Applied Linguistics, Volume 31, issue 1, 2010

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APPLI ED LI NGUISTICS

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Applied Linguistics

Volume 31 Number 1 February 2010

Volume 31 Number 1 February 2010

Published in cooperation with AAAL American Association for Applied Linguistics AILA International Association of Applied Linguistics BAAL British Association for Applied Linguistics

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EDITORS Ken Hyland, Director, Centre for Applied English Studies, KK Leung Building, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong Jane Zuengler, Nancy C. Hoefs Professor of English, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 6103 Helen C. White 600 North Park Street Madison, WI, 53706 USA Assistant to Jane Zuengler: Heather Carroll, University of Wisconsin-Madison

REVIEWS AND FORUM EDITOR Stef Slembrouck, Professor of English Linguistics and Discourse Analysis, Universiteit Gent, Vakgroep Engels, Rozier 44, B-9000 Gent, Belgium. <[email protected]> Assistant to Stef Slembrouck: Tine Defour, Universiteit Gent

ADVISORY BOARD Guy Cook, British Association for Applied Linguistics Aneta Pavlenko, American Association for Applied Linguistics Martin Bygate, International Association for Applied Linguistics Catherine Kneafsey, Oxford University Press

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Aims Applied Linguistics publishes research into language with relevance to real-world problems. The journal is keen to help make connections between fields, theories, research methods, and scholarly discourses, and welcomes contributions which critically reflect on current practices in applied linguistic research. It promotes scholarly and scientific discussion of issues that unite or divide scholars in applied linguistics. It is less interested in the ad hoc solution of particular problems and more interested in the handling of problems in a principled way by reference to theoretical studies. Applied linguistics is viewed not only as the relation between theory and practice, but also as the study of language and language-related problems in specific situations in which people use and learn languages. Within this framework the journal welcomes contributions in such areas of current enquiry as: bilingualism and multilingualism; computer-mediated communication; conversation analysis; corpus linguistics; critical discourse analysis; deaf linguistics; discourse analysis and pragmatics; first and additional language learning, teaching, and use; forensic linguistics; language assessment; language planning and policies; language for special purposes; lexicography; literacies; multimodal communication; rhetoric and stylistics; and translation. The journal welcomes both reports of original research and conceptual articles. The Journal’s Forum section is intended to enhance debate between authors and the wider community of applied linguists (see Editorial in 22/1) and affords a quicker turnaround time for short pieces. Forum pieces are typically responses to a published article, a shorter research note or report, or a commentary on research issues or professional practices. The Journal also contains a Reviews section. Applied Linguistics is covered by the following abstracting/indexing services: Bibliographie Linguistique/Linguistic Bibliography, BLonline, British Education Index, Current Index to Journals in Education, ERIC (Education Resources Information Centre), International Bibliography of the Social Sciences, ISI: Social Sciences Citation Index, Research Alert, Current Contents/Social and Behavioral Sciences, Social Scisearch, Sociological Abstracts: Language and Linguistics Behaviour Abstracts, Language Teaching, MLA Directory of Periodicals, MLA International Bibliography, PsycINFO, Sociological Abstracts, Zeitschrift fu¨r Germanistische Linguistik.

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APPLI ED LI NGUISTICS

ISSN 0142-6001 (PRINT) ISSN 1477-450X (ONLINE)

Applied Linguistics

Volume 31 Number 1 February 2010

Volume 31 Number 1 February 2010

Published in cooperation with AAAL American Association for Applied Linguistics AILA International Association of Applied Linguistics BAAL British Association for Applied Linguistics

OXFORD

www.applij.oxfordjournals.org

APPLIED LINGUISTICS Volume 31 Number 1 February 2010 CONTENTS Articles Textual Appropriation and Citing Behaviors of University Undergraduates LING SHI Practices of Other-Initiated Repair in the Classrooms of Children with Specific Speech and Language Difficulties JULIE RADFORD Style Shifts among Japanese Learners before and after Study Abroad in Japan: Becoming Active Social Agents in Japanese NORIKO IWASAKI The Relationship between Applied Linguistic Research and Language Policy for Bilingual Education DAVID CASSELS JOHNSON

1

25

45

72

Seizure, Fit or Attack? The Use of Diagnostic Labels by Patients with Epileptic or Non-epileptic Seizures LEENDERT PLUG, BASIL SHARRACK, and MARKUS REUBER English in Advertising: Generic Intertextuality in a Globalizing Media Environment AN H. KUPPENS

115

A Subject–Object Asymmetry in the Comprehension of wh-Questions by Korean Learners of English JIN-HWA LEE

136

REVIEWS F. Christie and J. Martin (eds): Language, Knowledge and Pedagogy: Functional Linguistic and Sociological Perspectives RICHARD BARWELL

156

S. Makoni and A. Pennycook (eds): Disinventing and Reconstituting Languages STEPHEN MAY

159

Alison Wray: Formulaic Language: Pushing the Boundaries PHILIP DURRANT

163

Ruth Wodak, Rudolf de Cillia, Martin Reisigl and Karin Liebhart: The Discursive Construction of National Identity ALEKSANDRA GALASIN´SKA

166

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

169

94

Applied Linguistics 31/1: 1–24 ß Oxford University Press 2008 doi:10.1093/applin/amn045 Advance Access published on 4 December 2008

Textual Appropriation and Citing Behaviors of University Undergraduates

University of British Columbia This article explores the citing behaviors of 16 undergraduates in a North American university. After completing a research paper for their disciplinary courses, each participating student was interviewed to identify in his/her writing words and ideas borrowed from source texts and to explain why and how the relevant texts were appropriated with or without citations. Analysis of students’ writing and comments illustrates how they relied on source texts for various aspects of their essays, some of which they believed required citations while some of which did not. Results showed that they tried to strike a balance between the need to cite published authors to gain credit for the scholarly quality of their writing and the desire to establish their own voice by limiting the extent to which they cited other texts. Some students also reported how they chose between quoting and paraphrasing (though the latter sometimes contained direct copying) on the basis of their ability to rephrase other’s words and their understanding of the different roles played by the two. The study indicates the degree to which citational acts are discursive markings of learning and knowledge construction.

INTERTEXTUALITY One theoretical perspective for research on students’ citing behaviors is the concept of intertextuality which suggests that each academic text is populated with other texts organized to generate new knowledge claims (Fairclough 1992). Researchers have found the concept useful in interpreting how students acquire academic literacy. For example, Starfield states that university students need to learn to interact with various texts which ‘circulate as currency’ (2002: 125) and develop citation skills to accumulate their own ‘textual capital’ (2002: 126). Young and Gaea (1998) suggest that citation skills develop along with one’s disciplinary knowledge and students achieve knowledge transformation by integrating content as interpreted evidence. While working with multiple source texts, many students, however, have produced ‘patchwriting’ by copying from a source text and then deleting or changing a few words and altering the sentence structures, a textual strategy that leads to accusations of plagiarism (Howard 1992, 1995). Such accusations, as Pennycook (1996: 226) states, are ‘inadequate and arrogant’ especially to L2 students from a culture that views borrowing and memorizing others’ words as a legitimate learning strategy. In order to understand issues embedded in students’ citation practices, Chandrasoma et al. (2004: 171)

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LING SHI

2 STUDENT’S TEXTUAL APPROPRIATION AND CITING BEHAVIORS

propose that we should ‘do away with the notion of plagiarism in favour of an understanding of transgressive or nontransgressive intertextuality’.

PREVIOUS RESEARCH A number of researchers compared student-generated texts with their source texts and found that students relied on source texts in their writing (Campbell 1990; Moore 1997; Shi 2004). Among them, Campbell (1990) noted that copying was a major strategy used by both L1 and L2 writers. In two other studies (Moore 1997; Shi 2004), L2 undergraduates were found to rely more than their L1 counterparts on source texts in their summary writing. Close comparisons of students’ texts also revealed that L2 students tended to use implicit attributions, such as ‘it is said’ or ‘the first idea is . . .’, to summarize propositions compared with their L1 peers who tended to mention the individual authors explicitly (Moore 1997; Shi 2004). The varied performances of the participants lead to the question of how students conceptualize textual borrowing or plagiarism.

Inability to identify plagiarized texts To explore students’ perceptions of plagiarism, a second strand of research explored students’ abilities to identify plagiarized texts by using questionnaires that contained examples of edited rewritten versions with their sources (McCormick 1989; Deckert 1993; Roig 1997; Chandrasegaran 2000). The edited rewritten texts contained what researchers believed to be either models of correct use of sources or texts that were copied or paraphrased with or without acknowledgement. For example, McCormick (1989) included three rewritten samples that had direct copying of phrases of 7, 13, and 15 words, respectively, without quotation marks. Together, these questionnaire surveys revealed that many students, either with L1 (McCormick 1989; Roig 1997) or L2 or a non-western background (Deckert 1993; Chandrasegaran 2000), had problems distinguishing the ‘plagiarized’ texts. Gray areas surrounding plagiarism concern the degree of reformulation or paraphrasing. Students, especially those from an L2 culture, are sensitive to the complexities of plagiarism (Pennycook 1994).

Nontransgressive plagiarism A third strand of research used students’ comments to clarify their inappropriate textual borrowing or plagiarized texts identified by researchers. These studies could be further distinguished based on whether the analysis focused more on students’ texts (Pecorari 2003, 2006) or interview data (Hull and Rose 1989; Dong 1996; Spack 1997; Currie 1998; Ange´lil-Carter 2000; Starfield 2002; Chandrasoma et al. 2004; Petric´ 2004; Thompson 2005). Those that

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Reliance on source texts

L. SHI

3

The present study The above review suggests that researchers that used both textual and interview data have provided more insightful information since citational acts are subjective and private. However, these studies have either provided a limited description of students’ text in terms of quantities and weightings of various types of use of citations or textual appropriation, or solicited students’ comments based on seemingly plagiarized texts identified by the researcher who

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focused more on students’ voices from interviews were case studies. The rich interview data in these case studies suggest evidence of unintentional plagiarism. Students were reported to defend their unacknowledged use of source information in terms of how they understood common knowledge (Chandrasoma et al. 2004) or relied on memorized and internalized knowledge (Petric´ 2004). There was also evidence that inappropriate use of citations was tied to students’ confusion of how to cite (Thompson 2005), unsuccessful attempts to develop authorial selves (Starfield 2002), underdeveloped skills of reading comprehension as well as critical thinking in relation to the authors’ stance (Spack 1997; Ange´lil-Carter 2000), and limited content knowledge that hindered them from selecting relevant and important references (Dong 1996; Chandrasoma et al. 2004). Being primarily concerned with how their teachers would judge their work, some students actually found patchwriting an efficient strategy for survival (e.g. Hull and Rose 1989; Currie 1998; Chandrasoma et al. 2004; Petric´ 2004). These findings suggest that plagiarism is a problem of academic literacy rather than that of dishonesty (Ange´lil-Carter 2000). The aforementioned case studies, however, provided limited or a less comprehensive description of students’ texts. Recognizing this limitation, Pecorari (2003, 2006) analyzed excerpts of 17 graduate students’ thesis writing in different content areas. Based on comparisons of passages from student texts and the cited sources, Pecorari (2003) found that students’ citations were not transparent as most of them had passages in which 50 per cent or more of the words were from the sources without acknowledgment or quotations. However, like those in the case studies, these students indicated no intention to deceive at the interview. The interview data revealed individual student writers’ understanding of the nature of source use. Citation is, as Pecorari (2003: 324) put it, ‘an occluded feature of academic writing’ because the ‘real nature of source use is only known to the writer’. Further exploring these students’ occluded use of citations, Pecorari (2006) identified that about 18 per cent of the total source mentions in students’ texts were actually from secondary sources without acknowledging the original author. Uncertain about such practice, one student said she relied on her advisor for guidance. However, since such occluded features were a blind spot for readers, Pecorari (2006) expressed a concern about how these students might graduate with the wrong impression that their citation practices were in compliance with the standard practice.

4 STUDENT’S TEXTUAL APPROPRIATION AND CITING BEHAVIORS

(i) Why do students appropriate source texts and cite them in their writing? (ii) Why do students appropriate source texts but not cite them in their writing? (iii) How do students apply principles of textual borrowing to quotations, paraphrases or summaries?

METHOD Participants Sixteen undergraduates in a North American university responded to an advertisement and volunteered to participate in the study. Of the 16 participants, 4 were science majors and the rest were in Arts and Social Science (Table 1). The initial letters of the pseudonyms indicate the first language of the students: ‘E’ for English (Elmer, Edward, and Eddy), ‘C’ for Cantonese (Carmen, Carl, Candy, Carol, Cathy, and Cary), ‘M’ for Mandarin (Martin, Mark, and May), ‘J’ for Japanese (Jane), ‘K’ for Korean (Kate), ‘R’ for Romanian (Rose), and ‘P’ for Polish (Polly). Participants who regarded English as their second language, including Carmen and Carl who were born in North America, all spoke their first language at home. Among them, Jane, Kate, and Rose had just arrived as international students and were literate in their home language. The rest were not literate in their first language as they had all or most of their schooling in local North American schools. These students, unlike those who were literate in their first language and might therefore bring different ideas about citation practices from their home cultures, were more like their North American born monolingual peers in terms of learning to cite, a difficult task for all university students.

Writing assignments Participants were asked to bring to the interview a research paper they had just written for a course as well as the source texts they used (see Appendix A

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examined passages of students’ texts that contained citations. In the latter case, portions of texts were excluded from the analyses when they ‘included no citations’ (Pecorari 2003: 322). What is missing here is a great amount of textual borrowing not indicated by citations. Since textual borrowing is a subjective act guided by, what Pecorari (2006) has noted, students’ own inferred rules, research needs to explore how students identify their own textual borrowing and explain why they make the borrowing and whether each borrowing is cited or not cited. Such research could also symmetrically compare students’ views in terms of how they apply textual borrowing or citations to quotations, paraphrases or summaries. To tap these issues, the present study uses undergraduates’ self-reflections to explore three research questions:

L. SHI

5

Table 1: Participants’ profiles Major

Year of study at the participating university

L1

Age

Elmer

Commerce

1

English

18

Edward

Commerce

1

English

18

Eddy

History

3

English

29

Carmen

Science

1

Cantonese

19

Carl

Arts

2

Cantonese

19

Candy Carol Cathy Cary Martin Mark May Polly Jane Kate Rose

Science Arts Arts Science Commerce Science Arts Economics Law English Literature Political Science

1 1 1 1 3 1 2 2 Exchange Exchange 2

Cantonese Cantonese Cantonese Cantonese Mandarin Mandarin Mandarin Polish Japanese Korean Romanian

18 17 18 18 20 18 19 25 23 21 19

Age arriving

Born in North America Born in North America Born in North America Born in North America Born in North America 7 3 3 10 10 12 9 7 23 21 18

in the supplementary data for the online version of the article). Depending on the courses they were taking at the time, most students brought their research papers for 100 level (first year) courses in English (8), history (1), film studies (1), and biology (2). The rest brought their research papers for 200 or 300 level (second or third year) courses in political science (3) or women’s studies (1). The average length of these papers was 1,805 words. The course handouts that explained the assignments all had a warning against plagiarism and directed students to the university or faculty websites on plagiarism. In other words, the participants were aware of the importance of attributing appropriated materials in their research paper assignments.

Interviews and data analysis I met the 16 students separately and conducted discourse-based interviews (Odell et al. 1983). Each interview lasted for an hour during which the student

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ID

6 STUDENT’S TEXTUAL APPROPRIATION AND CITING BEHAVIORS

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was asked to compare his/her own text with the source texts to identify and comment on texts appropriated, whether cited or not cited (see Appendix B in the supplementary data for the online version of the article for interview questions). Since citations without quotation marks signal the borrowed content whereas those with quotation marks signal the borrowed language in which content is presented, I also solicited students’ comments on their decisions of using quotes, paraphrases, or summaries for texts appropriated. The term ‘plagiarism’, though mentioned by some students, was carefully not used by me so as not to bias students’ views. Based on the interview data, a total of 187 units of textual appropriation were identified together with students’ comments. There were occasions when students identified units of textual borrowing but did not make any comments. Such units were excluded as the lack of explanation from students in these cases might be a significant problem worthy of another study. There is no consensus on how much language must be copied to be deemed plagiarism. For example, students have been advised to cite when copying a string with a minimum of three words from a source text (e.g. Hodges 1962). For the present study, a unit of textual appropriation was defined as a sentence or several sentences that contained words or ideas borrowed from source texts. The longest unit in the present data contained seven sentences with a total of 164 words. The boundaries of the units were set by students themselves who connected each unit to one specific borrowing and citation decision. After repeated readings of students’ explanations, a coding scheme was developed based on some key words used by students (e.g. support; new information). The purpose of using students’ own language was to be more accurate about students’ perspectives. This approach would also help produce ‘consensual readings’ of the narrative data (Denzin 1997: 232) and, therefore, catch ‘both the variation and central tendency or typicality’ (Watson-Gegeo 1988: 585). To check intercoder reliability, a research assistant was trained to use the scheme and then coded 10 per cent of the data on her own. The agreement between the researcher and the research assistant reached 84 per cent. The discrepancies were then solved by revising some of the categories. Table 2 presents the revised coding scheme. Fourteen reasons were identified under three major factors that influenced students’ use of source texts and citation decisions. First, the participants were concerned about the functional or rhetorical role of the borrowed texts in terms of whether it could provide support, help develop or form one’s own idea or form the basis of a key point. Such concerns demonstrate that the present students, unlike those in previous research (e.g. Chandrasegaran 2000), did have an understanding of using textual borrowing rhetorically to legitimize their own claims. In addition, the participants were making interpretations of the source information to determine whether it was new information, fact, research finding, background information, common knowledge, or information from a credible source. These reasons indicate that, apart from background information that was identified in previous research (Pecorari 2003), there were various other inferences

Form one’s own idea

Key point

2

3

New information

Fact

Research finding

Background information

5

6

7

Background information or established theory in the field

Previous research findings

Facts or events

New information for the writer

To form the basis of one’s key point

To build up one’s own idea

To provide support for one’s point

Definitions

I just took all the information and put it in my own words. . . . I just cite the author because I didn’t know any of the stuff really before. (Edward) This is just like facts . . . so I put the reference here. . . . I am summarizing her points. (Edward) I cite that, saying that who did the research and what they found. (Cary) I got that from this article. . . . It’s just like the background information. (Edward) I rephrased these from the article. . . . I mean it’s . . . fairly well established theory . . . That’s why I kind of cited the textbook. (Polly)

Quote

These are all quotes from their websites. I used them to support what I wrote here. (Polly) It’s part of my own argument . . . I mean, I took it from their argument but incorporated it into my own . . . overarching description of the situation. (Eddy) I used that [citation] because it forms the basis of my argument. (Elmer)

(continued)

Paraphrase

Summary

Summary

Summary

Formatb

Examplesa

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4

Interpretations of source text

Support

1

Functions

Explanations

Table 2: Coding of students’ explanations and examples

L. SHI 7

Common knowledge or term

9

Result of learning

Reference cited earlier in the text or in the reference list

No need to cite everything

Teachers’ preference

11

12

13

14

Teacher prefers citations

Not everything needs to be cited

A source cited earlier or in the reference list

Knowledge accumulated by learning

Words and ideas directly taken from the source

Quote

These are the actual words [from the source]. You have to quote them, right? (Edward) And this is kind of I just knew from my mum . . . and from previous school . . . I don’t think I really have to cite it. (Cary) I used my own words and it’s a summary. I didn’t cite because I already mentioned it in the first paragraph. (Carol) I don’t think I was supposed to cite this. We just indicate the book that we used at the end. (Cary) Or else I would have to cite every single sentence. I think it’s kind of distracting. (Candy) They (teachers) prefer you rephrase and cite it. (Cary)

b

Paraphrase

Summary

Paraphrase

Formatb

This is a citation from a book written by a concert artist. . . . I think he’s very credible. . . . It’s paraphrased here. (Cathy) I didn’t cite it because that’s common sense. (Mark) I didn’t cite it because it’s an actual term that people use. (Martin)

Examplesa

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Keywords that result in relevant coding are highlighted. Coding of the example comments in terms of quote, paraphrase, and summary when relevant information is available.

a

Other’s words/ideas

10

Reasons related to learning

Credible or reliable source

Credible source

8

Knowledge or words commonly known

Definitions

Explanations

Table 2: Continued

8 STUDENT’S TEXTUAL APPROPRIATION AND CITING BEHAVIORS

L. SHI

9

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION Since students’ decisions were based on more than one reason for some units, the 187 units of textual appropriation generated a total of 236 explanations of why and how source texts were used (Table 3). Over one-third of the explanations given (85) were related to the functions served by using the source texts, about one-third (77) were related to the interpretations of previous works, and slightly under one-third (74) were related to reasons of learning to cite. Of the 236 explanations provided, 159 (67 per cent) illustrate why students ended up citing the work. Students also explained how they applied the principle of textual borrowing by quoting, paraphrasing, or summarizing the source texts a total of 122 (out of 236) times. I will analyze how participants used source texts, focusing on their understanding of whether citing was required or not.

Reasons mentioned more frequently for citing texts borrowed The present students, as a group, seemed to mention some reasons for taking something from the source text more frequently for citing and others more frequently for not citing. The only reason that did not favor either citing or not citing was background information that was mentioned three times for citing and three times for not citing. Figure 1 presents the eight reasons mentioned more frequently by students to explain why a unit of textual borrowing was acknowledged.

Securing support for one’s writing Support was the most frequently mentioned reason (48) by students for using source texts with citations (Figure 1). The two occasions when it was mentioned for not citing were double coded with reasons of no need to cite everything and result of learning that typically led to no citations. Among those referring to support as the main reason for citing, many commented on how they searched for materials to cite from various published authors to support their arguments.

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that the present students made about which type of source information needed to be borrowed with or without citations. Finally, the participants described how their learning experiences influenced their use of source texts and citations. Such experiences included how they identified words of others, wrote from knowledge accumulated as result of learning, followed teachers’ preference, and understood that there was no need to cite everything including references that were cited earlier in the text or in the reference list. Table 2 shows that the relevant mentions were also coded in terms of a quote, paraphrase or summary1 when information was available. The fact that the relevant information was not available for some units will be discussed in the findings section.

10

STUDENT’S TEXTUAL APPROPRIATION AND CITING BEHAVIORS

Table 3: Classification of reasons students gave for using source text, by whether source is cited or not Explanation

Cited

Not cited

Total

No. %

No.

No.

%

%

Functions 1 Support 2 Form one’s own point 3 Key point Subtotal and percentage of 236

48 96 2 7 30 16 12 100 0 67 79 18

4 70 0 21

50 23 12 85

100 100 100 100

33 6 10 49

18 82 4 9 64 5 5 100 0 3 50 3 15 100 0 0 0 15 50 65 27

18 36 0 50 0 100 35

22 14 5 6 15 15 77

100 100 100 100 100 100 100

12 7 1 4 7 2 33

37 100 0 0 0 18 0 0 3

0 100 100

37 100 18 100 3 100

32 1 1

0 0 11 5 100 0 42 57 32

100 0 43

11 100 5 100 74 100

3 3 40

Interpretations of source text 4 New information 5 Fact 6 Research finding 7 Background information 8 Credible source 9 Common knowledge or term Subtotal and percentage of 236 Reasons related to learning 10 Other’s words/ideas 11 Result of learning 12 Reference cited earlier or in the reference list 13 No need to cite everything 14 Teachers’ preference Subtotal and percentage of 236 Total

159

67 77

33

236 100 122

a

Students mentioned in 236 instances how they relied on source texts. Among them, 122 were accompanied with explanations of whether they used source texts by quoting, paraphrasing, or summarizing.

The following is a typical example of how Jane took pains to find something to cite.2 Example 1 A unit of textual appropriation in Jane’s paper titled ‘Domination of the Liberal Democratic Party in Japanese Politics’: Keeping the dominance in the diet [parliament] made LDP [Liberal Democratic Party] able to influence the policies dramatically.

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No. of mentions of format of textual borrowinga

L. SHI 11

40 30

With citing

20

Without citing

10 0 rt

o pp

Su

y Ke

e as nc de i / re s e fi f rd le re ch wo ar 'p dib s e s e r ' s er Cr he Re th ac O e T

t in po

w Ne

ct Fa

ion at m r fo in

e

ng

c ur so

i nd

Figure 1: Leading reasons given for use of source text, with citing

Frequency of mentions

50 40 30

With citing Without citing

20 10

g

t fe r

ev er

en

yt

ce

hi n

lis

g in rn

ci te

re e

to

th

ed ne o N

R

ef er

en

ce

ci

te

d

ea

rli er

or

C

in

R

om

es

m

ul

on

to

kn

fl

ow

n ow s e' on m Fo r

ea

le

po

dg

in

t

e

0

Figure 2: Leading reasons given for use of source text, when not citing

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Frequency of mentions

50

12

STUDENT’S TEXTUAL APPROPRIATION AND CITING BEHAVIORS

The dominant party is generally able to get its own way in policymaking issues in the parliament. (Stockwin 1998: 121) Jane’s reason for citing, which has been classified as an instance of support:

The fatigue Jane expressed at the end shows the enormous time and energy she had spent searching for citations that would support her basic intuition about parliamentary influence. Jane’s comment suggests that she had learned to both trust and check her insights, even as she realized that further evidence beyond her own hunches needed to be found and included in her work. This contrasts markedly with the participant in Thompson (2005) who felt that it was necessary to always find a support because, as a student, he had nothing original to contribute, Jane seemed to have a scholarly sense of following one’s hunches, with enough confidence that one did not give up until either finding the evidence or realizing it was not there. The students’ interest in securing support from source texts was also evident when in 12 instances participants commented on how they presented a key point through the voice of a cited author. For example, in explaining how she argued for the importance of parents’ encouragement for kids learning to play the piano, Cathy said that she decided to use the citation ‘to show it was an important factor’. The reliance on source texts to frame important points was also shown in five instances of students citing research findings and 15 instances of drawing information from a credible source. Martin believed that citations ‘gave some authenticity or authority over [his] essay’. Like Martin, Carol explained that she cited from Milroy and Milroy (1999) about how English was an essential tool for working-class children because ‘quotes or citations . . . [had] been proven and recognized’. By using such a citation, Carol said her message was that ‘[i]t is not just what I am saying, it is from a published author’. These comments reveal how students draw on others to show that they are not alone in thinking and thus to gain credit for their own writing.

Learning to cite Students were also motivated to cite materials for two additional reasons related to what I am terming learning (Figure 1). As learners, the participants chose to cite when they recalled teachers’ preference for extensive citation (5) or

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This is something else that I got from the textbook . . . I have to find what was said previously to back up my writing. So that’s why I keep putting in references. . . . I had this idea that if you have dominance in the Diet, you must have big influence in the parliament. I just assume that it should be the case but I was just worried because it might not be the case. So I just went through all the books trying to find if somebody was actually saying the same thing. . . . So those are the little things that I went through and made me so tired.

L. SHI 13

when they saw source texts as others’ words and ideas that were worth quoting directly (37). In the following example, Edward explained how he attributed the ownership of the word ‘localization’ to an author (the co-authors of the original text were missing in both his writing and comment): Example 2

In his essay ‘‘Drug Dealers,’’ Caulkins describes the ‘‘localization’’ of certain areas of the city for drug use as a major problem leading to the augmented organization of drug dealers in Vancouver (Caulkins 326). Edward’s reason for quoting, which has been classified as an instance of other’s words: I used quotations for ‘‘localization’’ because it’s a word Caulkins used. It is his word. . . . He describes the ‘‘localization’’ of certain areas of the city for drug use . . . I usually cite if it’s something that most people wouldn’t use. . . . Just like if I was to hear ‘‘localization’’ before, I probably wouldn’t know it means that much before reading. It is interesting to note that Edward felt that the original author owned the word because any average person like himself would not have used the word in such a context. Also regarding themselves as average people, Martin and Mark said that citing words from published authors would save them the trouble of providing supporting details. As a student, Martin said that instructors always cast doubt on ideas he claimed as his own. For example, in explaining why he cited Hirsch (1990) when writing about Woody Allen’s family, Martin said ‘If I didn’t cite that, the instructor would say, ‘‘Where did you get this? Who said this? How did you know who said this?’’’ In comparison, Mark acknowledged the sources when ‘the language is powerful’ because, as he explained, ‘If you just present something really stunning people won’t believe you’. Mark’s lack of confidence in using his own words echoed that of L2 students in previous studies (e.g. Ange´lil-Carter 2000; Chandrasoma et al. 2004).

Learning ‘facts’ and ‘new information’ in various academic disciplines Compared with the above reasons, students were divided on whether fact and new information required citing, although they favored citing (Figure 1). The participants distinguished facts (things exist or performed) from ideas and opinions. For example, Edward interpreted chemical characteristics of drugs as facts that had to be cited, whereas Eddy regarded current or historical events as facts that needed no acknowledgement. The different decisions made by students imply that the debt owed to authors for facts differs across

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A unit of textual appropriation in Edward’s paper titled ‘Nowhere to Turn: Drug Abuse as a Cause of Homelessness and Poverty in Vancouver’:

14

STUDENT’S TEXTUAL APPROPRIATION AND CITING BEHAVIORS

 ‘Influences from early in our lives such as childhood trauma . . . or alcohol abuse can contribute to initial experimentation with a drug’ [a citation given by Edward and the material to which the citation applied came from Jones (1998)];  ‘The most significant side effects of antibiotics, however, is [sic] the depression of the immune system’ [a citation given by Mark and the material to which the citation applied came from Hauser and Reminngton (1982)]; and  that the reformed Indian Constitution ‘articulated the principle of equality of all citizens irrespective of caste, community, race or sex’ [a citation given by Rose and the material to which the citation applied came from Desai (1973)]. One can easily imagine that, on the one hand, some of these students’ peers might not consider such information as new knowledge and, on the other hand, the same students might choose not to cite later when they become acquainted with such information. By comparing students’ citing behaviors, the present study suggests a dynamic process of learning and claiming ownership of knowledge. Judgements on textual appropriation, whether appreciated or illegitimate, are grounded in the context of epistemologically and socially constructed academic literacies.

Reasons mentioned more frequently for not citing texts borrowed Since all of the reasons were offered to explain chunks of texts which the students identified as appropriated, a citation would be expected in every case. It is, therefore, highly significant to examine cases when students did not give a citation. Of the 14 reasons for using source texts, five were mentioned more often for not citing than citing (Figure 2).

Interpreting source information as common knowledge/term In 15 instances, the present students interpreted source texts as common knowledge/term and, therefore, did not cite them in their writing (Figure 2). For example, Cathy said that she did not cite the statement that ‘musical success is an innate gift’ which she read from a book because it was ‘something that [she had] grown up with’. Other appropriated texts that students

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disciplines. If facts about drugs are derived from scientific research, facts of current or historical events are public knowledge. Students’ citing behaviors are thus connected to their variable learning and practices in different disciplinary communities. Like the notion of fact, the concept of new information reveals the role of individual learning experiences. For example, the present students cited such new information as:

L. SHI 15

Example 3 A unit of textual appropriation in May’s paper titled ‘Starbucks Coffee’: Moreover, Starbucks prepare the coffee beans in a sanitary and safe environment that keeps the coffee fresh. May’s reason for not citing, which has been classified as an instance of common knowledge: I got this from the book. . . . But actually it’s kind of common sense because you have to put food in a bag or something so it doesn’t go stale. I think it’s just kind of related to all the food. Compared with May and those students who distinguished common knowledge based on their own understandings and interpretations, other students made similar decisions based on whether the source information was introduced in a textbook (Eddy) or a lecture (Mark), or frequently mentioned in reading materials (Jane). Jane, for example, did not cite the appropriated text about the dominance of the Liberal Democratic Party in Japan because, in her words, ‘I read them in so many places and textbooks so I thought that was just like a general understanding of this whole issue.’ Such comments illustrate that when certain information is recognized by students as public or owned by many, it becomes base knowledge of which students would claim ownership. Although previous research has also reported how one student did not cite common knowledge acquired through personal experiences (Chandrasoma et al. 2004), the present study provides insights of how a group of students across disciplines arrive at such an interpretation in each specific case.

Learning not to cite Students also attributed some of their decisions not to cite to various learning experiences (Figure 2). Specifically, they chose not to cite when the appropriated texts matched their knowledge accumulated as a result of learning (18) or was something they believed not worth citing otherwise they had to cite everything (11). To avoid using too many citations, three students (Carol, Cary, and Martin) said that they did not cite a reference cited earlier in the paper or included

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considered common knowledge included statements that ‘the industrial policy [of the government] is the driving force for economic growth [of Japan]’ (Kate); that ‘[t]he baby boom that took place from the mid 1940s throughout France had created, by the middle of the 1960s, many thousands of new undergraduates’ (Carl); and that ‘the human use of antibiotics helped the natural selection of bacteria’ (Mark). The following example illustrates how May generalized Starbucks’ way of preparing coffee to a common sense of how to keep food fresh:

16

STUDENT’S TEXTUAL APPROPRIATION AND CITING BEHAVIORS

in the reference list. As an example, Cary referred to her learning experiences when commenting on the following unit of textual appropriation: Example 4

However, spontaneous mutation occurs more frequently than induced because spontaneous mutations can occur simply due to natural radiation, and during replication in DNA. Cary’s reason for not citing, which has been classified as instances of the result of learning and no need to cite everything: Well, I didn’t cite these because I know that there is natural radiation. . . . I got it from lecture and the books I used. . . . I learned since I was in high school. . . . I don’t think we really have to cite everything, right? Although the above comment might be interpreted as common knowledge, it is coded as result of learning based on Cary’s own account of how she learned the information in high school. Like Cary, Eddy explained that he did not cite the term ‘unitary actors’ because it was ‘a part of lingo of political science [he had] been studying for a number of years’. Also commenting on the development of one’s own knowledge based on learning, Carol said, ‘When you read an article, you absorb the ideas then it becomes your own’. The participants believed that they were entitled to claim ownership of words and ideas learnt previously or internalized. As two other students explained explicitly when commenting on certain texts appropriated, ‘I’ve learned this in class so it is considered personal knowledge’ (Carmen); ‘I know it before then I don’t think I really have to cite it’ (Cary). These explanations for not citing illustrate how citation practices go hand in hand with students’ learning and accumulation of knowledge.

Claiming authorship of ideas and learning to construct knowledge Compared with the above reasons, the reason to use course texts to form one’s own point was bidirectional (for both citing and not citing) though it was mentioned more often for not citing than citing (Figure 2). Among those who mentioned how they appropriated texts to form their own points, Carmen, in his Biology research paper, explained how he came up with the statement about ‘a direct relationship between light intensity and accumulation of newrosecretions’ based on the information from Cymborosky (1983) that ‘accumulation of neurosecretions is the highest during the night when crickets are supported to move at the highest levels’. In Carmen’s words, ‘I came up with this based on what this person found. . . . So it was what I inferred from the study. This was what I came up with myself’. Although it was arguable

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A unit of textual appropriation in Cary’s paper titled ‘One Type of Spontaneous Mutations is Point Mutation’:

L. SHI 17

Example 5 A unit of textual appropriation in Cary’s paper titled ‘One Type of Spontaneous Mutations is Point Mutation’: Point mutation also divides into different categories that include base-pair substitution in the DNA, and insertion of deletion in a base pair. Base pair mutation happens when there is a replacement of one nucleotide in a chain of amino acids. . . . Cary’s reasons for not citing, which have been classified as instances of forming one’s own point and result of learning: I know it from a course last term. I just vaguely remember it. I think it’s mine, the idea and wording. I think it’s just my idea. The above examples illustrate how students might make different citation decisions when appropriating source texts to form their own points. If students’ citation decisions are based on various combinations of reasons related to their complex process of learning and constructing knowledge, the present findings highlight the important role of self-reflections in exploring the subjective act of citing.

Quotations, paraphrases and summaries A total of 122 (out of 236) mentions of reasons were accompanied with students’ explanations of whether the relevant units of textual appropriations were presented as quotes, paraphrases or summaries. Most of these identifications referred to texts cited (Table 4). Of the 122 mentions, only 14 (3 for paraphrases, 11 for summaries) were for texts not cited, which was about 18 per cent of total mentions (77, Table 3) for not citing. In addition, probably because quotations were visible, about 86 (out of 122) mentions were for textual borrowing quoted, leaving only 36 for texts either paraphrased (17) or summarized (19).

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how different the two statements were, Carmen believed that, as a legitimate process of learning and constructing knowledge, he was entitled to take the ownership of the inference he made. Carmen’s choice also reveals, as one anonymous reviewer of the paper noted by citing from Sinclair (1986) and Tadros (1993), an intention to aver or to put forward a claim on the basis of one’s own authority. Unlike Carmen, other students mentioned how they appropriated texts to form their own points together with other reasons for either citing or not citing. The relevant cases further illustrate how students support or claim their ownership of ideas in the context of learning. For example, Mark cited a reliable or credible source to support his understanding that antibiotics can be harmful. In comparison, Cary, in the following example, claimed ownership of the knowledge of point mutation in DNA as a result of learning and, therefore, did not cite the source:

18

STUDENT’S TEXTUAL APPROPRIATION AND CITING BEHAVIORS

Table 4: Citation types, format of textual borrowing, and students’ explanations Citation types

No. of units with explanations of format

Summary

Quote Subtotal

Cited Not Cited Not Cited cited cited Functions 1 Support 2 Form one’s own point 3 Key point Subtotal

3 1

1

2 6

1 2

3

3 1 1

3

29 2

33 6

17 17

50 23

3

7 38

10 49

2 36

12 85

2

6 4

1

1

12 7 1 4

10 7 4 2

22 14 5 6

5

7 2

8 13

15 15

16

33

44

77

32

32

5

37

1

1 1

17 2

18 3

3

3

8

11

3

2

5

Interpretations of source text 4 5 6 7

New information Fact Research finding Background information 8 Credible source 9 Common knowledge or term Subtotal

1

1

1

1 1

5

2

1 6

4

Reasons related to learning 10 Other’s words/ideas 11 Result of learning 12 Reference cited earlier or in the reference list 13 No need to cite everything 14 Teachers’ 3 preference Subtotal 3 Total

14

1

1 3

8

4

32

40

34

74

11

86

122

114

236

a Of the 236 units or instances in which students explained how they relied on source texts, 122 were accompanied with explanations of whether they used source texts by quoting, paraphrasing, or summarizing, whereas 114 were left unexplained.

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Paraphrase

No. of units Total with no explanations of formata

L. SHI 19

Limited identifications for formats of textual borrowing

Understanding the roles of summaries, quotes and paraphrases In instances when students did identify the format of their textual borrowing, some described how they arrived at such decisions. Students’ accounts suggest that while summaries were used to report a large amount of information concisely, quotes and paraphrases seemed to play different roles to individual students. For example, some students said that quoting was chosen over paraphrasing when they ‘did not know how to paraphrase it’ (Carl) or could not ‘think of another way to say it’ (Cathy). In comparison, when explaining their choices of paraphrasing over quoting, Rose and Carmen said that paraphrasing was the skill preferred at the university compared with quoting which they learned to use at high school. Two other students, Elmer and Carol, said that they chose to use paraphrases when citing secondary sources because they did not know if they could use quotations for such information. In the

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The limited identifications for the formats of textual borrowing not cited or as paraphrases or summaries are worth noting. During the interviews, when prompted to identify how they appropriated the source texts, some students failed to do so with typical responses, such as ‘I remember reading about that but I don’t remember whether I rephrased it or not’ (Polly), or ‘The idea is from the source but I don’t remember I used the words or not’ (Carol). Martin said he could not specify whether an appropriated text about Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen’s childhood was paraphrased or summarized because he ‘got the idea from different books’. Such responses or excuses could suggest students’ hesitations in talking to the researcher about how they missed the citations at the interview, an indication of the epistemological status of the data. One might also think that these students need to upgrade their note-taking skills so as to record source information accurately (e.g. Pecorari 2003). However, a close reading of students’ comments revealed that their inability to remember the source was frequently mentioned together with reasons for using source texts to present result of learning and common knowledge or term which typically led to no citations. For example, arguing that it was impossible and unnecessary to remember and cite all source information, Eddy said, ‘I guess my vocabulary was applied to IR (International Relationship). It’s part of me now. Obviously it was something that I picked up through a lecturer, through experts, but I couldn’t tell you where I got that because it’s just part of my vocabulary.’ Eddy’s comment implies that while some borrowed texts could be accurately cited by improving the note taking process, others are appropriated without acknowledgement deliberately by students who choose to establish their own voice by claiming ownership of the relevant knowledge or achievement of academic literacies.

20

STUDENT’S TEXTUAL APPROPRIATION AND CITING BEHAVIORS

following account, Polly said she decided to paraphrase because she believed that quoting was not appropriate at the beginning of the paper: Example 6 Polly’s reason for paraphrasing a unit of textual borrowing

Concern for plagiarism While explaining their choices between paraphrasing and quoting, some students expressed a concern for plagiarism or an uncertainty about whether they had paraphrased some source texts enough. Although they believed that quoting was irrelevant when they changed the source text slightly, these students were uncomfortable when they noted a close resemblance between the source texts and their writing. As an example, the following is a comparison of the source text and the unit of textual borrowing that Polly commented on in the previous quote (words identical in Polly’s text and source text are highlighted): Example 6 (continued) A unit of textual appropriation in Polly’s paper titled ‘GM Crops or Franken Foods: An analysis of the Rhetoric of Activis’: The first successful cross-species gene transfer to plants took place in the early 1980’s, and by 1998 more than 26 percent of the cotton and 40 percent of the soybean acreage in the US was planted with GM crops. (Shields 2000) The corresponding source text from Shields (2000: 18): The first successful gene transfers in plants took place in the early 1980’s, and by 1998 more than 26 percent of the cotton and 40 percent of the soybean acreage in the US was planted with GM crops containing a gene for herbicide resistance. Noticing the direct copying in their writing such as the above, Polly and other students (e.g. Carmen, Eddy, Mark), wondered whether they should have quoted the source texts. In the following comment, Eddy also expressed uncertainty about whether he should have acknowledged the source when summarizing the information about how an Iraqi citizen would be eliminated if he/she openly criticized Saddam Hussein: I got my idea from The Economist. . . . I mean, I took it from their argument but incorporated it into my own . . . overarching

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I rephrased these from the article. . . . I think I maybe copied that word for word and then rephrased it. I changed the wording around a bit and then cited it. Because it’s really early in the paper, and I figure it would have looked really silly to start quoting . . . It doesn’t look as nice, I think. It’s really a general introduction and background.

L. SHI 21

description of the situation. . . . And I guess that’s sort of a borderline. If you really want to be strict, then I probably should have quoted or cited that. . . . Use the judgment call. ‘Am I plagiarizing or not?’ Maybe I should have cited that.

CONCLUSION The present study illustrates the sophistication and range of the participating students’ understanding of the role of textual borrowing and citation by analyzing students’ self-reflections on not only units of textual appropriation cited but also those not cited. Results show that the citing behaviors of novice scholarly writers (in the case of undergraduates) are guided by a complex set of factors including functional uses of cited works, citers’ interpretations of source texts, a learning process to accumulate one’s own knowledge and textual capital, as well as a choice between quoting and paraphrasing. The study indicates the extent to which students attempt to maintain a balance between a reliance on source texts for support and an attempt to establish their own voice by choosing not to cite. On the one hand, the participants cited source texts that contained similar ideas so that their opinions were bolstered and secured. On the other hand, the participants understood that not everything needed to be cited and would simply draw on, rather than cite directly, source texts that matched either common knowledge or what they had learnt previously. Students’ citational acts are situated in a learning context where certain information seems supportive or irrelevant, new or learnt, owned by a particular author or shared by many others. As there are no fixed rules, some participants wondered when a citation would be appropriate and whether they should quote or paraphrase texts borrowed. Citing a source text is more than providing a name and a date; it is a subjective process of deciding how to make meaning out of the available resources. Students are still learning the general principles and guidelines. As they learn the parameters of appropriate use, students can easily go across the unmarked borders of appropriate borrowing and lapse into

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The concern about plagiarism expressed by Eddy and others further explains the limited identifications of the format of textual borrowing among the present students. Participants might be reluctant to identify how they borrowed source texts because they were not sure how much to paraphrase, so the relevant text did not need to be quoted, nor were they sure if it was OK not to cite when certain information was summarized using entirely one’s own words. In addition, they might not want to talk about their plagiarized texts with the researcher who might disagree with them on this sensitive issue. The epistemological status of the data complicates the findings of a dynamic learning process of choosing between not only citing and not citing but also quoting and paraphrasing. As the process is a blind spot for teachers, students have to rely on their own judgement call in making these choices.

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STUDENT’S TEXTUAL APPROPRIATION AND CITING BEHAVIORS

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unintentional plagiarism. For example, some people might disagree with Cary who considered spontaneous mutation that occurs during replication in DNA as knowledge learnt previously, and therefore did not cite the source when presenting the information; others would see Polly’s text (Example 6), though cited, as almost a direct copy of the original text and, therefore, a clear example of plagiarism. The present study suggests that appropriate or inappropriate textual borrowing cannot be determined by general context-free criteria. The judgement is negotiated, localized, and contingent. Given the students’ understanding of appropriate citation found among this sample, students’ textual appropriation, appropriate or inappropriate, could be viewed as evidence that students are learning this important academic writing skill of intertextuality and learning about it in ways that relate to the expression of their own ideas and acquisition of academic literacies. Like other studies that focus on participants’ post hoc self-reports, the present data analyses might have not represented students’ citation practices with accuracy. Holstein and Gubrium (2004), among many others, have pointed out that responses from the interviewees represent a dynamic meaning-making process done in collaboration with the interviewer or in the direction designed by the interviewer. For example, participants might have also used ‘familiar narrative constructs’ to comment on their textual appropriation rather than providing the lived experiences or ‘meaningful insights into their subjective view’ (Miller and Glassner 2004: 127). As I pointed out earlier, some students might have hesitated to comment on their textual borrowing for fear that the interviewer would disagree with their citation practices. Readers are thus advised to be aware of the epistemological status of the interview data. Despite the limitations, the study sheds some light on how and why some students borrow texts and, therefore, provides teaching implications. Instructors are advised to use specific examples or cases, such as those identified in the present study, to help students learn how to make value judgements around the use of prior texts based on the degree to which those texts belong to others, or represent either new or common knowledge. Since there is no hard and fast set of rules on citation practices in scholarly texts, students need assistance or direct instruction. I tried out this teaching strategy in a university writing workshop where the discussion on whether to cite or not to cite in each case aroused heated discussions. Many students said it was their first experience to discuss, share, and clarify their individual and subjective acts of textual borrowing. The present study also generates implications for follow-up research. One research focus could be on how citing behaviors mark high-level students’ (juniors, seniors, or grad students) development of disciplinary knowledge. Case studies comparing students’ self-reflections on their use of citations in a longer period of time would identify how students learn to use citations as standard symbols of their discipline and shape their own positions among recognized networks of references. Another research focus could be the

L. SHI 23

SUPPLEMENTARY DATA Supplementary data is available at Applied Linguistics online.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This study is part of a larger project on students’ textual appropriation funded by a Standard Research Grant of Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. I thank the participating students, Sin Heng Celine Sze for her help in transcribing and analyzing the data, and John Willinsky, Lynne Earls, and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedback on an earlier draft of the article.

NOTES 1

One student (Kate) referred to four of her units as translations from a source in her first language. Another student (Martin) said he created a quote himself but attributed it to a credible author. Since these cases raise different issues and also represent a small proportion of the data, I decided not to deal with them in the present analyses.

2

In all examples cited in this article, students’ writing and comments are presented verbatim. For easy reading, keywords in students’ comments that result in relevant coding are highlighted and alternatives for special terms in student writing are provided in brackets. See Appendix C in the online version of this article for cited works in student writing.

REFERENCES Ange´lil-Carter, S. 2000. Stolen Language? Plagiarism in Writing. Essex: Pearson Education Limited. Campbell, C. 1990. ‘Writing with others’ words: Using background reading text in academic compositions’ in B. Kroll (ed.): Second Language Writing: Research Insights for the Classroom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chandrasegaran, A. 2000. ‘Cultures in contact in academic writing: students’ perceptions

of plagiarism,’ Asian Journal of English Language Teaching 10: 91–113. Chandrasoma, R., C. Thompson, and A. Pennycook. 2004. ‘Beyond plagiarism: transgressive and nontransgressive intertextuality,’ Journal of Language, Identity, and Education 3: 171–93. Currie, P. 1998. ‘Staying out of trouble: apparent plagiarism and academic survival,’ Journal of Second Language Writing 7: 1–18.

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teacher’s perceptions of the students’ citing behaviors in terms of, for example, how successful the student writers are in learning the conventional citing forms and whether they are right to omit citations for information they think is common knowledge. Relevant findings would reveal disciplinerelated differences that may well speak to distinctions that instructors in these fields may wish to address directly with students. Together, these studies should build up a theory of citing as a process of learning for novice academic writers.

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writing,’ Journal of Second Language Writing 12: 317–45. Pecorari, D. 2006. ‘Visible and occluded citation features in postgraduate second-language writing,’ English for Specific Purposes 25: 4–29. Pennycook, A. 1994. ‘The complex contexts of plagiarism: a reply to Deckert,’ Journal of Second Language Writing 3: 277–84. Pennycook, A. 1996. ‘Borrowing other’s words: text, ownership, memory, and plagiarism,’ TESOL Quarterly 30: 201–30. Petric´, B. 2004. ‘A pedagogical perspective on plagiarism,’ NovELTy 11: 4–18. Roig, M. 1997. ‘Can undergraduate students determine whether text has been plagiarized?’ Psychological Record 47: 113–23. Shi, L. 2004. ‘Textual borrowing in second language writing,’ Written Communication 21: 171–200. Sinclair, J. M. 1986. ‘Fictional worlds’ in M. Coulthard (ed.): Talking about Text. Birmingham: University of Birmingham ELR. Spack, R. 1997. ‘The acquisition of academic literacy in a second language: a longitudinal case study,’ Written Communication 14: 3–62. Starfield, S. 2002. ‘ ‘‘I’m a second-language English speaker’’: negotiating writer identity and authority in Sociology One,’ Journal of Language, Identity, and Education 1: 121–40. Tadros, A. 1993. ‘The pragmatics of text averral and attribution in academic texts’ in M. Hoey (ed.): Data, Description, Discourse. London: HarperCollins. Thompson, C. 2005. ‘‘Authority is everything’: a study of the politics of textual ownership and knowledge in the formation of student writer identities,’ International Journal for Educational Integrity 1. Available at http://www.ojs.unisa. edu.au/journals/index.php/IJEI/article/view/18. Accessed 15 December 2007. Watson-Gegeo, K. A. 1988. ‘Ethnography in ESL: defining the essentials,’ TESOL Quarterly 22: 575–92. Young, K. M. and L. Gaea. 1998. ‘Writing from primary documents: a way of knowing in history,’ Written Communication 15: 25–68.

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Deckert, G. D. 1993. ‘Perspectives on plagiarism from ESL students in Hong Kong,’ Journal of Second Language Writing 2: 131–48. Denzin, N. K. 1997. Interpretive Ethnography: Ethnographic Practices for the 21st Century. London: Sage Publications. Dong, Y. R. 1996. ‘Learning how to use citations for knowledge transformation: nonnative doctoral students’ dissertation writing in science,’ Research in the Teaching of English 30: 428–57. Fairclough, N. 1992. Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity Press. Hodges, J. C. 1962. Harbrace College Handbook. 5th edn. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World Inc. Holstein, J. A. and J. F. Gubrium. 2004. ‘The active interview’ in D. Silverman (ed.): Qualitative Research: Theory, Method and Practice. London: Sage Publications. Howard, R. M. 1992. ‘A plagiarism pentimento,’ Journal of Teaching Writing 11: 233–45. Howard, R. M. 1995. ‘Plagiarism, authorships, and the academic penalty,’ College English 57: 788–806. Hull, G. and M. Rose. 1989. ‘Rethinking remediation,’ Written Communication 6: 139–54. McCormick, F. 1989. ‘The Plagiario and the professor in our peculiar institution,’ Journal of Teaching Writing 8: 133–45. Miller, J. and B. Glassner. 2004. ‘The ‘‘inside’’ and the ‘‘outside’’: finding realities in interviews’ in D. Silverman (ed.): Qualitative Research: Theory, Method and Practice. London: Sage Publications. Moore, T. 1997. ‘From test to note: cultural variation in summarization practices,’ Prospect 12: 54–63. Odell, L., D. Goswami, and A. Herrington. 1983. ‘The discourse-based interview: a procedure for exploring the tacit knowledge of writers in non-academic settings’ in P. Mosenthal, L. Tamor, and S. Walmsley (eds): Research on Writing. New York: Longman. Pecorari, D. 2003. ‘Good and original: plagiarism and patchwriting in academic second-language

Applied Linguistics 31/1: 25–44 ß Oxford University Press 2008 doi:10.1093/applin/amn046 Advance Access published on 6 December 2008

Practices of Other-Initiated Repair in the Classrooms of Children with Specific Speech and Language Difficulties JULIE RADFORD Institute of Education, University of London

INTRODUCTION Many children in schools experience specific speech and language difficulties (SSLDs) (Dockrell et al. 2006), also widely referred to as children with specific language impairment. These children are characterized, in particular, by lexical and grammatical language difficulties (Leonard 2000) that may impact on interpersonal communication. Education is typically delivered in schools where they receive additional resources from trained language teachers and speech and language therapists/pathologists (Law et al. 2000). The priority of specialised professionals is to develop the children’s understanding and use of grammar and vocabulary, to develop interpersonal communication skills and to facilitate access to the curriculum (Dockrell and Messer 1999). The fact that children with SSLDs spend a large proportion of their time in regular classrooms, where the vehicle of instruction is primarily oral (Edwards and Westgate 1994; Cazden 2001), places them at a significant disadvantage. Their dilemma for accessing the curriculum is exacerbated when teacher–pupil discourse is primarily targeted at whole class groups, such as during

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Repair practices used by teachers who work with children with specific speech and language difficulties (SSLDs) have hitherto remained largely unexplored. Such classrooms therefore offer a new context for researching repairs and considering how they compare with non-SSLD interactions. Repair trajectories are of interest because they are dialogic sites where the child’s meaning is being negotiated and, therefore, where adults might create opportunities for language learning. The interactions take place during activities, such as story writing, where teachers elicit children’s ideas and orient to their lack of clarity. From a data set of 78 cases, four significant patterns of teacher repair initiation emerged. First, non-specific repair initiators (RIs), such as ‘say that again’, target any aspect of the prior turn and reveal the adult’s lack of grasp of its content. Next, specific RIs (‘she has’) that are constructed with minimal components of the child’s turn, pinpoint the location of the trouble but provide no new lexical information. In contrast, specific RIs that are constructed as ‘wh’ questions (‘down where’), target the nature of the trouble and elicit further information. Finally, offers of candidates (‘do you mean X’) do provide new models of lexis but do not elicit repetition from the child.

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mathematics and literacy lessons (Mroz et al. 2000; Smith et al. 2004). Arguably the most important factor concerns the quality of the interaction itself. International research continues to report the prevalence of interrogative and evaluative styles of talk in classrooms (Alexander 2001), despite many efforts to foster the increased participation of children during interactions. A well-documented system, called the ‘IRE/F’, constrains the participation of teachers and students (Sinclair and Coulthard 1975; Mehan 1979). It is characterized by the teacher initiating a ‘test’ question (I) that is followed by a known answer/response (R) (Macbeth 2004). The third turn position, following the child’s response, is where evaluation (E) typically occurs, although there is potential for other devices that build upon the child’s turn, such as follow-up (F) or extension moves (Wells 1993) and uptake questions (Nystrand 1997). In IRE/F discourse contexts, however, children with SSLDs run the risk of becoming passive and lacking engagement in their learning (Radford and Ireson 2006). Minimal participation may lead to reduced opportunities for language learning, because topic-related exchanges are shortened and trouble sources may remain unresolved (Sadler and MogfordBevan 1997). An alternative to interrogative and evaluative talk is dialogic discourse that is evident during some types of classroom activities, for example in France, England and India (Skidmore 2000; Alexander 2001). Dialogic interactions provide higher quality learning experiences for children than talk that is teacher-led (Mercer 1995, 2000; Mercer and Littleton 2007). Dialogic talk is characterized by (at least some) questions that provoke thoughtful answers, the sharing of ideas between teachers and students, children’s free articulation of ideas and the chaining of ideas for a common purpose (Mercer 2000; Alexander 2006). Children with SSLDs could benefit from dialogic discourse provided that the language is accessible and allowance is made for their expressive difficulties. There is preliminary evidence that specialist language teachers engage in dialogic teaching with children with specific language difficulties during small group activities, such as story writing and news telling (Radford et al. 2006). Drawing on studies into the co-construction of topic using conversation analysis (CA) (Button and Casey 1984, 1985; Radford and Tarplee 2000; Ridley et al. 2002), the authors demonstrate how the children and their teachers co-construct topic on a turn-by-turn basis. Two examples are now provided that are relevant to the data analysed in the current study because children’s own ideas are generated in these contexts. Owing to the children’s language difficulties novel ideas, as we shall see in the later analyses, frequently necessitate the initiation of repair. The resulting trajectory of talk that deals with the repair is, arguably, an example of dialogic discourse. The first example, an ‘invitation’ sequence, has been found when teachers construct a story with a group of children [Extract (A), taken from Radford et al. 2006]. Invitation sequences differ from question-with-knownanswer sequences because, although they are suited to constraining the child’s response in terms of adherence to a story-line, they accomplish the generation

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of the child’s novel story ideas. As such, the teacher is not predicting precisely what ideas the child will offer, and therefore what s/he will subsequently receive as a relevant contribution.

The second example is found during a one-to-one speaking-book activity where the teacher and child are discussing pictures and photographs that the child has chosen. These pictures have been brought from the child’s home and the teacher has not seen them before. Extract (B) shows the teacher using a topic initial elicitor (TIE) (Button and Casey 1984) which is heard by the child as a request to offer ideas. The TIE sequence differs from a question-with-known-answer sequence because the child treats it as an opportunity to choose his/her own topical material, albeit within the constraints of relevancy to the picture. In the case of photographs, the child may offer personal news ideas whereas, in the case of pictures, the ideas may concern a description of any detail of the picture (Radford et al. 2006).

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Extract (A) begins with the teacher’s (T) story starter line (‘there was a’), that is designed to be incomplete and, therefore, completed by a nominated child. The child (line 2) treats T’s turn as a request to contribute an idea concerning the story’s character. Other examples of next turns include children’s ideas relevant to the story’s title, the setting or the plot. The teacher’s response to the child’s ideas is not an evaluation, but an ‘acceptance’ which can take a variety of forms. In line 3 it is a repeat of the child’s idea and, in some cases, the verbal idea is drawn onto a flipchart to make a visual representation of the story constructed so far (lines 5 and 6).

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PARTICIPANTS, DATA SET AND METHOD The adult participants were three specialized teachers who had all worked in language resource provision for at least 10 years. Whilst they were not

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In line 2, the teacher’s TIE at first appears to resemble an instruction, although it could take the form of a request for a telling ‘can you tell me. . .’. However, the child treats it as an open inquiry and offers her own ideas to describe the picture (line 2). The teacher responds to the ideas with topicalization of the material generated so far (Button and Casey 1984; Radford and Tarplee 2000). Here we find ‘mhm’, a continuer that does the job of topicalizing in this context. The child orients to the topicalizer and the silence with continuation of her description (line 6). If, instead of topicalization, the teacher had elected to evaluate the child’s response and asked a test-like question, the child would have been denied the opportunity to pursue the topic that she had nominated herself. As invitation and TIE sequences are suited to the generation of ideas by the children, they provide potentially richer resources for language learning than known-answer questions that generate short, unexpanded responses. Sequences that have further potential, but have not yet been investigated, are where acceptance or topicalization of the children’s ideas is withheld. Instead, the participants suspend the usual sequence in order to deal with a trouble (see Schegloff 1972, on insertion sequences). Children with SSLDs, owing to the very nature of their linguistic problems, produce turns that contain grammatical or lexical errors or risk being unclear to the listener. When teachers initiate repair (usually) in the next turn, the insertion sequence deals contingently with the child’s trouble. During the insertion, the teacher might provide correction (Jefferson 1987), which in language teaching would take the form of a more competent model of grammar or lexis, as compared with the child’s version. Another possibility is that the teacher might initiate repair such that the child is placed to revise her/his original move. This article aims to explicate, in detail, a series of practices where teachers and children are dealing with repair, when acceptance or topicalization of the child’s idea is withheld. More specifically, the article will pay particular attention to the design of the teachers’ initiator techniques and the actions accomplished by them. Owing to the pedagogical interests of the researcher, the analysis will highlight the relative strength of the repair initiator (RI) to locate the problem with speaking/hearing/understanding (Schegloff et al. 1977; Schegloff 1997). Techniques that provide the least help in locating the trouble, such as open class RIs (e.g. ‘pardon’) (Drew 1997) will be compared with those that locate the repairable more specifically and/or supply a candidate offer to the child. Some tentative suggestions will be made concerning the ordering of these devices in oral language lessons. It is of further empirical interest to compare the findings to studies conducted by conversation analysts in first and second language discourse contexts since there is no parallel work in the classrooms of children with SSLD.

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qualified as speech and language therapists/pathologists, they did have post-training qualifications in the area of language development and SSLDs. There were six children, aged 4 years 4 months to 8 years 7 months at the time of the first visit, who all had ‘statements’ of special educational need that indicated the need for language resource provision. Information about the nature of their language difficulties was collected by questionnaire that was completed by the teacher and speech and language therapist/pathologist together. Table 1 shows that the children had mainly receptive and expressive language difficulties,2 characterized also by semantic problems. Children with significant speech difficulties, such as verbal dyspraxia, phonological difficulties and pragmatic difficulties3 were excluded. Story writing, book-sharing and circle-time activities were selected by the teachers as best examples of oral language teaching. Story writing and circletime activities were conducted in small groups of five to six children, although two target children in each activity were the focus for the analysis. Booksharing was conducted on a one-to-one basis with the teacher. Video-recordings were made with a digital camera on four separate occasions, yielding a data set of 24 lessons (8–45 min long). Radio-microphones were positioned on the teacher and the quietest of the two target children in the group activities to help increase the accuracy of the recordings. Repeated viewings were made followed by detailed transcriptions of selected segments. Given that, apart from aforementioned work, there are no detailed studies of interaction in the classrooms of children with specific language difficulties, one possible analytical approach would be to borrow or adapt a coding scheme used in second language classroom research. This was rejected for several reasons. In terms of children’s moves, coding single turns, for instance as phonological, lexical or grammatical ‘errors’ (Lyster 1998), would be inappropriate because (i) many of the turns contain multiple sources of trouble and (ii) unclear content is a common source of trouble in specific language difficulties data, but it only becomes apparent from the teacher’s display of difficulty in the subsequent turn or turns. Similarly, coding single teacher moves as, for example, repetitions, recasts or requests for clarification (Loewen 2004) would be problematic as shown in the analysis. This study thus adopts CA perspective in order to represent ‘how participants themselves produce and interpret each other’s actions’ (Pomerantz 1988: 361). First, the author made a collection of 245 instances of repair of which 78 cases appeared, superficially at least, to be dealing with repair initiated in response to the child’s idea. The analysis next proceeded by repeated viewings of the video sequences, which uncovered how apparently similar practices, such as repetitions, accomplish completely different actions (Schegloff 1997). It also showed how actions can co-occur, notably checking/correction/clarification. Furthermore, a rich and detailed analysis of participants’ moves was made, including linguistic detail, non-verbal action and prosody, which is essential to fully document the competences of children with language difficulties and their teachers.

8 8 4 4 5 5

A B C D E F

7 months 3 months 4 months 8 months 10 months 5 months

F F M F F F

Gender

3 2 2 3 3 3

Receptive

2 2 2 3 3 3

Expressive syntax 0 0 1 2 1 1

Phonology

0 0 0 0 0 0

Verbal dyspraxia 1 2 2 3 2 3

Naming

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Note: 0 = none, 1 = mild, 2 = moderate, 3 = severe.

years years years years years years

Age

Child

Table 1: Children’s SSLDs Pragmatics

1 1 1 0 1 3

Word meaning 2 2 2 3 2 3

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FINDINGS

Non-specific (‘general’) RIs What is distinctive about non-specific RIs is that when teachers signal trouble with the child’s response turn, they do not, by any specific design indicator, locate the item to be repaired. As such they target potentially any aspect of the child’s prior utterance. Children have different options in response: they can either repeat or reformulate their own previous material in the following turn or turns. Extract (C) illustrates three examples of ‘general’ RIs: a repetition request at line 3 and two statements of uncertainty (lines 5 and 7). The context of the extract is story writing with a small group of six children. The teacher (T) has already written and drawn several of the children’s ideas onto a flipchart regarding the characters and story-line and now asks the children a question.

T’s question (line 1) would typically be heard by the child as a request for an idea concerning the story’s title. As the child (Ch) offers a verbal contribution at line 2, T’s relevant next would be to accept the idea (often in the form of a repeat). Instead, an insertion sequence suspends production of T’s acceptance to deal with a trouble. T’s use of ‘say that again’ gives

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A series of other-initiated repair (OIR) practices are described, of interest for language learning because they are dialogic sites where the child’s meaning is potentially being negotiated. First, there is an account of OIRs that are ‘non-specific’ in the sense that each RI has an open design that orients to the teacher’s problems hearing/understanding the child’s turn(s). Non-specific OIRs are, for the most part, treated as prompts to repeat. In contrast, the next examples are classed as ‘specific’ OIRs since the teacher pinpoints, in various ways, the location of the trouble, either because she leads the child into its location with a non-completed utterance, or because she uses a ‘wh’ question to specify its nature. Finally, examples where candidate offers are made will be explored, including requests for definition.

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‘Pardon’ could indicate that the trouble-source entails an issue related to T’s hearing and thus be heard as a request for a repeat. Yet, the child’s subsequent move is designed differently: while she does repeat some lexical components of her idea, she also reformulates her original word order and verb form. An explanation for the reformulation might be that open class RIs are claimed to treat ‘the whole of the prior turn as in some way problematic’ (Drew 1997). The child thus orients to T’s signalling of trouble with potentially any element of her turn at line 2. As in Extract (C), the open class RI is not targeting a specific component of the child’s message for repair. Features of all non-specific designs are that T’s options for repair initiation are constrained: if the child’s turn is not heard or understood clearly, T is unable to incorporate elements of the turn in a subsequent move. In this sense, T’s response is a ‘general’ repair initiation, as opposed to the more specific formats that will be presented next.

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the child an unambiguous message that a repeat is needed. In fact, line 3 has the appearance of an instruction, given the absence of lexical or syntactic markers of politeness. Although the child offers a response in line 4, T indicates continued trouble with a further non-specific marker of uncertainty (line 5). Ch next produces a non lexical item (‘ee::’), so T responds with a third RI, this time clearly displaying her difficulty with understanding. This also fails to solve the trouble so it is left to T to suggest a story name idea. A notable feature is that each of T’s RIs target the whole of Ch’s prior as opposed to marking out specific elements for Ch’s attention. Extract (C) showed three examples of non-specific RIs: a statement that a repeat is needed, and two statements that display general trouble with hearing or understanding. As the child’s responses were unintelligible, further data are needed to clarify the sequential consequences of such actions. Extract (D) has a clearer outcome because the teacher indicates trouble with an open class RI (‘pardon’, line 3) and this is taken up by the child as an opportunity to reformulate her grammar. The sequence takes place where the children are invited to suggest a plot line for the group’s story. The child’s subsequent ideas include both a novel character and an event. That the name ‘Dina’ that she supplies is searched-for is indicated by the stretched sound at the end of ‘com:::’ and the brief silence. The relevant next, a teacher acceptance, is once again withheld and an insertion sequence begins.

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Specific RIs (designedly incomplete utterances) that pinpoint the location of the trouble source

Although Tom offers the name of an animal, T withholds acceptance of this idea. Instead, she initiates an insertion sequence in line 3 with a DIU. It is a single word that is formed in a similar fashion to T’s original version and the child’s production: it repeats the element that preceded the lexical item, preserving the lengthening of the vowel and continuing intonation. Her trouble could have entailed hearing and is confirmed by her body language: a shake of the head and leaning posture. The child’s response shows her interpretation of the DIU, thus she supplies a repeat of the noun phrase (line 4), rather than a reformulation. The repeat supplies T with information and she offers her candidate hearing, proffered for confirmation. Although the hearing is confirmed by the child, T pursues a definition, as if to find out if the child knows what a cheetah is. One notable feature of the DIU is that it targets the trouble source

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When teacher’s acceptance of a child’s idea is withheld, a common design for initiation of an insertion sequence, is a designedly incomplete utterance (DIU). Whilst acknowledging that there is a small data set and more research is needed, the DIUs found in the classrooms of children with SSLDs share the following characteristics to those reported in second language writing conferences (Koshik 2002). First, they are constructed with minimal components, either a phrase or an individual word, that borrow fragments of the child’s prior turn. Next, they are used to perform different actions: on the one hand, through partial repeat of the child’s turn, a DIU may elicit repetition of prior talk [Extract (E)]; on the other hand, it may be used to target an error and prompt the child to self-correct [Extract (F)]. Extract (E) takes place during the early phase of the group story writing session where characters are being decided. The teacher targets Tom, using an oral cloze technique (incomplete utterance and vowel stretch), to select a character. In his turn, Tom begins with a repeat of T’s modelled story starter ‘there was a:::’. Prolongation of the vowel sound, constructed with continuing intonation, and the brief silence indicate that he is searching for a novel idea to offer the teacher.

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very precisely by leading the child, at least syntactically, up to the location of the trouble. Furthermore, the DIU has pedagogical value in so far as it generates both confirmation and definition sequences that afford further opportunities for language learning. A similar design of DIU is found in Extract (F) but the work that it does is different from Extract (E) because the child hears it as a request for revision rather than for repetition. The teacher and child have just embarked on the speaking-book activity so, as they turn the page to reveal a new picture to talk about, they embark on a TIE sequence. Downloaded from applij.oxfordjournals.org by guest on December 31, 2010

The child responds to T’s topic elicitor with a description of a girl (line 2), although the turn is partially unclear to both T and the researcher. That Ch’s gaze remains on the picture suggests that she is engaged in solitary searching during the silence. At line 3 T withholds topicalization and, instead, produces a DIU. It is formed by using two words of Ch’s turn up to the point at which there was potentially a missing adjective, as seen in Ch’s subsequent turn (line 4). Continuing intonation and gaze directed at the child, rather than the picture, suggests that the turn may be actioning a prompt. Ch hears it as a prompt, perhaps owing to the syntactic incompleteness of ‘she has’, not to produce the noun but a relevant next adjective ‘long’. T hears Ch’s turn and displays acceptance of the child’s idea with a repeat of both the child’s adjective and noun from line 2. In terms of pedagogical value, by generating further information from the child, the DIU sets up an opportunity for T to expand the material and supply further contingent models of language. Like Koshik’s (2002) DIUs, these two examples are not complete turn constructional units, but are recognizably complete actions that are designed, with the child’s own words, to be incomplete and thus completed by the child. In response, the child is not ‘interrupting’, even though T’s turn construction unit is not completed. The child orients to T’s design (where it stops) and continues with a syntactically fitted contribution. The first example (‘a::’) led the child to re-produce her noun and therefore complete the noun phrase. The second, a phrase, was not only an oral invitation to complete the sentence, but also taken as an opportunity by the child to revise the next item of her original phrase. DIUs are prosodically marked here, by sound stretches and by continuing intonation which position the child to continue the phrase or sentence. DIUs, thus, target very specifically the location of a trouble. Yet, even when they are heard as invitations to self-correct, they do not give the child semantic

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Specific RIs (‘wh’ questions) that pinpoint the nature of the trouble source The next sequences show three types of RIs that are formatted as ‘wh’ questions: a request to provide specific information and two requests for definition. Instead of being heard as requests for repetition, the ‘wh’ questions are treated as requests to supply further information. The analysis will reveal how their designs serve to pinpoint precisely, not so much the location of the trouble source, as in DIUs, but the nature of the repairable. The analysis will also show how the child orients to the RI by making a revision that provides additional information in terms of novel aspects to the story-line. Extract (G) takes place in the context of genuine news enquiry and reporting. As the child’s reports are potentially ‘news’ to the teacher, any new ideas are susceptible to lack of clarity. The turn of interest is at line 6, and is part of the emerging newstelling sequence. The child and teacher are looking at a photograph in the ‘speaking-book’ and Ch is reporting a personal news account about taking her dog, Penny, for a walk.

The teacher responds to Ch by asking a genuine question since she has not experienced the walk-with-the-dog. The enquiry is itemized in so far as she targets the location of the walk as a topic for further talk. The child’s pause and searching behaviour (‘uh::m’) show that a response is being searched-for. To assist the child’s search T offers a candidate answer of a

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information that could be usable in the subsequent correction. Both examples have pedagogical value in so far as T indicates the trouble source very specifically and generate further opportunities for targeted language practice. Finally, it is worth mentioning how the current examples are different from the writing conference examples reported by Koshik (2002). In most of the writing conference data, a written text was an additional available resource that was visible (at least on occasion) to the participants. In contrast, the language difficulty data are taken from oral language lessons, so the teachers are dealing with online discourse problems. That the children have language difficulties places an additional burden on the listener to process the children’s turns accurately, especially when novel ideas are being generated in an activity like story writing.

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potential location in line 4. However, as the reported event is the child’s experience, Ch holds the expert knowledge about what happened and rejects T’s version (‘no’). Following the rejection, Ch does supply some information that answers the itemized enquiry. At line 6, given T’s puzzled look, she seems to treat this turn as providing partial information regarding the location of the walk. She thus appears to be making an itemized enquiry to elicit specific information relevant to the news report. Although the request has a minimal format, recycling just one lexical item of the child’s turn (‘down’), it is informative to the child. There are two important dimensions: lexically, ‘whe:re’ indicates that a location is the source of trouble; prosodically, loudness on ‘whe:re’ marks out the item that lacks clarity. In response, (line 7), Ch answers the question by supplying potentially clarifying information. Even though the analyst found it impossible to tell, because the ambiguity of the homophone ‘see/sea’ in English, whether or not the child was using a verb (see) or was self-repairing use of the determiner ‘the’ before the noun ‘sea’, T displays an understanding which is confirmed by the child. T’s repair initiation at line 6, then, is heard by the child as an invitation to offer further information that has the additional effect of clarifying her news report. Furthermore, at line 8, when T pursues the information generated by the RI, the child is afforded another language model that is contingent. Extracts (H) and (J) illustrate typical definition-type requests that were widely used by the specialist teachers. Whilst the author acknowledges that more examples are needed to be confident about claims regarding their systematicity, both examples adopt a similar grammatical format (‘what’s X’) and initiate repair on a lexical item just used by the child which displays the T’s lack of understanding of Ch’s usage in that context. In the first example, Ch supplies different information that revises the earlier version of her lexical item. In the second example, there is no revision but, instead, it is heard as a request to provide additional information concerning the trouble source. In Extract (H), the exchange takes place in the context of picture description where, earlier in the sequence, the child had contributed a range of ideas. At line 20, Ch is continuing her description and is currently talking about the activities of a frog.

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The teacher’s question at line 5 signals her on-going trouble with Ch’s idea, also confirmed by T’s simultaneous non-verbal behaviour (shaking her head). The question has the appearance of a request for definition. How Ch heard T’s request is unclear. Perhaps, owing to her language difficulty, she was unable to supply a standard definition (e.g. a small wooden building). The action accomplished here, interestingly, is that she supplies a novel idea that is relevant to the story-line. T’s subsequent reformulation (line 7) incorporates the ideas from both line 2 as well as the new material produced

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In UK English, ‘neighbourhood’ (line 20) is a rare item of vocabulary and its use with respect to frogs is particularly unusual. The teacher in line 21, drawing presumably on this world knowledge, offers a candidate hearing by repeating the final two words of Ch’s turn. The candidate hearing is confirmed by Ch in line 22 (‘yeah’). Despite Ch’s confirmation, T continues to remain confused. She displays this confusion with a specific request in line 23 to define the problematic phrase (‘his neighbourhood’). The grammatical format ‘what’s X?’ supplies Ch with information that a word definition is needed. In line 24, the child does not, however, supply a definition but responds by reformulating the trouble source. The child’s self-repair is prefaced by ‘I mean’ that appears to indicate a degree of metalinguistic awareness on her part about self-correction. That Ch produces the lexical item (‘neighbour’) at line 24 gives T opportunity for a repeat and, therefore, a further module of the correct lexis. Extract (J) illustrates an apparently comparable request at line 5. It also emerges from prior talk that is dealing with checking mutual understanding and has the same grammatical form (‘what’s X’). What is different here is that, instead of being heard as a request for revision, the child is able to provide a partial definition of item ‘X’. At the beginning of Extract (J) we find a TIE sequence that generates a plot idea from the child. Although Ch offers a novel idea (given that ‘sheds’ have not been talked about so far), T withholds acceptance to initiate an insertion sequence. She repeats the last two words that the child said with additional loudness on ‘SHED’ and final rising intonation, as if to check for confirmation. The child offers non-verbal confirmation rather than a revision of her turn (line 4).

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Offers of candidates that supply a linguistic model The examples shown in Extract (K) are distinctive because there is material in the teacher’s turns that has not been mutually shared in prior talk, according to the available data. There are two teacher moves of particular interest: at line 5 there is a candidate understanding and, at line 10, an offer of a candidate that does the job of correction. Offers of candidates can be useful when a speaker anticipates that a hearer will experience difficulty supplying the relevant information and the speaker wants to offer help (Pomerantz 1988). The example at line 10 is formed as a modulated other-correction ‘Do you mean X?’ (Schegloff et al. 1977), although at line 5 there is a variation of form. T and Ch are talking about a picture of the seaside that Ch has drawn to represent her story setting.

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in 6. The work done by the repair initiation is therefore to achieve a definition that has the additional effect of contributing to the ongoing story-line (T later displays acceptance by drawing both ideas onto the flipchart). The RI also creates a sequential opportunity for the teacher (line 7) to supply an expanded model of the child’s ideas, which has value in terms of language learning. A further observation is that a candidate hearing/understanding (proffered for confirmation) precedes clarification in each of these sequences and appeared with some regularity elsewhere in the data set. As an illustration, Extracts (H) and (J) involve two teachers working with very different children of different ages and yet the pattern is similar. First of all, there is the first part of an adjacency pair, formed with a repeat of the child’s noun phrase [Extract (H), line 21, ‘his neighbourhood’; Extract (J), line 3, ‘a SHED?’]. This provides a candidate hearing or understanding that makes relevant the child’s confirmation or correction. What appears to be happening is that, in the context of content troubles, a first move is to check that the trouble does not reside with the teacher herself: could it have entailed her own problem with hearing or understanding? In both cases confirmation is given, so a hearing/understanding problem is ruled out. Yet, T’s pursuit of elaboration of the item persists, which has the effect of initiating a pedagogical side sequence that targets the child’s current understanding of the lexical item. A design like ‘what’s X’ does two jobs. First, it invites the child to provide further information and, as we see here, the information is forthcoming, either as a revision or as material relevant to the topic. Next, since X is a component of the child’s prior turn, it marks out very specifically the item to be talked about, which renders it pedagogically useful for displaying the child’s understanding. This distinguishes the practice from the single item ‘what?’ technique that targets the whole of the prior (Schegloff 1997). A final, somewhat tentative observation, is that there appears to a ‘natural ordering’ at work, based on the relative strength or power of the teachers’ techniques to locate the repairable (Schegloff et al. 1977). The teachers are employing their moves in order of increasing strength.

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At the start of the sequence the setting is being described and an additional character suggestion is made at line 3.

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Ch’s idea, ‘a nice snake’ is treated as problematic by T who withholds acceptance. An insertion sequence is initiated in line 4 with a repeat of the lexical item which is formed with high pitch rise, as if to signal surprise. T makes two specific queries concerning the snake’s whereabouts in lines 4 and 5. The first, beginning with ‘wha d’y’mea:n’, at first appears as a challenge to the credibility of Ch’s account (Schegloff 1997). A more likely interpretation is that T is targeting ‘in the water’ for clarification of the child’s meaning. Instead of waiting for a response, T directly offers a candidate understanding ‘in the sea?’ (line 5) of the Ch’s turn at line 3. Ch does not respond pragmatically to T’s queries or take up the offer of the candidate. Instead, she treats the turn as a hearing or understanding check, with a repeat of her phrase (line 6). No new topical material is produced by Ch, so mutual understanding has yet to be reached which is indicated by T re-visiting the problem at line 9. This turn signals T’s confusion (‘I’ve never see:n a snake in the sea.’) now making it explicit that her own world experience does not fit Ch’s claim. In line 10, T offers a further candidate with the modulated other correction format ‘do you mean X.’ In contrast with line 5, it has falling intonation which confirms its status as a correction. Use of the verb ‘mean’ indicates clearly to Ch that the issue concerns T’s understanding rather than hearing. In order to correct ‘snake’ to ‘eel’ T needed to guess by drawing on a range of contextual information. How are candidate offers significant for a discussion of language learning opportunities? In lengthy repair sequences, given the new material that they include, they occasion further opportunities for language practice. When offering a candidate item, the teacher is providing a model to the child of what is relevant and appropriate to produce as a response (Pomerantz 1988). In the case of ‘d’y’mean an eel?’ the model is a single lexical item, although grammatical units could equally be modelled in this way. The teacher leads the child to focus on the item, and further exposes it, by placing it in the final position of the turn and marking it with additional prosodic emphasis. Yet, in the example presented here and others in the data set, it is not repeated, even following

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teacher repetition at line 12. An explanation is that a relevant response to this type of yes/no question is either for the child to confirm T’s guess as the correct target, or to give a different version if the guess is incorrect.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

(i) Non-specific (‘general’) RIs:    

constructed as an open class RI (‘pardon’) or as a message that the trouble source entails hearing (‘say that again’) or understanding (‘I don’t know what that means’); target the whole, or potentially any aspect, of the child’s prior turn; reveal a ‘substantial lack of grasp of what was said’ (Schegloff 1997; 524); used to elicit a repeat or reformulation of any (or all) of the prior.

(ii) Specific RIs: DIUs:    

constructed with minimal components of the child’s prior turn (‘a:::’; ‘she has’); used as a clue that pinpoints the location of the trouble source; provide no new lexical information; used to elicit a repeat of the child’s prior or to target an error and prompt self-correction.

(iii) Specific RIs: ‘Wh’ questions:   

constructed as ‘wh’ questions (‘down whe:re.’; ‘what’s his neighbourhood?’); used as a clue that pinpoints the nature of the trouble source; used to elicit further information about the trouble.

(iv) Offers of candidates:   

constructed as modulated other correction ‘do you mean X’; provide a new model of the type of information that is needed (Pomerantz 1988), such as a lexical item, but could be grammatical, for example morphology: not suited to eliciting a repeat (uptake) of the model since formed as a yes/no question.

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This analysis has detailed, for the first time, a variety of techniques adopted by specialist teachers to initiate repair in response to troubles hearing or understanding children’s novel ideas. Given that children with SSLD typically display problems with their production of phonology, syntax and semantics, their original ideas commonly occasion insertion sequences that deal with the business of correction, other-initiation and self-repair. Such sequences afford contingent opportunities for dialogic discourse and, therefore, provide potential opportunities for language learning. Four distinct types of RI practices emerged as prevalent patterns in a substantial database of 78 cases. It is now worth summarizing the key characteristics of these techniques.

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Non-specific RIs are distinguished from specific RIs principally by the degree of information afforded to the child. The former target the trouble source more generally, so the child has a wider domain of prior utterance(s) from which to select in order to formulate a repeat or revision. Specific formats are more focused: they either target the location of the trouble (DIUs) or the nature of the trouble (‘wh’ questions). DIUs are used to both elicit repeats and to prompt self-correction. Furthermore, ‘wh’ questions include requests for word definition, and these are suited to eliciting the child’s display of understanding of lexical items. Whereas offers of candidates provide a linguistic model, they are not taken as opportunities for repeat (or ‘uptake’, as in Loewen 2004). General’ RIs are preceded by less clear child contributions, where the only option is to target the whole/any of the prior. In contrast, specific RIs are possible in contexts where the child has been, at least partially, heard or understood. This affords the opportunity to repeat part of the prior, as in DIUs, or to target a specific component such as in offers of candidates (‘Do you mean X?’) or ‘wh’ questions. Detailed descriptions of repair practices have important implications for practitioners. Studies of repair trajectories in classrooms where children are learning a second language have identified distinctive patterns that are associated with different communicative tasks (Seedhouse 2004). As far as the field of speech and language therapy is concerned, comparable work has provided preliminary insights into interactions between adults and children with specific language impairment (Gardner 2005) and adults with acquired speech disorders (Bloch 2005). In terms of the current study, both teachers and speech and language therapists will gain a richer understanding of adults’ responses to children’s ideas during language interventions, especially when dealing with sources of unclear meaning. From a methodological perspective, using CA has afforded fresh insights into the participants’ behaviours. Whereas Radford et al. (2006) broadened the notions of teacher initiation (I) and child response (R), this study provides fresh insight into feedback (F) practices that initiate repair and the actions accomplished by a range of designs. Although not a primary aim, the study also demonstrates the rich interactional competencies of the children to engage in repair sequences, despite their evident language difficulties. Furthermore, it is evident that in analysing the data of children with speech and language difficulties, external judgements of ‘errors’ would be misleading. The broader construct of trouble source may be better suited to ‘messier’ data, whilst the participants’ perspectives are key to interpreting the actions accomplished. Yet, as CA has rarely been adopted in studies of such children, there is a considerable amount of work still to do. Future research aims to explore a wider range of lesson and participant contexts and examine in more detail other design features, such as the non-verbal and prosodic features of the interaction.

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APPENDIX Transcription key1 (0.5) (.) = []

hh ((points)) ::: ! () (guess) . , ? "# under CAPITALS 88 >< !

NOTES 1

The transcription conventions used in this article (as shown in the Appendix)

are based on the system originally developed by Gail Jefferson, as

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.hh

The number in brackets indicates silence by tenths of seconds. A dot enclosed in a bracket indicates a gap in the talk of less than twotenths of a second. The equals sign indicates ‘latching’ between utterances. Square brackets between adjacent lines of concurrent speech indicate the onset and end of a spate of overlapping talk. A dot before an ‘h’ indicates speaker in-breath. The more h’s the longer the breath. An ‘h’ indicates an out-breath. The more h’s the longer the breath. A description enclosed in a bracket, and written in italics, indicates a non-verbal activity. For example ((points at picture)). A dash indicates a sharp cut-off of the prior word or sound. Colons indicate that the speaker has stretched the preceding sound or letter. The more colons the greater the extent of the stretching. Exclamation marks indicate an animated or emphatic tone. Empty parentheses indicate the presence of an unclear fragment of tape. The words within a single bracket indicate the transcriber’s best guess at an unclear utterance. A full stop indicates a stopping fall in tone. It does not necessarily indicate the end of a sentence. A comma indicates a ‘continuing’ intonation. A question mark indicates a rising inflection. It does not necessarily indicate a question. Pointed arrows indicate a marked falling or rising intonational shift. They are placed immediately before the onset of the shift. Underlined fragments indicate speaker emphasis. Words in capitals mark a section of speech noticeably louder than that surrounding it. Degree signs are used to indicate that the talk they encompass is spoken noticeably quieter than the surrounding talk. ‘More than’ and ‘less than’ signs indicate that the talk they encompass was produced noticeably quicker than the surrounding talk. Arrows in the left margin point to specific parts of an extract discussed in the text.

J. RADFORD

2

reported in Atkinson and Heritage (1984: ix–xvi). ‘Expressive’ language difficulties may include some or all of the following: problems with expressive syntax, morphology, articulation, phonology and word finding difficulties. ‘Receptive’ language difficulties entail problems

3

43

with the comprehension of syntax, morphology and word meanings (Conti-Ramsden and Botting 1999). ‘Pragmatic’ language difficulties are defined as problems in using language appropriately in a conversational context despite well-formed syntax (Bishop 2000).

REFERENCES Dockrell, J., G. Lindsay, B. Letchford, and C. Mackie. 2006. ‘Educational provision for children with specific speech and language difficulties: perspectives of speech and language therapy service managers,’ International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders 41/4: 423–40. Drew, P. 1997. ‘ ‘‘Open’’ class repair initiators in response to sequential sources of trouble in conversation,’ Journal of Pragmatics 28/1: 69–101. Edwards, A. D. and D. P. G. Westgate. 1994. Investigating Classroom Talk. 2nd edn. London: Falmer Press. Gardner, H. 2005. ‘A comparison of a mother and a therapist working on child speech’ in K. Richards and P. Seedhouse (eds): Applying Conversation Analysis. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Jefferson, G. 1987. ‘On exposed and embedded correction in conversation’ in G. Button and J. Lee (eds): Talk and Social Organization. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Koshik, I. 2002. ‘Designedly incomplete utterances: a pedagogical practice for eliciting knowledge displays in error correction sequences,’ Research on Language and Social Interaction 35/3: 277–309. Law, J., G. Lindsay, N. Peacey, M. Gascoigne, N. Soloff, J. Radford, S. Band, and L. Fitzgerald. 2000. Provision for Children with Speech and Language Needs in England and Wales. London: DfEE. Leonard, L. 2000. Children with Specific Language Impairment. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Loewen, S. 2004. ‘Uptake in incidental focus on form in meaning-focused ESL lessons,’ Language Learning 54/1: 153–88. Lyster, R. 1998. ‘Negotiation of form, recasts and explicit correction in relation to error

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Alexander, R. 2001. Culture and Pedagogy: International Comparisons in Primary Education. Oxford, UK/Malden, USA: Blackwell. Alexander, R. 2006. Towards Dialogic Teaching: Rethinking Classroom Talk. 3rd edn. Dialogos, UK: University of Cambridge. Atkinson, J. and J. Heritage (eds). 1984. Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bishop, D. V. M. 2000. ‘Pragmatic language impairment: a correlate of SLI, a distinct subgroup or part of the autistic continuum?’ in D. V. M. Bishop and L. B. Leonard (eds): Speech and Language Impairments in Children: Causes, Characteristics and Outcomes. East Sussex, UK: Psychology Press. Bloch, S. 2005. ‘Co-constructing meaning in acquired speech disorders: word and letter repetition in the construction of turns’ in K. Richards and P. Seedhouse (eds): Applying Conversation Analysis. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Button, G. and N. Casey. 1984. ‘Generating topic: the use of topic initial elicitors’ in J. M. Atkinson and J. Heritage (eds): Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Button, G. and N. Casey. 1985. ‘Topic nomination and topic pursuit,’ Human Studies 8: 3–55. Cazden, C. B. 2001. Classroom Discourse: The Language of Teaching and Learning. 2nd edn. Portsmouth: Heinemann. Conti-Ramsden, G. and N. Botting. 1999. ‘Classification of children with specific language impairment,’ Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research 42: 1195–204. Dockrell, J. and D. Messer. 1999. Children’s Language and Communication Difficulties: Understanding, Identification and Intervention. London: Cassell.

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Ridley, J., J. Radford, and M. Mahon. 2002. ‘How do teachers manage topic and repair?’ Child Language Teaching and Therapy 18/1: 43–58. Sadler, J. and K. Mogford-Bevan. 1997. ‘Teacher talk with children with language disorders: four case studies 2,’ Child Language Teaching and Therapy 11: 37–58. Schegloff, E. A. 1972. ‘Notes on a conversational practice,’ in D. Sudnow (ed.): Studies in Social Interaction. New York: Free Press. Schegloff, E. A. 1997. ‘Practices and actions: Boundary cases of other-initiated repair,’ Discourse Processes 23: 499–545. Schegloff, E. A., G. Jefferson, and H. Sacks. 1977. ‘The preference for self-correction in the organization of repair in conversation,’ Language 53: 361–82. Seedhouse, P. 2004. The Interactional Architecture of the Language Classroom. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Sinclair, J. M. and R. M. Coulthard. 1975. Towards an Analysis of Discourse: The English Used by Teachers and Pupils. London: Oxford University Press. Smith, F., F. Hardman, K. Wall, and M. Mroz. 2004. ‘Interactive whole class teaching in the national Literacy and Numeracy Strategies,’ British Educational Research Journal 30/3: 395–411. Skidmore, D. 2000. ‘From pedagogical dialogue to dialogical pedagogy,’ Language and Education 14/4: 283–96. Wells, G. 1993. ‘Re-evaluating the IRF Sequence: a proposal for the articulation of theories of activity and discourse for the analysis of teaching and learning in the classroom,’ Linguistics and Education 5: 1–37.

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types and learner repair in immersion classrooms,’ Language Learning 48: 183–218. Macbeth, D. 2004. ‘The relevance of repair for classroom correction,’ Language in Society 33: 703–36. Mehan, H. 1979. ‘ ‘‘What time is it Denise?’’: asking known information questions in classroom discourse,’ Theory into Practice 18/4: 285–94. Mercer, N. 1995. The Guided Construction of Knowledge: Talk Amongst Teachers and Learners. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Mercer, N. 2000. Words and Minds: How We Use Language to Think Together. London: Routledge. Mercer, N. and K. Littleton. 2007. Dialogue and the Development of Children’s Thinking: A Sociocultural Approach. London: Routledge. Mroz, M., F. Smith, and F. Hardman. 2000. ‘The discourse of the literacy hour,’ Cambridge Journal of Education 30/3: 379–90. Nystrand, M. 1997. Opening Dialogue: Understanding the Dynamics of Language and Learning in the English Classroom. New York: Teachers College Press. Pomerantz, A. 1988. ‘Offering a candidate answer,’ Communication Monographs 55: 360–73. Radford, J. and C. Tarplee. 2000. ‘The management of conversational topic by a ten-year-old child with pragmatic difficulty,’ Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics 14/5: 387–403. Radford, J. and J. Ireson. 2006. ‘Developing language skills through dialogic discourse,’ AFASIC Abstract Spring 1: 3. Radford, J., J. Ireson, and M. Mahon. 2006. ‘Triadic dialogue in oral communication tasks: what are the implications for language learning?,’ Language and Education 20/3: 191–210.

Applied Linguistics 31/1: 45–71 ß Oxford University Press 2008 doi:10.1093/applin/amn047 Advance Access published on 9 December 2008

Style Shifts among Japanese Learners before and after Study Abroad in Japan: Becoming Active Social Agents in Japanese NORIKO IWASAKI School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London

INTRODUCTION Societal interactions are structured by sociocultural norms of communities and are not easy to replicate in foreign language classrooms. Study abroad experiences provide second language (L2) learners with opportunities to observe first-hand how the language is used, to use the language themselves, and to observe how their utterances and performances unfold in subsequent interactions. Hence, studying abroad may facilitate acquisition of the aspects of language that are the most intimately associated with social norms and situations, such as the use of formal and informal styles. Yet, previous studies show that, though learners gain sociolinguistic knowledge while studying abroad, their knowledge and performance diverge from target norms. Barron (2006) found that Irish learners of German switched between the two address forms of ‘you’ (‘intimate/simple’ du and ‘polite/distant’ Sie) haphazardly within a turn after a 10-month stay in Germany. Regan (1995) also found that French learners overuse informal ne deletion in negatives after one academic year in France, which she

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Previous studies on L2 Japanese sojourners often reported that learners overuse the plain style or haphazardly mix the plain and polite styles upon return. These styles, which are often associated with formal or informal contexts, also index complex social and situational meanings, and native speakers are reported to shift their styles to create desired contexts. In order to better understand L2 development of the use of the plain and polite styles during study abroad, the current study examined the use of the polite/plain styles and style shifts among five English-speaking male students who studied in Japan for one academic year by comparing their performances both quantitatively and qualitatively in oral proficiency interviews before and after they studied abroad. Upon return, three predominantly used the polite style talking to the interviewer (their former teacher), while two primarily used the plain style. Though the quantitative analysis may lead one to conclude that these two students regressed in their pragmatic competence, the qualitative analysis revealed that all five learners gained some understanding of social meanings of the plain and polite styles and became more active social agents who make decisions to shift the styles.

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(1)

a. Iku. ‘(I) will go.’ b. Iki-masu. ‘(I) will go’.

(2)

a. Kiree da. ‘(it) is pretty.’ b. Kiree desu. ‘(it) is pretty.’

The choice between polite and plain forms needs to be made constantly with the consideration of various social and situational factors. Japanese textbooks generally first introduce the polite verb forms –mas(u) and copula des(u). This is presumably due to the ease of acquisition of polite forms and to the presumed desirability to err on the side of formality rather than informality. While the use of plain forms requires the learning of rather cumbersome morphological rules for negative and past formations [e.g. iku (non-past), ika-nai (negative), itta (past)] for each verb, the polite form formation is consistent across all verbs

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attributes to insufficient input in formal contexts. L2 Japanese speakers are also reported to overuse the informal style after studying abroad, presumably due to the influence of informal interactions (Marriott 1993, 1995). Therefore, ‘the recurrent finding was that students learn a more informal style during study abroad than at home in the classroom’ (Kasper and Rose 2002: 230). Interestingly, Kinginger and Farrell (2004) found that some advanced learners of French deliberately choose not to conform to the norms of address forms of ‘you’ (intimate tu and polite/distant vous) despite their knowledge. Learners sometimes feel that they do not need to conform to the norm (Barron 2003), or that the norm conflicts with their identity (Dufon 2000; Siegal 1995). Thus, the learning of formal/informal styles is not merely a matter of acquiring the forms and associating them with certain contextual features (e.g. the addressee’s social status). Rather, L2 learners learn to make their own choices as to which forms to use based on their understanding of the forms’ social meanings. Acquiring ways to convey an appropriate demeanor is vital in learning Japanese as an L2. Japanese has no neutral forms of politeness, and speakers cannot easily opt out of choosing the level of politeness—though there are some avoidance strategies speakers employ, such as the use of incomplete sentences (Cook 2006). Finite verbs and copulas are marked to indicate some acknowledgment of social and contextual factors as examples (1a and b) and (2a and b) indicate. The forms in (1a) and (2a) are generally used in informal situations and/or with an addressee with whom the speaker feels close, while (1b) and (2b) are used in more formal situations, most likely with a socially and psychologically distant addressee. The latter is the polite form, which is also referred to as des(u)/mas(u) form, or ‘addressee honorifics’ because it acknowledges distance and formality towards the addressee.1

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Polite and plain style and style shift What has thus far been called polite style is the style that utilizes polite forms of verbs –mas(u) or copula des(u), which express deference to addressees. The distinction between the polite and plain styles is traditionally viewed as a formal versus informal distinction based on social and situational factors (e.g. social status, presence/absence of intimacy) and is thus explained to L2 Japanese learners. However, the choice of these two styles is not simply a matter of observing social norms based on discernment of the contextual feature. Instead, polite and plain expressions index social meanings (i.e. the nature of relations and identities), such as in-group/out-group orientation (Makino 1983, 2002) and distance/proximity to the self and social role (Cook 1996). The choice between the two depends on ‘beliefs about who should speak deferentially and formally

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[e.g. iki-masu (non-past), iki-masen (negative), iki-masita (past)]. Furthermore, the consequence of using the polite form in informal situations is generally assumed to be not as adverse as the opposite in which case the speaker may sound rude.2 Learning the appropriate use of the styles was found to be the major obstacle for Australian secondary school students even after a year in Japan. Many overused the plain form (Hashimoto 1993; Marriott and Enomoto 1995; Marriott 1993, 1995). Most of the students in Marriott’s (1995) study used the polite style before going to Japan, but upon return they predominantly used the plain style or haphazardly mixed them. Interestingly, some of the students used a greater proportion of polite forms during role plays and picture descriptions than in interviews with a university instructor, which Marriot attributed to their higher awareness of language forms. Difficulty of acquiring appropriate styles is also reported for L2 Japanese learners who are college/university students or older. Atsuzawa-Windley and Noguchi (1995) found that university students who had previously studied in Japan for various lengths of time did not perform well in aspects related to politeness, overusing the informal plain style. Siegal’s (1995, 1996) in-depth study of four adult women studying in Japan demonstrated the complexity involved in the acquisition of sociolinguistic competence—involving the interplay of race, gender, and social status—which sometimes led to their resistance of using polite expressions. These previous studies show that studying abroad in Japan often leads to learners’ overuse of plain forms. However, these studies might have neglected the social/situational meanings of the styles by assuming that language style is bound to certain contextual features, such as the social status of the interlocutor. Recent work on style shifts among native Japanese speakers demonstrates that they do not always observe socially agreed-upon rules. Rather, they actively create speech styles and shift between them during interactions with the same addressee.

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THE CURRENT STUDY This study examines the use of polite and plain styles among five male university students from the United States, comparing their use of these styles before and after they studied abroad for a year. This may represent the circumstances in which politeness may not be highly valued by the participants because of the emphasis on informality in North American values (e.g. Althen 1988) and of a general cross-cultural expectation for women to be more polite than men (e.g. Brown and Levinson 1987; Okamoto 2002). By employing the oral proficiency interview (OPI), which complies with the guidelines of the American Council on Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL), this study first assesses the participants’ gains in overall proficiency,

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to whom, and under what circumstances’ (Okamoto 1999: 58), and the two styles are often mixed. In predominantly polite discourse, a speaker may switch to the plain style to state summaries, facts, convictions, feelings (e.g. Makino 1983, 2002), or to provide background information that is subordinate to the main idea (Ikuta 1983; Maynard 1991). Japanese speakers also express empathy (Ikuta 1983), spontaneous assertion of the speaker’s thought (Cook 1996), soliloquy, emotional, exclamatory reactions or closeness/friendliness (Okamoto 1999) by switching to the plain style. Okamoto (1999), for example, found that in an interaction between a professor and a former student the student occasionally used the plain style for exclamatory, emotional, or soliloquy-like expressions despite their social status and age difference. The professor also mixed the styles to maintain a degree of formality and to show friendliness. Likewise, Cook (2006) found that, in academic consultation sessions, a student shifted to the plain style to index his conviction to himself or to co-construct an idea with the professor by supplying the continuation of the professor’s utterance. The current study shares Okamoto’s (1999) and Cook’s (2006) theoretical perspective of ‘indexicality’ that the plain/polite forms (indirectly) index social meanings (and thus its use is a social action) and that Japanese speakers manipulate speech styles ‘in order to create a desired context, in particular, preferred interpersonal relations and identities’ (Okamoto 1999: 70), and ‘every move that the speaker makes is his or her choice’ (Cook 2006: 288). Native speakers vary in their beliefs and understanding of politeness and in their preferred modes of presenting their social roles, and they use this knowledge to actively create speech styles. Hence, the development of the use of the plain and polite forms involves not only an understanding of their respective social meanings but also the making of spontaneous choices of styles with the consideration of various contextual and situational factors. Study abroad experiences give L2 learners opportunities to interact with various interlocutors, and they may acquire speech styles through the process of language socialization by becoming active members in the society (e.g. Schieffelin and Ochs 1986).

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and then investigates how their use of the plain/polite styles changed as a result of studying abroad. In particular, it focuses on how L2 Japanese learners switch between the two styles before and after studying abroad.

Participants

Procedures and analyses Before studying abroad, the students participated in OPIs conducted by a certified OPI tester, who was the primary Japanese teacher of Henry, Peter, Sam, and Alan in the two semesters preceding their study abroad. In the fall after they returned, they participated in OPIs again. The tapes and the interviewer’s ratings of the post-study-abroad OPIs were sent to ACTFL to receive official ratings to avoid potential biases of the tester who had knowledge of the participants’ pre-study-abroad performances. The learners’ gains in overall oral proficiency were assessed by these OPI ratings. Because the criteria for OPI ratings do not include the use of appropriate styles (except for Superior), gains in these ratings mostly indicate the learners’ gains in other aspects of their performance (functions/tasks, content, text types, accuracy). The OPIs before and after study abroad are referred to as pre-OPI and post-OPI below. The OPIs were transcribed and analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. The appropriate base style for an interviewee to use in such interviews is the polite style, especially because the interviewer is a former teacher, who is clearly older than the participants. Role plays are part of the OPI protocol, but the types of role plays varied depending on the proficiency levels of the participants. For interviewees approaching Superior-level, the Japanese OPI requires formal and informal role plays to elicit both styles. Thus, the most proficient speakers of the five, Peter and Sam, were given role plays for both styles. In the quantitative analysis, predicates produced in OPIs, excluding the role play segments, were coded for the forms used: the polite form, plain form, omission of predicate/copula (in the case of nominal predicates). The proportions of each type were computed. The sentence-final matrix predicates and coordinate/subordinate predicates in which polite forms can be used without sounding excessively polite were considered.3 Further, these non-matrix clauses were broken down into two types to aid in the analysis. This is because whether and to what extent the plain form in non-matrix clauses has social

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Five male students, referred to by pseudonyms as Alan, Henry, Peter, Sam, and Greg, from a northeastern US state university voluntarily participated. Their ages at the time of departure ranged from 19 to 21. One participant, Greg, had studied Japanese for 1 year (6 hours of instruction per week for two semesters) before studying abroad, and the other four had completed 2 years of Japanese instruction (6 hours of instruction per week for four semesters). They attended four different universities in Japan. Henry studied in Aichi, Peter in Ibaraki, Sam in Tokyo, and Alan and Greg studied at the same institution in Hyogo.

50

STYLE SHIFTS AMONG JAPANESE LEARNERS

FINDINGS Gains in overall oral proficiency The participants’ OPI ratings were rather high even before studying abroad, most likely because they were highly motivated, enough to opt to study abroad. Four improved their proficiency by 1 or 2 sub-levels as indicated in Table 1. Henry, whose proficiency was at the Intermediate-Mid in pre-OPI, remained at the same level. Interestingly, despite the fact that OPI criteria do not include the appropriate speech styles for Novice to Advanced levels, those who rated higher demonstrated more appropriate and/or active use of styles and shifts. For example, as discussed below in the quantitative analyses, those who were rated higher (Alan, Sam, and Peter) appropriately chose the polite style as the base style. Moreover, as discussed in the qualitative analysis, Peter, who was rated the highest, actively shifted styles in a target-like manner rather than simply conforming to the appropriate polite base style.

Quantitative analysis: proportions of use of the polite and plain styles Table 2 shows the types of predicates each participant used. Table 3 shows breakdowns of the plain forms into three types of clauses. In terms of the proportion of the polite forms, the five participants did not differ greatly in

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meanings that contrast with the polite form depends on the degree of subordination of the clauses in question (Makino 1983; Cook 2001). The plain/polite forms used in the sentence-final matrix predicates primarily determine the level of politeness. The plain forms in highly independent clauses (ending with ga ‘but’, kedo ‘but’, and kara ‘because’) index some informality, but they may not necessarily express informality in clauses possessing marginal independence (ending with node ‘because’ and si ‘and’). For the sentence-final nominal predicates, such as yo-nensei da ‘I am a senior’, the omission of the copula da as in yo-nensei 6 0 is common in spoken Japanese. There are also instances of omission of entire predicates such as in zenzen ‘not at all’. These omissions are tallied as predicate/copula omissions; they are equivalent to the plain forms in degree of politeness/formality. In the qualitative analysis, the students’ style shifts in sentence-final matrix predicates were examined (leaving the examination of non-matrix clauses to future studies due to space limitations). The current analysis primarily focuses on the interaction with the interviewer taking her authentic role (university faculty), but performances in the role plays are also discussed. Note, however, these styles may index multiple social meanings, and their meanings may be occasionally ambiguous (Okamoto 1999). This is because the functions discussed above are not mutually exclusive. Thus, multiple plausible functions realized by the form are noted, though they may not be the only possibilities.

N. IWASAKI

51

Table 1: Gains in OPI ratings Pseudonyms

Length of prior instruction (years)

Before study abroad

After study abroad

Alan Henry Peter Sam Greg

2 2 2 2 1

Intermediate-High Intermediate-Mid Advanced-Low Intermediate-High Intermediate-Low

Advanced-Low Intermediate-Mid Advanced-High Advanced-Mid Intermediate-Mid

Pre-study abroad OPI Polite n (%)

Plain n (%)

Post-study abroad OPI

Copula Repair Total Polite omission n (%) n (%) n (%)

Plain n (%)

Greg

74 (79)

9 (10) 8 (9)

3 (3)

94

Henry

73 (72) 16 (16) 8 (8)

5 (5)

102

13 (10)

Alan

128 (87) 14 (10) 1 (1)

4 (3)

147

172 (86)

21 (11)

Sam

107 (84) 16 (13) 2 (2)

2 (2)

127

106 (85)

17 (14)

Peter

134 (80) 27 (16) 4 (2)

2 (1)

167

127 (70)

44 (24)

Copula Repair Total omission n (%) n (%) n (%)

96 (73) 23 (17)

0 (0)

132

31 (20) 103 (67) 20 (13)

1 (1)

155

5 (3)

1 (1)

199

2 (2)

0 (0)

125

10 (5)

1 (1)

182

Table 3: Clauses where the plain forms were used Pre-study abroad OPI

Greg Henry Alan Sam Peter

Post-study abroad OPI

Matrix clauses

kara, kedo, ga clauses

node, si clauses

Total

Matrix clauses

kara, kedo, ga clauses

node, si clauses

Total

0 5 1 0 3

0 11 9 8 15

9 0 4 8 9

9 16 14 16 27

83 67 10 3 17

12 36 9 2 13

0 0 2 12 14

95 103 21 17 44

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Table 2: Types of predicates produced

52

STYLE SHIFTS AMONG JAPANESE LEARNERS

(3)

(Greg, Pre-OPI)

1

I:

De, ano, hima-na zikan-mo arimasu ka. and well free time-also have-NONPAST-AH Q ‘And do you also have free time?’

2→

G:

Hima-no toki, aa, video geemu-o suru, aa, o suru n desu. free when uh video game-ACC play uh ACC N COP ‘When I have free time, uh I play ... uh it is that I play video games.’

Upon return, Greg used only 13 polite forms in 132 predicates, including eight uses of the epistemic modal marker desyoo with rising intonation, three uses of the polite form of the verb omoimasu ‘(I) think’. Greg did not use daroo, the informal equivalent of desyoo. In fact, Cook (2007) does not consider these two forms as polite and plain counterparts because desyo(o) is used in most informal situations as well. Taking this into consideration, Greg used only five polite forms including three instances of omoimasu in post-OPI. Likewise, Henry also primarily spoke in the polite style in pre-OPI, with a slightly higher tendency to use plain forms than Greg. He used 73 polite forms in 102 predicates. He made five repairs, suggesting a conscious effort to speak in the polite style while resisting the inclination to use the plain style as shown in an exchange about a student organization he belongs to in excerpt (4) line 3. (4)

(Henry, Pre-OPI)

1

I:

Membaa-wa takusan iru n desu ka. member-TOP many exist-NONPAST N COP-AH Q ‘Are there many members?’

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pre-OPIs: Greg 79 per cent, Henry 72 per cent, Alan 87 per cent, Sam 84 per cent, and Peter 80 per cent. All participants used the polite forms as their base style. Upon return, Alan, Sam, and Peter primarily maintained the polite style (86 per cent, 85 per cent, and 70 per cent), but Henry and Greg used the plain forms as their base style. Their proportions of polite forms were only 10 per cent and 20 per cent in their post-OPIs. In pre-OPI, Greg mostly used polite forms (74/94), and his plain forms were limited to nine uses in node and si clauses (which does not necessarily index informality), eight copula/predicate omissions (five of which were moo iti-do? ‘once again?’ requesting repetition), and three repairs. He repaired his use of the plain form to the polite form as shown in excerpt (3) line 2. In what follows, plain forms are underlined and polite forms are bolded. (‘I’ refers to Interviewer; pseudonym initials refer to participants.)

N. IWASAKI

2

H:

53

Membaa? Ano, [inaudible]-no hito-ni, ano, nan-nin-kurai, a, zyuu-go-nin-gurai member well

-GEN person-DAT well how-many-CL 15-CL-about

ano, takusan aru, ano takusan hito zyanai to omou kedo, well many exist well many people COP-NEG QT think but ‘Member? Well, [inaudible] people, well, how many, about 15, uh, well, there are many...well, I don’t think there are many, but,’ taisetu-na hito da kara,

3

→

totemo omosiroi, omosiroi yo, omosiroi desu. very interesting very interesting-SFP(assert) interesting COP-AH

‘Because they are important people, it (the club) is very interesting, interesting, it is very interesting.’

In post-OPI, his polite forms dramatically decreased. He used only 31 polite forms in 155 predicates, including one desyo, and he no longer corrected himself to be polite. Instead, he once adjusted a polite form to the plain form (his base style in post-OPI) as in excerpt (5) line 4. (5)

(Henry, Post-OPI)

1

I:

Sotugyoo-site kara donna sigoto-ga sitai n desu ka. graduate-GER after what-kind work-NOM want-to-do N COP Q ‘After graduation, what kind of job do you want to do?’

2

H:

(laugh) zense, zensen, wakarimasen. [fragment] at-all know-NEG-AH ‘I don’t know at all.’

3

I:

zenzen wakarimasen ka. at-all know-NEG-AH Q ‘You don’t know at all?’

4→

H:

Honto ni, ano, kangaete imasen, kangaete nai. really uh think-GER has-NEG-AH think-GER NEG ‘Really, well, I haven’t thought, haven’t thought about it.’

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important people COP-NONPAST because

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STYLE SHIFTS AMONG JAPANESE LEARNERS

Qualitative analysis The quantitative analysis above showed that Greg and Henry’s choice of base style was no longer the polite style in post-OPIs, while Alan and Sam predominantly maintained the polite style. Peter increased his use of plain forms in his predominantly polite style. Their style shifts are examined below. Though it is likely that the interviewer’s choice of style would influence the interviewee’s style choice, the current interviewer consistently used polite forms and only used one-word utterances for clarification/ confirmation and plain forms in role plays (when playing a friend or a child role).

Greg and Henry In pre-OPI, Greg consistently used polite forms, and all plain forms were in –si/node clauses. The copula was occasionally omitted when he requested or provided clarification. However, there was one shift in a role play to invite a friend to go to a movie. He spoke in the polite style, but switched to the plain style in a soliloquy-like, exclamatory utterance in excerpt (6) line 3. (6)

(Greg, Pre-OPI)

1

G:

A, kyoo-no yoru-wa hima desu ka. ah today-GEN night-TOP free COP Q ‘Uh, are you free tonight?’

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Henry’s mix of the styles appeared to be haphazard, but the qualitative analysis below reveals that his style shift is not entirely random. Like Greg, he had a slight tendency to use the polite forms for expressions of epistemic stance (omou ‘think’, wakaru ‘understand’, and kanziru ‘feel’). These verbs accounted for 6 of 19 verbs expressed in the polite forms out of 31 polite forms, though he also used these verbs in the plain forms. Unlike Greg and Henry, Alan and Sam spoke in the polite style both in pre- and post-OPIs. Their plain forms were mostly in non-matrix clauses: Alan used plain forms 13/14 (non-matrix/of all plain forms) in pre-OPI and 11/21 in post-OPI, and Sam 16/16 in pre-OPI and 14/17 in post-OPI. Peter, who received the highest OPI ratings both in pre- and post-OPIs, also mostly spoke in the polite style in both OPIs. Interestingly, however, his use of polite forms decreased in post-OPI from 80 per cent to 70 per cent, and his plain forms in matrix predicates increased from 3 to 17 instances. The question, then, is whether he shifted the styles in ways similar to how native speakers do in ways that reflect the social meanings of the forms.

N. IWASAKI

2

I:

55

Hai, zikan arimasu yo. Kyoo-no yoru dattara. yes time have-NONPAST-AH SFP(assert) today-GEN night COP-CONDITIONAL ‘Yes, I have time—tonight.’

3→

G:

um. yokatta. um Supaidaa-man-o mitai desu ka. um good-PAST um Spiderman-ACC watch-want COP-AH Q

Though this is an effective shift, it is unclear whether he had acquired the meaning of an in-group self-directed shift for soliloquy/exclamatory utterance because this was the only instance of shift. Possibly, he learned the sequence yokatta! as an equivalent to the English ‘Great!’. Upon return, his base style was the plain style, and his switches from the plain to polite style appeared to be rather haphazard. He used only two polite forms, other than eight instances of desyo(o) and three omoimasu ‘I think’. The use of the polite form for the verb omou is not lexically fixed for Greg as he also used the plain form omou six times in post-OPI. The remaining two instances used the copula desu and -masu as shown in excerpts (7) and (8), lines 5 and 4, respectively. (7)

(Greg, Post-OPI)

1

I:

Gureggu-san-wa, ano, ima daigaku-no nan-nen-sei na n desu ka. name-TOP

well now university-GEN what-year-student COP N COP-NONPAST Q

‘Greg-san, uh, which year are you at the university now?’

2

G:

Etto, ima, yo-nensei-gurai da to omou. well now 4th-year-about COP QT think ‘Well, now, I think I am about a senior.’

3

Hontoni roku-nensei-gurai kedo... really 6th-year-about but ‘....Actually, about the sixth year, but...’

4

I:

Yo-nensei-gurai na n desu ka. 4th-year-about COP N COP-NONPAST Q ‘You are about the fourth year?’

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‘Great! Uh, do you want to see Spiderman?’

56

5 →

STYLE SHIFTS AMONG JAPANESE LEARNERS

G:

Un. Roku-nen-gurai benkyoo-site ita ga...ima, etto, sono, ima yo-nensei desu. yeah 6-year-about study-GER AUX but now uh well now 4th-year COP-NONPAST AH ‘Yeah. I studied about six years, but... Now, uh, well, now I am a senior.’

(8)

(Greg, Post-OPI)

1

I:

Etto, ano, ryuugaku-no koto-toka takusan Gureggu-san-ni situmon-simasita kedo, uh well study-abroad-GEN about-such many name-DAT question-PAST-AH but Gureggu-san, watasi-ni situmon-wa arimasu ka. name me-DAT question-TOP have-NONPAST-AH Q SFP ‘I asked you a lot of questions about your study abroad, but do you have any questions for me?’

2

Nan-demo ii desu yo. what-ever good COP-NONPAST AH SFP(assert) ‘Any questions will be alright.’

3

G:

Etto, Alan-wa ikkyuu-o uketai kara, etto, kyooryoo*-o sagasite iru. well Alan-TOP level-one-ACC take-want because uh textbook-ACC look-for AUX ‘Well, because Alan wants to take the level 1 proficiency exam, he is looking for [textbooks].’(*Greg probably meant ‘textbook’ [kyookasyo])

4 →

Etto, ikkyuu-no nooryoku-siken motte imasu ka. well level-one-GEN proficiency-exam have Q ‘Do you have a level 1 exam?’

5

I:

Hai, mae-no hurui no-wa motte imasu kedo. yes past-GEN old one-TOP possess-NONPAST-AH but ‘Yes, I have the old versions.’

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Greg predominantly used plain forms in this sequence as well, and his motivation for the abrupt switch to the polite form in line 5 does not seem to utilize the social meanings of the polite form, such as deference or presentation of self. However, when a situation clearly calls for expressions of deference, he uses the polite form. In excerpt (8), he asks the interviewer a question to request something from her, when she gave Greg an opportunity to ask questions as part of OPI protocol for Novice-High- to Intermediate-level candidates.

N. IWASAKI

6

G:

57

Un, sore-demo ii. yeah that-COP-GER-also good-NONPAST ‘That will be fine.’

(9)

(Greg, Post-OPI)

1→

G:

Etto, sensei, moosiwake arimasen ga, uh teacher excuse have-NEG-AH but tyotto siken-ni maniawanakatta, aemasen desita. little exam for make-it-on-time-NEG-PAST POTENTIAL-NEG-PAST ‘Uh, teacher, I am very sorry. I did not, could not make it to the exam.’

2

→

Tesuto-ni iku toki, watasi-no kuruma-wa kowarete simaimasita. test-to go when my car-TOP break-GER end-up-PAST-AH ‘When I was going to the exam, my car broke down.’

3

I:

Demo siken-no mae-ni renraku-ga arimasen desita nee... but exam-GEN before-at contact-NOM exist-PAST-AH SFP ‘But you did not notify me in advance...’

4 →

G:

Unn, etto, zikan-ga arimasen desita. Umm well time-NOM have-NEG-PAST-AH ‘Umm, uh, I did not have time.’

5 →

Etoo, soreni, eto, keitai-o motte imasen kara, etto, renraku-dekimasen desita. well also uh cell-phone-ACC possess-NEG because well contact-POTENTIAL-NEGPAST

‘Well, besides, uh, because I do not have a cell phone, well, I could not contact you.’

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Unlike his other utterances, in which he primarily talks about himself (his hobby, experiences in Japan, and his future goal), the agent of the verb motu ‘possess’ in line 4 is the interviewer. Moreover, when he performed a role play to ask his teacher to arrange a make-up exam, he consistently used the polite style as in excerpt (9). First, he carefully chose a very polite expression for apology and quickly corrected his unintended use of a plain form to the polite form, and continued to use the polite style in line 2.

58

STYLE SHIFTS AMONG JAPANESE LEARNERS

(10)

(Henry, Pre-OPI).

1

I:

Hitori erande, donna hito ka osiete kudasai. one-person select-GER what-kind person Q tell-imperative-AH ‘Then could you select one and tell me what kind of person s/he is?’

2

H:

Eto, supeingo-ga hanasemasu. Yoku hanasemasu. well Spanish-NOM speak-POTENTIAL-AH well speak-POTENTIAL-AH ‘Well, (she) can speak Spanish. (She) can speak very well.’

3 →

Sorekara, kao-ga kawa, kawaii. also

face-NOM [fragment] cute-NONPAST

‘Also, (her) face is cut...cute.’

Henry’s use of the plain form kawaii ‘(her face) is cute’ in excerpt (10) line 3 is an effective shift to express an emphatic, emotional reaction to what is being described. His pre-OPI suggests that, before studying abroad, he understood that the appropriate base style to address a teacher/interviewer is the polite style and that some style mixes are possible. In post-OPI, however, he used the plain style as the base style. He shifted to the polite styles 31 times, including one instance of desyo and six instances of expressions of epistemic stances. Some of his shifts to the polite style appeared to be rather haphazard as shown in his descriptions of how he found a house to rent in excerpt (11). Henry first corrected his plain style utterance to polite in line 3, but abruptly switched back to the plain form in line 4. It is unclear what prompted this switch.

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His utterances in the role play clearly indicate that he can use the polite style consistently in both matrix and kara clauses if he chooses to do so. He uses the polite style in situations that call for expressing deference. This is in contrast to his use of polite forms in pre-OPI in which he may have been passively observing the social norms that he learned in classes. Though Greg’s base style no longer conforms to the norm, he was actively making choices as to which style to use. Like Greg, Henry primarily used the polite style in pre-OPI, and changed his base style to the plain style in post-OPI. In pre-OPI, he used only five plain forms in matrix predicates, most of which can be considered similar to native speakers’ shifts:  situmoi-nikui by which he probably meant setumei-sinikui ‘it is difficult to explain’ as a soliloquy-like utterance and empathic expressions, as shown in excerpt (10) line 3. Prior to this sequence, Henry said that in his club there are many people who are important to him.

N. IWASAKI

(11)

(Henry, Post-OPI)

1

I:

59

Dooyatte, sono sumu tokoro-o sagasitari, issyoni sumu hito-o sagasita n desu ka. how uh live place-ACC look-for-such together live people-ACC look-for N COPNONPAST-AH Q

‘How did you look for the place to live and people to live with?’ 2→

H:

ano staffu membaa-ga sono uti-ga aiteru tte, i, itte ta kara,

3

sono ie-wa kurabu-no miitingu-de, sono ie-ga aiterutte itte masita kara, that house-TOP club-NOM meeting-at that house-NOM is-vacant-AH because

4

sagasu hituyoo-ga nakatta. search need-NOM exist-NEG-PAST

‘Because that staff member was saying that the house was vacant, because they were saying that the house is vacant at the club meeting, there was no need to look for it.’

However, closer examination reveals that some shifts can be explained. In excerpt (12), where Henry describes his roommates, the information provided by the plain forms of hiku ‘play’ in line 3 is background information subordinate to the main idea (Makino 1983; Maynard 1991). (12)

(Henry, Post-OPI).

1

I:

Yuniiku-na hitotati desita ka. unique people COP-NONPAST-AH Q ‘Were they (roommates) unique people?’

2

H:

Aa, un, ma, minna, ongaku su ongaku, uh, gakki-o, gakki, hikemasita, minna. well uh everyone music..uh musical-instrument-ACC play-POTENTIAL-PAST-AH everyone ‘Yes, uh, well, everyone lik..played music, music, musical instruments, everyone.’

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that staff member-NOM that house-NOM vacant-that said because,

60

STYLE SHIFTS AMONG JAPANESE LEARNERS

3→

Hutari-ga gitaa hikeru... Hitori-ga piano hikeru, hiketa kara, two-NOM guitar play-POTENTIAL one-NOM piano play-POTENTIAL play-POTENTIALPAST because

minna issyo-ni yoku onngaku-o kiitari, ongaku-o tuku, tukuttari simasita. everyone together often music-ACC listen, music-ACC compose did-AH

did such activities as listening to music together and comp, composing music.’

Moreover, in post-OPI, he consistently switched to the polite style when asking the interviewer questions, such as in excerpts (13) and (14), lines 2 and 4. (13)

(Henry, Post-OPI) I:

de, uti-no sigoto-wa minna de, ano, kootai de sita n desu ka. and house-GEN work-TOP all by well turn do-PAST N COP-NONPAST-AH Q ‘Did you take turns doing house chores?’

H:

Kootai tte nan desu ka. (Taking-turns) that what COP-AH Q ‘What is kootai?’

(14)

(Henry, Post-OPI)

1

I:

Nanika Henrii-san-kara watasi-ni situmon-sitai koto-ga arimasu ka. something name-from me-DAT want-to-ask thing-NOM have-NONPAST-AH Q ‘Are there anything that you would like to ask me about?

2 →

H:

Ima kariforunia ni sunde imasu ka. now California in live-GER AUX-AH Q ‘Are you living in California now?’

3

I:

Hai. ‘Yes.’

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‘Two can play the guitar, and one can play could play the piano and so we often

N. IWASAKI

4→

H:

61

Sono daigaku-wa doo desu ka. that university-TOP how COP-AH Q ‘How is the university?’

(15)

(Henry, Post-OPI)

1→

H:

Ano, watasi-no mado-ga kowaremasita. uh my window-nom break-AH-PAST ‘Uh..my window broke.’

2

I:

Aa, soo desu ka. ah so COP-NONPAST-AH Q ‘Is that so?’

3→

H:

Ano, kodomo-ga yakyuu-o yarinagara, ano, sono beesubooru-ga, well child-NOM baseball-ACC play-while, well that baseball-NOM ano, watasi-no mado-o butukete, kowaremasita. uh my

window-ACC hit-GER break-AH-PAST

‘Well, while a child was playing baseball, his ball hit my window, and it broke.’ 4

Doo sureba ii desu ka. what do-CONDITIONAL good COP-AH-NONPAST Q

‘What would be good to do?’ 5

I:

Anoo, donnahuu-ni kowarete iru n desu ka. well what-way-in break-GER AUX N COP-NONPAST-AH Q

‘Well, how is it broken?’ 6

H:

Akerarenai si, mado-no gurasu-ga, moo, nanka, un, open-POTENTIAL-NEG and window-GEN glass-NOM already somehow um mado-no gurasu-ga, ko. to-iu-ka, uun, nai.

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Though some of Henry’s shifts seem haphazard, he speaks in the polite style when he asked the interviewer questions. Indeed, if he had produced the questions as in excerpts (13) and (14) in the plain style, he would have sounded severely inappropriate. Moreover, like Greg, Henry appropriately switched to the polite style when he performed a role play. He needed to call an apartment manager to request a window repair, and he mostly maintained the polite style as in excerpt (15), lines 1 and 3.

62

STYLE SHIFTS AMONG JAPANESE LEARNERS

Window-GEN glass-NOM [fragment] rather umm exist-NEG-NONPAST Gurasu-ga nai, ima. glass-NOM exist-NEG-NONPAST now

‘I can’t open it, and the window glass, well, the window glass is bro.., or rather, is gone now’.

Alan and Sam The quantitative analyses revealed that Alan and Sam were the most consistent in their use of polite forms. In his pre-OPI Alan used the plain form only once in a matrix clause as in excerpt (16) line 3, but the predicate in question is more likely an embedded predicate in a disfluent sequence. Prior to excerpt (16), Alan stated that after practice one can do amazing things in juggling. (16)

(Alan, Pre-OPI)

1

I:

huun, sugoi koto tte donna koto desu ka. hmm amazing thing QT what-kind thing COP-NONPAST-AH Q

‘Hmmm, what sort of things are those ‘amazing things’? 2

A:

Anoo..aa...booru-o, koo, takusan, aa, jaguru-suru toka, well ah ball-ACC this-way many ah juggle such-as

‘Well..uh, like..juggling many balls, and..’ 3 →

aa, tatoeba, ima, watasi-wa, oo, itu..itutu? itutu-no booru-o jaguru-suru ah for-example now I-top [fragment]...five five -GEN ball-ACC juggle

‘Uh, for example, now, I juggle fiv..five? five balls’ 4

A:

ano, rensyuu simasu. well practice-do-NONPAST-AH

‘...well, I do practice.’

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In excerpt (15) line 6, Henry returned to the plain form in the -si clause, akerarenai, and in the matrix predicate nai. Otherwise, he mostly used the polite style in this role play. Thus far, we have qualitatively examined the choice of styles by Greg and Henry, whose post-OPI base style was the plain style, diverging from the native norm. Striking similarities were found between the two. They both spoke in the polite style when expressing deference is highly needed—in asking for information and making requests.

N. IWASAKI

63

(17)

(Alan, Post-OPI)

1

I:

De, donogurai-no aida ryokoo-sita n desu ka. and how-long-GEN duration travel-PAST N COP-NONPAST-AH Q ‘So, how long did you travel?’

2

A:

A, ikka..kurai, ikkagetu-gurai, toriaezu, ano, nihonkai-made, aru..arukimasita. ah [fragment]..about one-month-about first well Japan-Sea-to walk-PAST-AH ‘Ah, about one, one month, first I wal..walked to the Japan Sea.’

3

Are-wa sugokatta desu. that-TOP amazing-PAST COP-AH ‘That was amazing.’

4

I:

Sugoi desu nee. amazing COP-NONPAST-AH SFP(exclamation) ‘That’s amazing.’

5→

A:

un, de, tyotto tookatta. yeah and a bit far-PAST ‘Yeah, and that was a bit far.’

Like Alan, in pre-OPI Sam predominantly used the polite style and did not shift to plain forms in matrix clauses. Though there was one instance of the plain form in a matrix-like clause shown in excerpt (18) line 2, this sequence seems to be incomplete. He is describing his audition to become a music major at his university.

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His disfluency made the plain form suru at the end of line 3 look like a sentence-final verb; however, it is likely that instead he was saying itutu-no booru-o jaguru-suru rensyuu simasu ‘I practice juggling five balls’. Put simply, Alan probably did not shift styles in matrix predicates at all in pre-OPI. In post-OPI, Alan did use plain forms in matrix predicates (10 instances). His shifts resemble native speakers’ shifts; many of them are soliloquy-like. He is thinking to himself, using such expressions as doo ieba ii ‘how shall I say it’, and . . . tte ieba ii kana ‘that’s probably how I should describe it’, or evaluating past events while recalling them. In excerpt (17), he first informed the interviewer that his travel was amazing in the polite style in line 3, and recalling his experience, he makes an exclamatory remark as to how far it was in the plain style in line 5.

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STYLE SHIFTS AMONG JAPANESE LEARNERS

(18)

(Sam, Pre-OPI)

1

I:

Oodisyon-to iu no-wa donna koto-o sita n desu ka. audition-QT say N-QT what-kind thing-ACC do-PAST N COP-NONPAST-AH Q ‘What kinds of things did you do in the audition?’

2 →

S:

Eto, senkoo, unn, ongaku-no senkoo-o saseru tame-ni, eto

sensei-no mae-ni, zibun-no, zibun-no, a, itiban tokui-na, aa, gakki-o hiite, aa, teacher-GEN front-in self-GEN self-GEN best good musical-instrument-ACC playGER ah

sono ato-de, sensei-ga saseru, aa, saseru, aa... that later-at teacher-NOM do-CAUSATIVE-NONPAST ah do-CAUSATIVE-NONPAST AH ‘Well, in order to major...let students major, (they make them) to play their own, own, favorite musical instrument in front of the teacher, and after that, the teacher let.. let.. ah...’ 3

S:

Ha....hairu ka kimemasu. [fragment] enter whether decide-NONPAST-AH ‘... decides whether the student gets in.’

In contrast, in post-OPI, Sam did shift his style three times when he was talking to himself with exclamation or emotion as in Oo sore-wa muzukasii ‘oh, that’s difficult (to explain)’, itiban tanosikatta ‘it was the most enjoyable’, and logical consequence that reflects his thought process when stating his opinion as in excerpt (19) line 2. Prior to excerpt (19), the interviewer mildly challenged Sam’s opinion in favor of a recent change from seniority-based to merit-based employment in Japan, stating that while some people get pay raises, some are laid off due to this merit system. (19)

(Sam, Post-OPI)

1

S:

Eeto, warui syoku-nin-wa kaiko-site ii n zyanai desu ka.. to omoimasu kedo. well bad employee-TOP layoff-GER good COP-NEG-AH Q COMP think-NONPAST-AH but

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well major um music-GEN major-ACC do-CAUSATVE-NONPAST purpose-of uh

N. IWASAKI

2 →

65

Eto, kaisya-ni warui eikyoo-o oyobosu kamo-sirenai. well company-on bad influence-ACC give may-NONPAST

‘Well, isn’t it okay to layoff bad employees? I think... Otherwise, it might affect the company negatively.’

(20)

(Sam, Pre-OPI)

1

S:

A, konnitiwa, aa, watasi-wa tyoto..mondai-ga aru n de..da. ah hello ah

I-TOP little problem-NOM exist COP-GER..COP-NONPAST

‘Ah, hello, uh, I hav, have a problem.’ 2

I:

Mondai? ‘Problem?’

3

S:

unto Kyoko-san-no kuruma-o unto, unten-site iru toki, kootuu ziko-ga atta n da. um [name]-GEN car-ACC um drive-GER AUX when traffic accident-NOM occur COPNONPAST

‘Um, when I was driving your car, I had a car accident.’ 4

Watasi-no sei dewa nakute, hoka-no untensyu-wa yopparatte ita to omoimasu. I-GEN fault COP-NEG

other-GEN driver drunk was COMP think-NONPAST-AH

‘It wasn’t my fault, I think the other driver was drunk.’ 5

Eto, aa, bampaa-ga aa bampaa-wa tyotto kowarete ita. Uh ah bumper-NOM ah bumper-TOP a little broken was ‘Uh..uh, the bumper, bumper was a little broken’

6

Sore igai, aa, sore igai wa daizyoobu de, da. that other ah other-TOP all-right COP-GER COP-NONPAST ‘But other, other than that, all right, it is all right.

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In line 2, he spontaneously states his thought using the plain form. Alternatively, the segment expressed in the plain form may be an increment. In other words, background reasoning for his stance (i.e. it is alright to layoff those who are incapable), which could have been stated earlier (e.g. before kaiko-site mo ii n zya nai desu ka), may have been added after the final predicate, omoimasu kedo. Sam was given a role play that called for the plain style in pre- and postOPIs. His performances in the role plays revealed his understanding of the social meanings of both styles. In pre-OPI, he was instructed to talk to a friend about a car accident he had in his friend’s car. Though he primarily used the plain forms, he shifted the plain forms as in excerpt (20).

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7

Eto, aa, watasi-ga naosu, aa, naosu okane-o aa harawasete kudasai. uh ah I-NOM repair ah repair money-ACC ah pay-CAUSATIVE IMPERATIVE-AH ‘Uh..please let me pay the money to repair it.’

Peter Peter increased the use of plain forms in matrix predicates from 2 to 17 instances. The qualitative analysis revealed that most of his shifts resemble reported native speakers’ strategic shifts. In pre-OPI, he largely maintained the polite style and shifted to the plain style only twice. One is a soliloquylike expression sore-wa muzukasii ‘It’s difficult (to explain)’, and the other is to state his stance by choosing from nominalized propositions that the interviewer listed—whether his teacher, who adopted the Suzuki method of piano instruction, valued ‘being creative’ or ‘imitating teachers’, as in excerpt (21). (21) 1

(Peter, Pre-OPI) I:

De, sono Suzuki-sensei-no hoohoo, toiuka, Suzuki Program-dewa, and that Suzuki-teacher-GEN method rather Suzuki Program-in-TOP dotira-o daizi-ni suru n desu ka, kurieitibu-na koto to, which-ACC value-COP do N COP-NONPAST-AH Q, creative N sensei-to onazi yoo-ni, ma, sensei-no mane-o suru koto to. and teacher-with same like well teacher-GEN imitation-ACC do N and ‘So, in Suzuki-sensei’s method, or Suzuki Program, which one do they value more, being creative or doing the same.. imitating the teacher?’

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Sam was using both the plain forms atta n da and daizyoobu da and the polite forms omoimasu and harawasete kudasai in this role play. Though not all native speakers necessarily switch styles in the same way, this is the kind of occasion in which native speakers manipulate the styles to sound apologetic. Sam’s performance in pre-OPI indicates that he understood the general social meanings of both the polite and plain styles prior to studying abroad, as he appropriately switched from the plain style to the polite in his role play. In post-OPI, he also switched appropriately from the polite to plain as discussed above, and in a role play where he talked to a visitor’s 4-year-old child in the plain style to be friendly and approachable. In pre-OPIs, Alan and Sam (except for Sam’s role play) were passive observers of the alleged social norms and only used the polite style. Upon return, they voluntarily switched from the polite to the plain styles, which cautious speakers would choose to do only if they have the knowledge of social meanings of the shifts.

N. IWASAKI

2

P:

67

Sensei-no mane-o suru, motiron. Teacher-GEN imitation-ACC do-NONPAST of-course ‘Imitate the teacher, of course.’

(22)

(Peter, Post-OPI)

1

I:

Dooiu koto-ni nareru koto-ga dekinakatta n desu ka, hazime wa. what-kind things-to accustom N-NOM can-NEG-PAST COP-NONPAST-AH Q, first-TOP ‘What kinds of things could you not get used to, at first?’

2

P:

hazime-wa, ma, sugoi, sonnani karada-o tukau-no-wa narete inakatta si, first-TOP uh really that-much body-ACC use-N-TOP accustom-GER AUX-NEG-PAST and ato-wa, iroina sinpaigoto-ga atta kara, ma, nanka, hakkiri ienai n desu kedo, rest-TOP various worry-NOM have-PAST because, well clearly say-NEG N COPNONPAST-AH

but

zentaitekini zikan-ga kakatta ki-ga suru. overall time-NOM take-PAST feeling-nom do-NONPAST ‘At first, I hadn’t been used to using the body that much, and I had various things to worry about. I cannot clearly say..., but overall, I feel that it took a long time (for me to get used to the club).’

In three instances, information provided in plain form predicates offer subordinate information (Ikuta 1983; Maynard 1991) as in excerpt (23), in which he is explaining his part-time job.

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Peter more actively used style shifts in post-OPI; 12 of 17 plain forms in matrix predicates were in self-directed soliloquy-like utterances—wondering, recalling, or expressing emotions, such as soo kana ‘I wonder’, a musume-san-ga ita ‘ah, he had a daughter’, and omosirokatta ‘that was fun’. He often concluded his turn with plain forms, which served as summary statements, often recalling his experiences with emotion or internal thoughts, such as in excerpt (22). His uses of the plain forms are congruent with the functions of style shifts discussed in the previous studies (e.g. Maynard 1991; Okamoto 1999; Makino 2002; Cook 2006). Peter, in response to the interviewer’s follow-up explanation concerning his kendo club activities, concluded his turn with a plain-form predicate.

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STYLE SHIFTS AMONG JAPANESE LEARNERS

(23)

(Peter, Post-OPI)

1

I:

Huun, donna baito site iru n desu ka. Hmm what-kind part-time-job do-GER AUX-NONPAST N COP-NONPAST-AH Q ‘Hmm, what kinds of part-time jobs are you doing?’

2

P:

Mazu-wa kyampasu-no [name of cafeteria]-de hataraite iru n... first campus-GEN

-LOC work-GER AUX that...

sandwich make-such-as do ‘First, I work in the campus cafeteria... like, making sandwiches.’

He also performed a role play in which he talked to a little child using the plain style in a friendly approachable way. Overall, Peter’s shifts both in preand post-OPIs are quite appropriate. Importantly, he became more active in shifting styles upon return, demonstrating his capacity to play a more active role in interactions in Japanese society.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION The quantitative analysis showed that even though all five participants spoke in the polite style prior to studying abroad, upon return, Greg and Henry’s styles diverged from the norm. They clearly overused the plain forms, confirming the reported tendency for some L2 sojourners to use the informal style upon return. The other three continued to use the polite style as their base style, though Peter increased the use of plain forms. If the quantitative analysis alone were considered, one might conclude that Greg and Henry (and possibly Peter) did not gain pragmatic competence and regressed in their use of the polite/plain styles while studying abroad. However, the qualitative analyses revealed that all participants gained some understanding of social meanings of the styles and became more active language users by choosing and shifting the styles. Rather than merely observing the assumed native speakers’ norms presumably taught to them, they appear to be actively making choices as to which style to use in different contexts. Alan, Sam, and Peter, who appropriately chose the polite style as their base style in post-OPIs, occasionally switched to the plain style. Peter, whose OPI rating was the highest, most actively shifted the styles. Their switches to the plain form index utterances that are close to their ‘selves’ (their self-directed thoughts, recalls, and emotions) and/or organize information (subordinate information, summary statements). Their moderate and appropriate style shifts also have the effect of not sounding too distant, resulting in a degree of friendliness.

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sandoicchi tukuttari suru.

N. IWASAKI

69

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On the other hand, both Greg and Henry chose to use the plain style as the base style in post-OPIs—though this choice may be considered inappropriate. Crucially, both Greg and Henry’s choice is not due to their inability to use the polite style. When the situations called for an expression of deference, they demonstrated their ability to consistently use the polite style, which reflects their understanding of the social/situational meanings of the polite style. Moreover, only some of their shifts to the polite style seem haphazard. It is evident from the qualitative analyses that all participants in this study learned through their study-abroad experiences that Japanese speakers make choices, and they themselves also learned to choose between styles—though there is considerable variability among individuals as to whether and to what extent their choices resemble those of native speakers. The conclusion above is not without limitation. In this study, the ways in which the participants use the plain/polite styles in post-OPIs, as compared with pre-OPIs, demonstrate that they became more active users of the style shifts that reflect their social meanings, but they do not tell us the processes by which they learned to become such active social agents. We can only infer that they learned the social meanings of these forms through the active process of language socialization while in Japan. We need to await future studies that examine the sojourners’ socialization during their stay abroad or their retrospective views about their experiences and language use while abroad in order to uncover the intricate relationship between their language choice, experiences, and perceptions, which is no doubt related to their sense of identities. L2 Japanese learners are generally introduced to the polite forms first and are given abundant practice using them in the classroom. Moreover, both linguists and textbook writers traditionally assert that Japanese speakers observe the socially agreed-upon rules. As a result, they may simplistically associate the polite forms with formal contexts and the plain forms with informal contexts, which are often only equated with interactions with close friends, without truly understanding the social meanings of the styles. During their stay in Japan, however, as they socialize and interact with Japanese speakers, they are likely to be encouraged or pressured to use the plain style by their Japanese peers and/or host families. They then may realize that the plain style is not bound to certain contextual features (e.g. talk with close friends), but that the form has social meanings which one employs moment-to-moment to index intimacy/friendliness and self-directed utterances to create a desired context. If socialization in the target language community is the key for L2 learners to acquire social meanings associated with different styles or address forms, then the question arises as to whether formal instruction in the home country can play any role in L2 learning of such social meanings. Though normative association between the form and context may be useful for the sake of simplicity, some discussion of the social meanings of the forms and their flexibility and variation among Japanese speakers that reflect the meanings may prove helpful for students.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Janet S. Shibamoto Smith, Gabriele Kasper, Jane Zuengler, and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful and constructive comments, and to Tammy Gales for thorough and thoughtful proofreading/editing.

APPENDIX Abbreviations used in the excerpts topic marker nominative accusative genitive dative instrumental quotative sentence final particle

Others AH AUX COP GER NEG Q N CL

address honorific auxiliary verb copula gerund negative question marker nominalizer classifier

NOTES 1

2

Japanese also has ‘referent honorifics’ through which the speaker expresses deference towards the referent or humbleness (when referring to his/her own action). These are realized by verb choice. This assumption may be questionable when considering the possibility that students primarily participate in

3

interactions with their peers where sounding distant may be negatively viewed. In highly dependent clauses, the use of the polite-form predicates results in hyper-politeness. For example, ittara ‘if I go’ can be expressed as ikimasitara, which sounds excessively polite.

REFERENCES Althen, G. 1988. American Ways: A Guide for Foreigners in the United States. Yarmouth, Maine: Intercultural Press.

Atsuzawa-Windley, S. and S. Noguchi. 1995. ‘Effects of in-country experience on the acquisition of oral communication skills in

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Particles TOP NOM ACC GEN DAT INSTR QT SFP

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Makino, S. 1983. ‘Speaker/listener-orientation and formality marking in Japanese,’ Gengo Kenkyuu 84: 126–45. Makino, S. 2002. ‘When does communication turn mentally inward? A case study of Japanese formal-to-informal switching,’ in N. M. Akatsuka and S. Strauss (eds): Japanese/Korean Linguistics 10. Stanford, CA: CSLI, pp. 121–35. Marriott, H. 1993. ‘Acquiring sociolinguistic competence: Australian secondary students in Japan,’ Journal of Asian Pacific Communication 4/4: 167–92. Marriott, H. 1995. ‘The acquisition of politeness patterns by exchange students in Japan,’ in B. Freed (ed.): Second Language Acquisition in a Study Abroad Context. Amsterdam: Benjamins, pp. 197–224. Marriott, H. and S. Enomoto. 1995. ‘Secondary exchanges with Japan: Exploring students’ exchanges and gains,’ Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 12: 64–82. Maynard, S. K. 1991. ‘Pragmatics of discourse modality: a case of ‘da’ and ‘desu/masu’ forms in Japanese,’ Journal of Pragmatics 15: 551–82. Okamoto, S. 1999. ‘Situated politeness: manipulating honorific and non-honorific expressions in Japanese conversations,’ Pragmatics 9/1: 51–74. Okamoto, S. 2002. ‘Ideology and social meanings: rethinking the relationship between language, politeness, and gender,’ in S. Benor, M. Rose, D. Sharma, J. Sweetland, and Q. Zhang (eds): Gender Practices in Language. Stanford: Center for the Study of Language and Information, pp. 91–113. Regan, V. 1995. ‘The acquisition of sociolinguistic native speech norms: effects of a year abroad on second language learners of French,’ in B. Freed (ed.): Second Language Acquisition in a Study Abroad Context. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 245–67. Schieffelin, B. B. and E. Ochs. 1986. ‘Language socialization,’ Annual Review of Anthropology 15: 163–91. Siegal, M. 1995. ‘Individual differences and study abroad: women learning Japanese in Japan,’ in B. Freed (ed.): Second Language Acquisition in a Study Abroad Context. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 225–44. Siegal, M. 1996. ‘The role of learner subjectivity in second language sociolinguistic competency: western woman learning Japanese,’ Applied Linguistics 17/3: 356–82.

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Japanese,’ Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 12: 83–98. Barron, A. 2003. Acquisition in Interlanguage Pragmatics: Learning How to do Things with Words in a Study Abroad Context. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Barron, A. 2006. ‘Learning to say ‘you’ in German: the acquisition of sociolinguistic competence in a study abroad context’ in M. A. Dufon and E. Churchill (eds): Language Learners in Study Abroad Contexts. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Brown, P. and S. C. Levinson. 1987. Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. vol. 4. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Cook, H. M. 1996. ‘The Japanese verbal suffixes as indicators of distance and proximity’ in R. Dirven, R. W. Langacker, and J. R. Taylor (eds): The Construal of Space in Language and Thought. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 3–27. Cook, H. M. 2001. ‘Why can’t learners of JFL distinguish polite from impolite speech styles?’ in K. R. Rose and G. Kasper (eds): Pragmatics in Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 80–102. Cook, H. M. 2006. ‘Japanese politeness as an interactional achievement: Academic consultation sessions in Japanese universities,’ Multilingua 25: 269–91. Cook, H. M. 2007. ‘The Role of Desho(o) in JFL Learners’ Language Socialization’. Paper presented at the CLIC Symposium entitled, ‘Language Socialization, Interaction and Culture,’ UCLA, February 23–24. Dufon, M. A. 2000. ‘The acquisition of linguistic politeness in Indonesian by sojourners in naturalistic interactions. PhD thesis. University of Hawai’i Manoa, 1999,’ Dissertation Abstracts International-A 60/11: 3985. Hashimoto, H. 1993. ‘Language acquisition of an exchange student within the homestay environment,’ Journal of Asian Pacific Communication 4: 209–24. Ikuta, S. 1983. ‘Speech level shift and conversational strategy in Japanese discourses,’ Language Science 5: 37–53. Kasper, G. and K. R. Rose. 2002. Pragmatic Development in a Second Language. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing. Kinginger, C. and K. Farrell. 2004. ‘Assessing development of meta-pragmatic awareness in study abroad,’ Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad 10: 19–42.

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Applied Linguistics 31/1: 72–93 ß Oxford University Press 2009 doi:10.1093/applin/amp011 Advance Access published on 9 April 2009

The Relationship between Applied Linguistic Research and Language Policy for Bilingual Education1 DAVID CASSELS JOHNSON Washington State University

TOWARDS MULTI-LAYERED RESEARCH IN LANGUAGE POLICY The field of language planning and policy (LPP) has progressed through a number of phases [see review in Ricento (2000)], engendering multiple frameworks which attempt to describe the process of national language planning/ policy development (Fishman 1979; Haugen 1983). While enumerating some of the possible (and perhaps preferable) steps in and goals of language planning, these earlier frameworks have been criticized for focusing on top-down policy making and ignoring the sociopolitical contexts in which language planning occurs [see review in Ricento (2000)]. Reacting to these so-called positivistic approaches, critical research emphasizes how the state can use language policy to perpetuate systems of social inequality (Tollefson 1991, 2002, 2006; Ricento 1998; Wiley 2002; Pennycook 2006). Tollefson (2006) articulates the aims of critical language policy (CLP): (i) it is critical of traditional apolitical LPP approaches and instead ‘acknowledges that policies often create and sustain various forms of social inequality, and that policy-makers usually promote the interests of dominant

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Currently, restrictive-language policies seem to threaten bilingual education throughout the USA. Anti-bilingual education initiatives have passed easily in California, Arizona, and Massachusetts, while one was closely defeated in Colorado, and federal education policy has re-invigorated the focus on English education for English language learners, while concomitantly obfuscating the possibility of native language maintenance and developmental bilingual education. This is the educational landscape within which bilingual education researchers, educators, and students must face the formidable challenge of preserving educational choice and bilingual education. Thus, substantive research is needed on how bilingual educators navigate this challenging ideological and policy landscape. Based on an ethnographic study of bilingual education language policy, this article takes up this challenge by focusing on how beliefs about Applied Linguistics research influence the interpretation and appropriation of federal language policy in one US school district. The results have implications for the relationship between the Applied Linguistic research community and language policy processes.

D. C. JOHNSON 73

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social groups’ (Tollefson 2006: 42); (ii) it seeks to develop more democratic policies which reduce inequality and promote the maintenance of minority languages; and (iii) it is influenced by critical theory. CLP scholarship has helped illuminate how language policies can be ideological, and presents a rich picture of language policy development as one aspect amongst many socio-political processes which may perpetuate social inequality, but it has also been criticized for underestimating the power of human agency (Ricento and Hornberger 1996) and not capturing the processes of language policy development (Davis 1999). As others have noted (Pennycook 2002; Hornberger and Johnson 2007), an (over)emphasis on the hegemonic power of language policies delimits the agentive role of local educators during implementation. Ricento and Hornberger (1996) introduce the metaphor of an onion to evoke the multiple layers through which language policy develops and emphasize the language policy power of the teacher exercised through pedagogical decisions. They argue that LPP research has unsuccessfully accounted for activity in all layers. Similarly, Ricento (2000) points out that language policy research has tended to fall short of fully accounting for precisely how micro-level interaction relates to the macro-levels of social organization. Still, more recent work has examined implementation. Proposition 227 was a voter-approved measure that restricted the development and maintenance of bilingual education programs in California. After Proposition 227 was enacted, bilingual programs were reduced (Ga´ndara 2000), but Garcı´a and CurryRodriguez (2000) note that teachers responded to the law in different ways—from defiance to acceptance. Reflecting this complexity, ethnographic portraits of California education, post-Proposition 227, reveal different findings. Baltodano (2004) finds that the formerly pro-bilingual education parents internalized the English-only ideology in Proposition 227, thus succumbing to its hegemonic influence. Valdez (2001) and Stritikus (2002), on the other hand, discuss the agentive role that teachers played in implementation, sometimes shaping the English-only focus of Proposition 227 to meet the needs of their linguistically diverse students. Some anthropological (Levinson and Sutton 2001; Gale and Densmore 2003) and sociological work (Ball 2006) on educational policy foregrounds the agentive role of local educators in policy processes. For example, Levinson and Sutton (2001) propose a sociocultural approach to educational policy which recognizes the power in authorized policy and involves researching official policy formation, but also emphasizes the need to consider policy appropriation2 when the ‘temporarily reified text is circulated across the various institutional contexts, where it may be applied, interpreted, and/or contested by a multiplicity of actors’ (Levinson and Sutton 2001: 2). They hope that traditional and clear-cut divisions between policy formation and implementation will be replaced with conceptualizations of policy making as a process which stretches across time and contexts (Ball 2006).

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METHOD The ethnography of language policy This study is an ethnography of language policy which ‘include[s] textual and historical analyses of policy texts but must be based in an ethnographic understanding of some local context’ (Hornberger and Johnson 2007). The results reported herein are part of a larger 3-year (2002–5) multi-sited ethnographic study of bilingual education policy and program development in the SDP (Johnson 2007). Ethnographic data collection emerged out of a series of action-oriented research projects on language policy and bilingual program development with bilingual education teachers, administrators, and outside researchers. These projects engendered participant observation and field note collection in many different contexts within the SDP, including the following, which are of interest for this article: (i) a series of meetings attended by teachers and administrators during the development of the SDP language policy, entitled ‘Policy for English Language Learners’ (2005); (ii) the central administrative office in charge of language policy which operated under three different names during data collection but is currently called the Office of Language, Culture, and the Arts (OLCA); and (iii) bilingual teacher

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The fate of bilingual education relies on language policy at multiple levels from national policies [like No Child Left Behind (NCLB)] to classroom policies, and everything in between. Yet, most LPP research has traditionally adopted a ‘top-down’ approach in that it examines either policy language and/or the historical and sociopolitical development of policies without looking at how such language is interpreted and appropriated. While ethnographic studies of educational policy (Walford 2003) and educational language policy (Stritikus 2002; Skilton-Sylvester 2003; Canagarajah 2006) are emerging, Levinson and Sutton (2001) note that there is still a paucity of ethnographically informed data on educational policy and, similarly, Blommaert (1996) and others (Davis 1999; Hornberger and Johnson 2007) argue that the field of language policy needs more ethnographic studies which illuminate local language policy processes.3 As well, little work has been done which includes both critical analyses of policy discourse and ethnographically captures the multiple layers of language policy creation, interpretation, and appropriation, or, in Ricento and Hornberger’s (1996) terms, illuminates the various layers of the LPP onion. Thus, this article focuses on the appropriation of one policy—Title III of NCLB—in the School District of Philadelphia (SDP) and, more specifically, I focus on a theme which emerged during ethnographic field work: the role of Applied Linguistics research and researchers in the creation, interpretation, and appropriation of language policy. The following research question guides this article: how does Applied Linguistics research shape the interpretation and appropriation of Title III of NCLB?

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Language policy discourse analysis Along with ethnography, I use intertextual discourse analysis to analyze the connections between the various layers of policy discourse. Bakhtin (1986) proposes that both the texts we write and the speech we create (discourse) are filled with the echoes of previous speakers and writers. These echoes, or intertextual connections, imbue texts and discourse with dialogic overtones and multiple meanings and any interpretation of a (potentially multi-voiced) text or discourse requires an understanding of these intertextual connections. Lemke notes that an intertextual approach requires any given text to be analyzed ‘in the context of and against the background of other texts and discourses’ (Lemke 1995: 10). For this study, the object of analysis is policy discourse which includes spoken interaction (e.g. policy meetings, congressional debate, and interviews) and writing (e.g. language policy language). Contained within this policy discourse are policy texts which are a part and product of the discourse and typically take the form of a language policy in the traditional sense, i.e. the language policy text. For example, Title III is the product of congressional debate and, therefore, a piece of Title III text is both a policy text and a product/part of policy discourse. What is referred to as a text, then, is simply the reproduction of some policy discourse and text for the purpose of analysis in this article. Following Gee’s (1990) distinction of little d and big D discourse, (policy) Discourse refers to larger discourses [after Foucault (1978)] which influence behavior and interaction and tend to normalize particular ways of speaking and being. The purpose of intertextual discourse analysis of language policy is to analyze policy text and discourse ‘in the context of and against the background of other texts

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professional development meetings. For the sake of data triangulation, I conducted multiple formal and informal interviews with key teachers and administrators, including recorded interviews with four administrators and four bilingual teachers and I recorded naturally occurring conversation at language policy meetings. I also analyzed (and contributed to) multiple drafts of the formal SDP language policy as well as informal policy texts (SDP language education literature and web site texts). In order to contextualize what was happening in the SDP, the ethnographic data were then compared with: (i) ‘top-down’ policy texts, including Title VII of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), commonly known as the Bilingual Education Act (BEA), and the multiple drafts of the policy which took its place, Title III of NCLB; (ii) the political discourse which accompanied the creation, interpretation, and appropriation of Title III, including Senate and House debate over NCLB (found in the legislative record), political literature released by politicians, and web site information from the USA and Pennsylvania Departments of Education; and (iii) interviews with one Federal Department of Education administrator and one Pennsylvania Department of Education Administrator.

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FEDERAL LANGUAGE POLICY This section deals with the role of research in the development of Title III and in the resulting policy language. An analysis is offered of early drafts of Title III and the discourse (legislative debate) which led to its enactment. I look at how ‘bilingual education’ is defined and the requirement that all language education programs should have scientifically based research support.

Defining bilingual education Beginning in 1968 when it was first enacted, Title VII of the ESEA, otherwise known as the BEA, was the preeminent federal educational language policy which governed how federal money was administered to language education programs in the USA. At the time of its inception, the goals of bilingual education were vague and definitions and typologies were scarce (Crawford 1998; Ricento 1998; Wiley and Wright 2004); those on the political left and right in the US supported what seemed to be an effective way for transitioning ELLs into English language classrooms. This ambiguity in goals affected each installment of the act when it was revised four more times, but in 1994 there was a definitive shift in the policy language toward valuing bilingualism as a resource (Wiese and Garcia 2001) and promoting both transitional and developmental4 bilingual education (in which native languages are developed). Yet, in 2002, Title VII was effectively replaced by Title III of the newly named ‘No Child Left Behind Act’ (NCLB). With its vigorous attention to English language acquisition for ELLs, Title III has fomented concern that developmental bilingual education will be phased out and transitional or English-only pedagogical approaches phased in (Wiley and Wright 2004). While critics of Title III decry the dominant focus on English language education and concomitant obfuscation of bilingual education, early drafts of the policy were even more restrictive. House Resolution 1 (HR 1) was introduced

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and discourses’ to illuminate policy Discourse and establish links between the various layers of language policy. Specifically for this article, I focus on circulating ideas about ‘research’ as they influence bilingual education policy. Each text, collected during ethnographic fieldwork, is analyzed in light of features within the layers of context which may be intertextually linked. Explanation of the context in which each text was collected is supported by field notes and participant observation. Intertextual connections are then analyzed between micro-level language policy discourse and ‘top-down’ or macro-level language policy Discourse. The goal here is to trace the intertextual links between federal and local language policy discourse by focusing on a particular theme: the role of Applied Linguistics research and/or researchers in language policy creation, interpretation, and appropriation.

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in the House of Representatives by John Boehner (Republican-Ohio) and began with ‘findings’ which make a conspicuous shift away from the language in the BEA: (a) FINDINGS – The congress finds as follows: (1) English is the common language of the United States and every citizen and other person residing in the United States should have a command of the English language in order to develop their full potential [HR 1, Title III, Sec. 3102]

[Purpose:] (3) to assist local educational agencies to . . . prepare limited English proficient students, including recent immigrant students, to enter all-English instructional settings within 3 years [emphasis added, HR1, Title III, Sec. 3102]. HR 1 might have restricted bilingual education to three-year transitional programs and concomitantly outlawed developmental bilingual education. However, when HR 1 was sent to the Senate for debate, Senators such as Jack Reed (Democrat-Rhode Island) argued that 3 years was an arbitrary time limit and students may need more time before they transition into all English instructional settings (22 June 2001, Congressional Record). Therefore, in the Senate, the ‘findings’ and 3-year time limit were struck from the policy and, when it was sent back to the House, legislators like Silvestre Reyes (Democrat-Texas), who championed late-exit bilingual education throughout the legislative process, celebrated the new version of the bill as a victory for bilingual education. On the House floor, Reyes exclaimed: I am proud to support the conference report on HR 1 . . . bilingual programs are important to limited English proficiency children because they build on native language proficiency to make the transition to all-English academic instruction . . . Opponents of bilingual education favored placing a three year time limit on how long students can be enrolled in bilingual education regardless of what level of English proficiency they reach . . . The compromise bill gives students the flexibility to remain enrolled in bilingual education as long as is appropriate. [Congressional Record, 20 December 2001, emphasis added] Reyes identifies ‘bilingual education’ as a pedagogical method which builds on native language proficiency to transition students to all-English academic instruction. He does not believe that time restrictions should be placed on this transition but he considers bilingual education to be, by definition, transitional, and not a method for native language maintenance and, thus, his definition does not include developmental programs.

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HR 1 places English at the fore, both in education and in society, because it is necessary for developing one’s full potential. This nationalistically monolingual sentiment is accompanied by a three-year time limit on ELL participation in bilingual education:

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While bilingual education supporters, like Reyes (and Ted Kennedy, Democrat-Massachusetts), saw Title III as a victory for bilingual education, opponents of bilingual education also felt victorious. In a press release, Boehner, who had introduced HR 1, proclaimed: As a result of the No Child Left Behind Act (H.R. 1), the bipartisan education reform legislation signed in January by President Bush, bilingual education programs across the country are being transformed to give new tools to parents and to focus on helping limited English proficient (LEP) children learn English. [News from the committee on Education and the Workforce, 17 October 2002]

‘Scientifically based research’ Along with the focus on English, Title III includes the provision that any education program must be based on ‘scientifically based research’, repeating the phrase 119 times. For example, in the beginning of Title III, one of the ‘Purposes’ sets the tone for the rest of Title III: The purposes of [Part A of Title III] are to . . . provide State agencies and local agencies with the flexibility to implement language instructional educational programs, based on scientifically-based research on teaching limited English proficient children, that the agencies believe to be the most effective for teaching English [Title III, Part A, Sec. 3102, 9]. This excerpt suggests that local educators must choose language programs which are supported by scientifically based research; yet it also poses an interpretive dilemma by simultaneously insisting on local flexibility (another salient theme coursing through NCLB) while placing at least one, and perhaps two, restrictions on local choice: (i) any program must be based on

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Boehner’s press release suggests that Title III will transform bilingual education programs such that they focus on English and, presumably, not mother tongue education. This, according to HR 1 (which Boehner introduced to Congress), is necessary for ELLs to develop their full potential, and the quicker they can transition to English, the better. Both political allies (like Reyes and Kennedy) and political opponents (like Boehner) celebrated Title III as a victory; as well, even political allies of bilingual education perpetuated the Discourse that bilingual education was necessarily transitional, a notion that is reflected in the final policy text. This policy Discourse ignores applied linguistic research which (i) compares multiple bilingual program typologies (Hornberger 1991; Garcı´a and Baker 2007) and (ii) demonstrates the effectiveness of developmental bilingual education relative to transitional and ESL-focused programs (Thomas and Collier 1997, 2002; Lindholm-Leary 2001; Krashen and McField 2005; Rolstad et al. 2005; August and Shanahan 2006; Genesee et al. 2006).

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THE SDP The SDP is an example of a local education agency responsible for interpreting and appropriating Title III. The fifth largest school district in the USA, the SDP has around 200,000 students, 14,000 of whom receive ESOL/bilingual program support services (representing more than a third of the ELL population for the entire state of Pennsylvania). While almost 50% of the ELLs are Spanish speaking, the SDP also serves large populations of Khmer, Vietnamese, Chinese, and Russian speakers. The SDP was a forerunner in bilingual education policy and has a history of supporting bilingual education programs—shortly after Title VII competitive grant funding became available under the BEA in 1968, pilot programs were implemented. Since then, bilingual programs have included Russian, Chinese, Khmer, and Spanish programs. Today, one central administrative office

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scientifically based research; and (ii) the agencies must believe in the effectiveness of their chosen program. What is believe referring to—beliefs about the most effective programs or beliefs about scientifically based research? Both interpretations are plausible based on the policy text alone. In order to ascertain how the US Department of Education interprets these policies, I interviewed the director of the State Consolidated Grant Division5 (Brinda Sea6) in the Office of English Language Acquisition to discover what, if any, educational programs were supported or promoted by the Department of Education. She immediately and unequivocally responded that they do not promote or prefer any particular method and are, in fact, prohibited from doing so: ‘We stay completely out of it’ (telephone conversation, 24 May 2006). She stressed that it was up to the states and schools to choose particular pedagogical programs for ELLs as long as the chosen programs are ‘research-based’ and added that as long as they provide support for their programs in the form of research, they are eligible to receive Title III funds. While NCLB does outline the parameters of scientifically based research (see Title IX, A-B7), the US Department of Education provides little guidance for local school districts8 regarding which programs the research supports or what even counts as scientifically based research. Brinda Sea neither advocates particular bodies of research nor language programs which such research might support, and asserts that the US Department of Education cannot prescribe particular pedagogical approaches.9 Not only does federal policy discourse offer no clear answers, but also federal policy texts, like Title III, can be confusing since they necessarily contain multiple voices and are an intertextual mixture of new and old policy language. Of the multiple authors of Title III, whose intentions carry the most power? Further, how are such policies—whose authors have conflicting intentions— interpreted and appropriated in school districts around the USA? How do educators make sense of these multi-voiced texts?

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Reflexive appropriation of applied linguistics research In the fall of 2002, OLCA recruited Eve Island, a Title VII consultant to the SDP and well-known and respected applied linguistic researcher, to begin developing an official language policy for the entire school district. Beginning in the spring of 2003, Eve organized and facilitated a series of policy meetings which culminated in a 2-day language policy retreat at which around 35 school district employees, teachers, and principals gathered to flesh out what they would like to see in a language policy. Eve was a human conduit and intertextual bridge between the Applied Linguistics research community and the SDP practitioners. Eve would portray the bilingual teachers’ struggle to maintain their bilingual programs as part of a larger bilingual education movement going on throughout the USA. For example, before the language policy retreat, Eve sent an inquiry to the TESOL Advocacy Listserv, requesting advice for writing a school district language policy; while she did not receive specific suggestions, she did receive words of encouragement which she then announced at the beginning of the language policy retreat. She reported that Donna Christian said, ‘I’ve never seen anything like this!’ and Richard Ruiz said that he ‘loved this!’ (field notes, 13 March 2003). In this way, well-known applied linguists were positioned as supporters of bilingual program development and the language policy initiative within the SDP. Eve not only brought words of encouragement to the language policy retreat, but she also relied heavily on David Corson’s book Language Policy in

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oversees all ESOL/bilingual programs. OLCA is the primary interpretative conduit for federal language policy and the administrators therein are the primary arbiters for interpretation and appropriation of educational language policies— including Titles VII and III. The data reported in this study arose from my close work with OLCA on various projects including the SDP language policy which began with what was called a ‘language policy retreat’ (March, 2003) and ended with its ratification at a school board meeting (June, 2004). I acted as a participant– observer during the production of the policy and I also helped edit the policy document at various stages in its development. However, while this gave me an insider’s perspective of how a local policy might be created, the minor additions I made to the document were largely ignored in the end. OLCA, in a sense, facilitates the intertextual links between federal and local language policy, yet the nature of this facilitation varies depending on who is doing the interpreting and, here, I focus on the various ways that applied linguistic research and researchers influenced the interpretation and appropriation of Title III. Specifically, I look at how two OLCA administrators and one outside applied linguistic researcher (and SDP consultant) influenced language policy in the SDP during the development of the SDP language policy.

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Eve refers to creating spaces or the emancipation potential within a language policy for challenging dominant ideologies and questioning how linguistic capital is allotted and this is really important in Corson’s book. She hopes his theories about the power of a school language policy to be emancipatory manifests in the SDP [field notes, 14 March 2003]. Eve herself anthropomorphized the philosophy espoused in Corson’s book by facilitating negotiation between teachers and administrators and empowering teachers in the language policy development process. Eve challenged traditional divisions of language policy ‘creators’ and ‘implementers’. Eve cited a community of applied linguistic researchers to promote and maintain local Discourses about the benefits of developmental bilingual education and she portrayed larger societal Discourses outside the SDP—as espoused by Donna Christian and Richard Ruiz—as supportive of local policy discourse. In this way, Eve challenged monolingual Discourses, so prevalent within and without US educational language policy, and instead portrayed applied linguistic research and researchers which support developmental bilingual education as a dominant Discourse.

Applied linguistics research as support During the development of the SDP language policy, I interviewed another champion of developmental bilingual programs—the Chief Officer of OLCA, Emily Dixon-Marquez. Emily helped author both the Title III application and Title VII grants and was also an integral member of the community that developed and drafted the SDP language policy. Her influence, however, transcends the time limits of this study as she first started working in the district in 1973, shortly after Title VII monies were made available under the BEA. In a recorded interview, she reflects on the history of US bilingual education language policy, beginning with the BEA: David: How do you interpret the parameters that were set in the Bilingual Education Act?

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Schools: A Resource for Teachers and Administrators (1999) (which proposes theoretical models of school district language policy development) as a foundation for the development of the SDP policy. She used the book as a stepby-step manual for constructing the policy and she perpetrated the modus operandi of Corson’s policy theories. For example, Corson adamantly argues for school language policy creation which draws upon the knowledge and resources of many different actors, not just a few key administrators, and in doing so can resist ‘unfair aspects of reproduction and . . . help soften social injustices’ (Corson 1999: 25). At the language policy retreat, Eve and I discussed the ramifications of Corson’s perspective on the SDP language policy:

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Emily: Well, I think that whoever set them probably wasn’t basing it on research because there was none – so in terms of federal grants 3 and 5 years were always convenient numbers. David: What are the 3 and 5 years? Emily: Well, transitional bilingual programs were initially 3 years and then out in the (mainstream) – and that’s how the legislation read. David: So in that title VII grant has continued until NCLB?

Emily characterizes the growth of language policy in the USA as developing and incorporating a better sense of the research because, in part, there was no body of bilingual education research when Title VII was developed. According to Emily, US education policy has grown alongside and been buttressed by applied linguistic research—as the research trends have grown away from remediation or deficit approaches, and increasingly supported enrichment models of language education, so has policy, leading right up to NCLB. I then asked Emily about NCLB’s requirement that all educational programs be supported by scientifically based research and how this influenced their Title III application. Emily said that they referred to the results reported in Thomas and Collier (1997, 2002) suggesting that two-way (or dual language) and one-way developmental bilingual education are the two most effective program models for facilitating content knowledge, acquisition of English, and maintenance of students’ mother tongues. Based on these studies, OLCA chose to develop ‘dual language programs’. I asked her why these programs were acceptable under Title III: Emily: [W]e preceded NCLB in terms of models and so forth – we’ve been doing dual language, that’s not new to us, so it hasn’t been enlightening in that sense. We’re glad that it’s an acceptable model that they subscribe to. David: Why is [dual language] an acceptable model? Emily: I think probably because of the Thomas and Collier study – which the government is comfortable with and they think has some integrity to it – and it’s research based . . . plus I think this country is finally coming to the realization – and I’m probably being really optimistic, and maybe naı¨ve here – but coming to the realization that we need to learn more about languages and cultures [recorded interview, 11 April 2003].

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Emily: But it’s really evolved – it’s become an enrichment model whereas before it was just remediation or a deficit type approach . . . it’s much much much better . . . I think it started it was like three million – and it’s now into the hundreds of millions [recorded interview, 11 April 2003].

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Referencing research in local language policy Within the discourse community responsible for the SDP language policy, Emily and Eve helped perpetuate the belief that developmental bilingual education was superior to transitional programs. Inspired by this belief and buttressed by applied linguistic research (Thomas and Collier 1997, 2002) and researchers (e.g. Donna Christian, Richard Ruiz, and David Corson), it appeared as though a policy which outright resisted and/or ignored Title III would develop. However, initial policy language filled with idealism eventually gave way to pragmatism, and, while the initial community of policy developers included a more egalitarian mix of teachers and administrators from multiple levels of institutional authority, OLCA eventually took control of the drafting process. The developers of the policy, including Eve, and especially Emily, were cognizant of the language in Title III and drafted a policy which appropriates, ignores, and/or alters Title III text. The first shift is a conspicuous snub of the ‘scientifically-based’ language in Title III in favor of: High quality programs for ELL’s provide optimum conditions for English Language acquisition, and therefore, the District commits to . . . programs for ELLs using sound instructional practices

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Emily asserts that NCLB is simply catching up with what they already knew in the SDP—developmental bilingual education is an effective and researchbased language education model. Further, Emily senses a shift in the language ideological landscape in the USA—we are coming to the realization that we need to promote learning about various languages and cultures. For Emily, the advancement of knowledge about languages and bilingual education, supported by applied linguistic research, has engendered bilingual educational policies which are increasingly sensitive to these shifts. She interprets Title III as being at the forefront of this national ideological shift and thus it embodies an enrichment model of bilingual education. Yet, as she argues, the SDP preceded this national trend toward enrichment models of bilingual education and thus NCLB has not been enlightening in that sense. In our interview, Emily was generally very optimistic about Title III and its effects on bilingual education in the SDP. Along with the policy text support for dual language education, she expressed gratitude that under Title III, unlike Title VII, money was no longer distributed according to a competitive grant and the per pupil entitlement was more per pupil. For Emily, this was ‘wonderful news’ (recorded interview, 11 April 2003). Emily’s interpretation of Title III stands in contrast to its creators, like Reyes, who conceptualize ‘bilingual education’ as necessarily transitional. This is not because Emily was unaware of the English-focused flavor of NCLB (as the author of the Title III application, she was well aware of its requirements), but she still interpreted it as supporting the dual language programs she intended to implement with Title III money.

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as shown by research in the field of second language acquisition [III, 1a]. Note the immediate nod to English language acquisition and the district’s assertion that they are committed to programs which ensure this, thus appropriating Title III’s English-focused discourse. However, using second language acquisition research to engender sound instructional practices is conspicuously different than Title III’s assertion that programs need to be based on ‘scientifically based research’. Then, unlike Title III, the policy defines bilingual education:

This text defines ‘bilingual education’ as a method which develops and maintains first language literacy which is not a goal of transitional programs and stands in contrast to Title III’s assertion that the goal of bilingual education is for ‘limited English speakers to enter all English-instructional settings’. Thus, definitions of bilingual education as necessarily transitional in federal policy text and discourse are resisted (or ignored) in favor of language which allows for developmental programs. Then, unlike Title III, the SDP policy makes explicit claims about what language programs the ‘research’ supports: The district recognizes that . . . research indicates that strong first language development serves as an effective foundation for second language acquisition [III, 3b]. This allusion to the interdependence hypothesis (Cummins 1981) asserts that English acquisition is aided by first language development, and presumably, pedagogy in which first languages are strongly developed. The SDP language policy text makes a few important discursive shifts away from, while concomitantly maintaining, some of Title III’s English-only focus. While SDP language policy text appropriates some of the salient Englishfocused language from Title III, it also creates implementational space for developing various types of bilingual programs because it makes specific claims about what the research supports—strong first language development—and defines bilingual education as a program which develops first languages.

Applied linguistic research as doctrine The remainder of this article focuses on shifts in bilingual education policy that took place between the Fall of 2003 and Spring of 2005, illustrated by changing definitions of ‘good’ bilingual education and shifting interpretations of Applied Linguistics research. What is missing in this study, and what might be expected at this point, is a description of the implementation of

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A bilingual education program develops and maintains first language literacy as well as literacy in the second language [Section III, Part 2b].

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When you talk about bilingual education, in many research based models, it is uh – considered a way to help children, or assist students who are second language learners, to acquire English – The problem we have seen historically with bilingual education is that – somehow even students who are born . . . in the United States have been placed in bilingual education programs just . . . because, even though they’re native speakers of English, they come in with some gaps with their linguistic development due to maybe speaking another language at home or even hearing another language at home [recorded interview, 13 June 2005]. Like Silvestre Reyes, what Lucı´a refers to as ‘bilingual education’ is a programmatic model, the primary goal of which is acquisition of English for ELLs. Bilingual education in her usage is specifically intended for non-native English speakers. Speaking or hearing a non-English language at home may induce gaps in some English-speaking students’ English language development, but those students, as English speakers, are still not good candidates for bilingual education in her view. Lucı´a’s beliefs about research influence her conceptualization of what ‘bilingual education’ is and who it is for; it does not include developmental programs and is not for English speakers born in the USA.

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the SDP language policy. In large part, there was no implementation and thus it existed, and continues to exist, as an interesting remnant on the OLCA web site, but has no real power. Its lack of power is, in part, due to a shift in pedagogical philosophy and bilingual education policy at OLCA. In the fall of 2003, OLCA acquired a new director of ESOL/bilingual programs, Lucı´a Sanchez, whose beliefs about applied linguistic research were different than Emily’s and Eve’s and influenced language policy accordingly. Emily Dixon-Marquez and Lucı´a Sanchez are an interesting comparative juxtaposition of how language (education) ideologies influence interpretation and appropriation of top-down language policies like Title III. Lucı´a started working at OLCA as Emily, who quit OLCA in 2004, was leaving, and as the current director of ESOL/bilingual programs, Lucı´a has been the most influential interpreter and appropriator of federal and state language policy since 2004. Before coming to Philadelphia, Lucı´a worked at the Pennsylvania Department of Education where she reviewed and approved the Title III plan submitted by Emily. Thus, when Lucı´a started working at OLCA, she adopted the responsibility of overseeing implementation of Title III monies which she herself had approved! Yet, Lucia’s beliefs about bilingual education differ from Emily’s and stand in contrast to the additive bilingual beliefs circulating through OLCA and the development of the SDP language policy. I had a chance to interview Lucı´a and ask her about programmatic changes that were underway:

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Lucı´a has promoted transitional bilingual programs which exit ELLs to English-medium classrooms by middle school. Her interpretation of the research accommodates (or vice versa) her interpretation of the intentions of Title III: Title III was created to improve English language acquisition programs by increasing the services or creating situations where the students would be getting supplemental services to move them into English language acquisition situations [recorded interview, 13 June 2005].

Teacher: Who or where did the decision make – come from to [transition students]? Lucia: Because, because, number one, we looked at all the programs that are effective based on Krashen’s research – and the beginning of Title III of the No Child Left Behind Act, which is long, and there’s nothing we can do to change that [tape recorded, 1 December 2005]. Lucı´a’s beliefs about the research, and here she alludes to Stephen Krashen’s research, are used to justify her interpretation of Title III as restrictively focused on English language development. By conferring language policy decisions to Stephen Krashen and Title III, Lucı´a deflects responsibility for her decision to shift SDP language policy to outside experts and outside language policy, both of which rigidly dictate a transitional bilingual language policy and ‘there’s nothing they can do to change that’. Later in the meeting, she emphasizes this point by saying: Everyone knows about Stephen Krashen – he’s a linguist that has devoted most of his research to education, but he’s a linguist. He’s a scientist that studies different linguistic patterns but he really – we heard about the silent period through Krashen, we heard about comprehensible input, that’s Krashen. We heard about the lowering the affective filter, that’s Krashen, error correction, that’s

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Lucia interprets the goals of ‘bilingual education’ and Title III as the same— eventual transition of ELLs into mainstream classrooms. She does not feel that the ELL students in Philadelphia are well served by maintenance programs and for these students, the preferred model is transitional (with all bilingual education students entering mainstream classrooms by middle school) with the option of heritage language classes to continue biliteracy development. Throughout ethnographic data collection, bilingual education meetings were held which involved policy and program development and teacher training. During one such meeting, led by Lucı´a, a couple of the teachers expressed concern that the programmatic changes being implemented were a clandestine attempt to get rid of bilingual education and mainstream ELLs, a claim which Lucı´a adamantly rejected. After Lucı´a introduced the transitional program, one of the teachers challenged her decision:

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Krashen, so all of that is good research that we all as language teachers need to know. And he said, he is the expert, and he said that, yes, you can introduce English right away – Yes it is important that we know what the research says [tape recorded, 1 December 2005].

DISCUSSION At this point, I would like to return to the research question proposed earlier: how does applied linguistic research shape the interpretation and appropriation of Title III in the SDP? 1 Ignoring the research: despite the preponderance of research supporting the relative ‘effectiveness’ of bilingual programs, administrators in the US Department of Education and federal lawmakers seem largely oblivious, or at least do not subscribe, to particular studies or bodies of research. Federal policy discourse perpetuates the limiting definition of ‘bilingual education’ as a means for transitioning ELLs into English-medium classrooms. Obscured in this federal discourse about bilingual education is the notion that it can be a means for fostering bilingualism and biliteracy for both native and non-native English speakers alike; that it is a means for utilizing languages as (cultural, educational, or economic) resources; or that ELLs have a right to literacy in their mother tongues. Thus, federal policy discourse and the resultant policy text (Title III) help perpetuate the popular Discourse that bilingual education is, by definition, transitional. 2 Vague demands for research support: still, in the US Department of Education, the views about what the research supports are not clear and/or not enforced when administering Title III monies, and the administrator interviewed for this study insisted that they would ‘stay out of it’ as long as the Title III grant applicants provide (any) research support for their chosen programs. While the definition of ‘scientifically based

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In these two texts, Lucı´a clarifies her beliefs about what role ‘research’ should play in language policy decision making. While Eve refers outside research and researchers in an attempt to enhance teacher agency, and Emily interprets the research as supportive of local choice and developmental bilingual education, Lucı´a positions the research, here embodied by Krashen, as setting rigid standards to which SDP language policy, and the teachers, must adapt. She enhances Krashen’s standing as the expert by emphasizing his position as a linguist and a scientist; in other words, Lucı´a is relaying Krashen’s expertise to the teachers who should not blame the messenger for the message. The teachers are stripped of their expertise and agency in making language policy decisions—since they are neither linguists nor scientists (nor experts according to Lucı´a)—and Lucı´a deflects the responsibility of SDP language policy decision making to Krashen and Title III.

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research’ in Title IX is (somewhat) clear, this administrator did not give a strict definition nor make claims about which programs are best, and she is directly responsible for administering Title III monies, thus leaving implementational space for creative interpretation of what ‘scientificallybased research’ is and which programs it supports. 3 Including researchers in the local discourse community: applied linguistic research is appropriated in the SDP in varying ways. Eve Island, the Title VII consultant and applied linguistic researcher, appropriated research (including her own) and voices from an outside community of bilingual education advocates and applied linguistic scholars (like Richard Ruiz) to contextualize and support educator efforts to develop developmental bilingual policy and pedagogy. Positioning the research(ers) as allies, and the SDP practitioners as experts, empowered teachers to become active agents in policy making. Eve served as a human conduit and intertextual link between a community of Applied Linguistics researchers and SDP educators; she positioned the policy developer’s initiative ‘within the context of and against the background of’ (Lemke 1995: 10) academic discourse which supports both developmental bilingual education and developing school district policy in an egalitarian way that appropriates a diversity of teacher and administrator voices. Concomitantly, she challenged traditional divisions between policy ‘creators’ and ‘implementers’ and exemplified how policies which reduce inequality and promote the maintenance of minority languages can be developed more democratically (Tollefson 2006). 4 Applied linguistic research as support: the Titles VII and III grant writer, Emily Dixon-Marquez, viewed the requirement that programs must be based on scientifically based research as beneficial because the research she knew—especially the Thomas and Collier studies (1997, 2002)—supported the programs she wanted to promote in the SDP. Within the ideological space created at the language policy retreat and maintained by key players, developmental bilingual programs were positioned as superior to transitional programs and the Thomas and Collier studies (1997, 2002) were appropriated as allies. Further, Emily interprets Title III as being supportive, in its language and funding, of dual language programs. 5 (Mis)appropriating Applied Linguistics research as a mandate: while Emily (and Eve) referred outside research and researchers in an attempt to enhance teacher agency, the new head of ESOL/bilingual programs, Lucı´a Sanchez, positioned the research, here embodied by linguists like Stephen Krashen, as setting rigid standards (i.e. transition into English) to which SDP language policy, and teachers, must adapt. Lucı´a’s interpretation of Title III was filtered through her definition of ‘bilingual education’ as necessarily transitional and she cited Krashen (in her words, a linguist and a scientist) as an expert who supports this transition. The expertise of the teachers was diminished in favor of outside experts whose research

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placed restrictions on SDP language policy by demanding transitional programs, which is an inaccurate interpretation of Krashen’s research (Krashen 1996; Krashen and McField 2005). Lucı´a reified popular definitions of bilingual education (as promoted by federal policy discourse) as necessarily transitional and, further, limited the role of teachers in language policy processes to that of ‘implementer’.

CONCLUSION It is difficult enough to pinpoint intentions in a single-authored text but a language policy has multiple authors with varied intentions. As Bakhtin (1986) argues, there are dialogic overtones and multiple meanings within any given text. Title III is no different. Still, while a plurality of readings and interpretations of national language policies like Title III of NCLB are possible (and a reality in this study), policy Discourse constrains interpretation and implementation possibilities—some interpretations will be privileged, especially those sanctioned in federal discourse, while others may be obfuscated or discredited (Ball 2006). The production of Title III was characterized by limiting definitions of bilingual education as necessarily transitional and

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Cutting edge theoretical developments portray language policy as a potentially hegemonic mechanism through which dominant ideologies about language (education) are promoted (Pennycook 2006; Tollefson 2006). The results of this paper suggest that emphasis should be placed on the word ‘potentially’ since it is shown that while language policies can have this effect, the effects of policies are channeled through human agents in local educational contexts and, thus, policy appropriation can be varied and unpredictable. While Emily and Eve resisted the English-focused discourse in Title III, Lucı´a appropriated it and promoted state-sponsored definitions of ‘bilingual education’ over definitions cited in applied linguistic research. Both Emily and Lucı´a advocate bilingual education but their beliefs about the best type of bilingual education, and what the research says, colored their interpretations of Title III. Using the same Title III policy language and money as support, they implemented ESOL/bilingual programs in very different ways. Emily’s interpretation that Title III is as flexible as it claims, and her beliefs about bilingual education research, created and supported ideological and implementational spaces for additive bilingualism. She and Eve fostered an ideological space for bilingual language policy and program development in which developmental programs were favored and an egalitarian discourse community of administrators and teachers was encouraged to engage with language policy processes. The educational transformation relies on Lucia’s interpretation of Title III as rigidly English-dominant and her own beliefs about language education research. In order for the effects of Title III to be truly monolingual, at least in Philadelphia, administrators must allow themselves to be conscripted by its monolingual discourse.

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TRANSCRIPTION NOTES () (?) ... Italics

transcription doubt unclear utterance ellipsis short pause emphatic stress

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this influenced the resulting policy text and some interpretations in the SDP. One administrator’s appropriation of Title III suggests that her interpretation was constrained by the English-focused and transitional bilingual education discourse; therefore, Title III put limits on what was educationally feasible. Still, other bilingual educators in the SDP were neither swayed by the English-focused discourse, nor the limiting definitions of bilingual education so prevalent in Title III, and used applied linguistic research to support their interpretation. It is up to local education agents to either expand or restrict their bilingual programs using Title III monies and it has gone both ways in the SDP. During the first half of ethnographic data collection, Title III was interpreted as flexible. In this ideological space of bilingual language policy and program development, Title III was portrayed as a real windfall for SDP bilingual programs and its flexibility was emphasized to teachers and other stakeholders. A shift in personnel, however, led to different interpretations of how Title III monies should be used, marked by beliefs that Title III’s focus on English was a mandate for transitional programs. As well, it is up to applied linguists to become engaged in local language policy processes. This article shows that bilingual language policy implementation is an agentive process which can be influenced by applied linguistic research and researchers. Because they are positioned as experts, at least in Philadelphia, researchers can become members of the discourse community which shapes the appropriation of language policy. In order to resist the pendulum swing away from native language maintenance, researchers will need to team with local educators—and especially administrators—to foster local ideological spaces in which developmental bilingual education is championed. And this is possible. SDP educators make choices and these choices influence the implementation of Title III. Such choices are constrained by the language policies which tend to set boundaries on what is allowed and/or what is considered ‘normal’, but the line of power does not flow linearly from the pen of the policy’s signer to the choices of the teacher. The negotiation at each institutional level creates the opportunity for reinterpretations and policy manipulation. Local educators are not helplessly caught in the ebb and flow of shifting ideologies in language policies—they help develop, maintain, and change that flow.

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NOTES 1

2

3

5

6 7

8

9

This department is responsible ‘for the administration of new formula grants and for providing technical assistance to State and Local educational agencies’, http://www.ed.gov/about/ offices/list/oela/aboutus.html All names are pseudonyms. This passage might also be subject to varying interpretations (Johnson 2007). A school district is an administrative unit which serves the schools in one or more cities. There is one school district which serves Philadelphia but it is divided into 11 regions. Similar assertions were made by representatives from the Pennsylvania Department of Education.

REFERENCES August, D. and T. Shanahan. (eds) 2006. Developing Literacy in Second-language Learners: Report of the National Literacy Panel on Language-minority Children and Youth. Lawrence Erlbaum and Center for Applied Linguistics. Bakhtin, M. 1986. Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. Texas University Press. Ball, S. J. 2006. Education Policy and Social Class: The Selected Works of Stephen J. Ball. Taylor & Francis. Baltodano, M. P. 2004. ‘Latino immigrant parents and the hegemony of Proposition 227,’ Latino Studies 2: 246–53. Blommaert, J. 1996. ‘Language planning as a discourse on language and society: The linguistic ideology of a scholarly tradition,’ Language Problems and Language Planning 20/3, 199–222. Canagarajah, S. 2006. ‘Ethnographic methods in language policy’ in T. Ricento (ed.): An Introduction to Language Policy: Theory and Method. Malden: Blackwell Publishing. Corson, D. 1999. Language Policy in Schools: A Resource for Teachers and Administrators. Lawrence Erlbaum.

Crawford, J. 1998. ‘Language politics in the U.S.A.: the paradox of bilingual education,’ Social Justice 25/3: 50–69. Cummins, J. 1981. ‘The role of primary language development in promoting educational success for language minority students in California State Department of Education’ in Schooling and Language Minority Students: A Theoretical Framework. Evaluation, Dissemination and Assessment Center California State University. Davis, K. A. 1994. Language Planning in Multilingual Contexts: Policies, Communities, and Schools in Luxembourg. John Benjamins Publishing Company. Davis, K. A. 1999. ‘The sociopolitical dynamics of indigenous language maintenance and loss: a framework for language policy and planning’ in T. Huebner and K. A. Davis (eds): Sociopolitical Perspectives on Language Policy and Planning in the USA. John Benjamins Publishing Company. Fairclough, N. 2001. ‘The discourse of new labour: Critical discourse analysis’ in M. Wetherell, S. Taylor, and S. J. Yates

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4

The study upon which this is based won the 2008 National Association of Bilingual Education dissertation competition. Levinson and Sutton (2001) prefer the term appropriation to implementation which they feel implicitly ratifies a top-down perspective. I agree and adopt this term. While other ethnographic work deals with language policy (Hornberger 1988; Davis 1998; Freeman 1998), the object of analysis in this body of work is not policy itself. Developmental or additive bilingual education can be contrasted with subtractive bilingual education and can include one- and two-way/dual language programs.

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Krashen, S. 1996. Under Attack: The Case against Bilingual Education. Language Education Associates. Krashen, S. and G. McField. 2005. ‘What works? Reviewing the latest evidence on bilingual education,’ Language Learner 1/2: 7–10, 34. Lemke, J. L. 1995. Textual Politics: Discourse and Social Dynamics. London: Taylor & Francis. Levinson, B. A. U. and M. Sutton. (eds) 2001. Policy as Practice: Toward a Sociocultural Analysis of Educational Policy. Ablex Publishing. Lindholm-Leary, K. J. 2001. Dual Language Education. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Pennycook, A. 2002. ‘Language policy and docile bodies: Hong Kong and governmentality’ in J. W. Tollefson (ed.): Language Policy in Education: Critical Issues. Lawrence Erlbaum. Pennycook, A. 2006. ‘Postmodernism in language policy’ in T. Ricento (ed.): An Introduction to Language Policy: Theory and Method. Blackwell Publishing. Ricento, T. 1998. ‘National language policy in the United States’ in T. Ricento and B. Burnaby (eds): Language and Politics in the United States and Canada: Myths and Realities. Lawrence Erlbaum. Ricento, T. 2000. ‘Historical and theoretical perspectives in language policy and planning,’ Journal of Sociolinguistics 4/2: 196–213. Ricento, T. and N. H. Hornberger. 1996. ‘Unpeeling the onion: language planning and policy and the ELT professional,’ TESOL Quarterly 30/3: 401–27. Rolstad, K., K. Mahoney, and G. V. Glass. 2005. ‘The big picture: a meta-analysis of program effectiveness research on English Language Learners,’ Educational Policy 19/4, 572–94. Skilton-Sylvester, E. 2003. ‘Legal discourse and decisions, teacher policymaking and the multilingual classroom: constraining and supporting Khmer/English biliteracy in the United States,’ International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 6/3,4: 168–84. Stritikus, T. 2002. Immigrant Children and the Politics of English-only. LFB Scholarly Publishing LLC. Thomas, W. P. and V. P. Collier. 1997. School Effectiveness for Language Minority Children. National Clearinghouse for Bilingual Education.

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(eds): Discourse as Data: A Guide for Analysis. Milton Keynes: The Open University. Fishman, J. S. 1979. ‘Bilingual education, language planning and English,’ English WorldWide 1/1: 11–24. Foucault, M. 1978. The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, Vol. 1. Random House. Freeman, R. D. 1998. Bilingual Education and Social Change. Multilingual Matters. Gale, T. and K. Densmore. 2003. Engaging Teachers: Towards a Radical Democratic Agenda for Schooling. Milton Keynes: Open University Press. Ga´ndara, P. 2000. ‘In the aftermath of the storm: English learners in the post-227 era,’ Bilingual Research Journal 24/1: 2. Garcı´a, E. E. and J. E. Curry-Rodriguez. 2000. ‘The education of limited English proficient students in California schools: an assessment of the influence of proposition 227 in selected districts and schools,’ Bilingual Research Journal 24/1: 2. Garcia, O. and C. Baker. (eds) 2007. Bilingual Education: An Introductory Reader. Multilingual Matters. Gee, J. P. 1990. Social Linguistics and Literacies. Falmer. Genesee, F., K. Lindholm-Leary, W. M. Saunders, and D. Christian. 2006. Education English Language Learners: A Synthesis of Research Evidence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Haugen, E. 1983. ‘The implementation of corpus planning: theory and practice’ in J. Cobarrubias and J. A. Fishman (eds): Progress in Language Planning. Mouton de Gruyter. Hornberger, N. 1988. Bilingual Education and Language Maintenance. Foris Publications. Hornberger, N. H. 1991. ‘Extending enrichment bilingual education: revisiting typologies and redirecting policy I’ in O. Garcı´a (ed.): Bilingual Education: Focusschrift in Honor of Joshua A. Fishman. Volume 1. John Benjamins. Hornberger, N. H. and D. C. Johnson. 2007. ‘Slicing the onion ethnographically: layers and spaces in multilingual language education policy and practice,’ TESOL Quarterly (Special Issue: Language Policies and TESOL: Perspectives from Practice) 41/3: 509–532. Johnson, D. C. 2007. Language Policy within and without the School District of Philadelphia. Unpublished dissertation. University of Pennsylvannia.

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Walford, G. (ed.) 2003. Investigating Educational Policy through Ethnography. JAI. Wiese, A. M. and E. E. Garcia. 2001. ‘The bilingual education act: language minority students and US Federal Educational Policy,’ International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 4/4, 229–48. Wiley, T. G. 2002. ‘Assessing language rights in education: a brief history of the U.S. context’ in J. W. Tollefson (ed.): Language Policies in Education: Critical Issues. Lawrence Erlbaum. Wiley, T. G. and W. E. Wright. 2004. ‘Against the undertow: language-minority education policy and politics in the ‘‘age of accountability’’,’ Educational Policy 18/2: 142–68.

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Thomas, W. P. and V. P. Collier. 2002. A National Study of School Effectiveness for Language Minority Students’ Long-term Academic Achievement. Center for Research on Education, Diversity, and Excellence. Tollefson, J. W. 1991. Planning Language, Planning Inequality: Language Policy in the Community. Longman. Tollefson, J. W. (ed.) 2002. Language Policies in Education: Critical Issues. Lawrence Erlbaum. Tollefson, J. W. 2006. ‘Critical theory in language policy’ in T. Ricento (ed.): An Introduction to Language Policy: Theory and Method. Malden: Blackwell Publishing. Valdez, E. O. 2001. ‘Winning the battle, losing the war: bilingual teachers and postProposition 227,’ The Urban Review 33: 237–53.

Applied Linguistics 31/1: 94–114 ß Oxford University Press 2009 doi:10.1093/applin/amp012 Advance Access published on 17 April 2009

Seizure, Fit or Attack? The Use of Diagnostic Labels by Patients with Epileptic or Non-epileptic Seizures 1

LEENDERT PLUG, 2BASIL SHARRACK, and MARKUS REUBER

2 1

We present an analysis of the use of diagnostic labels such as seizure, attack, fit, and blackout by patients who experience seizures. While previous research on patients’ preferences for diagnostic terminology has relied on questionnaires, we assess patients’ own preferences and their responses to a doctor’s use of different labels through the qualitative and quantitative analysis of doctor–patient interactions in a realistic clinical setting. We also examine whether two sub-groups of patients—those with epileptic seizures and those with (psychogenic) nonepileptic seizures—show different behaviours in this respect. Our findings suggest first that patients make fine lexical distinctions between the various diagnostic labels they use to describe their seizure experiences; secondly, that patients play an active role in the development and application of labels for their medical complaint; and thirdly, that attention to patients’ lexical choices and interactive use or avoidance of labels can be relevant for the differential diagnosis of seizures.

INTRODUCTION It is widely acknowledged that while lexical choice plays a crucial role in human verbal interaction (Hakulinen and Selting 2005), establishing the meaning of alternative lexical items is far from straightforward, especially if contextual factors are taken into account (Fischer 1998; Xiao and McEnery 2006; Nore´n and Linell 2007). In this article, we explore the function of lexical choice and the meanings of a number of related lexical items in the context of a specific type of medical interaction. We focus on the use of diagnostic labels—that is, lexical items that refer to an illness or the symptom of an illness—in interactions between a doctor and patients with recurrent seizures. The choice of diagnostic labels is significant for many reasons. For patients, the labels which describe their illness are a core aspect of their ‘illness representations’ (Leventhal et al. 1992; Horne 1999; Hagger and Orbell 2003). A range of studies have confirmed that ‘the manner in which individuals perceive their illnesses is likely to impact on many aspects of their experience, including the likelihood of seeking help, the particular nature of the help being sought, the degree of adherence to the treatment prescribed, and the

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Department of Linguistics and Phonetics, University of Leeds, UK and Academic Neurology Unit, University of Sheffield, UK

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likelihood of response to such treatment’ (Manber et al. 2003: 335). For example, patients who view their depression as caused by a ‘chemical imbalance’ are unlikely to engage in or respond to psychotherapy, even if this treatment is the most suitable from the physician’s point of view (Manber et al. 2003: 336). Associations between patients’ illness representations and treatment outcomes have been found in diverse clinical scenarios including Irritable Bowel Syndrome and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (Edwards et al. 2001; Rutter and Rutter 2007), cardiac events (Petrie et al. 2002; Lau-Walker 2004), and epileptic and non-epileptic seizures (NES) (Kemp et al. 1999; Goldstein et al. 2004; Green et al. 2004). For the doctor, it is important to adopt diagnostic labels which are clear, but which do not carry unwanted connotations. Misunderstandings are particularly likely in the area of medically unexplained symptoms, or ‘psychosomatic disorders’, which include NES. NES superficially resemble epileptic seizures, but are not caused by abnormal electrical activity in the brain. NES are an involuntary response to distressing situations, physical, or emotional stimuli (Reuber and Elger 2003). Most patients with NES have a previous history of traumatic experiences or face difficult dilemmas in their current lives. However, they typically fail to recognize the relevance of psychological or emotional factors for their seizures (Reuber and Gru¨newald 2007). They may therefore resist labels that associate their disorder more closely with a psychological problem and prefer labels which imply a physical aetiology, such as epilepsy. However, the clear differentiation of epilepsy and NES is very important to doctors because the two seizure disorders are treated differently. Whereas the first line of treatment for epileptic seizures involves the use of antiepileptic drugs, the treatment of choice for NES is psychotherapy (Reuber and Elger 2003; Reuber et al. 2005). Patients with NES who are inappropriately labelled as having epilepsy, or who fail to understand that they do not have epilepsy, are at risk of receiving unnecessary and potentially harmful medical treatments, and are unlikely to improve. Unfortunately, there is considerable uncertainty amongst doctors about the most appropriate diagnostic label for NES. One paper identified 19 different terms in the recent medical literature (Scull 1997). Whereas some terms give patients the impression that the doctor does not understand the cause of the attacks, others suggest that seizures are ‘put on’ or ‘all in the mind’: in fact, it has been shown that terms such as ‘hysterical seizure’ and ‘pseudoseizure’ are likely to offend patients (Stone et al. 2003). The implications for compliance with proposed treatment are obvious. For the doctor–patient relationship to work effectively, ‘diagnostic labels have to be not only helpful to doctors but also acceptable to patients’ (Stone et al. 2002: 1449; see also Page and Wessely 2003). Whereas the medical literature on diagnostic labels tends to discuss the advantages and drawbacks of particular terms from the doctor’s point of view, this article will focus on patients’ use of labels for their condition or their main symptom. Our study is based on one-to-one conversations between

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a doctor and 21 patients with epileptic or NES. The study is a part of the project Listening to people with seizures at the University of Sheffield, UK, which set out to improve the differential diagnosis of seizure disorders by analysing the communicative behaviour of patients with epileptic and NES (Schwabe et al. 2007). This project was inspired by a range of sociolinguistic studies carried out at the Bethel Epilepsy Centre and the University of Bielefeld in Germany (Schwabe et al. 2008). Our article seeks to answer two questions. First, we wanted to determine how patients use diagnostic labels for their seizures and which labels they prefer. Stone et al. (2003) employed a questionnaire to address the second half of this question. They asked neurology outpatients a range of variants of the question ‘If you had blackouts, your tests were normal and the doctor said you had pseudoseizures, would that be suggesting that you were putting it on?’ In contrast, our study takes a corpus-based approach (Biber et al. 1994), relying solely on the analysis of actual doctor–patient interactions. This methodology allows us to assess patients’ preferences directly: that is, we can gain insight into patients’ actual preferred use of diagnostic labels, rather than their reported preference in hypothetical scenarios. The sociolinguistic methods applied in Listening to people with seizures are strongly informed by work in Conversation Analysis (Drew et al. 2001; Schegloff et al. 2002), which has a long history of investigating issues of lexical choice and labelling in realistic interactional settings: see for example the work on membership categorization by Sacks (1972, 1992) and Schegloff (2007a, 2007b). Secondly, we set out to explore whether patients with epilepsy and patients with NES differ in their preferences or use of diagnostic labels. Although epileptic and NES look similar to an external observer, the results of the German studies as well as the preliminary findings of the Listening to people with seizures project show that patients with these aetiologically distinct seizure disorders describe their seizures very differently (Schwabe et al. 2007; Plug et al. in press). Broadly speaking, patients with epilepsy readily focus on the seizure experience and on the description of individual episodes, and volunteer a lot of information about how they feel during their seizures. Patients with NES, on the other hand, are more likely to talk about the impact of the seizures on their lives and about the failure of previous treatment; they need to be prompted to focus on how they feel during seizures, and generally provide less detailed information about individual seizure episodes than patients with epilepsy. In view of the superficial similarities between the manifestations of epileptic and NES it is perhaps not surprising that the differential diagnosis represents a serious challenge for doctors, who have to base their diagnosis on seizure descriptions in most cases. Tests carried out in between seizures are only modestly useful in this setting. Seizure recordings are impossible if seizures are infrequent. These difficulties may explain why most patients eventually diagnosed with NES on the basis of the ‘gold standard’ investigation (the synchronous recording of a typical seizure with video and EEG

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(electroencephalography)) have carried an inaccurate diagnosis of epilepsy for several years (Reuber et al. 2002). Any additional differential diagnostic pointers, for instance from patients’ interactive use or selection of labels, could therefore be very useful in clinical practice.

METHODOLOGY

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This study is based on the analysis of 21 first clinical encounters between a doctor (M. R., a consultant neurologist) and patients with seizures. The clinical interviews were conducted between August 2005 and July 2007. All patients had been admitted to the neurology ward at the Royal Hallamshire Hospital in Sheffield, UK, for 48 hours of video-EEG monitoring because their admitting neurologist was uncertain whether they had epileptic or NES. All patients had seizures with impairment of consciousness while being monitored. All diagnoses were confirmed by the video-EEG recording of a seizure which was considered typical of the habitual attacks by the patient and a seizure witness. Eight patients were found to have epilepsy, 13 NES. Pseudonyms were used to protect participants’ identity. The study was approved by the South Sheffield Ethics Review Committee and all patients gave written informed consent for their consultations to be recorded and analysed. The consultations were audio- and video-recorded using pre-installed monitoring equipment. Each consultation lasted between 20 and 35 minutes and followed a semi-standardized interview procedure which encourages the doctor to adopt an unusually passive but very attentive role, and which allows patients to develop their own communication agenda (Schwabe et al. 2007; Plug and Reuber in press). One aspect of the interview procedure of particular importance for this study is that the doctor opens the consultation by asking the patient about his/her expectations of the current hospital visit— with no mention of seizures or any other diagnostic label. At the beginning of the interview, it is therefore left to the patient how he/she refers to the seizure episodes. Moreover, the doctor does not present a diagnosis during the consultation. Therefore, while the doctor’s lexical choices may influence the patient’s, the doctor cannot be said to impose a terminological frame of reference: this is largely left to the patient. All 21 consultations were transcribed following standard conversationanalytic conventions. All nouns referring to the patients’ seizures—such as seizure, fit, attack, blackout—were identified and subjected to further qualitative and quantitative analysis. In particular, we were interested in establishing whether different labels were used synonymously or whether differences in meaning could be observed. We were also interested in how the doctor’s use of a particular label affects the patient’s lexical choice in the immediately subsequent speaking turns. Quantitative differences in usage between the doctor, patients with epilepsy and patients with NES were analysed using the Mann–Whitney U-test for independent groups (ordinal variables) and

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DIAGNOSTIC LABELS AND OVERALL USAGE PATTERNS Table 1 provides an overview of the diagnostic labels identified in the 21 consultations. The diagnostic label seizure was used most frequently, both by patients and by the doctor (255 instances in total). The term seizure was also used by the greatest number of patients (16 out of 21) and it was used by the doctor in most interviews (16 of 21). The most commonly used alternative labels were fit, attack, and blackout; together, these occurred 240 times in our data. A similar number of patients used the terms fit and attack (12 versus 11, difference not significant); and considering that 40 of the 66 usages of attack were attributable to a single

Table 1: Overview of diagnostic labels used by patients and doctor Diagnostic label

Seizure Fit Attack Blackout Absence, Grand mal, Petit mal, Partial seizure, Tonic clonic (seizure), Dizzy do, Funny do, (Funny) turn, Reaction, Chin thing, (Chin) episode, Blank spell, Collapse

Patients’ usage

Doctor’s usage

N

Npatients

N

Nconsultations

132 41 66 22 10

16 12 11 4 3

123 6 99 6 2

16 3 17 5 1

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Pearson’s Chi-square test (categorical variables). Two-tailed p-values <0.05 are reported as significant. It is worth highlighting that a number of factors that may be expected to influence patients’ communicative behaviour, including lexical choice, were controlled for in this study. As indicated above, all consultations were led by the same doctor, who did not have an established relationship with any of the patients and followed the same interview procedure in each case. Therefore, for the purpose of our analysis ‘the doctor’ can be treated as a relatively homogeneous category. Personal details were taken for each patient, so that any effects of gender, age, and duration of medical treatment could be investigated. In addition, all patients were assessed for their general linguistic competence using the Graded Naming Test (McKenna and Warrington 1983; Warrington 1997) for vocabulary and the Test for Reception of Grammar Version 2 (Bishop 2003) for grammar. On the other hand, we did not classify our patients in terms of social, geographical, or educational background, so that ‘the patient’ remains a relatively heterogeneous category.

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DIFFERENCES IN MEANING BETWEEN DIAGNOSTIC LABELS The quantitative differences reported above were replicated when we focused on those encounters in which the patient used at least two different labels. For example, 10 patients used both seizure and fit. In these 10 encounters, fit was used a mean of three times per consultation, while seizure was used eight times. Taken together, these quantitative observations suggest that while at first sight the terms listed in Table 1 would appear to be synonymous, they may in fact have different meanings in the context of the interactions we are dealing

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patient, the number of instances in which patients used the terms fit and attack were also rather similar. In the cases of fit and attack, there were interesting differences in usage between doctor and patients. Patients used fit much more commonly than the doctor. The doctor on the other hand showed a marked preference for the label attack. Whereas he used attack 99 times in 17 consultations, he only used fit 6 times in 3 consultations. This means that there were several consultations in which a patient used the label fit repeatedly, but the doctor chose not to adopt the label. Conversely, there were a number of encounters in which the doctor used attack repeatedly, but the patient persisted in their use of alternative labels. The differences between patients’ and doctor’s usage were statistically significant, both for fit (usage: 41 versus 6, p = 0.006; number of patients/consultations: 12 versus 3, p = 0.004) and attack (usage: 66 versus 99, p = 0.02; number of patients/consultations: 11 versus 17, p = 0.05). Blackout was used sparingly by doctor and patients alike, and additional diagnostic labels, including epilepsy-specific terms such as grand mal or partial seizure, as well as relatively colloquial labels such dizzy do or funny turn, were used 10 or fewer times by patients and/or doctor. To explore to what extent the described patterns of usage reflect patients’ own preferences, rather than alignment with the doctor, we checked in how many consultations each of the diagnostic labels was first used by the patient (patient-initiated usage) and in how many the patient only used a label after the doctor had introduced it (doctor-initiated usage). We only found a small number of examples (six patients, two labels) in which patients altered their terminology after the doctor had first used a particular term. One of the 16 patients who used the label seizure only did so after it was first mentioned by the doctor, whereas 15 out of our 21 patients self-initiated the use of seizure as a diagnostic label. All 12 patients who used fit self-initiated its usage. However, five out of the 11 patients who used attack did so only after the doctor had introduced the term. This offers further support for the suggestion that seizure is the most popular diagnostic label in this patient group; that fit is relatively popular among patients although it is used sparingly by the doctor; and that attack is used frequently by the doctor while only a small number of patients use the label without prompting.

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Differences at the level of denotation Many of the patients’ usages of fit and blackout suggest that these labels refer to a specific type of paroxysmal event, or a phase within a wider event trajectory, while the most popular diagnostic label, seizure, has a more general and inclusive denotation. Relevant examples of the use of fit are given below. (1) a. ‘and then I fell down with the fit’ (Carl). b. ‘that’s about fifteen minutes before I go into the really deep fit, you know’ (Sue). c. ‘others go into a more, er a bigger fit kind of thing’ (David). d. ‘I kept having these like fits, just collapsing and having fits, like grand mal symptoms, jerking and losing consciousness’ (Chris). e. ‘as I say I thought epilepsy was someone thrashing about having a fit on the floor’ (Samantha).

Carl and Sue both use seizure repeatedly to refer to events that involve a period of altered consciousness, followed by a period of complete unconsciousness and loss of physical control, and finally a gradual return to normality. Their uses of fit in (1a) and (1b) suggest that Carl reserves this label for the period of complete unconsciousness, while Sue uses it to refer to the middle phase of her more serious seizures. Similarly, David describes several types of paroxysm—with repeated use of seizure—including episodes in which he loses control of his body, but remains conscious throughout. He uses fit to refer to seizures in which he loses consciousness completely, as seen in (1c). Chris’ use of fit in (1c) suggests that in addition to loss of consciousness, ‘fits’ involve involuntary movement—or ‘jerking’. Chris distinguishes his ‘fits’ from ‘blackouts’, to which we turn below. The same is apparent from Samantha’s description of someone ‘thrashing about having a fit’. In Samantha’s case, she does not describe her own seizures as ‘fits’, and she does not mention involuntary movement as a prominent symptom.

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with—if not at the level of denotation, perhaps in terms of their connotations or the collocational patterns in which they participate. To assess whether this is the case, we investigated the contexts in which the labels were employed in our consultations in greater detail. This qualitative investigation revealed patterns of usage which suggest that there are indeed differences in meaning between individual labels. In what follows, we outline the crucial patterns and propose an account along two lines. First, we suggest that there are differences in the degree of specificity of reference between certain labels. Secondly, we suggest that the patients’ lexical choice is governed at least in part by the perceived appropriateness of certain labels in medical versus lay registers. We discuss the former differences in meaning in terms of differences at the level of denotation, and the latter in terms of differences at the level of connotation.

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The clearest evidence that (like fit) blackout is a more specific diagnostic label than seizure is provided by Chris; in particular in the fragment given in (2). (2) Doctor: Chris: Doctor:

Chris:

well can I (.) take you back to your first (1.0) seizure (1.6) which one well you know you’ve come here because of these blackouts (0.3) what about the first one you can remember (0.3) what can you tell me about that (1.6) the blackout or the (.) fit cos i’m having like (.) two different types at the moment

(3) a. ‘the blackouts started being different [. . .] you know, just dropping’ (Chris). b. ‘it was more like a blackout than anything else that one [. . .] nothing happened to me while I was gone if you like, I was just gone’ (Alastair). c. ‘because when I’m having the blackouts I could just be stood there’ (Alastair). d. ‘to me they were just blackouts, but not to everybody else [. . .] I just thought, one minute I can remember something, next minute I can’t’ (Sue).

In (3a), Chris indicates that what he calls ‘blackouts’ are seizures that involve him ‘just dropping’—but not ‘jerking’. While Alastair also describes seizures in which he loses control over his body, he suggests that in some ‘nothing happens’, and he remains stationary while his mind has ‘gone’ (3b and c). Sue’s use of blackouts in (3d) highlights a possible mismatch between the diagnostic label that the patient may assign to a seizure-related event on the basis of his/her own experience, and that of onlookers. Sue indicates that she started experiencing brief periods of unconsciousness and loss of memory. She was not aware of her physical state during these periods; therefore she classified as ‘blackouts’ what to those around her looked like ‘fits’. The usage of attack by the patients (as well as the doctor) suggests that it is synonymous with seizure; that is, it is a diagnostic label with a more general denotation than fit and blackout. Relevant examples are given in (4). (4) a. ‘it’s been ver- very – they’ve been very disruptive to my life, the, the er, the seizures, the attacks I’ve been having’ (Zack) b. ‘I had another, erm, I had another, er, seizure, but there again, I d- I don’t know what happened with these attacks’ (Jack) c. ‘I was having a fit at the time [. . .] everything was going off-scale in that attack’ (Betty) d. ‘it must be difficult to remember individual seizures when it’s – they’re such long way back, but maybe, maybe you can tell me about the last attack, what – just explain exactly what, what, what happened in, in the last seizure that you had’ (Doctor to Sandra)

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Chris’ subsequent usage of blackout suggests that both ‘fits’ and ‘blackouts’ involve complete loss of consciousness and possibly a limp collapse, but only ‘fits’ involve involuntary movements. This observation is confirmed by several other uses of blackout. Additional relevant examples are given in (3).

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e. ‘so you, you said you’re scared after seizures [. . .] and how do you feel in the attack?’ (Doctor to Laura)

seizure, attack

(5)

fit

blackout

GENERAL DENOTATION

SPECIFIC DENOTATION

Differences at the level of connotation In addition, we observed usage patterns which can be understood in terms of a register-related difference between seizure on the one hand and fit and blackout on the other. In particular, while seizure appears to have a more general denotation than fit and blackout, its usage by some of our patients suggests that it also has the connotation of ‘medical term’, while the more specific fit and blackout are at the same time more ‘colloquial’, representing the patient’s personal experience rather than a medical diagnosis. Again, we illustrate the crucial usage patterns below. First, we note the occurrence of instances of self-repair from fit to seizure. Examples are given in (6). (6) a. ‘in one respect the fi- seizures were better’ (Barbara) b. ‘I could have it, have a fit – seizure whatever you will call them’ (Peter)

In (6a) Barbara starts saying ‘fits’, but cuts off its production in favour of ‘seizures’. She uses seizure as a diagnostic label throughout the rest of her consultation, and does not use fit or blackout. Peter does produce ‘fit’, but repairs it to ‘seizure’ immediately (6b). His accompanying remark ‘whatever you will call them’ is suggestive of a concern with what is the ‘correct’

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Both Zack and Jack use seizure and attack within one speaking turn, with no indication that the two labels differ in meaning (4a and b). Betty’s use of both fit and attack in (4c) is consistent with the idea that the former is a sub-type of the latter: she describes one particular ‘attack’ as involving her ‘having a fit’. The doctor uses attack and seizure interchangeably on several occasions, as seen in (4d and e). Most of the less frequent diagnostic labels, in particular the epilepsy-specific terms such as absence, partial seizure, grand mal, and petit mal refer to particular types of seizures, but we have too few occurrences of these labels in our data to be able to report significant generalizations regarding their contexts of use. Our observations with regard to seizure, fit, blackout, and attack can be summarized as in (5): our patients recurrently use fit and blackout to refer to a specific sub-type of seizure or to a specific phase in a wider seizure trajectory, while reserving seizure and, sparingly, attack to refer more generically and inclusively to seizure-related events.

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(7) a. ‘and he said I were, like, having, like, a fit, in my bed, jerking and everything’ (Chris) b. ‘right mate, you had a fit’ (Peter) c. ‘he’s scared I’m going to have a fit in the middle of the street’ (Betty) d. ‘I just say hold on, I’m gonna have a fit’ (Sandra) e. ‘he says, you’ve got a – have you – do you suffer from seizures, I says yeah’ (Tallulah) f. ‘they said that the erm, seizures I’m having aren’t as bad while I’ve been on medication’ (Betty)

In (7a) Chris reports the observations of his brother using fit. The fragment both confirms that for Chris, ‘fits’ involve involuntary movement, and suggests that fit is a label that a lay person would use. This is confirmed by Peter and Betty’s reports of a third person’s use of fit (7b and c); on both occasions the third person is an acquaintance, not a doctor. Sandra’s formulation of her habitual warning to friends before a seizure (7d) is consistent with an orientation to fit as an appropriate term to use in interaction with non-experts. Interestingly, Sandra self-initiates the use of seizure and uses it consistently throughout the rest of the interview, in which the context of reported speech does not reoccur. In our data, seizure is found in the context of reported speech only when the speech is that of a doctor, as is the cases in (7e and f) in which Tallulah and Betty describe particular hospital visits. We have already seen the example of Sue indicating that when she first started having seizures, she thought she was having ‘blackouts’, while other people used alternative labels (3d). It is in this context—that of the patient’s reporting of first ‘realising the illness’ (Halkowski 2006)—that we find more uses of fit and blackout than seizure. Here, patients are explicitly reporting their own experience before they received a medical diagnosis. Additional examples of instances of fit and blackout in this context are given in (8). (8) a. ‘when I first started having fits’ (Betty) b. ‘and that’s when the blackouts started’ (Chris) c. ‘and I’d maybe have a cluster of seizures, but I didn’t know they were seizures at the time’ (Samantha)

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terminology to use in the setting of the consultation. In fact, one way of understanding examples such as those in (6) is in terms of an orientation by the patient to seizure as a medical term which can be used freely in interactions with a doctor, and to fit as a term that is potentially inappropriate. The fact that the doctor uses fit only six times in the 21 consultations is indeed consistent with it being a dispreferred diagnostic label from the doctor’s point of view. Perhaps more strikingly, over half of the instances of fit and blackout in our data occur either in the context of reported speech by or directed at a lay person, or in the context of explicit reporting of personal experience, rather than general description or diagnosis. Examples of these two contexts are given in (7) and (8) below.

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d. ‘and I went into a seizure, but I didn’t know’ (Tallulah)

seizure

(9)

fit

MEDICAL REGISTER

blackout

LAY REGISTER

RESISTANCE TO THE USE OF DIAGNOSTIC LABELS Having described which diagnostic labels patients use most commonly and explored a number of usage patterns which suggest meaning differences between some of these, we now focus on those diagnostic labels which patients do not commonly use, or which they adopt with evidence of a certain amount of hesitation or resistance. First of all, several patients seemed to show a general resistance to the use of diagnostic labels for their seizures. This was evident, in particular in the opening phases of the consultations. As indicated above, the doctor started each consultation with an open inquiry regarding the patient’s expectations of the current hospital visit, without overt reference to seizures. All patients referred to seizures in their response to this inquiry, but eight out of 21 initially used a pronoun rather than any of the diagnostic labels we have discussed so far. A clear example is given in (10). (10)

Doctor:

what were your expectations when you (0.3) when you came here (0.3)

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In (8a) Betty uses the label fit when referring to her very first seizures, while in the rest of the interview she repeatedly uses seizure. Chris similarly uses blackout—as well as fit—when referring to his first experience. The fragments in (8c and d) illustrate the recurrent retrospective application of the diagnostic label seizure to early, pre-diagnosis episodes: that is, the patient reports having had a seizure but not knowing that it was one at the time. This strongly suggests that the label seizure is one whose use is licensed by a medical diagnosis; not one that is readily used outside a medical context or in narratives of patients’ first symptom discovery. Fit and blackout, on the other hand, are used in exactly these contexts. The usage patterns illustrated in this section confirm that seizure on the one hand and fit and blackout on the other have different contextual distributions. One possible explanation for this is that there are register-related differences in meaning between these diagnostic labels. In the context of our interviews, patients appear to orient to seizure as a medical diagnostic label, whose use is appropriate in interaction with doctors and licensed by a medical diagnosis. They orient to fit and blackout as labels whose use is more appropriate in lay registers and which can be used to describe personal, pre-diagnosis experiences of seizure-related events. This account is summarized in (9).

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Here, Alastair formulates an elaborate response to the doctor’s opening inquiry in which he refers to his seizures several times using they/them (in bold), and to his disorder using it (in bold). It is only after a further inquiry by the doctor that he reverts to a diagnostic label—in this case blackout. Evidence for general resistance against the use of diagnostic labels can also be found at other points during the consultation. Some patients attempt to avoid using labels in the description of particular episodes, even if several labels have already been mentioned earlier on in the consultation. Others accompany their use of labels with comments that downplay their commitment to them. We have already seen an example of the latter in (6b), in which Peter accompanies his self-repair from fit to seizure with the comment ‘whatever you will call them’. Additional examples are given in (11). (11) a. ‘and then one of these (0.6) things started’ (Trudie) b. ‘I just want the fits to s- whatever they are to stop completely’ (Betty) c. ‘during the seizure or whatever it is I’ve had’ (Betty)

In (11a), Trudie hesitates at the point when the use of a diagnostic label is relevant. After a pause, she opts for ‘things’—avoiding the use of a specific label. In (11b and c), Betty uses both fit and seizure with the indication that she does not know what types of seizures she’s having—and, by extension, that she does not know whether her use of diagnostic labels is ‘correct’. The examples in (10) and (11) suggest that patients may feel they lack the authority to provide a diagnostic label for their experiences. One strategy is, then, to avoid using any label, at least until the doctor suggests one; another is to make it clear to the doctor that the use of a given diagnostic label is open to correction.

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Alastair: erm (0.3) I was just hoping that we could find (1.0) what it was (0.3) that was causing them? Doctor: mmm Alastair: hopefully lead to something that would stop me having them so I could continue having a normal life Doctor: mmm Alastair: you know cos er (.) it’s been very disrupted since it started Doctor: it’s been very disrupted Alastair: yeah (.) well cos I’ve been off (.) of work on (.) at work off work (several lines omitted; no diagnostic label) they come and go so I can’t really (2.2) risk being in a car Doctor: mmm Alastair: which is a shame so as soon as er (2.2) something’s found out (.) I can go back to being er (0.3) normal Doctor: mmm (3.6) Alastair: yeah (0.3) so that’s where they’re up to (1.4) well that’s my expectation Doctor: mmm

106 SEIZURE, FIT OR ATTACK?

We have already mentioned patients’ resistance to the use of the label attack, which the doctor used frequently as a synonym of seizure: only 11 out of our 21 patients used it. While one of these eleven patients used the label more than 40 times during the consultation, most others used it sparingly. As seen above, six patients chose not to adopt the label despite the doctor’s repeated use. Illustrative fragments are given in (12) and (13). In both, the doctor’s inquiry contains attack, but in their responses the patients choose to use an alternative label. (12)

Ken: Doctor: Ken:

(13)

Doctor: Samantha: Doctor: Samantha:

so you (.) came in here to learn about the small yeah attacks (0.2) I’ve had one while I’ve been here (1.7) [mmm [but they’re just (0.9) they only last for a couple of seconds (.) there’s a slight sort of partial seizure (0.3) it’s er (1.3) it sort of doesn’t develop into a full seizure so that’s in the attacks you had that feeling yeah (.) yeah mmm erm (.) but up until this point I’d never ever had a full blown seizure where I sort of lost consciousness (.) I could carry on going about my business whilstever this were going on in my head

It is perhaps surprising that the most popular label overall, seizure, was also the one that was most frequently and overtly resisted. First of all, recall that 16 out of 21 patients used this label at some point during the consultation. This means that five patients did not, although the doctor used the label repeatedly in two of these cases. We have already seen Chris’ use of fit and blackout in direct response to the doctor’s inquiry about his first ‘seizure’ in (2) above. In fact, Chris avoids the use of seizure throughout the consultation, while he uses fit and blackout repeatedly. Similarly, Steve avoids seizure despite the doctor’s repeated usage, in this case in favour of several labels including funny turn and funny do. Several other patients use seizure only in the context of reporting a previous medical diagnosis, rather than their own experience of seizures—using alternative labels in all other contexts. For example, we have seen two such uses of seizure by Tallulah in (7e) and (8d) above. Elsewhere in the consultation, she overtly resists the adoption of seizure, despite its use by the doctor, as seen in (14). (14)

Doctor: Tallulah:

is this related to (.) to the seizures er er not waking up from a seizure or just not (.) waking up not waking up from (0.3) a sei- er having a fit

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Doctor: Ken: Doctor:

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Here, Tallulah’s response to the doctor’s inquiry takes the form of a repetition of part of the inquiry: ‘not waking up from a seizure’. However, Tallulah hesitates before ‘a seizure’ and subsequently cuts off its production in favour of ‘having a fit’. Her self-repair, which constitutes a marked deviation from the part-turn repetition format and a marked refusal to align with the doctor in terms of lexical choice, makes it very clear that the adoption of the diagnostic label seizure is problematic for her. In addition, the hesitations and hedging remarks illustrated in (11) above most frequently involve the use of the label seizure. Some more examples are given in (15).

If patients’ general resistance to using diagnostic labels is due to their perceived lack of authority on the issue of what their seizures should be called, then their specific resistance to the use of seizure may be explained in terms of the ‘medical’ connotations of this particular label. We have suggested above that while fit and blackout are lay terms which a patient can use freely without implications of self-diagnosis, seizure is a more formal medical diagnostic label. As such, its use may imply a degree of command and understanding of seizure-related medical terminology. While about half of our patients use seizure without evidence of hesitation or resistance—and in fact a few appear to adopt the term precisely because they feel the context of the medical consultation occasions it, as seen in (6) above—some display an orientation to seizure as medical vocabulary to which they themselves do not have straightforward right of access. The latter patients leave it to the doctor to decide on an ‘official’ diagnostic label that best covers what they describe as their experience.

RELEVANCE FOR THE DIFFERENTIAL DIAGNOSIS OF PATIENTS WITH SEIZURES At this point, we turn to our second research question: do patients with epilepsy and patients with NES differ in their usage preferences or responses to certain diagnostic labels used by the doctor? So far we have discussed our patient group as a whole; however, when we compare the two clinical subgroups striking differences emerge. The clearest difference relates to the usage of seizure as a diagnostic label— or the resistance to using seizure described in the previous section. When we compare the frequency of usage between the two sub-groups, we see that 76 out of the 132 instances of seizure were produced by patients with epilepsy

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(15) a. ‘I‘ve never had any problem with er (0.8) seizures or anything’ (Trudie) b. ‘because there’s – I seem to have erm two different sorts of (0.9) seizures happening’ (Pat) c. ‘just really to find out what the problem is or what’s causing (.).hhh erm (0.3) the seizures’ (Sandra)

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and 56 by patients with NES. This means that the mean number of instances per patient was 9.5 for the epilepsy sub-group and 4.3 for the NES sub-group. First, we can therefore state that patients with epilepsy used seizure more frequently than patients with NES. When we do the same comparison for fit and blackout we find the reverse pattern. Of the 41 instances of fit, 31 were produced by patients with NES (2.4 instances per patient) and 10 by patients with epilepsy (1.3 instances per patient). All 22 instances of blackout were produced by patients with NES. That is, patients with epilepsy preferred seizure over fit and blackout, and patients with NES used fit and blackout but appeared to disprefer the use of seizure. The pattern is summarized in Figure 1. A Mann– Whitney U-test reveals that the difference for seizure is statistically significant (mean 9.5 versus 4.3, p = 0.034), although the differences for fit and blackout are not. Table 2 provides a more detailed view of the usage of and resistance to the label seizure among patients in the two sub-groups. Of the eight patients with epilepsy, all used seizure in the course of the consultation, and all selfinitiated its usage. Of the 13 patients with NES, five did not use seizure at all, and six did not self-initiate its usage. Chi-square tests reveal that in both cases the difference between the two sub-groups is significant (no use of seizure: 2 = 4.04, p = 0.04; no self-initiation: 2 = 5.17, p = 0.02). Of the five patients who use seizure with evidence of resistance to the label, four have NES and one has epilepsy (difference not statistically significant). Together, these figures mean that only three out of 13 patients with NES use the label seizure without priming and without reservation, as opposed to all but one of eight patients with epilepsy. A Chi-square test confirms that this overall difference between the two sub-groups is significant (2 = 8.24, p = 0.004). Of course, given the relatively small numbers on which our comparisons are based, we cannot at this point conclude that the observed differences between the two sub-groups of patients are robust and generalizable beyond our patient group. Nevertheless, the statistical significance of several of our comparisons does suggest that the differential patterns we observe are unlikely to be due to chance alone. It may be noted that the factors sex, age, and duration of medical treatment showed no significant effects in the same comparisons. Moreover, there is no observable difference between the two patient groups in terms of general linguistic competence: all patients scored average or above in both the Graded Naming Test and the Test for Reception of Grammar Version 2. While our second research question focuses on the patients’ rather than the doctor’s lexical choices and communicative behaviour, it is worth noting that in our data, the doctor used the label attack more often in consultations with patients eventually found to have NES than in those diagnosed as having epilepsy (6.5 times per conversation versus 2.0 times, p = 0.019). Given the findings we have just reported, we may now have an explanation for this: the doctor may have resorted to the use of attack when he observed a degree of resistance to the label seizure on the patient’s part. This would

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10 Epilepsy 9

NES

7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 Seizure

Fit

Blackout

Diagnostic label

Figure 1: Bar chart showing mean instances per patient for seizure, fit, and blackout in epilepsy and NES sub-groups

Table 2: Resistance to the diagnostic label seizure, comparing the epilepsy and NES sub-groups Disorder

N

No use of seizure (%)

No self-initiation of use of seizure (%)

Use of seizure with evidence of resistance (%)

Any evidence of resistance to seizure (%)

Epilepsy NES

8 13

0 (0) 5 (38)

0 (0) 6 (46)

1 (13) 4 (31)

1 (13) 10 (77)

mean that patients’ terminological preferences directly influence the doctor’s choice of labels. Finally, while patients with epilepsy were less likely to show resistance to the label seizure and to use fit and blackout instead, they were also more likely to adopt epilepsy-specific terminology when describing their seizure experience. The diagnostic labels absence, partial seizure, tonic clonic (seizure), grand mal, and petit mal occur almost exclusively in consultations with patients with epilepsy. This may seem a trivial observation, but it is not: each of our patients’ diagnosis was unclear at the time of the consultation we recorded, and all patients who turned out to have NES had previously been diagnosed

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Instances per patient

8

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with epilepsy—and had therefore been exposed to epilepsy-related diagnostic terminology. Nevertheless, the patient groups behaved differently in terms of their willingness to adopt this terminology. Patients with epilepsy readily adopted diagnostic labels which patients with NES may have seen as medical vocabulary items which were somehow less appropriate for them to use than the lay terms fit and blackout.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

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We set out to address two questions: first, which diagnostic labels do patients prefer to refer to their seizures; and secondly, do patients with epilepsy and patients with NES differ in their usage preferences or responses to the choice of certain diagnostic labels by the doctor? With respect to the first question, our study shows that seizure is a particularly popular diagnostic label, while attack is dispreferred and resisted by many patients. Further studies are necessary to establish whether this resistance is a general feature of patients with seizures, or whether it is particular to our sample of patients. Unfortunately, the label was not included in the set evaluated by Stone et al. (2003), and we have little insight into patients’ interpretations of this label from other sources. In addition, it remains to be established how common the relative preference of the label attack is amongst doctors. The label occurs in the context of the medical term Non-Epileptic Attack Disorder (NEAD), which is certainly widely used in the professional literature. If our findings are replicated by studies in larger patient populations, doctors may need to reconsider whether it is beneficial to use a term in this setting which is not readily acceptable to patients. We also found that fit and blackout are relatively popular, but that they are not synonymous with seizure: patients recurrently use fit and blackout to refer to particular sub-types of seizure or phases within a wider seizure trajectory, and use the terms in the context of lay description of their experience. In contrast, seizure is used in contexts that favour established medical vocabulary. We have suggested that it is particularly the register difference between seizure on the one hand and fit and blackout on the other that explains why some patients show resistance to the use of seizure, while such resistance is much less common for fit and blackout. Especially when talking about their own experience, patients may feel they do not have access to medical vocabulary—or at least that their access must be licensed by the doctor in the course of the consultation. They may also feel that by using medical vocabulary, they would be claiming a degree of authority over their disorder with which they do not feel comfortable. Again, further studies are needed to confirm whether the differential use and treatment of seizure on the one hand and fit and blackout on the other is generalizable beyond our sample of patients. As it stands, our proposed meanings of these labels account for a number of observed usage patterns in our consultations. Further studies on a wider

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patient population may reveal patterns for which our proposals cannot account, and will provide a stronger empirical basis for the statement of the lexical meanings of the various diagnostic labels used by doctors and patients. Moreover, our analysis somewhat undervalues the fact that parameters of lexical choice may shift during the course of an interaction (Hakulinen and Selting 2005; Nore´n and Linell 2007). While we have discussed in some detail several contexts in which individual labels are recurrently used and have commented on the extent to which the doctor’s usage of terminology influences the patient’s and vice versa, our observations only scratch the surface of the sequential-interactional dimension of lexical choice. We must leave this dimension as an area for further research. With respect to the second question, we noted several differences in the way patients with epilepsy and patients with NES use diagnostic labels. Patients with NES showed a tendency to avoid the use of labels such as seizure or attack, and to prefer labels such as fit and blackout. Patients with epilepsy did not show significant resistance to seizure, and several used epilepsy-specific medical terminology themselves. We have indicated that the factors sex, age, duration of treatment, and general linguistic competence do not help to explain this difference between the two patient groups. Other factors may be significant, however: as pointed out above, we did not control for the social, geographical, and educational background of the patients, let alone their sociolinguistic competence, sensitivity to register or state of mind at the time of the consultation. Again, more research is needed to assess the robustness of our current findings. Notwithstanding these reservations, it is interesting to consider the possibility that the observed difference between the two patient groups is related to the distinct ways in which patients with epilepsy and NES communicate about their seizures. As suggested above, sociolinguistic research on a large sample of German patients has shown that while patients with epilepsy readily volunteer information about subjective seizure symptoms and particular seizure episodes, the communication behaviour of patients with NES in relation to their seizures is characterized by ‘focusing resistance’. They tend to offer brief and superficial seizure accounts and put more emphasis on the situations in which seizures occur or on the negative impact seizures have had on their lives. When asked about specific seizure episodes, such as their first, last or worst seizure, they often say that they cannot remember, or produce general accounts of their seizures rather than descriptions of particular events (Schwabe et al. 2008). At first sight, it is difficult to make sense of the relationship between the usage patterns reported in this article and the wider communicative differences between patients with epilepsy and NES. If patients with epilepsy spend more of their consultations talking about their personal seizure experiences, one would expect them to use fit and blackout more frequently than seizure. Similarly, if patients use the less generic and inclusive fit and blackout as part of an attempt to downgrade the seriousness of their disorder in communicating

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REFERENCES Biber, D., S. Conrad, and R. Reppen. 1994. ‘Corpus-based approaches to issues in applied linguistics,’ Applied Linguistics 15: 169–89. Bishop, D. V. M. 2003. The Test for Reception of Grammar, version 2 (TROG-2). Psychological Corporation. Drew, P., J. Chatwin, and S. Collins. 2001. ‘Conversation analysis: A method for research into interactions between patients and healthcare professionals,’ Health Expectations 4: 58–70. Edwards, R., R. Suresh, S. Lynch, P. Clarkson, and P. Stanley. 2001. ‘Illness perceptions and mood in chronic fatigue syndrome,’ Journal of Psychosomatic Research 50: 65–68. Fischer, K. 1998. From Cognitive Semantics to Lexical Pragmatics. Mouton de Gruyter.

Gerhardt, U. 1989. Ideas About Illness. An Intellectual and Political History of Medical Sociology. Macmillan. Gill, V. T. and D. W. Maynard. 1995. ‘On ‘‘labelling’’ in actual interaction: delivering and receiving diagnoses of developmental disabilities,’ Social Problems 42: 11–37. Goldstein, L. H., A. Deale, S. MitchellO’Malley, B. K. Toone, and J. D. C. Mellers. 2004. ‘An evaluation of cognitive behavioral therapy as a treatment for dissociative seizures,’ Cognitive Behavioral Neurology 17: 41–49. Green, A., S. Payne, and R. Barnitt. 2004. ‘Illness representations among people with nonepileptic seizures attending a neuropsychiatry clinic: A qualitative study based on the selfregulation model,’ Seizure 13: 331–39.

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with the doctor, one would not expect patients with NES to use these terms more frequently than patients with epilepsy: it is patients with NES who tend to stress the negative impact of the seizures on their lives. Patients with epilepsy are more likely to communicate that they are actively engaged in minimizing the impact of the seizures on their daily lives, and that they are coping as well as they can. We suggest that it may be this higher level of engagement with the process of diagnosis and treatment which makes patients with epilepsy more likely to adopt vocabulary which we have characterized as ‘medical’ in consultations than patients with NES. The latter patients’ general resistance to engaging in a detailed discussion of their seizure experience would seem compatible with a resistance to the use of this type of vocabulary, and a tendency instead to resort to more colloquial formulations. Provided that our findings are generalizable to a larger patient population, this would be an interesting hypothesis for further research. While the clinical relevance of our findings remains to be established, especially given their basis in careful post hoc analysis rather on-line observation during consultations, they confirm that while healthcare professionals play a significant role in shaping patients’ views, patients take an active part in the negotiation of diagnoses and the use of diagnostic labels (Gerhardt 1989). Patients are capable of translating differences in seizure manifestations into lexical distinctions, and may resist the use of certain labels or actively encourage the doctor to apply particular labels to their experiences. Despite suggestions in early labelling theory (Hagan 1973; Mercer 1973), labelling is therefore not a one-way process from doctor to patient, but a complex, interactional negotiation with doctors and patients as participants with equal stakes (Maynard 1992; Gill and Maynard 1995; Pera¨kyla¨ 1998).

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in the doctor–patient encounter,’ Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 96: 223–27. Pera¨kyla¨, A. 1998. ‘Authority and accountability: The delivery of diagnosis in primary health care,’ Social Psychology Quarterly 61: 301–20. Petrie, K. J., L. D. Cameron, C. J. Ellis, D. Buick, and J. Weinman. 2002. ‘Changing illness perception after myocardial infarction: An early intervention randomized controlled trial,’ Psychosomatic Medicine 64: 580–86. Plug, L. and M. Reuber. 2009. ‘Making the diagnosis in patients with blackouts: It’s all in the history,’ Practical Neurology 9: 4–15. Plug, L., B. Sharrack, and M. Reuber. 2009. ‘Conversation analysis can help to distinguish between epilepsy and non-epileptic seizure disorders: A case comparison,’ Seizure 18: 43–50. Reuber, M. and C. E. Elger. 2003. ‘Psychogenic nonepileptic seizures: Review and update,’ Epilepsy and Behavior 4: 205–16. Reuber, M., G. Ferna´ndez, J. Bauer, C. Helmstaedter, and E. Elger. 2002. ‘Diagnostic delay in the diagnosis of psychogenic non-epileptic seizures,’ Neurology 53: 493–95. Reuber, M. and R. Gru¨newald. 2007. ‘The first seizure: Is it epilepsy?’ in C. P. Panayiotopoulos (ed.): Newly Identified Epileptic Seizures: Diagnosis, Procedures and Management. Medicinae, pp. 145–58. Reuber, M., S. Howlett, and S. Kemp. 2005. ‘Psychologic treatment for patients with psychogenic nonepileptic seizures,’ Expert Opinion in Neurotherapeutics 5: 737–52. Rutter, C. L. and D. R. Rutter. 2007. ‘Longitudinal analysis of the illness representation model in patients with Irritable Bowel Syndrome,’ Journal of Health Psychology 12: 141–48. Sacks, H. 1972. ‘On the analyzability of stories by children’ in J. J. Gumperz and D. Hymes (eds): Directions in Sociolinguistics: The Ethnography of Communication. Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, pp. 325–45. Sacks, H. 1992. Lecures on Conversation. vol. 2. Blackwell. Schegloff, E. A. 2007a. ‘Categories in action: Person-reference and membership categorization,’ Discourse Studies 9: 433–61. Schegloff, E. A. 2007b. ‘A tutorial on membership categoization,’ Journal of Pragmatics 39: 462–82. Schegloff, E. A., I. Koshik, S. Jacoby, and D. Olsher. 2002. ‘Conversation analysis and

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Hagan, J. 1973. ‘Labeling and deviance: A case study in the sociology of the interesting,’ Social Problems 20: 447–58. Hagger, M. S. and S. Orbell. 2003. ‘A metaanalytic review of the common-sense model of illness representations,’ Psychological Health 18: 141–84. Hakulinen, A. and M. Selting. (eds) 2005. Syntax and Lexis in Conversation. John Benjamins. Halkowski, T. 2006. ‘Realising the illness: Patients’ narratives of symptom discovery’ in J. Heritage and D. Maynard (eds): Communication in Medical Care. Cambridge University Press, pp. 86–114. Horne, R. 1999. ‘Patients’ beliefs about treatment: The hidden determinant of treatment outcome?’ Journal of Psychosomatic Research 47: 491–95. Kemp, S., S. Morley, and E. Anderson. 1999. ‘Coping with epilepsy: Do illness representations play a role?’ British Journal of Clinical Psychology 38: 43–58. Lau-Walker, M. 2004. ‘Relationship between illness representation and self-efficacy,’ Journal of Advanced Nursing 48: 216–25. Leventhal, H., M. Diefenbach, and E. A. Leventhal. 1992. ‘Illness cognitions: Using common sense to understand treatment adherence and affect cognition interactions,’ Cognitive Therapy Research 16: 143–63. Manber, R., A. S. Chambers, S. K. Hitt, C. McGahuey, P. Delgado, and J. J. B. Allen. 2003. ‘Patients’ perception of their depressive illness,’ Journal of Psychiatric Research 37: 335–43. Maynard, D. W. 1992. ‘On clinicians co-implicating recipients’ perspective in the delivery of diagnostic news’ in P. Drew and J. Heritage (eds): Talk at Work. Cambridge University Press, pp. 303–30. McKenna, P. and E. K. Warrington. 1983. The Graded Naming Test. NFER-Nelson. Mercer, J. R. 1973. Labeling the Mentally Retarded: Clinical and Social System Perspective on Mental Retardation. University of California Press. Nore´n, K. and P. Linell. 2007. ‘Meaning potentials and the interaction between lexis and contexts: An empirical substantiation,’ Pragmatics 17: 387–416. Page, L. A. and S. Wessely. 2003. ‘Medically unexplained symptoms: exacerbating factors

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2003. ‘What should we call pseudoseizures? The patient’s perspective,’ Seizure 12: 568–72. Stone, J., W. Wojcik, D. Durrance, A. Carson, S. Lewis, L. MacKenzie, C. P. Warlow, and M. Sharpe. 2002. ‘What should we say to patients with symptoms unexplained by disease? The ‘‘number needed to offend’’,’ British Medical Journal 325: 1449–50. Warrington, E. K. 1997. ‘The graded naming test: A restandardisation,’ Neuropsychological Rehabilitation 7: 143–46. Xiao, R. and T. McEnery. 2006. ‘Collocation, semantic prosody, and near synonymy: A cross-linguistic perspective,’ Applied Linguistics 27: 103–29.

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applied linguistics,’ Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 22: 3–31. Schwabe, M., S. J. Howell, and M. Reuber. 2007. ‘Differential diagnosis of seizure disorders: A conversation analytic approach,’ Social Science and Medicine 65: 712–24. Schwabe, M., M. Reuber, M. Scho¨ndienst, and E. Gu¨lich. 2008. ‘Listening to people with seizures: How can Conversation analysis help in the differential diagnosis of seizure disorders?’ Communication and Medicine 5: 59–72. Scull, D. A. 1997. ‘Pseudoseizures or nonepileptic seizures (NES): 15 synonyms,’ Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry 62: 200. Stone, J., K. Campbell, N. Sharma, A. Carson, C. P. Warlow, and M. Sharpe.

Applied Linguistics: 31/1: 115–135 ß Oxford University Press 2009 doi:10.1093/applin/amp014 Advance Access published on 29 April 2009

English in Advertising: Generic Intertextuality in a Globalizing Media Environment AN H. KUPPENS University of Antwerp, Belgium

INTRODUCTION: ENGLISH IN ADVERTISING In the globalization of English, mass media plays an important role (Phillipson and Skutnabb-Kangas 1997; Hjarvard 2004). The worldwide spread of English not only occurs through the worldwide export of North American, British, and Australian English-language media products, but also in multilingual ‘media idioms’ (Jacquemet 2005) such as chat language, news broadcasting language, and the language of cell phone messages. However, empirical studies of the use of English in such media idioms are still quite sparse. One notable exception is the research of English in advertising, which, after the publication of a few early studies (e.g. Haarmann 1984, 1989; Masavisut et al. 1986; Bhatia 1987; Takashi 1990; Mueller 1992; Cheshire and Moser 1994; Myers 1994) has seen a striking expansion of research during the last decade (e.g. Griffin 1997, 2001; Martin 1998, 2002a, 2002b, 2007; Meinhof 1998; Gerritsen et al. 1999, 2000, 2007; Kelly-Holmes 2000, 2005; Piller 2000, 2001, 2003; Friedrich 2002; Ovesdotter Alm 2003; Bhatia and Ritchie 2004; Ustinova and Bhatia 2005; Baumgardner 2006; Lee 2006; Ustinova 2006; Krishnasamy 2007). Whether they target Asian, European, or Latin-American consumers, advertisers seem to regard the use of English words, sentences, and even entire texts as an efficient strategy to sell brands and products to consumers. These different studies have revealed a number of explanations for the use of English in advertising, which can be categorized in three groups. A first set

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Across the globe, the use of English is a popular advertising technique. The ever expanding body of studies on this topic has revealed a number of explanations for the use of English in the advertising. It can be related to the larger marketing strategy of a campaign, to the cultural connotations English carries, or English can be used for creative-linguistic reasons. The current article, however, will present an analysis of four examples of advertisements in which English is used for reasons that have not been discussed in the scholarly literature so far. More specifically, in these advertisements, which intertextually refer to a range of British and American media genres, specific registers of English are used to mark the generic intertextuality of the ads. The analysis, I believe, sheds new light on the use of English in the media, and more particularly on issues such as viewers’ agency and linguistic superiority.

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of reasons pertains to the larger marketing strategy of a campaign. For instance, brands sometimes choose to use the same campaign or slogan worldwide in order to have a globally consistent marketing strategy and brand image. Some brands also choose to use the same advertisement in different countries in order to cut costs. In either case, English serves as the ‘lingua franca’ that is understood—or that at least sounds familiar—in different countries (e.g. Ovesdotter Alm 2003; Baumgardner 2006; Ustinova 2006). Within a single country as well, English can be used to address different language groups. In complex multilingual countries such as Switzerland, for instance, English is sometimes used because it is regarded as a comparatively neutral language, as it is not embroiled in the tensions between local languages (Cheshire and Moser 1994). Secondly, there are also creative-linguistic reasons for the use of English in advertising. English words are, for instance, often used in the case of a ‘lexical gap’, i.e. when there is no accurate equivalent for a word or expression in the host language (e.g. Masavisut et al. 1986; Gerritsen et al. 2000), or when the equivalent in the host language is considered taboo (Takashi 1990). English words are also popular with advertisers because they are shorter than the equivalents in the host language (Friedrich 2002), and because they (are believed to) attract the attention of the consumer (e.g. Bhatia 1987; Martin 2002a, 2007; Ustinova and Bhatia 2005; Krishnasamy 2007). The use of a foreign language also expands advertisers’ possibilities for linguistic creativity. For instance, it opens the door to bilingual word puns (e.g. ‘Koe and the Gang’ in a Flemish ad) and bilingual rhyming (e.g. ‘Trentenaire On Air’ in a French ad; Bhatia and Ritchie 2004: 539) in advertisements (e.g. Myers 1994; Martin 2002b, 2007; Ustinova and Bhatia 2005). A third set of reasons for the use of English in advertising pertains to the cultural connotations that English carries. Here, English is used because the values or stereotypes associated with it (e.g. internationalism, modernity, and Britishness) are assumed to reflect positively on the product (e.g. Cheshire and Moser 1994; Martin 2002a; Ustinova 2006) or to appeal to the ‘implied reader’ of the advertisement (e.g. Piller 2001; Lee 2006). In such advertisements, foreign languages are not used for their communicative value, but for their symbolic value (Kelly-Holmes 2000). Indeed, several studies report that for advertising purposes, consumers need not even understand the foreign language that is used, as long as they recognize the connotations that it is associated with. Very telling in this respect is that Martin (2002a), Piller (2000), and Masavisut et al. (1986) report advertisers’ practices to even use ‘invented’ or ‘nonsensical’ English in advertisements, i.e. meaningless words or sentences that only sound English—and can thus activate certain values with the consumers. When it comes to the connotations that are associated with different foreign languages, English seems to constitute a rather exceptional case. While other foreign languages derive their connotational values primarily from the countries in which they are the dominant language (e.g. German technical

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sophistication; French culinary superiority), English also has ‘meaning, use and significance independent of the countries in which it is spoken’ (KellyHolmes 2000: 76). In this respect, English is a ‘bicultural’ language (Cheshire and Moser 1994), as it symbolizes values that are stereotypically associated with the USA (e.g. freedom) or Great Britain (e.g. class and traditionalism), as well as ‘general’ values such as youth, prestige, modernity, globalization, cosmopolitanism, and internationalism. The associations in the latter case seem to indicate that English is a ‘neutral’ and ‘transparent’ language, ‘tied to no particular social, political, economic or religious system, [belonging] to everyone or to no one’ (Wardhaugh 1987: 14–15). However, the line between ‘American’ or ‘British’ values on the one hand, and ‘general’ values on the other, is probably far more blurry than it seems. For instance, the association of English with the ‘general’ notion modernity, might be strongly related to the stereotype of the USA as the modern country par excellence. Furthermore, the association of English with values such as quality, progress, reliability, credibility, and prestige, reveals that implicit notions of American (or, more generally, Western) culture as ‘superior’ underlie the use of English in advertising. Advertisers often even use English to market locally produced products to local consumers, in the hope that they will think they are produced abroad (Masavisut et al. 1986; Ovesdotter Alm 2003). ‘People still think that what comes from abroad is better, and if it’s in English – it’s even better’, an Ecuadorian advertiser states in Ovesdotter Alm (2003: 152). In the same study, another advertiser says: ‘[U]sually we relate English with North American and European and, therefore, with quality, with well-made, with technology, with research, with design, with something that is good. American is good. American equals good quality’ (p. 151). In such cases, the use of English amounts to an uncritical celebration of the language and its associated culture(s). The high incidence of English in advertising is often seen as an example of ‘linguistic imperialism’ (Phillipson 1992): The US dominant position in the production of commodity culture enables it to force English onto other, seemingly defenseless cultures. English thus becomes ‘the language of global mass consumer culture’ (Featherstone 1995: 8). The use of English in advertising, and in media more generally, is often a prime target for opponents of American cultural imperialism. For instance, the French ‘Loi Toubon’, which restricts the use of foreign languages in the media, was defended by its proponents as being an instrument against ‘Americanization’ (Machill 1997: 494). As becomes obvious from the summary above, the existing literature has provided insights into quite a range of explanations for the use of foreign languages in advertising. However, a sample of 746 advertisements that was collected in Flanders (the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium) contained a number of advertisements for which the use of a foreign language could not be fully explained by any of the reasons discussed above. These 746 advertisements were collected over a 1-year period (in September 2004,

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INTERTEXTUALITY IN ADVERTISING In a sense, every media text is intertextual (Barthes 1975; Bakhtin 1986; Fiske 1987). Producers do not create their texts in a vacuum: other media texts inevitably permeate their work. Similarly, when readers consume media texts, their decoding is influenced by other texts they are familiar with. In this view, intertextuality refers to ‘the fundamental and inescapable interdependence of all textual meaning upon the structures of meaning proposed by other texts’ (Gray 2005: 3–4). However, one should distinguish this type of ‘inescapable intertextuality’ (Fiske 1987: 115) from the ‘intertextual intent’ that some texts have. Such texts ‘aim themselves at other texts and genres, and [. . .] want us to read them through other texts or genres’ (Gray 2005: 4). In this type of intertextuality, which Hitchon and Jura (1997) have called ‘postmodern intertextuality’, the meaning of a new text is almost entirely dependent on the reader’s knowledge of the ‘referenced’ text(s). Withalm (2003), for instance, discusses a number of advertisements that intertextually refer to movies. The meaning and/or humor of these ads can only be understood and appreciated if viewers are familiar with movies such as Hitchcock’s classics Psycho (1960) or The Birds

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March 2005, and September 2005) from 10 different Flemish television stations (commercial as well as public broadcasting stations). English was by far the foreign language which was used most often in these advertisements: not less than 45 per cent of the advertisements contain English words. If we include the use of English in product names (e.g. ‘Head and Shoulders for Men’; ‘Electrabel Do-My-Care’), this percentage even rises to 65 per cent. French was the second most popular language, featuring in 4 per cent of the ads (14 per cent if French product names are included), followed by Italian with 1 per cent (2 per cent if Italian product names are included). In 25 out of the 746 advertisements, a foreign language seemed to be used for a reason that has, to my knowledge, not been discussed so far in the literature. I propose that in these advertisements, which intertextually refer to a range of (media) genres, the foreign language functions as a ‘linguistic cue’ to the intended intertextual references that are made. In 22 of the 25 advertisements, the foreign language was English. In this article, four examples of this type of advertisements will be discussed. Three are taken from the sample collection of 746 Flemish advertisements, the fourth is an advertisement recorded from Dutch television. These four advertisements were chosen because they include intertextual references to an interesting range of media genres (e.g. fiction and nonfiction, British and American) and provide examples of intergeneric as well as intrageneric intertextuality. The analysis, I believe, sheds new light on the use of English in advertisements, and more particularly on the issues such as viewers’ agency and linguistic superiority. First, the next section will discuss the role of intertextuality in advertising.

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Transcultural intertextuality The process of cultural and media globalization has dramatically increased the resources for intertextual references. As Hesmondhalgh (2002: 178)

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(1963), or box office hit Titanic (1997). Besides such intergeneric intertextual references (i.e. references to media genres other than advertising), advertisements can also contain intrageneric references, such as references to other particular advertisements, or to more general advertising cliche´s, codes, or routinized strategies (Cook 2001). In both inter- and intrageneric intertextuality, pastiche, parody, and humor often feature prominently. The advent of postmodern intertextual advertising in the 1980s attempted to appeal to a generation of critical, media-literate, and skeptical viewers (Goldman and Papson 1994; Leiss et al. 2005). ‘After nearly forty years of watching TV ads, viewers had grown too acclimatized to advertising’s routinized messages and reading rules. [. . .] Savvy, media-literate viewers now present advertisers with a challenge. Bored and fatigued, these viewers restlessly flip around the channels in search for something that will momentarily arrest their attention and fascination’ (Goldman and Papson 1994: 24). The creativity, humor, and reflexivity that are typical of intertextual advertisements, constitute an exciting way of appealing to advertising-literate viewers who ‘see through’ classic advertising strategies. If viewers recognize the intertextual references, the advertisement may function as ‘a source of ego enhancement’. By positioning the viewer as the holder of the necessary cultural capital, the advertiser ‘appears to speak to the viewer as a peer’ (Goldman and Papson 1994: 43). Furthermore, the enjoyment and pleasure that viewers derive from such advertisements, potentially contribute to positive attitudes towards the ad, and hence to the brand (Hitchon and Jura 1997). Also, Stam et al. (1992: 203) point out with regard to intergeneric intertextuality that ‘the self-referential humor signals to the spectator that the commercial is not to be taken seriously, and this more relaxed state of expectation renders the viewer more permeable to the commercial message’. Proctor et al. (2002) even state that the vagueness of such advertisements makes the audience vulnerable to manipulation and confusion. O’Donohoe’s (1997a, 1997b) study with Scottish 18- to 24-year-olds has pointed out that young adults are remarkably sophisticated in their consumption of intertextual advertisements. Still, the use of intertextual references in advertising is a very risky business, as its success relies almost entirely on what authors have variably referred to as the viewer’s cultural literacy (Hitchon and Jura 1997), intertextual competence (Gray 2005: 30), genre literacy (Gray 2005: 32), popular culture capital (Fiske 1992), or media literacy (Goldman and Papson 1994). As McCracken (1986: 75) points out, the viewer is always ‘the final author’ of an advertisement. If viewers miss the familiarity with another media genre or text that is necessary to understand an advertisement, they may become very irritated with it (Hitchon and Jura 1997).

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ANALYSIS: FOUR ADVERTISEMENTS, FOUR GENRES, FOUR ENGLISHES In the current article, I will discuss a sample of four advertisements in which English is used to mark intertextual references to American or British media genres. The first three advertisements I will discuss were produced by Belgian advertising agencies, and broadcast in Flanders, the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium. They advertise products that are only or predominantly relevant to Belgian consumers. In other words, despite the fact that they are entirely or almost entirely in English, these ads are not intended for an international audience. The fourth advertisement, however, was produced by a Canadian agency and targeted an English-speaking audience, but was later (partly) adopted to advertise a different product to a Dutch audience. This fourth advertisement was included in the analysis because it shows that there can be other reasons for not translating originally English-language advertisements than lower costs or the demand for worldwide ‘consistency’. The use of English in the four advertisements will be examined through a qualitative content analysis. Thereby, not only the linguistic, but also the

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points out: ‘Cultural texts originated in one country are increasingly seen, heard, and so on in other countries. Because of this increasing flow of cultural texts, audiences and symbol creators can, in many places, draw on texts from many other different places. Texts, genres and even technologies (such as musical instruments) will be often reinterpreted and adapted by symbol creators in other contexts.’ Similarly, Regev (2007: 126) considers the ‘world culture’ that globalization has created as ‘a bank of visual, sonic and textual stylistic elements and techniques of expression, from which every local producer at the national level can draw materials for her own use’. In Appadurai’s (1996: 35) terminology, mediascapes provide ‘large and complex repertoires of meanings, narratives, and ethnoscapes to viewers throughout the world’. Van Elteren (1996: 69) focuses on American popular culture, which he regards as ‘one big self service store’ or ‘superculture’, in that it is ‘a reservoir of cultural elements from which one may borrow as much and in as many ways as one wishes’. Van Elteren’s phrasing is quite euphemistic: ‘one may borrow’, he states, but the fact is that the dominance of American cultural products in global media flows narrows down the repertoire of cultures to borrow from. Nevertheless, those who borrow from the American cultural repertoire are free to creatively employ their borrowings in a myriad of ways, including in ways that invert, ridicule, or oppose American culture. In the next section, I will discuss four intertextual advertisements which ingeniously employ viewers’ increasing familiarity with foreign media genres. I will argue that English plays a vital role in anchoring the intertextuality of the advertisements.

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visual, auditory, and narrative characteristics of the ads will be taken into account. This holistic approach is required in order to fully grasp the intertextual references made in the advertisements. As advertisers’ possibilities of making ‘global’ generic intertextual references are greatly affected by their audiences’ genre literacy, and as this literacy is primarily dependent on these audiences familiarity with foreign media, the next section will give a short description of Flemish and Dutch audiences’ access to English-language media.

When it comes to the position of English, Flanders and the Netherlands are quite similar. Flanders is the Dutch-speaking part of the officially trilingual Belgium. The other official languages are French, which is spoken by about 40 per cent of inhabitants, and German, which is spoken by less than 1 per cent. Belgium is made up of four language communities: Flanders is the officially monolingual Dutch part in the north, Wallonia is the officially monolingual French part in the south, Brussels is the officially bilingual (French and Dutch) metropolitan district, and German is spoken by a small community in the east of Belgium. In addition to these official languages, about 70 other languages are spoken in families living in Flanders (De Houwer 2007: 414). From an educational point of view, French is the second language in Flanders: children generally start learning French in the fifth year of primary education (at the of age 10 or 11 years), while other languages such as English and German are only taught from secondary education on. However, culturally speaking, English is far more important in Flanders than French. While the Flemish are avid consumers of English-language television programs, movies, and music, French language media products have only a minor role in the Flemish media landscape: they are broadcast far less frequently, and when they are, they reach far smaller audiences than do English-language products. In Flanders, foreign language television programs and movies are (with the exception of some children’s programs and movies) always broadcast with Dutch subtitles, in contrast to Wallonia, where foreign programs and movies are generally provided with French voice-over. Most Belgians also have access to a range of English-language television channels, such as BBC1, BBC2, BBC World, CNBC, and CNN. The intensive contact the Flemish audience has with English through popular media explains why English is the most popular foreign language with youngsters in Flanders, and why Flemish 18-year-olds are on average more proficient in English than in French, despite the fact that they have taken a significantly larger number of French than English classes during their educational careers (Housen et al. 2001). Because of the popularity of English-language television programs and movies, the Flemish can be expected to be familiar with a wide range of American, British, and (to a lesser extent) Australian media genres

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The setting: languages and media in Flanders and the Netherlands

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(including, but not limited to: American, British, and/or Australian soaps, drama series, sitcoms, documentaries, reality television, talk shows, whodunits, animated series, and science fiction). When it comes to the access to, and popularity of English-language media, the situation in the Netherlands is comparable with that in Flanders. However, in the Netherlands, English is the first foreign language children learn in school (at about the age of 10 years); French and German are only taught in secondary education.

The first advertisement I will discuss promotes Belgacom, Belgium’s leading telecommunications company. The advertisement featured in a campaign with the slogan ‘Soms blijf je beter waar je bent’ (‘Sometimes it’s better to stay where you are’), which aimed at convincing clients to stay with former public enterprise and monopoly holder Belgacom, rather than switching over to the new companies that had recently entered the telecommunications market. The advertisement starts with the image of a field of corn, baking in the sun against a background of chirping crickets (Figure 1A). While the image switches to a close-up of a frog (Figure 1B), a male voice-over with a British accent says, ‘When temperatures rise to fifty degrees centigrade, the river frog, also known as the statue frog, avoids any physical activity.’ The advertisement switches again to an image of the corn, and then to two different close-ups

Figure 1: (A–F) Intergeneric intertextuality in an advertisement for the Belgian telecommunications company Belgacom. This advertisement parodies the style of a British wildlife documentary. (Images reproduced from the Belgacom commercial ‘Frog’ with permission from Manoe¨lle Ballaux)

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Advertisement 1: advertisement for the Belgian telecommunications company Belgacom

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Advertisement 2: advertisement for the Flemish radio station Studio Brussel The second advertisement featured in a campaign for Studio Brussel, the youth radio station of the Flemish public broadcaster VRT. The campaign centered around a fake international sports event called ‘The Music Games’, in which different national teams compete in such ludicrous disciplines as 20 meter moonwalk, guitar throwing, long singing, and breakdance curling. All four television advertisements are entirely in English (only the product name, Studio Brussel, is in Dutch). Here, I will discuss the advertisement ‘Breakdance Curling’. The advertisement begins with images of a giant sports center behind a ‘Music Games’ logo (Figure 2A). An American voice-over says ‘Welcome back to the music games. We’re about to see a new event called breakdance curling.’ As the advertisement switches to images of the curling sheet inside the sports center, the voice-over continues: ‘Well there’s a ton weight on that young man’s shoulders, and I’m sure glad that I’m not out there.’ The advertisement then shows the Swedish curling team being presented to the audience (Figure 2B), and a second male voice states, ‘So are we, Dave, so are we.’ A third male voice comments, ‘Okay, India leading. Here comes

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of the frog (Figure 1C and D). Meanwhile, the voice-over continues, ‘This particular specimen hasn’t moved an inch for almost half a day now.’ Next, we see a long-shot image of the frog jumping onto the road, ending up underneath the wheels of a passing car (Figure 1E). The voice-over says, ‘Oh’, and the advertisement shows the image of a flattened out frog, who croaks ‘Bollocks’. ‘Well’, a voice-over says, in Dutch, ‘Sometimes it’s better to stay where you are. With Belgacom, for instance’ (my translation). Simultaneously, the slogan ‘Sometimes it’s better to stay where you are’ appears on screen in Dutch (Figure 1F). Next, the Belgacom logo is shown. This advertisement is a textbook example of intergeneric intertextuality, as it intertextually refers to the genre of British wildlife documentary. Several cues are used to temporarily convince the viewer that (s)he is watching a documentary on a frog species, rather than an advertisement. There are, for instance, the background sounds (chirping crickets, the croaking of the frog), the visual look of the advertisement, the editing choices (cutting between long shots of the habitat of the animal and close-ups of the animal), and the tone of the voice-over (authoritative, at a slow pace, with wellconsidered pauses). More importantly, the use of English could be seen as a crucial marker of the intertextuality of the ad. Indeed, the adult, male, British English speaking voice functions as a reference to British wildlife documentaries in the tradition of David Attenborough. Interestingly, besides just providing the viewer with a translation of the English audiotape, the Dutch subtitles also seem to be contributing to indexing the advertisement as a British wildlife documentary, as these are generally also used in the British documentaries that are broadcast in Flanders.

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Sweden.’ As the Swedish ‘athlete’ starts spinning on his back on the ice (Figure 2C), the second voice continues, ‘And he’s off! Look at him spin, burning up that ice . . . Sweep, com’on sweep it up! Sweep!’ The third voice adds, ‘This really looks good Steve.’ As the Swedish athlete nears the target (Figure 2D), the second voice says, ‘Look out, India, look out!’ The third voice yells, ‘And it’s good! Sweden wins. What a game!’ Finally, both sportscasters (i.e. the ‘second voice’ and ‘third voice’) are shown (Figure 2E), with the left one chuckling, ‘Now look who’s going home with the gold. But now first a word from our sponsor.’ While the Studio Brussel logo appears on the screen (Figure 2F), the sportscaster on the right-hand side—seemingly unaware that he is still on air—tells his colleague on the left-hand side, ‘I’m freezing my ass off’; the left sportscaster responds with ‘I can’t feel my toes’. This ad, too, is an example of intergeneric intertextuality. More specifically, the advertisement presents a parody of American sports commentary, thereby adopting several features of the genre. For instance, the advertisement follows the general structure of a sports event broadcast: Starting with the announcement of the event and an image of the venue (Figure 2A), then switching to the presentation of the performing team (Figure 2B), followed by the actual performance (Figure 2C and D), and finishing with the commentators’ wrap-up (Figure 2E and F). The advertisement also adopts the typical ‘dialogic presentation’, with one announcer who narrates the play-by-play (e.g. ‘Okay, India leading. Here comes Sweden’, ‘And it’s good! Sweden wins. What a game’) and one commentator providing the color commentary (e.g. ‘Look at him spin, burning up that ice . . . Sweep, com’on sweep it up! Sweep!’) (Ferguson 1983: 156; Hansen 1999). The fact that the two presenters are actually shown to the viewer further marks the advertisement as an

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Figure 2: (A–F) Intergeneric intertextuality in an advertisement for the Flemish radio station Studio Brussel. This advertisement parodies American sportscaster talk. (Images reproduced from the Studio Brussel commercial ‘Breakdance Curling’ with permission from Peter Claes; ß VRT)

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Advertisement 3: public service advertisement against teenage pregnancy The third advertisement is a public service advertisement that warns against teenage pregnancy. The advertisement was created by a Flemish advertising agency and was jointly commissioned by the federal Public Health Department, the Belgian National Institute for Health and Invalidity Insurance (Riziv/Inami), and several health insurance companies. The advertisement was broadcast on Flemish television and cinema screens in 2005, and was accompanied by a web site on teenage pregnancy. At the outset, the advertisement seems to promote a new video game called ‘Teenage Mum’. The advertisement depicts the animation style of The Sims video games (and advertisements), while a hyperactive voice-over states, ‘Get ready for teenage mum, the ultimate gaming experience. Test your teenage motherhood skills in twenty-four exciting levels. Change diapers around the clock. Try to study while your baby keeps you up all night. Look after your child, but don’t miss phone calls from your friends.’ Meanwhile, the advertisement shows the different ‘levels’ of the video game, accompanied by head-up displays such as the indication ‘press start’ (Figure 3B), a progress bar (Figure 3E) which shows the teenage mum’s study progress, and the indication ‘Friend Lost’ (Figure 3F) which appears when the teenage mum fails to pick up the phone as she is chasing her crawling baby. The voice-over continues, ‘Your ultimate challenge: Not having a nervous breakdown.’ Next, the background turns black, the hyperactive music stops, and the exhausted teenage mum character falls down to her knees and

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American sports event broadcast (as this is rarely the case in Flemish broadcasts). Examples of visual features that refer to a sports event broadcast are the event logo (Figure 2A–F), the display with information on the competitors (Figure 2B), and the sportscasters’ sartorial choices (big headphones, wearing a warm casual coat over a tuxedo; Figure 2E). Also very significant is the use of typical elements of the language of sports commentary such as updates of the course of the game (‘India leading’), the use of specific routines (e.g. ‘What a game!’, ‘And he’s off!’, ‘And it’s good!’), some syntactic features of sports commentary (copula deletion in ‘India [is] leading’; the use of and for starting a new statement (as in ‘And he’s off!’, ‘And it’s good!’)), and the sportscasters’ rising intonation as the game nears its climax (Ferguson 1983; Delin 2000). Again, it seems that a very specific register of (in this case, American) English is used to mark the ‘intended’ intertextuality of the advertisement. Moreover, the American sportscasters’ register is not only adopted, but also mocked, most noticeably when the euphemistic cliche´ ‘a word from our sponsor’ is used (rather than ‘commercials’). This kind of lampooning also takes place at the end of the ad, when both sportscasters make the not uncommon mistake of making comments on air that are not intended to be heard by the viewers (‘I’m freezing my ass off’, ‘I can’t feel my toes’).

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sighs (Figure 3H). Finally, white letters against the black background read (originally in Dutch): ‘Being a teenage mum is not a game. Use contraception’ (Figure 3I) and ‘The pill is now cheaper if you are under 21. Info on laura.be’ (my translation). This advertisement combines both intrageneric and intergeneric intertextuality. Intergenerically, the commercial appropriates the animation style of the popular The Sims video games. The setting of the ‘Teenage Mum’ game (everyday life, ‘real world’ rather than fantasy world), the visual look of the characters and their environment, the erratic physical movements of the characters, and the several head-up displays that are shown, are all highly similar to the The Sims video games. However, the style of the advertisements for The Sims games is generally not as hyperactive as the Teenage Mum advertisement. On the contrary, such advertisements adopt a rather ‘laidback’ style, with minimal use of voice-over. The Teenage Mum advertisement, however, adopts the style of a different type of commercial, namely that of energetic commercials, in which a voice-over tries to mention as many of the products’ exciting features as is possible in the constrained duration of an advertisement. This short, hard sell, informational and rather irritating style

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Figure 3: (A–I) Intra- and intergeneric intertextuality in ‘Teenage Mum’, a public awareness advertisement against teenage pregnancy. This advertisement intertextually refers to the popular The Sims video games, as well as to the hyperactive style of ‘typically American’ advertisements. (Images reproduced from the Laura commercial ‘Teenage Mum’ with permission from Bruno Ruebens, Manager of Marketing, Nationaal Verbond van Socialistische Mutualiteiten, Sint-Jansstraat 32, 1000 Brussels)

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Advertisement 4: advertisement for the bathroom cleaning product Cif Power Cream Spray The fourth advertisement was broadcast in the Netherlands in 2006. In contrast with the advertisements discussed above, this advertisement was originally produced for an English-speaking audience. Originally created by a Canadian advertising agency for the Unilever product ‘Vim Cream’, this advertisement was later slightly adapted (i.e. supplied with subtitles and a different product name, tag line, and slogan) and used for promoting a different Unilever product (namely ‘Cif Power Cream Spray’). The advertisement starts with a close-up image of a worn-out woman in an orange overall. As melancholic music starts to play, a young, sad-looking girl puts her hand on the glass window that separates her from the woman (Figure 4A). As their hands meet on the glass window (Figure 4B), the girl asks, ‘When are you gonna get out of here?’ The woman responds sadly: ‘In a while . . . I gotta get back’ (Figure 4C). As we see the girl fight back her emotions, the advertisement suddenly switches to a long shot of the woman and the girl, who turn out to be located at either sides of a glass shower door (Figure 4D). As the woman starts cleaning the bath tub, the girl puts both hands on the shower door, and desperately yells, ‘I love you momma.’ The woman emotionally responds with ‘I love you too baby!’ (Figure 4E). The advertisement then shows the cleaning spray that is advertised (Figure 4F), and a voice-over states (originally in Dutch): ‘Thorough cleaning does not

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is typical of American advertising (Nevett 1992). The adoption of this advertising style constitutes the intrageneric intertextuality of the advertisement. Much of the humor and irony of the advertisement is situated in the contrast between the excited tone of the voice-over, and the miserable situation of the Teenage Mum character. The intrageneric intertextuality of the advertisement explains, I believe, why the first part of the advertisement is in English: the American English that is used marks the intertextual reference the advertisement makes to the ‘typically American’ advertising style. Indeed, as soon as the intertextual nature of the advertisement is revealed, the advertisement switches to Dutch (Figure 3F). This advertisement exemplifies many of the advantages that intertextual advertising has, especially when aiming at a young audience. The reflexivity which the advertisement achieves in parodying a specific advertising style allows the advertiser to ‘speak to the viewer as a peer’ (Goldman and Papson 1994: 43). At the same time, the deconstruction of that advertising style enables the advertiser to distance themselves from ‘commercial advertising’, thus reinforcing the informational nature of the ad. Hence, this advertisement cleverly manages to enjoy the visual attractiveness and appeal of the video game—not coincidentally The Sims, a game that is especially appealing to female youth (Nutt and Railton 2003)—without sacrificing its credibility as a public awareness ad.

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need to be a punishment. For Cif introduces Cif Power Cream Sprays. The power of Cif, in a handy spray’ (my translation). This fourth advertisement can be interpreted as intertextually referring to the genre of American television and Hollywood drama, and more specifically to movie scenes of prisoners being visited by family members. Again, several visual, auditory, and narrative cues are used to temporarily make viewers believe that they are watching a scene from a Hollywood movie or television drama, rather than a commercial for cleaning products. An important auditory reference to the genre is the melancholic background music. The intertextual nature of the advertisement is further visually enhanced by its grayish look, by the orange jumpsuit the mother is wearing (typical prison dress), and by the editing choices that where made (e.g. close-ups of emotion-ridden faces, shot-reverse-shots of the interactants). The most conspicuous intertextual references are, however, the several cliche´s of Hollywood scenes of prison visits that are used in the ad. The most prominent examples of such references are the hands of the mother/prisoner and the child/visitor touching through the glass (see especially the close-up in Figure 4B), the mother’s/prisoner’s utterance ‘I gotta get back’ (in movies generally preceded by a prison ward’s request to leave the visiting room), and the over-the-top emotions that lie in the facial expressions of both interactants (e.g. Figure 4E) and in utterances such as ‘I love you momma!’ and ‘I love you too, baby!’

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Figure 4: (A–F) Intergeneric intertextuality in an advertisement for Cif Power Cream. This advertisement borrows several elements of the style and structure of a Hollywood movie or television drama prison scene. (Images reproduced from the Cif Power Cream Spray commercial with permission from Unilever Nederland BV, located in Rotterdam, the Netherlands)

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DISCUSSION In this article, I discussed four television advertisements in which English is the dominant language, despite the fact that they target Dutch-speaking audiences. In these advertisements, the choice for English cannot be explained by the motivations that have thus far been described in the scholarly literature: the advertisements are not part of an international campaign, and English is not used for purely creative-linguistic reasons (e.g. for linguistic puns, to fill a lexical gap), nor for the cultural connotations it potentially reflects on the product or its potential users. Rather, in these ads, specific varieties and registers of English seem to be used because of their association with the genre to which the advertisement intertextually refers. Advertisers thereby draw on viewers’ familiarity with a range of American and British media genres. This observation has interesting implications for our views of foreign English in

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Again, the intertextual nature of the advertisement can explain why English is the dominant language in this advertisement. While the first part of the advertisement (Figure 4A–E) is identical to the Canadian original, the second part differs highly. In the Canadian ad, the tag line read ‘Don’t spend your life cleaning’, while the adaptation that was broadcast in the Netherlands reads (originally in Dutch): ‘Thorough cleaning does not need to be a punishment.’ The product slogan in the Canadian advertisement was ‘Cleans the tough stuff. Easily’, while the Dutch version, which advertises an entirely different cleaning product, says ‘The power of Cif in a handy spray.’ So, obviously, the use of English in this advertisement cannot be explained by a desire for a globally consistent marketing strategy and/or brand image. Rather, I believe it is the intertextuality of the advertisement which explains why the Dutch version of the advertisement did not use Dutch voice-over translation (dubbing), despite the fact that this is an often used strategy when English-language advertisements (especially those for cleaning products and detergents) are adapted for a Dutch-speaking audience. If the advertisement had been dubbed in Dutch, the intertextual reference to Hollywood drama would be largely lost, for American movies are never dubbed when they are broadcast in the Netherlands, but always subtitled. In fact, advertising is one of the very few genres in which dubbing is used in the Netherlands. In this sense, again, the subtitles in the advertisement seem to do more than just providing a translation; they also enhance the intertextuality of the ad. A Dutch-dubbed version of the advertisement would probably be less readily mistaken by viewers for a scene from a Hollywood movie or television drama; hence, the intertextual nature, as well as the humorous climax of the advertisement (i.e. when the ‘prisoner’ is revealed to be a cleaning housewife) could get ‘lost in translation’. Also, the orange jumpsuit the prisoner/mother is wearing would no longer make any sense, for orange suits are typically worn by American prisoners, not by Dutch(-speaking) prisoners.

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advertising and of the global spread of English through popular culture more generally. First of all, the analysis shows that, when English is used in advertisements, this does not necessarily entail an uncritical celebration of that language and the cultural values it is associated with. The current scholarly studies have demonstrated that English is often used because it is supposed to imbue the advertised product with the cultural connotations it carries, or because it is expected to appeal to a specific target audience that values those connotations. These connotations can be culturally linked to a specific English-speaking country (e.g. ‘British class’), or they can be more general (e.g. ‘modernity’). In the four advertisements discussed here, however, while the connotations English is used for are obviously linked to either the USA or Great Britain, these connotations are not used because they are assumed to reflect on the product or on its users. For instance, in the first advertisement I discussed, British English is not used because of the reputation the British hold with regard to the product that is advertised (i.e. telecommunications), but for their identification with the genre the advertisement intertextually refers to (i.e. wildlife documentary). Likewise, in the other three advertisements under study, American English is not used because the USA is highly regarded in the respective fields of contraception, radio stations, and cleaning products, but for the identification of American English with hyperactive hard-sell advertisements, dialogic sports commentary, and syrupy Hollywood drama. The distinction between both motivations for using English is crucial, as both involve an entirely different appreciation of the English language. In the advertisements described in the existing scholarly literature so far, English generally enjoyed the status of a superior language: The language of (American) high quality, (British) class, of prestige, modernity, globalization, cosmopolitanism, internationalism, etcetera, in short: the language of ‘all things good’. The advertisements that were discussed in the current article, however, do not involve such an uncritical celebration of the English language. On the contrary: English seems to be used in these advertisements because it is the language of specific media genres—genres, however, that are parodied and mocked, and whose conventions are subverted. In her analysis of French print and television advertisements, Piller (2001) has observed that English is often used at the end of an advertisement, and in important parts of the advertisement such as the slogan. When it is placed in such dominant parts of the ad, Piller claims, English is vested with the meaning of authority, authenticity, and truth. In the advertisements discussed in the current article, however, the opposite is the case. Here, English is used only in the beginning of the advertisements, while Dutch plays a dominant role at the end of the advertisements, more specifically when the intertextual nature of the advertisement is revealed, as well as the advertised product, the slogan, and other important information. In this sense, English enjoys quite

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a ‘subordinated’ position in the ads: it is used for parodying and mocking the genres it is associated with, it is used for entertaining the viewer, but when the ads come to revealing their ‘real’ message, English is quickly disposed of. Secondly, the advertisements discussed here demand a different, more active role from their readers than advertisements in which English is used because of the connotational values it evokes. The latter type of advertisements assumes an essentially passive role for their readers, as they draw on readers’ more or less subconscious associations between English and certain cultural connotations or stereotypes. In this sense, consumers are regarded as gullible and uncritical: it does not really matter what an advertiser says about the product; as long as he says it in English, consumers will rise to the bait (as is especially evident in advertisers’ use of ‘nonsensical English’ mentioned earlier). The advertisements discussed here, however, draw on readers’ cultural and media literacy, and on their ability and creativity to link certain visual, auditory, narrative, and linguistic cues to specific media genres. One could almost state that while the first type of advertising works better when the reader lacks a certain amount of media literacy (more specifically, advertising literacy)—for it depends partly on the reader’s unawareness of the fact that English is used to activate certain connotations—the second type can only be successful when a certain degree of media literacy is present—for the reader has to be familiar with the intertextual references that are made in order to understand the advertisement. Thirdly, the analysis presented here challenges monolithic notions of the spread of English. In the advertisements under study, a range of different registers of English is used to intertextually refer to an array of different media genres. Obviously, analyses that see the popularity of English in advertising worldwide merely as evidence for the idea that English is ‘the language of global mass consumer culture’ lack the complexity that is needed for a thorough understanding of the phenomenon. It is, of course, no coincidence that American and British popular culture are by far the foreign cultures most referred to in Flemish advertisements, and hence, that English is the prevailing foreign language in such advertisements. The dominant position that American and British products hold in the Flemish media landscape is thus reflected in the intertextual references that are made. Very relevant in this respect is that in the French-speaking part of Belgium, where English-language television programs and movies are transmitted with French voice-over instead of with subtitles, the Teenage Mum advertisement and the Belgacom advertisement were broadcast with French audio. Indeed, English would not serve as a ‘linguistic cue’ to the intertextual nature in the advertisements, as Anglo-Saxon programs are not broadcast in English there. In this sense, the advertisements analyzed here provide a clear demonstration of the idea that the dominant position of Anglo-Saxon in global media flows reinforces the global spread and popularity of English.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The author would like to thank Philippe Meers, Annick De Houwer, Jelle Mast and the anonymous reviewers for their insightful feedback on an earlier version of this article. Many thanks also to Steven Malliet for his suggestions with respect to gaming jargon, and to Manoe¨lle Ballaux (Belgacom), Christ Lannoy and Karel Vinck (Duval Guillaume Antwerp), Erik Liebe (Unilever Rotterdam), Bruno Ruebens (NVSM) and Geert Van Hoeymissen (VRT) for their kind permission to publish images from their commercials. Conflict of interest statement. None declared.

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However, we should be very careful in our understanding of such processes, and avoid lapsing into an overstated economic determinism. As stated earlier, my analysis shows that the adoption of English by advertisers does not equal admiringly and respectfully embracing the language. Rather, the ways English is used in the advertisements analyzed here express a quite complex and reflexive appreciation of the language. Thus, while the global flows of Anglo-Saxon media products might enhance the use of English in Flemish media products such as advertisements, one should be wary of making automatic assumptions about those who adopt the language. In summary, the advertisements I discussed here differ on a number of points from advertisements which use English because of its cultural connotations. However, these different motivations also share some similarities. Most importantly, transcultural intertextuality is also the condition which enables the cultural-connotational use of English to be successful. Here, I refer not to the ‘intended intertextuality’ displayed by the four ads I discussed, but rather to what Fiske (1987: 115) called inescapable intertextuality: the idea that as we create and decode texts, we inevitably rely on other texts we consumed. Advertisements which use English for the cultural connotations the language is believed to reflect on the product, build on the associations viewers hold between English and certain connotations, and these associations have been largely constructed through (the advertisers’ and the viewers’) consumption of other media texts (Kelly-Holmes 2005). The same ‘large and complex repertoires of meanings, narratives, and ethnoscapes’ (Appadurai 1996) the advertisements discussed here rely on to make their intended intertextual references work, are the necessary condition for the associations advertisers and viewers hold between American English and freedom, or between British English and class. Finally, the analysis reported here also shows the importance of a holistic approach to the analysis of advertisements, and media products more generally. In a simple analysis of the language of the advertisements which does not take into account their visual and narrative aspects, the link between the use of English and the intertextual references made in the advertisements might have gone unnoticed. Language use is always a cultural practice, and so, the study of advertising language must involve an analysis of the broader cultural meaning of the advertisements.

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and implications,’ Journal of Advertising 21/4: 61–71. Nutt, D. and D. Railton. 2003. ‘The Sims: Real life as genre,’ Information, Communication & Society 6/4: 577–92. O’Donohoe, S. 1997a. ‘Leaky boundaries. Intertextuality and young adult experiences of advertising’ In M. Nava, A. Blake, I. MacRury, and B. Richards (eds): Buy This Book. Studies in Advertising and Consumption. Routledge, pp. 257–75. O’Donohoe, S. 1997b. ‘Raiding the postmodern pantry. Advertising intertextuality and the young adult audience,’ European Journal of Marketing 31/3–4: 234–53. Ovesdotter Alm, C. 2003. ‘English in the Ecuadorian commercial context,’ World Englishes 22/2: 143–58. Phillipson, R. 1992. Linguistic Imperialism. Oxford University Press. Phillipson, R. and T. Skutnabb-Kangas. 1997. ‘Linguistic human rights and English in Europe,’ World Englishes 16/1: 27–43. Piller, I. 2000. ‘Multilingualism and the modes of TV advertising’ In F. Ungerer (ed.): English Media Texts Past and Present. Language and Textual Structure. John Benjamins, pp. 263–79. Piller, I. 2001. ‘Identity constructions in multilingual advertising,’ Language in Society 30/2: 153–86. Piller, I. 2003. ‘Advertising as a site of language contact,’ Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 23/1: 170–83. Proctor, S., T. Proctor, and I. PapasolomouDoukakis. 2002. ‘A post-modern perspective on advertisements and their analysis,’ Journal of Marketing Communications 8/1: 31–44. Regev, M. 2007. ‘Cultural uniqueness and aesthetic cosmopolitanism,’ European Journal of Social Theory 10/1: 123–38. Stam, R., R. Burgoyne, and S. FlittermanLewis. 1992. New Vocabularies in Film Semiotics. Structuralism, Post-Structuralism and Beyond. Routledge. Takashi, K. 1990. ‘A sociolinguistic analysis of English borrowings in Japanese advertising texts,’ World Englishes 9/3: 327–41. Ustinova, I. P. 2006. ‘English and emerging advertising in Russia,’ World Englishes 25/2: 267–77.

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Kelly-Holmes, H. 2000. ‘Bier, Parfum, Kaas. Language Fetish in European advertising,’ European Journal of Cultural Studies 3/1: 67–82. Kelly-Holmes, H. 2005. Advertising as Multilingual Communication. Palgrave Macmillan. Krishnasamy, K. 2007. ‘English in Tamil: The language of advertising,’ English Today 23/3–4: 40–49. Lee, J. S. 2006. ‘Linguistic constructions of modernity: English mixing in Korean television commercials,’ Language in Society 35/1: 59–91. Leiss, W., S. Kline, S. Jhally, and J. Botterill. 2005. Social Communication in Advertising. Consumption in the Mediated Marketplace. Routledge. Machill, M. 1997. ‘Background to French language policy and its impact on the media,’ European Journal of Communication 12/4: 479–509. Martin, E. 1998. ‘The use of English in written French advertising: A study of code-switching, code-mixing, and borrowing in a commercial context,’ Studies in the Linguistic Sciences 28/1: 159–84. Martin, E. 2002a. ‘Cultural images and different varieties of English in French television commercials,’ English Today 18/4: 8–20. Martin, E. 2002b. ‘Mixing English in French advertising,’ World Englishes 21/3: 375–402. Martin, E. 2007. ‘ ‘Frenglish’ for sale: Multilingual discourses for addressing today’s global consumer,’ World Englishes 26/2: 170–88. Masavisut, N., M. Sukwiwat, and S. Wongmontha. 1986. ‘The power of the English language in Thai media,’ World Englishes 5/2–3: 197–207. McCracken, G. 1986. ‘Culture and consumption: A theoretical account of the structure and movement of the cultural meaning of consumer goods,’ Journal of Consumer Research 13/1: 71–84. Meinhof, U. H. 1998. Language Learning in the Age of Satellite Television. Oxford University Press. Mueller, B. 1992. ‘Standardization vs. specialization: An examination of westernization in Japanese advertising,’ Journal of Advertising Research 32/1: 15–24. Myers, G. 1994. Words in Ads. Edward Arnold. Nevett, T. 1992. ‘Differences between American and British television advertising: Explanations

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Applied Linguistics: 31/1: 136–155 ß Oxford University Press 2009 doi:10.1093/applin/amp015 Advance Access published on 9 May 2009

A Subject–Object Asymmetry in the Comprehension of wh-Questions by Korean Learners of English JIN-HWA LEE Chung-Ang University, Seoul, Korea

INTRODUCTION Wh-questions have been extensively investigated in the second language (L2) acquisition literature, mostly within the Chomsky’s (1981) Principles and Parameters framework (Bley-Vroman et al. 1988; Schachter 1989, 1990; Johnson and Newport 1991; White 1992). Under the assumption that wh-movement is constrained by Universal Grammar (specifically, Subjacency (Chomsky 1977)), and that this constraint is instantiated in some languages but not in others, the central question of the studies was whether L2 learners are able to access the constraint when their first language (L1) does not instantiate it. L2 learners’ ability to accept grammatical questions and reject ungrammatical ones in L2 has been interpreted as evidence for UG availability in L2 acquisition. More recently, however, a different perspective has been brought to research on wh-questions. Researchers tried to explain L2 learners’ performance in terms of sentence processing or its relationship with the grammar (Schachter and Yip 1990; Juffs and Harrington 1995; White and Juffs 1998; Juffs 2005). It was Schachter and Yip who first drew researchers’ attention to the processing of wh-movement. They found that Chinese and Korean learners

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Previous studies on English as a second language (L2) argue for the relative ease of object wh-questions based on the finding that L2 learners are more accurate and faster in judging the grammaticality of object wh-questions than that of subject wh-questions in English. This article re-examines this claim by investigating L2 learners’ comprehension of long-distance wh-questions at different stages of English acquisition. A total of 113 Korean-speaking learners of English with different years of English instruction participated in a picture-based comprehension task. Contrary to previous studies, the results of the present study point toward a strong preference for subject wh-questions to object wh-questions. The learners were more accurate and improved faster in subject wh-questions than in object wh-questions. In addition, they showed a strong tendency to interpret object wh-questions as subject wh-questions. These results are in line with distance-based accounts of processing complexity. Subject wh-questions are easier to process because the distance between the wh-word and the gap is shorter and therefore poses less burden on working memory in subject wh-questions than in object wh-questions.

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of English, and even native speakers of English had more difficulty in accepting grammatical wh-questions when the subject of an embedded clause was extracted as in (1) than when the object was extracted as in (2). (1) Whoi did Cathy believe ei met her friend? (2) Whoi did Cathy believe Tom met ei?

(subject extraction) (object extraction)

REEXAMINATION OF PREVIOUS STUDIES ON THE SUBJECT– OBJECT ASYMMETRY IN WH-QUESTIONS Schachter and Yip (1990) found that Chinese and Korean L2 learners of English were less accurate in judging grammatical subject extraction than

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This asymmetry is not explainable by a grammar deficit because both types of questions are equally grammatical in English. Researchers have therefore attributed these differences to sentence processing. It has been suggested that an additional processing load is induced for subject extraction by backtracking (Schachter and Yip 1990) or gap reanalysis (Juffs and Harrington 1995), as will be detailed later. Not all the parsing-based accounts predict the relative difficulty of subject extraction, however. A distance-based account, which has been empirically supported by the L1 parsing literature, yields the opposite prediction on the processing of wh-questions. According to this account, the accuracy of the processing of a filler-gap dependency such as wh-questions or relative clauses decreases as more material is interpolated between the filler and its gap (O’Grady 1997; Gibson 2000; McElree 2000; McElree et al. 2002). This is because more material induces more demands on memory resources and makes the retrieval of wh-filler at the gap site more difficult. In the sentences above, the distance between the filler who and its gap is longer in object extraction in (2) than in subject extraction in (1). Therefore, object extraction in (2) would be more difficult to process. With these opposing predictions for a subject-object asymmetry in the processing of English wh-questions, this study reexamines the claim that L2 learners have more difficulty with subject extraction than object extraction by carefully reviewing the previous studies. The findings of psycholinguistic research suggest that sentence processing is affected by various nonsyntactic factors such as the animacy of Noun Phrases (NPs) (Traxler et al. 2002), referential properties of NPs (Warren and Gibson 2002), and the plausibility of a gap interpretation (Traxler and Pickering 1996; Williams et al. 2001). Arguing that the potential influence of these factors was not properly taken into consideration in the previous studies, this study investigates whether the previously observed subject–object asymmetry in grammaticality judgements pertaining to wh-questions is replicable (i) under a stricter experimental control, (ii) in a different type of task (i.e. listening comprehension), and (iii) with learners at earlier stages of English acquisition.

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(1) Whoi did Cathy believe ei met her friend? (2) Whoi did Cathy believe Tom met ei?

(subject extraction) (object extraction)

Schachter and Yip (1990) attributed the preference for object extraction over subject extraction to the general nature of left-to-right processing in human sentence processing and the Minimal Attachment principle (Frazier and Fodor 1978). Minimal Attachment states that the parser attempts to integrate an incoming item into the currently constructed phrase structure using the minimal number of syntactic nodes. To apply the Minimal Attachment principle to the sentences above, the parser initially posits an empty category (linked to the wh-word) as the object of believe for both sentences because this leads to a simpler structure than projecting an embedded clause as its complement.

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grammatical object extraction. While their mean scores for object wh-questions ranged from 5.1 to 6.9 out of 9 depending on the number of clauses over which the wh-word had been extracted, their mean scores for subject wh-questions ranged from 2.8 to 5.1. More interestingly, native English speakers showed a similar pattern. Juffs and Harrington (1995) not only replicated Schachter and Yip’s (1990) findings but also observed that advanced adult Chinese L2 learners of English were slower in judging subject extraction than object extraction from infinitival clauses. In addition, using a moving window technique which measures word-by-word reading time, they found a greater slowdown at the point where the learners encountered the subject extraction site than the object extraction site in finite clauses. Juffs and Harrington interpreted this result to indicate that Chinese learners had greater difficulty in reanalyzing subject gaps than object gaps. Similar results were reported by Juffs (2005) with Japanese and Spanish learners of English. White and Juffs (1998) further showed that this asymmetry pattern in long-distance wh-questions is not affected by learning environments. In their study, Chinese learners of English, regardless of whether they were studying in ESL (English as a Second Language) or EFL (English as a Foreign Language) settings, were less accurate and slower in judging subject extraction. The observed asymmetry in favor of long-distance object wh-questions among adult L2 learners in the above studies cannot be attributed to problems in grammatical competence per se for two reasons. First, the same pattern of asymmetry was observed among not only L2 learners but also adult native English speakers who have fully developed grammatical competence. Second, the same L2 learners who showed the asymmetry in grammatical long-distance questions could correctly reject ungrammatical long-distance wh-questions at the same level as native speakers, indicating that they had grammars constrained by the Subjacency Condition. Accordingly, the researchers tried to explain the observed asymmetry in relation to processing complexities. Consider sentences (1) and (2) again.

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(3) Generalized Theta Attachment (GTA) Every principle of the Syntax attempts to be maximally satisfied at every point during processing. (Pritchett 1992: 138)

The parser initially interprets who as the object of believe and thus posits a matrix object trace in both sentences. However, as it encounters met in the subject wh-question in (1), the initial matrix object trace must be reanalyzed as a subject trace in the embedded clause. This reanalysis gives rise to concomitant changes in theta role assigner (believe ! met), theta role (internal ! external), and Case assigned (accusative ! nominative). On the other hand, in the object wh-question in (2), the parser has to reanalyze the trace as an embedded object rather than a matrix object. This process requires a change only in theta role assigner (believe ! met). The type of theta role and Case that are assigned remains the same. According to Juffs and Harrington (1995), since subject extraction involves more changes in theta role and Case, it is harder to parse than object extraction for not only L2 learners but also native speakers of English. The review of the aforementioned studies suggests that subject wh-questions are more difficult to process than object wh-questions and that the locus of the difficulty is the extraction site. However, this conclusion is perhaps premature since the previous studies in particular suffer from nontrivial design flaws in terms of test sentences. For instance, Schachter and Yip (1990) used different verbs and lexical items for subject and object questions (e.g. Who did you say John suspects fell in love with Sue? versus Who did the President say he thinks he’ll appoint as ambassador?), thereby leaving open the possibility that lexical knowledge plays a role in the observed asymmetry pattern. The animacy of wh-words and NPs is another hidden factor which may have affected the result in the study. L1 studies suggest that animate NPs are more likely to be associated with an agent or subject, whereas inanimate ones are more likely to be associated with the object (Ervin-Tripp 1970; Tyack and Ingram 1977; Traxler et al. 2002). In Schachter and Yip’s study, two-thirds of stimuli included inanimate or at least nonhuman wh-words

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As parsing proceeds in sentence (1), the verb met calls for a subject, which leads the parser to ‘backtrack’ to posit a subject gap that is linked to the wh-word that had previously been associated with the potential object gap in the matrix clause. According to Schachter and Yip, it is this backtracking that makes subject extraction more difficult to process because it is against the left-to-right nature of human processing and therefore demands an extra processing effort. On the other hand, no backtracking occurs in object extraction in (2). When the parser encounters Tom, it only has to embed the NP node inside the following clause. As parsing proceeds, the verb met calls for an object, and the initial object gap in the matrix clause falls in the postverbal position. This process goes from left to right without any backtracking. Juffs and Harrington (1995) explain the asymmetry in terms of the reanalysis of the gap, drawing on the principle of Generalized Theta Attachment.

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(e.g. what or which), which are more favorable to object extractions. Therefore, it is possible that L2 learners’ preference of object wh-questions to subject whquestions in the study reflects the effect of animacy rather than the effect of syntactic configuration. Unlike Schachter and Yip (1990), Juffs and Harrington (1995) matched lexical items, but their stimuli are still biased either against subject wh-questions or in favor of object wh-questions for other reasons. Referential properties of NPs are one of the concerns. According to Warren and Gibson (2002), the less accessible the referent of an NP is in the discourse, the more resources are required to find or construct it in sentence processing. In this regard, they argue that pronouns whose referents are already present in the discourse context require the fewest resources, while indefinite NPs which must be constructed in the discourse model require the most resources, with proper nouns and definite NPs falling in between. In Juffs and Harrington’s study, many of the NPs in the stimuli were short proper nouns or pronouns, which are considered to require a small or moderate quantity of resources to access. While this may have reduced the potential processing load in both types of questions, the reduced processing load may have been particularly advantageous in the case of object extraction, where the distance between an extracted element and its gap is longer and therefore integrating cost is higher. In addition, some object wh-questions were pragmatically more acceptable than their subject counterparts (e.g. Who do the police want to arrest? versus Who does Ann want to arrest the thief?). It is also possible that object questions ending with a stranded preposition (e.g. What does the man think the car crashed into?) may have provided a more salient cue to the extraction site than their subject counterpart (e.g. What does the man think crushed into the car?), given that a sentence-final position is more salient than a sentencemedial position.1 On the other hand, the use of present tense in the embedded clause in some sentences may have added more computational load on subject wh-questions by requiring long-distance agreement (e.g. Who did Ann say likes her friend? versus Who did Jane say her friend likes?). Overall, the inclusion of those sentences in stimuli may have affected the subject–object asymmetry in a way to favor object wh-questions. The hidden influence of lexical-semantic properties of the stimuli in the previous studies is confirmed by Baek (2007). When he controlled for possible effects of animacy of wh-words, referential properties of NPs, and tense of embedded verbs in his replicate study of Juffs and Harrington (1995), he obtained the opposite asymmetry pattern in grammaticality judgements. Both native and Korean speakers of English performed better in correctly accepting subject-who and subject-what questions than object-who questions. However, the on-line reading data were still consistent with those of Juffs and Harrington in that the Korean learners of English took longer in processing embedded verbs of subject wh-questions than those of object

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1 Is the asymmetry observed in grammaticality judgement replicable in the comprehension of English long-distance wh-questions by Korean learners of English? 2 Is the previously observed asymmetry replicable in earlier stages of L2 English acquisition? 3 Is there any change in the asymmetry along with number of years of English instruction?

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wh-questions, indicating greater processing difficulty for the reanalysis of the subject gap. Baek explained these contradictory results from grammaticality judgements and on-line reading by claiming that the syntactic reanalysis is not a determining criterion but one of several factors affecting the difficulty involved in grammaticality judgements. He mainly attributed the L2 learners’ better performance on subject wh-questions to nonsyntactic factors such as animacy of wh-words and referential properties of NPs. The above reexamination of test sentences used in the previous studies revealed various lexical-semantic biases in favor of object wh-questions. Even without the problematic stimuli, however, the previous studies including Baek (2007) have two major limitations. First, the fact that all of the previous studies rely solely on grammaticality judgement tests (sometimes with measuring reaction time) raises a question about the generalizability of their findings. The possibility that the use of other tasks might lead to different results cannot be excluded. Particularly relevant in this regard is the fact that L1 studies which have adopted elicited production or comprehension tasks found exactly the opposite pattern of asymmetry, that is, a preference for subject wh-questions over object wh-questions (Crain and Thornton 1991, 1998; Yoshinaga 1996). While this finding could be taken to show that adult L2 learners are different from L1 children in processing English long-distance wh-questions, it is equally possible that task type played a role in the different results. To resolve this matter, it is essential to conduct L2 studies that are comparable with L1 studies in their data-collection methods. Another limitation in the previous studies concerns the range of subjects they investigated. They all tested only advanced-level L2 learners in comparison with native speakers. It remains to be shown that whether the same pattern of asymmetry will be found among L2 learners at earlier stages of English acquisition and whether there is any change in the asymmetry pattern along with the stages. To fill the gap in the existing research on L2 long-distance wh-questions, this study examined the comprehension of subject and object bi-clausal wh-questions by Korean-speaking learners of English. In light of the methodological issues raised above, this study compared the listening comprehension of subject and object wh-questions by Korean learners of English with different years of English instruction. Three research questions were addressed:

142 SUBJECT–OBJECT ASYMMETRY IN L2

THE EXPERIMENTAL STUDY Participants

Table 1: Biographical data summary of participants Group

Age (years)

The present study 9th graders in Korea (N = 29)

14–15

11th graders in Korea (N = 39)

16–17

College students in Korea (N = 29)

18–25

Graduate students in the USA (N = 17)

25–40 Average-31.09

Juffs and Harrington (1995) Average-29.11 Chinese-speaking learners of English in the USA (N = 26)

Others

 Age at first exposure—12.32 years  Lengths in the USA—30.88 months  Test score (TOEFL)—634.20

 Age at first exposure—13.20 years  Lengths in the USA—33.85 months  Test score (Michigan)—65.35/80

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Four groups of Korean-speaking learners of English participated in this study. The first three groups consisted of EFL students attending schools in Seoul, Korea: 29 of the 9th graders, 39 of the 11th graders, and 29 college students. The fourth ESL group consisted of 16 graduate students studying at a US university. Table 1 contains a summary of data on the four groups of participants. All the graduate students belonging to the ESL group reported TOEFL scores above 600. Our graduate group was comparable with the Chinese-speaking learners of English in Juffs and Harrington (1995) in terms of age, age of first exposure to English, and length of stay in the USA, although the use of different proficiency tests (TOEFL and Michigan, respectively) precludes ascertaining similar levels of proficiency across the two groups. The three EFL groups started learning English in 7th grade and thus differed in number of years of English instruction they had received as 3, 5, and over 6 years, respectively. Although no general English proficiency test scores were available for these groups, given that they learned English as part of public schooling and that the college group was taking an intermediate-level English class at the time of the experiment, it can be safely assumed that they belonged to earlier stages of English acquisition than the subjects in Juffs and Harrington’s (1995) study who had 16 years of exposure to English including 33.85 months of residence in the USA on average. Yet, possible individual

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variation within groups requires caution in interpreting any between-group differences in their performance on wh-questions. In addition, individual performance needs to be investigated.

Method

(4) Who did the girl think pinched the pig? (5) Who did the boy think the cow pinched?

(Subject wh-question) (Object wh-question)

Matrix clauses used one of three verbs, think, say, and believe and embedded clauses used one of five verbs, push, pinch, pull, bite, and hit. All the verbs were presented in the past tense forms. To control for the influence of referential properties of NPs (Warren and Gibson 2002), all the NPs consisted of a definite article the and a common noun. In addition, animals were used as the subject and the object of embedded clauses, in order to avoid any possible animacy bias (Ervin-Tripp 1970; Tyack and Ingram 1977; Traxler et al. 2002) and the possible influence of plausibility constraint (Traxler and Pickering 1996; Williams et al. 2001) by making the embedded clauses semantically reversible. Each question was presented with a picture that presented information relevant to the test questions. A sample picture that was used to test the subject wh-question in (4) is presented in Figure 1. As illustrated in Figure 1, each picture contains two animate agents, one of which corresponds to the subject of the matrix clause. Each agent is associated with a sub-picture presented as a ‘thought bubble’. Sub-pictures contained three animals in different combinations and different orders, which represent the content of the embedded clause—that is, what the agent believed, thought, or said. Since the sub-pictures associated with each agent are different, a correct answer can be obtained only when learners correctly identify both the subject of the matrix clause and the syntactic role of who in the embedded clause. Thus, learners had to pay attention to both matrix and embedded clauses to find an answer.4

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The experimental study made use of an elicited comprehension task. Participants were required to listen to recorded questions and choose answers, based on accompanying pictures. This task was chosen for two reasons: to explore whether the asymmetry previously observed in grammaticality judgement tasks is replicable in other types of tasks, and to make the present study comparable with L1 studies which have reported the opposite asymmetry based on comprehension or production tasks. For the latter reason, test materials were adapted from Wilhelm and Hanna (1992), who investigated the comprehension of mono-clausal wh-questions by L1 children.2 A total of 10 bi-clausal who-questions, five subject questions and five object questions, were tested in the task.3 The complete list of test sentences is provided in the Appendix. Each subject question had an object question counterpart with the same verbs, as illustrated in (4) and (5).

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Items were randomized so that the subject and object questions in a pair did not occur consecutively. The questions were recorded by a female native English speaker with a pause of 8 s between questions.

Procedure Data from 9th graders, 11th graders, and college students were collected in Seoul, Korea during regular English classes. For the 11th graders and the college group, the researcher visited their classes and collected data with the help of the teachers of the classes. In the case of the 9th graders, the English teacher alone conducted the data collection. This difference should not have had a significant influence on the results because the role of data-gatherer in this study was limited to management of the session, e.g. distributing test materials and playing the previously recorded tape. Each student was given a booklet of pictures and an answer sheet. When the teacher or the researcher played the tape, students were required to listen to each wh-question and choose an answer based on an accompanying picture. Each sentence was repeated twice. The task took approximately 10 min to complete. After the test, the students were given small gifts in appreciation for their participation. The graduate students were tested in Hawaii, either individually or in a small group. The procedure was identical to the one that was employed for the EFL groups except that the graduate group listened to each sentence only once and

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Figure 1: Sample picture for a subject wh-question

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was asked to fill in an additional background questionnaire at the end of the test, for the purpose of comparison with the Chinese-speaking learners of English in Juffs and Harrington (1995).

RESULTS Subject–object asymmetry in groups

Table 2: Mean accuracy scores for subject and object wh-questions by group Subject wh-Q (k = 5)

Object wh-Q (k = 5)

Group

Mean

SD

Mean

SD

9th graders (n = 29) 11th graders (n = 39) College students (n = 29) Graduate students (n = 16) Total (n = 113)

2.79 4.54 3.93 5.00 4.00

.90 .85 1.03 .00 1.16

2.10 2.41 2.03 4.19 2.49

1.11 1.80 1.66 1.11 1.66

Table 3: Factorial ANOVA for group and question type Source

df

SS

MS

F

p

2

Between Group Within Q Type Interactions Group  Q Type

3 1 3

103.120 97.217 23.269

34.373 97.217 7.756

22.170 64.282 5.129

.000 .000 .002

.379 .371 .124



p <.05

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The scores for the four groups in the form of mean correct responses to subject and object questions are presented in Table 2. In general, the participants performed better on subject wh-questions than on object wh-questions: on average, they responded correctly to four out of five subject wh-questions, compared with a mean score of just 2.49 for object questions. The same asymmetry was observed in all the groups. In order to check whether these differences within and between groups were statistically significant, a General Linear Model analysis was conducted with Group as a between-subjects factor (9th graders, 11th graders, college students, and graduate students) and Question Type as a within-subjects factor (subject and object questions). The results are summarized in Table 3. There were significant main effects for Group (F (3, 109) = 22.170, p < .05) and for Question Type (F (1, 111) = 64.282, p < .05) with considerably

146 SUBJECT–OBJECT ASYMMETRY IN L2

5

4 9th

3

11th College 2

Graduate

1

0 Su b -Q

Ob j-Q

Figure 2: Comparison of subject and object questions in each group

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high effect sizes (2 = .379 for Group, 2 = .371 for Question Type). However, the interaction of Group and Question Type was also significant (F (3, 107) = 5.129, p < .05). This means that the effect of Question Type was moderated by that of Group, as illustrated in Figure 2. While all the groups were more accurate on subject wh-questions than on object wh-questions, the difference was greater for 11th graders and college students than the other two groups. Since a significant Group effect was identified, two separate one-way ANOVAs (Analysis of Variance) and post hoc analyses were conducted on each of the comprehension of subject and object questions in order to locate the differences among the four groups. Again, the Group effect was significant in both subject wh-questions (F (3, 109) = 31.526, p < .05) and object wh-questions (F (3, 109) = 8.126, p < .05). Tukey HSD analyses showed that all the between-group differences were statistically significant in subject wh-questions, except the one between 11th grader group and graduate student group. On the other hand, in object wh-questions, only the graduate student group was significantly different from the other EFL groups, who exhibited no significant difference from each other. The 9th grader group was generally poor at interpreting both types of wh-questions, as shown by the low mean scores in Table 2 (2.79 for subject extraction and 2.10 for object extraction), although they were still more accurate on subject wh-questions than on object wh-questions. Compared with the 9th graders, the 11th grader group did far better on subject wh-questions (4.54) to the extent that they were not distinguishable from the graduate group. However, virtually no change occurred in object wh-questions (2.41). The college group was not statistically different from the first two groups in their performance on object wh-questions, while their performance on subject wh-questions was inferior to that of the 11th grader group, although still better than that of the 9th grader group. This seems to indicate that the college group was not necessarily at a higher stage than the 11th grader group in their

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Subject–object asymmetry within individuals Given possible individual variations within each group, it is necessary to investigate individual participants’ data. Based on their scores for subject and object questions, individual learners were classified into one of three patterns: no asymmetry (i.e. the same scores on subject and object questions), a preference for subject questions (i.e. a higher score on subject questions), and a preference for object questions (i.e. a higher score on object questions). Table 4 present the number of learners exhibiting each pattern. The majority of 9th graders, 11th graders, and college students belonged to the subject preference pattern; that is, they performed better on subject wh-questions than on object wh-questions (52, 72, and 72 per cent of the

Table 4: Number of learners for three response patterns Group

Sub = Obj (%)

Sub > Obj (%)

Sub < Obj (%)

9th graders (n = 29) 11th graders (n = 39) College students (n = 29) Graduate students (n = 16) Total (n = 113)

8 8 5 9 30

15 28 21 7 71

6 3 3 0 12

(28) (21) (17) (56) (27)

(52) (72) (72) (44) (63)

(21) (8) (10) (0) (11)

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English acquisition,5 which cannot be confirmed due to the lack of general English proficiency measures. However, considering English learning conditions in Korea, it is highly possible that some college students experience loss in their English proficiency. All the Korean EFL learners have to learn English as an obligatory subject until 12th grade. Once they enter university, however, they are relatively free to choose which English courses to take and how many hours to devote to language study. While some students keep studying English, others may discontinue it for several years and only resume it later. In the latter case, their English proficiency cannot but diminish. Although the college group in this study was taking the same English conversation class, it is still possible that they had experienced some language loss due to likely discontinuous and relatively sparse English instruction at universities. Given this possible within-group variation, it is crucial to examine individual data, as will be done in the following section. Finally, the graduate group manifested statistically significantly better performance on object questions. They were almost twice as accurate as the other groups on object wh-questions (4.19). Nevertheless they still performed better on subject wh-questions (5.0) than on object wh-questions. This asymmetry is the opposite of the one reported in Juffs and Harrington (1995) despite the fact that this group is comparable with their Chinese group in terms of background profile.

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group, respectively). A subject preference was still prevalent in the graduate group (44 per cent). On the other hand, out of a total of 113 participants, only 12 showed an object preference. Half of these were 9th graders, for whom the possibility of blind guessing cannot be completely excluded due to their low proficiency. There were no instances of object preference among the graduate students, the majority of whom (56 per cent) were balanced in interpreting subject and object wh-questions, indicating that they had overcome the initial strong preference for subject extraction observed in the 9th grader, 11th grader, and college groups.

The distribution of participants’ responses to subject and object questions was further analyzed to determine how the participants processed each type of question. In the elicited comprehension task, the participants were given three options to choose for each question. A learner’s choice of these options reflects whether he or she interpreted a given question correctly or reversely, or failed to interpret it at all. For instance, in Figure 1 accompanying the question of who did the girl think pinched the pig?, the monkey is the correct answer, the dog is an irrelevant item, and the cow is the response selected if the learner misinterprets the subject question as an object question (i.e. who did the girl think the pig pinched?). Table 5 presents the distribution of learners’ responses. All the nonresponses were found among the 9th graders, which may indicate an inability to deal with long-distance wh-questions appropriately. Relatively high percentages of responses to irrelevant items in this group, as compared with the other three groups, also seem to support this interpretation. As expected from the mean accuracy scores that we examined earlier, there were more correct answers to subject questions than to object questions regardless of the group.

Table 5: Distribution of learners’ responses Subject wh-Q (k = 5) Group

C

9th graders (n = 29) 81 11th graders (n = 39) 177 College students (n = 29) 114 Graduate students (n = 16) 80 Total (n = 113) 452

Object wh-Q (k = 5)

R

IR

NR

Total

C

R

IR

NR

Total

38 11 19 0 68

20 7 12 0 39

6 0 0 0 6

145 195 145 80 565

61 94 59 67 281

66 99 81 10 256

14 2 5 3 24

4 0 0 0 4

145 195 145 80 565

Note: C = correct response; R = reversal response; IR = irrelevant response; NR = no answer; Total = the total number of responses (the number of participants  the number of test items)

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Distribution of responses to subject and object questions

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DISCUSSION This study has addressed the question of whether the asymmetry previously observed in judgements of wh-question grammaticality is replicable in the L2 comprehension of English long-distance wh-questions by Korean learners of English. Contrary to the previous finding, the results of the present study clearly showed that subject extraction is easier to comprehend than object extraction. Evidence for the relative ease of subject extraction was threefold. First, withingroup comparisons of mean accuracy scores for subject and object questions revealed that the learners were more accurate on subject extraction than on object extraction. Second, the majority of individual learners obtained higher scores on subject questions than on object questions, while only a few learners showed the opposite pattern. Finally, the learners consistently made far more reversal errors in object wh-questions than in subject wh-questions, indicating a strong tendency to interpret object wh-questions as subject wh-questions. This study also showed that this asymmetry in favor of subject questions was not restricted to advanced learners. The learners at earlier stages of English acquisition also showed the better performance on subject wh-questions than on object wh-questions, indicating that they all rely on the same sentence processing strategies. Overall, the learners’ performance improved along with the number of years of English instruction, but at different stages depending on the question type. While a significant change occurred on subject wh-questions in 11th graders, a significant change on object wh-questions was observed only in the graduate group. This suggests that subject wh-questions are easier to improve on than are object wh-questions, adding another piece of evidence for the relative ease of subject wh-questions. Then, why do L2 learners find long-distance subject wh-questions easier to process than object question counterparts? Given that Korean has no wh-movement, at least at the surface level, there is no reason to expect Korean-speaking learners of English to prefer one type of extraction pattern to the other in English. Besides, since the same pattern of asymmetry was

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Particularly noteworthy in Table 5 are learners’ reversals. Remember that a reversal reveals that learners misinterpreted an object question as a subject question, or vice versa. If learners frequently and consistently made reversal errors only in one type of question, this provides another piece of evidence for its relative difficulty compared with the other. Reversal errors in object questions were far more frequent than in subject questions. While a total of 256 object wh-questions (45 per cent of all the responses) were misinterpreted as subject wh-questions, there were only 68 reversal errors (12 per cent of all the responses) in subject wh-questions. This general pattern of more reversal errors in object wh-questions than in subject wh-questions was observed in all groups. Moreover, the frequency of these reversal errors in object wh-questions did not decrease along with the years of English instruction in the three EFL groups.

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(6) Whoi did the girl think ei pinched the pig? (Subject wh-question) a. linear distance: four words, two words with discourse referents b. structural distance: three nodes (S1, VP2, S2) Who did [S2 the girl [VP2 think [S1 ___ [VP1 pinched the pig]]]? (7) Whoi did the boy think the cow pinched ei? (Object wh-question)

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observed in all the groups, despite differences in the length of instruction and the type of learning environment (i.e. EFL versus ESL), the preference for the subject pattern can apparently not be attributed to instruction effects. Another possibility worth explaining is that the learners in this study have been exposed to more subject questions than object questions. No corpus data are available specifically for L2 learning, but a possible indication of the general practice of native English speakers comes from Stromswold’s (1995) study of mono-clausal wh-questions in parental speech to children. Based on an analysis of the CHILDES transcripts of 12 children, Stromswold reports that adult English speakers asked more subject questions (M = 63.1 per cent, SD = 21.4 per cent) than object questions. Interestingly, however, there was no significant correlation between the relative frequency of adult who questions and their acquisition: children who heard more subject who questions than object questions did not necessarily acquire them at a younger age, leading Stromswold to suggest that ‘at best, the frequency in the input only partially accounts for the order of acquisition of subject and object questions’ (p. 37). Given the unlikelihood of L1, instruction, grammatical competence, and arguably input effects, parsing difficulty seems to be the most plausible account for the observed asymmetry. In particular, the finding of the present study fits into distance-based accounts of processing complexity. It is widely agreed that the difficulty of processing filler-gap structures such as wh-questions, relative clauses, and clefts depends on the distance between the filler and the gap (Carpenter et al. 1994; Frazier 1998; Hawkins 1999; O’Grady 2001). The greater distance means more burden on working memory because the filler has to be held until the parser encounters the gap. As more information is processed between the filler and its gap, the likelihood increases that the representation of the filler will decay and will be displaced from memory (McElree 2000). The distance can be calculated in various ways. One approach is to measure the linear distance between the filler and the gap by counting the number of all the intervening words or alternatively, as put forward by Gibson (2000), only the number of elements introducing new discourse referents (i.e. NPs and main verbs). Another approach measures the structural distance, that is, the depth of embedding of the gap by counting the nodes intervening between the filler and the gap (Collins 1994; O’Grady 1997). Both linear and structural approaches yield the same predictions for English wh-questions6—subject wh-questions should be easier than object wh-questions.

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a. linear distance: seven words, four words with discourse referents b. structural distance: four nodes (VP1, S1, VP2, S2) Who did [S2 the boy [VP2 think [S1 the cow [VP1 pinched ___]]]]?

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As can be seen in (6) and (7), the distance between who and its gap is both linearly and structurally shorter in subject wh-questions than object wh-questions. This, I suggest, is why the learners in this study performed better on subject wh-questions than object wh-questions, although both types of questions are equally grammatical. Given that L1 acquisition studies also report the same preference for subject wh-questions in long-distance extraction (Crain and Thornton 1991, 1998; Yoshinaga 1996), the above computational explanation offers a unified account of the development of wh-questions in first and second language acquisition. It also explains a parallel asymmetry in the L1 and L2 acquisition of mono-clausal questions (for L1 acquisition, Ervin-Tripp 1970; Tyack and Ingram 1977; Wilhelm and Hanna 1992; Yoshinaga 1996;7 Seidl and Hollich 2002, for L2 acquisition, Kim 1999; Lam 2001) as well as other gap-containing structures such as relative clauses and cleft sentences (O’Grady 1999; O’Grady et al. 2003). To sum up, the findings of the present study contradict results reported in the previous studies of adult L2 acquisition (Schachter and Yip 1990; Juffs and Harrington 1995; White and Juffs 1998; Juffs 2005). One reviewer attributes the discrepancy to different experimental settings. According to the reviewer, while the stimulus sentences and procedure used in the previous studies require reanalysis, which is argued to induce more processing difficulty for subject wh-questions, the experimental setup used in this study eliminates or greatly reduces the necessity for reanalysis. For instance, this study presented learners with pictures consisting of two animate agents and their thought-bubbles. It is possible that these thought-bubbles indicated that the main verb will take a clausal argument rather than the sentence-initial wh-word, which circumvents the necessity of subsequent reanalysis. Based on this, the reviewer suggests that this study, together with the findings from previous research, shows that when the stimuli necessitate reanalysis, subject wh-questions are more difficult than object wh-questions, but if the need for reanalysis is eliminated, subject wh-questions become easier due to the shorter distance between the filler and its gap. This interpretation, however, is hard to sustain in light of the fact that Baek (2007) replicated Juffs and Harrington’s study (1995) using the same experimental setup and stimuli requiring reanalysis of the subject gap, and yet found the same asymmetry as the present study. Therefore, the need for reanalysis cannot account for the different results of the present study and the previous studies. The crucial difference of the present study compared with the previous studies is that this study, as well as Baek’s (2007) study, controlled for various nonsyntactic factors such as lexical items, animacy of NPs, and referential

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properties of NPs, which may have exerted an unwanted influence on the results in the previous studies in a way favorable to object wh-questions. Interestingly, under a stricter experimental control, Baek observed that not only Korean learners of English but also native English speakers performed better on subject who-questions than on object who-questions. This indicates that sentence processing is strongly influenced by various nonsyntactic factors which need to be carefully considered in research on subject–object asymmetry.

CONCLUSION

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am grateful to William O’Grady and three anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions on this paper. My thanks also go to the participants and to their teachers for agreeing to participate in this experiment. Conflict of interest statement. None declared.

APPENDIX: TEST ITEMS Subject questions 1. Who did the grandmother think pushed the cow? 3. Who did the girl think pinched the pig? 4. Who did the boy say pulled the cat? 6. Who did the grandmother say bit the tiger? 10. Who did the boy believe hit the pig? Object questions 2. Who did the boy say the cow bit? 5. Who did the dog believe the monkey hit?

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This study investigated Korean-speaking learners’ comprehension of English long-distance wh-questions in relation to a subject–object asymmetry. The results of the present study clearly show that Korean learners of English find subject wh-questions easier to interpret than object wh-question, in line with the processing accounts that hold that the distance between a wh-word and its gap is a crucial determinant of computational difficulty. On the other hand, the findings contradict those of previous adult L2 studies that rely on grammaticality judgement tests—a discrepancy that may be attributable to the influence of various nonsyntactic factors. To identify the relative roles of all the various factors affecting parsing complexity, more studies involving carefully controlled stimuli and various measures are needed.

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7. Who did the baby think the cat pushed? 8. Who did the girl say the cow pulled? 9. Who did the boy think the cow pinched?

NOTES 1

3

4

difficulty in answering object wh-questions. There were no fillers in the task. As one reviewer points out, it is possible that the participants used metalinguistic knowledge or conscious strategies. However, given that the task used in this study is a listening comprehension task, not a grammaticality judgement task, it is not unnatural that all the test items are wh-questions, which coincide with the target structure of the present study. In addition, the participants were given only 8 s to answer each question and there were only 10 items in total, which may have allowed little time for metalinguistic analysis of test items. If they did use metalinguistic knowledge or conscious strategies, it may have been only at the later part of the test. However, participants’ performance was not better on later items than earlier items, indicating that the participants did not succeed in detecting the focus of the present study. To ensure that learners have to interpret not only the embedded clause but also the matrix clause is a very important but nonetheless very often ignored requirement in the previous studies on long-distance wh-questions. For instance, Crain and Thornton (1991) prompted L1 children to use the same matrix clause (i.e. what do you think) repeatedly. One problem with using the same matrix clause over and over is that as the elicitation task proceeds, the child might not have to pay much attention to the matrix clause because it became

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2

While it can be argued that two adjacent tensed verbs in subject wh-questions also may serve as a cue to the extraction site, their sentencemedial position is less salient than the sentence-final position of a stranded preposition in object wh-questions. Rather, Juffs (2005) considers two adjacent tensed verbs in subject whquestions and object-extracted relative clauses as the locus of processing difficulty, although this claim does not sustain given Grodner and Gibson’s (2005) finding that object-extracted relative clauses as in (2) were still more difficult to process than subjectextracted ones as in (1) even when two verbs were separated by a prepositional phrase: (1) The reporter who sent the photographer to the editor hoped for a good story. (2) The reporter who the photographer sent to the editor hoped for a good story. It can be argued that the test materials adapted from a child L1 study may look silly or even awkward to L2 learners who are older and cognitively more mature. However, given that this study involved four different age groups, possibly with different English proficiency levels, test materials should be manageable even for the youngest and the lowest proficiency group. The materials in this study seem to be appropriately challenging to the 9th and 11th grader groups. At the same time, they were not too easy for adult learners as shown in the fact that the college group still had

154 SUBJECT–OBJECT ASYMMETRY IN L2

5

6

7

The two approaches, however, generate different predictions in leftbranching languages. For instance, in relative clauses in Korean, a subject gap is structurally closer to the head than is a direct object gap but is linearly more distant. Based on the finding that English-speaking learners of L2 Korean performed better on subject relative clauses, O’Grady et al. (2003) suggest that structural distance is the principal determinant of processing difficulty. But see Stromswold (1995) for the opposite direction of asymmetry in L1 acquisition and O’Grady (1999) for its criticism.

REFERENCES Baek, S. 2007. ‘Is subject extraction more difficult than object extraction for second language learners of English?’ Unpublished manuscript, University of Illinois, UrbanaChampaign. Bley-Vroman, R., S. Felix, and G. Ioup. 1988. ‘The accessibility of Universal Grammar in adult language learning,’ Second Language Research 4: 1–32. Carpenter, P., M. Miyake, and M. Just. 1994. ‘Working memory constraints in comprehension: Evidence from individual differences, aphasia, and aging’ in M. Gernsbacher (ed.): Handbook of Psycholinguistics. Academic Press, pp. 1075–122. Chomsky, N. 1977. ‘On wh-movement’ in P. Culicover, T. Wasow, and A. Akmajian (eds): Formal Syntax. Academic Press, pp. 71–132. Chomsky, N. 1981. Lectures on Government and Binding. Foris. Collins, C. 1994. ‘Economy of derivation and the generalized proper binding condition,’ Linguistic Inquiry 25: 45–61. Crain, S. and R. Thornton. 1991. ‘Recharting the course of language acquisition: Studies in elicited production’ in N. Krasnegor, D. Rumbaugh, R. Schiefelbusch, and M. Studdert-Kennedy (eds): Biological and

Behavioral Determinants of Language Development. Erlbaum, pp. 321–37. Crain, S. and R. Thornton. 1998. Investigating Universal Grammar: A Guide to Experiments on the Acquisition of Syntax and Semantics. MIT Press. Ervin-Tripp, S. 1970. ‘Discourse agreement: How children answer questions’ in J. Hayes (ed.): Cognition and the Development of Language. Wiley, pp. 79–107. Frazier, L. 1998. ‘Getting there (slowly),’ Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 27: 123–46. Frazier, L. and J. D. Fodor. 1978. ‘The sausage machine: A new two-stage parsing model,’ Cognition 6: 291–325. Gibson, E. 2000. ‘The dependency locality theory: A distance-based theory of linguistic complexity’ in Y. Miyashita, A. Marantz, and W. O’Neil (eds): Image, Language, Brain. MIT Press, pp. 95–126. Grodner, D. and E. Gibson. 2005. ‘Consequences of the serial nature of linguistics input for sentential complexity,’ Cognitive Science 29: 261–90. Hawkins, R. 1999. ‘Processing complexity and filler-gap dependencies across grammars,’ Language 75: 244–85. Johnson, J. and E. Newport. 1991. ‘Critical period effects on universal properties of

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formularized or routinized. If this does happen, the learners’ task is no more different from producing or processing mono-clausal wh-questions. For this reason, the information carried by the matrix clause also should contribute to a correct interpretation of the whole sentence. Individual learner data in Table 4 support the similarity of the 11th grader group and the college group. When individual learners’ asymmetry was examined, a similar distribution of the three asymmetry patterns, that is, no asymmetry, a subject preference, and an object preference, was found in the two groups.

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Schachter, J. and V. Yip. 1990. ‘Grammaticality judgments: Why does anyone object to subject extraction?,’ Studies in Second Language Acquisition 12: 379–92. Seidl, A. and G. Hollich. 2002. ‘Infants’ and toddlers’ comprehension of subject and object wh-questions,’ BULCD Proceedings 26: 596–607. Stromswold, K. 1995. ‘The acquisition of subject and object wh-questions,’ Language Acquisition 4: 5–48. Tyack, D. and D. Ingram. 1977. ‘Children’s production and comprehension of questions,’ Journal of Child Language 4: 211–224. Traxler, M., R. Morris, and R. Seely. 2002. ‘Processing subject and object relative clauses: Evidence from eye movements,’ Journal of Memory and Language 47: 69–90. Traxler, M. and M. Pickering. 1996. ‘Plausibility and the processing of unbounded dependencies: An eye-tracking study,’ Journal of Memory and Language 35: 454–75. Warren, T. and E. Gibson. 2002. ‘The influence of referential processing on sentence complexity,’ Cognition 85: 79–112. White, L. 1992. ‘Subjacency violations and empty categories in L2 acquisition’ in H. Goodluck and M. Rochemont (eds): Island Constraints: Theory, Acquisition, and Processing. Kluwer, pp. 445–464. White, L and A. Juffs. 1998. ‘Constraints on wh-movement in two different contexts of nonnative language acquisition: Competence and processing’ in S. Flynn, G. Martohardjono, and W. O’Neil (eds): The Generative Study of Second Language Acquisition. Erlbaum, pp. 111–29. Wilhelm, A. and K. Hanna. 1992. ‘On the acquisition of wh-questions,’ Calgary Working Papers in Linguistics 15: 89–98. Williams, J., P. Mo¨bius, and C. Kim. 2001. ‘Native and non-native processing of English wh-questions: Parsing strategies and plausibility constraints,’ Applied Psycholinguistics 22: 509–40. Yoshinaga, N. 1996. ‘Wh-Questions: A Comparative Study of Their Form and Acquisition in English and Japanese,’ Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Hawaii at Manoa.

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language: The status of subjacency in the acquisition of English as a second language,’ Cognition 39: 215–58. Juffs, A. 2005. ‘The influence of first language on the processing of wh-movement in English as a second language,’ Second Language Research 21/2: 121–51. Juffs, A. and M. Harrington. 1995. ‘Parsing effects in second language processing: Subject and object asymmetries in wh-extraction,’ Studies in Second Language Acquisition 17: 483–516. Kim, S. 1999. ‘The subject-object asymmetry in the acquisition of wh-questions by Korean learners of English,’ Journal of Pan-Pacific Association of Applied Linguistics 3: 1–11. Lam, Y. 2001. ‘L1 transfer in child L2 acquisition of English wh-movement: Evidence from a Cantonese-speaking child.’ Paper presented in LOT-NWCL student conference, Universiteit Utrecht, The Netherlands. McElree, B. 2000. ‘Sentence comprehension is mediated by content-addressable memory structures,’ Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 29: 11–123. McElree, B., S. Foraker, and L. Dyer. 2002. ‘Memory structures that subserve sentence comprehension,’ Journal of Memory and Language 48: 67–91. O’Grady, W. 1997. Syntactic Development. University of Chicago Press. O’Grady, W. 1999. ‘Toward a new nativism,’ Studies in Second Language Acquisition 21: 621–33. O’Grady, W. 2001. ‘An Emergentist Approach to Syntax.’ Unpublished manuscript, University of Hawaii at Manoa. O’Grady, W., M. Lee, and M. Choo. 2003. ‘A subject-object asymmetry in the acquisition of relative clauses in Korean as a second language,’ Studies in Second Language Acquisition 25: 433–48. Pritchett, B. L. 1992. Grammatical Competence and Parsing Performance. University of Chicago Press. Schachter, J. 1989. ‘Testing a proposed universal’ in S. Gass and J. Schachter (eds): Linguistic Perspectives on Second Language Acquisition. Cambridge University Press, pp. 73–88. Schachter, J. 1990. ‘On the issue of completeness in second language acquisition,’ Second Language Research 6: 93–124.

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ß Oxford University Press 2009

REVIEWS F. Christie and J. Martin (eds): LANGUAGE, KNOWLEDGE AND PEDAGOGY: FUNCTIONAL LINGUISTIC AND SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES. Continuum, 2007.

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What is knowledge? How is it organized? How is it distributed? What is the relationship between language, social structure and the distribution of knowledge? And what difference does any of this make to education? Language, Knowledge and Pedagogy takes on these challenging questions, in the process seeking to forge a dialogue between Bernstein’s theoretical work in sociology and Halliday’s theoretical work in linguistics. Putting together two such vast and complex bodies of work is no mean feat. The contributors to this collection, generally experts in either Bernstein’s sociology of knowledge or Halliday’s systemic functional linguistics achieve a commendable degree of coherence: the volume has the dynamic feel of a deep and genuine dialogue. Along the way, the dialogue explores the nature of academic disciplines and the differences between them; the nature of education and its impact on the distribution of knowledge; and the linguistic instantiation of some of Bernstein’s theoretical ideas. Reviewing such a book presents several challenges. Few readers, including this one, will be well-versed in both Bernstein and Halliday; and few will be familiar with more than a couple of academic disciplines, so that evaluating some of the claims about the differences between these disciplines must rely to some degree on academic common sense. Furthermore, the sheer scope of this ambitious project makes it impossible to go into the many interesting avenues it presents. I will, therefore, settle for sharing some of the insights that I found productive, followed by some reflections on what the book itself suggests about the organization and distribution of knowledge as a case in point. The book is organized into two main parts. The first focuses on more theoretical issues, such as the hierarchical nature of disciplinary knowledge. Maton and Muller, in their chapter, explore the question of why Bernstein’s work is focused on knowledge, or more particularly on the ‘transmission’ of knowledge. Part of their answer concerns the idea that knowledge is differently valued, regulated and distributed. These differences are crucial in the reproduction of social structure, including, in particular, the structures of social class. Furthermore, schools are a key site in which the differentially organized transmission of knowledge, and hence the reproduction of social structure, is played out. Hence in mathematics, my own subject background, mathematical knowledge is highly valued, difficult to get, hierarchical and couched in a particularly specialized language. And research in mathematics education

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suggests that schooling produces social class differences in mathematical attainment. These class differences are explained in terms of working class students not having access to the ‘elaborated code’ of school mathematics. The role of language is apparent in both the organization and specification of mathematical knowledge, and in learners’ access to this knowledge. And the role of language is precisely where systemic linguistics has something to offer, as Martin shows in the next chapter. In particular, he makes a link between Halliday’s notion of grammatical metaphor and Bernstein’s vertical discourse. One of the key linguistic features of a vertical discourse like mathematics, is ‘a non-matching relation between grammar and semantics’ (p. 52), such as through nominalization, in which processes or qualities appear as nouns. In mathematics, words like factorization, calculation or equivalence ‘thingify’ (Martin’s word—an example of a noun realized as a process) active processes, making the language of mathematics technical, specialized and dehumanized. This process of ‘thingification’ (Martin’s nominalization) also makes mathematical language more susceptible to unequal distribution: middle class children learn to look behind the grammar at the meaning. The relationship between horizontal and vertical discourses and grammatical metaphor underpins much of the subsequent thinking and analysis in the rest of the book. In the remaining chapters of the first part, Muller, Maton and Moore look at different aspects of the organization of knowledge. Muller argues that insufficient attention to knowledge structures in school curricula leads to the invisible pedagogies that disadvantage poor children. Maton introduces the idea of knower structures to complement the more established one of knowledge structures. He develops the example of a ‘classical education’ as being more concerned with the cultivation of a certain kind of person than with any particular knowledge. Furthermore, as his example is designed to show, knower structures are related to social hierarchy: it is the classically educated who continue to dominate the British ruling classes. Moore attempts to refute the dreaded ‘anything goes’ relativism, engaging in an extended critique of the argument that what makes something art is simply that someone sees it as art. Moore’s chapter brings to the surface an undercurrent that runs throughout the book: namely, a need for the possibility of progress, for some kinds of knowledge to be better than others, for real, solid ground. The second part of the book offers four discipline-specific analyses. Painter’s chapter focuses on the language of early childhood. Through a case study of one child, she demonstrates how most early child language can be characterized as horizontal discourse. Drawing on systemic functional linguistics, she also traces the emergence of features of vertical discourse, such as grammatical metaphor and the construction of taxonomies, identifying features of the child’s interaction with his mother through which this emergence arises. Christie and Macken-Horarik’s chapter is about subject English and the invisible pedagogies they perceive as prevalent in English teaching and curricula. They build their argument on a critique of prevailing theories of language and

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literacy, including cultural studies and new literacy studies. To address the inequity that results from these invisible pedagogies, they propose the use of functional linguistics as a ‘meta-language’ with which to compare different approaches to subject English, and with which to construct alternative curricula. Wignell’s chapter presents an analysis of the development of social science as a vertical discourse through examination of texts by Hobbes, Smith, Ricardo and Marx. In her chapter, O’Halloran presents a similar analysis of the development of mathematical and scientific discourse, highlighting the different grammars of symbols and images and the process through which these grammars, combined with that of natural language, combine to create specialist forms of meaning. She brings her analysis up to date with a discussion of how powerful modern software that allows the creation and manipulation of both images and symbolic expressions is changing the nature of meaning-making in mathematics and science. The book ends with a valuable chapter in which the two editors and two of the principal contributors engage in a written conversation of some of the themes of the book. The book is valuable and challenging. It helped me to think about much of my own work—the nature of mathematical discourse, the nature of mathematics teaching and my own assumptions about what is effective in the teaching and learning of mathematics. It made me think, for example, about what is implicit in current trends towards a more discussion-based approach to mathematics teaching, in which students work collectively to solve problems. Are some students disadvantaged by this approach? What is the invisible pedagogy? In mathematics, unlike in subject English, there is an appeal to logic, to correctness, and this leaves less room for ideology to enter. Muller argues ‘The condition for a teacher being an authoritative pedagogical agent is, at the minimum, an internalized map of the conceptual structure of the subject, acquired through disciplinary training’ (p. 83). In the case of mathematics, the situation is more complex. While Muller’s condition is necessary, it is not sufficient. Brilliant mathematicians can often make rather bad mathematics teachers. The mathematical knowledge that teachers use is not, in fact, the same as the mathematical knowledge that mathematicians use. Aspects of the book made me uncomfortable. The prevalence of dichotomies in Bernsteinian thinking is striking (vertical/horizontal; knowledge/knower; restricted/elaborated; visible/invisible). For me, social life, including in mathematics classrooms, is not so strongly binary; there is not much reflexivity in this book. Similarly, I was uncomfortable with a discourse of education in terms of knowledge (a noun) and transmission. Whereas the general challenge to progressive education as perpetuating invisible pedagogies in new ways is bracing and thought-provoking, the metaphor of transmission remains problematically rigid and monolithic. A more psychologistic perspective on knowing and the relationship between knower and known would enrich the dialogue. Perhaps the sociologists and the linguists could helpfully be joined by sociocultural psychologists. Finally, the tone of the book sometimes comes across as cliquey; the desire for verticality leads the sociologists to want everyone to be a

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Bernsteinian, and the linguists to want educationalists to all learn systemic functional linguistics. In schooling, Maton and Muller advocate teaching ‘the key to the code enabling success’ (p. 17); if, perhaps using systemic functional linguistics, we can identify how language contributes to the unequal distribution of knowledge, and then we teach underprivileged students how to crack this code, inequality will be reduced. If only it were that simple! My feeling is that, even if these things came to pass, invisible pedagogies would remain. Reviewed by Richard Barwell University of Ottawa, Canada doi:10.1093/applin/amp054 Advance Access published on 21 December 2009

In his trenchant critique of structural linguistics, Bourdieu (1991) observes that linguistics as an academic discipline has been far too pre-occupied with idealist, abstracted approaches to the study of language—examining language in isolation from the social and political conditions in which it is used. As he comments ironically of this process: ‘bracketing out the social [. . .] allows language or any other symbolic object to be treated like an end in itself, [this] contributed considerably to the success of structural linguistics, for it endowed the ‘‘pure’’ exercises that characterise a purely internal and formal analysis with the charm of a game devoid of consequences’ (1991: 34). Or as Mey observes, ‘linguistic models, no matter how innocent and theoretical they may seem to be, not only have distinct economical, social and political presuppositions, but also consequences [. . .] Linguistic (and other) inequalities don’t cease to exist simply because their [. . .] causes are swept under the linguistic rug’ (1985: 26). Makoni and Pennycook would surely agree, given the central concerns of their important and provocative edited collection. The editors argue convincingly in their introduction that the idea of separate, enumerable ‘languages’, arising out of structural linguistics, is a fiction or ‘invention’, constructed out of the socio-historical and socio-political processes of nationalism and/or colonialism. They proceed to outline how this process of invention operates, not only in relation to the apparent abstract, formalized and distinct attributes of individual ‘languages’ but also the attendant ideology, or meta-discursive regime as they term it, used to create/describe/delineate them. The latter ‘treats languages as countable institutions, a view reinforced by the existence of grammars and

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S. Makoni and A. Pennycook (eds): DISINVENTING AND RECONSTITUTING LANGUAGES. Multilingual Matters, 2007.

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Bernsteinian, and the linguists to want educationalists to all learn systemic functional linguistics. In schooling, Maton and Muller advocate teaching ‘the key to the code enabling success’ (p. 17); if, perhaps using systemic functional linguistics, we can identify how language contributes to the unequal distribution of knowledge, and then we teach underprivileged students how to crack this code, inequality will be reduced. If only it were that simple! My feeling is that, even if these things came to pass, invisible pedagogies would remain. Reviewed by Richard Barwell University of Ottawa, Canada doi:10.1093/applin/amp054 Advance Access published on 21 December 2009

In his trenchant critique of structural linguistics, Bourdieu (1991) observes that linguistics as an academic discipline has been far too pre-occupied with idealist, abstracted approaches to the study of language—examining language in isolation from the social and political conditions in which it is used. As he comments ironically of this process: ‘bracketing out the social [. . .] allows language or any other symbolic object to be treated like an end in itself, [this] contributed considerably to the success of structural linguistics, for it endowed the ‘‘pure’’ exercises that characterise a purely internal and formal analysis with the charm of a game devoid of consequences’ (1991: 34). Or as Mey observes, ‘linguistic models, no matter how innocent and theoretical they may seem to be, not only have distinct economical, social and political presuppositions, but also consequences [. . .] Linguistic (and other) inequalities don’t cease to exist simply because their [. . .] causes are swept under the linguistic rug’ (1985: 26). Makoni and Pennycook would surely agree, given the central concerns of their important and provocative edited collection. The editors argue convincingly in their introduction that the idea of separate, enumerable ‘languages’, arising out of structural linguistics, is a fiction or ‘invention’, constructed out of the socio-historical and socio-political processes of nationalism and/or colonialism. They proceed to outline how this process of invention operates, not only in relation to the apparent abstract, formalized and distinct attributes of individual ‘languages’ but also the attendant ideology, or meta-discursive regime as they term it, used to create/describe/delineate them. The latter ‘treats languages as countable institutions, a view reinforced by the existence of grammars and

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S. Makoni and A. Pennycook (eds): DISINVENTING AND RECONSTITUTING LANGUAGES. Multilingual Matters, 2007.

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dictionaries’ (p. 2), and one that is still widely employed in contemporary national and/or post-colonial contexts. In the process, the much more complex and fluid reality of multilingual speakers ‘on the ground’—heteroglossia, in a Bakhtinian sense—is overlooked, even actively disguised/distorted. Situating the construction/invention of languages within this wider political context points to the second key concern of Makoni and Pennycook’s volume: the very real material, often highly deleterious, consequences of this process of language invention for individual multilingual speakers. Returning to Bourdieu, such processes are clearly not a game devoid of consequences. Rather, the construction of discrete, standardized languages, and related language hierarchies, actively delimits the choices of speakers and undermines their more variegated, fluid linguistic repertoires. For Makoni and Pennycook, this includes not only national and colonial languages, linked to the formation of nation-states, and English as the current lingua mundi, or world language, linked to globalization. It also includes, more controversially, the (often recursive) reconstruction of the so-called indigenous languages in colonial and post-colonial contexts. As they argue, ‘these constructed [indigenous] languages were administratively assigned to colonized populations as mother tongues and went on to form the basis of so-called mother tongue education and vernacular literacy’ (p. 14, emphasis in original). Indeed, they conclude, ‘[e]pistemologically, one of the key rhetorical moves of colonialism was to foster, then mask, the artificiality of indigenous languages [. . .], presenting them as if they were a natural part of local contexts’ (p. 15). From this, Makoni and Pennycook advocate for the active ‘disinvention’ of all languages. In so doing, they give short shrift not only to structural linguistics but also to pluralist approaches to socio-linguistics and related language rights arguments in support of indigenous and other minoritized languages. They argue that the latter strategies merely reproduce ‘the tropes of colonial invention, overlooking the contested history of language inventions, and ignoring the ‘collateral damage’ [. . .] that their embedded notions of language may be perpetuating’ (p. 16). More controversially still, they suggest that these strategies ‘continue to do damage to speech communities and deny those [indigenous] people educational opportunities’ (p. 21). While I do not agree with the latter arguments, for reasons I will return to shortly, one of the key strengths of this volume is its sophisticated exploration of a critical linguistics that does not reduce itself to the banality of ludic post-modernism, where everything is relative and nothing is real. Rather, each chapter highlights the contingent and constructed processes of language formation, alongside a recognition that, once formed, particular language communities reflect real communities of culture and power—a Durkheimian ‘social fact’, in effect—which clearly privilege some and disempower others. Thus chapters by Heryanto, and Busch and Schick, explore the dialectic between the emergence of standardized, written language varieties and the role of nationalism and nation building, along with their social and political effects, in relation to Indonesia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina, respectively.

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Pennycook examines the myths that pervade the role and influence of (standard) English as the current ‘international language’. Rather than achieving social and economic mobility via learning English, as is often claimed: ‘[t]his thing called English colludes with many of the pernicious processes of globalisation, deludes many learners through the false promises it holds out for social and material gain, and excludes many people by operating as an exclusionary class dialect, favouring particular people, countries, cultures and forms of knowledge’ (p. 101). A similar scepticism is apparent in the chapters by Makoni and Mashiri, on Africa, and de Souza, on Brazil, although their focus is primarily on so-called indigenous languages. Both argue that the construction of standardized indigenous languages inevitably undermines and/or devalues the much wider linguistic repertoires, particularly oral repertoires, of multilingual speakers. Branson and Miller provide a comparable perspective in their fascinating discussion of sign languages and how they have been viewed and juxtaposed, almost always negatively, in relation to spoken language varieties. Similarly, Richardson examines the performative dimensions of hiphop/rap discourse, as well as its links to resistance, the latter arising from its close historical and political connections to African American Vernacular Discourses. Thorne and Lantolf explore the implications of these wider arguments for linguistic analysis itself and argue convincingly for a reconstructed approach that dispenses with the language as form/communicative practices disjuncture that still pervades structural linguistics. Rather, drawing on a Vygotskyian perspective, they call for a linguistics of communicative activity, an approach to linguistic analysis based on ‘usage-based and meaning-centered characterizations of linguistically-mediated human activity’ (p. 171). Canagarajah concludes the volume with some brief reflections on what a ‘disinvented’ approach to languages might subsequently entail, arguing that we must look beyond modernism, which has been so central to constructing the various binaries this volume sets itself against, and return to an analysis of pre-colonial/pre-modern societies, ‘contexts of rampant multingualism and inveterate hybridity’ (p. 238), which were subsequently suppressed by the modernist demands of categorization, classification and codification. Again, the methodological consequence of this is ‘that, rather than focusing on rules and conventions [a` la structural linguistics], we have to focus on strategies of communication’ (p. 237). But, interestingly, there is one area where an unnecessary binary persists in this volume—that between indigenous language varieties and modernity. Makoni and Pennycook argue (as do Makoni and Mashiri, even more trenchantly) that the construction of indigenous languages has had deleterious effects comparable with those of the construction of national and/or colonial languages: ‘the invention of languages has had particularly insidious consequences for indigenous people, since the invention of the construct of

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indigenous peoples [. . .] produces [. . .] a need for identification with their prenatural selves’ (p. 23). It is on the basis of this argument that they subsequently dismiss more pluralist socio-linguistic approaches to language policy and related language rights arguments. There are two problems with this position. The first has to do with social and political context. Unlike their convincing analyses elsewhere, it is simply inaccurate to suggest that the construction of indigenous languages is comparable with that of national and/or colonial languages in terms of their (subsequent) deleterious social and political effects. Rather, it is the latter which have invariably delimited, pathologized and/or institutionally excluded the former, via the historical processes of colonization, most usually. If indigenous language varieties have been reconstituted in postcolonial contexts, as new languages of power, it is almost always in relation to re-entering the public domain, usually alongside other language varieties, and not as a primary basis for social exclusion. It may be ‘the pluralisation of monolingualism’ (p. 22), but it is surely better than nothing. The second key issue that remains unresolved in relation to indigenous language varieties is, ironically, the ongoing privileging of modernism in their arguments. By assuming that indigenous language varieties remain delimited to pre-modern, ‘pre-natural’ identities, fixing indigenous identities and ‘consequently disqualifying socially embedded urbanized indigenous peoples’ (p. 23) and related ‘urban vernaculars in Africa’ (p. 26), Makoni and Pennycook end up reinforcing rather than, as elsewhere, deconstructing the pre-modernity/modernity binary. The implication here seems clear—out with the old (primordial/essentialist) indigenous language varieties, in with the new (hybrid/fluid/dynamic) urban vernaculars. And yet, this misses a key point. All cultural and linguistic identities, including indigenous ones, inevitably change over time and no one is suggesting that such language varieties are, or need be, frozen in time—indeed, they cannot. The question is again rather a political one. Who has the locus of control to influence language change—group members themselves, or other, more powerful, cultural and linguistic groups? This is what language rights advocates, whom Makoni and Pennycook too readily dismiss, highlight. As the political theorist, Will Kymlicka, has observed, arguments for greater minority rights (in this case, in relation to language varieties and their speakers) are most often not based on some simplistic desire for cultural ‘purity’ or for preserving an ‘authentic’ culture. Instead, at issue is the right ‘to maintain one’s membership in a distinct culture, and to continue developing that culture [and associated language varieties] in the same (impure) way that the members of majority cultures are able to develop theirs’ (1995: 105). Cultural and linguistic change, adaptation and interaction are entirely consistent with such a position, even if Makoni and Pennycook appear not to recognize this in the context of indigenous language varieties.

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Be that as it may, this is an important, provocative, eloquent and timely volume. It moves forward debates in critical linguistics and language policy in significant ways and will shape discussions in these areas for some considerable time to come. Reviewed by Stephen May University of Auckland, New Zealand doi:10.1093/applin/amp056 Advance Access published on 21 December 2009

REFERENCES Mey, J. 1985. Whose Language? A Study in Linguistic Pragmatics. John Benjamins.

Alison Wray: FORMULAIC LANGUAGE: PUSHING THE BOUNDARIES. Oxford University Press, 2008.

Formulaic Language: Pushing the Boundaries is the follow-up to Wray’s influential 2002 book, Formulaic Language and the Lexicon. The volume develops three main ideas from the earlier work: (i) the mental lexicon comprises semantically unanalysed units of different sizes, from morphemes to fixed phrases, including both fully fixed chunks and more flexible units permitting internal variation; (ii) native speakers only analyse chunks of language into smaller units if this is necessary to unpack its meaning or if they encounter paradigmatic variations in the form; (iii) speakers use formulaic language to promote their own interests by tightly constraining hearers’ interpretations of their utterances. Wray covers a wide range of topics in developing these ideas: from machine translation to bugle calls via language learning and actors’ script memorization. What unites these discussions is the overarching metaphor of ‘pushing the boundaries’. In one sense, this refers to the nature of formulaic language as a phenomenon that breaks down the boundaries between traditional linguistic categories. In another, it refers to the need for cross-fertilization between areas of investigation that have often been isolated from each other. Above all, however, the boundary metaphor refers to Wray’s strategy of investigating marginal and extreme cases. Discussion is focused on what happens to communication in situations where language is forced to operate ‘beyond its normal scope’ (p. 5), and on the points where formulaicity crosses over into creativity, speech into writing and linguistic into non-linguistic communication.

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Bourdieu, P. 1991. Language and Symbolic Power. Polity Press. Kymlicka, W. 1995. Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights. Clarendon Press.

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Be that as it may, this is an important, provocative, eloquent and timely volume. It moves forward debates in critical linguistics and language policy in significant ways and will shape discussions in these areas for some considerable time to come. Reviewed by Stephen May University of Auckland, New Zealand doi:10.1093/applin/amp056 Advance Access published on 21 December 2009

REFERENCES Mey, J. 1985. Whose Language? A Study in Linguistic Pragmatics. John Benjamins.

Alison Wray: FORMULAIC LANGUAGE: PUSHING THE BOUNDARIES. Oxford University Press, 2008.

Formulaic Language: Pushing the Boundaries is the follow-up to Wray’s influential 2002 book, Formulaic Language and the Lexicon. The volume develops three main ideas from the earlier work: (i) the mental lexicon comprises semantically unanalysed units of different sizes, from morphemes to fixed phrases, including both fully fixed chunks and more flexible units permitting internal variation; (ii) native speakers only analyse chunks of language into smaller units if this is necessary to unpack its meaning or if they encounter paradigmatic variations in the form; (iii) speakers use formulaic language to promote their own interests by tightly constraining hearers’ interpretations of their utterances. Wray covers a wide range of topics in developing these ideas: from machine translation to bugle calls via language learning and actors’ script memorization. What unites these discussions is the overarching metaphor of ‘pushing the boundaries’. In one sense, this refers to the nature of formulaic language as a phenomenon that breaks down the boundaries between traditional linguistic categories. In another, it refers to the need for cross-fertilization between areas of investigation that have often been isolated from each other. Above all, however, the boundary metaphor refers to Wray’s strategy of investigating marginal and extreme cases. Discussion is focused on what happens to communication in situations where language is forced to operate ‘beyond its normal scope’ (p. 5), and on the points where formulaicity crosses over into creativity, speech into writing and linguistic into non-linguistic communication.

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Bourdieu, P. 1991. Language and Symbolic Power. Polity Press. Kymlicka, W. 1995. Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights. Clarendon Press.

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The book is divided into four sections. The first gives a general characterization of formulaic language and summarizes the main claims from Wray (2002). It also includes a review of the literature on the psycholinguistic processing of formulae, a chapter discussing the role of formulaicity in oral epic poetry and in the historical transition to literacy, and another discussing the differences between speech and writing in terms of their use of formulaic language. These discussions lead to a model of the ways in which the situational autonomy of a text influences its level of formulaicity. The book’s second section starts by setting out desiderata for a theory of formulaic language. Wray argues that a comprehensive model needs to encompass and show the relationships between three facets of formulaicity: description of what patterns exist; systematization of the (grammatical/semantic) principles underlying those patterns; and patterns’ (social/psychological/biological) causes. She takes steps towards such a theory by considering the extent to which various linguistic approaches to the description and systematization of patterns might complement her earlier ‘cause’-oriented models. The second section also deals with the issue of identifying formulaicity. After reviewing existing methods, Wray describes what she calls a ‘diagnostic approach’ to formula identification, the aim of which is not to determine whether particular stretches of language are formulaic or not, but rather to raise researchers’ awareness of their own reasons for thinking that particular stretches of language are formulaic. Section three is a collection of short chapters, each describing a (previously published) study into an aspect of formulaic language. The first looks at formulaicity in machine translation, discussing a pilot system for translating counter clerks’ spoken English into computer-generated sign-language for deaf customers. The second discusses the use of pre-programmed formulas in a speech generation program used by a woman with cerebral palsy. The third and fourth chapters are concerned with foreign language learning. The former describes a case study of a novice attempting in four days to learn through formula memorization enough Welsh to deliver a cookery demonstration. The latter describes an attempt to provide intermediate learners with formulaic material to carry out an anticipated conversation. The fifth chapter relates a court case in which the verdict rested on the interpretation of a particular piece of formulaic language. The final chapter looks at actors’ memorization of scripts and uses the case study of a TV comedy sketch to consider when and why precise recall is required and what the effects of deviation from form are. The fourth section develops the book’s three main theses through discussion of some key issues related to formulaic language. In the first chapter, Wray argues for the idea that formulaic language is the ‘default option’ in language production; that is, that language is handled holistically unless there is a specific reason for engaging in analysis. In the second chapter, she discusses what determines the level of formulaicity in language. This question is addressed from three different perspectives: how and why formulaicity might have emerged in the early stages of the evolution of the human language capacity;

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the relationship between the amount of formulaicity in a language and the amount of contact its speakers have with outsiders; and the effects on individual communicative acts when different interlocutors have different levels of formulaic knowledge or when they make deliberate choices to reject or adopt the use of particular formulae. The third issue is the place of formulaic language in adult second language learning. Situational differences between adult and child learners that might make formula-based learning problematic for adults are reviewed and the limitations of formula-based learning are discussed. Wray then suggests a possible teaching approach in which adults are ‘front-loaded’ with a suitably selected range of form-meaning pairings that would both enable the learner to engage in interactions that would provide further opportunities of learning and constrain their generalizations to nativelike patterns. These themes are pursued further in the following chapter, which concerns ‘teaching’ language to computers. Wray argues that some of the persistent problems in natural language processing and machine translation are similar to those faced in adult learning. She believes that in both cases the difficulties are rooted in an over-emphasis on equipping learners/computers with minimal units and highly productive rule systems. She proposes instead an approach that parallels that which she takes child learners to follow, with computers using input as the basis for noticing recurrent sequences and patterns, but engaging only in the minimum analysis necessary to derive meaning, so that paradigmatic rules are not generalized beyond the variation actually attested in the input. The final issue concerns the extent to which formulaic language constrains what we say and think. After discussing the trade-off between the advantages of using memorized forms—for example, for maintaining fluency, idiomaticity, or accuracy—and the costs, in terms of the efforts spent in memorization, and of the loss of ownership over one’s utterances, and after briefly describing work on the use of formulaic phrases to ensure doctrinal conformity during China’s Cultural Revolution, Wray turns to the question of the extent to which various intrinsically formulaic communication systems—a hypothetical holistic protolanguage, the flag signals used in motor racing and at sea, and military bugle calls—constrain thought and action, and the extent to which these systems are open to creative elaborations. She concludes that, since ideas need to be unpacked and assimilated before they can be applied, formulaicity is unlikely ever to effectively constrain thought; however, in the extreme examples discussed, it certainly can, and does, place constraints on creativity of expression. It will be clear from this review that Pushing the Boundaries covers a prodigious range of topics. One slightly frustrating consequence of this breadth is that discussion of individual issues is often rather brief; another is that chapters sometimes seem to lack internal coherence. However, in an area where researchers from different specializations have often been isolated from each other, the ‘cross-border’ perspectives that such a broad sweep opens up, and

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Reviewed by Philip Durrant Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey doi:10.1093/applin/amp055 Advance Access published on 21 December 2009

Ruth Wodak, Rudolf de Cillia, Martin Reisigl and Karin Liebhart: THE DISCURSIVE CONSTRUCTION OF NATIONAL IDENTITY. SECOND EDITION. Transl. by Angelika Hirsch, Richard Mitten and J. W. Unger. Edinburgh University Press, 2009.

Writing a review of the second edition of The Discursive Construction of National Identity has been an extremely difficult task. How to write an evaluation of an iconic volume, praised already everywhere and by everyone in the academe? Just one look at online book sellers brings ample examples of tributes, admirations and recommendations of Wodak, de Cillia, Reisigl and Liebhart’s work. A publishing history of the volume also speaks a lot about its credentials. At first it was a German edition by Suhrkamp in 1998; this was followed by an abbreviated and translated text for its first English edition by Edinburgh University Press in 1999, reprinted in 2003 and transferred to digital print in

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the consequent possibilities for inter-disciplinary dialogue more than make up for these niggles. The second language specialist, for example, is likely to find new sources of insight here in the commonalities that are highlighted between the task of the foreign language teacher and that of the computational linguist, between the choices for self-expression faced by the language learner and by individuals with language disorders, and between the issues facing students learning idiomatic phrases and actors learning their lines. Another notable strength of the book is its simultaneous commitment to both application and theory. On the one hand, numerous concrete suggestions are made for practical applications in language learning, natural language processing, language therapy and more. On the other hand, serious attempts are made to fit formulaic language into a broader conceptual framework. Given the current under-theorization of much work in this area, this commitment is very welcome. Particularly valuable in this regard is the series of models which the book articulates. In many cases, data are rather thin on the ground and these models may therefore be rather too speculative to convince sceptics. However, by formulating her ‘best guess’ at what is happening on the basis of the evidence available, Wray both provides us with a series of clearly stated theses that future work will be able to interrogate and elaborate, and highlights what is currently missing in the evidence base. It seems likely that this will make Pushing the Boundaries a fruitful stimulus for research and debate for several years to come.

166 REVIEWS

Reviewed by Philip Durrant Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey doi:10.1093/applin/amp055 Advance Access published on 21 December 2009

Ruth Wodak, Rudolf de Cillia, Martin Reisigl and Karin Liebhart: THE DISCURSIVE CONSTRUCTION OF NATIONAL IDENTITY. SECOND EDITION. Transl. by Angelika Hirsch, Richard Mitten and J. W. Unger. Edinburgh University Press, 2009.

Writing a review of the second edition of The Discursive Construction of National Identity has been an extremely difficult task. How to write an evaluation of an iconic volume, praised already everywhere and by everyone in the academe? Just one look at online book sellers brings ample examples of tributes, admirations and recommendations of Wodak, de Cillia, Reisigl and Liebhart’s work. A publishing history of the volume also speaks a lot about its credentials. At first it was a German edition by Suhrkamp in 1998; this was followed by an abbreviated and translated text for its first English edition by Edinburgh University Press in 1999, reprinted in 2003 and transferred to digital print in

Downloaded from applij.oxfordjournals.org by guest on December 31, 2010

the consequent possibilities for inter-disciplinary dialogue more than make up for these niggles. The second language specialist, for example, is likely to find new sources of insight here in the commonalities that are highlighted between the task of the foreign language teacher and that of the computational linguist, between the choices for self-expression faced by the language learner and by individuals with language disorders, and between the issues facing students learning idiomatic phrases and actors learning their lines. Another notable strength of the book is its simultaneous commitment to both application and theory. On the one hand, numerous concrete suggestions are made for practical applications in language learning, natural language processing, language therapy and more. On the other hand, serious attempts are made to fit formulaic language into a broader conceptual framework. Given the current under-theorization of much work in this area, this commitment is very welcome. Particularly valuable in this regard is the series of models which the book articulates. In many cases, data are rather thin on the ground and these models may therefore be rather too speculative to convince sceptics. However, by formulating her ‘best guess’ at what is happening on the basis of the evidence available, Wray both provides us with a series of clearly stated theses that future work will be able to interrogate and elaborate, and highlights what is currently missing in the evidence base. It seems likely that this will make Pushing the Boundaries a fruitful stimulus for research and debate for several years to come.

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2005. And finally an extended and revised 2009 second edition shows how important this book was, is and almost certainly will remain for academics and students of many disciplines within the broadly defined social sciences. It is after all a book that inspires many. Its ever interesting topic of nation and identity, focus on sameness and uniqueness in contrast to other work within this field which prefers to concentrate on otherness, its stimulating deployment of other important concepts from related disciplines, such as ‘imagined community’ and habitus, to the study of discourse makes this book widely appreciated and well regarded. By the same token, vigorous methodology of a discourse-historical approach developed in the Vienna School of Discourse Analysis, immaculate examination of multi-genred data (i.e. commemorative speeches, media texts, focus group interviews, qualitative interviews) showing both discursive strategies and argumentation schemes but also forms of realization, richness of linguistic extracts to illustrate authors’ point, all these features turned this book into an exceptional example of a distinguished research monograph. The authors choose to focus on the discursive data that was harvested around the celebratory and commemorative events of 1995, the year of the 50th anniversary of the Second Republic, also the year of Austria’s accession to the European Union. Thematically, they concentrate on topics of common past, present and future, common culture and territory as well as on the concept of homo nationalis. Apart from a dazzling red cover and an additional translator (J. Unger), readers of the second edition will find one new chapter titled ‘The ‘‘Story’’ Continues: 1995–2008’ which brings the investigation up to date with a comparative analysis of similar discursive events, including the commemorative celebration of 2005 in Austria. Austria’s second EU presidency in 2006 is also examined, and so is the Austrian and European political crisis following a rise of national populism in the country. The methodological principle of the extended case method (Burawoy 2009) is deployed here. Clearly, this discursive variation of a ‘focused revisit’ is organized around two aspects: ‘internal processes within the field site itself and forces external to the field site’ (Burawoy 2003: 645). In their analysis, the authors take into consideration significant socio-political developments in Austria, such as the impact of the EU membership. Having a high opinion of the book, I also wish to express some criticism. The authors argue that ‘there is no such thing as one national identity in an essentialist sense, but rather that different identities are discursively constructed according to context, that is, to the degree of public exposure of a given utterance, the setting, the topic addressed, and so on’ (pp. 186–7). And they continue: ‘Discourses in different political and media publics stand in reciprocal relation to one another in much the same way as do discourses of powerful elites and ‘‘everyday discourses’’. We have described the details of such discursive ‘‘exchanges’’ using the concepts of intertextuality and recontextualisation’ (p. 187). Indeed, while investigating developments in the discursive construction of Austrian national identity, researchers do pay particular

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Reviewed by Aleksandra Galasin´ska University of Wolverhampton, UK doi:10.1093/applin/amp052 Advance Access published on 21 December 2009

REFERENCES Burawoy, M. 2003. ‘Revisits: an outline of a theory of reflexive ethnography,’ American Sociological Review 68/5: 645–79. Burawoy, M. 2009. The Extended Case MethodUniversity of California Press. Heer, H., W. Manoschek, A. Pollak and R. Wodak (eds). 2008. The Discursive Construction of History: Remembering the Wehrmacht’s War of Annihilation. Palgrave Macmillan. Martin, J. R. and R. Wodak (eds). 2003. Re/Reading the Past: Critical and Functional Perspectives on Time and Value. John Benjamins.

Weiss, G. and R. Wodak (eds). 2003. Critical Discourse Analysis. Theory and Interdisciplinarity. Palgrave Macmillan. Wodak, R. 2009. The Discourse of Politics in Action. Politics as Usual. Palgrave Macmillan. Wodak, R. and M. Krzy_z anowski (eds). 2008. Qualitative Discourse Analysis in the Social Sciences. Palgrave Macmillan. Wodak, R. and M. Meyer (eds). 2001 Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. Sage.

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attention to political processes that influence and shape the discourses under investigation. This seems to be slightly narrowing the method of ‘revisiting’ the field. After all, the Vienna School sees discourse as inter alia ‘integrating various different positions and voices’ (Wodak 2009: 39); they postulate the need to look closely into different contexts, one of which is ‘the extra-linguistic social/sociological variable’ (Wodak 2009: 38). One can wonder then why other types of data were not taken into consideration. I think here mainly of the broad range of data from semi-public/semi-private settings such as internet discussions. This is in my opinion an extremely interesting and broadening source of texts which may reveal interesting aspects of the researched issue of national identity. It is the expansion of Internet which has already transformed and continues to transform our modes of communication, including areas of activity in which we express opinion. It seems to me that, for example, readers’ and viewers’ letters have often been replaced by e-mails to the newspapers and broadcasters. I would like to see some examples of this social and indeed discursive change incorporated into the extended edition of such a remarkable book. However, although I point at some minor shortcomings, I strongly recommend this monograph to everyone who is interested in the topics of identity, nation, politics and history. It is also worth mentioning some of the other books that will be an interesting companion reading to the volume reviewed here, thematically (e.g. Martin and Wodak 2003; Heer et al. 2008; Wodak 2009) and methodologically (e.g. Wodak and Meyer 2001; Weiss and Wodak 2003; Wodak and Krzy_z anowski 2008). Whether it is assessed together with its companion volumes or as a solo act, The Discursive Construction of National Identity continues to impress, inspire, encourage and motivate both young and more experienced researchers of discourse and society.

Applied Linguistics 31/1: 169–171 doi:10.1093/applin/amq002

ß Oxford University Press 2010

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Philip Durrant is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Graduate School of Education at Bilkent University. His research interests include corpus linguistics, English for Academic Purposes, and all aspects of formulaic language. Address for correspondence: Graduate School of Education, G Binasi No. 259, Bilkent University, 06800, Ankara, Turkey. Aleksandra Galasin´ska is a Senior Research Fellow in European Studies at the University of Wolverhampton. Her main research interests focus on ethnographic and discursive aspects of lived experience of post-communism and post-enlargement migration, with journal publications in Narrative Inquiry, Multilingua, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Ethnicities, Discourse & Society, and Journal of Multicultural Discourses. She is co-editor of Discourse and Transformation in Central and Eastern Europe (with Michal Krzy_zanowski, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). Currently, she is working on the edited volume devoted to Polish discourses of transformation (with D. Galasinski, Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, DAPSAC series, forthcoming). Address for correspondence: School of Law, Social Sciences and Communications, University of Wolverhampton, Wulfruna Street, Wolverhampton WV1 1LY, UK. Noriko Iwasaki is a Lecturer in Language Pedagogy in the Department of Linguistics at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. She received a PhD in Second Language Acquisition and Teaching at the University of Arizona. Her research interests include study abroad and language production processes. Recent publications include: ‘Assessing progress towards the advanced level Japanese after a year abroad: Focus on individual participants’ in Japanese Language and Literature and ‘Processes in L2 Japanese sentence production’ in The Handbook of East Asian Psycholinguistics (Cambridge University Press). Address for correspondence: Department of Linguistics, School of Oriental and African Studies,

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Richard Barwell is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa, Canada. His research is located in the intersection of applied linguistics and mathematics education, with a particular focus on multilingualism/bilingualism in the teaching and learning of mathematics. His research interests include mathematics classroom discourse, mathematics learning in multilingual settings, and the relationship between learning language and learning curriculum content. His work has been published in peerreviewed journals in Applied Linguistics, Mathematics Education, and General Education. Address for correspondence: Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa, 145 J-J Lussier, Ottawa K1N 6N5, Canada.

170 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

University of London, Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London WC1H 0XG, UK. David Cassels Johnson is an Assistant Professor of education at Washington State University. His research interests revolve around the interaction between language policy and educational opportunity. The study upon which this article is based won the 2008 National Association of Bilingual Education dissertation competition. <[email protected]>

Jin-Hwa Lee earned a PhD in second language acquisition from the University of Hawai’i in 2006 and is currently working in the Department of English Education at Chung-Ang University, Seoul, Korea. Her main research interests include second language acquisition and instruction, corpus-based L2 analysis and teaching, task-based language teaching, and L2 programme development. Address for correspondence: Department of English Education, 221 Heukseokdong, Dongjak-gu, Seoul 156-756, Korea. <[email protected]> Stephen May is a Professor of Education in the School of Critical Studies in Education, Faculty of Education, University of Auckland, New Zealand. He is the author of the award-winning Language and Minority Rights: Ethnicity, Nationalism and the Politics of Language (Routledge, 2008). He is the founding editor of the journal Ethnicities (Sage) and Associate Editor of Language Policy (Springer). Address for correspondence: School of Critical Studies in Education (CRSTIE), Faculty of Education, The University of Auckland, Private Bag 92601, Symonds Street, Auckland 1150, New Zealand. <[email protected]> Leendert Plug is a Lecturer in the Department of Linguistics and Phonetics, University of Leeds. He was previously Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Sheffield (on the project ‘Listening to people with seizures’), and has a PhD in Linguistics from the University of York. His teaching is in the areas of phonetics and phonology, and he has research interests in phonetics, phonology, conversation analysis, and the history of linguistics. Address for correspondence: Department of Linguistics and Phonetics, School of Modern Languages and Cultures, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK.

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An Kuppens is a teaching assistant and a PhD candidate at the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Antwerp. Her main research interests are on the intersection between cultural globalization, the media, and English. Recent publications include an article on African-American and Jamaican English in subcultural niche media in Journal of Communication Inquiry. Address for correspondence: Department of Communication Studies, University of Antwerp, Sint-Jacobstraat 2, B-2000 Antwerp, Belgium.

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

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Julie Radford is a course director of the Masters in Special and Inclusive Education at the Institute of Education, University of London. Her main area of research is the application of conversation analysis to exploring language learning processes in classrooms. She has a special interest in the joint construction of topic and repair. She has also published works that examine the linguistic skills and abilities of children with specific speech and language needs: for example, word finding and pragmatic difficulties. Current work studies the use of gaze and gesture in storybook sharing. Address for correspondence: Faculty of Children and Health, Institute of Education, 25 Woburn Square, London WC1H 0AA, UK. <[email protected]>

Basil Sharrack is an Honorary Senior Clinical Lecturer at the University of Sheffield, UK, and a Consultant Neurologist at the Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. He trained as a neurologist at Guy’s Hospital and the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London. His clinical practice focuses on the diagnosis and treatment of multiple sclerosis and other CNS inflammatory conditions. He has a research interest in neuro-immunology, neuro-ophthalmology, and behavioural neurology. Address for correspondence: Academic Neurology Unit, University of Sheffield, Royal Hallamshire Hospital, Glossop Road, Sheffield S10 2JF, UK. Ling Shi is an Associate Professor in the Department of Language and Literacy Education in the University of British Columbia. Her research has been published in journals such as Written Communication, Language Awareness, TESOL Quarterly, Language Testing, English for Specific Purposes, and Journal of English for Academic purposes. Address for correspondence: 2034 Lower Mall Road, UBC, Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6T 1Z2.

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Markus Reuber is a Senior Clinical Lecturer at the University of Sheffield, UK, and Honorary Consultant Neurologist at the Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust. He trained as a neurologist and epileptologists in Leeds, UK, and Bonn, Germany. His clinical practice focuses on the diagnosis and treatment of epileptic and non-epileptic seizure disorders. He has a research interest in behavioural neurology, especially the aetiology and treatment of non-epileptic seizures, co-morbidity in patients with epilepsy and doctor–patient communication. Address for correspondence: Academic Neurology Unit, University of Sheffield, Royal Hallamshire Hospital, Glossop Road, Sheffield S10 2JF, UK. <[email protected]>