Transcript Idiomatic competence
The 8 th ASIA TEFL INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE Teaching English as a Global Language: Creating and Sharing the Asian Framework of Practice Hanoi, Socialist Republic of Viet Nam, 6-8 August 2010 Idiomatic competence across languages: Implications for EFL and EAP classrooms
James McLellan Te Whare W ānanga o Waikato / The University of Waikato
30 April, 2020
Jos é F. Lacaba (1997), in a discussion on standards in Philippine English among newspaper and book publishers:
“The problem is that we don’t even get the clichés right.
A lot of Filipinos, for instance, say “ bark
at
the wrong tree ” instead of “ bark up the wrong tree ”. Or we say “ birds of
the same
feather ” instead of “ birds of a feather ”. So are these Filipino expressions acceptable in Philippine English? Or should we use the standard Ameri can or British clichés? Or should we find a way of not using clichés at all?” (p. 161).
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Outline of presentation
1.
2.
Idioms, idiomatic competence and idiomaticity (unilateral, creative?) Background: ELF, ALFE, EI(A)L & other acronyms 3. Presence or absence of idiomatic expressions: findings from small corpora of ASEAN / SEAMEO speeches, New Zealand speeches, and academic articles 4. Discussion: idioms, SEA Englishes and ALFE; implications for teaching EFL, EAP
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Idiomatic competence
can be applied to all four of Canale & Swain’s (1980) categories of
communicative competence
: •
Grammatical
•
Strategic
•
Sociolinguistic
•
Discoursal
and idioms can be placed on a scale of ‘transparency’: more less transparent transparent
Idioms
Variously defined: • Chunks • Multi-word units (mwus) • Formulaic expressions OED definition of
idiomaticity
(cited by Prodromou, 2008) : “A peculiarity of phraseology approved by usage and often having a signification other than its grammatical or logical one.” (p. 49)
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Unilateral idiomaticity
Seidlhofer (2002), e.g.
“What’s your bottom line ?”
Creative idiomaticity
Prodromou (2008), e.g. “It’s raining kittens and puppies ” (p. 226) “drinking like a horse ” (pp. 231-2)
Who is ‘allowed’ to do this?
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Premise: Idioms are frequent in some genres / registers
e.g. news media texts
Selangor speaker in the soup PETALING JAYA: Selangor Speaker Teng Chang Khim’s tweet over the sacking of Klang DAP municipal councillor Tee Boon Hock has landed him in hot water . ….
http://thestar.com.my/news/nation/ , August 2, 2010
NZ Dominion Post sports story example
(News media texts are often used in EFL classrooms, e.g. for reading comprehension)
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ALFE and other acronyms
ALFE: Asian / ASEAN Lingua Franca English
ELF: English as a Lingua Franca EIL: English as an International Language EIAL: English as an International
Auxiliary
Language (
Smith, L.E., 1983
)
SUEs: Successful users of English (avoiding the
NS/NNS distinction; Prodromou, 2008
)
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Research question I
What happens in terms of the use of idiomatic language in ALFE contexts? i.e.
Do figurative idiomatic expressions derive from SEA national cultures, from USA / UK / AUS / NZ cultures, … or are they not used?
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Research question II
Whose idioms are (should be???) used in
academic writing (EAP)
?
Subsidiary questions:
Should idioms be explicitly taught?
If so, how? Which ones? At what level?
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Some academic research article titles in Applied Linguistics (incl. idioms, intertextuality)
“ Lexical thickets and electronic gateways : making text accessible by novice writers” (Milton, 1999) “Is it a wood, or are they trees ?” (Johnson, 2002) “ Final frontiers in Applied Linguistics” (Crystal, 2003) “The agonism and the ecstacy : conflict and argument in Applied Linguistics” (Badger, 2004) “The devil in the kaleidoscope : can Europe speak with a single voice in many languages?” (Tosi, 2006) “ Bumping into creative idiomaticity” (Prodromou, 2007a) “ Kettles of fish : or, does unilateral idiomaticity exist?” (Prodromou, 2007c).
“EIL / ELF: cup half-full or half-empty ?” (Maley, 2008)
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In EAP and in writing coursebooks,
traditionally, students are advised to avoid clich éd idiomatic expressions – e.g. ‘ Every coin has two sides ’) These are seen as stylistically inappropriate in the academic domain.
(e.g. Rountree, K., 1991) (or else, the issue is avoided altogether)
Gregg (1986), commenting on Mohan and Lo (1985)
“[My Chinese students] did not share our disparagement of traditional formulaic language – the essential furniture of the learned person’s writing to them, the abhorred cliché to us.” (p. 357)
Gairns & Redman, 1986, p. 36
“Certain native speakers might ‘ get the ball rolling ’, but few foreign learners could carry off this idiom without sounding faintly ridiculous”.
=> idiomatic language is for ‘us’, not for ‘them’ (But a Malaysian academic used this phrase at the start of her presentation at the recent LSP conference in Kuala Lumpur)
Malay > English, English> Malay
Malaysia ‘ katak dibawah tempurung ’ > ‘ frog under the coconut shell ’ ‘ musuh dalam selimut ’ > ‘ enemy in the blanket ’ ‘ pengangkat bola ’ > ‘ ball carrier ’ + ‘ blacklisted ’ > ‘ disenaraihitamkan ’
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South East Asian Englishes
Tendency to modify syntactically or lexically restricted idiomatic expressions, as noted by Tongue (1979, pp. 88-89): the donkey ’s work in hot soup stop pulling my leg s neck to -neck up to my nose in work + “ We will make them eat back their words” (Malaysian Prime Minister, main news bulletin, TV1, 1 Nov. 2009) =
creative
, reclaiming ownership of English
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‘Unilateral idiomaticity’ examples (I)
(may cause intelligibility problems?)
Expressions used by senior academic staff of a New Zealand University in presentations to a visiting Malaysian delegation :
“We will put our skates on …” “(This university) punches well above its weight ”
(x2, different presenters, also used in uni. marketing
)
“Australians were green-eyed …” “ Go the gamut ” “ Tarred by the same brush ”
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‘Unilateral idiomaticity’ examples (II)
Canadian PhD supervisor to Malaysian PhD student:
“I can’t read your draft chapter right now, I’m snowed under with work” “ Bob each way ”:
used by (British) presenter at 14 th Asia conference, Manila English in SE
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Method
• Corpus of ≤ 30 transcripts of speeches, collected from websites, 33,000 words, delivered by heads of government, senior ASEAN and SEAMEO officials • Searched (mostly manually) for examples of figurative expressions • Frequency and distribution checked • Compared with reference corpus of speeches from New Zealand business meetings, representing an
intra
national, ‘inner-circle’ variety of English, • Then with a third (smaller, 23,000-word) corpus of NZ speeches addressed to Southeast Asian audiences • Then with a corpus of
EILJ
&
Asian EFLJ
articles
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ALFE speeches corpus findings: Total = 121 tokens
Ratio 1: 270 words Most frequent lemmas, phrases: 12 in 6 speeches : Seamless 5 in 4 : Tap / untapped 5 in 4 : Leverage(d) (v.) 5 in 2 : Bottom line 4 in 3 : Forge (v.) 4 in 3 : Fast track 3 in 3 : Harness (v.)
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Concordance for ‘seamless’, ALFE corpus
• technology, human resource and a " seamless " market should be a driving • • • strong hindrances to the creation of the seamless production base, and single can play a pivotal role and provide a seamless link for transportation between countries, resulting in a seamless movement of goods from • to provide Sun with a comprehensive, seamless global logistics solution • • • • logistics companies to facilitate the the case for the seamless ASEAN market that • • up various bases into a seamless market positioning of the region as a seamless market and • be best summed up in two key words, ' seamless ' and 'value'. The region will be and 'value', The region will be ' formalities, barriers to a seamless seamless seamless distribution of their goods and ' when borders between flow of goods
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Others (2 or 3 occurrences), e.g.
• to chart roadmaps • up the technology ladder • the indispensible “glue” binding these countries • movers and shakers • open-arms welcome • reaping these dividends • ASEAN to thrive as a hub for Asia • ASEAN is a concert of Southeast Asian nations • multipronged approaches towards integration
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Reference corpus 1: New Zealand English
• Corpus of the same size (c. 33,000 words) • NZ business and political speeches •
Intra-
, not international • Phase 5 in Schneider’s (2003) model • Total = 157 tokens • Ratio of 1: 216 words • Greater frequency of extended figurative use
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NZ Corpus findings: Total = 157 tokens
Ratio 1: 216 words Most frequent lemmas, phrases: 8 in 1 speech : Bottom line 5 in 4 speeches: Tap / untapped 5 in 3 : The big(ger) picture 2 in 2 : Hard-nosed 2 in 2 : Over-arching 2 in 1 : Canary in the coalmine 2 in 1 : (fly-by-night) cowboys 2 in 1 : Number 8 wire
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+ more frequent extended idioms in speeches in the NZ intranational corpus
e.g.
• We don’t want to be that inn keeper who will take advantage of an over-booked town to charge exorbitant rates.
• The question is when do you fix the roof? When the sun is shining or when it’s raining? Well when the sun’s shining we go to the beach.
• The opposing team has been much like a synchronised swimming team – polished in delivery but the nose peg masks a slightly tainted smell .
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Reference corpus 2: New Zealand speeches at ASEAN gatherings
• Smaller corpus (11 speeches, 23,116 words) • Total = 189 tokens • Ratio of 1: 122 words = highest of the 3 corpora • Fewer examples of
extended
NZ intranational corpus idioms than in the
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NZ>ASEAN Corpus findings: Total = 189 tokens
Most frequent lemmas, phrases: 6 in 1 speech : Glass ceiling 4 in 2 speeches : Weather the storm 3 in 2 speeches : Forge 3 in 1 speech : First past the post 2 in 2 speeches : Tap(ped) 2 in 2 speeches : Level playing field 2 in 2 speeches : Span(ning)
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ALFE Academic writing corpus
EIL Journal & Asian EFL Journal articles, 2010 98,000 words, 19 articles, by SUEs Total: 177 tokens Ratio:
1: 554
= much lower than other corpora Mostly in introductions, discussion, conclusions sections; 1 in title (“ 2 sides of a coin ”) Fewer found in lit. review, methods, presentation of findings sections
Examples from academic articles
11 in 2 articles: Washback (effect) 2 in 2 articles: cultivate (writing strategies) 3 in 1 article (extended): The king is (really) naked 2 in 1 article (extended): A skeleton in the cupboard
Others (x1 only)
Cognitive bottleneck … weeded out social factors When theoretical saturation was achieved To liberate English from native speakers is still a long and winding road
Limitations (‘hedges’)
• Critiques of the whole notion of ELF / ALFE as a distinct variety of English (e.g. Prodromou, 2007b, 2008; Maley, 2009): • Are ELF / ALFE just researchers’ artifacts or constructs?
• Further research needed - into
intelligibility
in ALFE contexts and
transparency
of the idioms used - into aspects of
accommodation meaning
and
negotiation for
in choices made by speakers (or their speechwriters)
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Discussion / Conclusions - I
Relatively few idiomatic expressions in ALFE corpus, compared to the int NZ>SEA speeches.
ra
national NZE corpus, but the highest frequency is in the The academic articles have by far the
lowest
of idioms. ratio None are culture-specific in the ALFE corpus Most are internationally intelligible, although some may be problematic Many are ‘clichés’, and/or ‘management speak’
In the context of formal speeches, as in academic discourse, the over-use of idiomatic expressions may not be appropriate
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Discussion / Conclusions - II
So, is the restricted use of idiomatic expressions a feature of ALFE? …..
Are ALFE, ELF and Academic English all interrelated in terms of their avoidance of idiomatic expressions? Idiom-free zones ?
Ongoing research into phonological and syntactic features of ALFE and ELF needs to be supplemented by study of lexical and discoursal patterns in ALFE and Academic English texts.
Is idiomatic competence just ‘ sour grapes ’?
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Discussion / Conclusions - III
• “ALFE” similar to ‘Academic English’?
• Grant, 2007, p. 181, citing Liu, 2003: “Even low-frequency figuratives could be important…so teaching students the skills to interpret the figurative… will help them become more independent learners” + Idiom teaching materials need to be “based on frequency and range of occurrence in authentic language”
.
Or are we b______ u_ the _____ ____?.....
(Grant & Bauer, 2004)
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Thank you
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