Transcript From code to discourse in spoken ELF interaction

SPOKEN ENGLISH IN
ACADEMIC LINGUA
FRANCA SETTINGS
AN INVESTIGATION OF FORM AND
COMMUNICATIVE EFFECTIVENESS
Beyza Björkman
Outline
• This panel
• This project:
– Two dimensions
• Code: Morphosyntax
• Communicativeness
– Disturbance
– Discourse: Clarification techniques
– Irritation
• General results
2
Researching Scandinavian
language environments
• Philip and Alan: Generally about
comprehension
• John: How we learn through English
• Tim and Margrethe: ELF and language learning
• My project: Code and discourse of spoken ELF
in engineering
An investigation of spoken ELF
1. What, if any, are the morphosyntactic commonalities of non-standard usage
in monologic and dialogic speech event types studied in the ELF setting
examined?
2. Are the commonalities found shared with those described in the literature?
3. What kind of morphosyntactic non-standard usage results in disturbance in
spoken ELF communication?
4. What kind of morphosyntactic non-standard usage is perceived as irritating in
ELF situations?
5. What are some of the discourse features in the two speech event types in the
ELF setting examined?
6. Are the discourse features found shared with those described in the
literature?
FORM: CODE (1, 2) and COMMUNICATIVENESS (3, 4, 5, 6)
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Material
• A typical international Scandinavian
university
• Two types of speech events
– Lectures (48 hrs.) and student group-work
(28 hrs.)
compare size /specialization /speech event
range with MICASE (size), VOICE
(specialization), ELFA (speech event range)
– 20 L1s, 69 speakers
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Dimension 1: Code (Morphosyntax)
• Large collection of recordings
• Methods
–
–
–
–
Digital recordings
Timed notes (observation with a protocol)
Extensive analyses (listening, without complete transcription)
Criteria:
• The feature must:
» occur for a minimum number of ten times
» be used by different L1 speakers
» in both speech event types (therefore extensive
listening)
• A corpus of four lectures and four group-work
sessions transcribed and analyzed (46 647
words)
• External judge to determine the error rate
(false positives and false negatives): 9%
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Code: Results
• Thirteen different types of non-standard
forms as candidates for commonalities.
• Twelve: Clearly divergent from
prescriptive norms but unproblematic.
NonS word forms
discriminization
NonS analytic comparative
more big
NonS plural
forms/countability
NonS article usage
How many hydrogen ...
Anybody can define the renewability?
D. comparative/superlatives
much more wider
SVA
A catalyst have...
Tense and aspect issues
In water turbines water is flowing...
Word order
Salinity affects what kind of material can you use.
Not marking the plural
500 meter, two different reactor, several process
Negation
It looks not good. / It’s a not very good generator.
NonS Passive voice
Pre- /Post-dislocation
(Headers/Tails)
It can be happened that…/ We affect by the flow...
1. So biomass it cannot alone supply all
fuel and food needs...
2. What is the problem when it gets too big
the vessel?
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Dimension 2
Communicativeness 1: Disturbance
• The only NonS morphosyntactic production
that causes communication breakdown:
Question formulation
• Examples of usage
•
•
•
•
•
•
How many pages we have now?
What means endothermic?
What other equation I would use?
Why we place it there?
So from which point you started?
Why the flutter’s velocity is lower than the divergence
velocity?
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Patterns in morphosyntax
• Reductions of redundancy
– Not marking the plural
– Agreement
• Increased explicitness
– Pre- and post- dislocations
– Unraised negative/ Negation through external negator
– Repetition
• Plausible usage (effectiveness and functionoriented)
• Diachronic source is individual interlanguage
use
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Limitations
<S1> say put that if you divide it by </S1>
• how
Hard
todoes
look
atto intersentential
andit’seven
<S2> yeah
much
it cost
produce it’s like how much
not the material like
how much </S2>
interclausal relationships.
<S1> no no no it’s it’s a the the investment [divided by] the number of [hours of] using
it </S1>
Discourse: incomplete and incoherent.
<S2>
[yeah]
[yeah] </S2>
<S1> and the [ operation] </S1>
<S2>
[workers] operation </S2>
<S1> construction </S1>
<S3> construction cost </S3>
<S1> production </S1>
<S2> ok </S2>
<S1> not the material not the material and the power consumption </S1>
<S2> uh that kind of stuff this is everything else but the material cost </S2>
<S1> and then you put the material cost </S1>
<S2> yeah then you have </S2>
<S3> i don’t think so </S3>
<S1> [you don’t think so] </S1>
<S2> [yeah] , ok so </S2>
<S1> [ok ok we do] anyway we we [check check] </S1>
<S2> [why do we]
[why do we] why do we have done that then why do
we done </S2>
<S3> we did that we thought that this was something else </S3>
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Communicativeness 2: Discourse
• Clarification techniques (Penz, 2008)
What is ’steam reforming’? It is
– Clarification of
• terms and concepts a commercial way to produce
hydrogen.
• details and content of task I don’t know if we’re supposed
to know the code during the lab.
– Metadiscursive comment on
• intent That’s not what I wanted to say.
• discourse structure (gist, reformulation etc.)
First I’ll go through the time
• discourse context That was my
question.
frame.
• common ground
We have to check
the distillation
• Backchanneling and repetition
(Dewey,
2006) process.
• Let-it-pass (Firth, 1996)
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DISCOURSE FEATURES
L1
L2
L3
L4
G1 G2
G3
G4
Clarification of terms and
concepts
3
1
3
1
-
4
-
-
Clarification of details and content
of task
-
26
9
16
6
5
15
33
Metadiscursive comment on
discourse structure
1
9
4
5
13
3
3
-
Metadiscursive comment on
discourse context
9
10
12
11
12
35
8
-
Metadiscursive comment on intent 3
8
1
1
11
4
4
-
Metadiscursive comment on
common ground
64
17
-
26
68
76
63
57
177 174 88
Backchannelling
Repetition (other repetition)
Let-it-pass
60
19 breakdown
7
8
Speakers ’let-it-pass’11when
-is inconsequential.
- (Firth,
- 1996)
-
Communicativeness 3: Irritation test
• Inevitably artificial and lecture-like rather than
interactive
– Methods:
• Two, three examples of each non-standard usage.
• From two different voices with slightly recognizable Swedish
and German accents.
• Others’ voices used (for ethical reasons).
• Only aural input. Recordings played along with a response
sheet.
• 101 respondents from engineering courses.
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Irritation
COMMUNICATIVENESS
IRRITATION
Sentence 1
□ Perfectly OK □ Comprehensible but wrong
□ Not irritating at all □ A bit irritating
□ Very irritating
□ Not irritating at all □ A bit irritating
□ Very irritating
□ Not irritating at all □ A bit irritating
□ Very irritating
□ Incomprehensible
Sentence 2
□ Perfectly OK □ Comprehensible but wrong
□ Incomprehensible
Sentence 3
□ Perfectly OK □ Comprehensible but wrong
□ Incomprehensible
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Communicativeness
1800
1600
1400
1200
1000
800
600
400
200
0
Irritation
Additional comments: 1
Language is peripheral:
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Additional comments: 2
• Irritation:
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General conclusions/ answers
• There are commonalities. (RQ1)
• Some shared with previous findings. (RQ2)
– (No who/which, invariable isn’t it tag etc.)
• Little breakdown in communication (breakdown caused only
by nonS question formulation). (RQ3)
• Suggestions of irritation at varying degrees toward all
thirteen features. (RQ4)
• Rich discourse: (RQ5 and 6)
–
–
–
–
Clarification techniques (unlike Penz)
Increased explicitness (similar to Mauranen, Dewey and Cogo)
Back chanelling, repetition (similar to Dewey and Cogo)
No ’Let-it-pass’ (dissimilar to Firth, Meierkord and House)
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References
Dewey, M. and A. Cogo. (2006). Efficiency in ELF communication: from pragmatic motives to
lexico-grammatical innovation. Nordic Journal of English Studies 5 (2): 1-36.
Firth, A. (1996). “The discursive accomplishment of normality: on ‘lingua franca” English and
conversation analysis.’ Journal of Pragmatics 26: 237-259.
Jenkins, J. (2000). The phonology of English as an international language: new models, new
norms, new goals. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Jenkins, J. (2007). English as a lingua franca: Attitude and identity. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Mauranen, Anna. (2003). “The Corpus of English as Lingua Franca in Academic Settings”. TESOL
Quarterly 37 (3): 513-527.
Mauranen, Anna. (2004). “English as Lingua Franca- an Unknown Language?” Paper presented at
Identity, Community, Discourse: English in Intercultural Settings International Conference.
Tampere, Finland.
Mauranen, Anna. 2006. “A Rich Domain of ELF— the ELFA Corpus of Academic Discourse”.
Nordic Journal of English Studies 5(2): 145-159.
Meierkord, C. (2004). Syntactic variation in interactions across international Englishes. English
World-Wide 25(1): 109-132.
Penz, H. (2008). “What do we mean by that?” –ELF in Intercultural Project Work. Paper
presented at the ESSE conference. August 22-26. University of Aarhus: Aarhus, Denmark.
Publications (on the present project/material)
Björkman, B. (Forthcoming-2009). ’ From code to discourse in spoken ELF’. In Mauranen, A. and
Ranta, E. (Eds.). English as a Lingua Franca: Studies and findings. Cambridge Scholars
Press: Newcastle.
Björkman, B. (Forthcoming-2009). ’English as a lingua franca at a Swedish technical university:
an effective medium?’ Proceedings of the Annual BALEAP Conference (2007): 'EAP in a
globalising world: English as an academic lingua franca‘. Peter Lang.
Björkman, B. (2008). ‘English as the lingua franca of Engineering: the morphosyntax of
academic speech events’. Nordic Journal of English Studies 7(3): 103-122.
Björkman, B. (2008). 'So where we are': spoken lingua franca English at a Swedish technical
university. English Today, 24 (2), 11-17.
Björkman, B. (2007). 'We' and 'you': pronouns and genre competence in oral technical
descriptions. In Lainio, J., & Leppänen, A. (Eds.), Linguistic Diversity and
Sustainable Development (pp. 89-109). Swedish Science Press.