaday’s language can also be articulated around the notion of vizenorian wordarrowary and, as such, a powerful vehicle that opens up a new historical space for his personal and communal imagination. engaging in an act that arnold krupat calls “anti-imperial translation”, momaday’s performative use of storytelling both in the way to rainy mountain and “the man made of words” reconstitutes the english language as a linguistic code capable of tracing new and transfiguring kiowascapes. in “memory and language in hiromi goto’s chorus of mushrooms”, eva pich ponce focuses on how japanese canadian author hiromi goto deploys linguistic codes to construct social and cultural identities that break stereotypical images of the japanese in the country. the novel describes the intercultural experience of these asian immigrants through the lives of three generations of women belonging to the same family. the polyphonic nature of the narrative, the choral rendering of living in new cultural and social borderlands, enhances goto’s intention to embrace a diversity of discourses on language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2012, volume 4, number 2 pp. i-xvi issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.1 xiii immigration, ethnicity, and identity. these discourses are widely represented by the inclusion of personal recollections, japanese legends and journal articles. taking into account the metafictional categorization of chorus of mushrooms, pich ponce analyses goto’s subversion of realism and her strategies to destabilize narrative unity, reliable point of view and coherent character presentation, in an attempt to problematize canadian fixed notions of multiculturalism. for goto, pich ponce argues, the protagonists’ construction of an identity together with their willingness to keep their native cultural and national legacies are mainly rendered in terms of linguistic conflicts. in the face of the colonizing changes suffered by these characters, goto tackles the thorny question of assimilation in the canadian scenario. naoe, the grandmother, tries desperately and against all odds to remain faithful to her roots, refuses to forget her past and japanese culture, and defiantly rejects using the english language. her language is pierced by memories, pain and desire that, far from romanticizing the past, question her native culture and history. keiko, her daughter, decides to go canadian for the sake of muriel, her own daughter, who has embraced english as her language. her will to assimilate into canadian culture reveals how the country’s rhetoric of multicultural acceptance is in fact pervaded by racism and homogenizing tendencies that betray an exclusionary politics. language, then, becomes a site of struggle for goto as she describes the reapproachment of the three women through their deployment of new linguistic practices. the narrative includes many words in japanese without translation into english, a conscious strategy to invert the relationship between the margin/immigrant japanese and the centre/national canadian, and highlight the fact that differences exist. this omission forces readers to reflect upon the fact of translation and how new kinds of communication can be established through body language and imagination. the protagonists change names, play with japanese and english throughout the text, composing a hybrid narrative that challenges accepted notions of identity. refashioning the oral tradition of telling stories, these characters reinvent themselves as hybrid ethnic subjects and show that, as one of them declares, the nature of words changes with the telling. thus, their ultimate truths offer multiple perspectives that disrupt readers’ stereotypical expectations about the japanese immigrant minority in canada. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� from the editors articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.1 xiv in “the voice of the cypress. cyrus cassells and the poetry of salvador espriu”, dídac llorens cubedo tackles transnational and translinguistic influences between one of the most revered twentieth-century catalan poets, salvador espriu (1913-1985), and african american poet cyrus cassells. as the president of the international association for the defence of menaced languages and cultures, during the early 1970s, espriu campaigned for the survival of minority languages spoken all over the world. as a writer, he produced a body of literature that attests to his unflagging vindication of catalan, a language persecuted during franco’s regime. cassells’s own sense of marginalization, as a man who is both black and gay, has drawn him to read and translate catalan poetry into english. similarly to espriu, he is a poet in debt with previous poetical traditions and poets. llorens cubedo focuses on cassells’s poem “to the cypresses again and again” (1986), a piece published a year after espriu’s death, which was meant to pay homage to the catalan bard. his analysis on aspects such as the point of view, the imagery and the themes, as well as his exploration of the reasons that engaged cassells’s passion for espriu, shows how two apparently divergent poetical traditions converge through space and time in cassells’s poetry. llorens cubedo brings to the fore the importance of how artists’ creativity is reinforced across historical, personal and communal experiences and, most relevant to the point analysed in this issue, how it is forged across and against different languages. finally, before concluding this introduction, it is worth remembering that, with regard to language rights in american multicultural society, in 1998 the linguistic society of america issued a “statement of language rights”. this document recognizes that the eradication of most of the indigenous languages of the united states was a “deliberate government policy” and that their decline “has been closely linked to the loss of much of the culture of their speakers”. and secondly that the country is “home to numerous immigrant languages other than english”, the presence of which offers “both challenges and opportunities”. both indigenous and immigrant non-english languages conform a multilingual america and present the nation with “many benefits and opportunities” (1998: 389-390). hence, the contributions to this issue of language value attest to the multiplicity of approaches followed by ethnic minority american and canadian writers to tell their stories, leaving behind complaints of the colonizing effect of english language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2012, volume 4, number 2 pp. i-xvi issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.1 xv and revealing its liberating potential in the tongues of the inhabitants of linguistic borderlands. carme manuel cuenca guest editor universitat de valència, spain references achebe, c. 1975. morning yet on creation day. london: heinemann. anzaldúa, g. 1987. borderlands/la frontera: the new mestiza. san francisco: spinsters/aunt lute books. bishop, r.s. 2007. free within ourselves: the development of african american children’s literature. westport, conn: greenwood press. cassells, c. 1986. “to the cypresses again and again”. callaloo 26, 18-23. condé, m.i. 1992. tituba black witch of salem. charlottesville: university press of virginia. de león, n. (1972/2010). reimpression. chicanos: our background & our pride. valencia: publicacions de la universitat de valència. deleuze, g. and guattari, f. 1986. kafka: toward a minor literature. trans. dana polan. minneapolis: university of minnesota. goto, h. 1997. chorus of mushrooms. london: the women’s press. gramsci, a. 1991. selections from cultural writings. forgacs, d. and g. nowell-smith (eds.), w. boelhower (trans.). cambridge: harvard university press. hutcheon, l. 1988. a poetics of postmodernism: history, theory, fiction. london: routledge. jones, h.l. 1969. “black humor and the american way of life”. satire 7 (1), 1-10. kymlicka, w. 1995. multicultural citizenship. oxford: oxford university press. kymlicka, w. 1998 “american multiculturalism in the international arena”. dissent 45 (4), 73-79. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� from the editors articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.1 xvi linguistic society of america. 1998 “statement on language rights”. in sollors, w. (ed.) multilingual america: transnationalism, ethnicity, and the languages of american literature. new york: new york university press, 389-391. lorde, a. 1984/2007. “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house”. sister outsider: essays and speeches. freedom, ca: the crossing press, 110-114. momaday, n.s. 1968. house made of dawn. new york: harper & row. momaday, n.s. 1969/2001. the way to rainy mountain. albuquerque, nm: university of new mexico press. momaday, n.s. 1997. the man made of words: essays, stories, passages. new york: st. martin’s press. owens, l. 1998. mixedblood messages: literature, film, family, place. norman: university of oklahoma press. proulx, p.-l.d. 1984. “american citizenship and minority rights”. critique: a world wide journal of politics 2, 43-63. reed, i. 1976. flight to canada. new york: random house. ricoeur, p. 1984. time and narrative. vol. i. trans. mclaughlin, k. and d. pellauer. chicago: university of chicago press. rushdy, a.h.a. 1999. neo-slave narratives: studies in the social logic of a literary form. new york: oxford university press. shell, m. and sollors, w. (eds.) 2000. the multilingual anthology of american literature: a reader of original texts with english translations. new york: new york university press. sollors, w. (ed.) 1998. multilingual america: transnationalism, ethnicity, and the languages of american literature. new york: new york university press. walzer, m. 1992. what it means to be an american. new york: marsilio. woodson, j. 2001. the other side. new york: the penguin group. *** in “diasporic dialogues: the role of gender, language, and revision in neo-slave narrative”, kalenda eaton studies how, throughout the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first, two black authors, ishmael reed and maryse condé, have r... eaton discusses the controversies generated around reed’s negative deployment of black female characters in his text. the language of satire, though, provides his characters with an agency to decide their fate, which in the case of mammy barracuda app... references language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue july 2012, volume 4, number 1 pp. 33-62 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.3 33 variability in l2 acquisition of formulaic sequences: a study of linguistic factors in the use and learning of phrasal verbs by non-native speakers rafael alejo-gonzález ralejo@unex.es universidad de extremadura, spain abstract in this paper, the acquisition of phrasal verbs (pvs) by l2 learners is explored from the perspective provided by a usage-based approach to language. this involves looking at low scope or item-specific schemas, which in this article are identified as the actual particles, prepositions and pvs used by the learners, together with the more abstract syntactic or semantic schemas that emerge from their use. given the labour intensive work required by this type of analysis, the focus is placed on the use of verbout constructions made by l2 learners of the pvs as reflected in a corpus of learner language, i.e. the spanish, italian, swedish, dutch, russian and bulgarian subsections of the icle (1,287,517 words). more concretely, i analyse l2 use of out-pvs at different grain levels and provide an account of the factors influencing the acquisition of these linguistic units. the results obtained from the analysis show 1) that out is underused by learners, at the lowest level of constituency, the level of the word and its collocates and that this may be due its low cue answer contingency (it is a short form with many meanings); 2) that out-pvs, as other formulaic sequences, shows a pattern of overuse of a small number of frequent verbs and underuse of the rest; 3) that, at a morpho-syntactic level, out-pvs used by l2 learners are typically frozen with little variability in both the tenses and the syntactic patterns chosen; and 4) that at the semantic level, more prototypical and frequent meanings in the text type analysed, not necessarily literal uses, are used with greater frequency by nns. all in all, the usage-based approach adopted has allowed us to reveal the complexity of factors involved in explaining the difficulty l2 learners have in acquiring phrasal verbs. keywords: phrasal verbs, constructions, formulaicity, second language acquisition, corpus linguistics, particle out i. introduction in the last few years, the role of formulaicity or formulaic language has been acknowledged (e.g. wray 2002, schmitt and carter 2004) as one of the key elements explaining the difference in language use and learning between native (ns) and nonnative speakers (nns) of english. more recent research has nuanced this broad finding by showing that underuse of formulaic sequences (fss) by nns is only part of the picture, which is completed by the tendency to overuse a small group of these linguistic units (durrant and schmitt 2009). the question remains, however, whether this gap in http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� mailto:ralejo@unex.es� variability in l2 acquisition of formulaic sequences language value 4 (1), 33–62 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 34 the knowledge between ns and nns can simply be described in quantitative terms, i.e. ns use more fss than nns, or whether, if we restrict ourselves to linguistic factors, there are additional qualitative factors specifically tied to the nature and constituent parts of the formulae. in other words, the question that needs to be asked is whether nns not only use fewer fss than ns but also use them in a different way and whether, as suggested by schmitt and carter (2004), the constituent elements or individual words integrating the fs play a particular role in this process. the above research programme starts from two main assumptions. the first one concerns the understanding of fss as units that are not completely frozen or fixed. fss can certainly show variability, flexibility and complexity at the different linguistic levels and this has been recognized by the different theoretical approaches (see gries 2008, moon 1998, for an overview). the second one, and here the theoretical differences are greater, is related to the fact that non-compositionality need not be absolute. individual words contribute both syntactic (konopka and bock 2009) and semantic (wulff 2009) information to the fss. given this approach, phrasal verbs (pvs) become a perfect test bed to study the range of linguistic factors affecting the l2 acquisition of fs. they do not only show different syntactic or semantic configurations (e.g. transitive vs. intransitive, continuous vs. split, opaque vs. transparent, etc.), which make them subject to great variability. more importantly, following a usage-based approach, pvs can be described at different levels of abstraction ranging from lower level concrete constructions, which can be equated to specific uses taught to learners in efl books (e.g. put it out), to their highest schematic configuration defined in reference grammars (e.g. as verb+particle constructions). pvs are thus the perfect example to study the problems that variable and schematic fs are likely to pose to l2 learners. however, the existing sla research has focused on the problems that pvs as a group pose to nns (ishii and sohmiya 2006, siyanova and schmitt 2007), thereby emphasizing their homogeneity and paying little attention to the different sources of variation. nns are shown to avoid and/or underuse pvs and this is taken as a manifestation of their mostly idiomatic and formulaic status irrespective of specific linguistic factors involved. this is basically the result of the mostly experimental http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� rafael alejo-gonzález language value 4 (1), 33–62 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 35 methodology used, which only allows the analysis of a limited number of pvs taken as representative of the whole phenomenon (however, see waibel 2007). moreover, pvs are defined exclusively following a structuralist approach (usually based on quirk et al. 1985) which gives priority to syntax and semantic opacity and therefore disregards the chunking mechanism at play in cases of multiple constituency (she’d come out of the water cf. cappelle 2005) and in non-compositional ones (e.g. go out). as research has shown, some of these sequences can become formulaic by dint of their frequent use. it is the aim of this article to explore the acquisition of pvs by l2 learners from the perspective provided by a usage-based approach to language, which will take into consideration all levels of schematicity (from low scope or item-specific levels to the more abstract syntactic schemas). thus, given the labour-intensive work required by this type of analysis, i will concentrate on the use of verb-out constructions made by l2 learners of the pvs as reflected in a corpus of learner language. this will allow me to start at the lowest level of analysis, the level of the word (in this case the word out), and proceed to study the construction at higher levels of abstraction that take into account meaning and syntax. in this way, i will look into l2 use of out-pv at different grain levels and will hopefully be able to provide a more thorough and detailed account of the factors that may influence the acquisition of these linguistic units. the article is organized as follows. after an introduction on the different aspects involved in the acquisition of pvs and a summary of the main findings on l2 acquisition of pvs, i present the methodology and the main hypotheses. then i will analyse the use of the particle out by l2 learners at different grain levels, first in isolation and then in combination with other words (i.e. its collocates), and finally i will concentrate on the main focus of the present article – its verbal patterns. ii. what is involved in l1 knowledge of pvs? ii.1. lexis and/or grammar following some of the research on the subject (jackendoff 1997, 2002, 2010, but see also cobb 2003), the task of acquiring pvs could be described as very similar to vocabulary acquisition. given their phraseological status, these multi-word units would be stored, as also happens with other idioms, in the mental lexicon on an item-by-item http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� variability in l2 acquisition of formulaic sequences language value 4 (1), 33–62 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 36 basis. the knowledge native speakers have of pvs would then become part of their long-term memory together with their meanings and structural specifications (see konopka and bock 2009 for an account). gauging the number of pvs known by a native speaker or, as in our case, by an l2 learner would amount to establishing their use of these multi-word units. however, as jackendoff (2002) himself acknowledges, this view does not provide us with a complete picture since there are at least two groups of what he calls verb particle constructions (vpcs) that do not need to be stored in the mental lexicon. the first one is instantiated by a sentence like i’m (all) coffeed out, where a verb and a noun can be substituted in the place of the verb with the meaning ‘worn out from too much v-ing/too much n’. the second makes reference to verb-particle combinations such as flip out, phase out, chill out, etc. (2002: 188), which allow for much less variation in the verb slot and can roughly be paraphrased as ‘go into an unusual mental state’. according to jackendoff, in both cases the vpcs can actually be constructed online as they are respectively based on productive and semi-productive schemas that can give rise to new and non-conventionalised instances. in other words, there is a rule involved in their production. even though other researchers have shown that frequently productive constructions or schemas can also be stored in the mental lexicon (cf. durrant and schmitt 2009), jackendoff’s analysis emphasizes that a lexical approach to the acquisition of vpcs is not enough and that there is a higher level of abstraction involved in the knowledge of vpcs, i.e. the syntactic level. in fact, it is only at this level that vpcs can be identified since it is by looking at their specific syntactic structure that it becomes possible to distinguish them from similar expressions containing a preposition (e.g. he went down the street). as put forward by the linguistics literature (cappelle 2005, jackendoff 1997, 2002, 2010, quirk et al 1985), the knowledge of pvs would involve being able to distinguish particles from prepositions, as these show different syntactic behaviour. this knowledge would obviously be implicit since very few native speakers, except perhaps for linguists, would be able to explain the difference between these two units. very few studies, however, have explored whether this syntactic distinction between particles and prepositions entails a difference in the way they are learned and the difficulty they pose for native and non-native speakers. the present study intends to address this gap by http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� rafael alejo-gonzález language value 4 (1), 33–62 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 37 studying the acquisition of out both when it functions as a preposition (e.g. he went out of the building) and when it does so as a particle (e.g. he went out). ii.2. semantic approaches to pv knowledge for some researchers (o’dowd 1998, or cappelle 2005 for a summary) grammatical knowledge is not entirely reliable and the syntactic status of particles has been problematized. thus, even reference grammars (huddlestone and pullum 2002, for example) have opted for doing away with them and subsuming them under the blanket category of prepositions. this decision is taken on the grounds that the semantic similarity between these two linguistic units should have priority. in cognitive linguistics, which is the approach that has paid greater attention to them, this semantic overlap has been explained in terms of semantic or metaphorical extension from their basic meaning. thus, the spatiotemporal meaning of a preposition like over would be extended into a network of senses that have arisen by its use in other less specific and abstract contexts (lakoff 1987), for example when it expresses control (evans and green 2006). this basic approach has been applied to other prepositions and has produced an extraordinary wealth of research (brugman 1981, campoy 1996, coventry and garrod 2004, deane 1993, 2005, dirven 2001, evans 2003, hampe, 2002, lakoff 1987, lindstromberg 1998, morgan 1997, navarro 2002, silvestre 2009, svorou 1994, vandeloise 1991, 1994). this new outlook on prepositions is made possible by the research on compositionality (e.g. gibbs et al. 1989; glucksberg 1993), which has shown that very few formulae or idioms are strictly non-compositional. in the case of pvs, this has even led to the elaboration of a measure of the contribution to the meaning of pvs by each of the component words (berry-rogghe 1974, cited in wulff 2009). this approach, however, is not without its critics, even within the field of cognitive linguistics. thus, as zlatev summarizes (2007: 341), both radial networks and the primacy of space have been called into question by experimental research (cf. cuyckens et al. 1997, rice et al. 1999, sandra and rice 1995) and have been said to lack psycholinguistic reality at the level of the individual speaker. but the evidence is still http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� variability in l2 acquisition of formulaic sequences language value 4 (1), 33–62 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 38 scarce and does not refute the existence of meaning connections or networks as such at a linguistic or conventionalized level (zlatev 2007). the mind of the individual speaker may not exactly reflect the diachrony of the language and the way meaning networks were created, but it is unlikely that all the connections between related meanings remain obscure for him or her. on the other hand, the spatiotemporal senses may not necessarily be the basic meaning, but, as prototype theory predicts, other senses will take its place in the mental lexicon. ii.3. pv constructions this critique of the standard cognitive linguistic position on prepositions brings to our notice the fact that both the syntactic and, to a lesser degree, the semantic descriptions above assume an understanding of pvs by an ideal native speaker and a homogenous knowledge of all pvs. but this is not always the case, as shown by the example of children. here, as pointed out by tomasello, it seems more accurate to posit a more unsystematic and patchy knowledge: “a given child might use a lexical item like up in all kinds of interesting ways in all kinds of combinatorial patterns, but then use the very similar lexical items down and on only as single word utterances” (tomasello 2000: 212). it can be argued that, although different in kind, l2 learners’ knowledge of pvs can also be assumed to be patchy and unsystematic and that an analysis at a lower level of abstraction like the one carried out here with out is necessary. in fact, as suggested by jackendoff (2002), it would be more accurate, from a strict constructionist perspective, to posit six different constructions or, to use his own words, phenomena (jackendoff 2010), since he can see no unity in their semantics: “there seems absolutely no semantic unity among these various phenomena, despite sharing the same syntax” (jackendoff 2010: 249). however, for a constructionist and usage-based approach to language, reconciling these three main perspectives need not be difficult, as they can be seen not as mutually exclusive but as complementary. item-based, abstract syntactic knowledge, semantic and constructional knowledge form part of the inventory of ‘symbolic units’ that constitute language (langacker 1987). furthermore, it would be possible to establish the http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� rafael alejo-gonzález language value 4 (1), 33–62 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 39 connection between the six phenomena jackendoff makes reference to by positing the meaning of the particle as the axis uniting and giving coherence to them. in short, an analysis wanting to explore the acquisition of pvs will have to take this into account. here a multiple perspective is adopted by first focusing on the acquisition of the adverbial particle out and then by analysing its different syntactic and semantic features when it collocates with a verb. iii. l2 acquisition of pvs the research on the acquisition of pvs can be divided into two main strands. on the one hand, we have the analyses carried out within the tradition of sla acquisition proper and, on the other, there is a certain amount of cl-inspired research mainly focusing on language instruction. as already stated in the introduction, sla research has mainly focused on the avoidance of pvs, defined as the preference by l2 learners for one-word verbs over multi-word verbs when these would be the typical choice by native speakers. in strict terms, avoidance does not mean lack of knowledge but strategic behaviour on the part of the learner, who perceives these units as difficult and opts for those he or she considers to be easier. factors that have been found to affect avoidance of pvs are: 1) the l1 of the learner, with learners whose l1 is closer to english showing less avoidance (dagut and laufer 1985, hulstijn and marchena 1989, sjöholm 1995); 2) the proficiency level of the learner (liao and fukuya 2004, but see siyanova and schmitt 2007 for a different opinion); 3) the idiomaticity of the pv (dagut and laufer 1985, liao and fukuya 2004, however, see ishii and sohmiya 2006 for different findings); and 4) the degree of control used in the task administered (liao and fukuya 2004). other sla researchers have focused on an aspect that is related to avoidance but does not presuppose previous knowledge or a strategic behaviour on the part of the learner, i.e. underuse (alejo 2010a, 2010b, cobb 2003). this concept can be defined as the tendency to use on average fewer pvs than native speakers and is related to the lack of formulaic competence by l2 learners. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� variability in l2 acquisition of formulaic sequences language value 4 (1), 33–62 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 40 perhaps as a result of the methodology adopted, these sla studies on pv acquisition do not touch on aspects that recent sla research has highlighted. thus, very little mention is made of frequency effects (see alejo 2010, alejo et al. 2010), zipfian tendencies (alejo et al. 2010) and other aspects such as saliency and construal. more importantly, the underlying assumption that these studies adopt is one whereby pvs are still perceived as a unitary phenomenon and not as a family of constructions (see gries 2003, dirven 2001) and pay little heed to the different sources of linguistic variation available for pvs in spite of their status as fs. iv. research questions in this paper, i intend to analyse how this variability in pvs, and more particularly in pvs using the particle out, affects the way in which nns of english acquire and use these formulaic sequences. in this respect, the following hypotheses can be put forward: 1. starting at the lower level, the level of the word and its collocates, out is hypothesized to be underused by learners, as it is a short form with low cue answer contingency, i.e. several meanings and functions correspond to one form. 2. in line with what has been found for other types of collocations (see section vi.4.1.c. below), all l2 learners of english will use pvs to a lesser extent than ns, while at the same time showing a tendency to overuse highly frequent pvs. 3. given that pvs show different syntactic and semantic configurations, which by using construction grammar could be identified as different constructions (gries 2003), which separate them from phraseology or contiguous collocations, overuse and underuse of pvs by l2 learners will be modulated by these specific configurations. v. methodology v.1. corpora used in this study, three different corpora were used. on the one hand, the icle (international corpus of learner english 2002) was used to establish l2 learners’ use of out-pvs, while both the locness (louvain corpus of native english essays) and the http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� rafael alejo-gonzález language value 4 (1), 33–62 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 41 university and school essay sections of the bnc served as the necessary benchmark against which learners’ patterns of use would be compared. the icle (2002) is a non-tagged corpus made up of short essays – 500 words – written by university students in europe on different contentious topics. it is perhaps one of the best corpora available to study learner language and has a major advantage for the purposes of our study: it comprises texts from students of different l1 backgrounds. as stated in the introduction, language transfer plays a particularly important role in l2 use of pvs and therefore had to be factored out. however, not all subcorpora included in the icle were selected, as this would have involved extensive work. at the same time a random selection was also methodologically problematic, given the demonstrated influence on pv acquisition of different l1 groups (cf. dagut and laufer 1985, hulstijn and marchena 1989), which has been confirmed and expanded by using cognitive criteria (alejo 2010). as a result, in order to ensure a balanced sample of learner language, two subcorpora for each of the groups established by alejo (2010b) were chosen (see table 1). both the locness and the sections of the bnc used here fulfilled the requirement of comparability in terms of genre or text types. they mainly consist of argumentative essays like the icle and their total length is also equivalent to each of the individual subcorpora of the icle. the total numbers of words in the ns and nns subsections are different but, as some of the calculations had to be performed on an individual basis (e.g. t-scores) and the overall figure was not very different, they were still deemed useful for comparative purposes. table 1. corpora used. corpus # words ns bnc 202,183 locness 288,177 nns dutchicle 231,322 swicle 198,705 russicle 227,648 bulgicle 199,951 spicle 200,931 iticle 228,960 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� variability in l2 acquisition of formulaic sequences language value 4 (1), 33–62 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 42 v.2. procedure given its commitment to a usage-based approach, the present study aims to conduct a comprehensive analysis and comprises all the hits of the word out found in the corpora, irrespective of function or meaning. its main focus, however, is restricted to out-pvs (i.e. pvs containing the word out). it is important to note that the scope of the present analysis and the terminology used is best defined by reference to dirven’s (2001) classification. following mostly a cognitive linguistic approach, and therefore using semantic criteria (see section above), he also recognizes the special syntactic status of some of these constructions. thus, he differentiates between pvs as a broad term including combinations of verbs and prepositions or particles and vpcs as a subcategory within that includes only particle combinations, the ones complying with syntactic tests (dirven 2001: 5). no other similar lexical items (e.g. up, down, off, etc.) were included in the analysis because a detailed usage-based analysis like the one proposed here would not be possible if the scope of analysis were wider. at the same time, selecting out fulfils some important conditions. in the first place, together with up, out is one of the most frequent particles (gardner and davies 2007, o’dowd 1998) and is likely to provide us with a good example of what may happen with pvs made up of other constituents. moreover, for the analyst, out provides the advantage of having neatly distinct particle and prepositional uses (nearly always followed by the preposition of) and therefore making it easier to distinguish between these two uses and categorize them. as some of the research on lexical acquisition has demonstrated, automatic extraction of vpcs is far from achieving a high degree of accuracy (cf. villavicencio, bannard, etc.) and in addition there are times where the analysis may be unclear (cf. o’dowd 1998). all instances of the word out, irrespective of meaning or function, were obtained by using the application wordsmith tools. a first methodological step consisted in identifying its collocations and in measuring the collocational strength of the resulting pairs. for this, the programme collocate was used and the test chosen to calculate the collocational strength was the t-score. even though some flaws have been pointed out (stefanovitch and gries 2003), this test is still widely used and has the advantage of taking into account highly frequent collocations (cf. durrant and schmitt 2009). given http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� rafael alejo-gonzález language value 4 (1), 33–62 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 43 the importance of frequency in constructional approaches (cf. ellis 2002, ellis and ferreira-junior 2009, wulff 2008) and in the present paper, this test allowed us to select those instances we were more interested in. however, as we are dealing with constructions, collocational strength was only useful to measure adjacent pairs since, as durrant and schmitt state, “combinations at a wider range of distances ran the risk of making association measures non-comparable between collocations” (2009: 166). in this case, raw and normalized frequencies were considered appropriate following standard procedures in corpus linguistics. once identified, all the instances of out were lemmatised and exported to excel format by using a functionality to that effect. a database was created from the resulting excel file and the following tags were added manually: 1. meaning of the particle. a slight reformulation and simplification of the radial network provided by tyler and evans (2003). according to this classification, the central meaning or proto-scene of out, exteriority, is typically expressed in meanings of motion and location. this basic meaning is extended into various other meanings, which can be interpreted to have developed as meaning extensions. among other meaning extensions, not included here given their low frequency, they mention the following major senses: a) perception and cognition (tyler and evans 2003) (e.g. find out the truth); b) exclusion and invisibility (e.g. he crossed out the typo); c) segmentation, which comprises distribution and reflexivity (e.g. the boy stretched out his hand); d) completion (e.g. this jacket needs to dry out); e) material source, which is the only meaning that is specific to the preposition out of included in this analysis, and refers to those instances where the preposition indicates what something is made of (e.g. the chair was made out of wood). 2. grammatical constituency of out including three main categories: a) nominal, i.e. when out was part of a compound which was either a noun or an adjective (e.g. crowding out); b) adjunctive, when the preposition or adverb function is outside the scope of the verb usually functioning as an adjunct; and c) verbal (pvs), when out functions within the scope of the verb as a particle or as a http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� variability in l2 acquisition of formulaic sequences language value 4 (1), 33–62 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 44 preposition. as suggested above (cf. dirven 2001), this category includes vpcs but does not identify with them, as it subsumes them. 3. grammatical status of verbal out differentiating between out-vpcs, where out has the syntactic and semantic properties of a particle, and ‘verb+out’ constructions, which comprise the rest of the uses. 4. syntax of vpcs, which was tagged for the following structures: a) intransitive vpcs; b) contiguous, when the particle is placed after the verb and before the direct object (he sorted out the situation); c) split, when the direct object is placed before the particle (i sorted it out); and d) stranded (something i did not find out). vi. results and discussion vi.1. frequency: how much do l2 learners use the word out? since the aim of this article is to study the acquisition of pvs comprising the particle out, it seems reasonable (and also appropriate from a usage-based perspective) to start at the lowest level by analysing the extent to which the word out is used by l2 learners. its frequency of use may provide us with a first approximation to the knowledge they have of this form. in icle, as already established by granger and rayson (1998), out ranks in the 96th position of the 100 most frequent words, which seems a clear indication that learners use it quite productively and that it constitutes one of the items of their basic vocabulary. this replicates, with a slight difference in rank, what happens with ns, where the word out is also included in the list of the 100 most frequent words. however, the similarities with native speaker use of the word out disappear if we look at the actual normalized frequency with which both groups use it. as can be seen from table 2, nns use the word out per million words nearly half as much as ns. in fact, every 100 times out is used by nns it will be used, on average, 140 times by a ns. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� rafael alejo-gonzález language value 4 (1), 33–62 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 45 table 2. frequency of out. # p.mil. ns 876 1786 nns 1612 1252 in short, l2 learners know the word out but underuse it. this is clearly related to an already established tendency in learner corpora to underuse function words and more particularly prepositions (granger and rayson 1998) and is also an indication that there is something in the way ns use out that escapes l2 learners. the present article will attempt to provide an explanation for this finding. vi.2. collocates: do learners know the company out keeps? after considering out in isolation, the second level of analysis deals with the different words it associates with, i.e. its collocations. a collocational analysis may provide further clues as to the way out is used in constructions by ns and the way learners reproduce those constructions or deviate from them. the results for the t-scores presented in this section have been calculated for each subcorpus and then averaged out for both ns and nns. thus, it was possible to compare t-scores, a measure which is dependent on corpus size. as some combinations of out are not found in all subcorpora, especially nns subcorpora, i have only included collocates appearing a minimum of 4 times (1 ns subcorpus and 3 nns subcorpora). vi.2.1. right collocates the right collocates for out in nns corpora roughly correspond with those in ns, as can be seen from table 3. thus, with the exception of ‘out what’, ‘out their’ and ‘out in’, the rank order is similar in both groups. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� variability in l2 acquisition of formulaic sequences language value 4 (1), 33–62 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 46 table 3: right collocates for out. ns nns n.gram # # corpora t-score # # corpora t-score out of 196 2 8.5084455 459 6 7.658805667 out that 37 2 2.875499 141 6 3.631427833 out to 59 2 2.8077225 116 6 2.147978667 out on 18 2 2.2360315 16 3 1.592677333 out by 15 2 1.917134 17 4 1.56093275 out what 5 1 1.886924 19 4 1.7147175 out but 5 1 1.457633 15 3 1.400459 out their 10 2 1.44653 10 3 0.936769667 out in 28 2 1.3997625 47 6 0.562578667 out from 4 1 1.246068 17 4 1.666419 out there 4 1 1.212829 14 3 1.496769333 out for 14 2 1.128472 26 4 1.4979615 out the 68 2 1.0884425 106 6 0.5810205 out a 24 2 0.8578945 29 5 -0.294445 out as 11 2 0.6059145 15 3 1.252079667 out and 22 2 -0.4253065 48 6 -0.046282333 it is interesting to note that the high t-scores indicate that l2 learners are aware of 1) the strong association of out and of, forming what structural grammars (quirk et al. 1985) call a complex preposition; and 2) the preference of out to be followed by clause initiators such as ‘that’, ‘to’ or ‘what’, which is also an indication of its preference to collocate with verbs on the left-hand side (see figure 1). figure 1. summary of right collocations. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� rafael alejo-gonzález language value 4 (1), 33–62 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 47 at the same time, learners show a weaker association of out with ‘in’, ‘on’ and ‘by’, which seems to indicate that the construction ‘out + preposition’ is difficult for them, with the exception of out of (see figure 1). table 4. frequency of out of. # p.mil. ns 238 483 nns 472 367 from a cl perspective, the underuse of out by nns may be the result of a greater cognitive effort required, since when out is used intransitively the landmark must be retrieved from the context, whereas in the case of out of the landmark is always present. vi.2.2. left collocates the left collocates for out are also very similar for both ns and nns (see table 5). most of them correspond, with the exception of ‘way out’, to reporting forms of verbs, which are typical of argumentative texts. it can also be noticed that they are tokens of a small group of pvs whose use seems to be entrenched in both groups (turn out, point out, find out and carry out). table 5. left collocates for out ns nns n.gram # corpora t-score # corpora t-score points out 43 2 4.5423 13 3 2.0548 carried out 34 2 4.1074 35 5 2.5338 way out 15 1 3.6875 60 6 2.8230 carry out 20 2 3.1276 30 5 2.4066 find out 20 2 3.0870 78 6 3.5141 go out 18 2 2.9113 60 5 3.3110 get out 18 2 2.7897 32 6 2.0882 pointed out 6 1 2.4438 35 5 2.6330 point out 6 1 2.3756 71 6 3.3527 turns out 11 2 2.2643 64 5 3.3507 turn out 8 2 1.9568 40 5 2.7333 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� variability in l2 acquisition of formulaic sequences language value 4 (1), 33–62 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 48 them out 5 1 1.8580 17 4 1.6192 turned out 10 2 1.7987 30 4 2.6384 found out 7 2 1.7569 28 5 2.3009 it out 5 1 0.1441 12 3 0.0116 calling out 19 3 2.4227 work out 28 5 2.1211 going out 12 3 1.9081 is out 19 5 -0.8588 vi.3. learner awareness of out constituency at a higher level of abstraction, out enters three broad configurations: 1) nominal constructions such as noun compounds (way out, time out), nominalizations of pvs1 as can be seen from figure 2, it is when out enters a verbal syntactic configuration that l2 learners have greater difficulty in reproducing native speaker use. the other configurations, mostly consisting in a reduced number of entrenched constructions, do not pose any problem for learners. some instances of the latter are, for example, the number out of number construction (e.g. three out of ten). (her coming out) and adjectival phrases functioning as complements or attributes of nouns (out of control, out of the question); 2) adverbial constructions which mostly comprise those instances where out is part of phrases functioning as an adjunct outside the scope of the verb (we did it out of respect); and 3) verbal constructions, which constitute the focus of the present article. figure 2: syntactic configurations of out. 1 i have not included nominalizations of pvs in my analysis following the arguments provided by goldberg (2006: 23) that both the syntax and the semantics of derived nouns are different from their verbal counterparts. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� rafael alejo-gonzález language value 4 (1), 33–62 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 49 to sum up, the great difference in the frequency of use of the word out between ns and nns is not the result of a divergent use of specific collocations by nns, but the consequence of underuse of the verbal schematic configuration this word usually enters. whether this verbal schematic configuration can be equated with pvs is a question that is mostly decided on theoretical grounds, as we have seen in the introduction. in the next section, i will analyse the quantitative impact of such a decision. vi.4. verbal out once i have explored the different immediate linguistic contexts of the word out, i will focus here on what constitutes the centre of the present article, i.e. on verbal out or, using cl terminology, on out-pvs. this analysis will involve situating ourselves at different levels of abstraction. at the highest level of abstraction, i will consider the construction represented by a verb and the preposition out [of], a schema that is mostly syntactic in nature and that – as we saw in the introduction – only captures the grammar. however, given the understanding of pvs as a network of constructions i have adopted, the analysis can only proceed by taking into account other elements, such as frequency and meaning. vi.4.1. frequency and entrenchment from a cl point of view, frequency is assumed to be an important factor insofar as it has a strong connection with usage-based approaches. vi.4.1.a. token/type frequency the frequency of out-pvs was already shown in figure 2 above, where we can see a comparison of the verbal out construction used by both ns and nns. although out-pvs are highly frequent in both groups, especially if we compare them to the other configurations in which out appears, they are more frequent in the group of ns. nns seem to experience greater difficulty with the acquisition of out-pvs, a corroboration of their problems with pvs in general. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� variability in l2 acquisition of formulaic sequences language value 4 (1), 33–62 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 50 however, as usage-based approaches have shown (bybee 2007), the best indicator that a schematic construction has been acquired is its type frequency, as this figure is the one that expresses the productivity of a schematic construction. according to this, we can see (figure 3) that nns’ mastery of out-pv constructions is further from ns use than token analysis initially pointed out. figure 3. type frequency. vi.4.1.b. frequency effects the above results do not mean that nns are totally unaware of the frequency with which ns use specific out-pvs. in fact, as can be seen from figure 4, nns’ use of outpvs shows frequency effects since, with the exception of some outliers such as carry out and turn out, the frequency band of the first 25 out-pvs is not very different from that of ns. moreover, their frequency of use also represents a typical zipfian curve, where a small number of items usually share the bulk of use. figure 4. most frequent out-pvs. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� rafael alejo-gonzález language value 4 (1), 33–62 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 51 vi.4.1.c. overuse as the flip side of underuse a final consideration regarding the frequency of out-pvs concerns a special phenomenon identified in l2 use of formulaic language. l2 learners have been shown to overuse a small set of formulaic sequences in comparison with ns (cobb 2003, durrant and schmitt 2009). as can be seen from table 6, this is also the case of the particular formulaic sequences analysed in this article, i.e. out-pvs. thus, the most frequent verbs (40) used by nns account for nearly 90% of all out-pv tokens, whereas the same number of types only accounts for just over 75% in ns essays. in other words, in acquiring out-pvs, learners seem to have the same difficulties they have when acquiring other formulaic expressions. they can be successful in acquiring a small set of formulae but seem to strive to achieve a native or native-like mastery of these formulae. this finding is complementary to the low type frequency detected in section vi.4.1.a. table 6. nns’ overuse of the most frequent out-pvs. ns nns # % # % top 40 pvs 379 76.25 769 88.18 rest of pvs 118 23.75 103 11.82 total 497 100 872 100 this phenomenon of overuse is not restricted to a number of types of out-pvs. it bears upon the different morphological variants or forms of the verbs. thus, while there are certain forms that are dispreferred by nns, such as the gerund or the past participle, the infinitive is clearly overused. a similar overuse of the infinitive, and concomitant underuse of the other verb forms, was already a trend in learner language for all lexical verbs (granger and rayson 1998: 129). however, the pattern found for out-pvs may be considered as more marked (see figure 5). http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� variability in l2 acquisition of formulaic sequences language value 4 (1), 33–62 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 52 figure 5. percentage of verbal tags. vi.4.2. syntax the role of syntax in the acquisition of pvs can be noticed, in the first place, by looking at the two broad subgroups that can be defined by drawing a distinction between verbs followed by particles, i.e. verb particle constructions or vpcs (see dirven 2001), on the one hand, and those followed by adverbs and prepositions, on the other. thus, the former group would have a greater degree of fixedness since, even though transitive verbs allow the discontinuous configuration, particle movement is limited and no adverbial phrases are allowed between the verb and the particle. on the other hand, the latter group would allow a greater degree of syntactic freedom since, for example, both adverbs and prepositions can be fronted (e.g. out they went). as can be seen from figures 6 and 7, the combination of verbs and particles is by far the most frequent construction in both ns and nns writing and is also the most productive, as is shown by the greater number of types. this was to be expected given that out, unlike similar function words such as in or off, is not frequently used as a preposition or as an adverb, as shown by o’dowd (1998). however, even though nns realize the frequency of vpcs, they underuse them by comparison with ns. the extent of underuse is already noticeable if the number of tokens is considered (see figure 6), but becomes really remarkable when we look at the number of types (see figure 7). if out-pv was already a very low productivity schema for nns, vpcs are even less productive. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� rafael alejo-gonzález language value 4 (1), 33–62 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 53 figure 6: out tokens. figure 7: out types. table 7: syntactic configurations of pvs out-vpcs ns nns ratio # p.mil. # p.mil continuous 229 467 558 433 1.1 intransitive 130 265 151 117 2.3 split 36 73 28 22 3.4 stranded 102 208 135 105 2.0 when the specific syntax of the vpc subgroup is analysed (see table 7), we can observe that nns show a strong preference for the transitive continuous construction (e.g. ‘he finds out that jim is hidden’ dutchicle), particularly when followed by a clause, as already indicated in section vi.2.1 above. however, the rest of the syntactic configurations are much less frequently used by nns, especially when the direct object is inserted between the verb and the particle in the split construction (e.g. ‘they can vote representatives out’ bnc), where the proportion of underuse goes from 1 to nearly 3 and a half. some of these results are somewhat surprising. thus, one would presume that both the transitive continuous and the intransitive configurations would pose the same degree of http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� variability in l2 acquisition of formulaic sequences language value 4 (1), 33–62 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 54 difficulty for nns. in both cases, the verb and the particle are not separated and the main task of the l2 learner is to parse them as a unit. the underuse of split and stranded configurations were much more expected for precisely the opposite reason. the cl perspective adopted here can shed some light on both results. thus, what we have called split corresponds to construction 2. as gries (2003) points out, this construction is preferred when the direct object is easily retrievable from the discourse context or/and has a high degree of entrenchment. this is why it is more appropriate for objects requiring a limited amount of consciousness. it seems only natural that nns have more difficulty in retrieving the context and possess fewer well-entrenched objects when writing and their written production would rely more on conscious elaboration (hence the overuse of the continuous configuration), rather than on automatic processing, which would explain why they underuse the split construction. the greater underuse of the intransitive vpcs poses a greater challenge for a cl explanation. it could be that, as dirven (2001) explains, intransitive constructions are the farthest from the original construction, where the preposition retained the prototypical locational meaning. vi.4.3 semantics of prepositions from a cl point of view, a key factor to explain the acquisition of pvs lies in the meaning of the prepositions, as they are considered to carry a great deal of the meaning of the whole multi-word verb. it is by analysing the radial network of meaning a preposition has that we can begin to understand the radial network of pv constructions to which they give rise. overall, nns’ use of the different meanings of out found in out-pvs reproduces the shape of ns radiality of meanings (see figure 8), although with areas in which this nns shape clearly shrinks with respect to that of ns. in other words, nns seem to be aware of the frequency of the different meanings of out, but their actual use fails to reproduce ns use, except for those instances where out expresses perception/cognition (e.g. point out). particularly noticeable is the scarce use of motion/location and completion out-pvs. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� rafael alejo-gonzález language value 4 (1), 33–62 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 55 all the different meanings, except again for perception/cognition, have a lower productivity in nns writing than in ns, as shown by table 8. it would appear that nns have only become aware of the productivity of this meaning. figure 8. radiality of meanings. table 8: token frequency of meanings. tokens ns nns ratio # p.mil. # p.mil perception/cognition 238 485 593 461 1.1 motion/location 227 463 344 267 1.7 completion 132 269 121 94 2.9 exclusion/invisibility 87 177 138 107 1.7 segmentation 29 59 36 28 2.1 m-source 7 14 46 36 0.4 table 9: type frequency of meanings. types ns nns ratio # p.mil. # p.mil motion/location 72 103 68 60 1.7 exclusion/invisibility 45 64 42 37 1.7 perception/cognition 37 53 39 34 1.5 completion 31 44 24 21 2.1 segmentation 15 21 12 11 2 m-source 3 4 13 11 0.4 vii. conclusion taking the word out as the starting point of my research, this paper compares the way in which it collocates in the language used by ns and nns of english, with special attention to its verbal collocations. following a usage-based approach, this comparison has attempted to include all the possible levels of analysis, ranging from its participation in low scope constructions (way out) to the more abstract syntactic and semantic levels. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� variability in l2 acquisition of formulaic sequences language value 4 (1), 33–62 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 56 i thus aimed to reveal some of the linguistic factors that may play a role in l2 learners’ acquisition of variable formulaic sequences such as pvs. the main purpose of this paper has been to show how the linguistic behaviour of pvs can have an impact on their acquisition by nns of english. on this point it can be said that i adopt a different perspective from the research on pv acquisition, which, as shown in the introduction, has mostly focused on extralinguistic factors such as the l1 of the learners or the amount of exposure, typically represented by the length of residence in an english-speaking country or the level of the students. from the analysis at the lowest level of schematicity, the one that focuses on the collocates of out, we can see that l2 learners use out in similar ways to ns, especially when it appears in the complex preposition out of or in combination with words marking a clause boundary (i.e. followed by to-inf, whwords, if, that, etc.). the first finding is not difficult to explain, as out of poses fewer cognitive demands on the learners, since the landmark is expressed and it is perceptually more salient than out. the second result is less obvious, but may be related to the strength of collocation of out with argumentative verbs, which are frequent in the text types used in our corpus (e.g. turn out, point out, find out, etc.). however, even if learners are aware of the collocation of out with these argumentative verbs, the present research also shows that they mostly underuse out when it is employed in the context of a verbal phrase. this general trend of underuse is combined with an apparently contradictory tendency to overuse the most frequent verbs. this is confirmation of previous findings in the literature on formulaic language (cobb 2003, durrant and schmitt 2009). nns do not just avoid using out-pvs as was suggested by earlier literature (see section on pv acquisition above). rather they rely on a small group, which is very frequent in their input. on the other hand, they have more difficulty with the ones in the low frequency band. following ellis and ferreira-junior (2009), it could be suggested that learners overuse the prototypical exemplars of argumentative discourse, while at the same time failing to be aware of the full range of verbs that are used by ns. in other words, learners show low type frequency and this indicates that they have not fully developed an abstract representation of the verbal+out http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� rafael alejo-gonzález language value 4 (1), 33–62 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 57 construction yet. they seem to rely more on memorized chunks than on a productive use of this construction (cf. goldberg 2009). further confirmation of this lack of abstract representation, i.e. of a construction that is more schematic, is provided by the frozen morphological and syntactic use of these verbs. nns’ preference to use out-pvs in the infinitive and their bias for the continuous syntactic order are a clear indication that they avoid variability and that they prefer to adopt a conservative stance as regards formulaic language (cf. durrant and schmitt 2009) not only by actively producing a small number of out-pv types, but also in the way they use them. finally, from a semantic point of view, learners seem to reproduce the frequency of meanings used by ns, but clearly underuse less 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2007. “spatial semantics”. in geeraerts, d. and h. cuyckens (eds.) the oxford handbook of cognitive linguistics. oxford: oxford university press, 319350. corpora bnc, the british national corpus, version 3 (bnc xml edition). 2007. distributed by oxford university computing services on behalf of the bnc consortium. http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/ icle (international corpus of learner english) 2002. centre for english corpus linguistics. université catholique de louvain, belgium locness (louvain corpus of native english essays). centre for english corpus linguistics. université catholique de louvain, belgium received: 26 march 2012 accepted: 11 may 2012 cite this article as: alejo-gonzález, r. 2012. “variability in l2 acquisition of formulaic sequences: a study of linguistic factors in the use and learning of phrasal verbs by non-native speakers”. language value 4 (1), 33-62. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.erevistes.uji.es/languagevalue. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.3 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/� http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� rafael alejo-gonzález ralejo@unex.es keywords: phrasal verbs, constructions, formulaicity, second language acquisition, corpus linguistics, particle out ii.1. lexis and/or grammar ii.2. semantic approaches to pv knowledge ii.3. pv constructions iii. l2 acquisition of pvs iv. research questions v. methodology v.1. corpora used v.2. procedure vi. results and discussion vi.1. frequency: how much do l2 learners use the word out? vi.2. collocates: do learners know the company out keeps? vi.2.1. right collocates figure 1. summary of right collocations. vi.2.2. left collocates vi.3. learner awareness of out constituency figure 2: syntactic configurations of out. vi.4. verbal out vi.4.1. frequency and entrenchment vi.4.1.a. token/type frequency figure 3. type frequency. vi.4.1.b. frequency effects figure 4. most frequent out-pvs. vi.4.1.c. overuse as the flip side of underuse figure 5. percentage of verbal tags. vi.4.2. syntax vi.4.3 semantics of prepositions figure 8. radiality of meanings. vii. conclusion references corpora cite this article as: alejo-gonzález, r. 2012. “variability in l2 acquisition of formulaic sequences: a study of linguistic factors in the use and learning of phrasal verbs by non-native speakers”. language value 4 (1), 33-62. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. ht... issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2012, volume 4, number 2 pp. 56-69 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.5 56 wordarrows: the performative power of language in n. scott momaday’s non-fiction work anna m. brígido-corachán anna.brigido@uv.es iulma universitat de valència, spain abstract this article focuses on two non-fiction works by native american author n. scott momaday: his 1969 historical memoir the way to rainy mountain and his essay collection the man made of words it specifically tackles performative conceptions of language in the kiowa storytelling tradition, where words are experienced as speech acts that have the power to intervene in surrounding realities. taking into account 20th century ethno-cultural and linguistic policies in the united states, the article also reflects on the role indigenous languages may play in contemporary native american literature, which has most often been written in english. keywords: n. scott momaday, kiowa, indigenous languages and cultures, history of the united states, native american literature “we cannot exhaust the power of words; that power is intrinsic” n. scott momaday, the man made of words “a well-chosen word, like a well-made arrow, pierces the heart” kenneth lincoln, native american literary renaissance i. introduction this article explores native american author n. scott momaday’s kiowa-based theory of language and culture as sketched in his experimental historical piece the way to rainy mountain and in some of his early essays1 1 research for this article has been supported by the r+d project “la cultura como recurso de desarrollo. prácticas, discursos y representaciones en procesos modernizadores contemporaneous”, financed by the spanish ministerio de ciencia e innovación. . originally published in 1969, although based on an earlier text (his 1967 privately-printed edition entitled the journey of tai-me), the way to rainy mountain operates both as a history of the kiowa people and as a familiar memoir filtered through personal reminiscences. it is considered, together with momaday’s pulitzer prize-winning novel, house made of dawn (1968), one of the key inaugural texts of the native american renaissance – a http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� mailto:anna.brigido@uv.es� anna m. brígido-corachán language value 4 (2), 56-69 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 57 rich literary movement that brought public visibility and recognition to first nations authors from a wide variety of native and mixed heritages2 born in lawton, oklahoma, of kiowa and cherokee descent, momaday spent his childhood and youth among the tewa-speaking native pueblos of new mexico, in the town of jemez, where his father was a school principal. he continued to live in new mexico during his college years and later in california, while completing his doctoral studies at stanford university – always far from the kiowa landscape he so vividly evokes in the way to rainy mountain (wrm henceforth). as he explains in his autobiography the names. a memoir, jemez pueblo “was my home from the time i was twelve until i ventured out to seek my fortune in the world” (momaday 1976: 11). . mirroring his personal spatial dislocations, momaday’s wrm is symbolically divided into three thematic blocks having to do with movement: “the setting out”, “the going on”, and “the closing in”. these sections recall the nomadic journey of the kiowa from their ancestral northwestern territory through the great plains until they reached the upper arkansas river region, where they finally settled before it became indian territory and then oklahoma, a state of the new american nation3. momaday’s autobiographical journey within wrm also charts such a shift, imagining the author as he returns home to rainy mountain creek to visit his grandmother’s burial ground in the kiowa reservation, where he spent significant periods of his early childhood4 2 in 1968 the american indian movement (aim) was founded in minneapolis and a year later, as native activists began the 20-month occupation of alcatraz island in protest for centuries of suppression of american indian socio-political, territorial, cultural, and linguistic rights, momaday’s novel was awarded the pulitzer prize. together with the way to rainy mountain’s coming to light, 1969 was also the year of publication of custer died for your sins: an indian manifesto, a groundbreaking political and philosophical piece by native american intellectual vine deloria. fostered by such historical turning point, the first native american studies programs were launched at the university of california, berkeley, and at the university of minnesota at twin cities (coulombe 2011:35). for a more detailed account of the origins of this literary movement and of momaday’s prominent position within it, see kenneth lincoln’s 1983 native american renaissance and jace weaver’s more recent “the mystery of language. n. scott momaday: an appreciation” (2008). chad allen (2005: 208) and robert warrior (2005: 154-6) further explore the links between momaday’s work and the late 1960s/early 1970s watershed context of native american political and intellectual activism. . this 3 the kiowa reservation is currently located in southwestern oklahoma, where the kiowa had settled in the early nineteenth century. see mooney (1979) and kracht (2007) for further details. 4 according to edward said, contemporary intellectual discourse is shifting from filiative to affiliative modes of relation. he describes filiation as “belong(ing) to the realms of nature and of ‘life’ whereas affiliation belongs exclusively to culture and society” (1983: 20). for a more detailed account of momaday’s af-filiative strategies in the way to rainy mountain and in his longer memoir the names see brígido-corachán (2011). http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� wordarrows: the performative power of language in n. scott momaday’s non-fiction work language value 4 (2), 56-69 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 58 memorial return of the author also builds a movement of af-filiation into tribal culture (brígido-corachán 2011: 114). “the setting out”, the opening section after momaday’s preface and introduction, describes the mythical emergence of the kiowa into this world from a hollow log as well as their acquisition of cultural and religious traits as they met other tribes on their nomadic eastward journey. “the going on” then includes various historical episodes from the period when the kiowa were one of the most important warrior, buffalohunting societies on the great plains. lastly, “the closing in” turns to the last years of the kiowa as an independent tribe at the close of the 19th century, prior to white dominance and reservation enclosure. these last historical reminiscences are based on direct eyewitness accounts preserved from family members and neighbors who lived through the experiences later to be translated by the author’s kiowa-speaking father, al momaday, a key figure in the chain of historical and linguistic transmission. the work’s three main sections are further divided into twenty-four short passages, which are visually and thematically organized in groups of three vignettes. facing each other on the page, these vignettes weave creative interconnections between three dimensions: a mythical, a historical/ anthropological, and a familiar version of a story or reminiscence. these entwined dimensions are also reinforced, at times, by a fourth element, a series of drawings sketched by momaday’s father, al. momaday refers to these three juxtaposed textual discourses as voices whose narratives and personas move freely from the mythical to the personal or historical dimensions and vice versa, creating a “polyphonic version of kiowa historiography that questions traditional divisions between fact and fiction, history and myth” (brígido-corachán 2011: 113-4). the first set of vignettes is organized around the idea of “coming out”; they describe the emergence of the kiowa into the world and their symbolic first act of identityconstruction through language: the self-naming of the tribe. the origin of the name “kwuda”, which means “coming out”, is explained in both the mythical (the oral tradition) and the historical vignettes. both dimensions are complemented by momaday’s personal reminiscence, as he “came out upon the great plain in the late spring” (1969/2001: 17), an encounter with his childhood landscape that will trigger the remembering act that is the way to rainy mountain. in this manner, momaday’s first set of reflections specifically links the concepts of emergence and birth with language, http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� anna m. brígido-corachán language value 4 (2), 56-69 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 59 meaning and identity-making, as they are inscribed in the landscape and re-imagined through the linguistic act of memorial contemplation. ii. language, performativity and the oral tradition symmetrically organized as a triptych between each facing page, the way to rainy mountain lends equal weight to oral and written, visual, mythic, historical, and familiar sources as each is blended into a composite narrative form that is impossible to classify5 5 it is interesting to point out that this triptych division was introduced by the book designer bruce gentry, as the original voices in momaday’s manuscript were actually consecutive. see interview with kay bonetti, in roemer (1988: 3). . elaine a. jahner has described momaday’s historical and personal segments as a kind of “commentary” on the oral tradition, of which he himself is the audience. in this manner, the narrative process of this work becomes an imitation of a performative event. according to jahner, “the perception of oneself as a member of a mythteller’s audience – a member who is discovering one’s own context of vital meaning (…) – is basic to understanding momaday’s role as the persona in his own work” (1983: 217). the way to rainy mountain thus echoes the structural and aesthetic features that shape traditional native storytelling and writing. they reproduce the oral story and also evoke what daniel mato denominates “extratextual acts” (1990: 16): an audience (as he dialogues with himself or listens to his grandmother’s stories), a place (the homestead at rainy mountain creek), a particular oral rhythm, and the conjuring up of voices from the past. the way to rainy mountain recreates the performative aspects of the storytelling process within the text by summoning up its context of enunciation. according to momaday, the writer and the storyteller are indivisible, as they are both “concerned to create himself and his audience in language” (in coltelli 1990: 93). wrm thus functions as an act of creation where two types of reader, indigenous and nonnative, are invoked in different manners. those readers not acquainted with kiowa culture will necessarily have to learn how best to listen to the stories it tells; they will be given an entryway into kiowa history which they will complement by contributing connections of their own to the triptych of loosely intertwined reminiscences. drawing their own signifying trajectories, all native and non-native readers thus participate in the remembering process, generating varying reflections and responses while traveling http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� wordarrows: the performative power of language in n. scott momaday’s non-fiction work language value 4 (2), 56-69 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 60 to rainy mountain as well as to their own familiar landscapes. as momaday expresses in the preface to his essay collection the man made of words, the storyteller creates the storytelling experience and himself and his audience in the process (…). the storyteller creates himself in the sense that the mask he wears for the sake of telling the story is of his own making, and it is never the same. he creates the listener in the sense that he determines the listener’s existence within, and in relation to, the story, and it is never the same (…) and this imagining is the burden of the story, and indeed it is the story. (1997: 3) like the storyteller shaping his listener in the telling, momaday develops a sort of cartographic language in wrm. a map is laid out for the reader to follow, with the preface and the introduction serving as a guide through the various kiowa scenes. the two framing poems, “headwaters” and “rainy mountain cemetery”, give us a symbolic beginning and a poetic textual end. his textual format is thus not expansive and never explicitly ambitious, but rather intimate and inclusive of all voices. meaning is ultimately created out of the active recombination and weaving of passages in the reader’s mind, as such parallel structures encourage free association and the connection of ideas. adding to this effect, momaday’s particular “storytelling experience” is characterized by the economy of his use of the english language, which, reduced to its bare essence, makes every word echo within countless subtexts6 in the oral tradition one stands in a different relation to language. words are rare and therefore dear. they are jealously preserved in the ear and in the mind. words are spoken with great care, and they are heard. they matter and they must not be taken for granted; they must be taken seriously and they must be remembered (…) words are intrinsically powerful. they are magical. by means of words can one bring about physical change in the universe. (1997: 15-6) . in his essay “the native voice in american literature”, the kiowa author explains that most cultures embrace, in one way or another, the performative function of language. many native cultures, additionally, believe that storytelling is performative, that is, in the telling of a story the events it describes may materialize and happen7 6 together with his strong kiowa storytelling roots, which he primarily inherited from his father and kiowa grandparents, momaday’s prose is also permeated by western poetic discourse. his doctoral dissertation focused on the poetry of frederick goddard tuckerman (1963) and his mentor at stanford university was the poet yvor winters. moreover, his transculturated language philosophy is clearly inspired by the idealist approach of wallace stevens. momaday, in fact, borrows the title of his book collection from a poetic line by stevens: “men made out of words” (see schubnell 1985: 45-6). . the kiowa respect the power of words that, as speech acts, may have an immediate or belated effect in the real world surrounding us. momaday lyrically conveys this idea in section viii of wrm, where he includes three reminiscences, one in each of the dimensions, all 7 see, for example, the power of laguna pueblo stories in leslie silko’s novel ceremony (1977), where the narrative and performative modes blend into one another (hoilman 1979: 65). http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� anna m. brígido-corachán language value 4 (2), 56-69 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 61 illustrating the tangible effects of words in action. in one of the mythic tales about the sacred kiowa twins, he narrates how the intrepid children are able to escape a murderous giant who tries to suffocate them with smoke by chanting the magic kiowa word thain-mom (“above my eyes”) – a word that had been given to them by grandmother spider to confront evil and danger (wrm 1969/2001: 32)8 finally, in the historical commentary, momaday describes the solemn kiowa protocols that were linguistically displayed when referring to a dead person. because words have the potential to release certain sacred energies, the kiowa would avoid using the names of their dead, and would go as far as substituting them (often also quotidian referents) with new terms, while the old words became taboo for a whole generation and were thus forgotten. in a similar way, many words would leave the kiowa world along with the people that symbolically owned them, to be later substituted by new ones . this story from the mythical dimension is paired with a familiar anecdote about momaday’s own grandmother, aho, who also had a powerful word, zei-dl-bei (“frightful”), which she would say out loud when facing a difficult or harmful situation. as the author explains: “(i)t was not an exclamation so much, i think, as it was a warding off, an exertion of language upon ignorance and disorder” (wrm 1969/2001: 33). 9 a word has power in and of itself. it comes from nothing into sound and meaning; it gives origin to all things. by means of words can a man deal with the world on equal terms. a man’s name is his own; he can keep it or give it away as he likes (…). the dead take their names with them out of the world. (wrm 1969/2001: 33) . despite this continually transforming dynamism and the creative energies associated with the kiowa language, it continues to be endangered, together with the remaining 200 indigenous languages that are still spoken in the united states. native american languages are rich repositories of history, cultural knowledge and spiritual beliefs, yet endless socio-cultural impositions by the dominant society, compounded by decades of boarding school internment and urban relocation for native american youth, away from 8 in the kiowa mythology, the twin brothers, sons of the sun, are considered to be two halves of the same son – his only child. maurice boyd actually refers to them as “half-boys”, which is more precise than the term twins. see berner (1988: 60), note 1. 9 see mooney’s classic anthropological account (1979:152) and momaday’s own explanation in the historical fragment of section viii, page 33, in the way to rainy mountain. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� wordarrows: the performative power of language in n. scott momaday’s non-fiction work language value 4 (2), 56-69 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 62 their families, have eroded linguistic practice in native households10. according to gus palmer jr., kiowa-speaking suffered a tremendous decline throughout the 20th century, and today only about 100 fluent speakers, most of whom are over 70 years old, can be found among the 11,000 registered tribal members, (2007: 16). in his preface to the man made of words, momaday explains that, as a very young child, he heard both english and kiowa words at their homestead in rainy mountain creek, although his father and mother (of kiowa and cherokee heritage respectively) used english as the common family language11 from the time i was born my parents spoke to me in english, for that was my mother’s native tongue, and she could speak no other (…). the house and the arbor of the homestead on rainy mountain creek in oklahoma crackled and rang with kiowa words, exclamations, and songs that even now i keep in my ear. but i would learn only a part of the whole, and i would never learn to converse easily in kiowa. (…) my kiowa family spoke to me in broken english, or their kiowa words were translated into english for me by my father. now when i hear kiowa spoken – mostly by the older people who are passing away – it is very good. the meaning most often escapes me, but the sound is like a warm wind that arises from my childhood. it is the music of memory. (1997: 7. my emphasis) . for native american authors using english as their primary vehicle of expression (in the great majority of cases, such as momaday’s, because it is their mother tongue), native words in a text may indeed function as a “music of memory” accompanying the text (1997:7). and while this expression may sound nostalgic, we must remember that it is not the native endangered language itself that is romanticized here, but momaday’s childhood, his linguistic self-discovery in the company of loved ones, that is lyrically evoked. perhaps even more poignantly, these isolated words in the kiowa language that momaday is able to use, and even those he does not dare use for lack of fluency, become a powerful historical reminder that points to the legacy of linguistic impositions and colonial abuses still dominating white/native relations in the continent12 10 according to johansen, approximately 200 indigenous languages are currently spoken in the usa, although only 20 of them continue to be taught at home as a first language (praeger handbook 5, qtd by coulombe 2011: 29). . and that a 11 between the age of 12 and 18 momaday grew up surrounded by jemez-speaking families, among the pueblo of new mexico. he actually used his knowledge of navajo culture to contextualize his celebrated novel house made of dawn. 12 most contemporary native writers in the united states are university-educated, mixed-blood authors writing in english, with very little command of the languages spoken by their ancestors, although there are a few exceptions primarily in the poetic field. simon ortiz and ray young bear, for example, often use native words from their mother tongues (keresan and mesquakie, respectively) in their poetic compositions, but generally write in english. this situation (the full presence of native languages as literary vehicles) is quite different in the case of latin american indigenous writers who are, for the most part, native speakers of endangered indigenous languages, and publish their work in bilingual texts, although, unlike their us counterparts, the dissemination of these texts is rather limited. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� anna m. brígido-corachán language value 4 (2), 56-69 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 63 historical and literary piece as moving as wrm could be built from what pieces remain, in the “enemy’s language”, may be momaday’s most powerful statement of all13. iii. the arrowmaker and the power of language the way to rainy mountain moves the reader not merely because of its original structure or because of the effective combination of the four intertwined dimensions (mythic, historical, personal, and visual) but through its contagious forward motion – the intimate yet powerful, performative wordarrows (vizenor 2003)14 13 i borrow the expression from joy harjo’s well-known anthology reinventing the enemy’s language: contemporary native women’s writings of north america (1997). that, although using the english language as a vehicle, open up a new historical space for the kiowas in the local/national imagination. for, in wrm there are many simultaneous approaches, “many landmarks, many journeys in the one” (wrm 1969/2001: 4). momaday points out that there are many ways to organize all these memories and knowledges; and although his is just “one way in which these traditions are conceived, developed, and interfused in the human mind” (ibid) it is one rooted in kiowa historiography and worldviews. moreover, by using the english language as a tool, momaday is actually engaging in an act of “anti-imperial translation” (krupat 1996: 30) – an action that neutralizes the violence engrained within the first acts of translation that took place between natives and western colonizers, a vindicative action that, borrowing the words of arnold krupat, “conceptualiz(es) the tensions and differences between contemporary native american fiction and ‘the imperial center’” (ibid). even if traditional oral stories are recalled using a language that is foreign to them, they are being rescued from the official national archive and reconfigured to suit the purposes of a contemporary kiowa storyteller bringing to the fore the history of his people. furthermore, this restored history is also built on direct eyewitness accounts and traditional narratives from his community, many of which were originally shared with the momadays by relatives and neighbors in the kiowa language. part and parcel of all native american writers’ modern heritage, english also functions as a lingua franca that may disseminate the 14 gerald vizenor’s critical term, based on momaday’s story, “the arrowmaker”, which i discuss later in this article. see vizenor’s wordarrows: native states of literary sovereignty for a more detailed explanation. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� wordarrows: the performative power of language in n. scott momaday’s non-fiction work language value 4 (2), 56-69 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 64 message as widely as possible, among other native communities and non-native readers. some scholars have accused momaday of relying excessively on modernist structures, nostalgia and for having an apolitical stance (forbes 1987, krupat 1989). the way to rainy mountain indeed seems to nostalgically invoke a time that is gone but which pervades the oral stories even in their written reconfiguration. the power held and transmitted through these stories is, however, not mystified and is very much alive in the text. this power derives from the vitality and deep creativity of language in its “original state”, a state associated by momaday with the oral tradition (momaday 2007). orality has always been central to kiowa historicity even in scriptural accounts, as the keepers of their historical calendars, which were picto-ideographic, always accompanied their visual elements with an explanatory oral account (mooney 1979). in wrm, these oral memorial narratives are again re-activated by momaday’s “transfiguring tongue”15 the performative power of language is perhaps best explained in momaday’s seminal essay “the man made of words”, which was first written as a keynote lecture at the first convocation of american indian scholars in march 1970, at princeton university, and was later republished in his essay collection of the same title. according to momaday “much of the power and magic and beauty of words consist not in meaning but in sound. storytellers, actors, and children know this, too” (1997: 7). he later contradicts himself and demonstrates that the power of words lies not merely in their sound, but also in their meaning and in their recollection, as his famous tale of the arrowmaker illustrates. in this traditional oral story (the first tale momaday ever heard . the kiowa language itself, a language in which the author cannot easily converse and that he describes as the “music of memory” (1997: 7), may at times acquire romanticized undertones but it certainly has a key empowering role in the narrative. the performative words chanted by his grandmother, aho, contribute to build a historical mood that is grounded on kiowa ways of conceptualizing language and of narrating history. they also act, as we have already mentioned, as a reminder of the colonial legacy of linguistic destitution still ongoing in the americas. 15 in his famous poem “robinson crusoe”, caribbean poet derek walcott refers to the transfigurative power of the english language to describe new world realities when used by the american native in a transculturated, anti-imperialistic manner. the native is epitomized, in the poem, by daniel defoe’s foundational character, friday. see walcott’s collected poems 1948-1984 (1986: 68). http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� anna m. brígido-corachán language value 4 (2), 56-69 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 65 as a child), as the arrowmaker is straightening an arrow with his teeth inside his teepee, he is able to identify and kill his hidden enemy, who is lurking in the shadows outside. it is the enemy’s ignorance of the kiowa language that prevents him from understanding the arrowmaker’s warning (1997: 9-12): “i know that you are there on the outside, for i can feel your eyes upon me. if you are a kiowa, you will understand what i am saying, and you will speak your name”. but there was no answer, and the man went on in the same way, pointing the arrow all around. at last his aim fell upon the place where his enemy stood, and he let go of the string. the arrow went straight to the enemy’s heart. (1997: 10)16 speaking and understanding the kiowa language work here as a symbol of recognition of one’s own clan as well as a weapon to challenge one’s enemy. the arrowmaker’s pronouncement “is also a question and a plea” (momaday 1997: 11), and an acknowledgement of kiowa identity through language. the “arrowmaker ventures to speak because he must: language is the repository of his whole knowledge and experience, and it represents the only chance he has for survival” (ibid). intellectual resourcefulness and survival are encoded in the arrowmaker’s words, just as his teeth have left an oral imprint in his story-arrow. as momaday explains: “the point of the story lies not so much in what the arrowmaker does, but in what he says – and, indeed, that he says it. the principal fact is that he speaks, and in so doing, he places his very life in the balance” (1997: 10). momaday’s arrowmaker thus establishes an intrinsic connection between language and literature and he is, as robert warrior points out, “a necessary stopping place in situating (momaday’s) relationship to language, literature, and the natural world” (2005: 171). many kiowa of momaday’s generation have lost that ability to speak their ancestors’ language but, still imbued in tribal culture, they have not forgotten the story which continues to be revitalized by other means. the way to rainy mountain’s thorough recovery of oral history is lyrically mobilized through momaday’s english-shaped transfiguring wordarrows, and these evince a strong commitment to tribal heritage. momaday is, above all, a cross-cultural american and as such he can effectively integrate kiowa historiography with a textual literary template, product of his academic education and western influences. thus, although orality is fundamental to the recovery 16 this story also appears as one of the mythical narratives in section xiii of the way to rainy mountain (1969/2001: 46). http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� wordarrows: the performative power of language in n. scott momaday’s non-fiction work language value 4 (2), 56-69 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 66 of kiowa cultural and intellectual traditions, it is not, by any means, the only one. there are many ways to rainy mountain within wrm, and any further textual, physical or linguistic resource that may enable kiowa heirs to reclaim tribal territories and autochthonous historical and intellectual traditions should be embraced and celebrated. iv. conclusion “language, that miracle of symbols and sounds that enable us to think, and therefore to define ourselves as human beings” (momaday 1997: 1) if, as momaday suggests, language and thought are intrinsically intertwined, if “(l)anguage is a creator of reality”17 wordarrows, in any language, can serve as imaginative weapons to organize and channel one’s anger and creative energies, to carve one’s place in the world. through , how does his not speaking kiowa, except for a handful of words, influence his worldview? as we have seen in this article, one may be tempted to think that the author fetishizes the oral tradition by setting it at the core of a memorial imagination that is nostalgic and artificial in nature, since it is expressed through the “enemy’s language”. however, his use of the colonial language as a vehicle serving kiowa expression is the result of centuries of imperialistic impositions and linguistic aggression. momaday’s masterful use of english is able to challenge this legacy. as jace weaver points out, “momaday is obsessed with words – their tone, their sonorousness, their rhythm, how they feel in the mouth” (2008: 81). in his works, he is clearly influenced by familiar linguistic rhythms passed on to him, together with the stories, by his kiowa-speaking father. momaday additionally bends english words at will so they may fit his own authorial designs: the making of a historical kiowascape where the absence of the kiowa language (the sacred names that each dead kiowa took along to the other world) actually fills the empty spaces of each page, as his people are remembered and honored. momaday’s own personal memoir, the names, further strengthens the memorial process by giving flesh and visual protagonism to each of his forefathers and foremothers speaking in the way to rainy mountain, whose names and stories thus continue to endure on the page. 17 “the mystery of language: native american oral tradition” charter lecture delivered at the university of georgia, athens, october 20, 1994. quoted by jace weaver (2008: 81). http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� anna m. brígido-corachán language value 4 (2), 56-69 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 67 words, native authors can re-construct, activate, and protect textual, familiar, and cultural territories from the socio-economic plundering and intellectual dispossession they have withstood for centuries. imagination “enables us to use language to its highest potential. it enables us to realize a reality beyond the ordinary, it enables us to create and to re-create ourselves in story and literature. it is the possible accomplishment of immortality” (momaday 1997: 2). with the help of his kiowa-speaking and memorykeeping family, momaday, the arrowmaker, is able to decode his native legacy and to render it in a language that, even if not fully kiowa in appearance, proves to be an effective, moving, and empowering vehicle for the present cross-cultural generation in charge of projecting their tribal traditions into the future. references allen, c. 2005. “n. scott momaday: becoming the bear”. in porter, j. and k.m. roemer (ed.) the cambridge companion to native american literature. cambridge: cambridge university press, 207-220. berner, r.l. 1988. “the way to rainy mountain: structure and language” in. roemer, k.m. 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(ed.) 1988. approaches to teaching momaday’s the way to rainy mountain. new york: mla. said, e.w. 1983. the world, the text and the critic. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://digital.library.okstate.edu/%20entries/k/ki017.html� http://digital.library.okstate.edu/%20entries/k/ki017.html� anna m. brígido-corachán language value 4 (2), 56-69 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 69 schubnell, m. 1985. n. scott momaday: the cultural and literary background. norman: university of oklahoma press. vizenor, g. 2003. wordarrows: native states of literary sovereignty. university of nebraska press. walcott, d. 1986. collected poems 1948-1984. new york: farrar, straus and giroux. warrior, r. 2005. the people and the word. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. weaver, j. 2008. “the mystery of language: n. scott momaday, an appreciation”. studies in american indian literatures 20 (4), 76-87. received: 19 september 2011 accepted: 07 october 2012 cite this article as: brígido-corachán, a.m. 2012. “wordarrows: the performative power of language in n. scott momaday’s non-fiction work”. language value 4 (2), 56-69. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.5 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.5� references cite this article as: brígido-corachán, a.m. 2012. “wordarrows: the performative power of language in n. scott momaday’s non-fiction work”. language value 4 (2), 56-69. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue. doi: http://dx.d... issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors 7. maquetado reseña annemieke meijer language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 2014, volume 6, number 1 pp. 100-103 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2014.6.7 100 book review english-medium instruction at universities: global challenges aintzane doiz, david lasagabaster and juan manuel sierra multilingual matters: bristol, 2013. 248 pages. isbn: 9781847698148 reviewed by annemieke meijer a.a.meijer@uu.nl university college utrecht, the netherlands this collection of articles is an interesting and timely addition to the growing literature on the use of english as the language of instruction at universities in non-native contexts. in the past two decades, emi (english-medium instruction, as the educational practice tends to be called when referring to the tertiary level, as opposed to the more thought-through pedagogical approach of content and language integrated learning or clil at secondary level) has caught on in many different countries and settings. motivated partly by the wish to attract international students, partly by the need to prepare home students for the international market, or, increasingly, with the aim of promoting the institution in an ever more competitive higher education market, universities have introduced english to replace the local language(s). needless to say this is having immediate implications for teachers and students alike and research is badly needed on issues such as language proficiency demands, effective curriculum design, and quality assurance, not only because this may lead to important contributions to theory building but also, hopefully, because the results could feed into the decisionmaking processes of university administrators. the aim of the present volume is, according to the editors, to “advance our awareness” of what is needed to improve emi at tertiary level. it sets out to do so by providing a varied picture of current issues and practices, in contributions from eighteen authors from countries as diverse as china, finland, israel, the netherlands, south africa, spain, and the usa. the selection may be somewhat arbitrary, but the emerging picture is highly interesting not only because of its diversity (in terms of, for instance, the societal position of english and the levels of language proficiency) but also because english-medium instruction at universities: global challenges language value 6 (1), 78-81 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 101 unexpected connections appear and very different settings turn out to be faced with quite similar issues. the volume has been organised into five parts which are not always very clearly delineated – some consist of just one chapter, while others contain chapters that might well have been more appropriate under the heading of one of the other sections. all contributions, however, add to the overall picture. the opening chapter is on maastricht university in the netherlands, a very early adopter, in which robert wilkinson emphasizes the crucial collaboration between ‘content’ departments and language specialists in the 25-year-old development of english-taught programmes there. this is followed by two case studies of the linguistic needs of students and teachers in the multilingual settings of south africa and the basque country respectively. in the section on institutional policies, taina saarinen and tarja nikula use discourse analysis to study policy documents concerning language and internationalisation strategies in finland, which has the highest number of institutions providing english-taught programmes in europe. the authors’ starting point is the apparent invisibility of language in such policies. the findings from their document analysis point at the ‘self-evidence’ of english, with “foreign language” often really meaning “english”. they also ask the common-sensical question of “what kind of english” is referred to in lists of entry requirements, and find that apart from many departments mentioning vague criteria such as “a good command” or “a sufficient knowledge”, finnish polytechnics since 2011 have specified the setting in which prospective students should have learnt their english in such narrow terms that the qualifications of applicants from about 50 countries in which english is, in fact, an official language (india, pakistan, south africa) would not be accepted, thus creating “a hierarchy of different ‘englishes’”. in the same section of the volume, ofelia garcía, mercè pujol-ferran and pooja reddy also make clear how language can be caught up, and become a factor in power relations. studying a community college with immigrant students and a global research university, they describe a painful dichotomy between international and immigrant students. using the somewhat comical (and rather poignant) abbreviation lote (languages other than english), they conclude that “whereas the lotes of international students are taught, celebrated and used in academic pursuits, the use of lotes in education is often restricted by colleges and book and multimedia review language value 6 (1), 78-81 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 102 universities serving immigrant students. whereas international students are welcomed in university content classes and their english proficiency is not seen as an obstacle to learning, immigrant students are often excluded from academic content until they develop appropriate english vocabulary” (193). it is this focus on language as a symbol of ethnic, cultural or national identity, which makes the volume such an interesting addition to the current body of literature on emi. it informs a number of other essays in the volume, and the editors might have emphasized this in their introduction. indeed, the book does not shy away from naming difficulties and potential negative effects of emi, both at the level of the individual learner and the community: concerns about the loss of l1 (and 2) at the cost of english, about emi programmes producing an “elite” whose skills and outlook sets them apart from others in society, and other sensitivities and anxieties. the buzzword in this book is “language ecology”, emphasizing the role of language as a social practice, in interaction with its environment. all this comes to the forefront especially in the chapters on trilingual education, which together form the third part of the book. the contexts of this section of the book are china and spain, and the topics described are at times strikingly similar. david c.s. li writes about the chinese university of hong kong, where the question of whether the predominance of english in higher education should be viewed as hegemony or linguistic capital became quite urgent after a proposed increase in the percentage of english-taught courses. local cantonese speaking students, faced with the necessity to learn both putonghua (mandarin), which is the national language, and english, staged vehement protests. they feared that english would push out cantonese and written chinese and voiced their emotions in terms that made it very clear the issue went beyond the pragmatic intentions of the vice-chancellor who had made the proposal. ofra onbar-lourie and smadar donitsa-schmidt, whose contribution is mysteriously included in the section on language policies, study the same theme as li but in the intricate linguistic scene of israel, where english is tentatively being introduced at a small number of colleges. because the language of instruction at almost all higher education institutions is hebrew, arabic speakers learn through their second language anyway, and english would be their l3. through self-report questionnaires the views of students at one teacher training college are studied, one interesting finding being that english was not english-medium instruction at universities: global challenges language value 6 (1), 78-81 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 103 being perceived as threat, perhaps, as the authors suggest, as a result of the unrivalled position of hebrew in this particular educational setting. aintzane doiz, david lasagabaster and juan manuel sierra investigate students’ views on the introduction of english as l3 at the basque university, where spanish and basque are the official languages. again, linguistic capital turned out to play a major role. they found that “[l]ocal students show a manifest unwillingness towards being required to be proficient in english or to be proficient in two languages at the end of their studies”, with basque mother tongue students manifestly more negative than those with spanish or basque and spanish as their mother tongue. josep maria cots concentrates on the catalan context with the aim of revealing “possible ambiguities and tensions” in the language policy of the bilingual university of lleida. in this sensitive environment, the introduction of english as one of the languages of instruction met with scepticism: it is only in the past 30 years or so that there has been what the author calls a “reverse language shift” with catalan gaining more prominence in society; moreover, there are serious fears that the university may not be ready for this, with the great majority of incoming students having an english language proficiency level of b1 or lower. the chapter illustrates the existing tensions nicely by pointing out some of the discourse surrounding the debate in which english is presented as a ‘killer language’ or a ‘language predator’, while the catalan students are characterised as having a ‘bunker attitude’. the final word in the book is by elana shohamy, who presents a “critical view of emi at university”, identifying a number of educational and societal issues that may have been overlooked as universities rushed to implement english-medium programmes. it is a fitting conclusion to a collection of articles that is highly valuable because it contextualizes and because it problematizes: it places emi firmly at the centre of a complex interplay of all kinds of socio-linguistic factors, and although it does offer ideas for overcoming some of the difficulties faced by universities, it is not simplistic or overly idealistic. perhaps we may see it as a sign that emi, both as an educational phenomenon and as an emerging field of study, has grown up. received: 30 december 2013 database connection failed! language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2012, volume 4, number 2 pp. 117-125 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.9 117 book review living with lynching. african american lynching plays, performance, and citizenship, 1890-1930 koritha mitchell urbana, il: university of illinois press, 2011. 272 pages. isbn: 978-0-252-07880-4 reviewed by m. mar gallego durán mar@uhu.es university of huelva, spain1 embodied practices of black belonging and identity formation in lynching drama of the progressive era: koritha mitchell’s living with lynching the volume authored by koritha mitchell is a remarkable contribution to the field of african american drama, as it explores the manifold uses of lynching plays during the progressive era as crucial tools to ensure community conversation and debate about the difficulties and complexities involved in having to coexist with the terrible reality of lynching. mitchell’s groundbreaking study reassesses the significance of black theater as an archive and repertoire of embodied practices of black belonging and communitybuilding in the face of constant exposure not only to lynching itself, but to the insidious exhibition of lynching photographs that perpetuated the myth of the black brute and rapist. the publication proposes an innovative critical reading that counteracts this racist practice by investigating the impact of lynching on both the black family and the black home, focusing on lynching dramas written by prominent writers and intellectuals from 1890 to 1930, such as angelina weld grimké, alice dunbar-nelson, mary burrill, georgia douglass johnson, myrtle smith livingston, g. d. lipscomb, and joseph mitchell. by analyzing the development of the genre itself, which was initiated by black women, mitchell highlights how lynching drama helped to “read aright” the horrible 1 the author wishes to acknowledge the funding provided by the spanish ministry of science and research for the writing of this review (research project fem2010-18142). http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� mailto:mar@uhu.es� book and multimedia review language value 4 (2), 117–125 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 118 practice of lynching as a profoundly unjust and unjustified manifestation of racial hatred resulting from the need to remind african americans of their inferior status in a markedly segregated country. in so doing, her work succeeds in confirming black performance as a recurrent means conveniently used by african americans to assert black citizenship and black identity. mitchell’s excellent study is neatly divided into two sections that complement each other. part i, “making lynching drama and its contributions legible”, sets the stage by introducing readers to the scenes and scenarios of actual lynchings, as well as the development of black-authored plays that effectively challenged the weighty legacy of minstrelsy and comedy. part ii, “developing a genre, asserting black citizenship”, offers a nuanced analysis of the recurrent figures in the lynching plays of the period: the black soldier, the black lawyer, the black mother/wife, and the pimp and the coward. mitchell repeatedly shows her deep knowledge of the discourses and practices of the time through a highly perceptive account of its background that is both ideologically and historically grounded. the first chapter is devoted to explaining the scenes and scenarios that were enacted during what mitchell aptly claims to be the “theatrical production” of an actual lynching. she effectively sets the records straight by means of a reformulation of the mob enactment and of the photographic display that followed. one of the most compelling and disputed issues at stake in the enactment of lynching is intimately related to the justification of lynching itself as a corrective practice to ward off the “black brute”, “the criminal”, and allegedly ensure social and racial harmony. from this first chapter onwards mitchell is able to deconstruct the notion of lynching as a “scenario of exorcism” by unmasking the white supremacist logic that supported the spectacle of brutalized black bodies. quite consistently, mitchell underlines the way in which the racist practice of lynching became ritualized murder effectively used to sustain white superiority while declaring the immorality and bestiality of blacks in general, and black men in particular. thus, mitchell argues that lynching became theatrical in the sense that it provided the opportunity to exorcize the “evil” that endangered (white) “civilization”, according to the dominant view of the period. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� living with lynching by m. mar gallego durán language value 4 (2), 117–125 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 119 on the other hand, lynching drama provided the ideal access to what diana taylor defined as “the archive and the repertoire of turn-of-the-century us culture” (cited in mitchell 2011: 23), which are key concepts that prove quite productive in mitchell’s analysis. in her insightful use of these two concepts mitchell overturns western scholarship’s investment in the archive in detriment of the repertoire, and demonstrates their complementarity. when examining the community practices that lynching drama fostered throughout the progressive era, both archive and repertoire become essential in the text. what is also innovative in mitchell’s apt reading of lynching is her shifting focus from the victimized black body to the equally victimized black family life and black home. she persuasively contends that lynching playwrights invested deeply in what may be referred to as a cult of domesticity2 the author’s committed stance becomes more evident in her theorization of lynching plays as artifacts/mediums to contest the mainstream “politics of representation”, exemplified by a rhetoric based on black barbarity and white righteousness. indeed, mitchell makes much of stuart hall’s notion, especially as she ties it to the need for racial self-affirmation and cultural expression, which were deemed priorities by black artists and intellectuals at that time. to allow for community mourning and survival, these playwrights redefined both what was theatrical and the theatrical form itself by valuing non-commercial and amateur work. in that line, these dramatists created , because they “understood the significance of showcasing – for themselves, not whites – black family life at a time when mainstream discourses and practices constantly asserted that african americans had no interest, or moral capacity for, stable domesticity” (mitchell 2011: 27). through the scripts of these plays, these writers made useful embodied practices of black belonging available to both family and community, while bolstering their selfconceptions. moreover, these scripts also incorporate necessary confirmation of their rightful belonging to the nation, thus problematizing configurations of both citizenship and nationhood. 2 hazel carby explains the significance of the cult of domesticity propitiated by the ideology known as the “cult of true womanhood” that emerged in the nineteenth century and its influence on black women writers in her classical work reconstructing womanhood (1987). http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� book and multimedia review language value 4 (2), 117–125 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 120 alternative public spaces that helped identity formation through “communal literacy”3 in the second chapter, the author engages in a thorough redefinition of “black theater” that emphasizes how the legacy of minstrelsy and comedy was effectively challenged by black-authored plays, paying special attention to the significant ways in which black writers responded to w.e.b. du bois’ 1926 call for the emergence of a black theater, “about us, by us, for us and near us” (mitchell 2011: 45) , thus encouraging the production of both selfand communal-affirming knowledge. 4 by means of an in-depth analysis of the thematic and formal devices in rachel, mitchell acknowledges the pioneering efforts on the part of angelina weld grimké to respond to this new writer-centered conception of black theater. this play paved the way for later lynching drama in many ways: in its politics of representing african american identity as shaped by mob violence and trauma, in its indictment of hypocritical christianity, and in its tracing the everlasting damaging effects on black households. on the other hand, the reaction to the play’s formal staging – a full-length production with emphasis on plot and directed toward an integrated audience – also facilitated later writers’ aesthetic choices. when fashioning a theory of black identity formation and citizenship, . she brings to the forefront the interesting debate about black representation that was taking place in the twenties, and which can be traced back to the previous decade. revisiting the history of black drama, she is tactful enough to remind readers of the legacy of black performers in both minstrelsy and musical comedy, especially successful all-black broadway musicals. mitchell thus provides an updated revision of the emergence of black-authored drama, addressing crucial topics such as representation, aesthetic choices, and black audience. she also manages to navigate the objections that were raised to black renditions of white-authored classics (such as shakespeare) and broadway hits. in the midst of harlem success, there were different proposals about what kind of theater was actually intended, going from locke’s timely meditation of the “academic model as the most viable” (mitchell 2011: 53) to more community-based approaches elaborated by du bois. 3 in forgotten readers the literary historian elizabeth mchenry describes how african americans exercized communal literacy via memorization thanks to reading aloud and dramatic readings (cited in mitchell 2011: 40). 4 in his famous essay “criteria for negro art” published in the crisis in 1926, du bois outlined the importance of art as propaganda for african americans in order to achieve recognition for their contributions to american culture. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� living with lynching by m. mar gallego durán language value 4 (2), 117–125 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 121 certain main patterns emerged and pervaded later plays: “virtuous womanhood, honorable manhood, and innocent childhood” in mitchell’s words (mitchell 2011: 61). questioning mainstream discourses about blacks’ moral corruption, these plays would blatantly depict white immorality, and blacks’ vulnerability to institutionalized physical and representational violence. she grounds this depiction on the enduring influence of the cult of true womanhood in the case of women, and on the need for inclusion in hegemonic models of manhood felt by black men back then. at this point she makes an interesting distinction between “manliness” and “masculinity”, which would have needed further contextualization within the field of masculinity studies, and more specifically black masculinity studies5. finally, she also discusses the concept of degeneration, spotlighting the resulting generational damage and the disruption of the structure of both family and community that lynching caused. in this way, she is able to call into question well-known sociological studies of the black family, such as the controversial 1965 report by daniel moynihan or the work of franklin frazier or herbert gutman, which overlooked and underestimated the role that mob violence and lynching played after emancipation6 in the chapters to follow mitchell pays homage to the playwrights that started the genre from scratch, as it were, especially the women writers that initiated it. following the lead of ida b. wells, mitchell meditates on the enormous contributions that these women made to the development of black drama, and documents the unprecedented effort to revise mainstream discourses and practices that they undertake in their plays. her impressive reading of the plays under study asserts the richness of lynching drama, as well as its heterogeneity and plurality. , according to mitchell. chapter 3 evolves around the figure of the black soldier, as portrayed in alice dunbarnelson’s mine eyes have seen (1918) and mary burrill’s aftermath (1919). this chapter is very illustrative of the book’s scope, since it chronicles the empowering practices these plays fostered as they were published in progressive periodicals such as crisis and the liberator. indeed, as mitchell proves, this representative figure enabled 5 mitchell cites one or two critics, especially bederman, but her analysis would have benefited from other critical perspectives, such as we real cool by bell hooks, black sexual politics by patricia hill collins, or progressive black masculinities by athena mutua, to name but a few. 6 frazier’s report was published in 1939 and gutman’s in 1976. with different intensity, the three studies coincided in the explanatory causes of the deterioration of the black family, namely its lack of adherence to patriarchal patterns due to black women’s role as matriarchs in the absence of black men. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� book and multimedia review language value 4 (2), 117–125 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 122 positive articulation of black self-affirmation. undermining the deep anxiety that affected blacks regarding their attitude to their country’s contradictions and patriotic rhetoric, both plays epitomize the so-called “perpetual dilemma” (mitchell 2011: 85)7 chapter 4 centers on the black lawyer as a figure that was instrumental in preserving community testimony. the author consistently argues for the centrality of the black attorney in georgia douglass johnson’s a sunday morning in the south (1925) and myrtle smith livingston’s for unborn children (1926) “as a figure who embodies the race’s faith in truth and justice” (mitchell 2011: 115) – against all odds, i would add. she discusses the transition from the black soldier to the black lawyer, contextualizing the ignominious real-life indignities that led to the defeat of the dyer anti-lynching bill and the race riots that erupted in many cities in the so-called red summer of 1919. all these events sparked these playwrights’ interest in depicting the unjust ways in which black testimony was rejected and silenced, and consequently black citizenship was denied. mitchell’s close reading of these two plays maps out that rejection of black testimony, together with a revaluation of the importance of community acknowledgement and bonding, especially of the nurturing role of the black church. , in which black men found themselves torn between their duty to their country and the doubts about the legitimacy of that duty. in her thought-provoking discussion of both plays, mitchell unearths those searing contradictions by equating military and mob tactics, and underscoring the challenges that black men faced in the midst of dehumanizing practices and unresolved tensions, i would contend, both within the military and within the terrain of the black home. featuring the intense debate in the private sphere of the black family, these two writers stage characters who intelligently engage in negotiations that complicate blind acceptance of the national rhetoric, and call for their rightful claim on full black citizenship ignited by an increasing notion of black militancy in the new negro era. these plays also serve the purpose of showcasing “additional evidence of the intellectual diversity found in african american communities” (mitchell 2011: 98), as they account for divergent opinions on these highly complex issues. moreover, these scripts also articulate their authors’ awareness of other influential discourses of the time, such as the religious or the democratic one, in their contributions to the contemporary debate on dignified black manhood. 7 springing from du bois’s editorial of the same title that appeared in the april issue of crisis. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� living with lynching by m. mar gallego durán language value 4 (2), 117–125 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 123 using bakhtin’s notion of “contested discourse”, she captures the characters’ deep belief in the justice system and reveals the devastating effects of that belief in the face of white barbarism. by reversing the racist logic, she undoubtedly affirms moral black manliness and brute white masculinity. livingston’s play adds further layers of meaning when dealing with interracial coupling and black men’s dilemma between manliness and masculinity. in the context of the play, interracial coupling does not respond to honorable codes of black manhood; on the contrary, it disrupts black citizenship by failing to comply with the need to build respectable and strong black families. she delves into the complex notion of consensual relationships with whites, and the debate that ensued between personal freedom and community responsibility. mitchell’s most suggestive passages come at the end of the chapter, when she offers a lucid reinterpretation of the new negro era, allegedly optimistic and confident, but which also evidences the ambivalent – indeed precarious – position that black lawyers, and by extension all black men, had to come to terms with in their daily lives. she also exposes the “justified anxiety” (mitchell 2011: 143), in mitchell’s words, that the denial of black citizenship engendered in the black community. in chapter 5 mitchell deciphers the crucial role black women played in lynching drama, especially prominent in three later plays authored by georgia douglass johnson, blue blood (1926), safe (1929), and blue-eyed black boy (1930). asserting the importance of black women in order to substantiate black claims to private space and respectable marriages and families, she enunciates their investment in the “politics of respectability” (mitchell 2011: 149), inspired by the lingering influence of the cult of true womanhood and domesticity. the author convincingly argues that the figure of the black mother/wife facilitates the difficult negotiation with trauma and terror, as she embodies “what it means to live with lynching” (mitchell 2011: 151). despite the patent vulnerability of the black family to white “homefront violence”8 8 anne rices uses this concept to refer to the strategies of racial terror deployed in the race riots that took place in 1917 and 1919 (cited in mitchell 2011: 149), but mitchell deems it a very useful term to apply to the enactment of lynching in general, as it unashamedly took violence inside the black household to tear it apart, both literally and metaphorically. and its sadistic practices, mitchell builds a coherent defense of the devices employed in these lynching plays to highlight how black women actively (and successfully) sustained both romantic and parental bonds. in some cases, this involved quite difficult decisions such as silence http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� book and multimedia review language value 4 (2), 117–125 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 124 about rape, a sexual encounter with a white man, or even infanticide. bearing witness to the dehumanizing and deeply disturbing psychological price that these women had to pay to signify upon normative definitions of black women’s immorality, mitchell unmistakably discloses the complex “plight” of black women, also caught up in the inevitable dilemma between securing domestic fulfillment and claiming their rights to agency and consent. the most extreme example of this perpetual dilemma is embodied by the protagonist of safe, who after having witnessed a lynching mob pursuing a black man, decides to kill her newborn baby to safeguard him. illuminating productive discussions of infanticide, not as blacks’ inner savagery (according to the racist rationale), but as a means to exercise responsible parenthood and parental rights, mitchell once more contradicts mainstream discourses by placing the blame where it belongs: on the white society that “makes the world dangerous for black children” (mitchell 2011: 165). mitchell thus disregards the justification of black women’s exploitation in the national rhetoric of the time by making readers aware of their fundamental role in the stability of both family and community. the last chapter rounds off mitchell’s stimulating study by centering on lynching plays authored by black male playwrights, namely g. d. limpscomb’s frances (1925) and joseph mitchell’s son-boy (1928), both of them featuring the ambivalent figures of the pimp and the coward. the chapter takes as its premise mitchell’s stance that allegedly questions the “logic of hierarchical approaches” (mitchell 2011: 175), by which she does not want to describe these black men’s contributions as secondary or less important. while sharing mitchell’s view about the vernacular, especially useful in the call/response pattern, and valuing – as she does – the greater variety that these plays add to the genre, i would nevertheless reassess at this point the previous women playwrights’ groundbreaking work that allowed for the establishment and further evolution of the genre. having said this, though, mitchell’s incisive analysis of these plays confers meaning to the ongoing debate about the traumatic effects of lynching on black men, especially those who eventually refuse to be heads of household because of the risk of losing their lives and jeopardizing their black homes. these plays textualize the intensity of the emasculation of black men whose behavior does not correspond to the concept of dignified black manhood mentioned above, but which is also incorporated into community conversation in order to enable nuanced interpretations of http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� living with lynching by m. mar gallego durán language value 4 (2), 117–125 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 125 the link between economic power, black success, and black manhood. resisting the strategy of masculine normalization, the fact that the pimp’s and the coward’s perspectives are not dismissed further indicates the multifaceted practice of community debate that was essential to the progressive era. probing into documenting black performance in her conclusion, mitchell’s book drives her final point home by stressing once more – and rather reiteratively i would add – the importance of performance for the black community. her penetrating comments actually support the crucial role of lynching drama in the community’s embodied practices of belonging and identity formation, while favoring a comprehensive and rigorous reinterpretation of the archive and repertoire of the new negro era. therefore, the volume discussed here undoubtedly contributes to the study of african american drama, as it prompts new and fresh insights into an impressive range of theatrical texts and their multiple strategies. it is thus a welcome addition to the reassessment of the black drama produced in the progressive era, while it also enriches and deepens our understanding of american drama in general. references carby, h. 1987. reconstructing womanhood: the emergence of the afro-american woman novelist. new york: oxford university press. collins, p.h. 2005. black sexual politics. african americans, gender, and the new racism. new york: routledge. du bois, w.e.b. 1917. “the perpetual dilemma”. crisis (april), 270-271. du bois, w.e.b. 1926. “criteria for negro art”. crisis (october), 290-297. hooks, b. 2004. we real cool. black men and masculinity. new york: routledge. mitchell, k. 2011. living with lynching. african american lynching plays, performance, and citizenship, 1890-1930. urbana, il: university of illinois press. mutua, a. (ed.) 2006. progressive black masculinities. new york: routledge. received: 23 february 2012 accepted: 09 may 2012 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� book review language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2012, volume 4, number 2 pp. 38-55 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.4 38 anzaldúa and ‘the new mestiza’: a chicana dives into collective identity maría henríquez-betancor mhenriquez@dfm.ulpgc.es universidad de las palmas de gran canaria, spain abstract in this article i analyze how gloria anzaldúa’s seventh essay in borderlands/la frontera:the new mestiza, titled “la conciencia de la mestiza: towards a new consciousness”, condenses and portrays a development towards the mestiza consciousness presented in the first six essays in the book. this is a well-structured as well as fluid process in which each step guides us in a complex identity-building awareness. this process is an inner journey as well as an evolution in the public scene where the “new mestiza” has to revise and reinvent herself in several ways in order to acquire “the mestiza consciousness”. this essay is also a clear example in which anzaldúa represents three voices: the “i”, the “we” and the “she”. these voices are one of anzaldúa’s strategies for diving into what she understands as her collective identity as a chicana and as a “new mestiza”. as will be shown in this article, the author moves among these voices for various purposes of identity-construction. keywords: identity, awareness, mestiza, voices, anzaldúa, chicana “with terror as my companion, i dip into my life and begin work on myself” gloria anzaldúa the image of diving into collective identity featured in the title of this essay comes from my perception that gloria anzaldúa does not stay on the surface of reality. she immerses herself in the sea of strengths, weaknesses, limitations and joys that experimenting with the construction of one’s own identity creates. the autobiographical experience is fundamental for anzaldúa as she constantly refers to it in her work. but she does not forget the multiple connections she maintains with other women, queer or heterosexual, with the land, with her family, with her personal past and the deep past of her people (reaching far back to the time of the aztecs). it is a process of holding her breath before her complex personal reality and the varied realities around her and then exhaling the reflections and the learned lessons gained throughout this metaphorical swimming. i only met her once and she was able to understand my cultural and personal http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� mailto:mhenriquez@dfm.ulpgc.es� maría henríquez betancor language value 4 (2), 38-55 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 39 borderlands as a woman from the canary islands (spain) who is frequently not identified as a spaniard because of my canarian accent and who identifies with many aspects of south american and cuban culture. anzaldúa could dive under and see through the basic information she had about me to connect with my own borderlands. i am no exception. her masterpiece, borderlands/la frontera: the new mestiza, is proof that her analysis goes beyond mere facts about the chicano/a world to achieve powerful critical knowledge about its painful history, gender struggles, and mythical figures. in this article i analyze how the seventh essay in borderlands/la frontera, titled “la conciencia de la mestiza: towards a new consciousness”, condenses and portrays a development towards the mestiza consciousness presented in the first six essays in the book. this is a well-structured as well as fluid process in which each step guides us in a complex identity-building awareness. i see this process as an inner journey as well as an evolution in the public scene where the “new mestiza” has to revise and reinvent herself in several ways in order to acquire the mestiza consciousness. the seventh essay is also a clear example in which anzaldúa represents three voices, the “i”, the “we” and the “she”. these voices are one of anzaldúa’s strategies for diving into what she understands as her collective identity as a chicana and as a “new mestiza”. as will be shown here, the author moves among these voices for various purposes of identityconstruction. in borderlands, anzaldúa verbalizes several chicana realities, including that of her indigenous ancestors, her mother’s mexican heritage, and the undocumented status of women in the u.s. in addition, she traces the linguistic frustrations experienced by chicana academics. the chicana/o realities she represents are the result both of various encounters in her own life as well as the experiences of others that she has gathered into herself. anzaldúa voices a theoretical chicana/o positionality in her paradigm of the “new mestiza” who “has a plural personality and who operates in a pluralistic mode” (1987: 79). anzaldúa theorizes the chicana identity conflict within a feminist, personal, collective, cultural and racial context. because of multicultural and multiracial influences, the new mestiza expresses herself with behaviors, words, and attitudes that are sometimes contradictory. she learns to tolerate the fact that her racial and cultural identity is not clear to anglo-americans or mexicans, and she adapts her behavior to http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� anzaldúa and ‘the new mestiza’: a chicana dives into collective identity language value 4 (2), 38-55 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 40 each situation. in other words, “she learns to be an indian in mexican culture, to be mexican from an anglo point of view” (1987: 79). anzaldúa herself identifies primarily with her indigenous roots and she often questions her hispanic as well as anglo-saxon heritage. she resists accommodating the identifying labels that patriarchal society, with its absolute terms, compels her to do. likewise, she rejects choosing between her racial and historical influences or positioning herself as either a mexican or north american. she rejects “the dual personality”1 through her image of the “new mestiza”, anzaldúa encourages chicanas to break alienating dichotomies of thought. according to critic maría c. gonzález “for anzaldúa dual thinking has split the individual into an unhealthy creature. this dualism has continued to reproduce itself to become the dominant system of thought” (1996: 29). to resist the dual thinking of western culture, anzaldúa suggests that we must first unlearn “the puta/virgen dichotomy” (1987: 84). rejecting the virgin/whore construct means annulling sexist prejudices that classify women according to their sexual and social behavior. to start dissolving this dichotomy the “new mestiza” has to break the patriarchal socially-established roles and behaviors believed to be correct for their gender. according to anzaldúa then, “la mestiza constantly has to shift out of habitual formations” (1987: 79). that catalogues her as a mexican-american and welcomes the new “mestiza’s” plural personality that embraces all the different parts of which she is made. the cultural mixture and the personal evolution meet in the “new mestiza” who presents herself as subject of her own changes. in addition, the “new mestiza” is a powerful image of the chicana’s appropriation of her independence. her potent self-definition begins after she has faced and tolerated the conflicts generated by her hybrid identity. according to rebolledo, “anzaldúa also clearly defined the historical oppression that made women feel they couldn’t cross the borders, and the empowerment that occurred when they realized that it was their choice” (1995: 103). anzaldúa states it thusly: “my chicana identity is grounded in the indian 1 maria lugones’ term to define the personality, of anglo-saxon creation, where one dash separates the author’s cultural group from american nationality, as it is in mexican-american. as lugones says: “according to this concept, there is no hybrid cultural self. it is part of the anglo imagination that we can keep our culture and assimilate, a position that would be contradictory if both cultures were understood as informing the ‘real’ fabric of everyday life” (1992: 35). http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� maría henríquez betancor language value 4 (2), 38-55 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 41 woman’s history of resistance. […] so mama, raza, how wonderful, no tener que rendir cuentas a nadie. i feel perfectly free to rebel against my culture” (1987: 21). when addressing the “raza”, anzaldúa refers to the historical, racial and cultural forces of her people that have oppressed her and which she has trespassed in her search for liberation as a chicana lesbian. as anzaldúa sees it, resistance begins individually but must also expand to the chicana collectivity. i. the path towards a mestiza consciousness: spaces for cultural and personal evolution i suggest that the seventh essay of borderlands, anzaldúa rewrites her personal experiences and analyzes the evolution of her life trajectory towards “the mestiza’s consciousness”. she describes thusly: “though it is a source of intense pain, its energy comes from continual creative motion that keeps breaking down the unitary aspect of each new paradigm” (1987: 80). the pain caused by this new consciousness is rooted in the rupture of paradigms from which her identity has been constructed and the rebellion against any ideology or behavior that would suppress “the new mestiza”. as much as her destiny, “el camino de la mestiza” (the mestiza’s way) includes places of change and spaces of transition towards a new way of thinking and feeling. a shared characteristic of what is referred to here is the permanent evolution of movement, its adaptability to external circumstances and personal conditions. the new mestiza’s consciousness is not a static condition but a beingness that is constantly redefined. according to chéla sandoval: “la conciencia de la mestiza is born of life lived in the ‘crossroads’ between races, nations, languages, genders, sexualities, and cultures: it is a developed subjectivity capable of transformation and relocation […]” (1998: 359). in anzaldúa’s words it is defined as an attempt “to work out a synthesis” in which “the self has added a third element which is greater than the sum of its severed parts” (1987: 7980). this new consciousness emerges as a space of redefinition of what has been achieved as much as the creation of new ideas and images: “by creating a new mythos-that is, a change in the way we perceive reality, the way we see ourselves, and the ways we behave--la mestiza creates a new consciousness ” (1987: 80). the seventh essay brilliantly coalesces the six essays that precede it. in “el camino de la mestiza”, which is one of the sections in the seventh essay, there is an echo of the issues http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� anzaldúa and ‘the new mestiza’: a chicana dives into collective identity language value 4 (2), 38-55 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 42 that anzaldúa has tackled in the previous six essays. initially she defends the construction of a new consciousness that implies a critical attitude toward her historical past. in order to understand the oppression suffered by the new mestiza, it is necessary to analyze it from its cultural and temporal origins. this is the task carried out by anzaldúa, who, in her first essay, dedicated to “the homeland, aztlán/el otro mexico”, re-writes the story of the chicano people from her contemporary chicana perspective. it is anzaldúa’s understanding that for the mestiza to initiate the road towards the constitution of the collective consciousness one has to look first at the individual and collective past in order to analyze the racial and cultural origins: “her first step is to take inventory. despojando, desgranando, quitando paja. just what did she inherit from her ancestors? this weight on her back –which is the baggage from the indian mother, which the baggage from the spanish father, and which the baggage from the anglo?” (1987: 82). in the second essay, “movimientos de rebeldía y culturas que traicionan”, anzaldúa tries to differentiate among “lo heredado, lo adquirido y lo impuesto” (1987: 82) (what has been inherited, acquired and imposed), which is another step in the mestiza’s journey. in this essay, she analyzes and accepts her rebelliousness, criticizing the influence of the anglo-saxon patriarchal culture while claiming her indigenous identity because it is “a new political stance as a fully racialized feminist chicana” (saldívarhull 1999: 5). in “entering the serpent”, the third essay in borderlands, the narrator explores “lo heredado” (what has been inherited) from the former indigenous cultures: here she revises the patriarchal articulation of the figure of the virgin of guadalupe and la llorona within culture and history. as sonia saldívar-hull affirms, “by rewriting the stories of malinali, la llorona and the virgin of guadalupe, anzaldúa is strategically reclaiming a ground for female historical presence” (1999: 6). anzaldúa re-invents these two myths from the chicana feminist perspective of the “new mestiza”, and this lays the groundwork for the next essay in which she incorporates coatlicue, the aztec goddess. in “la herencia de coatlicue / the coatlicue state”, anzaldúa analyzes in depth the nature of this change embodied in the figure of coatlicue. once she accepts this figure as the image of transformative strength, anzaldúa breaks down emotionally due to the contradictions of her identity: “i locked the door, kept the world out; i vegetated, hibernated, remained in stasis, idled. no http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� maría henríquez betancor language value 4 (2), 38-55 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 43 telephone, no television, no radio. alone with the presence in the room. who? me, my psyche, the shadow beast?” (1987: 44). part of the process and progression of acknowledging difference in this breakdown, anzaldúa realizes that “there are many defense strategies that the self uses to escape the agony of inadequacy and i have used all of them. i have split from and disowned those parts of myself that others rejected” (1987: 45). she realizes this is a collective crisis, for many chicanos have felt like her: “as a person, as a people, we, chicanos, blame ourselves, hate ourselves, terrorize ourselves. […] we suspect that there is something ‘wrong’ with us, something fundamentally ‘wrong’” (1987: 45). according to anzaldúa many people (not only chicanos) who find themselves in this situation keep busy doing mundane things in order to avoid “seeing” this painful inner reality, and thus “awareness does not happen” (1987: 45). this is the moment to see “the face of fear in the mirror” so that “it registers in our consciousness” (1987: 45). because of this risk of being paralized by the fear of not overcoming this feeling of being inferior, “the coatlicue state can be a way station or it can be a way of life” as this goddess is “the symbol of the underground aspects of the psyche” (1987: 46), those we would rather not recognize. in the fifth essay, “how to tame a wild tongue”, anzaldúa powerfully revises and interprets the multilingual chicana identity; she describes her linguistic experience as a chicana woman living in texas, while she rejects the self-marginalization practiced by many chicanas and resists the social contempt aroused by her use of both spanish and english. anzaldúa advocates for a variety of chicana languages while she vindicates chicano spanish as a language that synthesizes both the spanish and the angloamerican influences, enabling the development of new terms in both. yet this is not the only language that represents chicanos, as “there is no one chicano language just as there is no one chicano experience” (1987: 58). the linguistic aspect goes hand in hand with the individual and collective chicana awareness, for as anzaldúa says, “i am my language” (1987: 59) and “if a person, chicana or latina, has a low estimation of my native tongue, she also has a low estimation of me” (1987: 58). hers is a language claim that invokes her sexual, gender, and writerly identities. indeed, there are so many culturally-specific taboos that are collectively given no representational space in it, she must assert, “i will overcome the tradition of silence” (1987: 59). the numerous uses of http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� anzaldúa and ‘the new mestiza’: a chicana dives into collective identity language value 4 (2), 38-55 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 44 language and what these mean to the rich construction of culture become a political and personal issue where her rebellion as a chicana woman writer is also manifest. moving closer to a mestiza consciousness, in the seventh essay, in the section “el camino de la mestiza”, the author does not establish a strict procedure for transformation. each part of the process described is linked to what comes before and after but she also suggests that there are moments of change in which many elements of transformation occur simultaneously and non-linearly. during this journey, anzaldúa revisions and reinvents the past as a lesbian chicana feminist through the different modes in which this past manifests itself. these modes include mythology, historical facts, language, and the aztec cultural heritage. anzaldúa articulates this cultural recapitulation, and as a result her identity as a changing subject becomes more evident. likewise, the “new mestiza”’ also emerges as a feminine model of strength and openness to the progressive inner and fluid transformation required by this new consciousness. the construction of the mestiza’s new consciousness is in itself a journey that the chicana has to make all by herself. in this process, anzaldúa positions herself before her own conflicts and addresses certain social groups. from the section “que no se nos olviden los hombres” both anzaldúa and the new mestiza’s attention are directed to the external world. she starts out quoting a poem in which she despises chicana women: “tú no sirves pa’nada/you’re good for nothing./eres pura vieja” (1987: 83). anzaldúa includes this type of colloquy frequently heard in the streets or any place where the chicana’s womanhood is not valued. while anzaldúa’s point of departure is the chauvinistic male complaint about the chicana, she also questions where these men fit in her new consciousness. she confronts chicano and anglo-american men, asking them for their “individual we” to take a position and to acknowledge their role as oppressors: “we demand the admission/ acknowledgement/ disclosure/testimony that they wound us, violate us, are afraid of us and of our power” (1987: 84). then anzaldúa demands of the new masculine consciousness that men should discover their tenderness and not be afraid of it as “a sign of vulnerability” (1987: 84). as she recognizes, males and females are the victims of roles marked by the rigidity of the patriarchal system, which defines what it means to be a man. hence, many heterosexual men are afraid of anything that could be considered feminine because “they are confused, and entangled http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� maría henríquez betancor language value 4 (2), 38-55 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 45 with sexist behaviors that they have not been able to eradicate” (1987: 84). thus the transformation process anzaldúa requires has a public and a private dimension. in this same essay, in the section “somos una gente” the “new mestiza” observes the anglo-american white society from her cultural, racial, and gendered perspective. from the empowered position that the “new mestiza” has achieved, anzaldúa addresses the mestiza’s collective needs, verbalizing their vindications. she asks nothing less than that white north americans pay attention to such claims:“we need you to accept the fact that chicanos are different, to acknowledge your rejection and negotiation of us. we need you to own the fact that you looked upon us as less than human, that you stole our lands, our personhood, our self-respect” (1987: 85). this is another step in the transformation towards a mestiza consciousness, the moment of collective selfacknowledgement before the anglo-saxon, north american society. anzaldúa asks for historical acknowledgement not only of the chicanos’ presence in american history but also of the abuses they suffered due to social difference, racism, and linguistic and cultural contempt. her stance is one of conciliation with white society, for as she says: “i, for one, choose to use some of my energy to serve as mediator” (1987: 85). although anzaldúa does not give up her fight, she believes in the possibility of finding common ground instead of separating one from the other. for example, she proclaims, i think we need to allow whites to be our allies. through our literature, art, corridos, and folk-tales we must share our history with them so when they set up committees to help big mountain navajos or the chicano farmworkers or los nicaragüenses they won’t turn people away because of their racial fears and ignorances (1987: 85) lack of knowledge of the chicana culture increases cultural stereotypes that many people alien to the community believe. in contrast, anzaldúa cherishes all those aspects which constitute chicana culture, including corridos, art, history and she asserts that this culture should be better known and appreciated for its cultural richness. after asking for an acknowledgement of chicana’s culture and history, anzaldúa ends the section opening a door to dialogue with white society: “and finally tell us what you need from us” (1987: 86). anzaldúa’s deeply considered emotional and psychic progression through a fluid experience of a range of issues to attain a mestiza consciousness is necessary. confronting and naming the abuses perpetrated by white http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� anzaldúa and ‘the new mestiza’: a chicana dives into collective identity language value 4 (2), 38-55 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 46 society against chicanos makes it possible for anzaldúa to achieve an attitude in willing to find a way out to old and latent conflicts. in the section titled “el día de la chicana”, anzaldúa emphasizes her identity as a “new mestiza”, considering herself part of that chicana collectivity. she describes the ritual that takes place in her house every december the second, “when my sun goes into my first house” (1987: 88); this is a time when the influence of religion, astrology, and cultural beliefs converge. from her individual identity, she reaffirms the new mestiza’s collective identity to which she belongs: “on that day i affirm who we are” (1987: 88). she accepts all the parts of the group identity to which she belongs saying, “on that day i gather the splintered and disowned parts of la gente mexicana and hold them in my arms. todas las partes de nosotros valen” (1987: 88). in this section there is a strong connection between the “i” and the “we” as differentiated identities that are linked by common needs and experiences. thus this celebration day is a culmination of the process leading to mestiza consciousness. acknowledging the culture’s collective weaknesses and longings, anzaldúa celebrates a culturally and spiritually compelling ritual for the chicana/o collectivity. as she describes it, “on that day i say, yes, all you people wound us when you reject us. rejection strips us of self-worth; our vulnerability exposes us to shame”. she continues by accepting the responsibility of overcoming pain as a means to a rebirth of the chicana way, saying, “we can longer blame you, nor disown the white parts, the pathological parts, the queer parts, the vulnerable parts. here we are weaponless with open arms, with only our magic. let’s try it our way, the mestiza way, the chicana way, the woman way” (1987: 88). this individual celebration of the collective holds in it all the painful processes of past experience described in the previous six essays, the difficult understandings of her own contradictions, and the daring new beginnings of being a “new mestiza”. the “new mestiza” is a survivor; she has overcome the rupture with cultural patriarchal patterns and the limitations of gender. she has confronted her most obscure side, or her “shadow beast”, her fears and shame. thus declares the right to decide for herself who she wants to be. as anzaldúa writes: “se hace moldeadora de su alma” (1987: 83). after having been away from her home in texas, anzaldúa returns to her origins and to http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� maría henríquez betancor language value 4 (2), 38-55 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 47 her geographical birthplace, a borderland of survivors of poverty. she returns to the first years of her life in “el retorno”, the last section in the seventh essay, where there is plenty of autobiographical information. returning to the past through her memories, she recovers tastes and images of herself and her brothers and sisters working the land. anzaldúa returns to her land with an irrecoverable image of the land she left. associated with her memories of the valley, there are cultural elements which came to be part of her memories such as the mexican cemeteries “blooming with artificial flowers” (1987: 89), the local tv programs which she missed “where hosts speak in half and half, and where awards are given in the category of tex-mex music” (1987: 89). she also missed meals “el sabor de los tamales de rez y venado” (1987: 89). she realizes that the valley has changed; likewise, she is not the same woman who left. instead, she returns as the “new mestiza”, convinced that there is no going back from her new consciousness, though aware that she will always be part of that landscape in her memories. anzaldúa mixes images of old memories together with the new ones she finds when she returns and emphasizes what links her with some people of the mythic past: “like the ancients i worship the rain god and the maize goddess” (1987: 90). further, she points out what differentiates her when she comes back: “unlike my father i have recovered their names” (1987: 90). in doing so she reminds us that she has trespassed the cultural limits of the valley in order to recover her indigenous legacy. in conclusion, the consciousness of the “new mestiza” proposed by anzaldúa is a structural process of change in which the acceptance of cultural and personal problems, the meeting and intermixing of different groups with which anzaldúa identifies, and the possibility of reconciliation with the white society conflate in a linear and non-linear fashion. it is a diving that arises from personal experience and expands to the external world, to the mestiza’s social environment that rejects the macho’s role and questions the concept of masculinity in the chicana community to finally return to the author’s origins in texas. by coming back to her homeland, anzaldúa has carried out a transformation that has an influence in the new mestiza’s perspective. she is not the same woman who had left the valley; while looking at her previous reality with new eyes, she has become more critical, knowing what it means to live there. her memories link her with a space that only exists in her mind, though she also rescues her sense of the connection with the land, smells, and tastes of her historical past. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� anzaldúa and ‘the new mestiza’: a chicana dives into collective identity language value 4 (2), 38-55 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 48 ii. the new mestiza’s individual and collective identity defining “the new mestiza” as at a racial, cultural, social and sexual crossroads, anzaldúa does not refer to her as “mestiza” because she is the result of the mixing of two races but because she receives the cultures and races of various worlds, including the mexican, the indigenous, the spanish, and the anglo-saxon. the word “mestiza” is politically positioned at a multiracial, and multicultural meeting point. in an interview given in 1991, anzaldúa defines the “new mestiza” as “kind of border woman who is able to negotiate between different cultures and cross over from one to the other and therefore has a perspective of all those different worlds that someone who is monocultural cannot have” (blanco 1991: 4). this perspective of “the new mestiza” generates inner conflicts because she has difficulties positioning herself culturally, but it also allows her to discover her capacity to differentiate between what she wants and what she rejects in her identity. the mestiza perspective helps her to increase her tolerance and to amplify her vision of the world: “she is willing to share, to make herself vulnerable to foreign ways of seeing and thinking” (1987: 82). the use of the adjective “new” for the word “mestiza” and “conscience” announces an identity that is innovative and unknown previous to the publication of borderlands. anzaldúa’s individual identity, which recognizes itself as a “new mestiza”, builds bridges with the collectivity, these being other mestizas, the homosexual chicano or anglo community and the chicano world as a whole. as as a mestiza, anzaldúa belongs to all of these group identities because as a “new mestiza” she accepts her multiple alliances. when uniting with these different groups from her spoken position as “we”, she puts into words the collective claims of each of the different groups. from the first person voice, she claims her right to transcend dualities, she clarifies that her identity is not the sum of the chicana/mexicana and the anglo-american self and that these are mixed with a “third element” or the “mestiza consciousness”. from her stance as an “i” she accepts and welcomes all the identities that form her “plural personality”. the “new mestiza” learns to tolerate living with her different cultural and racial elements to turn them into something new and complex. anzaldúa adopts these three voices or cases, making the most of each perspective to identify with different groups of people and aspects of herself. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� maría henríquez betancor language value 4 (2), 38-55 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 49 being a chicana, anzaldúa recognizes herself in the experience of “the new mestiza” and includes herself in the collective identity of “the new mestizas”. to talk about “the new mestiza”, anzaldúa makes use of the third person singular as well as the first person singular and plural, moving among them as equivalents. each grammatical case is an “ideological i” which “face[s] the ideologies of the gendered subordination of women and heteronormativity” (smith and watson 2001: 63). i suggest that anzaldúa makes use of these multiple selected subject positions in order to contest and revise inherited gender and cultural roles and behaviors. when she speaks from the first person singular, she connects herself with her most intimate and personal identity. for example, as a lesbian mestiza she acknowledges her nationality and race as universal: “as a mestiza i have no country […] yet all countries are mine because i am every woman’s sister or potential lover. (as a lesbian i have no race, my own people disclaim me; but i am all races because there is the queer of me in all races)” (1987: 80). using the “i” she also defines her feminism and her new culture as a “new mestiza”: “i am cultureless because, as a feminist, i challenge the collective cultural/religious malederived beliefs of indo-hispanic and anglos; yet i am cultured because i am participating in the creation of yet another culture” (1987: 80-81). in this definition, she positions herself at the crossroads of the dualities in any of her attitudes, and she decides to be simultaneously both. in this way, she puts into practice her proposal that “the new mestiza” must show “in her work how duality is transcended” (1987: 80) and be “on both shores at once” (1987: 78), the “shores” representing the poles or extremes (of behavior, values, etc) among which the chicana has traditionally had to choose. even when anzaldúa’s statements are contradictory, the “new mestiza” transcends them as she lives with both. accepting her new hybrid identity, she writes, “soy un amasamiento, i am act of kneading, of uniting and joining that not only has produced both a creature of darkness and a creature of light, but also a creature that questions the definitions of light and dark and gives them new meanings” (1987: 81). anzaldúa uses the image of the dough or “el amasamiento”, in which various ingredients mix to give something new as a result, something that has a direct relationship with its components as it comes from them but which has its own texture and weight. in the same manner, the “new mestiza’s” own identity is marked by her origins but she transcends them to http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� anzaldúa and ‘the new mestiza’: a chicana dives into collective identity language value 4 (2), 38-55 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 50 become a critical being who rejects any cultural or gender assimilation that could overshadow her. in contrast, when anzaldúa refers to “the new mestiza”, she chooses to use “she”, the third person singular. when using this case, anzaldúa gains a certain distance from her own personal “i”, but she appropriates objectivity by observing the “she” as a complex constructed reality. the female third person singular adopted by anzaldúa for “the new mestiza” is the chosen subject to carry out change. in other words, this is a change that cannot happen if it does not begin from a personal starting point, though it must move as well to the “she” position where activism occurs. the “new mestiza” learns to adapt to the worlds she belongs to and develops open strategies for this purpose, “she has discovered that she can’t hold concepts or ideas in rigid boundaries. […] rigidity means death. only by remaining flexible is she able to stretch the psyche” (1987: 79). she also carries out this process “by developing a tolerance for contradictions, a tolerance for ambiguity” (1987: 79). this is a “she” voice that decides to position herself as an active subject of her own changes, “la mestiza has gone from being the sacrificial goat to becoming the officiating priestess at the crossroads” (1987: 80). the “she” for the “new mestiza” is also a potential “we” as it invites the chicana collectivity (as well as other identities) to join in the transformative process of creating a new and powerful identity. anzaldúa uses a very significant image, that of corn to define the shared qualities of the mestiza with many chicanas when she says, “indigenous like corn, like corn, the mestiza is a product of crossbreeding, designed for preservation under a variety of conditions” (1987: 81). anzaldúa continues, “she holds tight to the earth-she will survive the crossroads” (1987: 81). yet this “she” voice also includes anzaldúa’s “i”, for the author’s personal decisions and her life experience push her to envision and write the “new mestiza”. as she states, “as a mestiza i have no country, my homeland cast me out; yet all countries are mine because i am every woman’s sister or potential lover” (1987: 80). when the narrator speaks from the “we” position, it is normally to include herself in the collectivity of chicana women, to represent, together with other mestizas, those values that unite them and identify them as a group. the image of the stone captures this identity: “we are the coarse rock” (1987: 81). even when the rock can stand as an http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� maría henríquez betancor language value 4 (2), 38-55 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 51 image of impenetrability, the permeability or openness to other external influences is clear: “we are the porous rock in the stone metate” (1987: 81). it is this combination of the resistance of the rock and its porous nature that describes the common characteristic of chicanas who often protect themselves as well as open up to a multicultural experience. although it may appear to be a contradiction because the rock is both porous and resistant, at the same time anzaldúa is creating a culturally-specific image of amplified female power. anzaldúa also expresses the “mestizaje” in the widest sense of the word when she says “somos el amasijo” (1987: 81) (we are the dough). anzaldúa uses the image of the elaboration of tortillas as a cultural metaphor for the formation of the cultural and gender identity of “the new mestiza”. anzaldúa describes the process of making “tortillas de masa” as a synonym of how “new mestizas” go through different parts of themselves. anzaldúa creates what i call a collective and cultural self-definition as she mixes the personal with meaningful shared cultural elements. she identifies with the tortillas and with the specific utensils which are necessary to make them: el metate, el comal, and el molcajete. she includes the strong-flavored ingredients such as cumin, garlic, pepper, and red chile. the elements to make these tortillas are varied and culturally-specific, a metaphor for the complexity of her chicana/mexicana lesbian identity. the identification happens with the ingredients, the process, and the result. the communal “we” sometimes turns into an individual “we” as in “que no se nos olviden los hombres”. although the reality she tackles in this section may be shared by many chicanas, she makes a direct reference to her experience with her father as a man, and her sense of how his masculinity was perceived in her family. it is the individual “we” that includes her as well as her siblings, a smaller unique community experience of the father figure. analyzing the meaning of “macho” for her father, anzaldúa writes that it has connotations of “being strong enough to protect and support [us], yet being able to show love”. the more well-known negative use of macho, she insists, “is actually an anglo invention” (1987: 83). she then makes the more individual “we” stand for the whole male chicano culture as she also tries to understand why men abuse women saying: “though we understand the root of male hatred and fear, and the subsequent wounding of women, we do not excuse, we do not condone, and we will no longer put up with it” (1987: 83). in this use of “we”, anzaldúa assumes the collective dignity and the self-respect that are necessary to face abuse. through this “we” http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� anzaldúa and ‘the new mestiza’: a chicana dives into collective identity language value 4 (2), 38-55 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 52 anzaldúa represents the “new mestizas” as strong and resistant to violence so typical of their history. later on in the same section, “we” includes homosexual men of all races and nationalities together with lesbians: “we come from all colors, all classes, all races, all time periods” (1987: 84). this form of “we” indicates solidarity with transnational homosexual identities. anzaldúa claims the importance of the contributions made by minorities in the homosexual community. “colored homosexuals”, she writes, “have always been at the forefront […] of all liberation struggles in this country; have suffered more injustices and have survived them despite all odds” (1987: 85). as somebody who is affected by the marginality suffered by this group, the author claims collective acknowledgement in chicano society for the creative work, asserting that “chicanos need to acknowledge the political and artistic contributions of their queer. people, listen to what your jotería is saying” (1987: 85). in “by your true faces we will know you”, in the seventh part of the seventh essay, the “we” includes all chicanos (men and women) in a situation of disadvantage and discrimination because of white oppression: “the dominant white culture is killing us slowly with it ignorance […] we have never been allowed to be fully ourselves” (1987: 86). anzaldúa’s “narrating i” mixes with the “narrated i”2 the “new mestiza” analyzes, culls, and reconstitutes her identity within an individual and group frame, but there is not a border between her “i” and her “we” as subject. when analyzing her personal experience, anzaldúa creates a space of identification and representation for other chicanas. when speaking from the plural subject position, she has previously had to identify with a reality shared with others, either chicanas/os in through the use of the “we”. she is her people as she has also suffered discrimination in various forms and is conscious of the struggle that the chicana/o collectivity has and is still going through to gain recognition. she is able to look at the situation from outside as a writer and critic and also as a long-marginalized subject. anzaldúa includes herself within the chicano collectivity as the subject who writes and the object (as part of the group) of her writing. the plural subject unifies anzaldúa’s many hurt selves with the discriminated people she writes about. 2 the “narrated i” and “the narrating i” are terms coined by critics sidonie smith and julia watson (2001) to refer to the writing subject and the narrated object of narration. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� maría henríquez betancor language value 4 (2), 38-55 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 53 general or the homosexual community. the process of recreating identity that anzaldúa proposes, whether that identity is individual or collective, is non-linear and progressive, fluid and concrete. we learn the complexity of her identity as she positions herself in the different voices. recognizing the historical and cultural information, analysis, and different positioning as well as the claims of each one of them, it is clear that this text “provide[s] witness for other, create[s] a community of affirmation, and encourage[s] social transformation” (hall 2001: 104). in other words, borderlands itself through its stages of transformation and the many identities it re-presents and becomes (i, she, we) is a real representation of the collectivity. borderlands has marked a before and an after within the construction of the chicana identity. verbalizing the concept of “borderland” was a point of departure for anzaldúa. like many other chicanas, she felt the pressure to choose among the different cultures and ideologies from which she came. in borderlands anzaldúa dares to reveal silenced and repressed feelings within the chicanas’ literary panorama. she exposes rage and frustration and takes a stance through her vindication of a multicultural social and sexual identity. resisting the anglo-american dominant system’s literary and political assimilation, she creates a body of work which represents lesbian chicanas, and chicanas/os in general, who as a community share a cultural and historical memory of social discrimination. gloria anzaldúa enjoys the privilege of being different. through her work she vindicates her right to be chicana, mestiza, indian, lesbian, feminist, writer, and critic. borderlands represents anzaldúa’s multicultural, racial, multilingual, and historical experience; likewise, it presents diverse realities that constitute chicana’s complex collective memory. anzaldúa considers chicanas’ strength as a collectivity necessary to make social transformation possible. her text aims to generate changes in the individual and collective thought. as i have shown, she establishes a bridge between herself and her reader, using various voices as a strategy. these multiple identities connect her with many different groups of women: chicanas, texans, lesbians, writers, and women of mexican descent who in one way or another may see themselves reflected in her words. anzaldúa speaks as a lesbian chicana in the mexican-american frontier, but she certainly does not exclude other cultural groups who could see themselves represented in her journey across personal and collective experience. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� anzaldúa and ‘the new mestiza’: a chicana dives into collective identity language value 4 (2), 38-55 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 54 references anzaldúa, g. 1987. borderlands/la frontera: the new mestiza. san francisco: spinsters/aunt lute books. anzaldúa, g. 1999. 2nd ed. borderlands/la frontera: the new mestiza. san francisco: spinsters/aunt lute books. blanco, p. 1991. “interview with gloria anzaldúa”. university of arizona poetry center newsletter 16: 4-5. gonzález, m.c. 1996. contemporary mexican-american women novelists: toward a feminist identity. new york: peter lang. hall, l. 2001. “lorde, anzaldúa, and tropicana performatively embody the written self”. a/b: auto/biography studies 15 (1), 96-122. lugones, m. 1992. “on borderlands/la frontera: an interpretive essay”. hypatia 7 (4), 31-37. rebolledo, t.d. 1995. women singing in the snow: a cultural analysis of chicana literature. tucson: university of arizona press. saldívar-hull, s. 1999. “introduction. anzaldúa”. borderlands/la frontera. san francisco: aunt lute books, 1-15. sandoval, c. 1998. “mestizaje as method: feminists-of-color challenge the canon”. in trujillo, c. (ed.) living chicana theory. berkeley, ca: third woman press, 352-370. smith, s. and j. watson 2001. reading autobiography: a guide for interpreting life narratives. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. trujillo, c. (ed.) 1998. living chicana theory. berkeley, ca: third woman press. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� maría henríquez betancor language value 4 (2), 38-55 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 55 received: 23 november 2011 accepted: 23 february 2012 cite this article as: henríquez-betancor, m. 2012. “anzaldúa and ‘the new mestiza’: a chicana dives into collective identity”. language value 4 (2), 38-55. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.erevistes.uji.es/languagevalue. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.4 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.4� references cite this article as: henríquez-betancor, m. 2012. “anzaldúa and ‘the new mestiza’: a chicana dives into collective identity”. language value 4 (2), 38-55. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.603... issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue november 2015, volume 7, pp. i-iv issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2015.7.1 i from the editors research on new methods for testing language skills: a focus on speaking performance the current issue has speaking performance as a conducting thread, specifically, the research undertaken on new methods to test it. testing language skills and defining the constructs under which tests need to be constructed is a complex task. particularly, assessing speaking performance is a rather intricate process with many agents and variables involved and many factors affecting the final outcome. subjectivity, fairness, anxiety, cognitive and metacognitive aspects, particular features of speech, individual abilities, and social constraints among others make the mastery of speaking in a foreign language and its subsequent assessment a definitely arduous task. critical reflection and research on the part of educational institutions, researchers, test developers or any person undertaking assessment is of paramount importance to guarantee the adequacy, reliability and success of the whole testing process and results. in the first article of the issue, entitled “new and not so new methods for assessing oral communication”, gary j. ockey and zhi li note the necessary and logical evolution experienced by oral communication assessment practices over the past decades, namely those related to the testing process, the construct to be measured, the tasks employed and the technology used with this aim in the process. authors delve into the broadening of the construct to be assessed, including interactional competence and technology and thus playing a determining role in the type of tasks currently in vogue and present. five proposed task types in order to assess the degree to which they can contribute to effectively measure such construct are presented. these include: oral proficiency interviews, paired/group oral discussion tasks, simulated tasks, integrated oral communication tasks, and elicited imitation tasks. they are evaluated based on current conceptualizations of the construct of oral communication, and results seem to indicate http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue from the editors articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2015.7.1 ii that they do not assess a broad construct of oral communication equally. consequently, authors advise test developers to use more than a single task type to more effectively ensure construct representativeness, considering the aspects of oral communication that they aim to include or exclude in their assessment when they select one of these task types. in their “comparing candidates’ beliefs and exam performance in speaking tests”, pérez-guillot and zabala-delgado analyse students’ beliefs about their performance in the speaking section of a language proficiency exam and compare them with their actual results in the exam. in this way, the authors intend to determine whether students’ beliefs were based on their actual level of competence or if they were based on other factors arising from the particular characteristics of this section of the exam, mainly anxiety or stress. the paper suggests that determining the basis for students’ beliefs either self-perceived or factualand thus signaling the aspects to be modified would allow us to improve the reliability and quality of the exam. the authors claim that when developing a language exam factors outside the content of the exam, related to administration and organisation, as well as those connected to candidate’s individual features should be considered in order to shed some light on the differences detected between perceptions and actual results. beltrán-palanques, explores two different elicitation techniques among those that may be employed to test pragmatic competence, more specifically, discourse completion tasks/tests (dcts) and role-play tasks (rpts). as also reviewed by gary j. ockey and zhi li (this volume), rpts and dcts might be regarded as simulated tasks that can be used to assess pragmatic competence. in his study entitled “revisiting pragmatic tests in the fl context: towards interactive tests to examine speech act performance”, beltránpalanques examines the task effect of the two aforementioned elicitation techniques, which have been designed following an interactive perspective. more specifically, the dcts, traditionally designed to allow participants to take only one turn, have been elaborated interactively to allow participants to freely interact in the written mode, thereby resulting in interactive dcts (idcts). the rpts used in his study were open, language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2015, volume 7, pp. i-iv issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2015.7.1 iii which also allow interaction between participants. the speech act chosen for the purposes of this study was the illocutionary act of apologies, as an example of an interactive communicative act. his study points out effects across the two elicitation techniques in relation to the speech act outcomes as regards length, amount and typology of apology strategies performed. the volume also includes a final article entitled “speaking an additional language: can study abroad do the trick?” where maría juan-garau, provides an overall picture of the acquisition of speaking abilities in a given second language acquisition (sla) learning context. specifically, she tries to ascertain whether studying abroad can indeed ‘do the trick’ when it comes to effectively and “quickly” learning a second or foreign language, and, if so, under which conditions. the author deals with the features of the study abroad (sa) context, analysing the way it may affect oral performance and thus the acquisition of oral competence. she proceeds focusing on the specific linguistic benefits in the oral domain that can accrue in this learning context. with this aim, an overview of empirical research projects findings is provided. at the same time that an array of individual and external variables that may impinge on successful language acquisition abroad are discussed to show that the sa context is definitely advantageous for the development of language learners’ speaking skills as long as the relevant conditions outlined in the study are met. two books reviews have also been included in this issue. the first one, authored by elena martín monje, reviews the volume entitled changing methodologies in tesol, whose author, jane spiro, presents a work aimed at the student, student teacher and practising teacher of tesol who might be interested in the teaching and learning process of english language nowadays as well as in the way it is experienced worldwide. the reviewer describes the work as “a valuable resource for pre-service tesol courses” which may also be used as a reference book for teacher trainers and individual teachers to be informed of the latest developments in the field. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue from the editors articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2015.7.1 iv finally, raquel lázaro gutiérrez reviews the volume an introduction to interaction: understanding talk in formal and informal settings, authored by ángela cora garcía. the reviewer presents this volume as “a comprehensive guide for (mainly, but not only) linguistics, sociology, communication and even business students on the theories and research methodologies of conversation analysis”, and concedes that when students reach its last chapter they are expected to be able to apply the basics of conversation analytical research to the transcripts provided or to any conversation. mª carmen campoy-cubillo nuria edo-marzá editors universitat jaume i, spain language value http://www.languagevalue.uji.es december 2019, volume 11, number 1 pp. 23-44 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2019.11.3 23 difficulties resulting from language diversity in teaching medical translation and methods to overcome them when teaching medical english to future translators anna kuzio annakuzio@gmail.com uniwersytet zielonogórski, poland abstract active cooperation and international exchange of experience in the field of medicine and health care are being employed in the contemporary world. in this regard, the application of quality translation of medical records is of great significance. this paper discusses problems related to the translation of medical terms from english into polish, taking language diversity into account. it applies an evaluation approach to investigate and discuss the issues and complexities of translating medical terms from english into polish. the purpose of the study is to present the various linguistic difficulties related to the translation of medical terms and the way in which students in a medical translation course deal with them. the study used qualitative and quantitative approach to evaluate the significance of the potential problem. it concentrates on various types of medical terms. the findings of the analysis of the data revealed that the translation of medical terms posed real challenges and difficulties to students who face difficulties while rendering medical terms from english into polish that seems to be the main problem in translating medical texts. keywords: medicine, medical discourse, teaching medical translation, language diversity i. introduction nowadays, medical translation is a highly specialized industry that plays a key role in the distribution of medical knowledge and results of medical research, in the cooperation of the international scientific community and in introducing new medical products, services and technologies to the market. for these reasons, those individuals who choose this type of activity are required to meet numerous, very diverse quality standards. the terms “medicine” and “translation” are too broad and multi-faceted for any of their definitions to qualify for a comprehensive and consistent interpretation of each of them. yet, “medical translation” refers to the process and outcome of the complete, detailed transmission of health information expressed in one language through equivalent text or speech in another language (smith 2011: 135). currently, medical translation is frequently referred to as special types of scientific, technical or technological translation http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ mailto:annakuzio@gmail.com anna kuzio language value 11 (1), 23–44 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 24 (eck et al. 2004, byrne 2006: 18). in this respect, it is commonly believed that a medical translator should be a medical specialist (olle ten cate et al. 2010: 669). at the same time, from a different point of view, the main activity of a medical translator is to translate from one language to another, and such activity requires special knowledge in the field of translation studies and linguistics as a whole (montalt and gonzález-davies 2014: 20, shyiab et al. 2010: 100). translation activities entail the application of knowledge and skills that are not intended to be specifically targeted in the course of study of medical specialties. equally, the knowledge gained in translation and translation studies does not involve understanding of even the basics of medical science. systematic development of the combination of skills involves special training so it is crucial to offer the possibility to non-medical professionals to gain that opportunity. it is important to equip future translators with those skills as they are to offer the translation services in the future to a wide audience. moreover, literature resources have not shown any verified data on the number of philologists and doctors among those employed in the field of medical translation, but it can be assumed that, despite the relatively large number of philologists and linguists, physicians prevail among medical translators. however, when talking about medical translation as an industry, it should be kept in mind that this is mainly translation in medical discourse, i.e. the possession of specific translation skills is not only desirable, but also necessary for the qualitative performance of functional duties. insufficient proficiency in one's native language, which is most frequently the language of translation, is often a problem (pöchhacker and shlesinger 2007). surprisingly, but often seeing the way to success in foreign languages, young professionals spend a significant amount of time and effort studying the grammar and vocabulary of a foreign language (wakabayashi 1996: 358-359), and as a result, write, for example, in english even more competently than in polish. in the process of translation, a medical translator does not always pay adequate attention to the accuracy of translation, often hyperbolizing it as a literal translation of absolutely all terms (newmark 1976: 12) and expressions found in the source text, which is detrimental to the natural use of the translation language and complicates the perception of the text by the customer (kuhn et al. 2007: 820, crezee and ng 2016: 13). the opposite situation is also possible: due to their high professional level in the field of original text, a medical translator allows http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ difficulties resulting from language diversity in teaching medical translation and methods to overcome them when teaching medical english to future translators language value 11 (1), 23–44 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 25 himself to ‘creatively rethink’ some of its ‘insignificant’ moments, which can lead to distortion of the translation result (ji et al. 2019: 103-104). the abovementioned disadvantages are deprived of linguistic specialists who studied translation studies, understood the goals and objectives, and possessed skills and knowledge of the means of translation. at the same time, they still face the problem of redundancy and synonymity of medical terminology (cimino 1998: 42), as well as the mismatch between the medical descriptive systems adopted in the original language and culture and those employed by the target translation (sousa and rojjanasrirat 2011: 267). translation of eponyms and medical abbreviations is particularly problematic (it should be noted, for the sake of fairness, that translators with basic medical education also face a comparable problem) (sloane 1985). linguists’ difficulties are also related to the peculiarities of the use of medical vocabulary in the occasional use of medical vocabulary, as well as to the insufficiency of their existing base of medical phraseology (fischbach 1998: 87, shiyab et al. 2010: 106). of course, there are also ways to overcome this problem. for this purpose, a linguist has to master medical terminology (dubrovskaya and lobina 2015: 123), structure and peculiarities in the formation of medical terms, peculiarities of their pronunciation and use, to study the ‘false friends of the translator’ in the medical text (kuzmina et al. 2015: 549), the main peculiarities of the structure and functioning of the human body, and the peculiarities of formation of the names of medicines, procedures etc. (wright and budin 2001: 697). in general, the acquisition of such a significant amount of information requires a considerable amount of time and effort, as well as systematic training, which is not possible to discuss due to the limited availability of specialized educational programs in this paper. the availability of complete professional education in both medicine and in linguistics, taking into account of the aspect of high standard in this domain, at first glance appears to be an ideal combination for the formation of professional competence of a medical translator. the most effective option is to train a specialist in the field of ‘translation in the field of professional communication’ with professional orientation in the field of medical knowledge. it is crucial to identify the linguistic elements that will constitute the part of that training. the aim of this paper is to show how linguistic diversity can contribute to potential difficulties and how they can be overcome while teaching http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ anna kuzio language value 11 (1), 23–44 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 26 medical english to future translators. moreover, it is important to show which areas can pose potential problems to translators when it comes to their linguistic aspects. ii. theoretical background translation is a complex and multifaceted activity that requires a great deal of human effort (gonzález davies 2004: 11). the main requirement for translation is accuracy (darwish 2010: 42) and completeness (hung 2002: 182). none of the author’s ideas should be omitted or misrepresented (castro et al. 2017: 131). the consequences of a change in the meaning of the original source may vary depending on the type of translation and may be up to the point of causing harm to a person, for example, when it comes to translation in medicine. modern translation theory has not yet developed a single definition of translation as a language activity (gentzler 2001: 1). one of the definitions of translation is the following: “translation is a complete transfer by means of one language of communication, formulated in another (millán and bartrina 2013: 261). the aspect of “completeness” of information transmission in the process of translation also appears to be crucial from the point of view concerning rendering meaning (gambier and van doorslaer 2010: 97). by expert opinion, full translation of the medical text has completely different characteristics than a full translation of the journalistic text (trosborg 1997: xii). the “fullness” is not so much a linguistic, as an extra-linguistic, pragmatic property of translation, as it is provided only when taking into account such factors as the real situation of communication, the relative sociocultural communities of the communicating individuals (malmkjær 2008: 51). the global processes of the 21st century pose new challenges for medicine, which require the development of professional skills and abilities. this is impossible without close cooperation and exchange of experience at an international level. the main goals of teaching foreign language in a medical university are teaching professionally oriented reading, formation of the ability to extract necessary information from the scientific text depending on the communicative task of the specialist, and also conducting conversation on specialized topics (strop and carlson 2011: 87, antic 2007: 142). development of the ability to read and understand the original literature in the specialty is determined by the need to obtain information from foreign sources and is reflected in http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ difficulties resulting from language diversity in teaching medical translation and methods to overcome them when teaching medical english to future translators language value 11 (1), 23–44 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 27 foreign language programs (antic 2007: 142-143). knowledge of foreign languages, including medical english, helps doctors to be constantly aware of events in the field of medicine, to get acquainted with modern literature in english. the basis of the medical language is the terminology describing the state of the organism, medicines and their impact on people, technologies used in treatment, and much more, which is found in special publications, the content of which is related to human health. such texts, which need to be translated, can be of any level of complexity and can involve various types of texts: an abstract from a medical history, protocols of diagnostic examinations and operations performed, results of laboratory tests, information for patients and/or doctors, instructions on the use of medicines, treatment recommendations, etc. taking these aspects into account, it is important to pay attention to translation competence. translation competence is often perceived in translation literature as an additional skill (pellatt et al. 2010: 177). kielar (2007:19) states that it is “the ability to form in target linguistic texts that are equivalent to the original texts” or as grucza (2004: 250) mentions it is “the ability to move from l1 to l2, to pass the same content in the original translation and text.” pamela faber (2012: 3) believes that the comprehension of the source text terminology is very crucial factor in the process of translating, the creating of the terms’ target language counterparts is of equivalent, if not, greater significance. the main place in modern translation studies is occupied by the linguistics studies in the field of translation. as any scientific discipline, modern translation studies were developed by scientists from many countries. much of the merit in this field is attributed to the national science in this field (kerner and hall 2009, gea valor et al. 2010). medical translation and the translation of pharmaceutical texts are highly specialized types of translation, which requires a translator who not only speaks the relevant foreign language, but also possesses knowledge of the special terminology of the text to be translated (trosborg 1997: 159). characteristic features of contemporary medicine are the increasing number of narrow specialties, the emergence of new treatment options and the development of specialized equipment and materials. correspondingly, the requirements for the qualification of an interpreter are constantly growing (ozolins 2010: 198). it is significant for the translator to be conscious of, and to be trained in http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ anna kuzio language value 11 (1), 23–44 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 28 coping with, the technical terms that he/she encounters in translating technical texts. in this regard, garcía-sánchez (2010: 186) proposes that training in technical translation is a crucial criterion to help technical translators so the aspect of training students concerning medical translation should be treated as an obvious. over the last several decades, the translation of medical texts in combinations of two languages in which one of the languages is english has been studied in detail. translations highlight several major problems in translating medical texts. for example, the quebec linguist rouleau (203:143-152) has identified six main problems in english and french: 1) peculiarities of use, including the metonymic use of terms and the preferred use of certain parts of speech; 2) variability of terminology; 3) terminological synonyms; 4) problems of translating eponyms; 5) discrepancy of affixes in general words; 6) insufficiently high quality of specialized bilingual and multilingual dictionaries. rask (2004: 16-17) points out the following problems on the basis of swedish-english translations: 1) insufficient standardization of terminology, 2) the acceptability of the use of anglicisms in the translated text, 3) difficulties in translating eponyms, and 4) differences in the organization of the health care system in different countries. lee-jahnke (2001: 145-153) suggests a classification of medical translation difficulties applicable to any pairs of languages: 1) terminological problems; 2) translation difficulties; 3) difficulties in translating eponyms; 4) acceptability of the use of anglicisms; 5) peculiarities of the compatibility of language units and text structure the classification of medical translation distinguishes between written and spoken translation, as well as any other translation (montalt 2014: 333). translation is provided by professional, semi-professional and native speakers of languages for which the nature of the situation, the specific education of the communication and mastery of terminology are crucial taking into account the specific education of the translator as well as the specific knowledge of the communication (montalt 2014: 333). professional level is characterized by the use of certain lexical units and syntactic constructions, which are also characteristic for written medical translation. this is the language of conferences, symposiums, presentations, reports, etc. at the semi-professional level (doctor-patient communication), the efficiency of communication is reduced by the fact that one of its participants is not a member of the medical profession, and, accordingly, barriers to communication are established, among which are: semantic, communicative, http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ difficulties resulting from language diversity in teaching medical translation and methods to overcome them when teaching medical english to future translators language value 11 (1), 23–44 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 29 psychological, cultural, stylistic. these differences may result in creating language diversity that can contribute to the development of the coherent and cohesive translation. taking the abovementioned issues into account, one should be aware that language diversity greatly contributes to the whole translation process. precision in scientific and technical translations (stts) is both essential and important, particularly in this 'technological era', but they are not easy to obtain. the transfer of information and technology from one language to another is restricted by many limitations, since each language has its own characteristics, such as grammatical and lexical properties and cultural aspects. these are barriers for translators and readers of such texts (cronin 2003: 47). furthermore, each language has a tendency to change over time. changes here indicates that some words can be substituted by other similar or different words, new words are implemented to the language, and some words have established, or denote, different meanings. this kind of modification occurs because of changes in human culture and communities and it also affects the process of translation and medical discourse (trask 1994:1). the aspect of equivalence can also result in some problems that a translator has to face. moreover, this aspect seems to be an integral part of language diversity that can affect the final shape of the translated text. a translator’s failure to accomplish a suitable equivalent translation can give rise to a mistranslation which may be misleading in most fields but which can be ‘dangerous’ in the field of medicine (baker and saldanha 2009). problems of equivalence occur at various levels, ranging from word to the textual level. neologisms are very common in medical terminology mainly for the names of diseases as they spread very fast throughout the world and each language needs to have counterparts for them very quickly (montalt and gonzalez 2007: 230), e.g. in some situations functional-descriptive terms are employed to name new diseases as it was with the term ‘swine flu’ that was introduced in 2009. correspondingly, some acronyms and abbreviations can result in a problem of polysemy, as they are not exclusive and some abbreviations or acronyms can have diverse meanings. montalt (2011) claims that abbreviations and acronyms are causes of polysemy, e.g. the medical abbreviation cf can have about 15 possible meanings. http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ anna kuzio language value 11 (1), 23–44 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 30 taking into account the concept of language diversity and the pace of changes in medical discourse, one should realize that language diversity is an integral part of teaching medical translation. translations of scientific and technical terms ought to be updated as many terms come in languages over time and some become no longer in usage or are substituted by other terms. language diversity includes meaning and language change which pose some of the problems to medical translators. iii. methodology iii.1. statement of the problem medical translation requires a high degree of consistency and accuracy in the transfer of the source text to the target language (tl). the translation of medical terms generally poses many challenges. while some medical terms can be translated without any difficulties, others are very difficult to translate. one of the things that can make the translation of some medical terms into english more difficult is their complex structure, e.g. hypergammaglobulinemia. furthermore, there are medical complex terms and abbreviations (which may be vague) that make it hard for an unexperienced translator to grasp, such as the central nervous system (cns). it can sometimes be problematic for translators to cope with these structures in english, which can lead to incorrect translations (montalt and gonzález-davies 2014: 168). moreover, there are problems of ambiguity because many english terms are either new or so technical that inexperienced translators cannot comprehend their meaning in source language (sl) (ibid.). the problems of various types of equivalence and differences in polish medical terms for the same english medical term may appear to be unavoidable because of different factors. there are different translation phrases that operate independently, as unitary expressions in the polish world (baker and saldanha 2009). the use of competing resources is regarded as one of the main causes for the multiplicity of concepts, which is mirrored by the terminological inconsistency resulting from the lack of standardization. all this highlights the significance of translator education that leads to the development of their capacity to work in the field of medicine. http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ difficulties resulting from language diversity in teaching medical translation and methods to overcome them when teaching medical english to future translators language value 11 (1), 23–44 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 31 to summarize, the study will demonstrate that the translation of medical terms is difficult because some medical terms have complex structures and may give rise to different semantic, lexical and grammatical interpretations that make translating very difficult. a second reason is that there is a lack of clarity or because of ambiguity which may be due to certain medical terms or expressions in sl, which in turn has a great influence on the translation process. iii.2. aim of the study the current paper aims to analyse a specific translation problem, i.e., medical terms. the study examines the problems that polish students of translation majors may face while translating english medical terms into their mother tongue. the following are the research aims: 1. rendering medical terms from english into polish seems to be the main problem in translating medical texts. hervey et al. (1995: 155) mention that people have many problems with terms that are not used in ordinary language, which are, thus, unfamiliar to the translator. as a result, translators cannot guess the precise meaning of the term or make a reliable guess at its correct tl rendering and this is typical for medical terminology which often pose problems to translators who are not trained in this specific field. 2. it is essential to train future translators in the medical field before they start working in their profession. sofer (2011: 90) believes that all prospective translators should acquire some knowledge of the medical field in advance. 3. since neologism, lack of equality, polysemy and terminological incoherence present significant translation problems, the aim of the study is to work out strategies to help the future translators to deal with these difficulties. http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ anna kuzio language value 11 (1), 23–44 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 32 montalt and gonzález davies (2007: 248) also mention that the challenges faced by medical translators can be found in the following fields, namely terminology, neologisms and polysemy. iii.3. population and the sample of the study the starting point for the analysis in this paper is the course entitled 'the english language in medicine', which is taught to students of english philology at the bachelor's level. the course is not required but selective. students decide on their own whether to participate in the course, which is partially expected to be consistent with their interests, and thus it can be assumed that students will have some kind of background in medical knowledge. about 20% of the university students decide to enrol in this course, which consists of 15 classes (30 contact hours) per semester. students usually do not have formal education in medicine and generally do not know much about it, although they are expected to show an interest in the subject when choosing this course. the course is aimed primarily at students of the translation major in order to gain theoretical insights into how teaching medical translation differs from teaching foreign languages and teaching english to medical students. the texts examined include material from students who participated in the survey from 2017 to 2019. the number of students who attended the classes in those years amounted to 61 (18 men and 43 women). the age of the course participants, who are 1st and 2nd year students of m.a. level, was between 21-25, indicating c1 level of proficiency; those students were involved in the translation major at the b.a. level the analysis was based on the written pieces of work delivered by students, which included translating medical documents and medical texts from english into polish as well as standard translating tasks asking students to provide the equivalent in the given language. only translations prepared by individuals were used for the study, though sometimes students worked in teams but these team projects were not included in the analysis. problems that appeared in translations prepared by individuals were also http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ difficulties resulting from language diversity in teaching medical translation and methods to overcome them when teaching medical english to future translators language value 11 (1), 23–44 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 33 repeated in translations prepared by the groups. this shows that problems arising from linguistic diversity are a challenging issue at every stage of the translation process. validity and reliability have been assured. all examples of medical texts were taken from officially valid and reliable sources, which were easily accessible to the researcher from websites. iii.4. data analysis and discussion the following table summarizes the findings of the student translators' responses. it indicates that 51.7% of them were acceptable translations, namely translations that were believed to be coherent and cohesive in terms of style and lexical choice made by the translators. unacceptable translations accounted for 43.7% and 8.8% were blank, which indicates that participants did not give any response. unacceptable translations (43.7%) reflected the difficulty experienced in this field. this result is significant as it predicts difficulties in translating into english, as well as problems in translating into polish. the fifteen examples will be analysed in turn exemplifying the different kinds of problems linked to the translation of each of them. these examples show the general tendencies observed in rendering translation of medical terms. table 1. percentage results of the translations of medical term no. term acceptable unacceptable blank raw score % raw score % raw score % 1 outpatient appointment 42 69 9 15 10 16 2 orthotic appointment 7 12 47 77 7 12 3 meningococcal diseases 15 25 42 69 4 6 4 thalassaemia 38 62 20 33 3 5 5 aspiration 8 13 47 77 6 10 6 demyelinating neuropathy 12 20 41 67 8 13 7 sars 60 98 1 2 8 paediatrician 59 96 1 2 1 2 9 haemophilia b 53 87 5 8 3 5 10 african trypanosomiasis 12 20 44 72 5 8 11 haemoglobinopathies 16 26 39 64 6 10 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ anna kuzio language value 11 (1), 23–44 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 34 12 ophthalmologist 38 62 13 21 10 17 13 fundoplication 13 21 43 71 5 8 14 immunology assessment 52 85 6 10 3 5 15 flu jab 11 18 42 69 8 13 total 23 776 655 132 % 19,4 51.7 43.7 8.8 the first term is made up of two elements, the second one is appointment, which is a common word and for most of the participants it was very simple to grasp the correct meaning of the term. the term outpatient was sometimes translated literally. the respondents recognized that an outpatient clinic is something located outside the hospital, but were not able to state the correct equivalent in polish. element no.2 (orthotic appointment) is similar to example no. 1 (outpatient appointment) as this term is a compound involving more than one element, orthotic and appointment. most of the subjects failed to get the right meaning of the term in polish. it seems that the first element of the orthotic term is responsible for the error as it was associated with the term orthodontist and related to teeth. as a result, it was rendered as an activity dealing in the dentistry field. the subjects failed to observe that orthotic is a synonym for bone. it indicates that students faced some difficulties deriving the meaning of the expression. on the other hand, term no.14 (immunology assessment) was one of the easiest elements to translate in the group, only three people offered the wrong translation. it showed that students did not have a problem deriving the meaning of the expression from the context offered. terms like thalassemia, sars, paediatrician and haemophilia were rendered correctly. these terms can be translated using direct translation in polish. most participants decided to rely on offering the closest and safest equivalent for these terms. in the case of the abbreviation sars, the transliteration of this abbreviation is commonly used in polish. paediatrician was one of the least difficult terms. it accounted for one of the highest percentages of adequate translations. similarly, the term haemophilia did not pose many translation problems. more problematic was the term thalassemia, but most of the participants succeeded in giving acceptable translations which are often calques of the terms and are commonly used in polish. http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ difficulties resulting from language diversity in teaching medical translation and methods to overcome them when teaching medical english to future translators language value 11 (1), 23–44 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 35 meningococcal diseases appeared to be a difficult term to translate as the participants delivered unacceptable translations. meningococcal is an adjective that is used to describe the diseases. students experienced difficulties in comprehending the exact meaning of the concept. they typically offered an unacceptable translation of the term that could be back-translated as meningitis. even though the participants who gave the unacceptable translations grasped the meaning of the prefix, they failed to observe the right semantic relationship linking the two elements of the term. the term aspiration also caused translation problems. the cause for this could be that the term can be translated into polish using the direct translation method but the result does not reflect the medical term. some of the translations provided were recognized as unacceptable because, from the sequence of the text, it was clear that aspiration is the concern and not the treatment. yet while providing the equivalent in polish, students offered translations that indicated the treatment and not the concern. demyelinating neuropathy is one of the conditions with a small number of accurate renderings. the explanation for this small number may be because in medical dictionaries the compound could not be found. most of the students offered a backtranslation of the term neuropathy. this could have been due to their failure to find a polish counterpart for the first element, demyelinating, so they tried to resolve the problem using the omission strategy. this led to a loss of meaning of the one part of the concept. term no. 10 (african trypanosomiasis) also caused some problems for the future translators. the students had difficulties with the second part of the concept as it is related to the latin word denoting sleeping sickness. lack of knowledge concerning the latin stock of vocabulary in medical translation can result in more problems like this. term no.11 (haemoglobinopathies) appeared to be too complex to students to grasp the meaning of the term. students probably had problems with identifying the semantic components that were embedded in the term. this could be ascribed to the fact that the participants did not know the meaning of the condition in english and had problems with understanding what the components meant in english. ‘fundoplication’ has shown a low rate of appropriate translation. the answers offered by the participants indicated that the respondents were unable to comprehend the meaning of the word in english (sl) and were not able to find any easily available counterpart in their mother tongue that resulted in offering a direct calque into polish. the term flu jab was not easy http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ anna kuzio language value 11 (1), 23–44 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 36 to translate. moreover, this is an example of medical jargon. there may be may variants (e.g. injection, shot) of each word that can also cause some difficulties. the group of students had some difficulties in comprehending the accurate meaning of this concept. it appeared that the polysemous element jab was the problematic part of the compound. this caused the participants confused as to what to select as the suitable equivalent for jab, which goes with the element flu. besides this was a problematic word, the compound itself is not present in medical dictionaries, so the participants may resort to employing literal translation. one can notice that some technical terms pose a lot of problems for the participants. moreover, some of the participants find it more difficult to render the proper meaning while some of these terms are embedded in the context, as the context frequently creates another challenge. therefore, so, it is vital to examine how the same subjects decode the meaning of some technical terms. in my opinion, it is not possible to measure how many ideas and how much information a medical translator must try to understand in practice in order to translate efficiently. alternatively, i will offer some qualitative recommendations based on the medical translation course i had a chance to create. i consider that students who are involved in translating must be exposed, either by taking part in a special courses or self-paced learning, to the entire subsystem of medical concepts. this will allow them to have a holistic view of the area of concepts. in clinical medicine, the conceptual fields are clearly represented by organ systems. a systematic presentation of the basis of medical knowledge about a particular organ system may encompass the following aspects: anatomy and physiology, disease symptoms, diagnostic work, and treatment. the medical translation course therefore should comprise quite extensive english texts on various organ systems. some terms should be emphasized during class discussion, e.g. due to the specific nature of their polish equivalents or in order to establish a link between the concept and other concepts from the text. there is sometimes additional terminology presented which is not linked to a specific organ system. for example, the difference between hypertrophy and hyperplasia in the context of mild prostate hypertrophy / prostate hyperplasia in the presentation of the urinary system has been a point of reference for the implementation of related terms such as dysplasia, cancer or anaplasia and proliferation. http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ difficulties resulting from language diversity in teaching medical translation and methods to overcome them when teaching medical english to future translators language value 11 (1), 23–44 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 37 the translation course would therefore have to contain solutions to enhance the maintenance of thematic knowledge. this is best achieved, in my opinion, by enabling students to understand the links between concepts. learning associative relations is quite obviously the simplest way to gain a broader comprehension of the conceptual system of a field. moreover, a course in terminology and phraseology must apply to both english and the students' own mother tongue. since medicine is a domain of life to which virtually all of us have been exposed and medical issues are passed on in everyday situations by means of words, which may vary from official terminology, it is vital that students should study those texts for patients that may not include adequate terminology in polish. this concerns mainly and paradoxically words of latin and greek origin, which seem very medical, but in reality are not used by physicians e.g. chronic or epilepsy. cases of terminological distortions can also create some problems in translation from a foreign language to one’s mother tongue. for example, the gallbladder (polish literal translation ‘gall sac’), may have its unprofessional sound of gallbladder when the translator decides to use the common term instead of sticking to the literal translation (gall sac), resulting in an error. the terminology should also be taught with an example-based linguistic approach and not with the purpose of giving students the knowledge that is specific to a particular concept. students may be concerned with understanding the causes of hypocalcemia, but their translation skills will be better understood if they know that the name of such laboratory abnormalities is developed in accordance with the pattern hypo/hyper + name of substance, as it will allow them to use similar patterns to understand more terms that cause potential translation challenges. obviously not all information concerning medical terminology can be modelled, particularly since the terminology is to be provided in two languages. as mentioned earlier, english latinate terms have polish equivalents that represent native slavic words. some of them are structurally identical to the english terms while some are not. multi-word terms may likewise be classified in one of three categories: similar in form (e.g. invasive cardiology), similar in structure (e.g. malignant anaemia) or differently structured (e.g. cerebral hematoma). http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ anna kuzio language value 11 (1), 23–44 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 38 self-study skills should not be overlooked because most translation assignments require students to understand unfamiliar concepts, but this is no different from what can happen with other translation courses with specific orientation. students should also receive a list of general medical reference works and should be encouraged to read professional medical texts regularly. iv. implications and recommendations medical translators should have a good knowledge of both sl and tl, a good knowledge of the subject, an up-to-date knowledge of their field of specialization and a broad comprehension of medical terms and abbreviations. after the analysis of the errors, it can be stated that the students do not have adequate knowledge of medicine, which results in incorrect translations. it is evident that there is a problem regarding imbalances, relationships, abbreviations and new terms, as translators appear to be trying to find them in english-polish medical dictionaries that they believed to be the only source of information that could be seen as a reliable source of information. at the same time, they disregarded various databases, multilingual corpora and other resources that could offer them more reliable information. this would indicate that regularly updated english-polish medical dictionaries would be very useful and the quality of translation would be much better. it would be advisable to suggest that the polish academics should undertake some efforts to create a dictionary that would be very helpful and of better quality for translation. it is important to point out that specialized medical dictionaries on the polish market are becoming more and more popular, but there are still only a few of them, which does not provide full access to medical knowledge. furthermore, teaching medical translation with respect to linguistic diversity should be compulsory for translation majors as students do not always are aware that linguistic diversity is a key element. it would be worth engaging translators who are interested in working in the field of medicine, in order to be able to participate in the training of students to work in the field of medical translation. it is also advisable to involve medical students in the translation process in order to show students that the aspect of collaboration with a professional is essential at a certain stage. this training would http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ difficulties resulting from language diversity in teaching medical translation and methods to overcome them when teaching medical english to future translators language value 11 (1), 23–44 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 39 enable students to become well acquainted with medical terminology and the manner in which they work. from an academic point of view, deeper research on terminological inconsistency and standardization would be useful. this study was only aimed at addressing the problems that students and subsequently future translators may encounter, it should be noticed that the greatest problem arose in the use of medical terms in english and polish. in general, further in-depth research is required to address the problem of medical translation, and in particular the problems of semantic and associative relationships and abbreviations. v. conclusions the results of this research reveal that the translation of medical terms is a matter of concern for unprofessional translators and university students. moreover, the research results reveal that inexperienced students have a clear weakness in identifying precise translations and appropriate explanations of terms which are not found in english-polish medical dictionaries and cat tools or have no counterparts in polish. the study also found that most of the unacceptable translations come from students who have less than five years of medical experience. this could be negatively reflected in their work as translators in a field such as medicine. furthermore, the results of the study highlight the fact that hiring inexperienced translators and interpreters in bilingual settings (english and other languages) without offering them training may create risks for communication between patients and healthcare professionals. that is, interpreters interested in working in the medical field must be better trained before they start their careers. the findings of this research confirm previous hypotheses that translators would encounter some obstacles in translating some medical terms. as mentioned above, the findings demonstrate that certain difficulties were triggered by certain medical terms, that usually that terms which were represented by compounds, collocations and abbreviations, which cannot be found either in english-polish dictionaries or in monolingual dictionaries. they also indicate that the students use different approaches to translating medical terms with varying degrees of success. http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ anna kuzio language value 11 (1), 23–44 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 40 for this reason, hopefully the results of this study will be considered as a way of enhancing the level and competence of translators by offering them special training in medical translation and expanding the translation programme for translators in poland to include some medical translation courses. references antic, z. 2007. “forward in teaching english for medical purposes”. medicine and biology, 14 (3), 141-147. baker, m. and saldanha, g. 2009. encyclopedia of translation studies. 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(ed.) języki specjalistyczne 7. teksty specjalistyczne jako nośniki wiedzy fachowej. warszawa: university of warsaw, 19-33. kuhn, k.a. warren, j.r. and leong, t.y. 2007. medinfo 2007: proceedings of the 12th world congress on health (medical) informatics building sustainable health systems. research collection school of information systems. vol. 12. ios press. 20 june 2019 <https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/3015> kuzmina, o. d., fominykh, a. d. and abrosimova, n. a. 2015. “problems of the english abbreviations in medical translation”. procedia-social and behavioral sciences, 199, 548-554. lee-jahnke, h. 2001. “l'enseignement de la traduction médicale: un double défi?” meta: journal des traducteurs. 46 (1), 145-153. malmkjær, k. 2008. norms and nature in translation studies. incorporating corpora: the linguist and the translator. clevedon: multilingual matters. matthias e., vogel, s. and waibel, a. 2004. improving statistical machine translation in the medical domain using the unified medical language system. in proceedings of the 20th international conference on computational linguistics. association for computational linguistics, 792. millán, c. and bartrina, f. 2013. the routledge handbook of translation studies. london and new york: routledge. montalt v. 2014. medical translation step by step: learning by drafting. london and new york: routledge. http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/3015 difficulties resulting from language diversity in teaching medical translation and methods to overcome them when teaching medical english to future translators language value 11 (1), 23–44 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 43 montalt, v. 2011. medical translation and interpreting. handbook of translation studies, 2, 79-83. montalt, v. and gonzález-davies, m. 2014. medical translation step by step: learning by drafting. london and new york: routledge. montalt, v. and gonzalez, m. 2007. medical translation step by step. manchester: st jerome. newmark, p. 1976. “the theory and the craft of translation”. language teaching, 9 (1), 5-26. olle ten cate, t.j., snell, l. and carraccio, c. 2010. “medical competence: the interplay between individual ability and the health care environment”. medical teacher, 32 (8), 669-675. ozolins, u. 2010. “factors that determine the provision of public service interpreting: comparative perspectives on government motivation and language service implementation”. the journal of specialised translation, 14 (1), 194-215. pellatt, v., griffiths, c. and griffiths, k. 2010. teaching and testing interpreting and translating. oxford, bern, berlin, new york: peter lang. pöchhacker, f. and shlesinger, m. 2007. healthcare interpreting: discourse and interaction. amsterdam, philadelphia: john benjamins publishing company. rask n. 2004. analysis of a medical translation: terminology and cultural aspects. 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validation of instruments or scales for use in cross‐cultural health care research: a clear and user‐friendly guideline”. journal of evaluation in clinical practice, 17 (2), 268274. strop, j.m. and carlson, j. 2011. multimedia text sets: changing the shape of engagement and learning. canada: portage and main press. trask, r. 1994. language change. london and new york: routledge. trosborg, a. 1997. text typology and translation. amsterdam, philadelphia: john benjamins publishing company. wakabayashi, j. 1996. “teaching medical translation”. meta: journal des traducteurs/meta: translators' journal, 41 (3), 356-365. wright, s.e. and budin, g. 1997. handbook of terminology management: application-oriented terminology. vol 2. amsterdam, philadelphia: john benjamins publishing company. received: 17 july 2019 accepted: 13 december 2019 cite this article as: kuzio, anna. 2019. “difficulties resulting from language diversity in teaching medical translation and methods to overcome them when teaching medical english to future translators”. language value 11 (1), 23-44. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.languagevalue,uji.es doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2019.11.3 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ http://www.languagevalue,uji.es/ transitive phrasal verbs in acquisition and use: language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue july 2012, volume 4, number 1 pp. 1-32 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2 1 transitive phrasal verbs in acquisition and use: a view from construction grammar1 beate hampe beate.hampe@uni-erfurt.de erfurt university, germany abstract this paper surveys a number of aspects involved in viewing transitive phrasal verbs as verb-particle constructions in the construction-grammar sense of the term. the two word-order templates verb-objectparticle and verb-particle-object, as fully schematic and semantically and pragmatically distinct constructions (gries 2003), are discussed as members of different construction networks, viz. transitive vs. caused-motion constructions, with a focus on the latter. moreover, the word-order constructions are distinguished from specific phrasal verbs as “formal idioms”. it is argued that the notion of “allostruction” (cappelle 2006) can be fruitfully applied only at the intermediate level of the latter. the first results of a corpus study using data from childes (parts of manchester, fletcher), the ice-gb and parts of the bnc are reported to support the claim that early instances of transitive phrasal verbs exhibiting the word-order verb-object-particle function as precursors (diessel 2004) to full-blown, lexically and syntactically more complex realisations of the caused-motion construction. in a more explorative and thus also preliminary way, three hierarchical configurational frequency analyses are employed to trace the constellations of selected features of transitive phrasal verbs across different age groups. keywords: verb-particle construction, particle placement, caused-motion construction, particle placement, allostruction, precursor construction, hierarchical configurational frequency analysis i. introduction because of their complex morphosyntactic, semantic and discourse-pragmatic properties, transitive phrasal verbs have equally fascinated and challenged linguists of all kinds of theoretical persuasions for nearly a century (van dongen 1919). among the issues most intensely debated are (i) the placement of the particle before or after the direct-object np as well as (ii) the degree of idiomaticity or, vice versa, the motivation of the meaning of the combination by its parts, especially the spatial meaning of the particle: 1 the author gratefully acknowledges the use of hcfa 3.2, an interactive script in r, kindly provided by stefan th. gries. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� mailto:beate.hampe@uni-erfurt.de� transitive phrasal verbs in acquisition and use language value 4 (1), 1–32 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 2 (1.a) take off your shoes. (1.b) you can leave your hat on. as has been emphasized before (cf. bolinger 1971, lindner 1983, morgan 1997, hampe 1997, 2000), the latter is an intricate issue, as a verb-particle construction can be non-literal in a number of ways. concerning metaphorical shifts, it could be the case that only the particle (or only the verb, for that matter) is used figuratively. this is the case with the particles in (2.a). this “semi-idiomatic” use is what bolinger (1971: 112131) traced back to the presence of “first-level metaphor” (cf. lindner 1983, for a very detailed analysis of phrasal verbs with out and off). apart from that – and irrespective of whether the particle is used literally or not – the entire construction can be used figuratively (ex (2.b)), thus exhibiting bolinger’s “second-level metaphor”. a third kind of shift that may contribute to a construction’s degree of idiomaticity is presented by “second-level stereotyping” (ex (2.c)), i.e. the close association of a phrasal verb with a very specific context of use, such that aspects of this context are incorporated in the meaning of the verb-particle construction: (2.a) he rubbed out the first sentence. he switched out the lights. (2.b) this perspective brings out a completely new dimension of the problem. (2.c) he brought in (‘served’) dinner like an expert. beyond these structural and semantic aspects, various discourse properties of phrasal verbs have attracted attention, as they open up a potential for expressing meanings at several levels of discourse other than that of the ideational content, e.g. the level of information structure or the level of participant interaction (schiffrin 2006). the possibility of spreading out the verbal meaning across the entire verb phrase, and thus put the particle in the final, most rhematic position, for instance, allows speakers to manipulate the information structure so as to focus on (aspects of) the meaning of the verbal predicate itself. in addition, the presence of a stylistic connotation for informality allows speakers to index attitudes and emotions (powell 1992), with the effect becoming more pronounced the more (referentially) redundant the particle is, i.e. the more the (imagistic meaning of the) particle emphasizes and repeats dimensions of meaning already coded by the verb itself. in this way, a particular conceptual construal of the scenario referred to is made explicit (hampe 2002). what makes the study of http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� beate hampe language value 4 (1), 1–32 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 3 phrasal verbs so complex is that all of these factors interact in highly intricate ways, with discourse-pragmatic aspects being strongly motivated by the morphosyntactic properties of the entire verb-phrase and the semantic characteristics of the verb-particle combination itself. the most comprehensive study of the multi-dimensional problem of particle placement to date (gries 2003) investigates the effect of a large (though probably still not exhaustive) range of semantic, syntactic and discourse-pragmatic determinants of speakers’ positioning choices – both in isolation and in conjunction – on the basis of a carefully chosen sample of typical alternating transitive phrasal verbs from the british national corpus (bnc).2 gries’s work presents both mono-factorial analyses for each factor as well as a multi-factorial analysis, which assigns factor weights in view of the simultaneous presence of all factors.3 overall, the study shows particle positioning to be determined by factors from all of the linguistic levels listed above, such that (i) literal (i.e. spatial) particles, (ii) pronominal, simple, short (< 3 words) and definite realisations of the direct-object np and (iii) concrete as well as discourse-old referents work towards a preference for the post-object position of the particle.4 2 the study included only the most frequent verbs, taking vpcs that allow for both positioning options: put, bring, take, turn, throw, pull, call, get, keep, kick as well as the most frequent particles: up, out, off, down, in, away, back, over, on, around in syntactic contexts where the direct object appears in post-verbal position. in contrast, (i) idiomatic (but not necessarily transparently metaphorical), (ii) lexical, long and complex realisations of the direct-object np and (iii) non-concrete as well as discourse-new referents contribute to a preference for the post-verbal position of the particle. the author stresses that many of these factors are tightly correlated (cf. ibid.: 49-61): literal particles, for example, will co-occur with concrete object-np referents. along the same lines, discourse-new referents are usually indefinite, require a lexical realisation and are thus – at least if the head of the np needs to be complemented or modified – usually not just relatively longer, but also syntactically more complex. their processing is, in other words, relatively more costly. the results are thus explained with reference to an overarching processing-related hypothesis which assumes that speakers unconsciously decide for one of the placement options because they strive to minimize production 3 specifically, the author employs a general linear model in the form of a discrimination analysis. 4 the latter is defined via (i) large amounts of previous mentions (> threshold value 6) and (ii) short distance to last mention (2.03 clauses on average, sd 3.56, as opposed to 6.07 clauses for verb-adjacent particles, sd 4.37). http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� transitive phrasal verbs in acquisition and use language value 4 (1), 1–32 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 4 effort and maximize ease of comprehension. these empirical findings are chosen as the point of departure here because they are informative, not just about particle positioning itself, but also about the nature of transitive phrasal verbs – and even of the probabilistic nature of (many, if not most) grammatical choices more generally. at the very least, it follows from these results that the study of single factors in isolation allows only partial insights into the multi-dimensional phenomenon at hand. this paper will bring up a number of aspects involved in viewing transitive phrasal verbs as verb-particle constructions (henceforth also vpcs) in the constructiongrammar sense of the term. it will discuss in how far the two word-order templates verb-object-particle (henceforth v-o-prt) and verb-particle-object (henceforth v-prto), as candidates for two highly schematic, semantically and pragmatically distinct constructions (gries 2003), must be distinguished from lexically more specific constructions, i.e. particular phrasal verbs as partially schematic/formal idioms which can be more or less strongly attracted to either of the former. in this context, it will also examine the role “allostructions”. special emphasis will be put on the fact that v-o-prt and v-prt-o belong to different construction networks (fillmore et al. 1988), thus playing different roles in, for instance, the acquisition of these networks. while an exhaustive characterization of the issues involved in this is far beyond the scope of this paper, the role of transitive phrasal verbs exhibiting v-o-prt as precursors (diessel 2004) to full-blown, prototypical realisations of the caused-motion construction, which are lexically and syntactically more complex than (literal) transitive phrasal verbs, will be explored in some detail. to this end, this paper will first report the results of two previous, multifactorial studies of particle placement in early child language (diessel and tomasello 2005, gries 2011) and then present the first results of a pilot study by the author that investigates data from english-speaking children in their 3rd, 6th and 8th year of life. rather than focussing on particle placement as such again, this study attempts to trace the changing configurations of certain key features of the constructions children produce and compare them to adult usage. among the features presently included in the analysis are (i) the number and kinds of particles, (ii) particle placement and (iii) selected semantic characteristics of the constructions. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� beate hampe language value 4 (1), 1–32 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 5 ii. particle placement in early child language diessel and tomasello (2005) replicated gries (2003) for early child language on the basis of data from two children aged 1;6 to 2;3, viz. peter, recorded in the bloom files of the childes database, and eve, recorded in its brown files. they investigated 450 tokens of transitive phrasal verbs, including phrasal verbs with multiple particles or particles plus directional adverbials. their main findings did not only confirm earlier results about what has become known in the generative literature as the “stranded particle stage”, i.e. about the overwhelming predominance of the word order option vo-prt (v-o-prt: 421, v-prt-o: 29). they also found that expressions exhibiting v-prt-o occur only with a rather restricted range of particles, viz. up, on, off, out, and only after the children’s second birthday. in order to tease apart confounded factors in the multifactorial analysis, the authors employed a logistic regression analysis. their major findings are that, like adult particle positioning, the children’s word-order decisions are also governed by a set of interrelated factors, but this set is a subset of the adult criteria for particle placement and only includes (i) the np type of the direct object (lexical vs. pronominal), which was most pronounced and correlated with both the length and the complexity of the np, and (ii) the meaning of the particle (spatial vs. non-spatial). to this, it should be added that the children’s constructions closely mirrored those of their mothers. gries (2011) in turn presents a replication and extension of the study by diessel and tomasello (2005).5 gries investigates data from 3 children aged 1; 6 to 5 years (childes: kuczay: abe, brown: adam, suppes: nina), thus including later stages of acquisition. by and large, this study confirmed the previous results about the predominance of the ordering v-o-prt (here 95%) and about the factors determining particle placement: while particles marking a (spatially defined) end-state made all children prefer v-o-prt, this ordering was generally dispreferred when the particle served as a (grammaticalized) completive.6 5 gries also included an additional phonological determinant of positioning choice (cv alternation). in contrast to the previous study, gries (2011) takes into account individual differences between the children, observing for instance that nina seemed to have formed a generalization missing from those of the 6 in which way this category is related to figurative uses of either the particle or the entire combination or both is left open. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� transitive phrasal verbs in acquisition and use language value 4 (1), 1–32 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 6 other two children when she dispreferred v-o-prt with the np type “proper noun”. of the greatest interest/relevance to the construction grammarian, however, are probably those findings which suggest that, in contrast to previous claims by diessel and tomasello, “rote learning” may have a role in particle placement. only about a tenth of all verb types used by the children allowed for both particle positions (abe: 13.3%, adam: 10.5%, nina: 13.7%), with some verbs occurring in vpo more frequently than chance would predict (ex (3.a)), and other verbs, especially those with a high frequency of occurrence in the children’s speech, strongly preferring vop (ex (3.b)). from a cursory look at (3.a), it appears that these verbs might well be associated with very specific scenarios in the children’s world, such as putting on and taking off clothes, or picking things up off the floor after a play session, and thus present instances of secondlevel stereotyping. (3.a) abe: put on, pick up; adam: put on, take off, get out; nina: take off, pick up (3.b) abe: put in, get off, take off, take out, throw away; adam: eat up, knock down, put up, punch out; nina: put in, want on, have on, wear on iii. transitive phrasal verbs as “constructions” in construction grammar treating transitive phrasal verbs as constructions in the construction-grammar sense of the term is not as trivial a task as a cursory look at the issue might suggest, for two reasons. firstly, in formalist/transformational approaches to syntax, particle positioning presents an instance of a syntactic “alternation” – a concept that standard cgapproaches have avoided for a number of reasons (cappelle 2006). apart from this, a few additional considerations are required for models that deserve the label usagebased. these models define units as cognitive routines, whose degree of entrenchment correlates with their frequency of occurrence in usage. through the recognition of similarities between multiple instances, units of a similar structure (i.e. of a similar partwhole composition in the horizontal plane) are connected via relations of instantiation/elaboration and schematization. from a usage-based perspective, (seemingly) redundant instantiations of one and the same schema at various levels of specificity are thus not only possible, but also plausible. for an informal illustration of http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� beate hampe language value 4 (1), 1–32 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 7 this, consider the following, progressively more schematic non-literal examples of verb phrases in the caused-motion construction: (4.a) put emphasis [pp on [np]], put pressure [pp on [np]], put responsibility [pp on [np]] (4.b) put [npabstract mass noun] [pp on [np]] (4.c) verbcaused-motion [npabstract mass noun] [ppmetaphorical source/goal] an adequate treatment of verb-particle constructions as “constructions” must therefore, secondly, incur verb phrase generalizations at various levels of schematicity simultaneously, not all of which are equally unproblematic. to take up the most straightforward aspects first, any specific transitive phrasal verb (as a lexeme) clearly needs to be defined at an intermediate level of schematicity, i.e. it presents a so-called formal idiom, where both the verb and the particle, but not the direct-object np, are lexically specific (ex (5.a)). apart from these, there are also a considerable number of entirely lexically fixed idiomatic verb phrases with phrasal verbs (ex (5.b), taken from capelle, 2006: 13), all of which can in turn be seen as conventionalized elaborations of the mid-level schema. (5.a) put out [npdir o] / put [npdir o] out; roll up [npdir o] / roll [npdir o] up; take away [npdir o] / take [npdir o] away; throw in [npdir o] / throw [npdir o] in; turn back [npdir o] / turn [npdir o] back ... (5.b) put out feelers / put feelers out; roll up one’s sleeves / roll one’s sleeves up; take away so.’s breath / take someone’s breath away; throw in one’s hand / through one’s hand in; turn back the clock / turn the clock back ... the interesting/problematic issues concern (i) the completely schematic level comprising the two positioning options of the particle, i.e. the word-order templates vo-prt and v-prt-o, and (ii) the integration of particle placement in the model. so far, two divergent suggestions have been made by gries (2003) and capelle (2006). gries (2003: 132-143) treats the word-order templates v-o-prt and v-prt-o as two different, entirely schematic verb-phrase constructions, each with the semantic and discourse-pragmatic characteristics summarized above. to recapitulate: v-o-prt is preferred in spoken language (as well as children’s talk) for the expression of causedmotion meanings, i.e. of scenarios which involve the movement of concrete and http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� transitive phrasal verbs in acquisition and use language value 4 (1), 1–32 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 8 accessible objects to or from a spatially defined goal (hence relatively short phrases of low complexity taking up discourse-old referents as most typical referents of the directobject np). v-prt-o, on the other hand, is preferred with discourse-new referents of the direct-object np as well as with idiomatic meanings of the verb-particle combination, i.e. with non-spatial transitive scenarios, where the direct-object np typically expresses referents that are non-concrete and/or inaccessible (hence relatively long phrases of a higher complexity). what is certainly special about these categorisations as the semantic poles of the two verb-phrase constructions v-o-prt and v-prt-o is the dominance of discourse-pragmatic over strictly semantic information, especially with v-prt-o. given that construction grammars assume a continuum uniting semantic and discoursepragmatic aspects of the conceptual content expressed, such a constellation should not be disallowed in principle, though it raises questions about the ways in which information from a more generic/schematic construction can be inherited by its more specific instantiations, i.e. about whether goldberg-style inheritance links are the only kinds of relations between a schema and its instantiation. in this case, the discourserelated information associated with each word-order template strongly motivates certain kinds of expressions, but violations do not automatically create unacceptable expressions. despite these open issues, it must be stressed that the postulation of the two schematic verb-particle constructions is highly plausible within a strictly usage-based framework and in view of the results obtained from the quantitative analysis presented in gries (2003), as the different, very complex usage-properties of the two word-order options arise as statistical tendencies from the analysis (or from any given speaker’s experience) of a large number of specific expressions. in other words, at the most schematic level (i.e. irrespective of any specific lexical realisation), the properties of v-o-prt are decidedly distinct from those of v-prt-o, and both are in sync with the diverging demands arising from their respective discourse environments. this is not necessarily the case at the level of the specific instantiation, or even at the intermediate level of the particular phrasal verb. any given realisation could in principle go against the broader usage tendency without becoming ungrammatical, because decisions about particle placement are generally probabilistic and not categorical – with the exception of (i) http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� beate hampe language value 4 (1), 1–32 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 9 those verbs that are restricted to one ordering, and (ii) the well-known limiting case of unstressed, pronominal object nps requiring v-o-prt with any transitive phrasal verb. criticizing this postulation as “extreme constructivism”, capelle (2006: 18-25) argues that the two word-order generalisations should not be treated as categories that are completely distinct in the minds of speakers, as it is plausible to assume that speakers are aware that two expressions with the same phrasal verb, but different particle positions are semantically (i.e. truth-conditionally) identical. to account for this, he introduces the notion of “allostruction” and presents the two orderings as bidirectionally associated variants of one and the same schematic phrasal construction, which is formally underspecified, viz. with respect to the positioning of the particle (ex (6), cf. ibid.: 18, fig. 1). in analogy to inheritance links in goldberg’s model, the link between the two allostructions is assumed to constitute a syntactic object in its own right. (6.a) [vp trans v prt npdirect obj]  [vp, trans v npdirect obj prt] (6.b) [vp trans v {prt} npdirect obj {prt}] notwithstanding the obvious need for – or the psychological plausibility of – a link between closely related expressions, i.e. expressions with identical phrasal verbs, but differing positioning realisations of the particle, i suggest that this issue cannot be resolved without making explicit the precise level of specificity at which each single generalization can be justified. from a usage-based perspective, “allostructions” at the most generic level are highly implausible and could in a way also be labelled “extreme”. firstly, as expounded above, the usage tendencies that transcend the specifics of the use of any particular phrasal verb will be maximally distinct, as schematizations over all usage events bundle the most frequent usage configurations into prototypes that are quite far apart from one another. secondly, the formally underspecified, overarching super-construction (ex (6.b)) that is required to unite the two allostructions at the most generic level is unmotivated, as it remains unclear what the semantic pole of this construction should consist of – presenting, as it were, a generalization over the discourse properties and already extremely generic semantic specifications of the two word-order templates. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� transitive phrasal verbs in acquisition and use language value 4 (1), 1–32 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 10 clearly connected in the minds of speakers, however, are the two different uses of each specific phrasal verb that allows for both ordering options – if only for the obvious reasons of the shared lexical material and the similar truth-conditional semantics of all expressions that only differ with respect to particle placement. it is thus at the intermediate and the lowest level of generality, i.e. the levels of the phrasal verb as either a formal or a substantial idiom, where particle placement must be incorporated in the model and where the notion of “allostruction” can be most fruitfully implemented. the associative link arising from the existence of pairs of expressions making similar contributions to the (truth-conditional) semantics of the clauses they appear in creates formally underspecified constructions with two options for particle placement and either a lexically schematic or a lexically substantial np slot:7 (7.a) [vp put out feelers]  [vp put feelers out], [vp put out [np]]  [vp put [np] out] (7.b) [vp put {out} feelers {out}], [vp put {out} [np] {out}] the relation between the two schematic word-order constructions v-o-prt and v-prt-o and the lexically bound/lower-level constructions with positioning variants (allostructions) is one of elaboration, with any given phrasal verb or even phrasal-verb idiom being attracted with a particular strength to one (or both) of the word-order options provided by the most schematic constructions. empirically, this can be measured by means of a simple collexeme analysis, a method from the framework provided by collostruction analysis (stefanowitsch and gries 2003), which measures the degree of mutual attraction (or repulsion) between a construction and the lexical instantiations of one of its slots.8 one further aspect that has largely remained implicit in the literature relates to the fact that the two generic word-order constructions v-o-prt and v-prt-o participate in different construction networks and are influenced by different sets of motivating relations and networks of choices. gries (2003: 142) points out that (early, prototypical) elaborations of v-o-prt refer to the manipulation of the spatial positions of concrete objects and thus constitute a subset of the caused-motion construction (henceforth also cmc, cf. goldberg 1995). to this it should be added that expressions realising v-prt-o 7 although cappelle (2006) stresses that his postulation does not entail the assumption of a complementary distribution (which can be seen as the limiting case of contrasting usage patterns), i find the term allostruction misleading for precisely this association. 8 for experimental evidence in support of the method, see gries et al. (2005, 2010). http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� beate hampe language value 4 (1), 1–32 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 11 typically constitute informal alternatives to semantically highly specific mono-lexemic verbs. although they express transitive scenarios that are certainly not restricted to motion and that often involve abstract object referents, they differ from their monolexemic alternatives because they exhibit an imagistic dimension, viz. the properties of the spatial relation depicted by the particle, serving as a source domain of figurative shifts. as phrasal verbs with transparent motivations of verb and particle preserve this contribution of the particle (with the exception perhaps of the strongly grammaticalized uses of completive up and durative on), the question arises as to whether and in which way transitive phrasal verbs precede their mono-lexemic alternatives in acquisition and thus pave the way towards the mastery of more abstract meanings. while this big question goes beyond the confines of this paper, the role of v-o-prt in the resultative family or network (goldberg and jackendoff 2004, hampe 2011) will be explored, both as regards its role as one of the precursors to full-blown instances of the caused-motion construction and with respect to its relatedness to the latter in adult usage. usage provides another aspect connecting caused-motion constructions and phrasal verbs, which may be easily overlooked in analyses that disregard the lexical characteristics of actual usage. strong paradigmatic restrictions on seemingly open slots can lead to partial chunking within the lexical realisations of a given construction, which may to some extent blur the boundaries between neighbouring constructions. seemingly complex structures thus come to resemble simpler ones. lexically stereotyped instantiations of the resultative phrase in the cmc, for example, might turn it into an unanalysed whole that is much like a simple adverb and thus bring the entire construction closer to transitive phrasal verbs. (8) put x at risk, leave x in abeyance, take x on board, etc. a final issue concerns the role in later/adult usage played by strategies that are employed in early child language. in two classic articles on syntax and discourse from 1979 (givon 1979, ochs 1979), genre and acquisition perspectives are brought together. it is emphasized that early usage strategies – which together define what givon calls the “pragmatic mode” – may be retained in some forms of adult usage, rather than entirely replaced by the later, more elaborate strategies which define a more “syntactic mode” and enable the language user to express more precise meanings in a relatively contexthttp://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� transitive phrasal verbs in acquisition and use language value 4 (1), 1–32 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 12 independent way. they are generally found in (predominantly written) adult genres which do not put as extreme a planning/ production pressure on the speaker as does real-time conversation. in other words, what appears in acquisition as a movement towards a more syntactic mode re-surfaces in adult usage as genre variation. the use of particular constructions may be a part of these different strategies or repertoires, such that early constructions, like v-o-prt, might still dominate adult usage in spontaneous informal talk.9 in contrast, later constructions, such as v-prt-o, may be overused for stylistic reasons in formal written registers – and even appear in linguistic contexts (for instance with spatial meanings or object-nps of a very low complexity) that do not strictly require or strongly prefer them. such genre effects might remain partially or entirely veiled in corpus studies that contrast data from the spoken mode with data from the written mode, irrespective of the properties of the genres that the data are sampled from. iv. transitive phrasal verbs as precursor constructions transitive phrasal verbs leave the reference point of the spatial relation expressed by the particle implicit. they are thus semantically and syntactically simpler than full-blown instantiations of the caused-motion construction. it is therefore well worth asking to what extent transitive phrasal verbs serve as precursors in the acquisition of the resultative network, especially the cmc itself. in this capacity, they might be related to other constructions with similar properties that are not usually considered proper instances of transitive verb-particle constructions. obvious candidates are provided by expressions of a similar form where a deictic or non-deictic adverb, rather than a spatial particle, realises the resultative phrase after the direct-object np: (9.a) put that there, bring it here (9.b) take that home, put that one outside it can be assumed that these partially strictly situation-bound ways of describing a spatial relation are at least as undemanding as an expression with a spatial particle. for a 9 this does not hold if a precursor is ungrammatical from an adult perspective: the ‘presentational amalgam construction’ as a precursor of an adult relative clause, for instance, disappears in adult (standard) british and american usage (diessel 2004: 134-135). http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� beate hampe language value 4 (1), 1–32 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 13 young child with no command over v-prt-o, expressions like those in (9) and transitive phrasal verbs with spatial meaning in v-o-prt must appear as instantiations of the same pattern, viz. an early, simple caused-motion construction. v. goals and methods of this study for an illustration of some of the points discussed above, the pilot study presented here investigates (a part of) the caused-motion network in british english across 3 age groups in order to study the relation between vpcs, other precursor constructions and the cmc, as well as the occurrence of the order v-prt-o in conjunction with non-spatial uses of transitive phrasal verbs. in addition, it will also examine to which extent the early pattern provided by v-o-prt remains the prevalent option in spontaneously spoken adult language, though it is superseded by v-prt-o in more formal written genres and known to be generally more frequent in adult usage. the child data are gathered from the british part of the childes database. the two age groups are chosen to coincide with the lower and the upper end of the time span investigated in the previous studies introduced in section 2. the data for the first age group, roughly encompassing the 3rd year of life (22-36 months), come from 5 of the 12 files of the manchester corpus (anne, aran, becky, gail, domin).10 for the second group, data from 5and 7-year-old children are taken from two of the three files of the fletcher corpus, in total comprising data from 72 children.11 in order to trace the relation in acquisition between transitive vpcs and more elaborate instances of the cmc, all tokens of those caused-motion verbs that constitute the most the third age group comprises adult data from the spoken part of the ice-gb. in order to keep apart the effects of mode and genre in adult usage, the results obtained from the spoken part of the ice-gb are compared to those from its written part as well as to the results of an additional study, employing genre-specific bnc data that were extracted from files containing only spontaneously spoken language and texts from broadsheet newspapers, respectively. 10 the manchester corpus of childes was compiled by elena v. m. lieven, julian pine, caroline rowland and anna theakston (cf. theakston et al. 2001, johnson 1986). 11 the fletcher corpus of childes was compiled by paul fletcher, michael garman, michael johnson, christina schelleter and louisette stodel (cf. fletcher and garman 1988). http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� transitive phrasal verbs in acquisition and use language value 4 (1), 1–32 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 14 typical dynamic collexemes of the cmc in the ice-gb (ex (10), cf. hampe 2011) were also retrieved from the child data. these verbs present a subset of the verbs investigated in gries (2003, see note 2). moreover, as components of verb-particle constructions, these verbs are semantically “light” in that the information coded by the verbs does not add much to the meaning of the construction, which is precisely instantiated by put. in other words, in all of these combinations, the particle will be more informative than the verb and carry the brunt of the meaning of the combination (cf. also geld and krevelj, 2010).12 (10) put, bring, get, set, take, leave, turn though by far not all of the children’s phrasal verbs are thus included in the study, those that are contain verbs that have long been claimed to be path-breaking in the acquisition of the cmc (most notably put, the strongest collexeme of the cmc) and thus ensure the greatest possible comparability with full-blown instances of the cmc. this way, it will be possible to investigate how far this path-breaking function is initially bound to a simple realisation of the resultative phrase as a spatial particle or (deictic) adverb rather than a prepositional phrase. from the child corpora, the data were retrieved with maximal recall by inspecting all occurrences of the respective verbs manually. the relevant instances from the ice-gb were taken from an earlier study (hampe 2011) that had analysed the environments of all verbs parsed as complex-transitive (cxtr.). this initial data set was then completed by retrieving all occurrences of the verbs listed in (10) which are not parsed as cxtr. and which are followed by either of the tags <adv(phras)> or <prep(phras)> within a span of up to ten words (not containing another verb). this was done by means of the regex option in antconc, whereby the search string was applied to a txt version of the corpus, which all tags had been removed from prior to the query, except for the two tags given above, all verb tags and all corpus-file tags.13 all instances of the seven verbs with a spatial particle before the direct-object np or with a spatial particle, deictic adverb, prepositional phrase (or even a sequence of any of these) after the direct-object np were included in the investigation, i.e. coded as true 12 it is presently unclear to what extent such a combination presents an additional factor supporting v-o-prt. 13 i wish to thank katja fleming for preparing the corpora with the help of r. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� beate hampe language value 4 (1), 1–32 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 15 hits. in contrast to the route taken by gries (2003) and others, who studied particle placement per se, i did not exclude cases in which the direct-object np does not appear in its original position due to passivization or occurrence in object-interrogative/relative clauses, but kept track of these by the coding employed so that they appear as a third word-order option. to complement this data set with more genre-specific data from the bnc that are not pre-determined by the semantic and lexical characteristics of the verbs chosen for the developmental part of the study, all bnc files containing either spontaneously spoken language or material from broadsheet newspapers were investigated for sequences of any main verb followed by the tag <w avp> within a span of up to ten intervening words that are not verbs. this was again done with the help of the regex option in antconc. the search string retrieved transitive phrasal verbs and their closest relatives, e.g. expressions with multiple particles or phrasal-prepositional verbs (ex (11a.b)). of the approximately 17,000 hits that this procedure yielded per genre, the first 1,000 true hits of the randomized output were coded in the same way as the data from the other corpora. (11.a) and in ten minutes if they ain't down here, i'm going back up there! (kcn) (11.b) … the match against hampshire at basingstoke which petered out into a draw yesterday… (k4t) the results of all studies were evaluated mono-factorially by comparing the frequencies of single feature values across age groups or genres. in addition, the data from the childes files as well as the data from the spoken part of the ice-gb were evaluated in a more explorative way by means of a hierarchical configurational frequency analysis (hcfa). this method is designed to detect all combinations of feature levels that occur with a frequency significantly above chance. it was carried out by means of an interactive script in r (hcfa 3.2) written and kindly provided by stefan th. gries. included in the analysis were the following four features: (12) – construction (number of elements in rp): single particle vs. sequence – particle position:14 – deictics: presence or absence of a deictic adverb v-o-prt, v-prt-o, v-prt – semantics of the combination: spatial/literal; specialized; figurative 14 in cases of sequences of elements, the position of the first element was taken into account. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� transitive phrasal verbs in acquisition and use language value 4 (1), 1–32 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 16 vi. hypotheses in accordance with the findings of previous studies as well as the preceding considerations, the following assumptions are made: (i) spatial particles will present the earliest, typical realisation form of the resultative phrase (rp) in the caused-motion construction. in the child data, transitive phrasal verbs exhibiting v-o-prt will thus outnumber full-blown cmcs, whose rps are semantically and syntactically more complex. this effect will decrease with age, though it might not disappear entirely in spoken adult language. (ii) v-o-prt will be the most frequent order in the child data and probably also in spontaneously spoken adult language. the latter trend might be veiled in the icegb data. (iii) expressions with deictic adverbs like here, there or other adverbs (like home) will likewise serve as precursors to the cmc, as they also code caused-motion meanings and are close to (if not even simpler than) transitive phrasal verbs exhibiting v-o-prt. though of initial importance, their frequency will decrease with age, as they do not usually occur in v-prt-o and do not contribute to the expression of non-spatial meanings. (iv) although the frequency of v-prt-o is known to increase both with age and with the shift towards formal written genres, this order will remain marginal in all of the child data: firstly, because other deictic and non-deictic adverbs are excluded from it and, secondly, because “figurative/metaphorical competence” only starts to develop around the age of 7 (liu 2008: 94-97). of the few expressions with nonspatial meanings, however, most will be attracted to v-prt-o (where this is not ruled out by object pronominalization). those that are not are expected to be highly transparent or to exhibit only instances of “first-level” metaphor. (v) as particle combinations (with or without a deictic adverb: back in, down there, etc.) make the description of the endpoint of a path more precise in that the second element adds to the information provided by the first, it can be expected that they help children express spatial scenarios. there might also be a role for such sequences in adult usage, especially if the combination takes on the more complex http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� beate hampe language value 4 (1), 1–32 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 17 form of one or more particles preceding one or more prepositional phrases (up on the shelf, down here in the box, etc.). (vi) as constructions become more diversified in the course of development, with the number of available options multiplying, the amount of variation in the spoken adult data from the ice-gb will be very large (also because these are not genrespecific). in the younger age groups, however, it is expected that a smaller number of feature constellations – excluding the feature-level “figurative” – will characterize a bigger portion of the entire material. vii. results and discussion in the early child data from the manchester corpus – both the pooled data and the individual data for each child – transitive phrasal verbs (i.e. expressions with particles as resultative phrases) clearly outnumber full-blown cmcs (i.e. expressions with pps as resultative phrases) containing the same verbs (cf. appendix: figure 1.1). at the same time, the number of full-blown instances of the cmc are steadily increasing with age, even already within the time span documented in the manchester corpus, i.e. the third year of life (cf. appendix: figure 1.2), though the overall effect size here is small (cramer’s v = 0.145), due to the fact that the observed frequencies for cmcs are higher than expected only from month 31 onwards, with again relatively small residuals (2.63, 1.58 and 2.22, in months 31, 32 and 33, respectively). in addition, there is considerable variation in the data for each individual child (cf. appendix: figures 1.3a, b). the comparison across age groups requires the exclusion of all expressions in the increasingly frequent word order v-prt-o, which is not associated with caused-motion scenarios.15 15 to make sure there are no examples with doubtful word orders left in the manchester data either, incomplete or otherwise doubtful tokens were excluded from this count. the overall number of vpcs in figure 1.4 is thus slightly lower than in figure 1.1. the results show that the frequencies of full-blown instances of the cmc steadily increase with age: while these are already roughly on a par with vpcs in the fletcher data, they outnumber vpcs in the ice-gb (cf. appendix: figure 1.3). the differences between the age groups are highly significant, with the cmc exhibiting the highest residuals in the ice-gb (+9.4) and the lowest in manchester (-7.4). vice versa, vpcs exhibit the highest residuals in manchester (+5.9) and the lowest in the ice-gb http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� transitive phrasal verbs in acquisition and use language value 4 (1), 1–32 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 18 (-7.4). the residuals in fletcher point in the same direction as those in the spoken adult data, but are a lot smaller (vpc: -2.8, cmc: +3.5). the overall effect size is moderate (cramer’s v = 0.29). there is no significant difference between the two language modes in the ice-gb.16 the inclusion of other expressions with adverbs in post-object position completes this picture in that it brings out the preference in early child language for simple as well as deictic realisations of the resultative phrase in caused-motion expressions. as concerns deictics, more than 80% of all expressions with adverbs as rps in the data from both childes corpora contain one of the deictic adverbs here, there, and over there, which are practically absent from the adult data. 17 to take a closer look at particle positioning itself, the word order v-prt-o is excessively rare in the early child-language corpora, but increases with age, as expected. the same goes for v-prt (cf. appendix: figure 2.1). counting out the latter (cf. appendix: figure 2.2), the distribution of the word-order frequencies changes significantly across age apart from that, expressions with particles or adverbs outnumber those with prepositional phrases only in the two child corpora (74.02% in manchester and still 66.79% in fletcher), while the situation in the spoken part of the ice-gb is nearly reversed, with 59.39% of all expressions exhibiting rps in the form of prepositional phrases (cf. appendix: figure 1.5). the highest positive residuals are thus to be found with full-blown cmcs in the ice-gb (+11.65) and constructions with simple rps in manchester (+4.85), while the lowest provide the mirror image: -6.7 for full-blown cmcs in manchester and -8.4 for constructions with simple rps in the ice-gb. the residuals for the frequencies in fletcher point in the same direction as those in manchester, but are smaller than 1 and thus near the chance distribution. the overall effect size is again moderate (cramer’s v = 0.28). in sum, the early preference for simple and frequently also deictic constructions, as well as the trend towards more complex constructions with increasing age strongly support the assumption of a precursor-role of transitive phrasal verbs of the word order v-o-prt in the acquisition of the cmc. 16 spoken part of the ice-gb: vpc: 295, cmc: 449; written part of the ice-gb: vpc: 129, cmc: 225 (chi-squared = 1.043, df = 1, p-value = 0.307, n.s.). 17 in the manchester corpus 142 of the 174 adverbs are deictic (81.61%). in the fletcher corpus, 162 of 188 adverbs are deictic (86.17%). the latter frequency, esp. of the deictic expressions, is probably an artefact of the experimental situation: the children were required to take figures from a board and stick them back on after play. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� beate hampe language value 4 (1), 1–32 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 19 groups with a very strong effect (cramer’s v = 0.599). the highest positive residual is found with v-prt-o in the spoken adult data from the ice-gb (+22.66), the highest negative residuals are found with v-prt-o in the manchester data (-10.73) and with vo-prt in the ice (-6.87) –although the 193 expressions exhibiting v-o-prt still account for 56.1% of all cases. as concerns adult word-order variation due to language mode and genre (cf. appendix: figure 2.3), it turns out that v-prt-o is not just more frequent in the written than in the spoken part of the ice-gb, but also more frequent than v-o-prt in the written data, occurring in 69.63% of all instances. though these differences are highly significant, the effect is small (cramer’s v = 0.23). in the genre-specific bnc data, which come from spontaneously spoken language and broadsheet newspapers, respectively, and thus contrast sharply with respect to formality and spontaneity, these tendencies appear enlarged to a surprising degree (cramer’s v = 0.81). on the one hand, the formal and/or elaborated style of the broadsheet newspapers favours the word-order construction vprt-o, which is close to mono-lexemic transitive verbs, to the practical exclusion of vo-prt. on the other hand, the frequency of v-o-prt in spontaneously spoken language remains very high (80.55%). indeed, and as hypothesized, the frequency of v-o-prt is significantly higher in spontaneously spoken language than in genre-unspecific spoken data, though the effect is moderate (cramer’s v = 0.26). it was not expected, however, that the analogous difference between the frequency of v-prt-o in the written genre of broadsheet newspapers and just any written data should be so much more pronounced (cramer’s v = 0.47). extreme data sparsity makes it impossible to assess the children’s use of figurative phrasal verbs. the two figurative examples from the 5-year-olds in fletcher show v-oprt, but only contain first-level metaphors (ex (13.a)), which still make it possible to refer to the resultant state of the lights or the fire as being off or out. they are thus not too far removed from a spatial use of these particles. all of the five examples from the 7-year-olds in fletcher are highly transparent and involve a shift of meaning at the second level (ex (13.b)). they exhibit both v-prt-o and v-o-prt (ex (13b)), obviously due to the influence of factors other than their meaning. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� transitive phrasal verbs in acquisition and use language value 4 (1), 1–32 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 20 (13.a) turn the light off, get the fire out (13.b) took them a few centuries back, get one up to 1000, put in another story (2x), take away 10 the results of the three hcfas (appendix, tables 1-3), carried out with the data retrieved from the two childes corpora and the spoken part of the ice-gb, confirm and extend the results of the mono-factorial analyses. although they yield some insights into frequent complex configurations of specific feature-values, these results are to be taken with great care, as the effect sizes for all feature-level combinations are extremely small, indicating that a great amount of variation in the data is unaccounted for by the features chosen. the results for single feature values, however, are robust and confirm that v-o-prt is the single feature value occurring significantly above chance and with the highest effect size (above 0.9) in the data of both 2and 3-year-olds documented in the manchester corpus and the 5-/7-year-olds recorded in the fletcher corpus (cf. appendix, tables 1 and 2). apart from this, constructions with the following two single feature values occur significantly above chance in both age groups: constructions with only one particle and with literal (i.e. spatial) meanings.18 18 in the table, the feature relating to “number of particles” is called “construction” and this value is given as “vpc”. constructions with more than one particle are labelled “vpc_seq”. the effects of both of these are still strong (q between 0.6 and 0.9). while non-deictic constructions are likewise significantly frequent with a strong effect in the manchester corpus (with deictic ones being significantly less frequent than expected by chance), this is not the case in fletcher, where the feature “deictic” is more frequent and does not significantly diverge from a chance distribution (see note 17). finally, the feature level “figurative”, which is entirely absent from the manchester corpus, does occur in the data from fletcher, albeit with a frequency significantly below chance (q = 0.48). the most conspicuous result in the spoken adult data from the ice-gb (cf. appendix, table 3) thus relates to the frequency of the feature level “figurative”, which now occurs significantly above chance with the third-largest effect size in this data set (q = 0.37). otherwise, nondeictic elements again outnumber deictic ones to such an extent that deictic constructions occur below chance with an effect size above 0.9. the word-order feature v-o-prt remains significantly above chance, though the effect size is now small (q = http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� beate hampe language value 4 (1), 1–32 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 21 0.22) and thus dramatically lower than in the data from both child corpora.19 as regards feature combinations, in the data from the manchester corpus (cf. appendix, table 1), three different kinds of feature-level constellations can be discerned. firstly, the feature-value combination with the highest p-value and effect size (of all combinations involving more than two features) involves three features and relates to expressions that exhibit only one particle, which is non-deictic and occurs in post-object position (q = 0.14). the most complex constellation involving all of these featuresvalues plus the one for constructional meaning (literal), however, is weaker (q = 0.095) than the second pattern. rather interestingly, this second pattern, which constitutes the most complex feature-value constellation with the lowest p-value and highest (though still very small) effect size in this data set (q = 0.10), points to the increased frequency of constructions with literal/spatial meanings that contain more than one particle in post-object position, one of which is deictic. the third pattern is also maximally complex, but so weak (q = 0.04) that it is only reported here, because it goes against one of the hypotheses: it unites expressions with “specialized” meanings that exhibit one non-deictic particle in post-object position. in contrast, v-prt-o, which occurred in the child corpora with a frequency significantly below chance (q = 0.5 and 0.47, respectively), does not diverge significantly from chance. the feature level v-prt remains below chance in all age groups, but is a lot smaller in the spoken adult data from the ice-gb (q = 0.18) than in the child data (q = 0.49 and 0.48, respectively). in the fletcher data (cf. appendix, table 2), pattern 2, pertaining to expressions with literal/spatial meanings that exhibit several particles, including a deictic one, in postobject position, re-occurs as the feature constellation with the lowest p-value and highest effect size after the values of the single features. with q = 0.07, the effect is tiny, however. all other significant feature combinations are so weak that they remain under an effect size of 0.01. one of these is identical to the third pattern found in the manchester data, i.e. it unites expressions with specialized meanings, which – again unexpectedly – do not seem to motivate v-prt-o. the other captures (the two) nondeictic figurative expressions in the word order v-prt-o. 19 note that v-prt is counted in here as a third feature-level. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� transitive phrasal verbs in acquisition and use language value 4 (1), 1–32 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 22 due to the increased number of options in the spoken adult data from the ice-gb, all of the effect sizes of the significant feature-level combinations remain under 0.1. interestingly, though, the new feature constellations pertain to figurative constructions where the verb and one non-deictic particle are immediately adjacent. this may occur with both of the orders v-prt (highly significant, q = 0.07) and v-prt-o (very significant, q = 0.08). only a very weak reflection of the early child data is provided by literal/spatial combinations with several particles in post-object position, which may or may not be deictic (q = 0.02 and 0.03, respectively). this discussion should close on a note of caution. much further work with this method of data evaluation is urgently required. firstly, a lot depends on the specific feature selection employed. in the present analysis, some features (such as syntactic form or newsworthiness of the direct object), which previous studies have determined to be highly influential, have not been included in the analysis. it goes without saying that factors like these contribute to the large amount of unexplained variation in the data, reflected by the very small effect sizes of the feature-value combinations. secondly, depending on the number of features and feature levels chosen, the corpora employed may have to be relatively big for certain patterns to surface with a frequency above chance in the first place. viii. concluding remarks the realisation and choice of constructions is determined by a large range of (partially highly correlated) factors from all strata of the language system, as well as by dimensions of their users. in the case of transitive verb-particle constructions, preceding work suggests that choosing a particular construction over another, such as v-prt-o over v-o-prt (or vice versa), may entail choosing certain discourse-pragmatic values besides or even above choosing a particular constructional semantics. though this possibility is clearly entailed by the assumption of a semantics-pragmatics cline in many construction-based grammars, it still raises principled issues for further research pertaining to what kinds of conceptualisations must be regarded as constituting the semantic pole of constructions and what kinds of relations can hold between a schema and its instantiations. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� beate hampe language value 4 (1), 1–32 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 23 beyond that, the present study has shown that a construction-based analysis can benefit from the consideration of a construction’s location in its surrounding construction networks. the word-order construction v-o-prt, for example, was shown to be an early member of the caused-motion network, serving as a precursor in the acquisition of fullblown instances of the cmc. in doing so, it parallels other early expressions with simple realisations of the resultative phrase, viz. as mono-lexemic adverbs, especially deictic ones. the data on particle placement across adult language modes and genres, finally, have demonstrated that the linguistic differences between unplanned, spontaneous adult talk and more planned, elaborate forms of adult language use are indeed not entirely unlike those between the early and late stages of the developmental trajectory. in particular, early constructions (such as v-o-prt with transitive phrasal verbs) may well be retained and continue to be dominant in certain (spontaneous, unplanned) genres of adult usage, while later ones (such as v-prt-o) will generally complement, rather than fully replace them. the near-exclusive occurrence of v-prt-o in the bnc data sampled from broadsheet newspapers presents an extreme case that may be stylistically motivated. clearly, these results call for more research on the influence of highly specific genrerequirements. finally, the results have also shown that further research is needed on the usage of phrasal verbs by older children and teenagers. the huge differences in the frequencies of the word order v-prt-o and of the feature-value “figurative” between the data from fletcher and the adult data from the ice-gb suggest that v-prt-o really develops after the age of 7, very likely in conjunction with the emergence of “figurative competence”. the latter remains an important issue for future research, not just because of current data sparsity, but also because the consistent coding of non-literal examples for the number and kinds of metaphorical shifts is extremely difficult and requires reliable coding by several trained investigators. references bolinger, d. 1971. the phrasal verb in english. cambridge, ma: harvard university press http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� transitive phrasal verbs in acquisition and use language value 4 (1), 1–32 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 24 cappelle, b. 2006. “particle placement and the case for “allostructions””. constructions 1, 28 pgs. <http://elanguage.net/journals/constructions/article/view/ 22/27> diessel, h. 2004. the acquisition of complex sentences. cambridge: cambridge university press. diessel, h. and tomasello, m. 2005. “particle placement in early child language: a multifactorial analysis”. corpus linguistics and linguistic theory 1 (1), 89-111. fillmore, c.j., kay, p. and o’connor, c.m. 1988. “regularity and idiomaticity in grammatical constructions: the case of let alone”. language 64 (3), 501-538. fletcher, p. and garman, m. 1988. “normal language development and language impairment: syntax and beyond”. clinical linguistics and phonetics 2, 97–114. givon, t. 1979. “from discourse to syntax: grammar as a processing strategy”. in givon, t. (ed.) syntax and semantics (vol. 1). new york: academic press, 81112. geld, r. and krevelj, s.l. 2010. “centrality of space in the strategic construal of up in english particle verbs”. in brdar, m., m. omazic, v. pavicic takac, t. gradecakerdeljic and g. buljan (eds.) space and time in language. frankfurt am main: peter lang, 145-166. goldberg, a.e. 1995. constructions: a construction grammar approach to argument structure. chicago: the university of chicago press. goldberg, a.e. and jackendoff, r. 2004. “the english resultative as a family of constructions”. language 80 (3), 532-568. gries, s.t. 2003. multifactorial analysis in corpus linguistics. a study of particle placement. london/new york: continuum. gries, s.t. 2011. “acquiring particle placement in english: a corpus-based perspective”. in medina, p.g. (ed.) morphosyntactic alternations in english: functional and cognitive perspectives. london/oakville, ct: equinox, 235-263. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://elanguage.net/journals/constructions/article/view/%2022/27� http://elanguage.net/journals/constructions/article/view/%2022/27� beate hampe language value 4 (1), 1–32 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 25 gries, s.t., hampe, b. and schönefeld, d. 2005. “converging evidence: bringing together experimental and corpus data on the associations of verbs and constructions”. cognitive linguistics 16 (4), 635-676. gries, s.t., hampe, b. and schönefeld, d. 2010. “converging evidence ii: more on the association between verbs and constructions”. in rice, s. and j. newman (eds.) empirical and experimental methods in cognitive/functional research. stanford, ca: csli publications, 59-72. hampe, b. 1997. “towards a solution of the phrasal-verb puzzle: considerations on some scattered pieces”. lexicology 3 (2), 203-243. hampe, b. 2002. superlative verbs. a corpus-based study of semantic redundancy in english verb-particle constructions. tübingen: gunter narr verlag. hampe, b. 2011. “discovering constructions by means of collostruction analysis: the english denominative construction”. cognitive linguistics 22 (2), 211-245. johnson, m. 1986. a computer-based approach to the analysis of child language data. unpubl . ph. d. dissertation, reading, uk: university of reading. lindner, s. j. 1983. a lexico-semantic analysis of english verb-particle constructions with “out” and “up”. (laut paper, no. 101). trier, germany: linguistic agency of the university of trier. liu, d. 2008. idioms. description, comprehension, acquisition and pedagogy. london: routledge. morgan, p. 1997. “figuring out ‘figure out’. metaphor and the semantics of the english verb-particle construction”. cognitive linguistics 14 (2), 15-28. ochs, e. 1979. “planned and unplanned discourse”. in givon, t. (ed.) syntax and semantics (vol. 1). new york: academic press, 51-80. powell, m.j. (1992). semantic/pragmatic regularities in informal lexis. text 12 (1), 1958. schiffrin, d. 2006. “discourse”. in fasold, r. and j. connor-linton (eds.) an introduction to language and linguistics. cambridge: cambridge university press, 169-203. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� transitive phrasal verbs in acquisition and use language value 4 (1), 1–32 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 26 stefanowitsch, a. and gries, s.t. 2003. “collostructions: investigating the interaction of words and constructions”. international journal of corpus linguistics 8 (2), 209-243. theakston, a.l., lieven, e.v.m., pine, j.m. and rowland, c.f. 2001. “the role of performance limitations in the acquisition of verb-argument structure: an alternative account”. journal of child language 28, 127-152. van dongen, w.a. 1919. “he puts on his hat and he puts his hat on”. neophilologicus 4, 322-353. received: 18 july 2011 accepted: 19 march 2012 appendix 330 355 119 165 445 1414 111 187 59 87 107 551 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% anne aran becky domin gail all vpc (part) cmc (pp) figure 1.1. proportions of vpc and cmcs in the 5 files from the manchester corpus (childes); statistics for line all: chi-squared = 379.017, df = 1, p(chi 2) = 1.147e-83***. cite this article as: hampe, b. 2012. “transitive phrasal verbs in acquisition and use: a view from construction grammar”. language value 4 (1), 1-32. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.erevistes.uji.es/languagevalue. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� beate hampe language value 4 (1), 1–32 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 27 figure 1.2. average proportions of vpc and cmcs across months in 5 files from the manchester corpus (childes): months with tokens from all 5 children only; chi-squared = 37.382, df = 9, p = 2.249e05***, cramer’s v = 0.145. figure 1.3a. proportions of vpc and cmcs across months: manchester corpus (childes): anne. figure 1.3b. proportions of vpc and cmcs across months: manchester corpus (childes): gail. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� transitive phrasal verbs in acquisition and use language value 4 (1), 1–32 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 28 figure 1.4. cmc vs. vpc (only v-o-prt/v-prt) across age groups; chi-squared = 256.35, df = 2, p(chi2) = 2.15879e-56***, cramer’s v = 0.290 figure 1.5. cmc vs. simpler precursors (constructions with particles and deictic/non-deictic adverbials) across age groups; chi-squared = 275.861, df = 2, p(chi2) = 1.28e-60***, cramer’s v = 0.283 figure 2.1. proportions of the word orders v-o-prt, v-prt-o and v-prt across age groups figure 2.2. proportions of v-o-prt and v-prt-o across the age groups; chi-squared = 688.792, df = 2, p(chi2) = 2.696e-150***, cramer’s v = 0.599 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� beate hampe language value 4 (1), 1–32 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 29 • differences between language modes in ice: chi-squared = 25.696, df = 1, p(chi2) = 3.996e-07***, cramer’s v = 0.23 • differences between genres in the bnc: chi-squared = 404.291, df = 1, p(chi2) < 2.2e16***, cramer’s v = 0.81 • differences between the spoken data from the ice-gb and the spontaneously spoken sample from the bnc: chi-squared = 45.814, df = 1, p(chi2) = 1.300e-11***, cramer’s v = 0.262 • differences between the written data from the ice-gb and the newspaper sample from the bnc: chi-squared = 93.861, df = 1, p(chi2) < 2.2e-16***, cramer’s v = 0.469 figure 2.3. proportions of v-o-prt and v-prt-o in the adult data: language mode (ice-gb: spoken vs. written) vs. genre (bnc: spontaneous spoken vs. broadsheet newspaper samples): table 1. significant results of the hcfa (exact binomial test with bonferroni correction): manchester corpus deictics construction part pos meaning obs exp cont.chisq obs-exp p.adj.bin dec q . . vop . 1604 537.00 2120.091 > 0.00e+00 *** 0.993 . vpc . . 1402 805.50 441.728 > 7.28e-217 *** 0.741 . . . literal 1393 805.50 428.499 > 1.59e-209 *** 0.729 0 . . . 1323 805.50 332.472 > 2.31e-158 *** 0.642 0 vpc . . 1310 1151.36 21.857 > 1.90e-19 *** 0.138 0 vpc vop . 1303 1146.36 21.403 > 2.39e-18 *** 0.137 1 vpc_seq . literal 196 32.31 829.392 > 1.85e-87 *** 0.104 1 vpc_seq vop literal 196 32.17 834.442 > 2.67e-87 *** 0.104 1 vpc_seq . . 196 37.36 673.543 > 2.41e-77 *** 0.101 1 vpc_seq vop . 196 37.20 677.867 > 3.56e-77 *** 0.101 0 vpc . literal 1092 995.56 9.342 > 2.63e-06 *** 0.097 0 vpc vop literal 1085 991.24 8.870 > 1.67e-05 *** 0.095 0 vpc . special 218 155.80 24.830 > 3.00e-06 *** 0.043 0 vpc vop special 218 155.13 25.484 > 6.59e-06 *** 0.043 0 . . special 218 179.03 8.484 > 5.92e-03 ** 0.027 1 . . literal 288 249.03 6.099 > 1.83e-02 * 0.029 1 . vop literal 288 247.95 6.471 > 4.38e-02 * 0.029 0 . vop special 218 178.25 8.864 > 1.44e-02 * 0.028 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� transitive phrasal verbs in acquisition and use language value 4 (1), 1–32 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 30 deictics construction part pos meaning obs exp cont.chisq obs-exp p.adj.bin dec q . vpc_seq . . 209 805.50 441.728 < 7.28e-217 *** 0.741 . . . special 218 805.50 428.499 < 1.59e-209 *** 0.729 1 . . . 288 805.50 332.472 < 2.31e-158 *** 0.642 . . vpo . 1 537.00 535.002 < 5.02e-281 *** 0.499 . . vp . 6 537.00 525.067 < 2.36e-269 *** 0.494 1 vpc . . 92 250.64 100.407 < 4.83e-34 *** 0.117 1 vpc vop . 92 249.55 99.465 < 3.28e-33 *** 0.116 0 vpc_seq . . 13 171.64 146.622 < 4.84e-59 *** 0.11 0 vpc_seq vop . 13 170.89 145.880 < 3.14e-58 *** 0.11 0 vpc_seq . literal 13 148.41 123.550 < 1.90e-48 *** 0.093 0 vpc_seq vop literal 13 147.77 122.910 < 1.09e-47 *** 0.092 1 vpc . literal 92 216.72 71.776 < 2.90e-23 *** 0.089 1 vpc vop literal 92 215.78 71.004 < 1.63e-22 *** 0.089 1 . . special 0 38.97 38.972 < 2.94e-17 *** 0.025 1 . vop special 0 38.80 38.803 < 1.05e-16 *** 0.025 1 vpc . special 0 33.92 33.916 < 1.04e-14 *** 0.022 1 vpc vop special 0 33.77 33.769 < 3.62e-14 *** 0.021 . vpc_seq . special 0 28.28 28.282 < 1.62e-12 *** 0.018 . vpc_seq vop special 0 28.16 28.159 < 5.52e-12 *** 0.018 0 vpc_seq . special 0 23.23 23.226 < 5.53e-10 *** 0.015 0 vpc_seq vop special 0 23.12 23.125 < 1.84e-09 *** 0.015 table 2. significant results of the hcfa (exact binomial test with bonferroni correction): fletcher corpus. deictics construction part pos meaning obs exp cont.chisq obs-exp p.adj.bin dec q . . vop . 435 150.33 539.037 > 1.41e-181 *** 0.947 . . . literal 426 150.33 505.491 > 5.05e-167 *** 0.917 . vpc . . 360 225.50 80.223 > 6.67e-39 *** 0.596 1 vpc_seq vop literal 73 44.30 18.589 > 6.11e-04 *** 0.071 1 vpc_seq . literal 73 45.93 15.951 > 6.55e-04 *** 0.067 1 vpc_seq vop . 73 46.90 14.521 > 0.00125416 ** 0.065 1 vpc_seq . . 73 48.63 12.216 > 0.00122565 ** 0.061 0 vpc . special 18 6.69 19.119 > 2.23e-03 ** 0.025 0 vpc . . 192 167.63 3.544 > 0.04177328 * 0.086 0 . . special 18 8.38 11.038 > 0.01409268 * 0.022 0 . vpo special 3 0.19 42.625 > 0.0166642 * 0.006 0 vpc vpo special 3 0.15 54.836 > 1.74e-02 * 0.006 0 . vpo figur 2 0.07 51.397 > 0.04471329 * 0.004 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� beate hampe language value 4 (1), 1–32 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 31 deictics construction part pos meaning obs exp cont.chisq obs-exp p.adj.bin dec q . vpc_seq . . 91 225.50 80.223 < 6.67e-39 *** 0.596 . . vp . 6 150.33 138.573 < 2.08e-68 *** 0.480 . . . figur 7 150.33 136.659 < 6.65e-67 *** 0.477 . . vpo . 10 150.33 130.999 < 1.02e-62 *** 0.467 . . . special 18 150.33 116.489 < 3.15e-53 *** 0.440 0 vpc_seq . . 18 42.37 14.019 < 3.9115e-05 *** 0.060 0 vpc_seq . literal 16 40.02 14.420 < 8.29e-05 *** 0.058 0 vpc_seq vop . 18 40.87 12.797 < 0.00030778 *** 0.056 0 vpc_seq vop literal 16 38.60 13.235 < 6.39e-04 *** 0.055 1 . . special 0 9.62 9.619 < 0.00035946 *** 0.022 1 . vop special 0 9.28 9.277 < 0.00152804 ** 0.021 1 vpc . special 0 7.68 7.678 < 5.20e-03 ** 0.017 1 vpc . . 168 192.37 3.088 < 0.04467653 * 0.094 1 vpc vop special 0 7.41 7.406 < 2.06e-02 * 0.017 1 . vpo . 0 5.34 5.344 < 0.02776911 * 0.012 table 3. significant results of the hcfa (exact binomial test with bonferroni correction): ice-gb (spoken) deictics construction part pos meaning obs exp cont.chisq obs-exp p.adj.bin dec q 0 . . . 493 251.50 231.898 > 2.04e-131 *** 0.96 . vpc . . 437 251.50 136.820 > 3.83e-68 *** 0.738 . . . figur 292 167.67 92.199 > 2.11e-29 *** 0.371 . . vop . 242 167.67 32.955 > 1.58e-11 *** 0.222 . . vop literal 89 51.96 26.404 > 3.54e-06 *** 0.082 0 . vop literal 81 50.93 17.758 > 3.96e-04 *** 0.067 0 vpc vp figur 83 52.89 17.138 > 9.91e-04 *** 0.067 . vpc vp figur 83 53.97 15.622 > 9.93e-04 *** 0.065 . vpc_seq vop literal 31 6.82 85.772 > 1.18e-10 *** 0.049 . vpc_seq vop . 55 31.75 17.019 > 3.81e-04 *** 0.049 . vpc_seq . literal 37 14.17 36.777 > 1.14e-06 *** 0.047 0 vpc_seq vop literal 23 6.68 39.847 > 1.74e-05 *** 0.033 1 vpc_seq . literal 9 0.28 269.822 > 2.68e-10 *** 0.017 1 vpc_seq vop . 9 0.63 110.938 > 2.81e-07 *** 0.017 1 vpc_seq . . 10 1.31 57.526 > 4.76e-06 *** 0.017 1 vpc_seq vop literal 8 0.14 456.460 > 8.54e-11 *** 0.016 1 . vop literal 8 1.03 46.989 > 2.23e-04 *** 0.014 0 vpc vpo figur 110 76.13 15.074 > 1.37e-03 ** 0.079 . vpc vpo figur 110 77.67 13.458 > 1.56e-03 ** 0.076 0 vpc_seq . literal 28 13.89 14.336 > 5.53e-03 ** 0.029 1 . . literal 9 2.15 21.872 > 0.002274 ** 0.014 0 . vp figur 85 60.88 9.556 > 1.80e-02 * 0.055 . . vp figur 85 62.12 8.431 > 1.61e-02 * 0.052 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� transitive phrasal verbs in acquisition and use language value 4 (1), 1–32 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 32 deictics construction part pos meaning obs exp cont.chisq obs-exp p.adj.bin dec q 1 . . . 10 251.50 231.898 < 2.04e-131 *** 0.96 . vpc_seq . . 66 251.50 136.820 < 3.83e-68 *** 0.738 . . . special 103 167.67 24.941 < 3.90e-10 *** 0.193 . . vp . 107 167.67 21.951 < 5.22e-09 *** 0.181 . . . literal 108 167.67 21.233 < 9.70e-09 *** 0.178 . . vop figur 97 140.49 13.460 < 4.34e-05 *** 0.12 . vpc vop figur 79 122.05 15.186 < 3.30e-05 *** 0.113 0 . vop figur 97 137.69 12.026 < 2.91e-04 *** 0.111 0 vpc vop figur 79 119.63 13.797 < 2.06e-04 *** 0.106 . . vpo literal 12 33.07 13.421 < 1.33e-04 *** 0.045 0 . vpo literal 12 32.41 12.852 < 4.21e-04 *** 0.043 . vpc vpo literal 9 28.73 13.547 < 2.09e-04 *** 0.042 0 vpc vpo literal 9 28.16 13.033 < 6.36e-04 *** 0.04 . vpc_seq vpo . 4 20.21 12.999 < 6.55e-05 *** 0.034 0 . vp literal 6 22.52 12.116 < 5.45e-04 *** 0.034 0 vpc_seq vpo . 4 19.81 12.613 < 1.84e-04 *** 0.033 . vpc vp literal 4 19.96 12.761 < 2.42e-04 *** 0.033 . . vp literal 7 22.97 11.107 < 6.82e-04 *** 0.033 0 vpc vp literal 4 19.56 12.381 < 6.76e-04 *** 0.032 . vpc_seq vpo figur 0 11.73 11.730 < 1.26e-04 *** 0.024 0 vpc_seq vpo figur 0 11.50 11.497 < 3.20e-04 *** 0.023 1 vpc . . 0 8.69 8.688 < 6.25e-04 *** 0.018 . vpc_seq . figur 20 38.31 8.754 < 3.60e-03 ** 0.039 . vpc . literal 71 93.83 5.554 < 2.55e-02 * 0.056 0 vpc_seq . figur 20 37.55 8.204 < 1.08e-02 * 0.038 1 . . figur 0 5.81 5.805 < 0.017472 * 0.012 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� vi. hypotheses vii. results and discussion viii. concluding remarks references database connection failed! language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2012, volume 4, number 2 pp. 1-22 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.2 1 diasporic dialogues: the role of gender, language, and revision in the neo-slave narrative kalenda eaton eatonk@arcadia.edu arcadia university, usa abstract in this article i examine the creation of neo-slave narratives, or fictional texts written in the 20th and 21st centuries, yet set during an imagined period of american slavery or indentured servitude. in these novels the authors, usually african-descended, depict slavery and/or plantation life, generally, to privilege the experiences of the slave. the process of actively writing against traditional plantation narratives of the 18th and 19th centuries can liberate slave histories and allows silenced actors to speak. however, in this paper, i argue that there is a danger of further marginalization when history is the platform for creative expression. i examine two novels whose authors employ the use of satire to discuss slave experience and by doing so, i explore how the images of black slave and servant women can be either devalued or empowered depending on authorial representation and intent. keywords: slave narratives; women; african american; satire, historical fiction i. introduction in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, many authors have found their voices through the process of re-writing early african diasporic experience. one product of this self-conscious act is the creation of the “neo-slave narrative”; a subgenre of historical fiction, which often address possibilities of slave experience, word play, and re-memory absent from many writings during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. unlike fugitive authors, composers of recent narratives come from a position of relative privilege produced by a theoretical and chronological distance. these authors discuss slavery from the perspective of free citizens who have learned, but not lived, the history of societies in which their characters exist. in addition, the contemporary treatments are largely fictional accounts, whether they are historical narratives, “palimpsest narratives”, “genealogical narratives”, or a close imitation of the original slave narrative1 1 for a detailed description of the neo-slave narrative see andrews et al. (1997). . freedoms with form and style, numerous literary movements, and western http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� mailto:eatonk@arcadia.edu� diasporic dialogues: the role of gender, language, and revision in the neo-slave narrative language value 4 (2), 1–22 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 2 education have afforded writers the ability to re-create and re-historicize the text, thus liberating static representations of slave experience. with creative freedom comes the opportunity to vindicate former fictional depictions of slaves and slave life, generally found in literature written by nineteenth and twentieth century white male and female authors. as early as the late nineteenth century, black authors began to question the literary standard for addressing slavery and swiftly provided alternatives to narratives that presented unsophisticated caricatures of plantation slaves that portrayed the “runaway” as treacherous and the unloyal slave as “vile”. examples of these rewritings include works by pauline hopkins, charles chesnutt, william wells brown, victor séjour, and others who used their literacy to reinscribe history. throughout the twentieth century, the relative distance from a slave past coupled with increased educational access and freedom of expression created a literary environment ripe for intellectual query and liberty with form, style, and subject matter. though most writers create full characters seriously wrestling with the hardships of their slave (or neo-slave) experience, others reproduce important parts of this re-reading in a satirical or parodic form. contemporary writers concerned with slavery see themselves disrupting the typically sensitive nature of the subject by actively confronting accepted realities of the capitalist enterprise. interestingly, the choice to use satire to convey early black american experience is more than experimentation with craft. several authors are paying homage to the persistent satirical tradition that exists within african diasporic oral culture which was later transferred to the black written text. for example, in an essay on “third world aesthetics”, novelist and literary critic gayl jones proclaims: i am a novel of the third world, and so you would expect me to be different from those other novels, to have a different aesthetic, to revise (or rewrite) genre, characterization, style, theme, structure, viewpoint, values, and so i do. paradox and ambivalence may be seen in the margins of this marginal text; and may be read in and between then lines. satire and irony is plentiful here, for it’s part of my tradition. (jones 1994: 508, emphasis added) likewise, in a separate essay harry l. jones argues, “for three hundred and fifty years, black humor has been a survival technique and a weapon of the weak against the strong” (jones 1969: 3). both scholars speak to the ways “black” or “third world” people use satire and humor to react to their environments, a skill that is consequently http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� kalenda eaton language value 4 (2), 1–22 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 3 reproduced in black literature. when considering the empowering use of humor or satire in the neo-slave narrative one must also be aware of ways “new” narratives can reinforce the same gender and racial stereotypes writers are attempting to subvert. for example, in the novels flight to canada and i, tituba, black witch of salem ishmael reed and maryse condé (respectively) complicate the relationships between oppressors and oppressed in deliberate ways. the authors skillfully bend bondage narratives to address intricacies of black slave experience, africans in the diaspora, capitalism, free choice, and the master-slave dynamic2. however, the novels produce challenging depictions of black male/female relationships which seem to argue against attempts at collective rebuilding and inclusion. conversely, one can also argue that any interpretation by black writers of a “system” as deleterious and demented as slavery can be read as a revolutionary act, regardless of the content or the satirical style. ii. flight to canada written in response to the lack of black male protagonists in 19th century slave narratives; flight to canada, reed’s early novel about the economics of slavery, the power of literacy, and impossibility of escape, curiously employs black female characters as comic relief in an attempt to vindicate the fully developed male characters. this move assumes black women have the power of collective agency, absent in communities of black men, which allows them to withstand unfavorable images. therefore, the use of parody and satire becomes intricately tied to a (mis)read of gender dynamics within the black slave community in the authors’ attempts to rescue the male figure from the annals of history. in warriors, conjurers, and priests, joyce ann joyce notes, “not surprisingly, one of the most important problems in scholarship on [ishmael] reed involves his negative characterizations of black women” (joyce 1994: 244). she then continues to argue in reed’s favor and states, “though he challenges 2 this is not to say that these authors are the only using satire to comment on social relationships and/or racial injustices. i am aware of the long-standing tradition of satirical writing within the african american literary tradition. for example, langston hughes, wallace thurman, gloria naylor, ralph ellison, mel watkins, charles chesnutt, and toni morrison, are just a few that are noted for their satirical works. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� diasporic dialogues: the role of gender, language, and revision in the neo-slave narrative language value 4 (2), 1–22 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 4 societal evils, he is not didactic, and no one, neither man nor woman, escapes from his novels unscathed” (joyce 1994: 269). in the introduction to the ishmael reed reader reed acknowledges that in flight to canada he “refers to four slaves who represent the different approaches used by africans to deal with the situation in which they found themselves” (reed 1976: xxi). in the narrative, it appears that reed rewrites their experiences in satirical form to give the characters agency to decide their fate. when examined more closely there is a definite distinction between the agency given to the male characters and the agency taken by the female characters. therefore, the question regarding the depictions of the black female characters is: what exactly is reed rewriting? reed's novel follows raven quickskill’s escape from a southern plantation and the effect his flight has on the remaining inhabitants. he is able to write himself into being with crafty poetry and frequent letters detailing his exploits in the northern united states. through his satirical representation of 19th century america, reed challenges abraham lincoln’s rhetoric, white gentility, and the “cult of true womanhood”, while also exposing the exploitation of the fugitive slave on the lecture circuit and harriet beecher stowe’s “theft” of josiah henson’s life story among other tantalizing historical truths. reed uses the space of the novel to tackle the weighty issue of black complicity in the slave system as well as cross-racial intimacy (cordial, not romantic) fostered by the isolation of plantation. at first glance, reed’s unbalanced depiction of black female and male characters in the novel supports hazel carby’s statement that, “the institution of slavery is now widely regarded as the source of stereotypes about the black woman” (carby 1987: 20). for example, throughout the text reed positions the mammy figure (“mammy barracuda”) in direct contrast to the vilified uncle tom (“uncle robin”) character. she accurately embodies her namesake (barracuda), with her vicious attacks on every slave in the narrative and the unrelenting torture of her white mistress. in reconstructing womanhood, carby continues to argue that stereotypes of the black slave woman adversely affect contemporary perceptions of black women. given this knowledge, it is possible to understand reed’s conscious decision not to depict the humble, docile, selfless “mammy" that appears in antebellum (and reconstruction era) literature written http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� kalenda eaton language value 4 (2), 1–22 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 5 by white american authors. that idealized mammy was a construct of white sentimentalism and ignored the real properties of her womanhood and family life. where the traditionally popular mammy figure was maternal, asexual, selfless, caring, plump, and jolly, flight to canada’s mammy barracuda parodies these characteristics. she retains the maternal qualities in the sense that her white charges can “curl up fetus like in [her] lap” and be “rock[ed] in the rocking chair” (reed 1976: 20-21). she also provides the swille’s with opium-induced comfort by calming them with an injection when they are unable to handle the pressures of plantation life (reed 1976: 108-9). while ishmael reed reconstructs the asexual, effeminate characterizations of the historical “uncle tom” by including the fact that uncle robin is married and very sexually active; conversely, the asexual mammy experiences very little change in the perceptions of her sexuality. the major deviation in her behavior remains her excitement by the possibility of tormenting other slaves with “whips and chains”. accordingly, in the novel she uses these tools to inflict pain in a disturbing sadistic fashion. though it is obvious reed uses these and other deliberately ludicrous scenes to comment on problematic notions of gender in the antebellum south, the mammy becomes a female version of a cad. earlier in the novel, she is described as wearing a “silk scarf” that replaces the traditional worn, tattered “head rag”. the presence of silk attests to her prominent position in the swille household and assumes much more. as the text infers, mammy receives her jewels and riches from “arthur” (whom the other slaves know only as “massa swille”) in exchange for her numerous services — including prior sexual encounters. her hinted at, but unstated relationship with the master boldly addresses the complicated narratives surrounding sexual activity and subservience on the plantation. in an infamous book review of flight to canada, sondra o’neale argues, “…for the black woman reed intends no sympathy; as represented by swille’s human cudgel, mammy barracuda, whose whore-begotten wealth is so heavy that it bends her back and [is used] to ‘blind’ her master’s slaves (o’neale 1978: 174177). within reed’s description of mammy’s possessions is a parody of the perceptions surrounding the religious and self-righteous slave woman. the ‘blinding’ element to http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� diasporic dialogues: the role of gender, language, and revision in the neo-slave narrative language value 4 (2), 1–22 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 6 which o’neale refers is a diamond crucifix on mammy barracuda’s bosom, which is “so heavy she walks with a stoop”. later in a conversation between uncle robin and his wife, the reader learns that mammy formed a “jesus-cult” that was put in place to stamp out the heathenism — of african slaves. the pointed critique of imbued christianity as opposed to an embrace of polytheism or a form of “african spirituality” places her at the forefront of the debate over the acceptance of the “white-man’s religion” and the appropriation of european culture. also in the text, barracuda proudly “waltzes” out of the room with abraham lincoln and she proudly sings at the “last reunion of confederate soldiers” as a testament to where her true loyalty lies (reed 1976: 39, 14). again, one can argue that all of the aforementioned acts add to and support reed’s critique of the stereotype of the plantation mammy’s undying love for white southern livelihood. however, a more critical look questions if mammy barracuda’s actions do anything to relieve the black woman who has often been accused by those in her own ethnic community of being a servant, lover, and supporter of white patriarchy from time immemorial. no matter how ridiculous the package, in this novel, mammy barracuda appears to fulfill her culturally supported role and for the unskilled reader may not be a deviation from the plantation tradition that reed mocks. for example, in one poignant exchange between mammy and mrs. swille, reed uses mammy’s power to “attack” (literally) nineteenth century demands for women’s suffrage that ultimately eschewed the positionality of black women. throughout the novel mrs. swille stages a one-woman protest against her husband. she attempts to align herself with the injustices on the plantation when she accuses her husband of treating her as a slave in her own home. she stages a dramatic protest scene in her room and claims that all disadvantaged people (primarily women) regardless of color are fighting the same struggle against white patriarchy. subsequently, master swille grants a terribly annoyed mammy barracuda permission to make mrs. swille “act right” by any means necessary—once again suggesting collusion between the master and black former mistress who now runs his home. barracuda uses this opportunity to beat mrs. swille, “grab her hair and throw her to the floor”, and “give her a football-punt kick to her naked hip, causing and immediate red welt” (reed 1976: 112). the abuse continues until mrs. swille is finally “cleaned up” and given an injection of barbiturates to help http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� kalenda eaton language value 4 (2), 1–22 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 7 her sleep. soon after, mammy barracuda assures mrs. swille that she was doing this for her own good and that she “hates to do what she had to do with her darlin” (reed 1976: 114). through parody, reed appears to vindicate the “traditional” mammy by demonstrating her actual power, supplying a voice, and making her the epitome of the “strong black woman”. unfortunately, she remains stereotypical in other, more complex ways as she is transformed from one image of black womanhood into another. interestingly, with the flick of a pen the traditionally accommodating “mammy” becomes the vile “sapphire”. in an excerpt from ain’t i a woman, bell hooks asserts, as sapphires, black women were depicted as evil treacherous, bitchy, stubborn, and hateful, in short all that the mammy figure was not…white men could justify their dehumanization and sexual exploitation of black women by arguing that they possessed inherent demonic qualities…and white women could use the image of the evil sinful black woman to emphasize their own innocence and purity (hooks 1999: 85). though comedic in nature and possibly political in intent, mrs. swille’s violent encounter with mammy barracuda places her on the receiving end of the mammy’s rage preserving her womanhood and demonizing barracuda. mrs. swille is depicted as a helpless victim of mammy’s oppressive aggression. one can argue that the above scene confronts the fallacy that “sisterhood is global” and reproduces black women’s feelings of betrayal during the height of exclusivity in the second wave of the feminist movement. or, on the other hand that the satirical framework created for the text blurs the real meaning behind the action. the question then becomes, why is it when confronted with white womanhood the black woman’s (alleged) internalized violent and destructive feelings can only manifest in the pages of a text written by a male author? mammy barracuda remains a troubled character throughout the narrative. the fact that she is only one of three african american females used in the novel to depict a portion of slave life is additionally problematic. uncle robin’s wife, “aunt judy”, exists in the novel as a “bedmate” and rarely, if ever, leaves the confines of their home. mammy barracuda’s sidekick, “bangalang”, is an incomplete representation of anything substantive as she is depicted as a floundering, senseless woman. for example, in one scene she leaves the water running because mammy did not tell her to turn it off. later, when uncle robin reluctantly attempts to extinguish master swille (who is ironically http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� diasporic dialogues: the role of gender, language, and revision in the neo-slave narrative language value 4 (2), 1–22 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 8 set aflame by his own poe-esque gothic incestuous desires), she impedes his progress by stopping the water — because after the previous incident, mammy told her “when you turn the faucet on, you’re not suppose to forget to turn it off” (reed 1976: 136-7)3. in sum, many representations of black women in the novel appear as “comic capital”4 it is obvious to the reader that the “mammy” character in flight to canada is not supposed to be fully redeemed. she is overbearing, emasculating, and a close second to the myth of the black matriarch detailed in documents like “the moynihan report” released a decade prior to the publication of reed’s text , at more intelligent points in the novel. 5 reed is always serious, beneath his parodic play. it is this basic seriousness that critics have frequently been blind to when they accuse postmodernism of being ironic—and therefore trivial. the assumption seems to be that authenticity of experience and expression are somehow incompatible with double-voicing and/or humor. this view seems to be shared not only by marxist critics, but also by some feminist critics. and yet it is feminist writers, along with blacks, who have used such ironic intertextuality to such powerful ends—both ideologically and aesthetically (if the two could, in fact, be so easily separated) (hutcheon 1988:134). . in defense of reed, linda hutcheon argues: in slight opposition, sondra o’neale argues, “the moral [regarding flight to canada] is not an aesthetic one—but then a stance of the black aesthetic is that political and humanistic statement is an undeniable force in art. if reed purposes to free the black man with his writing, let us hope that he will magnanimously enlarge his vision to free all the race…” (o’neale 1978: 177). while championing the power in narrative, o’neale calls for a realistic view of the “political”. can one fault reed when he purports, “my writing is real cutup, it’s provocative, and i make no apologies about that” (carroll 1995: 193)? or is it true that “there is generally never a one-to-one correspondence between what a novel is and who/what a novelist is” as gayl jones argues? even if the “blame” is not on the author, per se, and/or rests in the representation of the female characters by other male characters, (e.g. charles 3her character is reminiscent of minstrel characters, like stepin fetchit, and other daft characterizations of african americans in early american cinema. generally men, these accomplished actors perpetuated the stereotype of the “foolish negro” in order to retain employment. an allusion is also made to prissy, butterfly mcqueen’s flighty character in the cinematic version of “gone with the wind” who famously confesses, “i don’t know nothing ‘bout birthing no babies”. 4 term used in elizabeth muher’s essay, “isadora at sea: misogyny as comic capital in charles johnson’s middle passage”. african american review: winter 1996. 5 for further analysis of the black family as perceived by moynihan, see rainwater and yancey (1967). http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� kalenda eaton language value 4 (2), 1–22 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 9 johnson’s middle passage), does understanding that satire is a playful form or style sufficiently address the larger issue of re-presentation? as o’neale articulates in her argument, there is a definite connection between stories and experiences of all african american people, specifically during slavery. the opportunity to rewrite the narratives of experience and reread “unsaid truths” should not have to privilege one story over another. in flight to canada, mammy barracuda misses the opportunity to salvage her ‘mammyhood’ and escape a prescribed lifestyle. at the novel’s end, master swille’s “last will and testament” relocates her to a “school for negroes” where it states, she can continue her sadism as headmistress. in an attempt to fully explain reed’s project, ashraf rushdy contemplates the many positive elements of reed’s work. he writes, [reed] offers a parody of slave narratives as they were read as a way of reconstructing potential readings of slave narratives as they can be read...a parody that renders uncle tom’s cabin obsolete simultaneously opens up the possibility for fresh readings of those co-opted slave narratives (rushdy 1999:125). he later argues, “according to reed, ‘hoodoo writing’ is essential to the act of collective healing necessary for slavery to end its influence on the behavior of its survivors” (rushdy 1999: 130). it is important to reiterate that the primary agenda of these novels is the reclamation of a black manhood that is lost and/or absent in the literature of white american authors. for reed, the goal may be to vindicate harriet beecher stowe's "uncle tom” (and josiah henson) through his uncle robin and raven characters. in the now classic critical text, the signifying, monkey: a theory of afro-american literary criticism, henry louis gates, jr. discusses the reproduction of canonical literary conventions through the language of the black vernacular. he writes, black literature shares much with, far more than it differs from, the western textual tradition, primarily as registered in english, spanish, portuguese, and french. but black formal repetition always repeats with a difference, a black difference that manifests itself in specific language use. and the repository that contains the language that is the source—and the reflection—of black difference is the black english vernacular tradition. (gates 2000: 342-343) the location of the “difference” is at the heart of the matter for scholars reading the male and female characters in the neo-slave narrative. reed dispels myths about black male experience during slavery when the text provides clear opportunities for the male slaves to redeem their former selves by giving voice to their histories. conversely, through this model and use of satire as a weapon, black female characters remain http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� diasporic dialogues: the role of gender, language, and revision in the neo-slave narrative language value 4 (2), 1–22 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 10 caricatures placed in the margins of history, as she is denied equal space with her male counterparts, or a voice of her own. iii. i, tituba, black witch of salem therefore, if satire and gendered re-presentations of slave life work in tandem how does one reconcile a novel written by a woman of the diaspora that recalls the life of a forgotten black woman whose very presence in the new world was considered the cause of legendary witchcraft hysteria in the 17th century? more importantly, how do we read this novel when, in reference to the protagonist, the author warns us afterward: “do not take tituba too seriously, please” (scarboro 1992: 212). in i, tituba black witch of salem maryse condé does not shy away from parody in her refashioning of servitude in new england. although she decides to privilege orality, recovery, and feminine control she openly admits to infusing i, tituba with comic irony and satire, possibly taking a cue from other early regional black texts6 condé retells the story of tituba indian; a historical figure denied a voice before and after she becomes a footnote to the controversial salem witch trials of 17th century colonial massachusetts. she is the sole blame for the debauchery among the accused women as her “black magic” is believed to be the source of witchcraft in the village. as a result of her silencing, condé’s fictional tituba modifies western concepts of language in an effort to preserve her life. the author conjures an intricate tale that enables tituba to project her voice through alternate means of communication; not only freeing the subject, but also allowing her the freedom to parody various episodes of historical memory. . what is interesting about her account is the equal space given to multiple voices alongside clever uses of parody and satire. throughout the text it is proven that speechlessness operates as a force that signifies more than mere silencing. because the events take place in a colonial space prior to fullscale geographic expansion and trans-atlantic slavery, suppression took many forms. for example, denying and/or inhibiting speech by enforcing a foreign tongue on the oppressed extends the realm of power and remains a destructive by-product of 6 see elizabeth breau’s (1993) discussion of the uses of satire in the new england slave narrative our nig. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� kalenda eaton language value 4 (2), 1–22 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 11 colonization. a prime example of the colonized tongue rests with the trans-atlantic or african slave trade, where research suggests slaves from corresponding african nations and linguistic backgrounds were separated as a means of deterring possible uprisings on the plantations of the west indies and the american south. in exchange for the african slave’s physical and psychological subjugation, the dominant (i.e. european) discourse was mandated as the only system of effective communication with the colonizer and slave master. in the historic essay, “on national culture”, frantz fanon posits, “the effect consciously sought by colonialism was to drive into the natives’ heads the idea that if the settlers were to leave, they would at once fall back into barbarism, degradation and bestiality” (fanon 1999: 37). the threat of abandonment speaks to an almost infantile dependence on the colonizer and a rejection of native customs and folkways. what condé and other post-colonial authors attempt is the “further creation” of the colonized language in a “new context, under new conditions” (bakhtin 1998: 535). through the use of satire, i, tituba, directly acknowledges the issue of an authoritative presence that attempts to cancel out the voice of the subject. in “tituba’s story”, bernard rosenthal gives an account of the facts known about the historical tituba’s existence. he notes, “the facts are few” and examines how over the years a majority of the knowledge about tituba can be traced back to fictional constructions by either authors such as condé or “historical speculation”. he notes that: she lived in the household of the reverend samuel parris. her prior whereabouts are not known. her culture defined her as an indian. her contemporaries offered no verifiable clues about her age. she was accused of witchcraft and confessed. she claimed to have been beaten and to have been herself afflicted by witches. from the beginning of march 1692 until she was brought to a court of general jail. delivery on 9 may 1693, she presumably languished in prison. exactly when she was released and whether she was ever reunited with john indian-or whether she had reason to be-is also not known (rosenthal 1998: 200). this account of tituba’s life exhibits the same stolid reportage as her actual court deposition. tituba exists as an intangible being attached to a name but detached from society. aime cesaire calls this the “thingification” of the colonized person. she has no active participation within the environment in which she is placed and is virtually ignored by all who surround her. in postcolonial theory, leela gandhi notes, “the ‘third world woman’ can thus be seen as yet another object of western knowledge, simultaneously knowable and unknowing” (gandhi 1998: 86). http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� diasporic dialogues: the role of gender, language, and revision in the neo-slave narrative language value 4 (2), 1–22 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 12 however, it is in the novel that we see condé’s tituba differ from the silenced historical subject. tituba, the fictional character, lives a vibrant, subversive life. a revision of this kind is possible because condé refuses to claim the historical tituba. the author adamantly denies that the novel is a work of historical fiction, and chooses to create a character from her own imagining. through this process, condé has the freedom to play with convention (as does reed), but notably steers clear of the caricatures discussed above. she identifies her text as the “opposite of a historical novel” noting that she “was not interested at all in what her real life could have been” (scarboro 1992: 201). the lack of a model gives condé nothing to reinforce, react to, or push against, again, making it possible for a more balanced rendering of the figure. condé’s tituba is first introduced as the product of rape, conceived on the slave ship christ the king, en route to barbados. these first lines of the text hint at condé’s hidden mission to disrupt serious imaginings of the character. while there is the obvious juxtaposition of domination and forced enslavement with the image of the religious savior (christ), tituba’s conception and nativity tale does much more. in her discussion of subversion in the novel, paula c. barnes notes, “condé’s adoption of the structure of the nineteenth-century slave narrative is completed in the narrative itself… [but] as seen with the pre-and post-narrative conventions, condé consciously imitates, manipulates, and revises these tropes (barnes 1999: 196). barnes goes on to discuss the description of tituba’s conception as an attack on the trope of the slave narrative which includes ‘a first sentence beginning ‘i was born…,’ in other words, the tracing of tituba’s conception back to the act of rape on a vessel moving across the atlantic situates her as the quintessential diasporic subject, whose “circumstances surrounding [her] birth become more prominent than the birth itself” (barnes 1999: 196). later in the text after tituba is accused of witchcraft and jailed, condé allows hester prynne, the victimized figure of nathaniel hawthorne’s the scarlet letter, to enter into the novel. hester and tituba share a cell, providing commentary on the effects puritanical values have on free-thinking women. in conde’s version of hester’s life she commits suicide after tituba’s testimony but remains a significant force in her life through the foresight of mama yaya or yao, her spiritual protectors throughout the novel. while the act of placing a figure like prynne in the novel can be read as a testament to shared experiences among women or an affront to colonial patriarchy, http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� kalenda eaton language value 4 (2), 1–22 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 13 according to condé, hester’s appearance in the novel is a reaction to the contemporary moment. in response to an interview question about prynne’s presence she states: “writing tituba was an opportunity to express my feelings about present-day america. i wanted to imply that in terms of narrow-mindedness, hypocrisy, and racism, little has changes since the days of the puritans” (scarboro 1992: 203). this revelation moves the reader away from the symbolism existing within the text (racial and gendered unity), instead using women’s lives to emphasize the progressive failures of the country. also, there are several layers of pastiche present in this scene. for example, the black author (condé) lends her voice to prynne, an ostracized white woman, unwed and a mother, originally created by a white male author. prynne’s capture and bondage in the prison cell of her novel (i, tituba) ultimately gives condé, not hawthorne, control over who holds the key. in similar moments, hester prynne appears long enough to teach tituba how to tell a true story that will allow her to survive and to introduce her to the future teachings of feminism. she also becomes a major part of tituba’s “text of silenced history” when she structures tituba’s testimony (dukats 1995: 54) and instructs tituba to “make them scared” and “give them their money’s worth!”, suggesting that her words and actions become the spectacle (condé 1992: 99). after hester’s advice, condé inserts the official deposition, giving validity to the scene, but also questioning the “truth” the world has accepted about tituba. including hester’s advice in the novel can also be read as an attempt to answer why, outside of the fiction that structures the novel, the factual deposition reads as if tituba is actually coerced into saying what her accusers wanted to hear. in black skin, white masks (1967) fanon asserts, “to speak is to exist absolutely for the other”. following this sentiment in relation to the historical tituba’s court deposition, the act of speaking and the words she mimics create for the court a level of truth to the accusations of witchery, whether they are her truth or not. her accusers pay close attention to her phrasing and extract meaning in order to build their case, but ironically, the testimony tituba gives is puzzling as it is extremely contradictory and illogical. likewise, the line of questioning is confusing and indirect. for example, the beginning of the original deposition reads as follows (note: the original spelling, punctuation, and terminology have not been altered): http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� diasporic dialogues: the role of gender, language, and revision in the neo-slave narrative language value 4 (2), 1–22 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 14 (h) titibe what evil spirit have you familiarity with (t) none (h) why do you hurt these children (t) i do not hurt them (h) who is it then (t) the devil for ought i know (h) did you never see the devil. (t) the devil came to me and bid me serve him (h) who have you seen (t) 4 women sometimes hurt the children (h) who were they? (t) goode osburn and sarah good and i doe not know who the other were sarah good and osburne would have me hurt the children but i would not shee furder saith there was a tale man of boston that shee did see (h) when did you see them (t) last night at boston (h) what did they say to you they said hurt the children (h) and did you hurt them (t) no there is 4 women and one man they hurt the children and then lay all upon me and they tell me if i will not hurt the children they will hurt me (h) but did you not hurt them (t) yes, but i will hurt them no more… (games 2010: 176-77)7 in the larger document, tituba vacillates between knowing and not knowing an “evil spirit”, being told by humans and then animals to “hurt the children”, and later hurting the children, not ever hurting the children, and/or refusing to hurt them again. condé recognizes how the multiple circumstances surrounding the deposition, including the atmosphere outside the courtroom leaves the interpretation of tituba’s inconsistencies wide open. in response, she depicts tituba as a cunning individual who spins the testimony in several directions for dramatic effect, thus doing as hester suggests and “giving them what they want”. toward the end of the deposition the fictional tituba adds, “i confess i wasn’t a good actress”, revealing a “truth” about her role in the alleged incidents that caused the hysteria (condé 1992: 106). by including the term ‘actress’ which suggests an invented persona, condé consciously calls into question the innocence of the most sympathetic characters in the novel and humorously responds to the awkward nature of the testimony and her own use of satirical forms. . in other ironic moments, the fictional tituba is depicted as an herbalist who uses her mystical power and knowledge of garden herbs to heal. the irony exists in the fact that her ability to use this natural craft is the premise behind the salem hysteria. tituba is first introduced to what the puritans call “witchcraft” and what she deems education about herbs, by mama yaya, her surrogate mother. though this is her first experience, 7 condé's text preserves much of the original with only a slight deviation in her creative choice to modernize the language and provide excerpts rather than the full draft of the deposition. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� kalenda eaton language value 4 (2), 1–22 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 15 her mother has the ability to “conjure up all the forces of nature” when she is pregnant with tituba (condé 1992: 4). mama yaya teaches tituba the art of conjure in order to ensure tituba’s survival and to pass on a legacy that will be lost when she dies. because of her knowledge, tituba is revered by the slaves on the plantation in barbados and news of her powers spreads across the island. condé admits that this rendering of mama yaya is a part of tituba’s existence as a “mock-epic” novel. in the aforementioned interview, condé is nonchalant in her response to the spiritual and empowering read of the novel. with regard to the omniscience of mama yaya, tituba’s spiritual guide, condé states: the question of grandmothers telling stories and thus teaching their granddaughters how to become writers is one of the biggest clichés of black female writing. i repeat that the element of parody is very important if you wish to fully comprehend tituba…if one misses the parody in tituba, one will not understand, for example, why she meets hester prynne in jail and why they discuss feminism in modern terms. similarly, the presence of the invisible (the conversations with the mother and with mama yaya) is deliberately overdrawn (scarboro 1992: 212). in addition to spiritual power, condé gives space and command to tituba’s burgeoning sexuality. she uses this power to resist the domination associated with slavery and combats her subjugation by loving freely in an environment where sexual satisfaction is condemned. her subsequent relationship with john indian highlights her inability to “do without men”. in order to satisfy her “uncontrollable desire” she does the unthinkable and willingly subjects herself to a life of slavery (condé 1992: 19). condé’s portrayal of tituba as a candidly sexual being writes tituba into a femininity that transcends the boundaries created by her european female counterparts. for it is during her jailhouse conversation with hester prynne that she is told she cannot be regarded as a feminist because of her overtly sexual image; a statement that recalls racist claims of licentiousness and bestiality among african women beginning in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (condé 1992: 101). additionally, the link prynne makes between tituba’s sexual desire and resulting inability to be a true feminist cleverly addressed the stereotype of an asexual or lesbian feminist whose love of herself or other women restricts her ability to love men (because, as it is thought, heterosexual love is counterrevolutionary). after her infamous testimony, tituba remains in jail until she is “rescued” by the jewish merchant benjamin cohen d’azevedo. her release into his custody was a release not only from the walls of the jail cell but also from the walls of institutional racism in http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� diasporic dialogues: the role of gender, language, and revision in the neo-slave narrative language value 4 (2), 1–22 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 16 which she resided for many years. in her relationship with benjamin, tituba allows her sexual desire to transcend race and transforms a typical master-slave act of physical domination into one in which she is reborn and in full control of her body. instead of being “another master, another bondage” (condé 1992: 120), benjamin allows tituba into his family and treats her as a person rather than a slave. it is important to note that tituba is his property and unable to “walk away” from any sexual advances that he makes towards her, but she makes no attempt to end the relationship and looks forward to their nights together. tituba reclaims the body that is so easily sold into bondage by enjoying the sexual relationship she has with benjamin. tituba’s text signifies on that of slave women who when faced with the demand to render their bodies chose to take any possible control over the situation. in reconstructing womanhood, hazel v. carby examines the reconstruction of “traditional” roles and identity as they relate to the slave narrative of harriet jacobs. in her autobiography, incidents in the life of a slave girl (1861), jacobs uses her body in order to save the lives of her future children. she becomes a willing participant in a sexual relationship with a white man she does not love so that she may arrange for their continued safety. in a plea to the reader, she expresses the sentiment that “a slave girl ought not to be judged by the same standard as others” (jacobs 1987: 386). though tituba’s act is not a desperate plea for a child born “free” in an environment of slavery, she embodies the desperation set forth by jacobs. as tituba matures and is released from benjamin, she returns to barbados and finds herself in a situation where christopher, the leader of a maroon camp, attempts to strip her of self-esteem. it is significant that condé chooses a jewish merchant as the person able to free tituba mentally as well as physically and then return her to her native land-while a caribbean man subjugates her upon her return. condé adeptly demonstrates the universality of patriarchal oppression. with christopher, tituba is demoralized when he calls her “a common negress” and professes that there is “no song for her”. he refuses to divulge a plan of escape among the maroon’s on the island and instructs that her only duty is to “make love”. tituba counters this sentiment by leaving christopher and http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� kalenda eaton language value 4 (2), 1–22 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 17 joining with another (iphingene8 the question of primary loyalty to race or gender that activist women of color encounter surfaces in tituba’s relationships with christopher and iphingene. tituba answers this question in her earlier decision to follow john indian into servitude and continues the pattern until she joins the preparation for the revolt towards the end of the novel. in salem, when she speaks back to liberal anglo-american feminism and redefines the premise of the sexual master-slave relationship she presents other complicated responses to the place of black womanhood in the new world as well. ) as leader of a slave rebellion, for which she ultimately gives her life. she knows the revolt will not be successful and repeatedly refers to it as the “final act/attack”. tituba’s involvement and willingness to die for the revolution purposefully positions her as the antithesis of the marginalized woman who is voiceless and denied access to the native struggle. again, it is only when she thinks of hester’s feminist standpoint and the restrictions it places on highly expressive acts of passion that tituba wonders if something is wrong with her sentiments. she remembers hester’s proclamation telling her that she is “too fond of love” and temporarily questions her feelings (condé 1992: 170). in the tongue snatchers, claudine hermann also examines love and the feminist agenda. in terms of the historical silencing of women and their propensity to question the attributes that hester repeatedly associates with feminist discourse, hermann states that “love... can not defend itself. love’s business isn’t to prove. it has no use for being right” (herrmann 1989: 56). tituba seems to realize the triviality of using the dominant discourse to examine her actions. returning to the interview, condé admits she “wanted to turn tituba into a sort of female hero, an epic heroine, like the legendary ‘nanny of the maroons (scarboro 1992: 201)’” therefore, it is important to question whether condé is successful in providing tituba true agency as an author of her own destiny — as opposed to an illusory invention of the writer’s consciousness. leela gandhi notes “liberal academic feminism is said to silence the ‘native woman’ in its pious attempts to represent or speak for her” (gandhi 1998: 89). is this silencing present in condé’s attempt to give tituba a voice or is she successful in eliminating her 8 iphingene’s name is likely an invented masculine version of “iphigenia” the ancient greek figure designed to be a sacrifice that would aid her father’s (agamemnon) defeat of troy. this read would be appropriate given iphingene’s sacrificial act on behalf of the island slaves. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� diasporic dialogues: the role of gender, language, and revision in the neo-slave narrative language value 4 (2), 1–22 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 18 own presence and allowing tituba to speak? mudimbé-boyi argues that condé removes herself from the position of narrator and fully allows the spirit of tituba to take control. though condé physically constructs the novel, mudimbé-boyi makes the distinction between condé’s voice and tituba’s voice. by giving tituba a voice, condé allows a voice to “emerge from elsewhere than from an ‘authority’ or from the social location of the writer” (mudimbé-boyi 1993: 753). the importance is that condé has “created a territory for her in history and literature, allowing her to survive as a black female literary character, if not a historical figure” (mudimbé-boyi 1993: 755). despite the serious subject matter, condé admits to hesitating “between irony and a desire to be serious” instead reaching a middle-ground that is the novel’s current form (scarboro 1992: 201). her references to contemporary novels, gender theory, and popular culture remind the reader of her satirical hand. she introduces the term “feminist” in the late seventeenth century as opposed to having it reside in its actual birthplace of the nineteenth century. the same is also true with references to “strange fruit” the poem and later song made famous by billie holiday that laments bodies of lynched african americans hanging from southern oak trees. these insertions prove that condé chooses not to surrender all of her creative agency in telling tituba’s story and decides to incorporate satire as an act of rebellion. since the publication of the novel, scholars have gone back and questioned the true import of pivotal scenes like the one where yao names tituba (thought to be a scene gleaned from alex haley’s roots) or the reoccurring themes of feminism, racial identity, literacy, and sexuality (scarboro 1992: 222, barnes 1999: 197-201). several have heeded condé’s words and not taken tituba or the novel ‘too seriously,’ instead choosing to focus on the reasons the author subverts convention and/or parodies traditional forms. likewise, the question of whether tituba or condé has the authority of speech should be considered in the continued analysis of tituba’s character along with the question of whether condé is an appropriate spokesperson for the bondswoman. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� kalenda eaton language value 4 (2), 1–22 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 19 iv. conclusion for writers like condé the act of giving a voice is similar to that of giving life. she is able to fill “the silence and voids with voice and presence” (i, tituba xii) and occupy a space that has been closed off in the pages of history. though many work to fill in the gap, there remains a deafening silence in relation to the representation and agency that is “allowed” the formerly colonized individual. this silence is the result of a continued dominance in the public sector, including institutions of higher education and the media. the privilege of re-creation afforded reed and condé supposes a nuanced revision history. for the diasporic author who takes it upon herself to retell the “truth” one of the main purposes of rewriting history is to heal stories and souls damaged by marginalization and suppression. however, i note that when satire is used in the text a clever “messiness” is created that often places artistic license at odds with national and/or cultural memory. likewise, the authors’ writing style and language use can create wholly unsympathetic characters whose presence causes the reader to question the role of the historical narrative. the examples of “fresh readings” and “acts of collective healing” allows for reconsiderations of history, memory, and truth. therefore, it is imperative that one reads satire within the neo-slave narrative as an evolution in the presentation and discussion of complicated themes, rather than the reinforcement of dominant discourse. when examining the ways interdisciplinary studies impacts discussions of progress on a global scale one must consider the pedagogical, political, and personal contributions scholars within the discipline make to modern notions of gender and identity. while it is true that significant sites of divergence within the histories and lives of africandescended people, for example, complicate attempts to claim racial solidarity; throughout the decades important connections have been made in recovery projects that further examine the ways language and rhetoric respond to theory. sociological and historical examinations of multicultural literature must continue to interrogate linguistic power, with contemporary research providing a space for the confluence of ideas and reimagining. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� diasporic dialogues: the role of gender, language, and revision in the neo-slave narrative language value 4 (2), 1–22 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 20 references andrews, w.l., foster, f.s. and harris, t. (eds.) 1997. the oxford companion to african american literature. oxford: oxford university press. bakhtin, m. 1998. “discourse in the novel”. in richter, r. (ed.) the critical tradition. boston: bedford books, 530-539. barnes, p.c. 1999. “maryse condé’s i, tituba, black witch of salem and the slave narrative tradition”. in liddell, j.l. and y.b. kemp (eds.) arms akimbo: africana women in contemporary literature. gainesville: university press of florida, 193-204. breau, e. 1993. “our nig”. callaloo 16 (2), 455-465. carby, h.v. 1987. reconstructing womanhood: the emergence of the afro-american woman novelist. oxford: oxford university press. carroll, r. 1995. swing low: black men writing. new york: crown trade paperbacks. condé, m.i. 1992. tituba black witch of salem. charlottesville: university press of virginia. hooks, b. 1999 (reprint). ain’t i a woman: black women and feminism. cambridge: south end press. dukats, m.l. 1995. “the hybrid terrain of literary imagination: maryse condé’s black witch of salem, nathaniel hawthorne’s hester prynne, and aimé césaire’s heroic poetic voice”. college literature 22, 51-61. fanon, f. 1967. black skin, white masks. new york: grove press. fanon, f. 1994. “on national culture”. in williams, p. and l. chrisman (eds.) colonial discourse and post-colonial theory. new york: columbia university press, 36-52. games, a. 2010. witchcraft in early north america. lanham: rowman & littlefield. gandhi, l. 1998. postcolonial theory: a critical introduction. new york: columbia university press. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� kalenda eaton language value 4 (2), 1–22 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 21 gates, h.l. 2000. “introduction to the signifying monkey: a theory of afro-american literary criticism”. in napier, w. (ed.) african american literary theory: a reader. new york: new york university, 339-347. herrmann, c. 1989. the tongue snatchers. lincoln: university of nebraska press. hutcheon, l. 1988. a poetics of postmodernism: history, theory, fiction. new york: routledge. jacobs, h. 1987. incidents in the life of a slave girl. gates jr., h.l. (ed.) new york: penguin books. jones, g. 1994. “the quest for wholeness: re-imagining the african american novel, an essay on third world aesthetics”. callaloo 12 (2), 507-518. jones, h.l. 1969. “black humor and the american way of life”. satire 7 (1), 1-10. joyce, j.a. 1994. warriors, conjurers, and priests: defining african-centered literary criticism. chicago: third world press. muher, e. 1996. “isadora at sea: misogyny as comic capital in charles johnson’s middle passage”. african american review 30 (4), 649-658. mudimbé-boyi, e. 1993. “giving a voice to tituba: the death of the author?” world literature today 67, 751-756. o’neale, s. 1978. “ishmael reed's fitful flight to canada: liberation for some, good reading for all”. callaloo 4, 174-177. rainwater, l. and yancey, w. 1967. the moynihan report and the politics of controversy. massachusetts: massachusetts institute of technology. reed, i. 1976. flight to canada. new york: random house. rushdy, a. 1999. neo-slave narratives: studies in the social logic of a literary form. london: oxford. rosenthal, b. 1998. “tituba’s story”. the new england quarterly 71, 190-203. scarboro, a.a. 1992. “afterword”. in condé, m. i, tituba, black witch of salem (trans. by richard philcox). new york: ballantine books, 187-225. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� diasporic dialogues: the role of gender, language, and revision in the neo-slave narrative language value 4 (2), 1–22 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 22 williams, p. and chrisman. l. 1994. colonial discourse and post-colonial theory. new york: columbia university press. received: 30 september 2011 accepted: 03 december 2012 cite this article as: eaton, k. 2012. “diasporic dialogues: the role of gender, language, and revision in the newslave narrative”. language value 4 (2), 1-22. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.2 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.2� likewise, in a separate essay harry l. jones argues, “for three hundred and fifty years, black humor has been a survival technique and a weapon of the weak against the strong” (jones 1969: 3). both scholars speak to the ways “black” or “third world” people use satire and humor to react to their environments, a skill that is consequently reproduced in black literature. references database connection failed! strategic construal of in and out in english particle verbs (pvs) language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2011, volume 3, number 1 pp. 76-113 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors 76 strategic construal of in and out in english particle verbs (pvs) renata geld and ricardo maldonado university of zagreb, croatia / universidad nacional autónoma de méxico, mexico geldrenata@gmail.com / msoto@servidor.unam.mx abstract1 the central aim of this work is to describe the strategic construal of in and out in english particle verbs. the term strategic construal assumes the following: 1) exploration of strategic thinking in l2 learning and processing, and 2) exploration of dynamic and subjective construction of meaning pertaining to the human ability to understand and portray the same situation in alternate ways (langacker 1987). in other words, the paper relies on two theoretical paradigms with self-evident commonalities – a strong link between language and cognition, and the insistence on the individual and subjective nature of meaning construction. the aim was to investigate whether l2 users of english are aware of the symbolic nature of language when dealing with highly schematic linguistic categories. our hypotheses were that construal of in and out is comparable to their cognitive linguistic description in english as l1 and that it shows a cognitively motivated path from the topological to the aspectual. both hypotheses have been confirmed. key words: strategic construal, particle verbs, in, out i. introduction the acquisition of particle verbs (pvs) constitutes one of the greatest difficulties when it comes to learning english as a second language. pvs vary considerably in the degree of opacity/transparency2 they exhibit, which raises the question as to the possible strategies the second-language user needs to develop in order to learn them. two obvious examples of this are put out in (1) and take in in (2): put out 1. a. ‘turn off the light’ b. ‘to injure your back, shoulder or hip’ c. ‘make somebody go to sleep or unconscious d. ‘broadcast, publish or issue’ e. ‘make a figure, result, etc. wrong’ f. ‘make trouble, problems or extra work’ http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� mailto:geldrenata@gmail.com� strategic construal of in and out in english particle verbs (pvs) language value 3 (1), 76–113 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 77 take in 2. a. ‘introduce something in a pocket’ b. ‘make a piece of clothing narrower or tighter’ c. ‘make somebody believe something that is not true’ d. ‘understand or absorb something’ given such array of meanings one may simply assume that the second-language user has no other choice than learn the idiom by rote. a less passive interpretation may wonder about possible strategies the l2 user could employ and whether they resemble the processes claimed to be activated in the first language learning and meaning construction, that is those used by native speakers. one obvious strategy is to use full compositionality by adding the meaning of the verb to that of the particle as expected in examples like (1a) and (2a). yet, other possibilities are also at hand, particularly when abstract and metaphorical readings are at play, as in cases (b) to (f). given the fact that not everything is transparent, learners may attend mainly to the meaning of the verb and pay little attention to in or out. alternatively, they may also focus on the value of the particle as a schematic representation determining the behaviour of the verb. in this paper we focus on the way the particle is interpreted by l2 users of english. the particle may be interpreted in more or less schematic terms. of course, metaphorical and metonymic connections could allow further interpretations such that out and in could be seen as representing enclosed or non-enclosed locations, abstract areas, different abstract situations and events, and even aspectual meanings related to the terminal or the initial part of an event. as we show in the next section, a considerable amount of research has been conducted on the construal of pvs, particles, and prepositions in l1. what has not been identified with enough precision are the specific strategies employed by l2 users in the process of constructing meaning of english pvs, and even more specifically, whether these strategies resemble processes assumed to be activated by native speakers of english. another issue of strategic meaning construal that has not been properly addressed is whether the strategies employed by l2 users are applied randomly to tackle individual problems or they follow general cognitive principles to construct language. in this study we attempt to identify the strategies employed to make sense of the meaning of pvs with in and out through experimental data from croatian and mexican users of english. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� renata geld and ricardo maldonado language value 3 (1), 76–113 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 78 having two groups of speakers of unrelated languages will enable us to identify both the language-specific strategic features developing from each language as well as the strategic coincidences suggesting the presence of general cognitive patterns operating in the acquisition of english pvs. ii. theoretical background according to cognitive grammar (langacker 1987, 1991, 2000a), “complex expressions exhibit only partial compositionality” (langacker 2000a: 16, original emphasis). the meaning of a complex expression constitutes either an elaboration or an extension in relation to what is expected as compositional value. when a novel expression is used for the first time, its meaning is constructed in a given context. the conventionally determined import of the expression at best approximates its actual contextual understanding. over time, and through frequency of usage, it achieves the status of a lexical item. in the process of fixation, recurrent aspects of its meaning, including some of a non-compositional origin “become entrenched and establish themselves as a part of what eventually emerges as its conventional linguistic value” (langacker ibid.: 15). thus, complex expressions are partially compositional because, on the one hand, the relationship between a composite structure and its components is not arbitrary and, on the other hand, a composite structure is not constructed out of its components, nor it is fully predictable. langacker concludes (ibid.: 16, original emphasis): rather than constituting a composite structure, the component structures correspond to certain facets of it, offering some degree of motivation for expressing the composite conception in the manner chosen. and because the composite structure represents a distinct entity that is not in general reducible to its components, a construction is described as an assembly of symbolic structures. for the analyses offered in this work, the most important dimension of lexical semantics is analysability, that is, “the extent to which speakers are cognizant of the presence and the semantic contribution of component symbolic elements” (langacker ibid.: 127). a novel expression is easily analysable because a speaker manipulates the components in the process of constructing it. if we transfer this phenomenon from the first language domain, i.e. the native speaker’s perspective, into the domain of second language, we shall notice considerable parallelism: when they come across a new construction, second-language users may attempt to analyse it in terms of its components, especially http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� strategic construal of in and out in english particle verbs (pvs) language value 3 (1), 76–113 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 79 when individual components are already well entrenched in their l2, as is frequently the case with pvs. however, l2 users soon realize that the expected compositional meaning is far from a simple sum of meanings. they appreciate that components are not predetermined or fixed, and that complex structures are not put together in a strictly compositional manner. over time, most learners abandon the idea of the building-block metaphor3, which implies that smaller constituents are building blocks out of which larger constituents are constructed, and their expectations change. what follows runs roughly in two directions: a) l2 users either start believing that whatever happens in the process of constructing and making sense of meaning is too elusive to be captured and understood, so they stop thinking about meaning and attempt to store whatever they encounter “intact” and in larger chunks, or b) despite having rejected the idea of the building-block metaphor, they tacitly nurture the idea of linguistic motivation, and they attend to various aspects of meaning and form. naturally, their attention depends on various language-internal and language-external factors, and their strategic meaning construal is deeply immersed in prior linguistic and world experience (see figure 1). the theoretical framework assumed in this paper, and shown schematically in figure 1, suggests the following: first, language is an experiential phenomenon and it is intimately related to other cognitive processes, such as attention, comparison, perspective and gestalt. in broader terms, the emergence of complex language representations results from “simple learning mechanisms operating in and across human systems of perception, motor action and cognition while exposed to language data in communicatively rich human social environments” (ellis 2003)4. furthermore, meaning construal is dynamic and subjective, and construal operations (e.g. metonymy, metaphor, fictive motion, categorization, deixis, etc.) are viewed as instances of the abovementioned general cognitive processes as aspects of a conceptual structure. finally, strategic meaning construal and l2 learning inevitably depend on whatever precedes. being entangled with l1 and experiential knowledge of the world, l2 both relies on and mirrors various cognitive processes that constitute conceptual structure in l1. however, this specific cognitive state of l2 users, burdened with prior linguistic knowledge and experience (macwhinney 2001, 2006), also functions as a constraint in the process of language acquisition and strategic meaning construal5. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� renata geld and ricardo maldonado language value 3 (1), 76–113 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 80 figure 1. integrated model of second-language acquisition (geld 2006: 108). for example, mexican users of english, coming from a linguistic environment that maps the core schema exclusively onto the verb, are likely to encounter considerable problems while processing english particle verbs where the core schema6 is mapped onto the particle (see geld this volume). however, if their attention shifts to form, it might activate aspects of conceptual structure, such as underlying image schemas or metaphorical mappings in cases of non-literal meanings, which, in turn, might facilitate input being processed and transformed into intake. thus, specific language realizations inherited from l1 might constrain and filter l2 input, but, on the other hand, the activation of underlying cognitive processes, which have been proved to be common cross-linguistically, is likely to facilitate the recognition of how form encodes meaning. returning to the issue of how l2 users perceive language, we wish to suggest that all of them, irrespective of their inclination to view language either as an arbitrary or as a cognitively motivated system, process language and construct meaning by attending to both meaning and form. in other words, their attention is constant but it varies quantitatively and qualitatively. this line of thought is in accordance with theoretical linguistic constructs such as langacker’s analysability (1987, 2000a), as well as with l2 research results on implicit vs. explicit knowledge, and their relation to consciousness (see for example doughty 2001, hulstijn 1989, and schmidt 1990, 1993a, 1993b, 1994a, 1994b, 1998, 2001). describing native speaker’s understanding of semantic structure and the concept of analysability, langacker discusses terms like “aware”, “cognizant” and “recognize”, and asks whether the claim that a speaker is “aware” or (1) experience (2) l1 and other cognitive abilities/processes (3) construal (4) l2 and strategic construal http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� strategic construal of in and out in english particle verbs (pvs) language value 3 (1), 76–113 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 81 “cognizant” of the components within a composite structure implies that “these components are consciously recognized and attended to”, and he proceeds by suggesting the following (1987: 459-460): there is nothing in the definition of analysability (characterized at the level of cognitive events) that inherently restricts it to the domain of consciousness. recognition is accomplished through acts of comparison, which are assumed to be ubiquitous to all domains and levels of cognitive processing. if we relate this to the issue of the relationship between explicit and implicit knowledge in the process of learning a second language, we cannot but agree with schmidt (1990), who suggests that the explicit/implicit contrast represents a continuum and that there is no learning without ‘noticing’. however, we wish to challenge his doubt that learning that occurs without learners’ being aware of learning plays a minor role in the field of second language (schmidt 1998, 2001). having embraced the insights from cognitive psychology, and hence assuming that various cognitive processes such as attention or comparison are present in all domains and levels of cognitive processing and construction of meaning, we may conclude that the abovementioned continuum is by itself sufficient to describe the nature of knowledge. in other words, in the process of learning, learners both consciously and subconsciously attend to various aspects of language and pass judgments that result in constant restructuring of their knowledge. thus, if we wish to investigate the process of strategic construal, i.e. meaning construal in l2, it is legitimate to do so by shifting our learners’ attention to form and asking specific questions about meaning. we will ask questions about the meaning of a pv attending to the meaning of its components and the way they interact to form the pv’s complex meaning. the learner’s conscious reasoning about composite wholes, such as particle verbs, might tell us a great deal about how components motivate and highlight selected facets of the composite meaning. naturally, analysability of composite wholes very much depends on the life they live as conventional units. they have an elaborate semantic value which lies in their extra-compositional specifications that correspond to facets of contextual meaning and, in addition to that, they diverge from their specifications by extension or elaboration (langacker 1987). in the case of particle verbs, dramatically extended meanings often prevent the activation of component meanings along with the meaning of the whole. however, we wish to suggest that comprehension failures that are likely to occur while processing http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� renata geld and ricardo maldonado language value 3 (1), 76–113 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 82 input containing these constructions tend to trigger focus on form, which is characterized by specific (re)-allocations of attention that are determined by the semantic “weight” of their components7. thus, as shown by geld (this volume), we might expect focus on particles when they collocate with semantically light lexical parts8 and, conversely, more focus on lexical parts when they are heavy verbs that are bound to make a more substantial semantic contribution. the aim of this paper is to offer a more detailed description of the contribution of particles, and to investigate the semantic nature of in and out in l2 in terms of its resemblance to the nature of these particles in english as l1. ii.1. how in and out structure space space and spatial relations have been of central importance for linguists for decades (see for example bennett 1975, bowerman 1996a, 1996b, bowerman and choi 2003, brugman 1981, casad and langacker 1985, choi and bowerman 1991, fillmore 1968, herskovits 1982, jackendoff 1983, johnson 1987, lakoff 1987, langacker 1982, 1987, lindner 1981, talmy 1982, 1983, 2000a, 2000b, tenbrink 2007, vandeloise 1984, 1991, 1994, zubin and svorou 1984). likewise, the properties of in and out in coding fundamental spatial relations have attracted a number of authors, such as herskovits (1982, 1988), who gives detailed and much-quoted accounts of in; lindner (1981), whose account of out is an exhaustive analysis of its roles in pv constructions; rudzkaostyn (2003), with her insightful applied work on the role of particles in pv constructions; dewell (2005), who contributes with a fresh account of the old issue of the dynamicity of containment (johnson 1987, lakoff 1987); and evans and tyler (2004), who, on the other hand, argue against the assumption that there are “dynamic” prepositions that denote motion. instead, they propose that there are clear principles when a particular sense is conventionalized, i.e. instantiated in memory, and when it is a contextualized usage. there are several distinct meanings of in and out that are directly relevant to our central discussion. first, the meanings of out described by lindner (1982: 81-140): a) out that codes “the removal or departure of one concrete object from within another object or space”; b) out whose meaning codes foregrounding a single (static) configuration; c) http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� strategic construal of in and out in english particle verbs (pvs) language value 3 (1), 76–113 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 83 meaning extensions pertaining to abstract displacement (landmarks are: some abstract, coherent complex of information; abstract neighbourhood of possession; privacy; change from hiddenness to accessibility; change from accessibility to inaccessibility, including non-function/non-existence; d) extensions and expansions in time and space, including full temporal extension of an event; and e) the meaning of “moving away”, including the spatial dimension and the sense of initiation, i.e. the start of a particular activity. second, the following meanings of in: a) the prototypical meaning of containment with both its static topology and dynamic characterization (dewell 2005, herskovits 1982, 1988, johnson 1987, lakoff 1987), and b) the vantage point as an interior/exterior cluster (evans and tyler 2004). iii. research iii.1. the hypotheses, instrument, sample and procedure as already suggested, the aim of the research was to establish what cognitive (learning) strategies (see geld 2006, geld and letica krevelj 2011, o’malley and chamot 1990), as aspects of meaning construal, reveal about the nature and role of particles in pv constructions. our hypotheses were the following: 1) l2 users are aware of the symbolic nature of language even while dealing with highly schematic linguistic categories; 2) strategic construal of in and out is comparable to their cognitive linguistic description in english as l1; 3) strategic construal of in and out shows a cognitively motivated path from the topological to the aspectual; our overall aim was twofold: first, to investigate semantic determination in terms of the lexical (verb dominant), topological (schematic particle dominant), and compositional (verb particle sum) nature of construal of the composite wholes9 in question (see geld, http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� renata geld and ricardo maldonado language value 3 (1), 76–113 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 84 this volume), and second, to investigate the construal of particles in greater detail, as evident from the hypotheses stated above. the sample consisted of 100 users of english – 68 english majors from croatia and 32 from mexico. the instrument used was a questionnaire that contained 20 particle verbs combining light (go, take and put) and heavy (call, cut, break, draw, pull, shut and write) lexical parts with in and out. the 46 meanings selected for the research material were those qualified as obscure (metaphorical) by a triangulation study10 conducted prior to the main stage of the research. the first step in the main stage11 of the research was to test our research participants’ language proficiency. after the proficiency test, the participants were scheduled to attend two separate sessions to complete the research questionnaire. in order to conduct both quantitative and qualitative analyses, all the answers were first copied, grouped and sequenced alphabetically. a methodological assumption should be put forward. given the fact that there is considerable literature on the construal of in and out in native speakers, we will contrast our results with well establish findings on the topic. thus there will not be a control group. iii.2. the data and results we obtained 4198 answers (2207 for out and 1991 for in). since we were interested in the construal of particles, we focused on the following two categories: 1) topological determination, and 2) compositional meaning12. the answers were further categorized according to the construal of the particles. ten categories were established for out and 9 categories for in. the categories correspond to schematic representations of our participants’ construals. iii.2.1 classification of verb groups in order to discuss specific construals of particles, we first grouped the meanings of the pvs used in the research questionnaire13: http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� strategic construal of in and out in english particle verbs (pvs) language value 3 (1), 76–113 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 85 1) processual topology (concrete) involves motion, entering or leaving some space (g2): put out (‘to injure your back, shoulder or hip’); go in (‘become hidden’); take in (‘make a piece of clothing narrower or tighter’); call out (‘ask somebody to come and help you when there is an emergency’); cut out (‘prevent something from reaching somewhere’); break out (‘become covered in something); break out (‘escape’); shut out (‘stop something from entering’); call in (‘send for somebody professional and official’); call in (‘make a short visit, usually on the way to another place’); break in (‘to wear something until it is comfortable’); draw in (‘become dark as the sun hides earlier when winter approaches’); pull in (‘move to the side of the road to stop’); shut in (‘trap or injure something by closing something tightly around it’); write in (‘write and send a message to ask or complain’). 2) processual topology (abstract) (g4) involves a participant who becomes or stops being a part of some state or abstract dominion: take out (‘kill somebody’); take out (‘obtain an official document or a service’); put out (‘make somebody go to sleep or unconscious’); put out (‘broadcast, publish or issue’); put out (‘make a figure, result, etc. wrong); put out (‘make trouble, problems or extra work’); go in (‘be understood’); take in (‘make somebody believe something that is not true’); take in (‘understand or absorb something’); put in (‘officially make a claim’); put in (‘to spend time or effort doing something’); put in (‘interrupt’); put in (‘elect political party as the government’); draw out (‘make somebody feel less nervous or shy’); draw out (‘make something last longer’); pull out (‘stop being involved in something’); shut out (‘refuse to allow a person to share your thoughts or feelings’); call in (‘make a public request for a product to be returned’); cut in (‘interrupt somebody's conversation’); break in (‘interrupt a conversation’); break in (‘get somebody accustomed to something new’); pull in (‘attract people in large numbers’). 3) aspect (termination) (g5): go out (‘stop burning’); go out (‘stop being fashionable’); put out (‘switch something off’); put out (‘extinguish, stop from burning’); cut out (‘stop working’); cut out (‘stop doing something’); write out (‘write something and include all the necessary information’). http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� renata geld and ricardo maldonado language value 3 (1), 76–113 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 86 4) aspect (inception) (g6): break out (‘begin suddenly’). in the first part of the research each answer was first labelled with a general code referring to the type of determination14 (or another general code if determination could not be defined). in the cases of topological determination and compositionality, the answer was also given a numerical code denoting the meaning of the topological part of the construction. iii.2.2. results for out in this section we list the types of strategic construal of out for each group of meanings outlined in the previous section. having the meanings organized in the abovementioned four groups, what we needed to find out were the type of strategies our participants stated that they used to figure out the meaning of the pv. in what follows “pc+number” stands for the coding of the particle. the percentage in brackets shows the number of answers containing explanations of the particle stated after the colon. 1) for the first group of meanings (g2 = processual topology – concrete) the meaning of out was construed as follows: a) pc1 (11.50%) – processual topology (concrete/physical). out is: going out or leaving an enclosed space; going out of anything that surrounds you or confines you; going out or leaving a container (human bodies, houses, buildings, drawers, etc) – very literal, physical, and concrete images. the meaning could be shown schematically in the following way: figure 2. strategic construal of out – processual topology (1). lm t tr c http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� strategic construal of in and out in english particle verbs (pvs) language value 3 (1), 76–113 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 87 b) pc3 (12.10%) – static topology (concrete/physical) – out of our dominion or out of the ‘usual’ place. out is: out of where we are; out of our world; out of our reach; out of the normal position; out of its place; displaced; out of its physical boundaries; out of its physical limits (see figure 3). figure 3. strategic construal of out – static topology (1). c) pc2 (3.25%) – a b s t r a c t t o p o l o g y (static displacement/change of state). out is: out of the previous state; out of the previous activity; out of the original state; out of the normal state; out of routine; out of the usual; out of order; out of the circuit; out of what is expected or correct. the change of state implied in the construal described above could be graphically approximated in the following way: figure 4. strategic construal of out – change of state. d) pc4 (0.2%) – out is: absence; absent; isolation; not present; not here; not seen; not visible (see figure 5). figure 5. strategic construal of out – invisibility & inaccessibility. c tr tr lm c tr http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� renata geld and ricardo maldonado language value 3 (1), 76–113 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 88 e) pc5 (1.0%) – processual topology without direct reference to the container. out is: disappear; disappearing; leaving (see figure 6). figure 6. strategic construal of out – processual topology (2). f) pc7 (1.20%) – aspectual (termination) – out is: something finished; something ended; end; completely; completely stopping; termination; all of something (see figure 7). figure 7. strategic construal of out – aspect (termination). g) pc9 (7.55%) – static topology (both concrete and abstract) – focus on the space outside our immediate dominion. out is: outside, “out” where other people are; visible; not hidden; out in the open; out in the larger area; out in all directions or surrounding space. the construal is shown in figure 8. figure 8. strategic construal of out – static topology (2). lm c r t tr tr lm t c tr http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� strategic construal of in and out in english particle verbs (pvs) language value 3 (1), 76–113 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 89 h) pc12 (0.6%) – established metaphor. out is: out of the group; not belonging; free; freedom; something discarded; something unacceptable; something negative (see figure 9). figure 9. strategic construal of out – ‘out of the group’. i) pc14 – (2.7%): there is some kind of reverse viewing; change of focus. the meaning of out in, for example, take out meaning ‘kill’ is interpreted in two ways: a) ‘a person is taken out of life’, or b) ‘life is taken out of a person’s body; or, for example, in draw out meaning ‘make less nervous or shy’, out is: a) ‘out of the state of nervousness, or b) ‘nervousness taken out of the body’. 2) the second group of meanings is g4 (processual topology – abstract). the meaning of out was construed as follows: a) pc1 (6.51%) – processual topology (concrete/physical) (see figure 2). b) pc3 (5.61%) – static topology (concrete/physical) (see figure 3). c) pc2 (17.64%) – abstract topology (static displacement) (see figure 4). d) pc4 (0.87%) – out is: absence; absent; not present; not here; isolation; not seen; not visible (see figure 5). e) pc5 (0.55%) – processual without direct reference to the container (see figure 6). f) pc7 (0.73%) – aspectual (termination) (see figure 7). g) pc9 (8.28%) – static topology (both concrete and abstract) focus on the space outside our immediate dominion (see figure 8). h) pc12 (1.13%) – established metaphor. out is: out of the group; not belonging; free; freedom; something discarded; something unacceptable; something negative (see figure 9). tr lm http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� renata geld and ricardo maldonado language value 3 (1), 76–113 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 90 i) pc14 (5.41%) – reverse viewing (change of focus). 3) for the third group of pv meanings (g5: aspectual – termination), the construals are the following: a) pc1 (3.97%) – processual topology (concrete/physical) (see figure 2). b) pc3 (6.51%) – static topology (concrete/physical) (see figure 3). c) pc2 (8.10%) – abstract topology (static displacement) (see figure 4). d) pc4 (3.94%) – out is: absence; absent; not present; not here; isolation; not seen; not visible (see figure 5). e) pc5 (2.06%) – processual without direct reference to the container (see figure 6). f) pc7 (11.61%) – aspectual (termination) (see figure 7). g) pc8 (0.43%) – out emphasizes the action. h) pc9 (1.14%) – static topology (both concrete and abstract) (see figure 8). i) pc12 (1.0%) – established metaphor. out is: out of the group; not belonging; free; freedom; something discarded; something unacceptable; something negative (see figure 9). j) pc14 (2.43%) – there is some kind of reverse viewing (change of focus). 4) for the fourth group of pv constructions (g6: aspectual – inception), the following construals of out were established: a) pc1 (7.61%) – processual topology (concrete/physical) (see figure 2). b) pc2 (3.26%) – abstract topology (static displacement) (see figure 3). c) pc9 (11.96%) – static topology (both concrete and abstract) (see figure 8). d) pc13 (7.61%) – aspectual (inception). out is: the action starts; the activity is in effect; things are in effect; things are in existence; things begin, see figure 10 below. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� strategic construal of in and out in english particle verbs (pvs) language value 3 (1), 76–113 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 91 figure 10. strategic construal of out – aspect (inception). table 1. strategic construal of out – summary. g2 processual topology concrete g4 processual topology abstract g5 aspectual termination g6 aspectual inception pc1 – processual topology (concrete/physical) 11.50% 6.51% 3.97% 7.61% pc2 – abstract topology (static displacement/change of state) 3:25% 17.64% 8.10% 3.26% pc3 – static topology (concrete/physical) 12.10% 5.61% 6.51% 0.00% pc4 – absence 0.20% 0.87% 3.94% 0.00% pc5 – processual topology (without direct reference to the container) 1.00% 0.55% 2.06% 0.00% pc7 – aspectual (termination) 1.20% 0.73% 11.61% 0.00% pc8 – emphasis on the action 0.00% 0.00% 0.43% 0.00% pc9 – static topology (both concrete and abstract) 7.55% 8.28% 1.14% 11.96% pc12 – established metaphor 0.60% 1.13% 1.00% 0.00% pc13 – aspectual inception 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 7.61% pc14 – reverse viewing 2.70% 5.41% 2.43% 0.00% iii.2.3. discussion for out for the group of pv meanings labelled g2, 11.50% of the answers implied concrete processual topology (pc1), which means that their strategic construal of the particle corresponds to our (i.e. researchers’/linguists’) construal of the whole pv construction. tr c http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� renata geld and ricardo maldonado language value 3 (1), 76–113 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 92 this strategic construal overlaps with the prototypical meaning of out, as described by lindner (1982). it should be repeated here that our selection of pvs was based on the triangulation study conducted with the aim of discriminating literal from metaphorical meanings. all the pvs used in the research were those whose rating had shown tendencies towards the metaphorical interpretation. however, even within that sample of pvs certain meanings were conducive to particles being construed as implying concrete, physical processes and topology. this is more than evident in the group of meanings discussed in this section. the second type of strategic construal, pc3 (static topology), which is almost as frequent as the previous one (12.10%), points to a more static construal of the particle. if we consider the fact that we are dealing with the construal of particles in the cases of both topological determination and compositional meanings, this particular construal of the particle might be interpreted in two ways. first, if this static topology refers to the previously established topological determination, it suggests that, in the process of constructing meaning, a certain number of l2 users of english more readily attend to the resultant stage of the event described (‘out of our world’, ‘out of our reach’, ‘out of the normal position’, etc.). second, if the static topology refers to the construal of the particle in the cases of established compositionality, it suggests that the verb denotes the process and the particle denotes the final stage. in either case the final state is what is most relevant. the same dual interpretation can be given for the construal involving abstract topology (pc2). even though only 3.25%15 of the participants construed this rather concrete group of meanings in a more abstract way, it still might be taken as a piece of evidence signalling that l2 users have different starting points within a lexical category16. where and how they start is likely to depend on various aspects of their experience and knowledge. for example, the meaning of out in the verb put out meaning ‘to injure your back, shoulder or hip’ is more likely to be construed as concrete and topological by someone who knows exactly what happens when such an injury occurs – a particular bone gets ‘out of its place’. however, it can be easily identified with a more abstract meaning such as ‘out of the original or normal state’. this also relates to what was suggested by lindner, who stresses that we should not attempt to categorize particular meanings as an exclusive member of only one category17. speakers (of l1) extract http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� strategic construal of in and out in english particle verbs (pvs) language value 3 (1), 76–113 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 93 regularities from particular constructions and construct meanings accordingly, but they are free to extract multiple patterns from a given set of forms. we believe that the same process may be claimed for l2 speakers/learners. this is particularly the case since the concrete and the abstract interpretation have enough commonalities to construe the event in alternate ways. the third most frequent construal, pc9 (concrete and abstract static topology – 7.55%), also implies static topology. however, this construal involves an important new element – focus on the space outside our immediate dominion. furthermore, it includes the concept of visibility and accessibility described in lindner in english as l1. these meanings are often related to the non-transparency of lms. they hide their contents and make them invisible, but they are often only vaguely specified and they refer to various states denoting obscurity. thus, out often denotes ‘change of state from non-visible to visible’. this resultant change approximates the strategic construal of out labelled pc9. the second group of meanings (g4) had been classified as denoting abstract processual topology. the most frequent construal of the particle in this group was pc2 (17.64%) – abstract topology (static displacement). this static aspect of the construal is actually the central element found for this group of meanings. this is confirmed by the frequencies established for pc3 (5.61%) and pc9 (8.28%), which both imply static topology, and the only difference between them is the viewing arrangement. more specifically, the construal labelled pc3 is deictic and partly egocentric. the location of the speaker operates as a reference point to calculate the location of others. this is evidenced by answers describing out as ‘out of our world’, ‘out of our reach’ or ‘out of where we are’, as opposed to answers belonging to pc9, which describe out as ‘outside where other people are’, ‘out in the open’, ‘out in the larger area’, and so forth, which do not have a deictic organization. in terms of what has been said about the nature of out in english as l1, these two meanings are consistent with what lindner explained by using the model of an evolutionary cycle. there are two basic viewer-defined regions (the potential private and the actual public) that serve as lms for out. both mexican and croatian users of english have recognized these two regions as an important aspect in the process of meaning construction of this particle. however, 6.51% of the answers referred to concrete processual topology, which suggests that degrees of concreteness and literalness are indeed very subjective. in this particular case, our participants’ strategic http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� renata geld and ricardo maldonado language value 3 (1), 76–113 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 94 construal showed a tendency towards the concrete whereas ours leaned towards the more abstract. this may be a consequence of the pervasiveness of the concrete construal to operate as the base for the construction of abstract meanings. thus l2 users may take advantage of the concrete representation in order to interpret abstract configurations. in contrast, the linguist’s view may be used to assume such a concrete basis and allow for the abstract representations to be profiled. in other words, common speakers tend to be more conservative than linguists, particularly cognitive linguists, who see metaphorical extensions as the natural shape of human language. finally, 5.41% of the answers implied a kind of reverse viewing pertaining to our bodies being perceived as containers. thus, for example, the meaning of take out ‘kill’ is explained by saying that ‘life is taken out of a person’s body’ or ‘one’s soul is taken out of someone’s body’ instead of ‘body being taken out of life’. it would be rather callous to attribute this kind of construal to a single factor, but it is reasonable to speculate that the following factors may have contributed to this interesting reversal: a) the centrality of body in human conceptualization; b) the importance of body as a source of containment; c) cultural significance of, for example, the body being the seat of the soul; d) a lack of linguistic context; e) level of language proficiency. the prominence of the body as a container metaphor is well established, at least in western civilization, and happens to be a quite productive schematic representation ideas escape our minds, we can get people out of our hearts, viruses enter our bodies, and so on. the reverse construal is thus to be expected. rather than being naïve, second language learners may be using basic metaphorical construals in acquiring new concepts. the third group of meanings (g5) had been classified as aspectual (termination). as expected, 11.61% of the participants’ answers suggest that the meaning of the particle denotes some sort of termination. however, a very large number of answers relate to less grammaticalized meanings of out, which again is likely to indicate that linguistic categories may be entered at various points in the process of language acquisition and development. thus, the second most frequent construal (8.10%) implies that the particle stands for static displacement. then, 6.51% of the answers point to the static topology focused on the space where the conceptualizer is situated, 3.97% of the answers say that the particle denotes concrete processual topology (together with 2.06% of the cases with no container specified), and 3.94% of the answers indicate that out stands for some sort http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� strategic construal of in and out in english particle verbs (pvs) language value 3 (1), 76–113 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 95 of inaccessibility and absence (pc4). if we reorder these answers into a sort of gradient line denoting the process of grammaticalization, we might obtain the order as shown in figure 11. figure 11. a potential path of grammaticalization in the strategic construal of out (1). finally, it is interesting to note the difference in frequencies between the two construals implying static topology (pc3 and pc9). whereas the frequency of pc3 (concrete static topology with the focus on the conceptualizer’s space) is 6.51%, the frequency of pc9 (concrete and abstract topology with the focus outside the conceptualizer’s space) is only 1.14%. this may indicate that in terms of the stages in the process of developing or acquiring a network of meanings, the construal of out involving the conceptualizer’s space and the construal of out involving the space outside the conceptualizer’s dominion are not equally distant from the aspectual meaning of out. in other words, the construal of out involving the conceptualizer’s space is closer to the aspectual meaning of out than the construal involving the space outside the conceptualizer’s dominion. this again shows the pervasiveness of the concrete and deictic representation of out operating as the base for alternative readings. the last group of meanings of pvs (g6) is also aspectual, but the meanings seem to be inceptive. contrary to the results for out denoting termination, the most frequent answers for this group of meanings are not those that refer explicitly to the aspectual processual topology > processual topology > static topology (concrete) > out is ‘leaving an out is ‘leaving and out is ‘out of where we are, enclosed space’ disappearing’ out of our reach’ > abstract topology > out is ‘absence’ > out marks ‘termination’ (static displacement) out is ‘out of the previous activity or state’ http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� renata geld and ricardo maldonado language value 3 (1), 76–113 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 96 nature of the particle. the most frequent answers are those labelled pc9 (11.96%), which imply static topology with the focus on an outer space. we hypothesize that for l2 users of english, the beginning of an activity is identified with the space entering their immediate dominion. things do not seem to be leaving the space of the conceptualizer, but they become accessible from a hidden region. things start as they become visible. the accessibility construal is generally quite pervasive. the sun and the moon come out, as well as actors on stage, water from fountains, and so on. it is reasonable to assume that l2 users exploit that kind of construal from their basic experience. concrete processual topology and explicit reference to aspect are the second most frequent kinds of construal (7.61%). in the case of processual topology, the users seem to construe the inceptive nature of pvs by assigning it to the particle denoting the process of a tr leaving an enclosed space (and the space is often described as something that confines the tr). finally, 3.26% of the answers refer to abstract topology (pc2). in sum, in a similar manner to out signalling termination, strategic construal of out that marks inception shows stages that resemble the process of grammaticalization that is implied in l1 descriptions of this particle (see figure 12). figure 12. a potential path of grammaticalization in the strategic construal of out (2). iii.2.4. results for in 1) for the group of meanings classified as g2 (processual topology – concrete), the meaning of in was construed as follows: processual topology > static topology > abstract topology out is ‘leaving an (concrete and abstract) (static topology) enclosed space’ focus on the space outside out is ‘out of the the conceptualizer’s previous activity or state’ dominion out marks ‘inception’ http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� strategic construal of in and out in english particle verbs (pvs) language value 3 (1), 76–113 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 97 a) pc1 (15.37%) – processual topology (concrete/physical). in is: entering a new space; getting (in)to a new space (there is some kind of movement involved); getting into a container and the container is specified; going into a certain space; going into a designated area; into a certain piece of space; into a place (see figure 13). figure 13. strategic construal of in – processual topology. b) pc3 (12.80%) – static topology (concrete/physical) – there is no motion, just physical space and location. in is: a place; a location; space; limited space; confined space; something like a hiding place (see figure 14). figure 14. strategic construal of in – static topology. c) pc2 (2.48%) – abstract topology leaning towards the inceptive aspect. in is: be/get (in)to a new activity; be/get (in)to a new situation; (in)to a (new/another) group of people; entering a new situation; beginning of something; starting to get involved. see figure 15, which represents the inceptive nature of the process constituting this construal18. lm tr tr t lm http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� renata geld and ricardo maldonado language value 3 (1), 76–113 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 98 figure 15. strategic construal of in – inceptive process. d) pc4 (3.47%) – static topology – focus on the subject’s dominion. in is: where the subject is, i.e. his/her world; control; dominion; power. figure 16. strategic construal of in – control within dominion. e) pc5 (2.01%) – process (concrete and physical, but no container specified). in is: going into; jumping into; moving towards inside; moving inwards; entering; returning (see figure 17). figure 17. strategic construal of in – entrance – no container specified. f) pc6 (2.01%) – in is: inside, inside of something (not very informative). g) pc8 (0.11%) – in intensifies the action. h) pc11 (2.48%) – reverse topology. tr t trtr t lm tr tr lm t http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� strategic construal of in and out in english particle verbs (pvs) language value 3 (1), 76–113 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 99 i) pc12 (0.11%) – established metaphor. in is: acceptable and accepting. 2) for g4 – processual topology (abstract), the meaning of in was construed in the following ways: a) pc1 (17.85%) – processual topology (concrete/physical). see figure 13. b) pc2 (16.91%) – abstract topology leaning towards the inceptive aspect. see figure 15. c) pc3 (3.55%) – static topology (concrete/physical). see figure 14. d) pc4 (2.75%) – static topology – focus on the subject’s dominion. e) pc5 (1.2%) – process (concrete and physical, but no container specified). see figure 16. f) pc6 (2.29%) – in is: inside, inside of something (not very informative). g) pc8 (0.34%) – in intensifies the action. h) pc11 (3.08%) – reverse topology. i) pc12 (0.17%) – established metaphor. in is: acceptable and accepting. table 2. strategic construal of in – summary. g2 (processual topology – concrete) for g4 (processual topology – abstract) pc1 – processual topology (concrete/physical) 15.37% 17.85% pc2 – abstract topology leaning towards the inceptive aspect 2.48% 16.91% pc3 – static topology (concrete/physical) 12.80% 3.55% pc4 – static topology – focus on the subject’s dominion 3.47% 2.75% pc5 – process (concrete and physical, but no container specified) 2.01% 1.20% pc6 – in is: inside, inside of something (not very informative) 2.01% 2.29% http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� renata geld and ricardo maldonado language value 3 (1), 76–113 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 100 pc8 – in intensifies the action 0.11% 0.34% pc 11 – reverse topology 2.48% 3.08% pc12 – established metaphor ‘acceptable’ 0.11% 0.17% iii.2.5. discussion for in the first and the most obvious observation is that in is less informative than out, which is relevant to various aspects of the results in both parts of the research (see geld, this volume). secondly, there are fewer types of the construal with in than with out, and the learners’ answers are shorter and/or less specified in the case of in. finally, with both groups of meanings (g2 and g4) there are a certain number of answers that explicitly say that in is ‘not very informative’ (pc6). this is probably due to the much-discussed pervasiveness of the experience of boundedness and containment (dewell 2005, johnson 1987, lakoff 1987), which results in containment being perceived as some kind of ‘regular’, ‘natural’ or ‘neutral’ state of being that is taken for granted. moreover the marked character of in corresponds to other conceptual phenomena well attested in language. we naturally see and conceptualize what is in front of us, what is on stage (langacker 2000). looking at the space we actually occupy implies special effort. this correlates with abundant asymmetry facts in language such as the unmarked status of 3rd person over 1st in pronominal marking, the marked character of reflexive, as opposed to transitive constructions, and the special treatment of inalienable possession. to the extent that in normally designates the location where the conceptualizer is located, the marked character of in is to be expected. let us now take a look at the two groups separately. for the group of meanings classified as g2 (processual topology – concrete), the most frequent construal was pc1 (concrete processual topology with reference to the container). together with pc5 (concrete processual topology with no reference to the container), 17.38% of the participants identified the meaning of the particle with the meaning we had assigned to the whole pv. the second most frequent construal, pc3 (static topology – 12.80%), suggests that the participants attended only to the resulting state of the whole image, and they formed a completely stationary image, independent from a preceding path. considering the fact that our participants were all adults, in whose l1 semantic system http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� strategic construal of in and out in english particle verbs (pvs) language value 3 (1), 76–113 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 101 static locations are considered to be more basic than motion events, it is not surprising that so many of them ignored the dynamic aspect of the underlying schema while constructing this particular meaning in l2. the last two types of construal that deserve our attention for this group of meanings are pc4 (static topology with the focus on the subject’s dominion) and pc11 (reverse or non-egocentric viewing). as stressed by evans and tyler in their description of in, there are two clusters of meaning related to the conceptualizer’s vantage point: a) the cluster related to the spatial scenes in which the vantage point is located within the location being conceptualized, and b) the cluster related to the spatial scenes in which the vantage point is located outside the spatial region being conceptualized. what the data for g2 show is that, for some users, the most important aspect of meaning construal is the one pertaining to the viewing arrangement in which the vantage point is located within the spatial scene being conceptualized. thus, 3.47%19 of the participants stressed that the most salient aspect of the construal was the focus on the participant’s/conceptualizer’s dominion. moreover, a smaller number of them (2.48%) did the same even when the particle does not actually code this particular viewing arrangement (e.g. in in the pv construction write in meaning ‘write to ask or complain’ does not code the subject’s dominion). if we treat the latter not simply as an error, we may conclude that l2 users recognize certain, more general, facets of the meaning of the particle even when they are not coded in a particular sense that is being processed. this might lead us to believe and conclude that their strategic thinking involves various cognitive processes, such as for example those pertaining to viewing arrangement, which tend to be activated whenever they constitute aspects of construal in l1. in other words, having encountered various facets of meaning and having abstracted a variety of regularities in the process of their l2 learning and processing, users are likely to employ them and construct meaning strategically whenever they face something they do not know or understand completely. consequently, their strategic thinking does involve errors in a narrow sense of the meaning, but, in broader terms, they should be treated as a meaningful and constructive stage in their progress. finally, for the group of meanings g4 (processual topology – abstract), the situation is somewhat different. even though there is a high percentage of answers implying concrete processual topology (pc1 – 17.85%), there is also a high percentage of http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� renata geld and ricardo maldonado language value 3 (1), 76–113 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 102 answers (16.91%) pointing to the inceptive aspect of the construal (pc2). the recognition of the abstract nature of the particle in this particular group of meanings is not that surprising. what is more surprising is the users’ tendency to go a step further and describe the role of the particle in terms of its aspectual nature. the inceptive aspect of the particle is defined either overtly by using descriptions such as ‘beginning of something’ or ‘starting to get involved’, or in a more covert manner by describing its meaning as, for example, ‘getting (in)to a new activity’ or ‘entering a new situation’. thus, we must conclude that our l2 users of english recognized the aspectual nature of the particle where we, i.e. linguists and researchers, had neither expected nor done so ourselves. a closer look at the two sources for inceptive meanings suggests that this construal is the mirror image of the inceptive meaning provided for out. in the case of out events are initiated as they become accessible from a hidden location. in the case of in accessibility is the default, no hidden location is required. as soon as mental contact is established the event gets started. the high frequency for inceptive in is thus to be expected. iv. conclusions users of english as l2 find both lexicon and grammar meaningful, and they are aware of the symbolic nature of language. the cognitive linguistic premise that language is intimately related to other cognitive processes finds its evidence in the nature of learning strategies employed by l2 users. more specifically, meaning construal in l2 is comparable to meaning construal in l1. this is especially apparent in users’ construal of particles. they recognize the complexity of their semantic networks proposed and described in english as l1. their answers clearly imply the problem of dynamic aspects of the construal of particles as well as the importance of cognitive processes such as attention and perspective (e.g. their answers imply gradience from the literal to the metaphorical, aspects of viewing arrangement, and mental scanning). in other words, their cognitive strategies employed in the process of meaning construction in l2 reflect general cognitive processes described as aspects of construal in l1. even though the realizations of these processes are language-specific and languages have different inventories for building their conceptual structures, the fact that cognitive processes are http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� strategic construal of in and out in english particle verbs (pvs) language value 3 (1), 76–113 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 103 intimately related to language enables l2 users to activate them in the process of meaning construal. what the data show is that their ability to go from the literal and concrete to the abstract and metaphorical results in a variety of strategically constructed meanings amounting to a gradient scale resembling a grammaticalization path of english particles. for example, their answers for out in the group of pv meanings implying aspect (termination) indicate that they make sense of meanings in a linguistically motivated way, that they are tacitly aware of the fact that lexicon and grammar form a continuum, and that their meaning construal involves general cognitive processes such as attention, comparison and perspective, i.e. linguistic construal operations such as selection, scalar adjustment, metaphor, vantage point, and so forth, as instances of these general processes. this is made clear in the following grammaticalization path: out is ‘leaving an enclosed space’ (processual topology) > out is ‘leaving and disappearing’ (processual topology, no container specified) > out is ‘out of where we are, out of our reach’ (static topology – concrete) > out is ‘out of the previous activity or state (abstract topology static displacement) > out is ‘absence’ > out marks ‘termination’. the path also shows an obvious subjectification path where the core meaning undergoes attenuation (langacker 2000b). some properties of the basic meaning of out lose prominence in favour of a less central feature to actually construe more schematic representations. first the notion of boundary is lost, and then the presence of the source locations is blurred. moreover, the space is no longer a concrete one and finally abandonment of a previous stage triggers the aspectual notion of termination. we may claim that the basic notion of containing space remains at the base to support the emergence of abstract meanings. another example of our users’ varying attention relates to the mental scanning underlying dynamic and static aspects of their meaning construal. for example, even though conceptual scanning processes are an essential element for both path schemas and stative relations, our learners’ attention was often rather selective and they attended only to the resulting states and described completely stationary images rather than processes. finally, aspects of viewing arrangement pertaining to the general cognitive process of perspective are more than evident in the types of strategic construal implying the http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� renata geld and ricardo maldonado language value 3 (1), 76–113 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 104 importance of the conceptualizer’s dominion or the space outside of her/his dominion (see construals pc3 and pc9 for out, and pc4 for in). the way our participants constructed particular meanings supports the idea that speakers of english have different starting points within a lexical category. it is true that the topological representation is dominant, but alternative ways of construing meaning are at hand. where and how they start is likely to depend on various factors pertaining to their experience and knowledge (e.g. the work they do, hobbies they have, places they live in), and to individual strategies employed to conform to events. for example, there are users who construct concrete meanings in a more abstract way. the meaning of out in the verb put out meaning ‘to injure your back, shoulder or hip’ is more likely to be construed as concrete and topological by someone who knows exactly what happens when such an injury occurs – a particular bone gets ‘out of its place’. on the other hand, it can be easily identified with a more abstract meaning such as ‘out of the original or normal state’ by those who have never seen or experienced such an injury or have never thought about it. however, predicting our learners’ starting points within a lexical category, if possible at all, would require the introduction of a number of relevant variables and a thorough investigation of various aspects of language learning. however, we can still conclude that our participants’ meaning construction supports the idea that the best way to deal with complex lexical categories is to avoid strict categorization which assumes fixed and predictable places of particular meanings within a particular category. our participants’ construals exhibit partial compositionality which is evident in their selection of one or two outstanding properties from the whole set of possible features of each pv. furthermore, they seem to extract regularities from particular constructions and construct meaning accordingly, but they are free to pull out multiple patterns from a given set of forms. crucially, these patterns do not vary in all possible directions. they exploit the possibilities of the base form in patterns of attenuation and subjectification that profile different facets of the base form as pertaining to the dominion they apply. the flexibility to construe in or out, in a concrete or an abstract manner, simply obeys the most fundamental topological schematic representation of these forms in such a way that the freedom in the conceptualizer’s vantage point is framed by the basic cognitive patterns we have sketched in this paper. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� strategic construal of in and out in english particle verbs (pvs) language value 3 (1), 76–113 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 105 given these cognitive patterns, the abundant similarities in event construal between secondand first-language users’ strategic construal should be anything but surprising. notes 1see also geld this volume as a complement to this article. 2 discussions on degrees of idiomaticity of english particle verbs as composite wholes are numerous (see for example bolinger 1971, celce-murcia and larsen-freeman 1999, cornell 1985, dagut and laufer 1985, dirven 2001, gries 2003, laufer and eliasson 1993, liao and fukuya 2004, lindner 1981, makkai 1972, mcportland 1989, o’ dowd 1998, quirk et al. 1985). even the content of phrasal-verb dictionaries varies according to the type of meanings included: for example, sinclair and moon (1989) and cullen and sargeant (1996) include both literal and idiomatic phrasal verbs, whereas cowie and mackin (1993) exclude the former. see also cappelle (2005: 120) for a two-way grid classifying particle verbs in terms of literal and idiomatic meanings assigned to their component parts. relevant parallelism related to gradient idiomaticity is also found in the field of idioms. for example, gibbs claims that chew the fat and kick the bucket are much less analyzable than e.g. pop the question or blow your stack (1995: 100). 3 the building-block metaphor was used by langacker (1987, 2000) to portray the way linguists tend to think about morphological and syntactic composition. 4 this view of language acquisition is shared by various constructivists, for example, the connectionists (christiansen and chater 2001, christiansen et al. 1999, plunkett 1998), functional linguists (bates and macwhinney 1981, macwhinney and bates 1989), emergentists (elman et al. 1996), cognitive linguists (croft and cruse 2004, lakoff 1987, langacker 1987, 1991), constructivist child-language researchers (slobin 1997, tomasello 1992, 1995, 2000) and many others. 5 these constraints are especially evident in adult l2 learning (see for example doughty 2003). 6 see the introduction of geld (this volume) to have the typology explained. 7 for issues related to negotiation of form prompted by negotiation of meaning see e.g. brock et al. (1986), day et al. (1983), foster and ohta (2005), skehan and foster (2001). 8 see also the results in section iv of geld’s article (this volume). 9 see geld’s abstract (this volume). 10 see section iii.1, the instrument, in geld’s article (this volume). 11 the main stage was preceded by a pilot study to test the reliability of the questionnaire. 12 the third category was lexical determination. the three categories (topological, lexical and compositional) were the results of the first part of the research (see geld this volume). 13 the following learners’ dictionaries were consulted while designing the questionnaire used in this research: oxford phrasal verbs: dictionary for learners of english (parkinson 2001) and cambridge phrasal verbs dictionary (walter 2006). 14 see section iii-3 in geld’s article (this volume) for complementary data. 15 it should be stressed that this percentage (3.25%) is viewed in relation to the frequency of other contributions. in other words, if we know that there were 10 types of construal identified for out, and that the highest percentage for this group of meanings was 12.10%, followed by 11.50% and 7.55%, and that most other frequencies were below 2.0%, it seemed reasonable to consider pc2 (3.25%) in our discussion and attempt to interpret its contribution. 16 rice analysed longitudinal data obtained from the childes corpus for two english-speaking children and the results showed that there are significant differences in usage patterns for the prepositions she studied, and that each child has a “different point of entry” into one of the nine lexical categories (2003: 272). rice concludes that the findings suggest that semantic extension within a lexical category proceeds outwardly only partially from some basic, concrete sense, and that the child language evidence presented in the analysis is “inconclusive about any parallelisms which might obtain between developmental and diachronic extension” (ibid.: 273). 17 here, lindner uses the term category in a narrower sense of its meaning. it actually refers to a cluster of meanings that make similar semantic contributions in particular groups of pv constructions. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� renata geld and ricardo maldonado language value 3 (1), 76–113 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 106 18 this particular construal combines two important aspects of the construal of in in l2. first, it implies abstract topology and, second, it points to a more grammaticalized meaning that codes the inceptive aspect that has not been discussed for in in l1. 19 we believe that a qualitative analysis such as ours needs to include and interpret even seemingly less significant contributions, especially in the light of our insistence on illuminating subjective and idiosyncratic aspects of (strategic) construal. references bates, e. and macwhinney, b. 1981. “second language acquisition from a functionalist perspective”. in winitz, h. 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(first ed. 1997). cambridge: cambridge university press. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� strategic construal of in and out in english particle verbs (pvs) language value 3 (1), 76–113 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 113 zubin, d. and svorou, s. 1984. “orientation and gestalt: conceptual organizing principles in the lexicalization of space”. in testen, v.m. and j. drogo (eds.) procedings of the 20th meeting of the chicago linguistic society, parasession on lexical semantics. chicago: chicago linguistic society, 333-345. received november 2011 cite this article as: geld, r. and maldonado, r. 2011. “strategic construal of in and out in english particle verbs (pvs)”. language value, 3 (1), 76-113. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.erevistes.uji.es/languagevalue. issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� database connection failed! language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2012, volume 4, number 2 pp. 70-88 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.6 70 memory and language in hiromi goto’s chorus of mushrooms eva pich ponce epich@us.es universidad de sevilla, spain abstract hiromi goto’s chorus of mushrooms (1994) highlights the difficulties encountered by japanese when immigrating and living in canada. this essay focuses on how hiromi goto uses linguistic codes to construct cultural identities and to stress the arbitrary nature of stereotypes. it analyzes the importance of memory and translation, which can be seen as both necessary and alienating. it also examines the importance of language and storytelling in the process of constructing one’s identity. keywords: language, memory, asian canadian writing, identity, stereotypes, storytelling i. introduction the remarkable literary activity in canada since the second world war has been recognized and celebrated by literary criticism throughout the world. the relationship between collective identity and the perception and representation of the other constitutes an essential question of contemporary cultural and literary discourse. the literary representation of ethnic minorities is extremely important in order to understand current issues about multiculturalism, nationalism, integration. it is even more significant when considering the emergence of authors writing from within that cultural minority experience. canadian history and its present situation are rewritten by these new voices that seek their place in the country. as mari sasano has pointed out, although the notion of multiculturalism implies the acknowledgement of different cultures, a distinction is generally made between “typical canadian” and “multicultural”, the latter consisting of “those minorities that are seen as additional to but outside of typical white middle-class majority” (sasano 1998: 39). through the analysis of hiromi goto’s chorus of mushrooms (1994), this study aims to examine how asian-canadian minorities are representing themselves and how language is used in the construction of social and cultural identities. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� mailto:epich@us.es� eva pich ponce language value 4 (2), 70-88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 71 hiromi goto was born in japan and immigrated to canada with her family when she was three years old. after living on the west coast for some time, her family moved to nanton, alberta. in chorus of mushrooms, the author highlights the difficulties encountered by ethnic minorities when trying to find their own identity. it examines the intercultural experience of japanese canadians through the lives of three generations of women belonging to the same japanese family living in nanton. if the author draws on her own experience to write this narrative, the autobiographical dimension of the text is challenged by the subversion of realism and the destabilization of narrative unity, reliable point of view and coherent character presentation. as linda hutcheon has observed in contemporary canadian novels: postmodernism in canada has suggested a rethinking of realism, and therefore we have a situation in which realism is both challenged and taken seriously. [...] like fiction, history is viewed through frames, and those frames bring only certain pre-selected things into the foreground of the reader’s attention. and this is true of both public and private history (hutcheon 1988: 21). in chorus of mushrooms, the metafictional dimension of the novel is made evident by the way the narrator refers to the creating process and by the structure of the text itself. the novel appears as a story which is being told by the narrator to her lover. the second personal pronoun, “you”, is used to address the narratee. this interlocutor, who asks the narrator to tell him a “true story”, sometimes interrupts the narrative to make comments or to give his opinion. a dialogue on the text itself is thus presented and it foretells some of the reactions goto’s readers may have. as hutcheon has pointed out, postmodern novelists are very aware of “the twin processes involved in their production: their creation and their reception” (1988: 45). the dialogue between narrator and narratee highlights the interaction that can take place. although the use of the second person invites the reader to identify with this narratee, the “you” can also be exclusionary, as emma e. smith has shown in her study on this novel. indeed, the second person refers to a particular character, who can speak japanese, and with whom the non-japanese-speaking reader cannot assume identity (smith, 2007: 251). the different narrative layers used in the novel bring to light different perspectives and challenge any possible unity. besides the dialogue between the controlling narrator (murasaki) and her lover, the text intertwines the stories told by muriel/murasaki, and by her grandmother naoe. these are centred on their experiences and recollections. other stories, such as japanese legends or journal articles, are embedded within their http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� memory and language in hiromi goto’s chorus of mushrooms language value 4 (2), 70-88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 72 narrations and introduce other voices in the text. the polyphonic nature of the novel, which is also announced in the title, suggests that the approaches to immigrant life in canada are plural, and cannot be reduced to a sole discourse on immigration and identity. moreover, throughout the multi-levelled narrative, the stress is put on interaction. the different voices, fragments and stories that appear in the text complement one another and create an intertextual dialogue. besides the conversations between the controlling narrator and the narratee, other dialogues take place between naoe and her granddaughter murasaki. their dialogues, written in brackets, appear as telepathic conversations that can take place in spite of the spatial and temporal distance that separates the interlocutors. the metafictional aspect of the novel is further highlighted by the contents of these dialogues where the two narrators speak about the creative process: murasaki: obachan, everyone wants to hear stories. and i can’t finish them. they scatter like sheep. like dust. naoe: no need to tie them up. there is always room for beginnings (goto 1997: 63). this lack of closure is also a procedure used by goto in her novel. as the author has explained in an interview, in her fiction: “there is a resistance to the notion of closure for this is not the reality of women’s lives. closure to me is very artificial, contrived and prescriptive. [...] life narratives are circular and ongoing” (goto, in morris 2008: 234). goto’s novel is characterized by the lack of a time line. as the fictional interlocutor tells the narrator: “‘you switch around in time a lot,’ [...] ‘i get all mixed up. i don’t know in what order things really happened” (goto 1997: 132)1 there isn’t a time line. it’s not a linear equation. you start in the middle and unfold outward from here. it’s not a flat surface that you walk back and forth on. it’s like being inside a ball that isn’t exactly a ball, but is really made up of thousands and thousands of small panels. and on each panel, there is a mirror, but each mirror reflects something different. and from where you crouch, if you turn your head up or around or down or sideways, you can see something new, something old, or something you’ve forgotten (132). . the answer provided by the narrator is extremely significant as it justifies the complex structure of the novel itself: according to this definition, the story consists of as a series of mirroring images and of windows opened to different realities and different times. again, the stress is put on 1 from now on, the references to this edition will be made through the number of the page written in brackets. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� eva pich ponce language value 4 (2), 70-88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 73 plurality, but also on memory and on the capacities of the story to make others aware of what has been forgotten. hutcheon has observed that the postmodern writer is inevitably in a “marginal or ‘excentric’ position with regard to the central or dominant culture, because the paradox of underlining and undermining cultural ‘universals’ [...] challenges any notions of centrality” (1988: 3). this is even truer when the author is writing from the position of an ethnic minority community. the margin becomes a place of transgression, but also, as hutcheon points out, the place of possibility (1988: 3). through their texts, writers try “to trouble, to question, to make both problematic and provisional any [...] desire for order or truth through the powers of the human imagination” (hutcheon 1988: 2). the notion of truth is indeed problematic, as goto’s text points out. truth may be confused with a system of belief specific to a particular culture and time. according to hutcheon, “what any society calls universal ‘truth’ is really [...] socially, culturally, economically, and historically particular” (1988: 12). the multiple voices of goto’s novel and the different stories embedded highlight how truth, as identity, is something fluid. it changes with the telling and it also involves the interlocutor’s trust and belief. chorus of mushrooms combines japanese cultural references and canadian ones. it stresses the importance of food and language when approaching a foreign culture and it shows how stories are both a way of getting to know the other and of constructing one’s history and one’s identity. ii. the memories of immigration chorus of mushrooms describes the relationship between three generations of women and their attitudes towards their situation as japanese immigrants living in nanton. the grandmother, naoe, tries to hold onto her roots. she refuses to forget her past and her japanese culture. although she can speak english, she refuses to use the english language that her family has adopted. on the contrary, her daughter, keiko, has decided to assimilate into canadian culture for the sake of her own daughter, muriel. keiko speaks only in english, eats canadian food and tries to dress and behave like a ‘white’ canadian woman. according to her mother, keiko “has forsaken identity [...] converted from rice and daikon to weiners and beans” (goto 1997: 13). the different attitude http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� memory and language in hiromi goto’s chorus of mushrooms language value 4 (2), 70-88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 74 adopted by these two characters is highlighted by the different language they use and by the lack of communication between them: “i speak my words in japanese and my daughter will not hear them. the words that come from our ears, our mouths, they collide in the space between us” (goto 1997: 4). naoe tries to prevent the complete loss of her culture by continually speaking out loud in her tongue. she tells japanese legends, speaks about her past, and gives her opinion about her life in canada. through her memories and the tales she narrates, naoe constructs a sense of home inside of her. as she explains, “you cannot move to a foreign land and call that place home because you parrot the words around you. find your home inside yourself first, i say. let your home words grow out from the inside, not the inside in” (goto 1997: 48). muriel, or murasaki, as her grandmother calls her, is the only one of them who was actually born in canada. in spite of this, she is still perceived as an outsider because of her physical complexion. she is alienated from a canadian culture which considers her as foreign, but also from the japanese background, as she cannot speak or read the language. it is only later, that she will decide to learn the japanese tongue. the three perspectives embodied by these characters are highlighted in an article, inserted in the text, and entitled “the multicultural voices of alberta, part 4: japanese canadians today” (goto 1997: 189). keiko explains her decision of forgetting her japanese identity in order to feel at home in her new country: “you can’t be everything at once. it is too confusing for a child to juggle two cultures. two sets of ideals. if you want a child to have a normal and accepted lifestyle, you have to live like everyone else” (goto 1997: 189). however, murasaki’s account challenges her mother’s perspective: life is hard in canada, once you come to an age when you find out that people think certain things of you just because your hair is black and they have watched ‘shogun, the mini series.’ [...] i wasn’t given the chance to choose. i feel a lot of bitterness about how i was raised, how i was taught to behave. i had a lot of questions about my heritage, but they were never answered. the place where we lived didn’t foster cultural difference. it only had room for cultural integration. if you didn’t abide by the unwritten rules of conduct, you were alienated as an other, subject to suspicion and mistrust (189). she has been deprived of the possibility of getting to know her family’s culture. what is more, her mother’s insistence on rejecting her japanese roots implied that there was something wrong with them. thus, murasaki avoided speaking with the vietnamese http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� eva pich ponce language value 4 (2), 70-88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 75 labourers who worked on her father’s farm. she also avoided speaking with the chinese boy that attended her school because “oriental people in single doses were well enough, but any hint of a group and it was all over” (goto 1997: 125). institutions in canada only provide stereotypical images of the other. when muriel goes to sunday school, she observes the pictures drawn on the song boards. there are pictures of “indians with feathers”, “black boys with curly hair wearing only shorts”, “yellow people with skinny eyes”, and a “blonde girl with long eyelashes with a normal dress on” (goto 1997: 59). the teacher tells the pupils that “everybody is the same [...] jesus doesn’t see any difference at all. he loves you all the same” (goto 1997: 59). by not recognising any difference, cultural specificity is erased and the other is apparently placed in a central position from which he is paradoxically banned. the use of stereotypes and the denial of cultural diversity are both unsatisfying discourses to approach alterity. the narrator stresses the importance of acknowledging and respecting cultural difference. as muriel points out: “i thought that jesus must be pretty blind if he thought everybody was the same” (goto 1997: 59). through the different stories inserted in the novel, goto tries to deconstruct cultural stereotypes and to present them as other stories, the truth of which can be questioned. the novel highlights how representations of alterity always entail exotic details that make the other interesting as well as alien. people ask murasaki whether her grandmother had to bind her feet, although feet were never bound in japan. asian cultural distinctions are obliterated. muriel is frequently considered chinese or treated as an oriental woman because of her appearance. even people of japanese background use the depreciative terms and representations applied to them: “you’re pretty cute for a nip. he said. most nips are pretty damn ugly. all that inbreeding [...] and i felt really funny inside, him saying nip and everything. because he was one too” (goto 1997: 53). the will of many immigrants to assimilate into canadian culture leads them not only to erase their roots, but also to become intolerant towards other immigrants. as marc colavincenzo has also highlighted, this novel shows how “behind a rhetoric of multicultural acceptance canadian culture is shot through with racism, non-acceptance, and homogenizing or assimilationist tendencies” (2005: 224). keiko and her husband http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� memory and language in hiromi goto’s chorus of mushrooms language value 4 (2), 70-88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 76 have given up their roots. keiko pretends to be “as white as her neighbour” (goto 1997: 29). her insistence on becoming an other, goes to the extent of washing her daughter’s hands frantically when observing that they are yellow after having eaten some candies: “yellow, she’s tuningyellow she’s turningyellow she’s –” (goto 1997: 92). when a schoolteacher tells her that muriel should wear a blonde wig in order to perform the part of alice in wonderland in a school operetta, keiko is more than willing to dye her daughter’s hair: “that way, muriel can really grow into her role as alice. she can live and be alice before opening night!” (goto 1997: 177). the façade she tries to create also implies changing names: her name is keiko but she asks the others to call her kay; her husband “shinji” becomes “sam”; and she gives her daughter an ‘occidental’ name, muriel. keiko also provides nicknames for the vietnamese people who work on the farm because she thinks “their real names are too hard to pronounce and no one will be able to remember them” (goto 1997: 34). names are essential in the novel and the characters change their names according to their shifting identities. muriel prefers to be named murasaki in order to acknowledge her japanese background. naoe becomes purple at the end of the novel. according to mari sasano, the characters “adopt new names to suit their identities, creating a movement between what each is born with and what each eventually chooses to become” (1998: 40). the name is also at the origin of the situation of naoe’s family, as her father lost his fortune by stamping his name on a legal document. as naoe states: “the name begins the story” (goto 1997: 49). the separation from the original culture is also stressed by the lack of a surname. keiko and her husband forgot their real surname when they gave up their roots. the only japanese word he could remember was the name of a meal, “tonkatsu” which they adopted as their own surname in canada. murasaki’s father explains that the word is not entirely japanese: “tonkatsu isn’t really a purely japanese word. ton, meaning pork, is japanese, but katsu is adopted from ‘cutled’, and i don’t know the origins of that word” (goto 1997: 209). as lisa harris has also observed, “goto seems to be suggesting that notions of authenticity tied to a particular place are always socially constructed and subject to change. they must therefore be understood as part of an ongoing process of negotiation” (harris 2008: 26). http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� eva pich ponce language value 4 (2), 70-88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 77 the third part of the novel consists of only a page, which represents everything that has been lost or forgotten: “part three. everything that is missing or lost or caught between memory and make believe or forgotten or hidden or sliced from the body like an unwanted tumour” (goto 1997: 159). it represents the unnameable, the missing part in an immigrant story, the things that have been forgotten or retold in another way, everything that has been erased from memory in the transition of becoming an other. keiko and her husband have chosen to forget and their personality has changed because of this decision. they become, as pilar cuder-domínguez et al. have pointed out, “mere shadows of the full beings they could have been”, since their effort to be accepted and to assimilate into ‘white’ canadian culture only results in silence and invisibility (2011: 106 and 111). shinji used to speak a lot in his youth, and suddenly he feels he is “half a person” (goto 1997: 207). as he explains: “i was ashamed. i felt a loss so fine it pierced my heart. made it ache. so i stopped talking” (goto 1997: 207). similarly, keiko ends up with a nervous breakdown when her mother leaves. naoe was indeed the only person that tried to preserve her cultural background through stories and memories. when she leaves the house, keiko stops talking and remains in bed. she only recovers from her depression after wearing japanese night clothes and eating japanese food. her husband also feels better when reading japanese books and eating salted seaweed paste. it is through memory, food and language that one’s culture and identity can be maintained. throughout the first part of the novel, naoe describes her youth and the atrocities of the war. the memory of these facts may be lost as her daughter refuses to hear and the younger generations cannot understand the language. yet, naoe keeps on talking: “don’t come to me for answers, child, these are only words”, she says to murasaki. however, the importance of the words she utters is constantly implied in the text: “the words of an old woman can change little in this world and nothing of the past [...] i only know i must” (goto 1997: 21). according to muna shafiq, “naoe’s incessant communication in japanese symbolically (re)constructs and (re)asserts the collective voice of japanese canadians” (2006: 6). the language of naoe is a “language of memory, pain, desire” (goto 1997: 129). her words allow her to preserve a link with her culture and to depict her past. her japanese background is however not free from criticism and naoe’s words do not hesitate to question the injustices she saw in her childhood and youth. she describes the social http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� memory and language in hiromi goto’s chorus of mushrooms language value 4 (2), 70-88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 78 injustices that existed in japan and in china before the war. she also criticizes the sexist treatment of women in that country. her constant discourse is also a way to make up for a silent past in which she didn’t dare to question social injustices: “the pain of not having spoken, of not bothering to ask questions, still aches inside me now”, she says (goto 1997: 46). the words she utters as an old woman are the words of a wisdom acquired year after year: there are ages of silence and ages of roaring. when i was young and beautiful, my lips were an ornament upon my face. now my face is crumpled with care and seams adorn my cheeks. my mouth bursts wide and the words rush out, a torrent of noise and scatters. an old woman on a wooden chair might not be much to look at, but step inside her circle of sound and fall into a tornado (24). the same idea is repeated some pages later and stresses the importance of the character’s discourse: “if an old woman sits in a chair and never gets out and talks and talks and talks, don’t ignore her. she might be saying something that will change the colour of your eyes” (goto 1997: 37). yet, nobody understands the language she speaks. as she says, “my words are only noises in this place i call a home” (goto 1997: 11). however, these last words also highlight that, in spite of all, she does consider her house in nanton “a home”. in fact, it is interesting to observe the evolution of the character’s attitude towards the canadian wind. the beginning of the first part of the novel stresses naoe’s dislike for “this unrelenting, dust-driven, crack your fingers dry wind” (goto 1997: 3). she tries to fight against the noise of the wind with the sound of her words. as the novel progresses, naoe also remembers japanese winds. first, she recalls a “non-wind” that characterized the summers of her childhood in japan, which are described as “a breathless time of sucking air like water” (goto 1997: 69). later, she remembers another wind, called “kama itachi. an evil wind that moves with the speed of a weasel and cuts with the sting of a scythe” (goto 1997: 75). through her narrative, she acknowledges that japanese winds can be as threatening as the canadian prairie wind. when she leaves the house and accepts to move on, her opinion about the canadian wind changes: “funny how i hated the wind so, when i was sheltered from it. we are sisters, you and i, and your cool breath upon my cheeks will comfort me” (goto 1997: 81). it is only after remembering and narrating her memories that naoe feels free to leave the house: “useless to waste time on sentimental memory. i may be an old fool, but http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� eva pich ponce language value 4 (2), 70-88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 79 stupidity is another matter. so important to remember, but say the words out loud. don’t wallow in pools of yesterday, i say. don’t drown in yesterday’s tears” (goto 1997: 74). at the end of the novel, naoe takes part in a rodeo, and rides a bull like a cowboy. through this image, the text stresses the absurdity of stereotypes and highlights the character’s transformation. as mari sasano has observed: [naoe] has infiltrated the ranks. while furiously not white canadian, she fully embraces and occupies aspects of that culture that please her. entering in means that the centre is neither sealed nor exclusive. membership changes, and as it does, the norm is altered. by challenging expectations and by living outside of the fear of being detected as abnormal, it is possible to carve out a new space of belonging while remaining truthful about the differences that do exist (1998: 51) if naoe’s success as a bull rider may signify her appropriation of a male western canadian tradition, her success is nuanced by the fact that she is wearing a mask, as eva darias beautell has argued (2003: 40). nevertheless, naoe progressively becomes closer to canadian culture just as keiko accepts the introduction of japanese food in her house. food is essential in this novel, where one seems to be what he eats. as the shop assistant states: “eating’s a part of being after all” (goto 1997: 138). according to heather latimer, “eating is a gendered and racialized act that constantly informs how the characters see themselves emotionally and psychologically” (2006: 1). although there isn’t any japanese food in keiko’s kitchen, naoe manages to get some sent by her brother and to hide it in her room. it is through food and language that she tries to preserve her culture. she shares the food with murasaki, just as she tells her stories from japan in a language the child cannot speak. the grandmother’s bed becomes a “bed of feasts”, a “bed of tales” (goto 1997: 18). lisa harris has also observed how “food unites naoe and murasaki”. murasaki “learns to use food and language as tools to shape her own version of a canadian future” (harris 2008: 24). she cannot speak japanese nor hold her chopsticks properly: “i know. i don’t hold my pen properly either. but i can still write. and i can still eat”, she says (goto 1997: 121). according to murasaki, eating is an important way of getting to know a culture: there are people who say that eating is only a superficial means of understanding a different culture. that eating at exotic restaurants and oohing and aahing over the food is not even worth the bill paid. you haven’t learned anything at all. i say that’s a lie. what can be more basic than food itself? food to begin to grow? [...] but don’t stop there, my friend, don’t stop there, because food is the point of departure. a place where growth begins” (goto 1997: 201). http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� memory and language in hiromi goto’s chorus of mushrooms language value 4 (2), 70-88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 80 it is through language and tales that it continues. words, like food, can nurture, and can be “swallow[ed]” (goto 1997: 29). they become like the squid which “swells and softens”: “i held my words inside my mouth until they swelled and softened” (goto 1997: 18), says murasaki. listening to the sound of foreign words becomes a way to discover and imagine another cultural background. iii. language words appear in the novel as material elements which can “take form and live and breathe among us. language is a living beast” (goto 1997: 99). they seem to have a life of their own, one that the self cannot control. they can “change shape and size”, “grow arms and legs”, and weigh heavily, as the memory of the characters: “words, words, words, words. ahh, words grow heavier every day, upon my bony back”, says naoe (goto 1997: 21). the text includes many words in japanese and does not provide their translation into english. the reader is thus put in the position of an outcast, unable to have access to the content of the words. our expectations of resolving difference into unity, or as hutcheon would say, of trying to “absorb the margin into the centre” (1988: 11) are thus frustrated. as murasaki listens to the words uttered by her grandmother without understanding them, the reader sees the signifiers and can only guess or imagine their meaning. hiromi goto has explained why she decided not to provide any translation: i wanted to highlight that difference exists, all cannot be understood, language could and can be a barrier. this is based on my assumption that most of my readers are englishspeaking and do not understand japanese. this is the audience the book is mainly speaking to [...] (goto 1996: 112) as muna shafiq has pointed out, “this strategy obliges the unilingual dominant language reader to seek meaning outside the dominant language” (2006: 8). yet, the materiality and the sound of the words introduce the reader to the other culture, as a child learning some aspects of the language by immersion. language appears as a constraint but also as a meaningful way of arousing interest towards what is unknown and foreign. although murasaki cannot understand the language used by naoe, communication still takes place through body language: she cannot understand the words i speak, but she can read the lines on my brow, the creases beside my mouth. i could speak the other to her, but my lips refuse and my tongue http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� eva pich ponce language value 4 (2), 70-88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 81 swells in revolt. i want so much for someone to hear, yet it must be in my words (goto 1997: 15). the reader is encouraged to think about translation and about how different languages do not have exact equivalents for some concepts. when learning japanese, murasaki realizes there is no word to express love “except to a spouse or lover” (goto 1997: 54). naoe also sees that the english word “water” doesn’t indicate whether the water is cold or warm, whereas the distinction is made clear by the japanese words “mizu” and “oyu” (goto 1997: 170). according to murasaki, the good thing about speaking several languages is that it allows you to fill these gaps: “when there isn’t one word in english, it will be there in japanese and if there’s something lacking in your tongue, i’ll reach for it in english. so i say to you in english. i love you, obachan” (goto 1997: 54). as mari sasano has highlighted: rather than being suspended half-in-half-out of two cultures, murasaki actually has an edge over either: she slips between them as easily as a salamander inhabits water and land. [...] contrary to keiko’s philosophy of childraising, murasaki benefits from, instead of being confused by, the juggling of two cultures (1998: 42). in her childhood, murasaki couldn’t speak nor understand the japanese language. in spite of this, the japanese words pronounced by her grandmother meant more to her than the conversations in english she had with her parents: “the things we talked about would never have the power to linger. ‘how was school?’ and, ‘pass the gravy boat,’ were sad substitutes for my malnourished culture” (goto 1997: 99). she imagined what her grandmother said in japanese. a new kind of communication was created through her imagination: “i couldn’t understand the words she spoke, but this is what i heard. mukashi, muhashi, omukashi... listen murasaki, listen” (goto 1997: 18). it is interesting to see how the sound of the words itself becomes poetry and seems to have an incantatory value: i turned my head slowly in obachan’s lap, the fabric scratch and stiff. inhaled dust and poetry. she stroked my forehead with her palm, and her words, they flowed fluid. i snuggled close and curled my legs and stopped pretending to understand. only listened. and listened. and then my mouth opened on its own accord and words fell from my tongue like treasure [...] obachan and i, our voices lingered, reverberated off hollow walls and stretched across the land with streamers of silken thread” (goto 1997: 52 and 20) the importance of language and of the two voices speaking together is stressed by the repetition of this same paragraph in the novel. communication can still take place in spite of the language used and even if the interlocutors are not together, i.e. “over distance and time” (goto 1997: 139). the characters can “hear” each other’s “thoughts” http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� memory and language in hiromi goto’s chorus of mushrooms language value 4 (2), 70-88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 82 (goto 1997: 114). the text defies normal realist logic. language can be learnt or suddenly forgotten. keiko’s husband can read books in japanese but he cannot speak the words out loud nor remember his name. murasaki knows what some japanese words “mean” but she doesn’t know “what they are” (goto 1997: 136). the narrator also plays with antiquated english words such as “league” or “fortnight”. as patricia l. gantzert has observed, “they have no specific meaning for naoe or murasaki, emphasizing the indefiniteness of any word. ‘whatever that means’ is a phrase murasaki often uses in her questioning discourse” (1997: 32). as the novel goes on, language is treated in a more surrealist way. naoe leaves the house and starts speaking in english with a cowboy who has a strong english accent. she even starts speaking herself with this accent just as he loses his own: “sher”, she says (goto 1997: 112). however the reader cannot be sure about the language or the accent that is being used, since the characters are not sure about it either. as mari sasano has observed, “language becomes unconscious. [...] naoe, when she has developed more of a rapport with tengu, remarks that his cowboy accent is gone, but in fact he didn’t have one to begin with; she has inserted the accent to fit with her preconceptions of him” (1998: 43). at the beginning of the novel, the controlling-narrator states that she will tell the story in japanese. therefore, the english used in the text implies that one layer of translation has been introduced. however, the narrator herself thinks she has been speaking in english all the time. “haven’t we been talking japanese all along?”, her lover reminds her (goto 1997: 196-197). the reader cannot be sure of the language that is actually being spoken nor of the identity of the different characters. pilar cuder-domínguez et al. have observed how in this novel translation “becomes oddly unnecessary between people speaking different languages, thus intimating true communication beyond words, whereas at other times translation allows for metamorphosis, change, and progress, resulting in a fluid, unfixed subjectivity” (2011: 138-139). the lives of murasaki and naoe seem to mingle. they both leave home and have a cowboy lover whom they abandon afterwards. this fusion is also encouraged by naoe who says to murasaki: “why don’t i talk sometimes and you just move your lips and it http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� eva pich ponce language value 4 (2), 70-88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 83 will look like you’re the one who’s talking” (goto 1997: 127). naoe chooses to be called purple, the english translation of murasaki: ‘so, who is murasaki and who is purple?’ ‘the words are different, but in translation, they come together.’ ‘so you’re a translation of murasaki and murasaki is a translation of you?’ [...] ‘that’s one reading of it’ (goto 1997: 174) as steve mccullough has observed, in the novel “proper names proliferate identities and problematize the notion of textual origins instead of simply positioning coherent selves in cultural-linguistic worlds” (2003: 160). the narrator plays with the notions of transition and translation to show that the characters’ identities evolve throughout the novel, but also shift and merge according to linguistic and cultural factors. muna shafiq has also highlighted how goto “constructs hybrid narrative identities that stand in opposition to and challenge notions of authenticity based on pure cultures” (2006: 8). there is not one identity, but several. naoe thinks about a philosopher who dreamt he was a butterfly dreaming that he was a philosopher: “and when he woke up, he didn’t know if he was a philosopher or a butterfly. what nonsense. this need to differentiate. why, he was both, of course” (goto 1997: 44). naoe and murasaki are characterized by different identities which coexist in a variety of degrees. as pilar cuder-domínguez et al. have stated: rather than being crippled by the memories of a traumatic past, [naoe] is so empowered that she comes to symbolize a wealth of future possibilities [...] naoe embodies the power of the tale and the storyteller to create new life and endow the current one with new meanings (2011: 99). the novel contains different stories and legends which intertwine with the character’s experiences. these appear as additional mirrors which echo the character’s lives. as muna shafiq has observed, the characters “employ the oral tradition of telling stories to reinvent themselves as bicultural (canadian and japanese) women, celebrating their ethnic differences (2006: 5). iv. the importance of storytelling as she did not understand what her grandmother said in japanese, the controllingnarrator is imagining the stories told by naoe. the narrator is not trustworthy. we know she lied to her friend patricia and invented what her grandmother was saying. as she affirms, “i’m making up the truth as i go along” (goto 1997: 12). she is not even sure http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� memory and language in hiromi goto’s chorus of mushrooms language value 4 (2), 70-88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 84 of the reliability of what she tells: “did i just make that up or is it true? i don’t even know anymore. saying it out loud can make it so” (goto 1997: 53). sometimes she directly admits having lied: “that’s a lie. one of many, i suppose” (goto 1997: 98). however, as we have seen, the notion of truth is subverted in the novel. it appears as a concept which is always under construction and negotiation. the emphasis is put on the telling, and particularly on the re-telling. in the “acknowledgements” of the novel, goto states: “in the process of re-telling personal myth, i have taken tremendous liberties with my grandmother’s history. this novel is a departure from historical ‘fact’ into the realms of contemporary folk legend. and should (almost) always be considered a work of fiction”. she is “re-telling” the life of her family in the novel, just as murasaki is “retelling and re-creating” the story (goto 1997: 185). as goto has explained: our worlds no longer exist in isolation. the arts are a place where cultures and stories can intersect, overlap. [...] i’ve rewritten japanese traditional folk tales with a north american feminist sensibility. [...] i make sense of my world with the instruments of the cultures i’ve inhabited. i feel lucky in that i’m in a position to choose the best of both worlds (goto, in morris 2008: 235). julia kristeva has observed that “any text is constructed as a mosaic of quotations, any text is the absorption and transformation of another” (1980: 66). memories and legends entwine in murasaki’s account. as the character explains, “it’s funny how you can sift your memories, braid them with other stories. come up with a single strand and call it truth” (goto 1997: 93). the intertexts inserted in the novel present contrasting points and therefore insist on multiplicity. many of the legends told echo the character’s stories. the tale of an old woman that must be abandoned by her family recalls naoe’s position as an old woman who is going to be sent to an old people’s home. the legend of a family that could not have children reminds that of naoe’s brother, who has not been able to have descendants. an encounter at an airport becomes “another airport story” (goto 1997: 53). myth, legend and reality are mixed. as hutcheon has pointed out, novels “renarrate and re-conceptualize the past, both literary and historical, and thereby reformulate the possibilities of subjectivity narrated in them” (1988: 8-9). stories are constructed in a way that is similar to the technique used in a japanese legend by two characters named izanami and izanagi. they create a new home just by pronouncing the words out loud: “‘we are gods [...] we can create’[...] ‘there are no http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� eva pich ponce language value 4 (2), 70-88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 85 rules,’ izanami chanted, and saying it aloud made it so” (goto 1997: 30). in this legend, in which the two children create japan, one of them exclaims “let there be light!” and is immediately reprimanded by his sister”. patricia l. gantzert has observed how the narrator makes reference to eastern and western texts and beliefs: “pokes at master narratives of western society, such as those of shakespeare (1997: 69, 175) and the bible, shake up the assumptions often association with them or situate their ‘truths’ in new relations” (1997: 31). when naoe leaves, murasaki realizes how people are looking forward to hearing exotic tales: “everybody, including me, was always looking for a story. that the story could be anything [...] the story can be anything, but there have to be details. people love details. the stranger, the more exotic the better” (goto 1997: 89). through the stories they hear, they construct their preconceived ideas about other cultures. as murasaki points out, “people want to hear a story, and then, after they’re done with it, they can stick the story back to wherever it came from” (goto 1997: 1). however, the multiple perspectives provided by the narrative disrupt these expectations and make it impossible for the reader to draw a stereotypical conclusion from the text. the different points of view, the mixture of facts and legend, of reality and imagined or invented parts show how a story is not an establish set of notions: “funny thing, murasaki, how these stories keep changing”, says naoe (goto 1997: 73). as this character points out: “this is not the story i learned, but it’s the story i tell. it is the nature of words to change with the telling. they are changing in your mind even as i speak” (goto 1997: 32) thus, telling a story implies creation, but also re-creation, and the characters and facts change with the telling: “it can’t really be you once i make it a story. it becomes someone else, you know?”, says murasaki (goto 1997: 55). telling stories is also a way of creating human ties. as naoe says: [...] stories are shared. [...] there is a partnership in the telling and listening, that it is of equal importance [...] if the positions become static, there can never be stories. stories grow out of stories grow out of stories. listening becomes telling, telling listening (goto 1997: 172). whereas her mother “didn’t tell tales at all”, the stories told by naoe fostered a deeper link between her and murasaki, who wanted to “hear bedtime stories, hear lies and truth dissembled” (goto 1997: 29). the importance of telling one’s story is highlighted by http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� memory and language in hiromi goto’s chorus of mushrooms language value 4 (2), 70-88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 86 the way murasaki imagines her mother’s tales: “her stories must be ugly things filled with bitterness and pain. the pain of never having told” (goto 1997: 32). it is interesting to see that murasaki is named after an important japanese writer, murasaki shikibu, who is considered to be the first person to write a novel and to “create the antihero” (goto 1997: 165) in her work, the tale of genji. as patricia gantzert has pointed out, the tale of genji “offers an important model of courageous achievement in the face of restrictive conditions”. this work may thus offer murasaki a valid representation upon which to build a positive image of herself as a japanesecanadian woman (1997: 63). by mixing different stories within the novel, chorus of mushrooms questions the established notions that surround immigration, and it tries to create a different kind of account. “an immigrant story with a happy ending. [...] nothing is impossible. within reason, of course”, says murasaki (goto 1997: 159). as mari sasano has affirmed, “muriel/murasaki ana naoe are attempting, in their retelling of folktales, as well as in the living of their lives, to unlock themselves from the expected unhappy endings”. part three, “an immigrant story with a happy ending” (goto 1997: 159) is, as sasano states, a “page-long non-story waiting to be written into existence” (1998: 46). part four shows how the experience of immigrants can be characterized by a happy ending. however, by introducing racist texts at the end of the novel, this perspective is attenuated, and recalls the tragic alternatives that may await them. references colavincenzo, m. 2005. “‘fables of the reconstruction of the fables’: multiculturalism, postmodernism, and the possibilities of myth in hiromi goto’s chorus of mushroms”. in davis g. (ed.) towards a transcultural future: literature and society in a 'post'-colonial world. new york: rodopi, 223-230. cuder-domínguez, p., martin-lucas, b. and villegas-lopez, s. (eds.) 2011. transnational poetics: asian canadian women’s fiction of the 1990s. toronto: tsar publications. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� eva pich ponce language value 4 (2), 70-88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 87 darias beautell, e. 2003. “hiromi goto’s chorus of mushrooms: cultural difference, visibility and the canadian traditon”. revista alicantina de estudios ingleses 16, 6-50. gantzert, p. 1997. “throwing voices: dialogism in the novels of three contemporary canadian women writers”. unpublished thesis submitted in the department of english of the university of manitoba. goto, h. 1996. “translating the self: moving between cultures”. west coast line 30 (2), 111-113. goto, h. 1997. chorus of mushrooms. london: the women’s press. harris, l. 2008 “eating and reading hiromi goto”. cuizine: the journal of canadian food cultures 1 (1). 24 january 2012 <http://id.erudit.org/iderudit/019372> hutcheon, l. 1988. the canadian postmodern: a study of contemporary englishcanadian fiction. toronto: oxford university press. kristeva, j. 1980. “word, dialogue and novel”. in roudiez l. (ed.) desire in language: a semiotic approach to literature and art. new york: columbia university press, 64-91. latimer, h. 2006. “eating, abjection, and transformation in the work of hiromi goto”. thirdspace: a journal of feminist theory & culture, 5 (2). 24 january 2012 <http://www.thirdspace.ca/journal/article/view/latimer> mccullough, s. 2003. “‘trust me’: responding to the threat of writing in chorus of mushrooms”. english studies in canada 29 (1-2), 149-170. morris, r. 2008. “braiding race politics and narrative form: an interview with hiromi goto”. in looking through the twin lens of race and gender: a new politics of surveillance in asian australian and asian canadian women’s writing. unpublished thesis submitted at the university of wollongong. sasano, m. 1998. “words like buckshoot: taking aim at notions of nation in hiromi goto’s chorus of mushrooms”. open letter 10 (3), 38-53. shafiq, m. 2006. “linguistic hybridity in gloria anzaldúa’s borderlands, antonia d’alfonso’s avril ou l’anti-passion, and hiromi goto’s chorus of http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� memory and language in hiromi goto’s chorus of mushrooms language value 4 (2), 70-88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 88 mushrooms”. in gonzalez m. and f. tolron (eds.) translating identity and the identity of translation. newcastle: cambridge scholar press, 3-19. smith, e. 2007. “‘can you listen before you hear?’: responsible reading and the politics of second-person narration in hiromi goto’s chorus of mushrroms”. visions of canada. canadian studies in europe 6, 251267. received: 25 february 2012 accepted: 29 march 2012 cite this article as: pich ponce, e. 2012. “memory and language in hiromi goto’s chorus of mushrooms”. language value 4 (2), 70-88. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.erevistes.uji.es/languagevalue. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.6 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.6� i. introduction ii. the memories of immigration iii. language iv. the importance of storytelling references cite this article as: pich ponce, e. 2012. “memory and language in hiromi goto’s chorus of mushrooms”. language value 4 (2), 70-88. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.6 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2013, volume 5, number 1 pp. 161-174 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2013.5.10 161 multimedia review managing the translation workflow with a computer assisted translation tool: sdl trados 2011 <http://www.sdl.com> reviewed by laura ramírez polo laura.ramirez-polo@uv.es universitat de valencia, spain i. introduction over the past 30 years, translators have been continuously incorporating the new advances in technology into their daily work. nowadays, it is inconceivable that a professional does not use a computer with at least a word processor and some tool allowing terminology to be managed and looked up, be it some application on the internet or a simple spreadsheet. however, most translators need more specific tools to cope with their daily work. indeed, the idea of the translator’s workstation incorporating all the features needed by a professional translator has been present since the 1960s, when the alpac report published in 1966 (alpac, 1966), which analysed the state of the art on machine translation, recommended the development of tools intended to aid, not to substitute, the translator. since then, a number of attempts1 1 see hutchins (1998: 293) for a review on the origins of the translator’s workstation; arthem (1978) explained the application of translation technology in the european union; and kay (1980/1997) wrote a seminal paper setting out the ideal design for a translator’s workstation. have been made to define the ideal translator’s workstation. with the quick expansion of desktop computers in the 1990s, the first commercial computer-assisted translation (cat) tools were born, such as trados workbench or transit, and all of them have been incorporating these ideas until the present day, expanding their functionality as new needs arise. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.sdl.com/� mailto:laura.ramirez-polo@uv.es� managing the translation workflow with a computer assisted translation tool: sdl trados 2011 language value 5 (1), 161–174 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 162 the following review aims at analysing the next-to-last release2 of one of the most widely used tools in the world of professional translation, sdl trados studio 2011, focusing on the particular needs of professional translators. in order to do so, we will review the main components of a cat tool and will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of implementing this type of technology in the translation workflow. subsequently we will describe the translation process using sdl trados studio 2011, dividing it into three phases: before, during and after the translation. the last part of this review offers some alternatives to sdl trados studio 2011, as well as some ideas for its application in the translation classroom. ii. components of a cat tool rico pérez (2002) adapted the categorisation of tools proposed by melby (1998) in order to outline the automated translation workflow, dividing it into three main phases: before, during and after translation. in each of these phases, different tools and different components of each tool are used. the idea behind a cat tool is to offer an all-round product that comprises most of the tasks carried out during these three phases. therefore, most cat tools include a series of main components or features that aim to satisfy the needs of the professional translator throughout the whole process. these can be summarised as follows3 • a translation memory system manages translation memories, that is, bilingual text files that contain segmented, aligned, parsed and classified texts (eagles, 1996). this component allows the creation, editing and deleting of translation units and whole translation memories. besides, the system not only stores segmented texts, but also allows their retrieval when similar or identical texts need to be translated again. : • a terminology management system enables translators to create, edit and delete databases as well as concepts and terms within these databases. edo (2011) carried out a review of different terminology management systems integrated within cat tools. 2 the last versión of the software is sdl trados 2014, which was released in july 2013. 3 see candel mora and ramírez polo (in press) for a more detailed description of these components. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� book and multimedia review language value 5 (1), 161–174 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 163 • an alignment tool segments and aligns two bilingual texts that have not been processed with a cat tool in order to integrate them into a translation memory. this may be useful to reuse previously translated material or to make use of bilingual texts coming from a reliable source. • editor. though there are different categories of cat tools and some of them use an external editor such as ms word, there is a growing trend to endow them with their own editor. this editor usually only supports an intermediate format, which can be either proprietary or standardised, such as xliff4 apart from these main components, cat tools also include different utilities for quality management, such as a spellchecker, and controls to verify the correct use of terminology or whether tags, numbers and formatting issues have been placed correctly. other more advanced features are related to project management. though these features can vary greatly from system to system depending on the version and sophistication of the system, most cat tools include some kind of statistics count in order to calculate the number of words, segments and characters to be translated, which allows the professional translator to prepare budgets and invoices, as well as to establish a date for delivery. . therefore, documents in various formats that are to be translated in the editor must undergo a transformation process in order to be ready for translation. the editor interacts with the translation memory and the terminology database, offering added functionalities such as pretranslation, assembly of subsegments, auto-propagation, active terminology recognition or concordance search. iii. advantages and disadvantages of using cat tools the use of this type of technology brings advantages and disadvantages with it. bowker (2002: 114-125) reviewed the benefits and drawbacks of working with a translation memory system, including time, quality, electronic form, file formats, filters and standards, character sets and language-related difficulties, attitudes, rates of pay, ownership, integration with other tools and economic aspects. 4 xliff is an xml-based format created to standardise localisation. xliff was standardised by oasis in 2002. its current specification is v1.2, released on feb. 1, 2008. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� managing the translation workflow with a computer assisted translation tool: sdl trados 2011 language value 5 (1), 161–174 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 164 in summary, one of the main advantages of cat tools claimed by the vendors is the ability to reuse previous translations, thus saving time, as well as to guarantee terminological consistency, given a well-built termbase. with regard to the drawbacks, some users might have difficulties in learning how to work with these tools due to their growing technical sophistication. price can also be a hurdle, especially for novice translators and students that wish to get an insight into these applications. therefore, before acquiring and integrating this type of technology into the translation process, it is important to take into account a series of factors that might tip the balance in favour or against its acquisition. ramírez polo (2010) gives some advice on how to make a decision and summarises these factors as follows: the real need for such a tool, the direct or indirect obligation imposed by the customer or agency in order to be able to work, the price and how much the user is able to afford, the functionality of the tool, the formats that can be processed, the portability in different operating systems, the compatibility with other tools, the ease of use or usability, the community of users and social tools such as forums, blogs, facebook groups, twitter accounts, etc. that might be of help and finally the quality, availability and price of the customer service. iv. sdl trados studio 2011 sdl trados studio 2011 is a software package designed for professional translation. the history of the program dates back to 1984, when jochen hummel and iko knyphausen initially set up trados as a language service provider (lsp). however, it was not until 1992 when the first version of translator’s workbench, a simple software application intended to help translators, was first released (sdl, 2012). in the following years the original software underwent considerable changes and in 2005 the company was acquired by the multilanguage provider sdl. after a number of attempts to market both translator’s workbench and the proprietary sdlx tool in a single software package or suite that still offered them as separate tools, in 2009 the company finally launched the first integrated version, which aimed to offer all the different functionalities in a single application with one consistent graphical user interface. sdl trados studio 2011 is an improved version of this first attempt. however, the terminology management system multiterm (including the terminology database http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� book and multimedia review language value 5 (1), 161–174 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 165 management system, a widget for desktop look-up and a utility to convert terminological data from other formats into multiterm format) as well as the alignment component winalign and the recently acquired tool passolo for the localisation of software are still single applications. furthermore, they also offer a tool for terminology extraction that needs a separate licence. the price of sdl trados studio 2011 ranges from 99 euro for the starter edition to 2195 euro for the professional version. v. translation workflow with sdl trados studio 2011 in the following sections we will review the functionalities of sdl trados studio 2011 as they are applied in the translation workflow. upon program launch, a clean, functional interface (home view) offers several view options (editor, translation memory, files, reports), as well as a selection of the major tasks: open document, open package, new project, terminology management, align translated documents, etc. (figure 1). figure 1. sdl trados studio 2011’s start screen, which allows access to the most important procedures in the central panel. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� managing the translation workflow with a computer assisted translation tool: sdl trados 2011 language value 5 (1), 161–174 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 166 v. 1. first stage: before the translation in the first stage, there are three main possibilities: • the translator wants to translate a single file into one target language. • the translator wants to translate a number of files into one or various target languages and creates a translation project. • the translator receives a package from the agency or the customer, that is, a compressed file containing all the necessary components for the translation: translation memory, terminology databases (if available), files to be translated and, if necessary, reference files (such as reference pdf files or pictures). the first case is rather infrequent, since even if only one file needs to be translated, a project is usually created containing a translation memory and, if available or necessary, a terminology database, which needs to have been created previously with multiterm. the translation memory is usually either provided by the client (agency, direct customer) or created ad-hoc for the project. machine translation technology can also be used in the project. in the creation of the project an assistant helps the user in the following steps: • choose whether a project should be based on a template, a previous project, or should be created from scratch. • provide project details: name and location in the computer. optionally the user can add a description and indicate the date and time the work is due and assign the project to a customer. • choose the project languages. the user needs to choose the source language and the target languages. • select the project files, that is, the files that are going to be translated. reference files that might be of help for the translator can be added too. • select a translation memory or a machine translation engine. if no translation memories are available, the user can create one ad-hoc within the application. the integration of several mt engines is one of the novelties of studio 2009 and 2011. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� book and multimedia review language value 5 (1), 161–174 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 167 • add termbases. if the customer does not provide a termbase or there are none available, the user first needs to create one in a separate application, multiterm. • as a new feature, sdl trados studio 2011 incorporates the possibility of adding previously translated files for each translatable document in the project. the software will then extract the translation units and transfer them to the editor. this new feature is called perfectmatch. once the project has been set up (figure 2), the next step is to carry out a custom task sequence. this sequence can be adapted if needed, but typically it comprises the following tasks: • convert to a translatable format: content and format from the original file will be separated and the documents will be converted into an intermediary file format which can be processed in the tool editor. sdl trados studio 2011 works with sdlxliff, a variant of xliff. • copy to target languages: folders are created for each language pair and the intermediary files are copied in each of them. these files are bilingual, that is, they contain both the source and the target segments. • apply perfectmatch: if bilingual files have been added, segments will be extracted and transferred to the file to be translated. these segments are then blocked in the editor, since they have already been reviewed and approved, without having to review them over and over again. • analyse files: a statistical account of the different files of the project is performed. • pre-translate files: finally, the files are checked against the translation memory and, if there are any previous translations available, these will be introduced in the bilingual text and be visible when the file is opened in the editor. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� managing the translation workflow with a computer assisted translation tool: sdl trados 2011 language value 5 (1), 161–174 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 168 figure 2. project setup. once the project has been prepared, first the translator checks the analysis and the pretranslation reports in order to determine how many words the files contain and, if there were any translation memories available, how many segments have already been translated. subsequently she opens the files, one by one, that will be processed in the editor. v. 2. second stage: during the translation in a second stage, the translator starts her work. the editor has a table layout, where the source text is presented on the left-hand side and the translation is introduced on the right-hand side, as can be observed in figure 3. the user moves sequentially from one segment to the next, either with the mouse, with the direction arrows or with a shortcut that confirms the segment to save it in the translation memory. once it has been stored, it can be retrieved later if there is a similar or identical segment in the source document. at this stage, the translator can make use of a wide range of options that help her to optimise her work. some of the most interesting options offered by sdl trados studio 2011 are auto-propagation, active terminology recognition, concordance search, autosuggest, quickplace and real-time preview. in the following we will comment briefly on each of these features: http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� book and multimedia review language value 5 (1), 161–174 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 169 • auto-propagation: segments that are identical or only differ in placeables (numbers, dates, measures, etc.) can be propagated automatically throughout the target text. • active terminology recognition: terminology in the source text that is stored in a termbase is recognised. the translator can introduce this terminology either with a mouse click, a shortcut or by starting to type it. • concordance search: the translator can look up the translation memory for terms or expressions while she is translating. • autosuggest: as we can see in figure 4, the user starts typing and the software suggests a word based on the termbase or on an autosuggest dictionary. in order to confirm and to introduce the word in the target text, the user only needs to confirm by pressing enter. • quickplace: this utility simplifies how to deal with formatting, tags, numbers, dates and all of those items that might not require translation or only need to be adapted in terms of format (e.g. automatically substituting “.” for “,” in numbers when translating from english into spanish). • real-time preview: the translator has only a limited view of the document she is translating, since it has been segmented and put in a tabular format. however, sdl trados studio 2011 has a preview function that allows the user to see what the real final document will look like. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� managing the translation workflow with a computer assisted translation tool: sdl trados 2011 language value 5 (1), 161–174 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 170 figure 3. editor window in sdl trados studio 2011. figure 4. example of the autosuggest technology. v. 3. third stage: after the translation in a final stage, the user has the possibility of conducting a quality check that comprises both a spell check and the verification of different aspects, such as tags, segments (if all have been translated, if source and target segments are identical), inconsistencies, punctuation, numbers or terminology, checking for the possible non-use of target terms, for instance. the verification settings can be configured in the project settings. furthermore, the translator can create a package for the reviewer, including the files, the translation memory and the termbase. during review, the reviewer can use the new feature track changes, which is very similar to the utility offered in ms word. insertions are marked in a different colour, together with the initials of the reviewer and the time, and deletions are crossed out, in a word-like manner. in addition, comments http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� book and multimedia review language value 5 (1), 161–174 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 171 can be made. once the text has been sent back to the translator, she can accept or reject the changes. if the reviewer does not have sdl trados studio 2011, there is also an interesting new feature that allows her to correct the document with the track changes utility in word and re-import the corrected file back into sdl trados studio 2011. to do so, the translator needs to export the file for external review. a final task that the translator might undertake once the translation has been reviewed is to update the main translation memories with the latest version of the target text, once it has been reviewed and approved. vi. alternatives to sdl trados studio 2011 even though sdl trados studio 2011 is one of the most widely used tools on the market, there are a number of alternatives, including déjà vu, transit, wordfast, memoq and across, to name just a few. however, it is difficult to establish a comparison among all of them, since there is a great deal of variation depending on the version and the type of licence. peris (2010) offers a comparison with the strengths and weaknesses of some of the subscription-based low-cost versions of these cat tools. another interesting alternative is omegat, a free software application which offers the basic functionalities of a cat tool: translation memory and dictionary management. this might be an alternative for novice translators or students who want to start using this type of technology in their processes. however, usually free software tools or lowcost versions of cat tools do not offer all the necessary functionalities and lack usability. furthermore, though most tools currently support tmx and xliff formats, which are standards for the transfer of translation memories and localisation files among different systems, there are still inconsistencies in the application of these standards. besides, most customers, especially translation agencies, “oblige” translators to use a certain software application, dismissing all other alternatives. vii. application in the classroom although sdl trados studio 2011 is a tool intended for professional use, it is not uncommon to find practical applications of cat tools in the classroom. some of these http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� managing the translation workflow with a computer assisted translation tool: sdl trados 2011 language value 5 (1), 161–174 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 172 are depicted in suau jiménez and ramírez polo (2010) and ramírez polo and ferrer mora (2010). basically, this type of technology can be implemented in four types of courses: • translation technology courses, based on the training of instrumental skills. here the cat tool is the main player and students learn the technical aspects of its functioning. • translation courses, based on the training of translation skills. students use the cat tool as an instrument in order to practise translation in an environment close to the one they can expect to find in professional practice. • terminology courses, based on the training of terminological skills. as in translation courses, students use the terminology management module of a cat tool as an instrument to practise terminology management in an environment close to the one they can expect to find in professional practice. • management courses, based on the training of management skills. students learn to use the management utilities of a cat tool to carry out a translation project and thus learn how to work in a professional way. sdl trados studio 2011 offers all these possibilities and can constitute a very enriching complement in the training of future translators because of its applicability in professional practice. furthermore, the company offers academic licences and has an academic programme for trainers, with materials and certifications for those who join it. viii. conclusions in this review, in general, we have dealt with the use of cat tools to manage the translation workflow and, more particularly, we have described how sdl trados studio 2011 works. in my opinion, the last release of this software package constitutes one of the most complete cat tools available on the market and offers a wide range of functionalities that help the translator to optimise her work. furthermore, including this type of technology in the classroom can bring students closer to real professional practice and offer them a competitive advantage against other future translators who have not been trained in the use of this software. it is important to note, however, that the acquisition http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� book and multimedia review language value 5 (1), 161–174 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 173 of such applications implies a considerable outlay and that a number of factors have to be considered before deciding to acquire a licence. references alpac 1966. “language and machines — computers in translation and linguistics” a report by the automatic language processing advisory committee, division of behavioral sciences. washington, dc: national academy of sciences, national research council. arthern, p.j. 1978 “machine translation and computerized terminology systems: a translator’s viewpoint”. in snell, b.n. (ed.) translating and the computer: proceedings of a seminar. london, uk: north-holland publishing company, 77108. bowker, l. 2002. computer-aided translation technology: a practical introduction. ottawa: university of ottawa press. candel mora, m.a. and ramírez polo, l. 2012. “translation technology in institutional settings: a decision-making framework towards the implementation of computer-assisted translation systems”. paper presented at international t3l conference: tradumatica, translation technologies & localization. barcelona. 2122 june 2011. eagles mt evaluation working group 1996. eagles evaluation of natural language processing systems. final report. eagles document eag-ewgpr.2. copenhagen, 271. edo marzá, n. 2011. “terminology management systems for the development of (specialised) dictionaries: a focus on wordsmith tools and termstar xv”. language value 3, 162-173. hutchins, j. 1998. “the origins of the translator’s workstation”. machine translation 13 (4), 287-307. kay, m. 1980/1997. “the proper place of men and machines in language translation”. machine translation 12 (1-2), 3-23. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� managing the translation workflow with a computer assisted translation tool: sdl trados 2011 language value 5 (1), 161–174 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 174 melby, a. 1998. “eight types of translation technology”. paper presented at the american translators association (ata) 39th annual conference. 10 september 2012 <http://www.ttt.org/technology/8types.pdf> peris, n. 2010. “cheap translation tech: who does what…and for how much?” 10 september 2012 <http://localizationlocalisation.wordpress.com/2010/08/24/ cheap-translation-tech-who-does-what-and-for-how-much/> ramírez polo, l. 2010: “¿qué me pongo? 10 consejos para adquirir una herramienta tao”. 10 september 2012 <http://laurapo.blogs.uv.es/%c2%bfque-me-pongo10-consejos-para-adquirir-una-herramienta-tao/> ramirez polo, l. and ferrer mora, h. 2010. “aplicación de las tic en traducción e interpretación en la universidad de valencia: experiencias y reflexiones”. redit 4, 23–41. rico, c. 2002. “el perfil del traductor profesional. desarrollo de competencias para una rápida incorporación a la industria”. in simposi sobre l’ensenyament a distància i semipresencial de la tradumàtica. bellaterra, catalunya, 1er, 8 pages. 10 september 2012 <http://ddd.uab.cat/pub/poncom/2002/64981/pertraproispa.pdf> sdl. “the history of sdl. celebrating innovation in the translation memory industry”. 10 september 2012 < http://www.translationzone.com/en/about-us/history-of-sdltrados/> suau jiménez, f. and ramírez polo, l. 2010. “las condiciones profesionales del traductor especializado: propuesta basada en las tic”. in garcía, m., p. ribera, a. costa, m.d. garcía, p. garcía, a. iglesias, m. del pozo and c. rodríguez (eds.) interacció comunicativa i ensenyament de llengües. valencia: universitat de valència (puv), 469-476. waβmer, t. 2011. “sdl trados studio 2011. reviewed by thomas waβmer”. multilingual 22(8), 14-19. received: 12 september 2012 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.ttt.org/technology/8types.pdf� http://localizationlocalisation.wordpress.com/2010/08/24/%20cheap-translation-tech-who-does-what-and-for-how-much/� http://localizationlocalisation.wordpress.com/2010/08/24/%20cheap-translation-tech-who-does-what-and-for-how-much/� http://laurapo.blogs.uv.es/%c2%bfque-me-pongo-10-consejos-para-adquirir-una-herramienta-tao/� http://laurapo.blogs.uv.es/%c2%bfque-me-pongo-10-consejos-para-adquirir-una-herramienta-tao/� http://ddd.uab.cat/pub/poncom/2002/64981/pertraproispa.pdf� http://www.translationzone.com/en/about-us/history-of-sdl-trados/� http://www.translationzone.com/en/about-us/history-of-sdl-trados/� multimedia review i. introduction ii. components of a cat tool iii. advantages and disadvantages of using cat tools iv. sdl trados studio 2011 v. translation workflow with sdl trados studio 2011 v. 1. first stage: before the translation v. 2. second stage: during the translation v. 3. third stage: after the translation vi. alternatives to sdl trados studio 2011 vii. application in the classroom viii. conclusions language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2012, volume 4, number 2 pp. 89-106 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.7 89 the voice of the cypresses. cyrus cassells and the poetry of salvador espriu dídac llorens cubedo dllorens@flog.uned.es universidad nacional de educación a distancia (uned), spain abstract “to the cypress again and again” is cyrus cassells’s poetic response to the work of salvador espriu, a poet whose reception has been limited by his belonging to a minority culture and his commitment to the catalan language. in its first eight sections, the poem reads as a dramatic monologue: its author adopts espriu’s voice, successfully evoking his poetic world. in what could be considered the second part of the poem, a different poetic speaker  identifiable with cassells  shares personal memories of espriu: the man, his nation and his culture. at the end of the poem, the emblematic cypresses are identified with the catalan people and their voice is heard. the poem is an example of epistolary elegy, a mode that allows cassells to enter into dialogue with deceased personalities who have had artistic or historical relevance. in so doing, the american poet shows, like espriu did, an acute sense of cultural tradition. keywords: “to the cypress again and again”, cyrus cassells, salvador espriu, epistolary elegy, poetic voice, imagery in its website, the european charter for regional or minority languages defines regional or minority language as one “traditionally used within a given territory of a state by nationals of that state who form a group numerically smaller than the rest of the state’s population”. as the president of the association internationale pour la défense des langues et cultures menacées, during the early 70s, the catalan poet salvador espriu (1913-1985) fought for the survival of minority languages spoken all over the world. in an interview, he connected this responsibility with the history of his own language: jo vaig reaccionar des del primer dia contra la intolerable arbitrarietat que suposa perseguir una llengua; va donar la casualitat que fos la meva, la catalana, però crec que hauria reaccionat de la mateixa manera contra la persecució de qualsevol altra llengua. ... [l]a meva reacció no va ser sentimental, sinó que va ser intel·lectual i ètica. (reina 1995b: 94) as a writer, espriu produced a body of literature that can be considered  among other things  a vindication of his own language, persecuted and belittled during franco’s http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� mailto:dllorens@flog.uned.es� the voice of the cypresses. cyrus cassells and the poetry of salvador espriu language value 4 (2), 89-106 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 90 regime1 his own liminal condition  an african american and gay man  has made the poet cyrus cassells (b. 1957) especially sensitive to the struggle of marginalized groups and minorities, to which he has given a poetic voice: “when you come from communities that have been oppressed [...] you just embody aspects of experience that might not have been articulated, because people’s testimonies and expressions are disregarded or ignored for whatever reasons” (jiménez 2009: 73). surely it must have been this special sensitivity that led cassells to read, study and translate catalan poetry, since a decisive first encounter with espriu’s verse. . despite espriu’s consistent and militant allegiance to the catalan language, his work has been internationally received. in his acceptance speech for the premi catalunya, harold bloom (2002) referred to espriu as a prominent figure in the catalan canon and defined him as “a remarkable poet by any international standard”. cassells wrote “to the cypress again and again” as a tribute to salvador espriu2 in his profile on the website of the national endowment for the arts, casells tells of his stays in barcelona, “to work on two projects, still life with children: selected poems of francesc parcerisas, and rider on the back of silence: tribute to salvador espriu, a . the first version of the poem  about 160 lines long  is divided into thirteen sections of varying length and metre patterns, and different voices can be heard: mainly espriu’s, but also cassells’s and the voice of the cypresses which, as we will see, becomes a central and pervading presence. the poem contains five temporal references that could be ordered into a narrative sequence: espriu’s life prior to the outbreak of the spanish civil war (1913-1936), franco’s regime, including the post-war (1939-1975), franco’s death (1975), cassells’ meeting with espriu (1984) and espriu’s death (1985). these dates will be useful in structuring our analysis of the poem, which will be explored in its connections with espriu’s poetic production and will focus on such aspects as point of view, imagery and themes. 1 for a detailed description of the persecution of catalan in the years following the spanish civil war, see josep benet’s catalunya sota el règim franquista (pp. 279-410). 2 the poem was first published in the journal callaloo (1986: 18-23) and later included in the collection soul make a path through shouting (1994). i choose to quote from the longer callaloo version  composed shortly after espriu’s death  since it will allow us to explore intertextual connectionas in mo depth. the poem’s title will be subsequently abbreviated to “to the cypress”. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� dídac llorens cubedo language value 4 (2), 89-106 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 91 memoir (with translations) about the catalan poet and nobel candidate, whom i met shortly before his death in 1985”. in section ix of the poem, the encounter is recalled: cassells? the name could be mallorcan  how old are you? twenty-seven. and you’ve never read don quixote! (cassells 1986: 21) the reader may assume that espriu’s death causes cassells to reminisce about the day they met, the year before. in the first eight sections of the poem, the latter adopts espriu’s voice to compare his life before and after the war, declare his ambitions as a writer and evoke the scenery of his homeland. this imagined exercise in poetic sincerity has espriu  essentially an impersonal poet  do what he rarely did in verse: communicate his own experience directly in a confessional tone. in fact, these sections resemble the dramatic monologue: a vivid impression of the speaker is conveyed and a sense of audience is implied (furniss and bath 1996: 175-176)  section iv begins with the question “can you understand?”, section vi with the interjection “listen” and in xiii we find the vocative “cyrus”. i. before the fighting (1913-1936) maria aurèlia capmany, a close friend of espriu, wrote about the poet’s experience of the spanish civil war (1936-39). her words indicate the extent to which the conflict affected him. it rendered his ideal of harmony in political difference and cultural diversity in spain dramatically impossible and, at a personal level, it brought an abrupt end to a student career pursued, until that point, with enthusiasm and marked success: he did not return to the university until after franco’s death, when he was awarded an honorary degree. he earned his living by working in a notary public’s office. he flatly refused to engage in any public activity or to write in spanish, the only language permitted at the time […] he had decided that his world had been destroyed by the war which had just begun. he deliberately sought out the kingdom of death, the negation of the life which lay before him. (capmany 1992: 17) “to the cypress” opens with espriu’s statement that “the bloodshed buried my world” (cassells 1986: 18), in an echo of the poem “viatge d’hivern”: “sang que no he vessat │ http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� the voice of the cypresses. cyrus cassells and the poetry of salvador espriu language value 4 (2), 89-106 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 92 m’ha destruït el món” (espriu 2003: 89)3 before the fighting, i was blessed, . the voice of the catalan poet depicts the post-war panorama of hopelessness and subjugation in his “vanquished country”, with a fleeting melancholy thought for the young man that he was before the cataclysm: at twenty-three, a prodigy with five books. salom, i called myself. (cassells 1986: 18) espriu’s choice to project himself in his own work as an allegorical character embodying peace  the name salom evidently taken from the hebrew word  shows how deeply the fratricidal fighting troubled him. the poems in his collection les hores were grouped into three parts: part i was dedicated to a close friend and fellow poet (“recordant b. rosselló-pòrcel”) and part ii is linked to the memory of espriu’s mother (“recordant sempre la meva mare”). espriu (2003: 57, 81) attaches, in parentheses, the exact dates of their demise: bartomeu rosselló-pòrcel died in 1938 and escolàstica castelló in 1950. the dedication of part iii (“recordant allunyadament salom”, 2003: 103) symbolically causes two events to coincide: the outbreak of the spanish civil war, on july 18 1936, and the death of the poet’s literary alter ego. in section i of “to the cypress”, as in les hores, espriu has a “distant memory” of the young salom, who lived in a time when peace was still a possibility: but salom died at the first shriek of the civil war: july 18, 1936  (cassells 1986: 18) the war not only traumatised espriu, depriving him of a progressive education in the best humanist tradition. it also caused his incipient and promising literary career to veer decisively. in 1936, espriu was “a prodigy with five books”, two novels and three short story collections: el doctor rip (1931), laia (1932), aspectes (1934), ariadna al laberint grotesc (1935), and miratge a citerea (1935). these works of fiction are characterised by stylistic experimentation and a point of view that is often ironic or satirical. after their publication, espriu switched to verse, his choice of the poetic mode as expressive vehicle being directly related to the war that drew the dividing line between enthusiastic freedom and discouraging repression. had the war never broken out and especially, had it not resulted in severe censorship and the persecution of catalan culture, he would have probably continued to write the kind of fiction that he 3 “viatge d’hivern” is included in the collection les hores which, despite containing some of espriu’s earliest verse, achieved its definitive form in 1963. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� dídac llorens cubedo language value 4 (2), 89-106 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 93 had published in the 30s. poetry became a more suitable means of expression in the new political situation: he dicho que mi obra refleja la guerra civil, pero es más. mi poesía es hija de la guerra. antes me interesaba  y ahora también  la narrativa, pero la poesía me “surgió” como más radical. la eliminación pública del catalán hacía imposible el cultivo de la narrativa, mientras que el poema pudo surgir de un modo más íntimo y necesario. (reina 1995a: 149) the early thirties, the years preceding the war, when espriu was an excellent student and a promising fiction writer, are idealised and identified with the vitality of catalan culture, the richness of the language  metaphorically associated with natural imagery  and the nation’s dynamism. in section v, espriu addresses cassells and the poem’s readers to dwell on the years of the second spanish republic: listen, in that distant time, in those ardent days of the republic, my language filled me like a heady wine, laced with the sweetness of figs, the tang of pine-nuts; yes, my country was an almond tree in bloom. the mediterranean was my garden  blue, voluminous  (cassells 1986: 19) the mediterranean sea, which washes the shore in sinera, is an alternative to, an escape from confinement and political boundaries. in les cançons d’ariadna, espriu included a poem with a basque title, “abesti bioztun bat entzun naiz”  which could be translated as “i heard a heartfelt song”. the basque country is, like catalonia / sinera, a small nation that turns to the sea in order to avoid isolation: clars solcs dibuixadíssims, terra petita en pau. com que se sap petita, obre portes a mar. (espriu 1990: 118) this watery and seamless garden is part of espriu’s lost world. pijoan i picas has analysed the garden image in espriu’s poetics and she considers it an instance of the refuge archetype: “un espai delimitat, hiperprotector, que indueix a la vida plàcida perquè s’hi ha exorcitzat la mort, i, per tant, hi ha una manca d’antagonisme entre la vida i la mort” (1995: 82). the archetype in question comprises the notions of protection, peace and intellectual activity. specifically in espriu’s imagination, it is objectified as a happy childhood in arenys de mar, “before the fighting”, with its inherent unawareness of mortality and the sense that the future was full of possibility (pijoan i picas, 1995: 83). poem ix of llibre de sinera is set in the “jardí dels cinc arbres”, where the poet and his siblings used to spend many summer hours at play: http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� the voice of the cypresses. cyrus cassells and the poetry of salvador espriu language value 4 (2), 89-106 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 94 claror de l’aigua, prima molsa del safareig. varava fràgils barques, en encalmar-se el vent. (espriu 2006: 30) the scene is evocative of “la infantesa, viscuda com una etapa paradisíaca d’atemporalitat, amb jocs i alegria” (pijoan i picas 1995: 60). refuge can be sought in this space of the family house, but also in the more extensive setting of sinera, its natural surroundings and “blue, voluminous” sea. the following lines are from poem ii of cementiri de sinera: aquesta mar, sinera, turons de pins i vinya, pols de rials. no estimo res més, excepte l’ombra viatgera d’un núvol. (espriu 2003: 10) in the lines from “to the cypress” quoted above, espriu’s love of his own language is expressed through gustative images unequivocally reminiscent of sineran life and nature: the taste of “a heady wine”, “the sweetness of figs”, “the tang of pine-nuts”. the sound of catalan is also an integrating component of espriu’s archetypal garden and his poems communicate a painful nostalgia for its normalised use. “advers al vent” (from mrs death) goes back to the old days of “sineran lords”, when the gardens withered in parallel with the banishment of words: no preguntis si penso encara en els vells dies dels senyors, si recordo com lentament morien els jardins, les paraules. (espriu 2003: 164) espriu’s garden of paradise was lost as a result of the original sin of the spanish civil war  in his play primera història d’esther, the altíssim, the blind man who runs the puppet show, warns the people of sinera: “eviteu el màxim crim, el pecat de la guerra entre germans” (espriu 1981: 129). to the critical political situation that espriu lived, one should add personal factors, such as the bereavement caused by the death of his father and his beloved friend rosselló-pòrcel: simbòlicament restava tot cancel·lat: la mort de la república, de rosselló i els seus somnis d’un món diferent; la mort del notari [espriu’s father’s death in 1940] i, amb ell, de les aspiracions professionals del mateix espriu. una família al seu càrrec, una guerra mundial a l’aguait de la situació a espanya. tot plegat, un autèntic lost paradise. (delor i muns 1993: 150; author’s emphasis) http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� dídac llorens cubedo language value 4 (2), 89-106 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 95 ii. the promise of oblivion (1936-1975) espriu recalls the post-war atmosphere and his state of mind in the first eight sections of cassells’ poem, where those years are viewed by the old poet in retrospect. in the following lines, from section ii, he compares himself with two heroes belonging to cultural sources that he knew very well, the bible and classical mythology. he felt impotent like samson after delilah’s treachery, lost like theseus inside the labyrinth, without ariadne’s help: suddenly i was powerless, like samson. who could have imagined it? no saviour, no ariadne’s thread, just the promise of oblivion  (cassells 1986: 18) the erasure of its past prevents sinera from having a present and a future. espriu’s task is a form of resistance against these barren prospects, a determined attempt to preserve the language and its culture. at the same time, it is also a lament over the deprivation suffered by sinera. hence, his poetry, singing of loss, is often labelled elegiac. in the poem “perquè un dia torni la cançó a sinera” (les hores), which contains interesting reflections about writing and the role of the poet, espriu complains that mai no ha entès ningú per què sempre parlo del meu món perdut. (espriu 2003: 118) in section viii of “to the cypress”, we find two verse lines that can connect with these. cassells has espriu declare “i am no lover of the present,  but the past” (cassells 1986: 20; author’s italics). the catalan poet’s work is further characterised through his own voice in the poem. in section vii, he outlines his poetic plan after wondering what his motivations in writing might have been. the lines below, conversational and anaphoric, refer to espriu’s firm refusal to write in spanish, to his fascination with the grotesque, to the themes of death, war and repression, to the frequent mythological allusions: damn it, what was i reaching for? something more than cervantes’ language. more than the brutal pantomime. more than the brunt of the black boot. more than sin or the minotaur. more, more than the fear of death  (cassells 1986: 20) http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� the voice of the cypresses. cyrus cassells and the poetry of salvador espriu language value 4 (2), 89-106 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 96 espriu’s poetry consists of all the elements listed, and is more than simply each one of them. he knew “what he was reaching for”: a meditation upon death “per veure-la d’una manera objectiva, serena i a partir de la qual es pot entendre el que realment interessa, que és la vida” (batista 1985: 64). immediately after the lines quoted, however, espriu’s goal is defined not conceptually, but with emphasis on the imaginative dimension and on his sense of belonging to sinera: he aspired to create “an alphabet of cypresses and sea-light” (cassells 1986: 20). some of the most frequent or evocative constituents of espriu’s “imaginal alphabet” are featured in the poem by cassells: ash, cemetery, sea, song (i); stars, light and shadow, dolphins (iv); wind (v, vi, x); hills, vines, fennel, fields, hoes (vii); pines, boats (viii); a bull’s hide (ix); marble, vineyards (x)4 the spain of the 30s and 40s, turbulent and war-stricken, made espriu’s poetry what it is  gravely meditative, but also intensely lyrical. even though espriu’s voice seems to diminish the importance of some of the more recognisable facets of his poetic world, the references to ariadne’s thread and the minotaur bring to mind a key image: the labyrinth, which could be related to the political situation in which the poet lived and, perhaps more importantly, to his everyman’s metaphysical quest . and of course the cypress tree which, given its relevance in the poem  signalled by the title  will be considered in more detail below. 5 as hinted at above, espriu’s poems contain frequent, more or less veiled allusions to the two fundamental strands of what could be called “universal culture”  a traditional concept no longer taken for granted, but one that is valid for a poet like espriu. references to biblical literature or classical mythology are an essential part of his work; identifying and examining them closely contributes to its deeper understanding. the interest of the curious poem “rars ecos pels tombants” (les cançons d’ariadna) lies in . according to castellet, the labyrinth is “un símbol conceptual, més lligat al desorientat vagarejar dels homes per la vida [...] que a la mítica elaboració grega” (1984: 123). 4 several images are only listed once, although they recur through the sequence. espriu’s image of the “pell de brau” was taken from a book about iberia by the greek geographer and historian strabo (63 bc – 19 ad), where the iberian peninsula is compared to a spread bull’s hide. espriu made that image a symbol of the coexistence, not always easy, of different peoples in spain and portugal. 5 the theseus myth is alluded to in the titles of several works by espriu, in prose and verse: ariadna al laberint grotesc, les cançons d’ariadna, final del laberint. additionally, the third part of el caminant i el mur bears the title “el minotaure i teseu”. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� dídac llorens cubedo language value 4 (2), 89-106 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 97 its interconnected presentation of the two cultural traditions that furnished the poet’s imagination from his early years. he recalls the biblical stories that his aunt maria used to tell him: la tia maria llegia sovint en llibres molt savis maleses i crims. […] quan queia la pluja damunt llessamins, contava disbauxes del sant rei david. (espriu 1990: 25) as espriu recalls in his prologue to primera història d’esther, maria castelló “dominava l’art, tan sinerenc, de vivificar el que contava” (1981: 86). her biblical narrations made it easier for the child to assimilate classical and egyptian mythology, into which he delved later in life. the aunt’s storytelling m’obria camins, enllà de l’escuma d’aquest mar antic. petit, m’allunyava, a lloms de dofins, per freus neguitosos, anquines, perills. de cop m’acollien els braços del nil, sentia mesclar-se mots grecs amb llatins. (espriu 1990: 25) as we have seen, espriu’s voice in cassells’ poem identifies his experiences with those lived by theseus and samson. the catalan poet’s life in the darkest years of the spanish post-war  when everyday hardships combined with the struggle to pursue a literary career in a banned language, in an isolated country  is compared in “to the cypress” to the plight of other biblical characters such as joseph, sold by his brothers and captive in egypt, or job, the butt of god’s seemingly unjustified rage and cruelty. the following lines are from section iii: it was like the dream of joseph in egypt, the dream-in-the-dungeon, the black well, or the plangent cry of job, the fortunate man who wakes in hell, tested by a fire from heaven  (cassells 1986: 19) espriu’s great interest in the book of job is reflected in his poetry. the realistic portrayal of the beggars and the blind men that people sinera is reminiscent of job’s http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� the voice of the cypresses. cyrus cassells and the poetry of salvador espriu language value 4 (2), 89-106 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 98 physical suffering and pitiful abandonment. in poem xl of la pell de brau, the lyrical speaker appeals to a tyrannical figure who has made him a leper and deserted him: però tu te’n rius: [...] em tornes mesell i em deixes podrint-me en aquest femer. (espriu 2008: 376)6 but these poignant images inspired by the trials of job do not apply only to the fate of sinera and sepharad 7 la terrible violència bèl·lica del segle xx, que li va tocar de presenciar quasi en la seva totalitat […] li fornia la visió, per dir-ho amb termes bíblics, d’un món caigut en el pecat; és a dir, un món exiliat de déu. una època de damnació en què déu estava més ocult que mai i l’home, tan desvalgut i angoixat com ho havia estat job, abandonat a les arbitràries forces destructores de satanàs (delor 2005: 578-579) . espriu thinks of the biblical character as emblematic of the human condition, and this mythical transposition became more evident and meaningful for the poet as belligerance intensified during the first half of the twentieth century: opposed to this world of sin and damnation is the “little homeland”, sinera, which is still the poet’s solace even  or perhaps with more reason  in the face of adversity. as we saw, in section ii of “to the cypress”, already quoted from, we are offered a glimpse of paradise lost in which the beauty of the sineran landscape and the poet’s pride in his language are imaginatively linked. these two elements are also brought together when the remembered period is the post-war and not the republic (vii). mediterranean nature and the voices of the living and the dead comfort and inspire espriu in troubled times: sometimes i’d sit before the blank page  impoverished, till the rising sun reclaimed the hills of vines and fennel, the hills, so unforgettable. and from the wide fields would come the voices of peasants, mingling with the voices of my dead, the sound of hoes striking my heart  (cassells 1986: 20) espriu is, according to cassells, “a lover of the past”, and the memory of those who ensured the continuity of his language and his culture (“the voices of my 6 the poem that follows (xli) completes the allusion. other poems that contain more or less direct references to the book of job are “perquè un dia torni la cançó a sinera” (les hores), “el vent” (les cançons d’ariadna) and poem vii of llibre de sinera. 7 in la pell de brau and other poems, espriu refers to spain as sepharad, establishing a parallelism between the israelites’ wandering in the desert and franco’s dictatorship. sephardi jews were those native to spain; they were expelled or forced to convert by the end of the 15th century. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� dídac llorens cubedo language value 4 (2), 89-106 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 99 dead”) justifies and empowers him in his civil resistance and poetic mission. in section ii, his idyllic youth is given the evanescent quality of a dream (“did i dream it all?”) and the old poet’s reminiscing comes to a halt when a powerful image, alluding to one of the witches’ prophecies in william shakespeare’s macbeth, is conjured up: “and then the armies of the dead advancing  surrounding me like birnam wood” (cassells 1986: 20)8 and from the sumptuous balconies of pine, . these ghosts, initially disturbing, become soothing presences when the mediterranean sea is no longer a garden, but the setting of the struggle to “save the words”. in section viii, and in espriu’s own voice, persecuted catalan is compared to boats against a stormy wind: i could see the boats feuding with the wind, like the fierce and indrawn words we uttered in exile (cassells 1986: 20) the imagery of sailing and shipwreck has a special signifcance in several poems by espriu9 perduts en la llunyana . in “port de retorn” (les hores), the lyrical speaker is, as in cassells’ poem, watching the boats cleave the waves. their sailing has something of a mystic journey, which transcends the local immediacy of sinera and the poet’s interior exile during the most sombre years of repression. souls are compared to vessels heading for “the port of time”, towards a marble shore: dificultat de l’aigua, passen velers que porten el senyal dels oratges soferts en la recerca del port del temps, on alça un vell poder vastíssim hostils fredors de marbre. (espriu 2003: 90) iii. at long last (1975-1985) section ix of “to the cypress” is especially important as it combines the voices of the two poets  espriu and cassells  in dialogic form and, at the same time, separates 8 cf. “macbeth shall never vanquish’d be  until birnam wood to high dunsinane hill  shall come against him” (shakespeare 2008: 174). 9 interesting examples are, besides from “port de retorn”, poem xxv of cementiri de sinera, “el passat i el pou, a trenc d’alba” (les cançons d’ariadna) or “cançó del matí encalmat” (el caminant i el mur). http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� the voice of the cypresses. cyrus cassells and the poetry of salvador espriu language value 4 (2), 89-106 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 100 the sequences where each of these two voices is heard independently. in the part of the poem where the lyrical voice is clearly identifiable with his own (x-xii), cassells draws on memories of espriu, catalan culture and arenys de mar. the association between language and natural imagery continues to be established. the metaphor the words of catalan are boats against the wind, implicit in viii, reappears in the lines below (“foundered language”), from section x. another metaphor equates the language with seeds that will be hurled into the air, in a rebellious act of freedom: your foundered language blazing inside you like sweetly-guarded seeds. at any moment, you could have tossed them to the wind  (cassells 1986: 21) cassells recalls his encounter with the catalan poet (ix) and a visit to the village of arenys de mar, his mythical nation of sinera (x). again typically sineran imagery is displayed: at long last, i reached your village: how the cemetery crowns sinera! in ecstasy, i found the cloudlet pines, the upraised vineyards. and the wind ushered me to your hall of vibrant cypresses. (cassells 1986: 21) as happens with other lines in the poem, the second here comes across as a calque of espriu’s language: cf. “quina petita pàtria encercla el cementiri!” (poem ii of cementiri de sinera, 2003: 10). in the following section, cassells declares that, on his visit, he “married sinera” and suitably, the little homeland is personified in terms that resemble the description of the wife in the biblical song of songs: “breasts of the greenest pines,  hips of sun-rife vines and fennel” (xi)10 the lyrical speaker has finally had a direct sensual experience of espriu’s world, and is especially impressed by the cypresses, true emblems of sinera. in the dark years of repression, the catalan poet was sheltered by “the cypress’ anointing shadow” (cassells 1986: 18), which prevented him  like job’s solid faith  from losing hope: “beside the cypresses, for awhile i could believe  god was not dead” (cassells 1986: 19). the irrepressible voice of these “testifying trees wailing” (cassells 1986: 19) carries with it denunciation and a vindication of justice. cassells asks these “wondrous trees that listen  and can answer back” (1986: 21) to pronounce espriu’s most cherished word: . 10 see chapter 4 of the song of solomon. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� dídac llorens cubedo language value 4 (2), 89-106 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 101 like gods, in green unison, the cypresses let go a luscent whisper: liberty. (cassells 1986: 22; author’s emphasis) the god-like trees can finally proclaim the people’s freedom. earlier in the poem, earlier in time, they could only echo the unsettling sounds of sinera’s stunted future. to accentuate the desperation in the italicised voice of the cypresses, in section v, cassells had eliminated the punctuation in the sentences and run them together. “for many years” espriu heard this “on the wind”: catalonia. exile. theft. horror of franco. don’t bark, speak the language of the empire. catalonia exile theft horror of franco don’t bark speak the language of the empire. cataloniaexilethefthorroroffrancodon’tbarkspeakthelanguage oftheempirecataloniaexilethefthorroroffrancodon’tbarkspeak thelanguageoftheempirecataloniaexilethefthorroroffrancodon (cassells 1986: 19) the cypresses are central images in espriu’s first collection of poetry, cementiri de sinera, where their stately presence accompanies the solitary poet. poem v ends as follows: m’esperen tan sols, per fer-me almoina, fidels xiprers verdíssims. (espriu 2003: 16) d. gareth walters interprets the cypress in cementiri as “a constant companion to the poet”, “accompanier of his defeat” and “a spur to movement”, but specifies that there is “no recourse to pathetic fallacy” (2006: 40), which contrasts with the conclusion of “to the cypress”. the last section of cassells’s poem combines the voices of the two poets and those of the cypresses. cassells desires espriu to speak once more: “tell me again, old poet” (1986: 21). the latter recalls the relieved excitement and hope that followed franco’s death and how he walked his way to the cemetery, the heart of sinera, as so many times before. there, he communicated his joy to the cypresses, urging them to “see how we have grown like you  bold, indomitable” (cassells 1986: 23). the cypresses are identified with the catalan people as the poem resolves. they speak its last words, quoting  as espriu does in the last line of section i  the poem “perquè un dia torni la cançó a sinera” (les hores). these echoing lines achieve their full http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� the voice of the cypresses. cyrus cassells and the poetry of salvador espriu language value 4 (2), 89-106 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 102 meaning when read in the light of the biblical epigraph chosen by espriu to open his seminal cementiri de sinera: “i les filles de cançó seran humiliades” (ecclesiastes 12.4). the humilated “daughters of song” stand for the repressed language that, after the dictator’s death, can hope to regain its dignity. the trees celebrate the new freedom, the return of the song and the future: let the dead rivers begin to breathe. let the scourged, once-taunted bell receive its tongue in pomp, in pure jubilee. for now the song has returned to sinera. (cassells 1986: 23; author’s italics) these lines have the cadence and rejoicing tone of a hymn or canticle and can compare with espriu’s “inici de càntic en el temple” (les cançons d’ariadna), a poem that is exceptional in celebrating the advent of freedom and spring in sinera. the generations that have endured and resisted, those who have kept the language alive through a symbolic wandering in the desert, offer it now onto the new generations, hoping that they will always remember their plight: ara digueu: “la ginesta floreix, arreu als camps hi ha vermell de roselles. amb nova falç comencem a segar el blat madur i, amb ell, les males herbes”. ah, joves llavis desclosos després de la foscor, si sabíeu com l’alba ens ha trigat, com és llarg d’esperar un alçament de llum en la tenebra! (espriu 1990: 146) iv. your legacy and liberation (conclusion) as has been exemplified, in the sections of “to the cypress again and again” where the voice can be assumed to be cassells’s, the poet draws largely on memories related to espriu and his culture. in xii, he takes the reader to perpignan, the catalan-speaking french arrondissement, where he first saw people dance the sardana. the american poet links the dance, an image of nationhood, to espriu’s role as a preserver of catalan culture: this was your legacy and liberation: a dawn of linked hands. a deep mediterranean laughter. (cassells 1986: 22) the poet expresses his wish to “enter the dance”, which can be considered an objective correlative of his interest in catalan culture. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� dídac llorens cubedo language value 4 (2), 89-106 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 103 malin pereira considers cassells’s work essentially cosmopolitan; the majority of poems in soul make a path through shouting, including the one he dedicates to espriu, turn to art as a witness to horror, crossing cultures from czechoslovakia and spain to russia, poland, and el salvador. the poet-speaker traverses these cultures at ease, employing the insights born from their historical and cultural particulars toward a vision of art as a universal tool of healing from 20th-century horror. (pereira 2007: 717) among other poets, espriu was a witness of this traumatic horror and used his art to exorcise it. decades later, cassells has shared that role and developed a particular way to acknowledge genius, achievement or courage. as “to the cypress” exemplifies, there is a tendency in his work to make the poem a setting for conversation with dead figures who have his sympathy and admiration; on the website of texas state university, amy francisco writes: “you could say that spirits speak to cyrus cassells ... [h]e has a talent for channeling life experiences  his own and those of others  into lyrical language that evokes empathy and compassion”. in an interview, jeremy halinen asks the poet about this genre of compositions, epistolary elegies “where you are aligning yourself with a historical figure during that figure’s historical moment. time is collapsed. voices merge” (halinen and laurentiis 2012: 124). cassells replies: i’m not sure i know why epistolary elegies keep coming up for me [...] in terms of unique effects and advantages in the direct address to the dead, there is perhaps more of an opportunity for emotional confrontation, for questioning and maybe even resolving the speaker’s relationship or connection to the elegized. (halinen and laurentiis 2012: 130) this “direct address to the dead” (lorca, montale, van gogh or pavese, for instance) is of a similar nature as espriu’s homage to his deceased friend rosselló-pòrcel, which delor i muns relates to the belief, in ancient greece, that the dead chose a double in the world of the living to project their existence. judging from espriu’s poetic production following rosselló-pòrcel’s death, the latter must have chosen his friend to act as his double, so that his art continued to be expressed. espriu’s role as double is more obvious in the first part of les hores, where he naturally assimilates rosselló-pòrcel’s style and characteristic imagery (delor i muns 1993: 155-163). it follows that cassells did the same for espriu in “to the cypress”. this instance of greek myth is coherent with cassells’s poetic technique. rickey laurentiis refers to his use of “personae and the dramatic monologue” and points out “how you have insisted [...] that each ‘i’, each historical self you have written about or from, is legitimately one of your own various selves” (halinen and laurentiis 2012: http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� the voice of the cypresses. cyrus cassells and the poetry of salvador espriu language value 4 (2), 89-106 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 104 130). when it comes to literature, the american poet’s sense of the past implies a veneration for tradition. the following lines are from amy francisco’s online profile: our cultural legacy is very, very important [...] when we think about the 19th century, we’re not going to journalism. we’re going to emily dickinson and walt whitman. and that’s part of the bigger truth culturally. so what we’re doing, what we’re investing in, what we’re putting our life energy into is part of a spiritual and social continuum in our culture. cassells “we” may well include espriu, whose poetic purpose has been described in strikingly similar terms: “inserir la pròpia obra en la constel·lació de les grans creacions de la humanitat, sobre la base d’integrar tot el passat cultural en el present, de contribuir constructivament a la prolongació del continuum històric” (castellet 1984: 90). the analysis of “to the cypress again and again”, in many ways representative of cassells’s work, also reveals an affinity to espriu’s vision of poetry and literary tradition. the poem that we have closely examined evinces a deep knowledge of espriu’s poetics and constitutes the kind of perceptive and admiring response that can only come from one poet to the work of another. cassells’s dialogue with espriu objectifies how the creativity of writers is enhanced by their sense of history and their appreciation of the work of those who preceded them  no matter when, where or in what language they wrote. references batista, a. 1985. salvador espriu. itinerari personal. barcelona: empúries. benet, j. 1978. catalunya sota el règim franquista. barcelona: blume. bloom. h. 2002. “the future of the literary imagination and its forms in relation to catalan achievement”. (xiv premi internacional catalunya, speech). generalitat de catalunya. 1 march 2012 <http://www20.gencat.cat/docs/msidgac/premi%20internacional%20catalunya/pdf/discurs_bloom_eng.pdf> capmany, m.a. 1992. “salvador espriu”. catalan writing 8, 13-18. cassells, c. 1986. “to the cypress again and again”. callaloo 26, 18-23. cassells, c. 1994. soul make a path through shouting. port townsend wa: copper canyon press. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� dídac llorens cubedo language value 4 (2), 89-106 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 105 cassells, c. “author’s statement”. national endowment for the arts. 1 march 2012 <http://www.nea.gov/features/writers/writerscms/writer.php?id=05_02>. castellet, j.m. 1984. iniciació a la poesia de salvador espriu. barcelona: edicions 62. delor i muns, r.m. 1993. la mort com a intercanvi simbòlic. bartomeu rosselló pòrcel i salvador espriu: diàleg intertextual (1934-1984). barcelona: publicacions de l’abadia de montserrat. delor i muns, r.m. 2005. “ordre i simbolisme a les cançons d’ariadna”. in martínez gil, v. and l. noguera (eds.) si de nou voleu passar. i simposi internacional salvador espriu. barcelona: centre de documentació i estudi salvador espriu / publicacions de l’abadia de montserrat, 575-61. espriu, s. 1981. primera història d’esther. in molas, j. and c. andreu (eds.). carner / espriu / brossa. teatre. barcelona: edicions 62, 82-130. espriu, s. 1990. obres completes. anys d’aprenetatge i. poesia 1. barcelona: edicions 62. espriu, s. 2003. cementiri de sinera. les hores. mrs death. barcelona: centre de documentació i estudi salvador espriu & edicions 62. espriu, s. 2006. llibre de sinera. per al llibre de salms d'aquests vells cecs. setmana santa. barcelona: centre de documentació i estudi salvador espriu & edicions 62. espriu, s. 2008. el caminant i el mur. final del laberint. la pell de brau. barcelona: centre de documentació i estudi salvador espriu & edicions 62. european charter for regional or minority languages. 1 march 2012 <http://conventions.coe.int/treaty/en/treaties/html/148.htm>. francisco, a. 2012. “rising star cyrus cassells”. texas state university. 1 march 2012 <http://www.txstate.edu/rising-stars/cyrus_cassells.html>. furniss, t. and bath, m. 1996. reading poetry. an introduction. harlow: longman. halinen, j. and laurentiis, r. 2012. “a conversation with cyrus cassells”. knockout, 4, 121-131. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.nea.gov/features/writers/writerscms/writer.php?id=05_02� http://conventions.coe.int/treaty/en/treaties/html/148.htm� http://www.txstate.edu/rising-stars/cyrus_cassells.html� the voice of the cypresses. cyrus cassells and the poetry of salvador espriu language value 4 (2), 89-106 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 106 jimenez, m.f. 2009. “living witness: an interview with cyrus cassells”. african american review 43 (1), 69-77. pereira, m. “‘the poet in the world, the world in the poet’: cyrus cassells and elizabeth alexander’s versions of post-soul sosmopolitanism”. african american review 41 (4), 709-725. pijoan i picas, m.i. 1995. viatge per l’imaginari de l’obra de salvador espriu. barcelona: publicacions de l’abadia de montserrat. reina, f. 1995a. enquestes i entrevistes, i (1933-1973). barcelona: centre de documentació i estudi salvador espriu i edicions 62. reina, f. 1995b. enquestes i entrevistes, ii (1974-1985). barcelona: centre de documentació i estudi salvador espriu i edicions 62. shakespeare, w. 2008. the tragedy of macbeth. oxford: oxford university press. walters d.g. 2006. the poetry of salvador espriu. to save the words. woodbridge: tamesis. received: 30 july 2011 accepted: 03 april 2012 cite this article as: llorens cubedo, d. 2012. “the voice of the cypresses. cyrus cassells and the poetry of salvador espriu”. language value 4 (2), 89-106. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.7 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.7� references cite this article as: llorens cubedo, d. 2012. “the voice of the cypresses. cyrus cassells and the poetry of salvador espriu”. language value 4 (2), 89-106. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.60... issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors language value december 2020, volume 13, number 1 pp. 110-115 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es issn 1989-7103 language value, issn 1989-7103 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2020.13.6 110 book review translation quality assessment: from principles to practice joss moorkens, sheila castilho, federico gaspari and stephen doherty (series editor: andy way) springer, 2018 (1st edition). 287 pages. isbn: 978-3-319-91240-0. reviewed by rocío caro quintana r.caro@wlv.ac.uk university of wolverhampton, spain with the growth of digital content and the consequences of globalization, more content is published every day and it needs to be translated in order to make it accessible to people all over the world. this process is very simple and straightforward thanks to the implementation of machine translation (mt), which is the process of translating texts automatically with a computer software in a few seconds. nevertheless, the quality of texts has to be checked to make them comprehensible, since the quality from mt is still far from perfect. translation quality assessment: from principles to practice, edited by joss moorkens, sheila castilho, federico gaspari and stephen doherty (2018), deals with the different ways (automatic and manual) these translations can be evaluated. the volume covers how the field has changed throughout the decades (from 1978 until 2018), the different methods it can be applied, and some considerations for future translation quality assessment applications. translation quality assessment (tqa) focuses on the product, not on the process of translation. in one way or another, it affects everyone in the translation process: students, educators, project managers, language service professional and translation scholars and researchers. therefore, this book is addressed to translation students, lecturers, and researchers who are interested in learning about the industry, research about the topic, or even creating new methods or applications. the volume consists of 11 chapters that are divided into the following 3 parts:  part 1: scenarios for translation quality assessment (chapters 1– 4). https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2275-2679 mailto:r.caro@wlv.ac.uk translation quality assessment: from principles to practice language value 13(1), 110–115 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 111  part 2: developing applications of translation quality assessment (5–8).  part 3: translation quality assessment in practice (9–11). the first chapter, written by the editors, is an introduction to translation quality assessment (tqa) and the different methods it can be applied. as aforementioned, there are two main ways to assess the quality of translated texts: manually and automatically. the manual evaluation can be done in several ways; however, the most known approaches are dynamic quality framework (dqf), multidimensional quality metric (mqm) and the lisa qa (localization industry standard association quality assessment) model. these approaches evaluate the final quality of a translation (for instance, checking if there are terminology errors or mistranslations). the automatic evaluation also has a variety of approaches, for instance, bilingual evaluation understudy (bleu, papineni et al. 2002), metric for evaluation of translation with explicit ordering (meteor, banerjee and lavie, 2007), and translation error rate (ter, snover et al. 2006). these approaches measure the quality of a translated text comparing the final output with one or more reference translations. however, the editors claim that no approach or metric is sufficient to all scenarios and text types (literary translation, audiovisual translation, etc.) and these approaches may be changed by the users accordingly to meet their needs. the next chapter (chapter 2) introduces how translation is managed and its quality evaluated in the european union (eu) institutions. the texts published by the eu are official texts that must be translated into many languages. therefore, quality must be maintained in all the versions and the consistency must be maintained. there are a lot of quality checks and steps that texts must go through before publishing the official version. as there are many texts published and a lot of languages, the eu outsources a lot of these texts, which have to follow the directorate general for translation norms. the eu has created its translation memory, mt and a glossary database: iate. the authors conclude by emphasising that these texts are essential to inform the citizens about the eu projects (especially in a time where the opposition to the eu and populist media with anti-eu agenda is very common) and this is achieved through quality translations. book review language value 13(1), 110–115 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 112 chapter 3 explores the new phenomenon of crowdsourcing, in this case, translation crowdsourcing, and how its quality can be measured. crowdsourcing entails the outsourcing of translation tasks (translation, revision, post-editing) for free or for low rates to large crowds. the problem is evident: as there are a lot of participants it is hard to check the quality of the texts due to stylistic issues. another problem has to do with the scope of the translation: just for gisting purposes or for dissemination. moreover, the author posed the following question: “who is responsible for quality?” (p.79). the author argues that, in certain cases, those responsible for the final text may be the language service providers and, in others, the translators and revisers. although it may be difficult to carry out this process due to the challenges it poses, it has been used in a lot of platforms, such as amara, wikipedia or facebook. the last chapter of the first part (chapter 4) discusses the lack of education in tqa in degrees and even on postgraduates’ translation courses. the authors advocate that it is crucial to teach translation students the quality evaluation methods to prepare them for the translation marketplace, especially since the use of mt is changing the role of translators into post-editors; thus their primary purpose will be to fix mt outputs. the second part of the volume focuses on the development of approaches or metrics to assess the quality of translation. the first chapter of this part (chapter 5) analyses three different systems for tqa in depth: dqt, mqm and the harmonisation of the two, called the dqq/mqm error typology. the author remarks that these systems were originally created to support translators with the reviewing process. the history of tqa is summarised, explaining that the first attempts to standardise the reviewing process were two standards: sae j2450 and lisa qa model. but as the author states, these approaches had important limitations: the low inter-annotator agreement and that they were not useful to all the possible translation scenarios or text types. as a result, dqf and mqm were created. since 2015, their integration has become the preferred method. following this research, the following chapter (chapter 6) focuses on the analysis of the errors found in mt. while the previous approaches described in chapter 5 could be used for human or machine translation, the main focus in this chapter is on the error analysis of mt outputs. the evaluation of mt is usually carried out during the post-editing process; therefore, the author states that the classification of mt errors or post-editing translation quality assessment: from principles to practice language value 13(1), 110–115 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 113 operations is performed to analyse the process, not translation errors. this error classification can be done manually, automatically or with a combination of the two. there is not, however, a standard system to evaluate mt output. similarly, chapter 7 discusses how mt output is evaluated. the author describes different human and automatic evaluations and their problems. there are three main different human evaluation types: typological evaluation, declarative evaluation and operational evaluation. regarding automatic evaluation, the following problems challenge the translation assessment task: 1) they do not compare the translation with the source segment; 2) they usually work with only one reference translation; 3) there is not a “perfect translation”; and 4) the human translation (used as reference translation) could be incorrect. to conclude, the author affirms that novel metrics are needed to improve the outputs of mt engines. the second part of the volume concludes with chapter 8, which briefly describes audiovisual translation (avt). it delves into the main features of this field, particularly into spatial and temporal restrictions, which produces a different set of norms and standards than differ from other text types. the authors describe how the computerassisted tools and mt are also being implemented in avt, especially to improve the productivity of translators and preserve the consistency of the texts (for instance, on tv shows). quality is still difficult to assess on these texts as metrics such as ner (net error rate, romero-fresco & pérez, 2015) or wer (word error rate, nießen et al., 2000) are not useful due to the inherent characteristics of avt mentioned above. the third and last part of the book includes chapters which analyse tqa in practice in different fields. chapter 9 delves into translation quality estimation (tqe) which differs slightly from tqa since tqe does not require a reference translation to estimate how good a translation provided by an mt engine is. the goal of the authors in this paper is to successfully implement tqe methods that can distinguish between “good” and “bad” translations. if the translation is “good”, the mt output is post-edited; and if the output is deemed “bad”, it will be translated from scratch. while this chapter is of interest, it may not be accessible to everyone as it has a lot of terms and mathematical formulas that only people that are familiar with computational linguistics may understand. book review language value 13(1), 110–115 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 114 chapter 10 explores the use of mt in academic texts. english has become a lingua franca worldwide and many scholars have to use it in order to publish their work. however, in many cases, english is not their first language, and this could produce some problems with the quality of the texts. the authors posed the following questions: “is [mt] actually a useful aid for academic writing and what impact it might have on the quality of the written product?” (p. 238). to this end, the authors conducted some experiments where 10 participants were asked to write half a text in english, and the other half in their native language, and this was later translated to english with an mt engine. then, the texts were revised. the results of these experiments showed that the revision of the texts written in english was shorter and the opinions of the translators were mixed in terms of efforts and whether they would use mt again for this purpose. the texts were also checked with an automatic grammar and style checker, but there were no major differences in terms of quality. finally, the last chapter of this part and this volume (chapter 11) goes into research the use of neural machine translation (nmt) into literary texts. the authors’ objective is to check whether literary texts can be translated correctly through nmt, namely novels from english into catalan. to do this, they built a literary-adapted nmt system and compared the results with a phrase-based statistical machine translation engine. the quality was checked with automatic metrics (bleu) and manual evaluation and, as the authors expected, the results proved favourable to nmt. all things considered, this volume is an excellent reference to learn and understand the different approaches and methods of tqa. it provides a very insightful look at the basics of tqa. the editors do not only present useful chapters about the basics of the theory, but they also present examples where these methods have been and could be applied. hence, it will be very useful to scholars and translation students, whether they want to focus on research or the industry. . translation quality assessment: from principles to practice language value 13(1), 110–115 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 115 references banerjee, s., & lavie, a. (2005). meteor: an automatic metric for mt evaluation with improved correlation with human judgments. in proceedings of the acl workshop on intrinsic and extrinsic evaluation measures for machine translation and/or summarization (pp. 65-72). michigan: association for computational linguistics. nießen s., och, f.j., leusch, g., & ney, h. (2000). an evaluation tool for machine translation: fast evaluation for mt research. in proceedings of the second international conference on language resources and evaluation (pp.39-45). athens: european language resources association (elra). papineni, k., salim, r., todd, w. & wei-jing, z. (2002). bleu: a method for automatic evaluation of machine translation. in proceedings of the 40th annual meeting on association for computational linguistics (pp.311-318). philadelphia: association for computational linguistics. romero-fresco p., & pérez, j.m. (2015). accuracy rate in live subtitling: the ner model. in j. díaz cintas & r. baños piñero (eds.), audiovisual translation in a global context (pp.28-50). london: palgrave macmillan. snover, m., dorr, b., richard, s., micciulla, l., & makhoul, j. (2006). a study of translation edit rate with targeted human annotation. in proceedings of the 7th conference of the association for machine translation in the americas (pp.223231). cambridge: the association for machine translation in the americas. received: 18 november 2020 accepted: 24 november 2020 language value http://www.languagevalue.uji.es december 2019, volume 11, number 1 pp. 108-112 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2019.11.7 108 book review assistive technology in special education: resources to support literacy, communication, and learning differences joan l. green prufrock press inc: wako, texas, 2018 (3rd ed.). 237 pages. isbn: 978-1-61821-758-5 reviewed by ana-isabel martínez-hernández anhernan@uji.es universitat jaume i, spain assistive technology in special education by joan l. green (2018) delves into technology, i.e. apps, websites and devices, to boost learning in students with special needs. with the rise of new technologies in the field of education, many students with disabilities are left behind. thus, this book intends to show how to use those technologies to make learning easier for physically and mentally challenged students to help them overcome learning difficulties and improve their quality of life. not only does this book suggest cutting-edge technology, but also everyday gadgets and apps which were not originally created with therapy goals in mind, but end up being so if used correctly, along with state-of-the-art solutions. this book is addressed to teachers, schools, speech-language pathologists, therapists and families who want to maximise the students’ learning potential and overcome barriers such as concentration issues, speech impairment or comprehension among others. although many of the resources found in this book can enhance learning in students with special needs, and in many cases withdraw this support gradually to aid them become independent, learners with no difficulties can find these resources beneficial in their learning process as a route to empowerment in order to become the masters of their own learning and promote autonomous learning. nevertheless, despite encouraging families to use technologies with challenged students and applauding families who already do so, the support and guidance of professionals is highly recommended throughout the book; what green strongly endorses is the idea of therapists, families and teachers working in unison to benefit the student. http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ mailto:anhernan@uji.es assistive technology in special education: resources to support literacy, communication, and learning differences language value 11 (1), 108–112 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 109 it cannot be denied that technology has become rather overwhelming in the past decade with the plethora of available resources, i.e. apps and websites, which together with the myriad of different devices at our disposal in the market can make of this advantage, i.e. technology, a cumbersome and time-consuming process in which families and professionals can get lost, and therefore many might regard it as a setback rather than a step forward. in this book, one of joan l. green’s purposes is to make a selection of the best resources to narrow down all the available apps and sources, a “representative sampling” (2018: 10) as she calls it, classifying them by function in order to help families and professionals filter all the resources at hand. the book is divided into 15 chapters, the first three of which are dedicated to the introduction of assistive technology and its future in helping students. the following chapters contain more detailed information about improving specific learning skills, closing with a call to a responsible use of the resources in the final chapter. all of these chapters include an enumeration of recommended apps, devices and websites which are accompanied by a short description and review of the product with the main characteristics as well as the operating system it works on and the price, with the intention of helping “readers save time, frustration and money” (2018: 25). in this sense, this book could be used as a resource book for those educators, families and therapists who would like to develop a learner’s skill to exploit their potential or cover a specific need. the book starts with a ‘reality check’ on the current situation of technology, namely hardware and software, which implies being aware of all the pros and cons it has to offer, as well as the reasons for the author to write a third edition of this book regardless of its transient, thus perishable, nature of which she is aware and is repeatedly mentioned throughout the pages. in the first chapter, green encourages people to use technology that is no longer expensive and is easily available in order to increase success and independence for people with communicative, learning and cognitive disabilities. she tries to achieve this by answering some of the most frequently asked questions among the teachers’ and parents’ communities first, guiding the readers through the procedure to be followed should they need to find a solution to a learner’s impediment. along these lines, notwithstanding the existing barriers to technology for http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ book review language value 11 (1), 108–112 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 110 some challenged individuals, the focal point of chapter 2 is on how beneficial the shift towards technology can be in assisting all students, but especially for those with challenges. the author refers to the advantages, but also to those obstacles and disadvantages technology may still present for students with an impairment or disability, although the advantages clearly outweigh the disadvantages. chapter 3 reinforces the idea of technology as a means towards independence for individuals with special needs with the sole aim of overcoming the existing hindrance. in this chapter, the author offers some guidance to assist families and professionals with device choice by offering a review of two of the most popular operating systems on mobile devices. the chapter that follows (chapter 4) focuses on improving verbal expression, namely intelligibility and expressive language, encouraging a diagnosis of the obstacle and offering strategies and useful technology tools to tackle it. chapter 5 introduces aac (augmentative and alternative communication), which helps boost communication needs, and offers a list of resources to learn more about aac as well as apps, devices, and other options to help individuals communicate. the author contrasts former solutions to aac and the current ones, which oftentimes are already installed on our phones by default, the reader only needs to be creative about how they are applied. chapter 6 reviews tips, strategy, apps and resources to improve listening skills – i.e. auditory comprehension, processing deficits and receptive language – such as captioning, assistive devices or websites with free listening activities among others. the resources mentioned in this chapter may also result profitable for those students learning english as a second language (esl). chapter 7 has to do with reading comprehension, in which the author emphasises tools which are key to developing this skill which is paramount for academic success. the most prominent feature to bolster reading comprehension mentioned throughout the chapter, be it apps or software on other devices, is text-to-speech, although many others are mentioned. additionally, chapter 8 unravels ways technology can be used to enhance reading skills in an engaging way, being mobile apps and websites the top suggestions. chapter 9 deals with improving written expression, and the writer insists on the use of assistive technology to make life easier and to empower the learners in order to show what they know in a different way with the aim of counteracting a challenge. chapter 10 is also connected to writing skills, although it offers guidance to acquire more essential skills. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue assistive technology in special education: resources to support literacy, communication, and learning differences language value 11 (1), 108–112 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 111 it focuses on spelling and how to draw letters correctly at the outset and goes on to more complex aspects like punctuation and sentence-building towards the end of the chapter. chapter 11 addresses the issue of attention, cognition, and executive function, i.e. how we pay attention, organise, remember and learn effectively and efficiently. the author suggests some technological and non-tech solutions to aid students in their learning by helping them to stay focused (e.g. calendars) and how to use those solutions effectively. chapter 12 nourishes the idea of using digital resources and mobile phones to support learning new information, yet it encourages the combination of traditional and contemporary approaches to avoid unnecessary digital distractions. chapter 13 presents everyday tools to enhance organisation and collaboration. in order to help students dodge the unpleasant situation of forgetting homework at home, the writer suggests online storage such as dropbox or google drive which has become commonplace and most students are familiar with them. on the other hand, to foster collaboration among peers chatting tools such as whatsapp and online collaboration tools like google docs are suggested. these are only some of the examples of those mainstream tools students have already been acquainted with that can be used creatively to provide students with special needs with solutions. chapter 14 supports the use of apps and online programmes to practise cognitive skills and offers a list of those the writer found most effective. however, competition against peers is discouraged, as it can result in demotivation. the purpose of these ‘games’ is to improve the last result and track the student’s progress. finally, chapter 15 closes the same way the book opened: with a ‘reality check’. it reminds the reader to teach students to use technology responsibly warning of all the dangers of the internet, but also of the benefits if used correctly, which at the same time will prepare them for their future, that is, the chapter aims to promote digital citizenship and safety on the net. all things considered, the book is a fantastic reference book which leads you to think about the students’ needs at all educational stages. it is definitely a helping hand for families but more so for us, teachers, and professionals: an excellent handbook, but above all, it is a stepping stone towards inclusion and accessibility in education. http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ book review language value 11 (1), 108–112 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 112 received: 05 september 2019 accepted: 27 novermber 2019 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue book review e-research y español le/l2: investigar en la era digital. cruz piñol, m. (ed.) routledge, 2021. 278 pages isbn: 978-1-138-359741 doi: 10.6035/languagev.6412 language value july 2022, vol 15, num. 1 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es issn 1989-7103 language value, issn 1989-7103 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.6412 reviewed by gloria sánchez-muñoz gmunoz@uji.es universitat jaume i, spain since the dawn of the internet, technology has played a crucial role in all spheres. in particular, in the educational and research world, the use of information and communication technologies (icts) has greatly advanced, making a complete transformation in the methodologies used. thus, virtual research environments are considered essential these days for those scholars and researchers who want to advance their investigations in the field of spanish as a second language (sl2) or foreign language (sfl) (allan, 2009; mairal-usón & faber, 2020; whishart & thomas, 2017). the book e-research y español le/l2: investigar en la era digital, edited by mar cruz piñol (2021), deals jointly with the contributions to sl2/sfl from three diverse fields, i.e., library science, corpus linguistics, and digital editing. this publication provides a new, interdisciplinary, and international vision combining theory with case studies. this volume, written in spanish, comprises ten chapters. while the first two chapters deal with the theoretical framework, the remaining eight chapters are organised into three main blocks. part i of the volume aims at guiding sl2/sfl researchers to incorporate technologies in their personal research environment. part ii presents the main features of research with large language samples to help researchers select the most appropriate http://www.languagevalue.uji.es https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2605-8465 corpus to work with according to their objectives or even compile their own ad hoc corpus. finally, part iii shows the advantages of disseminating and visually presenting research outcomes using technology. the book opens with chapter 1, where cruz piñol makes a revision of the theoretical and methodological foundations that contextualise the use of technologies for sl2/sfl research. to start with, the concepts e-research and personal research environment are deeply analysed. then, the main lines of sl2/sfl research are described to show, on the one hand, that all of them are nourished by the three main pillars which shape the research with technology, i.e., the use of large amounts of data, the collaboration, and the multidisciplinarity; and on the other hand, to highlight the need to make this research visible. the chapter ends presenting the objectives, the structure, and the main content of the volume. in chapter 2, by trigo, the use of technologies for sl2/sfl research is contextualised in the framework of digital humanities. the author explains that the use of technology has been a major transformation in the research world and has led to a revolution bringing the use of new terminology and substantial changes in relation to the dissemination of research. trigo continues delving into three areas of reference within the digital humanities: 1) the reinvention of new research environments, especially the role played by libraries and the free access; 2) the dissemination and the digital impact of research; and 3) the digital research in the learning of sl2/sfl. thus, preparing the grounds to address the needs grouped into the three main parts in which this volume is divided. the volume continues with part i, el entorno personal del investigador (epi), which includes chapters three, four and five. this section includes topics related to library science. in chapter 3, lópez-hernández, muro-subías and santoja-garriga focus on the process of searching for quality academic references when dealing with sl2/sfl and the problems gloria sánchez-muñoz language value 15(1) 101-106 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 102 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es encountered by researchers. in particular, the current needs of scholars and researchers when dealing with the search of resources are analysed. the authors of this chapter suggest that the university libraries are a good solution as they are considered dynamic and offer their users multiple resources such as databases, repositories and collaboration systems between librarians and researchers. in the last part of the chapter, some of these resources are deeply examined to find scientific quality references. chapter 4, by morante, explores how to manage the bibliography in the research world. she starts by pointing out the two main needs researchers have to face, i.e., organising and citing the bibliographic information. bibliographic reference managers are proposed as a good solution to simplify these tasks and the research process thanks to the technological aid they offer. morante explains how to introduce and organise data and get citations and bibliographical references from these tools. finally, a comparison among six bibliographic reference managers is provided, paying special attention to one of them, i.e., mendeley. this chapter is believed to be of great utility for researchers to integrate their job in these bibliographic reference managers. in chapter 5, marín queral examines the usefulness of social networks in shaping one’s personal research environment. the author starts by digging into the advantages and disadvantages of being present in social networks. then, differences between general and academic networks are mentioned regarding the management of the digital identity, the dissemination of research results, how documents are managed, and impact measurement. in the last part of the chapter, diverse case studies are shown, including the use of twitter, google scholar, researchgate, humanities commons, and orcid just to mention a few. part ii, entitled la investigación con muestras de lengua, comprises chapters six, seven, and eight, all of them devoted to linguistic corpus research. chapter 6 opens part ii of the volume, in which buyse pays attention to corpora composed book review language value 15(1) 101-106 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 103 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es by native speakers to explore them deeply. the main objective of the chapter is to offer scholars, researchers, and other experts in the field of sl2/sfl the basis to use these language samples and to start creating their own corpus. in the first pages, the author introduces the needs, advantages, and drawbacks of using corpora. then, a classification of language samples is offered to help researchers find the best corpora according to their objectives, followed by an analysis of the most important current native corpora for sl2/sfl research. it concludes with diverse grammatical, lexical, and pragmatic case studies from both a synchronic and a diachronic perspective to analyse different spanish variations. in chapter 7, lozano continues investigating the paramount role played by language samples in sl2/sfl research. this time, the importance of designing a corpus for learners due to its usefulness when learning spanish is emphasised. moreover, the author illustrates the key role played by corpus methods to allow researchers to understand the features of spanish for l2 learners in an objective and systematic way. the chapter starts examining the needs which exist in the acquisition of sl2/sfl in natural contexts. it then continues exploring the advantages and disadvantages of using technology in sl2 learners’ corpora and the basic principles of the corpus for learners’ design. after that, diverse case studies based on learners of sl2/sfl corpora are analysed. finally, a list of free sl2/sfl corpora for apprentices is offered to the reader. the focal point of chapter 8 is the use of corpus to investigate the phonic component of sl2/sfl. llisterri examines the oral corpora of spanish as a first language (sl1) and sl2 and explains how technology can help both teachers and researchers in their studies based on oral corpora. after an introduction including the main features of oral corpora, the chapter continues delving into the possibilities and limitations of using online oral corpora. the last part of the chapter compares 14 oral corpora from non-native spanish speakers with 23 oral corpora from native speakers. it concludes with the presentation of the main tools to explore and use oral corpora. gloria sánchez-muñoz language value 15(1) 101-106 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 104 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es part iii, la visibilización y la visualización de la investigación, is made up of chapters 9 and 10. this section focuses on the visibility and visualization of research results. in chapter 9, lloret cantero, lópez ferrero and cruz piñol set out the needs of sl2/sfl researchers when dealing with the search of online articles through specialised journals, bulletins, and book volumes. the authors suggest thesaurus, thematic websites, and digital maps as the best alternatives to make up for these necessities. in the third section of the chapter, three thematic websites, two digital maps, and a new website called porta_ele are presented to facilitate sl2/sfl scholars and teachers the search of online periodical publications. porta_ele, created after analysing 159 online periodical publications related to sl2/sfl, includes an interactive map to facilitate users search of articles and find journals to publish their work. finally, in chapter 10, barros garcía focuses on the potential visualization techniques have to share research outcomes and transfer knowledge in the field of sl2/sfl. the author encourages the research community to use visual ways both to present the results of their investigation and as an analysis and research tool due to the affordances it provides. the chapter begins dealing with the needs to visualise the research data to improve the transfer of knowledge. it then continues with the advantages and limitations provided by technology to visualise data. finally, various case studies and projects are shown to illustrate data visualisation. all things considered, this volume is believed to be the perfect guide for those experts, teachers or researchers who aim at investigating sl2/sfl in the digital era using a multidisciplinary vision. in particular, it centres on the fields of library science, corpus linguistics, and digital editing. e-research y español le/l2: investigar en la era digital offers invaluable digital resources to get on with the task of researching sl2/sfl in the 21st century. book review language value 15(1) 101-106 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 105 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es i. references allan, r. (2009). virtual research environments: from portals to science gateways. chandos publishing. mairal-usón, r., & faber, p. (2020). linguistic research in the 21st century: looking beyond. in a. bocanegra-valle (ed.), applied linguistics and knowledge transfer employability, internationalisation and social challenges (pp.55-64). peter lang. whishart, j., & thomas, m. (2017). e-research in educational contexts: the roles of technologies ethics and social media. routledge. received: 16 january 2022 accepted: 15 march 2022 gloria sánchez-muñoz language value 15(1) 101-106 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 106 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es language value december 2022, volume 15, number 2 pp. 112-117 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es issn 1989-7103 language value, issn 1989-7103 doi: https://doi.org/10.6035/languagev.6618 112 book review reviewed by hengzhi ciel hu p108937@siswa.ukm.edu.my universiti kebangsaan malaysia, malaysia it is not surprising that as we come upon the thirtieth anniversary of the birth of content and language integrated learning (clil), this young pedagogical approach is still a complicated phenomenon, with a wide variety of issues in every aspect of education remaining to be addressed. clil assessment is one of them. although over a decade has passed since coyle et al. (2010) necessitated an explicit understanding of the assessment process in clil, “the variety and depth of issues that remain on the clil agenda suggest more research on clil assessment is indeed needed before future research can offer clear and workable solutions for both teachers and students” (de angelis, 2021, p. 32). to this end, the book entitled assessment and learning in content and language integrated learning (clil) classrooms: approaches and conceptualisations is a timely response, both in scope and usefulness. it is a successful compilation of papers, which link various theoretical perspectives with different research paradigms and feature the discussion of classroom assessment aimed at improving the quality standard of education. the value of this volume is undeniable, assessment and learning in content and language integrated learning (clil) classrooms: approaches and conceptualisations. deboer, m. & leontjev, d. (eds.) springer cham, 2021. 263 pages isbn: 978-3-030-54130-9 doi: https://doi.org/10.6035/languagev.6618 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5232-913x assessment and learning in content and language integrated learning (clil) classrooms language value 15 (2), 112–117 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 113 and both researchers and educators can benefit from it, with a dialectical relationship established between research and classroom practices. the book has been edited by mark deboer and dmitri leontjev, who have extensive expertise in language education. this command is manifest in th e first chapter jointly constructed by them, conceptualising assessment and learning in the clil context. an introduction, which establishes a theoretical foundation for the entire volume through a detailed review of clil-related conceptions. more importantly, it elaborates the organisation of the following chapters based on leung and morton’s (2016) integration matrix of clil contexts, with chapters 2-5 emphasising subject-literacies, chapter 6 as well as chapter 9 characterised by using the target languag e as a tool for participation in content tasks, chapters 7-8 focusing on explicit language knowledge, and chapters 9-10 featuring the contingency of and dialogical interaction in learning. chapter 2, achieving in content through language: towards a cefr descriptor scale for academic language proficiency by stuart d. shaw, presents and justifies an academic proficiency scale designed based on the common european framework of reference (cefr) and exemplifies how it can be used formatively in classrooms by discussing the assessment issues in a clil history class. although the author admits future work is needed to refine this assessment scale, its preliminary design and application have offered the implications about prioritising professional development of clil skills and increasing language awareness in assessment. chapter 3, academic culture as content: self-assessment in the clil classroom in the international liberal arts university by alexander nanni and chris carl hale, investigates how self-assessment in clil can contribute to effective assessment practices and the realisation of learning goals. the positive assessment outcomes further highlight that self-assessment is consistent with assessment for learning (afl), whose nature is to integrate assessment into the learning process rather than the summative end. chapter 4, cefr, clil, loa, and tblt – synergising goals, methods and assessment to optimise active student by claudia kunschak, presents the development of an http://www.languagevalue/ hengzhi ciel hu language value 15 (2), 112–117 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 114 assessment framework on the basis of cefr, task-based learning and learning-oriented assessment (loa) theories. the author further highlights loa, whose goal is to promote learning, and advocates taking it as an indispensable and flexible part of clil assessment. chapter 5, assessment for learning in bilingual education/clil: a learning-oriented approach to assessing english language skills and curriculum content in portuguese primary schools by ana xavier, presents a supportive assessment framework developed based on loa. the author not only rationalises this framework by elaborating a range of supporting theories but also specifies how it can be used in primary-level clil classrooms to facilitate learning. following this, chapter 6, assessment of young learners’ english proficiency in bilingual content instruction (clil) in finland: practices, challenges, and points for development by taina wewer, reports a study conducted in the context of finnish primary education about the classroom assessment of english language proficiency. based on the assessment methods and challenges confronting clil teachers, the researcher submits a set of assessment recommendations. this chapter is positioned in this section of the volume, as it differs from the previous chapters in that it prioritises content learning of clil. chapter 7, gearing teaching and assessment towards clil: theorizing assessment for learning in the junior high school soft clil classrooms in japan by hidetoshi saito, presents a range of unreported, planned and unplanned a fl practices in cases of soft clil classes. the author establishes an afl-oriented framework of clil assessment, centring around that the responsibility for assessment should be shared amongst classroom stakeholders, such as students and teachers. chapter 8, does afl promote discussion in clil classrooms? exploring afl techniques and their effect on classroom communication by rachel basse and irene pascual peña, foregrounds the shift from teacher-centred education to a student-teacher coconstruction process of learning with the application of concrete afl techniques. despite the positive outcome that clil learners are more engaged in learning, the assessment and learning in content and language integrated learning (clil) classrooms language value 15 (2), 112–117 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 115 authors also link the discussion with the other chapters to highlight the potential of a fl as a meaningful tool to promote classroom interaction and help achieve the language and content learning aims. chapter 9, assessing (for) understanding in the clil classroom by dmitri leontjev, teppo jakonen and kristiina skinnari, is themed as clil assessment from teachers’ perspective, underlining the analysis of the interaction between a teacher and a student. amongst different findings, the researchers spotlight the purpose of the studied assessment practices, which is to understand learners and foster their understanding, coins a term (i.e. assessment for understanding) as an essential part of afl to raise teachers’ awareness of making efficient use of assessment for learning purposes. chapter 10, teacher-based assessment of learner-led interactions in clil: the power of cognitive discourse functions by mark deboer, analyses the interaction among learners in online forums and dwells on how they mediate each other in the process of knowledge construction. the researcher draws implications from the findings for teachers to improve classroom assessment for learning purposes and highlights the insight that content learning and language learning supplement one another. chapter 11, conclusion: dialectics in clil classrooms, is the summary of this book from the editors, who, based on the discussi on and research findings of the previous chapters, underline the combination of davison’s (2008) classroom-based assessment cycle of teaching, learning and assessment with leung and morton’s (2016) integration matrix for systematic afl and loa practices. moving beyond clil, the editors draw insight from clil assessment for other educational contexts and raise the expectations that researchers should probe into assessment issues from the perspectives of curriculum planning, participant perceptions and classroom practices in a dialectical research-practice way and that educators should embrace professional collaboration not only in local institutions but also in a wider international context. as my words have suggested at the beginning of this review, the edi ted book is a praiseworthy one, which has exemplified different clil assessment practices in various http://www.languagevalue/ hengzhi ciel hu language value 15 (2), 112–117 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 116 educational contexts and specified how clil learners and teachers can engage in more efficient assessment activities for formative, learning purposes. the exceptional merit of this volume first lies in that it offers a sophisticated understanding of clil assessment through innovative educational practices and frameworks, providing insights into several issues that educators may find challenging when implementing clil, such as which language should be used in assessment, who should administer it and how students’ learning progress can be measured (de angelis, 2021). the book is particularly embedded in the concept of afl, which also clarifies the confusing relationship between assessment of content and assessment of language in integrated classes (llosa, 2020) by allowing of more flexibility for learners and teachers to decide on what to assess as per the changing learning needs. the other strength of this book is that it positions education in a multilingual and multicultural arena, presenting not only those european countries (e.g. portugal, finland, spain) which have witnessed the boom of clil but also some asian ones (e.g. japan, thailand) that are pursuing the educational trend created by clil. against the backdrop that clil is still relatively under-researched outside europe and that the development of clil practices can be “rather diverse due to the various sociocultural and education contexts among and within” asian countries (copland & ni, 2018, p. 141), this book informs the academia of some invaluable experience in asia’s educational context and presents an encouraging phenomenon that the development of clil in asia is grounded on the experience from europe and deepened through the continuous localisation of educational reforms and policies. undeniably, both language researchers and clil educators, the target audience, will find this book engaging because of the rich account of innovative educational experience and how the chapters are positioned as per the contexts they belong to. a final comment, almost as a footnote, for not only this book but also the broader clil research agenda is that researchers and educators should establish a link between language education theories with general education ones and take into consideration the universal principles of assessment reliability, validity, flexibility, fairness, transparency, manageability, engagement, authenticity and appropriateness. this assessment and learning in content and language integrated learning (clil) classrooms language value 15 (2), 112–117 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 117 opinion, though personal, is rationalised by that these principles penetrate through summative, formative and diagnostic assessment across learning of different sorts, in a range of contexts and for learners of all ages, the adherence of which is a promise of accurate understanding about student learning (cranley et al., 2021). references copland, f., & ni, m. (2018). languages in the young learner classroom. in s. garton & f. copland (eds.), the routledge handbook of teaching english to young learners (pp. 138-143). routledge. coyle, d., hood, p., & marsh, d. (2010). clil: content and language integrated learning. cambridge university press. cranley, l., johnson, g., & harmon, w. (2021). assessment, feedback and reporting. cengage learning australia. davison, c. (2008, march). assessment for learning: building inquiry-oriented assessment communities [paper presentation]. 42nd annual tesol convention and exhibit, new york. de angelis, g. (2021). multilingual testing and assessment. multilingual matters. leung, c., & morton, t. (2016). conclusion: language competence, learning and pedagogy in clil – deepening and broadening integration. in t. nikula, e. dafouz, p. moore & u. smit (eds.), conceptualising integration in clil and multilingual education (pp. 235–248). multilingual matters. llosa, l. (2020). revisiting the role of content in language assessment constructs. in g. j. ockey & b. a. green (eds.), another generation of fundamental considerations in language assessment: a festschrift in honor of lyle f. bachman (pp. 29-42). springer. received: 21 may 2022 accepted: 07 july 2022 http://www.languagevalue/ language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2013, volume 5, number 1 pp. 129-151 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2013.5.7 129 ‘does everybody understand?’ teacher questions across disciplines in english-mediated university lectures: an exploratory study emma dafouz milne edafouzm@ucm.es universidad complutense de madrid, spain davinia sánchez garcía mariadavinia.sanchez@udima.es universidad a distancia de madrid, spain abstract this small-scale study attempts to analyse the role of english as a medium of instruction (emi) in three different university lectures across disciplines. following previous research (crawford camiciottoli 2004, dafouz 2011, dalton-puffer 2007), the focus is placed on teacher discourse and, more specifically, teacher questions as fundamental tools that articulate classroom talk and prime strategies that promote interaction and co-construct meanings (chang 2012, sánchez garcía 2010). our corpus includes four hours of teaching practice from spanish emi lessons where participants are non-native speakers of the vehicular language. preliminary results suggest that questions tend to be greatly exploited discursive features and that confirmation checks and display questions seem to predominate over all other types of questions used in the classroom. concurrently, the study suggests that there seem to be more commonalities than differences in the use of questions across disciplines. additionally, it can be stated that lecturers need to be trained to benefit from the resources offered by their own discourse in order to facilitate students' content and language learning. keywords: english as a medium of instruction, clil, teacher questions, language awareness, classroom discourse. i. introduction in the last decade, learning through english as a medium of instruction (or emi) has become a widespread trend all over europe. the driving forces leading to the expansion of this teaching and learning practice were grouped by coleman (2006: 4) in seven categories, namely, internationalization of higher education, student exchanges, teaching and research materials, staff mobility, graduate employability, the market in international students, and content and language integrated learning (hereinafter clil). clil approaches, in the specific case of spain, have been largely implemented at primary and secondary school levels as a top-down strategy stemming from the http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� mailto:edafouzm@ucm.es� mailto:mariadavinia.sanchez@udima.es� emma dafouz milne and davinia sánchez garcía language value 5 (1), 129–151 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 130 respective regional governments. in the case of tertiary education, however, clil implementation strategies (or rather emi strategies)1 due to the rapidly growing pace of emi instruction across settings, studies that attempt to throw light on this situation have multiplied and, concurrently, reflect the diversity of interests and concerns amongst scholars and practising teachers. in this line, emi research spans, for example, from studies on classroom discourse and school practices, teacher cognition and beliefs, to the role of english as an international language or lingua franca in multilingual institutions (see smit and dafouz 2012: 1-12 for a detailed account of these matters). within these macro research concerns, one of the specific aspects to which attention needs to be drawn is that of teacher discourse. the reason is two-fold: on the one hand, because in teacher talk students have to face complex discourses both from a conceptual (disciplinary) and a linguistic (foreign language) perspective; on the other hand, because it is essential to raise awareness, especially amongst the content specialists, of how teacher discourse can be used pedagogically to support students in their learning process. given the wide set of features that may be analysed in teacher classroom discourse, our work will focus on the specific use that teachers make of questions in emi settings. we are specifically interested in the role that questions play in the construction of learner knowledge, as they are one of the main devices that teachers use to co-construct meaning with learners. in this line, some of the initial research conducted thirty years ago already showed that teachers ask, on average, two questions a minute (edwards and mercer 1987). admittedly, although the study of questions is not novel in the educational context and its centrality in the teaching and learning process has been discussed extensively (see cazden 1988, csomay 2002, dillon 1988, mehan 1979, thompson 1998, van lier 1996, wu and chang 2007), research into the roles and types of teacher questions used in emi university contexts by are mostly decentralized and follow a rather heterogeneous fashion with universities embarking on ambitious internationalization plans that, amongst other measures, promote english as the language of instruction both in undergraduate and postgraduate degrees (dafouz and núñez 2009, dafouz et al. in press, doiz et al. 2013, fortanet-gómez 2013). 1 the acronym emi (english as the medium of instruction) rather than clil will be used throughout this study as it reflects more appropriately the content-oriented focus adopted by the universities taking part in our research. for terminological considerations regarding emi/icl/clil distinctions see smit and dafouz (2012: 4-5). http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� ‘does everybody understand?’ teacher questions across disciplines in english-mediated university lectures language value 5 (1), 129–151 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 131 non-native content teachers is much less frequent. in addition, we intend to examine the use of questions from a cross-disciplinary perspective in order to discern possible relations between the academic disciplines under scrutiny (i.e. business studies, engineering and physics) and the presence (or absence) of certain question-types. here we follow dillon (1988: 115) when he rightly observed that although most “classrooms are full of questions [however, they are often] empty of inquiry since those who ask questions in school – teachers, texts, tests – are not seeking knowledge; [and] those who would seek knowledge – students – are not asking questions at all”. given this paradox, our study aims to answer the following: rq 1: are questions used in emi classrooms? if so, what kinds of questions do teachers actually utilize in their lectures? rq 2: what discourse function(s) are implemented through the questions used by teachers in lectures? rq 3: do the types of questions displayed vary depending on the disciplines taught? rq 4: do teacher questions actually trigger student participation? ii. theoretical framework ii.1. learning as a social and interactive process vygotskyan and neo-vygotskyan approaches to learning and teaching underline the importance of learning as a social process and the role of discourse to enable the social construction of knowledge (gibbons 2002, mercer 2000, van lier 1996, vygotsky 1978, 1989). in gibbons’s words “the kinds of talk that occur in the classroom are critical in the development of how students learn to learn through language and ultimately how they learn to think” (2002: 25). from a social-interactionist perspective, it is important for students to engage in social classroom events that trigger off the thinking process and develop students’ conceptual knowledge. interaction has been identified as playing a key role, since learning is viewed not only as an individual cognitive learning process but also as a social one, and learning occurs during the interactions that take place between individuals. in view of these principles, it is important that teachers promote student participation and foster negotiations of http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� emma dafouz milne and davinia sánchez garcía language value 5 (1), 129–151 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 132 meaning in the classroom so that learners are provided with opportunities to develop their cognitive ability, improve their linguistic skills and boost their learning process. moreover, from a second language acquisition angle, the additional claim is that interaction also provides opportunities for foreign language learning and development (swain 1985, 1995, long 1981, 1983). the research carried out in this line reveals that considerable amounts of high-quality comprehensible input (krashen 1985) and opportunities to produce output through the interaction that takes place when negotiating meanings (lyster 2007) may push students’ l2 language learning. ii.2. teacher questions in university lectures the importance of interaction in university lectures is also gaining weight, in spite of the traditional assumption that tertiary education is mostly teacher-fronted and monologic (goffman 1981). in fact, a number of recent studies claim that university lectures are gradually shifting away from being “an institutionalized extended holding of the floor” (morell 2007: 223, crawford camiciottoli 2004) and becoming the means of a much more egalitarian and participatory methodology in which the role of the instructor is also moving from the main figure of knowledge-provider to that of facilitator in the learning process. as a result, much research has been conducted on the various textual and interpersonal discursive features that seem to promote more interactive lectures (dafouz milne and núñez perucha 2010, morell 2004), by using different discourse structuring devices (crawford camiciottoli 2004, young 1994) or by focusing on the use of questions across disciplines (chang 2012, sánchez garcía 2010, thompson 1998). by and large, whatever the educational context or level, questions seem to be key tools in the communicative exchanges that ensure a natural and equal interaction in the classroom (sánchez garcía 2010). in the case of university lectures, they also seem to be one of the strategies that lecturers employ for very diverse reasons: to ease comprehension, support students’ learning process, establish collaborative meaningmaking amongst participants, test learners’ knowledge, elicit information and avoid communicative breakdowns, among other things. given the multi-faceted nature of http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� ‘does everybody understand?’ teacher questions across disciplines in english-mediated university lectures language value 5 (1), 129–151 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 133 questions, the next section will tackle the myriad of typologies that have been used in the literature. ii.3. classroom question typologies much ink has been spilt on the nature of questions (cazden 1988, chaudron 1988, tharp and gallimore 1988) and different classifications of these textual devices have been offered. thompson (1998), for example, divided questions into audience-oriented and content-oriented devices, thus focusing on whether they addressed the learners and required their oral participation, or rather concentrated on the topics and subjects being dealt with. in her analysis of clil secondary classes in austria, dalton-puffer (2007) maintained two well-established binary oppositions: (i) display and referential questions (following mehan 1979) and (ii) open versus closed questions (barnes 1969). the first polarity refers to whether the answer to the question is actually known by the questioner (i.e. display) or unknown (i.e. referential), while the second polarity distinguishes between those questions whose answers are limited to a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ response (i.e. closed) and those which allow for a more linguistically elaborated reply (i.e. open). answers to display questions are typically reduced and include a very limited number of words while referential questions have usually been defined as triggers of more authentic, longer, more complex and more involved responses on the part of the students. as a result, they may foster students’ output and give them better opportunities for language production. hence, it is believed that a high number of referential questions are ideally expected in classrooms, although some studies (dalton-puffer 2007, long and sato 1983, musumeci 1996, inter alia) reveal that teachers tend to use more display questions than referential ones. dalton-puffer (2007: 123-255) elaborates a further classification regarding the goal of questions in classroom settings and thus makes a distinction between questions for facts, questions for explanations, questions for reasons, questions for opinions and metacognitive questions, all of which can be ‘moves’ performed by either the teacher or the students. in this study a combination of two taxonomies was adopted to categorize questions: dalton-puffer’s (2007) model in clil secondary classrooms, and sánchez garcía’s http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� emma dafouz milne and davinia sánchez garcía language value 5 (1), 129–151 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 134 (2010) proposal on emi university lectures. the resulting taxonomy, displayed below, integrates dalton-puffer’s categories with some new ones to adapt better to the data found, while it also makes a distinction between questions (or moves) initiated by the teacher, questions initiated by students and questions asked by both sets of participants. table 1 displays the taxonomy employed in the present analysis2 table 1. question taxonomy used in the study. : moves by teachers moves by students moves by teachers and students display questions questions seeking explanations confirmation checks referential questions questions seeking confirmation procedural questions rhetorical questions indirect questions retrospective questions repetition questions self-answered questions language questions as indicated in table 1, the question types analysed in the present study are (i) display questions, whose answer is known by the teacher, and uses them to find out the actual knowledge of students on a certain topic (e.g. “what are the advantages of exporting?”), (ii) referential questions, whose answer is not known by the teacher (e.g. “what sorts of ideas have you come up with?”), (iii) rhetorical questions, which are questions to which no answer is expected and are meant to make the audience think and reflect on something (e.g. “how can we face those industries?”), (iv) self-answered questions, which are immediately answered by the speaker himself/herself (e.g. “is it possible to be leading in one country and being completely inexistent in another?” “yeah, it’s possible. it happens”), (v) retrospective questions, which make hearers go back in time to revise some issues (e.g. “remember back to the uh, second class?”), (vi) confirmation checks, which aim at ensuring the audience’s understanding of the topic/lecture (e.g. “ok? do you understand?”, “pardon?”, “excuse me, what do you mean by that?”, “did you say…?”), and (vii) repetition questions, which repeat the last word, utterance, idea or argument expressed (e.g. “increase demand, what was the second thing?”). 2�for reasons of scope and space, this study will only focus on those questions articulated by lecturers in their discourse. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� ‘does everybody understand?’ teacher questions across disciplines in english-mediated university lectures language value 5 (1), 129–151 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 135 iii. methodology iii.1. data collection the data gathered in order to answer the research questions consist of three university lectures conducted in english. the teachers and most of the students attending the lectures (with the exception of a low number of foreign students on erasmus exchange programmes) are native speakers of spanish and, therefore, english is treated in this context as a foreign language. the data used is a subset of the lectures gathered by the research group clue (content and language in university education) based at the universidad complutense de madrid3 table 2. data description. . the three lectures analysed, which were first videotaped and then transcribed manually, were gathered from three different universities in madrid: universidad rey juan carlos, universidad carlos iii, and universidad politécnica de madrid. these universities were chosen by means of criterion sampling (duff 2008) drawing on two major decisions: a) different lecturer profiles (i.e. prior experience in emi instruction) and b) different disciplines under scrutiny (i.e. business, engineering and physics). as shown in table 2 below, our data account for 240 minutes of teaching practice and a total of 30,209 words pertaining to the three different disciplines mentioned above. lecture duration word count topic university business 90 minutes 11,321 company internationalization universidad rey juan carlos physics 93 minutes 13,450 monoand poly-crystals deformation / weak and strong obstacles universidad carlos iii engineering 57 minutes 5438 displacement of engines universidad politécnica de madrid total 240 minutes 30,209 3 the clue project (content and language in university education, ref: gr60/09) is a consolidated research group founded in 2006 and coordinated by dr. emma dafouz. the project has worked under the clil/emi umbrella terms distributing questionnaires, gathering and analysing data to provide a quantitative and qualitative evaluation of the implementation of clil/emi and internationalization strategies in spanish tertiary contexts. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� emma dafouz milne and davinia sánchez garcía language value 5 (1), 129–151 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 136 the three lectures chosen for the study belong to three different disciplines in order to not only provide an account of how english as a foreign language is used as a medium of instruction in tertiary education, but also to consider any possible differences and similarities across disciplines. content-wise, the business session develops around the concept of company globalization and internationalization. it is part of a course in the bachelor’s degree of business administration. the physics lecture focuses on the behaviour of monoand poly-crystals in deformation and on strength mechanisms for weak and strong obstacles. it took place within a ba programme on nuclear physics. finally, the engineering lecture has displacement of engines as the main topic and was part of a ba degree in engineering. the three lecturers are specialists in the content matter and for all three english is a foreign language. iii. 2. data analysis the aforementioned data were analysed using the following procedure. all three lectures were transcribed manually from videotapes provided by the clue research group. this was followed by the identification of all the instances of questions occurring in the transcripts. second, a qualitative approach was accomplished, which resulted in the functional classification of the different types of questions4 third, the categorization was complemented with a quantitative analysis by calculating the frequency of use of the aforesaid linguistic phenomena in order to get a clearer . for analytical purposes, a question was identified not only on the basis of its syntactic form (i.e. inversion, whwords, etc.) but also on the intonation and utterance function. in the functional analysis, a number of questions proved to be clearly multifunctional, meaning that there was no one-to-one relationship between its linguistic form and discourse function. thus, a context-sensitive analysis of each question had to be conducted prior to its final classification. chang (2012: 110) also reported on this issue of multi-functionality, suggesting that the more common the question form was, the more variable its functions were. 4 in order to guarantee inter-rater reliability, the two researchers initially coded questions independently, following the chosen taxonomy, and later checked for agreement. cases for which there were different codes were re-examined and consensus was reached. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� ‘does everybody understand?’ teacher questions across disciplines in english-mediated university lectures language value 5 (1), 129–151 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 137 account of the findings encountered and ease the comparison of the three lessons. for comparative purposes, and given that the lectures differ in length, results have been normalized taking into account the number of questions occurring per 1000 words5 . the results were displayed both using percentages (when the lectures were not compared across disciplines but treated collectively) and normalized findings (when compared cross-disciplinarily). a number of excerpts from the dialogues in the lectures are included to illustrate the discussion of results. iv. results and discussion in the four hours of teaching practice analysed, a total of 13.9 questions per 1000 words were identified, a finding that offers a positive answer to the first part of our research question 1 (rq1), that is, that questions are indeed used in emi classrooms as in other teaching contexts. the second part of rq1 referred to the types of questions that lecturers utilized in their sessions and the study reveals that the four more frequent question types in our data are confirmation checks (50%), followed by self-answered questions (22%), display questions (20%) and, finally, referential questions (8%) as figure 1 below shows: figure 1. most frequent question types in emi classrooms. 5 normalization is a common way to convert raw counts into rates of occurrence, so that the scores from texts of different lengths can be compared (see biber 1993 for a full account of this frequently used method). http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� emma dafouz milne and davinia sánchez garcía language value 5 (1), 129–151 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 138 by types, confirmation checks are the most commonly used type of question in the three lectures examined, regardless of the discipline. from a quantitative perspective, our findings differ notably from chang’s study (2012: 109) in terms of the frequency of comprehension checks on academic divisions similar to ours (namely, humanities and arts, social sciences and education, and physical sciences and engineering). in chang’s work the frequency of questions used by native english-speaking lecturers to check student’s comprehension was especially low. although chang does not provide further explanations to this finding, when compared to our study, one could argue that in chang’s paper (with data drawn from the micase corpus) both lecturers and students have english as their native or first language and thus comprehension problems derived from language difficulties will most likely not be so relevant. in contrast, the lecturers and students in our research have english as a foreign language, a difference which may have an effect on both the way lecturers articulate their discourse (thøgersen and airey 2011) and/or in the way students understand it. on a more refined level, and in order to seek possible reasons regarding the striking numerical differences between chang’s study and our own, we revised the composition of these units qualitatively and discovered that 89.9% of the questions classified as comprehension checks corresponded to the form ‘ok?’. the example below illustrates a typical instance found in our data: (example 1) i mean, for instance, imagine, there is an activity, the research and development. it is carried out in one particular country. it can lead you, it could lead you to have losses, ok? (pause) no problem with that in that particular country, but in the global… when considering it global, you will make more profit. do you know what i mean? but the point is that you are trying to maximize the value on a global basis, considering everything, ok? (pause) so, that´s it. in a more detailed analysis, we realized that the majority of these confirmation checks were not actually (or not only) directed by the teachers in our data to the studentaudience so as to verify whether they follow the ideas in the lectures adequately. in our data this device seems to be largely used as a transition marker, in that, when uttered, the lecturer is making a short pause to think about the next coming idea. in other words, it looks as if the primary goal of those “first-approach” confirmation checks used by lecturers is not to obtain verification from students but rather from himself/herself and could often be translated in teachers’ minds as “ok, this point is covered, let’s move on http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� ‘does everybody understand?’ teacher questions across disciplines in english-mediated university lectures language value 5 (1), 129–151 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 139 to the next one”. as far as our three teacher subjects are concerned, our data suggest that when in search of audience agreement, lecturers use other types of confirmation checks, that may be either more explicit (e.g. do you understand?, is it clear?) or more extended (e.g. is it ok?), while at the same time they pause for a few seconds seeking, maybe, some verbal or non-verbal response from students. in any case, in our sample these checks are rather scarce. regarding research question 3 (rq3), by disciplines, confirmation checks appear in the business class 5.8 times per 1000 words, 3.8 were produced in the engineering realm, and 2.7 in physics, as shown in figure 2. figure 2. confirmation checks by disciplines. from this disciplinary point of view, this time our results do match chang’s study (2012), since it also yields a higher number of comprehension checks in the social sciences, or ‘soft sciences’ (neumann 2001), than in the physical sciences and engineering, or ‘hard sciences’. for chang (2012: 113), this result could be linked to differences in the disciplinary cultures examined and thus concludes: in the hard fields, the process of knowledge production is cumulative in nature; more shared background knowledge and standard procedures of knowledge making can thus be established. due to this characteristic of knowledge production, the professors in these fields have developed a less interactive style of lecture discourse. [in contrast] the process of establishing new knowledge in the soft fields tends to be more persuasive and dialogic in nature and does not show the same linear developmental patterns as that in the hard fields. in conjunction with the less hierarchical power structure among the community members, this fact might explain why professors in the two soft divisions tend to use questions to engage their students and to manage the teaching flow slightly more often than their counterparts in the hard fields. although the reduced size of our dataset calls for great caution in the reading of the findings, it does trigger off interesting questions regarding disciplinary differences in http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� emma dafouz milne and davinia sánchez garcía language value 5 (1), 129–151 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 140 the construction of knowledge and, concurrently, in interactional classroom behaviour (neumann 2001). self-answered questions were the second most frequent question type in all three lectures except in engineering, where they were outnumbered by display and referential questions. as seen in figure 3, once again the business lecture is the one containing the highest number of questions (n = 4 per thousand words), followed by the physics session (n = 1.1 per thousand words) and finally the engineering lecture (n = 0.3 per thousand words). figure 3. self-answered questions by disciplines these types of questions do not seem to favour an intervention on the part of the students since the teacher offers a prompt reply with no pause, as if he/she were talking to himself/herself while paving the way for the next point in the lecture or the further development of an idea. on the basis of this finding, we coincide with bamford’s study (2005) when she views lecturers’ control of both the question and answer as an effective attention-focusing mechanism. bamford suggests that by reproducing the prosody of spontaneous conversation, such question/answer sequences can “serve to induce the student into thinking that what is taking place is an interactive sharing of ideas and information” (bamford 2005, quoted in chang 2012: 126). additionally, self-answered questions also seem to play a discourse guiding function, meaning that they may be used by the lecturer in guiding himself/herself through the unfolding speech so that new topics or subtopics can be introduced or developed. both of these functions can be traced in the examples below: http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� ‘does everybody understand?’ teacher questions across disciplines in english-mediated university lectures language value 5 (1), 129–151 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 141 (example 2) teacher: what happens if another dislocation is coming after this one? it will find not only the obstacle, but also the dislocation loop in here. so, it will have a more complex interaction. (example 3) teacher: (...) i have a carbon precipitate. i have just some impurities of carbon in my matrix, but they are just what is called a solid solution (...) what happens? we can have two possibilities. if the impurity atom it is of smaller size than the one from the matrix, then we will have some tensile stresses on the surrounding lattice. while if we have that the impurity it is bigger one, then i will have compressive stresses in the lattice. finally, display and referential questions, although present in all three lectures, show certain differences when it comes to their frequency of use, as figure 4 shows. overall, there are 4.9 display questions and 2.1 referential ones. figure 4. display and referential questions by disciplines. as shown in figure 4 above, display questions (2.7) are clearly more numerous than referential ones (0.8) in the business lecture. in the same vein, display questions (2.2) nearly double referential ones (1.2) in the engineering session. as a counterpoint, display (0) and referential questions (0.1) barely take place in the physics classroom. again, our findings match chang’s study (2012) in that more audience-oriented questions than content-oriented questions are found in the social sciences and fewer in the physics and engineering divisions. from a second language acquisition perspective, referential questions, as was mentioned earlier, are believed to trigger longer, more authentic and more involved contributions on the part of the student than display questions (dalton-puffer 2007: 96). http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� emma dafouz milne and davinia sánchez garcía language value 5 (1), 129–151 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 142 the reason for this lies in the genuine interrogative nature of referential questions, whereby participants exchange real information unknown to the teacher and most likely to their fellow students. nevertheless, in our data, students’ output to referential questions was extremely limited and often reduced to minimal responses as the examples below illustrate. this finding could be tied in to the fact that most referential questions are formally closed. in other words, they only offer the audience the possibility of answering with “yes” or “no” responses as shown in examples 4, 5 and 6: (example 4) teacher: some question about the theory that we saw yesterday? student: no. (example 5) teacher: have you seen that the commercials for volkswagen have been reproduced in german all around the world, even here? student: yes. (example 6) teacher: you wouldn’t be efficient if you only produced mobile phones for swedish people, ok? or norwegian people, imagine. how many norwegians can there be? student: four million. teacher: four million, puff. once again, although these questions in theory present an excellent opportunity to create a conversational exchange between participants, in most cases either no output (see example 4) or very reduced discourse (i.e. oneor two-word responses) was produced by students as examples 7 and 8 reveal; that is, short exchanges with few words and simple grammar. (example 7) teacher: what phases are you comparing? student: atom student: field (example 8) teacher: how much phase does the field go through in the time interval between the pulses? student: um... (that) length? on the whole, these findings inevitably prompt a reflection on the role of questions in lecture discourse and in classroom learning in general. moreover, it also brings to the foreground issues of teaching methods in university settings. in this line, musumeci (1996) suggested that interaction in university lectures was not to be expected by either teachers or students as lectures were not the appropriate genre for interactional exchanges to occur in. to look into this matter, prospective work could take into http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� ‘does everybody understand?’ teacher questions across disciplines in english-mediated university lectures language value 5 (1), 129–151 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 143 account classroom dynamics and the overall teaching aim of university lectures, as indeed in many cases the most important aspect of these sessions may not be classroom interaction after all. research question 4 (rq4) concerning the relationship between teacher questions and student interaction still needs to be answered. by participants, it is interesting to highlight that 9.6 questions out of the overall 13.9 questions per 1000 words were teacher-initiated questions, whereas only 4.3 were questions articulated by students. analysis of the data already showed that the number of questions uttered by teachers is not a transparent sign of classroom interaction. in other words, teacher questions do not necessarily correlate with student response, as the table below shows: table 3. questions per 1000 words – interaction correlation. business physics engineering total total questions 15.3 4.6 8.1 28 total questions triggering student interaction 5.7 2 4.4 12.1 however, the findings also suggest that the more numerous the teacher questions are, the higher the chances of student response will be. for example, the business lecture is the one containing the highest number of questions (n = 15.3) and consequently the one that yields the highest level of student response or interaction (5.7 instances). the engineering lecture appears in second place with a total of 8.1 questions, out of which 4.4 trigger interaction. and finally, the lecture producing the fewest conversational exchanges as the result of questioning is the physics session with 4.6 questions and 2 cases of interaction per thousand words. in any case, and in a rough calculation, less than 50% of the questions asked by teachers are actually responded to by learners. the inevitable question that is raised here and to which this study can provide no definite answer is whether in tertiary settings, or more precisely in lectures, successful education depends on question-answer interaction. interestingly, smit (2010: 241) showed that the international students in her hotel-management classrooms prefer some sessions to be teacher-fronted or lecture-based rather than interactive, as this grants them the opportunity to “gather a great deal of new information” without having the need to be http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� emma dafouz milne and davinia sánchez garcía language value 5 (1), 129–151 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 144 exposed to interactional practices. whether this option is preferred by the students in our data or not would need to be tested in prospective stages of research. v. concluding remarks and pedagogical implications this paper focused on the use of questions by three university teachers in three different spanish universities and across three different disciplines. specifically, the study reported that questions are indeed used in english medium instruction lectures and that the most recurrently used by all three teachers and disciplines are, in identical order, confirmation checks, followed by self-answered questions and display questions. this overall finding seems to suggest that, at least as far as our data suggest, there are far more similarities than differences between the disciplines under scrutiny with regard to the use of questions in academic lectures. this finding matches other studies dealing with lecturing performance across disciplinary subjects (chang 2012) and even languages (see dafouz milne and núñez perucha 2010 for a study of l1/l2 lecturing performance), thereby suggesting that maybe the generic features of lectures predominate over differences in the disciplinary culture. in other words, it could be claimed that lectures in an educational setting seem to transcend the academic disciplinary culture and exhibit certain uniformity or what we have called a common macro-structure. admittedly, the limited size of our sample and our focus on lectures as the sole classroom speech event analysed necessitates a cautious interpretation of the findings and calls for further research. from an emi perspective, what remains to be answered is whether differences in teacher question types could somehow also be influenced (whether consciously or unconsciously) by considerations of language proficiency as dalton-puffer (2007: 125) suggested. in other words, could questions be articulated and used by teachers as a kind of scaffolding or compensatory strategy to make up for potential difficulties derived from what instructors think may be students’ limited foreign language competence? or could questions be linked to what content teachers have found to be the usual (l1) conceptual difficulties students face in university disciplines and education? in order to answer such questions, contrastive data from l1 and l2 lecturer performance might be of interest in trying to disentangle specific emi variables from disciplinary differences http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� ‘does everybody understand?’ teacher questions across disciplines in english-mediated university lectures language value 5 (1), 129–151 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 145 or classroom discourse features. it might also be revealing to conduct longitudinal studies such as those by smit (2010) and dalton-puffer (2007) to track possible changes in the types of teacher questions used over longer periods of time. smit (2010), for example, found in her ethnographic study that both teachers and students varied their questioning behaviour across time and that while lecturers gradually shifted from more display questions to more referential ones, students moved from shorter, sometimes minimal one-word responses, to more extended discourse. all in all, what is indeed a difference in this study with respect to other research conducted on teacher questions in university settings is the role of english as the medium of instruction by non-native speaker lecturers and students. in these settings, language expertise authority cannot be automatically expected from lecturers (dafouz 2011, hynninen 2012, smit 2010). consequently, an interesting shift in the traditionally hierarchical roles found in university contexts may be found, with a more “democratic stance” developing between teacher and student interaction (see dafouz et al. 2007), as teachers often (need to) negotiate foreign language terms and expressions with students and use these as language informants. whether this democratic, less-hierarchical atmosphere in emi classrooms is actually deliberately enacted by teachers or the inevitable consequence of some teachers having (initially) a reduced repertoire is something to be researched6 to conclude, with this study our intention was to raise awareness of the importance of teacher discourse, and more specifically teacher questions, in emi settings. our results should be interpreted with caution and may not be generalized, since the analysis has dealt with a limited-size corpus. for this reason, further research on larger sets of data needs to be undertaken so that additional conclusions may be drawn. . from a pedagogical perspective, we believe that awareness of teacher discourse is essential since the large majority of teachers working in emi contexts (at least in spain) are not language experts, and thus need to be trained to be attentive to their own discourse in the classroom and to realise that language can be used as a supporting strategy for student learning. higher education teachers need to be aware of how 6 dafouz (2011: 203-204) observed, through face-to-face interviews, that teachers often expressed concern regarding their “limited” interpersonal skills when, for example, they had to solve misunderstandings, negotiate deadlines with students, or use an informal register or humorous strategies to empathise with learners. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� emma dafouz milne and davinia sánchez garcía language value 5 (1), 129–151 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 146 different interactional strategies (e.g. questions) can facilitate or limit the amount of content learning and language learning that students may achieve. as stoller (2004: 45) clearly stated “(…) 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(ed.) academic listening. research perspectives. cambridge: cambridge university press, 159-176. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� ‘does everybody understand?’ teacher questions across disciplines in english-mediated university lectures language value 5 (1), 129–151 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 151 received: 3 may 2013 accepted: 24 august 2013 cite this article as: dafouz milne, e. & sánchez garcía, d. 2013. “‘does everybody understand?’ teacher questions across disciplines in english-mediated university lectures: an exploratory study”. language value 5 (1), 129-151. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.erevistes.uji.es/languagevalue. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.5.7 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� cite this article as: issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2013, volume 5, number 1 pp. 24-47 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2013.5.3 24 (in)compatibility of clil and esp courses at university joseba m. gonzález ardeo fipgoarj@lg.ehu.es universidad del país vasco / euskal herriko unibertsitatea, spain abstract this paper deals with the current coexistence of esp (english for specific purposes) and clil (content and language integrated learning) courses in tertiary educational settings in the basque country. the university of the basque country (ubc) is immersed in an ongoing process of internationalization and, consequently, its language teachers are witnessing an unstoppable process of anglicization. at present, and presumably in the medium and long term, institutional decisions will continue to support clil in preference to esp. in order to analyse this process within the ubc, quantitative data about these two linguistic approaches are gathered and compared with data from 2005. a questionnaire aimed at gathering the opinions of engineering students who currently take both types of courses is also used as a source of qualitative data. the main conclusion of this exploratory study is that both types of courses seem to be compatible. however, language teachers, english-medium content teachers and students are facing a tough challenge, since neither of the two types of course is a panacea. keywords: clil, esp, internationalization of higher education, anglicization, university of the basque country, questionnaire i. introduction in a globalized, postmodern world a rather different model of education has emerged. with the aim of setting up a european higher education area (ehea), more than forty countries have joined the bologna process with the aim of standardizing higher education in europe and thus make an open market for european and non-european citizens (wächter 2008). one of the undeniable consequences is the fact that many universities in europe are desperately trying to internationalize their curricula. this approach offers several benefits, the most obvious of which is that it encourages academic cooperation and, consequently, staff and student mobility. internationalization of tertiary institutions usually means implementing higher education in english or, in simpler terms, anglicization, since universities tend to use this language more and more as a means of instruction and a working language, with the aim of attracting not only international students but also staff and courses. anglicization http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� joseba m. gonzález ardeo language value 5 (1), 24–47 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 25 in higher education means making use of the english language as a lingua franca for academia (mauranen and ranta 2009) and converting material in the local language into english in an attempt to increase international cooperation or, more succinctly and directly, introducing a number of english-medium programmes. the word internationalization primarily suggests, or should suggest, multiculturalism and multilingualism but a flow of cultures and languages other than english does not seem to exist. it is true that languages such as german and french try to keep up with english, but they are significantly less successful. publication in international journals is a synonym of publication in english. local languages used for publishing in local publications have little (if any) weight in a globalized world in contrast with almighty english. in fact, most ‘international’ journals based in non-english-speaking countries have become english-only publications, thus reducing multilingualism in that particular field and eliminating the status of any other language as an international language of science (hamel 2007). undergraduate and postgraduate programmes taught entirely in english increase year in, year out (costa and coleman 2010, wächter and maiworm 2008) not only in northern europe, germany and the netherlands but also, although at a slower rate, in southern europe. scholars for whom english is their second, or additional, language have a clear disadvantage, since nowadays (on the horns of a dilemma: publish or perish) a teacher may remain unknown on the international stage or academic community if s/he does not publish in english. at least three main conclusions can be reached from the information presented so far. first of all, as phillipson (2009: 37) stated, “what emerges unambiguously is that in the bologna process, internationalization means english-medium higher education”. secondly, as coleman (2006: 11) stated, “it seems inevitable that english, in some form, will definitely become the language of education”. the european shift towards english-medium instruction (hughes 2008) is one of the consequences of the bologna process and it has been a non-stop process since english became the international language for the dissemination of knowledge in, for example, scientific conferences several years ago (ammon 1996). finally, it seems to be true that, to a certain extent, most of us are somewhat forced to accept certain, sometimes controversial, beliefs due to the uncritical adoption of anglo-saxon paradigms (phillipson 2006). http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� (in)compatibility of clil and esp courses at university language value 5 (1), 24–47 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 26 the policies of the bologna process state that all university students will have to accredit the knowledge of a foreign language – in the majority of cases english – to b1 or b2 level of the european framework of reference in order to obtain their certificates. therefore, universities will have to provide for this requirement. this section depicts a scenario in which the term internationalization is a synonym of anglicization. the following section deals with the role of clil (content and language integrated learning) and esp (english for specific purposes) in this unstoppable process and the way they fight their way through future hegemony. ii. clil vs esp and the anglicization process to start with, the theoretical foundations of clil must be clearly established (daltonpuffer 2008). clil, a predominantly european movement, is in fact an umbrella term used to describe a whole spectrum of approaches. in other words, it embraces any type of programme where a second language is used to teach non-linguistic content-matter (garcía 2009, khoury and berilgen-duzgun 2008, marsh 2002). it consists in learning subject-matter content through the medium of a foreign language, and learning a foreign language by studying subject-matter content. in the clil methodology, language is a tool for learning and communicating, and the content determines the language to be learnt. in addition, some researchers (lasagabaster and sierra 2010, navés and victori 2010) have also pointed out and emphasized the need to have empirical studies that back up statements so often made about the benefits of clil, as well as to generalize the implementation of clil as a successful teaching model in order to consolidate clil programmes. to learn to be effective, it is necessary to integrate receptive and productive skills. moreover, reading and listening are re-dimensioned, language is functional, lexicon is of paramount importance and the approach is task-oriented. in 2006, a macro-survey on europeans’ languages was conducted by the european commission and some alarming (but fairly predictable) conclusions were reached. spain appears as “the bottom rung of the foreign-language knowledge ladder” (lasagabaster and sierra 2009: 7). clil has been embraced since then as a linguistic lifebelt or a possible lever for change and success. consequently, “…the clil approach has become an important tool in supporting the achievement of the european http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� joseba m. gonzález ardeo language value 5 (1), 24–47 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 27 commission’s objective of improving the foreign language proficiency of its citizens” (lasagabaster and sierra 2009: 15). powered by the aforementioned circumstances, clil has had an almost exponential uptake across europe over the past two decades, gradually becoming an established teaching approach (järvinen 2007). teaching through one single language is seen as second rate education (lorenzo 2007), and thus clil is spreading fast. however, the impact of this rapid spread has not been thoroughly researched yet, especially in spain (lasagabaster and ruiz de zarobe 2010, ruiz de zarobe and jiménez catalán 2009). there is also a need to explore how the key concepts of content, language and language learning merge into clil (fernández 2009). the differences between clil and other approaches and methodologies developed within the framework of content-based instruction (cbi), e.g. content-based learning (cbl), esp, cognitive academic language learning activities (calla), integration of content and language (icl), language across the curriculum and even task-based learning (tbl), are basically ontological and, consequentially, epistemological. these approaches get bundled together because they share some assumptions, namely: teaching/learning a foreign language is an educational practice; content is inseparable from linguistic expression; it is necessary to coordinate the learning of language and subject-matter; language is the major medium of instruction and learning; subject-matter content contextualizes language learning. for learning a subject in an l2, learners need three kinds of language and learning skills: basic l2 skills, academic l2 skills, and metacognitive skills. this means that they will have to be able to listen, speak, read and write on a wide range of topics, making appropriate and accurate use of the language at the level of sounds/spelling, grammar, vocabulary, function, and discourse. to learn all this, they take foreign language lessons and l2-medium subject lessons informally outside school. however, learners of subjects in an l2 have to do things with the language which conventional foreign language learners do not have to do. they need what cummins (1979) calls calp (cognitive academic language proficiency), a formal, de-contextualized variety of language used in school. these calp skills are: 1) listening. students may have to deal with excellent teacher presentations (well-organized, supported by visuals, etc.), or just the opposite. moreover, they will have to listen to their peers and try to grasp an http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� (in)compatibility of clil and esp courses at university language value 5 (1), 24–47 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 28 argument in the broken language typically found in these situations. 2) reading. learners will have to read handouts, board work, subject textbooks, and so on, sometimes with the help of diagrams, charts, etc. but sometimes with dense paragraphs in formal language in which sentences are long and complex. sometimes they will search for information in reference books, the internet, and so on, and will need the necessary skills for using tables, skimming, scanning, etc. they will also have to distinguish central from peripheral information. 3) writing. students will have to plan, draft and revise texts by constructing formal sentences accurately, using specific vocabulary, and organizing the sentences in paragraphs. 4) talking. this will include responding to teacher elicitations, talking in groups (this skill is complex and many students have difficulties even in their l1), making and supporting points, agreeing and disagreeing with others’ points, making presentations, and so forth, sometimes using various visual means of conveying data. 5) functions. thinking skills such as defining, classifying, hypothesizing, comparing, expressing cause and effect, time sequence, and so on, are needed. 6) vocabulary. they will have to learn low-frequency, high-precision subject-specific words and also academic vocabulary or school-specific words and phrases for expressing, for example, notions of structure, function, type, place, and so forth. 7) metacognitive skills. learners need to ask teachers to explain and repeat, to look up words, to remember key phrases useful in academic discourse, to listen carefully for organizational signals in teacher talk, to pre-read texts, etc. these skills will help learners to work efficiently in clil lessons, provided of course they are previously or simultaneously trained. clil programmes are considered to be content-based programmes as well as subject programmes. to be sure that students are indeed learning the language, clil teachers will have to analyse the language demands of lessons and provide language support to help learners meet them, otherwise learners will learn the subject inefficiently and the language more slowly. continued development occurs only if subject teachers promote it by drawing learners’ conscious attention to language. in other words, for clil teachers to be good, they need some skill in language development. a careful analysis of the development of esp, on the other hand, brings together key concepts such as register analysis, rhetorical/discourse analysis, situational analysis, skills and strategies, needs analysis, learning-centred processes (hutchinson and waters http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� joseba m. gonzález ardeo language value 5 (1), 24–47 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 29 1987) and authenticity of input and purpose, which seem to characterize all academic proposals in the field. esp is designed to meet specific needs; it is related in content to particular disciplines, occupations and activities; it is centred on language (syntax, lexis, discourse, semantics) that is appropriate to the activities; it is non-general english oriented and it has no pre-ordained methodology (discipline, strategy or needdependent) (bell 2006, dudley-evans and st john 1998). in fact, the esp teacher “should not become a teacher of subject matter, but rather an interested student of the subject matter” (micic 2005: 5). they should also regard themselves and their students as “professionals who learn and complement each other” (irizar and chiappy 2008: 13). knowledge of the subject and its terminology is important, but it is also important to remember that it is usage of the english language in a specific context which is being taught in esp, since the focus is on the terminology used in specific fields such as law, medicine, engineering, finance, etc. consequently, clil is not an evolution of esp because the focus is very different and even if both aim at the same goal of becoming fluent in a language, clil does not focus on teaching this language, as opposed to esp. clil and esp share a number of key features, such as the use of content from different non-linguistic subjects, development of academic and communication skills, and use of communicative language teaching methodology. however, there are some key differences in these two approaches, and one of them is the objectives and learning outcomes. clil clearly states that content-learning objectives are equally or even more important than language-learning objectives, whereas esp is language-led and language-learning objectives are of primary importance. another key aspect that both approaches share is the language (l2), but it is approached in a completely different way. in esp, language is both the content of the course and the means of learning content, it is often adapted to the learners’ proficiency level or rather the learners are often grouped according to their levels of language proficiency. in clil, it is advised to use ‘scaffolding’ strategies to make content more manageable without really adapting it (hammond and gibbons 2005). in clil, language is viewed as a means and not a goal in itself, which means it is learned when needed and not, as in more traditional approaches, esp among them, when language content leads towards http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� (in)compatibility of clil and esp courses at university language value 5 (1), 24–47 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 30 the choice of content topics. in clil, learning strategies are employed to provide language support for content acquisition. more tolerance to language usage, more support for language production, enabling learners to acquire language in such a way is one of the key principles of clil, as opposed to traditional language teaching. clil also tolerates more use of l1, and codeswitching strategies. one more key difference is the teachers. an ideal clil teacher is a subject specialist with an appropriate level of language proficiency. sometimes in clil, tandem teaching by content and subject specialists is used. a typical esp teacher is a language teacher who does not take on the responsibility for teaching subject content as it is beyond their competence because of the high cognitive demands of the subjects taught in higher education. one of the ways of solving the ‘content’ issue for the language specialists in higher education is to rely more on project or problem-based teaching and to co-operate with subject specialists. after analysing the global view of clil and esp methodologies and their current support, the following section focuses on a local scenario: the basque country and the use of english at its university. iii. english in the basque country and at the university of the basque country the basque country (euskal herria) is a small stateless nation (20,664 km2) located in the vertex of the atlantic arc on both sides of the pyrenees mountain range, divided between spain and france. euskal herria is made up of seven historical territories or provinces. within the spanish state: araba, bizkaia, gipuzkoa or the so-called basque autonomous community (bac) (7,233 km2), and the charter community of navarre (10,392 km2). in the french state, iparralde (northern basque country) (3,039 km2) is made up of lapurdi, behe nafarroa and zuberoa. these are part of the département of the pyrénées-atlantiques (they do not constitute a single, separate administration in france, despite continual demands for the creation of a basque département). this division largely explains the different situation presented by each of the three basque political-administrative units, with respect to both bilingualism and basque identity. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� joseba m. gonzález ardeo language value 5 (1), 24–47 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 31 the bac, the most dynamic in the basque language and culture normalization process, experienced high rates of immigration from other spanish regions, most significantly at the beginning of the 20th century and during the franco regime. in terms of population, euskal herria has, roughly speaking, 2.9 million inhabitants: 2.1 in the bac, 0.55 in navarre and 0.26 in iparralde. so, the region we are dealing with is a highly complex one. only two decades ago, bilingualism in the bac was the cornerstone of research when basque versus spanish competence was evaluated. a gradual shift towards multilingualism is taking place and it is becoming a social phenomenon (governed by the needs of globalization and cultural openness). multilingual education in the basque country reinforced the teaching of english as a foreign language in the curriculum. foreign-language teaching (english in most cases) is compulsory from the third year of primary school (eight-year-olds), but early instruction in english from the age of four or six is very common. specific projects to develop trilingual education in basque schools were developed in the 1990s and they can be regarded as an extension of the bilingual educational system. these projects aim at achieving communicative competence in the three languages (basque, spanish and english) and also consider the importance of developing positive attitudes towards the languages. research carried out in the basque country in connection with the level of competence in the three languages has covered a wide range of options. for example, cenoz and gorter (2011) analysed the development of writing skills in basque, spanish and english; elorza and muñoa (2008) focused on how to promote the minority language (basque) through integrated multilingual language planning; gallardo del puerto (2007) analysed l3 (english) phonological competence in connection with the learner’s level of bilingualism (basque/spanish). the growth of tertiary clil is an institutional initiative dictated by the strategic need for internationalization, one which will enhance the employability of home students while attracting international students (wächter 2004) in a globalizing academia (wilkinson and zegers 2008). research carried out in the basque country confirms that secondary school students enrolled in clil classes hold significantly more positive attitudes towards english as a foreign language to teach content than those in efl classes (lasagabaster and sierra 2009), but it is widely recognized that there is a strong http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� (in)compatibility of clil and esp courses at university language value 5 (1), 24–47 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 32 need for research and better practices in tertiary clil settings (costa and coleman, 2010, dalton-puffer and smit 2007). in 2005 the university of the basque country (ubc) launched a multilingualism plan (to implement an official strategy of the basque government) with the general aim of fostering the presence of foreign languages in its curricula. more specifically, these aims can be summarized as follows: to provide continuity to the multilingualism projects in which english or french are taught at secondary school in the bac. to develop linguistic training for students with the aim of facilitating mobility within the ehea. to foster conferences, symposia and other university activities in foreign languages. the plan expects to linguistically qualify students so that they can take more advantage of visiting professors and foreign journals. to facilitate the insertion of students on the labour market, since mastering a foreign language has become market value added. to widen the options for foreign students in exchange and international programmes. the delivery of lectures in foreign languages is undoubtedly appealing when it comes to attracting foreign students. to promote the internationalization of teaching staff, with a view to enhancing their teaching and research careers. the plan also states that it will allow students from the ubc to learn not only english and french but also the specific language of each branch or specialization. taking into account the topic of this paper, the word ‘specific’ is fundamental in this declaration of principles or intentions. nothing at all is mentioned in terms of, for example, teacher training. consequently, as wächter and maiworm (2008) stated, students are exposed to academic staff with a broad range of knowledge from different sources. it therefore seems that clil at the tertiary level is often performed in a rather casual manner because university lecturers are not usually inclined to receive training on how to teach in a foreign language. they are content to teach independently, and see no need to discuss issues with language teachers (more specifically, esp teachers). even worse, some content teachers may also http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� joseba m. gonzález ardeo language value 5 (1), 24–47 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 33 feel that the subjects taught through english will be watered down and simplified in order to make them comprehensible to the students, but in some cases this may be a fallacious argument. in order to justify our statement, let us consider the following summarized version of this ubc agreement – regulations on how to obtain accreditation for teaching in non-official languages (june 2010): 1) the accreditation certifies that the teacher can teach in the non-official language; 2) the accreditation can be obtained through one of the following ways: a) through a test that includes two parts. on the one hand there is a written part, in which firstly candidates will have to offer proof of their command of the language in a general way and, secondly, they will have to write a 250-300-word text to prove they have enough ability to write in a clear and comprehensible way about a university topic selected by the candidate from among those suggested by a committee. on the other hand, the test also includes an oral part in which the candidate will have to prove sufficient command of the language to develop and present a university topic chosen from among those suggested by the committee, a task that will last 15 minutes (maximum). b) through proper accreditation: c1 or higher certificate (cae is mentioned as an example); merits such as a university degree studied in that language; a phd completed in that language; an aptitude certificate granted by spanish official language schools; having taught at a foreign university in that language for at least 100 hours; other merits. one conclusion that can be drawn from this scenario is that watered-down versions of clil courses may be rather likely in the ubc, due mainly to a prospective lack of professional competence, from a linguistic point of view, of some clilers. on their part, esp teachers see a need for collaboration in order to properly define how to teach in english at the tertiary level. in the following section, current figures of clil at the ubc are presented and compared with current figures of esp. those figures are also compared with figures from 2005. this will show us the picture of a growing trend in favour of clil. next, an exploratory study is described and its results are presented. the main aim of this study is to quantify to what extent esp and clil courses are (in)compatible at the ubc and, more precisely, how engineering students face the dilemma of choosing clil vs. esp courses (or both) and why they do so. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� (in)compatibility of clil and esp courses at university language value 5 (1), 24–47 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 34 iv. clil and engineering at the university of the basque country as regards the implementation and results of clil programmes in the basque country, lasagabaster’s study (2008), which compared the linguistic competence of secondaryschool students in clil programmes and students in traditional efl courses, found statistically significant differences in all language skills (including speaking, writing, grammar, listening and overall english competence) in favour of clil students in secondary education. likewise, ruiz de zarobe’s research (2007) on the oral proficiency of secondary-school learners showed that clil learners outperformed nonclil learners in most of the measures used to analyse oral skills. those in favour of the clil approach justify its use by stating that as in secondary education, clil-type teaching in higher education increases learner motivation, contributing to both cognitively more demanding content and language learning and communicative skills development. they also state that clil enables learners to perform to the level of their linguistic and academic competence. integrating communication learning outcomes promotes students’ ability to observe, adopt and adjust the discursive identity of their discipline (fortanet-gómez and räisänen 2008). due to political, economic, academic and cultural reasons, clil is undoubtedly gaining ground in the academic market in general, and the bac is no exception. the recent evolution of clil and esp in tertiary settings within the bac seems to predict that esp will be soon fading away with the advent of clil. table 1 shows the evolution of esp and clil in quantitative terms, that is, by considering ‘southern-europe traditional’ credits (10 teaching hours per credit) in 2005, and the ects (european credit transfer system) credits at present assigned to esp courses and to clil courses. there were no clil courses in 2005, but at present the situation has changed radically (and dramatically for those esp practitioners that have been working in the bac for the last 30 years). http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� joseba m. gonzález ardeo language value 5 (1), 24–47 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 35 table 1. esp credits and clil ects credits in engineering. esp / clil 2005 esp / clil at present public institutions (ubc) faculty of engineering (bi) 24 / 0 0 / 82 school of technical industrial engineering (bi) 36 / 0 12 / 21 school of technical mining and public works (bi) 12 / 0 0 / 6 polytechnic school (gi) 30 / 0 12 / 12 school of technical industrial engineering (gi) 24 / 0 7.5 / 12 school of engineering (ar) 30 / 0 7.5 / 18 private institutions university of deusto (bi) 9 / 0 0 / 42 mondragon university (gi) 18 / 0 3 / 24 bac: bi (bizkaia), gi (gipuzkoa), ar (araba) v. exploratory study with the aim of helping to clarify the reality of this new scenario and thus supplement the figures from table 1, an additional study was carried out to gather information from engineering students about their esp and clil lessons. their opinions and reasons for choosing both types of courses throw light on the topic and may help us to predict shortterm trends, since both approaches will be compatible only if a synergic phenomenon takes place. v.1. sample the study was conducted in bilbao, internationally probably the best known city in the basque country. the participants were engineering students from the ubc, to be more precise, from the school of technical industrial engineering. more specifically, they were 23 undergraduates in their last year of study (men/women: 10/13) from different branches of engineering, and their ages ranged from 21 to 26. v.2. instruments the questionnaire that students were invited to complete (a sample is included as an appendix) is an original questionnaire in the sense that it is not an adaptation of other http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� (in)compatibility of clil and esp courses at university language value 5 (1), 24–47 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 36 researchers’ questionnaires. the reason for this lies in the peculiar characteristics of the sample used, i.e. engineering students located in the bac, where basque (a minority language) and spanish (an international language) are co-official languages, and where english is extensively used by engineers. the questionnaire was checked and tested thoroughly prior to being used. other esp teachers filtered out unclear or biased items from the questionnaire, and it was tested in a control group before adopting its final version – divided into three separate blocks. the first block gathers information about the students’ age and gender. the second one contains 16 statements. the first five items were included in order to gain an idea of the students’ attitudes towards english in general, in terms of liking or disliking it and in terms of weighing up its importance for them and for others in the basque country. previous research shows that monolingual (mother tongue: basque or spanish) and bilingual (basque/spanish) engineering students show overall positive attitudes towards english (gonzález ardeo 2003). the remaining eleven items were all connected with esp and clil and they attempted to find out whether, in these students’ opinion, esp lessons are more interesting/useful than clil lessons or not, and if they think they are compatible despite the sometimes considerable overlap between the subjects. the validity of the questionnaire rests on the fact that these adult students understood clearly enough the role of both clil and esp courses and their differences as well as their similarities. apart from the fact that the students were directly involved in these courses, they received intensive information about these two topics, and answers were provided to solve all the questions raised in the most effective and complete way. moreover, in order to reinforce its validity, it can be stated that the questionnaire measures what it was intended to measure, since the questions were phrased appropriately, and the options for responding were also considered appropriate after the sifting process mentioned above. finally, the last block includes a single statement to somehow filter the answers from the second block and thus try to minimize biased results. this statement (“i would have provided the same answers in this questionnaire if the interviewer had been a clil teacher”) expects the students to be as objective as possible – no matter who the interviewer is (esp teacher versus clil teacher). http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� joseba m. gonzález ardeo language value 5 (1), 24–47 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 37 v.3. procedure the paper-and-pencil questionnaires were completed in class and the time allowed was 10 minutes. they were printed in english and the answers were recorded on answer sheets, which were evaluated statistically after having been codified. v.4. results results were first tabulated. arithmetical means and standard deviations give us first an overall view of the students’ perceptions about the items included in the questionnaire. the standard deviation (sd = σ) has been chosen instead of the average absolute deviation because the former is algebraically simpler though practically less robust than the latter. moreover, σ is commonly used to measure confidence in statistical conclusions. the distribution of data is normal (bell-shaped), so we will assume that: mean ± 2σ = 95% of the population mean ± 3σ = 99.7% of the population figure 1 shows a summary of the results obtained in terms of descriptive statistics. it can be observed in items 1 to 5 that the dominant attitude towards english continues to be favourable or very favourable, and a strong instrumental but also integrative motivation (gardner and lambert 1972) is clear. however, in item 2, “english should be taught to all pupils in the basque country”, the scores are comparatively lower (although dispersion is relatively high) and this may deserve additional research. figure 1. mean (m) and σ (sd) values of the 16 items included in the questionnaire. 0 1 2 3 4 5 ite m 1 ite m 2 ite m 3 ite m 4 ite m 5 ite m 6 ite m 7 ite m 8 ite m 9 ite m 1 0 ite m 1 1 ite m 1 2 ite m 1 3 ite m 1 4 ite m 1 5 ite m 1 6 m sd http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� (in)compatibility of clil and esp courses at university language value 5 (1), 24–47 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 38 items 6 and 7 serve to clarify things in terms of the role of cognitive activity and cognitive interest in integrated esp and/or clil courses. the students’ views about esp and clil for english-improving purposes are checked in items 8 and 9. esp programmes are designed for students who want to improve their english in a certain professional field of study, normally taught at university, whereas the clil approach is said to be successful and to help to improve students’ foreign language competence, even in bilingual contexts where english has little social presence (lasagabaster 2008). items 10 and 11 provide information to know to what extent esp and/or clil have helped them to learn content in english. content-based instruction comprises the steps of vocabulary acquisition, oral and written summarizing, making oral presentations, and participating in project preparation and delivery. all these stages employ learners' professional knowledge and prompt them to activate it in a foreign language. being content-related, the areas of language learning described above allow learners to develop competence through a sequence of thematically organized tasks. this is a common procedure in traditional esp courses, where the use of language is restricted to a set of social and thematic areas chiefly for the unambiguous transfer of (technical) information (gramley 2008), but it cannot be denied that in clil courses the approach and aim are very similar. in items 12 and 13, information is gathered about how much the students think their english has improved due to their esp and/or clil teachers. the results show an important and surprising difference between the two. the theory behind clil is that complementary subjects taught at the same time result in improved internalization and retention. essentially, clil enables you to take advantage of the connections between language and specific subject-related content in order to improve the educational efficiency. in many cases, clil can increase your students’ motivation to learn what you are teaching them. this can enable them to progress more quickly and solidly than they would with deliberately separated subjects. for this to happen, all we have to do, according to clil supporters, is to make sure that the content-specific subject is the primary objective and that the linguistic goals are secondary, as this would provide consistency and sturdy scaffolding on which to build linguistic progress. the students http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.oxfordadvancedlearnersdictionary.com/dictionary/internalization#internalize__3� http://www.oxfordadvancedlearnersdictionary.com/dictionary/retention� joseba m. gonzález ardeo language value 5 (1), 24–47 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 39 were asked about this linguistic progress and, according to the results obtained, it seems to be significantly higher through esp lessons. clil is not a panacea (yet), but esp is no panacea either. nobody should expect near-native levels of proficiency, but improvement can be expected with both approaches. items 14 and 15 include crucial information with respect to the future of esp and clil. the students are not sure if esp lessons are necessary when in the presence of clil lessons and they are very consistent in their answers (low level of dispersion). however, their opinion about whether clil lessons are necessary is much clearer, since they consider that they are (again, with a low level of dispersion). finally, item 16 is one of the fundamental items in the questionnaire, since their perception on this topic may influence future actions implemented by teaching authorities. surprisingly, the students are very much in favour of the compatibility of esp and clil lessons. the mean and σ values (4.23 and 0.057) for the statement within the last block of the questionnaire, “i would have provided the same answers in this questionnaire if the interviewer had been a clil teacher”, provides the overall results of the questionnaire with potential validity. vi. discussion and conclusion language learning is not a simple linear process but a functional diversification, an extension of the learner’s communicative range. in a language-in-context model, language development is viewed as a process of learning to control an increasing range of registers and genres, rather than viewing development in relative terms of ‘more’ or ‘less’ language. clil and esp learners’ success is largely related to the opportunities they have to participate in a range of authentic learning contexts and meaning-making, and the support (in terms of scaffolding techniques) that they are given to do so successfully in english (hammond and gibbons 2005). esp practitioners understand that authentic learning contexts are obvious when dealing with content courses (irrespective of the language used), but they also know that students need to know certain linguistic tools when english is used as a means of instruction. some teachers involved in clil are not fully aware of this need. the http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� (in)compatibility of clil and esp courses at university language value 5 (1), 24–47 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 40 following anecdote can illustrate this belief. one of my colleagues, who teaches electronics courses, shared with me, in a friendly way, his thoughts on esp and clil: “we teach engineering courses in english. the medium of instruction is english. the textbooks we use are in english... then, what is the need for you (english language teachers) to teach english to the students?” my answer was: “we don't teach english as a subject. we teach the language as a life skill or survival skill. you explain certain technical concepts in english, whereas we teach students how to communicate effectively and how to develop their language skills. you want your students to make presentations, write reports, prepare proposals, etc. and we teach them these skills.” what many people believe, clil practitioners included, is that in principle clil is applicable regardless of the context; hence, by introducing clil from an early age at school, students will not have to take any esp courses in future. the ubc is cliling but no quantifiable feedback – in the broad sense – has been provided so far. no information has been made public with respect to the strong and/or weak points of the new approach. despite the fact that wide recognition has been afforded to clil over the years (baker 2001, dalton-puffer and smit 2007, genesee 1987), because providing curriculum content in a second or foreign language can lead to both increased subject knowledge and enhanced l2 proficiency, in the case of the ubc this assumption must be taken with some caution. this can be understood if we consider that clil approaches have tended to develop in primary and secondary schools in the bac, where the content is at a lower level and is therefore more accessible for language teachers, but at tertiary level the linguistic complexity increases probably beyond the limits of average university content teaching staff. clil might then become no more than “a brilliant business idea” (smith and hayworth 2005: 70), allowing publishers to churn out new titles, all of which claim to be in line with clil theories. the theoretical definitions of clil appear to be so wide as to admit any form of language teaching. moreover, clil itself is not a well-established teaching practice (of course, with exceptions). in some instances where clil has been implemented there have been concerns about the decrease in the level of the subject matter due to the oversimplification of the language because of the differences in the learners’ linguistic ability in the foreign language and, in the case of the ubc, because of the prospective http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� joseba m. gonzález ardeo language value 5 (1), 24–47 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 41 differences in the teachers’ linguistic ability in the foreign language. esp, in contrast, is supported by a wide body of theory. added to that, there are an increasing number of course books covering more and more specialized domains and esp does this by offering definite content: content that is geared to the students’ wants and needs. as a matter of policy, one school or university may decide to practice ‘immersion’ but this does not mean that it is cliling. the teacher may just treat the students as if they were native speakers and ‘immerse’ them in an academic context that attempts to simulate the type of educational conditions and experiences that a native-speaker pupil would expect to undergo. yet the social context of the student will in most cases be an obvious drawback and will act as a friction force putting up resistance against the relative motion of a solid surface (language learning). on the other hand, teachers who deliver their material in the l2 cannot assume that they are being understood. the implications are obvious: 1) teachers would have to adjust their methodology to ensure that the students understand the content. 2) the adjustment would mean more task-based and therefore more learner-centred materials. and 3) the materials would focus more clearly on the role that language plays in the students’ assimilation of the concepts in the subject matter. it is difficult to accept that a teacher or learner is cliling at present at the ubc. in exactly the same way, some esp practices were criticized 30 years ago. nevertheless, as graddol (2006) states, there is a steady growth of clil in most european countries. he has warned that the need for specialist english teachers will decline rapidly – from university level downwards. the need for language teachers should not change in terms of quantity, but today a different kind of language teacher is needed. content belongs to content teachers but good teaching belongs to the good teacher. clil is being used, among other things, to ‘unload’ the students’ timetable and, simultaneously, to find room for more efl instruction. in our humble opinion, input is not enough – which means that clil is not enough without some kind of efl support. efl instruction must therefore supplement and enhance language input from clil instruction to develop language proficiency by getting the students to use the language for increasingly demanding tasks while providing them with feedback and support. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� (in)compatibility of clil and esp courses at university language value 5 (1), 24–47 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 42 dafouz and guerrini (2009) claimed that things will improve in the future, as a new generation of clil students and teachers reaches higher education. however, despite all the institutional efforts in favour of clil in the basque country, language teachers are facing a tough challenge and, probably, all we can talk about is a pre-clil period at the ubc. nevertheless, inertia is being generated for clil while, with respect to esp, a clear slow-down process can be observed. despite this obvious fact, the main conclusion of our study is that clil and esp courses seem to be compatible (at least at present) at the ubc. nevertheless, this last statement must be considered with caution, since the study carried out in this paper is only exploratory due to its small-scale approach (only 23 participants from a single school). moreover, it should be pointed out that in this case, despite the fact that in this school a relatively larger number of students take either clil courses or esp courses, only 23 take both. further large-scale studies would be necessary to fully understand the nature of this recent phenomenon. these studies might focus on why some students choose clil courses but not esp courses and vice versa (if any!), when both are readily available. in other words, the synergic phenomenon mentioned within the previous section seems to be due to certain facts founded on the following: 1) a very favourable attitude of the students towards english (the highest means and the lowest sds in this block are for item 3: “i like being taught in english” and item 5 “english will be important for me when working as an engineer”); 2) the level of awareness of the students with respect to language acquisition vs. learning content (item 10 “i have learnt more language than content in my esp lessons” also receives a high mean with a very low sd); and 3) the feeling of compatibility of both types of courses (item 16 “esp lessons and clil lessons are compatible with each other” also presents a high mean with a very low sd). finally, more food for thought is presented. with more than 2 million international students, international education is a lucrative market. most students are shared among 5 western nations, namely the usa, the uk, france, germany and australia. moreover, the ratios between international students (they usually spend years in that country) and local students abroad (they usually travel overseas for only a few weeks) are overwhelmingly high (australia 23:1; usa 15:1; uk 9:1). the rates in some european countries are also outstandingly high. for example, of the 38,000 students enrolled at the university of copenhagen, 15% are international students (jensen and thøgersen http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� joseba m. gonzález ardeo language value 5 (1), 24–47 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 43 2011). this means that international students in these countries are seen primarily as financial resources. could this be one of the reasons for the ubc to support the new approach so vehemently? references ammon, u. 1996. “the european union (eu – formerly european community). status change during the last fifty 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(eds.) 2010. clil in spain: implementation, results and teacher training. newcastle upon tyne, uk: cambridge scholars publishing. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� (in)compatibility of clil and esp courses at university language value 5 (1), 24–47 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 46 lorenzo, f. 2007. “the sociolinguistics of clil: language planning and language change in 21st century europe”. revista española de lingüística aplicada, volume monográfico, 27-38. marsh, d. 2002. clil european dimension: actions, trends and foresight potential. <ec.europa.eu/education/languages/pdf/doc491_en.pdf> mauranen, a. and ranta, e. (eds.) 2009. english as a lingua franca: studies and findings. newcastle upon tyne, uk: cambridge scholars publishing. micic, s. 2005. “reforms in english for medical academic purposes in belgrade”. professional and academic english 27, 4-9. navés, t. and victori, m. 2010. “clil in catalonia: an overview of research studies”. in ruiz de zarobe, y. and d. lasagabaster (eds.) clil in spain: implementation, results and teacher training. newcastle upon tyne, uk: cambridge scholars publishing, 36-49. phillipson, r. 2006. “figuring out the englishization of europe”. in leung, c. and j. jenkins (eds.) reconfiguring europe. london: equinox, 65-86. phillipson, r. 2009. “english in higher education: panacea or pandemic?” angles on the english-speaking world 9, 29-57. ruiz de zarobe, y. 2007. “clil in a bilingual community: similarities and differences with the learning of english as a foreign language”. in smit, u. and c. daltonpuffer (eds.) viewz: vienna english working papers (special issue: current research on clil 2) 16 (3), 47-52. ruiz de zarobe, y. and jiménez catalán, r.m. 2009. clil in spain: content and language integrated learning: evidence from research in europe. bristol: multilingual matters. smith, k. and heyworth, f. 2005. “the elt journal debate: common european framework? we don’t need bureaucrats to tell us what to teach!”. in beaven, b. (ed.) iatefl 2005. cardiff conference selections. canterbury, england: iatefl, 70-72. wächter, b. 2004. higher education in a changing environment. bonn: lemmens. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/listaarticulos?tipo_busqueda=anualidad&revista_busqueda=1727&clave_busqueda=2007� http://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/listaarticulos?tipo_busqueda=anualidad&revista_busqueda=1727&clave_busqueda=2007� http://ec.europa.eu/languages/documents/doc491_en.pdf� joseba m. gonzález ardeo language value 5 (1), 24–47 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 47 wächter, b. 2008. internationalisation and the european higher education area, report prepared for the ‘official bologna seminar’ of the flemish government, ghent. <http://www.ond.vlaanderen.be/hogeronderwijs/bologna/bolognaseminars/ documents/ghent/ghent may08 bernd waechter.pdf> wächter, b. and maiworm, f. 2008. english-taught programmes in european higher education. the picture in 2007. bonn: lemmens. wilkinson, r. and zegers, v. (eds.) 2008. realizing content and language integration in higher education. maastricht, netherlands: maastricht university. received: 29 october 2012 accepted: 13 august 2013 appendix age gender ◊ male ◊ female 5: strongly agree; 4: agree; 3: neither agree nor disagree; 2: disagree; 1: strongly disagree items 5 4 3 2 1 1 i like speaking/reading/writing in english 2 english should be taught to all pupils in the basque country 3 i like being taught in english 4 english is a language worth learning 5 english will be important for me when working as an engineer 6 esp lessons have been interesting and useful 7 clil lessons have been interesting and useful 8 esp lessons have helped me to improve my english considerably 9 clil lessons have helped me to improve my english considerably 10 i have learnt more language than content in my esp lessons 11 i have learnt more language than content in my clil lessons 12 my esp teachers have had a beneficial effect on my english 13 my clil teachers have had a beneficial effect on my english 14 esp lessons are unnecessary if you attend clil lessons 15 clil lessons are unnecessary if you attend esp lessons 16 esp lessons and clil lessons are compatible with each other i would have provided the same answers in this questionnaire if the interviewer had been a clil teacher *esp stands for english for specific purposes / clil stands for content and language integrated learning cite this article as: gonzález ardeo, j.m. 2013. “(in)compatibility of clil and esp courses at university”. language value 5 (1), 24-47. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.erevistes.uji.es/languagevalue. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2013.5.3 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.ond.vlaanderen.be/hogeronderwijs/bologna/bolognaseminars/%20documents/ghent/ghent%20may08%20bernd%20waechter.pdf� http://www.ond.vlaanderen.be/hogeronderwijs/bologna/bolognaseminars/%20documents/ghent/ghent%20may08%20bernd%20waechter.pdf� http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� references appendix cite this article as: gonzález ardeo, j.m. 2013. “(in)compatibility of clil and esp courses at university”. language value 5 (1), 24-47. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2013.5.3 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors 3_juan-garau language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue november 2015, volume 7, number 1 pp. 46-61 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2015.7.4 46 speaking an additional language: can study abroad do the trick? maría juan-garau maria.juan@uib.eu universitat de les illes balears, spain abstract the present article sets out to provide an overall picture of the acquisition of speaking abilities in a given second language acquisition (sla) learning context, namely study abroad (sa), so as to ascertain whether sa can indeed ‘do the trick’, as it is popularly assumed, and, if so, under which conditions. section 1 will characterise the sa context and look at how it can affect oral performance, bearing in mind the opportunities for target language contact and practice it offers learners. section 2 will focus on the specific linguistic benefits in the oral domain that can accrue in this learning context. in this regard, we will present an overview of empirical research findings with special attention to the sala (study abroad and language acquisition) and cole (context, contact and competence level) research projects. section 3 will concentrate on individual variables that may affect oral development abroad in combination with external variables such as sa programme conditions. finally, section 4 will provide a summary of the main ideas presented and draw some conclusions. keywords: study abroad, speaking skills, oral competence, efl, sla, learning context i. study abroad as a language learning context research on bilingualism and multilingualism has paid increasing attention to the learning contexts in which languages are acquired, whether naturalistic or instructed. such research aims at finding empirical evidence regarding the potential efficiency of a given learning context in promoting students’ ability to communicate more fluently, accurately and with higher degrees of complexity in an additional language. in the present article we will focus on the study abroad (henceforth sa) context, situated at the naturalistic end of the learning context continuum (see juan-garau 2012, pérez-vidal 2011). as a natural learning setting, sa allows for the testing of learner hypotheses by paying attention to relevant input, for the practice of common speech acts embedded in daily routines, and for the contextualisation of learning in a myriad of authentic situations, enabling better memorisation and retrieval, in contrast to the relative dreariness of speaking an additional language: can study abroad do the trick? language value 7, 46-61 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 47 explicit learning within the confines of a classroom (dekeyser 1991, juan-garau and pérez-vidal 2007). sa conditions, thus, allow learners to pay attention to form incidentally while focusing on meaning (ortega 2005). sa research has proliferated over the last decades, basically as a result of the increasing number of sa programmes that secondary schools and particularly higher education institutions offer their students as part of their educational experience (wang 2010), giving rise to a massive-scale student mobility operation in europe and worldwide. such research can shed new light on both the positive aspects and the challenges of sa. most studies of language learners abroad have focused on the acquisition of oral skills, reflecting higher expectations for gains in this area. indeed, the sa context affords constant opportunities for learners to be exposed to comprehensible input from a plethora of target-language speakers and to practise speaking by getting a variety of things done while interacting and negotiating meaning in a second (l2) or additional language. learners, however, need to seize the contact opportunities the sa context affords in order to enhance their speaking abilities. barbara freed’s 1995 edited volume, entitled second language acquisition in a study abroad context, constituted the first important landmark in the study of the achievements of language learners abroad and inspired further research in this area, which has grown exponentially since then. in his foreword to the volume, as kinginger (2013) aptly remarks, charles a. ferguson referred to the “myths” that surround sa, including the belief that the only way to achieve “real fluency” in an l2 or foreign language is to travel to a place where the target language is spoken. in the next section we will survey sa research that has focused on learners’ speaking abilities. in so doing, we will try to dispel some of the myths surrounding oral development in sa settings and to ascertain whether sa can “do the trick” as far as the acquisition of oral competence in an additional language goes. ii. benefits in the oral domain after sa overall oral proficiency, often measured through the actfl (american council on the teaching of foreign languages) oral proficiency interview (opi) or similar protocols, has been found to register considerable gains abroad (e.g. isabelli-garcía 2003, kang 2014, lindseth maría juan-garau language value 7, 46-61 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 48 2010, segalowitz and freed 2004). research, furthermore, indicates that progress following residence abroad mostly accrues in the oral-aural skills, while it is much less apparent in the written and reading skills (e.g. brecht and robinson 1995, dyson 1988, lapkin et al. 1995, meara 1994). we will next examine the domains of complexity, accuracy and fluency (caf) in relation to speaking skills and will finally consider pronunciation as well. in so doing, we will pay special attention to research conducted as part of the sala (study abroad and language acquisition) and cole (context, contact and competence level) research projects. 1 speech complexity does not seem to increase much as a result of sa. pérez-vidal and juangarau (2011) examined sala-cole project participants’ oral productions regarding both syntactic and lexical complexity in the at-home and sa settings. as regards syntactic complexity, clauses per t-unit were seen to decrease slightly at home, while an increase close to significance was registered abroad. subordination also increased non-significantly in the sa setting, but not at home. similarly, lexical diversity, as measured by guiraud’s index, registered a non-significant improvement that was more noticeable abroad. learners significantly increased, nonetheless, their use of formulaic sequences as an effect of the period spent abroad. all in all, these results confirm the findings obtained by juan-garau and pérez-vidal (2007) with a smaller sample, which showed non-significant increases abroad in the domain of complexity. similarly, sala-cole researchers mora and valls-ferrer (2012) found that the complexity of their participants’ oral productions remained largely unmodified. however, llanes and muñoz (2013), in a study comparing the effects of sa and at-home learning contexts in children and adult learners, reported significant gains in oral complexity, with the sa setting appearing more beneficial for children’s oral skills than for older learners. as regards accuracy, there is a dearth of sa studies in comparison to the research conducted in relation to fluency. the existing documentation on speaking proficiency reveals that no substantial development tends to take place in the former domain after residence abroad. thus, isabelli (2001) examined the null subject parameter and found that l2 spanish learners abroad benefited from positive evidence, but some problems remained, suggesting restructuring of the parameter but no resetting. also investigating subject expression in l2 spanish with oral data, lopez ortega (2003) reported that a number of discourse variables affected the presence or absence of subjects. she found signs of progress in her four students after the sa experience, although the quantitative results did not yield conclusive evidence. based on interviews, picture-sequence tasks and questionnaires, longcope’s (2003) findings indicated that sa had an immediate reflection on learners’ fluency, but not necessarily on their grammatical accuracy or syntactic complexity. similarly, serrano et al. (2011) reported increased oral fluency and lexical complexity, but not accuracy (or syntactic complexity), for their sa group in comparison with speaking an additional language: can study abroad do the trick? language value 7, 46-61 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 49 the domestic semi-intensive programme. for her part, torres (2003) investigated the acquisition of spanish clitics to find that the sa context did not appear to have much linguistic benefit over classroom learning for clitic accuracy and use. finally, isabelli-garcía (2010) found no advantage of the sa abroad over the at-home context in the acquisition of spanish gender agreement for her intermediate level participants over a four-month period. other researchers, however, have provided a rosier view on sa accuracy outcomes. juan-garau (2014) examined oral accuracy in forty-three sala-cole participants, comparing the gains accrued in the sa context to the gains derived from formal instruction at home. results showed an advantage for the sa context, where learners became more target-like, with long-lasting effects. participants with lower pre-departure proficiency levels benefited the most from sa. some contact variables abroad (e.g. practice of listening and writing activities) were associated with the development of oral accuracy. similarly, llanes and muñoz’s (2009) participants improved their oral accuracy rates, measured by means of the ratio of error-free clauses and the average number of errors per clause, after just three-four weeks abroad. for his part, howard’s (2001) sa group reached higher levels of accuracy in aspectual marking in french across a wider range of contexts than the ah groups. howard (2005) also found a more beneficial effect for sa than for classroom instruction in the expression of past time in natural spontaneous speech for his eighteen irish learners of french. likewise, using oral interviews, isabelli and nishida’s (2005) sa learners showed better performance in the use of the subjunctive in spanish than the ah groups. after a summer abroad, twenty-two out of thirty l2 spanish learners in yager’s (1998) study were also observed to improve their grammar, along with their pronunciation and overall oral proficiency, on a nativeness scale. discrepancies in the findings on oral accuracy following a sojourn overseas evidence the complexity of grammatical development patterns as well as the need for more research in this area. oral fluency stands out as the clear winner abroad in comparison with the complexity and accuracy domains. fluency has been examined with respect to various temporal and hesitation characteristics of speech delivery revealing that sa learners increase the length and rate of their fluent speech runs (e.g. segalowitz and freed 2004, towell et al. 1996) while reducing their pauses and dysfluencies (e.g. freed et al. 2004, isabelli-garcía 2003, segalowitz and freed 2004). nevertheless, several studies have reported that not all learners improve their oral fluency abroad (e.g. segalowitz and freed 2004), with individual learner differences accounting for the variability observed. juan-garau and pérez-vidal (2007) presented evidence from the sala and cole projects. they considered the oral linguistic development of twelve catalanspanish undergraduate learners of english who spent three months abroad preceded and followed by periods of formal instruction in the at-home setting over the course of three maría juan-garau language value 7, 46-61 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 50 academic years. the participants’ oral abilities, assessed by means of a role-play conducted in dyads, were positively affected by the sa period, although significant gains were obtained only for the fluency measures. results also indicated that the opportunities for input and interaction that an sa period provides were conducive to linguistic gains in the oral skills, more so when certain sociolinguistic conditions are met (e.g. working in an international setting with targetlanguage speakers or listening to the media), while other conditions may prove detrimental (e.g. living with catalan/spanish companions). other sala-cole researchers have also investigated oral fluency with data elicited through an interview task from advanced learners also involved in these projects. trenchs-parera (2009) analysed seven dysfluency phenomena comparing learners’ performance to native-speaker baseline data. her findings unveil sa as a context that helps to correct learners’ disruptions, producing the impression of more fluent speech. mora and valls-ferrer (2012), for their part, provide evidence of robust gains in oral fluency as a result of sa (captured mostly through time-related aspects of speech production, such as speech rate, mean length of run, pause frequency and duration, and a composite fluency index), and lack thereof during formal instruction at home (see also valls-ferrer and mora 2014 for similar findings). turning to pronunciation, several scholars have focused on the development of sa learners’ phonetic and phonological abilities, although this remains a largely uncharted area of research. previous studies investigating speech learning and phonological acquisition abroad have not shown any consistent improvement in speech production and perception in this learning context. for instance, simões (1996), stevens (2001) and díaz-campos (2004), focusing on spanish pronunciation by native speakers of english, reported some benefits in phonological ability for sa students, with the last two studies revealing an advantage of sa over at-home groups in the loss of aspiration when producing unvoiced stops. however, findings in these three studies did not always point in the same direction and did not always report any improvement in the areas considered. individual differences in the participants and the programmes (e.g. pre-departure proficiency level, length of stay, and time spent using the target language) help to account for differences in pronunciation performance (see section iii below). research conducted within the sala-cole projects has also contributed to analyse the impact of sa on pronunciation. pérez-vidal et al. (2011) looked at the perception and production of english vowel contrasts. as regards perception, discrimination scores were always higher in the at-home setting rather than abroad, a finding that was confirmed in a recent study by mora (2014). this was contrary to our expectations but consistent with previous research (díazcampos 2004, mora 2008). as for production, an analysis of duration and frequency measurements of the vowel contrasts considered revealed that most of the vowels sa speaking an additional language: can study abroad do the trick? language value 7, 46-61 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 51 participants produced differed from native speakers’ in terms of both their duration and quality (see also avello and lara 2014 for comparable results). we concluded that a short-term sa period did not seem to provide enough experience with l2 sounds for changes in the learners’ ability to perceive and produce vowel contrasts to develop noticeably. in fact, special focused practice may be needed for those changes to come about (see, for example, aliaga-garcía and mora 2009). del río’s (2013) study, nevertheless, provides a more positive view of the effects of sa on pronunciation. she examined the development of foreign accent and comprehensibility in the oral productions of 25 adolescent spanish learners of english before and after a 3-month period of sa. results showed that sa participants improved significantly between pre-test and post-test in both speech dimensions, thus confirming the beneficial impact of sa context on l2 learners’ oral production. iii. variables influencing oral gains abroad as already hinted at in section i, it has often been assumed by teachers, students, families and society at large that sa is superior to formal instruction ah for language learning in general and fluency in particular. this belief, however, is often unfounded. in fact, dekeyser (2007) argues that sa does not always bring about sizeable linguistic gains, as this learning context is not always as obviously ideal to practise a foreign language as people tend to assume. he further claims that the sa and fi contexts are not in opposition, as the declarative and procedural knowledge gathered in the ah setting can bear fruit later on abroad, eventually leading to automatic language use. the problem, however, is that learners abroad, at least to begin with, often feel the pressure to communicate orally in real time and to do so in a fluent and comprehensible manner. given these difficulties, for sa to bring about language development, certain conditions, to which we turn next, must be met (pérez-vidal and juangarau 2011). one major variable affecting sa outcomes is pre-departure proficiency level, often interacting with other individual learner differences. several studies have indicated that learners may need to have a certain command of target-language lexical and grammatical forms and structures prior to the stay (e.g. dekeyser 2007, isabelli and nishida 2005, segalowitz and freed 2004). thus, the existence of a threshold level for substantial acquisition abroad to take place has been posited. in a recent study by kang (2014) with korean university participants learning english, intermediate-level students were the ones who made the most out of their sa period in terms of improving their speaking abilities, while low-level learners’ oral skills remained unchanged. these findings appear to lend support to the aforementioned threshold-level tenet that learners maría juan-garau language value 7, 46-61 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 52 must have a well-developed lexical and grammatical base to really benefit from sa. individual variables are also seen to influence sa gains (lafford 2006). among them, learners’ readiness and ability to benefit from the contact opportunities at hand has been signalled as an essential factor for sa success. in this respect, segalowitz and freed (2004) emphasise the importance of delving into learner-context interactions to explain why a given context may be advantageous to some learners and not others. in fact, freed et al. (2004) conclude that it is not context per se that promotes language gain, but rather the quantity and quality of contact within that context. in the same vein, kinginger (2013) underscores the variability in post-sa language learning outcomes and the need to further investigate student activity abroad to be able to understand this phenomenon. language learning, according to this author, is thus seen “as a dialogic, situated affair that unfolds in intercultural contexts and includes significant subjective dimensions” (kinginger 2013: 5). therefore, it is important to consider the extent to which learners abroad engage with the host community, which in turn may be affected by how they are received by the institution where they are to study or by their host families. students abroad may be eager to seek social interaction or, on the contrary, they may avoid contact with their interlocutors. in the latter case, as kinginger (2013: 5-6) remarks, they may “cling to social networks of co-nationals, or remain virtually ‘at home’ via the internet”, an option not available some decades ago that can now greatly diminish foreign language practice abroad. predeparture preparation can play an important role in avoiding such pitfalls and helping students make the most of their sojourn, as pérez-vidal (2014) mentions. the development of selfregulatory strategies among students – including motivation maintenance, goal-setting, and language-learning strategies – is also considered crucial to sustain and intensify foreign language learning abroad (allen 2013). learner attitudes, motivation, and beliefs have also been seen to affect how informal contact abroad relates to acquisition. thus, brecht and robinson (1995: 318) remark that: “understanding student attitudes may contribute substantively to our knowledge of second language acquisition (sla) as well as to the success of study abroad programs.” these scholars note that students’ opinions and beliefs may have an effect on their behaviour and, consequently, influence learning outcomes either positively or negatively. as churchill and dufon (2006) indicate in their overview of sa research, several studies have investigated both the effect of pre-departure motivation on the sojourn experience and the effect of time abroad on learner motivation. hernández (2010) reports that there is a positive relationship between participants’ integrative motivation and their interaction with the l2 culture, which, in turn, leads to a significant improvement of their speaking skills (see also isabelli-garcía 2006). yashima et al. (2004), for their part, show that pre-departure attitudinal and motivational speaking an additional language: can study abroad do the trick? language value 7, 46-61 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 53 variables relate to the willingness to communicate and the communication behaviour exhibited by japanese learners of english while abroad. these authors find that willingness to communicate results in more frequent communication in the l2 (see also macintyre 2007), as the learner seeks further opportunities to interact with host nationals and, in turn, that behaviour invites hosts to communicate with the sojourner more extensively, thus reinforcing language development in the l2. research investigating how the length of the period abroad can affect learner attitude and motivation has not produced consistent findings so far. allen (2002) finds that her learners do not develop positive attitudes towards french native speakers after six weeks abroad, which makes her question the usefulness of short stays to promote positive attitudes towards the target community. other studies, however, have reported increased motivation after short-term immersion programmes (e.g. simões 1996). thus, sala-cole researchers trenchs-parera and juan-garau (2014) find that the sa period heightens the development of positive motivational stands and the reduction of anxiety. longer stays have generally been thought to promote integration in the host community and yet some of the learners in hoffman-hicks’ (1999) study did not develop positive attitudes towards native speakers of the target language even after a year abroad. as yager (1998) points out, if students spend less than a semester overseas, their attitudes and motivation while abroad become even more important in order to take full advantage of their shorter stay in the host country. another factor that might interact with learner motivation and attitudes towards the host context is previous linguistic experience. allen (2002) concludes that her more proficient learners are better prepared to benefit from the opportunities to interact that an sa context offers. yashima et al. (2004), however, find that it might well be the students’ perception of their abilities to communicate in the foreign language – rather than their proficiency level as such – that interacts with their willingness to communicate. sa programme characteristics can also impinge on learning outcomes (for a review of programme features, see paige et al. 2002 and coleman 2013). one of particular significance to learner progress is length of stay. in this respect, as churchill and dufon (2006) point out, existing research suggests that (a) even short stays can produce benefits (see, for example, juangarau and pérez-vidal 2007, llanes 2010), although (b) longer stays tend to benefit learners more, particularly in the domains of pronunciation and fluency, and (c) learner development only approaches native-like norms at best. lara (2014), in a study conducted within the salacole framework, explored the linguistic development abroad of learners whose length of stay differed (three vs. six months). she did not find compelling evidence to suggest that a given length of stay was more beneficial than the other in terms of post-sa benefits. similarly, llanes (2010) did not find significant differences in the language gains of participants experiencing a maría juan-garau language value 7, 46-61 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 54 twoor a three-month stay. these results are indicative that a wider difference in length of stay may be needed (e.g. a semester vs. an academic year) for significant changes to appear. iv. conclusions research to date as regards the development of speaking skills in sa settings reveals that this context – providing extensive opportunities for l2 exposure and practice – has indeed the potential to enhance l2 learners’ oral abilities, even though findings are more positive and conclusive for fluency than they are for accuracy and complexity (see, for example, dekeyser 1991, freed et al. 2004, isabelli 2001, juan-garau and pérez-vidal 2007, pérez-vidal and juangarau 2011, segalowitz and freed 2004, towell et al. 1996). the latter two domains would possibly show significant gains after longer, or more intensive, periods of immersion abroad than the ones considered herein (mora and valls-ferrer 2012). as for the effects of sa on pronunciation and phonological development, previous research in l2 speech learning has not provided sufficient robust evidence to suggest that an sa setting can enhance l2 speech perception and production. this is an area, however, where more research is clearly needed. it is also important to remark that considerable variation is found both within and across individuals (i.e. intraand inter-speaker variation) in the literature on language acquisition in sa contexts, 2 which often makes it difficult to draw a linear developmental pattern over time (see, for example, jensen and howard 2014). considering all of the above, we gather that the sa context can no doubt be advantageous for the development of language learners’ speaking skills, but it may end up not being so for all learners (dekeyser 2007). consequently, we should bear in mind freed et al.’s (2004: 298) caveat that: “it is not the learning context per se that promotes various types of learning but rather […] the nature of the interactions, the quality of the experiences, and the efforts made to use the l2 that render one context superior to another with respect to language gain”. thus, in the preceding section (iii), we have considered an array of individual variables that impinge on successful language acquisition abroad, including learners’ pre-departure proficiency level and preparation, their readiness to benefit from contact opportunities abroad by engaging with the host community, and the development of self-regulatory strategies as well as positive attitudes, motivational stands and beliefs. these individual variables, often interacting with external variables such as programme characteristics (e.g. length of stay), affect learners’ socialization and ultimately their language learning success – or lack thereof – abroad. future research should bring together the variables summarised in the previous paragraph to speaking an additional language: can study abroad do the trick? language value 7, 46-61 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 55 provide a fuller characterisation of learners who succeed in improving their speaking skills abroad. as dekeyser (2014: 321) points out, more fine-grained studies combining quantitative and qualitative data are needed to provide “a reliable documentation of background, process and outcome variables with the in-depth documentation of students’ activities, and the quantity and quality of their interactions, especially from the students’ perspective”. intimately connected with the development of linguistic competence in general and of speaking skills in particular, coleman’s (2013) concentric circles model enables us to understand better the dynamic nature of socialization overseas. according to this model, learners gradually move outwards from the inner circle of co-nationals, through contact with other outsiders (generally other international students), towards the outer circle of locals. this progression, coleman (2013: 31) argues, “is not universal, automatic or uni-directional, but given motivation, time and effort, alternatively labelled agency, movement tends to be centrifugal”. he thus clearly pinpoints some of the ingredients that contribute to learners’ successful oral development abroad. in their attempt to maximise their sa experience, however, students should not only invest time and effort in language learning but also they should ideally get institutional and pedagogical support in the form of preparatory pre-departure sessions, monitoring during the actual period abroad, and follow-up activities (beattie 2014). in this sense, kinginger (2011: 70) states that: “every effort should be made to ensure that language learners abroad enjoy access to – and engagement in – the practices of their host communities as well as guidance in their efforts to learn and to interpret their experiences”. in the same vein, davidson (2010: 23) claims that residence abroad “holds enormous potential for meeting the needs of education in the 21st century”. to unfold this potential, though, sa needs to be well integrated into the learners’ curriculum and well supported by all the stakeholders involved, including of course learners themselves, who should engage actively in their learning process. in sum, as long as the relevant conditions we have outlined are met, sa can do the trick in terms of enhancing learners’ speaking abilities. notes 1 these are longitudinal research projects – based at universitat pompeu fabra (barcelona) in collaboration with the universitat de les illes balears (palma) – that focus on the acquisition of english as a foreign language by students who partake in sa in addition to formal instruction at home. learners’ language development in these two learning contexts is analysed over a three-year period, contrasted against native-speaker baseline data, and interpreted with the help of qualitative data derived from learner questionnaires and diaries. maría juan-garau language value 7, 46-61 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 56 2 in the case of the sala-cole studies which we have reported on, there is no inter-group variation in terms of such variables as motivation, proficiency or gender – among others – as the very same learners participated in both the at-home treatment and the sa period. acknowledgements this research received financial support through hum2007-66053-c02-01/02, ffi2010-21483c02-01/02 and ffi2013-48640-c2-2-p from the spanish ministry of economy and competitiveness. i would like to express my gratitude to the anonymous reviewers of this paper for their suggestions. thanks are also due to dr carmen pérez-vidal and the rest of my colleagues in the sala and cole projects. references aliaga-garcía, c. and mora, j.c. 2009. “assessing the effects of phonetic training on l2 sound perception and production”. in watkins, m.a., a.s. rauber and b.o. baptista (eds.) recent research in second language phonetics/phonology. newcastle upon tyne, uk: cambridge scholars publishing, 2-31. allen, h.w. 2002. “does study abroad make a difference? 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(ed.) language acquisition in study abroad and formal instruction contexts. amsterdam: john benjamins, 111-136. wang, c. 2010. “toward a second language socialization perspective: issues in study abroad research”. foreign language annals, 43 (1), 50-63. yager, k. 1998. “learning spanish in mexico: the effect of informal contact and student attitudes on language gain”. hispania, 81, 898-913. yashima, t., zenuk-nishide, l. and shimizu, k. 2004. “the influence of attitudes and affect on willingness to communicate and second language communication”. language learning, 54 (1), 119-152. received: 8 june 2015 accepted: 11 october 2015 cite this article as: juan-garau, m. 2015. “speaking an additional language: can study abroad do the trick?”. language value 7 (1), 45-60. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.erevistes.uji.es/languagevalue. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2015.7.4 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors language value http://www.languagevalue.uji.es december 2019, volume 11, number 1 pp. 45-70 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2019.11.4 45 communicative competences in non-linguistic university degrees oksana polyakova oksana.polyakova@ucv.es ruzana galstyan-sargsyan ruzanagalstyan@gmail.com universidad católica de valenica, spain abstract as labour markets continue to change rapidly, the learning environments continue to be unchallenged in the provision of new professionals across the world. this change has compelled the need for students to attain communicative competences in non-linguistic institutions of higher education. in order to address this issue, we propose a novel approach to communicative competences integration into the curriculum development of a specialised foreign language course. for this purpose, we combine students’ needs analysis with a personalised english for specific purposes (esp) course design that motivates them to learn more about technical and professional environments through a skill-based routing. additionally, we provide a scale for measuring training outcomes as well as suggest first results from the piloting phase of the teaching experience. the findings of the study highlight usefulness of the customised competence training experience. keywords: higher education, communicative competences, second language acquisition, foreign language teaching i. introduction working environment in the 21st century is changing fast. as a result, higher education institutions include communicative competences in non-linguistic degrees to ensure their students come out as well-prepared individuals. the competence training offers graduates the ability to develop their goals and acquire an understanding of a variety of specific skills required to succeed in the labour market. fundamentally, competence means achieving something successfully and efficiently (feldhaus et al. 2006), it becomes a positive quality that all professionals want, regardless of the field of expertise. several studies were conducted in different countries, so it is essential to point out some of the most relevant approaches and results. according to a research carried out in the usa by feldhaus et al. (2006), students of university degrees need specific training that guarantees the acquisition of ethical, social and professional responsibility competences. in addition, the authors of the teaching http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ mailto:oksana.polyakova@ucv.es mailto:ruzanagalstyan@gmail.com oksana polyakova and ruzana galstyan-sargsyan language value 11 (1), 45–70 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 46 project designed a qualification based on the essential competences for professional leadership in organisations. however, we have noticed that the focus on the leadership competence, provided by feldhaus as the main course of orientation, contains no broader competence vision and does not combine it with second language (l2) skills. the work of walther et al. (2011), also based on the us experience, argues that competence-based training of engineering students is determined by a series of factors of the education system. unlike the previous study, the authors propose the use of a framework based on seven blocks of professional skills linked to the technical training model. due to the linguistic profile of students –future american engineers whose mother tongue is english–, the communicative competence in l2 has not been considered. the research of argüelles álvarez (2013) conducted in spain reveals ground-breaking achievements in teaching specialised english and content course. the combination of content and language integrated learning (clil) methods as well as a set of generic competences were taught within moodle environment and on-campus. the assessment scale viewed holistically could gain precision and relevance in connection to competences achievement. in general, course activities planned alongside with project work designed specifically for the course were insightful for our l2 curriculum design. another investigation, undertaken by kongsom (2016) in thailand, improves the use of communicative strategies in engineering degrees. foreign language students often face difficulties in learning english, specifically oral expression. the communicative strategy is closely linked to communicative competences. as determined by the study results, a course of ten communicative strategies managed to improve communicative and strategic competences of university students. the main objective of our study is to investigate the combined methods and procedures related to the l2 communicative competence development. additionally, the research included mediation as a new key aspect for teaching and learning foreign languages according to the cefr. the study`s research questions to explore will include: (i) what type of methodology and procedures could address the implementation of linguistic competences in l2 training at university level? http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ communicative competences in non-linguistic university degrees language value 11 (1), 45–70 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 47 (ii) is it possible to personalise and bear in mind students’ interests while designing a training course? (iii) can we assess training results? (iv) does the use and piloting of a proposed course model correlate with expected learning outcomes in terms of competences acquired? thus, thorough research on literature addressing communicative competence training will be carried out. scholarly articles will be used, and a qualitative review and analysis will be carried out to justify our stance on the importance of communicative competences in higher education across the world. in our study, the concept of nonlinguistic university degree allows variation from technical to financial areas to extrapolate research results. the different political and geographical situations including various activities and social context around the world affect the issue. additionally, the attitude and the students’ expectations are critical factors in the attainment of competences among students. many students may view the competences as a waste of time and irrelevant in their field and our task is to change this point of view through the present research. the need to train students to communicate effectively enough for the modern-day workplaces is the main reason for this article as it discusses the importance of communicative competency in non-language degrees across the world. the study is critical in determining the attention that higher education is giving to communicative competence. the research will also be vital in determining how the institutions are adjusting towards providing students with the competence both in language and nonlanguage degrees. ii. theoretical background ii.1. concept of communicative competence and its development the concept of communicative competence was introduced by hymes (1972). the term was coined by hymes while reacting against the perceived inadequacy of noam http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ oksana polyakova and ruzana galstyan-sargsyan language value 11 (1), 45–70 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 48 chomsky’s (1965) difference between the performance and linguistic competence. in order to address chomsky’s abstract idea of competence, hymes conducted an ethnographic assessment of communicative competence that integrated communicative form and functions as they relate to one another. hymes’ approach towards improving the understanding of communicative competence is described as the ethnography of communication. hymes believed in the ability to communicate properly needs to be developed in language teaching. it implies that students must be taught about various ways of learning a language in their daily communication to enable them to demonstrate their language mastery. the aim of communicative language teaching is to infuse into individuals the ability to create and to construct utterances (spoken and written), which have the desired social value or purpose (kramsch 2006). fundamentally, communicative competence concept has been widely recognised in the teaching of english language, as well as other fields such as sociolinguistic, discourse, strategic and pragmatic competences. according to kramsch (2006), language communicative competence is the expression, interpretation and negotiation of meaning between interlocutors. the development of communicative competence among the students has contributed to a huge recognition of english as a fundamental communicating tool after graduation in many parts of europe where the language is treated as a foreign language. the use of the english language, for example, skills and cultural aspects have permitted them to learn about ways of communicating with people of different cultural backgrounds in real language contexts (pepper 2011). at the pedagogic level, the approach through which the competences highlight the practical side of learning, the use of the learning effects for the individuals as well as the society. in this regard, studies have shown that the use of competences in defining the objective is crucial as it allows the education to provide a considerably more direct answer to the concrete needs of the learning community. voiculescu (2013) reported that the integrator model of skills enhanced a proper interpretation of the concept, thereby preserving the elements identified. according to the authors, the communicative competences have the ability to address the knowledge and abilities that integrate the values, attitudes and the necessity for problem-solving. http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ communicative competences in non-linguistic university degrees language value 11 (1), 45–70 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 49 the communicative competence provides knowledge that ensures the theoretical basis of the competence, the ability to represent the executory, acting side of the competence and the personality characteristics that direct the competence from the value point of view (kramsch 2006). within the university environment, the communicative competence is defined in reference to given disciplinary competences. notably, they are competences that transcend the education discipline. theoretically, some skills are learnt with the disciplinary ones. they might be included explicitly and implicitly. the establishment of the common european framework of reference (cefr) has further enhanced the development and use of the communicative competence in the teaching of the university students across european nations (council of europe 2018). primarily, the framework was developed as a continuation of the council of europe’s work in language education during the 1970s and 1980s. notably, the action-oriented approach of the framework builds on and proceeds beyond a communicative approach in the teaching of the foreign languages amongst the university students. thus, they are led to a better perception of what is general and what is specific concerning the linguistic organisation of different languages. there are several theories that support the communicative language teaching. one of these theories is hymes’ theory (1972) of communicative learning. in this theory, hymes (1972) proposed a theory of language performance or use. this theory bases its core arguments on the acceptability and therefore pursues the models and rules that underlie within people’s performance. hymes’ framework (1972) goes beyond the difference between the competence and performance, based on the fact that both can be important. this has led to the development and understanding of the communicative competence teaching, which emphasizes all the four skills, namely listening, speaking, reading and writing. however, listening and speaking have a special place in communicative language teaching. ii.2. necessity and feasibility of developing communicative competence teaching communicative competence provides the students with an opportunity to speak and share their ideas in a relatively relaxed manner. ideally, the students are subject to being the major players or protagonists within the classroom settings as part http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ oksana polyakova and ruzana galstyan-sargsyan language value 11 (1), 45–70 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 50 of foreign language learning (valdman 1992). as such, their initiative and motivation are both enhanced. studies have shown that the problems that can be brought by the lack of competence in a foreign language can be solved through the implementation of communicative competence as a teaching strategy (pepper 2011). communicative competence does not only focus on the development of the students’ listening and speaking abilities but also their writing skills. many national governments have tried to adapt the curricula of their programmes to the needs of the labour market, and equipping their students with the transferable competences that will enable them to apply their knowledge in various professional areas. the future employer requires these skills. teaching the communicative competence in non-linguistic universities, therefore, facilitates the introduction of the new teaching methods, which creates a diversified teaching process. under these circumstances, teachers can utilize the various resources to assist the students in developing their communicative skills, which is one way through which diversity is manifested. for instance, english teachers might use pictures to foster group discussions, thereby assisting students in developing improved informational understanding and the cultural backgrounds on various topics. games also constitute one mechanism that promotes communicative competence (halász and michel 2011). ideally, games can be used to help students learn about the foreign vocabulary and practice their writing skills. more specifically, teachers can assist the student in learning about the vocabulary and consequently practising their writing skills. in some areas, teachers can help students in developing contexts in a foreign language when teaching them grammar and the culture of that particular foreign language. students can be asked various integrative questions to enable them to practice not only their spoken foreign language but also learn about the different cultures (valdman 1992). undeniably, this can be an excellent platform for students to learn and deeply study a foreign language. ii.3. challenges of developing student’s communicative competences studies have reported that inadequate interaction between teachers and students contribute to one of the significant traditional limitations to the learning of foreign http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ communicative competences in non-linguistic university degrees language value 11 (1), 45–70 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 51 language. traditional learning encompasses a simple interaction mechanism where teachers are involved in lecturing while students take notes and rarely participate in class. further, test-based teaching methods make learners develop a certain degree of reluctance and therefore become unable to participate in various classroom activities. in this sense, communicative teaching approach is still a journey from the theory to practice within the non-linguistic universities (halász and michel 2011). lack of individual initiative towards learning the foreign language also influences the effectiveness of teaching. learning a foreign language calls for an own effort, although a joint initiative by both the teacher and students is essential. while it is evident that most universities pay more attention to the development of the students’ communicative competence, the traditional systems of assessment do not take into account whether or not the students have genuinely developed such competences (kramsch 2006). in most cases, such methods are still ingrained, even though the dichotomy between fluency and accuracy is always worth to be considered. related to this is the fact that students may not be willing to learn by themselves. studies have found that students who do not speak the foreign language as their major may demonstrate a varied opinion about that particular language (halász and michel 2011). as such, the absence of both the input and output reduces the students’ interest and skills in reading the vocabularies. this kind of attitude towards learning a foreign language may severely impede students’ learning. in essence, the teachers and students need to establish a steady relationship between foreign language teaching and learning. iii. methods and procedures the communicative competence deals with the ability for a student to communicate, manage, relate, create and recognise. in order to tackle the issue of personalised implementation in non-linguistic degree second language (l2) learning and curriculum design, the following methods and procedures will be used in this study. initially, we will perform students’ needs analysis and then, in line with its results, we will design a combined training process based on communicative competences progress. finally, an assessment scale and a self-assessment table will be proposed to measure competence achievement. http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ oksana polyakova and ruzana galstyan-sargsyan language value 11 (1), 45–70 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 52 iii.1. student needs survey design as demonstrated by the soft competences required in the university and work context, it is necessary to be a qualified specialist and to have a correct command of professional expertise related to the ability to communicate effectively. in addition to this challenge, university students have to acquire l2 (english language) skills. thus, non-linguistic education requires a strong focus on communicative competences embedded in curricular programming and teaching materials of specialised language subjects. a method selected for detecting students’ points of view and motivation is a needs analysis that is going to collect learners’ background information on english training and special vocabulary preferences. 76 engineering students of the universitat politècnica de valència took part in our survey and provided us with their opinions and suggestions that will be described later in the results section. iii.2. communicative competences learning process it should be noted that a student survey is an essential starting point in the research process. due to its personalised approach, we can design a didactic planning aimed at achieving curricular objectives. specifically, the linguistic objective focuses on level b2 (council of europe 2018, 2001) and entails a correct mastery of the four skills (oral and written expression, reading and listening comprehension). moreover, a number of additional 21st century competences should be included in the learning process: mediation and online training competences, as well as pluricultural and plurilingual competences. however, at the lexical level, needs analysis outcomes will provide us with solid data on thematic choice for the course dossier. the study looks at ways student motivation regarding themes is used to reinforce language competence training. a course dossier contents will be compiled from ten units based on vocabulary section approved by students, a wide range of activities also combines speaking, grammar, reading, paraphrasing and translation tasks. each unit will promote the use and development of competences through a dynamic l2 environment as well as encourage reflection point on the knowledge and skills acquired or in progress. http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ communicative competences in non-linguistic university degrees language value 11 (1), 45–70 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 53 this didactic strategy is proposed in line with the learning process based on tasks and projects and follows the curricular design guidelines set by nation and macalister (2010), nunan (2013, 2004) and ur (2012). these guidelines will allow certain linguistic concepts to be worked on with a greater degree of adaptation to the learning objectives and transversal competences. iii.3. measuring language competences as mentioned before, a number of higher education institutions have introduced key competence measurement, including communication in foreign language as one of them (e.g. universita di bologna, coventry university, university of cordoba, alexandru ioan cuza university, among others). however, we cannot use them to tackle specific language competences while teaching foreign languages in non-linguistic degrees because of the missing linguistic components. for the current study, the researchers had to design a specific scale for measuring communicative competences` achievement within a specialised training context. language factors promoted by the updated common european framework of reference for language (council of europe 2018) will play an active role in emphasising the b2 level of english through seven language competences (lc): lc-01 listening, lc-02 speaking, lc-03 reading, lc-04 writing, lc-05 mediation, lc-06 pluricultural and plurilingual competence, lc-07 online training competence. iv. results and discussion iv.1. needs survey analysis in line with the bologna process priorities, our research places students at the centre of the learning process and we will study both their linguistic background and technical thematic preferences. 76 engineering degree students of the universitat politècnica de valència, spain (academic year 2017-2018) took part in a needs survey aimed at providing specific information through the google format survey. the purpose of the survey was to get a better understanding of our future students’ language background, future linguistic needs together with motivation towards a number of specific topics. http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ oksana polyakova and ruzana galstyan-sargsyan language value 11 (1), 45–70 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 54 the latter has become significantly relevant for the students’ involvement in their own communicative competence advance. in this respect, it is worth mentioning that the training designed aims a diverse group of future engineering staff specialised in industrial technologies, chemistry, biomedicine, energy among other. so, a closer connection between the learning process planned and the way we personalise it, can keep the course aligned with a meaningful competences training. here below are displayed the results of our survey (see figures 1, 2 and 3): a) language learning 82% 10% 5% 3% 8% how long have you been studying english? since primary school since secondary school since high school since university figure 1. language learning background. http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ communicative competences in non-linguistic university degrees language value 11 (1), 45–70 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 55 42% 42% 8% 8% 16% have you got any official language certificate? no certificate at all a2 certificate b1 cer tificate b2 cer tificate figure 2. official certificates obtained by engineering students. 29% 24% 22% 25% 47% have you ever studied english at a b1 or b2 level? general english b2 course no general english b1 course technical english b1 course figure 3. previous general or technical language learning background. according to the answers received, the majority of university students (82%) started learning english in elementary school. 42% of the respondents admit having the official http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ oksana polyakova and ruzana galstyan-sargsyan language value 11 (1), 45–70 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 56 a2 certificate in english, 8% have an official b1 level and 8% a b2, while 42% lack any type of official certification. regarding the previous experience of learning english, the proportion obtained corresponds to the almost equal distribution of courses of general english b1 (22%), technical english b1 (25%), general english b2 (29%) or absence of previous experience (24%). b) future l2 use and vocabulary preferences 6,6 78,9 1,3 13,2 where will you probably work in the future? university and education working place and business friends and family travelling and free time figure 4. future working place. the use of english in the future leaves us with clear evidence of the respondents recognising the importance of l2 to achieve professional goals. the majority (78.9%) have indicated the use of english in their future jobs as the most likely scenario, the second most voted option (13.2%) is travel and free time. the third choice (6.6%) is the university and educational environment, and friends and family (1.3%) rank in the last place. http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ communicative competences in non-linguistic university degrees language value 11 (1), 45–70 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 57 28,9 32,9 27,6 10,5 where will you probably work in the future? research and development process management and maintenance project management/consulting technical sales and customerservice figure 5. future work options. 39,5 7,9 47,4 5,3 what type of language use will you need? general english vocabulary general english grammar specific english vocabulary specific english grammar figure 6. types of future language use. http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ oksana polyakova and ruzana galstyan-sargsyan language value 11 (1), 45–70 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 58 3,9 9,2 81,6 5,3 what english language skills will you need for your future? reading listening speaking writing figure 7. types of future language skills needs. in the survey, students choose to work in the future in the areas of process management and maintenance (32.9%), research and development (28.9%), project management and consulting (27.8%), technical sales assistance and customer service (10.5%). in line with job expectations, students of university degrees indicate future needs of specific english vocabulary (47.4%), general english vocabulary (39.5%), and, to a lesser extent, general english grammar (7.9%) or specific grammar (5.3%). the linguistic skill most in demand for their professional future is oral expression in l2 (81.6%), followed by oral comprehension (9.2%), written expression (5.3%) and reading comprehension (3.9%). the data from the topic preference survey gave promising results. most of the participants agreed with the topics and the precise values for each one of the topics are listed in the figure below: http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ communicative competences in non-linguistic university degrees language value 11 (1), 45–70 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 59 25 30,3 25 14,5 26,7 25 22,4 36,8 46,1 7,9 43,4 47,4 53,9 60,5 50,7 60,5 60,5 50 48,7 60,5 15,8 14,5 14,5 18,4 14,7 11,8 10,5 13,2 3,9 25 15,8 7,9 6,6 6,6 8 2,6 6,6 0 1,3 6,6 h e a l t h a n d t e c h n o l og y e n v i r o n me n t a n d g e o g r ap h y t r a n s p o r t a n d t r a v e l a c a d e m i c s t u d i e s b u i l d i n g s a n d i n s ta l l a t i o n s w o r k p l a c e c o m m u n i c a ti on a n d c u l t u r e p r o j e c t , c r e a ti v i ty a n d i n n o v a t i o n b u s i n e s s a n d i n d u s t r y r u l e s a n d r e g u l a ti on s to p i c p r e f e r e n c e s completely agree agree no opinion disagree figure 8. topic preferences. c) proposals and suggestions the needs analysis survey includes the following set of open-ended questions:  what other subject could we include in the design of the course? several respondents pointed out the need to incorporate: new technologies, art, cinema and history, science, teamwork, job application, marketing strategies, how to communicate well, business and negotiation, among others.  what would be the best english textbook for each respondent? among the answers obtained are, for example, english grammar in use, gold first, objective first, communicating across cultures, cambridge english b2 level, face-to-face, my grammar lab or speaking skills books. the results displayed help obtain characteristics of previous l2 knowledge of our students, validate possible didactic topics and suggestions regarding our students’ l2 training experience. just as respondents suggested, we enriched our course content with http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ oksana polyakova and ruzana galstyan-sargsyan language value 11 (1), 45–70 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 60 multicultural job and academic oriented activities as well as strengthened grammar preparation to interconnect it with specific vocabulary. iv.2. a course dossier for teaching competences in line with the bologna process priorities, our research places students at the centre of the learning process and we will study both their linguistic background and technical thematic preferences. the course dossier covers the main areas of english grammar and concentrates on aspects that learners need to advance in listening, reading, speaking and writing skills to be able to communicate confidently. it consists of ten units which are based on the most up-to-date topics to engage learners to study the language according to the b2 level requirements (see table 1). a wide range of activities has been designed to engage learners and the language to the real-world demands and to group the units into the following type of activities:  warm-up activities to introduce the topic and give the students a chance to work in groups to share knowledge on the topic;  vocabulary activities allow students to reinforce the newly acquired words in a context;  grammar activities to build knowledge on different grammar aspects though fill-in gaps, writing or group activities;  reading activities to practice the reading skill through interactive exercises;  paraphrasing, translating activities to connect l2 structures and mother tongue of our students;  discussions, information analysis activities to encourage application and improvement of transversal competences;  summary, reflection and self-assessment activities to identify and measure competences acquired in a particular unit. http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ communicative competences in non-linguistic university degrees language value 11 (1), 45–70 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 61 table 1. dossier contents (polyakova and stepins 2019). source: authors. when linking the teaching of communicative competences in l2 with professional needs, the starting point is to customise ten didactic units according to the needs of future specialists. likewise, each unit proposes a clear communicative-linguistic approach of b2 level and connects unit contents to the list of transversal competences chosen for the current project. in order to illustrate the various types activities designed for the first unit, we have selected the following combination of competences and tasks: unit 1. the world around us (unit name chosen for the topic environment and geography). language competences, b2 level of english:  speaking, listening, reading, writing; dossier unit contents unit 1. the world around us vocabulary: geography and environment. grammar: quantifiers, articles, uncountable and plural nouns. unit 2. health technology vocabulary: present and past of health technology. grammar: comparison and order of adjectives, prepositions at, on, in. speaking topic: sport. unit 3. on a business trip vocabulary: transport and travel. grammar: infinitive and -ing, irregular verbs. unit 4. academic issues vocabulary: academic cv, writing clearly. grammar: connectors, prepositions and expressions. speaking topic: erasmus interview. unit 5. buildings and facilities vocabulary: buildings, industrial facilities, problems with installations. grammar: present tense, past tense, present perfect. unit 6. workplace vocabulary: workplace. grammar: modal verbs. speaking topic: swot analysis. unit 7. communication vocabulary: communication and media. grammar: future tenses, conditionals, temporal clauses. unit 8. projects, creativity and innovations vocabulary: projects, creativity and innovations. grammar: active and passive voice. unit 9. business and industry vocabulary: business and industry. grammar: reported speech, reporting verbs and their patterns unit 10. rules and regulations vocabulary: rules and regulations. grammar: future tenses http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ oksana polyakova and ruzana galstyan-sargsyan language value 11 (1), 45–70 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 62  vocabulary (geography and environment);  grammar (quantifiers, articles, uncountable and plural nouns);  mediation (groupwork and presentation of different types of energy). activities:  discuss different types of energy in your country (page 10, activity f);  classify energy types, indicate advantages / disadvantages in a table (page 11, activity g); write a short text giving the opinion on the classification (page 11, activity h);  work in groups and present different types of energy to convince others to use this type of energy (page 11, activity i). in this manner, we account for a course dossier prepared so that any l2 english professor can have several pre-designed thematic activities closely related to competence development. similarly, the dossier format will allow the incorporation of learning tasks based on cross-curricular projects and explore new paths of collaboration with teachers-experts in specialised subjects. iv.3. assessing communicative competence development as mentioned before, the research also includes an adapted assessment scale that will strengthen knowledge acquisition process and ensure effective competence achievement. besides that, a rubric presented (see appendix i) suggests a user-friendly format based on competence names, descriptors and likert scale marking that can be used for teacher, peer and self-assessment. http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ communicative competences in non-linguistic university degrees language value 11 (1), 45–70 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 63 figure 9. self-assessment part at the end of each unit. another compelling challenge in the area of assessment is the development of selfassessment skills of our learners. we recommend to implement the following selfassessment block designed for each unit (see figure 9) in order to engage students and support their gradual progress. iv.4. task-based curricular design modelling and piloting teaching english as a foreign language is part of the communicative competences’ integration programme. the programme teaches students to acquire skills that assist them to be competent in multi-professional skills. the skills acquired after completion of the programme are diverse with the inclusion of communicative orientation of training. pillars of learning is achieved through the learning of english since it is a pathway for students to acquire communicative knowledge and skills to be used in a different profession. http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ oksana polyakova and ruzana galstyan-sargsyan language value 11 (1), 45–70 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 64 the following stage on piloting communicative language competences integration performed in close cooperation with professor parvina islamova (tajik state university of commerce) includes course details as well as its goals, training setting and learning outcomes linked to competence achievement. the future profession, in this case, is accounting and audit. professional accountant learning different types of speech skills such as listening, speaking, reading, writing and mediation improve the chances of being a qualified professional in the job market. during the program period, students will get an opportunity to form communication skills. the component of communication skills is the ability of students to communicate with classmates, therefore, enhancing productive learning. forming and refining their communication skills is the first objective of this course. communication skills are the basics for students for them to be best positioned in understanding and factually synthesizing information. communication skills go beyond the basics needs putting students in a good state for them to effectively develop and justify points. point justification abilities are made possible through mastery of speech and writing. practicing communication relies on the text as a basic tool. the changing global trends put english as the leading foreign language to connect people. refined communication skills put a student in a good position to be accepted by most employers. the english language through mastery of communication skills makes it possible for students to enhance other complementing transversal skills. the english language is, therefore, the backbone of ensuring that students acquire other transversal competences with ease. the lesson was conducted using unit 3 of the dossier called “on a business trip” in the group of a specialty “accounting and audit” 13 participants, aged around 18-19. in words of parvina islamova, “we have got a theme about a business trip, and i wanted to test my students with the use of this book, but i have known that the level of english is higher than they have. i have found this book interesting, however my students would have had a better experience if they were b1-b2 level. my students are so ambitious they want to improve their knowledge, and i think it was a good idea to change our textbook”. the practical process also proved that knowledge acquired on the english language [partially acquired lc-01, lc-02, lc-03 and lc-04] was a factor when it http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ communicative competences in non-linguistic university degrees language value 11 (1), 45–70 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 65 came to carrying out of experiments and analysis of data. the interpretation of data is essential in concluding competence achievement”. v. conclusions this assessment of the importance of communicative competences in higher institutions demonstrates the type of skills looked for by institutions as well as for clarity in their definition. in terms of limitation, this study aims to critically assess the relevance of communicative competence in non-language degrees to increase the employability of students in the workplaces and delivery of the expected outcomes. we hope people that will use this study will be able to gain an insight into the importance of the subject both in the class and outside their classrooms. the study results presented in this article show that the authors attached importance to the development of a reliable study methodology. moreover, a number of methodological procedures for addressing university students’ thematic interests and connecting them to curricular objectives helped adopt innovative competence-based approaches. this allowed scholars to answer research questions in the following way: rq (i) the combination of procedures that ensured study cohesion was based on needs survey, dossier and assessment suggestions as well as project piloting; rq (ii) as mentioned before, students’ needs detected by needs analysis are the core element of motivation towards competence training; rq (iii) adapted competence assessment merging a specific scale and self-assessment table can be used for assessing learning results; rq (iv) piloting results were quite promising even though some adjustments should be done. the main result that is obtained in the research is a course design proposal that allows to integrate the personalised learning elements to complete successfully the training process through the implementation of communicative competences. one of the most remarkable practical implications of this study is that the proposed dossier allows a structural and clear development of communicative competences and their measurement. thus, it helps learners to have a robust vision of his/her learning processes. the implementation of communicative competences is usually presented in the context of a subject but there is no concrete didactic material which embraces and http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ oksana polyakova and ruzana galstyan-sargsyan language value 11 (1), 45–70 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 66 works those competences gradually and systematically through cross-curricular competences. in summary, learning of l2 can be challenging, but it can also be exciting if done with a positive attitude (redecker et al. 2011). it entails the involvement of different people to make sure that students can succeed in their education. these people include, but not limited to, educators, graduates and employers. acknowledgements we would like to thank professor parvina islamova (phd, senior lecturer at the department of foreign languages, tajik state university of commerce) for her valuable help and insights on the modelling and piloting stage of the current project. references argüelles álvarez, i. 2013. “a holistic experience in the integrated learning of specialized english and content in engineering degrees”. language value, 5 (1), 48-75. chomsky, n. 1965. aspects of the theory of syntax. cambridge, ma: mit press. council of europe. 2018. common european framework of reference for languages: learning, teaching, assessment. companion volume with new descriptors. strasbourg: council of europe publishing. 10 january 2019 <https://rm.coe.int/cefr-companion-volume-with-new-descriptors2018/168078798> council of europe. 2001. common european framework of reference for languages: learning, teaching, assessment. cambridge: press syndicate of the university of cambridge. feldhaus, c., wolter r., hundley s. and diemer t. 2006. “a single instrument: engineering and engineering technology students demonstrating competence http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ https://rm.coe.int/cefr-companion-volume-with-new-descriptors-2018/168078798 https://rm.coe.int/cefr-companion-volume-with-new-descriptors-2018/168078798 communicative competences in non-linguistic university degrees language value 11 (1), 45–70 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 67 in ethics and professional standards”. science and engineering ethics, 12, 291311. halász, g., and michel, a. 2011. “key competences in europe: interpretation, policy formulation and implementation”. european journal of education, 46 (3), 289306. hymes, d. 1972. "on communicative competence". in pride, j.b. and j. holmes (eds.) sociolinguistics. london: penguin books, 269-293. kongsom, t. 2016. “the impact of teaching communication strategies on english speaking of engineering undergraduates”. pasaa 51, 39-69. kramsch, c. (2006). “the uses of communicative competence in a global world”. review of applied linguistics in china, 2, 30-50. nation, i.s.p. and macalister, j. 2010. language curriculum design. new york, usa: routledge. nunan, d. 2013. learner-centered english language education: the selected works of david nunan. new york, usa: routledge. nunan, d. 2004. task-based language teaching. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. pepper, d. 2011. “assessing key competences across the curriculum—and europe”. european journal of education, 46 (3), 335-353. polyakova, o. and stepins, k. 2019. technical focus. learner dossier. edited by ruzana galstyan. valencia: universitat politècnica de valència. redecker, c., leis, m., leendertse, m., punie, y., gijsbers, g., kirschner, p. a. and hoogveld, b. 2011. the future of learning: preparing for change. jcr scientific and technical reports. luxembourg: publications office of the european union. reverdito, g. and st. john, s. k. 2019. “breaking the language barriers: free movement and language learning in the european community”. in st. john, s. and murphy, m. (eds.) education and public policy in the european union. cham: palgrave-macmillan, 111-147. http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ oksana polyakova and ruzana galstyan-sargsyan language value 11 (1), 45–70 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 68 ur., p. 2012. a course in english language teaching. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. valdman, a. 1992. “authenticity, variation and communication in the foreign language classroom”. in kramsch, c. and mcconell-ginet, s. (eds.) text and context: cross-disciplinary perspectives on language study. lexington, ma: d.c. heath, 79-97. voiculescu, f. (coord). 2013. elaborarea programului de formare in domeniul didacticii specialitatii. bucuresti: editura matrix. walther, j., kellam n., sochacka n. and radcliffe d. 2011. “engineering competence? an interpretive investigation of engineering students’ professional formation”. journal of engineering education, 100 (4), 703-740. http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ communicative competences in non-linguistic university degrees language value 11 (1), 45–70 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 69 appendix i table 2. adapted communicative competences assessment scale competence markers/ descriptors likert scale (1-5) c o m m u n ic a ti v e c o m p e te n c e s lc-01 listening, b2 can understand the main ideas of propositionally and linguistically complex speech. can follow extended speech and complex lines of argument. lc-02 speaking, b2 can give clear, systematically developed descriptions and presentations, with appropriate highlighting of significant points, and relevant supporting detail. can give clear, detailed descriptions and presentations on a wide range of subjects. can communicate detailed information reliably. can give a clear, detailed description of how to carry out a procedure. can interact with a degree of fluency and spontaneity. lc-03 reading, b2 can read with a large degree of independence. can scan quickly through long and complex texts, locating relevant details. can quickly identify the content and relevance of news items, articles and reports on a wide range of professional topics, deciding whether closer study is worthwhile. lc-04 writing can write clear, detailed texts on a variety of subjects related to his/her field of interest, synthesising and evaluating information and arguments from a number of sources. lc-05 mediation, b2 can convey detailed information and arguments reliably, e.g. the significant point(s) contained in complex but wellstructured, texts within my fields of professional, academic and personal interest. can encourage participation and pose questions that invite reactions from other group members’ perspectives or ask people to expand on their thinking and clarify their opinions. lc-06 pluricultural and plurilingual competence, b2 can describe and evaluate the viewpoints and practices of his/her own and other social groups, showing awareness of the implicit values on which judgments and prejudices are frequently based. can alternate between languages in his/her plurilingual repertoire in order to communicate specialised information and issues on a subject in his field of interest to different interlocutors. lc-07 online training competence, b2 can participate actively in an online discussion. can engage in online exchanges between several participants. can recognise misunderstandings and disagreements that arise in an online interaction and can deal with them. comments and feedback http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ oksana polyakova and ruzana galstyan-sargsyan language value 11 (1), 45–70 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 70 received: 01 july 2019 accepted: 17 december 2019 cite this article as: polyakova, oksana and galstyan-sargsyan, ruzana. 2019. “communicative competences in non-linguistic university degrees”. language value 11 (1), 45-70. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.languagevalue.uji.es. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2019.11.4 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ language attitudes and third language writing in a multilingual educational context irene guzmán alcón iguzman@uji.es universitat jaume i, spain abstract the study explores the impact of language attitudes on third language (english) writing. a total of 40 participants (20 from the b2 level and another 20 from the c2 level) from an official language school in the valencian community took part in the study. data were collected by means of semi-structured interviews and a questionnaire adapted from lasagabaster and huguet (2007), together with and a written composition evaluated using jacobs et al.’s (1981) taxonomy. findings from the study show that students’ attitudes towards languages are in line with the sociolinguistic status of each language in the valencian community. in addition, the present study shows that those students that use both official languages (spanish and catalan) at home got better results in the evaluation of their english writings. our findings indicate the impact of multilingualism on students’ l3 writing and suggest the advantages of multilingualism in language learning. keywords: language attitudes; third language; writing; multilingualism. guzmán-alcón, i. (2022). language attitudes and third language writing in a multilingual educational context. language value, 15(1), 30-51 universitat jaume i epress: castelló, spain. http://www.languagevalue.uji.es. july 2022 doi: https://doi.org/10.6035/languagev.6217 issn 1989-7103 language value july 2022, vol 15, num. 1 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es issn 1989-7103 language value, issn 1989-7103 doi: http://dx.doi.org/ 10.6035/languagev.6217 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es i. introduction within the legislation released in 1995, called the resolution of the european council, acquiring foreign languages was paramount among the citizens to achieve a successful career in the new european union. as a result, the european education systems felt the need to respond to those demands and give importance not only to cultural awareness, but also to fostering multilingualism in the school context. as a result, nowadays we frequently have multilingual classrooms where learners acquire communicative competence in different languages, one of them being english, and multiliteracy is one of the main targets in education (breuer et al., 2021). furthermore, as mentioned by cenoz (2009), it is acknowledged that the sociolinguistic environment of the school plays a role in fostering multilingualism and that learning english as an additional language cannot be separated, among other factors, from the use of other languages or attitudes towards languages (cenoz & gorter, 2015). however, despite the interest in developing students’ multilingualism and multiliteracy, little research has analysed the different factors that influence students’ writing competence in english as a third language. most of the research on writing in an additional language has focused on the influence of l1 on second language writing and few studies have focused on third language learners. an issue that the present study aims to cover. previous research on third language writers have examined the writing skills of bilingual and monolingual learners (cenoz & valencia, 1994; sanz, 2008) reporting the positive effect of bilingualism on l3 writing. additionally, the positive effect of bilingualism was supported by other studies that have explored students’ mother tongue and its influence on their writing performance. for instance, sagasta (2003) analysed the acquisition of l3 writing competence taking into account the variable of language used at home. a total of 155 participants participated in the study. participants were recruited from a secondary school in the basque country. although the language of instruction for all participants was basque, half of them used basque at home while the other half used irene guzmán alcón language value 15(1) 30-51 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 31 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es spanish. to analyze learners’ writings, sagasta (2003), asked the participants to write a letter to a host family in england. to analyse students’ writings, the taxonomy created by jacobs et al. (1981) was used. sagasta (2003) revealed that those students who used basque at home outperformed their peers in writing in basque. nevertheless, results concerning students who use spanish at home revealed that there were no differences among the students who spoke basque at home and those who spoke spanish at home (see also cenoz et al., 2013). therefore, sagasta (2003) noted that students transferred the writing skills acquired through instruction in the minority language when writing in the dominant language. in fact, those students who scored high in basque and spanish scored higher in english. additionally, those learners who use basque at home also performed better in english. findings from this study confirm the influence of the level of language competence across languages. findings reported in sagasta (2003) were supported in another study by cenoz et al., (2013) that analysed the assessment of writing skills in the educational context of the basque country. a multilingual context, similar to the one of the present study, and in which spanish, english and basque are used as languages of instruction. a total of 70 participants in the 3rd year of secondary education, recruited from three different schools, took part in the study. data were collected by means of two types of instruments. on the one hand, a background information questionnaire to gather information about age, gender, school, and different aspects of language use. one the other hand, each student wrote three compositions, one in each of the languages of instruction (basque, spanish and english) that were assessed, following jacobs et al’s. (1981) taxonomy, for content, organization, vocabulary, language use, and mechanics. findings from the study reported that the students who use basque with their parents obtained significantly higher scores in basque and english than those that use spanish with their parents. moreover, other studies have examined the prestige of the languages (majority, minority and additional languages) as well as the relationship between language attitudes and language attitudes and third language writing in a multilingual educational context language value 15(1) 30-51 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 32 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es written performance. on the one hand, lasagabaster & safont-jordà (2008) explored the language attitudes of 416 university students in the basque autonomous community and the valencian community. findings confirmed that students’ attitudes towards the three languages in contact across both communities were positive and that the influence of the l1 virtually disappeared when a holistic approach was employed. on the other hand, in the context of the valencian community, nightingale (2012) analysed, at the secondary level, how factors such as the sociocultural status, a stay abroad period and the ‘out-of-school’ incidental learning affect students’ attitudes towards languages. findings from this study showed that although attitudes towards the three languages were positive, students showed more positive attitudes towards the english language when attitudes towards the two official languages of the valencian community (catalan and spanish) were positive. in the same line, portolés (2014) examined the same issue at university level. portolés (2014) focussed on students’ attitudes towards catalan, spanish and english in private and public universities in castellón and valencia. a total of 75 participants participated in the study. data were analysed by means of a questionnaire adapted from lasagabaster and huguert (2007), and results from the study showed that the sociolinguistic context influenced attitudes towards the majority and foreign languages, but not towards the minority language. in the same context, guzmán-alcón (2019) analysed teachers’ attitudes towards the three official languages in the valencian community, taking into account the language school model as a variable. a total of 30 primary school teachers participated in the study. findings from the study showed that, although teachers believed that multilingualism is encouraged in education, they mainly relied on one language: english in the english model, catalan in the catalan model, and spanish in the spanish-based language model. finally, the language model seems to play a role in teachers’ attitudes towards languages, irene guzmán alcón language value 15(1) 30-51 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 33 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es and reveal the prestige of english as a lingua franca, the prestige of spanish as a majority language, and the lack of prestige of catalan as a minority language, especially for those who do not use catalan in education. similar results were obtained by guzmán-alcón & portolés (2021), who investigated the influence of the language programs and in-service teachers’ l1 had on attitudes towards the three contact languages (catalan, spanish and english). a total of 21 in-service teachers participated in the study. data were collected by means of a written questionnaire, based on lasagabaster and huguet (2007), and semi-structured oral interviews. findings from the study confirmed the influence of the language programme on in-service teachers’ language attitudes as well as the paramount role of the l1 in the formation of language attitudes. additionally, findings from the study pointed out that language attitudes and teaching practices do not always match since some monolingual perspectives in language teaching and learning. in addition, the relationship between language attitudes and writing performance has been addressed by knudson (1995), graham and perin, (2007), ansarmoghaddam and bee (2014) and baştuğ (2015). knudson (1995) conducted a survey to analyse 68 learners’ attitudes towards writing. findings from the study showed that learners who had a positive attitude towards writing were more likely to be better writers in the long run than those who held a more negative attitude. in the same line, graham and perin (2007) examined first and third-year primary students’ attitudes and their impact on their writing, reporting that the variable of age is crucial for writing achievement. they also found that the variable of gender was important, as females were found to have more positive attitudes towards writing than males. similar results on the relationship between positive attitude and writing achievement are reported by ansarmoghaddam and bee (2014), who compared how learners felt about writing in their l1 versus english. findings from the study showed that students who have a positive attitude towards english were more susceptible to use english when writing even outside the classroom. similarly, baştuğ (2015) investigated the writing skill and the affective factors of 57 participants, reporting that writing disposition and attitude significantly affected writing language attitudes and third language writing in a multilingual educational context language value 15(1) 30-51 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 34 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es achievement. from the studies reviewed above, we can claim that previous research has provided information on the effect of bilingualism on l1 and l2 students’ writing. other studies have reported that when different languages coexist in the same region, different attitudes towards those languages are observed. finally, some investigations have shown a positive relationship between language attitudes and writing performance. however, to the best of our knowledge, no study has analysed multilingual students’ attitudes towards languages and their relationship with performance in english writing. a gap that the present study aims to cover. therefore, in line with ibarraran et al., (2008) claiming that multilingualism goes along with positive attitudes, the present study aims to analyse multilingual students’ writing skill in english, taking into account language attitudes toward the three languages of education in the valencian community (catalan, spanish and english). considering the aim of the current investigation, the research questions of the present study are presented below. 1. research question i (rq i): is there any relationship between language attitude towards english and student’s writing performance? 2. research question ii (rq ii): is there any relationship between students’ attitudes towards catalan and spanish and their english writing? and, how do attitudes towards languages that coexist in multilingual settings play a role? ii. method ii.1. setting and participants the current study was carried out in one official school of languages (henceforth: eoi) in the province of castelló, that is located at the valencian community, a multilingual irene guzmán alcón language value 15(1) 30-51 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 35 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es community where catalan and spanish coexist, and english is learned as an additional language. the eois are specialised in language learning and teaching, and attendance is not compulsory. at the eoi of castellón, ten languages can be learned: spanish, catalan, english, french, german, italian, russian, portuguese, arabic and chinese. the great majority of students take english or catalan. the sample consisted of a total of 40 participants, with a c2 level (n=20) and a b2 level (n= 20) of english. the age of participants ranged from 16 to 59 years old (n= 32.2), and the gender distribution was 67.5% female (n= 27) and 32.5 % male (n= 13). in terms of mother tongue 55% (n= 22) of the participants reported their l1 to be spanish, 12.5% (n=5) reported to be catalan, and 30% (n= 12) reported both, spanish and catalan, and 3% (n= 1) reported having another language as mother tongue. all participants had knowledge of at least three languages: the minority language, catalan, which is the main language at school; spanish, the dominant language in the surrounding sociolinguistic environment and in society at large, and english, which is learned as a foreign language. ii.2. data collection instruments and analysis in the present investigation, a mixed-method research approach was used. thus, quantitative data were collected by means of a questionnaire based on lasagabaster and huguet (2007) that consisted of two parts. in the first part, general information regarding (i) age, (ii) sex, (iii) level of english (iv) mother tongue and (v) language spoken at home were gathered. information on participants’ language attitudes towards catalan, spanish and english were collected by means of questions included in the second part of the questionnaire (see appendix a). participants were given 15 minutes to complete the questionnaire that was written in spanish. considering the data obtained in the questionnaire, a profile for each of the participants (age, gender, l1, language attitudes towards english, catalan and spanish) was created. in addition, students’ l1 were categorised according to the language used at home (1 vlc, 2cs, 3 both, 4 other), and language attitudes were categorised on a scale from 1 to 5. in addition, each student was asked to write a composition (150-200 words) in english about “advantages and disadvantages of online shopping (see appendix b) ”. we chose this task considering the criteria formulated by jacobs et al. (1981) in their book on language attitudes and third language writing in a multilingual educational context language value 15(1) 30-51 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 36 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es “testing esl composition: a practical approach”, where the author suggested the composition to be realistic and the topic to be appropriate. thus, a total of 40 essays were typed up exactly as they were written in electronic format (.txt). the written compositions were all scored using jacobs et al.’s (1981) taxonomy, which included a five-component scale; content (how well they understood and developed the topic; 30 points), organisation (how organised, fluent and cohesive the text is; 20 points), vocabulary (how sophisticated, effective and appropriate the vocabulary is; 20 points) language use (how well complex constructions and grammar are used; 25 points) and mechanics (how effectively punctuation and spelling are used; 5 points). they added up to a total of 100 points. the compositions were rated by the principal researcher and two english teachers from the educational centre where the study was conducted. following cohen’s (1960) procedure, raters coded independently students’ writing according to the dimensions of jacob et al. (1981), but before coding students’ writings, raters went through two training sessions in order to become familiar with the rating scale and to provide them with specific instructions on how the compositions should be assessed. coding resulted in the following agreements: 88% for content, 87% for organisation, 91% for vocabulary, 85% for language use and 89% for mechanics. finally, the pearson moment correlation test was used to measure the strength of the linear relationship between students’ attitudes towards spanish and catalan and students’ scores in l3 (english) writing. this statistical test has a value between -1 to 1, with a value of -1 meaning a total negative linear correlation, 0 being no correlation, and + 1 meaning a total positive correlation. furthermore, qualitative data were collected by means of an open question where participants had to express their feelings, with a minimum of 20 words, after finishing their composition in english. in addition, individual semi-structured interviews were held in spanish. each interview consisted of five questions (see appendix c) and provided additional information to the ones provided in the questionnaire. interviewees were coded as sx (s1, s2, s3….) including the 40 participants of the study, and the qualitative irene guzmán alcón language value 15(1) 30-51 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 37 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es data from the interviews were used for further interpretation of the quantitative results. iii. results and discussion as previously mentioned, the main goal of this study is to explore students’ attitudes towards languages and their relationship on students’ english writing. in response to rqi, first, we examined students’ written performance. table 1 provides an overview of the mean scores in each of the five components suggested by jacob’s et al. (1981) to evaluate writing. written dimensions group mean sd content (30 points) 76 5.48 organization (20 points) 74.9 3.97 vocabulary (20 points) 76.5 3.93 language use (25 points) 72.2 5.23 mechanics (5 points) 70 1.26 as illustrated in table 1 all dimensions are above 50%. on the one hand, students perform better in vocabulary (m= 76.5), followed by organisation (m= 74.9) and content (m= 76). on the other hand, participants show less accuracy on language use (m= 72.2) and mechanics (m= 70). to answer rq1, which aimed to analyse the relationship between students’ attitude towards the english language and their written production, a pearson’s correlation statistical analysis was conducted. figure 1 shows the relationship between attitudes towards english and students’ written performance. in addition, the pearson correlation test indicated that the correlation between the two variables is statistically significant (r = .756, p < 0.05). language attitudes and third language writing in a multilingual educational context language value 15(1) 30-51 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 38 table 1. mean scores in each of the components of the compositions. http://www.languagevalue.uji.es findings related to rq1 are in line with those reported by knudspn (1995), ansarmoghan and bee (2014) and bastug (2015), and confirm that a positive attitude towards the target language, in this case english, correlates with better performance in writing. in fact, regardless of the proficiency level, students’ attitudes seem to correlate with accuracy in writing. both groups of students with a c2 and b2 level of english, in this study, show a positive correlation, (r = .803, p < 0.05) and (r= .469, p > 0.05) respectively between attitude towards english and writing production, although the correlation with the group of students with a b2 is not statistically significant. these correlations can also be observed in figures 2 and 3. irene guzmán alcón language value 15(1) 30-51 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 39 figure 1. scatter plot of language attitude towards english and student’s written performance. figure 2. scatter plot of language attitude towards english and written performance of students with c in english. http://www.languagevalue.uji.es our qualitative data obtained during the semi-structured interviews support our quantitative results. in general, participants reported feeling comfortable when writing in english. none of the students reported a negative attitude towards english, regardless of the level of proficiency, or even mother tongue. this can be observed in the following examples in response to the question “do you like writing in english?” s33: “i like writing in english. i feel that i am learning and improving little by little, and that every time i write and i make a mistake i correct it for the next time”. s2: “i like writing in english because i prove to myself that i can do it and since it is not the language i use the most, i am happy to see that i am learning”. s3: “i feel happy when i write in english because i realise that i am able to express myself in a foreign language”. thus, summarising results related to rq i, our findings seem to support previous research indicating the positive direction of the correlation between positive attitude towards english and scores in english writing performance. additionally, as the present study was carried in a multilingual context, rq ii addressed language attitudes and third language writing in a multilingual educational context language value 15(1) 30-51 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 40 figure 3. scatter plot of language attitude towards english and written performance of studens with b2 in english. http://www.languagevalue.uji.es the role of students’ attitudes towards the two official languages of the valencian community on english as a third language. in order to respond to rq ii, which aimed to examine whether students’ attitudes towards spanish and catalan were associated with scores in students’ l3 (english) writing, we conducted pearson’s correlation statistical tests. findings from the analysis indicated that, although there were positive correlations between attitudes towards spanish, catalan and english and students’ writings in english, there is only the correlation between positive attitude towards english and participants’ english writing that is statistically significant (p < 0.05) (see table 2). ac_sp ac_eng ac_cat wr_sco ac_sp 1.00 0.34 0.06 0.32 ac_eng 0.34 1.00 0.31 0.76 ac_cat 0.06 0.31 1.00 0.47 wr_sco 0.32 0.75 0.47 1.00 in addition, figure 4 represents an overview of the percentages of students’ attitudes towards the two official languages (spanish and catalan), and english as a third language, plus a global attitude towards languages. as illustrated in figure 4, participants have a holistic positive attitude towards the three languages (76%). however, participants do not have the same attitude towards the three of them. the most favourable attitude is towards spanish (95%) followed by english (74%) and the least favourable attitude is irene guzmán alcón language value 15(1) 30-51 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 41 table 2. persons correlation matrix for attitudes towards spanish, english and catalan and written score. figure 4. percentage of participants’ attitudes towards languages. http://www.languagevalue.uji.es language attitudes and third language writing in a multilingual educational context towards catalan (60%). more detailed information on students’ attitude towards the three languages, (spanish, english and catalan) is provided in figure 5, taking into account the information provided in the questionnaire. regarding the spanish language, all responses are above 90%, which shows that participants’ attitudes towards spanish are very positive. if we look at the results related to each of the questions of the questionnaire, it is worth paying attention to question 6 (participants were asked whether if they had children they would like them to speak spanish), and question 7 (participants were asked about the value of learning the spanish language). in the case of question 6, 98% of participants responded affirmatively, while 99% of them also considered that it was important to learn spanish. this can be explained due to the prestige of spanish as a majority language in the valencian community (portolés, 2014; guzmán-alcón, 2019). this finding is confirmed by looking at some of the comments participants made during the semi-structured interviews when participants were asked ”what language do you like the most, catalan, spanish or english? s21: “i prefer spanish because it is my language and i think it is the most important language”. language value 15(1) 30-51 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 42 figure 5. participants’ attitude towards the three languages (catalan, spanish and english) http://www.languagevalue.uji.es s2: “i believe that spanish, because it is my language and is spoken all over the world, and it is useful for the society in which we live”. s37: “i prefer spanish because i think english is given too much importance, but so is spanish” s7: “spanish is the one i am most comfortable speaking because i speak it all the time”. s5:”spanish because i speak it all the time, at home, at work and with my friends”. s6: ”spanish is a language that has to be taken into account, a lot of attention is given to english and we forget that spanish is the second most spoken language in the world”. regarding the english language, there are differences that are worth pointing out. for instance, question 6 and 7 are above 90%, while question 5 and 3 are around 50%. answers to question 6 “if you had children would you like them to speak english?” and question 7 “do you think it is worth learning english?” seem to indicate the instrumental motivation for learning english, while question 3 “do you like reading in english” and question 5 “would you marry someone who only spoke english?” refer to issues linked to participants’ intrinsic motivation for learning english. this is confirmed by looking at some of the comments participants made during the semi-structured interviews where participants’ were asked “what language do you consider the most, important (catalan, spanish or english?)” s38: “english since i need it to travel for my job” s22:”english because when i go around the world i can talk to people”. s33: “i think english, since i’ve been asked to speak it so much at work since i started, so i’ve ended up liking it”. irene guzmán alcón language value 15(1) 30-51 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 43 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es s34:“today, english is the language you need to find a job and it is the one we need the most”. s15: “english because it is very important for the future”. although our findings indicate participants’ perception of the prestige of the english language, and the desire of participants to learn that language, it is worth pointing out that students’ attitudes towards the english language are not as positive as their attitude towards the spanish language. these findings could be explained because participants may see the english language as a threat to the spanish language (lasagabaster, 2017). some of the students’ comments during the semi-structured interviews also confirm this tentative hypothesis. finally, with regards to the catalan language, we can observe that students have a neutral attitude towards this language. here it is worth looking at the answers to questions 1, 4, 6 and 7. participants in answering question 1 (“i like listening to catalan) and 4 (“learning catalan enriches my cultural background”) show a neutral attitude towards catalan (50% and 58% respectively). this also occurs in question 6 (“if i had children, i would like them to speak catalan”) and question 7 (“it is worth learning catalan). the percentages of 56% and 62% found respectively in students’ responses to these two questions show that neither is there an intrinsic nor an extrinsic motivation for learning catalan. this is confirmed by looking at some of the comments participants made during the semistructured interviews in response to the question “what language do you consider the most, important (catalan, spanish or english?)” s13: “of the three, the catalan is the least important because i believe it is not worth much”. s22: “catalan is the least important because i think it is of little use and i have not received a good education, i could not write very well or speak it”. language attitudes and third language writing in a multilingual educational context language value 15(1) 30-51 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 44 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es s31: “all of them are important and i like them, but i would say the catalan is the least important, since it does not open many professional opportunities”. s14: “the one i like the most is valencia, it’s the one i’m most comfortable with, but i think it’s the least important”. as it can be observed above, our quantitative data is supported by our qualitative data obtained in the semi-structured interviews. our findings are in line with previous studies, confirming positive attitudes towards the three languages of the valencian community, but, in line with previous studies (nightingale 2012; portolés 2014), the sociolinguistic status of each language in the multilingual context of the valencian community suggests the need to protect catalan as the minority language in the valencian community. in addition, in line with portolés (2014), our study shows the prestige of english as a lingua franca, the prestige of spanish as a majority language and the lack of prestige of catalan as a minority language. another issue observed in the semi structured interviews was that students’ mother tongue may play a role in l3 written performance. it seems that those students that are bilingual, that is to say those that use both official languages (spanish and catalan) at home, got better results in the evaluation of their english writings. for instance, in answering the question “how do you feel when you write in english?’’ s31 and s20 (bilingual spanish and catalan) got the best scores in english witten performance and reported positive attitudes towards l3 (english) writing: s31: “i feel good writing in english because i see that i am able to express my ideas in a language that is not my own”. s20: “happy because it is useful to improve our knowledge and to open our minds” respectively. irene guzmán alcón language value 15(1) 30-51 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 45 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es however, students whose mother tongue is only spanish or catalan did not show such a positive attitude towards english and their scores in english compositons were lower. s14: “no demasiado bien ya que prefiero escribir en mi lengua, escribir en inglés me cuesta y no lo tengo claro”. to sum up, findings related to rq ii corroborate previous studies that pointed out the impact of multilingualism on students’ language attitudes and l3 writing. in addition, and in line with sagasta (2003) and arozena (2017), further research is needed to explore in the valencian community whether bilingual learners in catalan and spanish outperform their monolingual peers when they write in english as a third language. this type of research may shed light on whether having more linguistic resources improves students’ writing skills, or how languages are interconnected at different levels (cenoz & gorter, 2015; arozena, 2017). iv. conclusions, limitations and pedagogical implications the aim of this study was to explore the relationship between students’ attitudes towards languages and third language (english) writing. our results related to the relationship between language attitudes and students’ written performance support previous studies and suggest that a positive attitude towards the target language, in this case english, correlates with better performance in writing. moreover, considering the two official languages of the valencian community, these do not seem to play a role in writing in english as an additional language. in addition, the present study shows differences in relation to the three languages of the valencian community, supporting previous studies conducted by nightingale (2012), portolés (2014) and guzmán-alcón (2019). in particular, our findings indicate that, although language attitude does not necessarily correlate with l3 writing performance, participants acknowledge the prestige of english as a lingua franca, the prestige of spanish as a majority language and the lack of prestige of catalan as a minority language. finally, a tentative hypothesis to be further explored is language value 15(1) 30-51 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 46 language attitudes and third language writing in a multilingual educational context http://www.languagevalue.uji.es suggested in relation to the relationship between being bilingual in catalan and spanish and students’ l3 writing. the present study also presents some limitations. first of all, the sample is too small to generalize the results. secondly, no recording was possible during the interviews as students preferred not to be recorded during the interview. thirdly, we only evaluated students’ writing in english and further studies are needed to evaluate students’ writing in the three languages of instruction, that is to say, catalan, spanish and english. in spite of these limitations, it is worth pointing out that our results suggest some pedagogical implications that may be interesting for language teachers. first, since a positive attitude towards language correlates with written performance, care should be taken to provide an environment that triggers a positive attitude towards english. secondly, since it seems that having different languages in students’ repertoire improves students’ writing, a multilingual education approach should be encouraged. this could be achieved by encouraging language teachers to explore “focus on multilingualism” (cenoz & gorter, 2015) and avoid monolingual classroom practices. this could also be done by encouraging positive attitudes towards the different languages of the curriculum and by incorporating translanguaging as a tool for language learning. finally, we encourage the implementation of multilingual pedagogies since they may change attitudes to languages and create some multilingual sensibilities and awareness of languages, whether they are local, national or international, and this, in turn, may facilitate the acquisition of other additional languages. v. acknowledgements as members of the laela (lingüística aplicada a l’ensenyament de la llengua anglesa) research group at universitat jaume i (castellón, spain), we would like to acknowledge that this study is part of the research project pid2020-117959gb-i00 funded by mcin/ aei /10.13039/501100011033. additional funding has been granted by generalitat valenciana (aico/2021/310), the universitat jaume i (uji-b2019-23) irene guzmán alcón language value 15(1) 30-51 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 47 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es language value 15(1) 30-51 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 48 language attitudes and third language writing in a multilingual educational context vi. references ansarmoghaddam, s., & bee, h. t. (2014). undergraduates’ experiences and attitudes of writing in l1 and english. journal of language studies, 14(01), 7–28. https://doi. org/10.17576/gema-2014-1401-02 arocena, m. e (2017). multilingual education: teacher’s beliefs and language use in the classroom. university of the basque country baştuğ, m. (2015). effects of primary school fourth-grade students’ attitude, disposition and writer’s block on writing success. egitim ve bilim, 40(180), 77-88. https://doi. org/10.15390/eb.2015.4279 breuer, e. o., lindgren, e., sṭavans, ʻanat, & steendam, e. van (eds.). (2021). multilingual literacy. multilingual matters. cenoz, j. (2009). towards multilingual education: basque educational research from an international perspective. multilingual matters. cenoz, j., arozena, e., & gorter, d. (2013). assessing multilingual students’ writing skills in basque, spanish and english. in v. mueller (ed.), issues in the assessment of bilinguals (pp. 185–204). multilingual matters. cenoz, j., & görter, d. (2015). towards a holistic approach in the study of multilingual education. modern language journal, 95(3), 339 343. doi: 10.1111/j.15404781.2011.01204.x cenoz, j., & valencia, j. f. (1994). additive trilingualism: evidence from the basque country. applied psycholinguistics, 15(2), 195–207. https://doi.org/10.1017/ s0142716400005324 cohen, j. (1960). a coefficient of agreement for nominal scales. educational and psychological measurement, 20, 37-46. https://doi.org/10.1177/001316446002000104 graham, s., & perin, d. (2007). a meta-analysis of writing instruction for adolescent students. journal of educational psychology, 99(3), 445–476. https://doi. org/10.1037/0022-0663.99.3.445 guzmán-alcón, i. (2019). teachers’ language use and attitudes towards multilingual education in primary education. lenguaje y textos, (50), 107-111. https://doi. org/10.4995/lyt.2019.11475 guzmán-alcón, i; & portolés, l .(2021). in-service teachers’ language attitudes in the valencian educational system: the effect of the school language programme and the l1. caplletra. revista internacional de filologia, 71, 121-46, https://doi. org/10.7203/caplletra.71.21034 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es irene guzmán alcón language value 15(1) 30-51 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 49 ibarraran, a., lasagabaster, d., & sierra, j. m. (2008). multilingualism and language attitudes: local versus immigrant students’ perceptions. language awareness, 17(4), 326–341. https://doi.org/10.1080/09658410802147311 jacobs, h., zinkgraf, s., wormuth, d., hearfiel, v., & hughey, j. (1981). testing esl composition: a practical approach. newbury house lasagabaster, d., & huguet, a. (2007). multilingualism in european bilingual contexts. multilingual matters. lasagabaster, d. & safont-jordà, p. (2008). un análisis de las actitudes lingüísticas en dos comunidades bilingües. in c. m. bretones et al (eds.), applied linguistics now: understanding language and mind (pp. 183–196). nightingale, r. (2012). bridging the gap between the internal and the external. lap lambert academic publishing. portolés, l. (2014). analysing prospective teachers’ attitudes towards three languages in two different sociolinguistic and educational settings. in a. otwinowska & g. de angelis (eds.), teaching and learning in multilingual contexts (pp. 50–74). multilingual matters. https://doi.org/10.21832/9781783091263-006 sagasta errasti, m. p. (2003). acquiring writing skills in a third language: the positive effects of bilingualism. international journal of bilingualism, 7(1), 27–42. https:// doi.org/10.1177/13670069030070010301 sanz, c. (2008). predicting enhanced l3 learning in bilingual contexts: the role of biliteracy. in c. perez-vidal, c. bel, a., &; m. j .garau,. (eds.) a portrait of the young in the new multilingual spain (pp. 220-240). multilingual matters. received: 25 october 2021 accepted: 20 may 2022 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es language value 15(1) 30-51 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 50 language attitudes and third language writing in a multilingual educational context appendices appendix a nos gustaría contar con tu ayuda para contestar estas preguntas. no es ninguna prueba y por lo tanto no hay respuestas ‘correctas’ o ‘incorrectas’, ni siquiera tienes que escribir tu nombre. lo que nos interesa es tu verdadera opinión. por favor, danos las respuestas de forma sincera, es la única manera de garantizar el éxito de la investigación. muchas gracias por tu ayuda. primera parte: información general 1) edad: ____ 2) sexo: chico __ chica __ 3)¿en qué curso de la eoi estás?___ 4) lengua materna: castellano __ valenciano __ ambas __ otra (indica)_________ 5) ¿cuántos años llevas estudiando inglés? ___ 6) ¿estudias otro idioma aparte del inglés?_______ ¿cuál?_____ 7) ¿en casa hablas en catalán/valenciano (sí / no), castellano (sí / no), inglés (sí / no)? segunda parte: actitudes lingüísticas. indica la importancia de saber cada lengua en: por favor, contesta en una escala de uno a 5. dónde 1 está totalmente en desacuerdo y 5 totalmente de acuerdo. sobre el catalán/ valenciano me gusta escuchar el catalán/valenciano hablado 1 2 3 4 5 me gusta hablar en catalán /valenciano 1 2 3 4 5 el catalan/valenciano se tiene que impartir en todos los centros educativos de la cv 1 2 3 4 5 me gusta hablar en catalán/ valenciano 1 2 3 4 5 aprender catalán/valenciano enriquece mi bagaje cultural 1 2 3 4 5 no me importaría casarme con alguien que solo hablara catalán/valenciano 1 2 3 4 5 si tuviera hijos/as me gustaría que aprendieran catalán/valenciano 1 2 3 4 5 vale la pena aprender catalán/valenciano 1 2 3 4 5 sobre el español me gusta escuchar el español hablado 1 2 3 4 5 me gusta hablar en español 1 2 3 4 5 el español se tiene que impartir en todos los centros educativos de la cv 1 2 3 4 5 me gusta hablar en español 1 2 3 4 5 aprender español enriquece mi bagaje cultural 1 2 3 4 5 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es irene guzmán alcón language value 15(1) 30-51 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 51 no me importaría casarme con alguien que solo hablara español 1 2 3 4 5 si tuviera hijos/as me gustaría que aprendieran español 1 2 3 4 5 vale la pena aprender español 1 2 3 4 5 sobre el inglés me gusta escuchar el inglés hablado 1 2 3 4 5 me gusta hablar en inglés 1 2 3 4 5 el inglés se tiene que impartir en todos los centros educativos de la cv 1 2 3 4 5 me gusta hablar en inglés 1 2 3 4 5 aprender inglés enriquece mi bagaje cultural 1 2 3 4 5 no me importaría casarme con alguien que solo hablara inglés 1 2 3 4 5 si tuviera hijos/as me gustaría que aprendieran inglés 1 2 3 4 5 vale la pena aprender inglés 1 2 3 4 5 appendix b written expression what are the advantages and disadvantages of online shopping? (between 150200) te gusta escribir en inglés: a ) nada b) muy poco c) normal d) bastante e) mucho ¿por qué? (utilitza un mínimo de 20 palabras) appendix c q1:do you like writing in english? q2:what language do you like the most, catalan, spanish or english? q3:how do you feel when you write in english? q4:what language do you feel more comfortable with? q5:do you think that learning how to write in english is useful? q6:what language do you consider the most, important (catalan, spanish or english?) http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 6. maquetado artículo nuria del campo language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 2014, volume 6, number 1 pp. 74-99 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2014.6.6 74 motivation and constraints of illocution in the lexical constructional model: the case of the aux np construction nuria del campo martínez nuria.delcampo@hotmail.es universidad de la rioja, spain abstract this article addresses the motivation and constraints of illocutionary meaning production. within the framework of the lexical constructional model (lcm), i explore how our knowledge of illocution is understood in terms of high-level situational models which are activated to produce speech act meaning and the way such operations motivate the conventionalized value of linguistic expressions. in so doing, i analyze the realization procedures of the aux np construction in relation to their potential to exploit the semantic base of requestive acts. i will study the most conventional linguistic realizations of the construction and explore the way in which such realizations are used to produce a requestive meaning. the resulting account provides a comprehensive understanding of the constructional nature of illocutionary meaning on the basis of naturally occurring data. keywords: illocution, cognitive models, conceptual metonymy, conventionalization, idiomatic construction, requestive speech acts, lexical constructional model. i. introduction the existence of conventional speech acts was first dealt with by searle (1975) early in the development of speech act theory. while pragmaticists have generally neglected the conventionalization of illocution (leech 1983; sperber and wilson, 1995, inter alia), the systemic-functional approach (halliday 1994; halliday and matthiessen 2004) and dik’s (1989, 1997) functional account have devoted a great effort to formalize the value of conventional speech acts. in general terms, functional grammar theories have argued for sentence types as codified carriers of basic illocutions, the remaining resulting from derivation processes or from the language options. alternatively, the cognitive linguistic approach has accounted for illocution in terms of metonymically grounded inferential schemas which become conventionalized through usage (pérez 2001; pérez and ruiz de mendoza 2002; panther and thornburg 2003; stefanowitsch, 2003; ruiz de mendoza and baicchi 2007; brdar-szabó 2009). conventional illocutions have been discussed as motivation and constraints of illocution in the lexical constructional model: the case case of the aux np construction language value 6 (1), 52-77 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 75 constructions (i.e. form-meaning pairings, like those described by lakoff 1987; and goldberg 1995, 2006) that have entrenched speech act values. on the grounds of the observations on the constructional nature of speech acts, the lexical constructional model (lcm) (ruiz de mendoza and mairal 2008, 2011; mairal and ruiz de mendoza 2009; butler 2009) has incorporated illocution as part of a meaning construction system. the lcm, which draws insights from functional models of language, cognitive linguistics and constructionist approaches, especially from the work by goldberg (1995, 2006), is concerned with the connections between syntax and all aspects of meaning construction, positing four levels of representation: level 1 deals with lexical and constructional argument structure, level 2 with implicated meaning captured by low-level models, level 3 with conventionalized illocutionary meaning and level 4 with discourse aspects, including cohesion and coherence phenomena. each of the levels is either subsumed into a higher configuration or acts as a cue for the activation of relevant conceptual structure that yields an implicit meaning derivation. the integration of lower-level structures into higher-level ones is regulated by two cognitive processes, constructional subsumption and cued inferencing. constructional subsumption is the constrained incorporation of lower level structures into higher level configurations. cued inferencing is a form of linguistically guided interpretation based on cognitive operations such as metaphor, metonymy, reinforcement and mitigation, among others. the lcm aims at the highest possible degree of explanatory adequacy, insofar as it avoids the proliferation of analytical categories. instead, it assumes that all levels of linguistic description and explanation may make use of the same or at least comparable cognitive processes. this assumption is termed the equipollence hypothesis, which has enabled the model to achieve a high degree of regularity and parsimony in the study of meaning construction. several linguistic processes have been attested to be pervasive in different levels of meaning construction, such as lexical-constructional integration, subsumption, metaphor and metonymy and inferential activity. the illocutionary component of the lcm treats constructions as form-meaning pairings like other kinds of construction. what distinguishes illocutionary constructions from the others is the idiomatic nature of the linguistic form and the situational generic grounding. constructions with an illocutionary meaning have also been dealt with at the nuria del campo martínez language value 6 (1), 52-77 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 76 layer of argument structure, as in the case of the manipulative subjective-transitive construction (e.g. i want you out by lunchtime) studied by ruiz de mendoza and gonzálvez (2010). even though the lcm has not provided an inventory of illocutionary constructions, its explanatory apparatus is consistent with the descriptions developed by ruiz de mendoza and baicchi (2007). in their approach, illocutionary constructions are discussed in terms of the metonymic activation of high-level scenarios in application of a number of socio-cultural conventions stipulated within a description labeled the costbenefit cognitive model. this article develops the illocutionary layer of the lcm by analyzing how cognitive models are exploited by speakers to produce speech act meaning and the way such operations motivate the conventionalized illocutionary value of linguistic expressions. in so doing, it analyzes the cognitive grounding of the aux np requestive construction and its various realization procedures. on the basis of the lcm notion of situational meaning, this work formulates a generic structure for requestive acts and examines the reasoning schemas behind the different lexico-grammatical resources used for their expression. the understanding of illocution in terms of the constructional realizations that activate pieces of knowledge makes necessary to provide a refined description of the cognitive model types involved and of all the mechanisms that take part in meaning derivation. this is not only for the lcm account but also for other cognitively-oriented theories where illocutionary expression is considered realizational of semantic structures. this will be made apparent by a brief revision of the shortcomings presented by cognitive approaches to illocution. then it will be shown how these shortcomings are overcome within the constructionist perspective of the lcm, which has been preliminary outlined by ruiz de mendoza and baicchi (2007). it will be further explained the cognitive model types underlying implicit meaning derivation and how the activation of highlevel scenarios yields illocutionary acts which may become conventionalized. the analytical tools proposed by the lcm will be used to study the conventional and nonconventional realizations of the aux np construction and the way such realizations produce requestive illocutions, giving evidence of their explanatory adequacy. motivation and constraints of illocution in the lexical constructional model: the case case of the aux np construction language value 6 (1), 52-77 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 77 ii. the cognition of illocution within the framework of cognitive linguistics, panther and thornburg (1998: 756) have addressed illocution by pointing to the problems that the lack of consideration of the cognitive mechanisms has caused in inferential approaches, which are, first, the fact that, even though illocutionary interpretation is based on inference, speakers can grasp the indirect force of a speech act effortlessly (e.g. the request value of could you pass me the salt?); and second, that they ignore the inference mechanisms involved in the interpretation of illocution as well as their cognitive grounding. in order to overcome these two shortcomings, panther and thornburg (1998, 2004) propose that our knowledge of illocutionary meaning is organized in the form of scenarios, which are conceptual constructs of meaning representation abstracted away from prototypical situations where people attempt to get their needs satisfied through expressions of different kinds. illocutionary scenarios are stored in long-term memory and can be accessed metonymically by activating relevant parts in them. for example, indirect requests such as can you open the window?, will you shut the door? and do you have hot coffee? activate pre-conditions for the performance of a request, which are the addressee’s ability and willingness to help, and his possession of the required object. the activation of these pre-conditions affords access to the whole speech act category of requesting. 1 the key elements that make panther and thornburg’s proposal interesting from a cognitive perspective are storage in long-term memory and metonymic instantiation. their formulation has been revised, however, due to the lack of consideration of sociocultural variables that affect inferencing. these variables are listed by ruiz de mendoza and baicchi (2007: 103) as the following: (i) the power relationship between speakers, (ii) the degree of optionality conveyed, (iii) the degree of politeness, (iv) the degree of cost-benefit, (v) the degree of prototypicality, (vi) the semantic motivation of different kinds of indirect speech acts, and (vii) the cognitive grounding of illocutions. in ruiz de mendoza and baicchi’s proposal, following preliminary work by pérez and ruiz de mendoza (2002), socio-cultural variables of this kind are captured by cognitive models that combine with scenarios and form what they call high-level situational models. nuria del campo martínez language value 6 (1), 52-77 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 78 high-level models are constructed on the basis of generalizations over cases of everyday interaction where people attempt to satisfy or report their needs. everyday interaction is captured by low-level situational models, which consist in life scenarios such as taking a taxi, going to the dentist, teaching a class, and the like (see ruiz de mendoza, 2007, for a thorough description of cognitive model types). the activation of low-level scenarios produces implicated meaning. an example is provided by i waved down a taxi, where the waving sign implies that the speaker got into the taxi, he asked the driver to take him to the destination, and that he arrived safely. the implicature is obtained through the metonymic access to one relevant part of a low-level model about taking a taxi. the abstraction over the common structure shared by low-level models allows us to construct higher-level representations. for instance, from our observation of people begging in a wide range of contexts, we derive generic structure which makes up the high-level model of begging and allows us to interpret each specific instance. 2 in contrast to low-level models, high-level models capture a number of socio-cultural generalizations that carry different types of pragmatic information like optionality, politeness and cost-benefit variables. these variables derive from a single description called the cost-benefit cognitive model, which is defined by ruiz de mendoza and baicchi (2007) as a high-level model based on the concept of mutual manifestness proposed by sperber and wilson (1995). the cost-benefit cognitive model captures the relevant socio-cultural information of high-level scenarios associated to illocutionary meaning. let us reproduce ruiz de mendoza and baicchi’s (2007: 111) formulation of the cost-benefit cognitive model in order to explain how it underlies the construing of illocutionary meaning: (a) if it is manifest to a that a particular state of affairs is not beneficial to b, and if a has the capacity to change that state of affairs, then a should do so. (b) if it is manifest to a that a potential state of affairs is not beneficial to b, then a is not expected to bring it about. (c) if it is manifest to a that a potential state of affairs is beneficial to b, then a is expected to bring it about provided he has the capacity to do so. (d) if it is manifest to a that it is not manifest to b that a potential state of affairs is (regarded as) beneficial for a, a is expected to make this manifest to b. motivation and constraints of illocution in the lexical constructional model: the case case of the aux np construction language value 6 (1), 52-77 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 79 (e) if it is manifest to a that it is not manifest to b that a potential state of affairs is beneficial for b, a is expected to make this manifest to b. (f) if it is manifest to a that a state of affairs is beneficial to b and b has brought it about, a should feel pleased about it and make this feeling manifest to b. (g) if it is manifest to b that a has changed a state of affairs to b’s benefit, b should feel grateful about a’s action and make this feeling manifest to a. (h) if it is manifest to a that a has not acted as directed by parts (a), (b), and (c) of the ‘cost-benefit’ model, a should feel regretful about this situation and make this feeling manifest to b. (i) if it is manifest to b that a has not acted as directed by parts (a), (b), and (c) of the ‘cost-benefit’ model and a has made his regret manifest to b, b should feel forgiveness for a’s inaction and make it manifest to a. (j) if it is manifest to a and b that a particular state of affairs is not beneficial to b but a has no power to change it to b’s benefit, a should still feel sympathy for b over the non-beneficial state of affairs and make this manifest to b. (k) if it is manifest to a that a is responsible for a certain state of affairs to be to a’s benefit, a may feel proud about this situation and make it manifest to b. ruiz de mendoza and baicchi place the cost-benefit cognitive model at the core of the derivation of illocutionary meaning. in their view, the activation of relevant parts of the model creates an inferential path which can become conventionalized. a case in point is the can you vp? sequence for requests, which was originally intended as a way of reminding the addressee to help if it was within his range of abilities. this value was obtained through the activation of part (c) of the cost-benefit cognitive model. this convention structures the high-level model of requests and shapes their definitional parameters (i.e. optionality and politeness). the repeated use of the can you vp? expression in request contexts conventionalized their meaning to the extent that it ended up yielding a default illocutionary value. conventional forms of this kind have constructional status, that is, they are the formal part of form-meaning pairings conveying an illocutionary act. by contrast, those expressions which are unable to supply relevant points of access to the convention that shapes the conceptual nuria del campo martínez language value 6 (1), 52-77 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 80 representation of a speech act category require inferential activity to produce illocutionary meaning, which is regulated through metonymic access to high-level models, much in the same way as panther and thornburg (1998, 2004) have claimed. the theoretical implications of constructional conventionalization in terms of the application of socio-cultural norms are approached at a later stage in this article. iii. illocutionary constructions since searle (1975) acknowledged that certain linguistic forms became conventionally accepted for the performance of an indirect illocutionary force, the research on the issue has received a great deal of attention. one of the most important contributions to the subject has been carried out by functional grammar theories (dik 1989, 1997; halliday and matthiessen 2004), which have been largely criticized for overgrammatizalizing illocutionary phenomena which could be accounted for within the domain of pragmatics (see leech 1983: 56; butler 1996: 66, for criticism in this direction). nevertheless, although the emphasis placed within functional approaches on the grammatical side of language lacks of consideration of inferential reasoning, this position has managed to incorporate into grammar a number of relevant illocutionary distinctions which had been assigned to pragmatics. the development of a constructional approach like the one put forward in this study comes closer to the work by other functionalists like risselada (1993), who disagrees with the idea that grammatical mood codifies basic speech act types, given the wide variety of illocutionary meanings that each mood option has, and rather suggests assigning a certain illocutionary value to each sentence type and counting them as reference points. risselada’s (1993: 74) approach to illocution is based on the assumption that the illocutionary force of speech act types is expressed by means of combinations of the linguistic properties that reflect the characteristic features of the speech act involved. in its most explicit form, an utterance expresses all the essential features of a speech act category. implicit utterances, by contrast, are due to pragmatic variables such as power or politeness or to the fact that the shared background knowledge provides speakers with the necessary information to derive their illocutionary value. 3 even though risselada does not explicitly talk about constructions in her account, her proposal covertly points to a constructional view of illocution. her motivation and constraints of illocution in the lexical constructional model: the case case of the aux np construction language value 6 (1), 52-77 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 81 pairings of formal properties of speech acts with illocutionary meaning cannot be regarded otherwise. this theory is in line with cognitively-oriented approaches such as the one put forward by ruiz de mendoza (1999), later developed in ruiz de mendoza and baicchi’s (2007) work. ruiz de mendoza’s notion of specialization of function, like risselada’s degree of explicitness, defines the ability of a given expression to activate a higher or lower number of meaning conditions of a speech act type. following risselada’s and ruiz de mendoza’s insights and working within cognitive linguistics, pérez (2001), puts forward an approach to illocution according to which the meaning conditions of speech act categories were paired with the linguistic means through (i.e. realization procedures) which they were communicated. 4 the notion of illocutionary construction posited by pérez refines risselada’s and ruiz de mendoza’s work in two aspects. in the first place, pérez extends the concept to include linguistic properties such as sentence type, grammatical resources, lexical elements and suprasegmental features. this is quite an advantage, since they serve to increase the level of specialization of an expression to convey an illocutionary force. the type of illocutionary construction put forward in the present study also captures the array of properties proposed by pérez. the second refinement is that the semantic makeup of illocutionary constructions is accounted for in terms of propositional icms specifying the meaning conditions of a speech act category. in this way, pérez views constructions as pairings of form and function, where form consists in realization procedures capable of activating the semantic variables of an icm. the higher the number of variables that are activated by a realization procedure, the more prototypical the realization is for the expression of an illocutionary act. however, pérez does not refer to these realizations as constructions with fixed and modifiable elements. in contrast to pérez, ruiz de mendoza and baicchi (2007) do recognize a constructional status for those formulations with instantiation potential for the corresponding scenario. as has been explained above, these authors contend that expressions which become entrenched as inferential shortcuts acquire a constructional character. the can you vp? construction mentioned before is a case in point. ruiz de mendoza and baicchi’s proposal regards constructions as conventionalized linguistic forms whose capacity to activate parts of a scenario becomes conventionalized. such a conception of the term is nuria del campo martínez language value 6 (1), 52-77 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 82 similar to the one put forward by pérez, although differs from the latter in two essential aspects. the first difference concerns the semantic structure of the construction, structured in the form of cultural high-level models. as has been explained, high-level models are conceptual representations of abstract knowledge of illocutionary meaning. the formulation of high-level models to account for illocution seeks to capture the multi-faced amount of information that speakers possess during communication. later it will be shown that the description of illocutionary acts in terms of high-level models attains a greater degree of explanatory adequacy. the second difference has to do with the formal composition of illocutionary constructions. ruiz de mendoza and baicchi consider all the realization procedures specified by pérez (e.g. grammatical resources, lexical items, intonation, etc.), with the difference that they are arranged into stable structural configurations. a description of illocutionary acts in terms of ruiz de mendoza and baicchi’s constructions is very attractive for the following reasons: (i) it accounts for the motivation of form from meaning, and (ii) it makes it possible to build into grammar a wide range of illocutionary values. the lcm elaborates on the view of illocution that has been proposed by ruiz de mendoza and baicchi. illocutionary constructions are conventionalized linguistic forms whose capacity to activate parts of a high-level scenario becomes conventionalized. the lcm approach, however, refines their account by placing a stronger emphasis on the constructional composition of illocution and regard illocutionary constructions as formmeaning pairings made up of fixed (can you in can you vp?) and modifiable (vp in can you vp?) elements. the fixed elements cannot be changed without altering the meaning implications conveyed and the variable elements can be parametrized in a constrained way. constructions may also incorporate further elements with a wide range of meaning implications (e.g. the adverb please or beneficiary indicators in the case of requests). illocutionary constructions may also have to a degree of variation in their form with a consequent variation in their meaning. sequences like could you vp? and do you think you could vp? are variations of the can you vp? construction. the meaning variation of these constructional variants is associated with degrees of indirectness and politeness as well as differences in register. because of this, the lcm accounts for constructions that have elements in common in terms of family resemblance relationships (ruiz de mendoza and gonzálvez 2010). 5 a case in point is motivation and constraints of illocution in the lexical constructional model: the case case of the aux np construction language value 6 (1), 52-77 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 83 the aux np construction, which can be realized in many different ways to produce requestive speech acts. the constructional realizations of the aux np form are analyzed to explore their grounding in the conventions of the cost-benefit cognitive model and the interplay between linguistic structures instantiating requests and their conceptual motivation. throughout the analysis i provide evidence in support of the lcm approach to illocution in terms of high-level scenarios and conventional constructions. iv. requestive speech acts requestive speech acts ask other people to act in the way we want them to. requestive illocutions ranges over many diverse acts like asking, ordering or begging. before we go into the differences among these values, it should be noted that they are all included by ruiz de mendoza and baicchi (2007) within a broad category of illocutionary acts that instruct the addressee to act to the speaker’s benefit. let us consider the conventions of the cost-benefit cognitive model that structure the cognitive grounding of requestive acts: if it is manifest to a that a particular state of affairs is not beneficial to b, and if a has the capacity to change that state of affairs, then a should do so. if it is manifest to a that a potential state of affairs is not beneficial to b, then a is not expected to bring it about. even though requestive illocutions are understood against the same socio-cultural background (that we have to satisfy other people’s needs), they are distinct in nature. we should first differentiate ordering from requesting and then requesting from begging. what distinguishes ordering from requesting has to do with the ratings of the power variable. in orders, speakers hold a position of authority over their addressees. because of this authority, the speaker who utters an order works under the expectation that the addressee will carry out the action. the addressee’s lack of optionality to decide upon the realization of the action triggers off the required response. this is not the case with requests, which are performed by speakers who do not have any kind of authority over their addressees. however, this does not mean that the addressee’s optionality is unconstrained, since his choice is restrained by the conventions that bind him to help the nuria del campo martínez language value 6 (1), 52-77 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 84 speaker if it is within his range of abilities. the power component that makes orders different from requests has led ruiz de mendoza and baicchi to address these categories as distinct illocutions. by contrast, requesting is considered within the same category as begging, in spite of presenting important differences. unlike requests, in begging the speaker believes that the addressee is not desirous to give him what he wants and adopts a submissive role to obtain the addressee’s compliance. this distinction is manifested through different constructional realizations. while requests tend to use mitigators or beneficiary indicators, beggings use repetitions and exclamations. nevertheless, acts of requesting and begging display the same cost-benefit ratings and are considered within the same category. in keeping with ruiz de mendoza and baicchi’s account, this study of requestive speech acts agrees in differentiating orders from requests based on the power variable and also in considering begging as a special form of requesting. the present analysis will only consider the illocutionary acts contained within the category of requesting. although the aux np form can be found in the performance of orders, as will be shown in next section, the meaning conditions of the construction are directly tied to the semantics of requesting and needs to be approached in relation to requests. to see how the various linguistic realizations of the construction express requestive values, it is necessary to define the meaning conditions that make up the generic structure of this illocutionary category. hence i will put forward a high-level scenario for requests by generalizing over the features of requesting scenarios grounded in the two conventions of the cost-benefit cognitive model. we derive the generic structure of requests from everyday situations where we attempt to get our needs satisfied by other people. 6 two possible low-level scenarios for requesting encompass a situation in which a person in a needful situation makes somebody else aware of his ability to help and a situation in which a person is asking for help while pretending he is not in need. these low-level scenarios have elements in common upon which the highlevel scenario may be constructed. this generic structure captures the semantics of the act of requesting: (a) a person is in need of something. (b) the person makes somebody else aware of the need. (c) the person makes this other person aware of his ability to help. motivation and constraints of illocution in the lexical constructional model: the case case of the aux np construction language value 6 (1), 52-77 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 85 (d) the person appeals to the addressee’s willingness. (e) the addressee may be persuaded to help. the realizational resources for this scenario may be exemplified in the following utterances: (1) i am thirsty. (2) maybe i could have a glass of water. (3) can you give me a glass of water? (4) would you give me a glass of water? (5) you will give me a glass of water, won’t you? the above realizations instantiate relevant parts of the scenario formulated for requests. utterances (1) and (2) point to the manifestness of the needful situation in which the speaker finds himself. utterances (3) and (4) address the addressee’s ability and willingness to satisfy the speaker’s need respectively. these examples are instances of the aux np construction parametrizing the meaning value with different degrees of mitigation. to finish with, utterance (5) spells out that the addressee should be willing to help in compliance with socio-cultural conventions. as will be shown in the next section, the use of various realization procedures in requests displays peculiarities in meaning that reveal different forms of construing a shared conceptual representation. v. the aux np construction the aux np construction is probably the most conventional form for the performance of requests. the formal part of this construction consists of an auxiliary plus a second person subject and a variable verb. the high-level scenario for requests constitutes the semantic base of the construction. this scenario is a manifestation of the conventions of the cost-benefit cognitive model according to which speakers should be willing to help others if it is within their range of abilities. the requestive meaning of the construction was originally derived by means of an inferential schema giving access to these conventions, and has become conventionalized through usage. let us see how this meaning value is parametrized through various realization procedures. nuria del campo martínez language value 6 (1), 52-77 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 86 v.1. the can you realization the different realization procedures of the construction are primarily related to the auxiliary verb, as the subject pronoun is almost invariable. 7 the auxiliary is realized by a modal verb. 8 modal verbs capture the relations between participants and the realization of the state of affairs in which they are involved (dik 1989: 205). they include distinctions related to ability and willingness and also to the obligation or permission imposed on participants. one of the most recurring modals used is the form can, mostly due to the fact that the parameter of the addressee’s ability is relevant to requests. in application of the conventions of the cost-benefit cognitive model, the can you form asks the addressee about his capacity to do something for the speaker. asking the addressee about his capacity to act makes him aware that he is indeed able to carry out the action and reminds him that he is culturally bound to act if he has the ability to do so. in most contexts, this realization gives easy access to the high-level scenario, which is then applied to the specific situation. however, there may be cases where this procedure does not fit to be used as a request. by way of illustration, consider the following examples: 9 (6) can you see into the future? (google books) (7) can you smell the flowers? (coca) (8) can you drive a truck? (google books) (9) can you speak german? (bnc) utterances above are cases of the construction that function as mere questions. 10 this is due to the parametrization of the variable verb, which needs to be realized by an actioncontrolling denoting action involving some kind of benefit to the speaker in order to yield a request interpretation. in (6) and (7), the verb denotes a non-controllable activity, which is incompatible with the nature of requesting. in (8) and (9), the verb designates a controllable action but there is no indication of the potential benefit to be obtained by the speaker. these utterances could only be interpreted as requests in marked contexts where it is clear that the speaker is interested in getting the action carried out and that the performance of the action involves some benefit to the speaker. the fact that the motivation and constraints of illocution in the lexical constructional model: the case case of the aux np construction language value 6 (1), 52-77 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 87 action is beneficial to the speaker is generally made explicit through the use of a beneficiary indicator. the instances of the construction featuring this characteristic convey an easy request value: (10) can you bring me my purse? (google books) (11) can you get me a drink? (coca) (12) can you write down a recipe for me? (google books) a similar effect is achieved through the use of mitigating devices, which have the function of softening the directive force of the request or of urging the addressee to act in the way described: (13) can you please give me a second? (coca) (14) can you kindly open the door? (google books) the request interpretation is coded here by the interpersonal adverbs please and kindly, whose function is that of increasing the degree of politeness. the mitigation brought about by resources of this kind is motivated by the need to soften the impact of the request by increasing the degree of the addressee’s optionality. granting someone with optionality is regarded as a sign of politeness in our social system and optionality and politeness are thus closely intertwined. even higher degrees of politeness can be achieved through the use of other mitigating strategies, like the replacement of can for could. past modals increase the indirectness of requests, thereby offering the addressee a greater degree of optionality to comply with the speaker’s wishes (see taylor, 1995, and pérez, 2001, for an explanation of the mitigation of past modals in cognitive terms). 11 the following examples illustrate this: (15) could you pass me the sugar? (google books) (16) could you complete the questionnaire for me? (google books) utterances (15) and (16) above display the highest degree of specialization as realization procedures for requests. first, because the past form of the modal does not only point to the addressee’s ability to carry out the action but also to his willingness by giving him optionality. this activates one further variable of the scenario: mitigation. thanks to the mitigating properties of past modal verbs, these two examples manage to nuria del campo martínez language value 6 (1), 52-77 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 88 make this aspect of requests explicit. and second, because the speaker’s interest in getting the action carried out is conveyed through beneficiary indicators (i.e. me and for me). the instantiation of these parts of the high-level scenario makes the interpretation of these utterances as instances of requesting straightforward. the degree of mitigation conveyed by the past form of could can be further increased with the addition of the adverb please. there are occasions on which higher degrees of mitigation are required in the performance of a request. consider situations in which the cost of the requested action is significant, as in (17), or in which the context of the utterance is formal, as in (18): (17) could you please hurry home and watch the children for me? (google books) (18) could you please bring me a cup of hot coffee? (coca) the diverse mitigation strategies found in (17) and (18) give rise to subtle formal realizations which, by activating a higher number of variables of the scenario, constitute even more specialized procedures. v.2. the will you realization another common way of parametrizing the auxiliary verb of the aux np form is through the use of the modal will appealing to his willingness to act to the speaker’s benefit. through application of the conventions of the cost-benefit cognitive model, the addressee should be willing to perform an action to the speaker’s benefit. the will you form enquires about the addressee’s willingness to act. in unmarked contexts, this realization procedure yields a preferred conventional request interpretation, but it may function as a question: (19) will you find true love? (google books) (20) will you ever go back to the world of business? (coca) likewise, this type of realization could be used to perform different speech acts like advising and offering. this is so because the modal will is affected in various ways depending on the conditions that apply in each particular interaction. the following are some examples of such a situation: motivation and constraints of illocution in the lexical constructional model: the case case of the aux np construction language value 6 (1), 52-77 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 89 (21) will you buy that car? it’s such a beauty. (coca) (22) will you eat some more cake? (google books) for this realization procedure to produce a request reading, the specified action has to be beneficial for the speaker. this information can be clear from the context or made explicit through beneficiary indicators. its explicitation obviously results in more codified instances of requesting. observe how the manifestness of this part of the high-level scenario increases the degree of specialization to the extent that it is not possible to interpret utterances as instances of a different speech act: (23) will you lend me money? (coca) (24) will you buy me a pencil set for christmas? (bnc) the impact of the resulting request can be mitigated through the use of please. this adverb generally indicates that the speaker seeks a benefit from the realization of the action, but it may occasionally have the opposite effect. in some cases, the adverb may produce forceful demands by implying that the addressee should have acted as required without being told to do so. this use of please is reinforced by an imposing falling intonation. this type of intonation is often used by people who have some kind of authority over their addressees. compare the different uses of the adverb in (25) and (26) below: (25) will you hold the door open for me, please? (google books) (26) will you please bring me my back my bag? (coca) as was the case with the previous type of realization, the request meaning can be further specified by means of a past form. it has already been explained that the past tense displays a mitigation that seems appropriate for the politeness that is expected in the performance of requests. by increasing the addressee’s optionality, the use of the form would softens the force of the act and points with increasing certainty to a request interpretation: (27) would you drive me to the station? (bnc) (28) would you give me a hand with the washing up? (google books) nuria del campo martínez language value 6 (1), 52-77 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 90 because of its instantiation potential for the mitigation that is proper of requests, the would you sequence represents a highly conventionalized procedure. needless to say that the combination of this type of realization with the adverb please results in even more polite and thus adapted instances of requesting as in the following examples: (29) would you please tell me where the library is? (google books) (30) would you please pass the steak sauce? (coca) as may become apparent by (29) and (30), the use of these resources increases the degree of politeness of this realization that fits best in formal contexts where there is a distant relationship between participants. v.3. negated modals the use of negated modals is another type of realization procedure of the construction under scrutiny, although its request meaning is less explicit than in the previous cases. the reasoning schema behind this realization affords metonymic access to the parts of the scenario where the speaker appeals either to the addressee’s ability or willingness to comply, but the negated form of the modal presupposes the addressee’s refusal, which gives rise to unmitigated requests marked by their impoliteness. let us see how this meaning is conveyed through the negated form of can in the examples: (31) can’t you behave properly? (coca) (32) can’t you wipe your feet on the rug? (google books) through application of the conventions of the cost-benefit cognitive model, the addressee should have acted as required without being asked to do so. since in normal circumstances, the speaker would expect that the addressee has the ability to act, he enquires about any unexpected inability on the part of the addressee to carry out the action. in unmarked contexts, this realization procedure has a strong power to activate the directive scenario, particularly because it makes explicit the speaker’s expectation that the addressee has the ability to perform the action. the request interpretation of the construction can be cancelled out uttered in a marked context where the addressee is not abided to do anything about the situation described (cf. can't you hear the whistle blowing?). motivation and constraints of illocution in the lexical constructional model: the case case of the aux np construction language value 6 (1), 52-77 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 91 we may find a related realization procedure making use of the negated form of will. in this case, the verb used does not assume the addressee’s inability but rather his unwillingness to comply with the speaker’s wish. see how this type of realization gives rise to a request: (33) won’t you sit quiet? (coca) (34) won’t you close the window? (google books) in (33) and (34), the addressee has not carried out the required action counter to expectations and the speaker enquires about any unexpected unwillingness on this part. this realization procedure produces a request interpretation by reminding the addressee that he is abided to act by socio-cultural conventions. the sequence can be nonetheless function as a question (cf. won’t you buy clothes online anymore?) in contexts where the addressee is not expected to act. realizations with negated modals can be performed as well by means of the imperative sentence type. take the case of the following examples: (35) calm down, can’t you? (coca) (36) hurry up, won’t you? (google books) in contrast to interrogative-based realizations, the use of imperative sentences indicates irritation on the part of a speaker who is urging the addressee to act. the resulting request is thus more forceful and the optionality of the addressee is notably reduced. v.4. conditional forms conditional forms are recognized as a conventional pragmatic mitigator of directive values (see dancygier and sweetser, 2005 and fauconnier, 1985, among others). in the case of requests, the use of the conditional tense is meant to distance the addressee from the required action. this opens up the degree of addressee’s optionality, which reduces the force of the act by increasing the indirectness of the request. the most common ways of using a conditional in the construction are the following: (37) would you mind if i use your bathroom? (coca) (38) would you mind handing me that book over there? (google books) nuria del campo martínez language value 6 (1), 52-77 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 92 utterance (37) is a request for permission. these differ from prototypical cases of requesting in that both the speaker and the addressee are expected to perform the action: the speaker will carry out the action that the addressee will grant permission. requests for permission are therefore conditional. the action will be carried out only if the addressee gives his consent. this conditional character finds an adapted vehicle for expression in this realization procedure. this case differs from the one observed in (38). utterance (38) exemplifies a request that makes use of the conditional appealing to the addressee’s willingness to comply. in application of the conventions of the cost-benefit cognitive model, we are expected to do our best to help others and, at the same time, they expect not to be put to too great an effort in that respect. the conditional form tells the addressee that if the carrying out of the action is too costly for him, he can choose not to do it. the same realization can be used with the opposite meaning, that is, reducing the addressee’s freedom by reminding him he should act as required in compliance with the principles of interaction: (39) would you mind not smoking? (coca) in (39), the addressee is treated as if he had not realized that he is acting in a way that is negative for the speaker. the conditional form appeals to his willingness to stop the negative action in compliance with socio-cultural conventions. the resulting act is forceful and impolite. in addition to these conventional realization procedures, there are others that accommodate along a prototypical cline. consider: (40) would you be so kind as to bump up the temperature in here by a degree or two? (coca) (41) would you be so kind as to water my plants while i’m away? (google books) the previous type of realization mitigated the act of requesting by increasing the addressee’s optionality in relation to the cost-benefit variable. the realization procedure illustrated in (40) and (41) above, the mitigation is upgraded in relation to the politeness parameter. by enquiring about the addressee’s willingness, the speaker is in fact reminding the addressee that he is bound by conventions to act if it is within his range of abilities. when the required action is presented as seeking a benefit for the speaker, the conditional softens the force of the act and functions as a mitigating device. by contrast, when the action is presented as an alternative of something negative being motivation and constraints of illocution in the lexical constructional model: the case case of the aux np construction language value 6 (1), 52-77 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 93 done by the addressee, the conditional is used to force the addressee to consider the underlying conventions, thereby rendering an impolite act: (42) would you be so kind as to remove your feet from the table? (google books) in the example, the speaker treats the addressee as if he were not observing the conventions of politeness, giving rise to an impolite request that forces the addressee to act as required. v.5. summary of realization procedures of the aux np construction table 1 below provides a non-exhaustive description of the meaning conditions of the high-level scenario for requests and the ways in which they attain linguistic expression through the various realizations of the aux np construction. table 1. realization procedures of the aux np construction request scenario realization procedures speaker’s need beneficiary indicators (for me) speaker’s willingness conditional forms, beneficiary indicators (for me) addressee’s ability can you…? could you…? can’t you…? addressee’s willingness will you…? would you…? won’t you…? cost-benefit ratings would you mind…? would you be so kind…? optionality past modals (could, would), use of please, conditional forms, beneficiary indicators (for me) mitigation past modals (could, would), conditional forms, interpersonal adverbs (please, kindly), mild intonation and stress vi. conclusion the present work is a case study of the constructional composition of illocutionary meaning within the lcm. the type of illocutionary constructions postulated here pair nuria del campo martínez language value 6 (1), 52-77 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 94 the semantic makeup of speech acts with the constructional realizations through which they are communicated. the formal composition of constructions includes properties such as sentence type, grammatical elements, lexical properties and suprasegmental features. the meaning conditions defined in the high-level scenario include semantic variables and pragmatic features like power, politeness, optionality and cost-benefit variables. such variables are culture-specific and their realization is related to the context of situation of each interactional exchange. high-level scenarios provide the base of a vast number of illocutionary constructions for a speech act type. the different meaning conditions of high-level scenarios are activated through diverse linguistic resources, giving rise to constructions with different degrees of codification. the higher the degree of codification of a construction, the easier it is to grasp the intended meaning and the more specialized the construction is. conversely, if a construction is implicit but still attains important levels of effectiveness by giving access to relevant parts of a scenario, it is likely to be conventionalized for a specific illocutionary value. the process whereby constructions become conventionalized is constrained by sociocultural conventions of the kind postulated within cost-benefit cognitive model. the interpretation of non-conventional constructions requires the use of inference and relies on the realization of variable elements and contextual information or shared background knowledge. this study examines the applicability of the analytical tools put forward by the lcm to account for the various realization procedures of the aux np construction in relation to their potential to activate the semantic base of requesting speech acts. once described the high-level scenario for the category of requesting, i have identified the different ways in which the realizations of the aux np construction provide the addressee with access to the relevant parts of the scenario. the formal composition of the construction has proved both realizational of lexico-grammatical devices and conventionally associated with them. the analysis carried out has provided evidence in support of the lcm approach to illocution. however, the results suggest that further research on the subject is still needed. it would be advisable to develop the description of the conventions of the costbenefit cognitive model in order to account for the distinctions among the various motivation and constraints of illocution in the lexical constructional model: the case case of the aux np construction language value 6 (1), 52-77 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 95 realization procedures of different requestive acts and also to study the relationship between form and meaning among other constructions performing requests. notes 1 in later work, panther (2005) has gone further and referred to metonymy as an inference schema rather than a substitution relation or a reference point phenomenon, as has been defended by many cognitive linguists (langacker 1993; kövecses and radden 1998, inter alia). specifically, panther has argued that metonymies provide natural inference schemas which are regularly used by speakers in meaning interpretation. the role of metonymy as an inference schema has been supported by later research carried out by ruiz de mendoza and baicchi (2007), who identify metonymy at the base of illocutionary derivation. the present proposal adheres to such a conception of metonymy in order to account for the illocutionary meaning that derives from the activation of scenarios and which later on becomes entrenched (in langacker’s terms, 1999: 105) through a conventionalization process. 2 in the lcm, interactional knowledge is structured in the form of situational cognitive models, to be differentiated from non-situational models. situational cognitive models capture the interaction among entities within a specific time and place. non-situational cognitive models include variables which are not dependent on time and place. cognitive operations on non-situational models regulate inferred meaning at the core grammar level, yielding conversion processes and constructional alternations. operations like metaphor and metonymy on situational models guide pragmatic inferencing (implicature derivation, illocutionary meaning and discourse connections). 3 risselada’s (1993) definition of explicit and implicit speech acts is equivalent to the traditional distinction between codified and inferred speech acts. the degree of explicitness or codification is in both cases determined by the number of meaning conditions of the speech act under consideration which are instantiated by the linguistic form. 4 the term realization procedures was first introduced by ruiz de mendoza and otal (1997) to define the options offered by the linguistic system for the realization of a communicative strategy. in later work by pérez (2001) and ruiz de mendoza and baicchi (2007), this notion is used referring to entrenched lexicogrammatical devices with instantiation potential with respect to cognitive models. in the present work, realizational procedures which have become conventionalized are regarded as constructions in their own right. 5 the notion of family resemblance was originally propounded by wittgenstein (1978) to make reference to those categories whose members do not share a set of common attributes but rather display a network of similarities. 6 for similar descriptions of requesting from a constructionist perspective, see pérez (1996, 2001) and ruiz de mendoza and baicchi (2007). 7 it is possible, however, to find contexts in which the subject pronoun does not point to the addressee (cf. will he stop making noise?). instances of this type represent implicit requests to the addressee to get a third person to carry out the action. except for these cases, the realization of the construction involves a second person subject (i.e. you). 8 a useful accounts of modal verbs in terms of force dynamics from a cognitive perspective can be found in talmy (1988). 9 the description of the realization procedures of the aux np construction results from the analysis of a corpus of one hundred and sixty-five instances of the construction. the data upon which the study is based has been drawn from the original editions of the british national corpus (bnc), the corpus of contemporary american english (coca), webcorp and google books. nuria del campo martínez language value 6 (1), 52-77 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 96 10 to resolve the ambiguity of the can you form, the lcm postulates two different constructions. one is the polar interrogative construction, which is interpreted as a question about ability and whose constituents are realized by can you sequence (e.g. can you write morse code?), and another that functions as a request, where can you is idiomatic (e.g. can you bring my glasses?) (see mairal and ruiz de mendoza 2009). 11 taylor explains the origin of the past tense as a mitigator as a cognitive process involving a double metaphorization. there is a first metaphor that structures the time domain in terms of space, as illustrated by expressions like near future and distant past, and a second metaphor that structures distance in terms of social involvement. pérez further argues that the distance that triggers the mitigating effect has to be established both between the speaker and the speech act and between the intended speech act and the actual speech act. references brdar-szabó, r. 2009. “metonymy in indirect directives: stand-alone conditional in english, german, hungarian, and croatian”. in panther, k.-u., thornburg, l. and barcelona, a. (eds.), metonymy and metaphor in grammar. amsterdam/philadelphia: john benjamins, 323-338. butler, c.s. 1996. “on the concept of an interpersonal metafunction in english”. in berry, m., butler, c.s., fawcett and r., huang, g. (eds.), meaning and form: systemic functional interpretations. norwood: ablex publishing, 151-181. butler, c.s. 2009. “the lexical constructional model: genesis, strengths and challenges”. in butler, c.s. and arista, j.m. (eds.), deconstructing constructions. amsterdam/philadelphia: john benjamins, 117-152. dancygier, b. and sweetser, e. 2005. mental spaces in grammar: conditional constructions. cambridge: cambridge university press. dik, s.c. 1989. the theory of functional grammar. the structure of the clause. berlin: mouton de gruyter dik, s.c. 1997. the theory of functional grammar. complex and derived constructions. berlin: mouton de gruyter. fauconnier, g. 1985. mental spaces. cambridge: cambridge university press. goldberg, a.e. 1995. constructions: a construction grammar approach to argument structure. chicago: chicago university press. motivation and constraints of illocution in the lexical constructional model: the case case of the aux np construction language value 6 (1), 52-77 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 97 goldberg, a.e. 2006. constructions at work: the nature of generalization in language. oxford: oxford university press. halliday, m.a.k. 1994. an introduction to functional grammar. london: edward arnold. halliday, m.a.k. and matthiessen, c. 2004. an introduction to functional grammar. 3 rd edition. london: hodder arnold. kövecses, z. and radden, g. 1998. “metonymy: developing a cognitive linguistic view”. cognitive linguistics 9, 37-77. lakoff, g. 1987. women, fire and dangerous things. chicago: chicago university press. langacker, r.w. 1993. “reference point constructions”. cognitive linguistics 4, 1-38. langacker, r.w. 1999. grammar and conceptualization. mouton de gruyter, berlin. leech, g. 1983. principles of pragmatics. london: longman. mairal, r., and ruiz de mendoza, f.j. 2009. “levels of description and explanation in meaning construction”. in butler, c.s. and arista, j.m. (eds.), deconstructing constructions. amsterdam/philadelphia: john benjamins, 153-198. panther, k.-u. 2005. “the role of conceptual metonymy in meaning construction”. in ruiz de mendoza, f.j., peña, s. (eds.), cognitive linguistics: internal dynamics and interdisciplinary interaction. berlin/new york: mouton de gruyter, 353-386. panther, k.-u. and thornburg, l. 1998. “a cognitive approach to inferencing in conversation”. journal of pragmatics 30, 755-769. panther, k.-u. and thornburg, l. 2003. “metonymies as natural inference and activation schemas: the case of dependent clauses as independent speech acts”. in panther, k.-u. and thornburg, l. (eds.), metonymy and pragmatic inferencing. amsterdam/philadelphia: john benjamins, 127-147. panther, k.-u. and thornburg, l. 2004. “the role of conceptual metonymy in meaning construction”. metaphorik.de 6, 91-111. nuria del campo martínez language value 6 (1), 52-77 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 98 pérez, l. 1996. “the cognition of requests”. estudios ingleses de la universidad complutense 4, 189-208. pérez, l. 2001. illocution and cognition: a constructional approach. university of la rioja press, la rioja. pérez, l. and ruiz de mendoza, f.j. 2002. “grounding, semantic motivation, and conceptual interaction in indirective speech acts”. journal of pragmatics 34, 259-284. risselada, r. 1993. imperatives and other directive expressions in latin: a study in the pragmatics of a dead language. amsterdam: j.c. gieben. ruiz de mendoza, f.j. 1999. “la ilocución y la gramática”. in butler, c.s. arista, j.m. and ruiz de mendoza, f.j. (eds.), nuevas perspectivas en gramática funcional. barcelona: ariel, 99-171. ruiz de mendoza, f.j. 2007. “high-level cognitive models: in search of a unified framework for inferential and grammatical behavior”. in kosecki, k. (ed.), perspectives on metonymy. frankfurt/main: peter lang, 11-30. ruiz de mendoza, f.j., and baicchi, a. 2007. “illocutionary constructions: cognitive motivation and linguistic realization”. in kecskes, i. and horn, l. (eds.), explorations in pragmatics: linguistic, cognitive, and intercultural aspects. berlin/new york: mouton de gruyter, 95-128. ruiz de mendoza, f.j. and gonzálvez, f. 2010. “illocutionary meaning revisited: subjective-transitive constructions in the lexical-constructional model”. in stalmaszczyk, p. 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(ed.), morphosyntactic alternations in english. functional and cognitive perspectives. london/oakville: equinox, 62-82. motivation and constraints of illocution in the lexical constructional model: the case case of the aux np construction language value 6 (1), 52-77 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 99 ruiz de mendoza, f.j. and otal, j.l. 1997. “communication strategies and realization procedures”. atlantis: revista de la asociación española de estudios anglonorteamericanos 19, 297-314. searle, j. 1975. “indirect speech acts”. in cole, p. and morgan, j.l. (eds.), syntax and semantics 3. new york: academic, 59-82. sperber, d. and wilson, d. 1995. relevance. communication and cognition. 2 nd edition. malden: blackwell. stefanowitsch, a. 2003. “a construction-based approach to indirect speech acts”. in panther, k.-u. and thornburg, l. (eds.), metonymy and pragmatic inferencing. amsterdam/philadelphia: john benjamins, 105-126. talmy, l. 1988. “force dynamics in language and cognition”. cognitive science 12, 49-100. taylor, j.r. 1995. linguistic categorization: prototypes in linguistic theory. 2 nd edition. oxford: clarendon press. wittgenstein, l. 1978. remarks on the fundaments of mathematics. oxford: blackwell. received: 31 may 2013 accepted: 12 march 2014 cite this article as: del campo martínez, n. 2014. “motivation and constraints of illocution in the lexical constructional model: the case of the aux np construction”. language value 6 (1), 52-77. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2014.6.6 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors microsoft word editorial statementi_issue1.doc language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue september 2009, volume 1, number 1 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors table of contents from the editors mari carmen campoy cubillo, miguel f. ruiz garrido, carme manuel cuenca i-vii articles the phraseology of intertextuality in english for professional communication martin warren 1-16 a little bit about: analyzing and teaching lexical bundles in academic lectures elizabeth neely, viviana cortes 17-38 how the linguistic colonization of the present by the past influences the colonization of other cultures adopting english as second language c. a. bowers 39-50 constitution of the white earth nation gerald vizenor 51-80 language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue september 2009, volume 1, number 1 pp. i-vii issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors i from the editors welcome to the inaugural issue of language value. this international online journal was conceived as a freely accessible forum for all scholars world-wide. we would like to thank our colleagues at the department of english studies for their support in starting up this new journal. from the very beginning they fully relied on us (the editors) and on our decisions. we are pleased to see it now become a reality and would also like to thank the servei de publicacions i comunicació at the universitat jaume i for working with us on making this journal the first fully online journal published by our university. it is a great pleasure and an honour to welcome members of the editing committee, the advisory board and the editorial board. all of these highly reputed scholars are giving us the assistance we need to start our journey. we are confident in our future and in the team backing us. it is our intention to offer a different standpoint about the english language use, searching for the attitudes and values language users convey in different contexts and situations. our journal aims at addressing innovative approaches to traditional ideas. language use is an essential activity in our daily routines. language reflects thoughts and creates not only sociological but also intellectual values. adopting new patterns of thought implies finding a way to put those thoughts into a linguistic pattern that conveys our attitudes towards a key issue. our journal invites contributors to analyze and discuss the value of language in order to present, exchange and store information, knowledge and beliefs. the journal welcomes original research and conceptual articles, reviews and commentary articles where previous articles can be critiqued, is a clear example of these readers’ contributions we want. the pages of language value are therefore open to a broad diversity of opinions. this first issue consists of four papers. the first two articles are corpus-based studies on language use. both articles tackle an issue which has been redefined by corpus linguistics, that of lexical phrases (nattinger and de carrico 1992). word combinations like ‘so to speak’ or ‘give a talk’ are phrases that were easily identified as forming units that are useful in building up speech. such phrases were said to be recognised by native from the editors articles are copyrighted by their respective authors ii speakers as conventional units and most studies relied on criteria such as transparency of meaning or idiomaticy, and the observance of syntactic and semantic criteria. the analysis of such phrases through the use of corpus tools has opened up new insights into the concept of ‘lexical phrase’ (biber et al. 1999). on the one hand, a new term, ‘lexical bundle’, is preferred in corpus studies to signal language chunks that do not necessarily form complete phrases or clauses (e.g. ‘if you look at’, ‘the end of the’, ‘i want you to’, ‘i don’t want to’). on the other hand, the possibility to analyse large amounts of texts has facilitated the statistic counts that inform us on which are the most frequent phrases used in a collection of texts belonging to a specific genre or text type, and may also inform us on their distribution. corpus tools also allow us to study positional and constituent variation in a more systematic and informed way. lexical bundles are said to act as functional frames. in the first article of this issue, “the phraseology of intertextuality in english for professional communication”, lexical bundles are studied in the context of written discourse and in relation to the signalling of intertextuality in professional communication. in the second article, “a little bit about: analyzing and teaching lexical bundles in academic lectures” lexical bundles are analysed as frames signalling how listeners should interpret the coming information. the first article is written by martin warren from the hong kong polytechnic university. his department is involved in educational and research projects at the research centre for professional communication in english (rcpce) which collaborates with the professional communities to carry out professional communication-related projects. the department has been engaged in the creation of corpora such as the hong kong financial services corpus, the polyu language bank, a large archive of written and spoken texts totalling over 12 million words, and the hong kong engineering corpus, with more than 1,066,000 words from texts that are representative of the english language in the hong kong engineering sector. warren and his colleagues have also recently been involved in the creation of the asia-pacific rim lsp and professional communication association. warren has published monographs on discourse intonation and conversational features and his research has appeared in the icame journal, international journal of corpus linguistics, applied linguistics, system and recall journal. language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue september 2009, volume 1, number 1 pp. i-vii issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors iii in his article, warren uses a new corpus analysis tool called concgram©. this programme allows the extraction of sets of between 2 and 5 co-occurring words, thus revealing the word co-selections made by the speakers in a corpus and aiding the identification of phraseological profiles. the advantage of concgram© over other programmes for finding n-grams (word bundles) is that it is able to provide word cooccurrences taking into account the possibility of both constituent variation (tastes delicious; tastes so delicious; taste me, i’m delicious, etc.) and positional variation (i.e. speaking english, english speaking). warren’s research is unique in its pursuit of the combination of discourse flow and the analysis of congrams. the author investigates how a specific discourse flow relies on intertextuality and whether there is some kind of phraseology associated with the signalling of this form of intertextuality. in his innovative study, he uses a corpus of business emails which is then processed by concgram© and reveals lexical bundles whose words are not constrained in terms of position or variation, thus revealing a number of less predictable patterns. shedding light on an identifiable set of phraseologies used to signal intertextuality in professional discourse will undoubtedly have significant benefits for esp practitioners. the second article in this issue is written by elizabeth neely and viviana cortes. neely teaches listening for academic purposes at tsinghua university in beijing and in her paper with cortes she combines her experience in language teaching with the use of corpus and its pedagogical applications. viviana cortes has a solid reputation in corpus linguistics. she taught in the tesl/applied linguistics and technology program at iowa state university (usa) and currently works as assistant professor at the department of applied linguistics and esl at georgia state university. her work has been published in applied linguistics, english for specific purposes, linguistics and education, and corpora. she has a wide teaching experience in corpus-based english grammar, academic writing and discourse analysis. she has collaborated in research articles and book chapters with douglas biber and susan conrad. her main publications are related to the study of lexical bundles in academic settings. in their article for language value, neely and cortes explore the functions that a number of lexical bundles perform in academic lectures and contrast the use of such bundles by instructors and students. they analyse the language used in lectures and students presentation and from the editors articles are copyrighted by their respective authors iv dissertation defenses in the micase corpus (simpson et al. 2002), paying attention to the following bundles: a little bit of, a little bit about, i want you to, if you look at, and i would like you to. if applied corpus studies on spoken language are scarce in comparison to the study of written language in the field of elt, analyzing data to create classroom materials aimed at developing listening skills are still practically inexistent. for this reason the article by neely and cortes presented here is extremely valuable and may open up new avenues for future research. the online micase corpus provides speech transcriptions for academic spoken english and these transcripts are supplemented by the annotation of speaker profiles and speech events. on request, the recordings of the speech events are also available. in a sense, we could say that micase is a multimedia non-assembled corpus, and as such it allows for the combination of modes in the pedagogical applications of specialized language corpora. thus, neely and cortes work on academic listening skills by combining corpus use of recordings and corpus transcriptions, and they discuss, among other tasks, the possibility of listening to a sample lecture to identify bundles within the context of a lecture. their direct approach in classroom corpus use for the development of listening skills is mainly based on awareness rising of the use of specific lexical bundles in academic speech. this approach is enriched by suggesting strategies to work with top-down corpus analysis combined with the more usual bottom-up approach to corpus use in the english language classroom. the third article in this issue, “how the linguistic colonization of the present by the past influences the colonization of other cultures adopting english as second language” is signed by chet a. bowers, courtesy professor of environmental studies at the university of oregon. a creative and prolific writer, he has published 16 books and more than 90 articles appearing in journals on environmental studies, education, history and linguistics. one of his main concerns is how schools and universities contribute to ecological crisis, and focuses on the importance of language use in educational settings. he is the co-funder of the international online journal the ecojustice review: educating for the commons. some of his best known publications are the culture of denial (1997), let them eat data: how computers affect education, cultural diversity, and the prospects of ecological sustainability (2000), educating for eco-justice and language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue september 2009, volume 1, number 1 pp. i-vii issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors v community (2001). he has recently written university reform in an era of global warming (2008), toward a post-industrial consciousness: understanding the linguistic basis of ecologically sustainable educational reforms (2008), and educating for ecological intelligence: practices and challenges (2009). in his article, bowers sets out to critique what he describes as the transmission of consumerist representations of nature through language. just like the different schools of feminism coincided in identifying the deeply rooted patriarchal ideology that is perpetuated in language, bowers claims that we often make use of language schemata that have long been removed from the analogs around which they originated. in doing so, we fail to question the culture of consumerism and abuse of nature that is ingrained in the english language. bowers analyses how the use of metaphors in language is the basis for cognitive frames that will accompany that metaphor whenever it is used again in a new context. when a language is given the status of lingua franca in professional settings and is regarded as the most common l2, the influence of metaphorical thoughts may remain hidden to the majority of non-native users of that language. in the case of the english language, this influence is also enhanced by printed books and the predominance of the use of english in computer-mediated publications and communications. from this point of view, an interdisciplinary analysis on the influence of metaphorical thinking on (environmental) education is presented. it is pointed out that there is no objective knowledge, information, no objective language use, and that educational institutions and teachers should make an effort to promote critical thinking on how language is used and to explain how metaphors are carriers of historical meaning and reflect a specific world view. in his article for language value, he goes even further, for, in his opinion, english teachers play an important role in the transmission of this consumerist ideology for in uncritically teaching english to speakers of other languages they help propagate consumerism. in the last article, gerald vizenor presents the text of the constitution of the white earth nation. gerald vizenor is the most important native american writer in the united states, not only because his list of published books is remarkable but because the quality of his writing defies qualification. he is a poet, essay writer, journalist, university professor, novelist, committed activist and bitter critic of his country’s racial from the editors articles are copyrighted by their respective authors vi politics. he has devoted his entire life to studying, exploring and redefining native american past and present stories and histories in more than thirty books, which break exceptional new literary paths. vizenor was born in 1934 and, as an anishinaabe, he is an enrolled member of the minnesota chippewa tribe, white earth reservation. in 2009 gerald vizenor was named the principal writer of the constitution of the white earth nation and in our first issue of language value he presents the origin of the constitution explaining the issues debated in its creation. this document is also reproduced here after his introduction to the text. vizenor’s political struggle linked itself to a number of influences coming from the field of cultural and literary criticism. vizenor’s ideas on the complexity and diversity of linguistic resources and on how they are used by individuals and nations are a solid illustration of the value of language within culture. for vizenor, political vindications and empowerment must necessarily tag along language freedom and empowerment. that meant that the decolonization of indians entailed a linguistic decolonization. language should be cleansed off its racist and colonizing traces to achieve political freedom. according to vizenor, literature should always promote change, uneasiness and contradiction. throughout his literary work vizenor has tried to rewrite the concept indian, to strip it bare of its colonizing connotations and endow it with new meanings. vizenor breaks down the logic of language and questions the mechanisms of power which lay undercover. he annihilates the fixed meaning of words, shakes language off its roots to make readers aware of its perennial ambiguities. vizenor describes himself as a tribal wordmaker, an inventor of words inspired in the oral tradition. gerald vizenor is an original voice which has deconstructed the myths behind the concept of indianness. in doing so he has helped and helps to enhance survival for native american communities without ignoring criticism of both native american politics and white american colonizing and imperialistic processes. his participation in the creation and writing of the constitution of the white earth nation is one more sign of his cultural and politic compromise. together, these papers are a good illustration of the complexity and diversity of linguistic and pedagogic work. as a multi-disciplinary journal, we are pleased to language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue september 2009, volume 1, number 1 pp. i-vii issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors vii publish a first issue which covers such a broad range of subjects. we hope the international online journal language value can serve the english language community well and may become a forum to share, present or discuss ideas and research work in literature, linguistics and computer-assisted language learning. we hope you enjoy reading this edition of language value, and will consider contributing in the future either as an author or as a reviewer. mari carmen campoy cubillo miguel f. ruiz garrido universitat jaume i. castelló editors carme manuel cuenca universitat de valència editorial board references biber, d., s. johansson, g. leech, s. conrad and e. finegan. 1999. longman grammar of spoken and written english. harlow, uk: longman. nattinger, j. r. and j. decarrico. 1992. lexical phrases and language teaching. oxford: oxford university press. simpson r. c., briggs s. l., ovens j. and swales j. m. 2002. the michigan corpus of academic spoken english. ann arbor, mi: the regents of the university of michigan. language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue september 2009, volume 1, number 1 pp. 1-16 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors the phraseology of intertextuality in english for professional communication martin warren research centre for professional communication in english english department, the hong kong polytechnic university abstract there is increasing interest in researching phraseology and intertextuality, but they are not usually studied together. this paper explores the implications of combining the two in the learning and teaching of english for professional communication. using data compiled at the hong kong-based research centre for professional communication in english, in combination with the recently developed corpus linguistics methodology of ‘congramming’ (cheng et al. 2006, cheng et al. 2009), this study investigates how intertextuality can be signalled in a corpus of discourse flows. a discourse flow is a series of interconnected discourses and the flows in this study were collected from a professional over a period of one week. concgramming is the process of fully automatically identifying concgrams in a text or corpus. concgrams are co-occurrences of words (e.g. hard and work) irrespective of any constituent variation (work hard, work very hard, work so very hard, etc.) and positional variation (i.e. work hard, hard work, etc.) that might be present. using concgrams extracted from the discourse flow corpus, examples of frequent phraseologies associated with the signalling of intertextuality are identified and their role in the realisation of intertextuality discussed. keywords: concgram, constituent variation, discourse flow, intertextuality, phraseology, positional variation introduction descriptions of the nature of professional discourse are hard to come by because it is difficult for the researcher to access professional discourses due to the thorny issues of confidentiality and/or the reluctance of professionals and their organisations to permit researchers to collect and analyse their discourses. these difficulties are well documented by others interested in investigating business and professional discourses (see, for example, candlin 2002, louhiala-salminen 2002, mccarthy and handford 2004, sarangi 2002,). this study examines the discourses a professional engages with over a working week. it is particularly interested in how a specific discourse flow relies on intertextuality to situate each discourse relative to other discourses in the flow and whether there is a phraseology associated with signalling this form of intertextuality. martin warren language value 1, (1), 1–16 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 2 a discourse (or text) does not exist in isolation. each one is usually based partly on prior discourses, partly on the current communicative goals of the speaker or writer, and partly in anticipating or predicting future discourses. this study is interested in the interconnectedness of discourse events and how they are explicitly managed in discourse flows. the very existence of discourse flows is evidence of the “intertextuality” (e.g. de beaugrande 1980) of discourses, which is the process by which parts of a specific discourse(s) become part of other discourses. by means of intertextuality, the information in a specific discourse is “condensed, reformulated and reshaped to fit the purposes of the author” (ventola 1999: 109). this is not the first study to look at discourse flows. for example, a study by gimenez (2006) looks at what he terms “embedded” business e-mails which is the term he uses to describe a discourse flow. others have studied such flows and termed them “mosiac messages” (markus 1994) and “e-mail dialogues” (eklundh and macdonald 1994). however, other studies on interconnectedness and intertextuality have not examined how these phenomena are signalled, which is the focus of this study. when the data for the project were collected it was recognised that the researchers’ needs, expectations and interpretations with regard to the data collected may sometimes differ from those of the professionals who provided the data. sarangi (2002: 99) emphasises the importance of understanding “professional practice and knowledge representations from the insiders’ perspective”. in order to follow sarangi’s advice on how to better analyse and interpret the discourses collected, additional information was collected including information that would assist in determining whether or not the discourses collected were interconnected. the data examined in this paper were collected over a five-day period from an information technology (it) manager based at a multinational bank in hong kong. the data collected consist mainly of e-mail correspondence written in english between the it manager and his colleagues, both internal and external to the multinational bank. the data were analysed and collated into discourse flows consisting of interconnected e-mails which were sometimes also interconnected with other types of discourse such as meetings, telephone calls, informal discussions and reports. at the end of the data collection period, there was a review of the data collected to determine whether or not it was necessary to go back to the subject for more information in order to better understand and analyse the data. after the data the phraseology of intertextuality in english for professional communication language value 1, (1), 1-16 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 3 were analysed, the researcher again met with the subject to discuss the findings and conclusions. the input of the it professional was particularly important in helping the researchers to correctly identify discourses belonging to the same discourse flow. a simple illustration of a discourse flow is shown in figure 1 below. figure 1. discourse flow. in figure 1, the current discourse is depicted in the centre of a discourse flow. this discourse makes reference to prior discourses (for example, a telephone discussion, project report, meeting or prior e-mail) and it may also refer to discourses which are prospected or predicted to occur by the speaker/writer of the current discourse. just as the current discourse at the centre of this discourse flow is in part comprised of prior and predicted discourses, so each of the prior and each of the predicted discourses are also comprised of prior and predicted texts. in this way, all discourses are intertextual in that they are comprised partly of previous discourses and also typically prospect or predict future discourses. importantly, the ability of a speaker or writer to master intertextuality, and to appropriately signal it, helps to facilitate communication in professional contexts and hence is an important component of professional communicative competence. in the data collected, thirty-two separate discourse flows were identified across a fiveday period. in this particular professional context, e-mail communication is the main means of communication and so contributes significantly to intertextuality. the discourse flows total approximately 30,000 words of data and they were also compiled as a small corpus to assist in examining the language used to signal intertextuality. intertextuality candlin and maley (1997: 203) describe one important way in which “discourses are internally viable” which is that they manifest “a plurality of sources” and are “thus prior discourses ↔ current discourse ↔ predicted discourses martin warren language value 1, (1), 1–16 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 4 intertextual” in nature. in other words, a discourse is less coherent, or may even be incoherent, if it is not appropriately situated within its discourse flow relative to both prior and predicted discourses. situating a discourse within its discourse flow requires the partial incorporation, or references to, prior discourses and, typically, the prospection or prediction of future discourses. there are a number of forms intertextuality can take, according to bhatia (2004: 126127). for example, “texts providing a context” (ibid: 126) such as the response to a prior request or “texts within and around the text” (ibid: 127) as in the sequencing of sections or chapters in a text. also, “texts explicitly referred to in the text” (ibid: 127) such as the explicit use of citations and “texts implicitly referred to in the text” such as the adaptation of a well-known quotes in a text which then relies on the shared knowledge between the participants to be correctly understood. the last of the forms described by bhatia are “texts embedded within the text” and “texts mixed with the text” (ibid: 127). an example of the former is when a different genre is used within a text, for example a section of a legal document in a business e-mail, and an example of the latter is the use of direct quotes in the text. all of the forms of intertextuality described by bhatia need to be handled appropriately by speakers and writers, and they all require that the speaker or writer signals to the hearer or reader that intertextuality is taking place. failure to signal intertextuality may result in the discourse being less intelligible to the hearer or reader. examples of intertextuality manifested in e-mails collected in this study are given below (example 1). in the e-mails, intertextuality related to prior texts is underlined while intertextuality related to predicted texts is shown in italics. the e-mails have been anonymised and all participant names are denoted with a capital letter followed for four xs (for example, axxxx) and all confidential information and company names are denoted with three xs. the phraseology of intertextuality in english for professional communication language value 1, (1), 1-16 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 5 example 1. a sequence of e-mails illustrating intertextuality (prior texts underlined, predicted texts in italics) e-mail 1 from: dxxxx sent: friday, june 13, 2008 1:35 pm to: axxxx; kxxxx cc: txxxx; nxxxx; rxxxx; sxxxx subject: re: changes required for indirect facilities & cases with guarantors rating >= 5 6. without approval to use it re: test cases importance: high 1. hi axxxx & kxxxx 2. previously, axxxx told us that we should use event supertype = ‘0’ instead of 3. ‘2’ to obtain the approved limit for indirect facility. we amended the idecision 4. calculator and managed to test the case with approved indirect facility 5. successfully. however, when we try to re-test the similar case again recently, it 6. failed and we realized that the event supertype = ‘0’ is not found for the approved 7. indirect facility (but only found ‘2’ & ‘1’). 8. please advise asap which event supertype (xxx) we should use? axxxx 9. said we should only look at column “xxx xx dom object”. i will log this as a 10. xxx problem. 11. also, the facility country of risk attribute (xxx) was in previous xxx xml, 12. but is now missing. has xxx version changed recently which affected these? 13. thanks. 14. dxxxx e-mail 2 from: axxxx sent: friday, 13 june 2008 2:04 pm to: lxxxx; bxxxx cc: vxxxx; pxxxx; jxxxx subject: fw: changes required for indirect facilities & cases with guarantors rating >= 5 without approval to use it re: test cases importance: high 1. lxxxx/bxxxx, 2. this is another error of the frr interface that field value is not matched with 3. interface specification. 4. please fix or clarify this asap. 5. pxxxx, 6. please log an xxx on xxx. martin warren language value 1, (1), 1–16 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 6 7. regards 8. axxxx e-mail 3 from:bxxxx sent: friday, june 13, 2008 2:55 pm to:axxxx cc: vxxxx; pxxxx; jxxxx; kxxxx subject: re: changes required for indirect facilities & cases with guarantors rating >= 5 6. without approval to use it re: test cases 1. hi axxxx, 2. could l understand at which stage of the credit application lifecycle this seems to 3. be an issue? 4. at the point of approval the lifecycle event is xxx = 2. however, remember 5. that the rms would like to see the previously approved (xxx = 0), the 6. proposed line (xxx = l) and the approved line (xxx = 2). 7. you might want to note that the approved timeline here under xxx = 2 can be 8. amended by ccu input units if the workflow path of “approved on paper” 9. is taken. hence the snapshot for the frr calc at the approved timeline here too 10. may also change if ccu input has to make changes to the limits as per the hard 11. copy approved xxx. 12. however, once everything has been confirmed approved, the final xxx document 13. printed and the credit facility detaches from the credit application, the facility only 14. has “existing” events (ie. xxx = 0). that will also be synonymous with your 15. approved line for the facility. 16. i need to find out from development if anything has changed in the xxx object 17. preventing the facility country of risk attribute (xxx) that was in previous 18. xxx xml, but is now missing. lxxxx, can you help raise an xxx assist for 19. this? 20. hope this clarifies. 21. thanks. 22. bxxxx. e-mail 4 from: axxxx sent: friday, june 13, 2008 3:06 pm to: dxxxx cc: vxxxx; pxxxx; hxxxx; sxxxx; fxxxx; gxxxx the phraseology of intertextuality in english for professional communication language value 1, (1), 1-16 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 7 subject: fw: changes required for indirect facilities & cases with guarantors rating > 6. 5 without approval to use it re: test cases 1. dxxxx, 2. i think the question from xxx is that in which stage we would like to have the 3. frr calculated. 4. you can call me to discuss and if necessary, we can get gxxxx and hxxxx 5. involved. 6. regards 7. axxxx one notable aspect of intertextuality such as that depicted in the above sequence of consecutive e-mails, which are taken from a larger discourse flow, is that the writer usually begins the discourse by invoking a prior discourse and closes by predicting a future discourse. this structure can be seen in e-mails 1, 2 and 4 in which the writers begin and end in this manner. the exception is e-mail 3 which begins with a question, and questions, of course, typically predict a future discourse, but, even in e-mail 3, the opening question, while predicting a future discourse, contains a reference to a prior discourse. writers, therefore, have a strong tendency to begin a new discourse by situating it relative to prior discourses. there is also a strong tendency to end a discourse with the prospection or prediction of a future discourse and this can be seen in all of the above e-mails which end with questions (e-mails 1 and 3), requests for action (e-mail 2) and offers of assistance (e-mail 4). the stereotypical opening and closing formulaics are ‘thank you for your e-mail’ and ‘thank you in advance for your help’ and neither of these are found here which is to be expected in a fast-moving discourse flow between colleagues where these four e-mails are written and read within a short timeframe of approximately ninety minutes. most importantly, all of the above e-mails clearly show that intertextuality is by no means confined to the opening and closing stages of e-mails. they demonstrate that intertextuality is to be found throughout and references to prior and predicted discourses account for most of the contents of these discourses. intertextuality, therefore, is not a minor factor when describing the composition of a discourse, in these business e-mails it plays a major role. on balance, there are more references to prior discourses across the four e-mails, but a number are also predicted. prior discourses are sometimes martin warren language value 1, (1), 1–16 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 8 paraphrased (see, for example, e-mail 3, lines 9-11) and sometimes they are quoted directly (see, for example, e-mail 1, line 2). however it is achieved, intertextuality needs to be signalled and below some of more frequent phraseologies used when doing this are examined. signalling intertextuality it has been shown that intertextuality is prevalent in the e-mails examined in this study. incorporating intertextuality into a discourse requires the speaker or writer to signal that it is taking place in order for the discourse to be intelligible to the hearer or reader. an earlier preliminary study (warren, 2008) identified words and invariant clusters which are associated with the signalling of intertextuality. for example, please, as, and based on occur frequently in the data and were found to be associated with prior discourses, as discussed, based on your advice, or with predicted discourses, please check. this study, however, is interested in uncovering phraseologies associated with this function which may exhibit variation. in order to find instances of phraseological variation, the discourse flow corpus was “concgrammed” (cheng et al. 2006, cheng et al. 2009, greaves and warren 2007, warren, 2009) using concgram 1.0 (greaves 2009). this software is specifically designed to fully automatically find word co-occurrences irrespective of variation and therefore reveals the full range of phraseologies in a text or corpus as opposed to software which is focused on finding n-grams (sometimes termed ‘clusters’ or ‘bundles’) which is unable to automatically find instances of phraseological variation. as a result, less predictable phraseologies were uncovered. the use of n-grams, such as based on, which contain predictable lexical words to signal intertextuality is perhaps not so surprising. however, concgram found other less predictable phrases associated with intertextuality which are less predictable and contain a core set of so-called ‘grammatical’ words. the importance of the co-selection of grammatical words framing more lexically-rich words, termed ‘collocational frameworks” (renouf and sinclair 1991), has received very little attention. this lack of attention has not been helped by the use of stop lists (i.e. lists of words, typically frequent grammatical words, deliberately excluded from corpus searches) which pushes them further off many the phraseology of intertextuality in english for professional communication language value 1, (1), 1-16 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 9 researchers’ radar. the phraseological tendency in language, or what sinclair (1987) terms “the idiom principle”, whereby words are co-selected by speakers and writers to create meaning, has yet to be fully described and all the forms and variation that these co-selections take need to be better understood. figures 2-6 below provide instances of some of the more frequent phraseologies found to signal intertextuality. for each phraseology, the total number of occurrences associated with intertextuality is given as a percentage of the total number of occurrences in the discourse flow corpus to underline the extent to which these phraseologies are associated with intertextuality. phraseologies are defined broadly in this study as all recurrent co-selections of two or more words in the corpus and here the interest is in those phraseologies which serve explicitly to introduce, or otherwise signal the boundaries of, intertextuality in the e-mails. it should also be pointed out that the convention for representing concgrams which exhibit variation is to write the words comprising the concgram alphabetically separated by a forward slash. predict prior 9 and trying to recreate. in some instances we can find the problem in others we can t and we don’t 10 which is name of ooa risk entity, and we can’t find the record in xxx. but we can find the figure 2. instances of “can/the/we”, 15/17 (88%). in figure 2, 88% of the instances of the phraseology we can + the are used to introduce intertextuality in the form of both predicted and prior discourses. this phraseology frames a main verb which indicates the form of action to be taken in the case of predicted discourses (for example, ‘make’, ‘test’, ‘discuss’) or the action that has been taken in the case of prior discourses (‘find’), and is then typically followed by a reference to the contents of the future discourse (for example, ‘xxx reports’, ‘patch’ and ‘changes’) or the prior discourse (‘problem’ and ‘record’). the variation in this particular phraseology is confined to constituency variation. martin warren language value 1, (1), 1–16 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 10 instances of similar phraseologies are illustrated in figures 3 and 4. figure 3. instances of “need/to/we”, 37/41 (90%). the phraseology we + need + to occurs more frequently in the corpus than we can + the (41 versus 17) and almost all of the instances (90%) are associated with the onset of intertextuality and all of these are predicting a future discourse in the ongoing discourse flow. again, variation is confined to constituency variation with the use of modal verbs between we and need in lines 1-5. this phraseology forms part of a larger verb group which includes a lexical verb that usually indicates the action to be taken in the predicted discourse (for example, ‘identify’, ‘check’, ‘change’ and ‘discuss’). in figure 4, there are three phraseologies which are, again, associated with predicting discourses in the discourse flow. figure 4. instances of “can/you”, 26/28 (92%) and “could or would/you”, 29/29 (100%). the phraseologies in figure 4 are very strongly associated with the prediction of future discourses and, in the case of could or would/you, all of the instances in the discourse the phraseology of intertextuality in english for professional communication language value 1, (1), 1-16 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 11 flow corpus are associated with the onset of this form of intertextuality. also, while these phraseologies do not exhibit constituency variation, they can have positional variation. irrespective of the variation that is exhibited, they are all associated with requests for action and the nature of the action to be taken is provided by a wide variety of lexical verbs (for example, ‘clarify’, advise’, ‘check’, ‘suggest’, ‘confirm’, ‘continue’, ‘elaborate’, ‘generate’, ‘call’ and ‘join’). figure 5 shows examples one of the more unlikely phraseologies, to/you, found to be associated with the onset of intertextuality in the data studied. figure 5. instances of “to/you”, 41/43 (95%). this phraseology occurs frequently (43 instances) and also has a strong association with intertextuality (95%). it has both constituency and positional variation and can signal both prior and predicted discourses. when it is used in its contiguous form, to you, it is in the context of the writer referring to a prior discourse which is accessible to the reader (lines 6-8) or, in the case of predicted texts, a discourse that will be accessible to the reader in the future (line 1). in the other instances, you again refers to the reader and the to-infinitive states the action taken (‘notify’) in a prior discourse or requested to be taken (for example, ‘provide’ and ‘liaise’) in a predicted discourse. figure 6 is another unlikely phraseology composed of grammatical words which has considerable variation, both constituency and positional, and is strongly associated (90%) with the initiation of intertextuality in the e-mails. martin warren language value 1, (1), 1–16 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 12 figure 6. instances of “is/the/to”, 19/21 (90%). despite the extent of the phraseological variation, the patterns of usage are evident whether they are associated with predicted or prior discourses. in all of the above instances, the is used in combination with either the identification of the predicted discourse (for example, ‘following’ and ‘xxx patch’) or prior discourse (‘risk entity’, ‘update’, ‘procedure’ and ‘changes’) or the individual(s) responsible for the discourse (line 7). while is and to are typically used in combination with the action required (for example, ‘is to be done’ and ‘is ready to deploy’) or the action taken (for example, ‘this is to confirm the changes’ and ‘here is the procedure to fix the problem’). conclusions this paper has shown, through the examination of e-mails collected in a professional context, that each e-mail is part of a discourse flow. this in turn means that an important component of each of these e-mails is its intertextuality which results from the speaker or writer situating each e-mail within the discourse flow. it is argued that the inability to situate a discourse within its discourse flow may result in the discourse being less intelligible to the hearer or reader. intertextuality is a major component of the e-mails examined in this study and is the product of referencing both prior and future discourses. given the levels of complexity in both producing and interpreting the widespread intertextuality to be found in almost any discourse, an important aspect of professional communication is that the speaker or writer needs to be able to effectively signal the boundaries of intertextuality. this study has found that there are identifiable phraseologies, which are used almost exclusively for this function. the phraseology of intertextuality in english for professional communication language value 1, (1), 1-16 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 13 while there are a number of options available to speakers and writers to signal intertextuality, there are discernible patterns of phraseology associated with the signalling of both prior and predicted discourses and these patterns, in turn, contribute to the coherence achieved by intertextuality. the study of the phraseology of interconnected discourses rather than individual words has been shown to be a good way of uncovering how intertextuality is managed by writers and speakers. what has been most significant with regard to the phraseologies associated with signaling intertextuality identified in this study is that they are predominantly comprised of grammatical words which frame or foreground a wider variety of lexically-rich words. given the potential variety of lexically-rich words that can be framed or foregrounded by these phraseologies of grammatical words, it has been shown that it is often the co-selection of grammatical words which is the more easily identified source of signalling intertextuality, and the borders of intertextuality, in a discourse based on their frequency in the discourse flow corpus. this finding further underlines the importance of not excluding grammatical words when searching a corpus. more research is needed, but from these initial findings it is increasingly better understood that professionals often need to signal intertextuality in their professional discourses and that there is an identifiable set of phraseologies associated with this important discourse function which could have implications for the learning and teaching of english for specific purposes. it is important to have the ability to refer to, and accurately reference, prior and predicted discourses, as well as the ability to summarise prior discourses and succinctly revise specific aspects of them. coupled with these skills is the need for a heightened awareness on the part of speakers and writers with regard to the importance of intertextuality and appropriately signalling its presence in the ongoing discourse flow. acknowledgements thanks are due to the it professional who generously provided the data used in this study. the work described in this paper was substantially supported by a grant from the research grants council of the hong kong special administrative region (project no. polyu 5480/06h, b-qo2j). martin warren language value 1, (1), 1–16 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 14 references bhatia, v. 2004. worlds of written discourse. london: continuum. candlin, c. (ed.) 2002. research and practice in professional discourse. hong kong: city university of hong kong. candlin, c. and maley, y. 1997. intertextuality and interdiscursivity in the discourse of alternative dispute resolution. in gunnarsson, b-l, linell, p. and nordberg, b. et al (eds.) the construction of professional discourse. london: longman, 201–222. cheng, w., greaves, c. and warren, m. 2006. from n-gram to skipgram to concgrarn. international journal of corpus linguistics 11 (4), 411-433. cheng, w., greaves, c., sinclair, j. mch. and warren, m. 2009. uncovering the extent of the phraseological tendency: towards a systematic analysis of concgrams, applied linguistics, 30 (2), 236-252. de beaugrande, r. 1980. text, discourse and process. london: longman. eklundh, s. and macdonald, c. 1994. the use of quoting to preserve context in electronic mail dialogues. ieee transactions on professional communication 37 (4), 97-202. gimenez, j. 2006. embedded business e-mails: meeting new demands in international communication. english for specific purposes 25, 154-172. greaves, c. 2009. concgram 1.0: a phraseological search engine. amsterdam: john benjamins. greaves, c. and warren, m. 2007. concgramming: a computer-driven approach to learning the phraseology of english. recall journal 17 (3), 287-306. louhiala-salminen, l. 2002. the fly’s perspective: discourse in the daily routine of a business manager. english for specific purposes, 21, 211-231. markus, m. 1994. electronic mail as the medium of managerial choice. organization science 5 (4), 502-527. mccarthy, m. and handford, m. 2004. “invisible to us”: a preliminary corpus-based study of spoken business english. in connor, u. & t. upton (eds.), discourse in the phraseology of intertextuality in english for professional communication language value 1, (1), 1-16 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 15 the professions: perspectives from corpus linguistics. amsterdam/philadelphia: john benjamins, 167-202. renouf, a.j. and sinclair, j.mch. 1991. collocational frameworks in english. in aijmer, k. and b. altenberg (eds.) english corpus linguistics: studies in honour of jan svartvik. london: longman, 128-43. sarangi, s. 2002. discourse practitioners as a community of interprofessional practice: some insights from health communication research. in candlin, c. (ed.), research and practice in professional discourse. hong kong: city university of hong kong, 95-113. sarangi, s., and coulthard, m. (eds.) 2000. discourse and social life. london: longman. sinclair, j.mch. 1987. collocation: a progress report. in steele, r. and t. threadgold (eds.) language topics: essays in honour of michael halliday. amsterdam: john benjamins, 319-331. ventola, e. 1999. semiotic spanning at conferences: cohesion and coherence in and across conference papers and their discussions. in bublitz, w., u. lenk and e. ventola (eds.) coherence in spoken and written discourse. amsterdam: john benjamins, 101-124. warren, m. 2008. the role of intertextuality in discourse coherence. international conference: discourse coherence text and theory. centre de linguistique theoretique et appliquee (celta), paris-sorbonne university, paris, france, september 18-20, 2008. warren, m. 2009. why concgram? in greaves, c. (ed.) concgram 1.0: a phraseological search engine. amsterdam: john benjamins, 1-11. received september 2009 martin warren language value 1, (1), 1–16 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 16 cite this article as: warren, m. 2009. “the phraseology of intertextuality in english for professional communication”. language value, 1 (1), 1-16. servei de publicacions de la universitat jaume i: castelló, spain. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue september 2009, volume 1, number 1 pp. 17-38 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors a little bit about: analyzing and teaching lexical bundles in academic lectures elizabeth neely and viviana cortes georgia state university abstract for english as a second language (esl) or english as a foreign language (efl) students, high academic listening skills are essential in order to succeed at the university level, and yet instructional materials in academic listening often lack authenticity (flowerdew and miller 1997). as corpus-based data has become more prevalent and corpus-based findings have become more and more accessible, esl/efl instructors are now in a position to investigate how language is actually used in the content classroom and to design lessons accordingly. the present study focuses on the use of lexical bundles, defined as recurrent word combinations, in academic lectures. a small group of lexical bundles which are frequently found in spoken academic language are examined in order to carefully analyze their function in this register, comparing the use of bundles by instructors to that of students. the findings of this comparison are used as the basis for the design of a series of academic listening lesson plans, focusing on those bundles that most often occur in academic lectures and the functions they perform in that context. keywords: lexical bundles, corpora, listening comprehension, english for academic purposes, authentic materials i. introduction for students learning english as a second language (esl) or as a foreign language (efl), there may be a moment of startling realization if they find that those language skills that were emphasized in the language classroom are not precisely the skills needed in an actual university environment. for instance, in his personal narrative about learning english as a foreign language and then attending school at an american university, tsai (2001: 138) writes, “…we learned grammar in depth and performed well in exams, but had no real experience…. most foreign students, including myself, struggled because we were in a real world – all lectures were given in english”. tsai’s narrative is but one example of what many esl/efl students experience when there is a noticeable gap between the language skills acquired in the classroom and those needed to successfully function in academic studies conducted entirely in english. especially noticeable, as tsai mentioned, is when there is a gap in the listening skills needed to comprehend academic lectures. according to flowerdew (1995: 7), “academic listening elizabeth neely and viviana cortes language value 1, (1) 17–38 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 18 skills are… an essential component of communicative competence in a university setting”, and yet morley (2001: 69) observes that “listening is still regarded as the least important skill”. for this reason, english for academic purposes (eap) instructors might wonder about the best way to teach academic listening skills so that students are adequately prepared for the demands of comprehending lectures in english. this is a valid concern of eap practitioners, and for many years a wide variety of research has been devoted to understanding classroom discourse and listening comprehension in academic settings. one research approach to the analysis of academic lectures that has recently become more widespread because of advances in technology is corpus-based research. “a corpus is a collection of texts, written or spoken, stored in machine readable form, which may be annotated with varied linguistic information” (mcenery et al. 2006: 345). once an electronic corpus has been compiled, computer programs such as concordancers can search for various linguistic features within the corpus texts. corpora are valuable tools for researchers and instructors alike; from the instructors’ perspectives, using a corpus as a resource or to inform their teaching with corpus-based findings may provide them with a sense of confidence. instead of relying on “intuitions and anecdotal evidence of how speakers and writers use language,” teachers can rely on a language corpus or the findings of corpora analyses to help them know how language is used in real life (biber et al. 2002: 10). further, conrad (1999: 3) states that “practicing teachers and teachers-in-training can learn a great deal from corpus-based studies and, in fact, owe it to their students to share the insights into language use that corpus linguistics provides”. corpus-based research is a valuable tool for classroom instruction and materials design; in the area of academic listening, one possible motivation for using corpus-based research is to better understand the type of language that is actually used in academic lectures, thus proving or disproving intuition. indeed, corpus-based studies on spoken academic language have revealed much about what type of language occurs in the classroom. one language feature that has come to light from such investigations is the lexical bundle. biber et al. (1999) define lexical bundles as sequences of three or more words that frequently occur in a particular register. biber et al. (2002: 443) add that these expressions “become ‘prefabricated chunks’ that speakers and writers can easily a little bit about: analysing and teaching lexical bundles in academic lectures language value 1, (1), 17–38 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 19 retrieve from their memory and use again and again as text building blocks”. in academic writing, frequent lexical bundles are expressions such as as a result of, on the other hand, and in the context of, among many others, and in academic speech, expressions such as a little bit about, i want you to, and if you look at. lexical bundles are identified empirically and determined by their frequency across a multitude of texts (biber et al. 2002). in this way, corpus based research, by permitting efficient examination of a large quantity of texts, has allowed for the discovery of bundles that otherwise would be nearly impossible to identify. other features of lexical bundles are discussed in more detail later in this paper in order to show that bundles can serve a wide variety of functions within discourse. the purpose of this paper is to examine five lexical bundles as identified by biber et al. (2004) and nesi and basturkmen (2006) that can be used to introduce new topics and organize the discourse in academic lectures. in order to illustrate how an eap instructor might go about using corpus data and concordance tools to better understand the function of these bundles and to design classroom materials, we survey the use of these bundles in micase, the michigan corpus of academic spoken english, which will be described in more detail in section 2. the following research questions were posed to guide our research: 1. how frequently do the topic-introducing/discourse organizing bundles if you look at, a little bit about, a little bit of, i want you to, and i would like you occur in the spoken production of instructors and students in the academic lectures of micase? 2. what are the teaching applications from the pattern of use of these bundles in academic lectures? thus, the current study is designed to show how eap practitioners can use the findings of current research along with available corpora and corpus-based research tools (e.g. concordancing programs) to not only analyze the use of linguistic features but also design lessons for the eap classroom. the rest of the paper is organized as follows. the next section describes how corpus-based research methods have contributed to the description of the language used to introduce new topics in academic lectures, focusing on lexical bundles that have been functionally classified as introducing or focusing on a topic. section three describes the methodology and the corpus used in this study. elizabeth neely and viviana cortes language value 1, (1) 17–38 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 20 section four presents the results of the analysis of lexical bundles and a discussion of those results. section five outlines the importance of lexical bundles in connection to academic listening comprehension. in the final section, the findings of this study are applied to the teaching of lexical bundles and listening comprehension by means of a series of activities that incorporate corpora and corpus-based research tools. ii. recurring phrases in academic lectures in this section we will present a brief review of the literature on lexical bundles in general and of the functions performed by lexical bundles in academic speech in particular. in addition, we will include a section on the relationship between lexical bundles and academic listening comprehension. ii.1. lexical bundles across registers: academic lectures within the field of research on academic lectures, special attention has been given to lexical phrases (e.g. de carrico and nattinger 1988: 91, 92). lexical phrases were defined as “‘chunks’ of language of varying length, phrases like as it were, that goes without saying, on the other hand,” and the assumption has been that knowledge of these chunks of language can “ease the problem of [listening] perception”. recently, with advances in technology and the prevalence of corpus-based research methodologies, lexical phrases within academic lectures have been revisited on a larger scale (rilling 1996). significantly larger numbers of transcribed lectures have been compiled into larger corpora, yielding a larger pool of information upon which to base findings. additionally, corpus-based research has allowed researchers to examine the lexical phrases in lectures without necessarily having pre-existing ideas of which phrases will be the most common. computer programs can be developed to search for commonly occurring three-, four-, or five-word (or longer) combinations. thus, corpusbased methodologies have allowed for a revelation of the frequently occurring lexical phrases in academic lectures that were not possible to identify before computers. this is the case of a particular type of word combination called lexical bundles (biber et al. 1999). according to biber and barbieri (2007) there are three characteristics of lexical bundles. the first one relates to their frequency: whether found in spoken or written a little bit about: analysing and teaching lexical bundles in academic lectures   language value 1, (1), 17–38 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 21 discourse, lexical bundles are extremely common, as previously mentioned. the second characteristic is that they are not idiomatic but transparent in meaning. their final characteristic is that they are usually not complete phrases or clauses. biber et al. (2004) determined that in spoken registers, lexical bundles act as functional frames that signal to the listeners how they should interpret the coming information. taken together, these characteristics would imply that lexical bundles, while occurring frequently, are not always obvious to the listener or the speaker due to their being fragments of language that are often used simply to frame other information. in this way, it is evident that corpus-based research, which objectively searches for frequencies of occurrences in large corpora, has been crucial in allowing lexical bundles to come into clearer focus. two recent studies that have contributed significantly to our understanding of lexical bundles in spoken academic discourse are biber et al. (2004) and nesi and basturkmen (2006). in the first study, biber et al. (2004) start their study by explaining two important considerations when identifying lexical bundles in texts: frequency and range. frequency refers to how often a phrase recurs. as the cut-off point used to consider a recurrent word-combination a lexical bundle is somewhat arbitrary (10 or 20 times in a million words depending on the study), for this study they chose a very conservative frequency-cut off point at 40 times in a million words. additionally, the authors mention that a phrase must be used in a range of texts, at least five different texts in the corpus, to avoid idiosyncratic use by individual writers or speakers. this feature is particularly important when trying to determine the phrases that students will encounter across a wide variety of settings. in addition, biber et al. (2004) provide insights into how lexical bundles are structurally and functionally classified, introducing a comprehensive functional taxonomy. the functional categories of lexical bundles identified in their study included stance expressions, discourse organizers, and referential expressions, with several sub-categories under each of these groups. in a broad sense, stance bundles provide a frame for which one can interpret coming information, discourse organizers allow for introducing new topics and elaborate on given topics, and referential bundles specify an attribute of something as being important. some of the bundles classified as discourse organizers will be analyzed in the current study, specifically those that have been labeled topic introduction/focus bundles, elizabeth neely and viviana cortes language value 1, (1) 17–38 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 22 which “provide overt signals to the student that a new topic is being introduced” (biber et al. 2004: 391). similarly to biber et al. (2004), the work of nesi and basturkmen (2006) examined the use of lexical bundles in academic lectures. these authors used monologic university lectures from two different corpora searching for four-word lexical bundles. their findings indicate that classroom teaching uses a large number of lexical bundles. the authors compiled a list of the 20 most frequently occurring bundles, 17 out of which were also reported in the findings of biber et al. (2004). in sum, the findings of both of these studies implicate that lexical bundles are frequently used in academic discourse and lend support to the necessity of knowing how bundles operate in introduction/focus bundles in these studies were used as a starting point for data analysis for materials development, as will be shown in the following section. ii.2. lexical bundles and academic listening comprehension two terms commonly used to describe listening processing are bottom-up and top-down listening processing skills. according to morley (2001), bottom-up skills call for the listener to pay attention to every detail of language input while top-down skills involve the listeners’ ability to access previous knowledge in order to understand what they are hearing. it has long been believed that problems in listening comprehension can arise when students depend too heavily on bottom-up rather than top-down skills; in this way, students may understand every word of an utterance without grasping the overall meaning. in this vein, chaudron and richards (1986) examined the effect of using what they termed micro-markers in academic lectures on students’ comprehension. micro-markers such as “well,” “now,” and “so” were believed to signal lower-level information and macro-markers such as “what i’m going to talk about today” were believed to signal higher level information. it was hypothesized that students would better comprehend a lecture when both microand macro-markers were used rather than when one or the other was used alone. what the results of this study showed was that students actually did better on the comprehension checks after listening to the lecture that used macromarkers alone rather than in addition to micro-markers or with micro-markers alone. a a little bit about: analysing and teaching lexical bundles in academic lectures language value 1, (1), 17–38 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 23 possible explanation for the benefit of macro-markers was that they allowed for better top-down processing, as students were able to categorize information based on those cues. the authors further concluded that the micro-markers added little in the way of semantic meaning and were possibly overlooked due to their inessentiality of the overall meaning. in light of the current study, an important note here is that some of the macromarkers chosen by chaudron and richards are actually similar to those lexical bundles identified in academic lectures, as shown in corpus data. for instance, the phrases what i’m going to talk about today is something you probably know and and that’s all we’ll talk about today as chosen by chaudron and richards (1986) contain the bundles (or similar bundles) what we’re going to and going to talk about as seen in biber et al. (2004). thus, from chaudron and richards, one might indirectly conclude that introduction/topic lexical bundles in academic lectures may actually help students better understand the structure of the lecture and utilize top-down rather than bottom-up processing. in addition, in a more explicit examination of the presence and distribution of lexical bundles in university classroom talk, csomay and cortes (in press) found that lexical bundles seem to aid in allowing the listener to follow the macro-level structure of classroom talk. iii. data and methodology the comparison of biber et al. (2004) and nesi and basturkmen (2006) provided us with a corpus-generated list of lexical bundles used to introduce new topics in academic lectures. from this list, the bundles if you look at, a little bit about, a little bit of, i want you to, and i would like you were chosen to conduct the analysis of the present study. the use of these five bundles was examined in the online version of the michigan corpus of academic spoken english (micase) and the concordancer software built in on its website. the search criteria were restricted by speech event type and speaker attributes. first, in examining the speech of instructors, the search criteria was limited so that the results only came from large and small lectures which were either interactive or monologic. the speaker attributes were limited so that only speech by faculty was considered in the results. then, in examining the speech of students, the results were limited to student presentations and dissertation defenses, and the speaker attributes elizabeth neely and viviana cortes language value 1, (1) 17–38 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 24 were limited to speech by students. with these restrictions established, there were 62 lectures used to gather data about the speech of instructors and 15 student presentation and dissertation defenses to analyze student speech. each speech event had a different speaker. a search was conducted for each of the five topic-introducing bundles selected for this study: if you look at, a little bit of, a little bit about, i want you to and i would like you. as the list of instances of occurrences came up, each instance was examined to determine the bundle’s function in the context, and these functions were compared to those described in biber et al. (2004) and nesi and basturkmen (2006). special attention was given to those bundles that did not function in the expected way (i.e. whose function did not resemble those in the reviewed studies) in order to better understand the nature of the bundle. iv. lexical bundle function in micase in this section, we present the analyses of the lexical bundles selected for this study in the speech of instructors first and then in the speech of students as identified in micase in order to carefully review the function they perform in these registers. the bundles’ use is illustrated by examples taken from the corpus. iv.1. if you look at instructor’s speech: the phrase was found 54 times across 34 transcripts. of the 54 occurrences, in 17 instances (31%) the bundle was used as topic introduction. by examining the co-texts, some interesting patterns were discovered. for instance, the contrastive transition word but preceded the bundle in some instances. “…uh dissolve in a liter of water, but if you look at this one a very very small number of moles of mercury-two iodide…” in keeping with the tendency of academic speech to resemble conversation as well as academic prose, the word so, which has been found to be a frequent conversational linking adverbial (biber et al. 2002) preceded the bundle as well, often when the bundle acted as the introduction of a new topic: a little bit about: analysing and teaching lexical bundles in academic lectures language value 1, (1), 17–38 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 25 “…that’s those n-o-three-minus anions that are highly soluble, uh will not precipitate. okay so if you look at question number one, uh, in your handout…” additionally, references to present time or a present object were made with the use of words such as here and now, both preceding and following the bundle. “…and, what can you see here especially if you look at the eyes, the hollow of the eyes, and the um, and the way the skin looks like she stood up out of a swamp.” a final observation was that if you look at was often used in order to draw student’s attention to an object, a visual representation, or part of class materials. “…so if you look at that top figure…” it is necessary to point out that two-thirds of the bundle occurrences showed the bundle used for topic elaboration or clarification, which is the second function of discourse organizing bundles as explained by biber et al. (2004). of these instances, if you look at was used 54% of the time with the meaning of “if you consider.” for example: “…about six lines from the bottom of that page where gertrudis is making an argument about how, well this is true if you look at it one way but it could be true if you look at another way and so on.” thus, it would not be enough to teach the topic introduction/focus function of this bundle in an academic listening skills class; both this function and the topic elaboration function should be emphasized. student speech: if you look at occurred 10 times in 5 transcripts of student speech. nine of these tokens can be interpreted to mean “if you consider” as in the following example: “…you don’t all of a sudden see a slew of multicultural films coming out every year. if you look at all the oscar nominees, um, if you look at the top ten grossing film [sic] sometimes you have…” elizabeth neely and viviana cortes language value 1, (1) 17–38 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 26 student speech seems to follow instructor speech in the tendency to use if you look at as a topic elaboration/clarification bundle. this finding emphasizes the fact that the bundle should be presented to students in both of the functions it often performs. iv.2. a little bit of instructor speech: in the corpus, a little bit about had 40 tokens across 22 texts and in 11 of these occurrences it was used to introduce a topic. in four of these occurrences, the bundle was preceded by the word spend and immediately followed by the word time, creating a six-word recurrent expression, spend a little bit of time. furthermore, three out of these four occurrences were part of the longer expression spend a little bit of time talking about, as shown in the following example: “…so, lemme spend a little bit of time and i mean a little bit of time talking about um a little bit about the continuous methods…” another frequent collocate of the bundle was the word reading that occurred in three occasions. on the other hand, 27 occurrences of a little bit about (68%) did not show it as introducing a topic. in these cases, the bundle was used as a quantifier. “…the application of serotonin itself, and you get a little bit of inhibition for a short period of time.” thus, in the instructor speech examples from micase, a little bit of functioned more often as a quantifier than a discourse organizer. this use as a quantifier could be attributed to instructors hedging when not sure of exact statistics or to deemphasize an action. these pragmatic implications for a little bit of should also be introduced to students. likewise, the phrase spend a little bit of time talking/discussing should be presented as a topic introduction marker, as it occurs relatively often in the corpus as well. student speech: a little bit about occurred 13 times in 7 texts of student speech. in 62% of the cases, it acted as a quantifier, similar to the tendency in instructor speech. in a little bit about: analysing and teaching lexical bundles in academic lectures language value 1, (1), 17–38 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 27 the remaining occurrences, it was used as topic introduction/focus. the following examples illustrate these functions, respectively: “…so i think that really until you could get a little bit of information, from an oral rsome real data, it’s gonna be hard to do…” “…um, and let me, tell you a little bit of this article, encountering language and language…” iv.3. a little bit about instructor speech: interestingly, a little bit about, while just one word different from a little bit of, showed a much stronger preference for acting as a topic introduction bundle. this bundle was used 81% of the time performing this function and it was preceded or followed by some reference to time, such as the word today or next. “…we talked about medical ecology on monday and today we’re gonna talk a little bit about epidemiology” student speech: the bundle a little bit about was used 6 times in 5 texts. four out of these six occurrences showed the bundle functioning as a topic introduction/focus marker. “…alright, let’s talk a little bit about mindspeak.” both in instructor and student speech, this bundle was often preceded by a communication verb such as tell, talk, and show. iv.4. i want you to instructor speech: the bundle i want you to occurred 43 times in 18 texts. this bundle was used only five times as a topic introduction marker. true to its nature as a directive, it was used as a kind of downplayed command, as if giving instructions or guiding the student to notice something: “…um , alright. let me tell you a couple other things i want you to know. you can control…” elizabeth neely and viviana cortes language value 1, (1) 17–38 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 28 the other 38 occurrences of this bundle showed it functioning as a directive but not introducing a topic. in these cases, the expression was used to ask students to literally do something as in the following example: “…assume a level of knowledge and comfort with uh archeological terminology that i don’t expect you to have so i want you to email me and let me know when you come across terms or concepts that you don’t know.” student speech: there were only five tokens for i want you to in 4 transcripts of student speech. in all 5 occurrences, the bundle was functioning as a directive, much as in the instructor samples. “…so, if you think that this is still a problem today, i want you to, um (do we stand up?) maybe we should stand up everybody…” iv.5. i would like you instructor speech: i would like you was mostly used as a directive in instructor speech. the bundle appeared only 5 times in four texts and was never used as a topic introduction marker. “…they are not in order. i would like you to rank them, from one to twentytwo, with one being…” student speech: there was only one token of this bundle produced by students, in which it functioned as a directive. “…when she comes she’ll come in around two o’clock, she’ll stay until around, two fifteen and i would like you asking her questions…” v. discussion this small-scale corpus study exemplifies how to go about using corpora to examine how language features are used by both instructors and students in academic settings and how implications for the instruction of academic listening skills can be drawn in order to inform the eap classroom. for instance, the data show that the lexical bundles a little bit about: analysing and teaching lexical bundles in academic lectures language value 1, (1), 17–38 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 29 analyzed in this study have numerous functions in academic lectures; labeling a lexical bundle as a “discourse organizer” or a “topic introducer” may serve as type of broad categorization, but often lexical bundles serve more than one purpose, a finding which aligns with that of biber et al. (2004). students should be aware of this flexibility that bundles have and should therefore be exposed to multiple occurrences of lexical bundles used to express different functions. for example, if you look at, while not always used to introduce a topic in a lecture or student presentation, was often used to ask students to turn their attention to a new object in the classroom or to imagine or contemplate a topic already under discussion. therefore, teachers should discuss this bundle’s tendency to be used to direct one’s attention, whether it be to a new topic or to contemplate a current topic further. the data also showed that certain bundles do have lexical preferences. for example, a little bit about seems to have a clear preference for being a discourse organizer, specifically a topic introducing bundle, and it commonly occurs with reference to time. teaching students this tendency would be very valuable, considering the frequency with which a little bit about is used in this way. likewise, a little bit of has a tendency to occur in the expression spend a little bit of time talking about, which has several functions. one might be that the instructor is making an aside to introduce knowledge that he/she thinks is important but has not been mentioned beforehand; another implication might be that the instructor is recognizing the importance of the students’ time and is showing a sign of politeness or rapport-building. without discussion about these subtle meanings, eap students may miss nuances of a lecture. as can be seen from the above results and discussion, lexical bundles are frequently used in academic lectures, and lexical bundles are used in a variety of types of academic lectures, varying by style (interactive or monologic) and subject. in addition, while a lexical bundle can have a primary function, the same bundle can be used for different functions across the span of a lecture. obviously, it would be beneficial to teach lexical bundles in regard to listening comprehension, but in what way? taking into account what research about lexical bundles in general and their use in the teaching of listening comprehension in particular, the next section will present our view of possible pedagogical applications of the findings of our study to english for academic purposes teaching settings. elizabeth neely and viviana cortes language value 1, (1) 17–38 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 30 vi. pedagogical applications: corpus-based activities in the classroom several criticisms of corpus-based classroom activities are addressed by flowerdew (2005). one criticism is that concordance, most often used to pull key words from the texts in a corpus with a line or so of surrounding co-text, only allow for bottom-up processing instead of top-down. similarly, another criticism is that corpus-based activities do not account for contextual features, since concordance programs only allow one to see a small “clip” of the entire picture. in other words, it has been argued that the “decontextualized nature of certain corpus-based activities have actually created an inauthentic language learning experience. yet flowerdew contends that corpus-based activities can be better contextualized by the use of whole texts; she states that “…carefully-chosen and appropriately constructed texts do lend themselves to more top-down processing” (p. 329). other criticisms have been aimed at the fact that much of the attention given to corpusbased activities has been from the perspective of instructors and materials developers but not students themselves. yet yoon and hirvela (2004), in their evaluation of students’ attitudes toward corpus-based language learning activities, established that the students actually found corpus activities to be useful ways of learning some types of features, such as words in context. additionally, these authors concluded that those students who had a strong desire to improve their language skills (writing skills in this case) were the ones who found the corpus-based activities the most useful. likewise, other researchers (cortes 2007, lee and swales 2006, thurstun and candlin 1998) also found that students appreciate corpus-based classroom activities when they are wellaligned with the goals of the course. thus, the research suggests that corpus-based activities can be effective teaching and learning tools when proper planning and instruction takes place. students should be aware that corpora and concordance programs are simply tools for language learning and should be treated as such. therefore, the following lesson plans, which focus on lexical bundles and listening comprehension, strive to include corpus-based activities in such a way that that students are encountering features (lexical bundles) within their context (academic lectures). the following series of lessons could be used consecutively or periodically over the length of a course. while they were not designed for an actual class, the intended a little bit about: analysing and teaching lexical bundles in academic lectures language value 1, (1), 17–38 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 31 audience would be a course of english for academic skills, particularly academic listening, in an esl or efl setting with students at the high intermediate or advanced level. as we wanted to concentrate on expressions that are used to mark the introduction of a topic in speech, for the purpose of this paper, only the lexical bundles if you look at, a little bit about, and a little bit of were used in the design of these activities in order to allow students to investigate how they are used to introduce topics in academic lectures. in the case of if you look at, the function of elaborating upon topics was also included in the units, as this function was also found to be very frequent in academic lectures. vi.1. lesson 1: comparing the language of textbooks to micase the first lesson aims at simply raising students’ awareness to the fact that the way that textbooks present materials (through “textbook” or contrived lectures) uses very different transition / topic introduction expressions from an actual academic lecture. as rilling (1996) suggests, one way to raise this awareness is to have students compare a textbook lecture to a lecture taken from a corpus (such as micase). students can examine an entire lecture or just an excerpt from both registers and make note of where transitions occur, as shown in figure 1. this could lead to a whole class discussion about the language used to make such transitions; while this activity will not necessarily highlight all of the bundles under examination, it will certainly raise students’ awareness of the vast difference between contrived and actual lectures. directions: read the following excerpt taken from a micase lecture on river flooding and mark the language the speakers used when they are going to introduce a topic. which words/expressions are generally used? alright great. the topic for today’s lecture is river floodplains, and what we’re gonna be doing is first i wanna talk about, the larger picture what it means, a watershed is and what drainage basins are, and then we’ll look at some specific drainage patterns which are actually, on page ninety-five i think, yeah in your coursepack. and then we’ll talk about the different processes, that are, that go on surrounding a river, followed by the elizabeth neely and viviana cortes language value 1, (1) 17–38 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 32 specific landforms of the floodplain, the climate of the floodplain, soils, and vegetation of the floodplain, and then if we have time we’ll look at slides of, um last week’s lab, when we went to sharon hollow, okay, so the first thing, is talking about this idea of a… figure 1. awareness-raising activity based on lecture excerpt. vi.2. lesson 2: lexical bundles in academic lectures the purpose of this lesson is to explicitly introduce lexical bundles and their functions, which can be done through a variety of activities. similar to lesson one, students should be led to noticing the ways in which the instructors introduce new topics within academic lectures, but attention should be drawn specifically to lexical bundles as language features that can have the function of introducing new topics. in order to lead this activity in the most authentic manner, an audio excerpt from micase could be used and students could be asked to listen for ways in which the speaker introduces new topics within the lecture. in order to focus on a particular lexical bundle at a time, several excerpts in which the bundle is used performing the function of introducing a new topic should be used to help students draw conclusions on the function of the bundle in different contexts. the following excerpt has been selected from micase to illustrate the way in which a little bit about has been used to introduce a new topic in these lectures. it would be advisable to present students with several excerpts from different lectures that include the bundle for them to draw their own conclusions. …so the average is somewhere, from point-two to two centimeters per thousand years. that's not very fast. and so you can see, if it were say one centimeter per thousand years, somewhere in the middle there, if the oldest part of the ocean is like two hundred million years old, uh a thousand years is ten-to-the-third, a million is ten-to-the-sixth, so it'd be one times ten-to-the-third, centimeters thick, on the oldest part of the ocean. that's not very thick... so uusually on the average you expect to ffind, a few hundred meters, of sediment. and that is indeed what you do find. now let's talk a little bit about each of these types of sediment. and we'll start with the terrigenous, stuff. <pause:09> it's very difficult... to carry sediment, out into the ocean very far. if you think about it, what happens? the the rivers flow down to the ocean a little bit about: analysing and teaching lexical bundles in academic lectures language value 1, (1), 17–38 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 33 right? in general in most places not every place but in most places, as you come down, from the mountains down through the hills down through the coastal plain, the level or the or the um, the steepness of the slope of the river gets lower and lower, and then when it hits the ocean, in a way it's like, hitting a sa rock wall i mean that it can't go any deeper than that, and so the flow, stops, in terms of river flow. and other processes take over. currents, tidal flushing in and out, longshore currents, wave generated currents, things like that, will then take that sediment that's delivered by the rivers, and move it around a little bit. but it's hard to get it out, out, far into the ocean. so the terrigenous sediment just tends to pile up around the edges. unless it's carried by the winds. and, of course dust, in the in the atmosphere, can go a long long way. in fact, uh, people have traced dust storms uh via satellite, well clear across the atlantic. (oceanography lecture) figure 2. example of lexical bundle use from micase. vi.3. lesson 3: familiarization with form and function the purpose of this lesson is to familiarize students with the form and function of lexical bundles. to do this, corpus-based activities similar to those of thurstun and candlin (1998) can be created, as shown in the figures below. first, students are given a page of one-line concordances for each of the bundles under examination (see figure 2) taken from micase, and they are guided in how to interpret the handout. students are asked to look at the words directly before and after the bundle and pay special attention to lexical patterns as well as the function the bundle is performing (as well as can be perceived). for further practice with form and function, a set of “fill-in-the-blank” exercises can be designed for students to determine the most appropriate bundle to use in a give context from micase, as shown in figure 4. a final example of this sort should include listening to a sample lecture so that students can identify the appropriate bundle within the context of that lecture. directions: examine the concordance lines containing a little bit about. notice the words immediately preceding and following a little bit about. is there a pattern? what do you think the speaker’s purpose was in using a little bit about? elizabeth neely and viviana cortes language value 1, (1) 17–38 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 34 also. on page ninety-seven…okay…so the next thing, is to talk a little bit about how the climate is different in these into a larger cohort of mice. and then, to conclude, i wanna talk a little bit about how this works. so, there’s really two it’s just a brief outline of what i’m talking about first i’ll go into a little bit about stress, uh and the different types of it ’re gonna talk about in case, people really care we’re gonna talk a little bit about the phytase content, we’re gonna talks …how ‘bout the role of groups in politics? wanna tell us a little bit about that? politics isn’t, politics doesn’t just that means of course, that you know, remember when we talked a little bit about range of resources available? states tha t one that you start out with…so my, final topics i'm gonna talk a little bit about the honeycomb problem, which is the t nna be. and then before that nothing happened right? we talked a little bit about that the other night when we talked abo e gonna talk a little bit about delayed ripening, we’re gonna talk a little bit about the phytase content, we’re gonna talk figure 3. activity based on concordancing lines from micase. directions: in each of the following sentences, a lexical bundle is missing. using the context of the sentence, decide which bundle should go in each blank. choose between if you look at and a little bit of …it's a good time to get into some of this. um this is just in the us. but this is actually, world wide so i wanna spend ____________ time talking about the extent, or extant i guess the the, distribution, of biotech, around the world. …now consistent with that, argument, are just a few things, first is that,___________the facial neuro-muscular mechanisms, fun to say that three times they show continuity from higher primates to man. we could’ve seen it after the glaciers left okay so that’s ______________ the soil profiles, how they get formed and then there’s six major soil orders. and um there’s other ones too but these… but now you start to look at other kiother hallucinogens. so ____________ something like mescaline. you see mescaline, which is a hallucinogen shows cross-tolerance and l-s-d doesn't bind to the one five or seven family. figure 4. fill-in-the-blanks examples taken from micase. a little bit about: analysing and teaching lexical bundles in academic lectures language value 1, (1), 17–38 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 35 a follow-up for this activity could consist of providing students with opportunities to continue noticing lexical bundles in a variety of academic context and reporting their analysis afterwards. students could then be asked to attend a public academic forum on their university campus (e.g. a special presentation, a guest lecturer, or some type of published speaking setting). students should be asked to pay special attention to how speakers organize their speech, to see if there are any key words or lexical bundles used. ideally, the purpose of this last activity is to increase students’ awareness of the presence of discourse organizers in the academic discourse they hear inside and outside the classroom. vii. conclusion the present study showed how it is possible to use existing corpus-based research findings in conjunction with publicly available corpora and concordance programs in order to design lessons and materials for the esl/efl classroom. in examining the presence of the bundles analyzed in this study in academic lectures, it was found that bundles should be taught presenting the complete spectrum of their functions in context for students to analyze these functions in discourse similar to the one they encounter daily in their academic lives. the series of lessons presented attempt to align current research in listening comprehension with the findings of corpus-based research, enabling students to become familiar with corpus-based research tools such as concordancing software. as corpus-based research findings become more popular and as publicly available corpora continue to increase, it is hoped that eap instructors will feel empowered to use these resources to inform their teaching and in the process of designing their classroom materials. references biber, d. and barbieri, f. 2007. “lexical bundles in university spoken and written registers”. english for specific purposes, 26, 263-286. biber, d., conrad, s. and cortes, v. 2004. “if you look at…: lexical bundles in university teaching and textbooks”. applied linguistics, 25, 3, 371-405. elizabeth neely and viviana cortes language value 1, (1) 17–38 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 36 biber, d., conrad, s. and leech, g. 2002. longman student grammar of spoken and written english. harlow: pearson education limited. biber, d., conrad, s., reppen, r., byrd, p. and helt, m. 2002. “speaking and writing in the university: a multidimensional comparison”. tesol quarterly, 36 (1), 9-48. biber, d., johansson, s., leech, g., conrad, s., and finegan, e. 1999. longman grammar of spoken and written english. london: longman. chaudron, c., loschky, l. and cook, j. 1994. “second language listening comprehension and lecture note-taking”. in flowerdew, j. (ed.) academic listening: research perspectives. cambridge: cambridge university press, 7592. chaudron, c. and richards, j. 1986. “the effect of discourse markers on the comprehension of lectures”. applied linguistics, 7 (2), 113-127. conrad, s.m. 1999. “the importance of corpus-based research for language teachers”. system, 27, 1-18. cortes, v. 2007. “exploring corpora in the english for academic writing class”. ortesol journal, 25, 9-16. csomay, e. and cortes, v. (in press). “lexical bundle distribution in university classroom talk”. in gries, s., s.wulff and m. davies (eds.). proceedings of aacl 2008. decarrico, j. and nattinger, j. 1988. “lexical phrases for the comprehension of academic lectures”. english for specific purposes, 7, 91-102. flowerdew, j. 1995. “research of relevance to second language comprehension – an overview”. in j. flowerdew (ed.), academic listening: research perspectives. cambridge: cambridge university press, 7-30. flowerdew, j. and miller, l. 1997. “the teaching of academic listening comprehension and the question of authenticity”. english for specific purposes, 16 (1), 27-46. a little bit about: analysing and teaching lexical bundles in academic lectures language value 1, (1), 17–38 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 37 flowerdew, l. 2005. “an integration of corpus-based and genre-based approaches to text analysis in eap/esp: countering criticisms against corpus-based methodologies”. english for specific purposes, 24, 321-332. lee, d. and swales, j. 2006. “a corpus-based eap course for nns doctoral students: moving from available specialized corpora to self-compiled corpora”. english for specific purposes, 25, 56-75. mcenery, t., xiao, r. and tono, y. 2006. corpus-based language studies. new york: routledge. morley, j. 2001. “aural comprehension instruction: principles and practices.” in celcemurcia, m. (ed.) teaching english as a second or foreign language. boston: heinle & heinle, 69-85. micase (n.d.) http://lw.lsa.umich.edu/eli/micase/research.html (see simpson et al.) nesi, h. & basturkmen, h. 2006. “lexical bundles and discourse signalling in academic lectures”. international journal of corpus linguistics, 11 (3), 283304. rilling, s. 1996. “lexical phrases as organizational markers in academic lectures: a corpusand computer-based approach to research and teaching”. ortesol journal, 17, 19-40. simpson r. c., briggs s. l., ovens j., and swales j. m. 2002. the michigan corpus of academic spoken english. ann arbor, mi: the regents of the university of michigan. thurston, j. and candlin, c. 1998. “concordancing and the teaching of the vocabulary of academic english”. english for specific purposes, 17 (3), 267280. tsai, m. 2001. “learning is a lifelong process.” in belcher, d. and u. connor (eds.) reflections on multiliterate lives. tonawanda: cromwell press ltd., 135-140. yoon, h. and hirvela, a. 2004. “esl student attitudes toward corpus use in l2 writing”. journal of second language writing, 13, 257-283. elizabeth neely and viviana cortes language value 1, (1) 17–38 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 38 received september 2009 cite this article as: e. neely and v. cortes. 2009. “a little bit about: analyzing and teaching lexical bundles in academic lectures”. language value, 1 (1), 17-38. servei de publicacions de la universitat jaume i: castelló, spain. http://www.erevistes.uji.es/languagevalue. issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue september 2009, volume 1, number 1 pp. 39-50 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors how the linguistic colonization of the present by the past influences the colonization of other cultures adopting english as second language c. a. bowers university of oregon abstract the conduit view of language that is widely taken-for-granted in the education of english speaking cultures has marginalized awareness that most of the english vocabulary are metaphors whose meanings were framed by the analogies that can be traced back to earlier thinkers. thus, words such as “property”, “wealth”, “progress”, “individualism”, “tradition”, “woman”, and so forth, carry forward the earlier ways of understanding—including the prejudices and silences of earlier eras. this essay addresses several of the implications of this process of linguistic colonization of the present by the past within the english speaking communities, as well as how the largely unrecognized process of cultural colonization by the past may be reproduced in teaching english as a second language. one of most important implications relates to how the meaning of words framed by earlier thinkers who were unaware of environmental limits continues to perpetuate the same patterns of thinking that is now globalizing an economic system that is ecologically unsustainable. another implication of not recognizing that the metaphorical nature of the english vocabulary has a history is that when learning english is associated with becoming modern and progressive, the process of cultural colonization continues. what is often marginalized are the intergenerational forms of knowledge, skills, and mutually supportive relationships that both english and non-english speaking cultures need to revitalize as alternatives to the consumer-oriented lifestyle that has such an ecologically destructive footprint. keywords: linguistic colonization, metaphor, double-bind, framing, ecological, intergenerational, sustainability two groups —english speakers and those who are learning english as a second language— now face a common threat. this is the ecological crisis that is impacting different regions and cultures in ways that vary from the melting of glaciers that are the source of water for hundreds of millions of people, to the drying up of aquifers, the collapse of local fisheries, the spread of droughts, the loss of forests, and the extinction of species that some scientists view as the early stage of entering the world’s 6th extinction of life. less often mentioned, but no less threatening, are the billions of pounds of chemicals, ranging from pcbs, dioxins, mercury, and pesticides— to cite only a few of the chemicals that have been put into the environment in the name of progress and profit. they can now be found in humans, the water supply, and in the how the linguistic colonization of the present by the past influences the colonization of other cultures language value 1, (1), 39–50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 40 plants and animals eaten around the world. the crisis has resulted in the poverty and hopelessness experienced by several billion people who are caught between the global spread of a money economy and the loss of their intergenerational knowledge that enabled previous generations to live a subsistence lifestyle within the limits and possibilities of their bioregion. the focus here will be on how much of the vocabulary that frames the thinking and values of people in english speaking countries and, by extension, the thinking of people who are learning to think and communicate in english as a second language, contributes to deepening the ecological crises. the problem that goes unrecognized in english speaking countries is the linguistic colonization of the present by the past. for people learning to speak english as a second language, the problem is an even more complex process of cultural colonization. linguistic colonization of the present by the past occurs in english speaking public schools and university classrooms, in the media, in the use of the internet by english speakers, and in daily conversations when it is ignored that the meaning of words (metaphors) are framed by cultural assumptions that were taken-for-granted at an earlier time in the culture’s development. what is widely overlooked in english speaking settings where students are being socialized in how to think and communicate about different aspects of their culture, as well as about other cultures, is that words have a history. the dominant message, as michael reddy pointed out in his pioneering essay, is that the educational processes as well as the everyday use of language, reinforce the idea that language is a conduit in a sender/receiver process of communication. in effect, the widely held assumption is that ideas, information, data, etc., can be put into words and then sent to others through the conduit of language (reddy 1979). this concept of language is important in maintaining several minor myths that have huge implications —for deepening the ecological crises and for contributing to the linguistic colonization of other cultures. first, the conduit view of language is essential to maintaining the myth that individuals are autonomous thinkers (or have the potential to become so). second, this view of language supports the idea that the rational process is free of cultural influences. this myth also requires assuming that words have a universal meaning — over time and for different cultures. the third myth is that there is such a thing as objective knowledge, information, and data. this myth hides the reality that observations and other ways of gathering c. a. bowers language value 1, (1), 39–50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 41 “objective” information, data, and ideas involve a human observer who relies upon a culturally layered metaphorical language that has a history that is seldom recognized. these three myths, as well as the idea that language is a conduit, marginalize awareness that most words are metaphors. the idea that the analogs that frame the meaning of words are derived from the individual’s embodied experiences, which george lakoff and mark johnson refer to as the source of “embodied reason” (lakoff and johnson 1999: 555), further marginalizes the awareness that words have a history, and that individuals are born into a community shared linguistic ecology that provides the initial cognitive schemata for interpreting the world, making value judgments, and that also influences the individual’s embodied experiences (bowers 2009, lakoff and johnson 1999). recognizing that words have a history should lead to the awareness of another fundamental characteristic of language. that is, most words are metaphors, and their meanings are framed by the process of analogic thinking. in 1885, friedrich nietzsche described the process of analogic thinking when he wrote “in our thought, the essential feature is fitting new material into old schemas…” (kaufman 1967: 273). that is, the initial understanding of what is new and thus unnamed is to identify what it is like, or what is similar. for example, in the early stage of developing computer technology there was an awareness that computers “processed” data and information. psychologists at that time also thought of human intelligence as processing information. this assumed similarity between computers and human thinking led to thinking of computers as devices that exhibited “artificial intelligence”. as people became more accustomed to thinking of computers as exhibiting intelligence, it has become the new analog for understanding the brain as a computer. another example of analogic thinking is in a textbook that explains that genes are passed from one person to the next in the same way that footballs are passed —which is an analog that most young students understand. in yet another textbook the students’ understanding of a crop of vegetables is introduced as the analog for understanding the life cycle of a forest. this analog leads to the basic misunderstanding that the main difference between farming the forest and a crop of vegetables is the mount of time between when the two “crops” can be harvested. this mapping of the familiar onto what is new may provide an initial basis for understanding, as long it is emphasized that the new and the already familiar are not represented as identical. what is often overlooked, however, is how the process of how the linguistic colonization of the present by the past influences the colonization of other cultures language value 1, (1), 39–50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 42 analogic thinking may involve ignoring that the differences are far more important than similarities. the dire consequences that may result from the choice of the wrong analogs can be seen in how president ronald reagan explained, in response to his critics, that an economy is like a game, and that the leader of the team does not change the plan in the fourth quarter. both an economy and a game may be based on a plan, but the difference is that one can walk away from a game that is poorly played and quickly put it in the past. but one cannot walk away and put out of thought an economy that is out of control. understanding the new in terms of the already familiar should alert students to being aware that words have a history, and that they carry forward the assumptions, prejudices, and silences of the individuals or groups who established the analogs that subsequent individuals or generations accept as framing the meaning of words. as other aspects of metaphorical thinking are explained, including how this process is key to understanding the linguistic colonization of the present by the past, other examples of metaphorical thinking will be introduced—including how to reframe the meaning of words by introducing new analogs that are ecologically and culturally informed. a key influence on the choice of analogies that frame and, over time, lead to the reframing the meaning of words, is the existence of what can be referred to as the root metaphors of the culture. the root metaphors in western cultures, such as patriarchy, anthropocentrism (a human-centered world), individualism, progress, mechanism, and now evolution, have their origins in the mythopoetic narratives, powerful evocative experiences, and other forces in the culture’s past and present experiences. root metaphors provide the largely taken-for-granted interpretive frameworks that influence cultural ways of thinking and practices in a wide range of activities — and over hundreds and even thousands of years. the vocabulary influenced by the root metaphor both reinforces its taken-for-granted status while at the same time excluding words that undermine its conceptual coherence. for example, johannes kepler (1571-1630) suggested that instead of thinking of the universe as a divine organism it should be thought of as a giant clockwork. this mechanistic root metaphor continues to be the basis of thinking in the area of artificial intelligence and even taken-for-granted by important environmental thinkers such as e. o. wilson who refers to the brain as a machine, and as a problem in engineering. the root metaphor of individualism started c. a. bowers language value 1, (1), 39–50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 43 out as an image or iconic metaphor that changed over time from being associated with being a subject, to being a citizen, to being self-creating, to being autonomous. it has now become a root metaphor (interpretative framework) in the west that leads to a taken-for-granted understanding that individuals own property and ideas, to the current understanding that they that construct their own ideas and values (as some educators now claim), to possessing civil rights, and so forth. this brief overview of the role of root metaphors, which are derived from the culture’s mythopoetic accounts of the beginning, purpose, and processes of reality, is meant to bring into focus a key aspect of language that is overlooked when the culture’s educational processes represent language as a neutral conduit. to restate a point made earlier, words have a history and in many instances the current meanings can be traced to an earlier period in the culture’s history when people were responding to a different set of circumstances. that is, analogies that framed the meaning of words that are still taken-for-granted today were settled upon by influential thinkers who were attempting to establish how to think about the changes taking place in their times. john locke, for example lived during a time of transition in the traditional feudal system of land ownership. the analogy that became his legacy to western cultures was to claim that private ownership of property is established through the person’s labor. adam smith, who was concerned about the restrictions of the mercantile system on local farmers and business, argued for “free markets” and observed that members of his community were engaging in activities he described as “truck, barter, and trade”. the analogs introduced by smith and the french physiocrats (who coined another metaphor, “laissez faire”) reflected the community-based experience and thinking of that era. however, the local markets that served as the analogs for his economic theory were ignored by readers who succeeded in reifying and thus turning his metaphorically based theory into a universal truth that has the same status as the law of gravity. that is, the cultural context as well as assumptions and prejudices of smith’s era have been ignored by today’s marketliberals who are working to globalize the layers of misunderstandings related to the idea of a free-market economy. to restate what is ignored when language is understood as a conduit in a sender/receiver process of communication: words are not objective representations of the real world, but are, as nietzsche pointed out, metaphorically based interpretations of people who were responding to the needs of their times. too how the linguistic colonization of the present by the past influences the colonization of other cultures language value 1, (1), 39–50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 44 often their responses to the challenges of their times involved a linguistic problem that gregory bateson has recently shed light upon. if we engage in examining the origins of the analogs that are carried forward and continue to influence today’s thinking, including the silences and prejudices, we would recognize what is now referred to by gregory bateson as double bind thinking (1972). conceptual and moral double binds result from relying upon earlier ways of thinking as the basis for addressing current issues and problems. double bind thinking increases the likelihood that the metaphors inherited from earlier thinkers will prevent us from recognizing the deep conceptual roots of the ecological crises for the simple reason that these earlier thinkers took for granted many of the same root metaphors that gave conceptual direction and moral legitimacy to the industrial and consumer-dependent culture that is overshooting the sustaining capacity of the earth’s natural systems. today, the major emphasis in addressing the ecological crisis is to rely upon technological solutions, which leaves these root metaphors unexamined. thus, economic growth is still seen as part of the solution to the crises of our times even though it further threatens the self-renewing capacity of natural systems. more specific examples of double bind thinking for speakers of english occurs when they ignore that the analogs that frame the meaning of much of today’s key words reproduce the prejudices, silences, and taken-for-granted deep cultural assumptions of earlier thinkers. for example, the analogs for thinking of “technology” as both culturally neutral and as an expression of progress, of “tradition” as a source of individual oppression and a restriction on progress, of “wealth” as measured in material possessions and money, of “intelligence” as an attribute of the autonomous individual and a process that occurs in the brain, of “freedom” as a right of the individual that needs to be expanded without limits, of “community” from the anthropocentric perspective that excludes awareness of the animals and plants that share with humans the same physical space, of “literacy” as representing a more advanced stage of cultural development, and so on, have all been influenced by different combinations of the west’s dominant root metaphors that were taken-for-granted in the past—and are still taken-for-granted by the majority of today’s speakers of english. c. a. bowers language value 1, (1), 39–50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 45 as we begin to recognize that both cultures and natural systems can be understood as ecologies (which means expanding the meaning of the word beyond how ernst haeckel reduced the greek word oikos in 1866 to mean the study of natural systems) the above metaphors, as well as many other english words (metaphors) take on profoundly different meanings. for example, both cultural and natural ecologies have a history and face the challenge of surviving into the future. given this understanding, culturally and ecologically informed analogs that frame the meaning of the word “tradition” no longer reproduce the enlightenment thinkers’ way of thinking of traditions as privileging small groups over others and of standing in the way of progress and rational thought. similarly, if we understand cultural and natural ecologies in terms of information circulating through the interdependent systems, and of the patterns that connect within and between both ecologies, it becomes clear that the old analogs for understanding “intelligence”, “freedom”, “individualism” and so forth, need to be radically revised. these context free metaphors were derived from the abstract theories of western philosophers and theorists who ignored other cultural ways of knowing as well as the cultural influences on their own thinking (bowers 2007). we also need to take account of what bateson refers to as the unit of survival —which takes account of how the individual is nested in the cultural ecology that is simultaneously nested in the natural ecology. as many non-english speaking cultures are facing the impact of global warming and other forms of environmental degradation that have far more severe consequences than what is being experienced in western countries, the problem of linguistic colonization of the present by the past becomes an even greater challenge where english is being adopted as a second language —and in some instances, as the primary language for relying upon western technologies and for participating in the global economy. if english words such as “development”, “modernization”, “market”, “progress”, “state”, “science”, “poverty”, and so forth, are taught as though they represent different universal possibilities, in the same way that gravity is understood as universal reality, then the colonization of the present by past influential english speakers is being ignored. that is, if students learning the meaning of english words do not question the current appropriateness of the analogs settled upon at earlier stages in the development how the linguistic colonization of the present by the past influences the colonization of other cultures language value 1, (1), 39–50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 46 of english speaking cultures, they will be undergoing the worst case scenario of linguistic colonization. if the english vocabulary were informed by analogs derived from a deep understanding of the differences in the world’s cultural ecologies as well as the natural ecologies, the linguistic colonization associated with learning english would not be so life threatening. but it would still be a form of linguistic and thus cultural colonization. given the thousands of years it has taken to revise the analogs as well as the underlying root metaphors for such english words as “environment” and “woman”, which are still not widely adopted in english speaking countries, it is not likely that other key metaphors in the english vocabulary will be revised in ways that avoid the double bind that albert einstein warned about when he observed that we cannot rely upon the same mindset to fix the problem that it created. there are a number of other important issues connected with learning english as a second language. one of the issues relates to learning english from a printed source. as walter ong and others have pointed out, print-based communication alters consciousness in fundamental ways (muhlhausler 1996, ong 1982). the form of cultural colonization that occurs when print-based communication is relied upon, such as in computer-mediated learning, is that print reproduces many of the characteristics of a conduit view of language, including how it hides that words have a culturally specific history as well as how it reinforces a taken-for-granted attitude toward abstract thinking. the printed word, whether appearing in a book or on a computer screen, marginalizes the importance of local contexts, tacit understandings, and the patterns of metacommunication that are integral to spoken english. it also marginalizes the importance of personal memory of identity forming narratives and relationships with mentors and others who nurture and model how to participate in the largely non-monetized intergenerational commons—which, in most cultures, have a smaller ecological footprint. in short, print-based approaches to learning english contribute to the reification of the analogs settled upon by earlier thinkers, thus making it difficult for the first-time learner to question them. there is another issue that arises when english is being learned as a second language. as local communities in english speaking countries are rediscovering the c. a. bowers language value 1, (1), 39–50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 47 intergenerational knowledge, skills, and practices that represent alternatives to the industrial and consumer dependent lifestyle that has such an adverse impact on the environment, there is beginning to be a change in the analogs that frame the meaning of such words as tradition, individualism, freedom, community, intelligence, progress, and so forth. for example, associating tradition with learning how to preserve vegetables as well as the daily practices of the older generation that are less reliant upon increasingly scarce sources of energy and water means that the enlightenment derived analogs that represented tradition as an obstacle to progress are less taken-for-granted today. similarly, the old analogs that represented all forms of change, especially in the area of technology and in the development of new markets and consumer goods, as the expression of progress are also being increasingly questioned as people are beginning to ask what traditions of community self-reliance are being overturned. the old analogs that framed the meaning of individualism, freedom, and community are also beginning to be questioned as the emerging root metaphor of ecology becomes more widely understood as the explanatory framework for understanding the interdependence between cultural and natural systems. the key point is that if the teachers of english as a second language are unaware that the ecological crises is causing fundamental linguistic changes among a small yet growing segment of the population in english speaking countries they may be teaching their students to adopt the meaning of words framed by the earlier analogs that are now being questioned and modified in way that take account of how to live more ecologically sustainable lives. changes in the root metaphors of patriarchy, anthropocentrism, and even mechanism, which framed the meaning of much of english vocabulary that still justifies economic and cultural colonization, are beginning to be revised as the explanatory power of new root metaphors such as evolution and ecology are recognized as more relevant to meeting today’s challenges. in effect, the emerging analogs that are reframing the meaning of words are being contested by reactionary groups still holding onto the assumptions that underlie the industrial and consumerdependent lifestyle, and the old analogs are being challenged by social groups who are beginning to exercise ecological intelligence that is informed about the interdependencies of cultural and natural systems. the linguistic changes occurring in english speaking countries that are resulting from the growing awareness of the cultural how the linguistic colonization of the present by the past influences the colonization of other cultures language value 1, (1), 39–50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 48 roots of the ecological crisis means that teaching english cannot be separated from helping students understand how linguistic changes mirror the contending political and economic forces in english speaking countries. there is a third issue that needs to be addressed in teaching english as a second language. that is, not only is there a need to introduce students to how the different ways in which key words are being contested and revised in english speaking countries, students also need to be encouraged to consider how the old analogs that framed the meaning of english words would, if accepted as the way everyday reality should be understood, undermine traditions that the students think essential to their own selfidentity and sense of community self-reliance. they should also be encouraged to question whether the new ecologically informed analogs that are changing the meaning of english words have implications for rethinking the historically constituted analogs that underlie their own vocabulary. do the historically constituted analogs that frame the meaning of key words in their own language take account of such challenges as the ecological crisis that earlier influential thinkers were unaware of? following ivan illich’s suggestion, wolfgang sachs published a series of essays by third world writers who examined how adopting the still dominant english meaning of such words as “development”, “progress”, “markets”, “needs”, “poverty”, and so on would introduce fundamental changes in local ways of thinking and practices. the collection of essays, titled the development dictionary: a guide to knowledge as power (1992), provides a model of what also needs to be included in teaching english. escaping from the subtle and complex ways in which linguistic colonization occurs can only be achieved by questioning the cultural assumptions taken-for-granted by earlier influential thinkers who established the analogs for judging what represents “developed” and “modern” cultures, and what cultures are to be viewed as undeveloped and backward. the ecologically informed analogs are reframing the meaning of words of these colonizing words by foregrounding the importance of such words and phrases as “ecologically sustainable”, “eco-justice”, and “local knowledge”. as the linguistic colonization of the present by the past is not unique to english, the need to conserve ecologically sustainable cultural practices is closely related to the need to conserve the diversity of the world’s languages. this will require greater awareness c. a. bowers language value 1, (1), 39–50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 49 that words are metaphors, that they have a history, and that the analogs that frame their meaning are derived from mythopoetic narratives and powerful evocative experiences that underlie culturally specific assumptions that are too often taken for granted. whether classroom teachers and university professors can avoid relying upon the conduit view of language that marginalizes the awareness that most words are metaphors that often carry forward the misconceptions, prejudices, and silences of earlier generations will be a challenge that must be met if they are to avoid the double bind that bateson and einstein identified. references bateson, g. 1972. steps to an ecology of mind. new york: ballantine books. bowers, c. a. 2007. “philosophy, language, and the titanic mindset”. language and ecology. http://ecoling.net/journal.html, 2 (1), 1-16 bowers, c. a. 2009. “why the lakoff and johnson theory of metaphor is inadequate for addressing the cultural issues related to the ecological crises” language and ecology http://ecoling.net/journal.html, 2, (4), 1-16. kaufmann, w. (ed.) 1967. friedrich nietzsche: the will to power. new york: vintage books. lakoff, g. and johnson, m. 1999. philosophy in the flesh: the embodied mind and its challenge to western thought. new york: basic books. muhlhausler, p. 1996. linguistic ecology: language change and linguistic imperialism in the pacific region. london: routledge. ong, w. 1982. orality and literacy: the technologizing of the word. new york. methuen publishers. reddy, m. j. 1979. “the conduit metaphor—a case of frame conflict in our language about language”. in ortony, a. (ed.) metaphor and thought. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press, 284-324. sachs, w. 1992. the develoment dictionary: a guide to knowledge as power. london: zed books. how the linguistic colonization of the present by the past influences the colonization of other cultures language value 1, (1), 39–50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 50 received may 2009 cite this article as: bowers, c. a. 2009. “how the linguistic colonization of the present by the past influences the colonization of other cultures adopting english as second language”. language value, 1 (1), 39-50. servei de publicacions de la universitat jaume i: castelló, spain. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue. issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue september 2009, volume 1, number 1 pp. 51-80 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors constitution of the white earth nation gerald vizenor university of new mexico abstract the constitution of the white earth nation was ratified by sworn delegates on april 4, 2009. the constitution declares a separation from the current federal constitution that consolidated six anishinaabe or chippewa reservations in minnesota. this federal constitutional association has not served the specific interests of the citizens of the white earth reservation. the disposition of treaty land, for instance, and the uses of natural resources cannot equitably be decided by any other government or federation of reservations. forty citizen delegates were appointed to deliberate the appropriate formation of an independent reservation government. in the past two years after three two-day constitutional conventions on the white earth reservation, gerald vizenor was named the principal writer of the new constitution. the constitution of the white earth nation was ratified at the fourth constitutional convention. the ratified constitution will soon be presented to the citizens of the reservation as a referendum. keywords: white earth, anishinaabe, constitution, nation, minnesota. prelude to a native charter the white earth reservation is located in three counties, becker, clearwater, and mahnomen, in northwestern minnesota. the legal boundaries of the reservation were established by federal treaty on march 19, 1867. the reservation was first governed by federal agents, and with the unbidden counsel of native elders and representatives of the community. the federal agents, who were stony and unlikable, in the main, ruled the reservation as an occupied territory held in trust by the federal government. the agents of the trust were mainly capricious and corrupt in the administration of the reservation. the hundreds of original families on the reservation had been removed according to the treaty from a wide area of woodland settlements in the northern sections of minnesota. alas, federal legislation partitioned the reservation into individual allotments, and subsequent state and federal legislation separated many native families from each other and from the treaty land. separated by federal racialist policies, and from the land by gerald vizenor language value 1 (1), 51–80 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 52 legislation that favored the timber speculators of white pine and other natural resources on the reservation. the anishinaabe elders resisted for several generations the unreasonable partitions of ethnic and racial policies. the notion of arithmetic blood quantum was concocted as a measure to determine federal services, tribal membership, and identity. title 25 of the united states code names and describes the laws relevant to the services provided by the government, for instance, education, health care, housing, land claims, child protection, family justice, and graves protection and repatriation. the severe quarter blood requirements for federal services have been amended, in certain circumstances, to accommodate reservation governments. many natives both liberal and traditional have declared that family descent, not blood quantum, determines personal associations and identity. the minnesota chippewa tribe was established by federal legislation as a government on june 18, 1934. six reservations, white earth, leech lake, fond du lac, bois forte, mille lac, and grand portage, were consolidated by a master constitution as a federation with a single government. the purpose of the federation, according to the revised constitution of the minnesota chippewa tribe, “shall be to conserve and develop tribal resources and to promote the conservation and development of individual indian trust property; to promote the general welfare of the members of the tribe; to preserve and maintain justice for its members and otherwise exercise all powers granted and provided the indians, and take advantage of the privileges afforded by the act of june 18, 1934.” the revised constitution of the minnesota chippewa tribe was adopted by the assistant secretary of the interior on september 12, 1963, and equivocally ratified by voters on november 23, 1963. the minnesota chippewa tribe provides that membership includes those persons of “indian blood whose names appear on the annuity roll of april 14, 1941, prepared pursuant to the treaty with said indians as enacted by congress in the act of january 14, 1889.” anishinaabe children born between april 14, 1941, the date of the annuity roll, and july 3, 1961, the approval date of the “membership ordinance” by federal agents, “to a parent or parents, either or both of whose names appear on the basic membership role,” shall be members according to constitution of the white earth nation language value 1, (1) 51–80 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 53 provisions of an application. moreover, these contingencies persist today. children who are “at least one quarter degree minnesota chippewa indian blood born after july 3, 1961, to a member, provided that an application for enrollment” was properly filed, are considered members. the united states policies and provisions based on blood quantum as racial evidence of reservation enumeration association, separates families. this practice of blood quantum, or racial arithmetic, would in time terminate the people named the anishinaabe. the anishinaabe of the white earth reservation convey and demonstrate sanguine notions of citizens and families. “there was no single system for determining who was a part of the community and who was not,” observed jill doerfler in anishinaabeg today, the newspaper of the white earth reservation. “more importantly the anishinaabeg maintained their identity as they adapted to new ways of life at white earth. identity was flexible and depended on the choices of individuals. ultimately, little was agreed upon except that rigid racial designations of ‘mixed-blood’ and ‘fullblood’ pushed by the united states government investigators were unacceptable and in direct conflict with all anishinaabeg understandings of identity.” the anishinaabeg “continue to use their own definitions even though they demonstrate a clear awareness” of the ethnic and racial applications of these notions by the federal government. the constitution of the minnesota chippewa tribe was created and imposed by the federal government. the constitution, a charter federation of six reservations, established a strong executive, and with reservation advisory committees, but no separate reservation judiciary. there were no real divisions of power in the government. the tribal executive committee, for instance, “shall be authorized to manage, lease, permit, or otherwise deal with tribal lands, interests in lands or other tribal assets; to engage in any business that will further the economic well being of members of the tribe,” and borrow money from the federal government. the white earth reservation is one of the largest in the federation, and there are specific treaty, charter, and constitutional issues that should be the reserved powers of the reservation, and not decided by the federation. tribal executive committee decisions about individual reservation resources, for instance, and the actual division and distribution of land claims and settlements could be adverse to the citizens of the gerald vizenor language value 1 (1), 51–80 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 54 white earth reservation. for these, and many other reasons, a new constitution was proposed to separate the white earth reservation from the jurisdiction of the federated minnesota chippewa tribe. erma vizenor, chief of the white earth reservation, was reelected for a second fouryear term in 2008. she has clearly articulated a determination to create a new constitution that would provide a separation of powers, the executive, legislative, and judiciary, that would fairly protect the treaty resources and land claims of the reservation. the ratification of a new constitution would mean the separation from the federation of the minnesota chippewa tribe. chief vizenor invited reservation communities to nominate eligible citizens to serve as official delegates to the white earth constitutional convention. and, she provided for the nomination of two at-large delegates. erma, who is related by marriage, nominated me as a delegate, and later she named me the principal writer of the constitution of the white earth nation. the constitutional convention convened for the first time on october 19, 20, 2007, at the shooting star casino hotel, white earth reservation, mahnomen, minnesota. judge anita fineday presided over the oath, a solemn promise to serve as delegates. that evening and the following day the delegates convened in groups of five to consider the course and significance of discussions about the general content of the proposed constitution of the white earth nation. the delegates used the words “reservation” and “nation” in the same sense at the start of the convention. later, a distinction was made between the treaty reservation, cultural sovereignty, and the relevant constitutional declarations of a nation. the delegates eagerly pronounced their confidence in the inauguration the new constitution, and, at the same time, many delegates raised serious issues about the definition of a citizen, by blood quantum or by family descent. the word “member” was renounced in favor of “citizens” of a nation. i declared, in my introduction as a delegate, that i could imagine the day when the constitution of the white earth nation would be taught in public schools, and that i would carry in my pocket a reference copy of the new constitution. i was probably more idealistic than some delegates about the creation of an actual constitutional document, but, at the same time, i had my doubts about how constitution of the white earth nation language value 1, (1) 51–80 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 55 the diverse views of forty delegates, and some delegates espoused notions of racial separatism, could be reconciled by association, discussion, and inescapable compromises to create a document of individual rights, duties, and principals of governance and justice. robert dahl pointed out similar circumstances in the necessary compromises made by delegates to the convention of the united states constitution. “the delegates had to confront still another stubborn limit: the need to engage in fundamental compromises in order to secure agreement on any constitution at all,” dahl wrote in how democratic is the american constitution? “compromises were necessary because, like the country at large, members of the convention held different views on some very basic issues.” the second constitutional convention was held on january 4, 5, 2008. the shooting star casino hotel was a comfortable and convenient place to schedule the four conventions. delegates arrived in the early afternoon, convened for dinner, followed by general discussions, and stayed over night for a full day to exchange ideas. surely, some of the delegates were pleased to have the evening to gamble at the casino. the third convention was scheduled on october 24, 25, 2008. the number of delegates in attendance had slightly but steadily decreased with each convention. i demonstrated my concern that the attendance of delegates would be eroded to a bare majority if there were more than four conventions. erma vizenor was persuaded by my argument and declared that ratification would be considered on april 3, 4, 2009, at the last convention. erma named me the lead or principal writer of the proposed constitution, and with a committee of three advisors: jill doerfler, assistant professor of indian studies, university of minnesota, duluth; joanne stately, vice president of development for the indian land tenure foundation; and anita fineday, chief tribal court judge, white earth nation. erma convened one last committee discussion session on january 9, 2009, at the brenda café in minneapolis to discuss the final suggestions and changes to the draft constitution. i made the minor changes and prepared the proposed constitution for consideration and ratification by the delegates. gerald vizenor language value 1 (1), 51–80 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 56 the constitution of the white earth nation was ratified by the delegates on saturday, april 4, 2009. the ratification was by secret ballot of twenty-four delegates present. sixteen delegates voted for ratification, and eight delegates voted against ratification. the constitution of the white earth nation will now be presented to eligible citizen voters in a referendum. there are more than twenty thousand citizens of the white earth nation. i duly completed the changes approved by a majority vote of the delegates, including the addition of two elected members of the legislative council from outside the reservation community but in minnesota. the changes in the final version of the document were only minor. the constitution of the white earth nation was posted on several websites and published in the reservation newspaper, anishinaabeg today. presentation at the final convention the constitution of the white earth nation provides and ensures a continuation of the native practices of reciprocity, cultural survivance and sovereignty, and the foundations of native common law. the constitution, ratified on saturday, april 4, 2009, confirms in conscience and custom the principles of anishinaabe governance, common justice, and native continental liberty. the constitution of the white earth nation entitles the delegates and citizens to say with confidence, “i know my rights.” by this constitution we become a nation that advances the formal practices of governance, cultural sovereignty, liberty, suffrage, and the rights of citizens. by this constitution we exercise a new political power and communal duties derived from the traditional practices of the anishinaabe. these were the cultural practices of continental liberty, reciprocity, courage, and the survivance of our ancestors. and by the legacy of other constitutions, documents, and the perceptive ideas of liberty inspired by the magna carta, we become a new nation. the magna carta, the great charter of freedoms, was first issued almost eight hundred years ago in 1215. the magna carta is the foundation chronicle of liberty in england. this ancient, original document considers grievances over feudal land, capricious constitution of the white earth nation language value 1, (1) 51–80 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 57 taxation and the autocratic justice of the monarchy. the magna carta announced, for instance, that no person would be imprisoned, or exiled, without the lawful judgment of his peers. later, these principles of fundamental justice were provided in the habeas corpus act of 1679 in england. the magna carta declared that no monarch was above the law. this document became one of the most significant influences in the development of common law and subsequent constitutions around the world. the constitution of the white earth nation declares a solemn association of these native and occidental traditions of human rights and liberty. the second magna carta, an anonymous document, was published in 1771, sixteen years before the adoption of the united states constitution. notably, the second magna carta called for “forty-eight representatives from the american colonies (including some for the indian nations) to be allotted seats at the westminster parliament.” the american revolution concluded the inspired representation of native nations at the parliament. the united states constitution was proposed and adopted by unanimous consent and signed by thirty-nine delegates at the constitutional convention in philadelphia on september 17, 1787. seven articles, including the last article which is the “ratification of the conventions of nine states, shall be sufficient for the establishment of this constitution between the states so ratifying the same.” delaware was the first state to ratify on december 7, 1787. new hampshire, the ninth state, confirmed the ratification on june 21, 1788. the constitution was actually ratified by all thirteen states. the united states constitution created a government on march 4, 1789. george washington was elected the first president and took the oath of office on april 30, 1789. “the fact that we purport to follow and be bound by the constitution that was proposed in 1787, ratified in 1789, and formally amended just 27 times,” wrote laurence tribe in the invisible constitution, “is due, in large part, to the fact that it is a single and singular text, one writing, that memorializes the commitments defining us over the course of time in a ways that neither our physical territory nor the multiple ancestral origins of our nation can. indeed, the physical writing itself—from the parchment gerald vizenor language value 1 (1), 51–80 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 58 signed in philadelphia in 1787 and still carefully preserved at considerable expense in the national archives to the numbered copies of the original that circulated physically throughout the several ratifying states—is almost instinctively treated with a devotion ordinarily accorded only to an object of national veneration, rather than any mere statute.” the constitution of the white earth nation was conceived by the stance of resistance, by the shared sentiments and associations of continental liberty, and by the epitome of cultural sovereignty and constitutional governance. the declaration and protection of human rights is a universal sentiment, and that promise has been ratified by the delegates in the constitution of the white earth nation. the first ten amendments to the united states constitution, the bill of rights, provide the foundations of liberty, that no law respecting religion or prohibiting free expression thereof, the freedom of speech, assembly and petition of grievances, the right to keep and bear arms, no unreasonable searches or seizures, due process of law, speedy and public trial, no excessive bail, and powers not delegated to the united states by the constitution are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people. the bill of rights was ratified in 1791. the constitution has been amended only twenty-seven times in more than two hundred years. “the american commitment to freedom of speech and press is the more remarkable because it emerged from legal and political origins that were highly repressive,” observed anthony lewis in freedom for the thought that we hate. “the colonists who crossed the atlantic in the seventeenth century came from an england where it was extremely dangerous to utter a thought that differed from official truth. the state defined what was allowable in politics and, perhaps even more rigorously, in religion.” the fifth amendment, ratified in 1868, at the same time the white earth reservation was established by federal treaty, provides that “representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting whole numbers of persons in each state, excluding indians not taxed.” “indians not taxed!” now, by the stories of resistance, courage, political and artistic irony, and a sense of survivance, our ancestors and families of the fur trade anticipated this extraordinary constitution of the white earth nation language value 1, (1) 51–80 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 59 moment of continental liberty. the anishinaabe delegates to the four conventions, taxed or not taxed, considered, compromised, and ratified the constitution of the white earth nation. the white earth constitution provides in each chapter a crucial composition of checks and balances, a distinct organization of the powers, measures, limitations, and constraints of three branches of government, the executive, legislative, and judicial. the composition of these powers of governance would embrace the necessary advice of the community councils, the council of elders, and the youth council. “so the visible constitution necessarily floats in a vast and deep—and, crucially invisible—ocean of ideas, propositions, recovered memories, and imagined experiences that the constitution as a whole puts us in a position to glimpse,” wrote tribe in the invisible constitution. the constitution of the white earth nation contains two preambles, the first announces the sentiments of cultural sovereignty and continental liberty, and the second is a declaration of essential political sovereignty and inalienable rights. there are twenty chapters and one hundred eighteen specific articles on the branches of the government and the rights of the citizens. i declared at the first constitutional convention that one day we would carry in our pockets a printed copy of the ratified constitution of the white earth nation. the sworn delegates to the final constitutional convention have created by the ratification of this document, a great and memorable moment in the history of the white earth nation. the constitution ensures a continuation of compassionate reciprocity, cultural sovereignty, survivance, and entitles the delegates and citizens to say with confidence, “i know my rights.” gerald vizenor language value 1 (1), 51–80 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 60 the constitution of the white earth nation gerald vizenor university of new mexico preamble the anishinaabeg of the white earth nation are the successors of a great tradition of continental liberty, a native constitution of families, totemic associations. the anishinaabeg create stories of natural reason, of courage, loyalty, humor, spiritual inspiration, survivance, reciprocal altruism, and native cultural sovereignty. we the anishinaabeg of the white earth nation in order to secure an inherent and essential sovereignty, to promote traditions of liberty, justice, and peace, and reserve common resources, and to ensure the inalienable rights of native governance for our posterity, do constitute, ordain and establish this constitution of the white earth nation. chapter 1: territory and jurisdiction the white earth nation shall have jurisdiction over citizens, residents, visitors, altruistic relations, and the whole of the land, including transfers, conferrals, and acquisitions of land in futurity, water, wild rice, public and private property, right of way, airspace, minerals, natural resources, parks, and any other environmental estates or territories designated by and located within the boundaries of the white earth reservation, as established and described in the treaty of march 19, 1867, and over the reserved rights within the ceded waterways and territories of the treaty of 1855. the constitution of the white earth nation was duly ratified on april 4, 2009, at the shooting star casino hotel, mahnomen, minnesota. copyright © by gerald vizenor constitution of the white earth nation language value 1, (1) 51–80 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 61 chapter 2: citizens of the white earth nation article 1 citizens of the white earth nation shall be descendants of anishinaabeg families and related by linear descent to enrolled members of the white earth reservation and nation, according to genealogical documents, treaties and other agreements with the government of the united states. article 2 services and entitlements provided by government agencies to citizens, otherwise designated members of the white earth nation, shall be defined according to treaties, trusts, and diplomatic agreements, state and federal laws, rules and regulations, and in policies and procedures established by the government of the white earth nation. article 3 the anishinaabeg and their descendants shall have the right to appeal to the president and to the white earth court any decisions that deny citizenship in the white earth nation. article 4 no person or government has the privilege or power to diminish the sovereignty of the white earth nation. chapter 3: rights and duties article 1 the white earth nation shall make no laws that would establish a religion, or laws that would deny the free expression of religion, speech, or of the press and electronic communication. article 2 the white earth nation shall make no laws that deny the right of the people to peaceably gather or assemble for any reason, and shall make no laws that prohibit the right to petition the government for restitution, amendments, or redress of grievances, gerald vizenor language value 1 (1), 51–80 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 62 and no person shall be discriminated against for initiating or espousing an untimely or contrary petition about governance. article 3 the people shall not be denied the fundamental human rights of citizenship in the white earth nation. article 4 the people are equal under the law and no law, government policy, or agency practice shall discriminate in political, economic, social or cultural associations because of race, creed, sex, gender, disability, or social status. article 5 the freedom of thought and conscience, academic, artistic irony, and literary expression, shall not be denied, violated or controverted by the government. article 6 the secrecy of personal communication shall not be violated, and no censorship shall be practiced or maintained by the government. article 7 the right to own and transfer of private property is inviolable. the rights of property shall be protected, and private property expropriated for public use shall be according to due process of law and just compensation. article 8 no person shall be denied or deprived of life or liberty, except certain serious misdemeanors and felony convictions, and no criminal penalties shall be imposed without due process of law and judicial procedures. article 9 no person shall be apprehended by law enforcement officers without probable cause and due process of law or by warrant duly issued by a court. constitution of the white earth nation language value 1, (1) 51–80 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 63 article 10 the people shall have the right to possess firearms except for convicted felons in accordance with state and federal laws. article 11 the people shall be secure in their homes, personal papers and documents, against entries, electronic and material searches, without a specific, descriptive warrant for adequate cause issued by a court. each search and seizure shall require a separate, specific warrant issued by a court, except in cases of probable threats or potential emergencies. article 12 no person shall be obligated to testify or provide evidence in a court against himself or herself, and any confessions obtained under compulsion, torture, or threats, or after arrest and excessive detention, may not be admissible as evidence in court. no person shall be convicted or punished for a crime when the only evidence against him or her is a confession, except in cases of crimes that can be proven by other evidence. article 13 no person shall be subject to trial twice for the same criminal indictment or offence. article 14 no person shall be denied the right to be duly informed of the nature and cause of a warrant, indictment, or criminal proceeding, and shall not be denied the right to be represented by legal counsel. article 15 the people shall have the right to confront and challenge witnesses in a criminal court, and the legal option of a speedy court hearing or public jury trial shall not be refused or contradicted. article 16 citizens shall never be banished from the white earth nation. gerald vizenor language value 1 (1), 51–80 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 64 article 17 the constitution of the white earth nation is inspired by inherent and traditional sovereignty, and contains, embodies, and promotes the rights and provisions provided in the articles and amendments of the indian civil rights act of 1968, and the united states constitution. chapter 4: sovereign immunity the white earth nation declares sovereign territorial, political and cultural rights and powers as an independent government and immunity to civil law suits. the legislative council by certain formal policies and procedures shall have the right to waive the sovereign immunity of the government in the best interests of the white earth nation. chapter 5: board of elections article 1 citizens must be at least eighteen years old to vote in government referenda and elections. article 2 election and voting procedures shall be established by an election code and managed by an independent board of elections appointed by the legislative council. article 3 the board of elections shall consist of five eligible citizen voters of the white earth nation. the chief judge of the board of elections shall administer and supervise election regulations and procedures according to provisions of the election code. the chief judge shall not vote as a member of the board of elections. article 4 members of the board of elections shall ensure fair and impartial elections according to the election code and the constitution of the white earth nation. constitution of the white earth nation language value 1, (1) 51–80 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 65 article 5 the legislative council shall resolve any challenges or allegations of impropriety of election laws or procedures. article 6 citizens who become candidates for elected positions in the government shall not be members of the board of elections. the legislative council shall appoint the chief judge and replacements to the board of elections. chapter 6: governance article 1 the white earth nation shall be governed by a representative and elected legislative council. article 2 the legislative council shall consist of a president, or white earth chief, the secretary treasurer, and elected representatives of acknowledged communities of the white earth nation. article 3 the respective communities shall be entitled to one elected representative to serve on the legislative council. article 4 communities shall be established or changed by petition, by population, historic or totemic associations, and ratified by a simple majority of eligible citizen voters in a general referendum. article 5 the president and the secretary treasurer shall be elected at large by eligible citizen voters of the white earth nation. gerald vizenor language value 1 (1), 51–80 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 66 article 6 the president, secretary treasure, and representatives of the legislative council shall be elected for no more than two four year terms, and staggered elections shall be ordered every two years. article 7 two citizens of the white earth nation shall be elected at large to serve constituencies outside the white earth reservation in the state of minnesota. article 8 the legislative council shall have the authority to propose changes in the count of elected representatives based on changes in population or the number of acknowledged communities. proposals to change the count of representatives shall be subject to a majority vote of citizens in a referendum. article 9 candidates for elected government offices shall be citizens who reside within the treaty boundaries according to the treaty of march 19, 1867, of the white earth nation, except two citizen members of the legislative council who shall be elected at large in the state of minnesota. article 10 citizens who have been convicted of a felony may vote in elections and referenda but shall not be eligible to hold elected offices in the white earth nation. article 11 candidates for elected government office shall be at least twenty-five years of age at the time of the election. article 12 the legislative council shall appoint a new president in the event of the death, resignation, incapacity, or removal of the duly elected president. the appointed president shall serve the remainder of the elected term of the office. constitution of the white earth nation language value 1, (1) 51–80 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 67 article 13 the legislative council has the power to initiate impeachment proceedings of elected representatives of the government for specific allegations of misconduct, criminal indictments, or felony convictions. to initiate impeachment procedures requires at least a two-thirds vote of the legislative council. article 14 there shall be two distinct procedures of impeachment. the first is admonition of misconduct but no other action or decree, and the second procedure is impeachment and removal from elected office. article 15 the white earth nation shall obligate candidates for elected offices not to disburse in campaign services, promotion and advertising more than three times the amount of the annual national family poverty guidelines, for one person in the contiguous states, established and published in the federal register by the united states department of human services. article 16 candidates for elected office shall file a formal report no later than thirty days after the election with the chief judge of the board of elections. the report shall be an affirmation of total election contributions and disbursements of the candidate. article 17 the president and legislative council of the white earth nation shall maintain public records and documents for posterity. the president shall nominate an archive to secure the public records and documents. chapter 7: community councils the community councils shall be initiated and established in geographically based communities by citizens of the white earth nation. the community councils shall provide communal information, guidance, and recommendations to both the legislative council and the president on matters of concern to the citizens. the community gerald vizenor language value 1 (1), 51–80 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 68 councils shall promote, advance and strengthen the philosophy of mino-bimaadiziwin, to live a good life, and in good health, through the creation and formation of associations, events and activities that demonstrate, teach and encourage respect, love, bravery, humility, wisdom, honesty and truth for citizens. chapter 8: council of elders the council of elders shall be nominated by citizens and designated by the legislative council. the council of elders shall provide ideas and thoughts on totemic associations, traditional knowledge, cultural and spiritual practices, native survivance, and considerations of resource management, and advice the legislative council. the council of elders shall consist of twenty citizens of the white earth nation who are at least fifty-five years of age at the time of appointment. chapter 9: youth council the youth council shall be nominated by citizens and designated by the legislative council. the youth council shall provide information about matters that affect young people and advise the president and legislative council. the youth council shall consist of twenty citizens who are between the ages of twelve and eighteen, and who are residents of the white earth nation. chapter 10: separation of powers the white earth nation shall be divided into three separate branches of government. the executive branch is the elected president, the board of elections, council of elders, youth council, and other executive designations. the legislative branch includes the representatives elected to the legislative council. the judicial branch of government is the judiciary and white earth courts. the three respective branches of government shall have no authority over any other branch, except for certain nominations and other provisions specified in the constitution of the white earth nation. constitution of the white earth nation language value 1, (1) 51–80 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 69 chapter 11: the president article 1 the president, or white earth chief, shall be the official national and international elected representative of the white earth nation. article 2 the president shall have the authority to secure and accept grants, negotiate agreements with associations, foundations, organizations, institutions, corporations, municipal, state, federal, and local governments, and other states and nations in the world with the ratification of the legislative council. article 3 the president shall be responsible for the administration and management of the government, and shall implement and execute the laws, ordinances, resolutions, and other enactments of the legislative council. article 4 the president shall approve by signature the laws, ordinances, measures, resolutions and appropriations of the legislative council. article 5 the president shall have the power to veto proposed laws, ordinances, measures, and resolutions initiated by the legislative council. article 6 the president shall return within five days vetoed or rejected proposed laws, ordinances and measures with a required statement of objection. article 7 the legislative council may overcome any veto of proposed laws, ordinances and resolutions by a two-thirds vote of the elected representatives. article 8 the president shall have the authority to appoint executive branch administrators and other officials to serve the white earth nation. gerald vizenor language value 1 (1), 51–80 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 70 article 9 the president shall have the power to schedule and preside over sessions of the legislative council. article 10 the president shall not vote except in the case of a tie vote of the legislative council. article 11 the president shall deliver an annual address dedicated to the state of the white earth nation. article 12 the president shall be bonded as an elected official. article 13 the president may serve no more than two four year elected terms. article 14 the president shall promote, protect, and defend cultural and political sovereignty and the constitution of the white earth nation. article 15 the president shall have the authority to nominate honorary ambassadors, consuls, citizens, and to initiate and establish embassies of the white earth nation to serve the national and international concerns of native survivance and moral equity. chapter 12: the legislative council article 1 representatives of the legislative council shall propose and enact laws, codes, ordinances, resolutions, and statutes of the white earth nation. article 2 the legislative council shall have the authority to raise general revenue, levy and collect taxes for government services and operations, establish license and service fees, constitution of the white earth nation language value 1, (1) 51–80 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 71 and initiate other specific levies and taxes for the welfare of the citizens of the white earth nation. article 3 the legislative council shall have the authority to borrow money, issue public bonds, appropriate funds for the operation of the government, and to initiate other monetary policies in the interests of the white earth nation. article 4 the legislative council shall promote and protect the health, public welfare, safety, education, and the cultural and political sovereignty of the citizens of the white earth nation. article 5 the legislative council shall establish subordinate and secondary boards, appoint delegates, and reserves the right to review the initiatives and actions of the delegates and boards. article 6 the legislative council shall be responsible for the proper management of government programs, land, waterways, resources, commerce, public housing, transportation, casino operations, business enterprises, and other assets of the white earth nation. article 7 the legislative council shall have the authority to control the distribution and sale of alcoholic beverages within the treaty boundaries of the white earth nation. article 8 the legislative council shall not establish, support, or embody any covert political, military, or intelligence operations, without due process of law and legal warrants, against peaceable citizens of the white earth nation. article 9 the legislative council shall have residual powers, and the powers of governance provided, specified and entrusted in the constitution shall not be construed as the gerald vizenor language value 1 (1), 51–80 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 72 limitation of legislative power or authority. the powers of the government not specifically expressed or entrusted to the legislative council shall be reserved to the citizens of the white earth nation. chapter 13: the secretary treasurer article 1 the secretary treasurer shall be bonded and responsible for monetary and financial matters, resources, documents and records of the legislative council. government records shall be available for public inspection and review. article 2 the secretary treasurer shall schedule an annual audit of funds, monetary transactions and records, deposits and expenditures by a duly certified independent auditor. article 3 the secretary treasurer shall carry through official duties and responsibilities of the president and the representatives of the legislative council. article 4 the secretary treasurer shall be a voting member of the legislative council. article 5 the secretary treasure shall provide and publish an annual fiscal report and accounting of the white earth nation. chapter 14: the judiciary article 1 the judiciary shall consist of the white earth court, court of appeals, and other courts established by the legislative council. constitution of the white earth nation language value 1, (1) 51–80 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 73 article 2 the white earth court shall have the power of judicial review and jurisdiction over any legal matters, disputes, civil procedures and criminal laws, ordinances, regulations, codes and customs of family relations, protection, and dissolution, adoption, domestic violence, juvenile justice, and probate, housing and property, conservation, taxation, governance, the corporate code, election disputes, and constitutional issues of the white earth nation. article 3 the court of appeals shall have original and appellate jurisdiction. the court of appeals shall hear case appeals and issues initiated by the legislative council. decisions of the court of appeals are conclusive. chapter 15: powers of the white earth courts article 1 the courts shall have the authority to interpret and construe the laws, ordinances, and regulations of the legislative council and the constitution of the white earth nation. article 2 the courts shall issue legal decisions, injunctions, reviews, writs of mandamus, extradition, certiorari, writs of habeas corpus, and other legal orders, instruments and documents. article 3 the courts shall establish procedures, rules, legal forms, and review by formal requests of citizens the specific and comprehensive constitutional validity of laws, ordinances and codes initiated and passed by the legislative council. article 4 the courts shall ensure and practice restorative justice in civil actions, minor criminal offences, juvenile and family matters, whenever appropriate to resolve complaints and disputes of the white earth nation. gerald vizenor language value 1 (1), 51–80 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 74 article 5 the courts shall establish and publish a code of judicial ethics. chapter 16: the white earth judges article 1 the white earth court shall consist of a chief judge and associate judges. the chief judge shall be appointed and removed by the legislative council. article 2 the chief judge shall appoint the necessary number of associate judges for five-year terms with the consent of the legislative council. article 3 the court of appeals shall consist of three judges and shall be appointed by the legislative council in consultation with the chief judge. article 4 the chief judge shall not be a member of the court of appeals. article 5 judges of the court of appeals shall serve for five-years, and may otherwise practice law or be associated with a law firm. article 6 the judges of the courts shall be at least twenty-five years of age, of proven moral character, and who have not been convicted of a felony. article 7 the judges shall be graduates of a law school accredited by the american bar association. article 8 the judges shall be admitted to the bar to practice law in native communities, state, or federal courts. constitution of the white earth nation language value 1, (1) 51–80 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 75 article 9 the judges shall be experienced lawyers, magistrates, or judges. article 10 the judges shall have knowledge of anishinaabe culture, traditions, and general history. article 11 the judges shall recuse themselves, an assertion of judicial disqualification, as unsuitable to perform legal duties where there are possible conflicts of interest, or the appearance of personal interests, or potential challenges of partiality. article 12 the judges shall be impeached by the legislative council and removed from judicial practice for abuses of impartiality, bribery, political impropriety, or felony conviction. chapter 17: legislative council meetings article 1 the legislative council shall meet at least once each month to conduct government business. the time and place of each session shall be posted in advance. article 2 citizens of the white earth nation have the right to attend sessions of the legislative council. article 3 the president has the authority to schedule special and emergency sessions of the legislative council. article 4 the legislative council by a majority vote and written request shall have the authority to schedule a special session. gerald vizenor language value 1 (1), 51–80 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 76 article 5 the president shall be obligated to schedule a special session of the legislative council by an official petition of thirty percent of eligible citizen voters of the white earth nation. article 6 the president may schedule an emergency session of the legislative council without written notice to consider urgent matters, services, protection of the health, welfare and safety of the citizens and communities of the white earth nation. article 7 the legislative council shall conduct no other business than the specific stated purpose of an emergency session. article 8 the legislative council shall have the authority to meet in closed executive sessions with the president to discuss matters of litigation, proposed and discreet negotiations, and other concerns of confidentiality. article 9 the legislative council shall not decide actions on matters of litigation or confidentiality in closed executive sessions except when the outcome of the session has been fully reported in subsequent public sessions of the legislative council. the results of executive sessions shall be decided by vote at a public meeting. article 10 legislative council motions, votes, resolutions and decisions shall be noted and preserved in the official minutes of the sessions. article 11 legislative council actions, decisions, and enactments of record shall be available for inspection by citizens during normal business hours of the government. constitution of the white earth nation language value 1, (1) 51–80 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 77 article 12 the legislative council shall date and number each and every resolution, ordinance, law and statute, and cite the appropriate authority of the constitution of the white earth nation. article 13 the legislative council shall prepare a certificate for each resolution, ordinance, and statute that confirms the presence of a quorum and indicates the number of members voting for or against each enactment. article 14 the legislative council shall constitute a quorum by a simple majority of fifty-one percent of the elected members at a duly schedule session. chapter 18: ethics and impeachment article 1 elected members of the government may be impeached or removed from office by a recorded two-thirds vote of the entire legislative council. article 2 the legislative council may impeach or remove from office an elected member of government for a felony conviction in a court of competent jurisdiction. article 3 the legislative council may impeach or remove from office an elected member of the government for two misdemeanor convictions, including driving while intoxicated, but not including ordinary traffic violations. article 4 elected officials of the government may not be suspended or removed from office without due process of law. gerald vizenor language value 1 (1), 51–80 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 78 article 5 the legislative council may impeach for cause an elected member of the government. the impeachment may be a form of admonition, a warning or legal statement of charges, or the impeachment may be based on an indictment or conviction for a felony, and the forcible removal of an official of the government. article 6 the white earth nation shall provide for a recall election of an elected official of the government. citizens have the right to initiate a petition to recall an elected official. the petition shall secure at least two-thirds of the eligible voters for a recall election. the petition may be political and may include allegations, grievances, complaints and assertions of misconduct, nonfeasance, or mismanagement by an elected official of the government. chapter 19: petitions and referenda article 1 the legislative council may initiate a referendum by a vote of two-thirds of the elected representatives. article 2 citizens of the white earth nation may initiate a referendum by evidence of a vote of thirty percent of the eligible citizen voters. article 3 the legislative council and eligible citizens may present proposed laws, ordinances, and initiatives to a referendum vote of the electorate, according to certified evidence of the constitutional process. article 4 the referendum vote shall be held within one hundred and eighty days from the official receipt of the petition, unless the scheduled date of the referendum is within six months of a general election, in that event the referendum would be presented to the eligible voters in the general election. constitution of the white earth nation language value 1, (1) 51–80 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 79 article 5 scheduled referenda shall be conducted according to the rules and regulations of the board of elections and the election code. chapter 20: amendments to the constitution the constitution of the white earth nation may be amended by two-thirds of the recorded eligible votes in a duly called election or referendum to amend the constitution. eligible voters must be formally informed by written and published notices of the proposed amendment to the constitution of the white earth nation. ratification of the constitution the sworn delegates to the white earth constitutional convention hereby duly ratify for a citizen referendum the constitution of the white earth nation. the constitution of the white earth nation was duly ratified on april 4, 2009, at the shooting star casino hotel, mahnomen, minnesota. the ratification was by secret ballots of twenty-four delegates present. sixteen delegates voted for ratification, and eight delegates votes against ratification. gerald vizenor, distinguished professor of american studies at the university of new mexico, was a delegate to the constitutional convention and the principal writer of the proposed constitution of the white earth nation. the constitution proposal team included erma vizenor, president of the white earth nation, jill may doerfler, assistant professor, department of indian studies, university of minnesota, duluth, jo anne e. stately, vice president of development for the indian land tenure foundation, and anita fineday, chief tribal court judge, white earth nation. david e. wilkins, professor of american indian studies, university of minnesota, was a special consultant to the constitutional convention and the proposal team. gerald vizenor language value 1 (1), 51–80 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 80 anton treuer, professor, american indian resource center, languages and ethnic studies, bemidji state university, was the translator of the preamble to the constitution. received may 2009 cite this article as: vizenor, g. 2009. “constitution of the white earth nation”. language value, 1 (1), 51-80. servei de publicacions de la universitat jaume i: castelló, spain. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue. issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors language value june 2023, volume 16, number 1 pp. 1-22 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es issn 1989-7103 language value, issn 1989-7103 doi: https://doi.org/10.6035/languagev.7186 1 stance in the corpus of english life sciences texts: a vindication of text-reading isabel moskowich imoskowich@udc.es universidade da coruña, spain begoña crespo bcrespo@udc.es universidade da coruña, spain abstract stance in academic writing has been discussed extensively within the fields of disc ourse analysis and pragmatics (alonso-almeida, 2015; hyland, 2005; white, 2003). thus, hyland and jiang (2016) identify certain linguistic elements that are said to be indexical of stance: hedges, boosters, attitude markers, and self-mentions. while that model aims at a macroscopic analysis, the present study is a microscopic one, and compares two scientific texts written by a male and a female author to detect possible differences in the way that these authors present themselves or give their opinions in their writings. to this end, we have sought to apply hyland and jiang’s (2016) three-aspects model but using cesiri’s inventory (2012) as a starting point. we have applied this adapted model to two samples from the corpus of english life sciences texts (celist), one of the subcorpus of the coruña corpus of english scientific writing. both texts belong to the same genre, are dated at an almost identical time, and deal with similar subjects. the only difference is that one was written by a woman, emily gregory , and the other by a man, alpheus packard. although these texts are part of an electronic corpus, on this occasion we will minimise the automatic analytical techniques of corpus linguistics as far as possible. rather, we will conduct a microscopic-level study by means of close reading, although some quantification of data moskowich, i., & crespo, b. (2023). stance in the corpus of english life sciences texts: a vindication of text-reading. language value, 16(1), 1-22. universitat jaume i epress: castelló, spain. http://www.languagevalue.uji.es. june 2023 doi: https://www.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.7186 issn 1989-7103 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4380-2487 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5125-9416 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ isabel moskowich and begoña crespo language value 16 (1), 1–22 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 2 will precede the qualitative analysis where this is useful. it is hoped that the qualitative focus presented in the analysis might open up new paths in the study of stance. keywords: stance; coruña corpus; sex of authors; late modern english; scientific/academic writing. stance in the corpus of english life sciences texts: a vindication of text-reading language value 16 (1), 1–22 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 3 i. introduction this paper is an attempt to underline the value of qualitative analyses over a who lly quantitative approach. it highlights the importance of reading texts in detail and manually disambiguating items, closely considering their semantic and pragmatic context before classifying them as pertaining to one category of analysis or another. the presence of stance in scientific writing has been addressed by many authors over recent decades (ağçam, 2015; alonso-almeida, 2017; álvarez-gil, 2022; feng, 2020; halliday, 2004; hyland, 1998a; hyland, 1998b; mele marrero, 2011; moskowich & crespo, 2014; yang, 2019), but in the current paper we aim to illustrate that a detai led account of the linguistic realisations of stance affords us the opportunity to achieve a fine-grained yet broad perspective on what is happening within a text, and also provides a different way of looking at an author’s more or less personal treatment of the content. the current trend in linguistic circles is increasingly to trust automatic analyses and statistical testing, this perhaps influenced by the methodologies of the social sciences. while this is appropriate when large amounts of texts are involved and a form of textmining is the objective, we believe that such an approach runs the risk of overlooking details. in terms of pragmatic functions these details can yield vital cl ues as to what a text hides, and hence can lead us towards a faithful and more enriched interpretation of that text. in other words, we are faced with what rissanen called the philologist’s dilemma (1989), in which he claimed that we need to actually read the texts instead of merely trusting software. with the aim of demonstrating the validity of such close analyses, we have organised the paper in a way which moves from more general concepts, in the introduction and the literature review on stance in section 2, to a description of our material and methodology in section 3. section 4 then offers a thorough examination of our dataset, paying special attention to the varied shades of meaning revealed by the contexts of the examples. finally, the conclusions in section 5 will serve as a http://www.languagevalue/ isabel moskowich and begoña crespo language value 16 (1), 1–22 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 4 vindication of the need to embrace manual text analysis once again, at least for the kind of studies that inevitably involve interpretation. ii. literature review the way in which writers and speakers express their opinions has been referred to using a variety of terms (hyland & jiang, 2016, p. 252): posture (grabe, 1984), attitude (halliday, 2004), appraisal (martin, 2000), evaluation (hunston & thompson, 2000) and metadiscourse (hyland, 2005). the term we will use here is stance. in fact, some bibliometric analyses on research trends in corpus linguistics cite stance as one of the most popular topics in the first two decades of the twenty-first century (crosthwaite, lingrum & schweinberger, 2022). from a linguistic point of view, this phenomenon is realised in many different ways by what labov (1984) called intensity, although others referred to it as involving disjuncts (quirk et al., 1985), hedges (hyland, 1998a) or modality (palmer, 1986). all such devices are used to manifest judgments, feelings, or viewpoint, thus revealing authorial presence. following petch-tyson (1998), writerreader visibility is the term used by ädel (2022) to refer to certain forms that could form part of stance, for instance. there have been several proposals to create a model for the analysis of stance in which both evidentiality (chafe, 1986; chafe & nichols, 1986) and affect (besnier, 1990; ochs & schieffelin, 1989) intervene. the former can be defined as “the status of the knowledge contained in propositions, and it concerns its reliability, implying its source, how it was acquired, and the credibility we can invest in it” (hyland & jiang, 2016, p. 252); meanwhile, the latter includes “feelings, moods, dispositions, and attitudes associated with persons and/or situations” (ochs & schieffelin, 1989, p. 7). models thus proposed include biber and finegan (1989), martin (2000), and hunston and thompson (2000). more recently, and in order to complement hyland’s metadiscourse model first introduced in 2005, hyland and jiang (2016, p. 256) include a third element along with stance in the corpus of english life sciences texts: a vindication of text-reading language value 16 (1), 1–22 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 5 evidentiality and affect, one which they call presence, defining it as “the extent to which the writer chooses to intrude into a text through the use of first-person pronouns and possessive determiners”. among other things, this model assumes that a writer’s stance is somehow determined by the imagined reader. that is, each of us, as writers, shape our language differently with different intended readerships in mind. certain registers have traditionally been seen as more likely to contain linguistic elements revealing the author’s attitude to the text, but scientific writing is not one of them. this was especially the case in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when there was a clear tendency towards objectivity on the part of science writers; indeed, all manner of reports and related writing became detached and object -centred (atkinson, 1999) exhibiting a move “from a discourse based around the experiencing gentleman-scientist to community-generated research problems” (hyland & jiang, 2016, p. 270). however, there is now general consensus (ädel, 2022) that in academic writing stance is manifested by means of a range of different linguistic elements, such as boosters, hedges, attitude markers, self-references, concession markers, certain evaluative adjectives, etc. the following section will present our current approach to the study of stance, and will also describe the texts used to carry out this preliminary microscopic analysis. iii. materials and methodology two ca. 10,000-word samples from celist have been selected for this microscopic analysis. celist is one of the subcorpora of the coruña corpus of english scientific writing, and thus it complies with all the general compilation principles of that corpus, including the criterion that all texts have been written directly in english. on these lines, then, we consider that any instances of the linguistic elements under examination here can be said to be genuinely part of an author’s english style, free of any kind of linguistic interference. as noted in the abstract, these two texts from the life sciences corpus were published at around the same time, at the end of the http://www.languagevalue/ isabel moskowich and begoña crespo language value 16 (1), 1–22 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 6 nineteenth century, and belong to the same genre, textbook. the only major difference, then, lies in the sex of the authors. one of the sample texts, by a female author, is extracted from emily lovira gregory’s elements of plant anatomy (1895). the other, by the male writer alpheus spring packard, is taken from his a text-book of entomology including the anatomy, physiology, embryology and metamorphoses of insects. for use in agricultural and technical schools and colleges as well as by the working entomologist (1898). from a methodological point of view, we have tried to adopt hyland’s metadiscourse model (2005), this completed by hyland and jiang’s (2016) model that encompasses the ideas of evidentiality, affect and presence, as mentioned in the previous section. different linguistic entities can realise each of these ideas. evidentiality is manifested through hedges and boosters. affect is expressed through various attitude markers (very often in the form of adverbs). finally, presence is typically repres ented by firstperson pronouns and possessive forms. these elements, taken together, can be understood as indicating the three branches of stance in this model (see figure 1 below). figure 1. three-aspects model stance in the corpus of english life sciences texts: a vindication of text-reading language value 16 (1), 1–22 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 7 however, it is not straightforward to establish a precise list of items that are seen as unequivocally representing each of the three branches of the model. as alonsoalmeida (2015, p. 1) notes, stance is, indeed, a complex concept that includes a large variety of linguistic devices indicating the author’s point of view with respect to a given proposition. to my knowledge, there is not, however, a single inventory of stance features and collocation rules, most likely because lexical and morphological features entailing stance are pragmatically defined. thus, for the purpose of this analysis we have resorted to cesiri’s inventory (2012), which in turn draws on hyland’s 1998b work on hedges and boosters. so, we will be using cesiri’s list as a starting point, although close reading will allow us to reclassify certain linguistic elements when looking at them in their respective contexts. first of all, in order to achieve a general overview of the type of linguistic items present in the texts, we have generated a separate word list for each sample using the coruña corpus tool, the information retrieval application that accompanies the corpus. after this initial automatic process, material that is irrelevant for our aims, such as numbers, proper nouns and grammatical words, has been discarded from the two lists. the following steps involve checking each type in both lists with the kwic utility, and then a close reading, which will allow us to accept or reject each individual token in each type. such manual disambiguation was needed for those forms which might have different meanings and functions, ones which do not coincide with those attributed to hedges, boosters and attitude markers. in our inspection of individual tokens, we detected cases such as the ones illustrated in examples (1) to (4) below. they are similar instances of cases in which manual disambiguation was necessary, in that automatic processing would have been unable to detect that may in (1) is not a modal verb but a month, that around in (2) expresses position/location rather that approximation, and that certain in (3) is an indefinite demonstrative and not an adjective expressing certainty. finally, in (4) an automatic listing would not have distinguished the meaning of find as ‘encounter’ rather than ‘think’, which conveys an opinion. http://www.languagevalue/ isabel moskowich and begoña crespo language value 16 (1), 1–22 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 8 (1) footnote: ¹[note] american naturalist, may, 1880, [pp]. 375, 376. [endnote] (packard, 1898, p, 19). (2) these latter occur at somewhat regular intervals around the whole circumference (gregory, 1895, p. 94). (3) if we go back to the simpler forms of plants to find the first traces of rootlike organs, we may perhaps begin with the haustoria which gr ow on the mycelium of certain fungi (gregory, 1895, p. 116). (4) the reparative nature of chitin is seen in the fact that verhoeff finds that a wound on an adult carabus, and presumably on other insects, is speedily closed, not merely by a clot of blood, but by a new growth of chitin. (packard, 1898, p. 30). example (5) below illustrates a slightly different case, one which can help explain the need to use word lists in the first place. both the samples encoded in xml format and the cctool search engine have been prepared to discriminate between the words written by the authors of the samples from words which were not produced by them and which thus represent someone else’s linguistic habits. in (5), the words which are not the author’s own are shown in red, as they are displayed in the software itself. this helps researchers keep track of the context, although, in order to avoid false retrievals, such words are neither indexed by the cctool nor included in the word lists. (5) ²[note] [quotation] "scolopendrella has very remarkable antennæ; they may be compared each to a series of glass cups strung upon a delicate hyaline and extensible rod of uniform thickness throughout: so that, like the body of the creature, they shrink enormously when the animal is irritated or thrown into alcohol, and they then possess scarcely two-thirds the length they have in the fully extended condition, their cup-like joints being drawn close together, one within the other. peripatus, japyx, many (if not all) homoptera, and the [s]. asiatic relatives of our common glomeris have all more or less extensible stance in the corpus of english life sciences texts: a vindication of text-reading language value 16 (1), 1–22 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 9 antennæ." (wood-mason, [trans]. [ent]. [soc]., london, 1879, [p]. 155.) [endnote] (p. 22) this is why the hedge more or less in example (5) does not occur in the word list. this special feature of encoding ensures that we only consider the author’s own words, and has been devised in this way for the sake of rigorous linguistic analyses. in what follows we will provide a detailed account of the forms in context. iv. analysis as already noted in the methodology, we looked for a closed inventory of linguistic forms that express stance. unfortunately, no such comprehensive list including all the different categories currently exists (alonso-almeida, 2015), so we focused our attention on cesiri’s 2012 study of hedges and boosters, in which she applied the metadiscourse model, claiming that she had built those lists on the basis of hyland’s work (1998b, p. 375). as we have noted earlier, we decided to adopt these lists of hedges and boosters as a point of departure for our research. these lists, including 186 items, are reproduced below: table 1. cesiri’s 2012 inventory of hedges and boosters. hedges about, almost, apparent, apparently, appear*, approximately, argue*, around, assume*, assumption, basically, can, certain+extent, conceivably, conclude*, conjecture*, consistent+with, contention, could, could not, of+course, deduce*, discern*, doubt, doubt*, doubtless, essentially, establish*, estimate*, expect*, the+fact+that, find, found, formally, frequently, general, generally, given+that, guess*, however, hypothesize*, hypothetically, ideally, implication*, imply, improbable, indeed, indicate*, inevitable, infer*, interpret, we+know, it+is+known, largely, least, likely, mainly, manifest*, may, maybe, might, more+or+less, most, not+necessarily, never, no+doubt, beyond+doubt, normally, occasionally, often, ostensibly, partially, partly, patently, perceive*, perhaps, plausible, possibility, possible, possibly, postulate*, precisely, predict*, prediction, predominately, presumably, presume*, probability, probable, probably, propose*, prove*, provided+that, open+to+question, questionable, quite, rare, rarely, rather, relatively, reportedly, reputedly, seem*, seems, seemingly, can+be+seen, seldom, general+sense, should, show, sometimes, somewhat, speculate*, suggest*, superficially, suppose*, surmise, suspect*, technically, tend*, tendency, theoretically, i+think, we+think, typically, uncertain, unclear, unlikely, unsure, usually, virtually, will, will+not, http://www.languagevalue/ isabel moskowich and begoña crespo language value 16 (1), 1–22 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 10 won't, would, would+not boosters actually, admittedly, always, assuredly, certainly, certainty, claim*, certain+that, is+clear, are+clear, to+be+clear, clearly, confirm*, convincingly, believe*, my+belief, our+belief, i+believe, we+believe, conclusive, decidedly, definitely, demonstrate*, determine*, is+essential, evidence, evident, evidently, impossible, incontrovertible, inconceivable, manifestly, must, necessarily, obvious, obviously, sure, surely, true, unambiguously, unarguably, undeniably, undoubtedly, unequivocal, unmistakably, unquestionably, wellknown, wrong, wrongly. we searched for all these items in our texts and found that not all of them occurred in our samples. thus, of all the 137 hedges listed by cesiri, gregory uses 46, and of the 49 boosters, she uses only 17. similarly, packard’s text contains 60 of cesiri’s 137 hedges and 23 of the 49 boosters. on a detailed examination of all these terms in context during the close reading phase of this survey, we noticed that some of the items in the lists could also be allocated to different categories of stance markers. thus, table 2 below summarises the cases which we have reclassified according to the meaning of the particular form in context: table 2. reclassification of hedges and boosters according to context. cesiri (2012) we-authors examples doubt hedge booster with little doubt without doubt fact the fact that hedge attitude marker in point of fact indeed hedge attitude marker tentative --hedge fundamental --attitude marker well (well-known) well-formed to be clear to make sth clear show hedge attitude marker “demonstrate” stance in the corpus of english life sciences texts: a vindication of text-reading language value 16 (1), 1–22 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 11 several instances of this reclassification process can be seen in examples (6) to (13). this process is not unidirectional. depending on their contextual meaning, some of the elements that cesiri classified as hedges were moved to the group of boosters and some others to the group of attitude markers in the present study. for instance , a close reading of examples (6) and (7) reveals that doubt in without doubt and with little doubt does not function as a hedge; on the contrary, both these expressions refer to the writer’s intention to reinforce the meaning of the message conveyed: (6) the sexual opening has without doubt become secondarily unpaired (packard, 1898, p. 24). (7) it is with little doubt that to their power of flight, and thus of escaping the attacks of their creeping arthropod enemies, insects owe, so to speak, their success in life (packard, 1898, p. 2). following this manual method, and after close reading, we have added forms that in some cases were not included in cesiri’s original list, but that we noticed were playing similar roles. such is the case with (8) and (9) below, where we found structures akin to the ones proposed by cesiri, that is, with the same meanings and pragmatic functions: (8) the brain is well developed, sending a pair of slender nerves to the small eyes (packard, 1898, p. 23). (9) to make this clear, certain morphological relations must here be explained. it is usual to consider the methods of leaf arrangement as reducible to two, opposite and alternate; the first, where two leaves appear to start from the same height on the stem and opposite each other; the second, where the leaves all start from different heights on the stem, always with some regular order of arrangement as regards their distance from each other measured on the circumference of the stem. (gregory, 1895, p. 96). http://www.languagevalue/ isabel moskowich and begoña crespo language value 16 (1), 1–22 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 12 as can be gathered from table 2 above, this reclassification process not only affects boosters and hedges but also the third realisation of stance under consideration in this paper, that is, attitude markers. examples (10) to (13) illustrate this point: (10) indeed, certain annelid worms of the family syllidæ have segmented tentacles and parapodia, as dujardinia ([fig]. 19) (packard, 1898, p. 34). while cesiri includes indeed within the set of hedges, examples such as (10) and (11) seem to be expressing certainty about what the author is stating, and thus it should be included in the set of attitude markers. (11) in point of fact, the leaf originates in the stem and its base is in the stem when the bundle arises, but it is customary to describe the course of the bundles in this way (gregory, 1895, p. 91). on other occasions we had to decide on particular senses of the same word. once again, it was the context that had to be taken into account before ascribing particular tokens of a specific type to one or another stance category. thus, in the case of the verb show, the token in example (12) does not express stance, although it is generally considered to do so by cesiri. its meaning here is a denotative one equivalent to “exhibit”. conversely, example (13) illustrates the same verb referring to the writer’s attitude. this time the meaning denotes “demonstrate” to indicate a conscious and deliberate action on the author’s part. (12) a striking difference in structure is shown in those leaves which for some reason, such as twisting of the petiole, infolding of the blade or other departure from the ordinary position, develop the palisade tissue on what is morphologically the underside, and the spongy tissue above, thus exactly reversing the normal order of arrangement. (gregory, 1898, p. 94) “can be seen”. (13) to show this, two examples are usually taken, blasia pusilla and fossombronia. the former consists of a ribbonor band-shaped thallus, bearing stance in the corpus of english life sciences texts: a vindication of text-reading language value 16 (1), 1–22 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 13 on its under side two rows of toothed scales, the so-called amphigastria. (gregory, 1898, p. 85). the preliminary, basic quantification of data announced at the beginning of the paper reveals that in the ca. 20,000 words we have found 599 tokens of 144 types expressing stance, as table 3 below shows. table 3. linguistic realisations of stance in the samples. gregory (f) packard (m) types tokens types tokens total tokens total types hedges 35 179 61 232 411 96 boosters 13 40 14 26 66 27 attitude markers 7 20 8 33 53 15 self-mentions 1 23 5 46 69 6 total 56 262 88 337 599 144 as already noted, stance has not been considered as a prototypical characteristic of academic and scientific writing until quite recently (hyland, 1999; hyland & jiang, 2016). additionally, women have traditionally been regarded as more emotional than men and, hence, more prone to the overt manifesta tion of feelings and opinions (flynn, 1988; lakoff, 1990; palander-colin, 2006; rubin & green, 1992). curiously enough, in our current study, the female representative makes use of fewer types (56) and fewer tokens (262) of stance-related elements; the male writer resorts slightly more frequently to both of these: 87 types and 335 tokens. as for the categories of linguistic realisations that are more frequently used, we must first recognise that three of these belong to open categories of words (hedges, boosters and attitude markers) whereas just one pertains to a closed-class (selfhttp://www.languagevalue/ isabel moskowich and begoña crespo language value 16 (1), 1–22 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 14 reference). additionally, some phrases can also take on the function of open categories. speakers can freely create open-class items and add new senses to the original meanings of existing forms, as long as the context admits such uses and they are understood within the conversation between writer and reader. closed classes do not admit such freedom. self-mentions are simply illustrated by pronominal forms, although the noun author/writer was also found (moskowich, 2020; moskowich & crespo, forthcoming). an overall view of the data (see table 4 below) reveals that hedges predominate when expressing stance, with 411 tokens. the second most frequent realisation of stance is in the form of boosters, with 66 tokens, followed by the 53 tokens of attitude markers. in terms of self-reference, we found 69 tokens, which, presumably, indicates a frequency of use higher than in the other categories. when addressing the analysis of each sample in detail, we must again bear in mind that the only variable at stake here is that of the sex of the author, with both texts being representative of the same discipline, time, and genre. the sample from the text by packard seems to involve a certain signpo sting in the distribution of the elements analysed. hedges represent the most prominent category, followed, in descending order, by boosters, attitude markers, and self-mentions. in general, this text contains a high number of uses of linguistic elements manifesting presence. curiously enough, hedges occur frequently in these samples from the genre textbook, notwithstanding that in principle this is defined as “a book used as a standard work for the study of a particular subject; now usually one written specially for this purpose; a manual of instruction in any science or branch of study, esp. a work recognized as an authority” (oed). hedges do not fit well into these defining features, in that authors of this kind of instructional manuals are not supposed to be tentative in the same way as they might be when addressing their peers in the epistemic community. the reason underlining the prominence of hedging in both examples here might then be the originally oral nature of the extracts, since, as the authors t hemselves reveal in their stance in the corpus of english life sciences texts: a vindication of text-reading language value 16 (1), 1–22 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 15 prefaces: “this book contains the substance of the lectures given to the classes in the last half of the second year's course in botany, at barnard college.” (gregory, 1895, p. iii) and “in preparing this book the author had in mind the wants both of the student and the teacher. for the student’s use the more difficult portions, particularly that on the embryology, may be omitted. the work has grown in part out of the writer’s experience in class work.” (packard, 1898, p. v). in both cases, therefore, the source of these texts is spoken interaction with students. the same general tendency in the use of stance markers can be observed in the extract from gregory’s textbook, illustrated in figure 2 below: figure 2. distribution of stance markers per sex. one deviation from this tendency is the number of occurrences of boosters in gregory’s sample, which surpasses the number of tokens used by the male author (40 vs 26). gregory’s slightly more abundant use of boosters may be accounted for either by the need that nineteenth-century female authors felt to reassure themselves as scientists in an androcentric world, or to the need to transmit knowledge and confidence to their readership in the face of prevailing perceptions that scientific knowledge comes predominantly from men. indeed, emily gregory vindicates her position in the world of academia when she claims that http://www.languagevalue/ isabel moskowich and begoña crespo language value 16 (1), 1–22 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 16 the method followed in this course differs somewhat from that generally adopted in either home or foreign colleges. the study of botany, as a science, is comparatively new in this country, and therefore we have the advantage of the experience of europe, where the science of botany has long held a place equal in rank with that of its related subjects. (gregory, 1895, p. iii) having examined the types of devices used to express evidentiality, we will now focus on attitude markers as expressions of affect and how the authors here use them. in this case, we see that it is the male author who resorts more often to expressions in which his opinions can be identified more or less openly. although he uses only eight types, as opposed to the seven used by gregory, his use of these is more frequent in terms of tokens (33 occurrences in packard vs 20 in gregory). it is not easy to interpret this based on a single text, but given that this is a microscopic analysis, we might speculate that we are in fact simply looking at the authors’ personal styles. in that case, perhaps the text by packard underwent a more superficial process of revision from the spoken to the written registers. examples (14) to (16) below illustrate this use, as represented by perhaps, quite as much, indeed and without doubt: (14) in their structure insects are perhaps more complicated than any other animals (packard, 1898, p. 2) (15) their bodies are quite as much complicated or specialized, and indeed, when we consider the winged forms, more so, than any other class of the branch, and besides this they have wings, fitting them for an aërial life. (packard, 1898, p. 3). (16) the uterus masculinus is in its structure homologous with the evaginable penis of pauropus, polyxenus, and some diplopods, and the sexual opening has without doubt become secondarily unpaired. (packard, 1898, p. 24). finally, authorial presence is expressed through the use of first-person pronouns and possessive forms. we have observed that packard not only uses more types here than gregory (we, us, our, me, my) but also uses them more frequently (in gregory’s text we only recorded the type we). it should come as no surprise that our male author is not stance in the corpus of english life sciences texts: a vindication of text-reading language value 16 (1), 1–22 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 17 shy about making his own presence clear in the text to his readership, while emily gregory modestly uses only the first-person plural pronoun, the inclusive we, to make her voice heard and to embrace the epistemic community. (17) our commonest species is [s]. immaculata newport, which occurs from massachusetts to cordova, mexico, and in europe from england t o the mediterranean and russia; [mr]. [o]. [f]. cook tells me he has found a species in liberia, west africa. (packard, 1898, p. 26). (18) we have now reached that stage of plant development which includes all the organs of the highest form, namely stem, root, and leaf. the anatomy of the remaining forms is therefore limited to a comparative study of thes e three organs. (gregory, 1895, p. 90). the type/token ratios (ttr) of each feature per author are set out in table 4: table 4. types/tokens of stance features. gregory packard types tokens ttr types tokens ttr hedges 35 179 0.19 61 232 0.26 boosters 13 40 0.32 14 26 0.53 attitude markers 7 20 0.35 8 33 0.24 self-mentions 1 23 0.43 5 46 0.10 total 56 262 0.21 88 337 0.26 the overall data for both samples suggest that packard’s text (0.26 ttr) is lexically more varied than that of gregory (0.21 ttr) in terms of the stance features under survey here. considering each linguistic element individually, the figures indicate that it is only in the use of attitude markers that the female author surpasses that of the male (0.35 vs 0.24). from the point of view of each feature, lexical richness seems to stand out in the case of boosters for packard (0.53), whereas attitude markers are the prevailing feature for gregory (0.35 ttr). these data lead us to conclude that, at least http://www.languagevalue/ isabel moskowich and begoña crespo language value 16 (1), 1–22 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 18 in these two samples, male and female writers do not seem to coincide in the relevance they give to the same stance markers. thus, the sample that represents women’s writing appears to rely more on expressing her perspective or opinion towards the content and making the reader aware of this (doubtful, however, prove); such tentative evaluative characteristics are not present in the use of boosters in the sample by the male author. boosters for the male writer show confidence, selfassurance, and help to convince the reader of the truth of the proposition and the expertise of the author in the topic (always, certain, believe, demonstrate, definitively, obvious, undoubtedly). both authors are engaged in an endeavour to disseminate science in society at a time when this formed an important part of social progress and when specialisation in the sciences was emerging. however, the two sexes did not enjoy the same level of social respect and recognition in this, with men far more prominent. the study of stance can lead the linguist into troublesome situations, since, as we have already suggested, linguistic items can be interpreted in various ways depending on contextual elements and all the extra-linguistic factors that are involved in text production (genre, period, discipline development, target audience, etc.). once more, all this indicates the appropriateness of an individual, fine-grained analysis of a text as a means of discerning the true role of the different linguistic components therein. v. conclusions in this study, we have applied hyland and jiang’s model (2016), but with an emphasis on qualitative and microscopic analysis rather than simply applying a quantitative approach. to this end, we have examined just two samples, since this was intended to be a preliminary study. indeed, through our direct contact with the texts we have been able to reveal nuances of meaning that might well have been lost in a wholly quantitative analysis. although we have considered samples of scientific english, the data reveal the authors’ presence at a time when an object-centred discourse was stance in the corpus of english life sciences texts: a vindication of text-reading language value 16 (1), 1–22 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 19 gradually replacing the authorial self (atkinson, 1999). overall, the male author seems to be more prone than the female one to use these devices, probably because of the androcentric mindset of the period (crespo, 2021), in which men were the ‘unmarked sex’ in these uses, and women were effectively invited to follow such tenets in an attempt to be recognised as part of the scientific community. moreover, the present research, focusing as it does on a qualitative view of texts, seeks to call the attention of other scholars to the vital role of the linguist in the interpretation of texts and the data arising from them. we hope that the study serves as a vindication of the need to look closely into a text and to analyse words or expressions within the intra-linguistic and extra-linguistic context, thus rehumanising the object of study. herein lies the key to revealing how the scientist’s mind was moulded, and helps us to discern how, why, and to whom they wrote. as a preliminary study, this research is merely the first step in renewing the path of detailed and manual examination of language, and we hope that, by expanding the survey to more texts, we will discover a great deal more about the authors’ intentions and perceptions, as well as the rhetorical trends in scientific communication. vi. acknowledgements the research here reported on has been funded by the spanish ministerio de ciencia, innovación y universidades (miciu), grant number pid2019-105226gb-i00. this grant is hereby gratefully acknowledged. vi. references ädel, a. 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(2000). beyond exchange: appraisal systems in english. in s. hunston & g. thompson (eds.), evaluation in text (pp. 142-175). oxford university press. mele marrero, m. (2011). self-mentioning: authority, authorship or self-promotion in 17th century prefaces to manuals on obstetrics? revista de lenguas para fines específicos, 17, 147-166. http://www.languagevalue/ isabel moskowich and begoña crespo language value 16 (1), 1–22 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 22 moskowich, i., & crespo, b. (2014). stance is present in scientific writing, indeed. evidence from the coruña corpus of english scientific writing. token: a journal of english linguistics, 3, 91-114. moskowich, i. (2020). personal pronouns in chet and cechet: authorial presence and other nuances revealed. studies about languages, 37, 56-73. moskowich, i., & crespo, b. (forthcoming). “… but be ſure you let it ſettle”: late modern authors’ presence in english scientific texts. ochs, e., & schieffelin, b. 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(2019). stance and academic writing in the disciplines: a comparative study of biology and history. english for specific purposes, 55, 95-108. received: 22 february 2023 accepted: 14 april 2023 clil for the teaching of history and english in secondary education: how to complete the existing materials alberto ángel vela rodrigo vela@unizar.es university of zaragoza, spain abstract the importance of clil can be understood by the new demands in education and the changing social forces that affect the use of languages in applied contexts today. therefore, the use of appropriate materials is basic. the aim of this paper is two-fold. firstly, to establish the key elements of clil, reviewing the theoretical frameworks informing this methodology to identify its basic characteristics. secondly, to examine to what extent they are applied in the teaching of history through a real example of a textbook for 2nd year of secondary education. to fulfil both aims, a list of nine criteria has been developed to be used as a relevant tool for teachers when choosing potentially effective materials. this tool will be inspired in the guidelines of two clil models in terms of sla and content support. finally, possible niches for improvement will be detected, always in order to increase students’ motivation. keywords: clil; secondary education; history; sla; textbook. vela-rodrigo, a. a. (2022). clil for the teaching of history and english in secondary education: how to complete the existing materials. language value, 15(1), 1-29. universitat jaume i epress: castelló, spain. http://www.languagevalue.uji.es. july 2022 doi: https://doi.org/10.6035/languagev.6413 issn 1989-7103 language value july 2022, vol 15, num. 1 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es issn 1989-7103 language value, issn 1989-7103 doi: http://dx.doi.org/ 10.6035/languagev.6413 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1241-9066 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es i. introduction in an increasingly globalized and interdependent world, multilingualism stands as an articulating element of society, which means that its role in school will be key when it comes to training new citizens of the future (graddol, 2006). in this context the development of communicative competences becomes a priority in teaching. therefore, content & language integrated learning (henceforth clil) research has become the centre of attention since it exceeds the mere acquisition of a language and allows the student to develop communication skills, also facilitating subsequent learning (marsh, 1994; marsh et al., 2001; ball et al., 2015). in fact, clil is intended to prepare students to cope with a changing world and to help them develop a sense of global citizenship, having experiences which they could not have had in a monolingual setting (ball et al., 2016). however, this methodology can be a cognitive challenge for both students and teachers. the first are expected to develop their basic interpersonal communication skills and their competence in cognitive-academic language, expanding their facets of thinking (coyle et al., 2010) while teachers have too much to pay attention to in the classroom: timing, teaching methodology, presenting content, language attention, class management, etc. consequently, counting on an appropriate text-book, which is well designed according to clil parameters, can facilitate the teacher’s labour but also students’ performance. the aim of this paper is two-fold. firstly, to establish the key elements of clil methodology. secondly, to examine to what extent they are applied in a coursebook for history used in clillearning today in a particular school in aragon (spain) and to suggest improvements, when possible, in regard to certain deficiencies detected. this study allows to analyse this learning model and its methodology and to examine how it is being addressed for the teaching of history today. namely, to critically examine real materials with the intention of analysing their contents and to know whether they allow to deal with concepts, language and procedures at different levels or not. this way it will be possible to grade the adequacy of the tasks for clil teaching and decide how to enrich this book for the development of specific competences in the subject of history. it alberto ángel vela rodrigo language value 15(1) 1-29 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 2 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es is also planned to shed more light on how clil meets sla requirements and how content can be supported. furthermore, attention will be turned to teachers’ opportunities to guide their students in the process of learning history in a second language, so they can perceive english not as an added difficulty but as a vehicle of getting access to extra knowledge and resources. for all that, a 9-criteria research tool will be designed and applied to the analysis of book activities, reserving a special space for those criteria that seek to focus on motivation specially. ii. literature review the importance of clil and the great interest around it can be understood by the new demands in education and the changing social and economic forces that affect the use of languages in applied contexts today (vollmer, 2006). we live in an increasingly globalized society in which economic and social exchanges have a significant impact on the learning of english as lingua franca, which is conceived as a difficult mission by many educational systems around the world. in fact, the european union policies even advocate the use and command of two other languages apart from the native one (reflected in the 22nd may 2019 council of europe recommendation) what has driven clil to be seen as one of the most appropriate tools to achieve this objective in the fastest way. clil is defined as a dual-focused educational approach in which and additional language, such as english in this case, serves as a vehicular tool for learning and teaching both content and language (ball et al., 2016, p. 5) these two components are interrelated, even if a deeper attention is put on one or another at a specific time. that is to say, clil is not a new form of language education but a fusion of content and language learning in an innovative way, overcoming the mere teaching of a subject in english. it is then an educational dual-focused approach that uses several foreign language methodologies to serve the teaching of specific subject content in a second language. as eurydice, the european publisher and descriptor of national education systems, indicated in 2006, “this two-fold aims calls for the development of a special approach to teaching a subject with clil for the teaching of history and english in secondary education language value 15(1) 1-29 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 3 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es the support of a foreign language and not despite a foreign language” (p. 6). the term clil was adopted in 1991 within the european educational space context to describe and design good practice in different school bilingual environments where learning and teaching were developed in a second language (marsh et al., 2001). but clil is much more than bilingual education, because it enables learners to master specific language terminology and prepares them for future studies/working life through the support for formal and informal language and cognition (harmer, 1991; coyle et al., 2010; ball et al., 2016). this way, clil is pursuing the acquisition of a wide range of subject competences (valuable for the learning of history, for example) and at the same time the improvement of a second language. but since content has always involved language and vice versa, the interest in clil lies on the interpretation of the word ‘integration’, which indicates the teacher is responsible providing language support and scaffolding cognition. ii.1. what clil model do we use? clil in aragon is regulated by the brit-model in order ecd/823/2018, of 18th may. this model of linguistic competence of and in foreign languages must respond to the training needs of students with the aim of favouring and develop the necessary communicative competence in foreign languages to reach the b2 level of the common european framework of reference for languages at the end of compulsory schooling. since clil is always content-driven, it involves different models which can be applied in a variety of ways with diverse kind of learners. perhaps one of the most well-known is the 4 cs model (coyle et al., 2010), which is a pedagogical approach based on four components: content, communication, cognition and culture. this model builds on the synergies of integrating learning (cognition and content) and language learning (communication and cultures). according to this model and referring to content, students learn an academic subject through an additional language support and they have communication as the central point of content and cognition. for fostering communication, students receive language instruction, such as specific vocabulary support, although the syllabus is not language oriented. alberto ángel vela rodrigo language value 15(1) 1-29 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 4 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es clil practitioners must also consider cognition when planning a learning sequence: the instruction must develop critical thinking, which is possible providing texts and activities for students to reflect and answer questions that imply a reasoning process. bloom’s taxonomy is normally used to identify different levels of critical thinking since cognition is referred to the higher order and lower order thinking skills. those levels of critical thinking are classified into levels of complexity and specificity, according to cognitive, affective and sensory domains (bloom & krathwohl, 1956). learning at higher levels depends on the acquisition of knowledge and skills of certain lower levels. on the other hand, to work cultural aspects students are encouraged to see themselves as citizens of the world, so they can develop an international awareness and global understanding of history (guerrero muñoz, 2014, p. 232). nevertheless, there is not a single way of meeting and teaching clil. other authors developed their own model based on the difficulty of the tasks. the competency model (ball et al., 2016) is focused basically on planning contents, language and procedures at different levels in order to grade the difficulty of the tasks. this way, language and contents are both a vehicle for the development of specific competences in every subject. the intellectual challenge of clil implies a cognitive integration that combines different types of knowledge: factual, conceptual, and procedural. one way of integrating these three dimensions consists on using learning tasks, designing our instruction around them and assessing students according to the results they get after working on them (ellis, 2003; marsh, 2009; ball et al., 2016). this concept of task comes from the teaching-learning process for foreign languages, in which tasks are presented as a tool for learning and a way to converge with the curriculum (vollmer, 2006). to design a task for clil can seem a difficult work, but it is possible to do it in a very similar way we design a task for an efl classroom (ellis, 2003). moreover, in clil, any task will have a triple projection in three different dimensions: they will teach conceptual content, by means of procedural choices (ball et. al., 2016) but using specific language from the discourse content. so, content, procedure and language will have to be considered as an integrated type of content, that is, a means clil for the teaching of history and english in secondary education language value 15(1) 1-29 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 5 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es to an end, which is that of developing specific competences for the history area. for this reason, content, procedure and language will have to be taken into account when both designing tools and planning priorities (llinares & whittaker, 2009). there are different ways of conceptualizing these mentioned three dimensions. ball et al. (2016) proposed a model using the example of a mixing desk. the clil teacher will have to regulate the different difficulty factors in a task in every moment of the didactic sequence, also choosing to which dimension he/she gives priority depending on the learning objectives. the dimension with the highest volume is the dimension that the teacher makes the most relevant. this model is valid for fine-tuning evaluation but also for designing tasks and estimating their difficulty, in a similar way the cummins matrix does: used to measure the combination of cognitive and linguistic levels of the different tasks of a unit (cummins, 1984). ii.2. clil meeting and supporting sla the use of language in clil is basically connected with most of second language acquisition (sla) requirements for l2 learning. therefore, it will be necessary to pay attention to the input guidance and to interaction, without forgetting output must be comprehensible while focusing on form and giving feedback to students. clil teachers first need to identify/establish the language of the subject, being aware of what types of language occur in each lesson at three different levels: there is a language related to the subject area (in history we could think of the term ‘regime’); another is crosscurricular, referred to as general academic language (for example, ‘it’s a type of political institution which…), and finally, there is language that forms the speech of the classroom, what we could call the ‘interactional language’ of communication, also known as ‘peripheral language’ (lozanov, 1978). following with an example in history we could say this is a subject which moves learners away from the ‘here and now’, that is to say, look back in time to establish ties and connections with the present (coyle, 1999; phillips, 2008) (obj. gh.5 of the aragonese curriculum (ac) for 2º eso: “identify and locate in time and space alberto ángel vela rodrigo language value 15(1) 1-29 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 6 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es the relevant historical processes and events in the history of the world, europe, spain and aragon to acquire a global perspective of the evolution of humanity”) (boa no. 105, june 2 2016, p. 12870). that is, there is a defect focusing on the past that influences discourse relating in the teaching and learning of the subject (phillips, 2008). the kind of language needed for history (historical terms, proper nouns, titles, foreign words, speculative statement, passive, language of inference and uncertainty…) will drive to a key aspect in this matter: the need for the history teacher talk to create hypothetical questions as a common aspect of the discourse and also as a challenge for non-native learners of english (ball et al., 2016). there are authors that go further on this questioning. for assor et al. (2005) these questions should not just appear during the class or when reading theoretical explanations in the textbook, there should also be a space at the beginning of the class to ask previous-knowledge questions and talk about what students already know, including hypothesis. learners will always have some prior understanding of the new learning and some idea of what language to use to express their initial ideas, however undeveloped. so, it is important to be aware of the fact that learners dealing with new content need to be able to express their basic comprehension of the content before they can develop their understanding further (assor et al., 2005). we can then begin to look at the scaffolding and instruments to provide input at this discovery stage assisting students in gradually broadening their understanding of content through the l2 (models, full scripts, word clouds, kwl charts, jigsaw tasks, etc.) (roth, 2005; ball et al., 2016). the idea is to provide students with a ‘message of abundancy’ in order to make the discourse comprehensible (gibbons, 2005). another key point is how to present input in an efficient way. a clil teacher will have to guide learners in their learning process of the subject and through the lesson input demands. these refer to listening, watching and reading skills required to complete a task in an l2. for example, the difficulty of understanding the discourse of the teacher is much higher when faster spoken language is present. the same happens with understanding written texts, something that is usually more challenging when long clil for the teaching of history and english in secondary education language value 15(1) 1-29 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 7 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es sentences with multiple clauses occur. these factors can make the process of decoding the message and arriving at the correct meaning difficult for learners, particularly in l2, so the teacher need to adapt input according to the necessities of the class. moreover, we must remember that, as classroom based, sla research evidences, although learners may already know the language rules, this does not mean they are able to use them in communicative interaction (lightbrown, 2000). therefore, a clil teacher must improve the input buy different techniques, which can be applied according to their learners’ necessities. as an example, they could use bold letters, underlining, or italics to highlight specific formulas used in a subject such as history or set sentences, employing similar techniques as those for teaching sla, so students can use them both in written and oral sentences (smith, 1993). furthermore, authentic materials (obj.gh.9. of the ac: “search, select, understand and relate verbal, graphic, iconic, statistical and cartographic information, coming from diverse sources, including historical sources […] media and information technologies”) (boa no. 105, june 2 2016, p. 12870) can also help a clil teacher to support content by bringing the characteristics of real-world speech into the classroom, so information become comprehensible and the vocabulary of the subject closer to the learner in this decoding process. but clil can also offer ‘authenticity of response’ and ‘interaction’ somehow in the sense historians also read a text about a certain topic and a discussion follows (obj.gh.10 of the ac: “carry out collaborative tasks, research projects and debates about the current social reality with a constructive, critical and tolerant attitude, adequately substantiating opinions and valuing dialogue, negotiation and decision making”) (boa no. 105, june 2 2016, p. 12870-12871). this is precisely what historians normally do, so clil students would practice an ‘authentic’ or real type of speech in which academic and formal vocabulary would be openly discuss and decode and therefore would get closer and help content to be understood (richards 2006, p. 20). learners also need to get access to comprehensible input and models of new language through the same information in a variety of ways (what is known as multimodality), so they can fix new content and internalize the new vocabulary alberto ángel vela rodrigo language value 15(1) 1-29 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 8 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es associated (krashen, 1982). but there can be some reluctance if students still do not feel familiar with the new vocabulary. to use l1 can be useful in these cases, especially when approaching a new topic for the first time. l1 could have a support function for explanation but could also have a learning function, as it can help to build up lexicon and to foster students’ metalinguistic awareness (ball et al., 2016). regarding to interaction, there must be a mediation or vehicular language between the learner and new knowledge, “with the teacher scouring input content” (ball et al., 2016, p. 48). this way, the teacher can provide examples of language and vocabulary looking out the learners’ production and feeding their observation in terms of output, as well as giving the necessary scaffolding. this principle would be directly connected to the obj.gh.8 of the ac: (“acquire and use the specific vocabulary and the notions of causality, change and permanence that geography and history contribute so that their incorporation into the usual vocabulary increases precision in the use of language and improves communication”, (boa no. 105, june 2 2016, p. 12870)), which pursues to increase precision in the use of language and therefore to improve communication (crit.gh.3.17). clil sessions normally need to be communicative. students usually first get confidence through speaking about a specific subject and they will not be totally convinced that they understand a concept until they have expressed it in their own words. this is a crucial observation on the relationship between self-expression and cognitive development. so, if we accept this principle, then clil teachers need to encourage and promote oral interaction in their classrooms, which requires creating an affective environment in order to encourage learners to interact in the l2 (ball et al., 2016). this way, clil learners need to rethink language having opportunities to use ‘stretched language’: the language produced by situations where they need struggle to make themselves understood in a foreign language, moving out of their comfort zone (swain, 1985). therefore, people learn a language by noticing when it is used incorrectly. if noticing happens, the learners then correct themselves and can use language making use of the grammatical rules for increased accuracy and precision. as previous studies clil for the teaching of history and english in secondary education language value 15(1) 1-29 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 9 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es have also indicated: “sometimes, under some conditions, output facilitates second language learning in ways that are different form, or enhance, those of input” (swain & lapkin, 1995, p. 371). that is, students’ self-production when communicating can help them notice their own limits and lacks. they will look for correction within their own resources, not just centred on the received input. nevertheless, to provide students with content knowledge and enhance l2 proficiency, it is also necessary to focus on form within clil lessons, so that integration of both content and language is effectively carried out. most clil lessons are sometimes too communicative, since lessons tend to draw attention primarily to meaning and negotiation of meaning, “leaving language apart and using it as a mere vehicle to communicate and not as a goal itself” (pérez-vidal, 2007, p. 51). eventually, this will negatively affect learner output. in order to prevent this and help learners to focus on form, it is necessary to require them to produce comprehensible output, at the same time as teachers provide negative feedback (mariotti, 2006). another important aspect to consider is the question of assessment and the type of clil system to be implemented: soft clil or hard clil (ball et al., 2016). soft clil is ‘language led’, so the assessment measures will need to reflect this. the problem lies on how far language teachers should go in their content-based extension. on the contrary, in hard clil it is no possible to talk about assessing the language, given the subject-based objectives and overall aims of the curriculum. normally, the process-led tendencies of clil give more importance to the practice of continuous and formative assessment and just look at the aspect of the language particularity in clil-based summative testing, identifying the ways in which teachers can warrant fairness for learners being assessed in l2 (ball et al., 2016). considering our educational environment, we will have to consider the brit-aragón regulation, which says language should only be valued and assess positively, a legal aspect that can interfere in the idea of mariotti (2006), previously cited, of providing negative feedback as a way to ensure learner’s output. this does not mean that teachers should not evaluate it, but they cannot penalize students for their faults. the order ecd/65/2015, of 21st january, which describes the alberto ángel vela rodrigo language value 15(1) 1-29 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 10 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es clil for the teaching of history and english in secondary education language value 15(1) 1-29 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 11 relationships between competencies, content and evaluation criteria, indicates that to evaluate complex content, complex tools have to be used. this is the essence of clil: the presence of competency contents (chadwick, 2012; ball et al., 2016). an option to assess in clil is the use of rubrics, preserving a room for language as the only real transversal component which is common to all subject areas and competences and leaving the rest for contents, being both the vehicles for developing the curricular competences. iii. methods to achieve the mentioned aims, literature research was first carried out among the existing materials for clil, as well as consulting online resources through europeana (the european digital library). a deep reading of the materials selected was necessary having into account the rd 1105 2014 on the basic curriculum for secondary education and its application in aragon through the order ecd/489/2016, of 26th may. this allowed to know exactly the main assessment criteria, aims and competences for history in the second year of compulsory secondary education. the analysed textbook is history, series explore, 2º eso (history, 2017) and it is divided into nine units, covering each one a different period of the universal history from the early middle ages to the baroque. the book is reinforced with a final glossary of useful historical terms and an appendix for romanesque and gothic architecture and arts. it also reserves a two-page initial area to introduce the structure of its lessons and activities, showing pictures and terms that are developed next to the main text in order to reinforce input. all units of the book follow one same structure: two introductory pages with large pictures and questions to activate previous knowledge and a text box where to read the aims of the lesson. next, the book develops its content in english as any other textbook would do in spanish, with activities on the sidelines. every unit finishes with four pages for extra exercises to deepen knowledge. further, a close examination on a specific unit was chosen to center the research (unit 9: baroque europe). this unit pursues to reach the last two contents of block 3 from the aragonese curriculum for history in 2º eso: “the 17th century in http://www.languagevalue.uji.es europe: authoritarian, parliamentary and absolute monarchies. the thirty years war, the austrians and their policies: felipe iii, felipe iv and carlos ii / baroque art: main manifestations of the culture of the 16th and 17th centuries” (boa no. 105, june 2 2016, p. 12870-12871). contents also fit assessment criteria crit. gh.3.14., crit. gh. 3.15, crit. gh.3.16 and crit. gh.3.17. (1) all the activities of the lesson were examined and classified one by one according to their nature: activities to work individually, activities to work in groups, activities suitable for both modalities, activities for activating previous knowledge, multimodality activities and activities to support language. the niches detected, as well as the deficiencies and shortcomings in the lesson for the application of the clil methodology helped to establish a list of 9 analytical criteria for teachers to use as a tool when facing the election of a textbook (see table 1). the choice of these criteria could seem somewhat arbitrary at first glance because it does not follow any specific clil model. nevertheless, it introduces specific proposals for application in order to cover the main aspects of the competency model (ball et al., 2016), namely, contents, language and procedures (in order to grade the difficulty of the tasks at different levels), as well as the areas of content and communication support of the 4 c’s model (coyle et al., 2010). once finished the design of the criteria list, all activities were examined again looking for those which meet any or several of the table criteria, reflecting the number and page of the activity. with all the information collected results and conclusions were finally addressed. this tool is intended to be relevant and applicable to any material analysis to be done in the subject of history for clil contexts. it has been tried that the criteria serve to know whether the activities meet sla necessities and they support language and content acquisition. when possible, a proposal for improvement is also presented in the results section. alberto ángel vela rodrigo language value 15(1) 1-29 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 12 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es language value 15(1) 1-29 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 13 clil for the teaching of history and english in secondary education table 1. list of 9 criteria to serve as a research tool for teachers when choosing a textbook for clil. criteria sla* supported by clil aspects to cover crit. 1. learners get opportunities to use ‘stretched language’ (gibbons, 2005, p. 26) with moments of struggle that push them to rethink (swain, 2000). int / co / for /feed -do students face a gap in l2 within their materials so they become aware and modify their output? -do materials give the chance for receiving feedback after formulating a hypothesis? crit. 2. materials give access to comprehensible input and models of new language through the same information in a variety of ways (multimodality) (krashen, 1982) and support output at same time. ip/ co / for -do materials contain specific terminology and its equivalent in informal language? -do materials offer the same information in different channels? crit. 3. ss get opportunities to build on the resources of their mother tongue, using l1 in a strategic way (gibbons, 2005, p. 24). int/ co/ for -do materials give ss the opportunity to seek information in l1 before starting a new subject? -can ss express any idea in l1 when they do not get content in l2? crit. 4. activities / content promote work in groups and pairs to use extended language creating an exploratory space in which to make thinking and reasoning explicit. (gibbons, 2005, p. 32) int/ co/ for/ feed -do materials give the opportunity to work in groups or pairs? -do materials inform appropriately about the language ss need to use? -do ss can feel motivated to express their reasoning receiving any kind of language support such as ‘starting sentences’? crit. 5. materials foster cognitive fluency through the scaffolding of content, language and learning skills. (ball et al., 2015, p. 196) ip/ int/ co/ for/ feed -do materials offer any support to make content more comprehensible? -do materials offer language vocabulary lists or thinking charts that support the assimilation of content? http://www.languagevalue.uji.es alberto ángel vela rodrigo language value 15(1) 1-29 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 14 criteria sla* supported by clil aspects to cover crit. 6. activities need to be attractive to increase students’ motivation (dörnyei, 1994, p. 281). for / co -are activities visually attractive? -are activities related to ss interests? -are activities designed to show how the content they teach can be useful for daily life? crit. 7. materials provide a ‘message of abundancy’ (gibbons, 2005, p. 42), referring to visuals, diagrams, significant landmarks, a landmark of keypoints and similar tools. ip / co / for do materials offer graphics, tables, schemas or similar to make content more comprehensible? crit. 8. materials help ss to stablish relations between new concepts and previous knowledge or experiences they already had. (ball et al., 2015, p. 75) ip / int/ co/ feed -do materials provide word clouds, think charts, kwl charts or similar support so ss can remember what they already know? -do pictures help to activate previous knowledge? -do the questions presented help to activate previous knowledge? crit. 9. activities help to make formal/academic writing explicit for ss and to convert it into informal language giving a model for use (marsh, 2009). co/ for -do activities ask ss for rewriting academic texts into informal or rethinking both? -are the rules to write an academic text clear enough through activities? *sla support: ip (input) / int (interaction) / co (comprehensible output) /for (focus on form) /feed (feedback) http://www.languagevalue.uji.es iv. results and discussion the process of acquiring a new content in history with a clil methodology seeks to integrate content and language. therefore, sla support will be crucial to implement a clil methodology adequately. in this section an analysis of the activities presented in the chosen unit will help to grade the accomplishment of this two-fold aim. for this, the table of criteria designed will be used with the intention of filling the gaps that the book itself may present. iii.1. how clil is this unit? analysing activities through the 9-criteria tool one of the main aspects of providing language support is the analysis of the cognitive and language demands of units and materials. students will have to pay attention to and figure 1. activities 2 from p. 157 and 1 from p. 158. source: history, 2017 follow the sequence of ideas in the presentation of the topic, giving importance to the signals the teacher uses to make the organization of the discourse clear. they will also need to learn some new vocabulary and to use it along with the necessary grammar to perform specific communicative functions when talking in groups. to achieve all this, the teacher can talk in a way that helps students to understand, by graduating the difficulty according to the student and allowing them to use l1 in a strategic way, when necessary, language value 15(1) 1-29 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 15 clil for the teaching of history and english in secondary education http://www.languagevalue.uji.es in order to rethink content. this idea of paying attention to language and to rethink is closely connected to crit. 1 of the proposed criteria tool: learners get opportunities to use ‘stretched language’ (gibbons, 2005, p. 26) with moments of struggle that push them to rethink (swain, 2000). for that, activities such as n. 2 from p. 157 and n. 1 from p. 158 force students to make a reinterpretation of the language they have seen in the theoretical body (see figure 1). they need to look at the pictures of the domestic system and jobs and to produce their own message after answering the proper questions. they also need to search for information to reinterpret it when writing a biography of a valido in 17th century. the first case would also be connected to crit. 4. content promote work in groups and pairs to use extended language (gibbons, 2005, p. 32). as for crit. 3 ss get opportunities to build on the resources of their mother tongue, using l1 in a strategic way, (gibbons, 2015, p. 24) there are no activities in the unit oriented this manner, as it could be an introductory activity that allows them to investigate the historical context in advance. thus, they could seek for information in their mother tongue (spanish in this case) on the internet or in libraries. the most appropriate activity in the textbook to meet this criterion is placed at the beginning of the unit and is entitled find out about: students must investigate some terms without any specific pattern (e.g., the scientific revolution, the spanish golden age, etc.). the unit starts with an attempt of previous knowledge activation through questions that foster reflection, which is not exclusive of the clil methodology but of tasks in general. in fact, clil is nothing new. it draws on principles and procedures that are associated with the communicative approach and meaningful learning. at any rate, there are some specific positive aspects of the unit which has little to do with the proposed criteria tool but that are important for content presentation too. this is the appropriate use of appealing pictures the book does, which are very visual and descriptive. some of them present content support through language definitions or indications with arrows nearby (e.g., introductory pages and pp. 166, 168, 169) (see figure 2 and figure 3). alberto ángel vela rodrigo language value 15(1) 1-29 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 16 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es figure 2. picture with vocabulary introduction. source: history, 2017 figure 3. picture with vocabulary introduction. source: history, 2017 iconic descriptors such as dialogue balloons, keys, stairs or cd’s drawings are used to indicate the nature of every activity, which also helps target learners to understand how to proceed. the same effect is produced by the use of schemas and diagrams, which make content easier at first glance (p. 158-159 with the lives of the habsburgs and most relevant facts in their time, or p. 163 where we find the political system of the united provinces after their treason to the spanish crown). but all this visual support has very little to do with clil methodology specifically, since they are common to any kind of activities available in most of text books from any subject of today. it would be more oriented towards clil if they introduced multimodality in presenting input. apart from diagrams, activities could give links to videos (authors could create their own videos, clil for the teaching of history and english in secondary education language value 15(1) 1-29 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 17 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es images or extended exercises with interactive maps in a cd annexed). this way they could make input comprehensible (krashen, 1982) and even clarify the context of the baroque through film recommendation. for this period of history there are relevant, informative films they could watch in english with/without subtitles such as barry lyndon (1975), caravaggio (1986) or the man in the iron mask (1998). subtitling them in l2 would serve also for enhancing input. a key aspect in clil is the support and active participation of the teacher in the learning and teaching process, both presenting content and providing scaffolding for content and language when necessary. none of the activities of the unit has been designed to work with the teacher together, but to work individually or in groups of students, considering the teacher as a mere controller (harmer, 1991). the unit meets the curriculum content and assessment criteria, but it is very far from meeting clil requirements. many speaking activity types would be possible to fill this blank. as an example, we can consider to read articles from historical magazines aloud and to ask for instructions among groups in order to design a final poster. to organize role-playing specific subject scenarios (for example, a dialogue between a doctor from the 17th century and one of the 21st century) or to ask open and closed questions from teacher to class and from student to student (about the consequences of a population growth in the past and now) can also be useful. as far as crit. 2. is concerned (materials give access to comprehensible input and models of new language through the same information in a variety of ways (multimodality) krashen, 1982), new language (especially new terminology) is introduced within the main text through the use of bold letters and italics. another way of presenting vocabulary in the book is through the use of arrows and terminology within a bubble next to a picture, that is to say, annotated visuals (pp. 166 and 172). nevertheless, this activity does not meet criteria 1 and 2, since input and vocabulary are only presented in one same way instead of using other techniques, such as information gaps, speaking frames, videos, word lists, substitution tables or sentence starters for learners to complete. alberto ángel vela rodrigo language value 15(1) 1-29 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 18 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es iii.2. activities and motivation: engaging students questioning can be very positive in clil-oriented activities since it stimulates learners’ interest and thinking. however, to make questioning effective, we have to give students time to think; we must handle wrong answers assertively; and, finally, we need to help students to understand that wrong answers are always opportunities to learn. the activities of this unit present several questioning proposals in groups, especially at the introductory pages, but most questions are designed to be answered individually. activities need to be more communicative, that is, more oriented towards a task-type model, in order to create a warm ambience in which to discuss (crit.6). here, opportunities to use a ‘stretched language’ (as indicated in crit. 1) will come up and the teacher will be able to provide scaffolding to content, language and learning skills (to fulfil crit. 5: materials foster cognitive fluency through the scaffolding of content, language and learning skills, ball et al., 2015, p. 196). namely, students could give explanations to the topics proposed. for example, they could offer their vision about the palace of versailles in p. 155 or express personal attitudes towards the people’s ways of life living in the palace. they also can expose disadvantages or advantages of absolutism in that time, likes and dislikes, or how to link this palace to similar constructions they have visited in spain or any other country. this would promote the use of functional language, that is, what students need in different daily situations, integrating all language skills. on the other hand, crit. 6 (activities need to be attractive to increase students’ motivation (dörnyei, 1994, p. 281)) can encompass all the activities in the unit, and possibly the whole textbook. activities are not as attractive as they could be, especially considering all the digital media and resources available nowadays. along the unit, it has been observed that there are some activities which consist on listening to cds or searching information on the internet (introductory exercise on page 154 (see figure 4) and act. 3 from p. 157, act. 1 on p. 158, act. 1 on p. 164, acts. 1, 2 and 3 from p. 165 and act. 8 from page 171), (see figure 5) but they are mere traditional activities which substitute written sources for digital ones. clil for the teaching of history and english in secondary education language value 15(1) 1-29 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 19 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es they seem to be there as it was necessary to meet the curriculum dispositions about the digital competence but they do not add any value to the teaching-learning process in clil. in this matter, the aragonese curriculum indicates that the teaching of geography and history is no longer understood without the incorporation of information and communication technologies, which carry their own baggage of knowledge, skills and attitudes necessary to function safely and critically in the digital world. these activities should go a step forward and promote discussion in class from the different results obtained in the search, introducing the possibility to prepare a project to present in front of the class at the end of the lesson. for example, in act. 1 from p. 158 they might prepare a poster under the title “the duke of lerma and its political connections: the city of lerma as the new spanish versailles”, so they could feel free to work on information alberto ángel vela rodrigo language value 15(1) 1-29 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 20 figure 4. activity from page 154. source: history, 2017 figure 5. activity from page 165. source: history, 2017 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es they consider relevant making learning more significant. moreover, these activities could be more interactive: presenting graphics, visuals, diagrams and links to videos. they could help classifying terms (‘how many classes of baroque constructions do you know?’) or promoting creative thinking imagining situations (what if…?/ ‘what would have happened if spain had won the thirty year war?’). thereby, activities would also meet crit. 4, activities / content promote work in groups and pairs to use extended language creating an exploratory space in which to make thinking and reasoning explicit. (gibbons, 2005, p. 32), because they would make reasoning explicit, and crit. 7 materials provide a ‘message of abundancy’, (gibbons, 2005, p. 42). here, the teacher needs to have an active role, interacting patiently with students when giving feedback to their discussion, but also when presenting new contents and ideas in class. if the teacher moves fast from one idea to another, students will get lost as they are hearing an explanation in a foreign language. according to gibbons (2015), for creating that ‘message of abundancy’, small bites of information can be given and repeated several times. in addition, visual representation can accompany the spoken message and terms can be written with different colour-codes on the blackboard. this could be done, for example, for presenting the spanish and austrian possessions after the thirty-year war, instead of just answering questions 1 to 4 in p. 160 on the notebook individually. activation is also essential both in clil and sla, as in any other learning field. to understand what students already know about the subject they are going to learn, it is helpful to introduce the new topic at same time as the teacher becomes aware of the type of language they already know or in which areas he/she needs to emphasize. i have found that the only exercise meeting partially crit. 8 materials help ss to stablish relations between new concepts and previous knowledge or experiences they already had, ball et al., 2015, p. 75 is the introductory sections “work with the image” and “how do we know?” in pp. 154-155 (see figure 6). clil for the teaching of history and english in secondary education language value 15(1) 1-29 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 21 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es they establish a series of questions in which students need to interact with a picture that serves as a presentation of the coming content in the lesson. that gives them also the opportunity to expand what they deduce from it or from the information they got on the internet previously. nevertheless, these sections are designed in an ambiguous manner, since they can be approached individually or as a group class dynamic. there is no reference to the teacher in the unit, so conversation or debates in which to make input or previous knowledge explicit are not assured. for meeting crit. 8 it would have been interesting to use visual resources such as a word cloud (with nouns and adjectives as well as specific terminology, for example, baroque, absolutism, power, war, migration, luxury, epidemic, morisco, hegemony, king, westphalia, centralization…). another interesting activity could consist on matching concepts and definitions, fill-in the gaps or using a kwl thinkchart (what i know, what i want to know, what i learned). kwl charts are graphic organizers that help students organize information before, during, and after a unit or a lesson, so students can have a very clear picture of their individual process of learning. there is not such an activity of matching concepts and definitions until p. 162 act. 1, and just as a result of a previous reading of the body content explaining the absolute monarchy of louis xiv. even so, this is just a traditional activity which has been used for teaching history in english. students need to develop not just subject alberto ángel vela rodrigo language value 15(1) 1-29 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 22 figure 6. introductory sections “work with the image” and “how do we know?” to clil unit in p. 154-155. source: history, 2017 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es clil for the teaching of history and english in secondary education language awareness, but general academic language awareness. subject specific vocabulary is just the first layer of language when teaching a subject as history. there is another layer which can make the learning process even more difficult and this is the academic language with all its fixed structures, wealth of verb phrasing (opposed to the predominant noun-phrasing in subject vocabulary) and pre-stablished expressions and formulas. thus, general academic language is cross-curricular. that is to say, it is valid for all subjects and for future learning in any field of knowledge. furthermore, unlike subject specific language, this is mostly invisible on the unit and needs to become visible so students can organize and assimilate it. although there is no unit activity that meets crit. 9. activities help to make formal/ academic writing explicit for students and to convert it into informal language giving a model for use (marsh, 2008) the teacher can take advantage of activities 3 from p. 157, 1 from p. 158 and 1 in p. 164 to guide students towards academic resources on the internet (see figure 7). namely, directing the learners’ attention to the main formulas and grammar constructions they present and allowing students to put them into their own words. after that, students might create an “academic manual” for personal use, or a glossary, in which they could write down all the academic formulas they find and their “translation” into informal language, so they can use the language they learn in different contexts according to the demands. we must not forget that general academic language is closely related to thinking skills within subject areas, so teachers should be able to identify the functions of language involved in those thinking areas by consulting their curricular documents: for example, to comprehend, to identify, to understand, language of the literature, the world of art, from politics, from social sciences (such as statistics or sociology), etc. language value 15(1) 1-29 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 23 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es alberto ángel vela rodrigo in general terms and in order to finish this analysis, it is necessary to highlight the better adequacy of the last four pages of the unit, dedicated exclusively to activities related to the content seen along the previous pages. these activities try to be more interactive, with a schema to complete in activity 1 from p. 170, which acts as a review of the whole unit and helps students to organize their information more clearly in four main points, though there is still no support to language in it. on the other hand, activity 7 of p. 171 requires a higher attention and the activation of inductive skills on the students’ part, since they have to explain the subject of the dutch painting from rembrandt, as well as make connections with what they know about the scientific revolution in the 17th century (see figure 8). it would be interesting to take advantage of this activity offering language samples to use for analysing materials, or an example of how to analyse the picture using informal language and how to do it when writing an academic extract. the activity could give them statements such as “there are three kinds/forms/types/classes/ categories of …………, this can be divided /classified / articulated into three forms/types/ classes”, etc. learners in clil programs need this language to be made clearly visible to them. v. conclusions having the appropriate materials when working in a clil classroom is basic to achieve language value 15(1) 1-29 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 24 figure 7. activitiy 3 from p. 157. source: history, 2017 figure 8. activity 7 from p. 171. source: history, 2017 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es clil for the teaching of history and english in secondary education the content and language aims of this methodology. in general terms, the teacher has too much to pay attention to in the classroom: timing, teaching methodology, presenting content, language attention, class management, etc. this is the reason why counting on an appropriate text-book which is well designed according to clil parameters can facilitate the teacher’s labour. with all this in mind, a material analysis tool has been designed with 9 basic criteria based on clil theory. this tool, in the form of a table, seeks to become a useful instrument in the choice of clil materials by teachers. to do this and always based on the literature on the subject, a series of questions taking into account how clil can support sla has been presented. this 9-criteria tool has consequently been applied to the analysis of the unit. based on the analysis of unit 9 of the chosen materials for the teaching of history in a school of aragon using the clil system, it is possible to draw attention on different aspects. first, the textual presentation of curricular content seems to be very traditional and plain since it follows the same structure of most spanish history textbooks. furthermore, it does not pay particular attention to specific tools that can support content and language acquisition, as clil pursues. content is simply presented for students as a text to be read in order to answer questions about it, with a slight attempt of knowledge activation at the two introductory pages of the unit. for that, the textbook offers a list of questions to work individually or in group, in which they have to infer or guess some content from the pictures, so all the weight of the clil competences falls on the teacher’s ability to make them valuable. second, the analysis of the cognitive and linguistic demands of lessons and the introduction of forms of language support are normally the things which subject teachers are least accustomed to doing. most of the exercises do not encourage communication with the teacher, so its ability to guide content and support language appears to be very limited. this way, it is difficult to use extended language in order to create an exploratory space in which to make thinking and reasoning explicit. in most of cases, talking activities in groups will consist on students using a mix of spanish and english and the teacher acting as a controlling figure. language value 15(1) 1-29 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 25 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es alberto ángel vela rodrigo applying the criteria tool as a method of analysis of the unit shows that students could get into the rest of the unit content in a faster and easier manner if the textbook also provided think charts. this would help them not just to activate previous knowledge but to be guided through their learning process, as well as other tools also do, such as word clouds or activities to match the beginning of a sentence with its ending. this would facilitate also the use of l1 to express some difficult ideas or concepts at first, in order to create their own working tools to help them during the rest of the lesson (such as glossaries), while making formal / academic writing more explicit. finally, in this unit 9 there are no activities or techniques which provide students with the necessary scaffolding in the use of the language, such as sentence starters, word lists or substitution tables, which can help students in their writing and speaking process. all suggestions derived from this analysis and here presented could improve the quality of the clil text-book, since they can help both the materials and the teacher to support content, cognition and language in a more efficient way, according to the literature on the subject. at the same time, they would increase students’ motivation, since they would perceive english not as an added difficulty, but as a vehicle for getting access to ‘extra’ knowledge and sources in international contexts that can help them in their future careers. in the end, the main purpose of clil is to prepare students to face the world of today, in which english is omnipresent, so they can perceive and use it as a vehicular language with which to overcome any barrier that prevents access to information. notes (1) these criteria are reflected in the aragonese curriculum for the teaching of history in 2nd year of secondary education. crit. gh.3.14. “understand and differentiate medieval monarchical regimes and modern authoritarian, parliamentary and absolute monarchies”; crit. gh. 3.15, “know features of the internal policies of the european language value 15(1) 1-29 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 26 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es clil for the teaching of history and english in secondary education language value 15(1) 1-29 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 27 monarchies (in particular, of the hispanic monarchy of the habsburg) and foreign policies of the european states of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries”; crit. gh.3.16 “know the importance of some authors and works of these centuries” and crit. gh.3.17. “discuss the importance of baroque art in europe and meet authors and representative works of art and literature. use historical-artistic vocabulary with precision, inserting it in the appropriate context”. (order ecd/489/2016, may 26, which approves the curriculum for compulsory secondary education and authorizes its application in the educational centres of the autonomous community of aragon. boletín oficial de aragón, 105, june 2, 2016, 12870 to 12871. https://educa.aragon.es/documents/20126/868873/ orden+curriculo+secundaria+2016.pdf). vi. acknowledgements this article is a contribution to the research group “comunicación internacional y retos sociales” funded by the regional government of aragon (project code h16_20r). vii. references assor, a., kaplan, h., kanat-maymon, y., and roth, g. (2005). directly controlling teacher behaviours as predictors of poor motivation and engagement in girls and boys: the role of anger and anxiety, learning and instruction, 15 (5), 397-413. ball, p., kelly, k., & clegg, j. (2016). putting clil into practice: oxford handbooks for language teachers. oxford university press. bloom, b.s. & krathwohl, d. r. 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(2006). language across the curriculum. language policy division. received: 17 january 2022 accepted: 20 may 2022 clil for the teaching of history and english in secondary education language value 15(1) 1-29 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 29 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es language value december 2022, volume 15, number 2 pp. 1-28 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es issn 1989-7103 language value, issn 1989-7103 doi: https://doi.org/10.6035/languagev.6845 1 do top-down and bottom-up agents agree on internationalisation? a mixed methods study of spanish universities rosana villares rvillares@unizar.es university of zaragoza, spain abstract this paper explores the implementation of internationalisation in the spanish university system and its effects from a mixed methods approach, combining quantitative corpus linguistics techniques and qualitative interview protocols. results showed that spanish universities’ written policies align with the national framework and rely on a complementary use of ‘abroad’ and ‘at home’ orientations for research and education. the main internationalisation strategies identified are mobility, collaboration, and english-medium instruction. a positive representation of internationalisation is also identified, with both top-down and bottom-up actors stressing its benefits for individuals and society. yet, some critical voices pointed at mismatches between institutional views and stakeholders’ experiences, questioning the sufficient allocation of resources and lack of recognition and incentives. the paper argues that effective comprehensive internationalisation should include written internationalisation plans, communication strategies, and a clearly defined internationalisation models adapted to the universities’ particularities. keywords: internationalisation, spanish higher education, collocate analysis, document analysis, semistructured interviews. villares, r. (2022). do top-down and bottom-up agents agree on internationalisation? a mixed methods study of spanish universities. language value, 15(2), 1-28. universitat jaume i epress: castelló, spain. http://www.languagevalue.uji.es. december 2022 doi: https://doi.org/10.6035/languagev.6845 issn 1989-7103 issn 1989-7103 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6070-5526 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ rosana villares language value 15 (2), 1–28 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 2 i. introduction in the last decades, globalisation has become one of the main drivers for the modernisation of higher education. as a response to the needs and demands of a global society, universities worldwide have developed internationalisation strategies (altbach & knight, 2007; knight, 2004). despite the wide range of definitions in the scholarly literature, there is a consensus about internationalisation consisting of at least the introduction of an international, intercultural, or global dimension into the university’s functions of research, teaching and administration (de wit et al., 2015; knight, 2004). to illustrate the relevance of internationalisation in the european context, the european commission has designed several policy documents to provide the member states with a space for cooperation, mobility, and intercultural awareness to “build a competitive and world-class european higher education system” (evans , 2006, p. 41). many of these european strategies (2013, 2019) address, among other things, the acquisition of transversal competences such as communication skills, global citizenship skills, professional skills, interpersonal and personal skills, and ict skills, which are crucial for the labour market (jones, 2013, 2020; murray, 2016; spencer-oatey & dauber, 2015). more specifically, the european commission (2013) is focused on developing comprehensive internationalisation, which consists of three main transversal areas: “international student and staff mobility; the internationalisation and improvement of curricula and digital learning; and strateg ic cooperation, partnerships and capacity building” (p. 4). hence, these policies stress the relevant role played by internationalised universities, which are essential to thrive in an interconnected and globalised world (european commission, 2019; sursock & smidt 2010). there is a clear-cut distinction between the strategies focused on ‘exporting’ and those focused on ‘importing’ internationalisation. traditionally, internationalisation tended to understand export-oriented initiatives (internationalisation abroad) as the main indicators of internationalisation such as mobility-related strategies, cross-border do top-down and bottom-up agents agree on internationalisation? a mixed methods study of spanish universities language value 15(2), 1–28 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 3 educational programmes, recruitment of international students, international collaboration between researchers and institutions, and the delivery of cross-border education in off-shore campuses or joint degrees (maringe & foskett, 2010; de wit, 2011; de wit et al., 2015; sursock & smidt, 2010; teichler, 2009). internationalisation at home (import-oriented), by contrast, pays more attention to language learning, multicultural issues, curriculum development and transversal skills acquisition for those students and staff who stay on the local campus and do not engage in physical mobility. in doing so, these initiatives contribute to the achievement of internationalised learning outcomes, global competence, and cultural diversity in the domestic campus (beelen & jones, 2015; knight, 2012; yemeni & sagie, 2016). although internationalisation has been thoroughly studied from a variety of perspectives, previous studies in the spanish context seemed to focus either on the internationalisation of one or few universities (cardim & luzón benedicto, 2008; rumbley, 2010; soler-carbonell & gallego-balsà, 2019; unesco, 2014) or on specific areas such as the connection between languages and internationalisation or student mobility and internationalisation rather than offering a transversal and comprehensive view of the state of internationalisation in the country (doiz et al., 2013; haug & vilalta, 2011; lasagabaster et al., 2013; ramos-garcía & pavón vázquez, 2018). to fill in this gap, this study aims at shedding light on the understanding of institutional internationalisation during the decade 2010-2020 from a holistic perspective as it comprises data from a representative number of spanish universities’ internationalisation written policies combined with interview data from stakeholders. due to the mixed methods nature of this study, internationalisation policies are textually analysed to determine their effect on institutional goals, implementation processes, and stakeholders’ experiences. in this way, supported by empirical data, it is more likely to identify potential mismatches between policy and the realities on the ground that could hinder internationalisation endeavours. the complementarity of data sources and methods was deemed necessary since, as fabricius et al. (2017) claim, there seems to be a “significant difference between theory and http://www.languagevalue/ rosana villares language value 15 (2), 1–28 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 4 internationalisation in practice” (p. 10). this paper addresses the following research questions: 1. what are the main goals and strategies included in spanish internationalisation written policies? 2. to what extent do bottom-up agents’ internationalisation experiences align with institutional policies? ii. the internationalisation of spanish universities ii.1. top-down internationalisation policies since internationalisation has evolved from being considered a set of isolated activities to become a transversal goal embedded in the university’s mission, ethos , and values (jones ,2020; knight, 2004, 2012), the creation of a national strategy is advantageous for institutional policy development. the spanish government launched the strategy for the internationalisation of spanish universities 2015-2020 (mecd, 2014) to provide universities with a general framework to succeed in a globally competitive society and to improve the spanish university system’s quality and efficiency. aware of the weaknesses of the university system such as the lack of internationalised study programmes, low rate of english competence, difficulties in the recruitment of international staff, or funding limitations, this strategy addresses the following objectives: the internationalisation of the university system, becoming internationally attractive, promoting the international competitive capacity of universities, and increasing cooperation with other countries (figure 1). each of the four objectives is complemented with specific actions that include resources, stakeholders, indicators, and timelines. in this way, the national strategy offers a roadmap to institutions that can be adapted to their context, needs and goals. do top-down and bottom-up agents agree on internationalisation? a mixed methods study of spanish universities language value 15(2), 1–28 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 5 figure 1. general overview of the spanish internationalisation strategy (adapted from mecd 2014) within the second objective, boosting the international attractiveness of universities, it is mentioned the need to update institutional internationalisation policies, which aligns with the literature reporting the relevance of written policies by authors such as childress (2010), qiang (2003), soliman et al. (2019), and sursock and smidt (2010). their findings stress the relevance of written internationalisation plans because they include: a) well-articulated mission statements, b) clear and measurable goals, c) allocation of financial and human resources, d) stakeholder participation and active discussion of the plan, e) practical and achievable timelines and targets. in the same line, hénard et al. (2012) recommended a series of actions for effective comprehensive internationalisation based on the statement of clear objectives, adaptive strategies to the characteristics of the universities, the engagement of stakeholders along the process, and the introduction of quality assurance indicators. http://www.languagevalue/ rosana villares language value 15 (2), 1–28 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 6 thus, written plans are crucial as they become an essential tool for the implementation of internationalisation. in this way, universities show their commitment to internationalisation from a comprehensive point of view and provide guidance to stakeholders during the implementation, monitoring and dissemination of internationalisation endeavours. ii.2. bottom-up internationalisation realities yet, to obtain a holistic view of internationalisation in the spanish landscape, it should also be investigated from other perspectives to gain insights into the impact of internationalisation policies. in other words, to explore how internationalisation is understood not only from a top-down perspective through institutional documents but also from a bottom-up perspective investigating stakeholders’ perceptions towards internationalisation. the interrelation of both perspectives falls into the major strands of research in the internationalisation field identified by bedenlier et al. (2018 ), which correspond to the combination of both institutional and bottom-up actors’ experiences and perceptions. in this study, a group of scholars from a medium-sized spanish university were considered one of the most suitable stakeholder groups because of their two-fold role in internationalisation at home and abroad strategies. scholars are the intermediates between international students, bilingual education, research outputs, and international publication, which are activities highly valued by institutions to boost the international agenda and international visibility of universities. this stakeholder group, therefore, is deemed crucial for the identification of potential top-down and bottomup mismatches. likewise, it is a group highly influenced by institutional policies’ contents. iii. methodology mixed methods research is defined by dörnyei (2007) as a form of complementing the limitations found in quantitative and qualitative methodological approaches when do top-down and bottom-up agents agree on internationalisation? a mixed methods study of spanish universities language value 15(2), 1–28 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 7 used separately. this author further highlights the benefits found in the combination of different methodologies such as the ability to cross-check and gain a better understanding of the target issues, or to reach a broader audience because it compresses multiple approaches. additionally, this methodology allows the comparison, complementation and verification of results in order to assure quality standards (creswell, 2013). thus, a mixed methods study does not only guarantee the reliability and validity of the analysis but adds to the research field of internationalisation new insights based on empirical data. this section first describes the quantitative corpus linguistics techniques employed during the analysis of the policy document corpus, followed by the description of the qualitative methodology used in the semi-structured interviews. the use of mixed methods regarding data sources (i.e. documents and interviews) as well as methodologies (i.e. collocate analysis and thematic analysis) is believed to assure the validity and representativeness of the study. iii.1. corpus design and corpus-linguistic analytical techniques a specialised corpus ad hoc was designed and compiled to investigate the nature and contents of the spanish universities’ internationalisation policies. the corpus consisted of 66 internationalisation-related documents from 66 spanish universities, which represent 79% of the spanish university system (mecd, 2016, p. 5), bearing in mind issues of size, practicality, and representativeness (o’keeffe & mccarthy, 2010). the documents were classified into internationalisation plans (n=22, 33%) and university strategic plans (n=44, 67%). when separate internationalisation plans did not exist, the university strategic plans were collected because they often included internationalisation-related information either as a strategic or transversal goal. documents were downloaded from the universities’ websites, particularly from the international-related and transparency portal sections, and then saved in both pdf and plain text formats. since the corpus compilation was carried out in 2020, the http://www.languagevalue/ rosana villares language value 15 (2), 1–28 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 8 documents dated from 2012 to 2019, with most of them being published in 2015, probably as a consequence of the national strategy publication one year before. antconc v.3.5.7 (anthony, 2018) was the software used to carry out a corpus linguistics-based study of the documents because it enables large-size corpora analysis to identify representative language use patterns (mcenery & hardie, 2012; o’keeffe & mccarthy, 2010). more specifically, a collocate analysis of the node internationalisation was carried out to identify the most-frequently associated words co-occurring with that term. the advanced search term ‘internationali*’ was employed to include all the multilingual occurrences of the term in spanish, catalan, galician, and english. lastly, a 5-span window (left and right) with a cut-off point of 4 and mi statistical measure were used to retrieve the data. once the result lists were gathered, an excel spreadsheet was created to organise, clean, and analyse the data. categories such as function words, university names, and proper nouns were deleted. the remaining 76 collocates of the node internationalisation were grouped together according to a corpus-driven taxonomy of semantic categories: • strategy refers to all the initiatives implemented for internationalisation goals in the different areas of university education. • agency includes all the stakeholders involved in internationalisation. • evaluation consists of nouns, adjectives and verbs including positive or negative discourse traits, as well as references to the own documents and internationalisation. each of these three categories comprises a series of collocates organised into subcategories, as can be seen in table 1: do top-down and bottom-up agents agree on internationalisation? a mixed methods study of spanish universities language value 15(2), 1–28 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 9 table 1. corpus-based categories of internationalisation’s collocates category subcategory collocates strategy research teaching administration general research, development, innovation, knowledge, transfer programme, undergraduate, offer, teaching, formative, education, studies, phd, postgraduate information, resources, website, support, service international, home, mobility, cooperation, culture, project, global, excellence, digital, employability, alliance, language, quality agency source target university, vice-rectorate, institution, centres, office students, administrative staff, community, teaching staff, people, company, society evaluation nouns adjectives verbs activity, objective, action, process, exe, indicator, level, initiatives, line, field, factor, challenge, vision, plan, strategy, policy, document transversal, key, integral, opportunity, major increase, boost, foster, promote, drive, improve, bet, compromise, achieve, facilitate during the report of results, the collocates are written in italics because it is translated into english for the sake of grouping all the multilingual occurrences under one term. for example, the collocate university includes “universidad”, “universitat”, “universidade” and “university” and it is followed by its raw frequency in parenthesis e.g. university (n=84). finally, the collocational results were complemented with a concordance analysis to guide the discussion of findings with real examples from the texts although the universities were anonymised. the excerpts employed in the discussion were translated into english for the same reason as the collocates. iii.2. semi-structured interview and content analysis techniques as part of a project focused on internationalisation and linguistic diversity in internationally engaged universities (cf. vázquez et al., 2019), a series of semistructured interviews were conducted with scholars from a medium-sized spanish university to enquire about their attitudes and perspectives on internationalisation. stemming from the question “what is an international campus?”, a protocol was designed to prompt answers and guide the follow-up conversation by asking other http://www.languagevalue/ rosana villares language value 15 (2), 1–28 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 10 questions such as “what should your university do to be more international in research, teaching and management?”, “what are the most important actions that should be implemented to make your university more international?”, and “what are the main challenges for an international campus?” also, some keywords were previously identified to assess the familiarity of the scholars with internationa lisation such as mobility, exchanges, media, economic life, cultural value, global citizen vs. monolingual national citizen, teaching standards, linguistic landscapes, and second language instruction. the participants were approached following a snowball sampling technique that relies on the own interviewees to suggest potential colleagues for conducting more interviews once they had done it. a total of 26 scholars from the earth sciences (n=16, 62%) and social sciences (n=10, 38%) disciplinary fields were interviewed. the interviews were conducted in spanish to facilitate comprehension and participation. they were recorded and manually transcribed, totalling 24,789 words. the interview data were analysed with the software atlas.ti v.8.4.2 that assisted the qualitative content analysis, which refers to “the systematic description of data through coding” to generate categories and analyse meaning (schreier, 2014, p. 5). for doing so, an initial close reading of the transcriptions took place to familiarise with the interviews’ contents and then a first broad descriptive data-driven coding system was developed. after a second revision, an updated grouping and redefinition of the initial coding system allowed the accurate identification of key themes emerging from the interviews. codes were grouped into three main themes (see table 2) and each one included descriptive codes, e.g. specific characteristics of internationalised universities, and evaluative codes, e.g. approach (aspects to change), the importance of languages, or perceived weaknesses. during the qualitative analysis, a similar approach to other studies like carciu and muresan (2020) and lourenco et al. (2020) was implemented. table 2. main themes and codes emerging from the interviews themes collocates strategies mobility, collaboration, exchange, international projects, networks, research stays, teaching quality do top-down and bottom-up agents agree on internationalisation? a mixed methods study of spanish universities language value 15(2), 1–28 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 11 language dimension english teaching, language courses, language support, website critical views approach, bureaucracy, funding, institutional support, perceived weakness, recognition iv. results and discussion iv.1. the main dimensions of internationalisation policies iv1.1. strategies among the numerous strategies found in the document corpus, the collocates indicating critical areas of action refer to research and teaching, which are considered key areas in the development of an internationalised and competitive university system. research (n=55) objectives are related to participation in international projects (n=12), associations (n=5) and networks that promote the visibility of research results through publications in high-impact journals. in fact, a current concern of universities is the applicability of the science they create; thus, research tends to be connected to development (n=15), innovation (n=13) and knowledge transfer (n=8) to society and companies, as found in institutional policies where research is framed as a crucial aspect of internationalisation. see for instance the following extract that sum marises this view: since the beginning, research has been an international activity where work is carried out and disseminated through global mechanisms (international research projects and teams, exchange of ideas in international forums, publication in international journals, etc.). it implies that internationalisation is an indispensable requirement for research excellence. (text 1, 2015) the idea of cross-border collaboration for research purposes is shown with both the collocate international (n=55), which points to the scope of research, and the collocates mobility (n=24) and cooperation (n=14) to foster exchanges among different http://www.languagevalue/ rosana villares language value 15 (2), 1–28 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 12 universities, research institutes, companies, society, and individuals. for instance, in the case of doctoral students, references to international research stays were found in the corpus to highlight the importance of international networking and collaboration from an early career stage. the collocate home (n=24) is part of the phrase ‘internationalisation at home’ that focuses on the education dimension of universities as well as the allocation of resources to increase the universities’ international impact. the internationalisation at home approach focuses on the strategies and actions taking place at the local campus, and it seems that for spanish policymakers, it takes the form of including an international dimension of teaching by means of using english-medium instruction. likewise, the collocates in the sub-category teaching show that this approach appears in relation to undergraduate and graduate teaching programmes, particularly regarding language-taught courses and mobility programmes. some of the specific strategies focusing on these two objectives can be summarised in the following extract, where the university designs a series of actions that range from creating international support measures on campus to promoting the university presence abroad with alliances (n=5): incentive programmes for bilingual teaching and international student mentoring. according to the internationalisation strategy of the [university], the mechanisms that promote the quantity and quality of english-taught courses must be strengthened. […] promotion of joint and double degrees. the creation of international official double degrees and joint degrees within and outside the european union is a line of action already started by the [university]. they comprise a competitive advantage for the enrolled students and an additional asset to the attraction of new students [...] (text 3, 2020) to succeed in the previous strategies, universities must offer their information (n=7) in different languages, as observed with the collocates accompanying the node such as the allocation of resources (n=7) to translate university websites (n=5) and other digital-related media (n=5) into english, as well as offering internationally related support (n=5) and service (n=5). in this way, an international audience may access the institutional information of research, teaching, management, and transference, aspects valued by international rankings and international quality agencies. do top-down and bottom-up agents agree on internationalisation? a mixed methods study of spanish universities language value 15(2), 1–28 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 13 iv.1.2. agency as far as agency is concerned, the most salient collocate in this section is university (n=84). it appears both with a general meaning (institution, n=40) referring to the institution itself and with a specific meaning that identifies the different levels of university managers, represented by the collocates vice-rectorate (n=47) and centres (n=13). this finding is not surprising since the institution is the main responsible for creating these policy documents, so most references to this word refer to the university name as the primary agent promoting the mentioned strategies by means of explaining its objectives and positioning in favour of internationalisation. their relevance is observed in their responsibility to create internationalisation plans, implement the contents described in those plans, and transform them into concrete actions. the main proof of institutional commitment is embodied in the creation of written plans, as observed in the collocates plan (n=79) and strategy (n=75), aligning with childress’ arguments (2010). the high frequency of these words corresponds mostly with self-references to the documents as an intertextuality feature, either as explaining its contents or referring to national and legal documents that shape the internationalisation plans’ contents, as seen for instance in: the objectives of the strategic plan are aligned with the rest of strategic objectives of the [university]; therefore, they are integrated in the “university strategy 2015” promoted by the government of spain, and they coordinate with the institutional compromise of the “international excellence campus” and the “strategic document for the viii centenary of the [university]” (text 6, 2012) similarly, collocates such as activity (n=42), objective (n=37), action (n=36), are likely to precede detailed information about specific strategies for teaching and research and are followed by the expression “responsible agent: vice -rectorate of internationalisation/ international relations” once the action is mentioned. other identified actors refer to students (n=19), administrative staff (n=14), teaching staff (n=11), and the university community (n=9), who are the main targeted groups by internationalisation plans. it is observed that these groups of stakeholders play a twohttp://www.languagevalue/ rosana villares language value 15 (2), 1–28 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 14 fold role in internationalisation. when actors are the ‘receivers’ of internationalisation strategies, it is observed how students are targeted with the majority of education and mobility strategies. in the case of the teaching staff, they are addressed with researchrelated strategies, mobility and incentives policies for foreign-language instruction. lastly, the administrative staff receives language training actions. on the other hand, when actors are responsible for ‘exporting’ internationalisation, the teaching staff includes an international dimension to their research activity, the administrative staff offers a quality service to international students and staff, and students can play an essential role as international representatives of their universities, as illustrated in the following extract: identification and dissemination of internationally prestigious alumni and researchers of the [university]. the university wants to create a network with members who belong or used to belong to the university community and who currently have an international curriculum of excellence. […] increase the recruitment capacity of international teaching staff. […] develop the actions related to the international mobility of students, teaching staff, and administrative staff (mobility, intercultural and language competences). (text 1, 2015) iv.1.3. evaluation collocates included in the evaluation category such as the verbs increase (n=22), boost (n=18), foster (n=16), or promote (n=12) show the desire to spread the internationalisation endeavours all over the university context. moreover, collocates like transversal (n=15), key (n=8) and integral (n=7) support the comprehensive approach to internationalisation that is embedded in all the university’s functions (european commission, 2013; knight, 2004, 2012). the occurrence of these collocates seems to confirm one more time the institutional commitment towards internationalisation and agree on the benefits it brings to society and the university community. the positive representation of internationalisation in the analysed documents shows that in spanish universities it is considered a strategic and transversal objective in the areas of research, education, and physical mobility. it is regarded as necessary to become internationally competitive and prestigious, aligning with the national and european supranational educational policies, and beneficial for society and the do top-down and bottom-up agents agree on internationalisation? a mixed methods study of spanish universities language value 15(2), 1–28 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 15 university community in terms of employment, collaboration, and skills acquisition essential requirements in modern society. the fact that institutional documents agree on the benefits of internationalisation connects with the ideas of maringe and foskett (2010), among others, who argue that top-down leadership and institutional support from agents specialised in internationalisation are essential factors for the effectiveness of such policies because a planned strategy provides stakeholders with opportunities to develop an international dimension. the primary tool that shows purposeful institutional commitment is embodied in written plans. they guide and overtly show the planning and implementation process of internationalisation to the university community. iv.2. bottom-up stakeholders’ perceptions iv.2.1. strategies mobility and the exchange of people and knowledge between universities were identified as the main aspects of an internationalised campus. outgoing mobility was considered to be well-established among the university community, yet, the incoming mobility of international staff and students was regarded as a challenge as a consequence of financial and legal restrictions for the recruitment of high-level international staff and recognition of hard work. for instance, the interviewees commented that the mobility programmes they participated in consisted of research stays motivated by their individual interests and the support provi ded by their research groups. although they agreed on the high level of collaboration between different universities in international projects, their conceptualisation of a genuinely international university was based on their previous experiences working in anglophone universities or central/northern european research centres where multicultural research groups and international students were easily found. in addition to collaboration for research purposes, exchange for teaching purposes emerged from the interviews. the following interviewee shares some interesting insights that envisioned a departmental exchange of people, materials, and resources http://www.languagevalue/ rosana villares language value 15 (2), 1–28 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 16 to broaden their current teaching practices, by bringing innovation and quality to the education offered at the university: no lo sé, pero a mi me gustaría que eso [internacionalización] fuera algo con profesores de otros países y que pudieras compartir asignaturas o en un departamento que hubiera gente de otras nacionalidades. pero sobre todo que hubiera profesores, alumnos por supuesto, pero profesores también. es que eso abriría muchos campos y un poco la mente de nuestros compañeros. (translation: i don’t know, but i would like it [internationalisation] to be related to lecturers from other countries, that we could share subjects, or that in a department there were people from different nationalities. particularly focusing on lecturers, for students too, but mostly for teachers. it would bring many possibilities for us, and it would turn some colleagues into more open-minded people). (respondent 7_earth sciences) iv.2.2. language dimension another emerging theme suggests the importance of sharing a lingua franca because it is essential for successful collaboration at different levels. for research purposes, english was identified as the international language of collaboration in international projects and publishing in international journals. the interviewees reflected on the importance of being competent in english since these were requirements for promotion and recruitment too. in the case of teaching and attracting international students, the presence of english-taught courses was considered a crucial initiative, as seen in the extract below: la forma de ser atractivos es ofrecer cursos en inglés, que es lo que están haciendo la mayoría, que vamos ya retrasaos. entonces hacer cursos en inglés, y también creo que entrar en contacto con universidades para dar y ofrecer programas conjuntos en inglés igual que esta la [universidad] con el mit ofreciendo el máster. (translation: the way to be attractive is by offering english-taught courses, something that most universities are doing, so we are already delayed. so, to offer english courses, but also to establish contacts with other universities to teach and offer joint degrees in english, similar to the collaboration between the [university’s name] and mit). (respondent 20_social sciences) alike the corpus findings about language-related strategies, interviewees agreed on the relevance of english not only for teaching and research but also for administrative purposes: a translated version of the w ebsite’s contents and information for students and researchers in english was essential for promoting the university's international profile. do top-down and bottom-up agents agree on internationalisation? a mixed methods study of spanish universities language value 15(2), 1–28 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 17 iv.2.3. critical views lastly, some critical views of the university’s internationalisation strategy emerged from the interviews. the first one referred to the weaknesses of the spanish university system, which consisted of the lack of sufficient funding and the perceived lack of a clear purpose and scope for internationalisation. the participants agreed on the importance of internationalisation strategies and the benefits it brings to them as members of the community, however, they considered that the number of sacrifices they had to do to be part of it was too high because the institution did not grant enough support resources. thus, scholars understand internationalisation as an enriching element for their careers and self-development, although they acknowledged the presence of potential challenges. they also agreed on the mismatches between the university managers’ words and the current actions to implement the internationalisation plans in terms of restrictions and recruitment: para ser un campus internacional la [universidad] tendría que abrir su mente y dejar de ponernos limitaciones a los profesores, a los investigadores y proporcionarnos más medios para poder hacer intercambios y desde luego de alguna manera reconocer un poquito más el mérito de algunos investigadores que están haciendo buena investigación con muy pocos recursos y aquí en esta universidad no se les reconoce lo suficiente. (translation: to be an international campus, the [university] should be more open-minded, stop putting limitations to lecturers and researchers, and offer more resources so that we can do exchanges. also, it should definitely recognise the researchers’ efforts because they are conducting great research projects with little resources, and the university does not recognise their merit). (respondent 6_earth sciences) tengo la sensación de que todos los dirigentes de la universidad, y no solo me refiero a los de más alto nivel si no incluso a nivel de centros, todos en sus programas cuando se presentan para dirigir una determinada facultad o instituto de investigación llevan la palabra internacionalización. pero la mayor parte de los casos suele estar vacía. (translation: i have the feeling that all university managers, from top to faculty management or research institute management, include internationalisation in their programmes. but most of the time it is just an empty word or catchphrase in most cases). (respondent 21_social sciences) in other words, bottom-up agents called for a clarification of approaches to become a truly internationalised university, echoing the concerns raised by de wit (2011) or fabricius et al. (2017) about internationalisation being a mere buzzword. these http://www.languagevalue/ rosana villares language value 15 (2), 1–28 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 18 comments lead to further reflection on the type of internationalisation that can and should be implemented at the university, its scope, capacity building, and the increase in the number of support resources offered by institutional agents. some universities may prioritise specific areas if they have a research-oriented or teaching-oriented profile; if their internationalisation strategy specialises in some academic disciplines due to geographical or cultural characteristics or offers an equal transversal international dimension; if their goals of capacity building, attraction and retention are at the international or regional levels; just to mention a few examples (bruque, 2020; haug, 2020, 2021). the interview data points to the relevant areas for spanish internationalisation improving the quality standards of education and research, the participation of both academics and students, and the importance of clear institutional guidance that coincided with the key areas in the national strategy (mecd, 2014). these results also echoed the studies of carciu and muresan (2020) and lourenco et al. (2020), whose findings reported that scholars associated internationalisation wi th the areas of mobility, quality, development of skills, and the use of english for knowledge transfer, research, and education. it is worth noting how the spanish scholars’ perceptions of internationalisation shared similar features with southern and eastern european contexts. despite the literature describing the dynamic nature of internationalisation, this shows how its core features are shared throughout different contexts, leading to comparability and replicability, particularly when the scholars’ definition of internationalisation is based on their individual international experiences rather than institutional policies. the interviewees tended to look up to the anglophone universities as the ideal models for an internationalised university according to quantitative indicators such as international students and international staff's presence. however, these should not be the only factors considered for an international campus, as recalled by knight’s myths (2011). in her article, knight warns about the importance of going beyond quantitative indicators to focus on the effectiveness and quality of an internationalisation plan because “quantify outcomes […] do not capture the human do top-down and bottom-up agents agree on internationalisation? a mixed methods study of spanish universities language value 15(2), 1–28 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 19 key intangible performances of students, faculty, researchers, and the com munity that bring significant benefits of internationalisation” (2011, p. 15). hence, it is necessary to educate stakeholders on the impact of internationalisation through different initiatives in research, education, and service, involving the international and local communities. in-depth reflection points at aspects such as (soft) skills development of academics and students, development of language learning competence, integration of internationalised values and culture in the curriculum, or increasing innovation in teaching and research. these examples are thought to lead to an inclusive internationalisation of campuses from both bottom-up and top-down perspectives. spreading internationalisation opportunities inside and outside the campus woul d activate reflection about the so-called internationalisation culture and acute understanding of the different internationalisation dimensions. v. conclusions the analysis presented in this paper has aimed to compare data from written policies and interviews to study the implementation of internationalisation and identify its impact on spanish universities’ stakeholders. concerning the main goals and strategies of spanish universities, there are similarities between the corpus findings and the four strategic objectives outlined in the national framework (mecd, 2014). regarding the objective of creating an internationalised university system, all the strategies falling into the teaching dimension and mobility support this objective. increasing the attractiveness of the university for international students and staff relied on languagebased strategies, which was also identified as a challenging area for spanish universities. the objective to become more internationally competitive focused mainly on research-based strategies promoting collaboration, visibility, and prestige. lastly, cooperation goals were integrated into the previous strategies since many relied on mobility and networking. all in all, these findings show how institutions promote their international profile in research and teaching to increase incoming mobility and http://www.languagevalue/ rosana villares language value 15 (2), 1–28 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 20 international capacity building, two weaknesses of the spanish university system identified by the national strategy as well as the interview data. the analysed strategies align with the comprehensive approach to internationalisation defined by the european commission (2013) and wit et al. (2015), where these initiatives are implemented in teaching, research, and management. compared to the three key objectives outlined by the european commission (2013), the objectives of mobility and strategic cooperation are thoroughly integrated and promoted in institutional policy. references to the creation of additional services and resources were mentioned in the interviews, which would certainly improve the international experiences of bottom-up stakeholders. in the case of the internationalisation of curricula and digital learning, universities opted for the introduction of english-medium instruction and joint degrees, ignoring other alternatives for the internationalisation of teaching. it could be suggested that policymakers could expand the range of at home strategies where the internationalisation of the curriculum includes a variety of initiatives promoting soft skills, digital competence, and the use of alternative teaching methodologies in addition to language learning and mobility (beleen & jones, 2015; jones, 2013). in this way, internationalisation initiatives may be further elaborated to offer inclusive and integrating opportunities for all students, adapting to the needs of a globalised society (jones, 2020; murray, 2016; spencer-oatey & dauber, 2015). despite the positive representation of internationalisation, it seems that spanish universities find themselves at different stages of policy development, as seen during the corpus compilation and the level of familiarity of stakeholders with such policies. for instance, while it was frequent to find intertextual references to a wide range of top-down policies in the document analysis, the ref erences to documents were almost non-existent during the interviews, which suggests mismatches between institutional policies and what information reaches bottom-up agents. this study’s findings confirm that institutional policies go in the right direction in terms of implementation, in fact, many of the internationalisation strategies identified in the corpus align with the stakeholders’ perceptions of internationalisation (e.g. mobility, do top-down and bottom-up agents agree on internationalisation? a mixed methods study of spanish universities language value 15(2), 1–28 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 21 collaboration). nevertheless, institutions need to go beyond quantitative indicators to meet bottom-up stakeholders’ needs. this is illustrated by the perceptions of some interviewees who concluded that their efforts were substantially more significant than the support and available resources they received from the university for teaching and research purposes. in this sense, efficient management, support services and funding are essential, as argued by foskett (2010) and iuspa (2010). moreover, it is believed that the combination of recognition, incentives, and support plays an essential role in the stakeholders’ participation and satisfaction with internationalisation goals. hence, an effective communication strategy is crucial for the dissemination of internationalisation initiatives among the university community to increase its impact, as suggested by the national strategy (mecd, 2014; see also european commission, 2013; hénard et al., 2012). another value of this study is observed in the methodological design, which combines both major trends in the field in the decade 2010s (bedenlier et al., 2018; yemeni & sagie, 2016) by offering an in-depth reflection of the state of internationalisation in spain. despite the insights gained from this mixed methods analysis, a limitation of the study is the small interview sample. it would be recommended to expand the sample of the semi-structured interviews to other stakeholders in the institution such as students, other staff members, and policymakers; after all, internationalisation affects all the members of the university community. similarly, another area for further research may focus on the replication of this study’s interview protocols in other institutions to get a bigger and richer overview of the spanish university system and its stakeholders. the interviews were conducted in one university, so by increasing the scope of the interviews to more universities, the study would benefit from the diverse suggestions for policy design at the national level similar to the document analysis. in the current era, when the local must think international, universities need to find the best solution to be both competitive and collaborative to thrive locally and internationally. institutional policymakers, in collaboration with other stakeholder http://www.languagevalue/ rosana villares language value 15 (2), 1–28 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 22 groups, should decide the most suitable model of internationalisation according to the context, strengths and weaknesses for international competition and collaboration to support the necessary measures, established or new, to reach institutional, national, and european objectives. in other words, universities should design strategies that stress the singularities of the spanish universities, and adapt to their stakeholders’ needs to redefine collaboration, knowledge, and internationalisation in the next decade. vi. acknowledgements this study is a contribution to the national research project ffi2015 -68638-r mineco/feder, eu, funded by the spanish ministry of economy and competitiveness and the european social fund and to the research group h16_20r “comunicación internacional y retos sociales” funded by the regional government of aragon. vii. references altbach, p.g., & knight, j. 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(2014). informe sobre la internacionalización de las universidades de madrid. imprenta gamar. vázquez, i., luzón, m.j., & pérez-llantada, c. (2019). linguistic diversity in a traditionally monolingual university: a multi-analytical approach. in j. jenkins & a. mauranen (eds.), linguistic diversity on the emi campus. insider accounts of the use of english and other languages in universities within asia, australasia, and europe (pp. 74-95). routledge. yemini, m., & sagie, n. (2016). research on internationalisatio n in higher education – exploratory analysis, perspectives. policy and practice in higher education, 20(2-3), 90-98. https://doi.org/10.1080/13603108.2015.1062057 http://www.languagevalue/ rosana villares language value 15 (2), 1–28 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 28 received: 10 september 2022 accepted: 09 december 2022 language value june 2023, volume 16, number 1 pp. 93-115 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es issn 1989-7103 language value, issn 1989-7103 doi: https://www.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.7230 93 narratology in early modern medical manuscripts: the case of london, wellcome library, ms 213 laura esteban-segura lesteban@uma.es universidad de málaga, spain abstract it has been argued that narrative elements can be found throughout the history of english scientific writing. narratives can be linked to specific genres; thus, learned texts for medical doctors were different from those directed to lay audiences (taavitsainen, 2022). this article sets out to analyse a specific type of medical narrative, that of recipe collections, focusing for the purpose on the text housed in london, wellcome library, ms 213. the manuscript dates from the beginning of the seventeenth century (1606, more specifically) and gathers recipes “experienced and tryed by the speciall practize of mrs corlyon” (moorat, 1962-1973)i. the codex belonged to alethea howard (née talbot), countess of arundel. the main aim of the study is to identify and examine narrative forms and functions as well as particular features in the collection of recipes held in ms wellcome 213, which can contribute to the knowledge of recipes written by and for women during the early modern period. keywords: early modern english; medicine; ms wellcome 213; recipe collection; women writing. esteban-segura, l. (2023). narratology in early modern medical manuscripts: the case of london, wellcome library, ms 213. language value, 16(1), 93-115. universitat jaume i epress: castelló, spain. http://www.languagevalue.uji.es. june 2023 doi: https://www.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.7230 issn 1989-7103 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7721-2210 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ laura esteban-segura language value 16 (1), 93–115 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 94 i. introduction the term “narratology” can be employed in a number of different senses, from very narrow to quite broad. there is also a plethora of words to describe the nature of narrative forms (see nünning, 2003, pp. 257-264). in this paper, a broader view is held: narrative is conceived of as ubiquitous and all-encompassing, including both fiction and non-fiction. narrative structures are crucial for ordering time and space, and thus allowing for the construction of meaning in general. as white (1987, p. 1) contends, “far from being one code among many that a culture may utilize for endowing experience with meaning, narrative is a meta-code, a human universal on the basis of which transcultural messages about the nature of a shared reality can be transmitted”. in the history of english scientific writing, narratives can be linked to specific genres, for instance, learned texts for medical doctors were different from t hose targeting lay audiences (taavitsainen, 2022). the focus of the present study is a particular type of medical narrative, that of recipe collections, in early modern english; to this end, the text contained in london, wellcome library, ms 213 (henceforth w213), which dates from the beginning of the seventeenth century and has been attributed to a woman, is taken into consideration. the recipe text type goes back to old english and gained popularity in the following periods. medical recipes were in fact “one of the most frequently copied text-types in late medieval england” (bower, 2022, p. 2). they have received much scholarly interest over the last decades, for instance, alonso-almeida (1998-1999), jones (1998), carroll (1999, 2004), taavitsainen (2001), mäkinen (2004), quintana-toledo (2009), de la cruz cabanillas (2017a), marqués-aguado and esteban-segura (2020), bower (2022). in the early modern english period, the role and function of medical recipes have been deal with leong and pennell (2007), leong (2008, 2013, 2018), alonso-almeida (2013), sylwanowicz (2017, 2018) and de la cruz cabanillas (2016, 2017b, 2020). traditionally, little attention has been paid to scientific and technical texts addressed to and written by women in this period, a gap which some of the previously mentioned studies have started to fill. narratology in early modern medical manuscripts: the case of london, wellcome library, ms 213 language value 16 (1), 93–115 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 95 according to leong (2013, p. 82), the “early modern domestic space has come under increasing scrutiny as a site of knowledge production”. this is materialised in the evidence contained in recipe books; in such a space women played an important part as providers of information. thus, the objective of this paper is to identify and examine narrative forms and functions as well as particular features in the collection of recipes held in w213, which can contribute to the knowledge of recipes written by and for women during the early modern period. ii. the manuscript w213 is a one-volume codex which dates from the early seventeenth century. it holds a collection of medical and household recipes in english. it is described in the library catalogue of the wellcome collection as “a booke of diuers medecines, broothes, salues, waters, syroppes and oyntementes of whichii many or the most part haue been experienced and tryed by the speciall practize of mrsiii corlyon. anno domini 1606” (moorat, 1962-1973)iv, after the words appearing on the first page of the manuscript. apart from putting forward its main contents, this brief description provides the exact date of composition. the description, in red ink, is preceded by the words “liber comitissæ arundeliæ” (“book of the countess of arundel”) in black ink at the top of the page, a reference to the owner and possible author of the handwritten book (further research is necessary to confirm this hypothesis, though). this can make reference to either anne howard (née dacre) or alethea howard (née talbot) (the owner was the latter); see below. it is not clear who the mrs corlyon referred to in the description was: it has been conjectured that she may have had a connection with the arundel family, although the name corlyon, on the other hand, could have been an early pseudonym of alethea talbot, alluding to the lion in the talbot coat of arms (rabe, 2016, p. 187). in any case, from the words in the description, it can be ruled out that mrs corlyon was the inventor of the recipes; she seems to have been the “experiencer”. as is the case of many recipe collections, recipes gathered knowledge of previous generations together with that of contemporary networks. http://www.languagevalue/ laura esteban-segura language value 16 (1), 93–115 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 96 the manuscript has an original gilt stamped calf binding with a central arabesque ornament, which has on each side the letter “a”. the “aa” monogram stands for alethea arundel and is another overt mark of ownership, which confirms that the manuscript belonged to alethea talbot (1585-1654), countess of arundel and wife of thomas howard, earl of arundel. leong and pennell (2007, p. 141) point out that the volume is thought to have been a wedding gift from anne howard (1557-1630), alethea’s mother-in-law, on the occasion of her marriage to his son, thomas howard, in 1606. this would discard alethea as the author of the manuscript in favour of anne, who was “an amateur healer and a prolific collector of manuscript receipts” (archer, 2002, n. p.). alethea was also a specialist in domestic medicine and a collector of medical and culinary recipes (rabe, 2016). her collection of recipes, including the contents of w213 as well as other material, was published as a posthumous book entitled natura exenterata: or nature umbowelled […] in london in 1655, one of “the first printed recipe books officially authored by a woman” (rabe, 2016, p. 187; see hunter, 1997). w213 displays two different paginations at the top right-hand side of the page. the first pagination, which is the original one, is contemporaneous with the text and includes 342 numbered pages (preceded by twelve and followed by seven pages which have not been numbered [xii + vii]); this pagination appears on all pagesv. the second one, probably carried out by the staff at the wellcome collection, is in pencil and only appears on odd pages; this new pagination consists of 194 pages. before the beginning of the recipes, on page xii, there is a one-page, rubricated table of contents listing the different chapters: “a table of the generall chapters or titles, to whiche all the particuler medecines in this booke ar referred as appeareth by a more particuler table annexed, which you may fynde in the ende of the booke folio · 365” narratology in early modern medical manuscripts: the case of london, wellcome library, ms 213 language value 16 (1), 93–115 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 97 a more detailed table of contents (15 pages long) including the headings of the recipes is indeed found at the end of the manuscript. for the text, black ink is employed, whereas chapter titles, recipe headings and some initial letters or words of recipes are in red ink. this ink colour may also be used for individual words within a recipe for emphasis and for catchwordsvi. the whole text is within red rules. this indicates a conscientious process of copying. although the handwriting of the text is good and careful, it exhibits some mistakes and, in most cases, corrections to them (see estebansegura, 2020). the volume consists of twenty-five chapters, each dealing with recipes for specific parts of the body, particular ailments/conditions or medical preparations (including waters, syrups, ointments, etc.), as follows: chapter one: eyes; chapter two: head; chapter three: ears; chapter four: face; chapter five: teeth and mouth; chapter six: throat; chapter seven: breast; chapter eight: lungs; chapter nine: pleurisy, stitch and spleen; chapter ten: liver and spleen; chapter eleven: stomach; chapter twelve: worms; chapter thirteen: colic and stone; chapter fourteen: purgations, clysters, suppositories, flux and looseness; chapter fifteen: jaundice; chapter sixteen: bleeding; chapter seventeen: sweat; chapter eighteen: plague; chapter nineteen: gout; chapter twenty: general medicines for particular effects, not sorting with the former chapters; chapter twenty-one: broths; chapter twenty-two: waters; chapter twenty-three: syrups; chapter twenty-four: salves, cerecloths; chapter twenty-five: ointments. the recipes are aimed at treating a range of illnesses, from common to severe. after each chapter, several pages have intentionally been left blank. as for hands, the main one found in most of the manuscript is tidy and clear. pages 12 and part of 13 display four recipes by two different handsvii. they are less clear and do not keep the lines as straight as the main one. a recipe has been added on page 172 in a darker ink and without rubrication. pages 179 and 180 also exhibit recipes by different hands: the name “la winnwoode” appears after the h eading of the recipe on page 179 and “my lady of buckhnest receptt” can be found at the end of page 180. on page 318 there are two other recipes by a different hand in latin , preceded by the http://www.languagevalue/ laura esteban-segura language value 16 (1), 93–115 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 98 heading: “my lady winwoods pilles for the spleen and against melancholy”. pages 319-324 contain additional recipes by different hands, also mentioning different names, mainly women’sviii. the headings of these added recipes are not in red ink as in the rest of the manuscript, although red ink has been superimposed on page 180 in the headings and the initial letter of the recipes. the space in which the recipes have been added (at a later stage) had originally been left blank. in figure 1, which shows the first page of w213 with recipes, some of the aspects discussed so far, such as ruling, pagination and hand, can be noticed. figure 1. page 1 of w213ix iii. methodology the present analysis stems from previous work carried out for several research projects (see the funding section at the end of the article), which have crystallised in the málaga corpus of early modern english scientific prosex. the corpus, which is postagged, consists of early modern english fachprosa from the hunterian collection at glasgow university library, the wellcome collection in london and the rylands collection at the university of manchester library. furthermore, the digitised images narratology in early modern medical manuscripts: the case of london, wellcome library, ms 213 language value 16 (1), 93–115 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 99 of the manuscripts can be consulted along with their corresponding diplomatic transcriptions. w213, which was hitherto unedited, has been transcribed by the author of this article. the tenets of the semi-diplomatic model, which proposes a faithful rendering of the original text, have been followed. they involve keeping original spelling, punctuation, capitalisation, word division, layout, etc. as well as indicating editorial intervention (for example, using italics to mark expanded abbreviations). the recipes relating to medical problems in the head (corresponding to chapters one to five, pages 1-54) have been selected for the investigationxi. they amount to sixtytwo recipes: twenty-six recipes for the eyes; eighteen for the head; six for the ears; three for the face; and nine for the teeth. iv. analysis and discussion the status of the recipe as a text type is indisputable (see görlach, 1992, 2004). görlach (2004, pp. 124-125) divides the characteristics of the recipe into four main groups (he focuses on the cooking recipe, but the same principles can be applied to the medical recipe): (a) well-definedness on macroand microlevel; (b) social; (c) linguistic; and (d) technical. iv.1 well-definedness on macroand microlevel category w213 meets the criteria proposed by görlach at the macroand microlevels. with regards to the former, the whole book is devoted to recipes and is meant as a collection of them. those recipes dealing with parts of the body have been arranged following the medieval de capite ad pedem structure (from head to foot) (cf. carroll [2004] who claims that recipes lack order). this organisational pattern evinces influence from the learned tradition of medical texts. at the microlevel, the recipes follow a similar structure: a rubricated and centred heading, which states the purpose of the recipe, followed by the main text in a different paragraph (see figure 2). http://www.languagevalue/ laura esteban-segura language value 16 (1), 93–115 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 100 figure 2. example of recipe (p. 18)xii in the text the procedure, ingredients, utensils, application and administration involved in the preparation of the remedy are detailed, as illustrated in example 1 (recipe no. 7, pp. 4-5): (1) “a medecine for the rednesse of the eyes without paine · take peeces of fyne manchett breade of an inche thicke, beyng the breadth of your eye, or bigger, and cutt hooles in the middest of them: then dry them before the fyer, but make them not browne, putt them in fayre running water, and when they be softe, lay them vppon your eyes, and after they haue lyen an hower bynde them fast to your eyes with a clothe. this must be doen when you goe to bedd, and in the morninge washe your eyes with fayre water, and lye still an hower after” administration could vary depending on whether the patient was an adult or a child: (2) “… and geue it to the patient |xiii to drincke 9 · morninges fastinge · and if it be to a childe a dozen | will serue at a · tyme” (recipe no. 19, p. 10) apart from that, other types of optional information may be provided. one of this involves storage and conservation time: (3) “… when it is colde poure the clearest into a glasse and | keepe it in a colde place, and it will last three weekes | in winter and 14 · dayes in the sommer” (recipe no. 1, p. 1) narratology in early modern medical manuscripts: the case of london, wellcome library, ms 213 language value 16 (1), 93–115 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 101 on the other hand, some of the recipes promise relief and cure, that is, the effectiveness of the remedies is overtly expressed by means of efficacy phrases, which are an optional element. efficacy phrases have received duly scholarly attention, see, for instance, hunt (1990), jones (1998), alonso-almeida and cabrera-abreu (2002) and mäkinen (2011). this kind of tag phrase occurs in 33 of the recipes examined, normally at the end of the remedy. some of them are general: “and you shall fynde ease” (recipe no. 12, p. 7); “this hathe been approued” (recipe no. 19, p. 10); “and it will helpe you” (recipe no. 37, p. 23); “you shall fynde it will cure you” (recipe no. 59, p. 53). some efficacy phrases are more specific to the medical problem for which the remedy seeks a solution: “and it will procure you to sleepe” (recipe no. 35, p. 22); “this will make you to avoide the rhewme exceedinglye” (recipe no. 41, p. 25); “and it will helpe the paine of the heade” (recipe no. 42, p. 25). reference to god is als o found in efficacy phrases: “and it will helpe if god will” (recipe no. 29, p. 18 ); “these beyng vsed as is aforesaid will by gods helpe heale it” (recipe no. 51, p. 41). the latin phrases “probatum” (recipe no. 26, p. 13) and “probatum est” (recipe no. 55, p. 51) occur once each. these were common in medieval recipes and continue to be in use during the early modern period. finally, the versatility of some remedies is explicitly manifested in several recipes, typically at the end: “and this is also very good for any kinde of scale, that groweth vppon the eye” (recipe no. 2, p. 2); “this water is likewise good for the rhewme in your eyes” (recipe no. 8, p. 5). iv.2. social category taking into account the background of the owner of the manuscript, it can be assumed that the recipes were addressed to an aristocratic readership to provide cures in a family context. it may be unlikely that the countess of arundel herself was physically involved in the preparation of the recipes, but she would have instructed and overse en her staff (rabe, 2016, p. 185). the narrative elements also allude to the recipes or teachings of other women (for instance, “mrs maynarde” in the heading of recipe no. 59, p. 53), which links to the idea of the recipe genre as a venue to exchange knowledge and expertise. http://www.languagevalue/ laura esteban-segura language value 16 (1), 93–115 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 102 iv.3. linguistic category the linguistic features put forward by görlach (2004, pp. 124-125) are: “form of the heading”; “full sentences or telegram style”; “use of imperative or other verbal forms”; “use of possessive pronouns with i ngredients and implements”; “deletion of objects”; “temporal sequence, and possible adverbs used”; “complexity of sentences”; “marked use of loanwords and of genteel diction”. some of these linguistic features will be discussed next. as far as the form of the heading is concerned, the most common pattern is for it to start with “a medicine to/for…” (36 instances). in 5 of these the noun “medicine” is modified by an adjective to emphasise the validity of the remedy or to indicate sequence: “a very good medecine to/for…” (recipe nos. 6 and 60); “a medecine good for…” (recipe no. 38); “a comfortable medecine for…” (recipe no. 43); “a thirde medecine to…” (recipe no. 35). other nouns or noun phrases (np) can also be found in the recipe headings: “a powder to…” (recipe no. 2); “an especiall good water for…” (recipe no. 8); “a drincke to…” (recipe nos. 12 and 24); “a plaister to/for…” (recipe nos. 14 and 28, respectively); “a water for…” (recipe no. 25); “a gargas or medecine for…” (recipe no. 27); “a gargle good for…” (recipe no. 41). the pattern “an other + np + (to/for) / (for to)” is found on 9 occasions: the np contains the word “medicine” in 8 instances and “drink” in 1 instance, for example, “an other medecine for to…” (recipe no. 10), “an other drincke to…” (recipe no. 13) and “an other very good medecine for…” (recipe no. 49). other different patterns for the beginning of a recipe are “to + make…” (2 occurrences) and “for + np…” (5 occurrences): “to make a quilte to stay the rhewme of what kinde soeuer it bee” (recipe no. 31) and “for a soore mouthe happening to children when they breede teethe” (recipe no. 62). sentences in the recipes are complete and a telegram style is avoided. coordination is prevalent with the conjunction “and” being frequently employed to connect sentences; other coordinating conjunctions are “but” and “or” (see example 1 above). narratology in early modern medical manuscripts: the case of london, wellcome library, ms 213 language value 16 (1), 93–115 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 103 after the heading, the opening element in the body of 59 of the recipes under analysis is the verb “take” in the imperative. as regards the other 3, “take” is preceded by “jn maye” (recipe no. 17) in one, another employs the verb “make” (recipe no. 43) and the third one provides an explanation for pains in the head (recipe no. 32). this last recipe is interesting since it is the longest one and it furnishes information (not only instructions) about possible causes of pain in the head. it is also remarkable because some of the remedies involve certain physical exercises. the imperative is the most common verbal form employed elsewhere (see example 4 below; recipe no. 22, p. 11). hence, the narrative of recipes shows a clear instructional purpose, where directions are provided to inform about how to prepare medicines, syrups, creams, broths, etc. (4) “a medecine for a soore eye · take pearle woorte, stampe and straine and myngle the iuyce thereof with woemans milke and white sugar candye powde= red, and so droppe it into the eye take also ribbwoorte, and if it be needfull to washe it, lett it be well dryed from the water then stampe and straine it, and dropp a good droppe thereof 2 · or 3 · tymes a daye into the eye this of ribbwoorte is also good for any beastes or cattell that haue soore eyes”xiv second-person possessive pronouns are normally found with parts of the body (“your tounge”; “your eyes”; “your fingars”; “your mouthe”; “your foreheade”; “your heade”; “your neck”; “your teethe”; “your elboes”; “your face”; “your handes”; “your eares”; etc.). on some occasions they appear with ingredients (“your sage”; “your salte and brann”; “your quinces”; “your coperesse”; “your whits of eggs”; “your licor”; “your quicksyluer”), preparations (“your powder”; “your plaister”) and utensils (“your stillitorye”; “your tentes”). they succeed in making the recipe more personalised (carroll, 2004, p. 182). regarding temporal sequence, the narrative elements are presented chronologically. first, the procedure comprising all the relevant steps in the making of the remedy with the ingredients is carefully explained. this includes actions such as boiling, heating, http://www.languagevalue/ laura esteban-segura language value 16 (1), 93–115 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 104 melting, grinding, mixing, distilling, beating, etc. then, the application and/or administration is specified and, finally, further data about storage or eff ectiveness may be supplied. this logical ordering can be strengthened by means of temporal adverbs, such as “then” and “after” (see example 1 above). iv.4. technical category quantities to indicate measures are commonly found in medieval manuscripts (see alonso-almeida, 1998-1999; bator and sylwanowicz, 2017). in w213, measures are generally expressed by handfuls and spoonfuls. weights are only sporadically mentioned: “(3 or) 4 ovnces” (p. 9); “one ounze” (p. 21); “halfe a pounde” (p. 41); “halfe a dramme (p. 53); “one scruple” (p. 53); “halfe an ownze” (p. 53). in this respect, reference to quantities is not very precise, a fact which contrasts with late middle english medical recipes, particularly those embedded in specialised treatises, which included standard apothecaries’ weights, usually abbreviated by means of symbols (see esteban-segura, 2012). specification is more detailed for times (example 5) and frequency of application and/or administration (example 6): (5) “but withall the patient must | drinck a greate draughte of this water following both in the | morning fasting and at 4 . of the clock in the after noone” (recipe no. 52, p. 42) (6) “vse it in the morning | and when you goe to bedd, and keepe your selfe warme” (recipe no. 49, p. 35) the ingredients are predominantly herbal (example 7). usual commodities found in households, such as sugar, salt, eggs, honey, vinegar, etc., are common as well. animalor human-derived ingredients may also form part of the remedies (examples 8-9). as for the type of instruments needed for the recipes, they may be present in any household (pans, vessels, boxes, etc.). (7) “take of camomele, rosemary, and sage…” (recipe no. 36, p. 22) (8) “… and take a | dozen greate earth wormes…” (recipe no. 3, p. 2) narratology in early modern medical manuscripts: the case of london, wellcome library, ms 213 language value 16 (1), 93–115 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 105 (9) “take a spoonefull of the iuyce of howselick, as much of | wœmans milke…”(recipe no. 33, p. 21) as has been discussed in the previous subsection, the arrangement of information in the recipes is standardised, following a logical and chronological rationale. iv.5. codification the recipes in w213 may have been collected from oral sources and/or other manuscripts. they contain specialised and verified knowledge, since this has been passed on and validated through generations. the inclusion of efficacy phrases (discussed in iv.1 above) also attests to matters of verification and validation. the recipe book can be considered a type of codifying writing or codification, in which “the acquired knowledge of a discipline is presented as generally accepted and valid” (schernus, 2011, p. 282). narrative forms are relevant to codifying texts and are systematic in w213. they are present at the supraand intra-textual levels. supratextual devices include the disposition of chapter and recipe headings as well as the layout of recipes on the page. as for chapter headings, they appear at the top of even pages when a new chapter begins. the word “cap” is followed by an arabic numeral and then the part of the body for which the recipes aim to provide cure (i.e. eyes, ears, etc.). a combination of several paragraphi, which are usually employed to mark paragraph divisions and take the form of a horizontal § in the manuscript, and puncti in middle position circumscribe the noun. all the chapter headings are rubricated, which may be regarded as decoration but also as a help to find the relevant information easily. recipe headings follow a similar pattern, appearing above the text in red ink; one or several paragraphi and puncti close the heading (see figure 3). http://www.languagevalue/ laura esteban-segura language value 16 (1), 93–115 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 106 figure 3. opening of chapter 2 (p. 17)xv with respect to the layout, recipes are neatly organised. the text is kept within the ruled margins and recipes are relatively short: the longest one occupies forty lines, whereas the shortest one takes three, being the average number of lines eleven. the discursive structure of recipes follows a set of stages, which continues that of the medieval tradition. alonso-almeida (2013, p. 72) has provided the following schema for early modern english recipes, where the use of parentheses indicates an optional stage and the asterisk variable order of the stages: (title) * ingredients * (preparation) * (application) * (efficacy) * (storage) * (expiry date) * (virtues). in w213, the title, ingredients, preparation and application stages always appear; the rest of stages may be present or not (see iv.1 above). at the linguistic level, although the imperative is the most employed verbal form, the modal verbs may, must and shall are also found. sentences are not generally complex and, while coordination predominates, temporal clauses may occur as well (example 10): (10) “… doe this as you | shall feele occasion. and when you haue made an ende with | these, then you must haue tentes to putt vpp into your nose | to open the conductes and to drawe downe the corrupte matter | that offendeth” (recipe no. 37, p. 23) narratology in early modern medical manuscripts: the case of london, wellcome library, ms 213 language value 16 (1), 93–115 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 107 since recipes are informative texts, they tend to be linguistically explicit. thus, objects of transitive verbs as well as pronouns are expressed (example 11): (11) “take a good quantity of rosemary leaues and chewe them | lightly in your mouthe that the ayre may assend into your | heade…” (recipe no. 37, p. 22) all the aspects addressed above make the narrative structure of recipes cohesive and well-assembled. v. concluding remarks the recipes analysed in w213 show distinct narrative forms (i.e. coherent organisational patterns and layout; consistent configuration of the headings; use of full sentences, coordination and imperative forms of the verb; clear temporal sequence, etc.) that help to transmit the information contained in them and make of the recipe a clear-cut text type, whose main function is instructional. recipe books are viewed as a type of codified writing. the texts contained in them are filled with practical knowledge useful for the running of a household and also enable us to outline social and cultural trends. thus, in the seventeenth century, medicinal preparations that could be made at home allowed for a self-help culture which continued to develop onwards (stobart, 2016, p. 175). their compilation into recipe books created and used by women in the seventeenth century are chronicles of life. as suc h, their study uncovers not only women’s literacy practices but also their thoughts and experiences which, until quite recently, have gone unnoticed. recipes were a means to amass, retain and exchange knowledge and experiences and bear witness to “the complex and elaborate tasks of the early modern gentlewoman: the preparation of preserves, confections, sweet-meats, and medicines” (rabe, 2016, p. 184) and to their reading practices. accordingly, manuscripts reveal themselves as historical documents that can be relevant to interdisciplinary research on linguistics, gender studies, book history, to name but a few. http://www.languagevalue/ laura esteban-segura language value 16 (1), 93–115 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 108 further investigation on aspects only briefly mentioned in this article, such as the names appearing in some recipes and the different hands found in the m anuscript, is currently in process in order to try to shed more light on historical writing by women. notes i this has been taken from the database description of the library catalogue of the wellcome collection, available at https://wellcomecollection.org/works/u3w8qbrt (date of access: february 2023). ii this is “which” in the manuscript. iii this is “mrs” in the manuscript. iv available at https://wellcomecollection.org/works/u3w8qbrt (date of access: february 2023). v they are wrongly numbered from page 327 (365 in the manuscript) onwards. vi catchwords appear on the right bottom margin. they replicate the first word(s) on the following page in order to help with the exact order of leaves or quires during binding. vii this and further reference to page numbers follow the original pagination of the manuscript. viii some of these hands may be the same; an in-depth palaeographical analysis is mandatory to determine how many different hands there are. ix corlyon, mrs. wellcome collection. public domain mark. x the corpus is available at https://modernmss.uma.es/ (date of access: february 2023). xi the recipe headings and the pages in which the recipes are found are provided in the appendix. xii corlyon, mrs. wellcome collection. public domain mark. xiii this vertical bar signals a change of line in the text of the manuscript. xiv the use of bold in this and following examples indicates added emphasis. xv corlyon, mrs. wellcome collection. public domain mark. xvi the original line breaks have not been kept and superfluous punctuation marks have been ignored. page numbers follow the original pagination of the manuscript. vi. acknowledgements the present research has been funded by the spanish ministry of economy and competitiveness (grant numbers ffi2014-57963-p and ffi2017-88060-p) and by the https://wellcomecollection.org/works/u3w8qbrt https://wellcomecollection.org/works/u3w8qbrt https://modernmss.uma.es/ narratology in early modern medical manuscripts: the case of london, wellcome library, ms 213 language value 16 (1), 93–115 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 109 andalusian regional government (grant number p11-hum-7597). these grants are hereby gratefully acknowledged. vii. references alonso-almeida, f. 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(2016). mediating between art and nature: the countess of arundel at tart hall. in s. burghartz, l. burkart & c. göttler (eds.), sites of mediation: connected histories of places, processes, and objects in europe and beyond, 1450–1650 (pp. 183-210). brill. schernus, w. (2011). narratology in the mirror of codifying texts. in g. olson (ed.), current trends in narratology (pp. 277-296). de gruyter. stobart, a. (2016). household medicine in seventeenth-century england. bloomsbury. sylwanowicz, m. (2017). noun phrase modification in early modern english medical recipes. anglica. an international journal of english studies, 26(2), 37-49. sylwanowicz, m. (2018). middle and early modern english medical recipes: some notes on specialised terminology. anglica. an international journal of english studies, 27(2), 89-101. taavitsainen, i. (2001). middle english recipes: genre characteristics, text type features and underlying traditions of writing. journal of historical pragmatics, 2(1), 85113. taavitsainen, i. (2022). narratives from 1375 to 1800 in medical and scientific writing: forms and functions. paper delivered at the european society for the study of english (esse) conference 2022 mainz, 29 august-2 september 2022, johannes gutenberg university, mainz, germany. white, h. (1987). the content of the form: narrative discourse and historical representation. johns hopkins university press. received: 02 march 2023 accepted: 05 may 2023 narratology in early modern medical manuscripts: the case of london, wellcome library, ms 213 language value 16 (1), 93–115 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 113 appendix: list of recipe headings for the head in w213xvi 1. a medecine for a pinn and a webb or any other soore eye (p. 1) 2. a powder to take away the pearle in the eye (pp. 1-2) 3. a medecine to staye the humors from fallinge to the eyes, and good for the meegreeme (pp. 2-3) 4. a medecine for a bruse in the eye (p. 3) 5. a medecine for rednesse in the eyes, the whiche proceedeth only of hott humors (pp. 3-4) 6. a very good medecine to comfort a weake eye or to helpe those that haue had the smale pockes or measelles in theire eyes (p. 4) 7. a medecine for the rednesse of the eyes without paine (pp. 4-5) 8. an especiall good water for the clearinge of the eye: and to preserue sighte (p. 5) 9. a medecine to eate out proude fleshe, growinge within the corner of the eye (pp. 5-6) 10. an other medecine for to take away the pynn and webb in the eye or a tey in the eye, which growethe from the corner of the eye to the blacke, and is like a litle gutt (p. 6) 11. a medecine for a burne in the eye eyther by fyer or gunpowder (pp. 6-7) 12. a drincke to cleare the sighte (p. 7) 13. an other drincke to cleare the sighte (pp. 7-8) 14. a plaister to stay the humors that feede the catorick, to be applied to the temples when the former drinckes ar in takinge (p. 8) 15. to make very good balles to stay ye revme (p. 9) 16. a medecine for reddnesse in the eyes (p. 9) 17. an other medecine for reddnesse in the eyes (p. 10) 18. a medecine for one that hath a strype in the eye or a bruse in the face (p. 10) 19. a medecine for a pynn and a webb or any such like in the eye (p. 10) 20. a medecine to comfort the sighte (p. 11) http://www.languagevalue/ laura esteban-segura language value 16 (1), 93–115 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 114 21. a medecine to clense a soore eye that is all couered with bloode like a jellye (p. 11) 22. a medecine for a soore eye (p. 11) 23. for the eyes that be sore (p. 12) 24. a drincke to heale an pin & a web in the eye (p. 12) 25. a water for the humor that falls into the eyes (pp. 12-13) 26. for the pinn and webb in the eye to be applied to the contrary wrest, and to be shifted euery 24 howers, and will cure in three dressinges (p. 13) 27. a gargas or medecine for the megreeme in the heade (p. 17) 28. a plaister for the same greefe to be applied after you haue taken the gargas (p. 17) 29. a medecine for a paine in the heade that commeth with a burninge feuer (p. 18) 30. an other medecine for the same greefe (p. 18) 31. to make a quilte to stay the rhewme of what kinde soeuer it bee (pp. 18-19) 32. the trewe cause whence many of the paines of the heade do proceede, how to know those paines and the reameadyes for them (pp. 19-21) 33. a medecine for those that cannot sleepe (p. 21) 34. an other medecine to procure sleepe (p. 21) 35. a thirde medecine to procure sleepe (p. 22) 36. a medecine for the paine in the heade that commeth of colde humors (p. 22) 37. a medecine to clense the braine, to helpe those that haue a corrupt ayre at theire nos es and to clense the lunges of such grosse humors, as ar distilled downe from the putrified heade (pp. 22-23) 38. a medecine good for those that ar troubled with winde in theire heades (pp. 23-24) 39. an other medecine for the same greefe to be vsed presently after you haue doen with the former (p. 24) 40. a medecine for the falling of the vuola (pp. 24-25) 41. a gargle good for the rhewme (p. 25) narratology in early modern medical manuscripts: the case of london, wellcome library, ms 213 language value 16 (1), 93–115 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 115 42. a medecine for paine in the heade (p. 25) 43. a comfortable medecine for paine in the heade (p. 26) 44. for the fallinge of the vuola (p. 26) 45. a medecine for those that ar deafe and to recouer perfect hearinge (pp. 33-34) 46. a medecine to drawe out an jmpostume that is bredd in the eare (p. 34) 47. a medecine to drawe an earewigge out of the eare (pp. 34-35) 48. a medecine for the singinge in the eares (p. 35) 49. an other very good medecine for the same (p. 35) 50. an other medecine for the same (p. 35) 51. a medecine to cure a face that is redd, and full of pimples (p. 41) 52. a medecine for those that haue a flushinge in theire faces and to cleare theire faces of wormes or such like thinges (pp. 42-43) 53. a medecine for the morfewe (p. 43) 54. a medecine for the toothe ache (p. 50) 55. an other medecine for the toothe ache (pp. 50-51) 56. a medecine to skower the teethe, to make them cleane and stronge, and to preserue them from perishinge beyng vsed two or three tymes a weeke (p. 51) 57. a medecine for those that haue lost theire speeche eyther by sicknesse, feare or otherwise (pp. 5152) 58. a medecine for a canker in the mouthe (pp. 52-53) 59. a medecine for the rhewme in the teethe or gummes taughte by mrs maynarde (p. 53) 60. a very good medecine for the tootheache (pp. 53-54) 61. for a canker in the mouthe or throote (p. 54) 62. for a soore mouthe happening to children when they breede teethe (p. 54) http://www.languagevalue/ language value december 2022, volume 15, number 2 pp. 81-111 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es issn 1989-7103 language value, issn 1989-7103 doi: https://doi.org/10.6035/languagev.7019 81 a multidimensional analysis of two registers of english for navy submariners yolanda noguera-díaz yolanda.noguera@upct.es universidad politécnica de cartagena, spain abstract this research explores the differences and the similarities found in two corpora representative of two registers of relevance for navy submariners in the spanish navy submarine warfare school. it shows cases in a range of analyses based on multi-dimensional analysis, characterizing these two submariner registers relative to biber’s 1988 dimensions of register variation. the findings can potentially inform professional language teaching in such contexts. it is argued that linguistic that can inform professional language teaching in such contexts. it is argued that linguistic variation among the texts affo rds the identification of both converging and diverging patterns of variation across dimensions of use. keywords: corpus linguistics; multidimensional analysis; linguistic variation; professional languages; english for the military noguera-díaz. y. (2022). a multidimensional analysis of two registers of english for navy submariners. language value, 15(2), 81-111. universitat jaume i epress: castelló, spain. http://www.languagevalue.uji.es. december 2022 doi: https://doi.org/10.6035/languagev.7019 issn 1989-7103 issn 1989-7103 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8471-1226 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ yolanda noguera-díaz language value 15 (2), 81–111 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 82 i. introduction text-linguistic register analyses examine “the lexico-grammatical features that are frequent and pervasive in […] texts that all share the same situational characteristics, and thus, all represent the same register” (biber, 2019b, pp. 46-7). an instance of such analysis is multi-dimensional analysis (md analysis), which has been widely used in the exploration of a range of professional and academic registers leading to an increased understanding of how the frequency and distribution of linguistic features contributes to variation. although pedagogical applications such as the development of educational materials have been suggested (biber, 1998; p.236), there is a lack of research that has explored how md analysis can potentially inform language teaching in professi onal, nonacademic contexts (friginal & roberts, 2020). our research examines how md analysis can potentially inform applied linguists and language teachers’ choices of texts across discourse domains (biber, 2019) when designing curricula for specialized l anguages. this study sets out to analyse a type of english for the military known as submarine english (se) used by navy submariners. this article uses md analysis to reveal aspects of variation in two corpora representative of se: (1) a corpus of professi onal magazines and (2) a corpus of manuals for maritime salvage and rescue of submari nes. thus, this research sets out to explore the linguistic characteristics of these two submariner registers relative to biber’s 1988 dimensions of register variation. in doing so, this study discusses the potential contribution of quantitative text-linguistic studies of register variation (biber, 2019a) to corpus-informed pedagogy of non-academic, professional languages. this paper is structured as follows. section ii revises the contributions of md analysis to the study of registers. section ii.2 describes the research methodology, while section iii examines the results and discussion of our analysis. in sections iv we provide some conclusions and offer some insights into the contribution of variation analysis to the pedagogy of specialized and professional registers. a multidimensional analysis of two registers of english for navy submariners language value 15(2), 81–111 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 83 ii. literature review ii.1. multidimensional analysis and the study of variation across registers md analysis seeks to interpret linguistic data in t he light of language variation across registers. in the md analysis tradition, a register is a variety of language associated with a particular situation of use that displays specific communicative purposes (biber and conrad, 2009, p. 6). register analysis explores the link between use and a social situation with a view towards explanation. while register analysis looks at lexical phraseology, as well as grammatical and lexico-grammatical features of a text, the situational analysis comprises characteristics of texts such as the communicative purpose, mode, setting and participants. md analysis (biber, 1988; biber & conrad, 2009; biber, 2019a) identifies systematic patterns of variation across registers. co-occurrence patterns are interpreted as dimensions of variation based on the shared communicative functions of the cooccurring features. each dimension is associated with a set of l inguistic features which tend to occur in texts. in the analysis of each dimension, we obtain sets of features, both positive and negative, that are in complementary distribution. if, for instance, a set of texts shows a high frequency of common nouns, it will also tend to have a high frequency of adjectives (biber & gray, 2013). biber’s (1988) study identified five main linguistic dimensions of language use that have been widely used by researchers to identify variation in most types of texts. md analysis enables a discourse domain to be described quantitatively and functionally (see section iii). from a quantitative perspective, dimensions scores quantify the extent to which they use features associated with the dimension and at the same time it is based on frequencies of the co-occurring features. functionally, dimensions are interpreted based on the analysis of shared functions of features, analysis of text excerpts and register distributions. in the following sections, we provide a breakdown of how md analysis has been used to study register variation. ii.1.1. strategies http://www.languagevalue/ yolanda noguera-díaz language value 15 (2), 81–111 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 84 esp (english for specific purposes), and by extension languages for specific purposes (lsp), is an area of inquiry and practice either in workplaces (hutchison and waters, 1987) or in academia such as english for biology (gray, 2013). despite the underlying motivation to improve curricula and classroom practice, pedagogical applications of md analysis have not received as much attention as the linguistic description of specialized corpora. some domains have received, however, some substantial attention. crosthwaite et al (2019) collected a corpus of dental public health papers which includes experimental research papers, dentistry professional research reports and dentistry case studies. their md analysis explored the linguistic features employed by dentistry professionals and undergraduate students’ writings. the analyses revealed the extensive use of the passive voice in professional writing as well as two dimensions of use involving a pervasive style (d4) and a more informative approach (d2). global aviation has similarly received some attention. friginal and roberts (2020) compared the functional features of linguistic dimensions in six spoken corpora: call centers, exploration aviation, maritime english, home calls, switchboard and general american conversations. they used the linguistic dimensions in friginal (2009 ): dimension 1 (polite and elaborated information vs simplified narrative), dimension 2 (planned talk) and dimension 3 (managed information flow). in dimension 1, call centre language showed the highest scores due to the number of polite markers (e.g., please, thank you) whereas aviation language showed the lowest score. exploration aviation and maritime english corpora yielded very similar scores in dimension 2 (planned talk), which highlights the fact that procedural and instructional instances are common in both registers. the analysis of linguistic variation using md analysis has gained some traction (friginal & roberts, 2020; ren & lu, 2021). however, little is known about the adaptation of such findings to the teaching of professional and specialized languages, particularly in non-university contexts. due to the dearth of teaching materials for the military (noguera-díaz, 2019), the present study examines a corpus of submarine english (se ) applying text linguistic register analysis that goes beyond previous efforts focused on a multidimensional analysis of two registers of english for navy submariners language value 15(2), 81–111 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 85 the examination of discrete features such as noun phrase complexity (author, 2020). this paper examines two registers of relevance to the students in the navy school: professional submarine magazines and salvage and rescue manuals and technical reports. this research addresses the following research question: 1. what are the linguistic characteristics of the two submariner registers analysed relative to biber’s 1988 dimensions of register variation? iii. methodology in this section, we discuss the corpora investigated, the methods that were adopted in the md analysis as well as the statistical test used. iii. 1. corpora as noguera-díaz (2019, 2020) noted, access to classified texts for instructional purposes is restricted to the military on-site and the analysis of classified sources is not possible. accordingly, the choice of the texts for the subject english for navy submariners was determined by the management of the navy submarine warfare school (nsws). our research examines (1) a corpus of professional military submarine magazines (cmsc) and (2) a corpus of manuals used in submarine search and rescue (sar). cmsc and sar represent two registers (professional magazines and manuals) that are relevant for the training and language learning of the navy submariners at the nsws. cmsc (noguera-díaz, 2019) is a corpus of us military magazine articles curated by the spanish ministry of defence and distributed in printed form. each issue is made up of selected articles from a pool of fourteen specialized magazines. the cmsc is made up of 822,755 words and comprises 12 years of curated texts published across a wide range of different professional magazines regularly read by trainees and used by language instructors for language learning purposes. it contains a total of 952 different http://www.languagevalue/ yolanda noguera-díaz language value 15 (2), 81–111 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 86 texts. for the sake of our analysis, each year issue (n=36) has been computed and analysed separately. the sar corpus is a collection of 16 non-classified manuals and reports recommended by the nsws. they are used as references for a compulsory subject on maritime search and rescue. these texts have been selected and read by professional trainees and used by tactical and language instructors. the sar corpus is made up of 717446 words and comprises texts published by either professional associations such as the nato standardization agency (nsa) or publishers such as defence research and development department, canada. some of the manuals are published by organizations based on countries where english is not an l1 language. each manual (n=16) has been computed and analysed separately. further details about the cmsc and the sar corpora can be found online in appendix 1 (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/365835753_cmsc_and_sardocx). iii. 2. corpus analysis: multidimensional analysis the two corpora were pos tagged and analysed using md analysis (biber, 1988; biber, 2019a). md analysis “empirically analyses the ways in which linguistic features cooccur in texts and the ways in which registers vary with respect to those co-occurrence patterns” (biber, 2019b, p. 49). the five dimensions of language use in biber (1988) were computed and a factor score was calculated for each of them using the multidimensional tagger (mat) (nini, 2019). this has been described as the 1988 model of variation (biber, 2019b). each dimension of use has distinct functional underpinnings. all frequencies of the linguistics features analysed are standardized to a mean of 0.0 and a standard deviation of 1.0 before the computation of the factor score. a factor score is a numerical value that indicates a text relative standing on a latent factor in factor analysis. according to nini (2019, pp. 9-17), the dimension scores produced by mat are reliable as shown by the replication of biber´s (1988) analysis of english language corpora. ii.2.1. hypothesis testing https://www.researchgate.net/publication/365835753_cmsc_and_sardocx a multidimensional analysis of two registers of english for navy submariners language value 15(2), 81–111 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 87 we used the kruskal-wallis h test to determine statistically significant differences between two or more groups of a dependent variable, in our case the five dimensions. the kruskal-wallis h test is a rank-based nonparametric test that can be used to test whether dimension scores are different between cmsc, and sar corpora based on the use of mean ranks. to know where any differences lie, post hoc tests were run. iv. results the following sections show the overall dimension scores for each of the two corpora (iv.1) and a discussion (iv.2) of the main dimensions of variation following biber (1988). we will pay special attention to the dimensions showing statistically significant differences and will showcase excerpts where some of the most relevant linguistic features are found in the two corpora analysed. the samples used below showcase texts that offer high degrees of either inter-corpus or intra-corpus linguistic variation. readers are invited to interpret individual text scores, provided in brackets, against the backdrop of the corpora dimension scores. section iv.ii offers a summary of the results. iv. 1. corpus dimension scores table 1 shows the mean scores of the cmsc and the sar corpora for biber’s (1988) dimensions 1-5. table 1. dimension scores of the cmsc and the sar corpora dimension dimension interpretation (biber, 1998) cmsc sar statistically significant differences? mean score mean score 1 involved vs informational production -19.95 -19.56 no 2 narrative vs non-narrative concerns -2.9 -4.59 yes 3 explicit vs situation dependent reference 5.77 8.12 yes 4 overt expression of persuasion -1.27 0.95 yes http://www.languagevalue/ yolanda noguera-díaz language value 15 (2), 81–111 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 88 5 abstract vs non-abstract information 2.47 1.64 no statistically significant differences between the two corpora were found for dimensions 2, 3 and 4. in the following paragraphs, results of the md analysis of every component of the two corpora are provided. results for the individual components of the corpora are shown chronologically (i.e., 2000 to 2012) in the following figures . iv.1.1. dimension 1: information production orientation as shown in figure 1, both corpora show a similar dimension 1 (d1) score. the score range fluctuates between cmsc3 (-15.18) and cmsc34 (-24.23), and between sar10 (15.68) and sar7 (-28.73). both corpora show a marked information orientation with a low impact of interpersonal features. figure 1 shows d1 scores of the corpora analysed. figure 1. dimension 1 scores for the cmsc and sar corpora professional magazines (cmsc) and manuals and reports (sar) show scores below the means for academic prose (-15) and official documents (-18) in biber (1988). the distribution of d1 scores was similar for the two corpora, as assessed by visual inspection of a boxplot. a kruskal-wallis test was conducted to determine if there were differences between the two corpora. d1 scores were not significantly different between the two corpora, h (3) = 1.076, p = .201. a multidimensional analysis of two registers of english for navy submariners language value 15(2), 81–111 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 89 both corpora display a high frequency of features associated with informational production, such as nouns, attributive adjectives, long words, prepositions, type/token ratio, agentless passives, place adverbials and past participle postnominal clauses (biber, 1988). sar texts, however, show a higher mean score for nouns (34.8), nominalizations (5.2) and agentless passives (1.5) than cmsc texts. these features suggest that the texts in the sar may show a marked ¨informational focus and a careful integration of information in a text¨ (conrad and biber, 2001:24). it is important to bear in mind that nouns are the principal way employed by writers to refer to concepts or entities (conrad, 2001) and are essential to display dense information packaging (biber et al., 1999). sample 1 includes cmsc3 and cmsc34 texts. cmsc3 includes the article dog fighting submarines which was written by a north american captain for the submarine review journal. he writes about his past experiences as a submariner and as an expertise on nuclear submarines and technical innovations. cmsc34 includes the article canadian sub overhaul begins with chicoutimi was published in jane´s defence weekly. here the journalist discusses submarine in-service contracts and capabilities. sample 1: cmsc corpus nouns in bold and attributive adjectives underlined cmsc3 (2000.3) = (-15.18) with a powerful new passive sonar and enormous mobility. cmsc34 (2011.3&4) = (-24.23) the diesel-electric boat is being overhauled at victoria shipyard’s covered facility in british columbia… sample 2 includes sar7 and sar10 texts. sar7, an assessment of the cf submarine watch schedule variants for impact on modelled crew performance, was published by the canadian defence department. this technical report was produced after a fire on board of a canadian submarine. sar10, atp-57_b, is a nato non-confidential allied tactical procedures publication which describes some basic concepts rel ated to http://www.languagevalue/ yolanda noguera-díaz language value 15 (2), 81–111 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 90 command, control and communications during the rescue operations, mainly how submarine rescue operations or exercises should be conducted. sar07 and sar10 contain the highest mean scores for nouns in both corpora. sample 2: sar corpus sar7 (2009): (-28.73) nouns in bold and attributive adjectives underlined. the primary objective of this field study was to evaluate whether enhanced white light would promote circadian entrainment. sar10 (2011) = (-15.68) smerat personnel require to know what the capabilities of individual spag teams are and how to interact with them. there is inter-country variability between the spag teams. iv.1.2. dimension 2: non-narrative orientation while professional magazines (cmsc) and manuals and reports (sar) share a nonnarrative orientation, both corpora show different dimension scores (see table 1). dimension 2 (d2) score range varies between cmsc21 (-0.1) and cmsc23 (-3.98), and between sar7 (0.22) and sar16 (-5.8), respectively. figures 2 and 3 show d2 mean scores of the corpora analysed. figure 2. dimension 2 scores for the cmsc corpus a multidimensional analysis of two registers of english for navy submariners language value 15(2), 81–111 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 91 figure 3. dimension 2 scores for the sar corpus cmsc scores are relatively closer to narrative concerns (-2.9) in contrast to sar texts (4.59). pairwise comparisons were performed using dunn's (1964) procedure with a bonferroni correction for multiple comparisons revealed statistically significant differences in d2 scores between the cmsc and sar corpora h(2) = -3.991, p = .0005. while the cmsc corpus shows a mean score (-2.9) like that of hobbies and broadcasts texts (-3), the sar corpus displays a mean score (-4.59) well below these two registers according to biber (1988). registers with high negative d2 scores include professional letters, academic writing, and official documents. the cmsc corpus shows a mean frequency of 8.56 attributive adjectives per 1,000 words whereas the sar texts show a lower mean (6.2). in addition, present tense verbs display a higher mean in the cmsc corpus (4.37) versus the sar corpus (3.12). biber’s (1988) original md analysis shows that the features with positive weights in d2 are past tenses, third person pronouns, perfect aspect, public verbs, synthetic negation, and present participial clauses. the features with negative weights are present tense verbs, attributive adjectives, and past participles with deletion. cmsc texts show a higher mean for past tenses (1.79), third person pronouns (0.53) and perfect aspect tenses (0.55) whereas the mean of the sar texts is (0.59) for past http://www.languagevalue/ yolanda noguera-díaz language value 15 (2), 81–111 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 92 tenses, (0.32) for third person pronoun and (0.18) for perfect aspect tenses. the excerpts below illustrate the range of variation found across the two corpor a. let us take cmsc21 (-0.1) and cmsc23 (-3.98), and sar07 (0.22) and sar16 (-5.8) as instances of extreme variation in the data. sample 3 includes cmsc21 and cmsc23 texts. cmsc21 (2006.4) includes the value of submarines published in the military technology journal the last term of 2006. this article discusses the economic benefits for texas provided by the submarine industry. cmsc23 (2007.3) includes the modernization of chilean navy, published in naval forces. the article discusses the increment of the chilean military budget. sample 3: cmsc corpus cmsc21 (2006.4) = (-0.1) perfect verb tenses are underlined and public verbs in bold. the region has supported these activities reflexively and often half-heartedly. the navy claims to need at the present rate of building one submarine a year. cmsc 23-(2007.3) = (-3.98) attributive adjectives in bold. the country is situated on the most peaceful continents in the world, and enjoys fairly good relations with all nations of the region. cmsc 21 displays the highest positive scores in perfect aspect tenses (0.56) and public verbs (1.39), illustrated in the sample above, which explains why the mean score of this text on d2 (-0.1) is close to a narrative register. on the contrary, cmsc23, shows the highest score of attributive verbs (9.63), together with a range of past participles with deletion (0.38), which exhibits the high negative score for d2. sample 4 includes sar7 and sar16 texts. sar7 was discussed previously. sar16 is a volume entitled corpas-sarsat: search and rescue satellite aided tracking. it was written by a steering corpas-sarsat committee and published in 2019. sample 4: sar corpus a multidimensional analysis of two registers of english for navy submariners language value 15(2), 81–111 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 93 sar7 (2009) = (0.22) past tenses are underlined and public verbs in bold. the entire subject population reported sleepiness in the middle of the scale thus confirming that they were quite sleepy. sar16 (2019) = (-5.8) present simple verbs underlined and past participles with deletion of relative in bold. this document contains the minimum requirements that apply to cospas-sarsat distress beacons. beacons type approved by cospas-sarsat for operation at 406.025 mhz sar corpus shows that highest scores within this dimension (sar7, 0.22) as well as the lowest negative score of this corpus (sar16, -5.8) for dimension 2. sar7 shows a higher positive score for verbs in past simple (3.56) and public verbs (0.50) as seen above. while sar7 shows some narrative orientation, sar 16 shows the minimum score mean of both corpora in d2. iv.1.3. dimension 3: textual elaboration in dimension 3, professional magazines (cmsc) and manuals and reports (sar) texts show very different mean scores: 5.77 and 8.12, respectively (table 1). however, both cmsc and sar share a clear orientation towards context independence and textual elaboration (biber, 1988). dimension 3 (d3) score range varies between cmsc19 (7.08) and cmsc21 (-3.69), and between sar05 (15.59) and sar15 (4.28). figures 4 and 5 show d3 mean scores of the corpora analysed. http://www.languagevalue/ yolanda noguera-díaz language value 15 (2), 81–111 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 94 figure 4. dimension 3 scores for the cmsc corpus figure 5. dimension 3 scores for the sar corpus cmsc shows a mean score (5.77) above that of academic texts (4.2) in biber (1988), while the sar corpus shows a mean score (8.12) above official documents (7.3). pairwise comparisons revealed statistically significant differences in dimension 3 scores h(2) = 2.829, p = .005. high positive scores in this dimension show independence from context, whereas low scores display dependence on the context. linguistic features with a positive weight in d3 include wh -relative clauses in object position, pied-piping relatives (preposition + a relativizer), wh-relative clauses in subject position, phrasal coordination and nominalization (biber, 1988). linguistic features with negative weights on d3 include time and place adverbials. the sar corpus in d3 shows a higher means score for nominalizations (5.25) than cmsc texts (3.61). however, the mean frequency for phrasal coordination (1.17) is a multidimensional analysis of two registers of english for navy submariners language value 15(2), 81–111 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 95 identical in both corpora, as well as the wh-object relative clauses on object position (0.01). relative clauses are relatively infrequent in the two corpora. time and place adverbials are more frequent in cmsc texts 0.36 and 0.31 versus 0.14 and 0.21 in sar texts, respectively. sample 5 includes cmsc21 and cmsc19 texts. cmsc21 (2006.4) includes warfare: capabilities and assets required; an article published in 2006 in the naval forces magazine. cmsc19 includes iran tests high-speed, originally published in 2006 in undersea enterprise news. sample 5: cmsc corpus cmsc21(2006.4) = (-3,69) place and time adverbials in bold. spending 49 days at sea the boat arrived in simon’s town, some 45 kilometers southeast of cape town after a voyage of 6,600 nautical miles. cmsc19 (2006.2) = (7.09) underlined phrasal coordination the united states and its western allies have been watching iran´s progress in missile capabilities with concern. cmsc19 texts have the highest positive mean value (7.09) in the corpus, with higher scores in phrasal coordination (1.30) and nominalization (4.09). cmsc21 has the lowest mean value in d3 (-3.69), and the highest scores for time adverbials (0.4 0) and place adverbials (0.42). sample 6 includes sar15 and sar5. sar15, specifications for corpas and sarsat, is a technical document that explains the requirements for the development of 406 mhz maritime distress beacons, emergency position-indicating radio beacons (epirbs) and personal locator beacons (plbs) for personal use. sar 5, iamsar v.1, stands for international aeronautical and maritime search and rescue manual discusses common aviation and maritime procedures to provide salvage and rescue services following http://www.languagevalue/ yolanda noguera-díaz language value 15 (2), 81–111 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 96 the international convention for the safety of life at sea (solas). it was published jointly by the international maritime organization (imo) and the international civil aviation organization (icao). sample 6: sar corpus sar 15 (2019) = (4.28) nominalizations in bold. the beacon shall commence transmissions upon activation even if no valid position data are available. sar 5 (2005) = (15.59) nominalizations in bold and wh relative clauses on subject position underlined. the reporting of a distress incident to a unit which can provide or co-ordinate assistance. sar15 displays a d3 score (4.28) similar to technology/engineering academic prose (4.7) in biber (1988). the text examines the rescue coordination processes between a distressed submarine and satellite devices (pre, while and post sequence of events). in d3, pied piping relative clauses constructions are important positive features within the three different forms of relative clauses of this dimension, and in sar5 wh-relative clauses in object position (0.02), together with pied-ping (0.08) show, despite the low frequency, higher scores than in sar15, with (0 and 0.04 respectively). sar15 and sar05 show the highest means for wh relative clauses in subject position, 0.12 and 0.15, respectively, whereas the means for cmsc19 and cmsc21 are lower, 0.08 and 0.01, respectively. despite the identical overall frequency mean for phrasal coordination in both corpora, the two sar texts (sar05 1.19 and sar15 1.70) show higher means than the cmsc texts. iv.1.4. dimension 4: argumentative orientation cmsc and sar corpora share a moderate orientation towards overtly argumentation and a prominent use of modality devices, with dimension 4 mean scores of -1.27 and a multidimensional analysis of two registers of english for navy submariners language value 15(2), 81–111 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 97 0.95, respectively (table 1). the score range varies between cmsc18 (-3.61) and cmsc17 (0.52), and between sar07 (-7.8) and sar06 (4.64). figure 6 shows dimension 4 (d4) mean scores of the corpora analysed. figure 6. dimension 4 scores for the cmsc and sar corpora while professional magazines (cmsc) show a mean score above that of press review texts (-2.8) in biber (1988), manuals and reports (sar) show a mean score slightly above phone conversations (0.6). pairwise comparisons revealed statistically significant differences in d4 scores between the cmsc and sar corpora h (2) = 2.863, p = .004. the defining linguistic features in d4 only display positive weights. they include infinitives, prediction modals (will, would, shall), suasive verbs (agree, ask), conditional subordination, necessity modals (ought to, should, must), split auxiliaries and possibility modals (can, might, may, could) (biber, 1988). the highest frequency means are observed in conditional subordination in sar (0.31) versus cmsc texts (0.08), and in the necessity modals in sar (0.56) versus cmsc texts (0.1). sample 7 includes cmsc17 and cmsc18 texts. cmsc18 d4 score (-3.61) contributed to the negative overall mean score for the cmsc corpus (-1.27). cmsc18 (2006.1) includes the heavyweight contenders: torpedoes, a text that examines torpedoes as the main hardkill submarine weapon in the international export markets. it was published in jane´s international defence review. cmsc17 (2005.4) the priz drama describes the russian mini-sub priz and her rescue operations with foreign assistance. http://www.languagevalue/ yolanda noguera-díaz language value 15 (2), 81–111 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 98 sample 7: cmsc corpus cmsc17 (2005.4) = (0.52) infinitives in bold. they expect the boat s to grow slightly to improve the relatively cramped conditions in the existing boats. cmsc18 (2006.1) = (-3.61) possibility modals and prediction modals underlined. its weapon can be installed without integration issues on the hellenic navy´s new type 214 and upgraded type 209 submarines. cmsc17 shows higher scores than cmsc18 in most of the relevant linguistic features in d4, which explains its mean score (0.52) and the negative mean score of cmsc18 ( 3.61). the linguistic features range from higher values of cmsc17 for infinitives (1.76) vs. cmsc18 (1.40), prediction modals cmsc17 (0.72) vs cmsc18 (0.51) to suasive verbs cmsc17 (0.49) vs cmsc18(0.21) or split auxiliaries in cmsc17 (0.66) vs cmsc18 (0.27). sample 8 includes sar6 and sar7 texts. sar 6 is entitled atp-18_f: allied manual of submarine operations. this is a 2006 allied technical procedures nato manual that specifies responsibilities at various levels of command for submarine operations. sar 7 was introduced in sample 4. sample 8: sar corpus sar6 (2006) = (4.64) prediction modals underlined. the submarine will have been instrumental in establishing the maritime superiority in the uwb that will allow the mio to proceed. sar7 (2009) = (-7.8) infinitives with to underlined. a multidimensional analysis of two registers of english for navy submariners language value 15(2), 81–111 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 99 the least significant difference test was used for post hoc analysis of the main effect of days at sea to assess day to day changes in alertness. sar07 (-7.8) shows general low positive scores. only infinitives with to (0.72) and suasive verbs (0.35) are higher than those in sar6, (0.62) and 0.22, respectively. the use of suasive verbs provides intentions to certain actions. these verbs int end to effect a change of some sort (e.g suggest, recommend). suasive verbs can be followed by a that-clause either with putative should or with a mandative subjunctive. in sample 8, prediction and possibility modal verbs are frequent. modality may be defined as the way the meaning of a clause is qualified so as to respect the speaker´s judgement of the likelihood of the proposition it expresses being true. prediction modals (e.g would) are used to discuss hypothetical situations whereas necessity modals (i.e., may) express a plan or intention for certain events. iv.1.5. dimension 5: abstract orientation both corpora show different dimension 5 (d5) scores. however, they share an orientation towards abstraction. the score range varies between cmsc20 (1.01) and cmsc31 (3.27), and between sar07 (-2.2) and sar14 (3.56). figures 7 and 8 show d5 mean scores of the corpora analysed. figure 7. dimension 5 scores for the cmsc corpus http://www.languagevalue/ yolanda noguera-díaz language value 15 (2), 81–111 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 100 figure 8. dimension 5 scores for the sar corpus while manuals and reports (sar) show a mean score of 1.64, professional magazines (cmsc) show a mean score (2.47) above that of press review or hobbies texts (1.2) in biber (1988). pairwise comparisons did not show statistically significant differences in d5 scores between the cmsc and sar corpora h(2) = 1.076, p = .282. the cmsc corpus shows a slightly higher degree of abstractness. linguistic features that are relevant in d5 include conjuncts (alternatively, altogether, else, etc), agentless passives, adverbial past participial clauses, by-passives and predicative adjectives. the use of agentless passives is the feature that possibly most distinguishes these two corpora: cmsc (1.34) vs. sar (1.51). the use of the passive voice with agentless passives displays high scores in cmsc. in sample 9 we find cmsc20 and cmsc31 texts. cmsc20 (2006.3) includes germany´s type 212 a rewards faith in aip published in jane´s navy international. it is a description of a new generation type of german subs which are ready to enter operational service. cmsc31(2010.1&2) is a briefing published in jane´s defense weekly journal entitled nuclear deterrent options. sample 9: cmsc corpus cmsc20 (2006.3) = (1.01) underlined agentless passive, conjuncts in bold. …which is stored at 180 in tanks under the boat outer skin, but pressure hull, hence the submarines increase in size. cmsc31(2010.1&2) = (3.27) a multidimensional analysis of two registers of english for navy submariners language value 15(2), 81–111 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 101 underlined agentless passive, conjuncts in bold. also, while acknowledging that such a capability is not intended to deter terrorist groups. cmsc31(3.27) shows higher positive weights in all the linguistic features except for adjectives, where is lower in cmsc31(0.50) than in cmsc20 (0.63). some examples of these higher positive scores can be observed in conjuncts (0.31) vs. cmsc20 (0.20), or agentless passive (1.49) in cmsc31 vs 0.84 in cmsc20. similarly, past participial clauses have a value of 0.18 in cmsc31 and 0.07 in cmsc20. sample 10 includes sar7 and sar14 texts. sar7 can also be found in sample 8. sar14 includes atp-57.2_eda_v3: standards related document. the submarine search and rescue manual. it is an allied tactical procedures manual published by nato. in d5, the sar minimum value is sar7 (-2.2). sample 10: sar corpus sar7 (2009) = (-2.2) underlined agentless passive, in bold past participles with deletion. the expected level of performance effectiveness is based upon the detailed analysis of data from participants engaged in the performance of cognitive tasks during several sleep deprivation studies conducted by the army, air force and canadian researches. sar14 (2017) = (3.56) underlined agentless passive. four pairs of salvage air fittings are located along the top surface of the submarine hull. iv.1.6. summary of findings table 2 shows the main findings for each of the five dimensions after the md analysis of both corpora in this study. http://www.languagevalue/ yolanda noguera-díaz language value 15 (2), 81–111 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 102 table 2. summary of findings dimensions main finding ationinterpret dimension 1 (cmsc – 19.25/ sar –19.56) similar negative mean scores in professional magazines and manuals and reports. manuals and reports (sar) show higher scores in nominalizations, nouns, plain adverbials, agentless passive, and present participles with deletion. it is in nominalizations and nouns where the highest scores are found, which indicates a tendency towards condensed information that contributes to the expression of highly specialised and informational context. professional magazines (cmsc) show the highest score in type/token ratio, which reflects, according to biber (1988), a larger diversity of lexical items. despite the lower mean score in nouns, cmsc texts show the highest score in attributive adjectives. dimension 2 (cmsc – 2.9/ sar – 4.59 cmsc shows a more narrative orientation. manuals and reports (sar) score suggest a more expository style than cmsc texts, linked to attributive nominal elaboration and immediate time (biber, 1988). the frequency and distribution of past tenses, third person pronouns, perfect aspect and public verbs in the cmsc is associated with a stronger narrative tendency. dimension 3 (cmsc 5.77/sar 8.12) sar texts tend to be more informational manuals and reports (sar) show the highest mean score for nominalization. professional magazines (cmsc) display lower mean scores (5.7 versus 8.1 in sar). time and place adverbials show the lowest scores. dimension 4 (cmsc – 1.27/ sar 0.95) sar texts are more persuasive manuals and reports (sar) show the highest scores in conditional subordination, necessity modals and possibility modals. these modals are associated with the ability or necessity for certain events to occur (biber, 1988). manual and reports make use of linguistic features that seek to guide the readers. dimension 5 (cmsc 2.47/ sar 1.64) scores are not significantly different professional magazines (cmsc) and manuals and reports (sar) show similar levels of linguistic abstraction. the frequency and distribution of linguistic features in cmsc texts are similar to official documents in biber (1988). agentless passives are more frequent in cmsc, though. a multidimensional analysis of two registers of english for navy submariners language value 15(2), 81–111 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 103 v. discussion this research examines two corpora (see section iii) that represent two different registers of interest to navy submariners: professional submarine magazines and salvage and rescue manuals and reports. although their situational characteristics are diverging in terms of participants and communicative functions, their channel, production circumstances and general topic domain are similar. given the lack of research in submarine english, applied linguists and language instructors, however, may be unfamiliar with the linguistic nature of relevant texts when they are appointed to teach such courses. cmsc was originally compiled and analysed as a response to the lack of research and teaching materials for navy submariners. in a previous study, author (2019) used corpus-based analyses of cmsc to shed some light on the complexity of the noun phrase in the corpus and thus inform the selection of vocabulary to be included in the lessons of the subject english for navy submariners. author (2020) went a step forward and used the sar to devise ddl activities for the teaching of acronyms. despite these efforts, using a narrow set of linguistics features can only pr ovide limited insight into the complexities of professional communication (ford et al., 2021). an md analysis informs both linguistic insights into the functional underpinning of the registers analysed as well as specialized language teaching, offering qua ntitative data about linguistic variation in any given domain. section iv offered an account of the variation that was found in the two corpora analysed across five dimensions of use. the differences were statistically significant in dimensions 2, 3 and 4, which suggests that the frequency and distribution of some defining linguistic features behaved differently in professional magazines and in manuals and reports. we argue that an understanding of variation continua can only be achieved by attending to what we describe in this paper as converging and diverging patterns of variation in the two corpora analysed across both individual texts and corpora. http://www.languagevalue/ yolanda noguera-díaz language value 15 (2), 81–111 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 104 converging patterns of variation show corpora and texts that behave similarly on a given dimension of use. on the contrary, diverging patterns of variation show how the corpora analysed display frequencies and distributions of linguistic features that facilitate distinct functional interpretations on a given dimension. while research has tended to focus on the differences (biber, 2019b), and hence on diverging patterns of variation, we note that, in professional and specialized language analysis, the study of converging patterns of variation can impact on t he evaluation of the texts that can inform pedagogy a corpus-pedagogy approach. in the following paragraphs, we will discuss the linguistic characteristics of the two submariner registers relative to biber’s 1988 dimensions of register variation. these characteristics can potentially inform the design of the c urriculum and materials (crosthwaite & cheung, 2019) for the aforementioned subject. in iv.1, we discuss the dimensions where differences between the registers were not found. section iv.2 explores the linguistic differences found across the dimensions and their potential impact on language teaching. v.1. converging orientation in the corpus analysed two corpora show a converging orientation when they display no significant differences in the score of a dimension in the md analysis. professional magazines and manuals and reports make use of linguistic features similarly when fulfilling the underlying communicative functions in d1 and d5 (see tables 1 and 2). however, their participants and specific topics vary (biber & conrad, 2009). as biber (2019b, p.7 2) put it “the registers themselves have traditionally been treated as discrete categories. most corpora are organized [into] non-overlapping categories (e.g., fiction, academic prose […] with individual texts placed into a single category”. in other words , both registers and texts could be analysed in a quantitative, continuous situational space “with individual texts being central or peripheral to the situational characteristics of the register” (biber, 2019b, p. 72). cmsc and sar corpora do not display significant differences in the frequency and distribution of features that construct dense information packaging (d1) or the a multidimensional analysis of two registers of english for navy submariners language value 15(2), 81–111 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 105 tendency towards abstraction (d5). while most register analyses have examined differences between corpora, similarities are equally interesting for language instructors and curriculum designers that may need a closer look at the main characteristics of a register. as hyland (2007, p.162) suggested, grounding curricula and language teaching in the texts that students will have to interact with can only increase the students’ “understanding of the ways language is used to create meanings [and] empowers teachers by offering them ways to analyse texts and reflect on the workings of language”. in d1, a high similar negative score for nouns in both corpora suggests the presence of very high density of information. some components of the two corpora yield almost identical mean scores. for example, sar5 mean noun score is 30.87, while cmsc32 score is 30.89. in d5, the similar mean scores in bot h corpora are best exemplified in features such as agentless passives, with similar mean scores in both corpora. agentless passives are usually associated with an abstract style (conrad and biber, 2001), so it may be interesting to observe that texts such as cmsc14 (1.47) and sar2 (1.43) show almost identical mean scores for this feature. thus, discovering converging patterns of variation across the two registers analysed (see figure 9) can inform language teachers about how concrete texts behave in the co ntext of a broader corpus. manuals and reports (sar) display higher means of nominalization and nouns. however, some magazine texts similarly show similar high frequencies. by obtaining the mean scores for each of these linguistic features for each of the texts, language instructors will be able to focus on the situational characteristics (biber & conrad, 2009; biber, 2019b) of the different registers, and thus help learners to contextualise the frequency and adequacy of linguistic features across differen t registers. consider samples 1 and 2. despite the similar mean dimension scores of both corpora, the texts in sar7 (-28.73) and cmsc34 (-24.23) behave in a more similar way in terms of frequency and distribution of nouns and nominalizations than sar11 ( -15.68) and cmsc3 (-15.18). while the differences of the two corpora are not significant, ifferences across individual texts as shown in samples 1 and 2 can be useful to illustrate specific situational characteristics and understand variation as a continuum rather than an http://www.languagevalue/ yolanda noguera-díaz language value 15 (2), 81–111 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 106 absolute measure. some of the target features that could be exploited in the language classroom are found in figure 9. figure 9. target linguistic features with similar frequencies and distribution in d1 and d2 v.2. diverging orientation in the corpus analysed two registers show a diverging orientation when they display significant differences in the score of a dimension in the md analysis. in this research, significant differences were found on dimensions 2, 3 and 4 (tables 1 and 2). d2 is a good linguistic predictor of register differences (biber, 2019a) between our two corpora. d2 in the sar corpus shows the highest negative score (-4.59) versus cmsc (2.9). manuals and reports are, expectedly, less narrative than cmsc texts and we can anticipate a lower frequency of features associated with a narrative orientation such as past tenses, third person pronouns or the use of the perfect aspect. more broadly, language instructors could use scores on dimensions 2, 3 and 4 to select textual evidence of frequency of a given set of linguistic features such as past tenses (d2), time and place adverbials (d3) or modal verbs (d4) that can inform situated uses of linguistic features. however, it is essential to appreciate that variation across corpora needs to be framed in the context of further variation in individual texts. in other words, it would be wrong to assume that linguistics variation is equally distributed across the corpus components/texts and to approach variation just attending to the general tendency and means in a given corpus. for example, it is counterintuitive to see that in the sar corpus we find that while sar1 offers a past tense mean frequency score of 0.34, sar14 yields a 4.19 mean score, which brings this text closer to the behaviour of past a multidimensional analysis of two registers of english for navy submariners language value 15(2), 81–111 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 107 tenses in professional magazines. within-corpus variation can thus useful when illustrating central tendencies, i.e., low frequency of simple past tenses, and uses that diverge from such tendencies. on the other hand, using corpus means can facilitate comparison with other registers and semiotic resources used in different texts. our md analysis, for example, confirms that sar texts tend to behave in a similar way as engineering academic prose, which shows the highest negative score of any register (4.1) in d2 in (biber, 1988). d3 is a good linguistic predictor of register differences in textual elaboration between the two corpora. textual elaboration is apparent in the sar corpus . d3 shows explicit textual elaboration through linguistic features with a positive weight such as whrelative clauses in object position, wh-relative clauses in subject position, nominalization and phrasal coordination. there are also differences for nomi nalization in inter-corpus and intra-corpus textual analysis (see samples 5 and 6). d4 is also a good linguistic predictor of register differences. in d4, manuals and reports show a moderate orientation towards argumentation. in d4 infinitives, prediction modals (will, would, shall), suasive verbs (agree, ask), conditional subordinators, necessity modals and possibility modals (can, may, might, could) are relevant linguistic features that can inform corpus-based language teaching and the use of conventional grammatical units of analysis, but again it is essential to bear in mind that features such as necessity modals display diverging frequencies in intra-corpus texts. for example, sar06 (0.19) and sar04 (0.71) offer different profiles and different opportunities to examine the occurrence of necessity modals. in sample 8, d4 scores are so diverging that the gap calls for a closer examination of the texts involved. some of the target features that could be exploited in a corpus -informed curriculum (hyland, 2007) are found in figure 10. http://www.languagevalue/ yolanda noguera-díaz language value 15 (2), 81–111 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 108 figure 10. target linguistic features with diverging frequencies and distribution in d2 -d4 vi. conclusions in this paper, we have operationalized the notion of variation in the context of a md analysis of two corpora in this paper, we have operationalized the notion of variation in the context of a md analysis of two corpora relevant to linguists interested in english for the military as well as to instructors and students of the subject english for navy submariners in the spanish navy submarine warfare school. we have shown that the analysis of variation can not only inform about the differences between corpora, the default approach according to biber (2019a), but they can also reveal aspects where corpora show similar patterns of variation. diverging and converging patterns of variation can therefore provide a fuller linguistic picture of the actual texts used by professionals (hyland, 2007) and offer instructors the opportunity to use their own data in corpusbased pedagogy (anthony, 2019). similarly, we have provided evidence that intra-corpus variation is equally relevant and needs further attention in lsp pedagogy. following biber’s (2019b) suggestion, if texts a multidimensional analysis of two registers of english for navy submariners language value 15(2), 81–111 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 109 in a text linguistic register analysis are treated as observations for which rates of occurrence for each linguistic feature are computed, this data can inform about where within-corpus variation can be found, providing valuable information about discursive practices. understanding how the texts in our data behave on a given dimension can only provide us with more opportunities to understand how variation works across texts and their situational characteristics. as bhatia (2019, p. 47) put it, professional communication needs to be “more efficient in bridging the gap between the academy and the profession, which certainly requires more understanding of and sensitivity to discursive as well as professional practice”. looking at variation, we note, could inform these much-needed practices, and contribute to bring together corpus-based methods and lsp theory and practice. some of the limitations of this study include the use of biber’s (1988) classic md analysis framework and the restrictions in place by the military to access other texts. a new md analysis of the two corpora may reveal new dimensions of use that are not necessarily identified in this study. access to classified materials is not, at the time of writing, an option. further work should examine the use of corpus-based materials that explore the notion of variation and its uptake in a classroom context. vii. references al-surmi, m. 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(2019). multi-dimensional analysis: research methods and current issues. bloomsbury publishing. received: 02 december 2022 accepted: 19 december 2022 http://www.languagevalue/ language value http://www.languagevalue.uji.es december 2019, volume 11, number 1 pp. 71-102 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2019.11.5 71 exploring the vocabulary learning strategies of italian learners of english james rock james.rock@unicatt.it università cattolica del sacro cuore di milano, italy abstract in this paper, a think-aloud protocol is used to explore the vocabulary learning strategies of ten adult learners of english at a university in the north of italy. the focus is on discovering the types of techniques that are actually used by learners while performing a deliberate vocabulary learning task. as well as providing details about the strategy use of each participant, the investigation considered the strategies used by more and less successful efl learners. in general, less attention was awarded to techniques involving deeper mental elaboration, such as complex guessing for meaning or the use of mnemonic techniques, in favour of strategies requiring less mental effort. there was also less emphasis on mechanical repetition than in many previous studies on the topic. keywords: vocabulary learning strategies, exploratory, think-aloud, strategy sequences, frequency of use i. introduction the present study is an in-depth exploration of the vocabulary learning strategies of a group of italian adult learners of english as a foreign language. information is provided about the types of strategies used and how frequently they are employed on a deliberate vocabulary learning task. the investigation distinguishes between individuals in terms of their strategic behaviour and also considers the relationship between language learning success and strategy use. the hope is that the findings will help inform how english vocabulary is presented and taught to italian learners of english in the classroom. due to the longevity of language learning strategy research, and its sub-set comprising vocabulary learning strategies, which emerged over forty years ago, it is necessary to begin by establishing why this investigation is of value. this is pertinent, given that the traditional approach to such research, which targeted the techniques that learners apply, has been the subject of criticism. essentially, rather than focus exclusively on the types of strategies used by learners, some researchers (dörnyei 2005, tseng et al. 2006, tseng http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ mailto:james.rock@unicatt.it james rock language value 11 (1), 71–102 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 72 and schmitt 2008) have called for greater attention to be devoted to exploring the forces driving our learning behaviour. the consequence of this is that many experts are seemingly less keen now on examining the types of strategies used by learners. yet, the position adopted here is that there are still valid reasons for persisting with inquiries of observable learner behaviour. indeed, in gao’s (2007) view, existing models of strategy use and investigations that look at the initial driving forces are not incompatible, as they are measuring the beginning and end-product of the same event. rose (2012) also maintains that it is possible to study strategic learning both in terms of what drives a learner to behave in a certain way, but also in terms of the cognitive and behavioural strategies they employ (rose 2012: 97). more recently, oxford (2017) and rose et al. (2018) both assert that investigating learning strategies is still beneficial, notwithstanding recent developments in the field of strategy research. such views helped establish the theoretical basis of the present study, which was also reinforced by pawlak and oxford’s (2018: 529) assertion that it is difficult to imagine how any kind of learning, including foreign language learning, could be successfully managed without skilled use of strategies. consequently, it is anticipated that this exploration of strategy use will prove beneficial, since it presents detailed information about the types of strategies employed and indicates how learners differ in terms of their use. since the goal is to present a thorough exploration of strategy use, the emphasis is placed on qualitative rather than quantitative research methods. for data collection, a think-aloud protocol is utilised to tap into the thoughts and actions of a group of learners as they attempt to determine and consolidate ten unknown lexical items. this methodological decision is supported by takeuchi (2019: 16) who contends that research on language learning strategies should “observe the trend in the direction of qualitative data collection methodologies including narratives, interviews, diaries, journals, portfolios, and think-aloud protocols”. besides functioning as a useful tool for uncovering the strategic moves made by individuals, a think-aloud protocol also enables one to gain some valuable insight into how a group of students differ while undertaking a specific learning task. this is relevant, as research has indicated that a variety of factors may influence the types of learning strategies that are used (oxford 1990, macaro 2006). these include, amongst others, age, gender, attitude, motivation, aptitude, learning stage, learning styles, individual differences, cultural differences, exploring the vocabulary learning strategies of italian learners of english language value 11 (1), 71–102 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 73 beliefs about language learning, and language proficiency. in this instance, the objective is to contribute to our understanding of the influence of language learning success on strategy use. though this topic has received research interest, there exists a paucity of research involving italian adult learners of english. consequently, rather than select participants randomly for the think-aloud study, the sample comprises an assortment of learners who were either successful or unsuccessful in their most recent university english examination. the study focuses on:  identifying the strategies used by italian learners of english while discovering and consolidating unknown english words.  exploring the relationship between language learning success and strategy use. ii. context of the study the motivation to perform the study came while i was teaching english to a group of undergraduate students at a university in the north of italy. all members of the class had been unsuccessful in the previous end-of-year written english language exam. the language class, in question, is termed a recupero course, and functions as a remedial programme for students who need to improve their level of performance in the end-ofyear written exam in english. hence, the course is very exam-oriented and contains fewer students than traditional english language courses at the university. in class, it struck me how passive many individuals were in terms of how they approached various learning tasks, with many showing a degree of reluctance to engage actively in language learning. with this in mind, i chose to focus exclusively on vocabulary learning, with the aim of learning more about the kinds of strategies used by italian learners of english to discover and consolidate lexical meaning in english. in so doing, i hoped some useful data would emerge surrounding the strategic behaviour of more and less successful learners. by contextualising the investigation within a third-level institution in the north of italy, the findings can be examined alongside studies with participants from different backgrounds. this is recommended by takeuchi (2019), who claims that future studies http://www.languagevalue/ james rock language value 11 (1), 71–102 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 74 should focus on a specific population in a specific task-setting and context, as strategy use depends to a large extent on learners, tasks, and contexts. consequently, rather than try to uncover general patterns in the population, which has been the focus of a large proportion of previous research on strategies, the goal here is to collect rich data about strategy use from learners as they actively engage in a deliberate vocabulary learning task. pawlak and oxford (2018) highlight the value of doing so, since understanding how strategies are used in specific learning tasks or the different phases of tasks remains a challenge for researchers. iii. vocabulary learning strategies while there has been an interest in language learning strategies for several decades, many investigations have focused broadly on language learning as a whole and tended to ignore vocabulary learning strategies (schmitt 1997). readers are invited to refer to cohen and macaro (2007) for a thorough overview of language learning strategy research, plus a 2018 special issue of studies in second language learning and teaching that explores past research on the topic and recommends avenues for future research. however, a body of research devoted specifically to vocabulary learning strategies now exists, which has addressed a variety of issues over the years (see pavičić takač 2008 for a detailed survey of vocabulary learning strategy research). in terms of focus, research has been done on various topics, including classifying vocabulary learning strategies (stoffer 1995, schmitt 1997, gu 2003, zhang and li 2011), examining frequency of strategy use (cohen and aphek 1981, gu and johnson 1996, lawson and hogben 1996, barcroft 2009; o’malley et al. 1985a, schmitt 1997, schmitt and schmitt 1993, fan 2003, kafipour et al. 2011, arjomand and sharififar 2011, rabadi 2016), and considering the effect of strategies on vocabulary retention (atkinson and raugh 1975, brown and perry 1991, rodríguez and sadowki 2000, zahedi 2012, wei 2015). on top of that, many studies have been conducted on learners from different cultural backgrounds and at various stages of education. in the last decade alone, numerous publications have appeared concerning the vocabulary learning strategies of english learners from many countries, including malaysia (asgari and ghazali 2011), turkey (çelik and toptaş 2010, kirmizi and topcu 2014, yigit and exploring the vocabulary learning strategies of italian learners of english language value 11 (1), 71–102 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 75 aykul 2018), iran (hamzah et al. 2009, davoudi and chavosh 2016), indonesia (bakti 2018, noprianto and purnawarman 2019), poland (nosidlak 2013), croatia (roguli and čizmić 2018), romania (cusen 2009) and china (zou and zhou 2017). the hope is that this study of italian learners of english will contribute to the field by providing another contextualized investigation of strategy use. several key investigations of vocabulary learning strategies by prominent experts in the field are outlined below. quite a few of them were published more than two decades ago, when interest in strategy research was at its peak. yet, due to the nature of this study, which explores the types of strategies actually used, how learners differ in terms of strategy use, and the relationship between learning success and strategy use, they remain relevant and will be referred to while discussing the findings. iii.1. types and frequency of vocabulary learning strategies gu and johnson (1996) surveyed the vocabulary learning behaviour of 850 chinese university learners of english. participants reported greater use of meaning-oriented strategies than rote-learning strategies. it also emerged that “contextualised guessing, skilful use of dictionaries for learning purposes (as opposed to looking up for comprehension only), note-taking, paying attention to word formation, contextual encoding, and intentional activation of new words all positively correlated” (gu and johnson 1996: 668) with vocabulary size. conversely, visual repetition was the strongest negative predictor of learning outcome. in another survey, schmitt and schmitt (1993) asked 600 japanese learners of english to indicate whether they used a particular strategy or not, as well as whether they thought it was helpful or not. there was a strong preference for a bilingual dictionary, while most respondents also guessed for meaning frequently and asked classmates for help with deciphering lexical meaning. as for consolidation strategies, some form of repetition was the most popular strategy, while focusing on a word’s spelling or connecting a word with synonyms or antonyms were also common. in terms of helpfulness, a bilingual dictionary was considered most beneficial, while asking a teacher for a paraphrase or synonym also ranked highly. forming an image of a word, or using the keyword method, were both considered unhelpful. http://www.languagevalue/ james rock language value 11 (1), 71–102 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 76 while obtaining perceptions of strategy use lends itself to descriptive analyses, lawson and hogben (1996) believed more could be understood about learner behaviour by exploring the kinds of strategies they actually use rather than those they think they use. to do so, they adopted a think-aloud protocol to explore the behaviour of 15 foreign language learners as they attempted to acquire the meaning of several new words. their study design proved instrumental when choosing a data collection tool for the present investigation. in terms of findings, the most frequently used strategy involved some form of repetition of words and their meanings. such findings supported an earlier investigation by o’malley et al. (1985a), which also highlighted the recurring use of repetition and reported actions requiring active manipulation of information to be far less frequent. in lawson and hogben’s study, participants largely ignored the physical or grammatical features of words, and overlooked more elaborate acquisition procedures, such as the keyword method. barcroft (2009) expanded on lawson and hogben’s work by exploring the relationship between strategy use and vocabulary learning performance. with respect to shared features across both studies, three actions emerged: repetition, testing, and mnemonic use. though such findings attest the value of mechanical strategies to learners, techniques requiring deeper mental elaboration resulted in greater recall of words. this supports an earlier study by cohen and aphek (1981), who highlighted the benefit of strategies requiring complex mental elaboration for learning vocabulary. iii.2. the relationship between language learning success and strategy use early research on the topic of language learning strategies focused on the topic of what defines a good learner, with rubin (1975: 42) postulating that “if we knew more about what the 'successful learners' did, we might be able to teach these strategies to poorer learners to enhance their success record” (1975: 42). a study by ahmed (1989) on vocabulary learning strategy use revealed that good learners are more aware of what they can learn about new words and words’ collocation, spelling and context. in contrast, poor learners refuse to use the dictionary and almost always ignore new words. they are generally characterised by their apparent passiveness in learning. gu (1994) performed an in-depth analysis of the vocabulary learning strategies of a ‘good’ and exploring the vocabulary learning strategies of italian learners of english language value 11 (1), 71–102 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 77 ‘poor’ chinese learners of english. in a similar vein to the present study, a think-aloud protocol was employed to tap into the types of strategies used by learners. gu reported that the poorer learner used a narrower range of strategies than the good learner and used them ineffectively. in his view, poorer learners need to learn how to monitor and evaluate their strategy use as well as the learning process. moreover, they need to understand that there is more to learning a language than remembering the target equivalents of all native language words. in an excellent review of research on ‘good’ and ‘poor’ language learners, griffiths (2008) deals with the issue in view of current thinking in the field and examines the implications for language teaching. with regard to vocabulary size and strategy use, fan (2003) revealed that learners with a greater knowledge of english vocabulary were more self-initiated, used more sources, and employed guessing and dictionary strategies more often than individuals with lower proficiency, which supports some earlier studies (ahmed 1989, barcroft 2009, gu and johnson 1996, lawson and hogben 1996, sanaoui 1995). finally, teng (2015), in a study of 145 chinese efl learners, reported that participants’ scores in strategy use correlated significantly and positively with breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge. against this background, is it reasonable to assume that less successful learners will improve if they pursue the vocabulary learning strategy use of better learners? while this may often be the case, gu (1994) cautions against doing so, as many less successful learners use a high number of strategies but remain poor learners. moreover, the literature shows the findings of previous studies often vary in terms of the importance awarded to rote-learning and meaning-oriented strategies. consequently, investigating actual strategy use may shed light on the priority awarded to such techniques. it may also help explain why less successful italian efl learners struggle and what can be done to improve their language learning performance. iv. participants ten individuals took part in the study (see table 1 and table 2). at the time of the investigation, they were all attending the second year of a three-year undergraduate degree programme in foreign languages at a university in the north of italy. a structured sample was chosen to increase the likelihood of the sample containing a mix of more http://www.languagevalue/ james rock language value 11 (1), 71–102 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 78 and less successful learners of english. thus, five individuals had all previously failed the end-of-year written examination in english on, at least, three occasions. as a result, they were attending a remedial english language programme, or a recupero course as it is defined at the university in question, which prepares students to retake the written exam. another five individuals were randomly selected from a regular second year course and had not yet attempted the end-of-year exam. as well as selecting the participants from different types of efl courses, the productive vocabulary knowledge of each learner was also assessed. to test productive vocabulary knowledge, a paper and pencil version of lex30 (meara and fitzpatrick 2000) was used (researchers can access the lex30 test at www.lognostics.co.uk/tools/index.htm). this is a tool designed for testing the productive vocabulary of non-native speakers of english. it is a word association task, in which learners are presented with thirty stimulus words, and are required to produce at least three responses to each word. thus, we are left with a short text generate by each testee, which typically contains about 90 different words. the stimulus words are selected so that they elicit unusual, infrequent words in native speakers. in terms of evaluation, lex30 awards one point to every response word, which does not appear in the most frequent 1,000 words of english. the assumption is that learners with a lower level of vocabulary knowledge will struggle to produce low frequency responses in this task, and that the presence of low frequency words in a test taker’s response set indicates that they have an extended productive vocabulary. the developers of lex30 claim that the test has considerable potential as a quick productive vocabulary test and can also be successfully used to identify cases where the vocabulary development of learners may be abnormal. the results indicated that the group of learners attending the recupero course possessed a lower level of productive vocabulary knowledge than those attending the regular second year course. table 1. participants involved in the study participant 1 2 3 4 5 age 24 22 22 22 22 gender f f f f f course study 2nd year recupero efl 2nd year recupero efl 2nd year recupero efl 2nd year recupero efl 2nd year recupero efl exploring the vocabulary learning strategies of italian learners of english language value 11 (1), 71–102 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 79 course course course course course score on lex30 7 28 38 28 38 table 2. participants involved in the study participant 6 7 8 9 10 age 19 20 20 20 22 gender f m f f m course study 2nd year efl course 2nd year efl course 2nd year efl course 2nd year efl course 2nd year efl course score on lex30 45 46 53 54 80 v. methodology the experimental set up is a variation on the work of lawson and hogben (1996), who also used a concurrent think-aloud procedure in their investigation of vocabulary learning strategies. as in their study, participants were presented with twelve english sentences, with each sentence containing an unknown word (this will henceforth be referred to as the target word). their task was to think aloud as they discovered and consolidated the meaning of the words by whichever means they chose. each learner was instructed to report on the thoughts that were in the focus of their attention, and, were not required to describe or explain what was being done. unlike in lawson and hogben’s study, they were also allowed to use a bilingual and monolingual dictionary. v.1. selecting the target words for the think-aloud task the following criteria were used in the selection of the twelve words. this was partially in keeping with lawson and hogben’s (1996) selection criteria, with the main difference being that while they focused exclusively on nouns, my study included other parts of speech. 1. eight words were nouns, three words were adjectives and one target word was a verb. http://www.languagevalue/ james rock language value 11 (1), 71–102 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 80 2. each word had to be one for which the students did not know the meaning. this was established prior to commencing the task. 3. each word had to represent a familiar object, concept or emotion. 4. three words had to contain suffixes. to cover the possibility of some words being familiar to participants, some reserve items were selected that also fulfilled the above criteria. if a learner knew the meaning of a word on the standard list, one of the reserve items of the same type would substitute it. the complete list of words is shown below. target words cot latch muzzle shovel refurbishment lumber seasoning underdog gobsmacked blissful gutless grieve reserve target words paving perishable unassailable leaflet outskirts exploring the vocabulary learning strategies of italian learners of english language value 11 (1), 71–102 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 81 each word was presented in context, with each sample sentence selected from the british national corpus (see table 3). every effort was made to check that each sentence provided a clue to the word’s meaning. table 3. sentences used in the think-aloud study. sentences containing the twelve target words 1. gobsmacked the loyal workers were gobsmacked to find two months later their ex-boss had bought all his ex-machinery at an auction for next to nothing and started up in business again under another name in the same building. (source: trade union annual congress (1985-1994). rec. on 6 jun 1993. 2. cot ‘i have put your daughter in a cot in your room,’ mrs barnet continued. (source: ruth appleby. rhodes, elvi. london: corgi books, 1992, pp. 109-226, 3427 s-units) 3. refurbishment we have undergone in the last year a major refurbishment of all our guest and public rooms and now offer the comforts so necessary for a mini-break. (source: short breaks brighton and hove 1992, 829 s-units) 4. shovel tom dug frantically with the shovel, lifting the heavy rain-soaked clods of earth with difficulty. (source: saigon. grey, anthony. london: pan books ltd, 1983, pp. 9-128. 2513 s-units) 5. latch i can still remember the click of the latch as she shut the door behind her. (source: part of the furniture. falk, michael. london: bellew pub. ltd, 1991, pp. 1-146. 3416 s-units) 6. underdog the welsh team arrived in edinburgh last night keen to exploit the underdog tag for tomorrow's rugby international at murrayfield, a ground where they have not won since 1985. (source: scotsman. leisure material, 6963 s-units) 7. lumber all along the riverbank, for a distance of 200 metres, piles of lumber are burning. (source: volcanoes. francis, peter. london: penguin group, 1979, 1432 s-units) 8. grieve yes, we grieve when tragedy strikes in such awful forms as we have seen recently. (source: i believe. carey, george. london: spck, 1991, pp. 32-131. 2205 s-units) 9. seasoning there are indeed times when a lemon as a seasoning seems second only in importance to salt. (source: an omelette and a glass of wine. david, elizabeth. london: penguin group, 1987, pp. 156-274. 1944 s-units) 10. muzzle but you have to admit, it's for the dog's own protection to wear a muzzle, as they can pick up all sorts of things in the street which can poison them. (source: dogs today. windsor: burlington pub. ltd, 1992, 1478 s-units) 11. blissful once the winter rains have passed, delhi experiences two months of weather so perfect and blissful that they almost compensate for the climatic extremes of the other ten months of the year. (source: city of djinns. dalrymple, william. london: harpercollins, 1993, 2329 sunits) 12. gutless i should have had the support of my team but they are gutless. (source: today. http://www.languagevalue/ james rock language value 11 (1), 71–102 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 82 11230 s-units) additional sentences containing the reserve words 1. paving a short path led along cracked paving to a front door with coloured glass set into its wood. (source: hide and seek. potter, dennis. london: faber and faber ltd, 1990, 2403 s-units). 2. perishable moreover, if the retailer has too much stock of perishable goods, items may deteriorate or pass their ‘sell by’ date before they are sold. (source: retailing: a manual for students. leach, helen. oxford: basil blackwell ltd, 1989, pp. 45-160. 3291 s-units). 3. unassailable when, just as kylie ended her ten-date tour, the uk's top pop magazine smash hits held its annual awards ceremony, her position as music's no 1 female star was unassailable. (source: kylie minogue: the superstar next door. stone, sasha. london: omnibus press, 1989, pp. 4-96. 2055 s-units). 4. leaflet criticism was made of his publicity leaflet, which featured a photograph not only of the candidate, but a family ensemble complete with children. (source: high risk lives: lesbian and gay politics after the clause. ed. lincoln, paul and kaufmann, tara. bridport, dorset: prism press, 1991, pp. 126-248. 1766 s-units). 5. outskirts he switched the engine on and swung the audi out of the car-park, down yorkstrasse towards the outskirts of the city. (source: the lucy ghosts. shah, eddy. london: corgi books, 1993, pp. 321-452. 4235 s-units). v.2. the interviews each participant was provided with a sheet of paper, listing the twelve target words, and was asked in english to mark any word whose meaning he/she knew. if any of the words were familiar, the cards for those words were replaced with a card from the reserve set. the objective of the study was explained to the participants, i.e. to obtain some information on ways italian learners go about learning the meaning of new english words. this was followed by each learner listening to a brief description of the think-aloud protocol, as well as observing the researcher run through the think-aloud method with a practice card. they were told to feel free to use the monolingual and bilingual dictionaries provided as often as they felt necessary. having completed the demonstration, each learner progressed through the twelve cards featuring the target words. all ten interviews were recorded with the average duration being 46 minutes. vi. data analysis the following section describes how the think-aloud data was analysed and coded. exploring the vocabulary learning strategies of italian learners of english language value 11 (1), 71–102 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 83 vi.1. analysis of the recordings and coding of data the ten recordings were transcribed and analysed for different types of strategic moves. a chart was created for each learner, which included the strategies they used, as well as the sequences in which they were used. each strategy was coded and assigned to one of five higher-level categories (see table 4), which was largely based on the procedure used by lawson and hogben (1996). a category describing dictionary use was added. the first four categories represented the kinds of actions used to discover the meaning of a new word, while the fifth category described the techniques used to consolidate the meaning of a new word. categories 1 and 2 involved transformation of the features of the word and/or the meaning, with strategies demanding more complex mental elaboration occupying the former category and those requiring less mental elaboration the latter. regarding the use of context as a way of providing clues to word meaning, the decision was made to split this strategy between categories 1 and 2. hence, more complex speculation on the meaning of a word, using knowledge of other constituents of the sentence, occupied category 1, while quickly guessing the meaning of a word using english, or providing a translation, fell into category 2. translating a sample sentence or producing a literal translation of a target word were viewed as demanding a lower degree of mental elaboration and were, thus, assigned to category 2. this category also included techniques analysis of physical features of a word, such as its appearance or its sound as a basis for identifying its features. by contrast, the production of synonyms of the target word before consulting a dictionary was viewed as demanding greater mental effort, and, thus, occupied category 1. category 3 reflected some form of word feature analysis. this included the analysis of affixes, or other grammatical features of a word, such as its part of speech. category 4 included strategies employed while consulting a dictionary, while category 5 represented consolidation strategies based upon note-taking, rehearsal of the word and/or the meaning, or some form of self-testing. table 4. categories of strategies used for coding 1. complex elaboration (c.e) complex use of context: the individual made a serious attempt to derive the target word meaning from the sentence, by referring to the meaning or features of other words in the sentence. http://www.languagevalue/ james rock language value 11 (1), 71–102 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 84 paraphrase: the individual suggested synonyms of the target word before consulting a dictionary. 2. simple elaboration (s.e) simple use of context: the individual attempted to explain the meaning of the target word (in english or italian) without making specific reference to any other word(s) in the sentence. simple use of context: the individual suggested a possible italian translation for the target word without making specific reference to any other word(s) in the sentence. literal translation: the individual attempted to translate literally the target word into italian. physical appearance: the individual commented on the target word’s similarity to a word in the l1 or l2. sentence translation: the individual attempted to translate the sample sentence into italian. 3. word feature analysis (w.f) word classification: the individual commented on the part of speech of the new word. use of affixes: the individual used his/her knowledge of prefixes or suffixes. 4. dictionary use (d.u) bilingual dictionary: the individual referred to a bilingual dictionary to find the meaning of the target word or another word in the sentence. monolingual dictionary: the individual referred to a monolingual dictionary to find the meaning of the target word or another word in the sentence. 5. consolidation strategies note taking (nt): the individual took a note of various features of the new word (meaning, translation, pronunciation, grammatical properties, sample sentence, other uses of the word). simple word rehearsal (reh): the individual used repetition, or other kinds of learning strategies, to help remember the meaning of the target word. cumulative rehearsal (reh): the individual not only repeated the word and/or meaning but also returned to previous words and rehearsed these in a sequence. self-testing (st): the individual engaged in self-testing by covering the italian/english meaning of the new word and tried to generate the other part of the pair. vii. findings in this section, the strategies used by the group to discover and consolidate the meaning of the lexical items is the vocabulary learning task are discussed (table 4), with exploring the vocabulary learning strategies of italian learners of english language value 11 (1), 71–102 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 85 reference also made to the types of strategies used while consulting dictionaries during the task (see table 5 and table 6). this is followed by a description of the strategies employed by each participant. the subsequent discussion section reflects on the strategy use of the sample of learners, and considers the strategy use of those who were described as being less successful learners. vii.1. the types of strategies used to discover and consolidate lexical meaning the most popular strategy involved the use of a bilingual dictionary, which was consulted to a greater or lesser extent by all ten individuals. while a monolingual dictionary was used less often, it was still popular with only one participant choosing not to use it. guessing for meaning through english, or coming up with a translation of a word, were also common. similarly, sentence translation was prominent, with seven individuals doing so at some point during the task. by contrast, examples of more complex guessing for meaning were less prevalent. with regard to word feature analysis, half of the sample attended to the affixes of several target words, with a similar number focusing on grammatical properties of words. finally, though the majority of participants commented on a physical similarity between a target word and a known word, only two individuals highlighted synonyms of a word. there was also variation in terms of the use of consolidation strategies. repetition, in particular, was less frequent than expected. indeed, only three participants engaged in simple word repetition, albeit doing so on several occasions. there were instances of cumulative rehearsal, though this was only popular with four individuals. on the other hand, note taking was much more evident, with most learners writing a target word and one, or more, translations of a word. fewer individuals chose to write the meaning of a word in english, though they did so consistently. in general, the sample failed to take written notes of grammatical or pronunciation features, and they chose not to write an example sentence to help remember a word. finally, there was only one case of selftesting. vii.2. the types of strategies used to discover and consolidate lexical meaning http://www.languagevalue/ james rock language value 11 (1), 71–102 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 86 most participants sought more than one translation of a word in a bilingual dictionary. many also looked for more than one meaning of a word in a monolingual dictionary, though they did so less frequently. similarly, their attention was only occasionally drawn to sample sentences in a monolingual and bilingual dictionary. in terms of word feature analysis, while half of the sample attended to grammatical information of, at least, one target word, only three individuals considered pronunciation features. the same number paid attention to different parts of speech of, at least, one target word, or looked for synonyms in a monolingual dictionary. finally, only two learners searched for further information about a word they found in a dictionary definition (see table 7). all ten participants matched a dictionary entry to the context in which a target word was originally used (see table 8). there was also a strong desire to translate, with most of them trying to guess a translation of a target word found in a monolingual dictionary. indeed, half of the sample also translated the definition of a word found in a monolingual dictionary. when english was used to guess for meaning, learners were more likely to search for information about a word in a monolingual dictionary. similarly, after providing synonyms of words, they were more likely to use a monolingual dictionary. on the other hand, upon translating a sentence, a bilingual dictionary was used more often. table 5. the types of strategies used by each participant to discover and consolidate lexical meaning a. frequency of strategies used to determine lexical meaning strategy participants total freq. of use 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 w.f: checked the part of speech of the target word 1 1 0 0 4 6 5 0 0 2 19 w.f: checked the affixes of the target word 1 2 1 0 1 3 0 0 0 1 9 s.e: tried to translate the sentence into italian 2 7 2 10 0 2 0 2 2 0 27 s.e: tried to translate literally the target word 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 3 s.e: guessed a translation of the word without referring to other items 1 5 0 3 0 3 0 4 1 1 18 s.e: guessed the meaning of the word without considering other items 1 1 4 4 3 3 2 3 3 5 29 s.e: commented on the similarity of the 0 1 0 1 1 1 2 0 1 1 8 exploring the vocabulary learning strategies of italian learners of english language value 11 (1), 71–102 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 87 target word to an l1 or l2 word c.e: guessed the meaning of the word by considering other items in the sentence 0 0 0 0 6 3 2 0 0 3 14 c.e: suggested possible synonyms of the target word 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 4 d.u: used a bilingual dictionary to look up the target word 12 11 3 10 4 10 12 10 7 8 87 d.u: used a bilingual dictionary to look up a non-target word in the sentence 0 3 0 5 0 2 2 2 6 0 20 d.u: used a monolingual dictionary to look up the target word 7 1 12 5 12 0 6 4 11 11 69 d.u: used a monolingual dictionary to look up a non-target word in the sentence 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 total frequency of strategy use per student 26 32 23 33 32 32 30 23 25 35 table 6. the types of strategies used by each participant to discover and consolidate lexical meaning b. strategies used to consolidate lexical meaning strategy participants total freq. of use 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 n.t: wrote the target word and one or more translations in italian 12 12 1 10 0 12 12 12 11 0 82 n.t: wrote the target word and its meaning in english 0 0 11 0 12 0 0 0 9 12 32 n.t: wrote the ipa of the target word 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 7 n.t: wrote some grammatical information about the target word 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 n.t: wrote a sentence or phrase to help remember the word 4 3 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 8 n.t: wrote a sentence or phrase to help remember a non-target word 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 n.t: wrote information about other uses of the target word 3 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 4 reh: simple word rehearsal 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 6 0 12 reh: cumulative rehearsal 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 4 s.t: self-testing 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 total frequency of use of consolidation strategies 31 16 14 11 12 12 13 14 30 12 http://www.languagevalue/ james rock language value 11 (1), 71–102 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 88 table 7. types of dictionary consultation strategies strategy participants tot 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 read more than one translation of a target word in a bilingual dictionary 12 9 2 5 0 10 6 6 5 8 63 read more than one definition of a target word in a monolingual dictionary 2 0 4 1 6 0 2 0 3 1 19 read a sample sentence containing a target word in a bilingual dictionary 3 0 1 2 0 1 0 1 2 1 11 read a sample sentence containing a target word in a monolingual dictionary 0 0 1 3 2 0 0 0 1 1 8 considered the ipa of a target word 3 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 3 0 7 considered the grammatical properties of a target word 2 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 1 2 8 looked up synonyms of a target word 3 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 3 0 7 looked at the meaning of another part of speech of a target word 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 2 4 related the target word’s meaning to the context in which a word was originally found 10 4 6 2 10 5 11 3 4 8 63 guessed an italian translation of a target word after reading a definition in a monolingual dictionary 0 0 2 2 7 0 3 3 5 3 25 translated a definition of a target word found in a monolingual dictionary into italian 0 1 2 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 6 looked up the meaning of an unknown word found in the definition of a target word in a monolingual dictionary 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 2 took note of another new word that was of interest 2 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 4 exploring the vocabulary learning strategies of italian learners of english language value 11 (1), 71–102 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 89 vii.3. the types of strategies used to discover and consolidate lexical meaning vii.3.1. participant 1 this individual actively used a bilingual dictionary to discover word meaning. her reliance on a bilingual dictionary was shown by the fact that it was consulted thirteen times throughout the task. this feature really distinguished her from the other participants. while a monolingual dictionary was also used, it merely functioned as a tool to consolidate something she had found in a bilingual dictionary. she infrequently guessed for meaning through english or tried to come up with an italian translation of a word. similarly, she seldom engaged in word feature analysis. with regard to consolidation, she took a lot of written notes, which included writing the target words, a possible translation of each word, and a sample sentence illustrating the use of several target words. finally, she engaged in simple word repetition with half of the target words. vii.3.2. participants 2 and 4 both individuals focused heavily on guessing translations of words, as well as making numerous attempts at sentence translation. they also frequently consulted a bilingual dictionary. while participant two only used a monolingual dictionary once, participant four used one regularly to confirm something she had read in a bilingual dictionary. both learners failed to examine the surrounding words to derive lexical meaning. in terms of consolidation, they took a written note of target words and, at least, one translation of each word. they also employed a vocabulary learning technique, with participant 2 using cumulative rehearsal and participant 4 engaging self-testing. vii.3.3. participants 3 and 5 these participants were characterised by their use of english while determining word meaning. hence, they frequently referred to a monolingual dictionary and guessed for meaning through english. while participant 3 chose not to engage in complex guessing for meaning, participant 5 focused heavily on the surrounding words in several sample sentences before guessing. in terms of consolidation, they both took written notes of target words and the meaning of each word in english. http://www.languagevalue/ james rock language value 11 (1), 71–102 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 90 vii.3.4. participants 6 and 7 both individuals awarded a lot of attention to the grammatical properties of words. there were also instances of quick guessing for meaning, plus more complex guessing involving prior knowledge of other sentence components. a bilingual dictionary was consulted frequently to check the meaning of both target and non-target words. on several occasions, participant 7 also made use of a monolingual dictionary. finally, they took written notes of the meaning of each target word in italian. vii.3.5. participant 8 this individual used both italian and english frequently to determine lexical meaning. thus, she combined translation (i.e. guessing a translation of an item, sentence translation, or using a bilingual dictionary) with several strategies involving english (use of a monolingual dictionary and guessing for meaning). with regard to consolidation, she took a note of a translation of each word and engaged in both simple and cumulative rehearsal of words. vii.3.6. participant 9 this learner relied heavily on a bilingual and monolingual dictionary to discover meaning. indeed, she consulted her bilingual dictionary thirteen times and a monolingual dictionary on eleven occasions. compared with the other participants, she used a monolingual dictionary used more extensively and did so not only to confirm the meaning of a word previously found in a bilingual dictionary. with regard to consolidation, she frequently engaged in repetition, which included both simple repetition of words and cumulative rehearsal of all ten words. finally, she took many written notes in both italian and english. vii.3.7. participant 10 this individual consistently used both types of dictionary, with a monolingual dictionary being his preferred choice. indeed, although a bilingual dictionary was used seven times, its use was confined to consolidating the meaning of a word previously sourced in a monolingual dictionary. he guessed for meaning in english six times, as exploring the vocabulary learning strategies of italian learners of english language value 11 (1), 71–102 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 91 well as guessing several synonyms of words. he also showed determination to work out the meaning of unfamiliar words through english. thus, instead of quickly seeking a translation of a word, he generally guessed for meaning before looking for further information in a monolingual dictionary. upon doing so, he then frequently sought confirmation in a bilingual dictionary. in terms of consolidation, he chose not to focus on rehearsal or self-testing strategies and wrote each target word and its meaning in english. viii. discussion the principle objective was to investigate the strategies used by a group of ten italian learners to discover and consolidate the meaning of twelve english words. from the outset, it was hoped the investigation would provide some useful information about the types of strategies that were actually used by italian learners of english on a deliberate vocabulary learning task. as well as shedding some light on the types of techniques commonly employed, the hope was that more could be learned about the way individuals differ in relation to vocabulary learning behaviour. from this standpoint, a special focus was placed on uncovering details about the relationship between language learning success and strategy use. the above-mentioned points are discussed below, while time is also taken to consider how the results could help inform how english vocabulary is taught to italian learners of english in the classroom.  the strategies used by italian learners of english while discovering and consolidating unknown english words when faced with the task of determining lexical meaning, many participants chose to translate. this involved either guessing a translation of an english word/phrase or consulting a bilingual dictionary. the desire to translate supports earlier investigations of strategy use by lawson and hogben (1996) and barcroft (2009), which also reported that learners translated items frequently. while the former noted instances of sentence translation, there was no evidence of this in barcroft’s study. in my study, sentence translation was popular with several individuals. guessing for meaning typically involved learners coming up with a translation or providing a brief description of the http://www.languagevalue/ james rock language value 11 (1), 71–102 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 92 meaning of a word in english. consequently, there were few instances of the kind of guessing that requires careful examination of contextual clues in a sentence to help derive word meaning. such findings support barcroft (2009), who claimed that his participants spent little time examining the sentence context as a means of generating cues for word meaning. in light of this, it is recommended that more needs to be done to teach italian learners how to use context as a word learning method. this is particularly pertinent, given that guessing for meaning is an important skill for promoting vocabulary development in learners. moreover, with the swing in language learning research towards producing more active and independent language learners, it makes sense to equip them with the tools that will enable this to happen. thus, rather than resort to a dictionary or ask a teacher for assistance, learners should be shown how to look out for contextual clues, such as synonyms, antonyms, cognates, definitions, parts of speech, pronunciation clues. dictionaries were frequently used throughout the task. while several individuals prioritised a monolingual dictionary, there were more instances of bilingual dictionary use. this confirms earlier studies by schmitt and schmitt (1993) and loucky (2003) who also revealed a preference among students for a bilingual dictionary. this is a cause for concern, as a study by ali (2012) on dictionaries as learning tools revealed that a monolingual dictionary was more effective than a bilingual dictionary. this is because a monolingual dictionary requires more effort and supplies sufficient contexts in their definitions of new words and expressions. by doing so, they assist learners to learn new words and vocabulary items and to produce them in similar contexts. as expected, the present study also indicated that guessing for meaning and dictionary use are closely related. thus, those who guessed translations of words or sentences were much more likely to consult a bilingual dictionary. on the other hand, those who used an english medium to guess the meaning of a word were more inclined to access a monolingual dictionary. the findings regarding dictionary use once again highlight the fact that greater attention should be devoted by teachers to contextualised vocabulary learning. indeed, while consulting a dictionary, few participants paid attention to contextualised sentences or information about grammar, pronunciation, or synonyms. hence, more could be achieved by showing italian efl learners how to use a bilingual and exploring the vocabulary learning strategies of italian learners of english language value 11 (1), 71–102 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 93 monolingual dictionary effectively, as well as providing them with information about the benefits that can be derived from learning words in context. there was also variation in terms of the level of attention devoted to word parts. while several participants ignored word parts almost completely, others actively examined the grammatical and physical form of words to help derive lexical meaning. hence, unlike lawson and hogben’s (1996) who reported that participants largely ignored the physical or grammatical features of unknown words, my findings support schmitt and schmitt (1993), who highlighted the popularity of this strategy with their learners. from a pedagogical perspective, schmitt (1997) stresses the importance of teaching word parts to students, as those who are familiar with them can guess meaning faster. as well as focusing on physical components of words, more should be done to direct students towards pronunciation of words. this stems from the fact that little attention was paid to pronunciation features of words in this study. this may be due to a lack of time devoted towards pronunciation by efl teachers in italy. according to harmer (2001), most english language teachers get students to study grammar and vocabulary, yet little attempt is made to teach pronunciation. gilbert (2008) also argues that teachers often find that they do not have enough time in class to give proper attention to this aspect of english instruction. considering that pronunciation is a challenging aspect of learning english for italian learners, teachers should devote more time to teaching this skill. shooshtari at al. (2013: 463) provide some useful guidelines for teachers about how this may be achieved. in terms of consolidating lexis, mechanical repetition was less prominent than in some previous studies of vocabulary learning strategies (lawson and hogben 1996, o’malley et al. 1985a, barcroft 2009). my findings are, thus, more reflective of an earlier investigation by gu and johnson (1996) who also reported how respondents generally avoided rote-learning strategies. while the use of repetition as a learning strategy is often overlooked in favour of more meaning-centred techniques, a recent study by altalhab (2018) on the effects of repetition on vocabulary retention shows that it may be worth spending more time on this strategy, particularly with difficult words or collocations. in terms of the use of mnemonic strategies, schmitt and schmitt (1993) reported that their respondents found them unhelpful, while o’malley et al. (1985a) also described such techniques as being infrequently used. in lawson and hogben’s (1996) http://www.languagevalue/ james rock language value 11 (1), 71–102 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 94 study, there was no evidence of the keyword method, while only a small proportion of learners used mnemonic strategies, which were similar to some component of the keyword method. barcroft (2009) also reported very little evidence of strategies requiring manipulation of information to consolidate lexical meaning. my data largely reflects such studies, with no evidence of the keyword method found or, indeed, any form of imagery being used. with regard to self-testing of word meaning, there was only one instance of this learning technique in my study, which contrasts with lawson and hogben (1996) and barcroft (2009) who reported frequent instances of its use in their studies. on the other hand, note taking was very common here, with some individuals writing a translation in italian, while others took notes exclusively in english. most learners, however, failed to take note of any features related to pronunciation, grammar or collocation. the popularity of note taking supports a recent study by boonnoon (2019) who also identified this strategy as one of the most frequently used by respondents.  exploring the relationship between language learning success and strategy use. a good deal of variation was found in terms of the types of strategies used by the learners. consequently, it was not possible to identify an underlying trend linking them all. typically, learner differences resulted from either focusing on the use of translation or making use of their english knowledge to determine lexical meaning. alternatively, several individuals combined translation with other strategies, such as guessing for meaning, analysis of word parts and use of a monolingual dictionary. while it was also impossible to determine a marked difference between the types of strategies used by the five most (1-5) and the five least successful learners (6-10), some features are referred to here. for instance, while several participants sought, once in a while, to translate a sample sentence containing a target word, participants 2, and 4 relied almost exclusively on this strategy with the target words in the learning task. such determination to translate was not so evident with the other learners. also, in terms of frequency of strategy use, the individual with the smallest vocabulary size (participant 1) ended up using the most strategies in the vocabulary learning task. in particular, she used an extensive range of strategies while consulting a dictionary and consolidating lexical meaning. this type of strategy use was somewhat unexpected, as research findings often indicates that less successful learners are generally characterised by the limited number exploring the vocabulary learning strategies of italian learners of english language value 11 (1), 71–102 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 95 of strategies they employ. thus, it conflicts with fan (2003) who revealed that learners with a greater knowledge of english vocabulary employed guessing and dictionary strategies more often than individuals with lower proficiency. it also lends support to gu’s (1994) observation that many less successful learners use a high number of strategies but remain poor learners. another observation related to participants 3 and 5 who predominantly used a monolingual dictionary, with participant 5 also carefully examining sentence context to help derive meaning. once again, it was anticipated here that this type of strategy use would typically be associated with more proficient or successful learners. ix. limitations of the study with regard to limitations of the study, it should be noted that research on the validity of think-aloud reports in sla is only in its infancy stage (bowles 2010). one of the criticisms of using think-aloud protocols relates to the validity of such reports, with researchers unsure as to whether verbalising while completing a task acts as an additional task and alters cognitive processes rather than providing a true reflection of thoughts. upon analysing studies that have investigated reactivity in the l2 literature, bowles (2010) claimed that while thinking aloud only has a small effect on post-task performance, it increases time on a task. aside from potential issues with the validity of my think-aloud data, another limitation of my think-aloud study may relate to the fact that i failed to specify which language the learners should use while verbalising their thoughts. according to bowles (2010: 115) not specifying the language(s) of verbalisation introduces variability into the research design of the study and creates a situation in which some participants may think aloud entirely in the l1, while others may force themselves to think aloud entirely in the second language and might therefore be unable to communicate some of their thoughts as effectively as they could in the l1. finally, a potential pitfall of using think-aloud reports lies in the fact that learners might report what they perceive they ought to know or do while learning new vocabulary in english, what they think ideal learners know and do, and not what they in fact know or do (ericsson and simon 1980). http://www.languagevalue/ james rock language value 11 (1), 71–102 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 96 x. conclusion this study suggests that it is possible to gain a good understanding of italian efl learners’ use of vocabulary learning strategies by encouraging them to think aloud while performing a deliberate vocabulary learning task. detailed information about the types of strategies used and their frequency of use were reported and discussed. moreover, it was possible to identify the types of strategies used by individual leaners. whilst it was not possible to provide clear-cut evidence of major differences in strategy use between more and less successful learners, some differences were revealed. above all else, the study highlighted the marked variation that exists among a group of italian learners of english in terms of how they approach the task of vocabulary learning in english. it indicated that while they may differ in terms of the types of strategies they use, the same strategies are often repeatedly employed by an individual with each new word. it is hoped this information will be of use to teachers when planning vocabulary teaching programmes. they are advised to discover more about the vocabulary learning behaviour of their students, and to identify the types of strategies that are not being used, or not being employed effectively. this information could then be passed on to learners with details about new strategies they could employ to improve their ability to learn words. for instance, it emerged that contextualised guessing for meaning, which involves looking for clues within a sentence, is rarely attempted by most learners. instead, they prefer to make a quick guess at a translation or to seek help from a bilingual dictionary. it would also be beneficial to educate learners on ways of improving the effectiveness of certain strategies. this could, for example, include showing them how to maximise dictionary use, and informing them about the various merits of each type of dictionary. similarly, they could be instructed on ways of improving their note taking skills. this study reported that there is often a failure to include useful information about words, with the focus placed exclusively on writing a translation or the meaning of a word in english. in terms of future research, it is felt more could be learned about the topic by analysing some of the underlying driving forces behind learner motivation, such as learner beliefs about vocabulary knowledge and learning, followed by an examination of the relationship between such driving forces and the types of 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(2022). dubbing television advertisements across cultures and languages: a case study of english and arabic. language value, 15(2), 54-80. universitat jaume i epress: castelló, spain. http://www.languagevalue.uji.es. december 2022 doi: https://doi.org/10.6035/languagev.6922 issn 1989-7103 issn 1989-7103 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5956-6119 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7763-201x http://www.languagevalue.uji.es/ dubbing television advertisements across cultures and languages: a case study of english and arabic language value 15(2), 54–80 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 55 i. introduction audiovisual translation (avt) is the transference of verbal and non-verbal elements of audiovisual products into the target language (chaume, 2013). it is a relatively new discipline with unique characteristics that distinguish it from other forms of translation (chaume, 2018). there are various modes of avt, namely, dubbing, subtitling, voiceover, free commentary, and audio description, to mention a few. however, subtitling and dubbing are the most commonly used types of avt. subtitling is defined as rendering the oral code from the source language into a writte n code that usually appears at the bottom of the screen (díaz-cintas, 2013). dubbing, as opposed to subtitling, is defined as replacing the original soundtrack with another soundtrack in the target language. at the same time, elements such as music, images, and special effects are kept inviolable (chaume, 2020). this study investigates the role of culture in reformulating some english advertisements dubbed into arabic. translating english advertisements into arabic is a challenging activity that is relatively different from translating or conveying other materials. the aim of translating operative text, including ads, is to convince text receivers to act in a particular way, for example, to buy a specific product. in addition, english and arab cultures are relatively incongruent, so translators need to be aware of such differences to overcome any cultural differences that may hinder the primary purpose of the translated text (saideen, haider, & al-abbas, 2022). different scholars have examined the challenges that audiovisual translators face when rendering audiovisual (av) materials, including movies, documentaries, and series (alzgoul & al-salman, 2022; debbas & haider, 2020; haider, al-saideen, & hussein, in press; haider & hussein, 2022). to the best of the researchers' knowledge, no studies have investigated the strategies used in dubbing english advertisements belonging to different domains, such as cars, chocolate& sweets, cosmetics& skincare, and detergents into arabic. this is a gap that this study aims to bridge. the current study also focuses on the cultural differences in the arabic versions of the advertisements compared to their english counterparts. it addresses the following question : http://www.languagevalue/ faurah al-rousan and ahmad s. haider language value 15 (2), 54–80 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 56 1. what are the main dubbing strategies used to render english advertisements into arabic? ii. literature review this section reviews the theoretical background relevant to dubbing and translating advertisements in particular. the second part discusses some empirical studies related to translation problems and strategies, particularly dubbing advertisements . ii.1. translation and culture culture is a style of life that includes different values, conventions, ideologies, beliefs, and traditions that regulate societies. like capsules and their contents, language and culture are essential elements in the communication process in general a nd in translation in particular. in this respect, the translator's main task as a mediator is to pay attention to both language and culture to bridge the gap between different languages and societies (al-khalafat & haider, 2022; farghal & bazzi, 2017; rababah & al-abbas, 2022). the cultural elements identify the failure and the success of the dubbing process. according to maluf (2005), the cultural reasons are behind the success of the mexican soap and the failure of the popular police academy film series to attract a broad audience in arabic. the plots and dialogues of the former were culturally acceptable to arab audiences, while the latter was seen as a contrived translation of plots and dialogues that had no bearing on arab reality. similar ly, yahiaoui and al-adwan (2020) maintained that the translator's role is to possess sufficient knowledge of both the source and target language a nd culture, have the element of creativity, and adapt the globally common elements into arabic. audiovisual translation is a process shaped by a set of constraints. dubbing is a mode of translation with a complex nature; it removes the original soundtrack and replaces it with the target one. it is a process that can be designed based on several cultural, aesthetic, and technical constraints. in dubbing, the audience listen to impersonating characters speaking dialogue in the source language that does not belong to their dubbing television advertisements across cultures and languages: a case study of english and arabic language value 15(2), 54–80 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 57 culture. the unique nature of dubbing helps in creating a significant interaction between the target viewers and the impersonating voices. dubbing in the arab world achieved resounding success (di giovanni, 2017). this unleashed a tsunami of dubbing various types of audiovisual materials in different genres. most of these materials were dubbed using vernacular dialects or modern standard arabic (msa). for example, nonarabic products about love, hatred, and envy are usually dubbed in vernaculars, while documentaries are normally dubbed in msa. in translating audiovisual materials, a range of strategies can be employed. these, according to díaz-cintas and remael (2014), include: • loan translation (direct transfer): involves transferring the source language (sl) element directly into the target language (tl) without any changes. • calque: is also known as a literal translation. it can be considered word -forword translation. • explicitation: involves making the implicit meaning of the sl element more explicit in the tl. • substitution: changing the meaning of the sl elements to be more acceptable in the tl. • transposition: is also known as cultural adaptation, replacing the cultural concept of the sl element with a cultural concept in the tl that conveys the same meaning and connotation. • lexical creation: coining or creating a new lexical element in the tl to stand for sl cultural reference. • compensation: describes the sl elements using a tl element that might be longer than the original one. • omission: deleting the sl elements and leaving them without meaning. • generalization: giving the general meaning or making the original look neutral. http://www.languagevalue/ faurah al-rousan and ahmad s. haider language value 15 (2), 54–80 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 58 ii.2. empirical studies translating audiovisual materials has attracted the attention of several researchers. for example, al agha (2006) investigated the translation strategies used in rendering culture-specific concepts, phrases, logos, and terms in english fast-food advertisements into arabic. in this study, two methods were used: questionnair es and textual analysis. the questionnaire highlighted the participants' observations on the translation strategies used to translate the ads under investigation and their perspectives on having a preferable translation that suits the arab culture. the fin dings showed that loan words and transliteration were the most common strategies used to translate fast-food advertising into arabic. in the same vein, abu shehab (2011) conducted a corpus-assisted study to examine the issues related to translation strategies and linguistic inaccuracies in rendering personal care advertising brochures from english into arabic. the researcher also conducted 18 personal interviews with professionals and workers in the personal care market. the results showed that translators sometimes have to manipulate and reproduce the source text to make the product more acceptable for the target consumers by adopting various strategies. the researcher recommended future researchers to enhance and ease the task of translators in rendering advertisements. similarly, haddad (2015) analyzed the translation of three print english advertisements into arabic by focusing on linguistic and cultural differences. the study hig hlighted the essential role of skopos theory as an effective guide in achieving a successful translation. the study also showed a range of micro and macro translation strategies used by the translators in the target market to convey the source text message. likewise, eshreteh (2016) examined the translation of english brand names of cosmetics into arabic. the data consisted of 20 audiovisual advertisements, 10 english advertisements, and their arabic-translated counterparts. the results showed that translators rendered the english brand names into arabic through domestication to create a similar effect to the original advertisements on the target consumers, which would better promote the products. dubbing television advertisements across cultures and languages: a case study of english and arabic language value 15(2), 54–80 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 59 likewise, bouziane (2016) investigated the role of skopos theory in translating textual and visual elements of 40 english online advertisements into arabic. the results showed that translators added, replaced, explained, and sometimes omitted the original linguistic and visual elements based on the target culture requirements to achieve functional equivalence. similarly, fan (2017) investigated the translation of english advertisements into chinese by focusing on linguistic, cultural, geogra phical, and environmental differences. the researcher highlighted the role of the characteristics of the advertisement itself in determining the appropriate translation strategy. the researcher found that translators and copywriters should hone their skill s and enrich their knowledge of culture to convey the meaning and spirit of the source advertisement in line with the culture and ideology of the target society. likewise, alharoon and yahiaoui (2017) investigated strategies of dubbing chocolate advertisements from english into vernacular and standard arabic and found that the micro-translation strategies are not limited to language variants but could also be used via cultural sub-themes. the researchers found that the use of cultural elements makes the process of dubbing flexible and convenient. in the same vein, obeidat and abu-melhim (2017) examined the translation strategies used in rendering 10 english baby formula labels into arabic based on venutie's foreignization and domestication theory. a comparative quantitative analysis was conducted to investigate the data. the study revealed that foreignization theory has superiority over domestication in translating baby formula labels. in the foreignization approach, a set of translation strategies are used, namely literal translation, transliteration, borrowing, and transference. on the other hand, in the domestication approach, the most common strategies used were transposition, omission, addition, and adaptation. although several studies examined the translation strategies used in translating advertisements across languages, including arabic and english, little attention has been paid to similar studies in the context of dubbing advertisements belonging to different domains. therefore, this study fills this gap by examining the dubbing http://www.languagevalue/ faurah al-rousan and ahmad s. haider language value 15 (2), 54–80 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 60 strategies of six advertisements of cars, chocolate and sweets, cosmetics and skincare, and detergents into arabic. iii. methods and procedures literature review the advertisements were compiled from youtube. the researchers selected six popular advertisements that belong to different domains and are available in english and arabic. the two versions of the advertisement (i.e., english and arabic) should be identical and of limited duration. it is worth noting that the researchers first compiled thirty advertisements belonging to seven domains, but due to space constraints, only six advertisements were selected to be further investigated in this study, as table 1 shows. table 1. types and number of advertisements product links 1 mercedes loch ness english version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywvtxsfnro4 arabic version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiqwwkcphq4 2 mercedes benz (gle 2020) english version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8psw1wfwbk arabic version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0nstpgoikc 3 oreo (biscuit) english version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_atvrf_7xm arabic version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cakivsf1_po 4 johnson english version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ridbtmmxnuo arabic version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=op2fosdv8jg 5 comfort stitchers english version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avznck9zj_m arabic version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywvtxsfnro4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiqwwkcphq4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8psw1wfwbk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0nstpgoikc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_atvrf_7xm https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cakivsf1_po https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ridbtmmxnuo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=op2fosdv8jg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avznck9zj_m dubbing television advertisements across cultures and languages: a case study of english and arabic language value 15(2), 54–80 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 61 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38mitusfeoc 6 finish english version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6qsetcbexc arabic version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9pmfeecs5u as table 1 shows, the researchers selected six advertisements belonging to different domains, namely, cars, chocolate and sweets, cosmetics and skincare, and detergents. the researchers first watched the advertisements in english with their arabic translation and then transcribed and wrote them down. finally, culture-bound expressions and translation incidents were analyzed to identify how these expressions were rendered. iv. results and discussion in this section, the researchers examine the arabic and english versions of the chosen advertisements. the selected advertisements were dubbed into arabic using msa or some arabic vernaculars such as khaliji and lebanese. the strategies used by the translator are examined. iv. 1. mercedes benz (gle 2020) the advertisement for new gle in english and the arabic version is discussed in table 2. the duration of the english and arabic advertisements is 30 seconds each. the source advertisement used the british english accent, while the ‘khaliji’ arabic was used in dubbing the arabic version. table 2. the mercedes loch ness advertisement, along with its dubbed arabic version no. english version dubbed arabic version 1 the new gle gleالجديد gle aljadīd 2 for the 'stop fighting in the back' trips ’وياه شجارانت وقفوا'‘ لحكايات liḩikāyāt ‘waqfū shijār ant wa yāh’ http://www.languagevalue/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38mitusfeoc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6qsetcbexc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9pmfeecs5u faurah al-rousan and ahmad s. haider language value 15 (2), 54–80 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 62 3 the 'mummy i need to pee' trips ’للحمام خذيني ماما’لحكايات liḩikāyāt ‘māmā khudhīnī lalḩammām’ 4 the 'where are babies come from' trips ’جدتك تزوربيت الزم ‘ لحكايات ḩikāyāt ‘lāzim tzūr bīt jiditak’ 5 finally, some peace and quiet trips. وسالم هدوء واخيرا للحكايات ū’ wa salāmhudn ḩikāyāt wa aakhīralil 6 hi mercedes! change the light to soft blue فاتح ازرق الى ةاإلضاء لون غيري !سمرسيد هاي hāy marsīdis! ghayrī lawn ali’ḑā’a ilá a’zraq fātiḩ 7 the 2020 gle gle 2020 8 with everything for every day. يوم كل حكايه لكل likull ḩikāyah kull yawm 9 it is a mercedes benz for real families. العائله عن تروى بنزحكايات مرسيدس marsīdis binz hikāyāt turwa ‘an al‘āi’lah notes: english version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8psw1wfwbk arabic version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0nstpgoikc through analyzing the arabic version of the advertisement, it can be noticed that the translator used the loan strategy in rendering the vehicle's name gle. the translator used the strategy of substitution to render the word 'trips' as حكايا ḩakāyā (lit. 'tales'). tales and stories have symbolism in the arab culture. utterances 3, 4, and 5 describe the trips by referring to some events that usually occur while kids are on board. the euphemism strategy is used to render the expression 'to pee' as لحمامل ماماخذيني māmā khudhīnī lalḩammām (lit. 'to be taken to the bathroom'). translating this phrase literally may have a negative impact as it lacks the required civility, which is one of the essential features of conservative arab societies. in utterance (4), the question of 'where are babies come from?' is asked by children spontaneously in different societies, but it is not desirable for kids to raise such questions in the arab culture. so, the translator used the strategy of omission as it was deleted in the target text and substituted with another expression that is more related to the arab culture, namely جدتك تزوربيت الزم لحكايات ḩikāyāt lāzim tzūr bīt jiditak (lit. 'for tales; you must visit the grandmother's house'). the utterance 'and finally quiet and peace' was translated following the literal approach of translation وسالم هدوء واخيرا wa aakhīran hudū’ wa salām. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8psw1wfwbk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0nstpgoikc dubbing television advertisements across cultures and languages: a case study of english and arabic language value 15(2), 54–80 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 63 in the translation of the product slogan, it can be noted that the translator used the loan strategy by presenting the tagline/slogan as is. the sentence ‘mercedes-benz for the real families' might be confusing for the target viewers, and so was rendered as العائله عن تروى بنزحكايات مرسيدس marsīdis binz hikāyāt turwa ‘an al‘āi’lah (lit. 'mercedesbenz: family tales'). as the above analysis shows, the translator linked the target culture with the english advertisement to reduce the ambiguity caused by cultural differences by using different translation strategies. since the translated advertisement is intended for the target audience, applying their values, morals, ethics, and customs is the first step to achieving the purpose of the advertisement by persuading new customers to buy it. in the catchphrase context, the translator decided to adapt it to the target culture and rewrite it to ease the viewers' comprehension. dynamic translation has a vital role in achieving the purpose of the original slogan and, at the same time, making it more communicative and closer to the target audience (li, 2021). iv.2. mercedes loch ness auto giant mercedes-benz advertisement, shown in table 3, was designed to present its masterpiece of intelligence, mercedes loch ness new e class. the duration of the english advertisement and its arabic counterpart is 30 seconds each. the source advertisement used the british english accent, while the target advertisement used msa. table 3. the new gle advertisement in english, along with its arabic version no. english version dubbed arabic version 1 loch ness بانتظار وحش بحيرة لوخ نيس bintiz̧ār waḩsh buḩayrat lūkh nis 2 well, is anything going to happen here or not? ترى هل سيحدث شي ما هنا ام ال turá hal sayaḩduth shay’ mā hunā am lā 3 there is a car that will know first. it observes what surrounds it sensitively and reacts before anything happens. هناك سياره ستكون اول من يعرف وهي تراقب محيطها بحذر وتستجيب فورا قبل ان يحدث شيء hunāka sayyārah satakūn awwal man ya‘rif wa hiya turāqib muḩīţahā biḩadhar 4 an example, the dam of an accident will مثال :دوي االصطدام ممكن ان يؤذي السمع http://www.languagevalue/ faurah al-rousan and ahmad s. haider language value 15 (2), 54–80 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 64 damage your hearing. mithāl: dawiyy alişţidām mumkin an yu’dhī assam‘ 5 the solution, just before! impact a signal! can trigger the natural safety mechanism in the ear. االصطدام بلحظات تنبعث اشاره ضوئيه لتفعيل لذلك قبل يعيه في االذن اليه الدفاع الطب lidhālik qabl alişţidām bilaḩaz̧āt tanba‘ithu ishārah ḑaw’iya litaf‘īl āliyat addifā‘ aţţabī‘ fī al’udhn 6 but ideally, nothing is going to happen at all ------------- 7 the only e class with intelligence reacts before anything happens مع نظام القياده الذكي ه الجديدهفئال alfi’ah aljadīah ma‘ niz̧ām alqiyādah adhdhakiyy 8 and only the mercedes benz, the best or nothing! عبقريه االبداع ‘abqariyyat ali’bdā‘ notes: english version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywvtxsfnro4 arabic version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiqwwkcphq4 in the english version, the presence of the heritage of scottish culture 'loch ness' can be noted in utterance 1. at the heart of the advertisement, a father and a son can be seen in the new e-class on the shores of loch ness in scotland, waiting for the legendary monster nessie. to make the cultural features clear to the audience, the translator used the explicitation strategy, where 'loch ness' was translated as بانتظار نيس لوخ بحيرة وحش bintiz̧ār waḩsh buḩayrat lūkh nis (lit. 'waiting for the loch ness monster'). such translation makes the source text clear and free of ambiguity for the target viewers. in this case, the translator made explicit the implicit meaning. the literal translation approach was observed in utterances (2), (3), (4), and (5). the point behind using direct translation in rendering the characteristics of the new car is to persuade the potential customers to buy it, especially that no cultural features need to be adopted. in utterance (6), the translator opted for the strategy of omission, where the entire utterance is deleted in the arabic version. in utterance (7), however , the translator preferred to use the paraphrase strategy to highlight the feature of intelligent technology in e-class. dynamic rather than formal equivalence is adapted to convey the meaning of this advertisement. the core notion of nida's theory of dyna mic equivalence is that the translator needs to convey the meaning and spirit of the original in an accurate way than conveying the original structure (li, 2021). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywvtxsfnro4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiqwwkcphq4 dubbing television advertisements across cultures and languages: a case study of english and arabic language value 15(2), 54–80 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 65 iv.3. oreo the english advertisement for oreo biscuit, along with its arabic translation, is discussed in table 4. the advertisement was one of oreo's ‘wonder-filled’ campaigns and expressed the vital message of oreo, which is sharing happiness with people around. the main theme of the advertisement was about sharing oreo with friends. the duration of each of the two advertisements is 30 seconds. the english version was in the american english accent, while the dubbed version was in the lebanese vernacular. table 4. the oreo advertisement, along with its lebanese version no. english version dubbed arabic version 1 i wonder if i gave an oreo to all the people in the high school i go to. المدرسه اوالد كل ولو اوري اصحابي اعطيت لو ياترى اوريو اخدوا yā turá law a‘ţīt aşḩābī ūryū wa law kul awlād almadrasah akhadhū ūryū 2 if i give it to my friend, hallway. عبود لرفيقي اوريو وحده اعطيت لو law a‘ţīt waḩdah ūryū lirafīqī ‘abbūd 3 would he keep an optimistic outlook all day? الموود ويعدل يتفائل يفرح رح raḩ yifraḩ yitfā’l wa y‘addil almūd 4 if i give an oreo to the dj? djلل اوريو وحده اعطينا لو law a‘ţaynā waḩdih ūryū lal (dj) 5 will he take my favourite record and play all the day? right awayغنيتي ني معبس قولك qawlak biysammi‘nī guniytī (right away) 6 because the cream is a wonderful thing when it comes to wondering filling, yeah, you know, is the king. سوبر شي هيك حركات تعمل حبيب يا الكريما حشوة النه رهيب la’nnuh ḩashwit alkrīmā yā ḩabīb ti‘mal ḩarakāt hīk shī sūpar rahīb 7 you can twist it, lick it and dunk it in the milk. بالحليب اسهغم تذوقها بتفكها bitfukhā tdhūqhā ghammishā bilḩalīb 8 little sandwich cookie and a wonderful field. عجيب شي وملياني صغيرة اوريو ūryū şaghīrah wa malyānī shī ‘ajīb notes: english version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_atvrf_7xm arabic version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cakivsf1_po the advertisement content was translated using the same music, style, and rhyming to grab the audience's attention and convey the message. the lebanese dialect might be appropriate for the rap style used in the original version. according to kashoob (1995), http://www.languagevalue/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_atvrf_7xm https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cakivsf1_po faurah al-rousan and ahmad s. haider language value 15 (2), 54–80 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 66 advertisement songs have a vital role in achieving the interaction between the consumer and the product because they can be remembered easily. utterance (1) in the english version is translated into arabic literally. since the advertisement is directed to children and youth, 'all the people in the high school' was translated into المدرسه والد كل kul awlād almadrasah (lit. 'all school children'). the translator chose to apply the terms that corresponded with the theme of the advertisement. utterance (2), 'if i give it to my friend hallway' was translated into لو عبود يقي لرف اوريو وحده اعطيت a‘ţīt waḩdah ūryū lirafīqī ‘abbūd (lit. 'i give it to my friend abood') following the cultural substitution strategy where the name hallway was substituted with the arabic name abood in order to give the same impact as the original. similarly, the translator successfully rendered the original version through the adaptation strategy by stressing the importance of sharing. the cultural adaptation strategy gives the advertisement credibility and recreates the effect of the source text (st). in utterance (3), the translator rendered 'would he keep an optimistic outlook all day' as الموود ويعدل يتفائل يفرح رح raḩ yifraḩ yitfā’l wa y‘addil almūd (lit. 'he would be happy and feel optimistic'), using direct translation to make the source text (st) clearer for the target audience, before adding the phrase, الموود يعدل y‘addil almūd .(lit. 'boost the mood'). also, the strategy of loan is evident in the use of 'mood' in the arabic advertisement. in this part, the translator used the english word ‘mood’ to have a similar rhyme with the last word in utterance (2), namely "abood." the same technique was used in the english source text, i.e., ‘hallway’ in utterance (2) and " all day" in utterance (3). the loan strategy for the word dj was used to keep the song's rhyme. similarly, the expression 'right away' was inserted in the arabic version, constituting an example of code-switching to english. these terms are frequently used among the youth community. similarly, in the following lines, rhyme was maintained in the english version using the words' filling, king, and milk.' in the arabic versi on, the translator used words like رهيب rahīb, حليب ḩalīb, andعجيب ‘ajīb to keep the same rhyming feature dubbing television advertisements across cultures and languages: a case study of english and arabic language value 15(2), 54–80 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 67 in the translated text. the cultural address term حبيب يا yā ḩabīb (lit. 'oh you my dear') was used in the arabic advertisement in a way that attracts the target audience. in utterance (6), the english loan word ‘super’ was used in the arabic ad to give a sense of foreignization since this expression is frequently used by youth in arab countries. the product slogan reminded the reviewers of the oreo message, ‘twist, lick, and dunk.’ this slogan which appears in oreo's advertisement was translated literally except for the expression (lick it), which was translated following the strategy of substitution as تذوقها tdhūqhā taste it to become more acceptable in the arab culture. moreover, the last utterance, ‘little sandwich cookie,’ was translated as الصغيرة اوريو ūryū aşşaghīrah (lit. 'little oreo') to naturalize the product. moreover, the english version advertisement's graphics, backgrounds, and colors were preserved in the translated advertisement. these elements were maintained in the translated arabic version to reach the target audience of children and youth. the domestication theory has a significant role in translating the advertisement with its cultural elements to achieve cross-cultural communication and reduce the burden on the target viewer to understand foreign elements (mansour, 2014). thus, seeking to achieve the maximum sales promotion in the target market. the translator conveyed the original advertisement to arabic by modifying the english cultural elements t o suit their counterparts in the target arabic language, alongside the motion graphic, lyrics, and beats that get the audience's attention. it is worth noting that using these elements in commercial advertisements has a promotional and persuasive function in capturing the audience's attention. similarly, translators need to be aware of the cultural stereotypes and clichés and their equivalent counterparts in the target culture. baider (2013) states that using cultural stereotypes and linguistic clichés correctly has a pivotal role in triggering recognition and acceptance within the target culture. iv.4. johnson johnson & johnson's global brand in skincare products launched its iconic new johnson's vita rich body lotion with nourishing cocoa butter (see table 5). the duration of the english and arabic advertisements is 30 seconds each. the source http://www.languagevalue/ faurah al-rousan and ahmad s. haider language value 15 (2), 54–80 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 68 advertisement used american english, while the dubbed version was rendered in the lebanese vernacular. table 5. johnson advertisement, along with its dubbed arabic version no. english version dubbed arabic version 1 pooja uses johnson's vita-rich جونسون بتستعمل ساره sārah btista‘mil jūnsūn 2 tanya doesn’t ال نورا بس bas nūrā lā 3 so, where is forced to the harsh environment قاسي لا بالطقس هيك مشان mishān hīk biţţaqs alqāsī 4 pooja skin stays rating and how they are looking وصحيه مشرقه بتضل ساره بشرة basharat sārah biţḑḑal mushriqah wa şiḩḩiyyah 5 but tanya doesn’t ال نورا بشرة بس bas basharat nūrā lā 6 new johnson vita –rich with nourishing cocoa butter الكاكاو زبده مع فايتاريتش جونسون جديد jadīd jūnsūn vāytāritsh ma ma‘ zibdat alkakaw 7 gently moistures and protects بفعاليه بشرتك وبيحمي برطب biraţţib wa byiḩmī bashartik bfa‘āliyyah 8 while leaving skin soft and healthy-looking all-day اليوم طول وصحيه ناعمه تايخليها 9 that the gentle power of johnson ايديكي بين للطافه قوةا جونسون jūnsūn quwwat allaţāfah bayn īdaykī 10 johnson vita – rich, restore what nature takes vita rich–جونسون مجموعه majmū‘at jūnsūn – (vita rich) notes: english version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ridbtmmxnuo arabic version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=op2fosdv8jg it can be noted that the translator rendered utterance (1), 'pooja uses johnson's vitarich' into جونسون بتستعمل هسار sārah btista‘mil jūnsūn (lit. 'sarah uses johnson'). the translator successfully rendered the original version with the use of cultural adaptation. similarly, the name tanya was translated into nūrā نورا noura. in utterance (3), the conjunction 'so' was localized into the spoken form هيك مشان mishān hīk (lit. 'for this purpose'). the word environment in utterance (3) was translated following the substitution strategy as الطقس iţţaqs (lit. 'weather'). the translator opted for using the strategy of explicitation in rendering utterance (4) 'pooja skin stays rating and how they are looking' as وصحيه مشرقه ساره بشره basharat sārah biţḑḑal mushriqah wa https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ridbtmmxnuo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=op2fosdv8jg dubbing television advertisements across cultures and languages: a case study of english and arabic language value 15(2), 54–80 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 69 şiḩḩiyyah (lit. 'sara's skin is shiny and healthy'). this strategy helps the target audience to understand the message better. the literal approach of translation was used in rendering utterances (5-9). the translator opted for the use of loan and omission strategies in rendering the catchphrase, 'johnson vita – rich, restore what nature takes' was translated as جونسون مجموعه –vita rich, majmū‘at jūnsūn – (vita rich) lit. 'johnson groupvita rich'), where the last part is omitted. based on the analysis above, the translator attempted to promote a new product to a new target market audience by using cultural adaptation iv.5. comfort stitchers the english advertisement for "comfort" fabric softener and its arabic translation are discussed in table 6. this advertisement is one of comfort's campaigns titled ‘clothes world.’ the duration of each of the two advertisements is 30 seconds. the english version was delivered in the british english accent, while the dubbed version was in "egyptian" vernacular. table 6. comfort stitchers advertisement along with its dubbed arabic version no. english version dubbed arabic version 1 oh, darrin needs comfort; it smells even fresher مدهشه حقيقي المنعشه كمفورت ريحه ياعلي هللا allāh yā ‘alī ‘alá rīḩat alkumfūrt almun‘ishah ḩaqīqī mudhishah 2 oh, no, it is a stitcher دبوس يا فيك غير تجيش ما ياساتر اي aī yā sātir mā tijīsh ghīr fīk yā dabbūs 3 he is getting another stuffing out of you, darrin علي يا خيط خيط حينسلك ḩaynasillak khīţ khīţ yā ‘alī 4 look, stitcher, i’ am really sorry دي المرة سامحني دبوس يا معلش ma‘lish yā dabbūs sāmiḩnī almarrah dī 5 oh! stitcher was gone! all soft! كده ناعم ويبقى حاله يتقلب دبوس معقوله ma‘qūlah dabbūs yitqalib ḩāluh wa yibqā nā‘im kidah 6 soften things up with fresh new comfort خشن كل ينعم انتعاش الجديد كمفورت kumfūrt aljadīd inti‘āsh yuna‘‘im kull khishn notes: english version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avznck9zj_m arabic version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38mitusfeoc http://www.languagevalue/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avznck9zj_m https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38mitusfeoc faurah al-rousan and ahmad s. haider language value 15 (2), 54–80 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 70 utterance (1) 'oh, darrin needs comfort; it smells even fresher' was translated into يا هللا مدهشه حقيقي المنعشه كمفورت ريحه علي , allāh yā ‘alī ‘alá rīḩat alkumfūrt almun‘ishah ḩaqīqī mudhishah (lit. ‘oh ali, comforts' smell is fresh and fantastic’). the translator opted for a cultural adaptation strategy by replacing the english proper name 'darrin' with the arabic common name ali. another example of cultural adaptation was observed in translating the english cultural expression 'oh' into one of the most common arabic expressions, هللا allāh (lit. 'oh my god'), to express surprise. this translation enhances the credibility of the advertisement and gives the target viewers the feeling of watching an original rather than a dubbed advertisement. in utterance (2), the cultural adaptation strategy was used again, where 'oh no' was translated into ساتر يا which expresses fear and surprise in the arab culture. in utterance (3), the english idiom 'he is getting another stuffing out of you,' which means to assault someone violently, was translated into a semantically equivalent idiom in arabic ياعلي خيط ط يخ حينسلك ḩaynasillak khīţ khīţ yā ‘alī (lit. 'he will undo the threads of you one by one'). suc h rendition grabs the target audience's attention and attracts them to watch the advertisement. utterances (4) and (5) were translated literally. the product's slogan in utterance (6), 'soften things up with fresh new comfort,' was translated into arabic b y using the paraphrase strategy into خشن كل بنعم انتعاش الجديد كمفورت kumfūrt aljadīd inti‘āsh yuna‘‘im kull khishn (lit. 'new comfort, freshness that soft ens all rough'). this translation successfully transferred the meaning of the original text by focusing on the product's features to attract the target audience attention and persuade them to buy the product. based on the analysis above, it is clear that persuasion is the key player in the world of advertising, and the role of translators is to apply the persuasive elements within the advertisement to reach the target audience. for example, in this advertisement, the translator seems to achieve the purpose of the advertisement by domesticating the english cultural expression into some well-known arabic equivalents and expressions. dubbing television advertisements across cultures and languages: a case study of english and arabic language value 15(2), 54–80 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 71 iv.6. finish the english dishwasher detergent advertisement for finish and its arabic translation are shown in table 7. the duration of the english and arabic advertisements is 30 seconds each. the source advertisement used the american english accent, while the translated version used the ‘khaliji’ arabic. table 7. finish advertisement along with its dubbed arabic version no. english version dubbed arabic version 1 finish, bye bye germs finishجراثيم باي باي (finish) , bāy bāy jarathīm 2 and the story begins of toto and his cutie little things الكيوته واغراضهم وتوته توتو مع الحدوته وبدات wa bada’t alḩaddūtah ma‘ tūtū wa tūtah w aghrūḑhum alkyūtah 3 is he hungry, or is he thirsty? نمنم هوي وش همهم شويه shwayyah hamham wa shwayyah namnam 4 does he want ducky or mr. chewy? فتفوته وال بطبوطه baţbūţah wellā fatfūtah 5 you can't always know what they want طلبهم ايش نعرف دايما مو mū dāyman ni‘raf īsh ţalabhum 6 but you should know that germs can be removed at high temperatures that your hands can't handle ما حراره يبغالها الجراثيم ازاله انه نعرف الزم بس اليد تتحملها bas lāzim ni‘raf annuh izālat aljarāthīm yibghālhā ḩarārah mā titḩamlhā alyad 7 but the dishwasher easily can الصحون غساله عليها وتقدر wa tiqdar ‘alyhā ghassālat aşşuḩūn 8 so, dish wash your baby dishes and protect their giggles ضحكاتهم ونحمي صحونهم نغسل يال yallā naghsil şuḩūnahum wa naḩmī ḑiḩkātahum 9 finish for sparkling clean dishes finishوالمعه نظييفه لصحون (finish) lişuḩūn naz̧īfah wa lāmi‘ah notes: english version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6qsetcbexc arabic version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9pmfeecs5u it is noticed that the translator preferred to adjust the english version by naturalizing its features to reach the target consumers. utterance (1('finish, bye bye germs' was translated using the strategy of loan to draw the viewers' attention where the word finish was written as is, i.e., in english letters in the dubbed version. similarly, 'bye bye' was borrowed and transliterated in the arabic version as باي ايب . utterance (2) 'and the http://www.languagevalue/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6qsetcbexc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9pmfeecs5u faurah al-rousan and ahmad s. haider language value 15 (2), 54–80 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 72 story begins of toto and his cute little things,' was rendered as توتو مع الحدوته وبدات wa bada’t alḩaddūtah ma‘ tūtū wa tūtah w aghrūḑhum alkyūtah الكيوته واغراضهم وتوته (lit. 'and the story begins of toto and tota and their cute little things'). cultural adaptation was used in rendering 'tota' as tūtū wa tūtah وتوته توتو toto and tota as these are popular expressions in tale-telling in arabic. loan strategy was also used where the english word cute was rendered as هكيوت kyūtah (lit. cutie). this is a dynamic choice to echo the original text's tone. cultural adaptation strategy was also used in rendering utterance (3) 'is he hungry or is he thirsty' as هم هم شويه نمنم شويه shwayyah namnam wa shwayyah hamham where the words namnam نمنم and همهم hamham are rhymed and used to convince little kids to eat. utterance (4), ‘does he want ducky or mr. chewy,’ was translated using the cultural adaptation strategy into baţbūţah wellā fatfūtah فتفوته تبي وال بطبوطه ." the translator maintained the funny tone and rhyme of the original and innovatively adapted two arabic toy names. furthermore, the rhetorical question in the arabic translation might be more explicit and suitable for the target customers. the literal approach was observed in rendering utterances (5), (6), (7), and (8). utterance (9) ‘finish for sparkling clean dishes’ was translated literally. once again, the brand's name finish was rendered as is in the arabic dubbed advertisement. to sum up, the english terms in the arabic version and the localization of the western cultural features relate to the domestication strategy and its vital role in bridging the cultural gap and getting the audience's attention to the product. translation, a vital annex to globalization, has enrich ed the fields of knowledge as a necessary means of achieving communication across borders. audiovisual translation in its different modes is seen as a manifestation of translation activities worldwide. advertising translation is an effective tool that companies adopt within their marketing strategies to reach more global levels. thus, as cultural agents, translators need to possess qualifications, skills, knowledge, and creativity to deal with the process of translation professionally and create a connection between the source and the target languages and cultures. therefore, they are key players in identifying the message of the source advertisement, studying the target market characteristics, and adopting the dubbing television advertisements across cultures and languages: a case study of english and arabic language value 15(2), 54–80 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 73 appropriate strategies to render the main functions of the original advertisements to reach the target customers in their native language. thus, grabbing their attention effectively and helping promote the commercialized products. translating english advertisements into arabic seems challenging for translators in conservative communities, where bridging the cultural gap by considering the target culture and ideology and reaching a high percentage of the target consumers is essential. the translation process is based on rendering the form and meaning from one language into another. therefore, translators should consider the different translation theories and strategies to create a sound and acceptable translation. advertisement translators in the arab world may modify, add, omit, and sometimes recreate the advertisement's text to be more intelligible to the arab audience. therefore, dynamic equivalence is recommended as it seeks to fit the advertisement to the target audience's culture. in essence, dynamic equivalence is geared toward adopting the receptor-oriented approach, bearing in mind the linguistic and cultural characteristics of the target language and culture. based on nida's naturalness notion, the motivation of translation is to create the same effect of the source text on the target audience. to sum up, the success in achieving the original script's same effect on the target audience or readers is one of the four translation requirements that nida (1964) highlighted. these are making sense, reflexing the spirit of the original, achieving naturalness by using natural expressions, and achieving the same effect as the original. due to the openness of communication across borders, the growing interest in advertising as a medium of communication enhanced the role of skopos theory. each action must have a purpose or an aim, and according to the skopos theory, translation is considered an action that must have a purpose. therefore, skopos theory should be considered in translating advertisements, as the target text must be compatible with the aim of the main message in the source text. undoubtedly, globalization significantly affects the growing need for translation business. the translators' major task is to break several barriers and constraints of http://www.languagevalue/ faurah al-rousan and ahmad s. haider language value 15 (2), 54–80 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 74 communication and build a communication bridge between different cultures. in this perspective, skopos theory has a paramount role in the translation of advertisements by paving the path before business translators to develop the translation strategies to achieve equivalence, reflect the spirit of the original advert, and cater to the requirements and needs of their customers in reaching the target audience via translation (zhang, 2016). v. conclusions this study examined the translation strategies used in dubbing english advertisements into arabic. the selected advertisements were dubbed into arabic using msa or vernaculars, and the original advertisements were compared to their dubbed counterparts. this study has focused on the strategies adopted by translators in dubbing english advertisements into arabic across various domains, namely cars, chocolate and sweets, cosmetics and skincare, and detergents. the researchers have focused on the content of the advertisement, the brand's name, and the catchphrase. the analysis of the investigated dubbed advertisements showed that translators used various translation strategies. they sought to identify the message of the original advertisement, study the target culture characteristics, and shed light on the persuasive elements of the source advertisement and how to convey it to the arab audience to capture their attention and urge them to buy the product. the analysis of the advertisements showed that translators, as cultural agents, attempted to convey the message correctly. advertisement is an instrument that urges the customers not only to buy the commercialized product but also to adopt its ideas, norms, values, and ideologies. therefore, the translator's challenging mission is to enforce the persuasive function of the original advertisement by making remarked amendments and following various translation strategies, including cultural adaptation, loan, substitution, transliteration, explicitation, addition, omission, and paraphrasing. the literal, as well as free approaches of translations , were used. dubbing television advertisements across cultures and languages: a case study of english and arabic language value 15(2), 54–80 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 75 translation is a decision-making process that depends on various factors, such as the target audience's promoted product, cultural features, and ideology. the analysis also revealed that translators sometimes use the literal translation approach to preserve the foreignness spirit and stay faithful to the original message. other times, they used the cultural adaptation of norms and references to achieve persuasion and attract the target audience. transcreation merges translation and copywriting techniques by creating a new version that can transfer the intended meaning of the original text and create an inevitable connection between the original advertisement, the new one, and the target audience. vi. references abu shehab, n. (2011). translating brochures advertising personal care products from english into arabic: strategies and linguistic inaccuracy. [master's thesis], annajah national university faculty of graduate studies, palestine. al-haroon, a., & yahiaoui, r. (2017). the role of culture in dubbing tv advertisements into arabic: the case of chocolate commercials. awej for translation & literacy studies volume, 1(3), 177-195. al-khalafat, l., & haider, a. s. (2022). a corpus-assisted translation study of strategies used in rendering culture-bound expressions in the speeches of king abdullah ii. theory and practice in language studies, 12(1), 130-142. https://doi.org/10.17507/tpls.1201.16 al-zgoul, o., & al-salman, s. (2022). fansubbers’ subtitling strategies of swear words from english into arabic in the bad boys movies. open cultural studies, 6(1), 199-217. https://doi.org/10.1515/culture-2022-0156 al agha, b. a. (2006). the translation of fast-food advertising texts from english to arabic. [phd dissertation], university of south africa, south africa. http://www.languagevalue/ faurah al-rousan and ahmad s. haider language value 15 (2), 54–80 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 76 bouziane, k. (2016). skopos theory in the translation of online advertising from english into arabic. professional communication and translation studies, 9, 139-146. chaume, f. (2013). the turn of audiovisual translation: new audiences and new technologies. translation spaces, 2(1), 105-123. chaume, f. (2018). an overview of audiovisual translation: four methodological turns in a mature discipline. journal of audiovisual translation, 1(1), 40-63. chaume, f. (2020). dubbing. in l. bogucki & m. deckert (eds.), the palgrave handbook of audiovisual translation and media accessibility (pp. 103-132). palgrave macmillan. debbas, m., & haider, a. s. (2020). overcoming cultural constraints in translating english series: a case study of subtitling family guy into arabic. 3l: language, linguistics, literature, 26(1), 1-17. https://doi.org/10.17576/3l-2020-2601-01 di giovanni, e. (2017). new imperialism in (re)translation: disney in the arab world. perspectives, 25(1), 4-17. díaz-cintas, j. (2013). subtitling: theory, practice and research. in c. millan -varela & f. bartrina (eds.), the routledge handbook of translation studies (pp. 291-305). routledge. díaz-cintas, j., & remael, a. (2014). audiovisual translation: subtitling. routledge. eshreteh, m. (2016). the translatability of brand names in cosmetic advertisements. arab world english journal (awej), 5, 100-107. fan, h. (2017). strategies for translation of english commercial advertisements from the intercultural perspective. open journal of social sciences, 5(11), 38-45. farghal, m., & bazzi, h. (2017). translation of english fiction ti tles into arabic. translation and interpreting, 9(2), 114-137. haddad, k. (2015). skopos in advertising translation into arabic. [master's thesis], american university of sharjah, sharjah, united arab emirates. dubbing television advertisements across cultures and languages: a case study of english and arabic language value 15(2), 54–80 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 77 haider, a. s., al-saideen, b., & hussein, r. f. (in press). subtitling taboo expressions from a conservative to a more liberal culture: the case of the arab tv series ‘jinn. middle east journal of culture and communication. haider, a. s., & hussein, r. f. (2022). modern standard arabic as a means of euphemism: a case study of the msa intralingual subtitling of jinn series. journal of intercultural communication research, 51(6), 628-643. https://doi.org/10.1080/17475759.2022.2106289 li, y. (2021). nida’s translation theory of “functional equivalence” and its application in chinese herbal medicine translation. advances in literary study, 9(1), 11-15. maluf, r. (2005). a potential untapped? why dubbing has not caught on in the arab world. arab media and society, 15. mansour, m. h. (2014). domestication and foreignization in translating culture-specific references of an english text into arabic. international journal of english language & translation studies, 2(2), 23-36. nida, e. a. (1964). towards a science of translating, with special reference to principles and procedures involved in bible translating. brill. obeidat, e. s., & abu-melhim, a.-r. h. (2017). foreignization and domestication in translating english-arabic baby formula labels. british journal of humanities and social sciences, 17(2), 50-66. rababah, s., & al-abbas, l. (2022). overcoming constraints in literary translation: a case study of rendering saud al-sanousi’s saq al-bambu into english. open cultural studies, 6(1), 260-271. https://doi.org/10.1515/culture-2022-0159 saideen, b. a., haider, a. s., & al-abbas, l. s. (2022). erotizing nabokov’s lolita in arabic: how translation strategies shift themes and characterization of literary works. open cultural studies, 6(1), 307-322. https://doi.org/10.1515/culture-2022-0163 http://www.languagevalue/ faurah al-rousan and ahmad s. haider language value 15 (2), 54–80 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 78 yahiaoui, r., & al-adwan, a. (2020). translating extra-linguistic elements for dubbing into arabic: the case of the simpsons. dirasat, human and social sciences, 47(2), 472-485. zhang, l. (2016). business english translation strategies in the perspective of skopos: in the case of advertisement translation. open journal of modern linguistics, 6(3), 243-246. al-haroon, a., & yahiaoui, r. (2017). the role of culture in dubbing tv advertisements into arabic: the case of chocolate commercials. awej for translation & literacy studies volume, 1(3), 177-195. al-khalafat, l., & haider, a. s. (2022). a corpus-assisted translation study of strategies used in rendering culture-bound expressions in the speeches of king abdullah ii. theory and practice in language studies, 12(1), 130-142. https://doi.org/10.17507/tpls.1201.16 al-zgoul, o., & al-salman, s. (2022). fansubbers’ subtitling strategies of swear words from english into arabic in the bad boys movies. open cultural studies, 6(1), 199217. https://doi.org/10.1515/culture-2022-0156 al agha, b. a. (2006). the translation of fast-food advertising texts from english to arabic. [phd dissertation], university of south africa, south africa. bouziane, k. (2016). skopos theory in the translation of online advertising from english into arabic. professional communication and translation studies, 9, 139-146. chaume, f. (2013). the turn of audiovisual translation: new audiences and new technologies. translation spaces, 2(1), 105-123. chaume, f. (2018). an overview of audiovisual translation: four methodological turns in a mature discipline. journal of audiovisual translation, 1(1), 40-63. chaume, f. (2020). dubbing. in l. bogucki & m. deckert (eds.), the palgrave handbook of audiovisual translation and media accessibility (pp. 103-132). palgrave macmillan. debbas, m., & haider, a. s. (2020). overcoming cultural constraints in translating english series: a case study of subtitling family guy into arabic. 3l: language, linguistics, literature, 26(1), 1-17. https://doi.org/10.17576/3l-2020-2601-01 https://doi.org/10.17507/tpls.1201.16 https://doi.org/10.1515/culture-2022-0156 dubbing television advertisements across cultures and languages: a case study of english and arabic language value 15(2), 54–80 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 79 di giovanni, e. (2017). new imperialism in (re)translation: disney in the arab world. perspectives, 25(1), 4-17. díaz-cintas, j. (2013). subtitling: theory, practice and research. in c. millan-varela & f. bartrina (eds.), the routledge handbook of translation studies (pp. 291-305). routledge. díaz-cintas, j., & remael, a. (2014). audiovisual translation: subtitling. routledge. eshreteh, m. (2016). the translatability of brand names in cosmetic advertisements. arab world english journal (awej), 5, 100-107. fan, h. (2017). strategies for translation of english commercial advertisements from the intercultural perspective. open journal of social sciences, 5(11), 38-45. farghal, m., & bazzi, h. (2017). translation of english fiction titles into arabic. translation and interpreting, 9(2), 114-137. haddad, k. (2015). skopos in advertising translation into arabic. [master's thesis], american university of sharjah, sharjah, united arab emirates. haider, a. s., al-saideen, b., & hussein, r. f. (in press). subtitling taboo expressions from a conservative to a more liberal culture: the case of the arab tv series ‘jinn. middle east journal of culture and communication. haider, a. s., & hussein, r. f. (2022). modern standard arabic as a means of euphemism: a case study of the msa intralingual subtitling of jinn series. journal of intercultural communication research, 51(6), 628-643. https://doi.org/10.1080/17475759.2022.2106289 li, y. (2021). nida’s translation theory of “functional equivalence” and its application in chinese herbal medicine translation. advances in literary study, 9(1), 11-15. maluf, r. (2005). a potential untapped? why dubbing has not caught on in the arab world. arab media and society, 15. mansour, m. h. (2014). domestication and foreignization in translating culture-specific references of an english text into arabic. international journal of english language & translation studies, 2(2), 23-36. nida, e. a. (1964). towards a science of translating, with special reference to principles and procedures involved in bible translating. brill. http://www.languagevalue/ https://doi.org/10.1080/17475759.2022.2106289 faurah al-rousan and ahmad s. haider language value 15 (2), 54–80 http://www.languagevalue.uji.es 80 obeidat, e. s., & abu-melhim, a.-r. h. (2017). foreignization and domestication i n translating english-arabic baby formula labels. british journal of humanities and social sciences, 17(2), 50-66. rababah, s., & al-abbas, l. (2022). overcoming constraints in literary translation: a case study of rendering saud al-sanousi’s saq al-bambu into english. open cultural studies, 6(1), 260-271. https://doi.org/10.1515/culture-2022-0159 saideen, b. a., haider, a. s., & al-abbas, l. s. (2022). erotizing nabokov’s lolita in arabic: how translation strategies shift themes and characterization of literary works. open cultural studies, 6(1), 307-322. https://doi.org/10.1515/culture2022-0163 yahiaoui, r., & al-adwan, a. (2020). translating extra-linguistic elements for dubbing into arabic: the case of the simpsons. dirasat, human and social sciences, 47(2), 472-485. zhang, l. (2016). business english translation strategies in the perspective of skopos: in the case of advertisement translation. open journal of modern linguistics, 6(3), 243-246. received: 14 october 2022 accepted: 19 november 2022 https://doi.org/10.1515/culture-2022-0159 https://doi.org/10.1515/culture-2022-0163 https://doi.org/10.1515/culture-2022-0163 language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 2014, volume 6, number 1 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors table of contents from the editors mari carmen campoy-cubillo and nuria edo marzá i-iv articles methodology for the process of validating qualifications in the basque language and their adaptation to the common european framework of reference for languages (cefr) iñaki pikabea torrano, josé francisco lukas múgica and neus figueras casanovas 1-14 issues in aligning assessments to the common european framework of reference spiros papageorgius 15-27 measuring the impact of clil on language skills: a cefr-based approach for higher education antonio jiménez-muñoz 28-50 the common european framework of reference for languages: a european framework for foreign language speech development bettina beinhoff 51-73 motivation and constraints of illocution in the lexical constructional model. the case of the aux np construction nuria del campo martínez 74-99 book review aintzane doiz, david lasagabaster and juan manuel sierra. english-medium instruction at universities: global challenges annemieke meijer 100-103 language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 2014, volume 1, number 1 pp. i-iv issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2014.6.1 i from the editors adapting to the cefr in elt: evaluation and assessment of language competence this issue includes articles concerning different approaches to tackle the impact of the common european framework of reference (cefr) on english language teaching (elt) and assessment. special attention is paid to the assessment of language competence in a higher education context. the use and impact of evaluation and assessment results is of paramount importance when these results are a prerequisite, for instance, to start postgraduate studies or to be able to ask for a job where a specific level is required. in this context, validity and reliability of standard tests and their alignment to the cefr levels and placement tests in higher education institutions are key concepts within the european framework. due to the fact that the english language has an important impact as a tool for communication worldwide, most research in defining the different cefr levels and evaluating their description (and how this description is understood and applied) refer to the english language. but the application of such levels to other european languages is also relevant particularly if we want to establish a clear language reference that may be understood and shared among languages. thus, we may talk about the comparison of educational achievements across countries and in different parts of the same country as well as among languages. another important issue within the cefr context is the modes in which assessment and tests are carried out, depending on the institutional media. multimodal means of assessment, online assessment or in situ assessment may also determine the way levels are measured and accessibility for test takers. in the first article presented in this volume pikabea, lukas and figueras survey the different models that have been used in order to certify basque language levels from the editors articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2013.5.1 ii according to the european framework, and the number of itineraries a test taker may choose to be able to obtain a certified level. in order to do so, they combine a number of tools in their study including technical qualitative analysis, interviews with people responsible for the management of test administration within an institution, and questionnaire design to gather data, among other procedures. the importance of their exhaustive research is to establish a framework for the validation of the existing accreditation systems for basque that accounts for an analysis of whether the specifications for fluency in the language that allowed test alignment with the cefr were properly followed in the different accreditation institutions. finally, they put forth a proposal for adaptations where necessary and monitoring of such adaptations. papageorgiou deals with the issue of how different assessment tools around the world are aligned with the cefr levels, that is, (1) how assessments are brought into alignment with other existing standards and frameworks and (2) how assessment results are interpreted when compared to another assessment frame. papageorgiou also identifies those areas that still need refinement in relation to the cerf levels, such as why and how these levels are selected in policy making or the fact that two tests are assessed as belonging to a same cerf level do not necessarily have the same content or level of test difficulty. the relevance of developing adequate alignment tools and theories cannot be emphasized strongly enough. in his article, measuring the impact of clil on language skills: a cefr-based approach for higher education, jiménez-muñoz discusses the difficulties faced by clil instructors when applying cefr criteria. issues like the lack of english language level on the part of the students that get enrolled in a clil classroom at university level; the need of developing specific skills to teach through a second or foreign language; the lack of financial means to accomplish all instructional purposes, both language and content ones; and the way instructors overcome these problems, are evaluated. the relevance of this study lies in the analysis of results based on tools that aim at evaluating student progress after a clil experience in a way that fits the university time schedules, adjusting to university terms and their timing. language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2013, volume 5, number 1 pp. i-iv issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2013.5.1 iii in the fourth article of the volume, beinhoff deals with the relevance of developing a european framework for language evaluation focusing on the representation of speech development -particularly perceptive skillsin the cefr level descriptions. according to this author, vagueness is a feature of the speech-related cefr sections and related level descriptions so that assumptions made therein -the supposed linear progression between levels amongst themhave not been sufficiently tested yet. by presenting an exploratory study on speech perception in language learners this paper investigates what kind of influence listeners’ levels of proficiency in the second language and their l1 backgrounds have when perceiving intelligibility. the results break new ground by identifying that proficiency levels and l1 background do (although not always) influence intelligibility and partially confirm the idea of a linear progression as proposed in the cefr. the volume also includes a final article entitled “motivation and constraints of illocution in the lexical constructional model: the case of the aux np construction”, in which its author, del campo, addresses the motivation and constraints of illocutionary meaning production. by analysing the realization procedures of the aux np construction in relation to their potential to exploit the semantic base of requestive acts, the author explores how our knowledge of illocution is understood in terms of highlevel situational models which are activated to produce speech act meaning, and the way such operations motivate the conventionalized value of linguistic expressions. as a result, always within the framework of the lexical constructional model (lcm), a comprehensive understanding of the constructional nature of illocutionary meaning on the basis of naturally occurring data is provided. finally, annemieke meijer reviews the volume english-medium instruction at universities, authored by doiz, lasagabaster and sierra. the reviewer presents this five-part volume as “an interesting and timely addition to the growing literature on the use of english as the language of instruction at universities in non-native contexts”, in which a varied picture of current issues and practices is provided by means of contributions from eighteen authors from many and diverse countries. the selection, even though a bit arbitrary somehow, is highly interesting not only because of their from the editors articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2013.5.1 iv diversity but also because of the unexpected connections established, all contributions adding thus to the overall picture. mª carmen campoy-cubillo nuria edo-marzá editors universitat jaume i, spain language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 2014, volume 6, number 1 pp. 1-14 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2014.6.2 1 methodology for the process of validating qualifications in the basque language and their adaptation to the common european framework of reference for languages (cefr) iñaki pikabea torrano i.pikabea@ehu.es josé francisco lukas mujika jf.lukas@ehu.es universidad del país vasco, spain neus figueras casanovas nfiguera@xtec.cat generalitat de catalunya, spain abstract in the basque country there are currently more than 140,000 people with accredited qualifications that certify their knowledge of euskara (basque language). these qualifications have been issued by a number of official bodies dependent on the basque government, but had not been validated against each other until recently. in order to validate these qualifications and adapt them to the common european framework of reference for languages, a group of experts were commissioned by the basque government to undertake a study conducive to this end. this paper outlines the methodology and conclusions of that study. keywords: methodology, evaluation, qualifications, euskara (the basque language), the european framework of reference, validations. i. introduction in the basque country (a region comprising part of the north of spain and the southwest of france) there are currently over 140,000 people who possess one or several of the more than 20 different qualifications that accredit knowledge of the basque language (euskara) at different levels. these qualifications are required to be able to work as government administration personnel (teaching staff, healthcare employees, etc.). since 1998 there have been demands from the general public for a single system and a common approach to accrediting competence in the basque language. in 2006, those responsible for such affairs at the vice-ministry for language policy of the basque iñaki pikabea torrano, josé francisco lukas mujika y neus figueras casanovas language value 6 (1), 1–14 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 2 government contacted the authors of this paper and stressed the need to have an accreditation system for knowledge of the basque language which was capable of agglutinating the different models of such knowledge and/or the routes that can be taken to certify it, while employing a unified approach based on the common european framework of reference for languages (cefr) (council of europe, 2001, 2003, 2004, 2009). it was also understood that the work undertaken in european bodies such as alte (association of language testers in europe) or ealta (european association for language testing and assessment) should be incorporated, as should the opinions of recognized experts from the field of language assessment (alderson, 2006; cizek & bunch, 2007; downing & haladyna, 2006; verdía, conde, de samblanc & cassany, 2002; zieky & livingston, 2008). in a first phase, the commission of experts drew up a report (figueras, pikabea & lukas, 2008) describing the work done and its results, and also including recommendations for improvement of the different tests. an outcome of this process was the approval by the basque government of the framework for the validation of qualifications and accredited certificates of knowledge in basque and their adaptation to the cefr. this framework was incorporated into a number of legislative decrees, culminating in the decree 1 which defined the validations and drew parallels between the various qualifications and certificates of knowledge of the basque language (pikabea, lukas, figueras, 2009). through this system of accreditations and validations practically all the qualifications in euskara (a total of 22, with some having been granted since 1975) have become officially recognized within the cefr. in this way, the validations between the different qualifications and certificates are recognized, as is their relationship with the four levels of the european framework. the equivalences of the qualifications and certificates from ivap 2 , habe, osakidetza, ertzaintza, the basque government’s education, universities and research department, the royal academy of the basque language (euskaltzaindia), the department of education of the government of navarre and the escuelas oficiales de idiomas (government-run language schools) were established with the b-1, b-2, c-1 and c-2 levels of the european framework. methodology of the process of validation of qualifications in the basque language and of their adaptation to the common european framework of reference for languages (cefr) language value 6 (1), 1–14 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 3 three years later, the basque government once again contacted the authors of this paper and asked for a second report. the different systems of evaluation had been updated by the various bodies involved after the publication of the above mentioned decree, and it was necessary to assess to what extent the changes responded to the recommendations of the 2008 report. this second report was finalized in 2011 (figueras, pikabea, lukas, 2011). in this article the research procedures followed in the first and second reports are briefly outlined, together with a series of suggestions put forward on the basis of the different analyses and observations. the authors have adopted a general approach, as detailed results and data for the different qualifications and organizations need to remain confidential. ii. objectives and limitations the objectives proposed were the following: 1. analysis of current systems for the accreditation of knowledge of the basque language amongst adults. 2. establishment of a common set of specifications for fluency in the language that would enable the objective comparison of levels, tests and the degree of benefit drawn from the various systems for certification amongst adults. 3. proposal for adaptations considered necessary, taking the cefr criteria and levels as a basis. 4. if possible, the design of a table of equivalences for the various certifications of knowledge of basque amongst adults. 5. monitoring of adaptations, 4 years on. iii. methodology iii.1. first phase (2006-2008) based on the council of europe’s recommendations for harmonizing exams with the cefr levels as described in the manual for relating examinations to the cefr iñaki pikabea torrano, josé francisco lukas mujika y neus figueras casanovas language value 6 (1), 1–14 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 4 (familiarization, specification, standardization of judgments, empirical validation), the steps and calendar to be followed were set out and a protocol of actions drawn up. these were then forwarded to all the bodies participating in the project, with the request to provide the researchers – within a period of one month – with: 1. a certain number of test forms (corresponding to the last three years) 2. the completed questionnaires designed to this end 3. a certain number of candidates’ written scripts and oral performances, following set requirements that is, on the one hand, protocols or questionnaires were drawn up for the analysis of the examinations and, on the other, expert judges were selected and used to assess the test tasks and the candidates’ scripts and performances in relation to the cefr levels. the following procedures were followed: questionnaire analysis. the questionnaire was developed based on the forms included in the 2003 council of europe manual and included questions on: 1) general description of the exam; 2) drafting and administration of the tests; 3) correction and scoring; 4) analysis of data and a later review; 5) qualitative-technical analysis of the tests; and 6) estimated global level of each examination in cefr terms. system of judges. judges were selected from amongst expert teachers, teacher trainers and item writers in the basque country, and the procedures followed in their training and standardization were also those recommended in the 2003 council of europe manual, including: 1) familiarization of the judges (a total of 30) with the cefr descriptors; 2) judges’ analysis and evaluation of the samples of oral and written production of the examinees (a total of 39 written comprehension tasks, 16 oral comprehension tasks, 36 pieces of written production from the students and another 34 items of oral production from the students). the data thus gathered were examined thoroughly and, as a conclusion, a report was drawn up in 2008. table 1 reflects the possible comparability of qualifications, as well as the adaptations needed to conform to the cefr levels. to this end, the following criteria were used: methodology of the process of validation of qualifications in the basque language and of their adaptation to the common european framework of reference for languages (cefr) language value 6 (1), 1–14 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 5 • analysis of test data provided by their devisers (lukas, 1998) • qualitative-technical analysis of tests • analysis of the tests and cefr level assignments by the judges when required, a scale of grey tones was used to indicate, beside each qualification, the areas in which the qualification in question had to be adjusted in order to have a comprehensive, integrated equivalence with the cefr 3 levels. abbreviations: wc: written comprehension we: written expression oc: oral comprehension oe: oral expression interpretation and positions of colours: same column equivalence in general terms absence of specific test does not reach required level exceeds the required level table 1 shows a graphical summary of the conclusions drawn from research in the 2008 report. this summary was considered extremely useful by examination bodies, as it showed where adjustments were necessary, and extremely helpful by government administration bodies, as it helped decision-making. numbers 1-5 in the organization column refer to the five exam-providing institutions in the basque country, their names not being given for the sake of confidentiality. iñaki pikabea torrano, josé francisco lukas mujika y neus figueras casanovas language value 6 (1), 1–14 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 6 table 1. summary of equivalences to the cefr (2008 report). cefr levels organisation a1 a2 b1 b2 c1 c2 wc wc wc wc wc wc we we we we we we oc oc oc oc oc oc 1 oe oe certificate a oe cer b oe cer c oe cer d oe wc wc wc wc wc wc we we we we we we oc oc oc oc oc oc 2 oe oe certificate a oe cer b oe cer c oe cer d oe wc wc wc wc wc wc we we we we we we oc oc oc oc oc oc 3 oe oe oe cer a oe cer b oe oe wc wc wc wc wc wc we we we we we we oc oc oc oc oc oc 4 oe oe certificate a oe cer b oe cer c oe oe wc wc wc wc wc wc we we we we we we oc oc oc oc oc oc 5 oe oe certificate a oe cer b oe cer c oe oe iii.2.second phase (2011) a number of years after these proposals for validated qualifications were first put forward (2008), the department of language policy of the basque government commissioned a review and the monitoring of the changes and improvements made by each body responsible for setting examinations in the basque language. in the process monitored for this research, a protocol of activities was drawn up again and then remitted to all those bodies participating in the project, the certifying bodies or organizations being requested to ensure that such examinations for the validation of qualifications should: • provide the same number of tests (corresponding to recent examination announcements) for each of the levels examined methodology of the process of validation of qualifications in the basque language and of their adaptation to the common european framework of reference for languages (cefr) language value 6 (1), 1–14 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 7 • complete the questionnaires designed with this aim • designate people with a thorough knowledge of the tests to be interviewed by the researchers technical qualitative analysis of the tests apart from the ealta recommendations, other points taken into account for the technical analysis of the tests were, on the one hand, the usual criteria for item development and, on the other, the recommendations made in the 2008 report. monitoring of suggested recommendations the recommendations made in the report of the commission of experts on the validation of basque language qualifications and their adaptation to cefr (2008) were reviewed to determine whether or not each recommendation had been taken into account. questionnaire analysis the questionnaires sent to examination providers were aimed at collecting information about five different aspects, namely: 1. drawing up the tests 2. medium-term adjustments 3. completing the tests 4. technical analysis of the tests 5. commentaries for each affirmative response some evidence was required to accredit its veracity. and each negative response also required an explanation. interviews with representatives of the board the information gathered and analyzed, both through questionnaires constructed ad hoc as well as through the technical qualitative analysis of the tests, was completed with interviews with the experts and/or those responsible for the various examinations of the iñaki pikabea torrano, josé francisco lukas mujika y neus figueras casanovas language value 6 (1), 1–14 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 8 institutions involved in the research. in all, 10 people from five institutions were interviewed. figure 1 shows the different sources of information employed in order to reach the conclusions drawn in this report. figure 1. triangulation of the different sources of information. iv. results the results and conclusions were included in two reports (2008 and 2011). team of evaluators the teams of evaluators are very heterogeneous. evaluation is considered to be a speciality that is sufficiently demanding and painstaking to have stable dedicated teams of evaluators in each institution. designs and protocols a clear improvement and greater professionalization in test development and analysis are observed. in most cases this was already the starting point. a very high level was seen in the measurement tools that were analyzed and in the processes and documentation supporting them. methodology of the process of validation of qualifications in the basque language and of their adaptation to the common european framework of reference for languages (cefr) language value 6 (1), 1–14 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 9 comparison of requirements the comparison of requirements for qualifications which, theoretically, accredit the same cefr level was not reviewed. this would be a very important experimental study which would make it possible to identify possible imbalances between qualifications at the same level issued by different departments. validation of qualification at cefr level no institution claims to have experimental data that guarantee that its qualifications do, in fact, correspond to cefr levels, whereas they all state that they follow the framework descriptors strictly. however, no field research has been carried out to allow an informed comparison of evaluation processes for other languages in spain or in other countries. qualifications at c2 level an analysis of the two existing qualifications that currently accredit level c2 reveals a different conception of the evaluation process for this level. while one particular body may present a concept similar to that used at previous levels but at a greater level of difficulty, the other body may interpret the certification as the final part of an ongoing evaluation process, where the work done during the course (a prerequisite to be able to sit the exam) is taken into consideration. this provides candidates with two ways of being evaluated, with different requirements. unnecessary evaluation processes it has been observed that in some cases candidates have to pass tests which, in reality, do not provide data of interest. this happens in certain evaluations where the candidate, before completing the examination that will provide him/her with an accreditation, is required to sit a pre-test, the results of which are only used to decide whether the candidate is ready to sit the examination or not. variety of examination formats the designs of the evaluations that were analyzed are complete and their content fulfils the criteria for validity. however, it has been observed that, in some cases, the training iñaki pikabea torrano, josé francisco lukas mujika y neus figueras casanovas language value 6 (1), 1–14 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 10 given to the students for the acquisition of basque is conditioned by the type of exam. as a consequence, it becomes too restricted, as it is too dependent on the exam format. this is why some bodies propose a greater variety of tests in their examinations, thereby avoiding an over-repetitive format. v. conclusions and implications the proposal for the validation of qualifications in basque and for their adaptation to the cefr levels also included several suggestions to improve the design and uses of the tests. the suggestions were addressed to the management or administrative bodies and referred to topics or lacunas needing shortor medium-term consideration with the goal of enhancing the accreditation processes. amongst the most notable suggestions, the following are worth mentioning: open/restricted exam sessions some bodies have both open and restricted examination sessions, but there is no empirical evidence about the level of competence of the candidates, whether they are comparable or not. this is a task that will have to be addressed in the future. examples of classified oral/written productions what the authors propose is the establishment of a classified collection of samples, to act as a reference for all accrediting organizations, given that this will reduce the risk of there being significant differences amongst the sample collections of different bodies. thus, just one collection of reference samples will help to obviate there being different levels of requirements from one organization to another at any one cefr level. inter-institutional technical commission the report proposed the creation of an inter-institutional technical commission to debate and agree on those technical aspects that are of concern to the evaluation processes, with the goal of avoiding overlaps (exam calendars, etc.) or disparity of criteria. team of evaluators test development is a sophisticated operation. in many organizations teams of item writers have a short existence, and in others item development is commissioned to methodology of the process of validation of qualifications in the basque language and of their adaptation to the common european framework of reference for languages (cefr) language value 6 (1), 1–14 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 11 outside contractors. in order to guarantee the necessary coordination and coherence, it is recommended that each institution take total control of the process, including the design of the tests, in order to foster higher quality. qualifications at c2 level it is recommended that the two institutions certifying c2 and currently using totally different procedures reach an agreement as to which formula is the fairest and most appropriate. accreditation bodies concern arises from not knowing which organizations will, in the future, be officially allowed to carry out the evaluation and accreditation of candidates’ knowledge and acquisition of the basque language, as well as the possible consequences thereof. unnecessary evaluation processes in section 4 of this paper we have mentioned that some institutions require the candidate to sit a pre-test prior to the final official test. the data available show that the results obtained in the oral and written comprehension sections of the pre-test that the candidates take in their study centers match those obtained in the final examination. in view of this evidence, we strongly recommend that the accrediting institutions focus on the assessment of productive skills (oral and written production), thus avoiding unnecessary duplication of costs incurred by the administration. request for advice while the authors were drawing up their reports, certain departments requested advice on evaluation topics that would help clear up doubts that might arise. at an administrative level, it would be useful to have a team of experts who could also respond to this type of internal requests. evaluation of oral comprehension in general, the models for the evaluation of oral production are apparently similar across institutions: the examinee listens to an audio accompanied by items that have to be answered correctly, but what format of audio text should the candidate be provided with? should it be a monologue, a conversation, a clip from a real interview, a sequence iñaki pikabea torrano, josé francisco lukas mujika y neus figueras casanovas language value 6 (1), 1–14 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 12 from a tv programme, a standard language production… or what? unification of criteria within each organization or body and, if possible, on an inter-institutional level is important. statistical analysis of the tests pilot testing needs to be an indispensable condition prior to the final application of a certificate test. it is equally important to analyze how the test items worked after their final application. besides justifying the technical quality of the tests employed, these analyses will be used to create the bank of calibrated items to guarantee the quality of future examinations. finally, the bodies that administer a preliminary test should analyze its predictive validity, as well as its reliability. establishment of standards or cut scores it would also be useful to set down some procedure for establishing such scoring methods, although this may involve modifying current legislation in some cases. linguistic normalization and accreditation the reports also raise the question of a possible clash between the goals of language normalization in the basque country and the system of accreditation. possible contradictions would have to be detected and, in such cases, decisions deemed opportune would need to be taken. resources and criteria for disabled candidates the drawing up of a general, single norm of compulsory compliance is recommended, and this would have to comply with and respond to the content of state legislation corresponding to that of the international convention on the rights of persons with disabilities. notes 1 decree 297/2010 in the official gazette of the government of the basque country. 2 ivap: basque institute for public administration; habe: institute for the acquisition of and literacy in the basque language by adults; osakidetza: the basque national health service, ertzaintza: the basque police force. methodology of the process of validation of qualifications in the basque language and of their adaptation to the common european framework of reference for languages (cefr) language value 6 (1), 1–14 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 13 3 this example serves as a rough guide, the names of the institutions and the qualifications awarded having been omitted. not all institutions issue qualifications at all cefr levels. references alderson, j.c. et al. 2006. analyzing tests of reading and listening in relation to the cef: the experience of the dutch cef construct project. language assessment quarterly. 3(1) 3-30. cizek, g. and bunch, m. 2007. standard setting. a guide to establishing and evaluating performance standards on tests. sage publications council of europe. 2001. common european framework of reference for languages: learning, teaching, assessment. cambridge: cambridge university press. council of europe. 2003. relating language examinations to the common european framework of reference for languages: learning, teaching, assessment (cef): manual preliminary pilot version. strasbourg: language policy division. council of europe. 2004. reference supplement to the preliminary pilot version of the manual for relating language examinations to the common european framework of reference for languages: learning, teaching, assessment. strasbourg: language council of europe. 2009. manual for relating examinations to the cefr. available at: http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/manuel1_en.asp (last accessed 22-11-2011) downing, s.m and haladyna, t.m. (eds.). 2006. handbook of test development. london: lawrence erlbaum associates. figueras, n., pikabea, i. and lukas; j.f. 2008. informe de la comisión de expertos sobre convalidación de titulaciones de euskara y adecuación al mcer. gobierno vasco: viceconsejería de política lingüística (unpublished). figueras, n., pikabea, i. and lukas, j.f. 2011. informe de seguimiento de la comisión de expertos sobre convalidación de titulaciones de euskara y adecuación al mcer. gobierno vasco: viceconsejería de política lingüística (unpublished). iñaki pikabea torrano, josé francisco lukas mujika y neus figueras casanovas language value 6 (1), 1–14 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 14 lukas, j.f. 1998. análisis de ítems y de tests con iteman. leioa: servicio de publicaciones de la universidad del país vasco. pikabea, i., lukas, j.f and figueras, n. 2009. “proceso de comparabilidad de titulaciones de euskara y adecuación al marco común europeo de referencia (mcer)”. revista de investigación educativa. 27(2) 469-486. verdía, e., conde, g., de samblanc and cassany, d. 2002. “marco común europeo de referencia y portfolio de las lenguas.”, mosaico, 9, monográfico. revista para la promoción y apoyo a la enseñanza del español. zieky, m. p. and livingston, s. 2008. cut scores: a manual for setting standards of performance on educational and occupational tests. ets. received: 10 may 2013 accepted: 24 october 2013 cite this article as: pikabea, i., lukas, j.f. & figueras, n. 2014. “methodology of the process of validation of qualifications in the basque language and their adaptation to the common european framework of reference for languages (cefr)”. language value 6 (1), 1-14. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2014.6.2 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 2014, volume 6, number 1 pp. 15-27 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2014.6.3 15 issues in aligning assessments with the common european framework of reference spiros papageorgiou spapageorgiou@ets.or educational testing service, mi, usa abstract one of the main aims of the common european framework of reference is to help providers and users of assessments “describe the levels of proficiency required by existing standards, tests and examinations in order to facilitate comparisons between different systems of qualifications” (council of europe 2001: 21). providers of language assessments both inside and outside europe follow various methodologies to align their assessments with the cefr levels, as several case studies show (figueras and noijons 2009; martyniuk 2010). this paper discusses the use of the cefr in the field of language assessment, focusing in particular on issues related to alignment. the paper presents the types of validity evidence that should be accumulated to support an alignment claim and concludes with directions for future research in order to further enhance our understanding of using the cefr for the design of assessments and the interpretation of assessment results. keywords: alignment, cut scores, common european framework of reference. i. introduction the publication of the common european framework of reference (cefr) in 2001 has been recognized as the “most significant recent event on the language education scene in europe” (alderson 2005b: 275). the main purpose of the cefr is to provide a common basis for the elaboration of language syllabuses, examinations, and textbooks by describing in a comprehensive way what language learners have to learn to do in order to use a language effectively for communication (council of europe 2001: 1). the language proficiency levels and their language performance descriptors are central to the cefr’s descriptive scheme of language use, as noted by little (2006: 169). they serve one of the main aims of the council of europe as described in chapter 3 of the cefr volume, that is: “to help partners to describe the levels of proficiency required by existing standards, tests and examinations in order to facilitate comparisons between spiros papageorgiou language value 6 (1), 15-27 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 16 different systems of qualifications” (council of europe 2001: 21). such comparability of language qualifications in europe was difficult to achieve prior to the cefr because of the plethora of diverse educational systems and traditions. alderson (2007: 660) pointed out that “the six main levels of the cefr have become a common currency in language education, and curricula, syllabuses, textbooks, teacher training courses, not only examinations, claim to be related to the cefr”. nowadays, providers of language assessments, both inside and outside europe, follow various methodologies to align their assessments with the cefr levels, as reported in several case studies in two edited volumes (figueras and noijons 2009; martyniuk 2010). the most common approach to bring tests into alignment with the cefr is the one recommended in the manual published by the council of europe (2009). the approach consists of two main stages: content alignment and setting of cut scores. the main purpose of this paper is to discuss the use of the cefr in the field of language assessment, with a particular focus on issues related to the alignment of assessments with the cefr. before discussing alignment issues, however, it is important to first consider the work that led to the development of the cefr and its levels, which is presented in the next section. ii. the development of the cefr and its language proficiency scales the council of europe (not be confused with the european union) is the continent's oldest political organization, founded in 1949. its general aim is to foster common democratic principles among its 47 members. the council of europe has been active in the area of languages for more than forty years with two complementary bodies: the language policy division in strasbourg, france, and the european centre for modern languages in graz, austria. in order to promote plurilingualism and pluriculturalism among european citizens, the council of europe published a number of documents in the 1970s that have been influential in second language teaching, such as the notional-functional syllabus by wilkins, which describes what a learner communicates through language (wilkins 1976), and three ascending levels describing language achievement: waystage (van ek issues in aligning assessments with the common european framework of reference language value 6 (1), 15-27 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 17 and trim 1991), threshold (van ek and trim 1998) and vantage (van ek and trim 2001). in 1991, at an intergovernmental symposium in switzerland, the development of a common framework for learning, teaching and assessment was deemed desirable in order to: • promote and facilitate cooperation among educational institutions in different countries; • provide a sound basis for the mutual recognition of language qualifications; • assist learners, teachers, course designers, examining bodies and educational administrators in situating and coordinating their efforts; (council of europe 2001: 5) the authoring group produced an initial version in 1996 and the final version of the cefr was published after feedback and consultation in 2001, the european year of languages, in english and french. since then, the cefr volume has been freely available online on the council of europe website (www.coe.int/portfolio) in more than 30 languages. these include non-european languages, such as arabic and japanese, revealing the strong interest in the document world-wide, not only within europe. although the cefr contains a rich description of the language learning process, it is widely accepted that the cefr language proficiency scales are the best known part of the 2001 volume (little 2006). the proficiency scales of the cefr have gained popularity because they offer a comprehensive description of the objectives that learners can expect to achieve at different levels of language proficiency. they describe language activities and competences at six main levels: a1 (the lowest) through a2, b1, b2, c1 to c2 (the highest). borderline levels are further elaborated using a ‘plus’ between a2+ (between a2 and b1), b1+ (between b1 and b2) and b2+ (between b2 and c1). the scales comprise statements called ‘descriptors’, which are always phrased positively, as they are intended to motivate learners by describing what they can do when they use the language, rather than what they cannot do (council of europe 2001: 205). the performance descriptors of the cefr are designed following an actionoriented approach: language users are seen as members of a society who have tasks to accomplish, including those that are not language-related (council of europe 2001: 9). spiros papageorgiou language value 6 (1), 15-27 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 18 because of the action-oriented emphasis, the descriptors are also frequently referred to as “can-do statements”. the scales and descriptors in the 2001 edition of the cefr were primarily developed during a large research project in switzerland (north 2000; north and schneider 1998). the project applied a variety of qualitative and quantitative methods for the initial analysis and collection of more than 2000 language descriptors used in proficiency scales around the world, the consequent selection and refinement of 1000 of these descriptors and, finally, the placement of the descriptors at different proficiency levels that subsequently formed the cefr levels (see also appendix a and appendix b in council of europe, 2001). a number of studies and research projects such as the dialang project (alderson 2005a; alderson and huhta 2005) have shown that the descriptors can be consistently replicated in a range of contexts, thus offering validity evidence for the use of those descriptors across a variety of contexts. language assessment is specifically discussed in chapter 9 of the cefr, which serves as a useful introduction to important notions and principles in the field. fundamental terms such as validity and reliability are explained, and different types of assessment are described (e.g., formative versus summative assessment; norm-reference testing versus criterion-referencing testing). the next section focuses on the process of aligning assessments with the cefr, which has been the topic of many studies in the field of language assessment. iii. the process of aligning assessments with the cefr the cefr has been extremely influential in the field of language assessment, as evidenced by the 2005 special issue of the language testing journal on language assessment in europe (alderson 2005b) and the various alignment studies in the two edited volumes mentioned above (figueras and noijons 2009; martyniuk 2010). the demand for alignment of assessments with various external standards has increased not only in europe, but worldwide, because of education reforms which push for accountability, including close monitoring of students’ progress and use of standardized tests (deville and chalhoub-deville 2011). in the united states, the no child left behind act and more recently the common core state standards, an initiative issues in aligning assessments with the common european framework of reference language value 6 (1), 15-27 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 19 supported by most states in the united states to describe the skills and abilities expected by students at each grade level, have further raised the demand to bring assessments into alignment with frameworks and standards. the manual published by the council of europe (2009) offers a recommended set of procedures for aligning tests with the cefr, which consists of two main stages: content alignment and setting of cut scores. for content alignment, the specification chapter of the manual suggests forms to be completed for each language skill. these forms contain several questions regarding the extent to which the content of an assessment covers communicative language activities, contexts, text types and other aspects of language ability described in the cefr. thus, the completed forms constitute a claim of content coverage in relation to the cefr. the second stage involves the setting of minimum scores on the test that would indicate that a test-taker has demonstrated the performance expected at that cefr level (standardization training and benchmarking chapter and standard setting procedures chapter). these minimum scores (cut scores) are established following a well-researched process in the educational measurement literature called “standard setting” (cizek and bunch 2007). during standard setting, a panel of expert judges (often called “panelists”) is required, under the guidance of one or more meeting facilitators, to make judgments on which examination providers will base their final cut score decisions. statistical information about test items and the distribution of scores might also be used to help panelists with their judgment task. a fairly common practice in standard setting meetings is that more than one round of judgments is implemented (hambleton 2001; plake 2008). between rounds, the panel discusses individual judgments, receives the statistical information about items and scores and repeats the judgments. even though the panel will offer a recommended cut score, the decision on whether to accept this score rests with the examination provider. in this sense, standard setting is in fact a procedure for recommending cut scores for implementation by the provider of the test (cizek and bunch 2007; tannenbaum and katz 2013). procedures for validating the recommended cut scores are also presented in the manual. spiros papageorgiou language value 6 (1), 15-27 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 20 iv. exploring the quality of alignment with the cefr in the field of educational measurement, alignment typically refers to the extent to which the content of an assessment covers the skills and abilities described in an external framework and standards. such exploration of content coverage is an integral part of the specification chapter in the manual. webb (2007) proposed a process to evaluate the alignment of assessments with content standards based on four criteria: • categorical occurrence, which addresses the issue of whether a test covers the content discussed in the standard. • depth-of-knowledge (dok) consistency, which addresses the extent to which an assessment is as cognitively challenging for test-takers as one would expect, given the description of what students are expected to know and be able to do in the standard. • range of knowledge correspondence, which deals with the extent to which the breadth of knowledge in the assessment corresponds to the expected one in the standard. • balance of representation, which addresses the extent to which specific knowledge is given more or less emphasis in the assessment compared to the standard. although the manual (council of europe 2009) does not provide criteria similar to the ones by webb (webb 2007) for evaluating alignment of test content with the cefr, it could be argued that the various forms that should be completed during the specification stage do cover the above criteria to some extent. content alignment as described in both the manual (council of europe 2009) and webb (2007) requires the use of human judgment. this use of human judgment is a central issue in the process of setting cut scores (zieky and perie 2006: 7). as kantarcioglu and papageorgiou (2011) noted, judgments are not only involved during the planning of a standard setting meeting, for example, when a standard setting method is chosen, but in every step of the decision-making process of setting cut scores, that is: deciding on the number of levels with which to classify test-takers, selecting and training panelists, and scheduling the activities in the standard setting meeting. despite this reliance on issues in aligning assessments with the common european framework of reference language value 6 (1), 15-27 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 21 judgments, the standard setting meeting and its outcomes can be evaluated based on several criteria typically grouped into three categories (council of europe 2001; hambleton and pitoniak 2006; kane 1994): • procedural validity, examining whether the procedures followed were practical, implemented properly, that feedback given to the judges was effective, and that sufficient documentation has been compiled. • internal validity, addressing issues of accuracy and consistency of the standard setting results. • external validation, by collecting evidence from independent sources which support the outcome of the standard setting meeting. the manual presents in detail how (mostly) quantitative data under these three categories should be collected and analyzed to support the proposed cut scores in relation to the cefr levels. studies reporting on the alignment of assessments with the cefr routinely employ such quantitative techniques to provide validity evidence for the setting of cut scores in relation to the cefr levels. for example, the alignment of the reading and listening scores of the michigan english test with the cefr levels (papageorgiou 2010b) involved examination of both intrajudge and interjudge consistency, such as standard error of judgment, agreement coefficient, and kappa indices as part of the internal validation of the cut score. in another study, kantarcioglu et al. (2010) applied the many-facet rasch model (linacre 1994) to explore the judges’ agreement in setting cut scores for the certificate of proficiency in english of bilkent university to the cefr levels. a qualitative approach to investigating the judges’ decision-making process when setting cut scores to the cefr was employed by papageorgiou (2010a). the study investigated the factors reportedly affecting the panelists’ decision to set a cut score and the problems faced when setting cut scores in relation to the cefr. the panelists’ group discussions were analyzed based on a coding scheme built both inductively, that is, drawing codes from the actual data, and deductively, that is, drawing codes from existing theory, such as qualitative research into participants’ experiences in standard setting (buckendahl 2005). the findings of the study suggest that decision-making might be affected by factors irrelevant to the description of expected performance in the spiros papageorgiou language value 6 (1), 15-27 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 22 cefr, such as panelists’ personal expectations and experiences, which might threaten the validity of the cut score. the study also found that the cefr might be useful for defining learning objectives, but is not sufficiently specified for the purpose of setting cut scores. to conclude, research approaches that evaluate alignment with the cefr include both quantitative and qualitative techniques and there are a growing number of relevant studies employing both. however, future research still needs to address several issues regarding cefr alignment, as discussed in the next section. v. future research in cefr alignment when aligning test scores with the cefr, an important decision to be made is whether a score that demonstrates sufficient performance on the assessment also indicates sufficient performance in relation to the cefr. this is particularly the case for language assessments reporting results in the form of a pass/fail result. a pass/fail result is usually the case with licensure examinations, intended for professionals such as doctors or pilots, who need to pass the exam in order to practice their profession. language assessments might also report pass/fail results, typically accompanied by a certificate which documents that a test-taker performed satisfactorily on the assessment. if the content of this assessment has been aligned with a specific level on the cefr, then the implication is that all test-takers with a “pass” certificate should be at the intended cefr level. therefore, two decisions need to be made regarding the use of the scores from such an assessment: first, whether a score indicates that a test-taker has passed the assessment, and second, whether this “pass” score indicates that the targeted cefr level has been achieved (see council of europe 2009: 58). more research is needed to understand the relationship between these two cut score decisions, which for now remains unclear. aligning assessments with the cefr has important implications for policy-making. there has been considerable criticism of the uses of the cefr as a policy document (mcnamara 2006; mcnamara and roever 2006), in particular when it comes to immigration. according to alderson (2007: 260), an unintended consequence of the adoption of the cefr as a tool by policy-makers is that these officials have no issues in aligning assessments with the common european framework of reference language value 6 (1), 15-27 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 23 understanding of the nature of language learning, yet they impose requirements for language proficiency without any consideration as to whether such levels are achievable. for example, language tests are extensively used as gatekeepers for immigration purposes (shohamy and mcnamara 2009) based on language requirements defined in terms of cefr level (see for example requirements by the uk border agency at http://www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk). however, the rationale behind the selection of a given cefr level for a specific purpose such as immigration is not always clear. therefore, more research is needed in local contexts to identify reasonable language requirements for specific language uses in order to inform policy-making. another important implication of cefr alignment for learners, teachers, and score users is the interpretation of results from different assessments that claim alignment with the same cefr level. these different assessments should not be interpreted as equivalent in terms of difficulty or content coverage (council of europe 2009: 90). achieving cefr level b1 on a general proficiency test intended for young learners and a test of english for specific purposes (esp) does not mean that the scores on these two tests have the same meaning because the intended test purpose, test content, and testtaking population are notably different. one way to provide more accurate information about assessment results is to provide empirically-derived, test-specific performance levels and descriptors designed for a given assessment, for example by adopting a scale anchoring methodology (garcia gomez, noah, schedl, wright, and yolkut 2007). such levels and descriptors can be provided in addition to information about cefr alignment. vi. conclusion as discussed in this paper, the cefr and in particular its language proficiency scales and descriptors might offer language teachers, learners and users of assessments an opportunity to better understand the meaning of the results of these assessments (kane 2012). however, alignment with the cefr should not be considered a substitute to ongoing procedures for validation (fulcher 2004). the manual strongly emphasizes that a prerequisite for any effort to achieve alignment with the cefr is that an assessment be of high quality, otherwise alignment is “a wasted enterprise” (council of europe spiros papageorgiou language value 6 (1), 15-27 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 24 2009: 90). for example, if an assessment is not reliable, setting a minimum score on this assessment to indicate adequate performance at a given cefr level will not be particularly meaningful. moreover, it should also be pointed out that the theoretical underpinnings of the cefr remain weak (alderson 2007) and that its language proficiency scales are primarily a taxonomy that makes sense to practitioners, rather than empirically validated descriptions of the language learning process (north and schneider 1998: 242-243). moreover researchers have noted several problems with the use of the cefr for designing test specifications (alderson et al. 2006). therefore, content alignment of an assessment with the cefr cannot provide sufficient evidence of content validity or substitute various language learning theories that should be considered when designing an assessment. alignment with the cefr might not be straightforward because, by design, the description of what learners are expected to do in the cefr is under-specified to allow for a wider application across a variety of contexts. unfortunately, this intended underspecification might also mean that alignment of assessments for specific groups of testtakers may be particularly challenging, for example, in the case of assessments for young learners (hasselgreen 2005). despite these issues, it could be argued that alignment of assessments with the cefr remains an important area of inquiry in the field of language assessment because it has the potential to raise awareness of important assessment issues, for example in contexts where local tests are developed (kantarcioglu, et al. 2010). acknowledgements the author would like to thank his ets colleagues don powers, veronika timpe, and jonathan schmidgall for their useful comments on an earlier version of this paper. the author is responsible for any errors in this publication. any opinions expressed in this paper are those of the authors and not necessarily of educational testing service. references alderson, j. c. 2005a. diagnosing foreign language proficiency: the interface between learning and assessment. london: continuum. alderson, j. c. 2005b. editorial. language testing, 22(3), 257-260. issues in aligning assessments with the common european framework of reference language value 6 (1), 15-27 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 25 alderson, j. c. 2007. the cefr and the need for more research. the modern language journal, 91(4), 659-663. alderson, j. c., figueras, n., kuijper, h., nold, g., takala, s., and tardieu, c. 2006. analysing tests of reading and listening in relation to the common european framework of reference: the experience of the dutch cefr construct project. language assessment quarterly, 3(1), 3–30. alderson, j. c., and huhta, a. 2005. the development of a suite of computer-based diagnostic tests based on the common european framework. language testing, 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(technical report). ann arbor: issues in aligning assessments with the common european framework of reference language value 6 (1), 15-27 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 27 university of michigan. retrieved 09/09/2011, from http://www.cambridgemichigan.org/sites/default/files/resources/met_standard setting.pdf. plake, b. s. 2008. standard setters: stand up and take a stand! educational measurement: issues and practice, 27(1), 3-9. shohamy, e., and mcnamara, t. 2009. language tests for citizenship, immigration, and asylum. language assessment quarterly, 6(1), 1-5. tannenbaum, r. j., and katz, i. r. 2013. standard setting. in k. f. geisinger (ed.), apa handbook of testing and assessment in psychology: vol 3. testing and assessment in school psychology and education (pp. 455-477). washington, dc: american psychological association. van ek, j. a., and trim, j. l. m. 1991. waystage 1990. cambridge: cambridge university press. van ek, j. a., and trim, j. l. m. 1998. threshold 1990. cambridge: cambridge university press. van ek, j. a., and trim, j. l. m. 2001. vantage. cambridge: cambridge university press. webb, n. l. 2007. issues related to judging the alignment of curriculum standards and assessments. applied measurement in education, 20(1), 7-25. wilkins, d. a. 1976. notional syllabuses. oxford: oxford university press. zieky, m. j., and perie, m. 2006. a primer on setting cutscores on tests of educational achievement. retrieved 08/08/2011, from http://www.ets.org/media/research/pdf/cut_scores_primer.pdf received: 26 november 2013 accepted: 27 february 2014 cite this article as: papageorgiou, s. 2014. “issue in aligning assessments to the common european framework of reference”. language value 6 (1), 15-27. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2014.6.3 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 2014, volume 6, number 1 pp. 28-50 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2014.6.4 28 measuring the impact of clil on language skills: a cefrbased approach for higher education antonio josé jiménez-muñoz jimenezantonio@uniovi.es universidad de oviedo, spain abstract advocates of clil (content and language integrated learning) have extolled the virtues of this approach to fostering both content and language alike. however, the generalised and varied implementation of emi (english as a medium of instruction) in universities worldwide has led many lecturers to question these claims. this paper presents a cefr (common european framework)-based model for measuring the impact of emi at the tertiary level, the aim being to provide further evidence of the progress made in language-learning in modules taught in a foreign language. using questionnaires based on the revised and refined cefr descriptors from eaquals (evaluation and accreditation of quality in language services), students answer an initial self-assessment survey about their background and language skills, which is controlled by a final questionnaire targeting their perceived progress throughout their instruction. designed from the ground up with the cefr as a backdrop, this method can be easily tallied with objective assessment to uncover data about students’ linguistic performance in clil contexts. keywords: clil, cefr, emi, educational research, plurilingualism i. clil as a contested approach most universities around the globe now offer full or partial degrees taught through a foreign language. english has long been the language of science, but these degrees have made english “the language of higher education in europe” (coleman 2006: 1). part programmatic development, part explicit competition in a wider tertiary environment, english has become the de-facto language for academic discourse and those refusing to provide english-taught modules endanger their global scientific visibility (alexander 2006). particularly in europe, there is a strong consensus on the methodological approach to be used when a content module or degree is taught through a language other than the students’ mother tongue (often in english as the medium of instruction, or emi). content and language integrated learning (clil) “is part of mainstream school education in the great majority of countries at primary and secondary levels” (eurydice measuring the impact of clil on language skills: a cefr-based approach for higher education language value 6 (1), 28-50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 29 2006: 13) and, more recently, it has also become a major move towards multilingualism at the tertiary level (fortanet-gómez 2013). unlike immersion programmes, multilingualism and clil assume that the role of language for the participants need not be transparent for either lecturer or student (lagasabaster and sierra 2010) and devise interventions to foster linguistic skills alongside content. rather than being a strict method, clil is “essentially methodological” (marsh 2008: 244). its theorists claim it fosters a flexible, inclusive approach which can be applied through many specific methodologies, since both content and language are integrated. its advocates stress that by “integrating language and subject teaching, various forms of educational success can be achieved where classrooms comprise learners with diverse levels of linguistic competence” (marsh 2006: 3). they believe it creates an “innovative fusion of non-language subject with and through a foreign language” (coyle, hood and marsh 2010: 1) and, as it focuses mainly on explaining meaning and not language per se, it allows for “implicit and incidental learning” in “naturalistic situations” (marsh 2002: 72). clil reportedly enables one “to learn as you use and use as you learn” (marsh 2002: 66) rather than learning language on its own or as separate from content. while the introduction of clil/emi opens a window for the revision of instructional strategies in many disciplines, a considerable number of participants have observed the problems it adds to their programmes of study. language level is often at the core of this criticism; content lecturers have complained about the lack of sophistication in their students’ use of english (erling and hilgendorf 2006: 284) and questioned their own abilities to tackle linguistic issues (airey 2013: 64), particularly in the case of nonnative english (coyle 2008: 105-106). the seemingly implicit need for the “watering down and simplification of content to make it comprehensible” (costa and coleman 2010: 13) questions the quality of learning in emi contexts. some have thus called for the “limiting effect” of a foreign language as a medium of instruction on students’ final performance to be accepted as something unavoidable (clegg 2001: 210). prima facie, clil as theory and its implementation as practice seem to be at odds. opponents, however, often overlook the fact that provisions made for vital structural readjustments affecting budget, staff development and educational design (mellion 2006) may not always have been well designed (airey 2011: 43-45). there is clearly a antonio josé jiménez-muñoz language value 6 (1), 28-50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 30 need for more development programmes, and advances in teacher-training (marsh, mehisto, wolff and frigols-martin 2012) may help design better programmes that target the specific skills needed to teach through a second language (ball and lindsay 2013). lecturers nevertheless attempt to overcome these linguistic hurdles with a number of mediations, techniques and approaches, but the success of these actions is often left unexplored, analysed subjectively or tightly linked to results. a closer assessment of both the effectiveness of those practices and their connection to the expected learning outcomes is essential to guarantee quality. for the learner, it is not a case of either-or: students need both content and language for future studies and employment (rienties, brouwer and lygo-baker 2013). until conclusive proof is found, the controversy over the usefulness of clil and emi to promote excellence in both content and language learning will continue. our study seeks to begin to address the lack of empirical evidence by establishing an evaluation framework that could be readily applicable to various clil implementations in order to provide proof towards their effect on the english of learners. ii. the need for evidence-based research there is a strong need to provide evidence for the hypotheses surrounding clil. the hopeful advantage of teaching “two for the price of one” and the “added value of clil” both need to be supported (bonnet 2012: 66) to avoid the “risk of becoming a ‘buzz word’ without evidence-based research” (hunter and parchoma 2012). unless this research is carried out to assess the quality of language-learning under clil programmes, they run the risk of becoming undervalued despite their obvious merits. most criticism is focused on the idea that a2-b1 students fresh from high school will find it impossible to cope with the linguistic demands of academic tasks; as a student progresses towards c1-level, this perception of english as limiting students’ academic performance becomes gradually unsustainable. however, several reasonable questions remain: how much does a student progress in his or her language proficiency with no specific language instruction? how successful are particular instruction tactics to teach the language and motivate students towards linguistic subtleties? how aware of their linguistic progress are students and how do they qualify it? measuring the impact of clil on language skills: a cefr-based approach for higher education language value 6 (1), 28-50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 31 there has been comparatively little hands-on research assessing the effectiveness of clil implementations, and most of what has been conducted has been mainly restricted to primary and secondary education (thomas and collier 2002; barnett, yarosz, thomas, jung and blanco 2007; cobb, vega and kronauge 2009; lindholm-leary 2011). some studies, such as kirkgöz (2005, 2009), vizconde (2006) and londo (2012), have centred upon student motivation and attitudes towards the use of emi in higher education, while others have linked particular skills to academic results (morrison, merrick, higgs and le métais 2005; rienties, beausaert, grohnert, niemantsverdriet and kommers 2012). however, there is very little empirical research on students’ actual performance which is data-driven (llinares and whittaker 2010). gradually, studies focused on particular skills (ruiz de zarobe 2010, navés 2011) and the effect of language level on learning content (aguilar and muñoz 2013) are appearing, but more solid and standardised evidence is needed for the language learning taking place under clil/emi conditions, particularly in higher education contexts. iii. a cefr-based research method the multiplicity of different linguistic skills displayed by students in class requires conflating these skills into a framework which makes students’ progress in reading, writing, listening and speaking understandable, referable and translatable. with its detailed use of descriptors, we have a perfect backdrop in the cefr for the interpretation of particular learner skills. thus, thinking inversely, those tools which aim to assess that linguistic performance would benefit from observing the cefr from the ground up, rather than having their outcomes transferred to cefr descriptors and levels. our approach designs a framework which grades student abilities and interprets them into cefr-coded language, which is in turn easier for linguists to demonstrate against students’ actual oral and written performance. it also helps when it comes to tracking learner performance over time, so that a student would progress or regress among different levels in that particular skill during their period of emi instruction. consequently, it may prove a valuable tool to show both qualitative and quantitative evidence for the actual linguistic learning taking place in clil/emi programmes. antonio josé jiménez-muñoz language value 6 (1), 28-50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 32 the aim of our study, then, is to offer an initial but solid framework for such evaluation based upon the cefr levels and descriptors as revised and refined by eaquals (evaluation and accreditation of quality in language services). these expanded, new levels and descriptors are more readily usable by university students as they are more varied and their wording is less technical than the original cefr descriptors developed in the 1990s. the new eaquals design also helps identify a total of eleven levels instead of the original six, which adds granularity and refinement, thereby making these descriptors particularly useful for shorter periods of reduced direct instruction, such as university semesters. iii.1. design phase the implementation of our framework has three major stages: design, data-collection and evaluation. in the design phase, content lecturers allocate cefr-compliant skills and sub-skills for students to perform, as specified in the module syllabus, and their attached tasks. these particular skills are then individually mapped onto their respective cefr level, which offers a detailed multi-level grid of the expected level from students. doing so has several inherent diagnostic advantages, such as detecting potential problems, designing strategies to promote excellence or setting an egress cefr level, as well as realising the linguistic complexity of those academic tasks set by lecturers. often overlooked in l1 contexts, this effect in module design might hinder students’ academic performance on purely linguistic grounds. these sub-skills are the major part of a questionnaire reflecting actual student ability as per cefr levels both in each grouped skill and globally. our survey adds more details about students’ background and profile to enable subject modelling and prototyping. iii.2. data collection first, students must complete an initial questionnaire (at the beginning of the semester, module or course) detailing their attitude towards studies, intrinsic motivation and selfperception of their english-language skills. the language part of the questionnaire is standardised according to cefr/eaquals descriptors (see references below), but students are not given any indication about the level each descriptor belongs to. they measuring the impact of clil on language skills: a cefr-based approach for higher education language value 6 (1), 28-50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 33 are required to evaluate their confidence in doing a number of linguistic tasks. in this way, students are in fact grading themselves in the skills and sub-skills identified as being required for their university core modules and tasks. additionally, it allows quantitative fine-graining, in five degrees, of their confidence in their performance in each skill, and fallibility control by means of items of the same skill/level in the same questionnaire. a second questionnaire is presented towards the end of the research period. when data has been compiled and analysed, this method allows student perceptions to be verified through an analysis of the oral or written work they have produced in their modules, which in turn enables language to be prototyped and linked to students’ academic achievement. iii.2.1 initial survey please note that this survey is a tailored questionnaire, specifically designed for firstyear students in an emi economics degree programme at a spanish university and, as such, it could serve as a proof-of-concept, to be expanded and adapted to other contexts. students have a minimum a2 level of english in all four skills, although their background and language abilities vary greatly. the survey is computerised, nominal and all items are compulsory. items 1-3 are demographic. items 4-15 enquire about the english-related educational background of the student to enable modelling/prototyping. items 16-19 respond to those skills needed in students’ particular degree programmes and in this case vary from b1 to c1 levels, since a full a1-c2 range is possible but unmanageable. the full cefr range is kept, however, for a more general evaluation of control items 20-27. cefr level references, in square brackets, are stated for the purposes of this paper, but are not present in the actual student survey. table 1. english level self-assessment: initial survey 1. please state your sex. • male • female 2. which year were you born? (open numeric answer) 3. which is your first language? • spanish • french • italian antonio josé jiménez-muñoz language value 6 (1), 28-50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 34 • german • an asian language • another romance language • another germanic language • a slavic language • other 4. please state whether you can use other languages and, if so, how well, using 1 (= not spoken) to 5 (fluent). • spanish (1-5) • french (1-5) • italian (1-5) • german (1-5) • an asian language (1-5) • another romance language (1-5) • another germanic language (1-5) • a slavic language (1-5) • other – please specify (1-5) 5. how many years have you been learning english? (open numeric answer) 6. which of these aspects do you find particularly difficult about learning english? (you can select more than one) • grammar structures • vocabulary • pronunciation • understanding what i read • understanding native speakers • understanding other foreigners when they speak english • writing long, formal texts • writing short, informal texts • speaking english with native speakers • speaking english with other foreigners 7. which of these aspects do you find easier about learning english? (you can select more than one) • grammar structures • vocabulary • pronunciation • understanding what i read • understanding native speakers • understanding other foreigners when they speak english • writing long, formal texts • writing short, informal texts • speaking english with native speakers • speaking english with other foreigners 8. which of these do you regularly do in english, if any? (you can select more than one item) • listening to music • reading books or magazines • reading websites • speaking to other people • talking on the phone/webcam • writing letters or e-mails • using social networks, text-based chat or forums • watching online videos, films or tv programmes • other – please specify 9. have you ever been to an english-speaking country, lived, studied or worked with people whose first language was english, so you had to use english for communication? please state the total amount of time these experiences lasted for. • never • 1 month • 1-3 months • 4-6 months • 6-12 months • more than 1 year • more than 2 years • more than 3 years measuring the impact of clil on language skills: a cefr-based approach for higher education language value 6 (1), 28-50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 35 • 4 years or more 10. please state your general attitude towards these points, using 1 (very negative) to 5 (very positive). • english language (1-5) • english lessons (1-5) • english teachers (1-5) • british or american culture (1-5) • the culture of other english-speaking countries (1-5) • british or american native speakers (1-5) • speakers from other english-speaking countries (1-5) • speaking in english with foreigners (1-5) 11. how would you describe your general level of english? • basic or elementary • pre-intermediate • intermediate • upper-intermediate • advanced • proficient / bilingual 12. what are your motivations for studying/improving your english? (you can select more than one) • travelling around the world • meeting people from different countries • having more opportunities in the future • knowing more about the language and culture • finding a job in the future • using the language as a tool to work in my country • using the language as a tool to work abroad • selling goods to other countries • being socially respected • other – please specify 13. what was your approximate university access test grade in the english paper? please use a comma for decimals. example: 8,2 (open numeric answer) 14. have you taken any extra english courses, apart from those at school? • never • about one year • about 2-3 years • about 4-5 years • about 6-7 years • more than 7 years 15. which is the highest english certificate you have obtained? • no certificate, just high-school / official language school basic level / cambridge ket with merit or pet / trinity 3 or 4 (cefr a2 , or similar certificate) • official language school intermediate level / cambridge pet with merit or fce grade d / trinity 4 or 5 (cefr b1, or similar certificate) • official language school advanced level / cambridge pet with distinction, fce grade b or c, cae grade d / trinity 6, 7 or 8 (cefr b2, or similar certificate) • official language school c1 / cambridge fce grade a, cae grade b or c, cpe grade d / trinity 10 or 11 (cefr c1, or similar certificate) • cambridge cae grade a, cpe grade a, b or c / trinity 12 (cefr c2, a similar certificate, or native speaker) 16. can you do the following? answer using 1 (no) to 5 (yes) to express how confident you feel in each of these skills. • i can understand in detail texts within my field of interest or the area of my academic or professional speciality. [b2.2] • i can understand the motives behind the characters’ actions and their consequences for the development of the plot in a narrative or play. [b2.2] • i can rapidly grasp the content and the significance of news, antonio josé jiménez-muñoz language value 6 (1), 28-50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 36 articles and reports on topics connected with my interests or my job, and decide if a closer reading is worthwhile. [b2.1] • i can read and understand articles and reports on current problems in which the writers’ express specific attitudes and points of view (e.g. arts reviews, political commentary). [b2.1] • i can take a quick look through simple, factual texts in magazines, brochures or on a website, and identify whether they contain information that might be of practical use to me. [b1.2] • i can identify the main conclusions in clearly written texts which argue a point of view. [b1.2] • i can follow clear, written instructions (for example for a game, the use of a cosmetic or medicine or when using a piece of electronic equipment for the first time). [b1.1] • i can find out and pass on straightforward factual information. [b1.1] 17. can you do the following? answer using 1 (no) to 5 (yes) to express how confident you feel in each of these skills. • i can use a variety of linking words efficiently to mark the relationships between ideas clearly. [b2.2] • i can develop an argument systematically in a composition or report, emphasising decisive points and including supporting details. [b2.2] • i can present a topical issue in a critical manner and weigh up the advantages and disadvantages of various options. [b2.1] • i can write clear, detailed descriptions on a variety of subjects related to my field of interest. [b2.1] • i can communicate with reasonable accuracy and can correct mistakes if they have led to misunderstandings. [b2.1] • i can summarise non-routine information on familiar subjects from various sources and present it to others with some confidence. [b1.2] • i can develop an argument in writing well enough to be followed without difficulty most of the time. [b1.2] • i can write short, comprehensible connected texts on familiar subjects. [b1.1] 18. can you do the following? answer using 1 (no) to 5 (yes) to express how confident you feel in each of these skills. • i can identify speaker viewpoints and attitudes as well as the information content in recordings on social, professional or academic subjects. [b2.2] • i can understand the main ideas of complex speech delivered in a standard dialect, including technical discussions in my field of specialisation. [b2.1] • i can understand in detail what is said to me in standard spoken language even in a noisy environment. [b2.1] • i can follow the essentials of lectures, talks and reports and other forms of academic or professional presentation in my field. [b2.1] • i can understand announcements and messages on concrete and abstract topics spoken in standard dialect at normal speed. [b2.1] • i can understand straightforward information about everyday, studyor work-related topics, identifying both general messages and specific details, provided people speak clearly in a familiar accent. [b1.2] • i can follow a lecture or talk within my own field, provided the subject matter is familiar and the presentation straightforward and clearly structured. [b1.2] measuring the impact of clil on language skills: a cefr-based approach for higher education language value 6 (1), 28-50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 37 • i can understand the information in audio material on topics that interest me provided it is spoken clearly in a standard accent. [b1.2] • i can follow a lot of what is said around me, when people speak clearly and without using idioms and special expressions. [b1.2] • i can understand the main points of clear standard speech on familiar, everyday subjects, provided there is an opportunity to get repetition or clarification sometimes. [b1.1] 19. can you do the following? answer using 1 (no) to 5 (yes) to express how confident you feel in each of these skills. • i can keep up with a discussion and express my ideas and opinions clearly, precisely and convincingly even in formal meetings. [b2.2] • if i don’t know a word or expression i can find another way of saying what i mean. [b2.2] • i can express exactly what i want to, focusing on both what i say and how i say it. [b2.2] • i can take an active part in extended conversation on most general topics. [b2.1] • i can evaluate advantages and disadvantages, and participate in reaching a decision. [b2.1] • i can account for and sustain my opinions in discussion by providing relevant explanations, arguments and comments. [b2.1] • i can give clear, detailed descriptions on a wide range of subjects related to my fields of interest. [b2.1] • i can speculate about causes, consequences, hypothetical situations. [b2.1] • i can develop a clear, coherent argument, linking ideas logically and expanding and supporting my points with appropriate examples. [b2.1] • i can use standard phrases like “that’s a difficult question to answer” to gain time and keep the turn while formulating what to say. [b2.1] • i can generally correct slips and errors if i become aware of them or if they have led to misunderstandings. [b2.1] • i have sufficient vocabulary and can vary formulation when expressing myself on matters connected to my field and on most general topics. [b2.1] • i can produce stretches of language with a fairly even tempo; although i can be hesitant as i search for expressions, there are few noticeably long pauses. [b2.1] • i can explain why something is a problem and comment on what other people think. [b1.2] • i can develop an argument well enough to be followed without difficulty most of the time. [b1.2] • i can sum up what has been said about something we are discussing. [b1.2] • i can start, maintain and close simple face-to-face conversation on topics that are familiar or of personal interest. [b1.1] • i can agree and disagree politely. [b1.1] • i can briefly explain and justify my points of view. [b1.1] • i can give a short prepared presentation, without practising word for word, and answer clear questions. [b1.1] • i can ask someone to clarify or elaborate what they have just said. [b1.1] antonio josé jiménez-muñoz language value 6 (1), 28-50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 38 20. select the statement which best represents your general ability in reading english. • i can understand any kind of text, including those written in a very colloquial style and containing many idiomatic expressions or slang. [c2] • i can understand in detail lengthy, complex texts, whether or not they relate to my area of speciality. [c1.2] • i can understand in detail a wide range of lengthy, complex texts likely to be encountered in social, professional or academic life, though i may want time to reread them. [c1.1] • i have a broad active reading vocabulary, which means i can read with a large degree of independence, adapting style and speed of reading to different texts and purposes. [b2.2] • i can read with a large degree of independence, using dictionaries and other reference sources selectively when necessary. [b2.1] • i can understand the main points in straightforward texts on subjects of personal or professional interest. [b1.2] • i can understand the main points in straightforward factual texts on subjects of personal or professional interest well enough to talk about them afterwards. [b1.1] • i can understand short, simple texts on familiar subjects, which consist of high-frequency, everyday or job-related language. [a2.2] • i can understand short, simple texts containing familiar vocabulary including international words. [a2.1] • i can read very short, simple texts very slowly by understanding familiar names, words and basic phrases. [a1.2] • i can recognise names, words and phrases i know and use them to understand very simple sentences if there are pictures. [a1.1] 21. select the statement which best represents your general ability when writing in english. • i can produce written work that shows good organisational structure, with an understanding of the style and content appropriate to the task. i can produce text which is proof-read and laid out in accordance with relevant conventions. [c2] • i can write well-structured texts which show a high degree of grammatical correctness and vary my vocabulary and style according to the addressee, the kind of text and the topic. [c1.2] • i can write clear, well-structured texts on complex topics in an appropriate style with good grammatical control. [c1.1] • i can use a range of language to express abstract ideas as well as topical subjects, correcting most of my mistakes in the process. [b2.2] • i can write at length about topical issues, even though complex concepts may be oversimplified, and can correct many of my mistakes in the process. [b2.1] • i can write about a variety of familiar subjects well enough for others to follow my story or argument. [b1.2] • i can write short, comprehensible connected texts on familiar subjects. [b1.1] • i can write about my everyday life in simple sentences (people, places, job, school, family, hobbies, etc.). [a2.2] • i can write about myself using simple language. for example: information about my family, school, job, hobbies, etc. [a2.1] • i can write simple sentences about myself, for example, measuring the impact of clil on language skills: a cefr-based approach for higher education language value 6 (1), 28-50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 39 where i live and what i do. [a1.2] • i can write about myself and where i live, using short, simple phrases. [a1.1] 22. select the statement which best represents your general ability to understand spoken in english. • i can understand any kind of spoken language, whether live or broadcast, delivered at fast speed, even in a noisy environment. i can appreciate irony and sarcasm and draw appropriate conclusions about their use. [c2] • i can understand a wide range of idiomatic expressions and colloquialisms, appreciating shifts in style and register. [c1.2] • i can understand enough to follow extended speech on abstract and complex topics of academic or vocational relevance. [c1.1] • i can understand standard spoken language, live or broadcast, even in a noisy environment. [b2.2] • i can understand the main ideas of complex speech on concrete and abstract topics delivered in a standard dialect, including technical discussions in my field of specialisation. [b2.1] • i can understand straightforward information about everyday, studyor work-related topics, identifying both general messages and specific details, provided people speak clearly in a familiar accent. [b1.2] • i can understand the main points of clear standard speech on familiar, everyday subjects, provided there is an opportunity to get repetition or clarification sometimes. [b1.1] • i can understand enough of what people say to be able to meet immediate needs, provided people speak slowly and clearly. [a2.2] • i can understand simple information and questions about family, people, homes, work and hobbies. [a2.1] • i can understand people if they speak very slowly and clearly about simple everyday topics. i can understand people describing objects and possessions (e.g. colour and size). [a1.2] • i can understand simple words and phrases, like "excuse me", "sorry", "thank you", etc. i can understand the days of the week and months of the year. i can understand times and dates. i can understand numbers and prices. [a1.1] 23. which of these is closest to what you can do when understanding spoken english? • i can recognise familiar words and very basic phrases concerning myself, my family and immediate concrete surroundings when people speak slowly and clearly. [a1] • i can understand phrases and the highest frequency vocabulary related to areas of most immediate personal relevance (e.g. very basic personal and family information, shopping, local area, employment). i can catch the main point in short, clear, simple messages and announcements. [a2] • i can understand the main points of clear standard speech on familiar matters regularly encountered in work, school, leisure, etc. i can understand the main point of many radio or tv programmes on current affairs or topics of personal or professional interest when the delivery is relatively slow and clear. [b1] • i can understand extended speech and lectures and follow even complex lines of argument provided the topic is reasonably familiar. i can understand most tv news and current affairs programmes. i can understand the majority of antonio josé jiménez-muñoz language value 6 (1), 28-50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 40 films in standard dialect. [b2] • i can understand extended speech even when it is not clearly structured and when relationships are only implied and not signalled explicitly. i can understand television programmes and films without too much effort. [c1] • i have no difficulty in understanding any kind of spoken language, whether live or broadcast, even when delivered at fast native speed, provided i have some time to get familiar with the accent. [c2] 24. which of these is closest to what you can do when understanding texts in english? • i can understand familiar names, words and very simple sentences, for example on notices and posters or in catalogues. [a1] • i can read very short, simple texts. i can find specific, predictable information in simple everyday material such as advertisements, prospectuses, menus and timetables, and i can understand short simple personal letters. [a2] • i can understand texts that consist mainly of high frequency everyday or job-related language. i can understand the description of events, feelings and wishes in personal letters. [b1] • i can read articles and reports concerned with contemporary problems in which the writers adopt particular attitudes or viewpoints. i can understand contemporary literary prose. [b2] • i can understand long and complex factual and literary texts, appreciating distinctions of style. i can understand specialised articles and longer technical instructions, even when they do not relate to my field. [c1] • i can read with ease virtually all forms of the written language, including abstract, structurally or linguistically complex texts such as manuals, specialised articles and literary works. [c2] 25. which of these is closest to what you can do when talking to others in english? • i can interact in a simple way provided the other person is prepared to repeat or rephrase things at a slower rate of speech and help me formulate what i'm trying to say. i can ask and answer simple questions in areas of immediate need or on very familiar topics. [a1] • i can communicate in simple and routine tasks requiring a simple and direct exchange of information on familiar topics and activities. i can handle very short social exchanges, even though i can't usually understand enough to keep the conversation going myself. [a2] • i can deal with most situations likely to arise whilst travelling in an area where the language is spoken. i can enter unprepared into conversation on topics that are familiar, of personal interest or pertinent to everyday life (e.g. family, hobbies, work, travel and current events). [b1] • i can interact with a degree of fluency and spontaneity that makes regular interaction with native speakers quite possible. i can take an active part in discussion in familiar contexts, accounting for and sustaining my views. [b2] • i can express myself fluently and spontaneously without much obvious searching for expressions. i can use language flexibly and effectively for social and professional purposes. i can formulate ideas and opinions with precision and relate my contribution skilfully to those of other speakers. [c1] • i can take part effortlessly in any conversation or discussion measuring the impact of clil on language skills: a cefr-based approach for higher education language value 6 (1), 28-50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 41 and have a good familiarity with idiomatic expressions and colloquialisms. i can express myself fluently and convey finer shades of meaning precisely. if i do have a problem, i can backtrack and restructure around the difficulty so smoothly that other people are hardly aware of it. [c2] 26. which of these is closest to what you can do when speaking on your own in english? • i can use simple phrases and sentences to describe where i live and people i know. [a1] • i can use a series of phrases and sentences to describe in simple terms my family and other people, living conditions, my educational background and my present or most recent job. [a2] • i can connect phrases in a simple way in order to describe experiences and events, my dreams, hopes and ambitions. i can briefly give reasons and explanations for opinions and plans. i can narrate a story or relate the plot of a book or film and describe my reactions. [b1] • i can present clear, detailed descriptions on a wide range of subjects related to my field of interest. i can explain a viewpoint on a topical issue giving the advantages and disadvantages of various options. [b2] • i can present clear, detailed descriptions of complex subjects integrating sub-themes, developing particular points and rounding off with an appropriate conclusion. [c1] • i can present a clear, smoothly-flowing description or argument in a style appropriate to the context and with an effective logical structure which helps the recipient to notice and remember significant points. [c2] 27. which of these is closest to what you can do when writing in english? • i can write a short, simple postcard, for example, sending holiday greetings. i can fill in forms with personal details, for example entering my name, nationality and address on a hotel registration form. [a1] • i can write short, simple notes and messages relating to matters in areas of immediate needs. i can write a very simple personal letter, for example thanking someone for something. [a2] • i can write simple connected text on topics which are familiar or of personal interest. i can write personal letters describing experiences and impressions. [b1] • i can write clear, detailed text on a wide range of subjects related to my interests. i can write an essay or report, passing on information or giving reasons in support of or against a particular point of view. i can write letters highlighting the personal significance of events and experiences. [b2] • i can express myself in clear, well-structured text, expressing points of view at some length. i can write about complex subjects in a letter, an essay or a report, underlining what i consider to be the salient issues. i can select style appropriate to the reader in mind. [c1] • i can write clear, smoothly-flowing text in an appropriate style. i can write complex letters, reports or articles which present a case with an effective logical structure which helps the recipient to notice and remember significant points. i can write summaries and reviews of professional or literary works. [c2] antonio josé jiménez-muñoz language value 6 (1), 28-50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 42 iii.2.2 final survey this survey builds heavily upon the initial questionnaire. for this reason, items 31-42, being identical to 16-27, are not reproduced here. table 2. english level self-assessment: final survey. 28. after receiving lectures and performing tasks in another language, how has your english level changed? what skills have you improved the most? write a short comment about your ideas. (open answer) 29. how much do you consider you have improved your language skills after the module? 1= not at all; 5= i have improved a lot • grammar structures (1-5) • vocabulary (1-5) • pronunciation (1-5) • understanding what i read (1-5) • understanding native speakers (1-5) • understanding other foreigners when they speak english (1-5) • writing long, formal texts (1-5) • writing short, informal texts (1-5) • speaking english with native speakers (1-5) • speaking english with other foreigners (1-5) 30. how would you describe your general level of english at present? • basic or elementary • pre-intermediate • intermediate • upper-intermediate • advanced • proficient / bilingual … iii.3. data evaluation finally, in the evaluation stage, quantitative data from these channels above are collated and analysed in order to trace the impact of emi on students’ self-perceived evolution. when analysing data following our method, two strategies are observed: control and scoring. student data are controlled by three groups of items per skill, so that their level is not severely influenced by a single choice. student responses are weighted and, using a software package for statistical analysis, greater variance in student choices for descriptors at the same level is deleveraged. student responses are scored and distributed across the cefr levels as follows: measuring the impact of clil on language skills: a cefr-based approach for higher education language value 6 (1), 28-50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 43 table 3. cefr level default scores. level default score c2 100 c1.2 90 c1.1 80 b2.2 70 b2.1 60 b1.2 50 b1.1 40 a2.2 30 a2.1 20 a1.2 10 a1.1 5 items which show module-specific sub-skills (16-19) are analysed in a specific way: for each item, each of the self-assessed options (1-5) is multiplied by its default level score shown in table 3 and the mean of the multiple choice values is adjusted to the value of the maximum potential score (5 x 100 c2 level score). choices in items 20-27 are given the value of the default score for their level. the total for the skill is calculated using the weighted mean of the values in each category, unless adjusted by the statistical software, and interpreted as the level for that particular skill as referred to above. as an indication, we calculate the global level of the student as the mean of the four skills. table 4. outline of the analysis scoring. skill item (weight) score total 16 (50%) adjusted mean (choice 1 x level score, choice 2 x level score , choice 3 x level score …) 20 (25%) choice x level score reading 24 (25%) choice x level score weighted mean 17 (50%) adjusted mean (choice 1 x level score, choice 2 x level score , choice 3 x level score …) 21 (25%) choice x level score writing 27 (25%) choice x level score weighted mean 18 (50%) adjusted mean (choice 1 x level score, choice 2 x level score , choice 3 x level score …) 22 (25%) choice x level score listening 23 (25%) choice x level score weighted mean 19 (50%) adjusted mean (choice 1 x level score, choice 2 x level score , choice 3 x level score …) 25 (25%) choice x level score speaking 26 (25%) choice x level score weighted mean overall only as an indication of student’s overall level mean antonio josé jiménez-muñoz language value 6 (1), 28-50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 44 iii.3.1 sample analysis the sample below is from julia a., a first-year 19-year-old female student in an economics degree programme at a state-funded spanish university. her l1 is spanish, with 12 years of english instruction. julia finds pronunciation and speaking to foreigners particularly difficult, and thinks that writing is her strongest skill. she regularly reads webpages and forums in english, but she does not often listen to or speak english. julia has been to an english-speaking country for less than three months altogether, and she shows a positive attitude towards the english language and cultures. she has received extra-curricular english lessons for about two years, and she has not obtained any kind of language certificate. julia describes her level of english as intermediate, and expects to use english in the future to improve her employability. table 5. initial survey (24 sept 2012). skill item score total 16 option 1, b2.2: 4 x 70 = 280 option 2, b2.2: 3 x 70 = 210 option 3, b2.1: 5 x 60 = 300 … mean: 263.8 adjusted mean: 26380 / 500 = 52.8 20 option 5, b2.1: 60 reading 24 option 4, b2.2: 70 58.9 [b1.2] 17 option 1, b2.2: 4 x 70 = 280 option 2, b2.2: 4 x 70 = 280 option 3, b2.1: 5 x 60 = 300 … mean: 272.3 adjusted mean: 27230 / 500 = 54.5 21 option 3, c1.1: 80 writing 27 option 4, b2.2: 70 64.8 [b2.1] 18 option 1, b2.2: 3 x 70 = 210 option 2, b2.1: 4 x 60 = 240 option 3, b2.1: 5 x 60 = 300 … mean: 245.8 adjusted mean: 24580 / 500 = 49.2 22 option 6, b1.2: 50 listening 23 option 6, b1.2: 50 49.6 [b1.1] 19 option 1, b2.2: 3 x 70 = 210 option 2, b2.2: 4 x 70 = 280 option 3, b2.2: 3 x 60 = 180 … mean: 196.8 adjusted mean: 19680 / 500 = 39,4 25 option 3, b1.2: 50 speaking 26 option 3, b1.2: 50 44.7 [b1.1] overall only as an indication of student global level 54.5 [b1.2] measuring the impact of clil on language skills: a cefr-based approach for higher education language value 6 (1), 28-50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 45 table 6. final survey (12 july 2013). skill item score total 16 option 1, b2.2: 4 x 70 = 280 option 2, b2.2: 4 x 70 = 280 option 3, b2.1: 5 x 60 = 300 … mean: 283.2 adjusted mean: 28320 / 500 = 56.6 20 option 4, b2.2: 70 reading 24 option 4, b2.2: 70 63.3 [b2.1] 17 option 1, b2.2: 5 x 70 = 350 option 2, b2.2: 4 x 70 = 280 option 3, b2.1: 5 x 60 = 300 … mean: 298.7 adjusted mean: 29870 / 500 = 59.7 21 option 3, c1.1: 80 writing 27 option 4, b1.1: 80 69.9 [b2.2] 18 option 1, b2.2: 4 x 70 = 280 option 2, b2.1: 4 x 60 = 240 option 3, b2.1: 5 x 60 = 300 … mean: 266.2 adjusted mean: 26620 / 500 = 53.2 22 option 4, b2.2: 70 listening 23 option 6, b2.2: 70 61.6 [b2.1] 19 option 1, b2.2: 4 x 70 = 280 option 2, b2.2: 5 x 70 = 350 option 3, b2.2: 4 x 60 = 240 … mean: 231.2 adjusted mean: 23120 / 500 = 46.2 25 option 4, b2.1: 60 speaking 26 option 4, b2.1: 60 53.1 [b1.2] overall only as an indication of student global level 62 [b2.1] table 6. skills variance (from 24 september 2012 to 12 july 2013) skill initial final variance level variance reading 58.9 [b1.2] 63.3 [b2.1] +4.4 + 0.5 writing 64.8 [b2.1] 69.9 [b2.2] +5.1 +0.5 listening 49.6 [b1.1] 61.6 [b2.1] +12 +1 speaking 44.7 [b1.1] 53.1 [b1.2] +8.4 +0.5 overall 54.5 [b1.2] 62 [b2.1] +7.5 +0.5 antonio josé jiménez-muñoz language value 6 (1), 28-50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 46 iv. providing evidence: further steps for the particular case of julia, her self-assessment reveals a significant improvement in all skills despite receiving no language lessons. before readily attributing that improvement to emi, further and deeper work needs to be carried out to assess the objective extent of that influence and its social triggers (llinares and morton 2012). here, we have contrasted this possible influence of emi against three recorded taskbased observations to evaluate student performance by analysing discourse and written work. some variation was found between their own self-assessment and their actual performance in many of the sub-skills included in the questionnaire (hernandeznanclares and jimenez-munoz 2014). the objective assessment we present here would need to be performed on a substantial cohort at a number of institutions over a period of time to give further evidence supporting the clil hypotheses. the research method we present here is flexible and subject to refinement and adaptation for that purpose. it could contribute to the considerably small amount of quantitative research conducted on the impact of language-based interventions on language competence and academic performance within clil contexts. furthermore, modelling of student 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study”. in dalton puffer, c., t. nikula, and u. smit (eds.) language use and language learning in clil classrooms. philadelphia: john benjamins, 191-212. thomas, w. p. and collier, v. p. 2002. a national study of school effectiveness for language minority students’ long-term academic achievement. santa cruz, ca: university of california at santa cruz. antonio josé jiménez-muñoz language value 6 (1), 28-50 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 50 vizconde, c. j. 2006. “attitudes of student teachers towards the use of english as language of instruction for science and mathematics in the philippines”. the linguistics journal, 1 (3), 7-33. received: 13 june 2013 accepted: 12 march 2014 cite this article as: jiménez-muñoz, a.j. 2014. “measuring the impact of clil on language skills: a cefr-based approach for higher education”. language value 6 (1), 28-50. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2014.6.4 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 2014, volume 6, number 1 pp. 51-73 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2014.6.5 51 the common european framework of reference for languages: a european framework for foreign language speech development? bettina beinhoff bettina.beinhoff@anglia.ac.uk anglia ruskin university cambridge, united kingdom abstract this paper explores the representation of speech development and particularly perceptive skills in the cefr level descriptions. the speech-related cefr sections and related level descriptions are vague and none of the assumptions made therein (such as the supposed linear progression between levels) have been sufficiently tested yet. this paper presents an exploratory study on speech perception in language learners at different levels of proficiency and from different first language (l1) backgrounds (spanish and german). the study is based on transcriptions in response to short narratives, and investigates what kind of influence listeners’ levels of proficiency in the second language (in this case english) and their l1 backgrounds have on how intelligibility is perceived. the results suggest that proficiency levels and l1 background do indeed influence intelligibility (though not always as anticipated) and partially confirm the idea of a linear progression as proposed in the cefr. keywords: language assessment, second language acquisition, speech perception, intelligibility, pronunciation, non-native speech i. introduction ever since its publication in 2001, the common european framework of reference for language (cefr, council of europe 2001) has received much attention from a variety of professional communities, such as language assessors, language teachers and researchers in the area of second and foreign language acquisition. each of these communities has made significant contributions to the discussion and it is probably fair to say that in this way, the cefr has stimulated a truly interdisciplinary debate. the cefr was introduced to serve as a ‘common basis for the elaboration of […] curriculum guidelines […] across europe’ (council of europe 2001: 1). its central part is a description of proficiency levels of learners’ skills with the aim of facilitating bettina beinhoff language value 6 (1), 51-73 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 52 comparisons in language teaching and assessment across europe. after presenting a brief overview of the main areas of research dealing with the cefr, this paper will focus on phonological competence which is one of six communicative language competences (together with lexical, grammatical, semantic, orthographic and orthoepic competence) that define learners’ levels of proficiency within the cefr. in the following i will be mainly concerned with the representation of speech perception in the cefr and i will argue that although much work still needs to be done in order to develop the cefr to a stage where it can be fully used in language teaching and assessment, the cefr has the potential to be an incredibly useful tool for bringing more structure into the description of ‘learner englishes’ and it can provide an alternative to the increasingly criticised use of native speaker norms in second language (l2) and foreign language education. this discussion will be followed by an explorative study which takes ‘intelligibility’ as a means of testing whether differences between learners at different cefr proficiency levels actually exist. throughout the debate surrounding the cefr, many perceived shortcomings of the framework were raised across a wide range of areas, such as lack of detail in its descriptor scales which restricts the cefr’s applicability in language testing (weir 2005) and specifically in test development (alderson et al. 2006), the political and social agenda underlying the cefr and the way this affects language testing (fulcher 2004) and possible ‘abuses’ of the cefr in testing migrant’s language abilities (krumm 2007). nevertheless, the cefr has been noted to make valuable contributions, including providing a general framework for language testing which builds on familiar concepts (the notion of ‘beginner’, ‘intermediate’ and ‘advanced’ skills) to develop new approaches (e.g. little 2007), its potential for improving curriculum design (westhoff 2007) and to spark discussion about the applicability and comparability of language tests across platforms (e.g. tannenbaum and wylie 2008), across national borders (e.g. phakiti and roever 2011) and across languages (e.g. breton et al. 2010). while most of these debates were mainly centred on language testing and assessment, further research looked at specific areas of language use and development, such as discourse structure, where for example evison (2013) investigated turn-taking in academic spoken discourse and mccarthy (2010) studied fluency and its connection to turn-taking mechanisms such as turn-openings and turn-closings. most attention, the common european framework of reference for languages: a european framework for foreign language speech development? language value 6 (1), 51-73 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 53 however, has been devoted to issues concerning lexical and grammatical development within the cefr with studies based on several of the ‘bigger’ european languages; e.g. english (milton 2010), french (kusseling and lonsdale 2013) and german (hancke and meurers 2013). moreover, some studies attempted to link criterial features of the cefr to second language acquisition theory (see hawkins and filipović 2012 and hawkins and buttery 2010 for a discussion of the development of grammatical features within the cefr with regard to universal grammar and cognitive theories), however, none of them dealt with phonological development. ii. speech development in the cefr compared to discourse structures and lexical and grammatical development, phonological development has received little attention in research and discussions on the cefr so far. this is problematic because more general findings from studies in grammatical and lexical development or discourse structure may not be applicable to phonological development because it is known to diverge from other competences and does not follow the same development rates (flege and bohn 1989). in very extreme cases the differences between a learner’s level of phonological competence and the level of competence in other areas of development can lead otherwise highly proficient second or foreign language learners to speak with an accent that is hardly intelligible (cf. the ‘joseph conrad phenomenon’ in scovel 1981). this discrepancy is not addressed in the cefr proficiency level descriptions or in cefr-related research publications. in addition, cefr level descriptions provide no detail on speech production and perception. while all cefr level descriptions are intentionally vague, mostly as a matter of practicality and for historical reasons (trim 2010), the descriptions for speech production and perception are particularly limited. there is some information on ‘phonological control’ which refers to speech production and mainly focuses on accentedness, intelligibility and overall fluency (see table 1). bettina beinhoff language value 6 (1), 51-73 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 54 table 1: requirements for phonological control (council of europe 2001: 117) note: the labels a1-c2 refer to the proficiency level of the learner, where a1 stands for beginner, a2 for waystage or elementary, b1 for threshold or intermediate, b2 for upper intermediate, c1 for advanced and c2 for mastery level. phonological control c2 as c1 c1 can vary intonation and place sentence stress correctly in order to express finer shades of meaning. b2 has acquired a clear, natural, pronunciation and intonation. b1 pronunciation is clearly intelligible even if a foreign accent is sometimes evident and occasional mispronunciations occur. a2 pronunciation is generally clear enough to be understood despite a noticeable foreign accent, but conversational partners will need to ask for repetition from time to time. a1 pronunciation of a very limited repertoire of learnt words and phrases can be understood with some effort by native speakers used to dealing with speakers of his/her language group. perceptive skills, however, are not described as part of phonological control, nor are they described in any detail anywhere else in the cefr. rather, speech perception is mentioned as part of other skills; for example under “general phonetic awareness and skills” which combines production and perception: “many learners, particularly mature students, will find their ability to pronounce new languages facilitated by: an ability to distinguish and produce unfamiliar sounds and prosodic patterns; an ability to perceive and catenate unfamiliar sound sequences; an ability, as a listener, to resolve (i.e. divide into distinct and significant parts) a continuous stream of sound into a meaningful structured string of phonological elements; an understanding/mastery of the processes of sound perception and production applicable to new language learning. these general phonetic skills are distinct from the ability to pronounce a particular language.” (council of europe 2001: 107) the common european framework of reference for languages: a european framework for foreign language speech development? language value 6 (1), 51-73 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 55 teasing out the features which relate specifically to perception, the above quote differentiates between the ability to (a) distinguish unfamiliar sounds and prosodic patterns, (b) perceive unfamiliar sound sequences, (c) turn a continuous stream of speech into meaningful input and (d) understand or master the processes required in learning how to perceive (and presumably understand) a new language. these perceptive skills are not linked to any specific proficiency level whereas more general issues of speech perception are part of “listening comprehension”. however, much of the listening comprehension level descriptions refer to the discourse level and lexical features, including content and register of speech, and are otherwise rather vague. ii.1. linear progression the information given in the cefr at each proficiency level suggests a linear progression from very basic skills and knowledge at level a1 and a2 through the intermediate stages b1 and b2 to the advanced stages c1 and c2. as hulstijn (2007) quite rightly pointed out, it is by no means clear whether this progression from one level to the next corresponds to the learners’ actual development. widely discussed theories in l2 speech acquisition, such as the speech learning model (flege 1995) and the native language magnet model (kuhl 1993) propose specific ways in which learners progress in acquiring the sound system of a new language. for example, in the speech learning model, flege (1995) suggests that it is necessary to create a category for a new speech sound in order to be able to successfully identify it and distinguish it from similar first language (l1) and l2 sounds. similarly, kuhl’s native language magnet model (1993) suggests that new speech sounds are perceived with reference to already known speech sounds (typically from the learner’s l1). only with repeated exposure to these new sounds does the learner (implicitly or explicitly) perceive these new sounds as meaningful new speech sounds. this indicates that speech perception and speech production are closely linked, and, in fact, research suggests that these two levels interact (e.g. lacabex et al. 2008). this suggests that research into l2 speech production bettina beinhoff language value 6 (1), 51-73 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 56 and perception could potentially add much-needed detail to the cefr level descriptions. however, so far, research conducted with reference to l2 speech acquisition models has not looked at the specific development of l2 learners or include l2 learners at different levels of proficiency in line with the cefr. rather, the focus was mostly on learners from different first language backgrounds (e.g. anderson-hsieh et al. 1992, munro et al. 2006). a notable exception is hulstijn et al.’s (2011) study which looked at pronunciation skills to determine the connection between speaking proficiency and linguistic competences within the cefr for learners of dutch as an l2. this study found that pronunciation skills are an important factor in determining a learner’s proficiency level, together with knowledge of vocabulary and grammar in combination with processing speed. this particular study looked at language production, but given the importance of perceptive skills in the l2 acquisition process, it is crucial to establish whether l2 speech perception is a distinguishing factor between cefr proficiency levels, and if it is, to investigate what the differences between the proficiency levels are. ii.2. native speaker norms and non-native speaker performance as a brief additional note, i would like to add a few comments on a potential area of use for the cefr which has not received much attention in academic debate as yet. variability in learners’ (non-native) speech perception is usually studied in terms of how it varies from native speaker (ns) abilities and to what extent it follows ns norms. this, however, fails to address the fact that for many, if not for most, non-native speakers, ns proficiency in the perception and production of their second/foreign language is unattainable. in addition, there has been much debate about the suitability of ns norms for non-native speakers, especially with regard to the ever increasing international and intercultural use of the english language (cf. e.g. canagarajah and wurr 2011, cook 1999, he and zhang 2010, timmis 2002). this debate reveals a dichotomy between those proposing ‘nativeness’ (which in itself is difficult to define) as a central pronunciation target and those who regard intelligibility to a wide native and non-native speaker audience as more important (levis 2005). this need for more suitable norms and aims for language learners has the common european framework of reference for languages: a european framework for foreign language speech development? language value 6 (1), 51-73 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 57 been considered by fitzpatrick and racine (2013) in their recent study on using l1 performance profiles as an alternative tool for l2 assessment, albeit without explicit reference to the cefr. this lack of alternative norms and factors is particularly an issue in speech development where, so far, most research included well-established factors such as ‘age of learning’ and ‘length of stay in target language country’ (cf. piske et al. 2001), which are not necessarily relevant for the majority of language learners. especially with regard to the worldwide use of english, many learners – in europe and beyond – tend to learn english in their first language environments and may not necessarily travel to a target language country; and if they do, they may not stay in the country for extended periods of time. thus, norms and factors which were developed in contexts where language learners lived in the l2 environment for extended periods of time may not be suitable for most learners. in fact, factors such as ‘age’ have been shown to have a very different impact for learners in l1 environments as compared to those in l2 contexts (see lecumberri and gallardo 2003). thus, a more appropriate way of studying and assessing non-native speech would consider the learners’ progress in relation to their own development and that of language learners from comparable backgrounds. in this way, the reference framework which the cefr provides could potentially be used to track and assess learner development based on individual progress, rather than native speaker norms. furthermore, specifying cefr proficiency levels for non-native speech development would provide more detailed and appropriate descriptions of learner language than what is currently available (see e.g. the descriptions of different learner englishes in swan and smith 2001). descriptions of language learners’ typical speech patterns (if these really exist) at any given proficiency level could therefore also contribute greatly to fairer assessment and realistic learning aims and targets. iii. intelligibility and cefr proficiency levels: aims of the study bettina beinhoff language value 6 (1), 51-73 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 58 the above discussion reveals that it is by no means clear whether the learner progression as suggested in the cefr corresponds to the learners’ actual development. in addition, the information given on speech perception in the cefr is almost nonexistent and does not give any information on what learners ‘can do’ at any particular level. the following study is a very first attempt at shedding some light on (a) whether there are any differences in speech perception between learners at different cefr proficiency levels, and (b) if there are differences, to reveal any general trends of what might constitute these differences. intelligibility is one of the main concerns in the cefr level descriptions for ‘phonological control’ and it also features strongly under ‘general phonetic awareness and skills’. in addition, further research into issues of intelligibility is crucial as it is still not fully determined what pronunciation features contribute to intelligibility (cf. harding 2013). therefore, this study will use ‘intelligibility’ to address the main research aim by investigating if learners of english from different proficiency levels (b1 and c2) can understand given speech samples equally well. it is possible that ‘intelligibility’ may follow a linear progression as it is necessary to understand before it is possible to engage in communication. therefore, it seems likely that there may be differences between learners at b1 and c2 level. another aim is to find out what it is that inhibits intelligibility and whether it is different for learners at b1 and c2 level of proficiency. given that the l1 is considered to strongly influence speech perception, this study will also investigate if learners of english from two different l1s (german and spanish) show differences in how they perceive l2 speech. this is quite likely and is implicitly included in the cefr section on perception where distinguishing unfamiliar sounds and perceiving unfamiliar sound sequences are central concerns (german and spanish are phonologically very different and may therefore lead to different problems with intelligibility). finally, to account for the global use of english and the growing number of learners and non-native speakers (nns) of english which – at least theoretically – makes nns to nns communication much more likely than nns to ns communication, this study the common european framework of reference for languages: a european framework for foreign language speech development? language value 6 (1), 51-73 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 59 aims to investigate intelligibility of nns english. this study uses spanish nns accents in english as the speech stimuli because it is one of the most widely distributed nns accents in english. previous research is unclear about whether sharing the same l1 as the speaker is beneficial in understanding l2 communication, such as spanish learners of english understanding spanish-accented english (a detailed discussion is beyond the scope of this paper, but see e.g. major et al. 2002 and munro et al. 2006), however, it is possible that familiar sounds and patterns from l1 spanish may be easier to understand for spanish l1 speakers compared to, for example, german l1 speakers, because spanish speakers are more familiar with such structures. iv. methodology and procedure in this study, 20 german and spanish learners of english (from here on called “listeners”) responded to recorded speech samples spoken by four spanish nns of english (from here on called “speakers”). the listeners were german and spanish learners of english at different cefr proficiency levels: ten german learners of english; five at proficiency level b1 (i.e. threshold level) and five at proficiency level c2 (i.e. proficient user) and ten spanish learners of english; five at proficiency level b1 and five at proficiency level c2. in addition, five english ns took part in the study as a control group. the proficiency levels b1 and c2 were chose because the likelihood to obtain distinctive results was deemed relatively high. all participants were students in cambridge, uk, where the english ns and the c2 listeners studied a variety of subjects at the local universities and the b1 listeners were students at residential language schools. all listeners grew up monolingual with german, spanish or english as their l1; the german and spanish listeners had learned english at schools in their l1 environments before coming to cambridge. their proficiency levels were established through proficiency tests they had taken up to two months previously (for the b1 listeners) and up to one year previously (for the c2 listeners, who had been living in the uk since then). the spanish and german listeners had stayed in english-speaking countries between three weeks and six months (for level b1) and between five months and seven years (for level c2). the age at which they started learning english was similar across all proficiency levels. the spanish listeners bettina beinhoff language value 6 (1), 51-73 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 60 started learning english when they were between 6 and 9 years old and the german listeners when they were between 8 and 13 years old. the speech samples were recordings of four spanish nns of english with varying degrees of influence from their l1 spanish in their english pronunciation. all of these speakers were female. the speech samples were recorded in a sound-treated room with a digital recorder. the speakers were asked to describe three different picture stories and to talk about themselves without revealing any personal information. from these recordings, short utterances were isolated using the speech processing software audacity (version 2.0.3). these utterances varied in length between five and 15 words. for the experiment, eight speech files per speaker were selected from these utterances (i.e. 32 speech stimuli in total). the speech samples contain a great range of variation that is generally found in spanish nns accents of english (cf. coe 2001), such as • variation in vowel length and vowel quality • variation in specific consonants (e.g. pronunciation of english /z/ towards /s/ or /ʃ/; /b/ towards /v/ or /β/; /r/ towards [ʃ] and [r]; /h/ towards /x/) • regular sentence rhythm, which often leads to vowels being produced as full vowels (instead of the weak forms) in unstressed syllables • strong devoicing of final consonants • narrower pitch range, leading to what is often perceived as a ‘flat’ intonation the four speakers in this study show all of the above types of variation but differ in the extent to which this variation surfaces in their accents. in an auditory analysis, the accent of speaker 1 showed a greater amount of the above features than any of the other three accents. the accent of speaker 4 showed relatively few of these features while the accents of speaker 2 and speaker 3 ranked in-between the two. speech samples were played in silent conditions over headphones using a praat (boersma and weenink, 2013, version 5.3.42) script on a laptop. the samples were arranged in two different randomisation patterns to address possible influences of the common european framework of reference for languages: a european framework for foreign language speech development? language value 6 (1), 51-73 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 61 adjacent speech samples on the responses and also to avoid samples of the same speaker appearing in direct succession. the listeners were asked to transcribe exactly what they heard. they could listen to each sample only once and had to write down what they heard immediately after each file was played. the task was self-paced to give sufficient time for the transcriptions. prior to the actual task the listeners did a short familiarisation session with sentences which were not used in the study. in addition, the listeners filled out a questionnaire which asked for additional information on the participants’ background and familiarity with languages other than their l1 and familiarity with ns and nns accents of english. as expected, all spanish listeners were more familiar with spanish-accented english than the german and english listeners. v. results the 32 speech stimuli were transcribed by all 25 listeners resulting in 800 transcribed sentences. these were coded against a transcription of the speech stimuli (which were carefully transcribed by the researcher and checked by a colleague). for each transcription the number of correctly transcribed words was counted; spelling mistakes were not considered to be incorrect transcriptions in cases where the listener had clearly identified the intended word. intelligibility scores were obtained by calculating the percentage of correctly transcribed words in each stimulus (following derwing and munro 1997); mean scores for each participant group were calculated for each sentence and across all stimuli of each speaker. the mean scores for stimulus transcriptions ranged from 16% (lowest) to 100%, where listeners at b1 level usually achieved the lowest value (in stimulus 1 from speaker 1, spanish b1 listeners scored 24% as the lowest value and german b1 listeners 16%) while the lowest value for listeners at c2 level was 24% for the german listeners and 43% for the spanish listeners. each group managed to transcribe a number of stimuli 100% correct. across speakers, the lowest value for correct transcriptions was 47% (for the spanish b1 group’s transcriptions of speaker 1’s utterances) and the highest was 94% (spanish c2 group’s transcriptions of speaker 3’s utterances). bettina beinhoff language value 6 (1), 51-73 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 62 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 speaker 1 speaker 2 speaker 3 speaker 4 spanish b1 spanish c2 german b1 german c2 english ns figure 1: mean percentages of correct transcriptions across speakers. the percentage of correctly transcribed words is lowest for speaker 1 (47% correct transcriptions for the spanish b1 group) and highest for speaker 3 (94% for the spanish c2 group). all participant groups seemed to have understood speaker 3 very well, the above values are almost at ceiling level for this speaker across all groups (between 88% and 94%; see figure 1). the main differences between listener groups are evident in the results for speaker 1, 2 and 4, where in general listeners at b1 level achieved fewer correct transcriptions than the corresponding listeners at c2 level, and for speaker 4 the results of the german b1 listeners are level with those of the spanish c2 listeners. according to the results, german listeners made more correct transcriptions of the utterances of speaker 2 and 4 than the corresponding spanish listeners; for speaker 1, the spanish c2 level listeners made more correct transcriptions than the german c2 listeners, but the spanish b1 listeners transcribed fewer words correctly than the german b1 listeners. the number of correct transcriptions of the english ns is always very similar to that of the german c2 group. however, this general trend is only partially confirmed by a one-way anova (with the factor ‘listener-group’ and the dependent factor ‘speaker’) and a post-hoc tukey test, which reveal significant differences between the following pairs (see table 2). the common european framework of reference for languages: a european framework for foreign language speech development? language value 6 (1), 51-73 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 63 table 2: significant differences in correct transcriptions (non-significant results are not reported). speaker 1 speaker 2 speaker 3 speaker 4 spanish b1 spanish c2 (p = 0.017) german c2 (p = 0.044) english (p = 0.024) spanish c2 (p = 0.01) german b1 (p = 0.03) german c2 (p = 0.00) english (p = 0.00) spanish c2 (p = 0.09) german b1 (p = 0.05) german c2 (p = 0.002) english (p = 0.001) spanish c2 spanish b1 (p = 0.017) spanish b1 (p = 0.01) spanish b1 (p = 0.09) none german b1 none spanish b1 (p = 0.03) none spanish b1 (p = 0.05) german c2 spanish b1 (p = 0.044) spanish b1 (p = 0.00) none spanish b1 (p = 0.002) english spanish b1 (p = 0.024) spanish b1 (p = 0.00) none spanish b1 (p = 0.001) the results listed in table 2 indicate that the only statistically significant differences occur between the spanish b1 group and other groups, which suggests that the other groups transcribed the stimuli equally correctly. a closer look at the transcriptions reveals that the lower number of correct transcriptions for the spanish b1 listeners is influenced by a comparatively high number of blanket statements such as ‘i did not understand a word’. in quite a few cases listeners from this group seemed to have not understood the utterance at all or they may have given up because the utterance appeared to be too difficult to understand. this did not happen as much with the german b1 listeners who by and large at least managed to understand a few words, although in this group there are also some cases where no word has been transcribed or where all transcribed words were incorrect. it was not always possible to determine what lead to misunderstandings of certain words or whole utterances. however, there are a number of items which give some idea of what may have been the main issues involved. for example the word “catch” in the utterance “cat trying to catch a fish” (speaker 1, stimulus 3) was misunderstood to mean “cut” by eight listeners (two spanish b1, 2 spanish c2, one german b1 and three german c2 listeners) or “cat” by three listeners (one spanish b1, one spanish c2 and one german b1 listener). this indicates that the final voiceless affricate was not perceived as such by these listeners, and indeed, the speaker placed more emphasis on the initial part of this affricate, though the final fricative is still audible. it also appears that in this case the vowel was perceived as a more open vowel by those who bettina beinhoff language value 6 (1), 51-73 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 64 understood “cut”. in fact, in this example many listeners opted to transcribe a word which would actually make sense in this context; i.e. “trying to cut a fish” makes more semantic sense than “trying to cat a fish”. interestingly, only one german listener (from the c2 group) was able to identify the word correctly and all english ns transcribed “catch” correctly. all other listeners either transcribed “cat” or “cut” or did not attempt to transcribe the word. another word which stands out as difficult to perceive and transcribe is the word “beaver” in the utterance “the beaver got a fish in his hands” (speaker 2, stimulus 1). all listeners were able to correctly transcribe this sentence except for the word “beaver” which was transcribed as “river” by four listeners (one spanish b1, two german b1 and one english ns listener) and as “weaver” by one german c2 listener. other transcriptions were nonsense entries (such as “beaber” or “viver”, usually with an added question mark); five listeners correctly identified the word “beaver” (two spanish c2, two german c2 and one english ns listener). all the other listeners did not attempt to transcribe this word. misunderstandings were apparently caused by the speaker’s pronunciation of the /b/ sounds which varied towards a bilabial fricative, which explains why some listeners perceived it as a /v/ or /w/. again, some listeners opted for the closest known word (such as “river” and “weaver”) in their transcriptions. an almost identical pattern emerged in sentence 1 of speaker 3 “the white cat is looking at the beaver”, where all listeners were able to transcribe the sentence correctly but for the final word, which was transcribed as “river”, “viver”, “weaver” or similar. further combinations of factors caused misunderstandings, most notably final devoicing in combination with variation in vowel quality. in stimulus 2, speaker 2 “he suddenly hugged the hedgehog”, the word “hugged” is transcribed as “hack” by eight listeners (three spanish c2, one german b1, four english ns listeners) and as “hacked” by three listeners (one spanish c2 and two german c2 listeners); one german c2 listener was undecided between “hack” and “hug”, six listeners transcribed the word correctly (two spanish b1, one german b1, two german c2 and one english ns listener). in this utterance, the speaker devoiced the final consonant cluster /gd/ and produced the vowel slightly more fronted. the common european framework of reference for languages: a european framework for foreign language speech development? language value 6 (1), 51-73 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 65 another noteworthy case is stimulus 8 by speaker 2 “and then i was living for three years”, where the word “living” was transcribed as “leaving” by three german b1 and three german c2 listeners. all other listeners transcribed this word correctly, indicating that the variation in vowel length in this item was only problematic for the german listeners. however, in another instance of variation in vowel length (in stimulus 4 of speaker 3 “the cat is hitting the beehive”) eight listeners transcribed “hitting” as “heating” (two spanish b1, two spanish c2, two german b1, one german c2 and one english ns listener). in addition, six listeners transcribed this word as “hid in” (one spanish c2, one german b1, one german c2 and three english ns) which is due to the speaker’s voicing of the intervocalic consonant. another instance of vowel variation which lead to misunderstandings was in stimulus 8, speaker 4 “the box was full of bees and they start chasing the hedgehog”. here the word “bees” was transcribed as “beers” by seven listeners (two spanish b1, one spanish c2, two german c2 and two english ns listeners) and as “bears” by four listeners (two spanish c2, one german b1 and one german c2 listener). one listener (german c2) was undecided between these two options and wrote down both, four listeners (spanish c2, german b1, german c2 and english ns) transcribed the correct word, all other listeners did not attempt to transcribe this word. vi. discussion the main aim of this study was to investigate whether there are any differences between learners at different cefr proficiency levels in order to determine whether the proficiency levels as set out in the cefr correspond to actual differences in the performance of language learners. there are uncertainties about the validity of assumed learner progression from one level to the next (cf. hulstijn 2007) especially with regard to speech perception and production. the results of the present study, however, reveal that learners of english at b1 level had in general more difficulties understanding the speech stimuli than learners of english at c2 level, which was especially visible in the results for speaker 1, 2 and 4. interestingly, these differences were only statistically significant for the spanish listener groups and not for the german groups (a finding which is in itself interesting and should be investigated further). nevertheless, these bettina beinhoff language value 6 (1), 51-73 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 66 results confirm that there is indeed a difference between these two proficiency levels with regard to speech perception at least in some l1 groups. considering that the development of second/foreign language speech production and perception are considered to be closely interconnected (cf. lacabex, garcía lecumberri and cooke 2008), this result confirms that some of hulstijn et al.’s (2011) findings on pronunciation skills may also be applicable for speech perception in some contexts. in the transcriptions, some items stood out since many participants had difficulties understanding them. these items were analysed more closely to find general trends of what might cause intelligibility issues between learners at different proficiency levels. the main finding here is that many spanish b1 listeners did not transcribe a particular stimulus because they did not understand a single word of the stimulus (as many of these listeners later reported or noted on their transcription sheets). it is also likely that they may have perceived the utterance as too difficult to understand and thus did not attempt to transcribe anything, or ‘gave up’. it is quite possible that these listeners may have been able to transcribe at least some part of these stimuli had they been given the opportunity to listen to them again. after all, ‘repetition’ of speech is included in level a2 of ‘phonological control’ (i.e. speech production; council of europe 2001) and though it does not appear in the cefr section on “general phonetic awareness and skills” there is no reason why it should not be part of level descriptions for speech perception. there were no further findings regarding a possible influence of specific patterns on the intelligibility between proficiency levels, however, this does not necessarily mean that there is none. bearing in mind that the speech stimuli for the present study were based on natural speech in order to account for the kind of accents these learners are likely to encounter in everyday life, it is possible that speech stimuli which are controlled for specific features may reveal perceptual differences. however, based on the present study, it is not possible to show any general trends of what might constitute differences in speech perception and intelligibility between learners at b1 and c2 proficiency level other than that spanish b1 listeners were more likely not to understand and transcribe entire stimuli. the transcriptions and especially those of the difficult items were further analysed to reveal any differences between the spanish and german learners of english. based on the cefr’s account of “general phonetic awareness and skills” (council of europe the common european framework of reference for languages: a european framework for foreign language speech development? language value 6 (1), 51-73 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 67 2001) it is tempting to predict that the spanish listeners – who are more familiar with spanish accents than the german listeners, as revealed by the background questionnaire – would generally be better able to understand the spanish accents because these accents may include more familiar sounds and prosodic patterns. and indeed, in one stimulus the word “living” was misunderstood to mean “leaving” by most german speakers but not by the spanish listeners. this may indicate that spanish listeners are more likely to be able to process variation in vowel length as compared to german listeners (who would not normally have this feature in their accent). however, a different stimulus containing the same feature only in a different word (“hitting”) was misunderstood to mean “heating” by both spanish and german listeners. clearly this aspect would be worth further investigation; based on the present results, however, it appears that sharing the same l1 was not an advantage in understanding the speakers. in fact, for the stimuli spoken by speakers 2 and 4, the german listeners made fewer incorrect transcriptions than the spanish listeners. however, for speaker 1, the spanish c2 listeners transcribed more items correctly as compared to the german c2 group, while the spanish b1 group made fewer incorrect transcriptions than the german b1 group. vii. conclusion this paper was made up of two parts; in the first part it presented a brief overview of previous research into the common european framework of reference for languages (cefr; council of europe 2001) and gave an account of the representation of speech development in the cefr. in the cefr, speech production is covered by the level descriptions of “phonological control” which focuses mainly on intelligibility and accentedness of the speaker as perceived by native speakers of the language (cf. council of europe 2001: 117) and is otherwise rather vague. speech perception, however, is not included in any detail and only some possible features concerning speech perception are included in the section on “general phonetic awareness and skills” (ibid.: 107). this was followed by a review of previous research into speech perception which pointed out the main areas that would benefit from further investigation in relation to the cefr; i.e. the supposed linear progression between proficiency levels as described in the cefr, bettina beinhoff language value 6 (1), 51-73 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 68 but not confirmed by research findings, and the close connection between speech perception and production, which is included to a limited extent in the cefr section on “general phonetic awareness and skills”. in addition, this paper briefly explored the potential of the cefr to act as an alternative way of describing and evaluating learner speech without necessarily having to resort to native speaker norms and targets. given that there is a rising interest in such an alternative (cf. fitzpatrick and racine 2013) and considering that native speaker norms are not always suitable in language learning contexts (cf. e.g. cook 1999, he and zhang 2010) it is well worth exploring this possibility. the second part of this paper was devoted to an exploratory study of speech perception by learners of english at two different cefr proficiency levels, with ten german learners of english (five at proficiency level b1 and five at proficiency level c2) and ten spanish learners of english (five at proficiency level b1 and five at proficiency level c2). in addition, five english native speakers took part as a control group. these participants listened to speech samples based on recordings of four spanish nns of english with varying degrees of influence from their l1 spanish in their english pronunciation. the participants were asked to transcribe each stimulus exactly as they heard it. the transcriptions were then analysed for the number of correctly transcribed words and for any specific sounds and patterns which may have been difficult to understand. the study shows that some of the assumptions made in the cefr are valid and correspond to learners’ differences at the two levels of proficiency; for example, listeners at c2 level consistently transcribed more sentences correctly than the corresponding b1 level group (though this was only statistically significant for the spanish listeners). while this study only looked at these two levels, which are quite different in terms of the learners’ proficiency in the language, the results show that it would be worth looking at differences between adjacent levels, e.g. c1 and c2, which would also confirm whether the assumption that c1 and c2 are the same (as depicted in “phonological control”) holds in speech perception. while this study did not find any particular patterns regarding what was difficult to understand for b1 vs. c2 learners and for german vs. spanish learners, it must be born the common european framework of reference for languages: a european framework for foreign language speech development? language value 6 (1), 51-73 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 69 in mind that the stimuli were naturalistic and geared towards assessing overall intelligibility. however, there were some items which proved difficult for many listeners and these may be a suitable starting point for further investigation. in general, what this study shows is that intelligibility is a suitable measure with which to investigate differences in the perception of accents between speakers at different proficiency levels. in this paper, i hoped to show that it is crucial to conduct research into the representation of speech development in the cefr, for the benefit of learners, language practitioners, researchers and the further development of the cefr. the results from the study, though limited, have revealed that there are 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framework for developing comparable examinations and tests”. language testing, 22 (3), 281-300. westhoff, g. 2007. “challenges and opportunities of the cefr for reimagining foreign language pedagogy”. the modern language journal, 91 (4), 676-679. received: 25 june 2013 accepted: 17 january 2014 cite this article as: beinhoff, b. 2014. “the common european framework of reference for languages: a european framework for foreign language speech development?”. language value 6 (1), 51-73. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2014.6.5 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 2014, volume 6, number 1 pp. 74-99 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2014.6.6 74 motivation and constraints of illocution in the lexical constructional model: the case of the aux np construction nuria del campo martínez nuria.delcampo@hotmail.es universidad de la rioja, spain abstract this article addresses the motivation and constraints of illocutionary meaning production. within the framework of the lexical constructional model (lcm), i explore how our knowledge of illocution is understood in terms of high-level situational models which are activated to produce speech act meaning and the way such operations motivate the conventionalized value of linguistic expressions. in so doing, i analyze the realization procedures of the aux np construction in relation to their potential to exploit the semantic base of requestive acts. i will study the most conventional linguistic realizations of the construction and explore the way in which such realizations are used to produce a requestive meaning. the resulting account provides a comprehensive understanding of the constructional nature of illocutionary meaning on the basis of naturally occurring data. keywords: illocution, cognitive models, conceptual metonymy, conventionalization, idiomatic construction, requestive speech acts, lexical constructional model. i. introduction the existence of conventional speech acts was first dealt with by searle (1975) early in the development of speech act theory. while pragmaticists have generally neglected the conventionalization of illocution (leech 1983; sperber and wilson, 1995, inter alia), the systemic-functional approach (halliday 1994; halliday and matthiessen 2004) and dik’s (1989, 1997) functional account have devoted a great effort to formalize the value of conventional speech acts. in general terms, functional grammar theories have argued for sentence types as codified carriers of basic illocutions, the remaining resulting from derivation processes or from the language options. alternatively, the cognitive linguistic approach has accounted for illocution in terms of metonymically grounded inferential schemas which become conventionalized through usage (pérez 2001; pérez and ruiz de mendoza 2002; panther and thornburg 2003; stefanowitsch, 2003; ruiz de mendoza and baicchi 2007; brdar-szabó 2009). conventional illocutions have been discussed as motivation and constraints of illocution in the lexical constructional model: the case case of the aux np construction language value 6 (1), 52-77 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 75 constructions (i.e. form-meaning pairings, like those described by lakoff 1987; and goldberg 1995, 2006) that have entrenched speech act values. on the grounds of the observations on the constructional nature of speech acts, the lexical constructional model (lcm) (ruiz de mendoza and mairal 2008, 2011; mairal and ruiz de mendoza 2009; butler 2009) has incorporated illocution as part of a meaning construction system. the lcm, which draws insights from functional models of language, cognitive linguistics and constructionist approaches, especially from the work by goldberg (1995, 2006), is concerned with the connections between syntax and all aspects of meaning construction, positing four levels of representation: level 1 deals with lexical and constructional argument structure, level 2 with implicated meaning captured by low-level models, level 3 with conventionalized illocutionary meaning and level 4 with discourse aspects, including cohesion and coherence phenomena. each of the levels is either subsumed into a higher configuration or acts as a cue for the activation of relevant conceptual structure that yields an implicit meaning derivation. the integration of lower-level structures into higher-level ones is regulated by two cognitive processes, constructional subsumption and cued inferencing. constructional subsumption is the constrained incorporation of lower level structures into higher level configurations. cued inferencing is a form of linguistically guided interpretation based on cognitive operations such as metaphor, metonymy, reinforcement and mitigation, among others. the lcm aims at the highest possible degree of explanatory adequacy, insofar as it avoids the proliferation of analytical categories. instead, it assumes that all levels of linguistic description and explanation may make use of the same or at least comparable cognitive processes. this assumption is termed the equipollence hypothesis, which has enabled the model to achieve a high degree of regularity and parsimony in the study of meaning construction. several linguistic processes have been attested to be pervasive in different levels of meaning construction, such as lexical-constructional integration, subsumption, metaphor and metonymy and inferential activity. the illocutionary component of the lcm treats constructions as form-meaning pairings like other kinds of construction. what distinguishes illocutionary constructions from the others is the idiomatic nature of the linguistic form and the situational generic grounding. constructions with an illocutionary meaning have also been dealt with at the nuria del campo martínez language value 6 (1), 52-77 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 76 layer of argument structure, as in the case of the manipulative subjective-transitive construction (e.g. i want you out by lunchtime) studied by ruiz de mendoza and gonzálvez (2010). even though the lcm has not provided an inventory of illocutionary constructions, its explanatory apparatus is consistent with the descriptions developed by ruiz de mendoza and baicchi (2007). in their approach, illocutionary constructions are discussed in terms of the metonymic activation of high-level scenarios in application of a number of socio-cultural conventions stipulated within a description labeled the costbenefit cognitive model. this article develops the illocutionary layer of the lcm by analyzing how cognitive models are exploited by speakers to produce speech act meaning and the way such operations motivate the conventionalized illocutionary value of linguistic expressions. in so doing, it analyzes the cognitive grounding of the aux np requestive construction and its various realization procedures. on the basis of the lcm notion of situational meaning, this work formulates a generic structure for requestive acts and examines the reasoning schemas behind the different lexico-grammatical resources used for their expression. the understanding of illocution in terms of the constructional realizations that activate pieces of knowledge makes necessary to provide a refined description of the cognitive model types involved and of all the mechanisms that take part in meaning derivation. this is not only for the lcm account but also for other cognitively-oriented theories where illocutionary expression is considered realizational of semantic structures. this will be made apparent by a brief revision of the shortcomings presented by cognitive approaches to illocution. then it will be shown how these shortcomings are overcome within the constructionist perspective of the lcm, which has been preliminary outlined by ruiz de mendoza and baicchi (2007). it will be further explained the cognitive model types underlying implicit meaning derivation and how the activation of highlevel scenarios yields illocutionary acts which may become conventionalized. the analytical tools proposed by the lcm will be used to study the conventional and nonconventional realizations of the aux np construction and the way such realizations produce requestive illocutions, giving evidence of their explanatory adequacy. motivation and constraints of illocution in the lexical constructional model: the case case of the aux np construction language value 6 (1), 52-77 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 77 ii. the cognition of illocution within the framework of cognitive linguistics, panther and thornburg (1998: 756) have addressed illocution by pointing to the problems that the lack of consideration of the cognitive mechanisms has caused in inferential approaches, which are, first, the fact that, even though illocutionary interpretation is based on inference, speakers can grasp the indirect force of a speech act effortlessly (e.g. the request value of could you pass me the salt?); and second, that they ignore the inference mechanisms involved in the interpretation of illocution as well as their cognitive grounding. in order to overcome these two shortcomings, panther and thornburg (1998, 2004) propose that our knowledge of illocutionary meaning is organized in the form of scenarios, which are conceptual constructs of meaning representation abstracted away from prototypical situations where people attempt to get their needs satisfied through expressions of different kinds. illocutionary scenarios are stored in long-term memory and can be accessed metonymically by activating relevant parts in them. for example, indirect requests such as can you open the window?, will you shut the door? and do you have hot coffee? activate pre-conditions for the performance of a request, which are the addressee’s ability and willingness to help, and his possession of the required object. the activation of these pre-conditions affords access to the whole speech act category of requesting. 1 the key elements that make panther and thornburg’s proposal interesting from a cognitive perspective are storage in long-term memory and metonymic instantiation. their formulation has been revised, however, due to the lack of consideration of sociocultural variables that affect inferencing. these variables are listed by ruiz de mendoza and baicchi (2007: 103) as the following: (i) the power relationship between speakers, (ii) the degree of optionality conveyed, (iii) the degree of politeness, (iv) the degree of cost-benefit, (v) the degree of prototypicality, (vi) the semantic motivation of different kinds of indirect speech acts, and (vii) the cognitive grounding of illocutions. in ruiz de mendoza and baicchi’s proposal, following preliminary work by pérez and ruiz de mendoza (2002), socio-cultural variables of this kind are captured by cognitive models that combine with scenarios and form what they call high-level situational models. nuria del campo martínez language value 6 (1), 52-77 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 78 high-level models are constructed on the basis of generalizations over cases of everyday interaction where people attempt to satisfy or report their needs. everyday interaction is captured by low-level situational models, which consist in life scenarios such as taking a taxi, going to the dentist, teaching a class, and the like (see ruiz de mendoza, 2007, for a thorough description of cognitive model types). the activation of low-level scenarios produces implicated meaning. an example is provided by i waved down a taxi, where the waving sign implies that the speaker got into the taxi, he asked the driver to take him to the destination, and that he arrived safely. the implicature is obtained through the metonymic access to one relevant part of a low-level model about taking a taxi. the abstraction over the common structure shared by low-level models allows us to construct higher-level representations. for instance, from our observation of people begging in a wide range of contexts, we derive generic structure which makes up the high-level model of begging and allows us to interpret each specific instance. 2 in contrast to low-level models, high-level models capture a number of socio-cultural generalizations that carry different types of pragmatic information like optionality, politeness and cost-benefit variables. these variables derive from a single description called the cost-benefit cognitive model, which is defined by ruiz de mendoza and baicchi (2007) as a high-level model based on the concept of mutual manifestness proposed by sperber and wilson (1995). the cost-benefit cognitive model captures the relevant socio-cultural information of high-level scenarios associated to illocutionary meaning. let us reproduce ruiz de mendoza and baicchi’s (2007: 111) formulation of the cost-benefit cognitive model in order to explain how it underlies the construing of illocutionary meaning: (a) if it is manifest to a that a particular state of affairs is not beneficial to b, and if a has the capacity to change that state of affairs, then a should do so. (b) if it is manifest to a that a potential state of affairs is not beneficial to b, then a is not expected to bring it about. (c) if it is manifest to a that a potential state of affairs is beneficial to b, then a is expected to bring it about provided he has the capacity to do so. (d) if it is manifest to a that it is not manifest to b that a potential state of affairs is (regarded as) beneficial for a, a is expected to make this manifest to b. motivation and constraints of illocution in the lexical constructional model: the case case of the aux np construction language value 6 (1), 52-77 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 79 (e) if it is manifest to a that it is not manifest to b that a potential state of affairs is beneficial for b, a is expected to make this manifest to b. (f) if it is manifest to a that a state of affairs is beneficial to b and b has brought it about, a should feel pleased about it and make this feeling manifest to b. (g) if it is manifest to b that a has changed a state of affairs to b’s benefit, b should feel grateful about a’s action and make this feeling manifest to a. (h) if it is manifest to a that a has not acted as directed by parts (a), (b), and (c) of the ‘cost-benefit’ model, a should feel regretful about this situation and make this feeling manifest to b. (i) if it is manifest to b that a has not acted as directed by parts (a), (b), and (c) of the ‘cost-benefit’ model and a has made his regret manifest to b, b should feel forgiveness for a’s inaction and make it manifest to a. (j) if it is manifest to a and b that a particular state of affairs is not beneficial to b but a has no power to change it to b’s benefit, a should still feel sympathy for b over the non-beneficial state of affairs and make this manifest to b. (k) if it is manifest to a that a is responsible for a certain state of affairs to be to a’s benefit, a may feel proud about this situation and make it manifest to b. ruiz de mendoza and baicchi place the cost-benefit cognitive model at the core of the derivation of illocutionary meaning. in their view, the activation of relevant parts of the model creates an inferential path which can become conventionalized. a case in point is the can you vp? sequence for requests, which was originally intended as a way of reminding the addressee to help if it was within his range of abilities. this value was obtained through the activation of part (c) of the cost-benefit cognitive model. this convention structures the high-level model of requests and shapes their definitional parameters (i.e. optionality and politeness). the repeated use of the can you vp? expression in request contexts conventionalized their meaning to the extent that it ended up yielding a default illocutionary value. conventional forms of this kind have constructional status, that is, they are the formal part of form-meaning pairings conveying an illocutionary act. by contrast, those expressions which are unable to supply relevant points of access to the convention that shapes the conceptual nuria del campo martínez language value 6 (1), 52-77 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 80 representation of a speech act category require inferential activity to produce illocutionary meaning, which is regulated through metonymic access to high-level models, much in the same way as panther and thornburg (1998, 2004) have claimed. the theoretical implications of constructional conventionalization in terms of the application of socio-cultural norms are approached at a later stage in this article. iii. illocutionary constructions since searle (1975) acknowledged that certain linguistic forms became conventionally accepted for the performance of an indirect illocutionary force, the research on the issue has received a great deal of attention. one of the most important contributions to the subject has been carried out by functional grammar theories (dik 1989, 1997; halliday and matthiessen 2004), which have been largely criticized for overgrammatizalizing illocutionary phenomena which could be accounted for within the domain of pragmatics (see leech 1983: 56; butler 1996: 66, for criticism in this direction). nevertheless, although the emphasis placed within functional approaches on the grammatical side of language lacks of consideration of inferential reasoning, this position has managed to incorporate into grammar a number of relevant illocutionary distinctions which had been assigned to pragmatics. the development of a constructional approach like the one put forward in this study comes closer to the work by other functionalists like risselada (1993), who disagrees with the idea that grammatical mood codifies basic speech act types, given the wide variety of illocutionary meanings that each mood option has, and rather suggests assigning a certain illocutionary value to each sentence type and counting them as reference points. risselada’s (1993: 74) approach to illocution is based on the assumption that the illocutionary force of speech act types is expressed by means of combinations of the linguistic properties that reflect the characteristic features of the speech act involved. in its most explicit form, an utterance expresses all the essential features of a speech act category. implicit utterances, by contrast, are due to pragmatic variables such as power or politeness or to the fact that the shared background knowledge provides speakers with the necessary information to derive their illocutionary value. 3 even though risselada does not explicitly talk about constructions in her account, her proposal covertly points to a constructional view of illocution. her motivation and constraints of illocution in the lexical constructional model: the case case of the aux np construction language value 6 (1), 52-77 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 81 pairings of formal properties of speech acts with illocutionary meaning cannot be regarded otherwise. this theory is in line with cognitively-oriented approaches such as the one put forward by ruiz de mendoza (1999), later developed in ruiz de mendoza and baicchi’s (2007) work. ruiz de mendoza’s notion of specialization of function, like risselada’s degree of explicitness, defines the ability of a given expression to activate a higher or lower number of meaning conditions of a speech act type. following risselada’s and ruiz de mendoza’s insights and working within cognitive linguistics, pérez (2001), puts forward an approach to illocution according to which the meaning conditions of speech act categories were paired with the linguistic means through (i.e. realization procedures) which they were communicated. 4 the notion of illocutionary construction posited by pérez refines risselada’s and ruiz de mendoza’s work in two aspects. in the first place, pérez extends the concept to include linguistic properties such as sentence type, grammatical resources, lexical elements and suprasegmental features. this is quite an advantage, since they serve to increase the level of specialization of an expression to convey an illocutionary force. the type of illocutionary construction put forward in the present study also captures the array of properties proposed by pérez. the second refinement is that the semantic makeup of illocutionary constructions is accounted for in terms of propositional icms specifying the meaning conditions of a speech act category. in this way, pérez views constructions as pairings of form and function, where form consists in realization procedures capable of activating the semantic variables of an icm. the higher the number of variables that are activated by a realization procedure, the more prototypical the realization is for the expression of an illocutionary act. however, pérez does not refer to these realizations as constructions with fixed and modifiable elements. in contrast to pérez, ruiz de mendoza and baicchi (2007) do recognize a constructional status for those formulations with instantiation potential for the corresponding scenario. as has been explained above, these authors contend that expressions which become entrenched as inferential shortcuts acquire a constructional character. the can you vp? construction mentioned before is a case in point. ruiz de mendoza and baicchi’s proposal regards constructions as conventionalized linguistic forms whose capacity to activate parts of a scenario becomes conventionalized. such a conception of the term is nuria del campo martínez language value 6 (1), 52-77 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 82 similar to the one put forward by pérez, although differs from the latter in two essential aspects. the first difference concerns the semantic structure of the construction, structured in the form of cultural high-level models. as has been explained, high-level models are conceptual representations of abstract knowledge of illocutionary meaning. the formulation of high-level models to account for illocution seeks to capture the multi-faced amount of information that speakers possess during communication. later it will be shown that the description of illocutionary acts in terms of high-level models attains a greater degree of explanatory adequacy. the second difference has to do with the formal composition of illocutionary constructions. ruiz de mendoza and baicchi consider all the realization procedures specified by pérez (e.g. grammatical resources, lexical items, intonation, etc.), with the difference that they are arranged into stable structural configurations. a description of illocutionary acts in terms of ruiz de mendoza and baicchi’s constructions is very attractive for the following reasons: (i) it accounts for the motivation of form from meaning, and (ii) it makes it possible to build into grammar a wide range of illocutionary values. the lcm elaborates on the view of illocution that has been proposed by ruiz de mendoza and baicchi. illocutionary constructions are conventionalized linguistic forms whose capacity to activate parts of a high-level scenario becomes conventionalized. the lcm approach, however, refines their account by placing a stronger emphasis on the constructional composition of illocution and regard illocutionary constructions as formmeaning pairings made up of fixed (can you in can you vp?) and modifiable (vp in can you vp?) elements. the fixed elements cannot be changed without altering the meaning implications conveyed and the variable elements can be parametrized in a constrained way. constructions may also incorporate further elements with a wide range of meaning implications (e.g. the adverb please or beneficiary indicators in the case of requests). illocutionary constructions may also have to a degree of variation in their form with a consequent variation in their meaning. sequences like could you vp? and do you think you could vp? are variations of the can you vp? construction. the meaning variation of these constructional variants is associated with degrees of indirectness and politeness as well as differences in register. because of this, the lcm accounts for constructions that have elements in common in terms of family resemblance relationships (ruiz de mendoza and gonzálvez 2010). 5 a case in point is motivation and constraints of illocution in the lexical constructional model: the case case of the aux np construction language value 6 (1), 52-77 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 83 the aux np construction, which can be realized in many different ways to produce requestive speech acts. the constructional realizations of the aux np form are analyzed to explore their grounding in the conventions of the cost-benefit cognitive model and the interplay between linguistic structures instantiating requests and their conceptual motivation. throughout the analysis i provide evidence in support of the lcm approach to illocution in terms of high-level scenarios and conventional constructions. iv. requestive speech acts requestive speech acts ask other people to act in the way we want them to. requestive illocutions ranges over many diverse acts like asking, ordering or begging. before we go into the differences among these values, it should be noted that they are all included by ruiz de mendoza and baicchi (2007) within a broad category of illocutionary acts that instruct the addressee to act to the speaker’s benefit. let us consider the conventions of the cost-benefit cognitive model that structure the cognitive grounding of requestive acts: if it is manifest to a that a particular state of affairs is not beneficial to b, and if a has the capacity to change that state of affairs, then a should do so. if it is manifest to a that a potential state of affairs is not beneficial to b, then a is not expected to bring it about. even though requestive illocutions are understood against the same socio-cultural background (that we have to satisfy other people’s needs), they are distinct in nature. we should first differentiate ordering from requesting and then requesting from begging. what distinguishes ordering from requesting has to do with the ratings of the power variable. in orders, speakers hold a position of authority over their addressees. because of this authority, the speaker who utters an order works under the expectation that the addressee will carry out the action. the addressee’s lack of optionality to decide upon the realization of the action triggers off the required response. this is not the case with requests, which are performed by speakers who do not have any kind of authority over their addressees. however, this does not mean that the addressee’s optionality is unconstrained, since his choice is restrained by the conventions that bind him to help the nuria del campo martínez language value 6 (1), 52-77 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 84 speaker if it is within his range of abilities. the power component that makes orders different from requests has led ruiz de mendoza and baicchi to address these categories as distinct illocutions. by contrast, requesting is considered within the same category as begging, in spite of presenting important differences. unlike requests, in begging the speaker believes that the addressee is not desirous to give him what he wants and adopts a submissive role to obtain the addressee’s compliance. this distinction is manifested through different constructional realizations. while requests tend to use mitigators or beneficiary indicators, beggings use repetitions and exclamations. nevertheless, acts of requesting and begging display the same cost-benefit ratings and are considered within the same category. in keeping with ruiz de mendoza and baicchi’s account, this study of requestive speech acts agrees in differentiating orders from requests based on the power variable and also in considering begging as a special form of requesting. the present analysis will only consider the illocutionary acts contained within the category of requesting. although the aux np form can be found in the performance of orders, as will be shown in next section, the meaning conditions of the construction are directly tied to the semantics of requesting and needs to be approached in relation to requests. to see how the various linguistic realizations of the construction express requestive values, it is necessary to define the meaning conditions that make up the generic structure of this illocutionary category. hence i will put forward a high-level scenario for requests by generalizing over the features of requesting scenarios grounded in the two conventions of the cost-benefit cognitive model. we derive the generic structure of requests from everyday situations where we attempt to get our needs satisfied by other people. 6 two possible low-level scenarios for requesting encompass a situation in which a person in a needful situation makes somebody else aware of his ability to help and a situation in which a person is asking for help while pretending he is not in need. these low-level scenarios have elements in common upon which the highlevel scenario may be constructed. this generic structure captures the semantics of the act of requesting: (a) a person is in need of something. (b) the person makes somebody else aware of the need. (c) the person makes this other person aware of his ability to help. motivation and constraints of illocution in the lexical constructional model: the case case of the aux np construction language value 6 (1), 52-77 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 85 (d) the person appeals to the addressee’s willingness. (e) the addressee may be persuaded to help. the realizational resources for this scenario may be exemplified in the following utterances: (1) i am thirsty. (2) maybe i could have a glass of water. (3) can you give me a glass of water? (4) would you give me a glass of water? (5) you will give me a glass of water, won’t you? the above realizations instantiate relevant parts of the scenario formulated for requests. utterances (1) and (2) point to the manifestness of the needful situation in which the speaker finds himself. utterances (3) and (4) address the addressee’s ability and willingness to satisfy the speaker’s need respectively. these examples are instances of the aux np construction parametrizing the meaning value with different degrees of mitigation. to finish with, utterance (5) spells out that the addressee should be willing to help in compliance with socio-cultural conventions. as will be shown in the next section, the use of various realization procedures in requests displays peculiarities in meaning that reveal different forms of construing a shared conceptual representation. v. the aux np construction the aux np construction is probably the most conventional form for the performance of requests. the formal part of this construction consists of an auxiliary plus a second person subject and a variable verb. the high-level scenario for requests constitutes the semantic base of the construction. this scenario is a manifestation of the conventions of the cost-benefit cognitive model according to which speakers should be willing to help others if it is within their range of abilities. the requestive meaning of the construction was originally derived by means of an inferential schema giving access to these conventions, and has become conventionalized through usage. let us see how this meaning value is parametrized through various realization procedures. nuria del campo martínez language value 6 (1), 52-77 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 86 v.1. the can you realization the different realization procedures of the construction are primarily related to the auxiliary verb, as the subject pronoun is almost invariable. 7 the auxiliary is realized by a modal verb. 8 modal verbs capture the relations between participants and the realization of the state of affairs in which they are involved (dik 1989: 205). they include distinctions related to ability and willingness and also to the obligation or permission imposed on participants. one of the most recurring modals used is the form can, mostly due to the fact that the parameter of the addressee’s ability is relevant to requests. in application of the conventions of the cost-benefit cognitive model, the can you form asks the addressee about his capacity to do something for the speaker. asking the addressee about his capacity to act makes him aware that he is indeed able to carry out the action and reminds him that he is culturally bound to act if he has the ability to do so. in most contexts, this realization gives easy access to the high-level scenario, which is then applied to the specific situation. however, there may be cases where this procedure does not fit to be used as a request. by way of illustration, consider the following examples: 9 (6) can you see into the future? (google books) (7) can you smell the flowers? (coca) (8) can you drive a truck? (google books) (9) can you speak german? (bnc) utterances above are cases of the construction that function as mere questions. 10 this is due to the parametrization of the variable verb, which needs to be realized by an actioncontrolling denoting action involving some kind of benefit to the speaker in order to yield a request interpretation. in (6) and (7), the verb denotes a non-controllable activity, which is incompatible with the nature of requesting. in (8) and (9), the verb designates a controllable action but there is no indication of the potential benefit to be obtained by the speaker. these utterances could only be interpreted as requests in marked contexts where it is clear that the speaker is interested in getting the action carried out and that the performance of the action involves some benefit to the speaker. the fact that the motivation and constraints of illocution in the lexical constructional model: the case case of the aux np construction language value 6 (1), 52-77 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 87 action is beneficial to the speaker is generally made explicit through the use of a beneficiary indicator. the instances of the construction featuring this characteristic convey an easy request value: (10) can you bring me my purse? (google books) (11) can you get me a drink? (coca) (12) can you write down a recipe for me? (google books) a similar effect is achieved through the use of mitigating devices, which have the function of softening the directive force of the request or of urging the addressee to act in the way described: (13) can you please give me a second? (coca) (14) can you kindly open the door? (google books) the request interpretation is coded here by the interpersonal adverbs please and kindly, whose function is that of increasing the degree of politeness. the mitigation brought about by resources of this kind is motivated by the need to soften the impact of the request by increasing the degree of the addressee’s optionality. granting someone with optionality is regarded as a sign of politeness in our social system and optionality and politeness are thus closely intertwined. even higher degrees of politeness can be achieved through the use of other mitigating strategies, like the replacement of can for could. past modals increase the indirectness of requests, thereby offering the addressee a greater degree of optionality to comply with the speaker’s wishes (see taylor, 1995, and pérez, 2001, for an explanation of the mitigation of past modals in cognitive terms). 11 the following examples illustrate this: (15) could you pass me the sugar? (google books) (16) could you complete the questionnaire for me? (google books) utterances (15) and (16) above display the highest degree of specialization as realization procedures for requests. first, because the past form of the modal does not only point to the addressee’s ability to carry out the action but also to his willingness by giving him optionality. this activates one further variable of the scenario: mitigation. thanks to the mitigating properties of past modal verbs, these two examples manage to nuria del campo martínez language value 6 (1), 52-77 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 88 make this aspect of requests explicit. and second, because the speaker’s interest in getting the action carried out is conveyed through beneficiary indicators (i.e. me and for me). the instantiation of these parts of the high-level scenario makes the interpretation of these utterances as instances of requesting straightforward. the degree of mitigation conveyed by the past form of could can be further increased with the addition of the adverb please. there are occasions on which higher degrees of mitigation are required in the performance of a request. consider situations in which the cost of the requested action is significant, as in (17), or in which the context of the utterance is formal, as in (18): (17) could you please hurry home and watch the children for me? (google books) (18) could you please bring me a cup of hot coffee? (coca) the diverse mitigation strategies found in (17) and (18) give rise to subtle formal realizations which, by activating a higher number of variables of the scenario, constitute even more specialized procedures. v.2. the will you realization another common way of parametrizing the auxiliary verb of the aux np form is through the use of the modal will appealing to his willingness to act to the speaker’s benefit. through application of the conventions of the cost-benefit cognitive model, the addressee should be willing to perform an action to the speaker’s benefit. the will you form enquires about the addressee’s willingness to act. in unmarked contexts, this realization procedure yields a preferred conventional request interpretation, but it may function as a question: (19) will you find true love? (google books) (20) will you ever go back to the world of business? (coca) likewise, this type of realization could be used to perform different speech acts like advising and offering. this is so because the modal will is affected in various ways depending on the conditions that apply in each particular interaction. the following are some examples of such a situation: motivation and constraints of illocution in the lexical constructional model: the case case of the aux np construction language value 6 (1), 52-77 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 89 (21) will you buy that car? it’s such a beauty. (coca) (22) will you eat some more cake? (google books) for this realization procedure to produce a request reading, the specified action has to be beneficial for the speaker. this information can be clear from the context or made explicit through beneficiary indicators. its explicitation obviously results in more codified instances of requesting. observe how the manifestness of this part of the high-level scenario increases the degree of specialization to the extent that it is not possible to interpret utterances as instances of a different speech act: (23) will you lend me money? (coca) (24) will you buy me a pencil set for christmas? (bnc) the impact of the resulting request can be mitigated through the use of please. this adverb generally indicates that the speaker seeks a benefit from the realization of the action, but it may occasionally have the opposite effect. in some cases, the adverb may produce forceful demands by implying that the addressee should have acted as required without being told to do so. this use of please is reinforced by an imposing falling intonation. this type of intonation is often used by people who have some kind of authority over their addressees. compare the different uses of the adverb in (25) and (26) below: (25) will you hold the door open for me, please? (google books) (26) will you please bring me my back my bag? (coca) as was the case with the previous type of realization, the request meaning can be further specified by means of a past form. it has already been explained that the past tense displays a mitigation that seems appropriate for the politeness that is expected in the performance of requests. by increasing the addressee’s optionality, the use of the form would softens the force of the act and points with increasing certainty to a request interpretation: (27) would you drive me to the station? (bnc) (28) would you give me a hand with the washing up? (google books) nuria del campo martínez language value 6 (1), 52-77 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 90 because of its instantiation potential for the mitigation that is proper of requests, the would you sequence represents a highly conventionalized procedure. needless to say that the combination of this type of realization with the adverb please results in even more polite and thus adapted instances of requesting as in the following examples: (29) would you please tell me where the library is? (google books) (30) would you please pass the steak sauce? (coca) as may become apparent by (29) and (30), the use of these resources increases the degree of politeness of this realization that fits best in formal contexts where there is a distant relationship between participants. v.3. negated modals the use of negated modals is another type of realization procedure of the construction under scrutiny, although its request meaning is less explicit than in the previous cases. the reasoning schema behind this realization affords metonymic access to the parts of the scenario where the speaker appeals either to the addressee’s ability or willingness to comply, but the negated form of the modal presupposes the addressee’s refusal, which gives rise to unmitigated requests marked by their impoliteness. let us see how this meaning is conveyed through the negated form of can in the examples: (31) can’t you behave properly? (coca) (32) can’t you wipe your feet on the rug? (google books) through application of the conventions of the cost-benefit cognitive model, the addressee should have acted as required without being asked to do so. since in normal circumstances, the speaker would expect that the addressee has the ability to act, he enquires about any unexpected inability on the part of the addressee to carry out the action. in unmarked contexts, this realization procedure has a strong power to activate the directive scenario, particularly because it makes explicit the speaker’s expectation that the addressee has the ability to perform the action. the request interpretation of the construction can be cancelled out uttered in a marked context where the addressee is not abided to do anything about the situation described (cf. can't you hear the whistle blowing?). motivation and constraints of illocution in the lexical constructional model: the case case of the aux np construction language value 6 (1), 52-77 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 91 we may find a related realization procedure making use of the negated form of will. in this case, the verb used does not assume the addressee’s inability but rather his unwillingness to comply with the speaker’s wish. see how this type of realization gives rise to a request: (33) won’t you sit quiet? (coca) (34) won’t you close the window? (google books) in (33) and (34), the addressee has not carried out the required action counter to expectations and the speaker enquires about any unexpected unwillingness on this part. this realization procedure produces a request interpretation by reminding the addressee that he is abided to act by socio-cultural conventions. the sequence can be nonetheless function as a question (cf. won’t you buy clothes online anymore?) in contexts where the addressee is not expected to act. realizations with negated modals can be performed as well by means of the imperative sentence type. take the case of the following examples: (35) calm down, can’t you? (coca) (36) hurry up, won’t you? (google books) in contrast to interrogative-based realizations, the use of imperative sentences indicates irritation on the part of a speaker who is urging the addressee to act. the resulting request is thus more forceful and the optionality of the addressee is notably reduced. v.4. conditional forms conditional forms are recognized as a conventional pragmatic mitigator of directive values (see dancygier and sweetser, 2005 and fauconnier, 1985, among others). in the case of requests, the use of the conditional tense is meant to distance the addressee from the required action. this opens up the degree of addressee’s optionality, which reduces the force of the act by increasing the indirectness of the request. the most common ways of using a conditional in the construction are the following: (37) would you mind if i use your bathroom? (coca) (38) would you mind handing me that book over there? (google books) nuria del campo martínez language value 6 (1), 52-77 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 92 utterance (37) is a request for permission. these differ from prototypical cases of requesting in that both the speaker and the addressee are expected to perform the action: the speaker will carry out the action that the addressee will grant permission. requests for permission are therefore conditional. the action will be carried out only if the addressee gives his consent. this conditional character finds an adapted vehicle for expression in this realization procedure. this case differs from the one observed in (38). utterance (38) exemplifies a request that makes use of the conditional appealing to the addressee’s willingness to comply. in application of the conventions of the cost-benefit cognitive model, we are expected to do our best to help others and, at the same time, they expect not to be put to too great an effort in that respect. the conditional form tells the addressee that if the carrying out of the action is too costly for him, he can choose not to do it. the same realization can be used with the opposite meaning, that is, reducing the addressee’s freedom by reminding him he should act as required in compliance with the principles of interaction: (39) would you mind not smoking? (coca) in (39), the addressee is treated as if he had not realized that he is acting in a way that is negative for the speaker. the conditional form appeals to his willingness to stop the negative action in compliance with socio-cultural conventions. the resulting act is forceful and impolite. in addition to these conventional realization procedures, there are others that accommodate along a prototypical cline. consider: (40) would you be so kind as to bump up the temperature in here by a degree or two? (coca) (41) would you be so kind as to water my plants while i’m away? (google books) the previous type of realization mitigated the act of requesting by increasing the addressee’s optionality in relation to the cost-benefit variable. the realization procedure illustrated in (40) and (41) above, the mitigation is upgraded in relation to the politeness parameter. by enquiring about the addressee’s willingness, the speaker is in fact reminding the addressee that he is bound by conventions to act if it is within his range of abilities. when the required action is presented as seeking a benefit for the speaker, the conditional softens the force of the act and functions as a mitigating device. by contrast, when the action is presented as an alternative of something negative being motivation and constraints of illocution in the lexical constructional model: the case case of the aux np construction language value 6 (1), 52-77 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 93 done by the addressee, the conditional is used to force the addressee to consider the underlying conventions, thereby rendering an impolite act: (42) would you be so kind as to remove your feet from the table? (google books) in the example, the speaker treats the addressee as if he were not observing the conventions of politeness, giving rise to an impolite request that forces the addressee to act as required. v.5. summary of realization procedures of the aux np construction table 1 below provides a non-exhaustive description of the meaning conditions of the high-level scenario for requests and the ways in which they attain linguistic expression through the various realizations of the aux np construction. table 1. realization procedures of the aux np construction request scenario realization procedures speaker’s need beneficiary indicators (for me) speaker’s willingness conditional forms, beneficiary indicators (for me) addressee’s ability can you…? could you…? can’t you…? addressee’s willingness will you…? would you…? won’t you…? cost-benefit ratings would you mind…? would you be so kind…? optionality past modals (could, would), use of please, conditional forms, beneficiary indicators (for me) mitigation past modals (could, would), conditional forms, interpersonal adverbs (please, kindly), mild intonation and stress vi. conclusion the present work is a case study of the constructional composition of illocutionary meaning within the lcm. the type of illocutionary constructions postulated here pair nuria del campo martínez language value 6 (1), 52-77 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 94 the semantic makeup of speech acts with the constructional realizations through which they are communicated. the formal composition of constructions includes properties such as sentence type, grammatical elements, lexical properties and suprasegmental features. the meaning conditions defined in the high-level scenario include semantic variables and pragmatic features like power, politeness, optionality and cost-benefit variables. such variables are culture-specific and their realization is related to the context of situation of each interactional exchange. high-level scenarios provide the base of a vast number of illocutionary constructions for a speech act type. the different meaning conditions of high-level scenarios are activated through diverse linguistic resources, giving rise to constructions with different degrees of codification. the higher the degree of codification of a construction, the easier it is to grasp the intended meaning and the more specialized the construction is. conversely, if a construction is implicit but still attains important levels of effectiveness by giving access to relevant parts of a scenario, it is likely to be conventionalized for a specific illocutionary value. the process whereby constructions become conventionalized is constrained by sociocultural conventions of the kind postulated within cost-benefit cognitive model. the interpretation of non-conventional constructions requires the use of inference and relies on the realization of variable elements and contextual information or shared background knowledge. this study examines the applicability of the analytical tools put forward by the lcm to account for the various realization procedures of the aux np construction in relation to their potential to activate the semantic base of requesting speech acts. once described the high-level scenario for the category of requesting, i have identified the different ways in which the realizations of the aux np construction provide the addressee with access to the relevant parts of the scenario. the formal composition of the construction has proved both realizational of lexico-grammatical devices and conventionally associated with them. the analysis carried out has provided evidence in support of the lcm approach to illocution. however, the results suggest that further research on the subject is still needed. it would be advisable to develop the description of the conventions of the costbenefit cognitive model in order to account for the distinctions among the various motivation and constraints of illocution in the lexical constructional model: the case case of the aux np construction language value 6 (1), 52-77 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 95 realization procedures of different requestive acts and also to study the relationship between form and meaning among other constructions performing requests. notes 1 in later work, panther (2005) has gone further and referred to metonymy as an inference schema rather than a substitution relation or a reference point phenomenon, as has been defended by many cognitive linguists (langacker 1993; kövecses and radden 1998, inter alia). specifically, panther has argued that metonymies provide natural inference schemas which are regularly used by speakers in meaning interpretation. the role of metonymy as an inference schema has been supported by later research carried out by ruiz de mendoza and baicchi (2007), who identify metonymy at the base of illocutionary derivation. the present proposal adheres to such a conception of metonymy in order to account for the illocutionary meaning that derives from the activation of scenarios and which later on becomes entrenched (in langacker’s terms, 1999: 105) through a conventionalization process. 2 in the lcm, interactional knowledge is structured in the form of situational cognitive models, to be differentiated from non-situational models. situational cognitive models capture the interaction among entities within a specific time and place. non-situational cognitive models include variables which are not dependent on time and place. cognitive operations on non-situational models regulate inferred meaning at the core grammar level, yielding conversion processes and constructional alternations. operations like metaphor and metonymy on situational models guide pragmatic inferencing (implicature derivation, illocutionary meaning and discourse connections). 3 risselada’s (1993) definition of explicit and implicit speech acts is equivalent to the traditional distinction between codified and inferred speech acts. the degree of explicitness or codification is in both cases determined by the number of meaning conditions of the speech act under consideration which are instantiated by the linguistic form. 4 the term realization procedures was first introduced by ruiz de mendoza and otal (1997) to define the options offered by the linguistic system for the realization of a communicative strategy. in later work by pérez (2001) and ruiz de mendoza and baicchi (2007), this notion is used referring to entrenched lexicogrammatical devices with instantiation potential with respect to cognitive models. in the present work, realizational procedures which have become conventionalized are regarded as constructions in their own right. 5 the notion of family resemblance was originally propounded by wittgenstein (1978) to make reference to those categories whose members do not share a set of common attributes but rather display a network of similarities. 6 for similar descriptions of requesting from a constructionist perspective, see pérez (1996, 2001) and ruiz de mendoza and baicchi (2007). 7 it is possible, however, to find contexts in which the subject pronoun does not point to the addressee (cf. will he stop making noise?). instances of this type represent implicit requests to the addressee to get a third person to carry out the action. except for these cases, the realization of the construction involves a second person subject (i.e. you). 8 a useful accounts of modal verbs in terms of force dynamics from a cognitive perspective can be found in talmy (1988). 9 the description of the realization procedures of the aux np construction results from the analysis of a corpus of one hundred and sixty-five instances of the construction. the data upon which the study is based has been drawn from the original editions of the british national corpus (bnc), the corpus of contemporary american english (coca), webcorp and google books. nuria del campo martínez language value 6 (1), 52-77 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 96 10 to resolve the ambiguity of the can you form, the lcm postulates two different constructions. one is the polar interrogative construction, which is interpreted as a question about ability and whose constituents are realized by can you sequence (e.g. can you write morse code?), and another that functions as a request, where can you is idiomatic (e.g. can you bring my glasses?) (see mairal and ruiz de mendoza 2009). 11 taylor explains the origin of the past tense as a mitigator as a cognitive process involving a double metaphorization. there is a first metaphor that structures the time domain in terms of space, as illustrated by expressions like near future and distant past, and a second metaphor that structures distance in terms of social involvement. pérez further argues that the distance that triggers the mitigating effect has to be established both between the speaker and the speech act and between the intended speech act and the actual speech act. references brdar-szabó, r. 2009. “metonymy in indirect directives: stand-alone conditional in english, german, hungarian, and croatian”. in panther, k.-u., thornburg, l. and barcelona, a. (eds.), metonymy and metaphor in grammar. amsterdam/philadelphia: john benjamins, 323-338. butler, c.s. 1996. “on the concept of an interpersonal metafunction in english”. in berry, m., butler, c.s., fawcett and r., huang, g. (eds.), meaning and form: systemic functional interpretations. norwood: ablex publishing, 151-181. butler, c.s. 2009. “the lexical constructional model: genesis, strengths and challenges”. in butler, c.s. and arista, j.m. (eds.), deconstructing constructions. amsterdam/philadelphia: john benjamins, 117-152. dancygier, b. and sweetser, e. 2005. mental spaces in grammar: conditional constructions. cambridge: cambridge university press. dik, s.c. 1989. the theory of functional grammar. the structure of the clause. berlin: mouton de gruyter dik, s.c. 1997. the theory of functional grammar. complex and derived constructions. berlin: mouton de gruyter. fauconnier, g. 1985. mental spaces. cambridge: cambridge university press. goldberg, a.e. 1995. constructions: a construction grammar approach to argument structure. chicago: chicago university press. motivation and constraints of illocution in the lexical constructional model: the case case of the aux np construction language value 6 (1), 52-77 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 97 goldberg, a.e. 2006. constructions at work: the nature of generalization in language. oxford: oxford university press. halliday, m.a.k. 1994. an introduction to functional grammar. london: edward arnold. halliday, m.a.k. and matthiessen, c. 2004. an introduction to functional grammar. 3 rd edition. london: hodder arnold. kövecses, z. and radden, g. 1998. “metonymy: developing a cognitive linguistic view”. cognitive linguistics 9, 37-77. lakoff, g. 1987. women, fire and dangerous things. chicago: chicago university press. langacker, r.w. 1993. “reference point constructions”. cognitive linguistics 4, 1-38. langacker, r.w. 1999. grammar and conceptualization. mouton de gruyter, berlin. leech, g. 1983. principles of pragmatics. london: longman. mairal, r., and ruiz de mendoza, f.j. 2009. “levels of description and explanation in meaning construction”. in butler, c.s. and arista, j.m. (eds.), deconstructing constructions. amsterdam/philadelphia: john benjamins, 153-198. panther, k.-u. 2005. “the role of conceptual metonymy in meaning construction”. in ruiz de mendoza, f.j., peña, s. (eds.), cognitive linguistics: internal dynamics and interdisciplinary interaction. berlin/new york: mouton de gruyter, 353-386. panther, k.-u. and thornburg, l. 1998. “a cognitive approach to inferencing in conversation”. journal of pragmatics 30, 755-769. panther, k.-u. and thornburg, l. 2003. “metonymies as natural inference and activation schemas: the case of dependent clauses as independent speech acts”. in panther, k.-u. and thornburg, l. (eds.), metonymy and pragmatic inferencing. amsterdam/philadelphia: john benjamins, 127-147. panther, k.-u. and thornburg, l. 2004. “the role of conceptual metonymy in meaning construction”. metaphorik.de 6, 91-111. nuria del campo martínez language value 6 (1), 52-77 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 98 pérez, l. 1996. “the cognition of requests”. estudios ingleses de la universidad complutense 4, 189-208. pérez, l. 2001. illocution and cognition: a constructional approach. university of la rioja press, la rioja. pérez, l. and ruiz de mendoza, f.j. 2002. “grounding, semantic motivation, and conceptual interaction in indirective speech acts”. journal of pragmatics 34, 259-284. risselada, r. 1993. imperatives and other directive expressions in latin: a study in the pragmatics of a dead language. amsterdam: j.c. gieben. ruiz de mendoza, f.j. 1999. “la ilocución y la gramática”. in butler, c.s. arista, j.m. and ruiz de mendoza, f.j. (eds.), nuevas perspectivas en gramática funcional. barcelona: ariel, 99-171. ruiz de mendoza, f.j. 2007. “high-level cognitive models: in search of a unified framework for inferential and grammatical behavior”. in kosecki, k. (ed.), perspectives on metonymy. frankfurt/main: peter lang, 11-30. ruiz de mendoza, f.j., and baicchi, a. 2007. “illocutionary constructions: cognitive motivation and linguistic realization”. in kecskes, i. and horn, l. (eds.), explorations in pragmatics: linguistic, cognitive, and intercultural aspects. berlin/new york: mouton de gruyter, 95-128. ruiz de mendoza, f.j. and gonzálvez, f. 2010. “illocutionary meaning revisited: subjective-transitive constructions in the lexical-constructional model”. in stalmaszczyk, p. (ed.), turning points in the philosophy of language and linguistics. frankfurt/main: peter lang, 65-77. ruiz de mendoza, f.j., and mairal, r. 2008. “levels of description and constraining factors in meaning construction: an introduction to the lexical constructional model”. folia linguistica 42, 355-400. ruiz de mendoza, f.j. and mairal, r. 2011. “constraints on syntactic alternation: lexical-constructional subsumption in the lexical constructional model”. in guerrero, p. (ed.), morphosyntactic alternations in english. functional and cognitive perspectives. london/oakville: equinox, 62-82. motivation and constraints of illocution in the lexical constructional model: the case case of the aux np construction language value 6 (1), 52-77 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 99 ruiz de mendoza, f.j. and otal, j.l. 1997. “communication strategies and realization procedures”. atlantis: revista de la asociación española de estudios anglonorteamericanos 19, 297-314. searle, j. 1975. “indirect speech acts”. in cole, p. and morgan, j.l. (eds.), syntax and semantics 3. new york: academic, 59-82. sperber, d. and wilson, d. 1995. relevance. communication and cognition. 2 nd edition. malden: blackwell. stefanowitsch, a. 2003. “a construction-based approach to indirect speech acts”. in panther, k.-u. and thornburg, l. (eds.), metonymy and pragmatic inferencing. amsterdam/philadelphia: john benjamins, 105-126. talmy, l. 1988. “force dynamics in language and cognition”. cognitive science 12, 49-100. taylor, j.r. 1995. linguistic categorization: prototypes in linguistic theory. 2 nd edition. oxford: clarendon press. wittgenstein, l. 1978. remarks on the fundaments of mathematics. oxford: blackwell. received: 31 may 2013 accepted: 12 march 2014 cite this article as: del campo martínez, n. 2014. “motivation and constraints of illocution in the lexical constructional model: the case of the aux np construction”. language value 6 (1), 52-77. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2014.6.6 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 2014, volume 6, number 1 pp. 100-103 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2014.6.7 100 book review english-medium instruction at universities: global challenges aintzane doiz, david lasagabaster and juan manuel sierra multilingual matters: bristol, 2013. 248 pages. isbn: 9781847698148 reviewed by annemieke meijer a.a.meijer@uu.nl university college utrecht, the netherlands this collection of articles is an interesting and timely addition to the growing literature on the use of english as the language of instruction at universities in non-native contexts. in the past two decades, emi (english-medium instruction, as the educational practice tends to be called when referring to the tertiary level, as opposed to the more thought-through pedagogical approach of content and language integrated learning or clil at secondary level) has caught on in many different countries and settings. motivated partly by the wish to attract international students, partly by the need to prepare home students for the international market, or, increasingly, with the aim of promoting the institution in an ever more competitive higher education market, universities have introduced english to replace the local language(s). needless to say this is having immediate implications for teachers and students alike and research is badly needed on issues such as language proficiency demands, effective curriculum design, and quality assurance, not only because this may lead to important contributions to theory building but also, hopefully, because the results could feed into the decisionmaking processes of university administrators. the aim of the present volume is, according to the editors, to “advance our awareness” of what is needed to improve emi at tertiary level. it sets out to do so by providing a varied picture of current issues and practices, in contributions from eighteen authors from countries as diverse as china, finland, israel, the netherlands, south africa, spain, and the usa. the selection may be somewhat arbitrary, but the emerging picture is highly interesting not only because of its diversity (in terms of, for instance, the societal position of english and the levels of language proficiency) but also because english-medium instruction at universities: global challenges language value 6 (1), 78-81 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 101 unexpected connections appear and very different settings turn out to be faced with quite similar issues. the volume has been organised into five parts which are not always very clearly delineated – some consist of just one chapter, while others contain chapters that might well have been more appropriate under the heading of one of the other sections. all contributions, however, add to the overall picture. the opening chapter is on maastricht university in the netherlands, a very early adopter, in which robert wilkinson emphasizes the crucial collaboration between ‘content’ departments and language specialists in the 25-year-old development of english-taught programmes there. this is followed by two case studies of the linguistic needs of students and teachers in the multilingual settings of south africa and the basque country respectively. in the section on institutional policies, taina saarinen and tarja nikula use discourse analysis to study policy documents concerning language and internationalisation strategies in finland, which has the highest number of institutions providing english-taught programmes in europe. the authors’ starting point is the apparent invisibility of language in such policies. the findings from their document analysis point at the ‘self-evidence’ of english, with “foreign language” often really meaning “english”. they also ask the common-sensical question of “what kind of english” is referred to in lists of entry requirements, and find that apart from many departments mentioning vague criteria such as “a good command” or “a sufficient knowledge”, finnish polytechnics since 2011 have specified the setting in which prospective students should have learnt their english in such narrow terms that the qualifications of applicants from about 50 countries in which english is, in fact, an official language (india, pakistan, south africa) would not be accepted, thus creating “a hierarchy of different ‘englishes’”. in the same section of the volume, ofelia garcía, mercè pujol-ferran and pooja reddy also make clear how language can be caught up, and become a factor in power relations. studying a community college with immigrant students and a global research university, they describe a painful dichotomy between international and immigrant students. using the somewhat comical (and rather poignant) abbreviation lote (languages other than english), they conclude that “whereas the lotes of international students are taught, celebrated and used in academic pursuits, the use of lotes in education is often restricted by colleges and book and multimedia review language value 6 (1), 78-81 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 102 universities serving immigrant students. whereas international students are welcomed in university content classes and their english proficiency is not seen as an obstacle to learning, immigrant students are often excluded from academic content until they develop appropriate english vocabulary” (193). it is this focus on language as a symbol of ethnic, cultural or national identity, which makes the volume such an interesting addition to the current body of literature on emi. it informs a number of other essays in the volume, and the editors might have emphasized this in their introduction. indeed, the book does not shy away from naming difficulties and potential negative effects of emi, both at the level of the individual learner and the community: concerns about the loss of l1 (and 2) at the cost of english, about emi programmes producing an “elite” whose skills and outlook sets them apart from others in society, and other sensitivities and anxieties. the buzzword in this book is “language ecology”, emphasizing the role of language as a social practice, in interaction with its environment. all this comes to the forefront especially in the chapters on trilingual education, which together form the third part of the book. the contexts of this section of the book are china and spain, and the topics described are at times strikingly similar. david c.s. li writes about the chinese university of hong kong, where the question of whether the predominance of english in higher education should be viewed as hegemony or linguistic capital became quite urgent after a proposed increase in the percentage of english-taught courses. local cantonese speaking students, faced with the necessity to learn both putonghua (mandarin), which is the national language, and english, staged vehement protests. they feared that english would push out cantonese and written chinese and voiced their emotions in terms that made it very clear the issue went beyond the pragmatic intentions of the vice-chancellor who had made the proposal. ofra onbar-lourie and smadar donitsa-schmidt, whose contribution is mysteriously included in the section on language policies, study the same theme as li but in the intricate linguistic scene of israel, where english is tentatively being introduced at a small number of colleges. because the language of instruction at almost all higher education institutions is hebrew, arabic speakers learn through their second language anyway, and english would be their l3. through self-report questionnaires the views of students at one teacher training college are studied, one interesting finding being that english was not english-medium instruction at universities: global challenges language value 6 (1), 78-81 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 103 being perceived as threat, perhaps, as the authors suggest, as a result of the unrivalled position of hebrew in this particular educational setting. aintzane doiz, david lasagabaster and juan manuel sierra investigate students’ views on the introduction of english as l3 at the basque university, where spanish and basque are the official languages. again, linguistic capital turned out to play a major role. they found that “[l]ocal students show a manifest unwillingness towards being required to be proficient in english or to be proficient in two languages at the end of their studies”, with basque mother tongue students manifestly more negative than those with spanish or basque and spanish as their mother tongue. josep maria cots concentrates on the catalan context with the aim of revealing “possible ambiguities and tensions” in the language policy of the bilingual university of lleida. in this sensitive environment, the introduction of english as one of the languages of instruction met with scepticism: it is only in the past 30 years or so that there has been what the author calls a “reverse language shift” with catalan gaining more prominence in society; moreover, there are serious fears that the university may not be ready for this, with the great majority of incoming students having an english language proficiency level of b1 or lower. the chapter illustrates the existing tensions nicely by pointing out some of the discourse surrounding the debate in which english is presented as a ‘killer language’ or a ‘language predator’, while the catalan students are characterised as having a ‘bunker attitude’. the final word in the book is by elana shohamy, who presents a “critical view of emi at university”, identifying a number of educational and societal issues that may have been overlooked as universities rushed to implement english-medium programmes. it is a fitting conclusion to a collection of articles that is highly valuable because it contextualizes and because it problematizes: it places emi firmly at the centre of a complex interplay of all kinds of socio-linguistic factors, and although it does offer ideas for overcoming some of the difficulties faced by universities, it is not simplistic or overly idealistic. perhaps we may see it as a sign that emi, both as an educational phenomenon and as an emerging field of study, has grown up. received: 30 december 2013 microsoft word 00_contents_issue4_2 language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2012, volume 4, number 2 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors table of contents from the editors carme manuel cuenca i-xvi articles diasporic dialogues: the role of gender, language, and revision in neo-slave narrative kalenda eaton 1-22 jacqueline woodson’s narrative style in the other side: an african american picture book for children agustín reyes torres 23-37 anzaldúa and ‘the new mestiza’: a chicana dives into collective identity maría henríquez-betancor 38-55 wordarrows: the performative power of language in n. scott momaday’s non-fiction work anna m. brígido-corachán 56-69 memory and language in hiromi goto’s chorus of mushrooms eva pich ponce 70-88 the voice of the cypresses: cyrus cassells and the poetry of salvador espriu dídac llorens cubedo 89-106 a poet speaks about ... the use and abuse of language by a chicano from aztlán (both words unknown) nephtalí de león 107-116 book and multimedia reviews koritha mitchell. living with lynching mª mar gallego durán 117-125 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2012, volume 4, number 2 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors editorial team editors • mari carmen campoy cubillo, departament d'estudis anglesos, universitat jaume i, castelló, spain • miguel f. ruiz garrido, departament d'estudis anglesos, universitat jaume i, castelló, spain editing committee • mari carmen campoy cubillo, departament d'estudis anglesos, universitat jaume i, castelló, spain • miguel f. ruiz garrido, departament d'estudis anglesos, universitat jaume i, castelló, spain • mª josé luzón marco, departamento de filología inglesa y alemana, universidad de zaragoza, spain • amaya mendikoetxea pelayo, departamento de filología inglesa, universidad autónoma de madrid (uam), spain • susana murcia bielsa, departamento de filología inglesa, universidad autónoma de madrid (uam), spain advisory board • winnie cheng, english department, hong kong polytechnic, hong kong, china • ulla m. connor, barbara e. and karl r. zimmer chair in intercultural communication indiana, usa • maría del pilar garcía mayo, departamento de filología inglesa, universidad del país vasco, vitoria-gasteiz, spain • constante gonzález groba, departamento de filología inglesa, universidad santiago de compostela, spain • eva alcón soler, departament d’estudis anglesos, universitat jaume i, castelló, spain • inmaculada fortanet gómez, departament d’estudis anglesos, universitat jaume i, castelló, spain • belinda crawford camiciottoli, dipartimento di filologia, letteratura e linguistica, universita di pisa, italy editorial board • liliana alexandrova grozdanova, department of english and american studies,st kliment ohridski university sofia, bulgaria • julio c. gimenez, centre for english language education (cele), university of nottingham, uk • viviana cortes, department of applied linguistics and esl, georgia state university, atlanta, usa • eniko csomay, director of undergraduate research, san diego state university, california, usa • michael aaron rockland, american studies department, rutgers university, new jersey, usa • paula garcia mcallister, the institutional review board (irb), northern arizona university, arizona, usa • andrew domzalski, english and communication arts department, madonna university, detroit, michigan, usa • shigeru yamada, waseda university, tokyo, japan • carme manuel cuenca, departament de filologia anglesa i alemanya, universitat de valència, spain • jarosław krajka, department of german studies. maria curie-skłodowska university, poland • paul scott derrick, departament de filologia anglesa i alemanya, universitat de valència, spain • sylvie de cock, département d'études germaniques, université catholique de louvain, belgium • gene halleck, english department, oklahoma state university. usa • jorge ishizawa oba, ricardo palma university, lima, perú book and multimedia review editors • núria edo marzá, departament d'estudis anglesos, universitat jaume i, castelló, spain (book review editor) • m. noelia ruiz madrid, departament d'estudis anglesos, universitat jaume i, castelló, spain (multimedia review editor) http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2012, volume 4, number 2 pp. i-xvi issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.1 i from the editors special issue: language value in minority literatures in the wake of nigerian independence and in contrast to african writers who took an essentialist view that equates language with cultural identity (ngugi wa thiong’o, for example), chinua achebe declared that “[a] language spoken by africans on african soil, a language in which africans write, justifies itself” (1975: 67). according to his vision, the colonizers’ languages, english and french, even if they were not african languages, because of their grasp on african history, were part and parcel of african experience. yet, for achebe, this did not mean that, through the use of these historically imposed linguistic systems, african authors were simply mimicking the colonizers’ weltgeist, but rather they were using them to empower themselves and fashion them to represent their experience. in this sense, their writings constitute what gilles deleuze and felix guattari describe in kafka: toward a minor literature as a “minor literature”, that is, a literature which is produced by a minority in a major language in order “to express another possible community and to forge the means for another consciousness and another sensibility” (1986: 17). “minor literature” includes three characteristics: “in it language is affected with a high coefficient of deterritorialization”; “everything in it is political”; and “in it everything takes on a collective value” (1986: 16). the first characteristic enlightens the language question surrounding the discussions of some of the writers studied in this issue of language value. historically dispossessed of their original languages, they turn to english and discover minor usages that open and unsettle the language by creating new meanings. in the same way as kafka used german, these writers’ deterritorialization of english becomes a strategy to deal with the dilemma of deploying english, the master’s tongue. these writers have become “minor”, then, not out a personal choice, but out of historical political impositions that deprived them of their native tongues. this is shown in contemporary scholarship in the history of literary writing in the united states. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� from the editors articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.1 ii unlike other countries with a clear national linguistic policy secured by their constitutions, recently revised histories of the beginnings of the united states highlight the fact that the language of the united states was never english only. the multilingual anthology of american literature: a reader of original texts with english translations (2000), edited by marc shell and werner sollors, and multilingual america: transnationalism, ethnicity, and the languages of american literature (1998), edited by werner sollors, argue for the acceptance of an early multilingual and multicultural country. viewing english-written literature as the sole dominion for literary american expression is to displace and marginalize a vast array of legitimate american multilingual articulations. in time and narrative, paul ricoeur explains that “[w]e tell stories because in the last analysis human lives need and merit being narrated. this remark takes on its full force when we refer to the necessity to save the history of the defeated and the lost. the whole history of suffering cries out for vengeance and calls for narrative” (ricoeur 1984: 175). the united states is, according to political theorist michael walzer in his what it means to be an american, “a political nation of cultural nationalities”, where “citizenship is separated from every sort of particularism: the state is nationally, ethnically, racially, and religiously neutral” (1992: 9). this issue of language value aims at studying how writers belonging to some of these american cultural nationalities have questioned this ideal of neutrality and have used literature to express their experience as part of a history of the defeated and the lost. to such an end, they have used the english language to dismantle the shortcomings of their abused representations and have secured new, although sometimes problematic and controversial, visible textualities. for antonio gramsci, “[e]very time the question of the language surfaces, in one way or another, it means that a series of other problems are coming to the fore: the formation and enlargement of the governing class, the need to establish more intimate and secure relationships between the governing groups and the national-popular mass, in other words to reorganize cultural hegemony” (1991: 183–84). his words clarify the fact that speaking about language is always a political question, and that national languages are language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2012, volume 4, number 2 pp. i-xvi issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.1 iii bearers of power relations which affect minority communities in processes of adopting, passively or actively, the dominant culture. in “american citizenship and minority rights”, pierre-luc dostie proulx explains the complex interplay of diversity and homogeneity that characterizes american life, and how the main reason for its “political stability, in spite of the strong polyethnic constitution of the country”, is due to diverse processes of voluntary integration (1984: 44). in multicultural citizenship, canadian political philosopher will kymlicka argues that before the period of the civil rights movement, immigrants were expected to assimilate following what is known as the “anglo-conformity” model of immigration. assimilation was considered “essential for political stability, and was further rationalized through ethnocentric denigration of other cultures” (1995: 14). kymlicka makes a distinction between national and ethnic communities, and claims that, when minorities integrate into a larger community, they shape their political status, following two broad patterns of cultural diversity – national minorities and ethnic minorities. for kymlicka, a nation is “a historical community, more or less institutionally complete, occupying a given territory or homeland, sharing a distinct language and culture. a ‘nation’ in this sociological sense is closely related to the idea of a ‘people’ or a ‘culture’” (1995: 11). these national minorities may have undergone a process of forced conquest or voluntary assimilation. native americans and chicanos (hispanics in the southwest who were annexed after the mexican war of 1846-1848 and who had previously formed part of the northern provinces of mexico) would come under the first categorization. ethnic minorities, on the other hand, would include immigrants, whose cultural heritage (even with rights to be respected) must not thwart their expected integration into the larger community. for kymlicka, however, the main obstacle hindering the creation of “a fluid conception of american multiculturalism remains the disadvantaged and stigmatized status of african americans” (1998: 73). this is so because “being ‘black’ is an ascribed identity that is difficult for most african americans to escape or renounce”, and the main challenge is to reduce this stigmatized element, so that being black can come to resemble other ethnic identities in america. in mixedblood messages: literature, film, family, place, louis owens declares that human beings have “the power to heal our tongues and learn to speak in any language http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� from the editors articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.1 iv on earth or to imagine a new one”. furthermore, we have “the ability to appropriate and liberate the other’s discourse. rather than merely reflecting back to him the master’s own voice, we can, in an oft-quoted phrase, learn to make it bear the burden of our own experience” (1998: xiii). in the contributions to this issue, their authors study how the colonizer’s language in the hands or, better, in the tongues of native american, african american, japanese canadian, chicano, panlatino and catalan writers articulate worlds that, paraphrasing owens’s terminology, “find themselves whole” (1998: xiii). kalenda eaton and agustín reyes torres focus on how african american writers have redefined their histories of slavery and racism through the neo-slave genre and children’s literature. nephtalí de león and maría henríquez-betancor address the situation of chicanos and latinos as national and immigrant groups from different perspectives that shatter the image of a monolithic approach by peoples of hispanic descent in the united states when confronted by the ongoing attacks to disempower them and eliminate their sense of a distinct national identity. anna brígido-corachán analyses how american indian writers make a claim for the distinctiveness of their cultural and historical differences through performative uses of language that go back to native traditions of storytelling. eva pich ponce studies canadian nationalism as it appears linked to the questionings of ethnic minority groups. unlike the american anglo-conformity model of assimilation, which advocates a kind of immigrant integration that entails the loss of the different ethnical distinctive cultural elements, canadian society has created the “multicultural mosaic” metaphor. this multiculturalist policy, adopted in 1971, conveys the image of a country in which different races, cultures and religions live together on an equal footing. it treats “immigrant ethnocultural affiliation as voluntary and encourages the members of the different immigrant groups to interact, to share their cultural heritage, and to participate in common educational, economic, political, and legal institutions” (kymlicka 1998: 74). however, pich ponce focuses on hiromi goto, a japanese canadian writer, to show how authors writing from within that cultural minority experience denounce this contradiction. last but not least, dídac llorens cubedo delves into the literary correspondence between salvador espriu and african american cyrus cassells and how cassells, from his own liminal condition of being language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2012, volume 4, number 2 pp. i-xvi issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.1 v black and gay, has felt inspired by the plight the catalan poets living in linguistic and political borderlands of fascist spain. these scholars show, then, how authors belonging to the american minorities analysed here confront american and canadian processes of assimilation through an energetic reclamation of the english language to shake the embedded principles of cultural and political hegemony. english is undoubtedly a tool that can be used to oppress and dominate, but it is also their most powerful instrument for self-definition and communal resistance. *** in “diasporic dialogues: the role of gender, language, and revision in neo-slave narrative”, kalenda eaton studies how, throughout the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first, two black authors, ishmael reed and maryse condé, have rerewritten early african diasporic experience through the genre of “neo-slave narratives”. in neo-slave narratives: studies in the social logic of a literary form (1999), ashraf h.a. rushdy defined the genre as composed of “contemporary novels that assume the form, the conventions, and take on the first-person voice of the antebellum slave narrative” (1999: 3). these works allowed him to study the social logic of the literary form of the neo-slave narrative: its origins, in the social, intellectual and racial formations of the sixties, its cultural politics as these texts intervene in debates over the significance of race, and its literary politics as these texts make statements on engagements between texts and between mainstream and minority traditions” (1999: 3). taking into account this previous scholarship, eaton explains that, unlike the slave narratives composed during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, reed’s flight to canada (1976) and condé’s i, tituba, black witch of salem (1992) tell palimpsest narratives deploying new uses of form and style that afford them the ability to re-create, re-member, and re-historicize their texts, in a process that renders their narratives liberated from the static representations of slave experience. without obviating the seriousness of struggling with the plight of slavery conditions, reed and condé confront the reality of chattel slavery in the americas through narrative experimentation using parody or satire, “a survival technique and a weapon of the weak http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� from the editors articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.1 vi against the strong” (jones 1969: 3) and black humour, to come to terms with the suffocating and annihilating historical circumstances surrounding slaves’ lives. at the same time, eaton promptly readdresses her analysis to the ways the empowering use of satire in the neo-slave narrative might reinforce the gender and racial stereotypes reed and condé are attempting to subvert. yet, as she explains, ishmael reed’s flight to canada (1976) and maryse condé’s i, tituba, black witch of salem (1992) go beyond a mere depiction of dynamics of masters and slaves, and delve into the intricacies of black slave experience, africans in the diaspora, capitalism, and gender relationships. eaton discusses the controversies generated around reed’s negative deployment of black female characters in his text. the language of satire, though, provides his characters with an agency to decide their fate, which in the case of mammy barracuda apparently parodies the traditionally idealized mammy figure, a construct of white sentimentalization that ignored the humanity and womanhood of black women. yet, for all his good intentions, reed’s use of satire as a playful style does not address the issue of gender imbalance in the text. whereas his male slave characters seem to subvert the myths about black male experience in slavery through the textual opportunities granted to them in the text to redeem their previously silenced voices, his female slave characters remain a caricature, cornered in the interstices of history. unlike reed’s flight to canada, condé, according to eaton, plays with conventions but steers clear of the caricatures of his text. conde’s i, tituba, black witch of salem makes full and explicit use of comic irony and satire to refashion the female protagonist’s servitude in new england and her role in the cause of the seventeenth-century witchcraft hysteria. this neo-slave narrative transforms the flimsy existence of tituba as a mere footnote in historical records into a full-fledged character, whose voice was always a matter of speculation. to do so, condé manipulates western concepts of speech and projects tituba’s voice through alternate means of communication and parodies of various episodes of historical collective consciousness. playing with the title of one of audre lorde’s celebrated essays (1984/2007), condé uses the master’s tools to dismantle the master’s house and attempts to recreate the colonized language in a new context. thus, for eaton, i, tituba, acknowledges the issue of an authoritative language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2012, volume 4, number 2 pp. i-xvi issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.1 vii presence that attempts to erase the voice of the subject while at the same time, through imitation and parody, condé revises the silencing tropes of the nineteenth-century slave narrative and disrupts any serious imaginings of the character. for eaton, both flight to canada and i, tituba might be considered examples of what linda hutcheon (1988) labelled as “historiographic metafiction”, and thus problematize history’s objectivity and the possibility of knowing the past through historical fiction. as such, both novels are self-reflexive, lay claim to historical characters and events, and manifest a theoretical self-awareness of history and fiction as human constructs that question historical discourse as a discourse of power. both works then use language with a postmodern reliance upon textual play, parody and historical re-conceptualization. the question of how literature, through the values encapsulated in language use but also through visual images, gives form to the experience of the cycle of life and how this process needs exploring in accordance with the particular historical circumstances of human beings is studied by agustín reyes torres in “jacqueline woodson´s narrative style in the other side: an african american picture book for children”. reyes torres analyses the other side (2001), a children’s picture book written by jacqueline woodson and beautifully illustrated by e.b. lewis’s evocative watercolours. the plot of the book brings to mind robert frost’s famous poem, “mending wall”. frost published this metaphorical piece written in blank verse in his north of boston, his second collection of poetry. the poem tells about a man who asks why he and his neighbour must rebuild the stone wall dividing their farms each spring. as if offending nature, the wall stones crumble every year and the wall needs rebuilding. “good fences make good neighbours”, insists his neighbour rejecting any possibility of destroying the border dividing their properties. for reyes torres, the other side is articulated around the central metaphor of the fence that divides blacks from whites, and makes use of children’s literature to delve into the experience of what it means for a young black girl to grow up in the united states and to come to terms with a racial reality that stubbornly builds and, if ever broken, mends dividing walls. reyes torres highlights how african american children’s literature was from its inception a radical site of representational resistance and “has its roots in african http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� from the editors articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.1 viii americans’ determination to maintain a sense of themselves as fully human in the face of their legal status as property and to maintain some control over their own lives” (bishop 2007: 4). thus, woodson firmly establishes herself within a tradition strengthened during the first half of the twentieth century to counteract the pernicious effects of black representation by white culture, in an attempt to foster a dignified view of blacks maligned by both written and visual exclusionary practices. the other side caters for the need to have more children’s books through which young african american readers can relate to the protagonists. as in other textual practices, children’s literature has always been part and parcel of the process of colonization, where the language of racialization implemented by the colonizing power was imposed on the black community through legal and educational measures. in the other side, both woodson and lewis try, through words and pictures, to break black children’s isolationism, promote acceptance of themselves and others, and foster commitment to family and community. woodson’s language is enhanced by lewis’s watercolour illustrations, which set a tone of warmth, happiness and love, and symbolize knowledge, dignity, creativity and self-esteem. furthermore and in the same way as the written plot, lewis’s expertise and proficiency break old stereotypes about the visual representation of black people. from the tandem struggle against linguistic homogenization and essentialism encapsulated in traditional children’s literature, reyes torres concludes that the other side portrays the initiation of children’s racial reality in the united states and teaches them to be brave and overlook differences in skin colour in favour of friendship, knowledge and solidarity. nephtalí de león, one of the most important contemporary chicano authors, honours this issue with “the use and abuse of language by a chicano from aztlán (both words unknown)” in a poet speaks about... his piece is not an academic article but a manifesto about what it means to be a chicano in the united states of the third millennium. de león, who calls himself “the gypsy vagabond poet of his community”, grew up as a migrant worker and lives his life in a territory that might undoubtedly be dubbed as physical, spiritual and linguistic borderlands. self-taught, his approach to his craft is non-academic and, as he himself highlights, it is the result of his multilingual and multicultural dialogue with immigrants and natives. this has also encouraged him language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2012, volume 4, number 2 pp. i-xvi issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.1 ix to freely practise “the visual and literary arts that have a resonance and relation to the community he comes from”. he is also the author of one of the first books to come out in the early 70s that theorize about the creative force of the chicano community and tackle the issue of their bilingual and bicultural identity: chicanos: our background & our pride (1972, reissued by puv in 2010), a volume that traces the origins and traditions of chicanos and pays homage to their struggle for dignity in anglo-american territory. as a manifesto, his article celebrates the importance of language as the most relevant tool of humankind, and focuses on a very specific use and abuse of it: how it has identified, trapped, occupied and liberated the chicano people of the nation of aztlán. de león explains that chicanos are those native americans often referred to as latinos, hispanics, mexican americans, mestizos, cholos and raza. in fact, they are the descendants of the people that once lived and continue to live in their homeland, aztlán. as such, their native language is neither english nor spanish, but azteca náhuatl, a language suppressed to such a degree that very few chicanos are even aware of it. the political oppression exercised by the united states government on chicanos through the exercise of a policy of genocide, based on the use and abuse of language, is responsible for what de león calls the life of semi-existence of chicanos. the abuse of language originated the blurring of the race and triggered an extreme xenophobia about their presence that has historically brought about the dehumanization of chicanos through a process of their being labelled as “illegals”, “undocumented” and “aliens”. in america, claims de león, the possessors have ignored the language of the dispossessed, have used language politics to mask unbalanced power relations which cloak, deceive, distract and euphemize “what has been a constant realpolitik of destruction meant to annihilate my people, community and ancestral memory”. political violence exerted on the chicano community has, according to de león, succeeded in erasing their language. yet, constant aggressions have failed to obliterate the most important element in their ancestral roots and in the memory of themselves, namely, their knowledge that they descend from a people of mythical proportions. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� from the editors articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.1 x similarly to nephtalí de león, maría henríquez-betancor devotes her article to the chicano experience, yet with a focus on gloria anzaldúa’s construction of identity as “the new mestiza” in borderlands/la frontera (1987), a turning point in the studies of race, class, gender and sex in the 1980s. henríquez-betancor analyses how, in the seventh essay of anzaldúa’s borderlands/la frontera, entitled “la conciencia de la mestiza: towards a new consciousness”, the author contests and revises inherited gender and cultural roles. anzaldúa rejects the dual personality that classifies her as a mexican-american and embraces the “new mestiza’s” plural identity in order to break alienating dichotomies of thought. the “new mestiza” is a survivor who has overcome the rupture with cultural patriarchal patterns and the limitations of gender. for henríquez-betancor, the consciousness of anzaldúa’s “new mestiza” is “a structural process of change in which the acceptance of cultural and personal problems, the meeting and intermixing of different groups with which anzaldúa identifies, and the possibility of reconciliation with the white society conflate in a linear and non-linear fashion”. she questions the concept of masculinity in the chicana community to finally return to her homeland, but carrying out a transformation. henríquez-betancor explains how anzaldúa traces the journey towards the mestiza consciousness and how anzaldúa represents three voices – the “i”, the “we” and the “she” – as her strategies to explore what she deems as her collective identity as a chicana and as a “new mestiza”. this positioning of herself in three different voices bespeaks the complexity of her identity. when she uses the “i”, she links herself with her personal identity, defines her feminism and creates a new culture as a “new mestiza. her “i” is a new hybrid identity that transcends her origins to become a critical being. when she uses the third person singular, “she” (“the new mestiza”), she adopts a chosen subject with the purpose of triggering change, and it becomes a potential “we” since it invites the collectivity of chicana women, but also homosexual men of all races and nationalities together with lesbians, to join in the regenerative process of establishing a new and powerful identity. for henríquez-betancor, anzaldúa creates what she calls “a collective and cultural self-definition as she mixes the personal with meaningful shared cultural elements” in a process that is non-linear and progressive, fluid and concrete. this multiplicity of identities resists exclusionary linguistic practices and aims at a real language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2012, volume 4, number 2 pp. i-xvi issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.1 xi representation of transnational historical memories, forging solidarity across experiential borders. anna m. brígido-corachán’s “wordarrows: the performative power of language in n. scott momaday’s non-fiction work” analyses how contemporary native american literary works, mostly written in english, reflect on the role of tribal native languages as part of their legacy, taking into account the fact that out of the two hundred indigenous languages spoken in united states now, only twenty are taught at home as a first language. brígido-corachán argues how the unstoppable erosion of tribal languages by the overwhelming presence and historical educational imposition of english on native americans explains why most contemporary authors use english and exhibit very little command of the languages once spoken by their ancestors. that being the case, native american writers, if interested in contributing to reverse the colonial imbalance, must necessarily subvert the language of historical subjugation and dominion, and deploy new language strategies to rewrite their personal and communal histories. her essay then focuses on momaday’s non-fiction piece the way to rainy mountain (1969/2001) and on his seminal essay “the man made of words” (1997), as examples of orality and performative conceptions of language in the kiowa storytelling tradition. in “the man made of words”, momaday declares: “we cannot exhaust the power of words; that power is intrinsic”. this is further explained in his essay “the native voice in american literature”, where he defines what language stands for in the indian tribal worlds: “words are intrinsically powerful. they are magical. by means of words one can bring about physical change in the universe”. momaday holds a relevant position within what, in 1983, kenneth lincoln baptized as the native american renaissance. in fact, the crucial event that marked its origin was the awarding of the 1968 pulitzer prize to momaday, a kiowa writer, for his novel house made of dawn. after his national and international recognition, other native american writers followed. yet, the division of native american traditions into two stages has been opposed by some critics, since the period inaugurated by momaday obscures not only the written work of previous nineteenth-century authors, but also the extraordinary legacy of oral works created in the different tribal languages spread around the north american continent. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� from the editors articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.1 xii for brígido-corachán, the way to rainy mountain – thematically divided into three blocks having to do with the momaday’s personal spatial dis-locations – traces the movement of his affiliation strategies into tribal culture from his academic studies in california. this journey back into the heart of his indigenous community is shaped by juxtaposing not only words (the mythical, the historical/anthropological, the family version of stories and reminiscences) but also his father’s drawings, and creates a polyphonic version of kiowa historiography that breaks the boundaries between fact and fiction, history and myth. thus, for brígido-corachán, the way to rainy mountain becomes a resisting text that questions the authority of the written word and echoes the structural and aesthetic traits that conform traditional native storytelling, boldly recreating its performative aspects as it reproduces an audience, a place, a particular oral rhythm and the voices from the past. as a native american storyteller, momaday develops what brígido-corachán calls “a sort of cartographic language” in this work. he facilitates a map for readers with the paratextual pieces wrapping up the text, thus allowing them to infer ultimate meaning out of the active weaving of the passages in their minds. taking into account gerald vizenor’s new coinages and the way they construct a new vision of the world that moves away from the hackneyed language of victimry, brígido-corachán concludes that momaday’s language can also be articulated around the notion of vizenorian wordarrowary and, as such, a powerful vehicle that opens up a new historical space for his personal and communal imagination. engaging in an act that arnold krupat calls “anti-imperial translation”, momaday’s performative use of storytelling both in the way to rainy mountain and “the man made of words” reconstitutes the english language as a linguistic code capable of tracing new and transfiguring kiowascapes. in “memory and language in hiromi goto’s chorus of mushrooms”, eva pich ponce focuses on how japanese canadian author hiromi goto deploys linguistic codes to construct social and cultural identities that break stereotypical images of the japanese in the country. the novel describes the intercultural experience of these asian immigrants through the lives of three generations of women belonging to the same family. the polyphonic nature of the narrative, the choral rendering of living in new cultural and social borderlands, enhances goto’s intention to embrace a diversity of discourses on language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2012, volume 4, number 2 pp. i-xvi issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.1 xiii immigration, ethnicity, and identity. these discourses are widely represented by the inclusion of personal recollections, japanese legends and journal articles. taking into account the metafictional categorization of chorus of mushrooms, pich ponce analyses goto’s subversion of realism and her strategies to destabilize narrative unity, reliable point of view and coherent character presentation, in an attempt to problematize canadian fixed notions of multiculturalism. for goto, pich ponce argues, the protagonists’ construction of an identity together with their willingness to keep their native cultural and national legacies are mainly rendered in terms of linguistic conflicts. in the face of the colonizing changes suffered by these characters, goto tackles the thorny question of assimilation in the canadian scenario. naoe, the grandmother, tries desperately and against all odds to remain faithful to her roots, refuses to forget her past and japanese culture, and defiantly rejects using the english language. her language is pierced by memories, pain and desire that, far from romanticizing the past, question her native culture and history. keiko, her daughter, decides to go canadian for the sake of muriel, her own daughter, who has embraced english as her language. her will to assimilate into canadian culture reveals how the country’s rhetoric of multicultural acceptance is in fact pervaded by racism and homogenizing tendencies that betray an exclusionary politics. language, then, becomes a site of struggle for goto as she describes the reapproachment of the three women through their deployment of new linguistic practices. the narrative includes many words in japanese without translation into english, a conscious strategy to invert the relationship between the margin/immigrant japanese and the centre/national canadian, and highlight the fact that differences exist. this omission forces readers to reflect upon the fact of translation and how new kinds of communication can be established through body language and imagination. the protagonists change names, play with japanese and english throughout the text, composing a hybrid narrative that challenges accepted notions of identity. refashioning the oral tradition of telling stories, these characters reinvent themselves as hybrid ethnic subjects and show that, as one of them declares, the nature of words changes with the telling. thus, their ultimate truths offer multiple perspectives that disrupt readers’ stereotypical expectations about the japanese immigrant minority in canada. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� from the editors articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.1 xiv in “the voice of the cypress. cyrus cassells and the poetry of salvador espriu”, dídac llorens cubedo tackles transnational and translinguistic influences between one of the most revered twentieth-century catalan poets, salvador espriu (1913-1985), and african american poet cyrus cassells. as the president of the international association for the defence of menaced languages and cultures, during the early 1970s, espriu campaigned for the survival of minority languages spoken all over the world. as a writer, he produced a body of literature that attests to his unflagging vindication of catalan, a language persecuted during franco’s regime. cassells’s own sense of marginalization, as a man who is both black and gay, has drawn him to read and translate catalan poetry into english. similarly to espriu, he is a poet in debt with previous poetical traditions and poets. llorens cubedo focuses on cassells’s poem “to the cypresses again and again” (1986), a piece published a year after espriu’s death, which was meant to pay homage to the catalan bard. his analysis on aspects such as the point of view, the imagery and the themes, as well as his exploration of the reasons that engaged cassells’s passion for espriu, shows how two apparently divergent poetical traditions converge through space and time in cassells’s poetry. llorens cubedo brings to the fore the importance of how artists’ creativity is reinforced across historical, personal and communal experiences and, most relevant to the point analysed in this issue, how it is forged across and against different languages. finally, before concluding this introduction, it is worth remembering that, with regard to language rights in american multicultural society, in 1998 the linguistic society of america issued a “statement of language rights”. this document recognizes that the eradication of most of the indigenous languages of the united states was a “deliberate government policy” and that their decline “has been closely linked to the loss of much of the culture of their speakers”. and secondly that the country is “home to numerous immigrant languages other than english”, the presence of which offers “both challenges and opportunities”. both indigenous and immigrant non-english languages conform a multilingual america and present the nation with “many benefits and opportunities” (1998: 389-390). hence, the contributions to this issue of language value attest to the multiplicity of approaches followed by ethnic minority american and canadian writers to tell their stories, leaving behind complaints of the colonizing effect of english language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2012, volume 4, number 2 pp. i-xvi issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.1 xv and revealing its liberating potential in the tongues of the inhabitants of linguistic borderlands. carme manuel cuenca guest editor universitat de valència, spain references achebe, c. 1975. morning yet on creation day. london: heinemann. anzaldúa, g. 1987. borderlands/la frontera: the new mestiza. san francisco: spinsters/aunt lute books. bishop, r.s. 2007. free within ourselves: the development of african american children’s literature. westport, conn: greenwood press. cassells, c. 1986. “to the cypresses again and again”. callaloo 26, 18-23. condé, m.i. 1992. tituba black witch of salem. charlottesville: university press of virginia. de león, n. (1972/2010). reimpression. chicanos: our background & our pride. valencia: publicacions de la universitat de valència. deleuze, g. and guattari, f. 1986. kafka: toward a minor literature. trans. dana polan. minneapolis: university of minnesota. goto, h. 1997. chorus of mushrooms. london: the women’s press. gramsci, a. 1991. selections from cultural writings. forgacs, d. and g. nowell-smith (eds.), w. boelhower (trans.). cambridge: harvard university press. hutcheon, l. 1988. a poetics of postmodernism: history, theory, fiction. london: routledge. jones, h.l. 1969. “black humor and the american way of life”. satire 7 (1), 1-10. kymlicka, w. 1995. multicultural citizenship. oxford: oxford university press. kymlicka, w. 1998 “american multiculturalism in the international arena”. dissent 45 (4), 73-79. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� from the editors articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.1 xvi linguistic society of america. 1998 “statement on language rights”. in sollors, w. (ed.) multilingual america: transnationalism, ethnicity, and the languages of american literature. new york: new york university press, 389-391. lorde, a. 1984/2007. “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house”. sister outsider: essays and speeches. freedom, ca: the crossing press, 110-114. momaday, n.s. 1968. house made of dawn. new york: harper & row. momaday, n.s. 1969/2001. the way to rainy mountain. albuquerque, nm: university of new mexico press. momaday, n.s. 1997. the man made of words: essays, stories, passages. new york: st. martin’s press. owens, l. 1998. mixedblood messages: literature, film, family, place. norman: university of oklahoma press. proulx, p.-l.d. 1984. “american citizenship and minority rights”. critique: a world wide journal of politics 2, 43-63. reed, i. 1976. flight to canada. new york: random house. ricoeur, p. 1984. time and narrative. vol. i. trans. mclaughlin, k. and d. pellauer. chicago: university of chicago press. rushdy, a.h.a. 1999. neo-slave narratives: studies in the social logic of a literary form. new york: oxford university press. shell, m. and sollors, w. (eds.) 2000. the multilingual anthology of american literature: a reader of original texts with english translations. new york: new york university press. sollors, w. (ed.) 1998. multilingual america: transnationalism, ethnicity, and the languages of american literature. new york: new york university press. walzer, m. 1992. what it means to be an american. new york: marsilio. woodson, j. 2001. the other side. new york: the penguin group. language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2012, volume 4, number 2 pp. 1-22 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.2 1 diasporic dialogues: the role of gender, language, and revision in the neo-slave narrative kalenda eaton eatonk@arcadia.edu arcadia university, usa abstract in this article i examine the creation of neo-slave narratives, or fictional texts written in the 20th and 21st centuries, yet set during an imagined period of american slavery or indentured servitude. in these novels the authors, usually african-descended, depict slavery and/or plantation life, generally, to privilege the experiences of the slave. the process of actively writing against traditional plantation narratives of the 18th and 19th centuries can liberate slave histories and allows silenced actors to speak. however, in this paper, i argue that there is a danger of further marginalization when history is the platform for creative expression. i examine two novels whose authors employ the use of satire to discuss slave experience and by doing so, i explore how the images of black slave and servant women can be either devalued or empowered depending on authorial representation and intent. keywords: slave narratives; women; african american; satire, historical fiction i. introduction in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, many authors have found their voices through the process of re-writing early african diasporic experience. one product of this self-conscious act is the creation of the “neo-slave narrative”; a subgenre of historical fiction, which often address possibilities of slave experience, word play, and re-memory absent from many writings during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. unlike fugitive authors, composers of recent narratives come from a position of relative privilege produced by a theoretical and chronological distance. these authors discuss slavery from the perspective of free citizens who have learned, but not lived, the history of societies in which their characters exist. in addition, the contemporary treatments are largely fictional accounts, whether they are historical narratives, “palimpsest narratives”, “genealogical narratives”, or a close imitation of the original slave narrative1 1 for a detailed description of the neo-slave narrative see andrews et al. (1997). . freedoms with form and style, numerous literary movements, and western http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� mailto:eatonk@arcadia.edu� diasporic dialogues: the role of gender, language, and revision in the neo-slave narrative language value 4 (2), 1–22 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 2 education have afforded writers the ability to re-create and re-historicize the text, thus liberating static representations of slave experience. with creative freedom comes the opportunity to vindicate former fictional depictions of slaves and slave life, generally found in literature written by nineteenth and twentieth century white male and female authors. as early as the late nineteenth century, black authors began to question the literary standard for addressing slavery and swiftly provided alternatives to narratives that presented unsophisticated caricatures of plantation slaves that portrayed the “runaway” as treacherous and the unloyal slave as “vile”. examples of these rewritings include works by pauline hopkins, charles chesnutt, william wells brown, victor séjour, and others who used their literacy to reinscribe history. throughout the twentieth century, the relative distance from a slave past coupled with increased educational access and freedom of expression created a literary environment ripe for intellectual query and liberty with form, style, and subject matter. though most writers create full characters seriously wrestling with the hardships of their slave (or neo-slave) experience, others reproduce important parts of this re-reading in a satirical or parodic form. contemporary writers concerned with slavery see themselves disrupting the typically sensitive nature of the subject by actively confronting accepted realities of the capitalist enterprise. interestingly, the choice to use satire to convey early black american experience is more than experimentation with craft. several authors are paying homage to the persistent satirical tradition that exists within african diasporic oral culture which was later transferred to the black written text. for example, in an essay on “third world aesthetics”, novelist and literary critic gayl jones proclaims: i am a novel of the third world, and so you would expect me to be different from those other novels, to have a different aesthetic, to revise (or rewrite) genre, characterization, style, theme, structure, viewpoint, values, and so i do. paradox and ambivalence may be seen in the margins of this marginal text; and may be read in and between then lines. satire and irony is plentiful here, for it’s part of my tradition. (jones 1994: 508, emphasis added) likewise, in a separate essay harry l. jones argues, “for three hundred and fifty years, black humor has been a survival technique and a weapon of the weak against the strong” (jones 1969: 3). both scholars speak to the ways “black” or “third world” people use satire and humor to react to their environments, a skill that is consequently http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� kalenda eaton language value 4 (2), 1–22 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 3 reproduced in black literature. when considering the empowering use of humor or satire in the neo-slave narrative one must also be aware of ways “new” narratives can reinforce the same gender and racial stereotypes writers are attempting to subvert. for example, in the novels flight to canada and i, tituba, black witch of salem ishmael reed and maryse condé (respectively) complicate the relationships between oppressors and oppressed in deliberate ways. the authors skillfully bend bondage narratives to address intricacies of black slave experience, africans in the diaspora, capitalism, free choice, and the master-slave dynamic2. however, the novels produce challenging depictions of black male/female relationships which seem to argue against attempts at collective rebuilding and inclusion. conversely, one can also argue that any interpretation by black writers of a “system” as deleterious and demented as slavery can be read as a revolutionary act, regardless of the content or the satirical style. ii. flight to canada written in response to the lack of black male protagonists in 19th century slave narratives; flight to canada, reed’s early novel about the economics of slavery, the power of literacy, and impossibility of escape, curiously employs black female characters as comic relief in an attempt to vindicate the fully developed male characters. this move assumes black women have the power of collective agency, absent in communities of black men, which allows them to withstand unfavorable images. therefore, the use of parody and satire becomes intricately tied to a (mis)read of gender dynamics within the black slave community in the authors’ attempts to rescue the male figure from the annals of history. in warriors, conjurers, and priests, joyce ann joyce notes, “not surprisingly, one of the most important problems in scholarship on [ishmael] reed involves his negative characterizations of black women” (joyce 1994: 244). she then continues to argue in reed’s favor and states, “though he challenges 2 this is not to say that these authors are the only using satire to comment on social relationships and/or racial injustices. i am aware of the long-standing tradition of satirical writing within the african american literary tradition. for example, langston hughes, wallace thurman, gloria naylor, ralph ellison, mel watkins, charles chesnutt, and toni morrison, are just a few that are noted for their satirical works. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� diasporic dialogues: the role of gender, language, and revision in the neo-slave narrative language value 4 (2), 1–22 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 4 societal evils, he is not didactic, and no one, neither man nor woman, escapes from his novels unscathed” (joyce 1994: 269). in the introduction to the ishmael reed reader reed acknowledges that in flight to canada he “refers to four slaves who represent the different approaches used by africans to deal with the situation in which they found themselves” (reed 1976: xxi). in the narrative, it appears that reed rewrites their experiences in satirical form to give the characters agency to decide their fate. when examined more closely there is a definite distinction between the agency given to the male characters and the agency taken by the female characters. therefore, the question regarding the depictions of the black female characters is: what exactly is reed rewriting? reed's novel follows raven quickskill’s escape from a southern plantation and the effect his flight has on the remaining inhabitants. he is able to write himself into being with crafty poetry and frequent letters detailing his exploits in the northern united states. through his satirical representation of 19th century america, reed challenges abraham lincoln’s rhetoric, white gentility, and the “cult of true womanhood”, while also exposing the exploitation of the fugitive slave on the lecture circuit and harriet beecher stowe’s “theft” of josiah henson’s life story among other tantalizing historical truths. reed uses the space of the novel to tackle the weighty issue of black complicity in the slave system as well as cross-racial intimacy (cordial, not romantic) fostered by the isolation of plantation. at first glance, reed’s unbalanced depiction of black female and male characters in the novel supports hazel carby’s statement that, “the institution of slavery is now widely regarded as the source of stereotypes about the black woman” (carby 1987: 20). for example, throughout the text reed positions the mammy figure (“mammy barracuda”) in direct contrast to the vilified uncle tom (“uncle robin”) character. she accurately embodies her namesake (barracuda), with her vicious attacks on every slave in the narrative and the unrelenting torture of her white mistress. in reconstructing womanhood, carby continues to argue that stereotypes of the black slave woman adversely affect contemporary perceptions of black women. given this knowledge, it is possible to understand reed’s conscious decision not to depict the humble, docile, selfless “mammy" that appears in antebellum (and reconstruction era) literature written http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� kalenda eaton language value 4 (2), 1–22 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 5 by white american authors. that idealized mammy was a construct of white sentimentalism and ignored the real properties of her womanhood and family life. where the traditionally popular mammy figure was maternal, asexual, selfless, caring, plump, and jolly, flight to canada’s mammy barracuda parodies these characteristics. she retains the maternal qualities in the sense that her white charges can “curl up fetus like in [her] lap” and be “rock[ed] in the rocking chair” (reed 1976: 20-21). she also provides the swille’s with opium-induced comfort by calming them with an injection when they are unable to handle the pressures of plantation life (reed 1976: 108-9). while ishmael reed reconstructs the asexual, effeminate characterizations of the historical “uncle tom” by including the fact that uncle robin is married and very sexually active; conversely, the asexual mammy experiences very little change in the perceptions of her sexuality. the major deviation in her behavior remains her excitement by the possibility of tormenting other slaves with “whips and chains”. accordingly, in the novel she uses these tools to inflict pain in a disturbing sadistic fashion. though it is obvious reed uses these and other deliberately ludicrous scenes to comment on problematic notions of gender in the antebellum south, the mammy becomes a female version of a cad. earlier in the novel, she is described as wearing a “silk scarf” that replaces the traditional worn, tattered “head rag”. the presence of silk attests to her prominent position in the swille household and assumes much more. as the text infers, mammy receives her jewels and riches from “arthur” (whom the other slaves know only as “massa swille”) in exchange for her numerous services — including prior sexual encounters. her hinted at, but unstated relationship with the master boldly addresses the complicated narratives surrounding sexual activity and subservience on the plantation. in an infamous book review of flight to canada, sondra o’neale argues, “…for the black woman reed intends no sympathy; as represented by swille’s human cudgel, mammy barracuda, whose whore-begotten wealth is so heavy that it bends her back and [is used] to ‘blind’ her master’s slaves (o’neale 1978: 174177). within reed’s description of mammy’s possessions is a parody of the perceptions surrounding the religious and self-righteous slave woman. the ‘blinding’ element to http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� diasporic dialogues: the role of gender, language, and revision in the neo-slave narrative language value 4 (2), 1–22 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 6 which o’neale refers is a diamond crucifix on mammy barracuda’s bosom, which is “so heavy she walks with a stoop”. later in a conversation between uncle robin and his wife, the reader learns that mammy formed a “jesus-cult” that was put in place to stamp out the heathenism — of african slaves. the pointed critique of imbued christianity as opposed to an embrace of polytheism or a form of “african spirituality” places her at the forefront of the debate over the acceptance of the “white-man’s religion” and the appropriation of european culture. also in the text, barracuda proudly “waltzes” out of the room with abraham lincoln and she proudly sings at the “last reunion of confederate soldiers” as a testament to where her true loyalty lies (reed 1976: 39, 14). again, one can argue that all of the aforementioned acts add to and support reed’s critique of the stereotype of the plantation mammy’s undying love for white southern livelihood. however, a more critical look questions if mammy barracuda’s actions do anything to relieve the black woman who has often been accused by those in her own ethnic community of being a servant, lover, and supporter of white patriarchy from time immemorial. no matter how ridiculous the package, in this novel, mammy barracuda appears to fulfill her culturally supported role and for the unskilled reader may not be a deviation from the plantation tradition that reed mocks. for example, in one poignant exchange between mammy and mrs. swille, reed uses mammy’s power to “attack” (literally) nineteenth century demands for women’s suffrage that ultimately eschewed the positionality of black women. throughout the novel mrs. swille stages a one-woman protest against her husband. she attempts to align herself with the injustices on the plantation when she accuses her husband of treating her as a slave in her own home. she stages a dramatic protest scene in her room and claims that all disadvantaged people (primarily women) regardless of color are fighting the same struggle against white patriarchy. subsequently, master swille grants a terribly annoyed mammy barracuda permission to make mrs. swille “act right” by any means necessary—once again suggesting collusion between the master and black former mistress who now runs his home. barracuda uses this opportunity to beat mrs. swille, “grab her hair and throw her to the floor”, and “give her a football-punt kick to her naked hip, causing and immediate red welt” (reed 1976: 112). the abuse continues until mrs. swille is finally “cleaned up” and given an injection of barbiturates to help http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� kalenda eaton language value 4 (2), 1–22 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 7 her sleep. soon after, mammy barracuda assures mrs. swille that she was doing this for her own good and that she “hates to do what she had to do with her darlin” (reed 1976: 114). through parody, reed appears to vindicate the “traditional” mammy by demonstrating her actual power, supplying a voice, and making her the epitome of the “strong black woman”. unfortunately, she remains stereotypical in other, more complex ways as she is transformed from one image of black womanhood into another. interestingly, with the flick of a pen the traditionally accommodating “mammy” becomes the vile “sapphire”. in an excerpt from ain’t i a woman, bell hooks asserts, as sapphires, black women were depicted as evil treacherous, bitchy, stubborn, and hateful, in short all that the mammy figure was not…white men could justify their dehumanization and sexual exploitation of black women by arguing that they possessed inherent demonic qualities…and white women could use the image of the evil sinful black woman to emphasize their own innocence and purity (hooks 1999: 85). though comedic in nature and possibly political in intent, mrs. swille’s violent encounter with mammy barracuda places her on the receiving end of the mammy’s rage preserving her womanhood and demonizing barracuda. mrs. swille is depicted as a helpless victim of mammy’s oppressive aggression. one can argue that the above scene confronts the fallacy that “sisterhood is global” and reproduces black women’s feelings of betrayal during the height of exclusivity in the second wave of the feminist movement. or, on the other hand that the satirical framework created for the text blurs the real meaning behind the action. the question then becomes, why is it when confronted with white womanhood the black woman’s (alleged) internalized violent and destructive feelings can only manifest in the pages of a text written by a male author? mammy barracuda remains a troubled character throughout the narrative. the fact that she is only one of three african american females used in the novel to depict a portion of slave life is additionally problematic. uncle robin’s wife, “aunt judy”, exists in the novel as a “bedmate” and rarely, if ever, leaves the confines of their home. mammy barracuda’s sidekick, “bangalang”, is an incomplete representation of anything substantive as she is depicted as a floundering, senseless woman. for example, in one scene she leaves the water running because mammy did not tell her to turn it off. later, when uncle robin reluctantly attempts to extinguish master swille (who is ironically http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� diasporic dialogues: the role of gender, language, and revision in the neo-slave narrative language value 4 (2), 1–22 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 8 set aflame by his own poe-esque gothic incestuous desires), she impedes his progress by stopping the water — because after the previous incident, mammy told her “when you turn the faucet on, you’re not suppose to forget to turn it off” (reed 1976: 136-7)3. in sum, many representations of black women in the novel appear as “comic capital”4 it is obvious to the reader that the “mammy” character in flight to canada is not supposed to be fully redeemed. she is overbearing, emasculating, and a close second to the myth of the black matriarch detailed in documents like “the moynihan report” released a decade prior to the publication of reed’s text , at more intelligent points in the novel. 5 reed is always serious, beneath his parodic play. it is this basic seriousness that critics have frequently been blind to when they accuse postmodernism of being ironic—and therefore trivial. the assumption seems to be that authenticity of experience and expression are somehow incompatible with double-voicing and/or humor. this view seems to be shared not only by marxist critics, but also by some feminist critics. and yet it is feminist writers, along with blacks, who have used such ironic intertextuality to such powerful ends—both ideologically and aesthetically (if the two could, in fact, be so easily separated) (hutcheon 1988:134). . in defense of reed, linda hutcheon argues: in slight opposition, sondra o’neale argues, “the moral [regarding flight to canada] is not an aesthetic one—but then a stance of the black aesthetic is that political and humanistic statement is an undeniable force in art. if reed purposes to free the black man with his writing, let us hope that he will magnanimously enlarge his vision to free all the race…” (o’neale 1978: 177). while championing the power in narrative, o’neale calls for a realistic view of the “political”. can one fault reed when he purports, “my writing is real cutup, it’s provocative, and i make no apologies about that” (carroll 1995: 193)? or is it true that “there is generally never a one-to-one correspondence between what a novel is and who/what a novelist is” as gayl jones argues? even if the “blame” is not on the author, per se, and/or rests in the representation of the female characters by other male characters, (e.g. charles 3her character is reminiscent of minstrel characters, like stepin fetchit, and other daft characterizations of african americans in early american cinema. generally men, these accomplished actors perpetuated the stereotype of the “foolish negro” in order to retain employment. an allusion is also made to prissy, butterfly mcqueen’s flighty character in the cinematic version of “gone with the wind” who famously confesses, “i don’t know nothing ‘bout birthing no babies”. 4 term used in elizabeth muher’s essay, “isadora at sea: misogyny as comic capital in charles johnson’s middle passage”. african american review: winter 1996. 5 for further analysis of the black family as perceived by moynihan, see rainwater and yancey (1967). http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� kalenda eaton language value 4 (2), 1–22 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 9 johnson’s middle passage), does understanding that satire is a playful form or style sufficiently address the larger issue of re-presentation? as o’neale articulates in her argument, there is a definite connection between stories and experiences of all african american people, specifically during slavery. the opportunity to rewrite the narratives of experience and reread “unsaid truths” should not have to privilege one story over another. in flight to canada, mammy barracuda misses the opportunity to salvage her ‘mammyhood’ and escape a prescribed lifestyle. at the novel’s end, master swille’s “last will and testament” relocates her to a “school for negroes” where it states, she can continue her sadism as headmistress. in an attempt to fully explain reed’s project, ashraf rushdy contemplates the many positive elements of reed’s work. he writes, [reed] offers a parody of slave narratives as they were read as a way of reconstructing potential readings of slave narratives as they can be read...a parody that renders uncle tom’s cabin obsolete simultaneously opens up the possibility for fresh readings of those co-opted slave narratives (rushdy 1999:125). he later argues, “according to reed, ‘hoodoo writing’ is essential to the act of collective healing necessary for slavery to end its influence on the behavior of its survivors” (rushdy 1999: 130). it is important to reiterate that the primary agenda of these novels is the reclamation of a black manhood that is lost and/or absent in the literature of white american authors. for reed, the goal may be to vindicate harriet beecher stowe's "uncle tom” (and josiah henson) through his uncle robin and raven characters. in the now classic critical text, the signifying, monkey: a theory of afro-american literary criticism, henry louis gates, jr. discusses the reproduction of canonical literary conventions through the language of the black vernacular. he writes, black literature shares much with, far more than it differs from, the western textual tradition, primarily as registered in english, spanish, portuguese, and french. but black formal repetition always repeats with a difference, a black difference that manifests itself in specific language use. and the repository that contains the language that is the source—and the reflection—of black difference is the black english vernacular tradition. (gates 2000: 342-343) the location of the “difference” is at the heart of the matter for scholars reading the male and female characters in the neo-slave narrative. reed dispels myths about black male experience during slavery when the text provides clear opportunities for the male slaves to redeem their former selves by giving voice to their histories. conversely, through this model and use of satire as a weapon, black female characters remain http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� diasporic dialogues: the role of gender, language, and revision in the neo-slave narrative language value 4 (2), 1–22 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 10 caricatures placed in the margins of history, as she is denied equal space with her male counterparts, or a voice of her own. iii. i, tituba, black witch of salem therefore, if satire and gendered re-presentations of slave life work in tandem how does one reconcile a novel written by a woman of the diaspora that recalls the life of a forgotten black woman whose very presence in the new world was considered the cause of legendary witchcraft hysteria in the 17th century? more importantly, how do we read this novel when, in reference to the protagonist, the author warns us afterward: “do not take tituba too seriously, please” (scarboro 1992: 212). in i, tituba black witch of salem maryse condé does not shy away from parody in her refashioning of servitude in new england. although she decides to privilege orality, recovery, and feminine control she openly admits to infusing i, tituba with comic irony and satire, possibly taking a cue from other early regional black texts6 condé retells the story of tituba indian; a historical figure denied a voice before and after she becomes a footnote to the controversial salem witch trials of 17th century colonial massachusetts. she is the sole blame for the debauchery among the accused women as her “black magic” is believed to be the source of witchcraft in the village. as a result of her silencing, condé’s fictional tituba modifies western concepts of language in an effort to preserve her life. the author conjures an intricate tale that enables tituba to project her voice through alternate means of communication; not only freeing the subject, but also allowing her the freedom to parody various episodes of historical memory. . what is interesting about her account is the equal space given to multiple voices alongside clever uses of parody and satire. throughout the text it is proven that speechlessness operates as a force that signifies more than mere silencing. because the events take place in a colonial space prior to fullscale geographic expansion and trans-atlantic slavery, suppression took many forms. for example, denying and/or inhibiting speech by enforcing a foreign tongue on the oppressed extends the realm of power and remains a destructive by-product of 6 see elizabeth breau’s (1993) discussion of the uses of satire in the new england slave narrative our nig. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� kalenda eaton language value 4 (2), 1–22 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 11 colonization. a prime example of the colonized tongue rests with the trans-atlantic or african slave trade, where research suggests slaves from corresponding african nations and linguistic backgrounds were separated as a means of deterring possible uprisings on the plantations of the west indies and the american south. in exchange for the african slave’s physical and psychological subjugation, the dominant (i.e. european) discourse was mandated as the only system of effective communication with the colonizer and slave master. in the historic essay, “on national culture”, frantz fanon posits, “the effect consciously sought by colonialism was to drive into the natives’ heads the idea that if the settlers were to leave, they would at once fall back into barbarism, degradation and bestiality” (fanon 1999: 37). the threat of abandonment speaks to an almost infantile dependence on the colonizer and a rejection of native customs and folkways. what condé and other post-colonial authors attempt is the “further creation” of the colonized language in a “new context, under new conditions” (bakhtin 1998: 535). through the use of satire, i, tituba, directly acknowledges the issue of an authoritative presence that attempts to cancel out the voice of the subject. in “tituba’s story”, bernard rosenthal gives an account of the facts known about the historical tituba’s existence. he notes, “the facts are few” and examines how over the years a majority of the knowledge about tituba can be traced back to fictional constructions by either authors such as condé or “historical speculation”. he notes that: she lived in the household of the reverend samuel parris. her prior whereabouts are not known. her culture defined her as an indian. her contemporaries offered no verifiable clues about her age. she was accused of witchcraft and confessed. she claimed to have been beaten and to have been herself afflicted by witches. from the beginning of march 1692 until she was brought to a court of general jail. delivery on 9 may 1693, she presumably languished in prison. exactly when she was released and whether she was ever reunited with john indian-or whether she had reason to be-is also not known (rosenthal 1998: 200). this account of tituba’s life exhibits the same stolid reportage as her actual court deposition. tituba exists as an intangible being attached to a name but detached from society. aime cesaire calls this the “thingification” of the colonized person. she has no active participation within the environment in which she is placed and is virtually ignored by all who surround her. in postcolonial theory, leela gandhi notes, “the ‘third world woman’ can thus be seen as yet another object of western knowledge, simultaneously knowable and unknowing” (gandhi 1998: 86). http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� diasporic dialogues: the role of gender, language, and revision in the neo-slave narrative language value 4 (2), 1–22 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 12 however, it is in the novel that we see condé’s tituba differ from the silenced historical subject. tituba, the fictional character, lives a vibrant, subversive life. a revision of this kind is possible because condé refuses to claim the historical tituba. the author adamantly denies that the novel is a work of historical fiction, and chooses to create a character from her own imagining. through this process, condé has the freedom to play with convention (as does reed), but notably steers clear of the caricatures discussed above. she identifies her text as the “opposite of a historical novel” noting that she “was not interested at all in what her real life could have been” (scarboro 1992: 201). the lack of a model gives condé nothing to reinforce, react to, or push against, again, making it possible for a more balanced rendering of the figure. condé’s tituba is first introduced as the product of rape, conceived on the slave ship christ the king, en route to barbados. these first lines of the text hint at condé’s hidden mission to disrupt serious imaginings of the character. while there is the obvious juxtaposition of domination and forced enslavement with the image of the religious savior (christ), tituba’s conception and nativity tale does much more. in her discussion of subversion in the novel, paula c. barnes notes, “condé’s adoption of the structure of the nineteenth-century slave narrative is completed in the narrative itself… [but] as seen with the pre-and post-narrative conventions, condé consciously imitates, manipulates, and revises these tropes (barnes 1999: 196). barnes goes on to discuss the description of tituba’s conception as an attack on the trope of the slave narrative which includes ‘a first sentence beginning ‘i was born…,’ in other words, the tracing of tituba’s conception back to the act of rape on a vessel moving across the atlantic situates her as the quintessential diasporic subject, whose “circumstances surrounding [her] birth become more prominent than the birth itself” (barnes 1999: 196). later in the text after tituba is accused of witchcraft and jailed, condé allows hester prynne, the victimized figure of nathaniel hawthorne’s the scarlet letter, to enter into the novel. hester and tituba share a cell, providing commentary on the effects puritanical values have on free-thinking women. in conde’s version of hester’s life she commits suicide after tituba’s testimony but remains a significant force in her life through the foresight of mama yaya or yao, her spiritual protectors throughout the novel. while the act of placing a figure like prynne in the novel can be read as a testament to shared experiences among women or an affront to colonial patriarchy, http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� kalenda eaton language value 4 (2), 1–22 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 13 according to condé, hester’s appearance in the novel is a reaction to the contemporary moment. in response to an interview question about prynne’s presence she states: “writing tituba was an opportunity to express my feelings about present-day america. i wanted to imply that in terms of narrow-mindedness, hypocrisy, and racism, little has changes since the days of the puritans” (scarboro 1992: 203). this revelation moves the reader away from the symbolism existing within the text (racial and gendered unity), instead using women’s lives to emphasize the progressive failures of the country. also, there are several layers of pastiche present in this scene. for example, the black author (condé) lends her voice to prynne, an ostracized white woman, unwed and a mother, originally created by a white male author. prynne’s capture and bondage in the prison cell of her novel (i, tituba) ultimately gives condé, not hawthorne, control over who holds the key. in similar moments, hester prynne appears long enough to teach tituba how to tell a true story that will allow her to survive and to introduce her to the future teachings of feminism. she also becomes a major part of tituba’s “text of silenced history” when she structures tituba’s testimony (dukats 1995: 54) and instructs tituba to “make them scared” and “give them their money’s worth!”, suggesting that her words and actions become the spectacle (condé 1992: 99). after hester’s advice, condé inserts the official deposition, giving validity to the scene, but also questioning the “truth” the world has accepted about tituba. including hester’s advice in the novel can also be read as an attempt to answer why, outside of the fiction that structures the novel, the factual deposition reads as if tituba is actually coerced into saying what her accusers wanted to hear. in black skin, white masks (1967) fanon asserts, “to speak is to exist absolutely for the other”. following this sentiment in relation to the historical tituba’s court deposition, the act of speaking and the words she mimics create for the court a level of truth to the accusations of witchery, whether they are her truth or not. her accusers pay close attention to her phrasing and extract meaning in order to build their case, but ironically, the testimony tituba gives is puzzling as it is extremely contradictory and illogical. likewise, the line of questioning is confusing and indirect. for example, the beginning of the original deposition reads as follows (note: the original spelling, punctuation, and terminology have not been altered): http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� diasporic dialogues: the role of gender, language, and revision in the neo-slave narrative language value 4 (2), 1–22 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 14 (h) titibe what evil spirit have you familiarity with (t) none (h) why do you hurt these children (t) i do not hurt them (h) who is it then (t) the devil for ought i know (h) did you never see the devil. (t) the devil came to me and bid me serve him (h) who have you seen (t) 4 women sometimes hurt the children (h) who were they? (t) goode osburn and sarah good and i doe not know who the other were sarah good and osburne would have me hurt the children but i would not shee furder saith there was a tale man of boston that shee did see (h) when did you see them (t) last night at boston (h) what did they say to you they said hurt the children (h) and did you hurt them (t) no there is 4 women and one man they hurt the children and then lay all upon me and they tell me if i will not hurt the children they will hurt me (h) but did you not hurt them (t) yes, but i will hurt them no more… (games 2010: 176-77)7 in the larger document, tituba vacillates between knowing and not knowing an “evil spirit”, being told by humans and then animals to “hurt the children”, and later hurting the children, not ever hurting the children, and/or refusing to hurt them again. condé recognizes how the multiple circumstances surrounding the deposition, including the atmosphere outside the courtroom leaves the interpretation of tituba’s inconsistencies wide open. in response, she depicts tituba as a cunning individual who spins the testimony in several directions for dramatic effect, thus doing as hester suggests and “giving them what they want”. toward the end of the deposition the fictional tituba adds, “i confess i wasn’t a good actress”, revealing a “truth” about her role in the alleged incidents that caused the hysteria (condé 1992: 106). by including the term ‘actress’ which suggests an invented persona, condé consciously calls into question the innocence of the most sympathetic characters in the novel and humorously responds to the awkward nature of the testimony and her own use of satirical forms. . in other ironic moments, the fictional tituba is depicted as an herbalist who uses her mystical power and knowledge of garden herbs to heal. the irony exists in the fact that her ability to use this natural craft is the premise behind the salem hysteria. tituba is first introduced to what the puritans call “witchcraft” and what she deems education about herbs, by mama yaya, her surrogate mother. though this is her first experience, 7 condé's text preserves much of the original with only a slight deviation in her creative choice to modernize the language and provide excerpts rather than the full draft of the deposition. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� kalenda eaton language value 4 (2), 1–22 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 15 her mother has the ability to “conjure up all the forces of nature” when she is pregnant with tituba (condé 1992: 4). mama yaya teaches tituba the art of conjure in order to ensure tituba’s survival and to pass on a legacy that will be lost when she dies. because of her knowledge, tituba is revered by the slaves on the plantation in barbados and news of her powers spreads across the island. condé admits that this rendering of mama yaya is a part of tituba’s existence as a “mock-epic” novel. in the aforementioned interview, condé is nonchalant in her response to the spiritual and empowering read of the novel. with regard to the omniscience of mama yaya, tituba’s spiritual guide, condé states: the question of grandmothers telling stories and thus teaching their granddaughters how to become writers is one of the biggest clichés of black female writing. i repeat that the element of parody is very important if you wish to fully comprehend tituba…if one misses the parody in tituba, one will not understand, for example, why she meets hester prynne in jail and why they discuss feminism in modern terms. similarly, the presence of the invisible (the conversations with the mother and with mama yaya) is deliberately overdrawn (scarboro 1992: 212). in addition to spiritual power, condé gives space and command to tituba’s burgeoning sexuality. she uses this power to resist the domination associated with slavery and combats her subjugation by loving freely in an environment where sexual satisfaction is condemned. her subsequent relationship with john indian highlights her inability to “do without men”. in order to satisfy her “uncontrollable desire” she does the unthinkable and willingly subjects herself to a life of slavery (condé 1992: 19). condé’s portrayal of tituba as a candidly sexual being writes tituba into a femininity that transcends the boundaries created by her european female counterparts. for it is during her jailhouse conversation with hester prynne that she is told she cannot be regarded as a feminist because of her overtly sexual image; a statement that recalls racist claims of licentiousness and bestiality among african women beginning in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (condé 1992: 101). additionally, the link prynne makes between tituba’s sexual desire and resulting inability to be a true feminist cleverly addressed the stereotype of an asexual or lesbian feminist whose love of herself or other women restricts her ability to love men (because, as it is thought, heterosexual love is counterrevolutionary). after her infamous testimony, tituba remains in jail until she is “rescued” by the jewish merchant benjamin cohen d’azevedo. her release into his custody was a release not only from the walls of the jail cell but also from the walls of institutional racism in http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� diasporic dialogues: the role of gender, language, and revision in the neo-slave narrative language value 4 (2), 1–22 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 16 which she resided for many years. in her relationship with benjamin, tituba allows her sexual desire to transcend race and transforms a typical master-slave act of physical domination into one in which she is reborn and in full control of her body. instead of being “another master, another bondage” (condé 1992: 120), benjamin allows tituba into his family and treats her as a person rather than a slave. it is important to note that tituba is his property and unable to “walk away” from any sexual advances that he makes towards her, but she makes no attempt to end the relationship and looks forward to their nights together. tituba reclaims the body that is so easily sold into bondage by enjoying the sexual relationship she has with benjamin. tituba’s text signifies on that of slave women who when faced with the demand to render their bodies chose to take any possible control over the situation. in reconstructing womanhood, hazel v. carby examines the reconstruction of “traditional” roles and identity as they relate to the slave narrative of harriet jacobs. in her autobiography, incidents in the life of a slave girl (1861), jacobs uses her body in order to save the lives of her future children. she becomes a willing participant in a sexual relationship with a white man she does not love so that she may arrange for their continued safety. in a plea to the reader, she expresses the sentiment that “a slave girl ought not to be judged by the same standard as others” (jacobs 1987: 386). though tituba’s act is not a desperate plea for a child born “free” in an environment of slavery, she embodies the desperation set forth by jacobs. as tituba matures and is released from benjamin, she returns to barbados and finds herself in a situation where christopher, the leader of a maroon camp, attempts to strip her of self-esteem. it is significant that condé chooses a jewish merchant as the person able to free tituba mentally as well as physically and then return her to her native land-while a caribbean man subjugates her upon her return. condé adeptly demonstrates the universality of patriarchal oppression. with christopher, tituba is demoralized when he calls her “a common negress” and professes that there is “no song for her”. he refuses to divulge a plan of escape among the maroon’s on the island and instructs that her only duty is to “make love”. tituba counters this sentiment by leaving christopher and http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� kalenda eaton language value 4 (2), 1–22 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 17 joining with another (iphingene8 the question of primary loyalty to race or gender that activist women of color encounter surfaces in tituba’s relationships with christopher and iphingene. tituba answers this question in her earlier decision to follow john indian into servitude and continues the pattern until she joins the preparation for the revolt towards the end of the novel. in salem, when she speaks back to liberal anglo-american feminism and redefines the premise of the sexual master-slave relationship she presents other complicated responses to the place of black womanhood in the new world as well. ) as leader of a slave rebellion, for which she ultimately gives her life. she knows the revolt will not be successful and repeatedly refers to it as the “final act/attack”. tituba’s involvement and willingness to die for the revolution purposefully positions her as the antithesis of the marginalized woman who is voiceless and denied access to the native struggle. again, it is only when she thinks of hester’s feminist standpoint and the restrictions it places on highly expressive acts of passion that tituba wonders if something is wrong with her sentiments. she remembers hester’s proclamation telling her that she is “too fond of love” and temporarily questions her feelings (condé 1992: 170). in the tongue snatchers, claudine hermann also examines love and the feminist agenda. in terms of the historical silencing of women and their propensity to question the attributes that hester repeatedly associates with feminist discourse, hermann states that “love... can not defend itself. love’s business isn’t to prove. it has no use for being right” (herrmann 1989: 56). tituba seems to realize the triviality of using the dominant discourse to examine her actions. returning to the interview, condé admits she “wanted to turn tituba into a sort of female hero, an epic heroine, like the legendary ‘nanny of the maroons (scarboro 1992: 201)’” therefore, it is important to question whether condé is successful in providing tituba true agency as an author of her own destiny — as opposed to an illusory invention of the writer’s consciousness. leela gandhi notes “liberal academic feminism is said to silence the ‘native woman’ in its pious attempts to represent or speak for her” (gandhi 1998: 89). is this silencing present in condé’s attempt to give tituba a voice or is she successful in eliminating her 8 iphingene’s name is likely an invented masculine version of “iphigenia” the ancient greek figure designed to be a sacrifice that would aid her father’s (agamemnon) defeat of troy. this read would be appropriate given iphingene’s sacrificial act on behalf of the island slaves. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� diasporic dialogues: the role of gender, language, and revision in the neo-slave narrative language value 4 (2), 1–22 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 18 own presence and allowing tituba to speak? mudimbé-boyi argues that condé removes herself from the position of narrator and fully allows the spirit of tituba to take control. though condé physically constructs the novel, mudimbé-boyi makes the distinction between condé’s voice and tituba’s voice. by giving tituba a voice, condé allows a voice to “emerge from elsewhere than from an ‘authority’ or from the social location of the writer” (mudimbé-boyi 1993: 753). the importance is that condé has “created a territory for her in history and literature, allowing her to survive as a black female literary character, if not a historical figure” (mudimbé-boyi 1993: 755). despite the serious subject matter, condé admits to hesitating “between irony and a desire to be serious” instead reaching a middle-ground that is the novel’s current form (scarboro 1992: 201). her references to contemporary novels, gender theory, and popular culture remind the reader of her satirical hand. she introduces the term “feminist” in the late seventeenth century as opposed to having it reside in its actual birthplace of the nineteenth century. the same is also true with references to “strange fruit” the poem and later song made famous by billie holiday that laments bodies of lynched african americans hanging from southern oak trees. these insertions prove that condé chooses not to surrender all of her creative agency in telling tituba’s story and decides to incorporate satire as an act of rebellion. since the publication of the novel, scholars have gone back and questioned the true import of pivotal scenes like the one where yao names tituba (thought to be a scene gleaned from alex haley’s roots) or the reoccurring themes of feminism, racial identity, literacy, and sexuality (scarboro 1992: 222, barnes 1999: 197-201). several have heeded condé’s words and not taken tituba or the novel ‘too seriously,’ instead choosing to focus on the reasons the author subverts convention and/or parodies traditional forms. likewise, the question of whether tituba or condé has the authority of speech should be considered in the continued analysis of tituba’s character along with the question of whether condé is an appropriate spokesperson for the bondswoman. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� kalenda eaton language value 4 (2), 1–22 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 19 iv. conclusion for writers like condé the act of giving a voice is similar to that of giving life. she is able to fill “the silence and voids with voice and presence” (i, tituba xii) and occupy a space that has been closed off in the pages of history. though many work to fill in the gap, there remains a deafening silence in relation to the representation and agency that is “allowed” the formerly colonized individual. this silence is the result of a continued dominance in the public sector, including institutions of higher education and the media. the privilege of re-creation afforded reed and condé supposes a nuanced revision history. for the diasporic author who takes it upon herself to retell the “truth” one of the main purposes of rewriting history is to heal stories and souls damaged by marginalization and suppression. however, i note that when satire is used in the text a clever “messiness” is created that often places artistic license at odds with national and/or cultural memory. likewise, the authors’ writing style and language use can create wholly unsympathetic characters whose presence causes the reader to question the role of the historical narrative. the examples of “fresh readings” and “acts of collective healing” allows for reconsiderations of history, memory, and truth. therefore, it is imperative that one reads satire within the neo-slave narrative as an evolution in the presentation and discussion of complicated themes, rather than the reinforcement of dominant discourse. when examining the ways interdisciplinary studies impacts discussions of progress on a global scale one must consider the pedagogical, political, and personal contributions scholars within the discipline make to modern notions of gender and identity. while it is true that significant sites of divergence within the histories and lives of africandescended people, for example, complicate attempts to claim racial solidarity; throughout the decades important connections have been made in recovery projects that further examine the ways language and rhetoric respond to theory. sociological and historical examinations of multicultural literature must continue to interrogate linguistic power, with contemporary research providing a space for the confluence of ideas and reimagining. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� diasporic dialogues: the role of gender, language, and revision in the neo-slave narrative language value 4 (2), 1–22 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 20 references andrews, w.l., foster, f.s. and harris, t. (eds.) 1997. the oxford companion to african american literature. oxford: oxford university press. bakhtin, m. 1998. “discourse in the novel”. in richter, r. (ed.) the critical tradition. boston: bedford books, 530-539. barnes, p.c. 1999. “maryse condé’s i, tituba, black witch of salem and the slave narrative tradition”. in liddell, j.l. and y.b. kemp (eds.) arms akimbo: africana women in contemporary literature. gainesville: university press of florida, 193-204. breau, e. 1993. “our nig”. callaloo 16 (2), 455-465. carby, h.v. 1987. reconstructing womanhood: the emergence of the afro-american woman novelist. oxford: oxford university press. carroll, r. 1995. swing low: black men writing. new york: crown trade paperbacks. condé, m.i. 1992. tituba black witch of salem. charlottesville: university press of virginia. hooks, b. 1999 (reprint). ain’t i a woman: black women and feminism. cambridge: south end press. dukats, m.l. 1995. “the hybrid terrain of literary imagination: maryse condé’s black witch of salem, nathaniel hawthorne’s hester prynne, and aimé césaire’s heroic poetic voice”. college literature 22, 51-61. fanon, f. 1967. black skin, white masks. new york: grove press. fanon, f. 1994. “on national culture”. in williams, p. and l. chrisman (eds.) colonial discourse and post-colonial theory. new york: columbia university press, 36-52. games, a. 2010. witchcraft in early north america. lanham: rowman & littlefield. gandhi, l. 1998. postcolonial theory: a critical introduction. new york: columbia university press. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� kalenda eaton language value 4 (2), 1–22 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 21 gates, h.l. 2000. “introduction to the signifying monkey: a theory of afro-american literary criticism”. in napier, w. (ed.) african american literary theory: a reader. new york: new york university, 339-347. herrmann, c. 1989. the tongue snatchers. lincoln: university of nebraska press. hutcheon, l. 1988. a poetics of postmodernism: history, theory, fiction. new york: routledge. jacobs, h. 1987. incidents in the life of a slave girl. gates jr., h.l. (ed.) new york: penguin books. jones, g. 1994. “the quest for wholeness: re-imagining the african american novel, an essay on third world aesthetics”. callaloo 12 (2), 507-518. jones, h.l. 1969. “black humor and the american way of life”. satire 7 (1), 1-10. joyce, j.a. 1994. warriors, conjurers, and priests: defining african-centered literary criticism. chicago: third world press. muher, e. 1996. “isadora at sea: misogyny as comic capital in charles johnson’s middle passage”. african american review 30 (4), 649-658. mudimbé-boyi, e. 1993. “giving a voice to tituba: the death of the author?” world literature today 67, 751-756. o’neale, s. 1978. “ishmael reed's fitful flight to canada: liberation for some, good reading for all”. callaloo 4, 174-177. rainwater, l. and yancey, w. 1967. the moynihan report and the politics of controversy. massachusetts: massachusetts institute of technology. reed, i. 1976. flight to canada. new york: random house. rushdy, a. 1999. neo-slave narratives: studies in the social logic of a literary form. london: oxford. rosenthal, b. 1998. “tituba’s story”. the new england quarterly 71, 190-203. scarboro, a.a. 1992. “afterword”. in condé, m. i, tituba, black witch of salem (trans. by richard philcox). new york: ballantine books, 187-225. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� diasporic dialogues: the role of gender, language, and revision in the neo-slave narrative language value 4 (2), 1–22 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 22 williams, p. and chrisman. l. 1994. colonial discourse and post-colonial theory. new york: columbia university press. received: 30 september 2011 accepted: 03 december 2012 cite this article as: eaton, k. 2012. “diasporic dialogues: the role of gender, language, and revision in the newslave narrative”. language value 4 (2), 1-22. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.2 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.2� language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2012, volume 4, number 2 pp. 23-37 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.3 23 jacqueline woodson’s narrative style in the other side: an african american picture book for children agustín reyes torres agustin.reyes@uv.es universitat de valència, spain abstract the other side (2001) is a children’s story with multicultural characters and themes that can be regarded as an aesthetic exploration of the human experience in the process of the acquisition of knowledge. following the black arts movement, jacqueline woodson’s work portrays many of the issues that are present in the real world but seldom appear in children’s literature, such as racial division or interracial relationships. using the metaphor of a fence, this african american author reveals issues of loneliness and friendship, inclusion and exclusion, and the overcoming of prejudice and segregation through the wisdom of clover and annie, an african american and a white girl, who become friends. the story is told from the point of view of clover who is both the protagonist and the first person narrator. the reader, thus, gets to see and understand the world through her eyes. keywords: african american, jacqueline woodson, picture book, children, segregation “the content of a story and how it is told are inseparable” henry james writers who make powerful statements in their stories communicate their ideas through the artistic and skillful use of language. while there is considerable controversy among literary theorists and critics as to how to define literature, there is common agreement regarding the crucial role that language plays in it. as gillian lazar’s puts it, literature can be understood as “those novels, short stories, plays and poems which are fictional and convey their message by paying considerable attention to language which is rich and multi-layered” (1993: 5). it is through language that literature provides relevant source material for identifying and examining human motives; readers can see into the mind of the character or even into the subconscious that the very same character does not know. through the writer’s careful choice of language we come to see the current environment, the details from the past and the imaginary world of the character, in other words, the character’s motivation for action. literature thus, through language, gives http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� mailto:agustin.reyes@uv.es� jacqueline woodson’s narrative style in the other side: an african american picture book for children language value 4 (2), 23-37 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 24 form to the experience of the ongoing cycle of life; it explores the nature of human beings and their particular circumstances. what happens then when the nature and the circumstances of some cultural minorities differ from those consistently represented in mainstream literature? how does literature represent the voices of the so-called cultural minorities, their values and perspectives? the aim of this article is to study how the african american writer jacqueline woodson makes use of her narrative style to represent in children’s terms the experience of a black girl growing up in the united states and coming to terms with the racial reality. in her book the other side (2001), she reorients children’s literature, raising racial concerns and eliciting strong emotional responses in the reader. woodson’s work includes many of the issues that are present in the real world but seldom appear in children’s literature, such as racial division, child abuse or interracial relationships. like many other black american authors, she shares the experience of being a member of a society in which race matters a great deal. in this sense, her writing for children is clearly rooted in an african american and american social and literary history that can be traced all the way back to the 19th century. since then, as rudine sims bishop argues, “the racist [and] stereotypical books about blacks, created by benighted white writers and artists, made it imperative to create an african american literature to contradict and counteract such imagery” (2007: xiv). african american children’s literature developed thus as a literature of social action. it emerges from the very oral culture (songs, stories, rhymes, etc) created by enslaved africans to form and pass on a set of moral and spiritual values, to instruct each other, to build community and to entertain themselves. as bishop puts it, african american children’s literature has roots in african american’s determination to maintain a sense of themselves as fully human in the face of their legal status as property and to maintain some control over their own lives. where literacy was forbidden and denied to african americans, story and song flourished and served to entertain, to discipline, to provide information, to subvert slaveholders’ intentions, and to transmit to children the values and attitudes that the community deemed necessary for its survival. (2007: 4) gradually, as the number of african americans that had access to freedom and literacy increased throughout the 19th century, some newspapers and periodicals launched by black religious people appeared as vehicles for self-definition, self-determination and self-expression. some of them such as the recorder (1852) included readings for children. these publications, along with others created towards the end of the century in http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� agustín reyes torres language value 4 (2), 23–37 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 25 which the participation of black women became highly significant such as our women and children magazine (1888), shared a similar goal, making evident their concern for children’s literary and education, and most importantly, like woodson does in the other side, establishing their determination to create and display their own african american perspective. this interest in children’s literature among african americans would be cultivated and strengthened during the first half of the 20th century with the emergence of intellectuals and writers such a w.e.b. du bois, mary effie lee, langston hughes, and arna bontemps among others. while du bois created the renowned magazine for black children, the brownies’ book (1920-1921), and lee and hughes published in it their first poems, bontemps became one of the most important authors that the harlem renaissance left to african american children’s literature (bishop 2007: 45). over the course of his prolific forty-year career from the 1930s to the late 1960s, his work not only developed and refined some of the traditions that had begun with the brownies’ book (a focus on fostering black children’s education and see themselves as normal), but also took them a step further. as bishop highlights, bontemps interjected a black perspective on black subjects, black themes, and black traditions, many of which were carried over from adult african american literature into american children’s literature, an arena in which such a perspective was sorely needed. (2007: 52). this approach set up the basis for the growth and national recognition of other upcoming african american writers and picture book illustrators such as jacob lawrence’s with harriet and the promised land (1968), john steptoe with stevie (1969) or jacqueline woodson, who also instilled a black perspective in their work and their characters. in one interviewed in 1987, steptoe observed: “what i try to create are all the things i didn´t have as a kid that i would have liked to read” (natov and deluca 1987: 126). as we will see, these words coincide with woodson’s ideas and aims for herself as a writer. in this case, both authors agree on the need of more children’s books through which african american young readers can relate to the protagonists. in words of neal lester, “all children need to see possibilities and to see themselves in all possibilities” (smith 2008). self-validation for them comes from seeing themselves and acknowledging difference in the pages of the books they read. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� jacqueline woodson’s narrative style in the other side: an african american picture book for children language value 4 (2), 23-37 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 26 certainly, one of the characteristics of woodson’s books is that her main characters are african american children, so we get to see and understand the world from their particular perspective. as rose casement points out, “in many books that include relationships across races, the white child is in a position of social power. that is not the case in many of woodson’s stories, where the black child is generally situated in the more powerful position within the relationship” (2003: 81). in an interview with the author, she commented: “sometimes people are surprised that the relationships and situations aren’t stereotypical. i wanted to write my side of the story. i grew up reading the white side, which surprisingly to some people, isn´t the only side” (casement 2003: 81). like many other black writers and critics such as w.e.b. du bois, arna bontemps, john steptoe, violet j. harris, patricia hill collins, bell hooks, cornell west and laretta henderson among others, jacqueline woodson considers that literature and politics have always been linked for the african american community. in her essay “fictions” she states “…as a woman who is african american, my whole world is political so of course my writing is. […] it become writing where a reader recognizes a part of themselves and because of this, knows that they are not alone in the world. writing where the reader’s life is legitimized and by extension, the reader is legitimized” (woodson 2001b: 48). woodson clearly labels her work political, yet not the kind of didactic political writing that discourages the reader from recognizing himself or herself. her books for children enable many young african american readers to free their minds of the idea that they are not alone. she articulates the stance that literature can be uplifting and heal the individual. in the past, despite the effort of many african american intellectuals to change it, numerous white authors created novels that contributed to institutionalize the image of blacks as infantile, unintelligent, comical, and ugly (bishop 2007, harris 2007, hooks 2003, manuel 2009, tolson 2008). many black children found themselves thus surrounded by children’s literature dominated by white representation in books written and illustrated by white authors and illustrators. for woodson, that must change and there is still much work to be done. like her african american predecessors, she believes that literature for young black readers should uplift and elevate rather than degrade. that is why her books portray values that promote acceptance of oneself, acceptance of others, pride, moderation, and commitment to family and community. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� agustín reyes torres language value 4 (2), 23–37 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 27 according to laretta henderson, children’s literature written by african americans should follow the critical discourse and canon created by the black art movement that focuses its attention on the black community as the audience of black art (2005: 301). although a final ideology is always a compendium of different voices, this movement, which arose in the late 1960s, “moves toward educating the african american community to its collective and differing histories; reflects the community and its culture and concerns; and addresses their social, spiritual and physical needs” (henderson 2005: 301). jacqueline woodson’s, in this way, aligns herself with the african american literary tradition and follows the combination of political orientation, audience, content, literary elements and style that defines the black aesthetic. however, she does not fall in the controversial issue of afrocentrism placing african and african american culture at the center of knowledge. as patricia collins, cornel west and bell hooks criticize, afroncentricity sometimes may lead to essentialize blackness and engage as a result in reverse racism. woodson does not do this. as it will be shown, in the other side, she embraces w.e.b. du bois’ idea of double consciousness highlighting throughout the story the importance for black children of being aware of both their african ancestry and their purely american identity. moreover, she pursues the maxim expressed by du bois when he conceived the brownies’ book by which he called for a literature that would be “adapted to colored children, and indeed to all children who live in a world of varied races” (cited in bishop 2007: 35). the other side is a picture book in which woodson shows the many discoveries that children can make through literature. it is a story made real through the inclusion of universal complexities within the specific cultural experiences that impact young readers. using the metaphor of a fence, she reveals issues of loneliness and friendship, inclusion and exclusion, and the overcoming of prejudice and segregation through the wisdom of clover and annie, an african american and a white girl, who become friends. the author raises simple questions such as: what is the purpose of a fence? what are people like? why are they like that? what make white and black people do what they do? can you be friends with a person of a different race? a glimpse of answers to these questions are made visible through woodson’s poetic language and narrative style by the elements of plot, character, point of view, setting, and tone of an http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� jacqueline woodson’s narrative style in the other side: an african american picture book for children language value 4 (2), 23-37 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 28 imaginative work. the other question remaining to be discussed is who is the target audience of this book? is the other side a reading only intended for black children? as many of the picture storybooks written for younger readers, the other side depicts children facing situations and problems that are common to all young children. in spite of its brevity, only twenty-nine pages, woodson manages to create an engaging plot, to develop clover’s full character, and to show with words and pictures an integral setting in which a number of relevant themes are revealed such as children’s curiosity, friendship, family, race and prejudice. the other important aspect to be considered is that the story is told from the point of view of a young african american girl: clover. she is both the protagonist and the first person narrator. the reader, thus, gets to see and understand the world through her eyes. this is important not only because as a black girl she represents the figure of the “self” and not the “other”, but also because as we will see, she breaks old stereotypes regarding the traditional portrayal of african american characters. to begin with the analysis of the narrative style, let us examine the plot and how the author’s choice of words introduces the reader in the story and the character’s reality. the plot revolves around the presence of the fence that separates the town where clover lives. woodson portrays clover’s growing awareness of the world that surrounds her and how she gradually becomes more observant. the opening line of the book is: “that summer the fence that stretched through our town seemed bigger” (woodson 2001a: 2). by using the demonstrative pronoun “that” at the beginning of the sentence, emotional meaning and attention are draw to the fact that that particular summer was a crucial one in her childhood. the structure pattern of starting a phrase with the words “that summer” is repeated later throughout the story adding significance and impact to the term. it was that summer, we can then interpret, when clover discovered, and experienced for the first time, that there was racial tension between black and white people and that they were expected to occupy different spaces in society. in the same way, within the very first page the reader has also access to the setting as well as the initial conflict of the story: clover is a young african american girl between the ages of eight and ten who lives with her family on one side of that fence; on the other side lives a white family. to create tension, we hear clover’s mom saying: “don´t http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� agustín reyes torres language value 4 (2), 23–37 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 29 climb over that fence when you play” (woodson 2001a: 2). but to clover, the reason for this is not so clear. we can imagine her young mind wondering why if there are white people on that other side, she cannot go there. her mom does tell her that it is not safe, but this (the unknown) only spurs more intrigue and perplexity. why is it not safe? this is the question that any young reader may ask himself or herself when reading the beginning of this book. as the story line progresses, the conflict and the tension increases when clover sees a young white girl sitting on that fence. the latter even shows interest in playing with her and her african american friends, but to them this white girl, who lives on the other side of the fence, only represents a mysterious threat so they feel afraid of her. they have been taught to keep a distance from that world on that other side so they continue to do so. clover, however, feels more and more intrigued. woodson’s style holds the reader’s interest by creating suspense regarding the action that will arouse the subsequent characters’ reactions. if in literary terms the conflict is defined as the struggle against opposing forces, it is significant that in this case those opposed forces embody black children against white children. is it possible for them to be friends? the conflict as a result is twofold: on the one hand, we find clover’s own internal conflict about overcoming her fears and talking to the white girl. on the other, there is the conflict of person-against-society: can clover defy social and racial historical conventions? can she climb over that fence and overlook the barriers between black and white people? in fact, what clover and annie eventually do by becoming friends is to disregard the old beliefs and take a first step towards putting an end to that fence that keep people apart. in the other side we find that conflict is mainly caused by social and racial issues, but also by the natural growth of a young girl. clover is a full developed character with the complexities of an african american child maturing in the united states some time presumably in the 1960s or 1970s. these decades are characterized by tension and despair among african americans. although the 1950s had been a decade marked by historic progress in the campaign for racial justice, in much of the country, as walter r. allen and reynolds farley indicate, “blacks could not attend the same schools, eat at the same restaurants, or stay at the same hotels as whites. black americans were also http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� jacqueline woodson’s narrative style in the other side: an african american picture book for children language value 4 (2), 23-37 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 30 denied opportunities in education and employment and, in southern states, their voting rights” (1986: 278). thus, the struggle to build a society free of persecutions and discrimination against blacks was far from finished and it would carry on into the 1960s. thanks to the emergence and the influence of prominent leaders such as president john f. kennedy and martin luther king, jr., the african americans’ demands for equality and change came to be recognized as the nation’s pre-eminent challenge (rosenberg 2006: 212). however, both leaders were murdered and by then, malcolm x was proclaiming that a more militant approach could be used to gain civil rights. soon after, the civil rights movements took place and in the 1970s students’ protest and the black power movement expanded. while woodson does not explicitly portray any social or political issue, she makes clover’s traits and experiences believable and as the story goes by, we come to know her well through the words she says, her thoughts and her actions. woodson relies on imagery, appealing to the reader’s senses, to give us different impressions of the protagonist’s personality. based on her tone and her choice of details, she stirs the reader’s imagination. in this way, we can sense clover’s growth throughout the story. whereas at the beginning we infer her young mind through her observations, her childish use of the language and her way of recalling her mom’s warnings; at the end of the book her actions and comments demonstrate her development as a character. to illustrate these points, we see how clover at first expresses her thoughts through sentence structure that reflect her young age. she says, for instance: she never sat on that fence with anybody, that girl didn’t. (woodson 2001a: 4) or she looked sad sometimes, that girl did. (woodson 2001a: 8) through these statements not only is she articulating her thoughts in order to reaffirm herself, but also revealing her concern about that unknown white girl who seems lonely and blue. furthermore, this same concern brings to light clover’s warm heart, inner curiosity and feeling of uncertainty on how to act. this is evident again when she recalls the time when they were jumping rope and annie asked if she could play: and my friend sandra said no without even asking the rest of us. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� agustín reyes torres language value 4 (2), 23–37 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 31 i don’t know what i would have said. maybe yes. maybe no. (woodson 2001a: 6) clover’s words invite the reader to reflect with her about her dilemma. she is having a hard time understanding the whole racial issue. some of the questions she might want to answer could be: would you play with a person from the other side of the fence? or rather, why would you not play with a person who has a different skin color? and why is there such a distance between black and white people? the fact that clover feels bothered by her friend sandra’s reply reveals that she does not necessarily agree with the group’s decision and she is an independent thinker. clover’s initial way to sort out her problem is to ask her mom. woodson again portrays a typical reaction in any given child, not just an african american one. and it is here when the writer makes an explicit critique of the history of segregation in america through the mother’s response to her daughter: “…that’s the way things have always been” (woodson 2001a: 8), she says. this simple statement can be subject to different interpretations. as a child, clover might infer that this is one of those complicated matters about which grown-ups avoid talking. however, as the curious girl that she is, there is another question that it is still pending even though she does not utter it: why? why have things always been that way? one of woodson’s achievements is her ability to trigger questions in the young reader’s mind regardless of his or her cultural background or skin color. another achievement is her subtle way of pointing out the past of injustice and discrimination that many african americans suffered. in fact, she does this without even mentioning it. this is something that the adults know and what we are more likely to interpret out of the mother’s statement. certainly, we understand that the mother’s first reaction is to protect her daughter. she does not want to tell her, at least not yet, that there is distance between blacks and whites because in the past blacks were taken as slaves by whites; there is distance because blacks were disregarded as human beings and considered inferior. ultimately, there is distance because there are old wounds that still have not healed and possibly too because blacks themselves now choose to have that distance as a way to feel safe. again, this is a significant reflection for every reader to make, not just an african american one. but woodson’s story goes further than that. it is not her intention to instigate hatred or accuse anybody. on the contrary, the message in her picture book is one of optimism. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� jacqueline woodson’s narrative style in the other side: an african american picture book for children language value 4 (2), 23-37 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 32 as cindy giorgis and nancy johnson indicate, the author’s “hopeful child’s voice [and the illustrator] e.b. lewis’ watercolors capture the powerful mood of the story, the longing for friendship revealed by the girls’ body language” (2001a: 310). as already mentioned, woodson’s message echoes du bois’ philosophy that considers that “the history of the american negro is the history of his strife. […] he simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a negro and an american, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of opportunity closed roughly in his face” (1903: 5). there is no doubt that among the themes of the book are attempts to support the ongoing struggle for equality, racial pride, strength and self-definition, but also interracial relationships, the role of the family and the community in the shaping of identity, and the role of education for both black and white children. for du bois, african american people are gifted with a second-sight. they can develop a double consciousness that allow them to be proud of their heritage while at the same time be american; that means living in the united states together with everybody else no matter the racial designation. for clover, annie is like an enigma that she wants to decipher but does not know how to start. the important thing is that she is willing to try. she narrates how that summer (o)n rainy days that girl sat on the fence in a raincoat. she let herself get all wet and acted like she didn’t even care. sometimes i saw her dancing around in puddles, splashing and laughing. (woodson 2001a: 9) clover is puzzled about how someone who lives so close can feel so distant and foreign to her. here the author portrays a contrast between the two girls, and how clover is in the process of developing that double consciousness that would let her figure out the white girl. it is significant that annie is portrayed as the other, that is, the different one. on the contrary, clover, as the self, appears inside her house looking out through the window. the watercolor illustrations are also crucial at this point. they set a tone of warmth, happiness and love. e.b. lewis gives the reader a glimpse of clover’s home paying attention to details such as the four-tray shelf full of books, the book on the ottoman next to the armchair as if someone is currently reading it, the xylophone on the floor, and the picture frames. they symbolize knowledge, dignity, creativity, selfesteem, and most importantly, they break old stereotypes about black people related to http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� agustín reyes torres language value 4 (2), 23–37 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 33 their lack of interest in reading and learning or their poor living conditions. in the other side, home is a comfort zone. on the other hand, it is necessary to pay attention to clover’s words on this page. as nancy d. tolson puts it, “a good picture book for children consists of illustrations that validate the words and vice versa, creating a much fuller understanding for the child” (2008: 38). clover says: mama wouldn’t let me go out in the rain. “that’s why i bought you rainy-day toys”, my mama said. “you stay inside here – where it’s warm and safe and dry”. but every time it rained, i looked for that girl. and i always found her. somewhere near the fence. (woodson 2001a: 12) the author’s use of language here illustrates the previous ideas about clover’s mom taking good care of her but also the child’s restless mind and desire to go outside. the use of “but” at the beginning of the fourth sentence reveals clover’ slight rebellious attitude. her mom’s words do not comfort her at this moment. it seems as if there is something else in her head, as if she could not stop thinking about that girl on the other side of the fence. the rain is both outside and in her own thoughts. woodson’s language style in this excerpt can be related to henry louis gates, jr’s theory of signifyin(g), a uniquely black rhetorical concept, entirely textual or linguistic, rooted in the black vernacular tradition by which a second statement or figure repeats, or tropes, or reverses the first (gates 1987: 49). in black vernacular, signifying is verbal play. it is a rhetorical strategy, a sign that words cannot be trusted, that even the most literal utterance allows room for interpretation. in other words, what is said by a person must be understood in terms of context and other factors, rather than in and of itself. in this case, the fence stands up as a barrier that separates people but further than that, as an obstacle that also impedes access to knowledge. clover becomes aware of her lack of understanding and every time she is confused (every time it rains), she tries to find an answer (she looks for that girl), and that answer is always near the fence. as a result, she realizes that the fence is the key and therefore, she has a strong desire to overcome it. rising above the fence means defeating separation and inequality but over all, defeating ignorance. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� jacqueline woodson’s narrative style in the other side: an african american picture book for children language value 4 (2), 23-37 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 34 similarly, a double reading can also be done on the following page of the book when clover narrates: someplace in the middle of the summer, the rain stopped. when i walked outside, the grass was damp and the sun was already high up in the sky. and i stood there with my hands up in the air. i felt brave that day. i felt free. following gates’ theory of signifying, the fact that the rain stopped and the sun began to shine can be read as the end of clover’s conflict. she has made up her mind. now she feels free to do what she wants to do. for that reason, it is not without significance, that on the next page the climax of the story takes place: clover gathers her courage, approaches the fence and talks to annie for the first time. as the story progresses, in the last part of the book, clover shows her growth and mental development. she becomes friends with annie, sits on the fence with her, dares to disregard sandra and her other african american friends and even succeeds eventually in integrating annie to the group by playing all together. in the very end, what was originally a barrier becomes a link between the two sides. the author leaves a final hopeful message for the reader through annie and clover’s words: “someday somebody’s going to come along and knock this old fence down”. annie said. and i nodded. “yeah”, i said. “someday”. (woodson 2001a: 29) from a literary point of view, when the reader is assured that all is well and will continue to be, we can say that the denouement is closed, or that the plot has a closed ending. in this case, the tying of the loose ends is thoroughly optimistic. there is no anxiety for black or white children on the last page of the story. it ends with clover and annie imagining a fenceless world. both of them agree on the idea of knocking the fence down, assuming that it is old, from a different era and not from their own. likewise, it is important that it is annie the one who stated the idea first and not clover showing thus a similarity between the viewpoints of the two girls. along this line of argument, we see how the first conflict in the story has been solved. clover has come to terms with the racial reality in which she lives, she has acquired a new outlook on life –she has been brave to become friends with annie and sit on the fence; all that means new knowledge. by contrast, the second conflict, the social and racial issues are still pending. the idea of sitting on the fence symbolizes the girls http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� agustín reyes torres language value 4 (2), 23–37 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 35 coming to terms with the fact that racism exists. knocking the fence down would symbolize the end of it. the pictures here show us that clover and annie are not alone. there are four more girls sitting on the fence or playing around it. this issue is one that affects them too. as clover and annie talk, their friends listen to them. they all hope for the fence to be demolished some day. to sum up, it is evident that woodson’s narrative style aligns with the black arts movements and aesthetic. while as violet j. harris points out “a single black aesthetic does not exist [and] rather, some core tenets can be found in the philosophies espoused by individuals” (2007: 1018); in the other side it is evident how the author’s political views lead her to the literary objective of enveloping black children in a sense of respect, pride and love throughout the story. in consequence, woodson’s story not only is grounded in the african american experience but also attempts to deconstruct and reconstruct what it means to be a black person in a white society. in addition, the plot, representation of characters, point of view, setting, and tone aim to encourage and agitate positive thoughts and actions into black children’s lives. as we have seen, the other side portrays the initiation of a child’s racial reality in the united states. it presents a story that is necessary in order for black children to receive a more realistic view of the world that surrounds them. in this way, woodson’s book educates african american children who in the past often “felt ignored, mentally abused and confused from exposure to books that are invisible to their child’s identity” (tolson 2008: 2). the next question then that needs to be addressed is why it should be implied that the target audience of the other side is only african american young readers. why should not european and american white children read it? this book is a tool of reflection and enrichment that demonstrates racial and cultural understanding for all children. it portrays themes that affect all human beings no matter the racial designation. by reading a book written from the perspective of an african american girl in children’s terms, young white readers also could gain an understanding of how all children have similar concerns as they grow up. european and american white children could thus begin to reflect on the past of oppression and discrimination that black americans endured. clove and annie represent a new generation of children who are brave to disregard the skin color historical differences and forge a friendship. the other side is thus a book with multicultural characters and themes that can be regarded as an http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� jacqueline woodson’s narrative style in the other side: an african american picture book for children language value 4 (2), 23-37 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 36 aesthetic exploration of the human experience in the process of the acquisition of knowledge. that is what makes it universal. references allen, w.r. and farley r. 1986. “the shifting social and economic tides of black america, 1950-1980”. annual review of sociology 12, 277-306. bishop, r.s. 2007. free within ourselves: the development of african american children’s literature. westport, conn: greenwood press. casement, r. 2003. “jacqueline woodson: real characters, real voices”. language arts 81 (1), 81-83. du bois, w.e.b. 1996. the souls of the black folk. (1903). new york: penguin books. gates jr., h.l. 1987. figures in black. words, signs and the “racial” self. new york: oxford university press. giorgis, c. and johnson n. 2001. “children’s books: finding a place”. the reading teacher 55 (3), 304-311. harris, v.j. 2007. “master narratives and oppositional texts: aesthetics and black literature for youth”. in bresler, l. (ed.) international handbook of research in arts education, vol. 2. dordrecht, netherlands: springer, 1007-1020. henderson, l. 2005. “the black arts movement and african american young adult literature: an evaluation of narrative style”. children’s literature in education 36 (4), 299-323. hooks, b. 2003. rock my soul: black people and self-esteem. new york: washington square press. lazar, g. 1993. literature and language teaching. cambridge. cambridge university press. manuel, c. 2009. “bell hooks’s children’s literature: writing to transform the world at its root”. in davidson m.g. and g. yancy (eds.) critical perspectives on bell hooks. new york and london: routledge, 95-107. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� agustín reyes torres language value 4 (2), 23–37 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 37 natov, r. and de lunca g. 1987. “an interview with john steptoe”. the lion and the unicorn 11, 1, 122-129. rosenberg, j. 2006. how far the promised land? princeton: princeton university press. smith, c.l. 2008. “author interview: neal a. lester on once upon a time in a different world”. 22 march 2012 <http://cynthialeitichsmith.blogspot.com.es/ 2008/06/author-interview-neal-lester-on-once.html> tolson, n.d. 2008. black children’s literature got the blues: the creativity of black writers and illustrators. new york: peter lang. woodson, j. 2001a. the other side. new york: the penguin group. woodson, j. 2001b. “fictions”. obsidian iii 3 (1), 49. received: 19 september 2011 accepted: 10 may 2012 cite this article as: reyes torres, a. 2012. “jacqueline woodson’s narrative style in the other side: an african american picture book for children”. language value 4 (2), 23-37. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/ languagev.2012.4.2.3 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/%20languagev.2012.4.2.3� http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/%20languagev.2012.4.2.3� language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2012, volume 4, number 2 pp. 38-55 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.4 38 anzaldúa and ‘the new mestiza’: a chicana dives into collective identity maría henríquez-betancor mhenriquez@dfm.ulpgc.es universidad de las palmas de gran canaria, spain abstract in this article i analyze how gloria anzaldúa’s seventh essay in borderlands/la frontera:the new mestiza, titled “la conciencia de la mestiza: towards a new consciousness”, condenses and portrays a development towards the mestiza consciousness presented in the first six essays in the book. this is a well-structured as well as fluid process in which each step guides us in a complex identity-building awareness. this process is an inner journey as well as an evolution in the public scene where the “new mestiza” has to revise and reinvent herself in several ways in order to acquire “the mestiza consciousness”. this essay is also a clear example in which anzaldúa represents three voices: the “i”, the “we” and the “she”. these voices are one of anzaldúa’s strategies for diving into what she understands as her collective identity as a chicana and as a “new mestiza”. as will be shown in this article, the author moves among these voices for various purposes of identity-construction. keywords: identity, awareness, mestiza, voices, anzaldúa, chicana “with terror as my companion, i dip into my life and begin work on myself” gloria anzaldúa the image of diving into collective identity featured in the title of this essay comes from my perception that gloria anzaldúa does not stay on the surface of reality. she immerses herself in the sea of strengths, weaknesses, limitations and joys that experimenting with the construction of one’s own identity creates. the autobiographical experience is fundamental for anzaldúa as she constantly refers to it in her work. but she does not forget the multiple connections she maintains with other women, queer or heterosexual, with the land, with her family, with her personal past and the deep past of her people (reaching far back to the time of the aztecs). it is a process of holding her breath before her complex personal reality and the varied realities around her and then exhaling the reflections and the learned lessons gained throughout this metaphorical swimming. i only met her once and she was able to understand my cultural and personal http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� mailto:mhenriquez@dfm.ulpgc.es� maría henríquez betancor language value 4 (2), 38-55 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 39 borderlands as a woman from the canary islands (spain) who is frequently not identified as a spaniard because of my canarian accent and who identifies with many aspects of south american and cuban culture. anzaldúa could dive under and see through the basic information she had about me to connect with my own borderlands. i am no exception. her masterpiece, borderlands/la frontera: the new mestiza, is proof that her analysis goes beyond mere facts about the chicano/a world to achieve powerful critical knowledge about its painful history, gender struggles, and mythical figures. in this article i analyze how the seventh essay in borderlands/la frontera, titled “la conciencia de la mestiza: towards a new consciousness”, condenses and portrays a development towards the mestiza consciousness presented in the first six essays in the book. this is a well-structured as well as fluid process in which each step guides us in a complex identity-building awareness. i see this process as an inner journey as well as an evolution in the public scene where the “new mestiza” has to revise and reinvent herself in several ways in order to acquire the mestiza consciousness. the seventh essay is also a clear example in which anzaldúa represents three voices, the “i”, the “we” and the “she”. these voices are one of anzaldúa’s strategies for diving into what she understands as her collective identity as a chicana and as a “new mestiza”. as will be shown here, the author moves among these voices for various purposes of identityconstruction. in borderlands, anzaldúa verbalizes several chicana realities, including that of her indigenous ancestors, her mother’s mexican heritage, and the undocumented status of women in the u.s. in addition, she traces the linguistic frustrations experienced by chicana academics. the chicana/o realities she represents are the result both of various encounters in her own life as well as the experiences of others that she has gathered into herself. anzaldúa voices a theoretical chicana/o positionality in her paradigm of the “new mestiza” who “has a plural personality and who operates in a pluralistic mode” (1987: 79). anzaldúa theorizes the chicana identity conflict within a feminist, personal, collective, cultural and racial context. because of multicultural and multiracial influences, the new mestiza expresses herself with behaviors, words, and attitudes that are sometimes contradictory. she learns to tolerate the fact that her racial and cultural identity is not clear to anglo-americans or mexicans, and she adapts her behavior to http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� anzaldúa and ‘the new mestiza’: a chicana dives into collective identity language value 4 (2), 38-55 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 40 each situation. in other words, “she learns to be an indian in mexican culture, to be mexican from an anglo point of view” (1987: 79). anzaldúa herself identifies primarily with her indigenous roots and she often questions her hispanic as well as anglo-saxon heritage. she resists accommodating the identifying labels that patriarchal society, with its absolute terms, compels her to do. likewise, she rejects choosing between her racial and historical influences or positioning herself as either a mexican or north american. she rejects “the dual personality”1 through her image of the “new mestiza”, anzaldúa encourages chicanas to break alienating dichotomies of thought. according to critic maría c. gonzález “for anzaldúa dual thinking has split the individual into an unhealthy creature. this dualism has continued to reproduce itself to become the dominant system of thought” (1996: 29). to resist the dual thinking of western culture, anzaldúa suggests that we must first unlearn “the puta/virgen dichotomy” (1987: 84). rejecting the virgin/whore construct means annulling sexist prejudices that classify women according to their sexual and social behavior. to start dissolving this dichotomy the “new mestiza” has to break the patriarchal socially-established roles and behaviors believed to be correct for their gender. according to anzaldúa then, “la mestiza constantly has to shift out of habitual formations” (1987: 79). that catalogues her as a mexican-american and welcomes the new “mestiza’s” plural personality that embraces all the different parts of which she is made. the cultural mixture and the personal evolution meet in the “new mestiza” who presents herself as subject of her own changes. in addition, the “new mestiza” is a powerful image of the chicana’s appropriation of her independence. her potent self-definition begins after she has faced and tolerated the conflicts generated by her hybrid identity. according to rebolledo, “anzaldúa also clearly defined the historical oppression that made women feel they couldn’t cross the borders, and the empowerment that occurred when they realized that it was their choice” (1995: 103). anzaldúa states it thusly: “my chicana identity is grounded in the indian 1 maria lugones’ term to define the personality, of anglo-saxon creation, where one dash separates the author’s cultural group from american nationality, as it is in mexican-american. as lugones says: “according to this concept, there is no hybrid cultural self. it is part of the anglo imagination that we can keep our culture and assimilate, a position that would be contradictory if both cultures were understood as informing the ‘real’ fabric of everyday life” (1992: 35). http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� maría henríquez betancor language value 4 (2), 38-55 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 41 woman’s history of resistance. […] so mama, raza, how wonderful, no tener que rendir cuentas a nadie. i feel perfectly free to rebel against my culture” (1987: 21). when addressing the “raza”, anzaldúa refers to the historical, racial and cultural forces of her people that have oppressed her and which she has trespassed in her search for liberation as a chicana lesbian. as anzaldúa sees it, resistance begins individually but must also expand to the chicana collectivity. i. the path towards a mestiza consciousness: spaces for cultural and personal evolution i suggest that the seventh essay of borderlands, anzaldúa rewrites her personal experiences and analyzes the evolution of her life trajectory towards “the mestiza’s consciousness”. she describes thusly: “though it is a source of intense pain, its energy comes from continual creative motion that keeps breaking down the unitary aspect of each new paradigm” (1987: 80). the pain caused by this new consciousness is rooted in the rupture of paradigms from which her identity has been constructed and the rebellion against any ideology or behavior that would suppress “the new mestiza”. as much as her destiny, “el camino de la mestiza” (the mestiza’s way) includes places of change and spaces of transition towards a new way of thinking and feeling. a shared characteristic of what is referred to here is the permanent evolution of movement, its adaptability to external circumstances and personal conditions. the new mestiza’s consciousness is not a static condition but a beingness that is constantly redefined. according to chéla sandoval: “la conciencia de la mestiza is born of life lived in the ‘crossroads’ between races, nations, languages, genders, sexualities, and cultures: it is a developed subjectivity capable of transformation and relocation […]” (1998: 359). in anzaldúa’s words it is defined as an attempt “to work out a synthesis” in which “the self has added a third element which is greater than the sum of its severed parts” (1987: 7980). this new consciousness emerges as a space of redefinition of what has been achieved as much as the creation of new ideas and images: “by creating a new mythos-that is, a change in the way we perceive reality, the way we see ourselves, and the ways we behave--la mestiza creates a new consciousness ” (1987: 80). the seventh essay brilliantly coalesces the six essays that precede it. in “el camino de la mestiza”, which is one of the sections in the seventh essay, there is an echo of the issues http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� anzaldúa and ‘the new mestiza’: a chicana dives into collective identity language value 4 (2), 38-55 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 42 that anzaldúa has tackled in the previous six essays. initially she defends the construction of a new consciousness that implies a critical attitude toward her historical past. in order to understand the oppression suffered by the new mestiza, it is necessary to analyze it from its cultural and temporal origins. this is the task carried out by anzaldúa, who, in her first essay, dedicated to “the homeland, aztlán/el otro mexico”, re-writes the story of the chicano people from her contemporary chicana perspective. it is anzaldúa’s understanding that for the mestiza to initiate the road towards the constitution of the collective consciousness one has to look first at the individual and collective past in order to analyze the racial and cultural origins: “her first step is to take inventory. despojando, desgranando, quitando paja. just what did she inherit from her ancestors? this weight on her back –which is the baggage from the indian mother, which the baggage from the spanish father, and which the baggage from the anglo?” (1987: 82). in the second essay, “movimientos de rebeldía y culturas que traicionan”, anzaldúa tries to differentiate among “lo heredado, lo adquirido y lo impuesto” (1987: 82) (what has been inherited, acquired and imposed), which is another step in the mestiza’s journey. in this essay, she analyzes and accepts her rebelliousness, criticizing the influence of the anglo-saxon patriarchal culture while claiming her indigenous identity because it is “a new political stance as a fully racialized feminist chicana” (saldívarhull 1999: 5). in “entering the serpent”, the third essay in borderlands, the narrator explores “lo heredado” (what has been inherited) from the former indigenous cultures: here she revises the patriarchal articulation of the figure of the virgin of guadalupe and la llorona within culture and history. as sonia saldívar-hull affirms, “by rewriting the stories of malinali, la llorona and the virgin of guadalupe, anzaldúa is strategically reclaiming a ground for female historical presence” (1999: 6). anzaldúa re-invents these two myths from the chicana feminist perspective of the “new mestiza”, and this lays the groundwork for the next essay in which she incorporates coatlicue, the aztec goddess. in “la herencia de coatlicue / the coatlicue state”, anzaldúa analyzes in depth the nature of this change embodied in the figure of coatlicue. once she accepts this figure as the image of transformative strength, anzaldúa breaks down emotionally due to the contradictions of her identity: “i locked the door, kept the world out; i vegetated, hibernated, remained in stasis, idled. no http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� maría henríquez betancor language value 4 (2), 38-55 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 43 telephone, no television, no radio. alone with the presence in the room. who? me, my psyche, the shadow beast?” (1987: 44). part of the process and progression of acknowledging difference in this breakdown, anzaldúa realizes that “there are many defense strategies that the self uses to escape the agony of inadequacy and i have used all of them. i have split from and disowned those parts of myself that others rejected” (1987: 45). she realizes this is a collective crisis, for many chicanos have felt like her: “as a person, as a people, we, chicanos, blame ourselves, hate ourselves, terrorize ourselves. […] we suspect that there is something ‘wrong’ with us, something fundamentally ‘wrong’” (1987: 45). according to anzaldúa many people (not only chicanos) who find themselves in this situation keep busy doing mundane things in order to avoid “seeing” this painful inner reality, and thus “awareness does not happen” (1987: 45). this is the moment to see “the face of fear in the mirror” so that “it registers in our consciousness” (1987: 45). because of this risk of being paralized by the fear of not overcoming this feeling of being inferior, “the coatlicue state can be a way station or it can be a way of life” as this goddess is “the symbol of the underground aspects of the psyche” (1987: 46), those we would rather not recognize. in the fifth essay, “how to tame a wild tongue”, anzaldúa powerfully revises and interprets the multilingual chicana identity; she describes her linguistic experience as a chicana woman living in texas, while she rejects the self-marginalization practiced by many chicanas and resists the social contempt aroused by her use of both spanish and english. anzaldúa advocates for a variety of chicana languages while she vindicates chicano spanish as a language that synthesizes both the spanish and the angloamerican influences, enabling the development of new terms in both. yet this is not the only language that represents chicanos, as “there is no one chicano language just as there is no one chicano experience” (1987: 58). the linguistic aspect goes hand in hand with the individual and collective chicana awareness, for as anzaldúa says, “i am my language” (1987: 59) and “if a person, chicana or latina, has a low estimation of my native tongue, she also has a low estimation of me” (1987: 58). hers is a language claim that invokes her sexual, gender, and writerly identities. indeed, there are so many culturally-specific taboos that are collectively given no representational space in it, she must assert, “i will overcome the tradition of silence” (1987: 59). the numerous uses of http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� anzaldúa and ‘the new mestiza’: a chicana dives into collective identity language value 4 (2), 38-55 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 44 language and what these mean to the rich construction of culture become a political and personal issue where her rebellion as a chicana woman writer is also manifest. moving closer to a mestiza consciousness, in the seventh essay, in the section “el camino de la mestiza”, the author does not establish a strict procedure for transformation. each part of the process described is linked to what comes before and after but she also suggests that there are moments of change in which many elements of transformation occur simultaneously and non-linearly. during this journey, anzaldúa revisions and reinvents the past as a lesbian chicana feminist through the different modes in which this past manifests itself. these modes include mythology, historical facts, language, and the aztec cultural heritage. anzaldúa articulates this cultural recapitulation, and as a result her identity as a changing subject becomes more evident. likewise, the “new mestiza”’ also emerges as a feminine model of strength and openness to the progressive inner and fluid transformation required by this new consciousness. the construction of the mestiza’s new consciousness is in itself a journey that the chicana has to make all by herself. in this process, anzaldúa positions herself before her own conflicts and addresses certain social groups. from the section “que no se nos olviden los hombres” both anzaldúa and the new mestiza’s attention are directed to the external world. she starts out quoting a poem in which she despises chicana women: “tú no sirves pa’nada/you’re good for nothing./eres pura vieja” (1987: 83). anzaldúa includes this type of colloquy frequently heard in the streets or any place where the chicana’s womanhood is not valued. while anzaldúa’s point of departure is the chauvinistic male complaint about the chicana, she also questions where these men fit in her new consciousness. she confronts chicano and anglo-american men, asking them for their “individual we” to take a position and to acknowledge their role as oppressors: “we demand the admission/ acknowledgement/ disclosure/testimony that they wound us, violate us, are afraid of us and of our power” (1987: 84). then anzaldúa demands of the new masculine consciousness that men should discover their tenderness and not be afraid of it as “a sign of vulnerability” (1987: 84). as she recognizes, males and females are the victims of roles marked by the rigidity of the patriarchal system, which defines what it means to be a man. hence, many heterosexual men are afraid of anything that could be considered feminine because “they are confused, and entangled http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� maría henríquez betancor language value 4 (2), 38-55 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 45 with sexist behaviors that they have not been able to eradicate” (1987: 84). thus the transformation process anzaldúa requires has a public and a private dimension. in this same essay, in the section “somos una gente” the “new mestiza” observes the anglo-american white society from her cultural, racial, and gendered perspective. from the empowered position that the “new mestiza” has achieved, anzaldúa addresses the mestiza’s collective needs, verbalizing their vindications. she asks nothing less than that white north americans pay attention to such claims:“we need you to accept the fact that chicanos are different, to acknowledge your rejection and negotiation of us. we need you to own the fact that you looked upon us as less than human, that you stole our lands, our personhood, our self-respect” (1987: 85). this is another step in the transformation towards a mestiza consciousness, the moment of collective selfacknowledgement before the anglo-saxon, north american society. anzaldúa asks for historical acknowledgement not only of the chicanos’ presence in american history but also of the abuses they suffered due to social difference, racism, and linguistic and cultural contempt. her stance is one of conciliation with white society, for as she says: “i, for one, choose to use some of my energy to serve as mediator” (1987: 85). although anzaldúa does not give up her fight, she believes in the possibility of finding common ground instead of separating one from the other. for example, she proclaims, i think we need to allow whites to be our allies. through our literature, art, corridos, and folk-tales we must share our history with them so when they set up committees to help big mountain navajos or the chicano farmworkers or los nicaragüenses they won’t turn people away because of their racial fears and ignorances (1987: 85) lack of knowledge of the chicana culture increases cultural stereotypes that many people alien to the community believe. in contrast, anzaldúa cherishes all those aspects which constitute chicana culture, including corridos, art, history and she asserts that this culture should be better known and appreciated for its cultural richness. after asking for an acknowledgement of chicana’s culture and history, anzaldúa ends the section opening a door to dialogue with white society: “and finally tell us what you need from us” (1987: 86). anzaldúa’s deeply considered emotional and psychic progression through a fluid experience of a range of issues to attain a mestiza consciousness is necessary. confronting and naming the abuses perpetrated by white http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� anzaldúa and ‘the new mestiza’: a chicana dives into collective identity language value 4 (2), 38-55 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 46 society against chicanos makes it possible for anzaldúa to achieve an attitude in willing to find a way out to old and latent conflicts. in the section titled “el día de la chicana”, anzaldúa emphasizes her identity as a “new mestiza”, considering herself part of that chicana collectivity. she describes the ritual that takes place in her house every december the second, “when my sun goes into my first house” (1987: 88); this is a time when the influence of religion, astrology, and cultural beliefs converge. from her individual identity, she reaffirms the new mestiza’s collective identity to which she belongs: “on that day i affirm who we are” (1987: 88). she accepts all the parts of the group identity to which she belongs saying, “on that day i gather the splintered and disowned parts of la gente mexicana and hold them in my arms. todas las partes de nosotros valen” (1987: 88). in this section there is a strong connection between the “i” and the “we” as differentiated identities that are linked by common needs and experiences. thus this celebration day is a culmination of the process leading to mestiza consciousness. acknowledging the culture’s collective weaknesses and longings, anzaldúa celebrates a culturally and spiritually compelling ritual for the chicana/o collectivity. as she describes it, “on that day i say, yes, all you people wound us when you reject us. rejection strips us of self-worth; our vulnerability exposes us to shame”. she continues by accepting the responsibility of overcoming pain as a means to a rebirth of the chicana way, saying, “we can longer blame you, nor disown the white parts, the pathological parts, the queer parts, the vulnerable parts. here we are weaponless with open arms, with only our magic. let’s try it our way, the mestiza way, the chicana way, the woman way” (1987: 88). this individual celebration of the collective holds in it all the painful processes of past experience described in the previous six essays, the difficult understandings of her own contradictions, and the daring new beginnings of being a “new mestiza”. the “new mestiza” is a survivor; she has overcome the rupture with cultural patriarchal patterns and the limitations of gender. she has confronted her most obscure side, or her “shadow beast”, her fears and shame. thus declares the right to decide for herself who she wants to be. as anzaldúa writes: “se hace moldeadora de su alma” (1987: 83). after having been away from her home in texas, anzaldúa returns to her origins and to http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� maría henríquez betancor language value 4 (2), 38-55 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 47 her geographical birthplace, a borderland of survivors of poverty. she returns to the first years of her life in “el retorno”, the last section in the seventh essay, where there is plenty of autobiographical information. returning to the past through her memories, she recovers tastes and images of herself and her brothers and sisters working the land. anzaldúa returns to her land with an irrecoverable image of the land she left. associated with her memories of the valley, there are cultural elements which came to be part of her memories such as the mexican cemeteries “blooming with artificial flowers” (1987: 89), the local tv programs which she missed “where hosts speak in half and half, and where awards are given in the category of tex-mex music” (1987: 89). she also missed meals “el sabor de los tamales de rez y venado” (1987: 89). she realizes that the valley has changed; likewise, she is not the same woman who left. instead, she returns as the “new mestiza”, convinced that there is no going back from her new consciousness, though aware that she will always be part of that landscape in her memories. anzaldúa mixes images of old memories together with the new ones she finds when she returns and emphasizes what links her with some people of the mythic past: “like the ancients i worship the rain god and the maize goddess” (1987: 90). further, she points out what differentiates her when she comes back: “unlike my father i have recovered their names” (1987: 90). in doing so she reminds us that she has trespassed the cultural limits of the valley in order to recover her indigenous legacy. in conclusion, the consciousness of the “new mestiza” proposed by anzaldúa is a structural process of change in which the acceptance of cultural and personal problems, the meeting and intermixing of different groups with which anzaldúa identifies, and the possibility of reconciliation with the white society conflate in a linear and non-linear fashion. it is a diving that arises from personal experience and expands to the external world, to the mestiza’s social environment that rejects the macho’s role and questions the concept of masculinity in the chicana community to finally return to the author’s origins in texas. by coming back to her homeland, anzaldúa has carried out a transformation that has an influence in the new mestiza’s perspective. she is not the same woman who had left the valley; while looking at her previous reality with new eyes, she has become more critical, knowing what it means to live there. her memories link her with a space that only exists in her mind, though she also rescues her sense of the connection with the land, smells, and tastes of her historical past. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� anzaldúa and ‘the new mestiza’: a chicana dives into collective identity language value 4 (2), 38-55 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 48 ii. the new mestiza’s individual and collective identity defining “the new mestiza” as at a racial, cultural, social and sexual crossroads, anzaldúa does not refer to her as “mestiza” because she is the result of the mixing of two races but because she receives the cultures and races of various worlds, including the mexican, the indigenous, the spanish, and the anglo-saxon. the word “mestiza” is politically positioned at a multiracial, and multicultural meeting point. in an interview given in 1991, anzaldúa defines the “new mestiza” as “kind of border woman who is able to negotiate between different cultures and cross over from one to the other and therefore has a perspective of all those different worlds that someone who is monocultural cannot have” (blanco 1991: 4). this perspective of “the new mestiza” generates inner conflicts because she has difficulties positioning herself culturally, but it also allows her to discover her capacity to differentiate between what she wants and what she rejects in her identity. the mestiza perspective helps her to increase her tolerance and to amplify her vision of the world: “she is willing to share, to make herself vulnerable to foreign ways of seeing and thinking” (1987: 82). the use of the adjective “new” for the word “mestiza” and “conscience” announces an identity that is innovative and unknown previous to the publication of borderlands. anzaldúa’s individual identity, which recognizes itself as a “new mestiza”, builds bridges with the collectivity, these being other mestizas, the homosexual chicano or anglo community and the chicano world as a whole. as as a mestiza, anzaldúa belongs to all of these group identities because as a “new mestiza” she accepts her multiple alliances. when uniting with these different groups from her spoken position as “we”, she puts into words the collective claims of each of the different groups. from the first person voice, she claims her right to transcend dualities, she clarifies that her identity is not the sum of the chicana/mexicana and the anglo-american self and that these are mixed with a “third element” or the “mestiza consciousness”. from her stance as an “i” she accepts and welcomes all the identities that form her “plural personality”. the “new mestiza” learns to tolerate living with her different cultural and racial elements to turn them into something new and complex. anzaldúa adopts these three voices or cases, making the most of each perspective to identify with different groups of people and aspects of herself. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� maría henríquez betancor language value 4 (2), 38-55 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 49 being a chicana, anzaldúa recognizes herself in the experience of “the new mestiza” and includes herself in the collective identity of “the new mestizas”. to talk about “the new mestiza”, anzaldúa makes use of the third person singular as well as the first person singular and plural, moving among them as equivalents. each grammatical case is an “ideological i” which “face[s] the ideologies of the gendered subordination of women and heteronormativity” (smith and watson 2001: 63). i suggest that anzaldúa makes use of these multiple selected subject positions in order to contest and revise inherited gender and cultural roles and behaviors. when she speaks from the first person singular, she connects herself with her most intimate and personal identity. for example, as a lesbian mestiza she acknowledges her nationality and race as universal: “as a mestiza i have no country […] yet all countries are mine because i am every woman’s sister or potential lover. (as a lesbian i have no race, my own people disclaim me; but i am all races because there is the queer of me in all races)” (1987: 80). using the “i” she also defines her feminism and her new culture as a “new mestiza”: “i am cultureless because, as a feminist, i challenge the collective cultural/religious malederived beliefs of indo-hispanic and anglos; yet i am cultured because i am participating in the creation of yet another culture” (1987: 80-81). in this definition, she positions herself at the crossroads of the dualities in any of her attitudes, and she decides to be simultaneously both. in this way, she puts into practice her proposal that “the new mestiza” must show “in her work how duality is transcended” (1987: 80) and be “on both shores at once” (1987: 78), the “shores” representing the poles or extremes (of behavior, values, etc) among which the chicana has traditionally had to choose. even when anzaldúa’s statements are contradictory, the “new mestiza” transcends them as she lives with both. accepting her new hybrid identity, she writes, “soy un amasamiento, i am act of kneading, of uniting and joining that not only has produced both a creature of darkness and a creature of light, but also a creature that questions the definitions of light and dark and gives them new meanings” (1987: 81). anzaldúa uses the image of the dough or “el amasamiento”, in which various ingredients mix to give something new as a result, something that has a direct relationship with its components as it comes from them but which has its own texture and weight. in the same manner, the “new mestiza’s” own identity is marked by her origins but she transcends them to http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� anzaldúa and ‘the new mestiza’: a chicana dives into collective identity language value 4 (2), 38-55 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 50 become a critical being who rejects any cultural or gender assimilation that could overshadow her. in contrast, when anzaldúa refers to “the new mestiza”, she chooses to use “she”, the third person singular. when using this case, anzaldúa gains a certain distance from her own personal “i”, but she appropriates objectivity by observing the “she” as a complex constructed reality. the female third person singular adopted by anzaldúa for “the new mestiza” is the chosen subject to carry out change. in other words, this is a change that cannot happen if it does not begin from a personal starting point, though it must move as well to the “she” position where activism occurs. the “new mestiza” learns to adapt to the worlds she belongs to and develops open strategies for this purpose, “she has discovered that she can’t hold concepts or ideas in rigid boundaries. […] rigidity means death. only by remaining flexible is she able to stretch the psyche” (1987: 79). she also carries out this process “by developing a tolerance for contradictions, a tolerance for ambiguity” (1987: 79). this is a “she” voice that decides to position herself as an active subject of her own changes, “la mestiza has gone from being the sacrificial goat to becoming the officiating priestess at the crossroads” (1987: 80). the “she” for the “new mestiza” is also a potential “we” as it invites the chicana collectivity (as well as other identities) to join in the transformative process of creating a new and powerful identity. anzaldúa uses a very significant image, that of corn to define the shared qualities of the mestiza with many chicanas when she says, “indigenous like corn, like corn, the mestiza is a product of crossbreeding, designed for preservation under a variety of conditions” (1987: 81). anzaldúa continues, “she holds tight to the earth-she will survive the crossroads” (1987: 81). yet this “she” voice also includes anzaldúa’s “i”, for the author’s personal decisions and her life experience push her to envision and write the “new mestiza”. as she states, “as a mestiza i have no country, my homeland cast me out; yet all countries are mine because i am every woman’s sister or potential lover” (1987: 80). when the narrator speaks from the “we” position, it is normally to include herself in the collectivity of chicana women, to represent, together with other mestizas, those values that unite them and identify them as a group. the image of the stone captures this identity: “we are the coarse rock” (1987: 81). even when the rock can stand as an http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� maría henríquez betancor language value 4 (2), 38-55 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 51 image of impenetrability, the permeability or openness to other external influences is clear: “we are the porous rock in the stone metate” (1987: 81). it is this combination of the resistance of the rock and its porous nature that describes the common characteristic of chicanas who often protect themselves as well as open up to a multicultural experience. although it may appear to be a contradiction because the rock is both porous and resistant, at the same time anzaldúa is creating a culturally-specific image of amplified female power. anzaldúa also expresses the “mestizaje” in the widest sense of the word when she says “somos el amasijo” (1987: 81) (we are the dough). anzaldúa uses the image of the elaboration of tortillas as a cultural metaphor for the formation of the cultural and gender identity of “the new mestiza”. anzaldúa describes the process of making “tortillas de masa” as a synonym of how “new mestizas” go through different parts of themselves. anzaldúa creates what i call a collective and cultural self-definition as she mixes the personal with meaningful shared cultural elements. she identifies with the tortillas and with the specific utensils which are necessary to make them: el metate, el comal, and el molcajete. she includes the strong-flavored ingredients such as cumin, garlic, pepper, and red chile. the elements to make these tortillas are varied and culturally-specific, a metaphor for the complexity of her chicana/mexicana lesbian identity. the identification happens with the ingredients, the process, and the result. the communal “we” sometimes turns into an individual “we” as in “que no se nos olviden los hombres”. although the reality she tackles in this section may be shared by many chicanas, she makes a direct reference to her experience with her father as a man, and her sense of how his masculinity was perceived in her family. it is the individual “we” that includes her as well as her siblings, a smaller unique community experience of the father figure. analyzing the meaning of “macho” for her father, anzaldúa writes that it has connotations of “being strong enough to protect and support [us], yet being able to show love”. the more well-known negative use of macho, she insists, “is actually an anglo invention” (1987: 83). she then makes the more individual “we” stand for the whole male chicano culture as she also tries to understand why men abuse women saying: “though we understand the root of male hatred and fear, and the subsequent wounding of women, we do not excuse, we do not condone, and we will no longer put up with it” (1987: 83). in this use of “we”, anzaldúa assumes the collective dignity and the self-respect that are necessary to face abuse. through this “we” http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� anzaldúa and ‘the new mestiza’: a chicana dives into collective identity language value 4 (2), 38-55 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 52 anzaldúa represents the “new mestizas” as strong and resistant to violence so typical of their history. later on in the same section, “we” includes homosexual men of all races and nationalities together with lesbians: “we come from all colors, all classes, all races, all time periods” (1987: 84). this form of “we” indicates solidarity with transnational homosexual identities. anzaldúa claims the importance of the contributions made by minorities in the homosexual community. “colored homosexuals”, she writes, “have always been at the forefront […] of all liberation struggles in this country; have suffered more injustices and have survived them despite all odds” (1987: 85). as somebody who is affected by the marginality suffered by this group, the author claims collective acknowledgement in chicano society for the creative work, asserting that “chicanos need to acknowledge the political and artistic contributions of their queer. people, listen to what your jotería is saying” (1987: 85). in “by your true faces we will know you”, in the seventh part of the seventh essay, the “we” includes all chicanos (men and women) in a situation of disadvantage and discrimination because of white oppression: “the dominant white culture is killing us slowly with it ignorance […] we have never been allowed to be fully ourselves” (1987: 86). anzaldúa’s “narrating i” mixes with the “narrated i”2 the “new mestiza” analyzes, culls, and reconstitutes her identity within an individual and group frame, but there is not a border between her “i” and her “we” as subject. when analyzing her personal experience, anzaldúa creates a space of identification and representation for other chicanas. when speaking from the plural subject position, she has previously had to identify with a reality shared with others, either chicanas/os in through the use of the “we”. she is her people as she has also suffered discrimination in various forms and is conscious of the struggle that the chicana/o collectivity has and is still going through to gain recognition. she is able to look at the situation from outside as a writer and critic and also as a long-marginalized subject. anzaldúa includes herself within the chicano collectivity as the subject who writes and the object (as part of the group) of her writing. the plural subject unifies anzaldúa’s many hurt selves with the discriminated people she writes about. 2 the “narrated i” and “the narrating i” are terms coined by critics sidonie smith and julia watson (2001) to refer to the writing subject and the narrated object of narration. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� maría henríquez betancor language value 4 (2), 38-55 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 53 general or the homosexual community. the process of recreating identity that anzaldúa proposes, whether that identity is individual or collective, is non-linear and progressive, fluid and concrete. we learn the complexity of her identity as she positions herself in the different voices. recognizing the historical and cultural information, analysis, and different positioning as well as the claims of each one of them, it is clear that this text “provide[s] witness for other, create[s] a community of affirmation, and encourage[s] social transformation” (hall 2001: 104). in other words, borderlands itself through its stages of transformation and the many identities it re-presents and becomes (i, she, we) is a real representation of the collectivity. borderlands has marked a before and an after within the construction of the chicana identity. verbalizing the concept of “borderland” was a point of departure for anzaldúa. like many other chicanas, she felt the pressure to choose among the different cultures and ideologies from which she came. in borderlands anzaldúa dares to reveal silenced and repressed feelings within the chicanas’ literary panorama. she exposes rage and frustration and takes a stance through her vindication of a multicultural social and sexual identity. resisting the anglo-american dominant system’s literary and political assimilation, she creates a body of work which represents lesbian chicanas, and chicanas/os in general, who as a community share a cultural and historical memory of social discrimination. gloria anzaldúa enjoys the privilege of being different. through her work she vindicates her right to be chicana, mestiza, indian, lesbian, feminist, writer, and critic. borderlands represents anzaldúa’s multicultural, racial, multilingual, and historical experience; likewise, it presents diverse realities that constitute chicana’s complex collective memory. anzaldúa considers chicanas’ strength as a collectivity necessary to make social transformation possible. her text aims to generate changes in the individual and collective thought. as i have shown, she establishes a bridge between herself and her reader, using various voices as a strategy. these multiple identities connect her with many different groups of women: chicanas, texans, lesbians, writers, and women of mexican descent who in one way or another may see themselves reflected in her words. anzaldúa speaks as a lesbian chicana in the mexican-american frontier, but she certainly does not exclude other cultural groups who could see themselves represented in her journey across personal and collective experience. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� anzaldúa and ‘the new mestiza’: a chicana dives into collective identity language value 4 (2), 38-55 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 54 references anzaldúa, g. 1987. borderlands/la frontera: the new mestiza. san francisco: spinsters/aunt lute books. anzaldúa, g. 1999. 2nd ed. borderlands/la frontera: the new mestiza. san francisco: spinsters/aunt lute books. blanco, p. 1991. “interview with gloria anzaldúa”. university of arizona poetry center newsletter 16: 4-5. gonzález, m.c. 1996. contemporary mexican-american women novelists: toward a feminist identity. new york: peter lang. hall, l. 2001. “lorde, anzaldúa, and tropicana performatively embody the written self”. a/b: auto/biography studies 15 (1), 96-122. lugones, m. 1992. “on borderlands/la frontera: an interpretive essay”. hypatia 7 (4), 31-37. rebolledo, t.d. 1995. women singing in the snow: a cultural analysis of chicana literature. tucson: university of arizona press. saldívar-hull, s. 1999. “introduction. anzaldúa”. borderlands/la frontera. san francisco: aunt lute books, 1-15. sandoval, c. 1998. “mestizaje as method: feminists-of-color challenge the canon”. in trujillo, c. (ed.) living chicana theory. berkeley, ca: third woman press, 352-370. smith, s. and j. watson 2001. reading autobiography: a guide for interpreting life narratives. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. trujillo, c. (ed.) 1998. living chicana theory. berkeley, ca: third woman press. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� maría henríquez betancor language value 4 (2), 38-55 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 55 received: 23 november 2011 accepted: 23 february 2012 cite this article as: henríquez-betancor, m. 2012. “anzaldúa and ‘the new mestiza’: a chicana dives into collective identity”. language value 4 (2), 38-55. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.erevistes.uji.es/languagevalue. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.4 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.4� language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2012, volume 4, number 2 pp. 56-69 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.5 56 wordarrows: the performative power of language in n. scott momaday’s non-fiction work anna m. brígido-corachán anna.brigido@uv.es iulma universitat de valència, spain abstract this article focuses on two non-fiction works by native american author n. scott momaday: his 1969 historical memoir the way to rainy mountain and his essay collection the man made of words it specifically tackles performative conceptions of language in the kiowa storytelling tradition, where words are experienced as speech acts that have the power to intervene in surrounding realities. taking into account 20th century ethno-cultural and linguistic policies in the united states, the article also reflects on the role indigenous languages may play in contemporary native american literature, which has most often been written in english. keywords: n. scott momaday, kiowa, indigenous languages and cultures, history of the united states, native american literature “we cannot exhaust the power of words; that power is intrinsic” n. scott momaday, the man made of words “a well-chosen word, like a well-made arrow, pierces the heart” kenneth lincoln, native american literary renaissance i. introduction this article explores native american author n. scott momaday’s kiowa-based theory of language and culture as sketched in his experimental historical piece the way to rainy mountain and in some of his early essays1 1 research for this article has been supported by the r+d project “la cultura como recurso de desarrollo. prácticas, discursos y representaciones en procesos modernizadores contemporaneous”, financed by the spanish ministerio de ciencia e innovación. . originally published in 1969, although based on an earlier text (his 1967 privately-printed edition entitled the journey of tai-me), the way to rainy mountain operates both as a history of the kiowa people and as a familiar memoir filtered through personal reminiscences. it is considered, together with momaday’s pulitzer prize-winning novel, house made of dawn (1968), one of the key inaugural texts of the native american renaissance – a http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� mailto:anna.brigido@uv.es� anna m. brígido-corachán language value 4 (2), 56-69 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 57 rich literary movement that brought public visibility and recognition to first nations authors from a wide variety of native and mixed heritages2 born in lawton, oklahoma, of kiowa and cherokee descent, momaday spent his childhood and youth among the tewa-speaking native pueblos of new mexico, in the town of jemez, where his father was a school principal. he continued to live in new mexico during his college years and later in california, while completing his doctoral studies at stanford university – always far from the kiowa landscape he so vividly evokes in the way to rainy mountain (wrm henceforth). as he explains in his autobiography the names. a memoir, jemez pueblo “was my home from the time i was twelve until i ventured out to seek my fortune in the world” (momaday 1976: 11). . mirroring his personal spatial dislocations, momaday’s wrm is symbolically divided into three thematic blocks having to do with movement: “the setting out”, “the going on”, and “the closing in”. these sections recall the nomadic journey of the kiowa from their ancestral northwestern territory through the great plains until they reached the upper arkansas river region, where they finally settled before it became indian territory and then oklahoma, a state of the new american nation3. momaday’s autobiographical journey within wrm also charts such a shift, imagining the author as he returns home to rainy mountain creek to visit his grandmother’s burial ground in the kiowa reservation, where he spent significant periods of his early childhood4 2 in 1968 the american indian movement (aim) was founded in minneapolis and a year later, as native activists began the 20-month occupation of alcatraz island in protest for centuries of suppression of american indian socio-political, territorial, cultural, and linguistic rights, momaday’s novel was awarded the pulitzer prize. together with the way to rainy mountain’s coming to light, 1969 was also the year of publication of custer died for your sins: an indian manifesto, a groundbreaking political and philosophical piece by native american intellectual vine deloria. fostered by such historical turning point, the first native american studies programs were launched at the university of california, berkeley, and at the university of minnesota at twin cities (coulombe 2011:35). for a more detailed account of the origins of this literary movement and of momaday’s prominent position within it, see kenneth lincoln’s 1983 native american renaissance and jace weaver’s more recent “the mystery of language. n. scott momaday: an appreciation” (2008). chad allen (2005: 208) and robert warrior (2005: 154-6) further explore the links between momaday’s work and the late 1960s/early 1970s watershed context of native american political and intellectual activism. . this 3 the kiowa reservation is currently located in southwestern oklahoma, where the kiowa had settled in the early nineteenth century. see mooney (1979) and kracht (2007) for further details. 4 according to edward said, contemporary intellectual discourse is shifting from filiative to affiliative modes of relation. he describes filiation as “belong(ing) to the realms of nature and of ‘life’ whereas affiliation belongs exclusively to culture and society” (1983: 20). for a more detailed account of momaday’s af-filiative strategies in the way to rainy mountain and in his longer memoir the names see brígido-corachán (2011). http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� wordarrows: the performative power of language in n. scott momaday’s non-fiction work language value 4 (2), 56-69 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 58 memorial return of the author also builds a movement of af-filiation into tribal culture (brígido-corachán 2011: 114). “the setting out”, the opening section after momaday’s preface and introduction, describes the mythical emergence of the kiowa into this world from a hollow log as well as their acquisition of cultural and religious traits as they met other tribes on their nomadic eastward journey. “the going on” then includes various historical episodes from the period when the kiowa were one of the most important warrior, buffalohunting societies on the great plains. lastly, “the closing in” turns to the last years of the kiowa as an independent tribe at the close of the 19th century, prior to white dominance and reservation enclosure. these last historical reminiscences are based on direct eyewitness accounts preserved from family members and neighbors who lived through the experiences later to be translated by the author’s kiowa-speaking father, al momaday, a key figure in the chain of historical and linguistic transmission. the work’s three main sections are further divided into twenty-four short passages, which are visually and thematically organized in groups of three vignettes. facing each other on the page, these vignettes weave creative interconnections between three dimensions: a mythical, a historical/ anthropological, and a familiar version of a story or reminiscence. these entwined dimensions are also reinforced, at times, by a fourth element, a series of drawings sketched by momaday’s father, al. momaday refers to these three juxtaposed textual discourses as voices whose narratives and personas move freely from the mythical to the personal or historical dimensions and vice versa, creating a “polyphonic version of kiowa historiography that questions traditional divisions between fact and fiction, history and myth” (brígido-corachán 2011: 113-4). the first set of vignettes is organized around the idea of “coming out”; they describe the emergence of the kiowa into the world and their symbolic first act of identityconstruction through language: the self-naming of the tribe. the origin of the name “kwuda”, which means “coming out”, is explained in both the mythical (the oral tradition) and the historical vignettes. both dimensions are complemented by momaday’s personal reminiscence, as he “came out upon the great plain in the late spring” (1969/2001: 17), an encounter with his childhood landscape that will trigger the remembering act that is the way to rainy mountain. in this manner, momaday’s first set of reflections specifically links the concepts of emergence and birth with language, http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� anna m. brígido-corachán language value 4 (2), 56-69 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 59 meaning and identity-making, as they are inscribed in the landscape and re-imagined through the linguistic act of memorial contemplation. ii. language, performativity and the oral tradition symmetrically organized as a triptych between each facing page, the way to rainy mountain lends equal weight to oral and written, visual, mythic, historical, and familiar sources as each is blended into a composite narrative form that is impossible to classify5 5 it is interesting to point out that this triptych division was introduced by the book designer bruce gentry, as the original voices in momaday’s manuscript were actually consecutive. see interview with kay bonetti, in roemer (1988: 3). . elaine a. jahner has described momaday’s historical and personal segments as a kind of “commentary” on the oral tradition, of which he himself is the audience. in this manner, the narrative process of this work becomes an imitation of a performative event. according to jahner, “the perception of oneself as a member of a mythteller’s audience – a member who is discovering one’s own context of vital meaning (…) – is basic to understanding momaday’s role as the persona in his own work” (1983: 217). the way to rainy mountain thus echoes the structural and aesthetic features that shape traditional native storytelling and writing. they reproduce the oral story and also evoke what daniel mato denominates “extratextual acts” (1990: 16): an audience (as he dialogues with himself or listens to his grandmother’s stories), a place (the homestead at rainy mountain creek), a particular oral rhythm, and the conjuring up of voices from the past. the way to rainy mountain recreates the performative aspects of the storytelling process within the text by summoning up its context of enunciation. according to momaday, the writer and the storyteller are indivisible, as they are both “concerned to create himself and his audience in language” (in coltelli 1990: 93). wrm thus functions as an act of creation where two types of reader, indigenous and nonnative, are invoked in different manners. those readers not acquainted with kiowa culture will necessarily have to learn how best to listen to the stories it tells; they will be given an entryway into kiowa history which they will complement by contributing connections of their own to the triptych of loosely intertwined reminiscences. drawing their own signifying trajectories, all native and non-native readers thus participate in the remembering process, generating varying reflections and responses while traveling http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� wordarrows: the performative power of language in n. scott momaday’s non-fiction work language value 4 (2), 56-69 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 60 to rainy mountain as well as to their own familiar landscapes. as momaday expresses in the preface to his essay collection the man made of words, the storyteller creates the storytelling experience and himself and his audience in the process (…). the storyteller creates himself in the sense that the mask he wears for the sake of telling the story is of his own making, and it is never the same. he creates the listener in the sense that he determines the listener’s existence within, and in relation to, the story, and it is never the same (…) and this imagining is the burden of the story, and indeed it is the story. (1997: 3) like the storyteller shaping his listener in the telling, momaday develops a sort of cartographic language in wrm. a map is laid out for the reader to follow, with the preface and the introduction serving as a guide through the various kiowa scenes. the two framing poems, “headwaters” and “rainy mountain cemetery”, give us a symbolic beginning and a poetic textual end. his textual format is thus not expansive and never explicitly ambitious, but rather intimate and inclusive of all voices. meaning is ultimately created out of the active recombination and weaving of passages in the reader’s mind, as such parallel structures encourage free association and the connection of ideas. adding to this effect, momaday’s particular “storytelling experience” is characterized by the economy of his use of the english language, which, reduced to its bare essence, makes every word echo within countless subtexts6 in the oral tradition one stands in a different relation to language. words are rare and therefore dear. they are jealously preserved in the ear and in the mind. words are spoken with great care, and they are heard. they matter and they must not be taken for granted; they must be taken seriously and they must be remembered (…) words are intrinsically powerful. they are magical. by means of words can one bring about physical change in the universe. (1997: 15-6) . in his essay “the native voice in american literature”, the kiowa author explains that most cultures embrace, in one way or another, the performative function of language. many native cultures, additionally, believe that storytelling is performative, that is, in the telling of a story the events it describes may materialize and happen7 6 together with his strong kiowa storytelling roots, which he primarily inherited from his father and kiowa grandparents, momaday’s prose is also permeated by western poetic discourse. his doctoral dissertation focused on the poetry of frederick goddard tuckerman (1963) and his mentor at stanford university was the poet yvor winters. moreover, his transculturated language philosophy is clearly inspired by the idealist approach of wallace stevens. momaday, in fact, borrows the title of his book collection from a poetic line by stevens: “men made out of words” (see schubnell 1985: 45-6). . the kiowa respect the power of words that, as speech acts, may have an immediate or belated effect in the real world surrounding us. momaday lyrically conveys this idea in section viii of wrm, where he includes three reminiscences, one in each of the dimensions, all 7 see, for example, the power of laguna pueblo stories in leslie silko’s novel ceremony (1977), where the narrative and performative modes blend into one another (hoilman 1979: 65). http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� anna m. brígido-corachán language value 4 (2), 56-69 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 61 illustrating the tangible effects of words in action. in one of the mythic tales about the sacred kiowa twins, he narrates how the intrepid children are able to escape a murderous giant who tries to suffocate them with smoke by chanting the magic kiowa word thain-mom (“above my eyes”) – a word that had been given to them by grandmother spider to confront evil and danger (wrm 1969/2001: 32)8 finally, in the historical commentary, momaday describes the solemn kiowa protocols that were linguistically displayed when referring to a dead person. because words have the potential to release certain sacred energies, the kiowa would avoid using the names of their dead, and would go as far as substituting them (often also quotidian referents) with new terms, while the old words became taboo for a whole generation and were thus forgotten. in a similar way, many words would leave the kiowa world along with the people that symbolically owned them, to be later substituted by new ones . this story from the mythical dimension is paired with a familiar anecdote about momaday’s own grandmother, aho, who also had a powerful word, zei-dl-bei (“frightful”), which she would say out loud when facing a difficult or harmful situation. as the author explains: “(i)t was not an exclamation so much, i think, as it was a warding off, an exertion of language upon ignorance and disorder” (wrm 1969/2001: 33). 9 a word has power in and of itself. it comes from nothing into sound and meaning; it gives origin to all things. by means of words can a man deal with the world on equal terms. a man’s name is his own; he can keep it or give it away as he likes (…). the dead take their names with them out of the world. (wrm 1969/2001: 33) . despite this continually transforming dynamism and the creative energies associated with the kiowa language, it continues to be endangered, together with the remaining 200 indigenous languages that are still spoken in the united states. native american languages are rich repositories of history, cultural knowledge and spiritual beliefs, yet endless socio-cultural impositions by the dominant society, compounded by decades of boarding school internment and urban relocation for native american youth, away from 8 in the kiowa mythology, the twin brothers, sons of the sun, are considered to be two halves of the same son – his only child. maurice boyd actually refers to them as “half-boys”, which is more precise than the term twins. see berner (1988: 60), note 1. 9 see mooney’s classic anthropological account (1979:152) and momaday’s own explanation in the historical fragment of section viii, page 33, in the way to rainy mountain. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� wordarrows: the performative power of language in n. scott momaday’s non-fiction work language value 4 (2), 56-69 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 62 their families, have eroded linguistic practice in native households10. according to gus palmer jr., kiowa-speaking suffered a tremendous decline throughout the 20th century, and today only about 100 fluent speakers, most of whom are over 70 years old, can be found among the 11,000 registered tribal members, (2007: 16). in his preface to the man made of words, momaday explains that, as a very young child, he heard both english and kiowa words at their homestead in rainy mountain creek, although his father and mother (of kiowa and cherokee heritage respectively) used english as the common family language11 from the time i was born my parents spoke to me in english, for that was my mother’s native tongue, and she could speak no other (…). the house and the arbor of the homestead on rainy mountain creek in oklahoma crackled and rang with kiowa words, exclamations, and songs that even now i keep in my ear. but i would learn only a part of the whole, and i would never learn to converse easily in kiowa. (…) my kiowa family spoke to me in broken english, or their kiowa words were translated into english for me by my father. now when i hear kiowa spoken – mostly by the older people who are passing away – it is very good. the meaning most often escapes me, but the sound is like a warm wind that arises from my childhood. it is the music of memory. (1997: 7. my emphasis) . for native american authors using english as their primary vehicle of expression (in the great majority of cases, such as momaday’s, because it is their mother tongue), native words in a text may indeed function as a “music of memory” accompanying the text (1997:7). and while this expression may sound nostalgic, we must remember that it is not the native endangered language itself that is romanticized here, but momaday’s childhood, his linguistic self-discovery in the company of loved ones, that is lyrically evoked. perhaps even more poignantly, these isolated words in the kiowa language that momaday is able to use, and even those he does not dare use for lack of fluency, become a powerful historical reminder that points to the legacy of linguistic impositions and colonial abuses still dominating white/native relations in the continent12 10 according to johansen, approximately 200 indigenous languages are currently spoken in the usa, although only 20 of them continue to be taught at home as a first language (praeger handbook 5, qtd by coulombe 2011: 29). . and that a 11 between the age of 12 and 18 momaday grew up surrounded by jemez-speaking families, among the pueblo of new mexico. he actually used his knowledge of navajo culture to contextualize his celebrated novel house made of dawn. 12 most contemporary native writers in the united states are university-educated, mixed-blood authors writing in english, with very little command of the languages spoken by their ancestors, although there are a few exceptions primarily in the poetic field. simon ortiz and ray young bear, for example, often use native words from their mother tongues (keresan and mesquakie, respectively) in their poetic compositions, but generally write in english. this situation (the full presence of native languages as literary vehicles) is quite different in the case of latin american indigenous writers who are, for the most part, native speakers of endangered indigenous languages, and publish their work in bilingual texts, although, unlike their us counterparts, the dissemination of these texts is rather limited. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� anna m. brígido-corachán language value 4 (2), 56-69 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 63 historical and literary piece as moving as wrm could be built from what pieces remain, in the “enemy’s language”, may be momaday’s most powerful statement of all13. iii. the arrowmaker and the power of language the way to rainy mountain moves the reader not merely because of its original structure or because of the effective combination of the four intertwined dimensions (mythic, historical, personal, and visual) but through its contagious forward motion – the intimate yet powerful, performative wordarrows (vizenor 2003)14 13 i borrow the expression from joy harjo’s well-known anthology reinventing the enemy’s language: contemporary native women’s writings of north america (1997). that, although using the english language as a vehicle, open up a new historical space for the kiowas in the local/national imagination. for, in wrm there are many simultaneous approaches, “many landmarks, many journeys in the one” (wrm 1969/2001: 4). momaday points out that there are many ways to organize all these memories and knowledges; and although his is just “one way in which these traditions are conceived, developed, and interfused in the human mind” (ibid) it is one rooted in kiowa historiography and worldviews. moreover, by using the english language as a tool, momaday is actually engaging in an act of “anti-imperial translation” (krupat 1996: 30) – an action that neutralizes the violence engrained within the first acts of translation that took place between natives and western colonizers, a vindicative action that, borrowing the words of arnold krupat, “conceptualiz(es) the tensions and differences between contemporary native american fiction and ‘the imperial center’” (ibid). even if traditional oral stories are recalled using a language that is foreign to them, they are being rescued from the official national archive and reconfigured to suit the purposes of a contemporary kiowa storyteller bringing to the fore the history of his people. furthermore, this restored history is also built on direct eyewitness accounts and traditional narratives from his community, many of which were originally shared with the momadays by relatives and neighbors in the kiowa language. part and parcel of all native american writers’ modern heritage, english also functions as a lingua franca that may disseminate the 14 gerald vizenor’s critical term, based on momaday’s story, “the arrowmaker”, which i discuss later in this article. see vizenor’s wordarrows: native states of literary sovereignty for a more detailed explanation. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� wordarrows: the performative power of language in n. scott momaday’s non-fiction work language value 4 (2), 56-69 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 64 message as widely as possible, among other native communities and non-native readers. some scholars have accused momaday of relying excessively on modernist structures, nostalgia and for having an apolitical stance (forbes 1987, krupat 1989). the way to rainy mountain indeed seems to nostalgically invoke a time that is gone but which pervades the oral stories even in their written reconfiguration. the power held and transmitted through these stories is, however, not mystified and is very much alive in the text. this power derives from the vitality and deep creativity of language in its “original state”, a state associated by momaday with the oral tradition (momaday 2007). orality has always been central to kiowa historicity even in scriptural accounts, as the keepers of their historical calendars, which were picto-ideographic, always accompanied their visual elements with an explanatory oral account (mooney 1979). in wrm, these oral memorial narratives are again re-activated by momaday’s “transfiguring tongue”15 the performative power of language is perhaps best explained in momaday’s seminal essay “the man made of words”, which was first written as a keynote lecture at the first convocation of american indian scholars in march 1970, at princeton university, and was later republished in his essay collection of the same title. according to momaday “much of the power and magic and beauty of words consist not in meaning but in sound. storytellers, actors, and children know this, too” (1997: 7). he later contradicts himself and demonstrates that the power of words lies not merely in their sound, but also in their meaning and in their recollection, as his famous tale of the arrowmaker illustrates. in this traditional oral story (the first tale momaday ever heard . the kiowa language itself, a language in which the author cannot easily converse and that he describes as the “music of memory” (1997: 7), may at times acquire romanticized undertones but it certainly has a key empowering role in the narrative. the performative words chanted by his grandmother, aho, contribute to build a historical mood that is grounded on kiowa ways of conceptualizing language and of narrating history. they also act, as we have already mentioned, as a reminder of the colonial legacy of linguistic destitution still ongoing in the americas. 15 in his famous poem “robinson crusoe”, caribbean poet derek walcott refers to the transfigurative power of the english language to describe new world realities when used by the american native in a transculturated, anti-imperialistic manner. the native is epitomized, in the poem, by daniel defoe’s foundational character, friday. see walcott’s collected poems 1948-1984 (1986: 68). http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� anna m. brígido-corachán language value 4 (2), 56-69 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 65 as a child), as the arrowmaker is straightening an arrow with his teeth inside his teepee, he is able to identify and kill his hidden enemy, who is lurking in the shadows outside. it is the enemy’s ignorance of the kiowa language that prevents him from understanding the arrowmaker’s warning (1997: 9-12): “i know that you are there on the outside, for i can feel your eyes upon me. if you are a kiowa, you will understand what i am saying, and you will speak your name”. but there was no answer, and the man went on in the same way, pointing the arrow all around. at last his aim fell upon the place where his enemy stood, and he let go of the string. the arrow went straight to the enemy’s heart. (1997: 10)16 speaking and understanding the kiowa language work here as a symbol of recognition of one’s own clan as well as a weapon to challenge one’s enemy. the arrowmaker’s pronouncement “is also a question and a plea” (momaday 1997: 11), and an acknowledgement of kiowa identity through language. the “arrowmaker ventures to speak because he must: language is the repository of his whole knowledge and experience, and it represents the only chance he has for survival” (ibid). intellectual resourcefulness and survival are encoded in the arrowmaker’s words, just as his teeth have left an oral imprint in his story-arrow. as momaday explains: “the point of the story lies not so much in what the arrowmaker does, but in what he says – and, indeed, that he says it. the principal fact is that he speaks, and in so doing, he places his very life in the balance” (1997: 10). momaday’s arrowmaker thus establishes an intrinsic connection between language and literature and he is, as robert warrior points out, “a necessary stopping place in situating (momaday’s) relationship to language, literature, and the natural world” (2005: 171). many kiowa of momaday’s generation have lost that ability to speak their ancestors’ language but, still imbued in tribal culture, they have not forgotten the story which continues to be revitalized by other means. the way to rainy mountain’s thorough recovery of oral history is lyrically mobilized through momaday’s english-shaped transfiguring wordarrows, and these evince a strong commitment to tribal heritage. momaday is, above all, a cross-cultural american and as such he can effectively integrate kiowa historiography with a textual literary template, product of his academic education and western influences. thus, although orality is fundamental to the recovery 16 this story also appears as one of the mythical narratives in section xiii of the way to rainy mountain (1969/2001: 46). http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� wordarrows: the performative power of language in n. scott momaday’s non-fiction work language value 4 (2), 56-69 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 66 of kiowa cultural and intellectual traditions, it is not, by any means, the only one. there are many ways to rainy mountain within wrm, and any further textual, physical or linguistic resource that may enable kiowa heirs to reclaim tribal territories and autochthonous historical and intellectual traditions should be embraced and celebrated. iv. conclusion “language, that miracle of symbols and sounds that enable us to think, and therefore to define ourselves as human beings” (momaday 1997: 1) if, as momaday suggests, language and thought are intrinsically intertwined, if “(l)anguage is a creator of reality”17 wordarrows, in any language, can serve as imaginative weapons to organize and channel one’s anger and creative energies, to carve one’s place in the world. through , how does his not speaking kiowa, except for a handful of words, influence his worldview? as we have seen in this article, one may be tempted to think that the author fetishizes the oral tradition by setting it at the core of a memorial imagination that is nostalgic and artificial in nature, since it is expressed through the “enemy’s language”. however, his use of the colonial language as a vehicle serving kiowa expression is the result of centuries of imperialistic impositions and linguistic aggression. momaday’s masterful use of english is able to challenge this legacy. as jace weaver points out, “momaday is obsessed with words – their tone, their sonorousness, their rhythm, how they feel in the mouth” (2008: 81). in his works, he is clearly influenced by familiar linguistic rhythms passed on to him, together with the stories, by his kiowa-speaking father. momaday additionally bends english words at will so they may fit his own authorial designs: the making of a historical kiowascape where the absence of the kiowa language (the sacred names that each dead kiowa took along to the other world) actually fills the empty spaces of each page, as his people are remembered and honored. momaday’s own personal memoir, the names, further strengthens the memorial process by giving flesh and visual protagonism to each of his forefathers and foremothers speaking in the way to rainy mountain, whose names and stories thus continue to endure on the page. 17 “the mystery of language: native american oral tradition” charter lecture delivered at the university of georgia, athens, october 20, 1994. quoted by jace weaver (2008: 81). http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� anna m. brígido-corachán language value 4 (2), 56-69 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 67 words, native authors can re-construct, activate, and protect textual, familiar, and cultural territories from the socio-economic plundering and intellectual dispossession they have withstood for centuries. imagination “enables us to use language to its highest potential. it enables us to realize a reality beyond the ordinary, it enables us to create and to re-create ourselves in story and literature. it is the possible accomplishment of immortality” (momaday 1997: 2). with the help of his kiowa-speaking and memorykeeping family, momaday, the arrowmaker, is able to decode his native legacy and to render it in a language that, even if not fully kiowa in appearance, proves to be an effective, moving, and empowering vehicle for the present cross-cultural generation in charge of projecting their tribal traditions into the future. references allen, c. 2005. “n. scott momaday: becoming the bear”. in porter, j. and k.m. roemer (ed.) the cambridge companion to native american literature. cambridge: cambridge university press, 207-220. berner, r.l. 1988. “the way to rainy mountain: structure and language” in. roemer, k.m. 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(ed.) 1988. approaches to teaching momaday’s the way to rainy mountain. new york: mla. said, e.w. 1983. the world, the text and the critic. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://digital.library.okstate.edu/%20entries/k/ki017.html� http://digital.library.okstate.edu/%20entries/k/ki017.html� anna m. brígido-corachán language value 4 (2), 56-69 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 69 schubnell, m. 1985. n. scott momaday: the cultural and literary background. norman: university of oklahoma press. vizenor, g. 2003. wordarrows: native states of literary sovereignty. university of nebraska press. walcott, d. 1986. collected poems 1948-1984. new york: farrar, straus and giroux. warrior, r. 2005. the people and the word. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. weaver, j. 2008. “the mystery of language: n. scott momaday, an appreciation”. studies in american indian literatures 20 (4), 76-87. received: 19 september 2011 accepted: 07 october 2012 cite this article as: brígido-corachán, a.m. 2012. “wordarrows: the performative power of language in n. scott momaday’s non-fiction work”. language value 4 (2), 56-69. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.5 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.5� language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2012, volume 4, number 2 pp. 70-88 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.6 70 memory and language in hiromi goto’s chorus of mushrooms eva pich ponce epich@us.es universidad de sevilla, spain abstract hiromi goto’s chorus of mushrooms (1994) highlights the difficulties encountered by japanese when immigrating and living in canada. this essay focuses on how hiromi goto uses linguistic codes to construct cultural identities and to stress the arbitrary nature of stereotypes. it analyzes the importance of memory and translation, which can be seen as both necessary and alienating. it also examines the importance of language and storytelling in the process of constructing one’s identity. keywords: language, memory, asian canadian writing, identity, stereotypes, storytelling i. introduction the remarkable literary activity in canada since the second world war has been recognized and celebrated by literary criticism throughout the world. the relationship between collective identity and the perception and representation of the other constitutes an essential question of contemporary cultural and literary discourse. the literary representation of ethnic minorities is extremely important in order to understand current issues about multiculturalism, nationalism, integration. it is even more significant when considering the emergence of authors writing from within that cultural minority experience. canadian history and its present situation are rewritten by these new voices that seek their place in the country. as mari sasano has pointed out, although the notion of multiculturalism implies the acknowledgement of different cultures, a distinction is generally made between “typical canadian” and “multicultural”, the latter consisting of “those minorities that are seen as additional to but outside of typical white middle-class majority” (sasano 1998: 39). through the analysis of hiromi goto’s chorus of mushrooms (1994), this study aims to examine how asian-canadian minorities are representing themselves and how language is used in the construction of social and cultural identities. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� mailto:epich@us.es� eva pich ponce language value 4 (2), 70-88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 71 hiromi goto was born in japan and immigrated to canada with her family when she was three years old. after living on the west coast for some time, her family moved to nanton, alberta. in chorus of mushrooms, the author highlights the difficulties encountered by ethnic minorities when trying to find their own identity. it examines the intercultural experience of japanese canadians through the lives of three generations of women belonging to the same japanese family living in nanton. if the author draws on her own experience to write this narrative, the autobiographical dimension of the text is challenged by the subversion of realism and the destabilization of narrative unity, reliable point of view and coherent character presentation. as linda hutcheon has observed in contemporary canadian novels: postmodernism in canada has suggested a rethinking of realism, and therefore we have a situation in which realism is both challenged and taken seriously. [...] like fiction, history is viewed through frames, and those frames bring only certain pre-selected things into the foreground of the reader’s attention. and this is true of both public and private history (hutcheon 1988: 21). in chorus of mushrooms, the metafictional dimension of the novel is made evident by the way the narrator refers to the creating process and by the structure of the text itself. the novel appears as a story which is being told by the narrator to her lover. the second personal pronoun, “you”, is used to address the narratee. this interlocutor, who asks the narrator to tell him a “true story”, sometimes interrupts the narrative to make comments or to give his opinion. a dialogue on the text itself is thus presented and it foretells some of the reactions goto’s readers may have. as hutcheon has pointed out, postmodern novelists are very aware of “the twin processes involved in their production: their creation and their reception” (1988: 45). the dialogue between narrator and narratee highlights the interaction that can take place. although the use of the second person invites the reader to identify with this narratee, the “you” can also be exclusionary, as emma e. smith has shown in her study on this novel. indeed, the second person refers to a particular character, who can speak japanese, and with whom the non-japanese-speaking reader cannot assume identity (smith, 2007: 251). the different narrative layers used in the novel bring to light different perspectives and challenge any possible unity. besides the dialogue between the controlling narrator (murasaki) and her lover, the text intertwines the stories told by muriel/murasaki, and by her grandmother naoe. these are centred on their experiences and recollections. other stories, such as japanese legends or journal articles, are embedded within their http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� memory and language in hiromi goto’s chorus of mushrooms language value 4 (2), 70-88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 72 narrations and introduce other voices in the text. the polyphonic nature of the novel, which is also announced in the title, suggests that the approaches to immigrant life in canada are plural, and cannot be reduced to a sole discourse on immigration and identity. moreover, throughout the multi-levelled narrative, the stress is put on interaction. the different voices, fragments and stories that appear in the text complement one another and create an intertextual dialogue. besides the conversations between the controlling narrator and the narratee, other dialogues take place between naoe and her granddaughter murasaki. their dialogues, written in brackets, appear as telepathic conversations that can take place in spite of the spatial and temporal distance that separates the interlocutors. the metafictional aspect of the novel is further highlighted by the contents of these dialogues where the two narrators speak about the creative process: murasaki: obachan, everyone wants to hear stories. and i can’t finish them. they scatter like sheep. like dust. naoe: no need to tie them up. there is always room for beginnings (goto 1997: 63). this lack of closure is also a procedure used by goto in her novel. as the author has explained in an interview, in her fiction: “there is a resistance to the notion of closure for this is not the reality of women’s lives. closure to me is very artificial, contrived and prescriptive. [...] life narratives are circular and ongoing” (goto, in morris 2008: 234). goto’s novel is characterized by the lack of a time line. as the fictional interlocutor tells the narrator: “‘you switch around in time a lot,’ [...] ‘i get all mixed up. i don’t know in what order things really happened” (goto 1997: 132)1 there isn’t a time line. it’s not a linear equation. you start in the middle and unfold outward from here. it’s not a flat surface that you walk back and forth on. it’s like being inside a ball that isn’t exactly a ball, but is really made up of thousands and thousands of small panels. and on each panel, there is a mirror, but each mirror reflects something different. and from where you crouch, if you turn your head up or around or down or sideways, you can see something new, something old, or something you’ve forgotten (132). . the answer provided by the narrator is extremely significant as it justifies the complex structure of the novel itself: according to this definition, the story consists of as a series of mirroring images and of windows opened to different realities and different times. again, the stress is put on 1 from now on, the references to this edition will be made through the number of the page written in brackets. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� eva pich ponce language value 4 (2), 70-88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 73 plurality, but also on memory and on the capacities of the story to make others aware of what has been forgotten. hutcheon has observed that the postmodern writer is inevitably in a “marginal or ‘excentric’ position with regard to the central or dominant culture, because the paradox of underlining and undermining cultural ‘universals’ [...] challenges any notions of centrality” (1988: 3). this is even truer when the author is writing from the position of an ethnic minority community. the margin becomes a place of transgression, but also, as hutcheon points out, the place of possibility (1988: 3). through their texts, writers try “to trouble, to question, to make both problematic and provisional any [...] desire for order or truth through the powers of the human imagination” (hutcheon 1988: 2). the notion of truth is indeed problematic, as goto’s text points out. truth may be confused with a system of belief specific to a particular culture and time. according to hutcheon, “what any society calls universal ‘truth’ is really [...] socially, culturally, economically, and historically particular” (1988: 12). the multiple voices of goto’s novel and the different stories embedded highlight how truth, as identity, is something fluid. it changes with the telling and it also involves the interlocutor’s trust and belief. chorus of mushrooms combines japanese cultural references and canadian ones. it stresses the importance of food and language when approaching a foreign culture and it shows how stories are both a way of getting to know the other and of constructing one’s history and one’s identity. ii. the memories of immigration chorus of mushrooms describes the relationship between three generations of women and their attitudes towards their situation as japanese immigrants living in nanton. the grandmother, naoe, tries to hold onto her roots. she refuses to forget her past and her japanese culture. although she can speak english, she refuses to use the english language that her family has adopted. on the contrary, her daughter, keiko, has decided to assimilate into canadian culture for the sake of her own daughter, muriel. keiko speaks only in english, eats canadian food and tries to dress and behave like a ‘white’ canadian woman. according to her mother, keiko “has forsaken identity [...] converted from rice and daikon to weiners and beans” (goto 1997: 13). the different attitude http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� memory and language in hiromi goto’s chorus of mushrooms language value 4 (2), 70-88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 74 adopted by these two characters is highlighted by the different language they use and by the lack of communication between them: “i speak my words in japanese and my daughter will not hear them. the words that come from our ears, our mouths, they collide in the space between us” (goto 1997: 4). naoe tries to prevent the complete loss of her culture by continually speaking out loud in her tongue. she tells japanese legends, speaks about her past, and gives her opinion about her life in canada. through her memories and the tales she narrates, naoe constructs a sense of home inside of her. as she explains, “you cannot move to a foreign land and call that place home because you parrot the words around you. find your home inside yourself first, i say. let your home words grow out from the inside, not the inside in” (goto 1997: 48). muriel, or murasaki, as her grandmother calls her, is the only one of them who was actually born in canada. in spite of this, she is still perceived as an outsider because of her physical complexion. she is alienated from a canadian culture which considers her as foreign, but also from the japanese background, as she cannot speak or read the language. it is only later, that she will decide to learn the japanese tongue. the three perspectives embodied by these characters are highlighted in an article, inserted in the text, and entitled “the multicultural voices of alberta, part 4: japanese canadians today” (goto 1997: 189). keiko explains her decision of forgetting her japanese identity in order to feel at home in her new country: “you can’t be everything at once. it is too confusing for a child to juggle two cultures. two sets of ideals. if you want a child to have a normal and accepted lifestyle, you have to live like everyone else” (goto 1997: 189). however, murasaki’s account challenges her mother’s perspective: life is hard in canada, once you come to an age when you find out that people think certain things of you just because your hair is black and they have watched ‘shogun, the mini series.’ [...] i wasn’t given the chance to choose. i feel a lot of bitterness about how i was raised, how i was taught to behave. i had a lot of questions about my heritage, but they were never answered. the place where we lived didn’t foster cultural difference. it only had room for cultural integration. if you didn’t abide by the unwritten rules of conduct, you were alienated as an other, subject to suspicion and mistrust (189). she has been deprived of the possibility of getting to know her family’s culture. what is more, her mother’s insistence on rejecting her japanese roots implied that there was something wrong with them. thus, murasaki avoided speaking with the vietnamese http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� eva pich ponce language value 4 (2), 70-88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 75 labourers who worked on her father’s farm. she also avoided speaking with the chinese boy that attended her school because “oriental people in single doses were well enough, but any hint of a group and it was all over” (goto 1997: 125). institutions in canada only provide stereotypical images of the other. when muriel goes to sunday school, she observes the pictures drawn on the song boards. there are pictures of “indians with feathers”, “black boys with curly hair wearing only shorts”, “yellow people with skinny eyes”, and a “blonde girl with long eyelashes with a normal dress on” (goto 1997: 59). the teacher tells the pupils that “everybody is the same [...] jesus doesn’t see any difference at all. he loves you all the same” (goto 1997: 59). by not recognising any difference, cultural specificity is erased and the other is apparently placed in a central position from which he is paradoxically banned. the use of stereotypes and the denial of cultural diversity are both unsatisfying discourses to approach alterity. the narrator stresses the importance of acknowledging and respecting cultural difference. as muriel points out: “i thought that jesus must be pretty blind if he thought everybody was the same” (goto 1997: 59). through the different stories inserted in the novel, goto tries to deconstruct cultural stereotypes and to present them as other stories, the truth of which can be questioned. the novel highlights how representations of alterity always entail exotic details that make the other interesting as well as alien. people ask murasaki whether her grandmother had to bind her feet, although feet were never bound in japan. asian cultural distinctions are obliterated. muriel is frequently considered chinese or treated as an oriental woman because of her appearance. even people of japanese background use the depreciative terms and representations applied to them: “you’re pretty cute for a nip. he said. most nips are pretty damn ugly. all that inbreeding [...] and i felt really funny inside, him saying nip and everything. because he was one too” (goto 1997: 53). the will of many immigrants to assimilate into canadian culture leads them not only to erase their roots, but also to become intolerant towards other immigrants. as marc colavincenzo has also highlighted, this novel shows how “behind a rhetoric of multicultural acceptance canadian culture is shot through with racism, non-acceptance, and homogenizing or assimilationist tendencies” (2005: 224). keiko and her husband http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� memory and language in hiromi goto’s chorus of mushrooms language value 4 (2), 70-88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 76 have given up their roots. keiko pretends to be “as white as her neighbour” (goto 1997: 29). her insistence on becoming an other, goes to the extent of washing her daughter’s hands frantically when observing that they are yellow after having eaten some candies: “yellow, she’s tuningyellow she’s turningyellow she’s –” (goto 1997: 92). when a schoolteacher tells her that muriel should wear a blonde wig in order to perform the part of alice in wonderland in a school operetta, keiko is more than willing to dye her daughter’s hair: “that way, muriel can really grow into her role as alice. she can live and be alice before opening night!” (goto 1997: 177). the façade she tries to create also implies changing names: her name is keiko but she asks the others to call her kay; her husband “shinji” becomes “sam”; and she gives her daughter an ‘occidental’ name, muriel. keiko also provides nicknames for the vietnamese people who work on the farm because she thinks “their real names are too hard to pronounce and no one will be able to remember them” (goto 1997: 34). names are essential in the novel and the characters change their names according to their shifting identities. muriel prefers to be named murasaki in order to acknowledge her japanese background. naoe becomes purple at the end of the novel. according to mari sasano, the characters “adopt new names to suit their identities, creating a movement between what each is born with and what each eventually chooses to become” (1998: 40). the name is also at the origin of the situation of naoe’s family, as her father lost his fortune by stamping his name on a legal document. as naoe states: “the name begins the story” (goto 1997: 49). the separation from the original culture is also stressed by the lack of a surname. keiko and her husband forgot their real surname when they gave up their roots. the only japanese word he could remember was the name of a meal, “tonkatsu” which they adopted as their own surname in canada. murasaki’s father explains that the word is not entirely japanese: “tonkatsu isn’t really a purely japanese word. ton, meaning pork, is japanese, but katsu is adopted from ‘cutled’, and i don’t know the origins of that word” (goto 1997: 209). as lisa harris has also observed, “goto seems to be suggesting that notions of authenticity tied to a particular place are always socially constructed and subject to change. they must therefore be understood as part of an ongoing process of negotiation” (harris 2008: 26). http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� eva pich ponce language value 4 (2), 70-88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 77 the third part of the novel consists of only a page, which represents everything that has been lost or forgotten: “part three. everything that is missing or lost or caught between memory and make believe or forgotten or hidden or sliced from the body like an unwanted tumour” (goto 1997: 159). it represents the unnameable, the missing part in an immigrant story, the things that have been forgotten or retold in another way, everything that has been erased from memory in the transition of becoming an other. keiko and her husband have chosen to forget and their personality has changed because of this decision. they become, as pilar cuder-domínguez et al. have pointed out, “mere shadows of the full beings they could have been”, since their effort to be accepted and to assimilate into ‘white’ canadian culture only results in silence and invisibility (2011: 106 and 111). shinji used to speak a lot in his youth, and suddenly he feels he is “half a person” (goto 1997: 207). as he explains: “i was ashamed. i felt a loss so fine it pierced my heart. made it ache. so i stopped talking” (goto 1997: 207). similarly, keiko ends up with a nervous breakdown when her mother leaves. naoe was indeed the only person that tried to preserve her cultural background through stories and memories. when she leaves the house, keiko stops talking and remains in bed. she only recovers from her depression after wearing japanese night clothes and eating japanese food. her husband also feels better when reading japanese books and eating salted seaweed paste. it is through memory, food and language that one’s culture and identity can be maintained. throughout the first part of the novel, naoe describes her youth and the atrocities of the war. the memory of these facts may be lost as her daughter refuses to hear and the younger generations cannot understand the language. yet, naoe keeps on talking: “don’t come to me for answers, child, these are only words”, she says to murasaki. however, the importance of the words she utters is constantly implied in the text: “the words of an old woman can change little in this world and nothing of the past [...] i only know i must” (goto 1997: 21). according to muna shafiq, “naoe’s incessant communication in japanese symbolically (re)constructs and (re)asserts the collective voice of japanese canadians” (2006: 6). the language of naoe is a “language of memory, pain, desire” (goto 1997: 129). her words allow her to preserve a link with her culture and to depict her past. her japanese background is however not free from criticism and naoe’s words do not hesitate to question the injustices she saw in her childhood and youth. she describes the social http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� memory and language in hiromi goto’s chorus of mushrooms language value 4 (2), 70-88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 78 injustices that existed in japan and in china before the war. she also criticizes the sexist treatment of women in that country. her constant discourse is also a way to make up for a silent past in which she didn’t dare to question social injustices: “the pain of not having spoken, of not bothering to ask questions, still aches inside me now”, she says (goto 1997: 46). the words she utters as an old woman are the words of a wisdom acquired year after year: there are ages of silence and ages of roaring. when i was young and beautiful, my lips were an ornament upon my face. now my face is crumpled with care and seams adorn my cheeks. my mouth bursts wide and the words rush out, a torrent of noise and scatters. an old woman on a wooden chair might not be much to look at, but step inside her circle of sound and fall into a tornado (24). the same idea is repeated some pages later and stresses the importance of the character’s discourse: “if an old woman sits in a chair and never gets out and talks and talks and talks, don’t ignore her. she might be saying something that will change the colour of your eyes” (goto 1997: 37). yet, nobody understands the language she speaks. as she says, “my words are only noises in this place i call a home” (goto 1997: 11). however, these last words also highlight that, in spite of all, she does consider her house in nanton “a home”. in fact, it is interesting to observe the evolution of the character’s attitude towards the canadian wind. the beginning of the first part of the novel stresses naoe’s dislike for “this unrelenting, dust-driven, crack your fingers dry wind” (goto 1997: 3). she tries to fight against the noise of the wind with the sound of her words. as the novel progresses, naoe also remembers japanese winds. first, she recalls a “non-wind” that characterized the summers of her childhood in japan, which are described as “a breathless time of sucking air like water” (goto 1997: 69). later, she remembers another wind, called “kama itachi. an evil wind that moves with the speed of a weasel and cuts with the sting of a scythe” (goto 1997: 75). through her narrative, she acknowledges that japanese winds can be as threatening as the canadian prairie wind. when she leaves the house and accepts to move on, her opinion about the canadian wind changes: “funny how i hated the wind so, when i was sheltered from it. we are sisters, you and i, and your cool breath upon my cheeks will comfort me” (goto 1997: 81). it is only after remembering and narrating her memories that naoe feels free to leave the house: “useless to waste time on sentimental memory. i may be an old fool, but http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� eva pich ponce language value 4 (2), 70-88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 79 stupidity is another matter. so important to remember, but say the words out loud. don’t wallow in pools of yesterday, i say. don’t drown in yesterday’s tears” (goto 1997: 74). at the end of the novel, naoe takes part in a rodeo, and rides a bull like a cowboy. through this image, the text stresses the absurdity of stereotypes and highlights the character’s transformation. as mari sasano has observed: [naoe] has infiltrated the ranks. while furiously not white canadian, she fully embraces and occupies aspects of that culture that please her. entering in means that the centre is neither sealed nor exclusive. membership changes, and as it does, the norm is altered. by challenging expectations and by living outside of the fear of being detected as abnormal, it is possible to carve out a new space of belonging while remaining truthful about the differences that do exist (1998: 51) if naoe’s success as a bull rider may signify her appropriation of a male western canadian tradition, her success is nuanced by the fact that she is wearing a mask, as eva darias beautell has argued (2003: 40). nevertheless, naoe progressively becomes closer to canadian culture just as keiko accepts the introduction of japanese food in her house. food is essential in this novel, where one seems to be what he eats. as the shop assistant states: “eating’s a part of being after all” (goto 1997: 138). according to heather latimer, “eating is a gendered and racialized act that constantly informs how the characters see themselves emotionally and psychologically” (2006: 1). although there isn’t any japanese food in keiko’s kitchen, naoe manages to get some sent by her brother and to hide it in her room. it is through food and language that she tries to preserve her culture. she shares the food with murasaki, just as she tells her stories from japan in a language the child cannot speak. the grandmother’s bed becomes a “bed of feasts”, a “bed of tales” (goto 1997: 18). lisa harris has also observed how “food unites naoe and murasaki”. murasaki “learns to use food and language as tools to shape her own version of a canadian future” (harris 2008: 24). she cannot speak japanese nor hold her chopsticks properly: “i know. i don’t hold my pen properly either. but i can still write. and i can still eat”, she says (goto 1997: 121). according to murasaki, eating is an important way of getting to know a culture: there are people who say that eating is only a superficial means of understanding a different culture. that eating at exotic restaurants and oohing and aahing over the food is not even worth the bill paid. you haven’t learned anything at all. i say that’s a lie. what can be more basic than food itself? food to begin to grow? [...] but don’t stop there, my friend, don’t stop there, because food is the point of departure. a place where growth begins” (goto 1997: 201). http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� memory and language in hiromi goto’s chorus of mushrooms language value 4 (2), 70-88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 80 it is through language and tales that it continues. words, like food, can nurture, and can be “swallow[ed]” (goto 1997: 29). they become like the squid which “swells and softens”: “i held my words inside my mouth until they swelled and softened” (goto 1997: 18), says murasaki. listening to the sound of foreign words becomes a way to discover and imagine another cultural background. iii. language words appear in the novel as material elements which can “take form and live and breathe among us. language is a living beast” (goto 1997: 99). they seem to have a life of their own, one that the self cannot control. they can “change shape and size”, “grow arms and legs”, and weigh heavily, as the memory of the characters: “words, words, words, words. ahh, words grow heavier every day, upon my bony back”, says naoe (goto 1997: 21). the text includes many words in japanese and does not provide their translation into english. the reader is thus put in the position of an outcast, unable to have access to the content of the words. our expectations of resolving difference into unity, or as hutcheon would say, of trying to “absorb the margin into the centre” (1988: 11) are thus frustrated. as murasaki listens to the words uttered by her grandmother without understanding them, the reader sees the signifiers and can only guess or imagine their meaning. hiromi goto has explained why she decided not to provide any translation: i wanted to highlight that difference exists, all cannot be understood, language could and can be a barrier. this is based on my assumption that most of my readers are englishspeaking and do not understand japanese. this is the audience the book is mainly speaking to [...] (goto 1996: 112) as muna shafiq has pointed out, “this strategy obliges the unilingual dominant language reader to seek meaning outside the dominant language” (2006: 8). yet, the materiality and the sound of the words introduce the reader to the other culture, as a child learning some aspects of the language by immersion. language appears as a constraint but also as a meaningful way of arousing interest towards what is unknown and foreign. although murasaki cannot understand the language used by naoe, communication still takes place through body language: she cannot understand the words i speak, but she can read the lines on my brow, the creases beside my mouth. i could speak the other to her, but my lips refuse and my tongue http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� eva pich ponce language value 4 (2), 70-88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 81 swells in revolt. i want so much for someone to hear, yet it must be in my words (goto 1997: 15). the reader is encouraged to think about translation and about how different languages do not have exact equivalents for some concepts. when learning japanese, murasaki realizes there is no word to express love “except to a spouse or lover” (goto 1997: 54). naoe also sees that the english word “water” doesn’t indicate whether the water is cold or warm, whereas the distinction is made clear by the japanese words “mizu” and “oyu” (goto 1997: 170). according to murasaki, the good thing about speaking several languages is that it allows you to fill these gaps: “when there isn’t one word in english, it will be there in japanese and if there’s something lacking in your tongue, i’ll reach for it in english. so i say to you in english. i love you, obachan” (goto 1997: 54). as mari sasano has highlighted: rather than being suspended half-in-half-out of two cultures, murasaki actually has an edge over either: she slips between them as easily as a salamander inhabits water and land. [...] contrary to keiko’s philosophy of childraising, murasaki benefits from, instead of being confused by, the juggling of two cultures (1998: 42). in her childhood, murasaki couldn’t speak nor understand the japanese language. in spite of this, the japanese words pronounced by her grandmother meant more to her than the conversations in english she had with her parents: “the things we talked about would never have the power to linger. ‘how was school?’ and, ‘pass the gravy boat,’ were sad substitutes for my malnourished culture” (goto 1997: 99). she imagined what her grandmother said in japanese. a new kind of communication was created through her imagination: “i couldn’t understand the words she spoke, but this is what i heard. mukashi, muhashi, omukashi... listen murasaki, listen” (goto 1997: 18). it is interesting to see how the sound of the words itself becomes poetry and seems to have an incantatory value: i turned my head slowly in obachan’s lap, the fabric scratch and stiff. inhaled dust and poetry. she stroked my forehead with her palm, and her words, they flowed fluid. i snuggled close and curled my legs and stopped pretending to understand. only listened. and listened. and then my mouth opened on its own accord and words fell from my tongue like treasure [...] obachan and i, our voices lingered, reverberated off hollow walls and stretched across the land with streamers of silken thread” (goto 1997: 52 and 20) the importance of language and of the two voices speaking together is stressed by the repetition of this same paragraph in the novel. communication can still take place in spite of the language used and even if the interlocutors are not together, i.e. “over distance and time” (goto 1997: 139). the characters can “hear” each other’s “thoughts” http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� memory and language in hiromi goto’s chorus of mushrooms language value 4 (2), 70-88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 82 (goto 1997: 114). the text defies normal realist logic. language can be learnt or suddenly forgotten. keiko’s husband can read books in japanese but he cannot speak the words out loud nor remember his name. murasaki knows what some japanese words “mean” but she doesn’t know “what they are” (goto 1997: 136). the narrator also plays with antiquated english words such as “league” or “fortnight”. as patricia l. gantzert has observed, “they have no specific meaning for naoe or murasaki, emphasizing the indefiniteness of any word. ‘whatever that means’ is a phrase murasaki often uses in her questioning discourse” (1997: 32). as the novel goes on, language is treated in a more surrealist way. naoe leaves the house and starts speaking in english with a cowboy who has a strong english accent. she even starts speaking herself with this accent just as he loses his own: “sher”, she says (goto 1997: 112). however the reader cannot be sure about the language or the accent that is being used, since the characters are not sure about it either. as mari sasano has observed, “language becomes unconscious. [...] naoe, when she has developed more of a rapport with tengu, remarks that his cowboy accent is gone, but in fact he didn’t have one to begin with; she has inserted the accent to fit with her preconceptions of him” (1998: 43). at the beginning of the novel, the controlling-narrator states that she will tell the story in japanese. therefore, the english used in the text implies that one layer of translation has been introduced. however, the narrator herself thinks she has been speaking in english all the time. “haven’t we been talking japanese all along?”, her lover reminds her (goto 1997: 196-197). the reader cannot be sure of the language that is actually being spoken nor of the identity of the different characters. pilar cuder-domínguez et al. have observed how in this novel translation “becomes oddly unnecessary between people speaking different languages, thus intimating true communication beyond words, whereas at other times translation allows for metamorphosis, change, and progress, resulting in a fluid, unfixed subjectivity” (2011: 138-139). the lives of murasaki and naoe seem to mingle. they both leave home and have a cowboy lover whom they abandon afterwards. this fusion is also encouraged by naoe who says to murasaki: “why don’t i talk sometimes and you just move your lips and it http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� eva pich ponce language value 4 (2), 70-88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 83 will look like you’re the one who’s talking” (goto 1997: 127). naoe chooses to be called purple, the english translation of murasaki: ‘so, who is murasaki and who is purple?’ ‘the words are different, but in translation, they come together.’ ‘so you’re a translation of murasaki and murasaki is a translation of you?’ [...] ‘that’s one reading of it’ (goto 1997: 174) as steve mccullough has observed, in the novel “proper names proliferate identities and problematize the notion of textual origins instead of simply positioning coherent selves in cultural-linguistic worlds” (2003: 160). the narrator plays with the notions of transition and translation to show that the characters’ identities evolve throughout the novel, but also shift and merge according to linguistic and cultural factors. muna shafiq has also highlighted how goto “constructs hybrid narrative identities that stand in opposition to and challenge notions of authenticity based on pure cultures” (2006: 8). there is not one identity, but several. naoe thinks about a philosopher who dreamt he was a butterfly dreaming that he was a philosopher: “and when he woke up, he didn’t know if he was a philosopher or a butterfly. what nonsense. this need to differentiate. why, he was both, of course” (goto 1997: 44). naoe and murasaki are characterized by different identities which coexist in a variety of degrees. as pilar cuder-domínguez et al. have stated: rather than being crippled by the memories of a traumatic past, [naoe] is so empowered that she comes to symbolize a wealth of future possibilities [...] naoe embodies the power of the tale and the storyteller to create new life and endow the current one with new meanings (2011: 99). the novel contains different stories and legends which intertwine with the character’s experiences. these appear as additional mirrors which echo the character’s lives. as muna shafiq has observed, the characters “employ the oral tradition of telling stories to reinvent themselves as bicultural (canadian and japanese) women, celebrating their ethnic differences (2006: 5). iv. the importance of storytelling as she did not understand what her grandmother said in japanese, the controllingnarrator is imagining the stories told by naoe. the narrator is not trustworthy. we know she lied to her friend patricia and invented what her grandmother was saying. as she affirms, “i’m making up the truth as i go along” (goto 1997: 12). she is not even sure http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� memory and language in hiromi goto’s chorus of mushrooms language value 4 (2), 70-88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 84 of the reliability of what she tells: “did i just make that up or is it true? i don’t even know anymore. saying it out loud can make it so” (goto 1997: 53). sometimes she directly admits having lied: “that’s a lie. one of many, i suppose” (goto 1997: 98). however, as we have seen, the notion of truth is subverted in the novel. it appears as a concept which is always under construction and negotiation. the emphasis is put on the telling, and particularly on the re-telling. in the “acknowledgements” of the novel, goto states: “in the process of re-telling personal myth, i have taken tremendous liberties with my grandmother’s history. this novel is a departure from historical ‘fact’ into the realms of contemporary folk legend. and should (almost) always be considered a work of fiction”. she is “re-telling” the life of her family in the novel, just as murasaki is “retelling and re-creating” the story (goto 1997: 185). as goto has explained: our worlds no longer exist in isolation. the arts are a place where cultures and stories can intersect, overlap. [...] i’ve rewritten japanese traditional folk tales with a north american feminist sensibility. [...] i make sense of my world with the instruments of the cultures i’ve inhabited. i feel lucky in that i’m in a position to choose the best of both worlds (goto, in morris 2008: 235). julia kristeva has observed that “any text is constructed as a mosaic of quotations, any text is the absorption and transformation of another” (1980: 66). memories and legends entwine in murasaki’s account. as the character explains, “it’s funny how you can sift your memories, braid them with other stories. come up with a single strand and call it truth” (goto 1997: 93). the intertexts inserted in the novel present contrasting points and therefore insist on multiplicity. many of the legends told echo the character’s stories. the tale of an old woman that must be abandoned by her family recalls naoe’s position as an old woman who is going to be sent to an old people’s home. the legend of a family that could not have children reminds that of naoe’s brother, who has not been able to have descendants. an encounter at an airport becomes “another airport story” (goto 1997: 53). myth, legend and reality are mixed. as hutcheon has pointed out, novels “renarrate and re-conceptualize the past, both literary and historical, and thereby reformulate the possibilities of subjectivity narrated in them” (1988: 8-9). stories are constructed in a way that is similar to the technique used in a japanese legend by two characters named izanami and izanagi. they create a new home just by pronouncing the words out loud: “‘we are gods [...] we can create’[...] ‘there are no http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� eva pich ponce language value 4 (2), 70-88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 85 rules,’ izanami chanted, and saying it aloud made it so” (goto 1997: 30). in this legend, in which the two children create japan, one of them exclaims “let there be light!” and is immediately reprimanded by his sister”. patricia l. gantzert has observed how the narrator makes reference to eastern and western texts and beliefs: “pokes at master narratives of western society, such as those of shakespeare (1997: 69, 175) and the bible, shake up the assumptions often association with them or situate their ‘truths’ in new relations” (1997: 31). when naoe leaves, murasaki realizes how people are looking forward to hearing exotic tales: “everybody, including me, was always looking for a story. that the story could be anything [...] the story can be anything, but there have to be details. people love details. the stranger, the more exotic the better” (goto 1997: 89). through the stories they hear, they construct their preconceived ideas about other cultures. as murasaki points out, “people want to hear a story, and then, after they’re done with it, they can stick the story back to wherever it came from” (goto 1997: 1). however, the multiple perspectives provided by the narrative disrupt these expectations and make it impossible for the reader to draw a stereotypical conclusion from the text. the different points of view, the mixture of facts and legend, of reality and imagined or invented parts show how a story is not an establish set of notions: “funny thing, murasaki, how these stories keep changing”, says naoe (goto 1997: 73). as this character points out: “this is not the story i learned, but it’s the story i tell. it is the nature of words to change with the telling. they are changing in your mind even as i speak” (goto 1997: 32) thus, telling a story implies creation, but also re-creation, and the characters and facts change with the telling: “it can’t really be you once i make it a story. it becomes someone else, you know?”, says murasaki (goto 1997: 55). telling stories is also a way of creating human ties. as naoe says: [...] stories are shared. [...] there is a partnership in the telling and listening, that it is of equal importance [...] if the positions become static, there can never be stories. stories grow out of stories grow out of stories. listening becomes telling, telling listening (goto 1997: 172). whereas her mother “didn’t tell tales at all”, the stories told by naoe fostered a deeper link between her and murasaki, who wanted to “hear bedtime stories, hear lies and truth dissembled” (goto 1997: 29). the importance of telling one’s story is highlighted by http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� memory and language in hiromi goto’s chorus of mushrooms language value 4 (2), 70-88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 86 the way murasaki imagines her mother’s tales: “her stories must be ugly things filled with bitterness and pain. the pain of never having told” (goto 1997: 32). it is interesting to see that murasaki is named after an important japanese writer, murasaki shikibu, who is considered to be the first person to write a novel and to “create the antihero” (goto 1997: 165) in her work, the tale of genji. as patricia gantzert has pointed out, the tale of genji “offers an important model of courageous achievement in the face of restrictive conditions”. this work may thus offer murasaki a valid representation upon which to build a positive image of herself as a japanesecanadian woman (1997: 63). by mixing different stories within the novel, chorus of mushrooms questions the established notions that surround immigration, and it tries to create a different kind of account. “an immigrant story with a happy ending. [...] nothing is impossible. within reason, of course”, says murasaki (goto 1997: 159). as mari sasano has affirmed, “muriel/murasaki ana naoe are attempting, in their retelling of folktales, as well as in the living of their lives, to unlock themselves from the expected unhappy endings”. part three, “an immigrant story with a happy ending” (goto 1997: 159) is, as sasano states, a “page-long non-story waiting to be written into existence” (1998: 46). part four shows how the experience of immigrants can be characterized by a happy ending. however, by introducing racist texts at the end of the novel, this perspective is attenuated, and recalls the tragic alternatives that may await them. references colavincenzo, m. 2005. “‘fables of the reconstruction of the fables’: multiculturalism, postmodernism, and the possibilities of myth in hiromi goto’s chorus of mushroms”. in davis g. (ed.) towards a transcultural future: literature and society in a 'post'-colonial world. new york: rodopi, 223-230. cuder-domínguez, p., martin-lucas, b. and villegas-lopez, s. (eds.) 2011. transnational poetics: asian canadian women’s fiction of the 1990s. toronto: tsar publications. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� eva pich ponce language value 4 (2), 70-88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 87 darias beautell, e. 2003. “hiromi goto’s chorus of mushrooms: cultural difference, visibility and the canadian traditon”. revista alicantina de estudios ingleses 16, 6-50. gantzert, p. 1997. “throwing voices: dialogism in the novels of three contemporary canadian women writers”. unpublished thesis submitted in the department of english of the university of manitoba. goto, h. 1996. “translating the self: moving between cultures”. west coast line 30 (2), 111-113. goto, h. 1997. chorus of mushrooms. london: the women’s press. harris, l. 2008 “eating and reading hiromi goto”. cuizine: the journal of canadian food cultures 1 (1). 24 january 2012 <http://id.erudit.org/iderudit/019372> hutcheon, l. 1988. the canadian postmodern: a study of contemporary englishcanadian fiction. toronto: oxford university press. kristeva, j. 1980. “word, dialogue and novel”. in roudiez l. (ed.) desire in language: a semiotic approach to literature and art. new york: columbia university press, 64-91. latimer, h. 2006. “eating, abjection, and transformation in the work of hiromi goto”. thirdspace: a journal of feminist theory & culture, 5 (2). 24 january 2012 <http://www.thirdspace.ca/journal/article/view/latimer> mccullough, s. 2003. “‘trust me’: responding to the threat of writing in chorus of mushrooms”. english studies in canada 29 (1-2), 149-170. morris, r. 2008. “braiding race politics and narrative form: an interview with hiromi goto”. in looking through the twin lens of race and gender: a new politics of surveillance in asian australian and asian canadian women’s writing. unpublished thesis submitted at the university of wollongong. sasano, m. 1998. “words like buckshoot: taking aim at notions of nation in hiromi goto’s chorus of mushrooms”. open letter 10 (3), 38-53. shafiq, m. 2006. “linguistic hybridity in gloria anzaldúa’s borderlands, antonia d’alfonso’s avril ou l’anti-passion, and hiromi goto’s chorus of http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� memory and language in hiromi goto’s chorus of mushrooms language value 4 (2), 70-88 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 88 mushrooms”. in gonzalez m. and f. tolron (eds.) translating identity and the identity of translation. newcastle: cambridge scholar press, 3-19. smith, e. 2007. “‘can you listen before you hear?’: responsible reading and the politics of second-person narration in hiromi goto’s chorus of mushrroms”. visions of canada. canadian studies in europe 6, 251267. received: 25 february 2012 accepted: 29 march 2012 cite this article as: pich ponce, e. 2012. “memory and language in hiromi goto’s chorus of mushrooms”. language value 4 (2), 70-88. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.erevistes.uji.es/languagevalue. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.6 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.6� language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2012, volume 4, number 2 pp. 89-106 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.7 89 the voice of the cypresses. cyrus cassells and the poetry of salvador espriu dídac llorens cubedo dllorens@flog.uned.es universidad nacional de educación a distancia (uned), spain abstract “to the cypress again and again” is cyrus cassells’s poetic response to the work of salvador espriu, a poet whose reception has been limited by his belonging to a minority culture and his commitment to the catalan language. in its first eight sections, the poem reads as a dramatic monologue: its author adopts espriu’s voice, successfully evoking his poetic world. in what could be considered the second part of the poem, a different poetic speaker  identifiable with cassells  shares personal memories of espriu: the man, his nation and his culture. at the end of the poem, the emblematic cypresses are identified with the catalan people and their voice is heard. the poem is an example of epistolary elegy, a mode that allows cassells to enter into dialogue with deceased personalities who have had artistic or historical relevance. in so doing, the american poet shows, like espriu did, an acute sense of cultural tradition. keywords: “to the cypress again and again”, cyrus cassells, salvador espriu, epistolary elegy, poetic voice, imagery in its website, the european charter for regional or minority languages defines regional or minority language as one “traditionally used within a given territory of a state by nationals of that state who form a group numerically smaller than the rest of the state’s population”. as the president of the association internationale pour la défense des langues et cultures menacées, during the early 70s, the catalan poet salvador espriu (1913-1985) fought for the survival of minority languages spoken all over the world. in an interview, he connected this responsibility with the history of his own language: jo vaig reaccionar des del primer dia contra la intolerable arbitrarietat que suposa perseguir una llengua; va donar la casualitat que fos la meva, la catalana, però crec que hauria reaccionat de la mateixa manera contra la persecució de qualsevol altra llengua. ... [l]a meva reacció no va ser sentimental, sinó que va ser intel·lectual i ètica. (reina 1995b: 94) as a writer, espriu produced a body of literature that can be considered  among other things  a vindication of his own language, persecuted and belittled during franco’s http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� mailto:dllorens@flog.uned.es� the voice of the cypresses. cyrus cassells and the poetry of salvador espriu language value 4 (2), 89-106 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 90 regime1 his own liminal condition  an african american and gay man  has made the poet cyrus cassells (b. 1957) especially sensitive to the struggle of marginalized groups and minorities, to which he has given a poetic voice: “when you come from communities that have been oppressed [...] you just embody aspects of experience that might not have been articulated, because people’s testimonies and expressions are disregarded or ignored for whatever reasons” (jiménez 2009: 73). surely it must have been this special sensitivity that led cassells to read, study and translate catalan poetry, since a decisive first encounter with espriu’s verse. . despite espriu’s consistent and militant allegiance to the catalan language, his work has been internationally received. in his acceptance speech for the premi catalunya, harold bloom (2002) referred to espriu as a prominent figure in the catalan canon and defined him as “a remarkable poet by any international standard”. cassells wrote “to the cypress again and again” as a tribute to salvador espriu2 in his profile on the website of the national endowment for the arts, casells tells of his stays in barcelona, “to work on two projects, still life with children: selected poems of francesc parcerisas, and rider on the back of silence: tribute to salvador espriu, a . the first version of the poem  about 160 lines long  is divided into thirteen sections of varying length and metre patterns, and different voices can be heard: mainly espriu’s, but also cassells’s and the voice of the cypresses which, as we will see, becomes a central and pervading presence. the poem contains five temporal references that could be ordered into a narrative sequence: espriu’s life prior to the outbreak of the spanish civil war (1913-1936), franco’s regime, including the post-war (1939-1975), franco’s death (1975), cassells’ meeting with espriu (1984) and espriu’s death (1985). these dates will be useful in structuring our analysis of the poem, which will be explored in its connections with espriu’s poetic production and will focus on such aspects as point of view, imagery and themes. 1 for a detailed description of the persecution of catalan in the years following the spanish civil war, see josep benet’s catalunya sota el règim franquista (pp. 279-410). 2 the poem was first published in the journal callaloo (1986: 18-23) and later included in the collection soul make a path through shouting (1994). i choose to quote from the longer callaloo version  composed shortly after espriu’s death  since it will allow us to explore intertextual connectionas in mo depth. the poem’s title will be subsequently abbreviated to “to the cypress”. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� dídac llorens cubedo language value 4 (2), 89-106 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 91 memoir (with translations) about the catalan poet and nobel candidate, whom i met shortly before his death in 1985”. in section ix of the poem, the encounter is recalled: cassells? the name could be mallorcan  how old are you? twenty-seven. and you’ve never read don quixote! (cassells 1986: 21) the reader may assume that espriu’s death causes cassells to reminisce about the day they met, the year before. in the first eight sections of the poem, the latter adopts espriu’s voice to compare his life before and after the war, declare his ambitions as a writer and evoke the scenery of his homeland. this imagined exercise in poetic sincerity has espriu  essentially an impersonal poet  do what he rarely did in verse: communicate his own experience directly in a confessional tone. in fact, these sections resemble the dramatic monologue: a vivid impression of the speaker is conveyed and a sense of audience is implied (furniss and bath 1996: 175-176)  section iv begins with the question “can you understand?”, section vi with the interjection “listen” and in xiii we find the vocative “cyrus”. i. before the fighting (1913-1936) maria aurèlia capmany, a close friend of espriu, wrote about the poet’s experience of the spanish civil war (1936-39). her words indicate the extent to which the conflict affected him. it rendered his ideal of harmony in political difference and cultural diversity in spain dramatically impossible and, at a personal level, it brought an abrupt end to a student career pursued, until that point, with enthusiasm and marked success: he did not return to the university until after franco’s death, when he was awarded an honorary degree. he earned his living by working in a notary public’s office. he flatly refused to engage in any public activity or to write in spanish, the only language permitted at the time […] he had decided that his world had been destroyed by the war which had just begun. he deliberately sought out the kingdom of death, the negation of the life which lay before him. (capmany 1992: 17) “to the cypress” opens with espriu’s statement that “the bloodshed buried my world” (cassells 1986: 18), in an echo of the poem “viatge d’hivern”: “sang que no he vessat │ http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� the voice of the cypresses. cyrus cassells and the poetry of salvador espriu language value 4 (2), 89-106 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 92 m’ha destruït el món” (espriu 2003: 89)3 before the fighting, i was blessed, . the voice of the catalan poet depicts the post-war panorama of hopelessness and subjugation in his “vanquished country”, with a fleeting melancholy thought for the young man that he was before the cataclysm: at twenty-three, a prodigy with five books. salom, i called myself. (cassells 1986: 18) espriu’s choice to project himself in his own work as an allegorical character embodying peace  the name salom evidently taken from the hebrew word  shows how deeply the fratricidal fighting troubled him. the poems in his collection les hores were grouped into three parts: part i was dedicated to a close friend and fellow poet (“recordant b. rosselló-pòrcel”) and part ii is linked to the memory of espriu’s mother (“recordant sempre la meva mare”). espriu (2003: 57, 81) attaches, in parentheses, the exact dates of their demise: bartomeu rosselló-pòrcel died in 1938 and escolàstica castelló in 1950. the dedication of part iii (“recordant allunyadament salom”, 2003: 103) symbolically causes two events to coincide: the outbreak of the spanish civil war, on july 18 1936, and the death of the poet’s literary alter ego. in section i of “to the cypress”, as in les hores, espriu has a “distant memory” of the young salom, who lived in a time when peace was still a possibility: but salom died at the first shriek of the civil war: july 18, 1936  (cassells 1986: 18) the war not only traumatised espriu, depriving him of a progressive education in the best humanist tradition. it also caused his incipient and promising literary career to veer decisively. in 1936, espriu was “a prodigy with five books”, two novels and three short story collections: el doctor rip (1931), laia (1932), aspectes (1934), ariadna al laberint grotesc (1935), and miratge a citerea (1935). these works of fiction are characterised by stylistic experimentation and a point of view that is often ironic or satirical. after their publication, espriu switched to verse, his choice of the poetic mode as expressive vehicle being directly related to the war that drew the dividing line between enthusiastic freedom and discouraging repression. had the war never broken out and especially, had it not resulted in severe censorship and the persecution of catalan culture, he would have probably continued to write the kind of fiction that he 3 “viatge d’hivern” is included in the collection les hores which, despite containing some of espriu’s earliest verse, achieved its definitive form in 1963. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� dídac llorens cubedo language value 4 (2), 89-106 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 93 had published in the 30s. poetry became a more suitable means of expression in the new political situation: he dicho que mi obra refleja la guerra civil, pero es más. mi poesía es hija de la guerra. antes me interesaba  y ahora también  la narrativa, pero la poesía me “surgió” como más radical. la eliminación pública del catalán hacía imposible el cultivo de la narrativa, mientras que el poema pudo surgir de un modo más íntimo y necesario. (reina 1995a: 149) the early thirties, the years preceding the war, when espriu was an excellent student and a promising fiction writer, are idealised and identified with the vitality of catalan culture, the richness of the language  metaphorically associated with natural imagery  and the nation’s dynamism. in section v, espriu addresses cassells and the poem’s readers to dwell on the years of the second spanish republic: listen, in that distant time, in those ardent days of the republic, my language filled me like a heady wine, laced with the sweetness of figs, the tang of pine-nuts; yes, my country was an almond tree in bloom. the mediterranean was my garden  blue, voluminous  (cassells 1986: 19) the mediterranean sea, which washes the shore in sinera, is an alternative to, an escape from confinement and political boundaries. in les cançons d’ariadna, espriu included a poem with a basque title, “abesti bioztun bat entzun naiz”  which could be translated as “i heard a heartfelt song”. the basque country is, like catalonia / sinera, a small nation that turns to the sea in order to avoid isolation: clars solcs dibuixadíssims, terra petita en pau. com que se sap petita, obre portes a mar. (espriu 1990: 118) this watery and seamless garden is part of espriu’s lost world. pijoan i picas has analysed the garden image in espriu’s poetics and she considers it an instance of the refuge archetype: “un espai delimitat, hiperprotector, que indueix a la vida plàcida perquè s’hi ha exorcitzat la mort, i, per tant, hi ha una manca d’antagonisme entre la vida i la mort” (1995: 82). the archetype in question comprises the notions of protection, peace and intellectual activity. specifically in espriu’s imagination, it is objectified as a happy childhood in arenys de mar, “before the fighting”, with its inherent unawareness of mortality and the sense that the future was full of possibility (pijoan i picas, 1995: 83). poem ix of llibre de sinera is set in the “jardí dels cinc arbres”, where the poet and his siblings used to spend many summer hours at play: http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� the voice of the cypresses. cyrus cassells and the poetry of salvador espriu language value 4 (2), 89-106 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 94 claror de l’aigua, prima molsa del safareig. varava fràgils barques, en encalmar-se el vent. (espriu 2006: 30) the scene is evocative of “la infantesa, viscuda com una etapa paradisíaca d’atemporalitat, amb jocs i alegria” (pijoan i picas 1995: 60). refuge can be sought in this space of the family house, but also in the more extensive setting of sinera, its natural surroundings and “blue, voluminous” sea. the following lines are from poem ii of cementiri de sinera: aquesta mar, sinera, turons de pins i vinya, pols de rials. no estimo res més, excepte l’ombra viatgera d’un núvol. (espriu 2003: 10) in the lines from “to the cypress” quoted above, espriu’s love of his own language is expressed through gustative images unequivocally reminiscent of sineran life and nature: the taste of “a heady wine”, “the sweetness of figs”, “the tang of pine-nuts”. the sound of catalan is also an integrating component of espriu’s archetypal garden and his poems communicate a painful nostalgia for its normalised use. “advers al vent” (from mrs death) goes back to the old days of “sineran lords”, when the gardens withered in parallel with the banishment of words: no preguntis si penso encara en els vells dies dels senyors, si recordo com lentament morien els jardins, les paraules. (espriu 2003: 164) espriu’s garden of paradise was lost as a result of the original sin of the spanish civil war  in his play primera història d’esther, the altíssim, the blind man who runs the puppet show, warns the people of sinera: “eviteu el màxim crim, el pecat de la guerra entre germans” (espriu 1981: 129). to the critical political situation that espriu lived, one should add personal factors, such as the bereavement caused by the death of his father and his beloved friend rosselló-pòrcel: simbòlicament restava tot cancel·lat: la mort de la república, de rosselló i els seus somnis d’un món diferent; la mort del notari [espriu’s father’s death in 1940] i, amb ell, de les aspiracions professionals del mateix espriu. una família al seu càrrec, una guerra mundial a l’aguait de la situació a espanya. tot plegat, un autèntic lost paradise. (delor i muns 1993: 150; author’s emphasis) http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� dídac llorens cubedo language value 4 (2), 89-106 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 95 ii. the promise of oblivion (1936-1975) espriu recalls the post-war atmosphere and his state of mind in the first eight sections of cassells’ poem, where those years are viewed by the old poet in retrospect. in the following lines, from section ii, he compares himself with two heroes belonging to cultural sources that he knew very well, the bible and classical mythology. he felt impotent like samson after delilah’s treachery, lost like theseus inside the labyrinth, without ariadne’s help: suddenly i was powerless, like samson. who could have imagined it? no saviour, no ariadne’s thread, just the promise of oblivion  (cassells 1986: 18) the erasure of its past prevents sinera from having a present and a future. espriu’s task is a form of resistance against these barren prospects, a determined attempt to preserve the language and its culture. at the same time, it is also a lament over the deprivation suffered by sinera. hence, his poetry, singing of loss, is often labelled elegiac. in the poem “perquè un dia torni la cançó a sinera” (les hores), which contains interesting reflections about writing and the role of the poet, espriu complains that mai no ha entès ningú per què sempre parlo del meu món perdut. (espriu 2003: 118) in section viii of “to the cypress”, we find two verse lines that can connect with these. cassells has espriu declare “i am no lover of the present,  but the past” (cassells 1986: 20; author’s italics). the catalan poet’s work is further characterised through his own voice in the poem. in section vii, he outlines his poetic plan after wondering what his motivations in writing might have been. the lines below, conversational and anaphoric, refer to espriu’s firm refusal to write in spanish, to his fascination with the grotesque, to the themes of death, war and repression, to the frequent mythological allusions: damn it, what was i reaching for? something more than cervantes’ language. more than the brutal pantomime. more than the brunt of the black boot. more than sin or the minotaur. more, more than the fear of death  (cassells 1986: 20) http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� the voice of the cypresses. cyrus cassells and the poetry of salvador espriu language value 4 (2), 89-106 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 96 espriu’s poetry consists of all the elements listed, and is more than simply each one of them. he knew “what he was reaching for”: a meditation upon death “per veure-la d’una manera objectiva, serena i a partir de la qual es pot entendre el que realment interessa, que és la vida” (batista 1985: 64). immediately after the lines quoted, however, espriu’s goal is defined not conceptually, but with emphasis on the imaginative dimension and on his sense of belonging to sinera: he aspired to create “an alphabet of cypresses and sea-light” (cassells 1986: 20). some of the most frequent or evocative constituents of espriu’s “imaginal alphabet” are featured in the poem by cassells: ash, cemetery, sea, song (i); stars, light and shadow, dolphins (iv); wind (v, vi, x); hills, vines, fennel, fields, hoes (vii); pines, boats (viii); a bull’s hide (ix); marble, vineyards (x)4 the spain of the 30s and 40s, turbulent and war-stricken, made espriu’s poetry what it is  gravely meditative, but also intensely lyrical. even though espriu’s voice seems to diminish the importance of some of the more recognisable facets of his poetic world, the references to ariadne’s thread and the minotaur bring to mind a key image: the labyrinth, which could be related to the political situation in which the poet lived and, perhaps more importantly, to his everyman’s metaphysical quest . and of course the cypress tree which, given its relevance in the poem  signalled by the title  will be considered in more detail below. 5 as hinted at above, espriu’s poems contain frequent, more or less veiled allusions to the two fundamental strands of what could be called “universal culture”  a traditional concept no longer taken for granted, but one that is valid for a poet like espriu. references to biblical literature or classical mythology are an essential part of his work; identifying and examining them closely contributes to its deeper understanding. the interest of the curious poem “rars ecos pels tombants” (les cançons d’ariadna) lies in . according to castellet, the labyrinth is “un símbol conceptual, més lligat al desorientat vagarejar dels homes per la vida [...] que a la mítica elaboració grega” (1984: 123). 4 several images are only listed once, although they recur through the sequence. espriu’s image of the “pell de brau” was taken from a book about iberia by the greek geographer and historian strabo (63 bc – 19 ad), where the iberian peninsula is compared to a spread bull’s hide. espriu made that image a symbol of the coexistence, not always easy, of different peoples in spain and portugal. 5 the theseus myth is alluded to in the titles of several works by espriu, in prose and verse: ariadna al laberint grotesc, les cançons d’ariadna, final del laberint. additionally, the third part of el caminant i el mur bears the title “el minotaure i teseu”. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� dídac llorens cubedo language value 4 (2), 89-106 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 97 its interconnected presentation of the two cultural traditions that furnished the poet’s imagination from his early years. he recalls the biblical stories that his aunt maria used to tell him: la tia maria llegia sovint en llibres molt savis maleses i crims. […] quan queia la pluja damunt llessamins, contava disbauxes del sant rei david. (espriu 1990: 25) as espriu recalls in his prologue to primera història d’esther, maria castelló “dominava l’art, tan sinerenc, de vivificar el que contava” (1981: 86). her biblical narrations made it easier for the child to assimilate classical and egyptian mythology, into which he delved later in life. the aunt’s storytelling m’obria camins, enllà de l’escuma d’aquest mar antic. petit, m’allunyava, a lloms de dofins, per freus neguitosos, anquines, perills. de cop m’acollien els braços del nil, sentia mesclar-se mots grecs amb llatins. (espriu 1990: 25) as we have seen, espriu’s voice in cassells’ poem identifies his experiences with those lived by theseus and samson. the catalan poet’s life in the darkest years of the spanish post-war  when everyday hardships combined with the struggle to pursue a literary career in a banned language, in an isolated country  is compared in “to the cypress” to the plight of other biblical characters such as joseph, sold by his brothers and captive in egypt, or job, the butt of god’s seemingly unjustified rage and cruelty. the following lines are from section iii: it was like the dream of joseph in egypt, the dream-in-the-dungeon, the black well, or the plangent cry of job, the fortunate man who wakes in hell, tested by a fire from heaven  (cassells 1986: 19) espriu’s great interest in the book of job is reflected in his poetry. the realistic portrayal of the beggars and the blind men that people sinera is reminiscent of job’s http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� the voice of the cypresses. cyrus cassells and the poetry of salvador espriu language value 4 (2), 89-106 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 98 physical suffering and pitiful abandonment. in poem xl of la pell de brau, the lyrical speaker appeals to a tyrannical figure who has made him a leper and deserted him: però tu te’n rius: [...] em tornes mesell i em deixes podrint-me en aquest femer. (espriu 2008: 376)6 but these poignant images inspired by the trials of job do not apply only to the fate of sinera and sepharad 7 la terrible violència bèl·lica del segle xx, que li va tocar de presenciar quasi en la seva totalitat […] li fornia la visió, per dir-ho amb termes bíblics, d’un món caigut en el pecat; és a dir, un món exiliat de déu. una època de damnació en què déu estava més ocult que mai i l’home, tan desvalgut i angoixat com ho havia estat job, abandonat a les arbitràries forces destructores de satanàs (delor 2005: 578-579) . espriu thinks of the biblical character as emblematic of the human condition, and this mythical transposition became more evident and meaningful for the poet as belligerance intensified during the first half of the twentieth century: opposed to this world of sin and damnation is the “little homeland”, sinera, which is still the poet’s solace even  or perhaps with more reason  in the face of adversity. as we saw, in section ii of “to the cypress”, already quoted from, we are offered a glimpse of paradise lost in which the beauty of the sineran landscape and the poet’s pride in his language are imaginatively linked. these two elements are also brought together when the remembered period is the post-war and not the republic (vii). mediterranean nature and the voices of the living and the dead comfort and inspire espriu in troubled times: sometimes i’d sit before the blank page  impoverished, till the rising sun reclaimed the hills of vines and fennel, the hills, so unforgettable. and from the wide fields would come the voices of peasants, mingling with the voices of my dead, the sound of hoes striking my heart  (cassells 1986: 20) espriu is, according to cassells, “a lover of the past”, and the memory of those who ensured the continuity of his language and his culture (“the voices of my 6 the poem that follows (xli) completes the allusion. other poems that contain more or less direct references to the book of job are “perquè un dia torni la cançó a sinera” (les hores), “el vent” (les cançons d’ariadna) and poem vii of llibre de sinera. 7 in la pell de brau and other poems, espriu refers to spain as sepharad, establishing a parallelism between the israelites’ wandering in the desert and franco’s dictatorship. sephardi jews were those native to spain; they were expelled or forced to convert by the end of the 15th century. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� dídac llorens cubedo language value 4 (2), 89-106 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 99 dead”) justifies and empowers him in his civil resistance and poetic mission. in section ii, his idyllic youth is given the evanescent quality of a dream (“did i dream it all?”) and the old poet’s reminiscing comes to a halt when a powerful image, alluding to one of the witches’ prophecies in william shakespeare’s macbeth, is conjured up: “and then the armies of the dead advancing  surrounding me like birnam wood” (cassells 1986: 20)8 and from the sumptuous balconies of pine, . these ghosts, initially disturbing, become soothing presences when the mediterranean sea is no longer a garden, but the setting of the struggle to “save the words”. in section viii, and in espriu’s own voice, persecuted catalan is compared to boats against a stormy wind: i could see the boats feuding with the wind, like the fierce and indrawn words we uttered in exile (cassells 1986: 20) the imagery of sailing and shipwreck has a special signifcance in several poems by espriu9 perduts en la llunyana . in “port de retorn” (les hores), the lyrical speaker is, as in cassells’ poem, watching the boats cleave the waves. their sailing has something of a mystic journey, which transcends the local immediacy of sinera and the poet’s interior exile during the most sombre years of repression. souls are compared to vessels heading for “the port of time”, towards a marble shore: dificultat de l’aigua, passen velers que porten el senyal dels oratges soferts en la recerca del port del temps, on alça un vell poder vastíssim hostils fredors de marbre. (espriu 2003: 90) iii. at long last (1975-1985) section ix of “to the cypress” is especially important as it combines the voices of the two poets  espriu and cassells  in dialogic form and, at the same time, separates 8 cf. “macbeth shall never vanquish’d be  until birnam wood to high dunsinane hill  shall come against him” (shakespeare 2008: 174). 9 interesting examples are, besides from “port de retorn”, poem xxv of cementiri de sinera, “el passat i el pou, a trenc d’alba” (les cançons d’ariadna) or “cançó del matí encalmat” (el caminant i el mur). http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� the voice of the cypresses. cyrus cassells and the poetry of salvador espriu language value 4 (2), 89-106 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 100 the sequences where each of these two voices is heard independently. in the part of the poem where the lyrical voice is clearly identifiable with his own (x-xii), cassells draws on memories of espriu, catalan culture and arenys de mar. the association between language and natural imagery continues to be established. the metaphor the words of catalan are boats against the wind, implicit in viii, reappears in the lines below (“foundered language”), from section x. another metaphor equates the language with seeds that will be hurled into the air, in a rebellious act of freedom: your foundered language blazing inside you like sweetly-guarded seeds. at any moment, you could have tossed them to the wind  (cassells 1986: 21) cassells recalls his encounter with the catalan poet (ix) and a visit to the village of arenys de mar, his mythical nation of sinera (x). again typically sineran imagery is displayed: at long last, i reached your village: how the cemetery crowns sinera! in ecstasy, i found the cloudlet pines, the upraised vineyards. and the wind ushered me to your hall of vibrant cypresses. (cassells 1986: 21) as happens with other lines in the poem, the second here comes across as a calque of espriu’s language: cf. “quina petita pàtria encercla el cementiri!” (poem ii of cementiri de sinera, 2003: 10). in the following section, cassells declares that, on his visit, he “married sinera” and suitably, the little homeland is personified in terms that resemble the description of the wife in the biblical song of songs: “breasts of the greenest pines,  hips of sun-rife vines and fennel” (xi)10 the lyrical speaker has finally had a direct sensual experience of espriu’s world, and is especially impressed by the cypresses, true emblems of sinera. in the dark years of repression, the catalan poet was sheltered by “the cypress’ anointing shadow” (cassells 1986: 18), which prevented him  like job’s solid faith  from losing hope: “beside the cypresses, for awhile i could believe  god was not dead” (cassells 1986: 19). the irrepressible voice of these “testifying trees wailing” (cassells 1986: 19) carries with it denunciation and a vindication of justice. cassells asks these “wondrous trees that listen  and can answer back” (1986: 21) to pronounce espriu’s most cherished word: . 10 see chapter 4 of the song of solomon. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� dídac llorens cubedo language value 4 (2), 89-106 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 101 like gods, in green unison, the cypresses let go a luscent whisper: liberty. (cassells 1986: 22; author’s emphasis) the god-like trees can finally proclaim the people’s freedom. earlier in the poem, earlier in time, they could only echo the unsettling sounds of sinera’s stunted future. to accentuate the desperation in the italicised voice of the cypresses, in section v, cassells had eliminated the punctuation in the sentences and run them together. “for many years” espriu heard this “on the wind”: catalonia. exile. theft. horror of franco. don’t bark, speak the language of the empire. catalonia exile theft horror of franco don’t bark speak the language of the empire. cataloniaexilethefthorroroffrancodon’tbarkspeakthelanguage oftheempirecataloniaexilethefthorroroffrancodon’tbarkspeak thelanguageoftheempirecataloniaexilethefthorroroffrancodon (cassells 1986: 19) the cypresses are central images in espriu’s first collection of poetry, cementiri de sinera, where their stately presence accompanies the solitary poet. poem v ends as follows: m’esperen tan sols, per fer-me almoina, fidels xiprers verdíssims. (espriu 2003: 16) d. gareth walters interprets the cypress in cementiri as “a constant companion to the poet”, “accompanier of his defeat” and “a spur to movement”, but specifies that there is “no recourse to pathetic fallacy” (2006: 40), which contrasts with the conclusion of “to the cypress”. the last section of cassells’s poem combines the voices of the two poets and those of the cypresses. cassells desires espriu to speak once more: “tell me again, old poet” (1986: 21). the latter recalls the relieved excitement and hope that followed franco’s death and how he walked his way to the cemetery, the heart of sinera, as so many times before. there, he communicated his joy to the cypresses, urging them to “see how we have grown like you  bold, indomitable” (cassells 1986: 23). the cypresses are identified with the catalan people as the poem resolves. they speak its last words, quoting  as espriu does in the last line of section i  the poem “perquè un dia torni la cançó a sinera” (les hores). these echoing lines achieve their full http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� the voice of the cypresses. cyrus cassells and the poetry of salvador espriu language value 4 (2), 89-106 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 102 meaning when read in the light of the biblical epigraph chosen by espriu to open his seminal cementiri de sinera: “i les filles de cançó seran humiliades” (ecclesiastes 12.4). the humilated “daughters of song” stand for the repressed language that, after the dictator’s death, can hope to regain its dignity. the trees celebrate the new freedom, the return of the song and the future: let the dead rivers begin to breathe. let the scourged, once-taunted bell receive its tongue in pomp, in pure jubilee. for now the song has returned to sinera. (cassells 1986: 23; author’s italics) these lines have the cadence and rejoicing tone of a hymn or canticle and can compare with espriu’s “inici de càntic en el temple” (les cançons d’ariadna), a poem that is exceptional in celebrating the advent of freedom and spring in sinera. the generations that have endured and resisted, those who have kept the language alive through a symbolic wandering in the desert, offer it now onto the new generations, hoping that they will always remember their plight: ara digueu: “la ginesta floreix, arreu als camps hi ha vermell de roselles. amb nova falç comencem a segar el blat madur i, amb ell, les males herbes”. ah, joves llavis desclosos després de la foscor, si sabíeu com l’alba ens ha trigat, com és llarg d’esperar un alçament de llum en la tenebra! (espriu 1990: 146) iv. your legacy and liberation (conclusion) as has been exemplified, in the sections of “to the cypress again and again” where the voice can be assumed to be cassells’s, the poet draws largely on memories related to espriu and his culture. in xii, he takes the reader to perpignan, the catalan-speaking french arrondissement, where he first saw people dance the sardana. the american poet links the dance, an image of nationhood, to espriu’s role as a preserver of catalan culture: this was your legacy and liberation: a dawn of linked hands. a deep mediterranean laughter. (cassells 1986: 22) the poet expresses his wish to “enter the dance”, which can be considered an objective correlative of his interest in catalan culture. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� dídac llorens cubedo language value 4 (2), 89-106 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 103 malin pereira considers cassells’s work essentially cosmopolitan; the majority of poems in soul make a path through shouting, including the one he dedicates to espriu, turn to art as a witness to horror, crossing cultures from czechoslovakia and spain to russia, poland, and el salvador. the poet-speaker traverses these cultures at ease, employing the insights born from their historical and cultural particulars toward a vision of art as a universal tool of healing from 20th-century horror. (pereira 2007: 717) among other poets, espriu was a witness of this traumatic horror and used his art to exorcise it. decades later, cassells has shared that role and developed a particular way to acknowledge genius, achievement or courage. as “to the cypress” exemplifies, there is a tendency in his work to make the poem a setting for conversation with dead figures who have his sympathy and admiration; on the website of texas state university, amy francisco writes: “you could say that spirits speak to cyrus cassells ... [h]e has a talent for channeling life experiences  his own and those of others  into lyrical language that evokes empathy and compassion”. in an interview, jeremy halinen asks the poet about this genre of compositions, epistolary elegies “where you are aligning yourself with a historical figure during that figure’s historical moment. time is collapsed. voices merge” (halinen and laurentiis 2012: 124). cassells replies: i’m not sure i know why epistolary elegies keep coming up for me [...] in terms of unique effects and advantages in the direct address to the dead, there is perhaps more of an opportunity for emotional confrontation, for questioning and maybe even resolving the speaker’s relationship or connection to the elegized. (halinen and laurentiis 2012: 130) this “direct address to the dead” (lorca, montale, van gogh or pavese, for instance) is of a similar nature as espriu’s homage to his deceased friend rosselló-pòrcel, which delor i muns relates to the belief, in ancient greece, that the dead chose a double in the world of the living to project their existence. judging from espriu’s poetic production following rosselló-pòrcel’s death, the latter must have chosen his friend to act as his double, so that his art continued to be expressed. espriu’s role as double is more obvious in the first part of les hores, where he naturally assimilates rosselló-pòrcel’s style and characteristic imagery (delor i muns 1993: 155-163). it follows that cassells did the same for espriu in “to the cypress”. this instance of greek myth is coherent with cassells’s poetic technique. rickey laurentiis refers to his use of “personae and the dramatic monologue” and points out “how you have insisted [...] that each ‘i’, each historical self you have written about or from, is legitimately one of your own various selves” (halinen and laurentiis 2012: http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� the voice of the cypresses. cyrus cassells and the poetry of salvador espriu language value 4 (2), 89-106 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 104 130). when it comes to literature, the american poet’s sense of the past implies a veneration for tradition. the following lines are from amy francisco’s online profile: our cultural legacy is very, very important [...] when we think about the 19th century, we’re not going to journalism. we’re going to emily dickinson and walt whitman. and that’s part of the bigger truth culturally. so what we’re doing, what we’re investing in, what we’re putting our life energy into is part of a spiritual and social continuum in our culture. cassells “we” may well include espriu, whose poetic purpose has been described in strikingly similar terms: “inserir la pròpia obra en la constel·lació de les grans creacions de la humanitat, sobre la base d’integrar tot el passat cultural en el present, de contribuir constructivament a la prolongació del continuum històric” (castellet 1984: 90). the analysis of “to the cypress again and again”, in many ways representative of cassells’s work, also reveals an affinity to espriu’s vision of poetry and literary tradition. the poem that we have closely examined evinces a deep knowledge of espriu’s poetics and constitutes the kind of perceptive and admiring response that can only come from one poet to the work of another. cassells’s dialogue with espriu objectifies how the creativity of writers is enhanced by their sense of history and their appreciation of the work of those who preceded them  no matter when, where or in what language they wrote. references batista, a. 1985. salvador espriu. itinerari personal. barcelona: empúries. benet, j. 1978. catalunya sota el règim franquista. barcelona: blume. bloom. h. 2002. “the future of the literary imagination and its forms in relation to catalan achievement”. (xiv premi internacional catalunya, speech). generalitat de catalunya. 1 march 2012 <http://www20.gencat.cat/docs/msidgac/premi%20internacional%20catalunya/pdf/discurs_bloom_eng.pdf> capmany, m.a. 1992. “salvador espriu”. catalan writing 8, 13-18. cassells, c. 1986. “to the cypress again and again”. callaloo 26, 18-23. cassells, c. 1994. soul make a path through shouting. port townsend wa: copper canyon press. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� dídac llorens cubedo language value 4 (2), 89-106 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 105 cassells, c. “author’s statement”. national endowment for the arts. 1 march 2012 <http://www.nea.gov/features/writers/writerscms/writer.php?id=05_02>. castellet, j.m. 1984. iniciació a la poesia de salvador espriu. barcelona: edicions 62. delor i muns, r.m. 1993. la mort com a intercanvi simbòlic. bartomeu rosselló pòrcel i salvador espriu: diàleg intertextual (1934-1984). barcelona: publicacions de l’abadia de montserrat. delor i muns, r.m. 2005. “ordre i simbolisme a les cançons d’ariadna”. in martínez gil, v. and l. noguera (eds.) si de nou voleu passar. i simposi internacional salvador espriu. barcelona: centre de documentació i estudi salvador espriu / publicacions de l’abadia de montserrat, 575-61. espriu, s. 1981. primera història d’esther. in molas, j. and c. andreu (eds.). carner / espriu / brossa. teatre. barcelona: edicions 62, 82-130. espriu, s. 1990. obres completes. anys d’aprenetatge i. poesia 1. barcelona: edicions 62. espriu, s. 2003. cementiri de sinera. les hores. mrs death. barcelona: centre de documentació i estudi salvador espriu & edicions 62. espriu, s. 2006. llibre de sinera. per al llibre de salms d'aquests vells cecs. setmana santa. barcelona: centre de documentació i estudi salvador espriu & edicions 62. espriu, s. 2008. el caminant i el mur. final del laberint. la pell de brau. barcelona: centre de documentació i estudi salvador espriu & edicions 62. european charter for regional or minority languages. 1 march 2012 <http://conventions.coe.int/treaty/en/treaties/html/148.htm>. francisco, a. 2012. “rising star cyrus cassells”. texas state university. 1 march 2012 <http://www.txstate.edu/rising-stars/cyrus_cassells.html>. furniss, t. and bath, m. 1996. reading poetry. an introduction. harlow: longman. halinen, j. and laurentiis, r. 2012. “a conversation with cyrus cassells”. knockout, 4, 121-131. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.nea.gov/features/writers/writerscms/writer.php?id=05_02� http://conventions.coe.int/treaty/en/treaties/html/148.htm� http://www.txstate.edu/rising-stars/cyrus_cassells.html� the voice of the cypresses. cyrus cassells and the poetry of salvador espriu language value 4 (2), 89-106 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 106 jimenez, m.f. 2009. “living witness: an interview with cyrus cassells”. african american review 43 (1), 69-77. pereira, m. “‘the poet in the world, the world in the poet’: cyrus cassells and elizabeth alexander’s versions of post-soul sosmopolitanism”. african american review 41 (4), 709-725. pijoan i picas, m.i. 1995. viatge per l’imaginari de l’obra de salvador espriu. barcelona: publicacions de l’abadia de montserrat. reina, f. 1995a. enquestes i entrevistes, i (1933-1973). barcelona: centre de documentació i estudi salvador espriu i edicions 62. reina, f. 1995b. enquestes i entrevistes, ii (1974-1985). barcelona: centre de documentació i estudi salvador espriu i edicions 62. shakespeare, w. 2008. the tragedy of macbeth. oxford: oxford university press. walters d.g. 2006. the poetry of salvador espriu. to save the words. woodbridge: tamesis. received: 30 july 2011 accepted: 03 april 2012 cite this article as: llorens cubedo, d. 2012. “the voice of the cypresses. cyrus cassells and the poetry of salvador espriu”. language value 4 (2), 89-106. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.7 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.7� language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2012, volume 4, number 2 pp. 107-116 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.8 107 a poet speaks about… the use and abuse of language by a chicano from aztlán (both words unknown) nephtalí de león nephtali3000@hotmail.com when the rich steal from the poor it is called business, when the poor protest it is called violence. when the natives follow their millennial migrations across america, they are called undocumented illegal aliens. when the europeans, invade, commit genocide and steal america, they call themselves immigrants and pilgrims. the united nations and the red cross are concerned and sometimes respond to atrocities throughout the world, never to atrocities in the united states of america and its borderland wall of death more than 1000 miles long, so long the boundaries can be seen from outer space! language is the most important tool of humankind, and by the act of genesis, of all life. after all, before we became human there was language, as it continues to be present in creation itself. we hear that dogs communicate or emit what could be language: “au au” in brazil, “ham ham” in albania, “wang wang” in china, “guau guau” in mexico, and “bow wow” in the united states. a variant of their language is “grrr…” metaphorically we say there is the language of music, poetry, art, science, mathematics, and that there is a family of languages. academically this most complex human system of communication is broken down into philology, etymology, grammar, phonetics, diction, verbs, nouns, gerunds, adjectives, possessives, past, and present tenses. to delve into language minutiae gets extremely mind boggling, mysterious, and either headachy or rapturous depending on your love or hate for insights on language. leaving the origins, extensions, variants, dialects, specific language branches, and evolution of nationally collective forms of expression to scientists, poets and dreamers, i shall focus here on a very specific use and abuse of language: how language has http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� mailto:nephtali3000@hotmail.com� a poet speaks about ... the use and abuse of language by a chicano from aztlán (both words unknown) language value 4 (2), 107–116 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 108 identified, trapped, occupied and liberated a specific people in the world: the chicano people of the nation of aztlán. the mere declaration of such a purpose and the use of the words “chicano” and “aztlán” is already a statement of mystery, ambiguity, an ipso facto truth of the unknown, of the destruction of knowledge, of an occupation, unknown elements (chicanos, aztlán) to be deleted. i refer to language here as a tool of occupation or liberation, of validation or elimination. when i say that i am chicano to people in china, they say, chicago? i tell them that i am a person, not a town. and the question follows – what is chicano? the irony is that the same question is echoed in the land of my own origins. chicanos in my homeland do not know they are chicanos. those that do know find themselves in the minority. aztlán? it is a millenial nation-land that still does not exist! even fewer natives of aztlán have even heard of an aztlán ! by contrast and contradiction, both chicanos and aztlán bear an influence way out of proportion to their self-awareness and acknowledged numbers. chicanos of aztlán shake the roots of the most powerful nation in the world, the united states of america. on the immediate surface one might think; this is politics, not language. just as thought is action, all life interaction is transmitted and sieved through and with language. we are the collective result of what language permits us or binds us to be, in freedom, or bondage; autonomy, misery or joy. chicanos are native americans often referred to as latinos, hispanics, mexican americans, and a host of other internal denominations such as mestizos, cholos, and raza. chicanos are the descendants of the people that lived and continue to live in their homeland, aztlán. many of their ancestors left the place to migrate into and settle in the central valley of mexico destined to become the aztec capital tenocthitlan, today´s mexico city. chicanos are the people left in limbo while european nations warred with each other for control of the land, totally ignoring when they could, destroying when they met, the native people of the americas. chicanos are the original mexica tribes that would give the name to mexico – mexicanos, while they themselves remained xicanos written more popularly today as chicanos. the native language of chicanos is neither english nor spanish, but was and is – azteca náhuatl. today´s chicanos speak all three http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� nephtalí de león language value 4 (2), 107–116 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 109 languages, with their native language so suppressed that they often are unaware they speak it. the fact that we as chicanos semi-exist is a direct result of the use and abuse of language. as extraordinary as it may seem, we are in the throes of surviving the last hurrahs of the days of an outdated but real empire colonization. through a series of well established government plans, the united states of america has pursued a policy of genocide, the total extermination of natives, especially those advocating for the deoccupation of their homelands, or at least, for the present, a negotiated co-existence planning for mutual autonomy. the most concentrated and focused use of language was placed in motion – a language that would justify, validate and install the ultimate masquerade to morality, democracy, fairness, freedom and justice. among other examples of this, is the pivotal one called the constitution of the united states, the bible of democracy, and freedom in america. it holds the most preposterous, outlandish and irreverent hyperboles, such as “we hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal”. it then declared that black people were 3/5 human and natives were savages, the ownership of their land preempted and “extinguished” – actual language to rephrase “invasion” and “highway robbery”. the language that replaced “colonization” was “democracy”. the greatest malefactor of the great american theft is the bugled hero supreme court chief justice john marshall (1801-1835) who declared that america had inherited ownership of the americas from great britain. he also wrote of the rights of preemption (replace the word here with “theft” ) by virtue of the rights of discovery and conquest. this was to be the base of the masqueraded “rule of law” still flaunted to this day. to the euro-illegals, to accidentally run into a populated civilized continent is “discovery”. they immediately struck with the sword, the cross and the power of language by labeling the populations , “unchristian, heathen and savage”. these were our ancestors, many with magnificent temple cities, paved walkways, balustrades, intrically carved statues and earthly placed buildings to reflect the heavens and the moving stars. john marshall´s use of language to declare legal what was totally on prima facie evidence, illegal, became the basis for “american constitutional law”, and made the supreme court a co-equal branch of government; that is, the government could not stand without its word-master thief to rubber stamp its government thefts. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� a poet speaks about ... the use and abuse of language by a chicano from aztlán (both words unknown) language value 4 (2), 107–116 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 110 historical facts abound that this was and has always been our homeland. mayan ruins, from our other large half of our brethren have been discovered in florida, while very recently, in the last few months of this year 2012, more mayan pyramid ruins have been found in the state of georgia, traditional base, like the state of alabama, of racism of the deep south of the united states. the abuse of language was instituted when the mexican people (so confused and mixed, natives with european spanish) were seen as a blurred race to be despised and condemned, destroyed if possible. referred to as greasers, wets, and dirty messcans, they were shot on the range, haunted in their homes and hung on the nearest tree, as black slaves who stood up for their freedom, or who dared to look at a white woman. such brutality would give rise to many a local hero such as jacino treviño, from southtexas, who became a legend in his own time, by defying all white attempts to kill him and foiled many a posse attempt to capture him including his running circles around the infamous texas rangers. he shot a local sheriff who murdered his brother over language confusion regarding a horse. the question was – do u have a horse ? a caballo repeated the sheriff. the true answer was no. jacintos´s brother had a “llegua”, ( a mare). the sheriff called him a liar and shot him. jacinto shot the sheriff. from then on jacinto treviño shot many a sheriff and many a texas ranger who came to hunt him down. there are songs and corridos about his “asañas” (exploits). américo paredes immortalized him in his book titled, with a pistol in his hand. during the later part of the depression era 1929-1944, the government began massive deportations of mexican people, estimated to be about 2 million; they were accused of taking american jobs. it is estimated that some 400,000 of them were u.s. citizens and/or legal residents. a recent article in the los angeles times, february 21, 2012, states that “families were forced to abandon their homes, or were defrauded of personal and real property, often sold by local authorities as ‘payment’ for the transportation expenses incurred in their removal”. in february of the year 2012, governor arnold schwarzenegger, born in austria, signed a law to apologize for the inhumane deportation of such masses. a memorial has been placed in la plaza on main street in the city of los angeles, california. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� nephtalí de león language value 4 (2), 107–116 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 111 so real and so extreme is this established policy of extermination that a 50 page manual exists today issued by the department of the interior officially titled “endgame” (remember the use and abuse of language?). the direct perversity of intent, said in a mocking terminology cannot be missed. endgame. this manual details ways and means to find, arrest, and deport 10 million people of our kind, to be removed out of the united states of america, that is, from the heart of aztlán, our ancient and native homeland. the genocide and removal of the native people, the destruction of their infrastructure and means of survival have been a game from hell to the invading euro-american illegals. in this very day, the daily television news can break your heart to see the tears and anguish of families broken apart, children left alone to criminals who sometimes rape them, parents removed unable to defend them. as if to drive the unwelcome fact home, the linguistic nails hammered on the cross of our chicano golgotha are various. the extreme xenophobia about our presence, and the memory of our belonging home, has driven the foreign euro-americans to dehumanize us in order to treat us as “others”. the government has labeled many of us, that migrate back and forth in our homeland, as illegals, undocumented, and aliens. these 3 words are the language of the day, -officially instituted in order to stop, abuse, harass, arrest, imprison, and deport many of our kind. it does not matter that families are broken up, that children are left without parents, wives without husbands and vice versa. it does not matter that this community is not breaking any laws but quite the contrary doing its best to uphold morality, humanity and the economy by being consumers and doing the most dangerous and difficult jobs. as if they were criminal offenders my community is arrested while doing its job. the prisons where they are incarcerated are called “detention centers”. in america, language is used to cloak, to deceive, to distract and to euphemize what has been a constant realpolitik of destruction meant to annihilate my people, community and ancestral memory. this has been going on for centuries where our communities are shuffled back and forth worse than cattle. cattle are fed and taken care of – even if slaughtered. we are only slaughtered. in addition to the fact that our color and physical native appearance is enough reason to be suspect and detained for deportation, the worst damage is done to our minds – as with the death of our minds, so goes the extermination of our identity and presence as native americans. in the case of language, when a http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� a poet speaks about ... the use and abuse of language by a chicano from aztlán (both words unknown) language value 4 (2), 107–116 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 112 language is erased, so are the tools of expression and maintenance of autonomous memory, and ancestral ways. in tucson, arizona, as of this writing in the middle of the month of january in the year of our lord, 2012, when, according to maya prophecy, an era is to come to an end and a new more enlightened one begin, an auto da fé, has just been executed; the public burning of knowledge of our history by the u.s. government. an inquisition was instituted by a state of the union. all that was needed was for the torch to be set to the burning of the books. some fifty books were banned and physically confiscated from the successful program of mexican american studies (mas). not only was the program declared “unconstitutional”, but the books that served that program were banned and physically removed, this action in front of the students who used them. some of the books banned and confiscated in this 21st century inquisition are: critical race theory, by richard delgado and jean stefancic 500 years of chicano history in pictures, edited by elizabeth martinez message to aztlán, by rodolfo corky gonzales chicano! the history of the mexican civil rights movement, by f. arturo rosales occupied america: a history of chicanos, by rodolfo acuña pedagogy of the oppressed, by paulo freire rethinking columbus: the next 500 years, by bill bigelow cantos al sexto sol, an anthology of aztlanahuac writing, edited by cecilio garcía-camarillo, roberto rodriguez, and patrisia gonzales this last book banned and prohibited, cantos al sexto sol (songs to the sixth sun), is an anthology of aztlanahuac writings, reflecting a great number of chicano activists from the heyday of the 70´s and 80’s. the poetry and words of my fellow chicano authors are there, including some of my own. as if to underline the perversity of control over our hearts and minds some of our own native people were instruments of this public auto da fe. the words of san antonio, texas, 1950´s organizer, emma tenayuca, ring true, “a people cannot be oppressed without the help of some of the oppressed”. when students from cholla high school walked out and marched a distance of 5 miles to tucson http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� nephtalí de león language value 4 (2), 107–116 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 113 unified school district, they were met by “burrocrats” including administrator lupita garcía. she told the students that racism had nothing to do with the action and that mexico should be taught in mexico not in america. an earlier bill passed in the state upon which she based her words was hb (house bill) 2281 that suspended mexican american studies not mexican studies. when asked why european studies had not been banned, no one, including lupita garcía, had a response. those students that protested were directed to perform janitorial duties on the weekend without any kind of hearing regarding their actions. this is all too reminiscent of the fact that “ethnic studies” did not exist until the europeans came to invade and occupy our homelands. the apartheid fact also exists in that in tucson more than half of the students are of native origin. it is a minority of white immigrant invaders that establish the rules of conduct and what will be taught and reflected in the colonial schools. the irony and abuse of language lies in the fact that “ethnic studies” bases itself on the “racialization” in the americas. its mission statement (of ethnic studies) is to focus on the histories, literatures and politics of minorities and how such impact upon the social, political, and cultural factors that shape these minorities. as long as this interdisciplinary verbiage does not declare openly that we are an occupied people, but rather fulfills the job of telling minorities how they should interact with their occupiers, ethnic studies is grudgingly accepted in some schools. accept the fact and study how messed up we are. all this can go on in an academic classroom while the streets are haunted by bodies armed with the latest high tech equipment to terminate us. all this is executed and put into effect by language. this is the tricky abuse and cunning of a perverse mentality to enforce an advantage of power, this through politics and warfare. some intent to portray the politics as benign is so absurd that there is a billboard that runs across the internet. “ice establishes toll-free hotline for detainees claiming u.s. citizenship (855) 448-6903”. rather than absolve the armed force of wrong doing, it fully establishes that this wrong doing is so prevalent that those that claim allegiance to white pure blue blood but do not looks so are picked up for deportation and imprisonment daily. it also establishes that any hope of being freed is directly bound to a proclaimed allegiance and fealty to being occupied and invaded – http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� a poet speaks about ... the use and abuse of language by a chicano from aztlán (both words unknown) language value 4 (2), 107–116 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 114 claim u.s. citizenship. what is this ice i have mentioned? it is the arm that triggers the guillotine: immigration and customs enforcement. immigration is the act of foreigners passing or coming into a country for the purpose of permanent residence. customs is usage, frequency of same acts, habitual. we all know what enforcement is. what is ice enforcing? the contradiction is real easy to see. the real immigrants are the white people that came from the old world of europe. ice is either enforcing that the customs of the new european immigrants be the law of the land – or that the customs of the natives be extinguished, especially their insistence that they are amerindian natives. to deport native peoples from their homeland is more than ethnic cleansing, it is a war of termination. only time and history can record the outcome and clash between natives and colonization. language continues to be central to the on-going battle for control of how anyone will be classified as a member of the world community. the fact that ice exists is an orwellian concept plucked from the pages of huxley’s brave new world. it is a vini vidi wiki, (i came i saw i conquered) aryan supremacy mentality that still polices the world in a tweedlee and tweedledom society. the people that once came uninvited to trespass and steal america from the natives now refer to themselves as “nativists”. what are we to think of a people that impose a nation with the words, “we hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal”, while invading and occupying people´s homelands, and dragging their slaves in chains? in present times the inhumanity of this is reflected in the young men and women sacrificed to be warriors; minorities to the war front in droves! many who survive remain in shock forever as they learn that humanity is not meant to create carnage one upon the other. chicanos exist by the power of ancestral legacy. the denomination itself, the name, has floated in the misty past of myth and legend. the appellation itself, “chicanos” has had its own uphill struggle to become itself, that is, to be established as an accepted denomination for a people. the mexicans from mexico said it sounded nasty, like chiquero (a pigsty), until they were reminded that part of their (our) tribes were called “chichimecas”. the euro-illegal americans said it was dirty and sounded like “chicanery” (deception, trickery, artifice). the native community was so confused that http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� nephtalí de león language value 4 (2), 107–116 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 115 in the beginning the word “chicano” was used in hushed whispers and mostly in the backstreets and narrow alleys where chicanos were surviving. the community itself was leery of those that used the word and community members were defensive about being called chicanos themselves. in the beginning there was almost universal rejection of the use of the word chicano. in the early mist of time chicanos and the mexica tribes they come from, had their homeland named aztlán. it was their ancestors, the mexica tribe that gave them their name: mexicanos to the south (mexico) and chicanos to the north (usa). their world of language allowed them group communication, group survival, and with a certain surplus of confidence in sheltered safety, the time and space to transcend language applications. it was through language that chicanos discovered a reflection of their identity, doubted it, questioned it, and sealed it in their customs, traditions and ways. then came the inequity of invasion and colonial occupation that persists to this day just as the moors remained holding spain hostage for 800 years. giuseppe mazzini states: “without a country you have neither name, token, voice, no right, no admission as brothers into the fellowship of the peoples”. chicanos have no language of their own, no homeland of their own, no flag, no written statement of their identity or rights as a people, or as a nation. there is no one to advocate for, protect or guarantee the human rights of chicanos as a people, as a nation or even as a conglomeration of tribes. nonetheless, chicanos have emerged in the 20th / 21st centuries as living fossils that carry their own rebirths. there exists no weapon, nation, force, government or flag that can defeat or destroy such persistence of presence which translates into an indomitable sense of greatness. in spite of all that chicanos do not have, they have the most important element in their dna, in their ancestral roots and in their memory of themselves; they have myth, they have legend and the knowledge that they descend from a people of awesome and mythic proportions. that is why the united states government has burned its wits to withhold, contain and extinguish the flame of freedom and liberty that beats a great rhythm in every barrio across the length and width of america. aztlán has grown and continues to grow day by day. it has neither diminished nor lessened. the land of the dead, mictlán, has a greater http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� a poet speaks about ... the use and abuse of language by a chicano from aztlán (both words unknown) language value 4 (2), 107–116 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 116 voice than the thunder of american weapons and arms. in the year 2012 the prophecy comes to pass. aztlán is reborn with the splendor, wisdom and strength of all our generations past. the language and voice of aztlán is reborn to liberate our colonized home. all the king´s horses and men can never pretend to be legal resident citizens of someone else´s stolen land – ever again. those euro-illegals that have, in spite of their own government, acquired a sense of humanity are now occupying wall street, a movement that has spread throughout the world. language is once more being applied toward the liberation of a humanity held hostage through the use and abuse of language. received: 8 april 2012 accepted: 25 september 2012 cite this article as: de león, n. 2012. “the use and abuse of language by a chicano from aztlán (both words unknown)”. language value 4 (2), 107-116. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.8 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.8� language value http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue december 2012, volume 4, number 2 pp. 117-125 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.9 117 book review living with lynching. african american lynching plays, performance, and citizenship, 1890-1930 koritha mitchell urbana, il: university of illinois press, 2011. 272 pages. isbn: 978-0-252-07880-4 reviewed by m. mar gallego durán mar@uhu.es university of huelva, spain1 embodied practices of black belonging and identity formation in lynching drama of the progressive era: koritha mitchell’s living with lynching the volume authored by koritha mitchell is a remarkable contribution to the field of african american drama, as it explores the manifold uses of lynching plays during the progressive era as crucial tools to ensure community conversation and debate about the difficulties and complexities involved in having to coexist with the terrible reality of lynching. mitchell’s groundbreaking study reassesses the significance of black theater as an archive and repertoire of embodied practices of black belonging and communitybuilding in the face of constant exposure not only to lynching itself, but to the insidious exhibition of lynching photographs that perpetuated the myth of the black brute and rapist. the publication proposes an innovative critical reading that counteracts this racist practice by investigating the impact of lynching on both the black family and the black home, focusing on lynching dramas written by prominent writers and intellectuals from 1890 to 1930, such as angelina weld grimké, alice dunbar-nelson, mary burrill, georgia douglass johnson, myrtle smith livingston, g. d. lipscomb, and joseph mitchell. by analyzing the development of the genre itself, which was initiated by black women, mitchell highlights how lynching drama helped to “read aright” the horrible 1 the author wishes to acknowledge the funding provided by the spanish ministry of science and research for the writing of this review (research project fem2010-18142). http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� mailto:mar@uhu.es� book and multimedia review language value 4 (2), 117–125 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 118 practice of lynching as a profoundly unjust and unjustified manifestation of racial hatred resulting from the need to remind african americans of their inferior status in a markedly segregated country. in so doing, her work succeeds in confirming black performance as a recurrent means conveniently used by african americans to assert black citizenship and black identity. mitchell’s excellent study is neatly divided into two sections that complement each other. part i, “making lynching drama and its contributions legible”, sets the stage by introducing readers to the scenes and scenarios of actual lynchings, as well as the development of black-authored plays that effectively challenged the weighty legacy of minstrelsy and comedy. part ii, “developing a genre, asserting black citizenship”, offers a nuanced analysis of the recurrent figures in the lynching plays of the period: the black soldier, the black lawyer, the black mother/wife, and the pimp and the coward. mitchell repeatedly shows her deep knowledge of the discourses and practices of the time through a highly perceptive account of its background that is both ideologically and historically grounded. the first chapter is devoted to explaining the scenes and scenarios that were enacted during what mitchell aptly claims to be the “theatrical production” of an actual lynching. she effectively sets the records straight by means of a reformulation of the mob enactment and of the photographic display that followed. one of the most compelling and disputed issues at stake in the enactment of lynching is intimately related to the justification of lynching itself as a corrective practice to ward off the “black brute”, “the criminal”, and allegedly ensure social and racial harmony. from this first chapter onwards mitchell is able to deconstruct the notion of lynching as a “scenario of exorcism” by unmasking the white supremacist logic that supported the spectacle of brutalized black bodies. quite consistently, mitchell underlines the way in which the racist practice of lynching became ritualized murder effectively used to sustain white superiority while declaring the immorality and bestiality of blacks in general, and black men in particular. thus, mitchell argues that lynching became theatrical in the sense that it provided the opportunity to exorcize the “evil” that endangered (white) “civilization”, according to the dominant view of the period. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� living with lynching by m. mar gallego durán language value 4 (2), 117–125 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 119 on the other hand, lynching drama provided the ideal access to what diana taylor defined as “the archive and the repertoire of turn-of-the-century us culture” (cited in mitchell 2011: 23), which are key concepts that prove quite productive in mitchell’s analysis. in her insightful use of these two concepts mitchell overturns western scholarship’s investment in the archive in detriment of the repertoire, and demonstrates their complementarity. when examining the community practices that lynching drama fostered throughout the progressive era, both archive and repertoire become essential in the text. what is also innovative in mitchell’s apt reading of lynching is her shifting focus from the victimized black body to the equally victimized black family life and black home. she persuasively contends that lynching playwrights invested deeply in what may be referred to as a cult of domesticity2 the author’s committed stance becomes more evident in her theorization of lynching plays as artifacts/mediums to contest the mainstream “politics of representation”, exemplified by a rhetoric based on black barbarity and white righteousness. indeed, mitchell makes much of stuart hall’s notion, especially as she ties it to the need for racial self-affirmation and cultural expression, which were deemed priorities by black artists and intellectuals at that time. to allow for community mourning and survival, these playwrights redefined both what was theatrical and the theatrical form itself by valuing non-commercial and amateur work. in that line, these dramatists created , because they “understood the significance of showcasing – for themselves, not whites – black family life at a time when mainstream discourses and practices constantly asserted that african americans had no interest, or moral capacity for, stable domesticity” (mitchell 2011: 27). through the scripts of these plays, these writers made useful embodied practices of black belonging available to both family and community, while bolstering their selfconceptions. moreover, these scripts also incorporate necessary confirmation of their rightful belonging to the nation, thus problematizing configurations of both citizenship and nationhood. 2 hazel carby explains the significance of the cult of domesticity propitiated by the ideology known as the “cult of true womanhood” that emerged in the nineteenth century and its influence on black women writers in her classical work reconstructing womanhood (1987). http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� book and multimedia review language value 4 (2), 117–125 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 120 alternative public spaces that helped identity formation through “communal literacy”3 in the second chapter, the author engages in a thorough redefinition of “black theater” that emphasizes how the legacy of minstrelsy and comedy was effectively challenged by black-authored plays, paying special attention to the significant ways in which black writers responded to w.e.b. du bois’ 1926 call for the emergence of a black theater, “about us, by us, for us and near us” (mitchell 2011: 45) , thus encouraging the production of both selfand communal-affirming knowledge. 4 by means of an in-depth analysis of the thematic and formal devices in rachel, mitchell acknowledges the pioneering efforts on the part of angelina weld grimké to respond to this new writer-centered conception of black theater. this play paved the way for later lynching drama in many ways: in its politics of representing african american identity as shaped by mob violence and trauma, in its indictment of hypocritical christianity, and in its tracing the everlasting damaging effects on black households. on the other hand, the reaction to the play’s formal staging – a full-length production with emphasis on plot and directed toward an integrated audience – also facilitated later writers’ aesthetic choices. when fashioning a theory of black identity formation and citizenship, . she brings to the forefront the interesting debate about black representation that was taking place in the twenties, and which can be traced back to the previous decade. revisiting the history of black drama, she is tactful enough to remind readers of the legacy of black performers in both minstrelsy and musical comedy, especially successful all-black broadway musicals. mitchell thus provides an updated revision of the emergence of black-authored drama, addressing crucial topics such as representation, aesthetic choices, and black audience. she also manages to navigate the objections that were raised to black renditions of white-authored classics (such as shakespeare) and broadway hits. in the midst of harlem success, there were different proposals about what kind of theater was actually intended, going from locke’s timely meditation of the “academic model as the most viable” (mitchell 2011: 53) to more community-based approaches elaborated by du bois. 3 in forgotten readers the literary historian elizabeth mchenry describes how african americans exercized communal literacy via memorization thanks to reading aloud and dramatic readings (cited in mitchell 2011: 40). 4 in his famous essay “criteria for negro art” published in the crisis in 1926, du bois outlined the importance of art as propaganda for african americans in order to achieve recognition for their contributions to american culture. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� living with lynching by m. mar gallego durán language value 4 (2), 117–125 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 121 certain main patterns emerged and pervaded later plays: “virtuous womanhood, honorable manhood, and innocent childhood” in mitchell’s words (mitchell 2011: 61). questioning mainstream discourses about blacks’ moral corruption, these plays would blatantly depict white immorality, and blacks’ vulnerability to institutionalized physical and representational violence. she grounds this depiction on the enduring influence of the cult of true womanhood in the case of women, and on the need for inclusion in hegemonic models of manhood felt by black men back then. at this point she makes an interesting distinction between “manliness” and “masculinity”, which would have needed further contextualization within the field of masculinity studies, and more specifically black masculinity studies5. finally, she also discusses the concept of degeneration, spotlighting the resulting generational damage and the disruption of the structure of both family and community that lynching caused. in this way, she is able to call into question well-known sociological studies of the black family, such as the controversial 1965 report by daniel moynihan or the work of franklin frazier or herbert gutman, which overlooked and underestimated the role that mob violence and lynching played after emancipation6 in the chapters to follow mitchell pays homage to the playwrights that started the genre from scratch, as it were, especially the women writers that initiated it. following the lead of ida b. wells, mitchell meditates on the enormous contributions that these women made to the development of black drama, and documents the unprecedented effort to revise mainstream discourses and practices that they undertake in their plays. her impressive reading of the plays under study asserts the richness of lynching drama, as well as its heterogeneity and plurality. , according to mitchell. chapter 3 evolves around the figure of the black soldier, as portrayed in alice dunbarnelson’s mine eyes have seen (1918) and mary burrill’s aftermath (1919). this chapter is very illustrative of the book’s scope, since it chronicles the empowering practices these plays fostered as they were published in progressive periodicals such as crisis and the liberator. indeed, as mitchell proves, this representative figure enabled 5 mitchell cites one or two critics, especially bederman, but her analysis would have benefited from other critical perspectives, such as we real cool by bell hooks, black sexual politics by patricia hill collins, or progressive black masculinities by athena mutua, to name but a few. 6 frazier’s report was published in 1939 and gutman’s in 1976. with different intensity, the three studies coincided in the explanatory causes of the deterioration of the black family, namely its lack of adherence to patriarchal patterns due to black women’s role as matriarchs in the absence of black men. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� book and multimedia review language value 4 (2), 117–125 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 122 positive articulation of black self-affirmation. undermining the deep anxiety that affected blacks regarding their attitude to their country’s contradictions and patriotic rhetoric, both plays epitomize the so-called “perpetual dilemma” (mitchell 2011: 85)7 chapter 4 centers on the black lawyer as a figure that was instrumental in preserving community testimony. the author consistently argues for the centrality of the black attorney in georgia douglass johnson’s a sunday morning in the south (1925) and myrtle smith livingston’s for unborn children (1926) “as a figure who embodies the race’s faith in truth and justice” (mitchell 2011: 115) – against all odds, i would add. she discusses the transition from the black soldier to the black lawyer, contextualizing the ignominious real-life indignities that led to the defeat of the dyer anti-lynching bill and the race riots that erupted in many cities in the so-called red summer of 1919. all these events sparked these playwrights’ interest in depicting the unjust ways in which black testimony was rejected and silenced, and consequently black citizenship was denied. mitchell’s close reading of these two plays maps out that rejection of black testimony, together with a revaluation of the importance of community acknowledgement and bonding, especially of the nurturing role of the black church. , in which black men found themselves torn between their duty to their country and the doubts about the legitimacy of that duty. in her thought-provoking discussion of both plays, mitchell unearths those searing contradictions by equating military and mob tactics, and underscoring the challenges that black men faced in the midst of dehumanizing practices and unresolved tensions, i would contend, both within the military and within the terrain of the black home. featuring the intense debate in the private sphere of the black family, these two writers stage characters who intelligently engage in negotiations that complicate blind acceptance of the national rhetoric, and call for their rightful claim on full black citizenship ignited by an increasing notion of black militancy in the new negro era. these plays also serve the purpose of showcasing “additional evidence of the intellectual diversity found in african american communities” (mitchell 2011: 98), as they account for divergent opinions on these highly complex issues. moreover, these scripts also articulate their authors’ awareness of other influential discourses of the time, such as the religious or the democratic one, in their contributions to the contemporary debate on dignified black manhood. 7 springing from du bois’s editorial of the same title that appeared in the april issue of crisis. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� living with lynching by m. mar gallego durán language value 4 (2), 117–125 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 123 using bakhtin’s notion of “contested discourse”, she captures the characters’ deep belief in the justice system and reveals the devastating effects of that belief in the face of white barbarism. by reversing the racist logic, she undoubtedly affirms moral black manliness and brute white masculinity. livingston’s play adds further layers of meaning when dealing with interracial coupling and black men’s dilemma between manliness and masculinity. in the context of the play, interracial coupling does not respond to honorable codes of black manhood; on the contrary, it disrupts black citizenship by failing to comply with the need to build respectable and strong black families. she delves into the complex notion of consensual relationships with whites, and the debate that ensued between personal freedom and community responsibility. mitchell’s most suggestive passages come at the end of the chapter, when she offers a lucid reinterpretation of the new negro era, allegedly optimistic and confident, but which also evidences the ambivalent – indeed precarious – position that black lawyers, and by extension all black men, had to come to terms with in their daily lives. she also exposes the “justified anxiety” (mitchell 2011: 143), in mitchell’s words, that the denial of black citizenship engendered in the black community. in chapter 5 mitchell deciphers the crucial role black women played in lynching drama, especially prominent in three later plays authored by georgia douglass johnson, blue blood (1926), safe (1929), and blue-eyed black boy (1930). asserting the importance of black women in order to substantiate black claims to private space and respectable marriages and families, she enunciates their investment in the “politics of respectability” (mitchell 2011: 149), inspired by the lingering influence of the cult of true womanhood and domesticity. the author convincingly argues that the figure of the black mother/wife facilitates the difficult negotiation with trauma and terror, as she embodies “what it means to live with lynching” (mitchell 2011: 151). despite the patent vulnerability of the black family to white “homefront violence”8 8 anne rices uses this concept to refer to the strategies of racial terror deployed in the race riots that took place in 1917 and 1919 (cited in mitchell 2011: 149), but mitchell deems it a very useful term to apply to the enactment of lynching in general, as it unashamedly took violence inside the black household to tear it apart, both literally and metaphorically. and its sadistic practices, mitchell builds a coherent defense of the devices employed in these lynching plays to highlight how black women actively (and successfully) sustained both romantic and parental bonds. in some cases, this involved quite difficult decisions such as silence http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� book and multimedia review language value 4 (2), 117–125 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 124 about rape, a sexual encounter with a white man, or even infanticide. bearing witness to the dehumanizing and deeply disturbing psychological price that these women had to pay to signify upon normative definitions of black women’s immorality, mitchell unmistakably discloses the complex “plight” of black women, also caught up in the inevitable dilemma between securing domestic fulfillment and claiming their rights to agency and consent. the most extreme example of this perpetual dilemma is embodied by the protagonist of safe, who after having witnessed a lynching mob pursuing a black man, decides to kill her newborn baby to safeguard him. illuminating productive discussions of infanticide, not as blacks’ inner savagery (according to the racist rationale), but as a means to exercise responsible parenthood and parental rights, mitchell once more contradicts mainstream discourses by placing the blame where it belongs: on the white society that “makes the world dangerous for black children” (mitchell 2011: 165). mitchell thus disregards the justification of black women’s exploitation in the national rhetoric of the time by making readers aware of their fundamental role in the stability of both family and community. the last chapter rounds off mitchell’s stimulating study by centering on lynching plays authored by black male playwrights, namely g. d. limpscomb’s frances (1925) and joseph mitchell’s son-boy (1928), both of them featuring the ambivalent figures of the pimp and the coward. the chapter takes as its premise mitchell’s stance that allegedly questions the “logic of hierarchical approaches” (mitchell 2011: 175), by which she does not want to describe these black men’s contributions as secondary or less important. while sharing mitchell’s view about the vernacular, especially useful in the call/response pattern, and valuing – as she does – the greater variety that these plays add to the genre, i would nevertheless reassess at this point the previous women playwrights’ groundbreaking work that allowed for the establishment and further evolution of the genre. having said this, though, mitchell’s incisive analysis of these plays confers meaning to the ongoing debate about the traumatic effects of lynching on black men, especially those who eventually refuse to be heads of household because of the risk of losing their lives and jeopardizing their black homes. these plays textualize the intensity of the emasculation of black men whose behavior does not correspond to the concept of dignified black manhood mentioned above, but which is also incorporated into community conversation in order to enable nuanced interpretations of http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� living with lynching by m. mar gallego durán language value 4 (2), 117–125 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue 125 the link between economic power, black success, and black manhood. resisting the strategy of masculine normalization, the fact that the pimp’s and the coward’s perspectives are not dismissed further indicates the multifaceted practice of community debate that was essential to the progressive era. probing into documenting black performance in her conclusion, mitchell’s book drives her final point home by stressing once more – and rather reiteratively i would add – the importance of performance for the black community. her penetrating comments actually support the crucial role of lynching drama in the community’s embodied practices of belonging and identity formation, while favoring a comprehensive and rigorous reinterpretation of the archive and repertoire of the new negro era. therefore, the volume discussed here undoubtedly contributes to the study of african american drama, as it prompts new and fresh insights into an impressive range of theatrical texts and their multiple strategies. it is thus a welcome addition to the reassessment of the black drama produced in the progressive era, while it also enriches and deepens our understanding of american drama in general. references carby, h. 1987. reconstructing womanhood: the emergence of the afro-american woman novelist. new york: oxford university press. collins, p.h. 2005. black sexual politics. african americans, gender, and the new racism. new york: routledge. du bois, w.e.b. 1917. “the perpetual dilemma”. crisis (april), 270-271. du bois, w.e.b. 1926. “criteria for negro art”. crisis (october), 290-297. hooks, b. 2004. we real cool. black men and masculinity. new york: routledge. mitchell, k. 2011. living with lynching. african american lynching plays, performance, and citizenship, 1890-1930. urbana, il: university of illinois press. mutua, a. (ed.) 2006. progressive black masculinities. new york: routledge. received: 23 february 2012 accepted: 09 may 2012 http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue� 0_editorial.pdf *** in “diasporic dialogues: the role of gender, language, and revision in neo-slave narrative”, kalenda eaton studies how, throughout the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first, two black authors, ishmael reed and maryse condé, have r... eaton discusses the controversies generated around reed’s negative deployment of black female characters in his text. the language of satire, though, provides his characters with an agency to decide their fate, which in the case of mammy barracuda app... references 01_eaton.pdf likewise, in a separate essay harry l. jones argues, “for three hundred and fifty years, black humor has been a survival technique and a weapon of the weak against the strong” (jones 1969: 3). both scholars speak to the ways “black” or “third world” people use satire and humor to react to their environments, a skill that is consequently reproduced in black literature. references 02_reyes.pdf references cite this article as: reyes torres, a. 2012. “jacqueline woodson’s narrative style in the other side: an african american picture book for children”. language value 4 (2), 23-37. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue. doi: h... issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors 03_henriquez.pdf references cite this article as: henríquez-betancor, m. 2012. “anzaldúa and ‘the new mestiza’: a chicana dives into collective identity”. language value 4 (2), 38-55. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.603... issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors 04_brígido.pdf references cite this article as: brígido-corachán, a.m. 2012. “wordarrows: the performative power of language in n. scott momaday’s non-fiction work”. language value 4 (2), 56-69. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue. doi: http://dx.d... issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors 05_pich.pdf i. introduction ii. the memories of immigration iii. language iv. the importance of storytelling references cite this article as: pich ponce, e. 2012. “memory and language in hiromi goto’s chorus of mushrooms”. language value 4 (2), 70-88. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/languagev.2012.4.2.6 issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors 06_llorens.pdf references cite this article as: llorens cubedo, d. 2012. “the voice of the cypresses. cyrus cassells and the poetry of salvador espriu”. language value 4 (2), 89-106. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.60... issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors 07_leon.pdf a poet speaks about… cite this article as: de león, n. 2012. “the use and abuse of language by a chicano from aztlán (both words unknown)”. language value 4 (2), 107-116. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/lang... issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors 08_gallego.pdf book review 07_leon.pdf a poet speaks about… cite this article as: de león, n. 2012. “the use and abuse of language by a chicano from aztlán (both words unknown)”. language value 4 (2), 107-116. jaume i university epress: castelló, spain. http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/languagevalue. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6035/lang... issn 1989-7103 articles are copyrighted by their respective authors 08_gallego.pdf book review 0_editorial_v1.pdf *** in “diasporic dialogues: the role of gender, language, and revision in neo-slave narrative”, kalenda eaton studies how, throughout the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first, two black authors, ishmael reed and maryse condé, have r... eaton discusses the controversies generated around reed’s negative deployment of black female characters in his text. the language of satire, though, provides his characters with an agency to decide their fate, which in the case of mammy barracuda app... references 00_contents_issue4_2_v1.pdf editorial team_page.pdf editorial team editors editing committee advisory board editorial board book and multimedia review editors 0_editorial_v2.pdf *** in “diasporic dialogues: the role of gender, language, and revision in neo-slave narrative”, kalenda eaton studies how, throughout the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first, two black authors, ishmael reed and maryse condé, have r... eaton discusses the controversies generated around reed’s negative deployment of black female characters in his text. the language of satire, though, provides his characters with an agency to decide their fate, which in the case of mammy barracuda app... references editorial team_page_v1.pdf editorial team editors editing committee advisory board editorial board book and multimedia review editors