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English Pages 235 Year 2014
Investigating Lexis
Investigating Lexis Vocabulary Teaching, ESP, Lexicography and Lexical Innovation Edited by
José Ramón Calvo-Ferrer and Miguel Ángel Campos Pardillos
Investigating Lexis: Vocabulary Teaching, ESP, Lexicography and Lexical Innovation Edited by José Ramón Calvo-Ferrer and Miguel Ángel Campos Pardillos This book first published 2014 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2014 by José Ramón Calvo-Ferrer, Miguel Ángel Campos Pardillos and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-6807-8 ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-6807-5
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword .................................................................................................... ix Part I. Lexical Theory and Acquisition Chapter One ................................................................................................. 3 “You Shall Know a Collocation by the Company It Keeps”: Methodological Advances in Lexical-Constellation Analysis Moisés Almela Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 27 From EFL to CLIL: Teaching and Learning Vocabulary in the Primary Classroom María Tabuenca Cuevas and Gema Alcaraz Mármol Part II. Legal Terminology Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 41 Pronunciation Skills in Legal English for Interpreters: English Latinisms and Cognates Miguel Ángel Campos Pardillos Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 57 The U.S. Supreme Court Cognitive Metaphors: Law, Deep Roots and the Right Soil Laura Vegara Fabregat Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 79 A Comparative Study of Latinisms in the European Legislation: Degrees of Syntactic Integration in English, Spanish and Greek Document Versions Rita Winiarska
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Part III. Dictionaries: Past and Present Chapter Six ................................................................................................ 95 Online Arabic-English-Arabic Specialised Dictionaries Reima Al-Jarf Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 103 General Remarks on the Challenges of Integrating Scientific and Technical Words in General Dictionaries Isabel Balteiro and José Ramón Calvo-Ferrer Chapter Eight ........................................................................................... 123 Gentyll On-Line Glossaries: Professional Titles of Women and Men in a Series of Fields of Activity Mercedes Bengoechea, María Rosa Cabellos and José Simón Chapter Nine............................................................................................ 133 The Dictionary of Richard Percyvall’s Bibliotheca Hispanica (1591): Structure and Composition David Carrascosa Cañego Chapter Ten ............................................................................................. 145 First Anglicisms in the Spanish Press: Treatment Given by the Royal Spanish Academy Dictionary María Vázquez-Amador & M. Carmen Lario-de-Oñate Part IV. New Challenges, New Approaches Chapter Eleven ........................................................................................ 163 Swingvergüenzas A Contra Blues: A Study on Creative Code Mixing in Spanish Music Paula López Rúa Chapter Twelve ....................................................................................... 181 New Challenges in the Translation of Terminology for Software Applications José Ramón Belda Medina
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Chapter Thirteen ...................................................................................... 191 The Terminology of the Video Game Industry: A New Type of Specialised Language Ramón Méndez González Chapter Fourteen ..................................................................................... 205 The Multiple Shades of Erotica: Translating Romantic and Erotic Fiction into Spanish Scheherezade Surià
FOREWORD
This book is a collection of essays representing various aspects of lexicography; in all cases, its authors have attempted to combine state-ofthe-art research with a user-friendly approach which makes it attractive for readers worldwide. It is divided into four major sections: (i) Lexical theory and acquisition, (ii) Legal terminology, (iii) Dictionaries, (iv) New challenges. The first section, which deals with basic theoretical issues regarding vocabulary, consists of two studies. The first one, “You Shall Know a Collocation by the Company It Keeps”: Methodological Advances in Lexical-Constellation Analysis” studies collocations, offering a new development within standard collocational analysis, that of lexical constellations, which improves semantic description through the use of clusters. The other paper in this section, “Vocabulary in Primary Language Learning” revisits the first stages of vocabulary learning and acquisition by analysing lexical choices in primary school textbooks, and the implications such choices have upon primary school teaching. The second section focuses on legal terminology, an area of specialized vocabulary which has received comparatively less attention than others (e.g. business), but the importance of which is progressively gaining ground with the weight of transnational political bodies. The first paper, “Pronunciation Skills in Legal English for Interpreters: English Latinisms and Cognates” analyses a gap in interpreter training regarding the use of adapted and unadapted words of Latin origin in legal English, and emphasizes the need for a more thorough approach to specialized vocabulary learning which also includes pronunciation. This is followed by an innovative study of another almost uncharted territory: legal metaphors, entitled “The US Supreme Court Cognitive Metaphors and their Translation into Spanish: Law, Deep Roots and the Right Soil”. This paper examines the conceptual framework underlying some common metaphors in legal English, insofar as they shape legal reasoning and become a challenge for translators. The third paper in this section, “A Comparative Study of Latinisms in European Legislation. Degrees of Syntactic Integration in English, Spanish and Greek Document Versions”, deals with Latin expressions and how they have made their way into
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English, Spanish and Greek syntax, while in most cases remaining clearly recognizable as a sort of legal lingua franca. The third part of the book offers new insights into dictionaries, a tool which has had to face new challenges over the last decades and with the advent of globalization and new technologies. The first chapter, “Online Arabic-English-Arabic Specialized Dictionaries”, points out some of the shortcomings of the dictionaries presently available for specialized translation between English and Arabic, and makes a few suggestions for improvement in terms of coverage, accuracy and inclusiveness. The second contribution, “General Remarks on the Challenges of Integrating Scientific and Technical Words in General Dictionaries” deals with a problem that lexicographers have traditionally faced, and has received scant scholarly attention: i.e. to which extent scientific terms should be included in a dictionaries intended for the general public, and the amount of information they should offer. The third paper, “Gentyll On-Line Glossaries: Professional Titles of Women and Men in a Series of Fields of Activity”, is a poignant revelation of how, in spite of the alleged gender neutrality and political correctness in lexicographic practice, terminological banks continue to base human denomination on the masculine term. For their part, the fourth and fifth papers look at past lexicographic practice. The first one, entitled “The Dictionary of Richard Percyvall’s Bibliotheca Hispanica (1591): Structure and Composition”, provide insight into a 16th century grammar-cumdictionary for English learners of Spanish, analysing the criteria used, the English translation suggested and the role of Latin in its creation process. The second one, “First Anglicisms in the Spanish Press: Treatment Given in The Royal Spanish Academy Dictionary” describes the practices by domestic prescriptive authorities with regards to the admission of Anglicisms in Spanish –a rather controversial issue, especially when the self-declared role of such authority is to “cleanse” the language from impurities. The final section, entitled “New challenges, new approaches”, explores areas of vocabulary absent so far from academic analysis, either because they correspond to recent technological developments, or because scholars might have feared to tread into controversial territory. In the first study, “Swingvergüenzas A Contra Blues: A Study On Creative Code Mixing In Spanish Music”, cases of linguistic creativity are analysed, with a number of word-formation processes half-way between code-mixing and true borrowing whose stylistic effectiveness makes them attractive to music audiences. The second paper, “New Challenges in the Translation of Language for Software Applications”, looks into the localisation of software applications and the lexical problems such translation process
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entails and provides numerous examples to illustrate the major challenges translators face when adapting these terms into Spanish by using different lexical resources. The third contribution, “The Terminology of The Video Games Market: A New Type of Specialized Language” deals with a completely new product, whose innovativeness can only be equalled by its financial weight as a thriving area, and whose terminology may be challenging for those translators not familiar with the whole concept. Finally, “The Multiple Shades of Erotica: Translating Romantic and Erotic Fiction into Spanish” is a daring study of the lexical choices made by translators faced with erotic content, focusing on one of the most recent literary best-sellers whose explicit language regarding sexual organs and practices forces the translator to open new paths in the literary vocabulary in the target language.
PART I LEXICAL THEORY AND ACQUISITION
CHAPTER ONE “YOU SHALL KNOW A COLLOCATION BY THE COMPANY IT KEEPS”: METHODOLOGICAL ADVANCES IN LEXICAL-CONSTELLATION ANALYSIS MOISÉS ALMELA
Introduction Traditionally, collocation has been conceived of as a bipartite structure. In all the dominant approaches to collocation, the structure of this type of word combinations is analysed into two parts though not necessarily into two words, because one of the two parts of a collocation can be a complex item (García-Page 2011). In fact, as Martin (2008) remarks, the notion that collocation is made up of two parts is one of the few points over which most experts in the field are generally agreed. This is not to deny that there are fundamental discrepancies concerning the way the two parts are categorised. Thus, the distinction between base and collocator in the literature on phraseology establishes a hierarchical relation between an autonomous item and a dependent element (Hausmann 1979, 1990, 1998; Írsula Peña 1994; Liang 1991), while the distinction of node and collocate in corpus linguistics is purely methodological and distinguishes only between input and output in the process of collocation extraction (Jones and Sinclair 1974; Krishnamurthy 2004; Phillips 1985; Sinclair 1991). However, over and above these differences, there is a common ground shared by all these approaches. All of them describe collocation as a relation between two parts. The idea of collocation as a bipartite structure has been called into question by research conducted in the framework of the Lexical Constellation model (hereinafter, LCM), developed by members of the LACELL research group at the University of Murcia (Cantos & Sánchez, 2001; Almela 2011a; Almela et al. 2011a, 2011b). Central to the LCM
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programme is an attempt to optimise the methods of semantic description used in corpus-based lexicology. In pursuing this goal, previous LCM research has concluded that the established dualism of node and collocate is not suitable for capturing the complexity of collocational relations. The main reason for this is that the strength of attraction between a node and a collocate cannot be established independently of the effects produced by other collocations of the same node. Besides, these effects have implications for the analysis of meaning. Hence, where the Firthian motto reads: “You shall know a word by the company it keeps”, the LCM adds: “Collocations, too, shall be known by the company they keep”. In fact, much of the company attributed to individual words in collocational studies is in reality attributable to an interplay of different collocational patterns. While collocational research has mostly been concerned with investigating the effect of a word on neighbouring words, LCM research has directed the attention towards the effects that a collocation produces on neighbouring collocations. For an overview of theoretical foundations of the LCM and potential applications in the field of lexicography, the reader is referred to Almela et al. (2011b). The main difference between the LCM and other approaches to the phenomenon of interlocking collocation lies in the account of interactions among bi-grams. Like lexical constellations, collocational networks (Williams 1998, 2001; Alonso et al. 2008) and collocation chains (Alonso Ramos and Wanner 2007) represent forms of co-occurrence patterning where two or more collocations share one of their elements. With respect to these approaches, the specific contribution of the LCM lies in the development of a method for describing dependencies among different collocates of a node. In addition to stating the fact that two or more observed collocations have an element in common, the LCM apparatus is suited to determine whether the presence of one of these collocations increases or diminishes the probability of the other. Further differences include the fact that collocational networks are conceived to describe the vocabulary of specialised sublanguages, while the LCM has so far been applied to the description of general English. Also worth mentioning is the difference with respect to the theoretical background research into collocation chains. The study of collocation chains carried out by Alonso Ramos & Wanner (2007) is informed by Meaning-Text Theory, whereas the LCM adopts a usage-based approach to language. The aim of this study is to present a methodological innovation in the LCM. The new version presented in this paper introduces a step consisting in the use of clustering techniques. This step is aimed at guiding the
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description of the semantic relations underlying the network of cocollocations (i.e. collocations that are strengthened or co-activated by the presence of other collocations of the same node). The paper is formally structured as follows. The next section provides a summary of the LCM methodological framework and explains the new step introduced in this study. Then, section 3 will present the new methodology at work. The collocational patterns analysed include interactions of verbs and premodifiers in the lexical environment of the noun decision. Finally, section 4 will discuss the findings and make suggestions for further research.
The Method of Constellational Analysis At present, the method applied in the LCM consists of three main steps: (i) extraction of collocates, (ii) identification of inter-collocability relations, (iii) semantic grouping and analysis of co-collocates. The first step involves simply an extraction of statistically significant cooccurrences (collocates) of a node word. At this point there is no difference with respect to standard practices of collocation extraction in corpus linguistics. The specificity of constellational analysis is introduced in the second step. It is at this point where the distinction between the categories of collocate and co-collocate is established. LCM research has identified so far two main forms of co-collocation, that is, of inter-collocational dependency (Almela et al. 2011b). The first one is positive inter-collocability, and the second one is negative intercollocability. Positive inter-collocability obtains in cases where one collocation makes a contribution to the activation of another collocation of the same node. For example, the probability that reject goods converges with faulty goods is higher than the probability of reject co-occurring with goods. This can be interpreted as an indication that the selection of one of these collocations favours the selection of the other. Negative inter-collocability obtains when the collocability of a node and a collocate is restricted by the presence of other collocates of the same node. For example, the probability of ship goods converging with faulty goods is considerably lower than the probability of ship co-occurring with goods. This indicates that the selection of one of these collocations repels the selection of the other. The technique for detecting cases of positive and negative cocollocation is based on comparisons of conditional probabilities (Almela et
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al. 2011b). The values compared in this phase of constellational are the following ones: x The probability that a collocate of the node is selected given as a fact the co-occurrence of the node and another collocate: P(c1|n,c2), where n stands for the node, and c1 and c2 represent two different collocates; x The probability that the same collocate (c1) is selected given as a fact the occurrence of the node: P(c1|n). For the sake of brevity, we will refer here to the first value as P1, and to the second one as P2. P1 can be described as a value of conditional probability at the inter-collocational level, and P2 as a value of conditional probability at the intra-collocational level. If P1 is higher than P2, we can say that c1 is a positive co-collocate of c2 relative to n (Almela et al. 2011b). To render the terminology more symmetrical, we can further add that c2 is a positive co-node of c1 relative to n. This formulation expresses the fact that the collocation of c1 and n is made more probable (or strengthened) by the presence of c2. An additional requirement for positive inter-collocability is a frequency threshold. If the frequency of the 3-gram (n,c1,c2) is lower than 2, the combination is excluded from being a candidate for positive inter-collocability. Negative inter-collocability obtains when P1 is lower than P2. In this case we can say that c1 is a negative co-collocate of c2 relative to n, and conversely, that c2 is a negative co-node of c1 relative to n. This formulation expresses the fact that the collocation of the node with c2 diminishes the probability of finding the collocation (n,c1). Like the distinction between node and collocate (see Introduction), the distinction between co-node and co-collocate is purely methodological: it depends on which collocational pattern has been used as input and which one has been obtained as output. If we are investigating the contexts of the pattern faulty goods, return will be obtained as a positive co-collocate, and faulty will be the co-node of return, but if we decide to investigate the contextual effects of return goods, it may turn out that we also obtain faulty as a positive co-collocate of return. The same applies to negative inter-collocabilitymore on this issue in Almela et al. (2011b). Therefore, it is important to emphasise that inter-collocability can be mutual, although it does not have to. It may operate in the two directions, from c1 to c2 and vice versa, or only in one direction. From the fact that c1 is a positive or negative co-collocate of c2 it does not necessarily follow that c2 must also be a positive or negative co-collocate of c1. The reason for this is that conditional probabilities are directional. The probability of finding a word
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or expression a in the context of another word or expression b can be considerably higher or lower than that of finding b in the context of a. In earlier versions of the method, the third step in constellational analysis consists in the semantic grouping of co-collocates and the lexical description of the resulting structures. Unlike the previous steps, this task is not automatised and consequently depends more on intuition. Despite this weakness, the step is absolutely necessary to account for a fundamental aspect of constellations, namely, the underlying semantic motivation of inter-collocational dependencies. Previous studies have shown that words from the same conceptual domain will also tend to share a substantial amount of their co-collocates. This suggests that lexical constellations may well be interpreted as representing specific surface realisations of more abstract semantic structures (Almela et al. 2011a).
Figure 1. Some lexical constellations of goods For example, verbal collocates of goods that express a process of TRANSPORTATION tend to function as positive co-collocates of adjectives expressing DANGER. Meanwhile, adjectival collocates of goods that describe some kind of FLAW in a product tend to function as co-nodes of verbs that describe a decision of NON-ACCEPTANCE of the goods. These two patterns of co-collocation are graphically represented in Figure 1. The node is emphasised in bold type and capital letters, and each line stands for a relationship of statistically significant co-occurrence between the node and a collocate. The arrows represent relations of
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positive inter-collocability, and the circles have been used to group together words that are related within the same conceptual domain. Thus, following the steps indicated in Almela et al. (2011a), the lexical constellations displayed in Figure 1 can be turned to lexico-conceptual constellations, as in Figure 2, where the link of positive inter-collocability holds between semantic groups, and not just between individual items.
Figure 2. Some lexico-conceptual constellations of goods The semantic motivation of inter-collocability paves the way to interesting advances in the description of lexical structure. One of the reasons why collocational studies have proven so fruitful to lexicology is their capacity for identifying correlations of distributional classes and semantic classes. For example, we know that nouns occurring as direct objects of the verb face tend to share an aspect of their meaning. The list includes difficulty, challenge, crisis, dilemma, threat, problem, etc. This set of nouns constitutes both a distributional class and a semantic class. It is a distributional class because they share a distributional feature: they are statistically significant co-occurrences of the same item (face) and in the same slot (direct object). At the same time, they represent a semantic class, because they form a semantically coherent set. They all refer to concepts related to DIFFICULTY. To a large extent, the potential of collocational data for providing semantically relevant information is owed to this alignment of distributional classes and meaning groups. However, the standard
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techniques of collocational description had allowed us to detect such correlations only at an elementary, coarse-grained level of analysis. It was possible to identify semantic sets of collocates, but not semantic sets of cocollocates. In this respect, constellational analysis supersedes the traditional methods of collocation-based analysis of meaning. The technique applied in the LCM makes it possible to identify correlations of distributional and semantic classes at more than one level (i.e. not only between nodes and collocates, but also between co-nodes and cocollocates). For example, the traditional techniques of corpus collocational analysis determine that tough and difficult are collocates of decision. In the ukWaC corpus (at SketchEngine) these words form statistically significant pairs with decision within a 4:4 collocational span. The two pairs form statistically significant co-occurrences with three different measures (logDice, MI, T-score). What these techniques fail to tell us is that the presence of tough and difficult in the context of decision is motivated not by decision alone, but by interactions of the collocations tough/difficult decision with other collocational patterns of decision. While there are verbs that avoid co-collocations with tough/difficult decision for example, in the ukWaC the frequency of occurrence of review, reconsider or reverse in this context is zero there other verbal collocates of decision that are strongly associated with this pattern of inter-collocability. Thus, the verb face is a prominent co-node of tough and difficult. The probability that tough is selected as premodifier of decision is increased by almost 40 times if the collocation converges with face. A similar difference is obtained in the case of difficult. P(tough|face,decision) = 38/304 = 0.125 P(tough|decision) = 962/302679 = 0.003 P(difficult|face,decision) = 80/304 = 0.263 P(difficult|decision) = 2034/302679 = 0.007 In the light of these data, it would be inaccurate to say that tough is a collocate of decision without specifying that it is also a co-collocate of face, because the probability that tough is selected as a premodifier of decision increases with the presence of the verb face but decreases with the presence of other verbal collocates of decision, such as review, reconsider, or reverse, inter alia. Ultimately, the method of lexical-constellation analysis arises from a revision of the concept of lexical gravity. Mason (2000: 270) defined lexical gravity as “the restriction a word imposes on the variability of its
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context”, but as Cantos & Sánchez (2000) remarked, the trouble with this concept is that, contrary to what collocational studies have often assumed, the node does not exert an unlimited influence on its environment. The restrictions imposed on the variability of the context of a word are shaped by an interplay of several factors, including the attraction between different collocational pairs (and not just between words). What is more important for lexical studies is that the patterns of interaction among collocates of a node are usually motivated by an underlying semantic structure. To continue with the example above, the fact that tough and difficult are positive co-collocates of face is not unrelated to the fact that face (again as a verb) collocates with nouns that share a same semantic feature (DIFFICULTY) with the adjectives tough and difficult (e.g. face + difficulty, challenge, crisis, dilemma, threat, problem, etc.). At present, a major weakness of the LCM method for grouping conodes and co-collocates into semantic sets is that it relies mainly on the analyst’s intuition. The proposal we submit in this paper is intended to minimise the subjective component in this task and strengthen the commitment of the model to an objective methodology. One way to achieve this goal is to base the semantic grouping of co-nodes on classifications obtained from hierarchical cluster analysis. The amalgamation of co-nodes according to clustering techniques can be used as a guide to the manual amalgamation of co-collocates.
A Case Study: Lexical Constellations of Decision In this section the analytical framework sketched out above is applied to the description of lexical constellations formed around the noun decision. The methodological decisions adopted in this case study are similar to those applied in the analysis of lexical constellations of goods in earlier research (Almela 2011a), except for the fact the present study introduces the use of cluster analysis as previous step to the semantic analysis of co-nodes and co-collocates. The data and the examples have been extracted from the ukWaC corpus (1,565,274,190 tokens), accessible at the SketchEngine query system. The analysis is focused on capturing features of inter-collocability in verb + noun and premodifier + noun collocations. Previous research has proven successful in detecting cases of positive inter-collocability within this grammatical framework (Almela 2011b; Almela et al. 2011a). Therefore, all queries are syntactically restricted. We have taken into account only occurrences of the noun phrase (i.e. the adjective-noun collocation) as a
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direct object of the verb in an active construction, or as the subject in a passive construction (the connection between the two constructions is that in both cases the collocation premodifier + decision performs the same semantic role). The WordSketch function has been useful in limiting our queries to the foregoing grammatical scheme. Nevertheless, manual supervision was required in order to detect possible parsing errors. As instructed in the previous section, the method of constellational analysis applied in this study consists of four steps. Each of these steps is described in detail in the subsections below (3.1 to 3.4).
First Step: Collocation Extraction The first step was to extract a list of verbal and modifier collocates of decision. Statistical significance was defined in terms of logDice for an explanation of the advantages of this measure, cf. Rychlý (2008). The number of verbal collocates was limited to 25 due to limitations of space, given that a dendrogram containing more than 25 variables in this case, the variables are verbs would not fit in one page (see Figures 4 and 5 in the next subsection). Table 1 shows the list of 25 top verbal collocates of decision arranged in order of decreasing logDice score. The list of adjectives was allowed to be larger because a higher number of cases does not affect the size of the dendrogram but helps to make the analysis more accurate. Therefore, the list of premodifiers was extended to include 50 items (Table 2). Again, the collocates in the table have been arranged in order of decreasing logDice score. 1. make 2. reach 3. influence 4. inform 5. take
6. reverse 7. appeal 8. reconsider 9. justify 10. overturn
11. challenge 12. announce 13. review 14. welcome 15. defer
16. await 17. uphold 18. regret 19. implement 20. delay
21. confirm 22. defend 23. affect 24. issue 25. explain
Table 1. Top collocates of goods (grammatical relation: “object_of”)
Chapter One
12 1. informed 2. final 3. tough 4. conscious 5. right 6. strategic 7. unanimous 8. difficult 9. purchasing 10. investment
11. recent 12. key 13. planning 14. wise 15. important 16. judicial 17. controversial 18. own 19. policy 20. original
21. rational 22. initial 23. wrong 24. political 25. crucial 26. sensible 27. clinical 28. collective 29. court 30. major
31. quick 32. correct 33. buying 34. ultimate 35. deliberate 36. formal 37. ethical 38. future 39. brave 40. executive
41. big 42. bad 43. hard 44. tribunal 45. subsequent 46. tactical 47. momentous 48. early 49. funding 50. majority
Table 2. Top collocates of goods (grammatical relation: “modifies”)
Second Step: Identification of Co-Collocates In a second step, the values of conditional probabilities were calculated and compared following the procedure explained in section 2. Table 3 shows a sample of the data used for identifying co-collocates of one of the verbs, overturn. The first column is a list of potential co-collocates. The next column indicates the raw frequency of the whole combination (verb, premodifier, noun) in the corpus (for instance, the frequency of overturn an earlier decision). The third column provides the raw frequency data of the collocational pair formed by the noun (decision) and each of the collocates listed in the left-most column (for instance, the frequency of the collocation original decision in the corpus is 721). original early tribunal court initial executive
f(v,m,n) 23 5 13 2 4 5
f(m,n) 721 669 189 653 477 207
P(m|v,n) 5.00% 2.83% 1.09% 1.09% 0.87% 0.43%
P(m|n) 0.24% 0.22% 0.06% 0.22% 0.16% 0.07%
Table 3. Frequency and probability data for calculating co-collocates of overturn Along with the frequency of the noun, which is not shown in the table because it remains constant (302679) in all the rows, the frequency data in the second and in the third columns are necessary in order to calculate the values of conditional probabilities in the remaining columns. The fourth column returns the value of P(m|v,n), that is, the probability that the
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premodifier occurs given as a fact the occurrence of the verb + noun collocation; the second one specifies the probability that the premodifier occurs given the selection of the noun, which is formally expressed as P(m|n). Hence, these two columns return the values labelled as P1 and P2 in section 2.
Figure 3. Comparing intra- and inter-collocational conditional probabilities from Table 3 The order of the rows is determined by the difference between the values of the last two columns. Thus, the premodifier at the top of the list is the best candidate for positive co-collocation. Original is the premodifier with the highest difference between the value of P1 (intercollocational conditional probability) and of P2 (intra-collocational conditional probability). The difference between these two values is graphically represented in Figure 3. The top line represents P1, and the bottom line represents P2. The figure shows that all the premodifiers analysed in this table are positive co-collocates of overturn relative to the noun decision, and that original is the most prominent one.
Third step: cluster analysis The third step in the new version of the model is cluster analysis. Using SPSS 19 and selecting square Euclidean distance as a measure, the verbs were grouped into clusters. In the settings, the verbs were entered as variables, and the premodifiers as cases. The reason for not doing the opposite can be explained with reference to figures 4 and 5. The dendrogram in Figure 4 shows the results from clustering the 25 top
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logDice premodifiers of decision according to their distribution in collocations of decision with its top 50 logDice verbs (always within the syntactic pattern specified at the beginning of this section). This clustering is much less discriminatory than the one displayed in the dendrogram of Figure 5, which shows the clustering of 25 top logDice verbal collocates of decision according to their distribution in collocations of decision with its top 50 logDice premodifiers. This is the main reason why in this study it was decided to treat the verbal collocates as potential co-nodes and the premodifiers as potential co-collocates, rather than the other way round. The results displayed in the dendrogram of Figure 5 suggest the existence of three clusters of verbs according to their distribution in lexicogrammatical contexts of the type ‘verb + premodifier + decision’: x First cluster: {overturn uphold confirm reverse reconsider review defend regret appeal challenge welcome} x Second cluster: {influence inform affect justify implement} x Third cluster: {defer delay announce await reach issue take explain make} The first cluster is semantically more homogeneous than the other two. All the verbs in the first cluster express some aspect of a REACTION to a decision. In three verbs from the cluster, the reaction is described in terms of an axiological value, i.e. a judgment of APPROVAL or DISAPPROVAL: defend, challenge, welcome. In the remaining verbs from the cluster, the reaction described implies a process of REVISION. This subframe is organised around a temporal sequence. One of the verbs (appeal) refers to the initial stages, when the revision is demanded but still not undertaken, let alone completed. Two other verbs, reconsider and review, denote the process of undertaking the revision itself. Finally, the event denoted by four other verbs implies that the revision has already been completed. Different verbs denote different outcomes of the process of revision: confirm and uphold express an action by which the earlier decision is affirmed, while reverse and overturn express an action by which the earlier decision is altered or cancelled.
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Figure 4. Cluster analysis of 25 premodifiers More differences among the verbs from this cluster arise from their degree of contextual specialisation. Uphold, overturn and appeal are highly characteristic of the legal jargon, while the remaining verbs are more versatile in this respect. However, these are minor differences which do not alter the conclusion that the verbs from this cluster form a consistent semantic set structured around the central notion of REACTION to a prior decision. Therefore, there are good reasons to predict that the verbs from this cluster will tend to co-activate collocations describing decisions made in the past. The answer to this prediction will be given in 3.4.
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Figure 5. Cluster analysis of 25 verbal co-nodes The second cluster is smaller, as it contains only five verbs. Three of these verbs have clearly related meanings: influence, inform and affect express ways of exerting some form of INFLUENCE on a decision. Thus, INFLUENCE can be deemed to constitute the central conceptual domain of the cluster. Nevertheless, it has to be conceded that the other two verbs, justify and implement, are less directly connected to this domain. Considering that the domain INFLUENCE conveys a semantic dimension of PROSPECT (i.e. projection of possible events or state of affairs in the future), it is reasonable to expect that verbs from this cluster will tend to function as co-nodes of premodifiers referring to FUTURE EVENTS. The
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answer will be given in section 3.4, when the whole process of constellational analysis is completed. Lastly, the third cluster is less homogeneous than the other two. It contains two verbs of COMMUNICATION (announce, issue) and two verbs expressing POSTPONEMENT (defer, delay), plus three support verbs (make, take, reach) that as such are not associated with any specific conceptual domain. An indication of their status as support verbs in this context is the fact that the collocations take/make/reach a decision are equivalent to the simple verb decide, as far as denotation is concerned. The semantic relation expressed by these verbs corresponds to the lexical function Oper1 in Meaning-Text Theory (see Melþuk 1998). One member of the cluster, await, cannot be pigeonholed into any of the aforementioned categories.
Fourth step: co-node and co-collocate grouping In the fourth and last step the clusters obtained from the previous step are used as guidelines for the classification and description of intercollocability relations. Put differently, the amalgamation of co-nodes according to clustering techniques in the third step is used now as a template for the manual amalgamation of co-collocates. Following this procedure, the clusters of verbs obtained from the third step should be used now as a starting point for merging and dividing premodifiers into groups. The expectation was that co-nodes (in this case: verbs) that are grouped together in the same cluster would tend to select similar groups of co-collocates (in this case: premodifiers). If distributional classes are closely aligned with semantic classes, as is normally the case, we can predict that verbs from the same cluster will tend to activate premodifiers from related conceptual domains. Although the combination of verbs and premodifiers does not form part of any established grammatical typology of collocation, previous LCM research has shown that these two categories can interact and form semantic patterns (Almela 2011b; Almela et al. 2011b). Therefore, the classification of premodifiers according to clusters of verbs should lead, in principle, to coherent results. Table 4 contains the lists of positive co-collocates of verbs amalgamated in the first cluster (negative inter-collocability has not been taken into consideration in this empirical study). Within each list the premodifiers have been arranged in order of decreasing prominence, that is, of decreasing difference between the values of inter-collocational and intra-collocational conditional probabilities (the same criterion has been applied in tables 5 and 6 for verbs from the second and the third cluster).
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The results displayed in Table 4 are highly consistent and conform to the initial expectations that cluster analysis is an adequate starting point for grouping co-collocates under specific groups of co-nodes. Thus, the first pair of verbs to be joined together by a cluster, overturn and uphold, are also those that share exactly the same pattern of positive co-collocation. The lists of premodifiers associated with these verbs are identical. Even the order in which the premodifiers are arranged is exactly the same in both lists. verbs (co-nodes) overturn uphold confirm reverse reconsider review defend regret appeal challenge welcome
premodifiers (co-collocates) original, early, tribunal, court, initial, executive, controversial original, early, tribunal, court, initial, executive, controversial original, early, controversial, funding, initial early, original, court, initial, controversial, funding early, original original, recent, own, early, initial, controversial, tribunal, formal, funding original, controversial, difficult early court, tribunal, planning, original, bad, early tribunal, court, planning, executive, bad, original recent, tribunal, court, unanimous
Table 4. Co-collocates associated with verbs from the first cluster More generally, we can observe that the most repeated premodifiers in this cluster are related to two main conceptual domains. The first one includes premodifiers that are used to describe PAST EVENTS: original, early, initial, recent. All the verbs from this cluster are associated with at least one of the premodifiers from this list, and many verbs are associated with three of them. This is the case of overturn, uphold, confirm, and reverse, all of which exhibit positive co-collocation with early, original and initial. Notice also that review is associated with the four premodifiers from this group. The second conceptual domain that is commonly found though to a lesser extent among co-collocates associated with the first cluster is structured around the notion LEGAL SYSTEM, more specifically in connection with the setting COURT OF LAW: tribunal and court (used as premodifiers) are positive co-collocates of five verbs from this cluster
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(overturn, uphold, appeal, challenge, welcome). Besides, court occurs in the list for reverse, and tribunal in the list for review. verbs (co-nodes) influence inform affect justify implement
premodifiers (co-collocates) policy, future, political, purchasing, investment, buying, subsequent, planning, strategic, key, major, clinical, judicial, funding, initial future, policy, investment, purchasing, funding, clinical, planning, buying, strategic, subsequent, ethical investment, purchasing, future, policy, planning, buying, funding, major political, funding, policy, investment, clinical policy, strategic, tribunal, key, court
Table 5. Co-collocates associated with verbs from the second cluster The discrimination between the first and the second cluster of verbs is convincing. By comparing tables 4 and 5 we can arrive at the following conclusions: firstly, the two clusters are highly coherent internally; and secondly, there is a noticeable semantic contrast between them, which speaks for the discriminatory power of the technique applied. While the prevailing conceptual domain in co-collocates associated with the first cluster is PAST EVENT, the dominant domain in the second cluster is exactly the opposite, that is, FUTURE EVENT. All the verbs from this cluster are co-nodes of premodifiers that in some or other way describe an action of planning or a projection of future events. This is obvious in the case of premodifiers such as future, planning, and investment. The same semantic dimension is less obvious though still present in premodifiers such as strategic, policy, political. These three words relate to an action of planning, and the notion PLANNING in turn contains a reference to FUTURE EVENTS. In a different sense, the word subsequent is also related to the notion of FUTURE EVENT, because it describes a temporal sequence. Another conceptual domain that is repeated in the second cluster is the TRANSACTION frame. Buying, purchasing and investment (used as premodifiers) are perfect examples of this category note that investment is related simultaneously to the two dominant conceptual domains in the cluster, since it combines the semantic features PLANNING and TRANSACTION. Funding is also related to this domain because, after all, it also makes reference to a transfer of capital.
20 verbs (co-nodes) defer delay announce await reach issue take explain make
Chapter One premodifiers (co-collocates) final, funding, investment, hard, big final, planning, funding, purchasing, policy, key final, funding, majority, formal, unanimous, major final, initial, court final, own, unanimous, informed, correct, collective, planning, majority, sensible, formal, initial, rational final, formal, recent tough, final, strategic, difficult, major, brave, key, policy, hard, deliberate, important, political, formal, executive, conscious, momentous, crucial, sensible, early, collective, ultimate, right, controversial, tactical (none) informed, right, own, final, conscious, important, wrong, purchasing, quick, correct, difficult, investment, rational, strategic, sensible, wise, bad, crucial, key, major, ethical, tough, buying, momentous, executive, big, clinical, initial, tactical, deliberate, collective, ultimate
Table 6. Co-collocates associated with verbs from the third cluster Unfortunately, the third cluster is slightly more heterogeneous than the other two (see Table 6). Besides, the discrimination between this cluster and the previous ones is less convincing than that between the first and the second one. Put briefly, the problem is that the third cluster contains many items that were found to characterise elements from the first cluster or from the second cluster (e.g. early, initial, planning, funding, investment, policy, political). In part, this can be explained by the fact that the third cluster contains three ‘support’ verbs: take, make and reach. Support verbs are largely delexicalised and semantically underspecified. This also implies that their collocational behaviour is highly versatile that is, they occur in a wide range of lexical contexts. This remark concerns their relations not only to collocates but also to co-collocates. Compared to the other verbs in the cluster (the purely ‘lexical’ verbs), the lists of positive co-collocates attributed to the support verbs particularly to make and take, which are more frequent than reach is significantly larger and more heterogeneous.
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Figure 6. Positive inter-collocability relations among collocates of decision Yet, in spite of the presence of support verbs, there are some features that lend a certain degree of cohesiveness to the co-collocates derived from the last cluster. The most noticeable feature is that the first six verbs to be joined together in the cluster (defer, delay, announce, await, reach, issue) have the adjective final as their most prominent positive co-collocate. Moreover, there seem to be two dominant conceptual domains that are specific to this cluster. The first of them encompasses adjectives that describe the RATIONALITY of a decision: informed, rational, sensible, deliberate, conscious. The second group includes adjectives that depict a COLLECTIVITY as the agent of the decision: unanimous, collective, majority. The three words from this group are positive co-collocates of reach. The end result of the whole process is sketched in Figure 6. This figure offers a general picture of the most systematic patterns of co-collocation
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obtained from the semantic analysis of the three clusters and of the corresponding lists of co-collocates. Like in figures 1 and 2, the lines stand for statistically significant co-occurrences of the node, and the arrows symbolise links of positive inter-collocability. These arrows are oriented from co-nodes to co-collocates.
Concluding remarks The main objective of this study has been to present and put into practice a new version of the method of constellational analysis. The investigation was motivated by the suggestion that cluster analysis might provide a suitable basis for the classification and analysis of co-collocates. The evolution can be summarised as follows: in earlier versions of the model the analyst had to classify the co-collocates with the only guidance of his or her intuition; in the new version, the classification of cocollocates is assisted by the cluster solution obtained for their co-nodes. The theoretical underpinning of this strategy resides in the principle that distributional classes tend to be closely aligned with semantic classes, and consequently, that verbs from the same cluster will tend to activate premodifiers from related conceptual domains. In general, the results obtained are satisfactory, because the analysis of co-nodes that were amalgamated into clusters in the third step of the methodology dovetail with those obtained from the analysis of cocollocates in the fourth and last step. This consistency observed between the results obtained from the two steps can be summarised in two points. Firstly, it has been observed that the least homogeneous group of verbs (those from the third cluster) is also attributed the least homogenous group of co-collocates. It is not difficult to explain why the support verbs make and take admit a much broader range of positive co-collocates than the fully ‘lexical’ verbs of the list. The reason is that make and take are highfrequency items and that they are delexicalised and semantically underspecified. Secondly, there is a remarkably coherent relation between the conceptual domains assigned to specific groups of co-nodes and the conceptual domains that prevail in the corresponding groups of cocollocates. Thus, verbs related to the REACTION domain (first cluster) favour the co-activation of premodifiers related to the PAST EVENT domain. Likewise, verbs that are related to the INFLUENCE domain tend to favour the selection of premodifiers describing FUTURE EVENTS or PLANS. These conclusions reinforce the idea that cluster analysis is a suitable starting point for classifying co-collocates into semantic sets.
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Nevertheless, the method put forward in this study does not entail a suppression of the analyst’s intuition. The method is intended to impose a stricter control on the use the subjective component, but not to eliminate it. The analyst’s intuition is still needed at specific points of the analysis, for instance in cases where it is necessary to divide each group of cocollocates into smaller semantic subsets. This point is illustrated by the way the case study has been carried out. A detailed analysis of the dominant conceptual domains in each cluster would not have been possible without recourse to intuition. However, the role of intuitive judgements has been limited to a relatively fine-grained level of description and, crucially, this task has been preceded and informed by a coarser-grained classification that has been carried out automatically and on more objective grounds. In this sense, the process applied in this study can be characterised as semi-automatic. The clustering technique applied in this study supplies us with reliable coarse-grained divisions to get started, but later, when it comes to drawing finer-grained delimitations among conceptual domains, the intervention of the human analyst appears to be unavoidable. One of the main limitations with which the present study must be confronted is that the analysis of clusters was performed with 25 variables. Adding more variables to the analysis could have served to render the cluster solution more discriminatory and solve difficulties such as those encountered in third cluster of verbal collocates of decision, whose cocollocates overlap with some items derived from the first and the second cluster. Thus, a suggestion for future research is that the same empirical case study be replicated with a larger number of verbs used as variables. Another limitation that future research can resolve is the fact that this study has been applied only to a subset of the collocational field of decision. The study has taken into account only interactions between verbal collocates and modifiers of the head noun in the THEME constituent. The reason for having circumscribed the case study to a specified subset of collocational patterns was simple: as a pilot study, it was advisable to test the model on a small-scale set of data before applying it at larger scale. Now that the preliminary results have lent credibility to the model, our next steps should lead to the study of interactions among collocates in a broader range of syntactic patterns around the nodefor instance, interactions between verbal collocates and modifiers in the AGENT noun phrase, or between predicative adjectives and the subject head noun, to quote only some of the possibilities that can be explored in later studies. It is reasonable to expect that, with a higher number of variables and a broader range of contextual patterns, the replication of this
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study in forthcoming LCM research will lead to more accurate results and more revealing findings.
Acknowledgements This study presents preliminary results from a research project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education (Ref. FFI2012-38724). We are grateful for this financial support.
Bibliography Almela, M. (2011a). Improving corpus-driven methods of semantic analysis: a case study of the collocational profile of incidence. English Studies 92 (1), 84-99. —. (2011b). The case for verb-adjective collocations: corpus-based analysis and lexicographical treatment. Revista de Lingüística y Lenguas Aplicadas 6, 39-51. Almela, M., Cantos, P. & Sánchez, A. (2011a). From collocation to meaning: revising corpus-based techniques of lexical semantic analysis. In I. Balteiro (Ed.), New Approaches to Specialised English Lexicology and Lexicography. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press, 57-72. Almela, M., Cantos, P. & Sánchez, A. (2011b). Towards a dynamic combinatorial dictionary: a proposal for introducing interactions between collocations in an electronic dictionary of English word combinations. In I. Kosem & K. Kosem (Eds.), Electronic Lexicography in the 21st Century: New Applications for New Users. Proceedings of eLex 2011, Bled, 10-12 November 2011. Ljubljana: Trojina, 1-11. Alonso A., Millon, A. & Williams, G. (2011). Collocational networks and their application to an E-Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Verbs in Science (DicSci). In I. Kosem & K. Kosem (Eds.), Electronic Lexicography in the 21st Century: New Applications for New Users. Proceedings of eLex 2011, Bled, 10-12 November 2011. Ljubljana: Trojina, 12-22. Alonso Ramos, M. & Wanner, L. (2007). Collocation chains: how to deal with them? In K. Gerdes K., T. Reuther & L. Wanner (Eds.), Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Meaning-Text Theory, Wiener Slawistischer Almanach, Sonderband 69. Munich: 1120.
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Cantos, P. & Sánchez, A. (2001). Lexical constellations: what collocates fail to tell. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 6 (2), 199-228. García-Page, M. (2011). Collocations complexes (application à l’espagnol). Lingvisticae Investigationes 34 (1), 68-111. Hausmann, F. (1979). Un dictionnaire des collocations est-il possible?. Travaux de linguistique et de literature 17 (1), 187-195. —. (1990). Le dictionnaire de collocations. In F. Hausmann, O. Reichmann, H.E. Wiegand & L. Zgusta (Eds.), Wörterbücher, Dictionaries, Dictionnaires: Ein internationals Handbuch zur Lexicographie / An International Encyclopedia of Lexicography / Encyclopédie internationale de lexicographie, Vol 2. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1010-1019. —. (1998). O diccionario de colocacións. Criterios de organización. In Actas do I Coloquio Galego de Fraseoloxía (Centro Ramón Piñeiro, Santiago de Compostela, 1997), 63-81. Írsula Peña, J. (1994). Substantiv-Verb-Kollokationen. Kontrastive Untersuchungen Deutsch-Spanisch. Frankfurt a. M.: Peter Lang. Jones, S., Sinclair, J. (1974). English lexical collocations. A study in computational linguistics. Cahiers de Lexicologie 24: 15-61. Krishnamurthy, R. (Ed.) (2004). English Collocation Studies. The OSTI Report. London: Continuum. Liang, S. Q. (1991). À propos du dictionnaire français-chinois des collocations françaises. Cahiers de Lexicologie 59 (2), 151-167. Martin, W. (2008). A unified approach to semantic frames and collocational patterns. In S. Granger & F. Meunier (Eds.), Phraseology. An Interdisciplinary Perspective. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 51-65. Mason, O. (2000). Parameters of collocation: the word in the centre of gravity. In J.M. Kirk (Ed.), Corpora Galore. Analyses and Techniques in Describing English. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 267-280. Mel’þuk, I. (1998). Collocations and lexical functions. In A.P. Cowie (Ed.), Phraseology. Theory, Analyses and Applications. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 23-53. Phillips, M. (1985). Aspects of Text Structure. An Investigation of the Lexical Organisation of Text. Amsterdam: North Holland. Rychlý, P. (2008). A lexicographer-friendly association score. In P. Sojka & A. Horák (Eds.), Proceedings of Recent Advances in Slavonic Natural Language Processing, RASLAN 2008. Brno: Masaryk University, 6-9. Sinclair, J. (1991). Corpus, Concordance, Collocation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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Williams, G. (1998). Collocational networks: interlocking patterns of lexis in a corpus of plant biology research articles. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 3 (1), 151-171. —. (2001). Mediating between lexis and text: collocational networks in specialised corpora. ASp (online) 31-33, 2-12.
CHAPTER TWO FROM EFL TO CLIL: TEACHING AND LEARNING VOCABULARY IN THE PRIMARY CLASSROOM MARÍA TABUENCA CUEVAS AND GEMA ALCARAZ MÁRMOL
Introduction: From EFL to CLIL in Primary Education The focus on foreign language learning in primary education in Spain is currently going through many changes. Until recently, English as a foreign language (EFL) was relegated to one subject taught throughout the curriculum between two to three hours a week depending on the grade. Language learning at this level has traditionally been based on the development of the four skills: speaking, listening, reading and writing with the use of textbooks in the classroom. According to Nation (2001) a minimum of 2000 words would be necessary to be able to communicate at a basic level in a foreign language. At the end of six years of classroom instruction, students were expected to have acquired sufficient receptive vocabulary and productive vocabulary knowledge in English. Receptive vocabulary corresponds to the words a student can understand in contrast to productive vocabulary which are the words that a student can produce. This vocabulary can also be grouped into structural vocabulary (prepositions, auxiliary verbs, etc.) and lexical vocabulary, (less frequent words) which have more weight of meaning. Nonetheless, two studies by Jiménez and Moreno (2005), Jiménez and Terrazas (2008) have shown that primary school students in many cases only reached a level of 1000 words at the end of sixth grade. These results bring to the forefront the little attention that is paid to vocabulary in the classroom reflecting the perspective put forth by Milton (2009: 1) that “outside the arena of specialist vocabulary studies there seems to be a
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long-standing idea that words are just words and that learning words is unsystematic”. Current changes within the last five years, that include the introduction of bilingual Spanish/English programmes in many schools, have shifted the focus from language learning to learning the content of curricular subjects using English. To this end Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) methodology is being used in the classroom. This type of methodology can be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, students are expected to improve their skills in a second language. On the other hand, the change from L1 (Spanish) to L2 (English) as the language of instruction may increase the degree of difficulty in the acquisition of content. This added difficulty may lead to the student’s frustration and lack of motivation, which largely affects the learning process which makes L2 learning so important in CLIL. In general terms, within the CLIL methodology, the L2 is expected to be learned implicitly, as it is the content of the subject which is the main thread of the lesson (Ellis, 1994: 24, cf. Milton, 2009). Vocabulary is acquired by means of reading texts, listening to the teachers’ explanations and communicating with the teacher and other students in the L2. This does not mean that explicit reference to the L2 should be made. In fact, it is recommended to pay attention to target words or structures that can be especially important for the content to be taught, especially at low levels (Coyle et al., 2010). Thus, the lack of emphasis on vocabulary in language acquisition is once more made evident. Vocabulary is essential in language learning, and it is especially important in a CLIL context, where the language is not the object to be learned but the vehicle through which learning is expected to be transmitted. Nonetheless, there is no consensus and no focus on the methodology for vocabulary acquisition, one of the essential stepping stones in acquiring language proficiency as vocabulary is seen as “unchallenging as a pedagogical or an academic issue” (Milton, 2009: 1).
Word Frequency Research has shown that there are different factors that affect how students acquire vocabulary and one of these is word frequency. The number of times a student has been exposed to a word has been the basis for many studies which have tried to ascertain how many times it is necessary to see a word before it is acquired. Mason & Krashen (1997) and Grabe & Stoller (1997) argue that exposure to language leads inevitably to language learning; this is in sharp contrast to studies by
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Coady (1997) who shows that this is not the case. However, the literature in the field shows there is no consensus on the number of times a word needs to appear before it is assimilated. The table below summarises some of the results of studies in the field. Author Kachroo (1962) Saragi, Nation & Meister (1978) Bunker (1988) Horst et al. (1998) Hulstijn, Hollander & Gradius (1996) Rott (1999) Reyes (1999) Nation (1990 Waring & Takaki (2003) Piagada & Schmitt (2006) Webb (2007)
Word repetitions Up to seven Ten occurrences At least five At least eight Two or three encounters Two encounters, but six exposures are necessary for the effect to be significant No less than nine occurrences are needed Five to sixteen exposures Ten encounters Twenty occurrences Ten encounters
Table 1. Number of word repetitions necessary for language acquisition (Alcaraz-Mármol, 2010) This number of word repetitions must not be confused with the idea that students will automatically integrate new vocabulary idea, or that vocabulary acquisition is not based on explicit instruction (Harris and Snow, 2004). Research has shown that exposure alone to vocabulary is not a guarantee for the acquisition of vocabulary. Studies by Alcaraz-Mármol (2010: 189) have clearly demonstrated that “intensive and extensive repetition together with some explicit attention to vocabulary” have shown better results in retention. At this point it is necessary to discuss what type of vocabulary students are exposed to in the primary classroom.
Vocabulary in textbooks As previously mentioned, textbooks for English language are the primary source for language for students. Recent studies have shown that the type of vocabulary varies greatly in different textbooks resulting in uneven exposure to vocabulary and word types (Scholdfield 1991; Scott 2005). Textbooks do not seem to follow a specific pattern in the way vocabulary is introduced, and no rational is found behind the way vocabulary is presented. Accordingly, the teaching of vocabulary is dealt with arbitrarily.
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Mancebo (2005) has discovered that textbooks in Spain in general do not follow the guidelines of the European Framework of Reference regarding word frequency and word selection, albeit these guidelines are general. Jiménez and Mancebo (2008) have shown that the focus is on grammatical terms which generally follow the pattern of nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs in decreasing repetition. They have also compared textbooks and have found that specific vocabulary changes in different textbooks, thus stating that there is a clear “lack of systematic criteria in English L2 textbooks regarding the number of words and the type of vocabulary contained in them” (p.162). They have called for parameters to specify what kind of vocabulary students should know at the end of each educational stage. Thus, the selection of appropriate vocabulary and its arrangement is one of the main issues in L2 vocabulary teaching. To this respect we should have realistic expectations about what learners can learn, what they cannot learn and what they need to learn. Frequency is the basis of a pioneering attempt to establish solid criteria in the selection of vocabulary: the Carnegie Report, which was part of the Vocabulary Control Movement that arose towards the second half of the 20th century. Although it is considered a reference, some problems can be found. Some scholars warn about relying exclusively on frequency for vocabulary selection. One of the most noteworthy weaknesses of the Carnegie Report is the modest pedagogical usefulness of frequency lists (Richards, 1974). According to McCarthy (1990) some of the most frequent words are “empty words”, devoid of semantic meaning, such as articles or pronouns. Another fact to consider is that language is in continuous change: new terms appear and some terms change their frequency of use. Therefore, it seems that L2 vocabulary teaching should not just be exclusively based on frequency, as “the single word-frequency list alone is not sufficient and must be supplemented by psychological considerations” (McCarthy, 2001). In fact, Schmitt states that “word frequency alone is not enough as there are many words which all learners […] are almost sure to need even though they do not occur very high up on frequency lists” (2000: 270). In this line, authors such as Allen (1983) and White (1988) claim that a vocabulary syllabus should be designed on the bases of what the student needs. We need to identify the vocabulary that best adapts to the learners’ communicative requirements. White (1988) highlights the criteria of availability, opportunism and centers of interest as the three aspects under which school syllabi should be designed. That means that the learners’
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communicative needs should be taken into consideration as the first thing in materials design. Consequently, another issue which should be discussed is that most textbooks for EFL in primary education have a set of routine activities designed for vocabulary acquisition. In general there is little variety in the types of exercises which include: gap fill, mix and match, and multiple choice exercises. These exercises provide vocabulary practice once in that specific activity. In contrast, in order for vocabulary to be acquired Stahl (2005), among others, points out that repetition (not repetitive activities) and multiple exposures to vocabulary are necessary. Others like Anderson & Nagy (1991) point out the need for direct instruction of vocabulary for a specific text. This leads to the need for vocabulary tasks to be restructured as necessary (Kamil, 2004) for vocabulary acquisition. The real objective as described by Stahl & Kapinus (2001) must be the following: that knowing a word does not refer only to knowing the definition but also the relationship with other words, and the word functions in different contexts.
Receptive knowledge and productive knowledge In language learning skills are often not compensated; this is also the case in vocabulary acquisition. Lexical competence consists of receptive (R) and productive (P) knowledge. As Nation states: “receptive knowledge involves perceiving the form of a word while listening or reading and retrieving its meaning. Productive knowledge involves wanting to express a meaning through speaking or writing and retrieving and producing the appropriate spoken and written word form” (2001: 24). Passive knowledge of lexis is often wider and includes the ability of comprehending core meanings of lexis. According to Laufer & Nation (1995), productive knowledge is more complex, as productive knowledge requires familiarisation with a type of information that the learner has to be able to recall, whereas receptive knowledge only requires partial information of that concept. In fact, we have to bear in mind that, especially at low levels, a new L2 word hardly has any relationship with other L2 words, as L2 words are not highly integrated, given that their links are not very strong. On the contrary, connections between L1 words are much stronger, providing the speaker with the ability to “integrate information across and within sentences and to generate accurate syntactic and semantic inferences about words” (Nassaji, 2006: 398). What seems clear from the research is the importance of vocabulary knowledge in being able to understand and communicate in a foreign
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language. However, we should not think that receptive knowledge of vocabulary comes completely before productive vocabulary learning. It seems more appropriate to consider them two overlapping areas within the learner’s general cognitive system (Melka, 1997). Scholars claim that they may complement each other (Griffin & Harley 1996; Waring 1997), far from the idea that these two dimensions of knowledge constitute an ordered linear continuum.
Implications for CLIL The importance of vocabulary acquisition in CLIL cannot be underestimated. All interaction in the classroom is done in the foreign language. Studies have clearly shown that the number of words a student is familiar with is essential to following and understanding a lesson. To be able to follow classes students need to have assimilated between 2000 and 3000 of the most common words of a language (Schmitt, 2000). The end goal of language acquisition in spoken discourse, as pointed out by Nation (2006), would be that 6,000-7,000 word families are necessary to understand spoken text and that 8,000 to 9,000 word families are needed to understand a written text. Thus, students would be expected to know what a word means, how to transform it, and when to use it. It stands to reason that as students are learning content and language is the vehicle, there must be a special focus on specific vocabulary regarding content. How is this to be done simultaneously? Nation (2001) has pointed out that knowing a word involves a complex procedure shown in the table below. Each section of the table is divided into three parts as well as indicating productive and receptive knowledge. The first section, Form, includes knowing what a word looks like and sounds like. In addition, it includes the knowledge of word parts for word family creation. The second part, Meaning, which refers to the ability of link the L2 word to the most accurate word in the L1 maintaining the right connotations. The third section of the table is often the most complicated for language learners as it deals with how the language is used. If the end goal in CLIL is for students to perform like native speakers, this would mean that students need “to learn thousands of words … to discover which words can be combined and which cannot …” (Milton, 2009: 2). CLIL provides the opportunity for students to see vocabulary in meaningful situations and with the classroom. This is closely related to the Involvement Load Hypothesis (Laufer & Hulstijn, 2001), which suggests that the higher the degree of involvement and cognitive effort during word processing the better for acquisition. Recent studies seem to confirm the
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hypothesis. Keating (2008) observed that beginners obtained better retention results if they completed a sentence writing exercise than if they just filled blanks. In the same line, Lu (2013) found out that at the same time blank-filling was more beneficial for acquisition than just reading. This hypothesis is consistent upon the components of need, search and evaluation. The first one points to the external or internal learner’s need to know the meaning of a word. The second one leads the learner to search for the meaning of a word in alternative ways, for instance asking the teacher or looking up in the dictionary. As for the third aspect, evaluation is a constant in CLIL. Content is transmitted in the L2 and the L2 is the vehicular language in the classroom, so that the learner is permanently – consciously or unconsciously – evaluating one’s own performance. These aspects have to be normally promoted in EFL through different activities. Nonetheless, they are present in CLIL due to the very nature of this methodology itself. Spoken Form
Written Word parts Form and meaning
Meaning
Concepts and referents Associations Grammatical functions
Use
Collocations Constraints on use (register, frequency)
R What does the word sound like? P How is the word pronounced? R What does the word look like? P How is the word written and spelled? R What parts are recognisable in this word? P What word parts are needed to express the meaning? R What meaning does this word form signal? P What word form can be used to express this meaning? R What is included in the concept? P What items can the concept refer to? R What other words does this make us think of? P What other words could we use instead of this one? R In what patterns does the word occur? P In what patterns must we use this word? R What words or types of words occur with this one? P What words or types of words must we use with this one? R Where, when, and how often would we expect to meet this word? P Where, when, and how often can we use this word?
Table 2. Description of “what is involved in knowing a word”, from Nation (2001: 27)
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Pedagogical Implications Many of the same difficulties regarding vocabulary acquisition in EFL in primary education are currently still part of the problem with CLIL methodologies. One of the hurdles is the identification of what vocabulary needs to be taught and learned. It is necessary to highlight that this is not an exclusive problem of the Spanish Primary Education system, but a much wider issue. Language learning levels are currently outlined by the Common European Framework of Reference of Languages (2001) in which the four skills are described and graded by level from A1 to C2. Nevertheless, within the framework, there is an absence of specific vocabulary guidelines for these levels. This is a key issue which should be addressed (Milton, 2009; Mancebo, 2005). Material in the classroom and classroom language needs to take into consideration both receptive and productive knowledge (Merikivi & Pietilä, 2014). It is essential for students to be able to quickly acquire the minimum number of words to be able to follow classes and thus be able to consciously become aware that learning vocabulary is not only based on learning meaning but also on form and use. This awareness would enable students to understand the complexity of vocabulary and would help in the acquisition of word families. Classroom activities need to be adapted to incorporate a greater involvement load. It is clear that students neither assimilate vocabulary by simply seeing it, nor by doing activities that do not promote involvement. Research has shown that students need to be actively engaged in the acquisition of vocabulary and aware of form, meaning and use if they are to become proficient in the language. With all this in mind, it is important to be aware of the changes that underlie the shift from EFL to CLIL, where most L2 learning occurs implicitly, and where, at the same time, L2 communicative skills need to be developed in order to follow lessons. That is why CLIL methodologies need to be developed which specifically help to promote vocabulary learning as vocabulary the key (Wilkins, 1972), and this implies developing extensive word learning strategies. Therefore, we propose some pedagogical tips to bear in mind, so that the input received by the learners triggers the acquisition of target vocabulary: Make the most of the multiple focus provided by CLIL: promote reflection on the process of vocabulary learning using involvement load activities.
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x Once the expected silent period is overcome, students should communicate more than the teacher to work on not only receptive vocabulary but also on productive vocabulary. x Promote meaning negotiation. x Work on word forms to create word families which in turn promotes greater vocabulary acquisition. x The power of word association: Use semantic fields in explanations of concepts and promote the construction of semantic fields in learners. x Make students aware of their growth in vocabulary size.
Bibliography Alcaraz-Mármol, G. (2010). The role of frequency in the foreign language classroom. Malaysian Journal of ELT research 6, 167-194. Allen, V. (1983). Techniques in teaching vocabulary. New York: OUP. Anderson, R. & Nagy, W. (1991). Word meanings. In R. Barr, M. Kamil, P. Mosenthal & P.D. Pearson, (Eds.), Handbook of Reading Research, Vol. 2. New York: Longman, 690-724. Coady, J. (1997). L2 vocabulary acquisition. A synthesis of the research. In J. Coady & T. Huckin (Eds.), Second language vocabulary acquisition. New York: Cambridge University Press, 273-290. Council of Europe. (2001). Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment. Cambridge: CUP. Coyle, D., March, D. & Hood, P. (2010). CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning). Cambridge: CUP. Ellis, R. (1994). The Study of Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: OUP. Grabe, W. & Stoller, F. L. (1997). Content-based instruction: Research foundations. In T. A. Snow & D. T. Brinton (Eds.), The content-based classroom: Perspectives on integrating language and content. White Plains, NY: Longman, 5-21. Griffin, J.F. and Harley, T.A. (1996). List learning of second language vocabulary. Applied Psycholinguistics 17 (2), 443-460. Harris, V. & Snow, D. (2004). Classic Pathfinder: Doing it for themselves:focus on learning strategies and vocabulary building. London: CILT. Jiménez Catalán, R. M. & Mancebo, R. (2008). Vocabulary input in EFL textbooks. Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada 21, 147-166. Jiménez Catalán, R. M. & Moreno Espinosa, S. (2005). Using Lex30 to measure the L2 productive vocabulary of Spanish primary learners of EFL. Vial 13 (2), 27-44.
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Jiménez Catalán, R. M. & Terrazas, M. (2008). The Receptive Vocabulary of English Foreign Language Young Learners. IJES 2 (2): 201-15. Kamil, M. L. (2004). Vocabulary and comprehension instruction: Summary and implications of the National Reading Panel findings. In P. McCardle & V. Chhabra (Eds.), The voice of evidence in reading research. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes. Keating, G.D. (2008). Task effectiveness and word learning in a second language: the Involvement Load Hypothesis on trial. Language Teaching Research 12, 365-386. Laufer, B. & Hulstijn, J. (2001). Incidental vocabulary acquisition in a second language: the construct of task-induced involvement. Applied Linguistics 22 (1), 1-26. Laufer, B. & Nation, P. (1995). Vocabulary size and use: lexical richness in L2 written production. Applied Linguistics 16(3), 307-322. Lu, M. (2013). Effects of four vocabulary exercises on facilitating learning vocabulary meaning, form and use. TESOL Quaterly 47, 167-178. Mancebo, R. (2005). ¿Hasta qué punto los libros de texto de primaria se adecuan a las directrices de enseñanza de vocabulario del marco común?. Paper presented at the commemoration of the European Day of Languages. University of Valladolid. Mason, B. & Krashen, S. (1997). Extensive reading in English as a foreign language. System 25 (1), 91-102. McCarthy, M. (1990). Vocabulary. Oxford: OUP. —. (2001). What is an advanced level vocabulary? SELL 8(3), 149-163. Melka, F. (1997). Receptive vs. productive aspects of vocabulary. In N. Schmitt & M. McCarthy (Eds.), Vocabulary: Description, acquisition and pedagogy. Cambridge: CUP, 84-102. Merikivi, R. & Pietilä, P. (2014). Vocabulary in CLIL and in Mainstream Education. Journal of Language Teaching and Research 5(3), 487497. Milton, J. (2009). Measuring second language vocabulary acquisition. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Nassaji, H. (2006). The relationship between depth of vocabulary knowledge and L2 learners’ lexical inferencing strategy use and success. The Modern Language Journal 90 (3), 387-401. Nation, P.S.N. (2001). Learning Vocabulary in Another Language. Cambridge: CUP. —. (2006). How large a vocabulary is needed for reading and listening? The Canadian Modern Language Review 63, 59-81. Richards, J.C. (1974). Word lists: problems and prospects. RELC Journal 5(2), 69-84.
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Schmitt, N. (2000). Vocabulary in language teaching. Cambridge: CUP. Scholfield, P. (1991). Vocabulary rate in coursebooks: Living with an unstable lexical economy. Proceedings of 5th Symposium on the Description and/or Comparison of English and Greek. Thessaloniki: Aristotle University, 11-32. Scott, J.A. (2005). Creating opportunities to acquire new word meanings from text. In E.H. Hiebert & M. Kamil (Eds.), Teaching and learning vocabulary: Bringing research to practice. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 69-91. Stahl, S. (2005). Four problems with teaching word meanings (and what to do to make vocabulary an integral part of instruction). In E. H. Hiebert & M. L. Kamil (Eds.), Teaching and learning vocabulary: Bringing research to practice. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 95-114. Stahl, S. A. & Kapinus, B. (2001). Word power: What every educator needs to know about teaching vocabulary. Washington, D.C.: National Education Association. Waring, R. (1997). A study of receptive and productive learning from word cards. Studies in Foreign Language and Literature 21(1), 94-114. White, R. (1988). The ELT Curriculum: design, innovation and management. Oxford: Blackwell. Wilkins, D.A. (1972). Linguistics in language teaching. London: Arnold.
PART II LEGAL TERMINOLOGY
CHAPTER THREE PRONUNCIATION SKILLS IN LEGAL ENGLISH FOR INTERPRETERS: ENGLISH LATINISMS AND COGNATES MIGUEL ÁNGEL CAMPOS PARDILLOS
Legal Latin and Legal English Until very recent times, Latin has exerted a great influence upon legal language, both in the civil law and in the common law system. The reasons for this can be found at the very roots of both systems. Indeed, most European legal traditions are largely indebted to Justinian’s Corpus Iuris Civilis, which provided the foundation of the ius commune, but one must also consider also the influence of Canon law in the Middle Ages, or of legal philosophy (especially Cicero and Aquinas). In fact, until the 19th century, Latin was the language of legal science. In the case of Legal English, due to a number of historical reasons, one can still find a great number of Latin expressions, in spite of the fact that Latin (in addition to syntax, impersonal constructions, etc.) has been singled out as one of the reasons for unnecessary obscurity in legal communication. As a number of scholars have mentioned (MacLeod 1997; Tiersma 1999), there is still a great presence of Latin and Latin-based words in Legal English, higher than one would expect given that English is not a Romance language; in fact, some authors, such as Green (2008: xi), remark that 60% of English vocabulary is of Latin and Greek origin, and this figure might reach 90% in some areas of technical and specialised vocabulary. Curiously enough, many legal professionals and theorists consider that Latinisms serve a purpose, arguing that they convey a clear and concise meaning, and that their use prevents ambiguity. Some experts even believe that Latin acts as a sort of “legal lingua franca” allowing judges, law professors and legal experts to communicate beyond the boundaries of their respective languages (see, for instance, Mattila 2002).
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The number of Latinisms in Legal English becomes even greater if one includes not only direct unadapted borrowings, like prima facie, but etymological Latinisms, or vocabulary elements which have entered the language through French and suffered various degrees of adaptation, such as crime, delinquency or advocate. Take, for instance, the beginning of the statement by Justice Stevens on denial of a petition for certiorari at the United States Supreme Court in 1996 (Martinez v. Quarterman, our italics): The limitations period in the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA) requires a person in custody pursuant to the judgment of a State court to file an application for a writ of habeas corpus within one year of the date on which the judgment became final (8 U. S. C. §2244(d)(1)(A). This case raises the question whether a Texas order of deferred adjudication probation is a judgment under the statute. In essence, a deferred adjudication probation order places a defendant on probation while postponing any adjudication of guilt. See Tex. Code Crim. Proc. Ann., Art. 42.12, §5 (Vernon 2006 Supp. Pamphlet). If the defendant successfully completes the terms of his probation, the charges against him are dismissed, §5(c); if he violates those terms, he is found guilty and sentenced […]
Although some of these words, like “charges” or “antiterrorism” are quite commonplace in present-day English, Latin-based vocabulary represents a certain degree of complication and abstraction for native speakers compared to Anglo-Saxon vocabulary, to the point that some of these expressions, such as habeas corpus, may be quite obscure. However, it is precisely Latin expressions and cognates which could make Legal English easier for speakers of Romance languages although, as we shall see below, “semantic transparency” is indeed one of the components of vocabulary knowledge, but pronunciation may also be essential for recognition and usage, as we shall explore in the following sections. The analysis below starts with some considerations on the pronunciation of unadapted Latinisms and Latin-based cognates, followed by a brief review on how these are dealt with in the materials used to learn Legal English and Translation. A case study is then presented including a survey on the pronunciation of such vocabulary among Spanish-speaking students. An analysis is made of the results, with various conclusions being drawn which might be worth taking into account towards the preparation of Legal English or Legal Translation courses or materials, and in general, when designing ESP syllabi.
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The pronunciation of Latin and Latin-based words: different traditions and contrastive problems In this section, a distinction must necessarily be made between two types of words: non-adapted and adapted Latinisms and cognates. Non-adapted borrowings are all those words which have not suffered any spelling or morphological modification on their way from the source to the recipient language. However, lack of spelling or morphological adaptation does not necessarily mean “lack of phonetic adaptation”: all languages have examples of loanwords whose pronunciation changes, for reasons that might include lack of the relevant sound (for example, the French final /e/ or /ܭ/ of crème brulée or buffet does not occur in wordfinal positions in English, and tends to be substituted by /eܼ/, as in /ޙkrܭm bru:ޖleܼ/ or /ޖbݜfeܼ/-/ޖbݞfeܼ/), but also different stress patterns (which result, for instance, in the neutralisation of the pronunciation of all unstressed vowels, like chauffeur, changing from an original /ݕofœݒ/ to English /ݕޖԥݜfԥ/). In the case of Latin loanwords in English, there is also a variety of practices due to the different traditions in pronunciation. Kelly (1998: 196197) reminds us that, among English speakers, there are as many as four ways of pronouncing Latin: the classical (or Ciceronian), the Italian (or Dantean), the Continental (or Chaucerian) and the Shakespearean one (see Pyles 1947). In general, it appears that the prevailing pronunciation among legal professionals is that which is most adapted to English phonetics, to such an extent that lawyers attempting to use what is seen as “textbook Latin” might be reprimanded by judges (Kelly 1988: 195). This has a number of consequences: on the one hand, as some authors have noted (Balteiro & Campos, 2010), Latin cannot easily be used as a lingua franca. On the other, even those foreign learners or prospective interpreters who have received some Latin instruction may be unable to identify the expressions when used, or may make the wrong choices when pronouncing. In other words, a Spanish legal professional might not recognise a Latin expression used by an English legal professional in courtroom settings, firstly due to the various traditions in Latin pronunciation (whether the first sound of Cicero should be pronounced /k/, /t/ or /ts/), and secondly, in the case of English, due to the changes resulting from speakers applying their own native-language pronunciation rules. Indeed, one of the items studied here, prima facie, is usually pronounced in English /ޙpraܼmԥ ޖfeܼi/, whereas speakers of most Romance languages would render it as /ޖprima ޖfatie/ or /ޖprima ޖfakie/, depending on whether they have been exposed to the so-called “Church” or
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“classical” traditions 1 . Even among native English speakers differences can be found, especially between those lawyers who studied Latin at secondary school, where the classical pronunciation is the norm, and those who did not, who usually apply the English rules (for a more detailed study, see, for instance, Kelly 1996, 1998; Sobkoviak 1997). As for adapted Latinisms, non-native speakers (prospective interpreters, amongst them) also encounter problems, mostly due to the stress shift mentioned earlier. Although pronunciation is often a component of general English courses (which precede specialised English in the training of translators and interpreters), Legal English, like all specialised registers, contains a number of words of Latin origin which are seldom found in general English. In these cases, the pronunciation of items like legislature /ޖleܼݶslԥݹԥ, ޖleܼݶsޙleܼݹԥ/, cognizable /ޖkܥgnܼzԥbl/ or equitable /ޖekwܼtԥbl/) has little, if anything, to do with their cognates in other Romance languages. It has to be admitted that, unlike the case of unadapted Latinisms, advanced foreign learners are usually aware that the pronunciation of cognates is different, but this does not necessarily enable them to predict the correct rendering, as our results will show.
The pronunciation of legal English: textbooks and dictionaries After identifying the main problems in the pronunciation of Latinbased vocabulary, it is worth analysing how some of the tools at the learners’ disposal tackle this difficulty; for this purpose, a brief analysis has been made of a few of the textbooks and dictionaries used in Spanish higher education institutions when learning Legal English. As a rule, it has been found that pronunciation is taken for granted, and authors appear to assume that it has been dealt with in previous stages and, seemingly, users no longer have any pronunciation difficulties. Regarding textbooks, the “traditional” foundation of any learning process (at least in most university settings), probably the two most 1
In fact, these expressions are even more difficult to recognise because some speakers are unaware that they can be pronounced in a different manner. During a Legal English course we taught recently in Poland, some local judges and prosecutors could not come to terms with the idea that exequatur could be pronounced /䩉䧷ks䨆䩇kwe䨆tԥ/ under any circumstances. Their reasoning was “this is Latin, and there is only one way to pronounce Latin”, which is why the only conceivable rendering for them was /䧷kse䩇kwatur/. Needless to say, the debate arose because they were unable to identify the word when spoken.
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popular in Spain are Krois-Lindner and Translegal’s International Legal English (2006) and, especially, Alcaraz’s El inglés jurídico: Textos y Documentos (2007). In general, they mostly concentrate on vocabulary, and when productive skills are contemplated, these usually consist in writing and/or translation. More specifically, in the case of El inglés jurídico, since it is mainly aimed at written translation, there is, as one might expect, very little mention of pronunciation problems. However, International Legal English, which defines itself as “suitable preparation for the International Legal English Certificate” examination, does not pay attention at all to pronunciation. The book focuses on communication, and there are a number of listening and speaking exercises (with excellent audio material), but without one single pronunciation task; similarly, its ample glossary offers words and definitions, but no transcription of lexical items. Furthermore, there is no mention of Latinisms having a specific pronunciation, and although there are two exercises dealing with Latin words and expressions, they fail to comment on such differences. Probably this could be due to the fact that International Legal English is intended for upper-intermediate and advanced learners, although the book in the same series for lower-level students (Krois-Lindner et al. 2008) also ignores pronunciation. Another reason why pronunciation may be completely absent might be that learners could be expected to use the language as a lingua franca, and, hence, that native pronunciation is not seen as an important issue, although even the staunchest supporters of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) admit that comprehensibility should not be taken for granted (see Jenkins 2000). A similar disregard for pronunciation can be found in other reference materials, such as Mckay & Charlton (2005), whose glossary also lacks phonetic information, and who devote just one exercise in the whole book to the pronunciation of specific vocabulary (mostly cognates, which seems a good choice in the context of this paper). This, however, does not mean that pronunciation is disregarded by all textbooks; although Russell & Locke (1992) do not deal with pronunciation (except for the occasional note on how to read the v. in contexts like Regina v. Stevens), they offer a glossary with transcriptions, and so does Riley (1991), although neither of them contain any pronunciation exercises. Since our survey was conducted in a Spanish-speaking setting, we also examined the most widely used bilingual dictionaries, in order to see the tools at the students’ disposal. In this case, almost the only reference for students is Alcaraz & Hughes (2007). This dictionary, which has won widespread recognition (see, for instance, Fuertes-Olivera 2010), and which offers an enormous wealth of grammatical and lexical information,
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does not include phonetic transcription. Nevertheless, this is a common occurrence in many bilingual specialised dictionaries, as can be seen in other works dealing with English-Spanish legal terminology, either general (for example, Cabanellas & Hoague 1993) 2 , or specialised (amongst others, Benmaman et al. 1991). This lack of phonetic information could be solved in part through the use of online dictionaries, which now offer both transcription and audio renderings, but at training level their usage is still more restricted (because of practical limitations) than that of traditional paper-based dictionaries. Also, online dictionaries offering pronunciation are usually non-specialised ones, and therefore the fact remains that there is no “one-stop shop” for most ESP areas which offers all the information about a word, including pronunciation.
The survey In order to verify whether there were gaps in the language training of prospective interpreters, as well as the nature and causes of such gaps, the following research questions were formulated: Q1: Do prospective interpreters know the correct pronunciation of Latin-based expressions in Legal English? Q2: If not, is this due to a general lack of pronunciation skills, or rather a consequence of neglect in specific training? Q3: Are there systematic problems in the mistakes found which might make it easier to address them? The survey involved testing advanced students of legal translation on the pronunciation of a sample of 26 contextualised Latin and Latin-based words and expressions (see Appendix 1). Initially our aim was to examine the pronunciation of Latinisms (adapted or not); however, it was decided to include a French borrowing that students were familiar with (voir dire) and three “genuine” English words pertaining to legal language or to very formal registers (thwart, writ, albeit). The purpose was to analyse if the problem affected only loanwords, or could be extended to other areas of 2 One should not believe that this is a specific fault of Spanish-English legal dictionaries; the same occurs with other legal dictionaries, and, in general, with many specialised dictionaries in most ESP areas. This is in sharp contrast with the textbooks mentioned earlier, whose glossaries do offer transcription, although they are mere appendixes to non-lexicographical works: probably the explanation is that pronunciation is felt as a part of language learning, whereas dictionaries are mainly (or, sometimes, exclusively) conceived for written translation.
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specific legal vocabulary. The focus was on production; in other words, we were not concerned in this case with whether the learner would recognise (and be able to interpret) a given word or expression, but whether their notion of the rendering of such word in English would correspond to the correct pronunciation, and thus it would be recognizable by a specialised audience in certain settings. This test was given to a total of 47 students in their final year of Translation and Interpreting studies (with a general language competence of B2/C1 according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages). The students were presented with a written list of the words in appropriate legal contexts (see Appendix 1), and then exposed orally to four potential options for pronunciation, wherefrom they were to choose what they thought the correct option was. As is customary in multiple-choice testing in order to discourage blind guessing, students were penalised for wrong answers (i.e. as there were four pronunciation options, there was a 1/3 point deduction from the score for each incorrect answer, following standard practice), and were informed about such penalisation before the test took place.
Analysis of results On average, as expected, the results were not exceedingly good as regards pronunciation proficiency. The general figures are conclusive: out of 47 respondents, none was able to reach 7 marks out of 10, that is, what is generally regarded as “good”. The maximum mark obtained was 6.92, and the average mark was very low (3.63); in fact, only 27.66% obtained a mark over 5 out of a maximum of 10, and 61.7 obtained less than 4 marks (see Appendix 2). More interesting, given the purposes of our study and for potential identification of areas for improvement, are the results classified according to etymological origin of the word (see Figure 2 and Table 1). As hypothesised, while the percentage of correct answers may be qualified as “low”, it appears that words of English origin are not the ones whose pronunciation is most problematic (58.15% were right answers, even allowing for the difficulty of albeit), and that the greatest difficulties concern non-adapted Latinisms (even if the knowledge of voir dire was poor, one single item does not lead to categorical conclusions). The results appear to prove, as expected, that lexical knowledge does not always include pronunciation skills: many students who pronounced thwart correctly later remarked that they did not know what it meant, whereas it is very likely that most students knew the meaning of prima facie or modus
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operandi. The Gallicism voir dire offered an extremely high failure rate (although, of course, statistics based on one token are not very significant). Nevertheless, this was again to be foreseen, as most prospective interpreters had previously studied French (as a second or third foreign language), and the expression had been introduced to prove that knowledge of French (in the same way as with Latin) does not necessarily enable the learner to predict the adapted English pronunciation. In fact, 40.43% of respondents assumed that the French pronunciation /ޖvwܤr ޙdir/ was the correct one.
Figure 1. Results in 0-10 grade scale (number of students in each grade range)
Figure 2. Correct pronunciation according to word origin Regarding etymological Latinisms, or cognates, the degree of difficulty was slightly lower (52.62% correct answers), but nonetheless unsatisfactory considering the great weight of such lexical items in legal contexts, and also bearing in mind that this was a passive, recognition test, which tends to be simpler than active ones. As mentioned earlier, learners were aware that both the pronunciation and meaning of these words may differ from that of their cognates in their native language. However, while there is a
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great emphasis in training materials aimed at preventing students from confusing such meanings (e.g. in Alcaraz 2007: 90-81), this does not happen with pronunciation. As can be observed in the results, the students’ hypotheses regarding correct rendering are not always successful, even if they did not attempt to pronounce the words as they would in their native language. Special mention must be made of debt, as 72.34% of the respondents wrongly believed that it is pronounced *[ޖdebt], a result which suggests serious gaps in students’ pronunciation skills. Another interesting detail regarding cognates is the connection between the differences in stress structure between English and Spanish. The most visible example of this is legislature, which according to most respondents should be pronounced *[lԥܼݶޖslԥݹԥ], and not with a front stress /‘leܼݶs,leܼݹԥ/. However, pronunciation problems do not always result from differences in stress structure; for instance, conspiracy also has a different stress structure, but errors here stem from the wrong inference that the stressed vowel is pronounced like the verb (conspire), or probably the idea that the spelling i corresponds to /aܼ/ (as in piracy, which is pronounced /ޖpaܼrԥsܼ/). English origin writ albeit thwart
95.74% 14.89% 63.83%
average 58.15%
Etymological Latinism (cognate) legislature 12,77% punishable 82.98% allege 57.45% debt 25.53% felony 87.23% equitable 19.15% scrutinize 76.60% expunge 63.83% rebuttable 76.60% demur 23.40% conspiracy 63.83% certificate 38.30% inure 59.57% violent 82.98% cognizable 19.15% average 52.62%
Unadapted Gallicism prima facie 36.17% voir dire 16.36% ultra vires 68.09% habeas corpus 70.21% modus operandi 21.28% ab initio 42.55% exequatur 29.79% stare decisis 51.06% Non-adapted Latinism
average
45.59% average
21.28%
Table 1. Rate of accurate pronunciation for each specific vocabulary item according to etymological origin Finally, and also as expected, non-adapted words (Latinisms and Gallicisms) yielded the weakest results (45.59% and 21.28%, respectively); as with French, knowledge of the original Latin
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pronunciation (or even having studied Latin, which was the case with 69.44% of the participants) is no guarantee of a correct rendering in English. Inevitably, the options chosen by the students were based on the literal Spanish pronunciation of vowels (what is called in English their “European value”, that is, “a” rendered as /a/, “e” as /e/, and so forth), and very few were aware of the native reaction to written vowels, the most visible example being the /eܼ/ rendering of stressed “a” vowels in facie and exequatur. As for consonants, “c” before “i” was sometimes pronounced as /k/ (the classical pronunciation) or /ࣄ/ (like in Spanish hicimos), but seldom in the correct way (/ݕ/ in prima facie, /s/ in stare decisis). From the point of view of language training, two strategies might be mentioned in order to solve these problems: one could be the classification into fairly regular patterns (see, for instance, Kelly 1996; Stockwell and Minkova 2001: 184-186), whereby vowels are read with their English name when stressed, as in modus (the “o” being /ԥݜ/, the “i” in decisis being /aܼ/), but rendered as /ԥ/ when unstressed, as in prima, habeas). Nevertheless, the relatively high number of exceptions (the “a” in stare is /eԥ/ or /ޝܤ/, in operandi it is /æ/), and the unpredictability of consonants, might favour other more traditional strategies, such as direct memorisation rather than intuition (the number of Latin expressions being relatively low). If one should favour the latter strategy, a careful selection might be made based on legal corpora, preferably created ad hoc (there are no spoken legal corpora available), based on the predictable setting where an interpreter might need those skills, for instance, criminal or civil trials.
Concluding remarks In order to prove the importance of teaching pronunciation in legal ESP (and, as a rule, in other areas where it may be neglected), a number of potentially problematic words and expressions have been chosen, some of them unlikely to appear in general English or in other academic registers. In the previous sections, pronunciation difficulties represented by borrowings in legal language have been explored. For such purpose, three research questions were formulated, concerning prospective interpreters’ knowledge of correct pronunciations, the reasons for insufficient knowledge and the possible existence of regular patterns which might help teachers to address these shortcomings. After an analysis of the results, firstly, it appears that prospective interpreters are not aware of the correct pronunciation of Latin-based borrowings in English, the rate of accurate renderings falling below what might be admitted in settings, such as court
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interpreting, where any mistakes could have serious consequences for communication. As to the second research question, the high error rate can hardly be explained through limited language competence, since these are students relatively proficient in most language skills (all of them have passed language subjects, including consecutive and simultaneous interpreting, requiring an advanced level of B2/C1). The problems can rather be attributed to lack of training in the pronunciation of specific legal vocabulary. This component is not present in general language courses and receives scant (if any) attention in the materials used for the translation or Legal English, as seen in the previous sections. Finally, regarding the third research question, there seem to be systematic problems causing mispronunciation, such as stress shift in adapted Latinisms and unpredictable pronunciation in non-adapted Latinisms. However, the potential strategies to address such problems do not appear at first sight to be 100% error-free, since the correct pronunciation may not always be inferred from a reliable rule (as proved, for instance, by the fact that at times there are two acceptable pronunciations in English, as in modus operandi and stare decisis). The results also lead to general conclusions that may be obvious, but might need some reminding: pronunciation is not a “given” in the shift from general English to ESP. There are a number of reasons for this: firstly, the specific vocabulary in ESP does not always occur in everyday language, even in highly formal contexts. Secondly, English is a language with a great lack of correspondence between sound and spelling. Thirdly, loanwords undergo a number of modifications when entering the English language, which only occasionally lead to meaning shifts, but almost inevitably cause changes regarding pronunciation. All this confirms that specific attention should be paid to the pronunciation of non-native word stock in ESP. In some areas of ESP this is extremely important, given that, as we have seen earlier, English may not be a Romance language, but there is a great weight of Latin-based vocabulary in legal contexts (and also for instance, in science). Therefore, other approaches might be possible to ESP and translation subjects, which may be at times too much focused on vocabulary and on written communication. Another partial conclusion is that Latin can hardly be used as a lingua franca, at least in legal settings; the specific pronunciations of non-adapted Latinisms, which sometimes baffle even native speakers, might make them unrecognizable in spoken communication without specific training. This lack of comprehensibility would be even greater in oral settings involving high degrees of stress or lack of time for reflection, such as whispered
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interpreting or courtroom argument. As discussed earlier, this difficulty may be overcome through specific training, which would necessarily have to take place within each ESP area (in this case, legal language), in the shape of general rules for predictability derived from purely statistical data (including the most usual reaction to a specific grapheme), or specific training after a careful selection of the most relevant vocabulary items. We are conscious of the limitations of this study: firstly, the results are based on written tests, which could be problematic for those learners who are not familiar with phonetic transcript (although, as we said earlier, phonetic symbols are used at all stages of university education in language degrees in Spain). Secondly, the sample is a relatively small one and only includes Spanish-speaking students, which places a constraint upon the extrapolability of the results, and does not distinguish between those learners who have received previous training in Latin or not. Therefore, further research might consider supplementing the study with oral testing (with or without the support of phonetic transcript) with non-Spanish speakers (including learners, interpreters and even members of the legal profession). Also, concerning remedial action, tests might be carried out after various strategies in specific pronunciation training, comparing results obtained after teaching basic pronunciation rules with those obtained after memorisation of the vocabulary involved. Nevertheless, in spite of these limitations, it is our belief that this study has laid bare an important gap in ESP training, and that it may pave the way for further work regarding pronunciation in specialised registers.
Bibliography Alcaraz Varó, E. (2007). El inglés jurídico: Textos y Documentos. Barcelona: Ariel (6th edition). Alcaraz Varó, E. & Hughes, B. (2007). Diccionario de Términos Jurídicos Inglés-Español / Spanish-English. Barcelona: Ariel (10th edition). Benmaman, V., Connolly, N.C. & Loos, S.R. (1991). Bilingual Dictionary of Criminal Justice Terms. Longwood, FL.: Gould Publications. Cabanellas, G. & Hoague, E.C. (1993). Diccionario Jurídico / Law Dictionary English-Spanish / Inglés – Español. Buenos Aires: Heliasta. Balteiro, I. & Campos, M.A. (2010). A Comparative Study of Latinisms in Court Opinions in the United States and Spain. International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law 17 (1), 95-118. Else, G. F. (1967). The Pronunciation of Classical Names and Words in English. The Classical Journal 62 (5), 210-214.
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Fuertes-Olivera, P.A. (2010). Specialized Dictionaries for Learners. Berlin/New York: DeGruyter. Green, T.M. (2008). The Greek and Latin Roots of English. Plymouth: Rowman & Littlefield. Jenkins, J. (2000). The Phonology of English as an International Language: New Models, New Norms, New Goals. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kelly, H.A. (1986). Pronouncing Latin Words in English. Classical World 80, 33-37. Kelly, H.A. (1988). Lawyers’ Latin: Loquenda ut vulgus? Journal of Legal Education 38, 195-207. Krois-Lindner, A. & Translegal (2006). International Legal English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Krois-Lindner, A., Firth, M. & Translegal. (2008). Introduction to International Legal English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Macleod, P.R. (1997). Latin in legal writing: an inquiry into the use of Latin in the modern legal world. Boston College Law Review 39, 23551. Mattila, H.E.S. (2002). De aequalitate latinitatis jurisperitorum. Le latin juridique dans les grandes familles de droit contemporaines a la lumière des dictionnaires specialises. Revue Internationale de Droit Comparé 3, 717–758. Mckay, W.R., Charlton, H,E. (2005). Legal English. Harlow: LongmanPearson. Pyles, T. (1947). The Pronunciation of Latin in English: A Lexicographical Dilemma. American Speech 22 (1), 3-17. Riley, A. (1991). English for Law. London and Basingstoke: Macmillan. Russell, F. & Locke, C. (1992). English Law and Language: An Introduction for Students of English. London: Cassell. Sobkoviak, W. (1997). The phonetics of EAP Latinisms in EFL edictionaries. http://ifa.amu.edu.pl/~swlodek/Latin_pron.pdf (accessed 10 April 2013). Stockwell, R.P. & Minkova, D. (2001). The pronunciation of classical words in English. In English Words: History and Structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 182-199. Tiersma, P.M. (1999). Legal Language. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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Appendix 1. List of words in the survey and their respective contexts (as used in the test) 1. WRIT "Writs of summons shall be issued in the following circumstances" 2. LEGISLATURE "The Minnesota Constitution states that the size of the Legislature must be prescribed by law" 3. PRIMA FACIE "it was prima facie ineffective for counsel to abandon an investigation based on rudimentary knowledge" 4. ALBEIT "officials attended trade shows in several States, albeit not in New Jersey" 5. PUNISHABLE "If you have been convicted of a crime punishable by imprisonment in an adult" 6. ALLEGE "We do not allege any manipulation or intentional orchestration by the police" 7. VOIR DIRE “During voir dire, two judges presided at different stages" 8. DEBT "respondent Arrow, seeking to collect a debt, violated the act by using an automatic telephone dialing system" 9. FELONY "The court handles preliminary hearings in felony cases" 10. EQUITABLE "fair and equitable application of the laws" 11. SCRUTINIZE "Due process requires federal courts to scrutinize suggestive identification procedures" 12. ULTRA VIRES "the common law is generally interpreted to prohibit corporate political expenditures as ultra vires" 13. EXPUNGE "Under current Tennessee law, certain criminal convictions may be expunged" 14. REBUTTABLE "The child support guidelines shall be applied as a rebuttable presumption” 15. DEMUR "One can demur to the argument that Congress anticipated that decisions on reopening motions would be discretionary" 16. CONSPIRACY "The court sentenced Mr. Kent to 18 months imprisonment on conspiracy to distribute 5 kilograms of cocaine" 17. CERTIFICATE "The petition for a writ of certiorari must be accompanied by a certificate signed by the attorney" 18. INURE "None of its earnings may inure to any private shareholder or individual" 19. VIOLENT "establish any causal link between violent programming and violent behavior" 20. HABEAS CORPUS "State petition for a writ of habeas corpus"
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21. MODUS OPERANDI "Storch used precisely the same modus operandi that he had used time and again to falsely implicate other defendants". 22. AB INITIO: "a court rather than an arbitrator should resolve a claim that a contract is illegal and void ab initio" 23. EXEQUATUR “Whereas exequaturs were heretofore issued to the following named ..." 24. THWART "legislation has been enacted to thwart terrorist attacks" 25. COGNIZABLE "The district court dismissed this claim as not properly cognizable under the federal habeas statute" 26. STARE DECISIS "Considerations of stare decisis have special force in the area of statutory interpretation"
Appendix 2. Numerical results of the survey Numerical grade (on scale from 1 to 10) From 0 to 1 From 1 to 2 From 2 to 3 From 3 to 4 From 4 to 5 From 5 to 6 From 6 to 7 From 7 to 8 From 8 to 9 From 9 to 10
Number of students 6.38% 10.64% 23.40% 21.28% 10.64% 17.02% 10.64% 0% 0% 0%
61.7% 10.64% 27.66% 0%
CHAPTER FOUR THE U.S. SUPREME COURT COGNITIVE METAPHORS: LAW, DEEP ROOTS AND THE RIGHT SOIL LAURA VEGARA FABREGAT
Introduction The present work must necessarily be considered against the background of a broader research project on metaphors within the legal realm (cf. Vegara, 2013), which will be frequently referred to throughout this study. Several judicial opinions from the United States Supreme Court are examined in the aforementioned work in order to ascertain, amongst other things, the approximate percentage of metaphors in them, their cognitive weight and the possible strategies available when translating them into Spanish. Our main interest here, however, will not be discussing translation strategies but unfolding cognitive implications underlying metaphors. Unquestionably, many pages have been written about cognitive metaphors since George Lakoff and Mark Johnson detailed their first postulates about cognitivism (in Lakoff & Johnson, 1980a). There are very different viewpoints regarding metaphors and their role in legal language. Some authors praise this figure of speech as a highly useful linguistic device and cognitive tool, such as Murray (1984: 730), Hibbitts (1994: 241), Berger (2002: 36-38) or Twardzisz (2008: 251). Nevertheless, there are opinions that argue in favour of the opposite idea, that is, employing metaphors in legal language is, at least, not advisable (cf. Oldfather, 1994: 20 or Malem, 2006: 63). Additionally, we find other voices in support of the existence and the common usage of metaphors in different legal branches, but they show little elaboration on the cognitive side (cf. Aguiló, 2000: 21). As Tsai (2004: 7) notes: “[l]egal scholars have traditionally understood metaphor as, at worst, a perversion of the law or, at best, a
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necessary but temporary placeholder for more fully developed lines of argument”. However, as we mentioned above, many authors argue in favour of metaphors within the texts of the law, not merely as ornaments or as persuasive instruments, but as important and sometimes complex cognitive devices (cf. Dickerson, 1996: 374; Joo, 2001: 23; Morra, 2010: 387; Lipshaw, 2012: 994 or Jumanca, 2013: 366-369). We agree with this approach, since we believe that conceptual metaphors have an important function in the transmission and even in the articulation of legal thought. On many occasions there is no better way to communicate this kind of knowledge than with metaphorical statements because they can go far beyond the mere transfer of ideas and have influence on our attitudes and actions (cf. Dickerson, 1996: 377). Likewise, metaphorical thinking is paramount in some legal spheres because “[n]ot only is metaphoric reasoning inescapable, […] plays a central role in the cultivation of constitutional culture and institutional influence, two phenomena essential to the vitality of law” (Tsai, 2004: 10). The main aim of this chapter will be to stress the presence of figurative language in legal texts as a cognitive mechanism, and also to address aspects connected with some particular metaphors, their meaning and the way they convey notions, concepts and even perspectives. Hopefully, our results will contribute to gain awareness of metaphors as truly peculiar items within the framework of legal language, as powerful tools used not only for persuasion but also for the change and/or the re-channelling of public opinion. These results may, in addition, be helpful to compile interesting ideas for lexicographic studies and the translation of legal metaphors in general.
The U.S. Supreme Court and its Metaphors In this section we will briefly look at the main features of the judicial body which authors the legal opinions of our interest since our goal is to analyse its language, as already stated. Undoubtedly, the United States Supreme Court (including its texts) is a special object of study because of the importance its decisions may have, as the highest federal court in the land, with the power of judicial review (cf. Hartman et al., 2004: xi). This Court always had, and still has, great social and legal significance in the United States. We must remember that some of its decisions entailed important changes at different levels in the mentioned country (cf. Balteiro & Campos, 2010: 101-102), namely, Scott v. Sandford (1856), regarding
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slavery; Brown v. Board of Education (1954), concerning racial segregation; or Miranda v. Arizona (1966), regarding due process of law, to name only a few cases. From the linguistic standpoint, it has been suggested that the U.S. Supreme Court is quoted on certain occasions, and that it takes references from other sources (cf. Oseid, 2010: 140). The media, for instance, may often repeat some of its expressions, which eventually reach public opinion (through the newspapers and/or specialised media). This could lead to the reiteration of metaphors and also of concepts together with the perspectives linked to them. As a consequence, it would not be illogical to think that the linguistic influence of the U.S. Supreme Court is really significant. Its style and its eloquent discourse are very important in the conveyance of legal ideas and of ways of thinking. Moreover, some experts even claim that this Court, as the Supreme Interpreter of the Constitution, has substantial influence over certain aspects, such as what attitudes and actions of the American system should be reflected (cf. Dickerson, 1996: 377). Furthermore, as other experts point out, metaphors configure legal doctrine and reveal institutional relationships. These goals are achieved by employing powerful frames of judicial power, creating mental spaces for the assertion of judicial prerogatives, and invoking recurring myths so as to promote acceptance of state power (cf. Tsai, 2004: 24). Reference must be made here to many outstanding works on metaphor and law (cf. Hibbitts, 1994; Thornburg, 1995 or Alcaraz & Hughes, 2002) and, more specifically, works within the framework of legal opinions (cf. Yelnosky, 1996 or Archer & Cohen, 1998). Scholars have also examined cognitive aspects of metaphors found in U.S. Supreme Court opinions (cf. Dickerson, 1996 or Tsai, 2004). Some of these studies go beyond the issue of persuasion and conceptual transfer and explore the idea of metaphors as instruments used to foster certain ways of thinking, to control opinions, to shape our ideas. Nevertheless, “[…] it is not sufficient to recognise simply that legal metaphors shape thought. The choice of metaphor—[...]—can profoundly affect the manner in which legal thought is affected” (Berger, 2002: 38). For a better perception of the power of metaphors we must first turn to Lakoff and Johnson and their postulates about how these expressions are fundamental items of our language and cognitive system, which allow us to understand reality. Metaphors could be described as intellectual tools (cf. Lakoff & Johnson, 1999: 155) operating at a cognitive level in everyday language. We will elaborate on some of the ideas sketched by Lakoff and Johnson below.
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In summary, our goal in the present paper is to offer consideration on several metaphors possessing salient cognitive force. They somehow shape thought and present legal matters in very specific and suggestive ways. They efficiently transfer legal knowledge, and may plant a particular approach or perspective in our minds in a subtle way.
Cognitive Metaphors: A Brief Description As we have already stated, in order to understand the analysis we will present in subsequent pages, we must briefly review the theories developed by Lakoff and Johnson (and also by Lakoff, 1987a/b/c, 1990, 1993 [1979]; Lakoff & Turner, 1989; Lakoff & Johnson, 1999; Johnson, 2007), and by other cognitive scientists (cf. Fauconnier & Turner, 2002, amongst others). In very broad terms, Lakoff and Johnson conceive metaphors as cognitive instruments which are pervasive in our daily lives in thought and action, not only in language (cf. Lakoff & Johnson, 1980a:3). Metaphors stem from reality and constitute conceptual tools useful to grasp everyday (and specialised) concepts. They function at a cognitive level through a coherent system based on categories and subcategories, as well as on our physical and mental relationship with the environment and society (cf. Lakoff & Johnson, 1999: 90 and 149). In spite of the fact that this approach is quite complex, we will try to clarify some essential notions (Lakoff, 1993 [1979]: 203): “[…] metaphor has come to mean a cross-domain mapping in the conceptual system. The term metaphorical expression refers to a linguistic expression (a word, phrase, or sentence) that is the surface realization of such a crossdomain mapping […]”.
It shall be noted that in the present paper we will refer to specific instances of a conceptual metaphor as linguistic metaphors, metaphorical expressions or simply as metaphors, amongst others. Metaphorical meaning takes place thanks to conceptual mappings, that is, through the interaction of two cognitive domains: the source and the target domains. In order to understand this, we can look at the LOVE-AS-JOURNEY mapping: lovers correspond to travellers; the love relationship corresponds to the vehicle; and the lovers’ common goals are their common destinations on the journey. As we can see, a mapping is a set of correspondences which allow us to reason about love with the knowledge we use to reason about journeys (cf. Lakoff, 1993 [1979]: 207).
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Following Lakoff & Johnson (1980a), manifold types of metaphors can be identified, but there are three salient categories (cf. 1980a: 25-178): structural metaphors (they structure a notion in terms of a different notion thus creating a new idea or approach, e.g. LOVE IS A JOURNEY); orientational metaphors (they use physical space as reference and place abstract concepts around it, e.g. HAPPY IS UP, SAD IS DOWN); and ontological metaphors (they present ideas as tangible, solid things, e.g. THE MIND IS A CONTAINER). These categories were modified and new ones appeared later, as explained in some works (cf. Lakoff, 1987b/c; Lakoff & Turner, 1989), although the basic ideas remain the same. The metaphors studied here belong to a previous work, as indicated in the Introduction, where they were organised partly according to a taxonomy suggested by Moreno (2008). Moreno designed a classification for her corpus resorting to mainly to Lakoff and Johnson and their postulates. She analysed metaphors taken from press articles on politics and identifies three cognitive groups mainly, which show several subcategories in turn. We will not fully outline them here for space reasons, but the essential types were (cf. 2008: 108-109): GREAT CHAIN OF BEING metaphors, Image-schema metaphors and metaphors belonging to the generic metaphor ACTIONS ARE ACTIONS, EVENTS AND STATES. The first category contains linguistic metaphors connected with GREAT CHAIN OF BEING metaphor (GCOB) (cf. Lakoff & Turner, 1989: 166). This is an idea related to The Great Chain of Being notion, based in turn on the scala naturae, a medieval concept clearly explained by some authors (cf. Lovejoy, 1983 [1936]: 181). It can be described as a cultural model that sees the world, and everything in it, as a work of God. According to this, everything, from objects to human beings (including divine creatures), is organised vertically, and every object/being has a position in the chain depending on its own properties. God (the Supreme Being, with the most sophisticated properties) would be at the top of the chain. Human beings and animals would follow, and then the rest of beings and objects (cf. López Rodríguez, 2009: 62). By means of the GREAT CHAIN OF BEING conceptual metaphor we can apply human properties to non-human beings and vice versa. Moreover, this metaphor can ‘transform’ abstract things into physical objects. In our corpus we find examples such as: “The Government argues1 that, […]”; “[…] the parties fight a sharp preliminary action over […]”; “We conclude, consistent with the great weight of our case law […]” (cf. Vegara, 2013: 406, 422 1
Bold is ours unless otherwise stated.
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and 416 respectively). Let us note that GCOB metaphors include the abovementioned ontological metaphors. The so-called Event-Structure metaphor is closely related to Imageschema expressions (cf. Lakoff & Johnson, 1999: 170-171), the second group. It makes it possible to think about abstract things (e.g. processes, actions, goals or causes) in terms of physical space, physical force or movement, in such a way that abstract ideas are then easier to grasp and understand. Activities which have a goal would fall within this category because they can often be conceived as journeys (cf. Moreno, 2008: 443). As an illustration, our corpus contains metaphors such as these: “Both state and federal courts, in assessing its implications, have arrived at varying conclusions”; “In approaching this problem, we cannot […]” (cf. Vegara, 2013: 423). This group would encompass the previously mentioned orientational metaphors. Regarding the last group, the linguistic metaphors coming from the generic metaphor ACTIONS ARE ACTIONS, EVENTS AND STATES, we can say it comprises all those metaphorical expressions conceptualizing actions as other kind of actions, as events and even as states. The source domain action is, hence, easier to absorb. As Moreno (2008) indicates, a generic metaphor is a conceptual structure employed to make generalisations in the source domain and in the target domain on the basis of a considerable amount of linguistic statements which do not fall within any specific conceptual domain (cf. 2008: 442). The third category can be better understood through the concept of war because, as some authors claim, legal aspects are sometimes metaphorically conceived as a battle (cf. Thornburg, 1995: 232). Certainly, legal practice may bear some resemblance to violence and conflicts, and this can be observed in language: “But it must be decided peacefully, or remain a source of hostile legislation, […]”; “[…] it did not create any conflict among the Courts of Appeal, […]”. Also, thanks to the mentioned conceptual metaphor (ACTIONS ARE…), the action of analysing an argument can be presented as the act of seeing, a very dissimilar action: “Judge Ross saw no reason why the stay […]” (cf. Vegara, 2013: 439 and 445).
Legal Metaphors and Cognitive Science There are abundant studies devoted to the analysis of metaphors within the texts of law from a cognitive viewpoint, as we will show below. Inspired by Lakoff and Johnson, and by other authors, the said works
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attempt to account for the functioning of metaphors as vehicles for the transmission of ideas and also as persuasive instruments. Twardzisz (2008), as a case in point, details how it is conceptually more accessible to conceive a company as a ‘legal person’ rather than as a business organisation oriented to the production or selling of goods (cf. 2008: 251). Lipshaw (2012) offers the following idea when speaking about contracts: replacing the metaphor he defines as “contract as model” with the journey metaphor (cf. 2012: 994). This new metaphorical concept allows for a change of perspective: contracts are not viewed as a rational model of transaction, but as a journey which starts with the individual will of the parties and ends with a written document. This would make it possible: “[…] to take account of those divergent incentives and perspectives for both the before-the-fact transaction and the after-the-fact dispute resolution” (2012: 995). Furthermore, there are studies which review the preference of certain languages, such as English, for the conceptualisation of law in terms of people and natural phenomena, as we will discuss in subsequent sections and examples. Houbert (2008), similarly, stresses the presence of body metaphors in common law; the rationale underlying the use of these metaphors would be “[…] conférer une certaine humanité au droit, matière réputée aride” (2008: online). Along these lines, we discover cases such as “long-arm statute” or “thin skull doctrine”. These are specific legal concepts, but there are also general linguistic expressions which tend to add force to the text: the arm of the law, the mouth of the law or the big ear of the law (cf. 2008: online). Mention must be made of the study carried out by Larsson (2011) on copyright law. According to Larsson, the importance of cognitive postulates in this branch is paramount since “[w]hen approaching an analysis of the metaphors of copyright, the research on metaphors in cognitive linguistics is a guide” (2011: 24). This work covers many interesting points such as the issue of power and authority. In turn, Jumanca (2013) delves into an amount of metaphorical expressions related to sight, which seem to be more common than those linked to hearing or touch (2013: 369): “[v]isual metaphors occur more often that the aural or tactile ones. They are the most frequently used in legal discourse or its various genres […] illustrating the importance of understanding and analyzing the text”
Armstrong (2009) focuses on metaphors in English texts about criminal policy, from the cognitive standpoint. As he states, this kind of documents show very special communicative needs for transparency
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reasons, that is, they must be clear for citizens to understand, but they must also ‘translate’ legislation into technical and operative rules for daily practice (cf. 2009: 2). Amongst others, Armstrong particularly touches upon the area of sexual assaults and identifies several conceptual metaphors regarding sexual offenders such as OFFENDERS ARE DANGEROUS ANIMALS (cf. 2009: 10). Finally, Mark Johnson (2007) himself tackles the issue of law and cognitive metaphors; he even speaks about a cognitive science of law, which he defines as an emergent discipline whose “[…] potential for transforming legal theory is substantial” (2007: 845). Johnson reviews the three most relevant cognitive aspects within law: radial categories (used for prototypes); image schemata (for logical and body inference) and conceptual metaphors (related to abstract reasoning) (cf. 2007: 848). He also emphasises the fact that cognitive models are essential for a great part of ethical and legal reasoning (cf. 2007: 867).
Methodology and Analysis In the following pages we will briefly unfold our methodology for the identification and selection of linguistic metaphors. Firstly, we selected 42 opinions issued by the United States Supreme Court (available on its official website). We chose the opinions following a source where their translation into Spanish could be found: Las sentencias básicas del Tribunal Supremo de los Estados Unidos de América (Beltrán de Felipe, M. & González García, J., 2006, Madrid: BOE). This book contains annotated translations of relevant opinions authored by the mentioned Court and was published by two Spanish university professors. As they explain in their work, they resorted to the criterion of legal relevance in order to select the opinions (cf. Beltrán & González, 2006: 22). Secondly, we manually identified and examined the original metaphors, mainly following the Pragglejazz Group (2007) and its approach. Therefore, we looked at the keyword(s) in every expression and observed its meaning in context to check if there was a contrast regarding the ordinary or common meaning of the word. In case of contrast between the common meaning of the keyword and its meaning in context, we labelled the word and the linguistic expression as metaphorical (cf. Vegara, 2013: 291). These keywords (e.g. the flow of events) would later lead to a cognitive concept and, thus, to a category in the classification (cf. 2013: 290-291), as we will explain. We used several bibliographic sources (e.g. Webster’s New Encyclopedic Dictionary, 1994) with the aim of determining the original meaning of the keywords. Finally, it is important
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to remember that when identifying metaphors criteria may vary, and also that: “[e]very criterion for a metaphor’s presence, however plausible, is defeasible in special circumstances” (Black, 1993 [1979]: 34-35). In this way, 1,440 metaphorical expressions were collected which were classified using the three categories described previously. As we have stated in previous sections, for the classification of our data we partially based ourselves on Moreno (2008) and her taxonomy and classification criteria (cf. 2008: 88-89). However, it was necessary to modify the said taxonomy since our corpus of legal metaphors had specific requirements. Moreno discussed metaphors taken from newspaper articles on politics; accordingly, we needed to adapt her work to our corpus of legal metaphors. Three salient cognitive groups are identified by the author, as already indicated (cf. 2008: 108-109): GREAT CHAIN OF BEING metaphors, Image-schema metaphors and metaphors derived from the generic metaphor ACTIONS ARE ACTIONS, EVENTS AND STATES. What follows is a visual representation of the amount of linguistic expressions per category (with a total number of 1,440 linguistic elements):
Figure 1. Linguistic metaphors per group Once all the original text items were classified, we had to search for their equivalent in Spanish in the abovementioned source since the final goal (in Vegara, 2013) was to focus on translation strategies. We manually located every equivalent noticing that in some cases there was no translation available, that is, the fragment in which the linguistic metaphor was embedded was not present in the target text. Then we labelled every English-Spanish pair with a translation strategy. For the strategies we partly based ourselves on Samaniego (cf. 2000: 434-440) and Rojo (cf. 2009: 204-209), chiefly. We will not detail them here because our goal is not the analysis of translation mechanisms.
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In the following pages we will draw attention to metaphors extracted from the abovementioned corpus. Our aim will be to outline some of their linguistic aspects and also to highlight a number of interesting cognitive features. We will try to illustrate the fact that metaphors in law texts are not just ornaments or persuasive tools; as some scholars have already implied, that they are conceptually powerful elements because they can actually combine notions into a visual image that shows cultural values without losing what is essential (cf. Dickerson, 1996: 368).
Metaphors from the U.S. Supreme Court: A Case Study In this part we will only examine metaphors from our corpus which are connected with the realm of nature and human/living beings. Therefore, the group of our interest will be the already mentioned GREAT CHAIN OF BEING conceptual metaphor and its related linguistic expressions. They make possible, for instance, the transfer of human properties to nonhuman beings and vice versa. Likewise, this mechanism permits the conceptualisation of abstract things as physical objects. This group is essentially based on an old cultural model which structures all beings and objects of nature vertically (scala naturae, Great Chain of Being), as detailed previously. However, although the category or conceptual metaphor is called the GREAT CHAIN OF BEING, it does not only derive from one single notion, but also condenses the following (cf. Lakoff & Turner, 1989: 166): the GENERIC IS SPECIFIC metaphor; the concept of the Nature of Things and the Maxim of Quality. Secondly, as indicated by Lakoff and Turner (cf. 1989: 162), at this point it is indispensable to introduce the GENERIC IS SPECIFIC metaphor, which is the structure allowing for generalisations. This is a generic metaphor that extracts “the underlying generic-level schema structure” and maps it onto specific situations (cf. 1989: 162-163). Such device permits the cognitive functioning of statements such as proverbs. Let us draw attention to the example “Blind blames the ditch” (Lakoff, 1993 [1979]: 233). By means of the GENERIC IS SPECIFIC metaphor, the proverb is also applicable to seeing people, that is, to people with other problems or features. For a better comprehension, Lakoff clarifies the proverb (1993 [1979]: 233): “[s]uppose a presidential candidate knowingly commits some personal impropriety […] and his candidacy is destroyed by the press’s reporting of the impropriety. He blames the press […], rather than himself […]. […] We express our judgement by saying, “Blind / blames the ditch.””
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Nevertheless, we still need other elements to fully grasp the cognitive process through which we can map properties and behaviours from some objects or beings onto other objects or beings in a natural way from the communicative viewpoint. We summarise all the factors involved according to Lakoff and Turner (cf. 1989: 166-175): The Great Chain of Being, a cultural model which allows us to speak about the animal instinct of human beings, for example. This instinct is present in beasts and possibly in human beings, but not in plants because they are not as high in the chain. The Nature of Things, a causal theory that links attributes to behaviour (cf. Liebenberg, 2000: 130-131). It explains the relationship between things/beings and their behaviour. The GENERIC IS SPECIFIC metaphor introduces the metaphorical element and allows for generalisations. According to Grice’s Maxim of Quality, users select the highest-ranking properties available in each case. In line with all the abovementioned, we find the metaphorical expression “Achilles is a lion” (an illustration originally provided by Aristotle) (Lakoff & Turner, 1989: 195). We may in very broad terms say that this metaphor highlights some animal or primary features in Achilles, in his character. The relevant feature here is mainly courage (in the context of a battle). It can also be stated that lions are ferocious, possibly a typical behaviour in the case of the said animal, although not the only one (cf. 1989: 195-198). Other characteristics of lions are not stressed for relevance reasons. It is then metaphorically understood that Achilles is a lion, that is, that he shows great courage. We must clarify that this example is not only a matter of plain similarity. The courage of the man is a property of his character but for the lion it is an instinctual feature. Character is metaphorically represented in terms of instinct (cf. Santibáñez, 2010: 976). However, other authors grant deeper interpretations to this metaphor. Yarbrough (2010), for instance, claims that the metaphor at the beginning of this paragraph means that “[…] Achilles’ ethical relations […] are the same as those of a lion. The metaphor is, therefore, an indication of how to regard Achilles ethically in order to understand his actions” (2010: 190). In the chart below we provide the proportion in which metaphors related to nature and human/living beings appear in our corpus:
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(Vegara, 2013) Nature and human/living beings GCOB Total items
Items 302 581 1,440
% 21 40 100
(In this study) Nature and human/living beings GCOB
Items 302 581
% 51 100
Table 1. Metaphors in corpus
Metaphors related to human/living beings In the ensuing lines we will speak about metaphorical references to living or human beings, which will logically include personifications. We may say that personifications are a subtype of metaphors (cf. Knowles & Moon, 2006: 7). They could, in general terms, be defined as “[…] the practice of representing a thing or an idea as a person […]”2. However, we sometimes find that even though the qualities transferred metaphorically are not exclusively human (e.g. breathe, eat, run, etc.), the process is still labelled as ‘personification’. Nevertheless, personification and animation are different concepts according to several authors (cf. Valcárcel, 1978: 546, for instance). Consequently, we have regarded as personification only those cases in which the metaphorically-applied capacity is clearly human. As we have stated above, the GCOB group mentions aspects and items connected with our environment, such as plants, people, physical objects, buildings or weight, amongst others. In spite of the above, here we will only focus on aspects of nature and on human/living being references. They cover slightly over the half of the items within the GCOB (Table 1). Let us briefly comment on an interesting example, which by dint of sheer repetition we have even ceased to see as metaphorical: “[…] but the Court thought that the city had not acted with […]” (cf. Vegara, 2013: 458). In the classification contained in the work we have previously mentioned and on which we based ourselves, this linguistic metaphor would be located within the category (or conceptual metaphor) labelled COURTS ARE PEOPLE. Amongst the metonymically-based metaphors of our corpus, we deem this is one of the most salient and evident cases. Undoubtedly, courts are made of judges, who are people; their human properties are metaphorically transferred to a lifeless and abstract entity: the court. At 2
Merriam-Webster Dictionary and Thesaurus, http://www.merriam-webster.com/
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this point we must remember that metaphor is closely related to metonymy; very often the latter constitutes the base of the former (cf. Barcelona, 2000: 53; Stepien, 2007: 397). For example, country metaphors generally refer to citizens, but the metonymy allows for the use of the image of the country. In fact, “[…] all nations can potentially be described in terms of people - having friends, enemies, being victims or heroes etc. […]” (Charteris-Black, 2004: 16). Thanks to cognitive metaphors and their derived expressions, lifeless objects can conceptualised as living beings or even as people. In some cases, the mentioned objects may be presented as having feelings, moods, body parts or a mind. Furthermore, by means of the same process, intangible and/or inert things become plants and natural elements. We shall now comment on a selection of metaphors (personifications and/or animations) accompanied by a concise cognitive comment in order to illustrate some of the ideas developed in the foregoing section (cf. Vegara, 2013: 406-410): […] but the Court thought that the city had not acted with a ‘strong basis in evidence for its conclusion’ […].
This is a case within the category COURTS ARE PEOPLE, as stated above. The capacity for (rational) thinking can be defined as exclusively human. Thus, it could be considered a personification. Here the metonymic root is quite transparent, as we said above, since the Court is made of judges, of people. By means of this metaphor an abstract entity is conferred human properties; the situation or process in question is perhaps better condensed and easier to understand. Additionally, by describing the U.S. Supreme Court Justices as a single entity (the Court), a sense of unity or unitary thinking is delivered. To enforce those rights today is not to choose weak government over strong government […].
The usage of the adjective is a reference to living things (we also find in the corpus other adjectives: anaemic, strong, etc.). The government is presented as a living being with physical problems; it may even inspire pity. This linguistic metaphor is an easy and straightforward way (physical weakness is something we all have experienced) to view and explain the problems of an official entity, probably implying an opinion or perspective on the issue. Another manifest application of living properties to abstract or nonliving things is: “Thus, these discretionary statutes are unconstitutional in their operation. They are pregnant with discrimination, […]”.
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This instance certainly makes us picture the State as a person (or a living being) actually reaching out and embracing the citizens in order to protect them. This somehow provides a positive impression of the State and its role in society. This instance reminds us of the GUARDIAN metaphor, which refers to a metaphor cluster often found throughout the U.S. Supreme Court opinions (cf. Dickerson, 1996: 384). These metaphors personify freedom of expression and present it performing actions typical of caretakers or protectors (cf. 1996: 385), which are in fact quite positive actions. Another attractive example of body metaphor is: “[…] a history of prior discrimination at the hands of the State”. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices.
This is another reference to a physical process. The State is, in this case, a living being whose strength is being depleted by forces not detailed in the fragment. Again, the State is somehow conceived as a victim in a very suggestive way. We also shall remember previous comments: “[…] considerable influence over the choice of symbols used to perpetuate our political system and significant power to control […] what attitudes and actions […] of our system should be reflected” (Dickerson, 1996: 377). An Act of Virginia, approved March 20, 1924, recites that […].
In our opinion, this constitutes an obvious personification. Reciting, strictly speaking, is a purely human activity. In this metaphor an act (a legal instrument) recites its normative content. This metaphor is a dynamic approach, a curious way to express the idea, as opposed to other possible non-metaphorical formulas. We would like to analyse a final metaphor in this section which, we believe, demands special attention: “On this point, the dissent sees fire where there is no flame”. This is quite a provocative item in our corpus. We may assert that, basically, it is a personification (or an animation) which would deserve a special category like PROBLEMS ARE PHYSICAL/NATURAL DISASTERS. Nevertheless, this expression is an isolated case and, therefore, it may be grouped within NORMATIVE AND LEGAL PROCEDURES/ INSTRUMENTS ARE PEOPLE OR LIVING BEINGS (cf. Vegara, 2013: 462), together with other metaphors.
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The author of this linguistic example was Justice Ginsberg, who employed it to comment on the dissent issued by his colleague, or Brother3 in the U.S. Supreme Court (Justice Scalia), in United States v. Virginia (1996) (cf. Burgin, 2007: 839). The fire reference seems to express that the dissent (a part of a document) sees (a living property) a problem or a fact which does not exist, somehow causing alarm. Tsai (2004) scrutinises the repeated usage the U.S. Supreme Court makes of the fire metaphor and makes some interesting remarks about metaphorical statements involving fire: “[…], this metaphor had broadbased, cognitive force not only because of citizens’ experience with fire in daily life […]” (2004: 17). Physical experience is essential for cognitive metaphors, as argued in preceding sections. However, as Tsai remarks in connection with the quote above, contemporary experiences (e.g. war, ideological challenges, etc.) are likewise relevant in order to understand the functioning of every particular metaphor (cf. 2004: 17-18). Regarding the fire metaphor as a powerful cognitive tool at the service of the U.S. Supreme Court, Tsai discusses another instance which represents the first use of the fire motif when speaking about First Amendment law: “[…] falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic” (2004: 18). According to Tsai, this metaphorical statement “[…] wove a firebased hypothetical with the circumstances of the case at hand. […] Holmes’s use of fire to create a sense of emergency had the desired effect of promoting the Court’s policy of judicial non-involvement” (2004: 19). We could say that the metaphors above communicate legal thought vividly. Many of the notions transferred by them could have been explained non-metaphorically; nevertheless, the U.S. Supreme Court Justices chose these linguistic and conceptual instruments possibly due to the fact that they regarded them as the most efficient method to convey their ideas and perspectives, to convince with their arguments and, maybe, to reinforce state and judicial power.
Metaphors of nature Lakoff and Johnson (1980b) claimed in their early postulates that a single metaphorical concept could not completely account for an abstract notion. Hence, we have to comprehend abstract concepts in terms of several metaphorical definitions (cf. 1980b: 198). In order to clarify this, 3
Webster’s New World Law Dictionary, Hoboken: Wiley Publishing, Inc. (2006), p. 57.
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they explain that ideas can only be defined through a complex group of (conceptual) metaphors (cf. 1980b: 198-199): Ideas Are Organisms4 would be the name of the group, which would be comprised of other metaphors such as Ideas Are Plants, Ideas Are Products or Ideas Are People. Each metaphor highlights a different aspect of ‘idea’. They complement each other, but they can also overlap because each of them creates its own system of correspondences; at some points they may even contradict each other (cf. 1980b: 200). Here allusions to nature take several forms: references to plants (roots, seeds, branch), to the environment in general (sources, penumbra, star) or to physical processes (crystallize, submerge, engulf, erosion). Some categories are LEGAL INSTITUTIONS ARE PLANTS, LEGAL IDEAS ARE PLANTS or PEOPLE AND LEGAL IDEAS ARE ELEMENTS OF NATURE (cf. Vegara, 2013: 467-469). We can quote linguistic metaphors like “[…] petitioner errs by presuming that interactions between the Judicial Branch and the Executive […]” or “[…] the self-doubt of an institution which is electorally irresponsible and has no earth to draw strength from”, as shown below (cf. 2013: 410-413): […] petitioner errs by presuming that interactions between the Judicial Branch and the Executive […].
Here the State is conceived as a tree, where we can imagine that two of its branches interact or touch. We may be able to better understand the concept of separation of powers and/or the relationship between those powers or ‘branches’. The notion is possibly more obvious thus expressed than with a literal description of the State organisation. […] the self-doubt of an institution which is electorally irresponsible and has no earth to draw strength from.
This expression explicitly conceptualises the institution in question as a plant, but it simultaneously stresses its weakness since it does not have sufficient earth to live. This might be regarded as a powerful image describing a given situation; we could say that it is even poetic and very rich in cognitive terms. The institution is presented as fragile and weak. This is an idea with many implications depending on the context. If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty […].
4
Emphasis is ours.
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This instance is not only picturing the central idea as a star (indicating its importance), it is also placing the ‘star’ within a metaphorical constellation: the U.S. Constitution. Hence, we could state that the author of the fragment and of the metaphor has located the central idea he wants to convey within a context and, at the same time, has granted great weight to the mentioned idea (and its framework) in a subtle and elegant way. Burdens and obstructions may be due to injurious action springing from other sources.
In this metaphor we have a manifest reference to water, or another type of liquid, coming from a natural source. Actions, conceptualised in such a way, seem to flow smoothly and quickly. Certainly, “[w]e refer to “sources” of law because we can imagine the sources of water” (Ebbesson, 2008: 268). Physical experience and interaction with our environment seem to be essential for metaphor creation and comprehension. The cases before us raise questions which go to the roots of our concepts of American criminal jurisprudence.
References to roots are frequent in our corpus and appear repeatedly. We find this type of metaphorical instances very eloquent when we want to talk about the well-settled base or origin of something, especially when we are talking about an abstract idea. These principles grew in soil which also produced a philosophy that […].
Here the principles are described as organisms from the vegetable kingdom. The soil might be understood as the social, legal and/or political context in which they thrived. The said principles are not specified, but, by means of this metaphor, we imagine that they are ideas which grew slowly and naturally in a physical context which ‘nourished’ them. As we have already discussed in the foregoing pages, the metaphors in the chart above are analysed as linguistic and also as cognitive tools. In this case, the natural environment is the source domain used to explain legal notions, the target domain. Let us remember that mappings allow us to reason about one thing with the knowledge we use to reason about another thing (cf. Lakoff, 1993 [1979]: 207). Thanks to conceptual mappings we are able to think about legal issues using the knowledge we employ to reason about nature, which is an area of reality, of our world, that we usually know or understand clearly. Along these lines, legal reasoning is somehow closer to our comprehension, and intricate legal approaches are smoothly presented and easier to follow. The same happens
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with human/living being references: we can resort to the experience with our bodies and to our own interaction with the world to grasp the legal ideas communicated by the examined metaphors. This mechanism favours the perception of complex legal issues. However, in order to fully absorb the significance of these expressions, an assessment might be made from a political and a social perspective. Then we will possibly begin to understand the real impact of the United States Supreme Court language on American society, as several authors seem to imply (cf. Tsai, 2004).
Concluding remarks Our main goal in this chapter was to stress the relevance of metaphors within legal language as cognitive instruments, especially focusing on metaphors linked to nature and to human/living lbeings. Another aim of this scrutiny was to illustrate the power of representation of metaphors when describing a number of legal concepts in the opinions issued by the United States Supreme Court. This may be interesting for the area of lexicography and even for translators. Additionally, another purpose was to highlight the usage of metaphorical concepts and expressions to exert power and control to a certain extent. A deeper description of the cognitive processes underlying the U.S. Supreme Court texts can be very fruitful, especially when trying to determine the meaning of some sophisticated notions expressed in the form of metaphors. Finally, the research option mentioned and the development of works about the preferences of judges and lawyers regarding metaphor may provide advantageous information for legal lexicographers and translators, amongst others.
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Malem, J. (2006). El lenguaje de las sentencias. Reforma judicial: Revista Mexicana de Justicia 7, 47-63. Merriam-Webster’s New Encyclopedic Dictionary. Cologne: Könemann 1994. Moreno, M.A. (2004). La metáfora conceptual y el lenguaje político periodístico: configuración, interacciones y niveles de descripción. Ph.D Dissertation. La Rioja (Spain): University of La Rioja. Morra, L. (2010). New Models for Language Understanding and the Cogntive Approach to Legal Metaphor. International Journal for the Semiotics of Law 23(4), 387-405. Murray, J. (1984). Understanding law as metaphor. Journal of Legal Education 34 (4), 714-730. Oldfather, C. (1994). The Hidden Ball: A Substantive Critique of Baseball Metaphors in Judicial Opinions. Connecticut Law Review, 27 (1), 1751. Oseid, J.A. (2010). The Power of Metaphor: Thomas Jefferson's “Wall of Separation between Church and State. Journal of the Association of Legal Writing Directors 7, 123-153. Pragglejazz Group. (2007). MIP: A method for identifying metaphorically used words in discourse. Metaphor and Symbol 22 (1), 1-39. Rojo, A. (2009). Step by Step: A Course in Contrastive Linguistics and Translation. Bern: Peter Lang. Samaniego, E. (2000). Diseño y aplicación de un marco de análisis de la traducción de la metáfora. PhD Dissertation. Alicante (Spain): University of Alicante. (Unpublished) Santibáñez, C. (2010). Metaphor and argumentation: The case of Chilean parliamentarian media participation. Journal of Pragmatics 42, 973989. Stepien, M. A. (2007). Metáfora y metonimia conceptual en la fraseología de cinco partes del cuerpo humano en español y en polaco. Anuario de Estudios Filológicos (AEF) 30, 391-409. Thornburg, E. (1995). Metaphors Matter: How Images of Battle, Sport and Sex Shape the Adversary System. Wisconsin Women's Law Journal 10, 225-281. Tsai, R. (2004). Fire, Metaphor and Constitutional Myth-Making. Georgetown Law Journal 93, 181-239. Twardzisz, P. (2008). Metaphors in Commercial Contracts. In C. AlmArvius, N.L. Johannesson & D. C. Minugh (Eds.), Selected papers from the Stockholm 2008 Metaphor Festival, Department of English, Stockholm: Stockholm University, 237-253.
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CHAPTER FIVE A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF LATINISMS IN THE EUROPEAN LEGISLATION: DEGREES OF SYNTACTIC INTEGRATION IN ENGLISH, SPANISH AND GREEK DOCUMENT VERSIONS RITA WINIARSKA
Introduction In spite of the attention that the language of the European Union and its institutions receives, very little has been said about the position of Latin in EU legislation. Recent studies on the linguistic issues related to the EU have been in the majority of cases focused on legal translation, multilingualism, equivalent concepts, etc. It is worth mentioning, for example, Puntoycoma, the Bulletin of Spanish translators for European Union institutions, or numerous papers on the challenges which legal translators are faced with (e.g. Hertog 2009, Krimpas 2009, Biel 2007). There exists, therefore, a need to look closer at the way in which Latinisms are integrated into the European legal documents. The main objective of the present study is to provide an overview of Latin expressions which are used in the official documents of the European Union. The corpus on which the analysis is based is formed by texts such as: court judgments, opinions of advocates, decisions of the European Commission, Council regulations, etc., in English-, Spanish- and Greek-language versions. Each of the Latin phrases in question is viewed in a particular context. The analysis is aimed at checking how the Latin expressions are integrated into the English, Spanish and Greek versions of the documents. As stated by Kurzon (1987: 233), “foreign words and phrases belonging as it were ‘to another text’ (in a fairly broad sense) may in varying degrees be
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integrated into the native language text”. In the present chapter we shall observe the level of integration of the Latin phrases into the syntactic structure of each of the examined languages.
Methodology and objectives The omnipresence of Latin in modern legal languages accounts for its longevity. Latin maxims are often terse and convey complex ideas in not many words, and this is one of the reasons for using this ancient language in legal documents. Consequently, Latinisms can perform various syntactic functions within the sentences. In the present study, we shall generally follow the degrees of textual integration provided by Kurzon (1987: 234-235): a) The maxim is given as a separate sentence, followed or not by an explanation or translation; b) The maxim is part of a sentence or phrase, with or without a translation; c) The Latinism is introduced in brackets as a technical term following an explanation; d) Latinisms are used as part of a clause or a sentence, function as nominal premodifier or postmodifier in noun clauses, or they are applied like foreign (English/Spanish/Greek) words, but of a different word class. In addition to the degrees above, we have introduced another one (hereinafter, Degree II), for Latinisms which are present in the sentences between commas, and therefore, do not have a direct relation with the syntax. The methodology of the study comprised the following steps: a selection of Latinisms, a search for such Latinisms in EU legal texts, and an analysis of the degrees of integration, followed by a discussion.
Selection of Latinisms The choice of the Latin phrases and maxims in our analysis was to a great extent based on the context(s) in which they can be used. The objective was to find terms which may function in various text types and in different legal areas. It implied discarding phrases such as, for example, a mensa et thoro, which is used only in divorce cases. Also, terms of general application, that is, used not exclusively in legal matters, were also left aside (e.g. inter alia). The final list of selected Latinisms consists of 16 terms, and it was developed with the aid of the following dictionaries:
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Webster’s New World Law Dictionary (2006), Oxford Dictionary of Law, 5th edition (2003), Latin for Lawyers: The Language of the Law, by Emanuel (1999), and the Gale Encyclopedia of American Law, vol. 14: Dictionary of Legal Terms (2011). The following Latinisms were analysed: actio popularis, actio Pauliana, ad litem, arguendo, bona fide, caveat, ex parte, ex post facto, in extremis, lex fori, lis pendens, nemo tenetur se ipsum accusare, prima facie, res iudicata, status quo and ultra vires.
Search for legal texts The only source of the analyzed texts was the page http://eurlex.europa.eu, which provides access to European Union law in all the official languages of the Community. The English version of the site was consulted, in order to use the English version as a starting point. Then, in the bilingual displays (English-Spanish and English-Greek), the particular Latinism was looked for and the correspondent paragraphs were compared. In the analysed texts, English is the language of reference, that is to say, the chosen Latinisms always appear in the English versions of the documents. For the purposes of our analysis, the original languages in which a particular text has been written is not considered. This is mainly due to a number of reasons: from an operational point of view, not all the documents are translated into all the official languages simultaneously. The European entities follow a three-language system, focused on English, French and German, and if a document is drafted, for example, in Polish and needs a translation into Lithuanian, it is first translated into the three main languages, and then retranslated from one of these. Also, for political reasons, the term “translation” always implies that there is an original version and a subordinated one, which is something that is carefully avoided whenever possible in order to avoid feelings of inequality; in fact, reference is usually made to “n single originals”. This is why, when referring to the European documents, we speak about versions and not translations (Gibová 2009: 147).
Method For reasons of space, the examined texts cannot be presented in this chapter. The study is based on 53 sample texts in each of the languages, which makes in total 159 texts. Instead of dedicating at least one page for every case, the examples are classified according to the degrees of syntactic integration. Since this analysis has an exclusively syntactic focus,
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the legal adequacy of the discussed terms is not taken into consideration. Apart from the analysis of the syntactic integration of the Latinisms, the study of the examples is aimed at checking if the following two hypotheses can be ascertained or discarded: a) There will be more Latinisms in the Spanish versions of the documents, as it is a Romance language and its syntax is based on Latin; in the Greek versions, on the contrary, there will be more translations or definitions of the Latinisms, since Greek is a language developed independently from Latin, and with a much longer history; b) The documents of general application in the European Union are published in all the 23 official languages, which fulfils the principle of plurilinguistic equality. However, there may appear differences in terms of translating, explaining and (or) defining the Latinisms, as Latin is not an official language of the Community. In other words, the legal principles expressed in Latin may be introduced into the documents in different ways.
Analysis The sixteen Latin expressions, object of the present study, have been searched for in 159 sample texts in English, Spanish and Greek. This section will include a commentary on the degrees of syntactic integration, illustrated with suitable examples.
Degree I The first degree covers Latin maxims which are given as separate sentences. In our analysis, no texts have been found with of this category.
Degree II This degree refers to Latin phrases which are introduced between commas, and thus independent from the syntax of the sentence. In the English versions there have been five occurrences of such phrases, three in the Spanish ones and only one in the Greek ones. We have chosen three examples to illustrate this phenomenon: However, even if, arguendo, that book value could be accepted, the method used in the study would nonetheless be flawed.
“Arguendo”, lit. “in arguing”, is a term used to assume a fact without waiving the right to question it later on (Webster’s New World Law
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Dictionary [2006]). In other words, it could be replaced by the adverb “hypothetically”. The Latinism is the ablative form of the gerund; in the English sentence, it is used adverbially to modify the verbal construction “could be accepted”. (…) țĮțȫȢ IJȠ īİȞȚțȩ ǻȚțĮıIJȒȡȚȠ ȑțȡȚȞİ ȩIJȚ Ș ǼʌȚIJȡȠʌȒ ȩijİȚȜİ ȞĮ İȡİȣȞȒıİȚ, ex post facto, ʌȠȜȜȐ ȑIJȘ ȝİIJȐ IJĮ ȖİȖȠȞȩIJĮ ʌȠȚĮ șĮ ȝʌȠȡȠȪıİ ȞĮ İȓȞĮȚ Ș ıIJȐıȘ ȝȚĮȢ ĮȡȤȒȢ (…).
The expression “ex post facto” (“after the fact”, “by a subsequent act”), present in the above Greek text, adds a temporal aspect to the sentence “ȩIJȚ Ș ǼʌȚIJȡȠʌȒ ȩijİȚȜİ ȞĮ İȡİȣȞȒıİȚ” (“that the Commission was to investigate”). (...) adoptar y ejecutar medidas efectivas a la empresa, entre las que se encuentran, in extremis, la denegación o la revocación de la autorización.
The Latinism “in extremis” can mean “at the point of death”, “in grave circumstances” or “in extreme cases”, depending on the context. It is a prepositional phrase which, in this case, indicates the attendant circumstance of the action.
Degree III The third degree refers to maxims which are part of a sentence or phrase, with or without a translation. In our study, only three examples (one in each of the examined languages) illustrating this degree have been found. [...] the 2002 Leniency Notice is unlawful, in that it breaches the principles nemo tenetur se ipsum accusare, nemo tenetur se ipsum prodere [...]. (...) la ilegalidad de la Comunicación sobre la cooperación de 2002 debido a la vulneración de los principios nemo tenetur se ipsum accusare, nemo tenetur se ipsum prodere [...]. (...) ĮȞIJȜİȓIJĮȚ Įʌȩ IJȠȞ ȝȘ ıȪȞȞȠȝȠ ȤĮȡĮțIJȒȡĮ IJȚȢ ĮȞĮțȠȚȞȫıİȦȢ IJȠȣ 2002 ȖȚĮ IJȘ ıȣȞİȡȖĮıȓĮ, ȜȩȖȦ ʌĮȡĮȕȚȐıİȦȢ IJȦȞ ĮȡȤȫȞ nemo tenetur se ipsum accusare, nemo tenetur se ipsum prodere [...].
In all the above cases, the maxim “Nemo tenetur se ipsum accusare” (“No one is bound to incriminate himself”) forms part of the sentence and is put in apposition to the words “principles”, “principios” and “ĮȡȤȑȢ”, respectively.
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Degree IV Degree IV corresponds to Latin phrases which, used in brackets, are introduced as technical terms following an explanation in other languages. [...] declaration of the invalidity of that unfair term which has become part of a consumer contract on behalf of consumers in an action in the public interest (actio popularis).
The Latinism “actio popularis” (“action in the interest of public order”) is here preceded by its definition in English. The definition itself is not a literal translation of the term, yet it provides more information on what “actio popularis” is. The phrase, therefore, serves as a shorthand for the concept described in the sentence. ȁĮȝȕȐȞȠȞIJĮȢ ȣʌȩȥȘ ȩIJȚ Ș ĮȣIJȠȞȠȝȓĮ IJȦȞ įȚĮįȓțȦȞ ȑȤİȚ ȝİȓȗȠȞĮ ıȘȝĮıȓĮ țĮȚ Ș İijĮȡȝȠȖȒ IJȠȣ țĮȞȩȞĮ IJȘȢ İțțȡİȝȠįȚțȓĮȢ (lis pendens) ʌȠȣ șȑıʌȚıİ IJȠ įȚțĮıIJȒȡȚȠ İʌȚIJȡȑʌİȚ (...).
In this example, we can observe that the phrase “lis pendens” (“pending lawsuit”) is given in brackets after its equivalent in Greek (“İțțȡİȝȠįȚțȓĮ”). [...] las cuestiones [...] de cómo deben entenderse las disposiciones sobre litispendencia (lis pendens) y ejecución de resoluciones extranjeras del artículo 31 de dicho Convenio.
This excerpt is an example of the usage of the Latinism “lis pendens” as a technicism which accompanies its equivalent in the language of the text; in the case of Spanish, it can be noticed that the term litispendencia is strongly influenced by its Latin roots.
Degree V The last degree covers Latin phrases which are used as part of a clause or a sentence, perform the function of nominal pre- or postmodifiers, or are introduced like foreign words, but of a different word class. This category has proved to be the most widely represented one in the examined texts, characterised by rich diversity. For example, if the Latinisms were used as nouns, they were accompanied by articles; if they functioned as complements of the nominal heads, they were placed after the nouns, etc.
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[...] a declaration including a bona fide estimate made in the course of the financial year shall be accepted.
The Latinism “bona fide”, being an ablative, (“in good faith”, “without deception or fraud”) precedes the noun “estimate”, performing thus the function of nominal premodifier, which makes the foreign phrase fully integrated into the English syntax. [...] the provision is qualified by an important caveat, that is, ‘provided that this is in the best interest of the minor’.
The phrase “caveat” is a verbal form, literally meaning “let him/her beware”. In legal contexts, though, it is used as a noun, which indicates a very high level of syntactic integration. (...) ıIJȠ ʌȜĮȓıȚȠ įȚĮįȚțĮıȓĮȢ ex parte (įȚĮįȚțĮıȓĮ ıIJȘȞ ȠʌȠȓĮ İȝʌȜȑțİIJĮȚ ȝȩȞȠ Ƞ ʌȡȠıijİȪȖȦȞ țĮȚ IJȠ īǼǼǹ), ʌȠȣ ĮijȠȡȠȪıİ ȐȜȜȘ ĮȓIJȘıȘ țĮIJĮȤȦȡȓıİȦȢ ıȒȝĮIJȠȢ.
The expression “ex parte” (“on the part of one side only”) appears in the Greek text as a nominal postmodifier, related to the noun įȚĮįȚțĮıȓĮ (“proceedings”). The Latinism is also followed by a short definition put into brackets. [...] a criterion based on a specific date and a period of three years prior to the commencement of education or training abroad appears prima facie inappropriate as a means of demonstrating the required integration.
The Latinism “prima facie” (“at first sight”, “at first appearance”) performs in the above example the function of adverbial of manner, fully integrated into the syntax of the sentence.
Discussion Let us first look at the number of occurrences of Latinisms in the analysed texts. It will help us check if the first hypothesis of the present study, stating that there will be more Latin expressions in the Spanish versions, is true or false. The data are shown in the table below.
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Degree I Degree II Degree III Degree IV Degree V Total
English 0 5 1 3 44 53
Spanish 0 3 1 4 10 18
Greek 0 1 1 6 8 16
Table 1. Occurrences of Latinisms in the analysed texts As we can see from Table 1, the analysis has produced in total 53 examples of Latin phrases in the English versions of the documents, 18 in the Spanish ones and 16 in the Greek ones. In the texts there are no examples of Latinisms which would show the first degree of syntactic integration. This is so due to the fact that such degree refers to maxims which are given as separate sentences, and in our analysis only one maxim has been included. As for degree II - phrases introduced between commas, independent from the syntax of the sentencefive occurrences of such examples have been found in the English versions of the documents, three in the Spanish ones and only one in the Greek ones. The next degree has been illustrated by only one example, a maxim which formed part of a sentence or phrase, and in our case, not followed by translation. Next, as far as the fourth degree is concerned, most examples have been found in the Greek versions (6), followed by the Spanish ones (4) and the English ones (3). This degree covered Latinisms which were introduced in brackets as technical terms following an explanation. Finally, the fifth degree is represented by numerous examples in each of the language versions: 44 in the English texts, 10 in the Spanish ones and 8 in the Greek ones, accounting for 83% of all the examples in English, 55% in Spanish and 50% in Greek. From the analysis of the numeric data, the following conclusions can be attained: x From the three languages taken into account in this study, English is the language which presents the greatest number of Latin phrases; x Generally, there are slightly more Latinisms in the Spanish versions than in the Greek ones; x Latinisms introduced independently of the syntax of the sentence can be found most likely in the English versions; x The Greek versions contain the highest number of Latinisms introduced as technical terms;
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x Latinisms show a general tendency towards very high levels of syntactic integration, functioning as nominal pre- or postmodifiers, or applied as foreign words, but of a different word class (e.g. “caveat”verbal form which functions as noun). Having said all that, the first hypothesis of the present study is confirmed. The greater number of Latin phrases in the Spanish versions than in the Greek ones can be explained by the fact that the Spanish syntax and vocabulary is rooted in the Latin language, whereas the Greek language has been developed with scarce Roman influences. In the Greek versions, Latinisms are kept in only 30% of the texts (16 phrases in 53 examples of texts), which means that in the majority of cases Latin phrases are translated or their meaning is expressed through other solutions, such as Greek equivalents which are not literal translations. It should be underlined, though, that the results of the present analysis may not be always relevant, and they should be rather viewed as general tendencies. Certainly, more empirical research, based on a greater number of texts and a more exhaustive list of Latinisms, is needed to produce results with a higher level of objectivity. Regarding the second hypothesis of the present study, stating that the legal principles expressed in Latin may be introduced in the documents in different ways, since Latin is not an official language of the European Union. In order to determine if this hypothesis can be ascertained, we have taken into account versions only in Spanish and Greek, as English is the primary language of the analysis and all the examples in this language do contain Latinisms. The following table shows, for each Latin phrase, the number of texts in which a particular expression could be found (column “No. examples for each phrase”), as well as the number of different solutions proposed for each Latinism: whether it is kept in Latin or it is translated, defined, explained, etc. (column “No. different shapes”). For instance, in the case of the expression “actio popularis”, which is present in three texts, there are also three different ways of introducing this Latinism: first, as a technical term in brackets which follows its translation into Spanish (“acción popular”), next, again as a technicism in brackets, but with the reverse word order (“popularis actio”), and finally, the Latin phrase appears without any explanations, and it is accompanied by the definite article (“la actio popularis”).
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No. examples for each phrase actio popularis actio Pauliana ad litem arguendo bona fide caveat ex parte ex post facto in extremis lex fori lis pendens nemo tenetur se ipsum accusare prima facie res iudicata status quo ultra vires
No. different “shapes” (Latinisms and/ or translations, equivalents, definitions, etc.) Spanish Greek 3 3 2 2 2 1 1 3 2 3 4 3 4 4 3 3 3 3 2 3 2 2
Spanish 3 3 2 1 3 4 4 4 3 3 3
Greek 3 3 2 3 3 4 4 4 3 3 3
2
2
2
2
5 5 3 2
5 5 3 3
4 3 3 2
4 2 3 3
Table 2. Comparison of different linguistic solutions proposed for Latinisms in Spanish and Greek versions There are a few cases when the number of different solutions is equal to the number of texts, as illustrated by the Latinism “ex parte”. As we can see from Table 2, in the four texts in which this expression appears (in Latin or in translation), it has four distinct forms, not only in the Spanishlanguage versions, but also in the Greek ones. “Ex parte” is not the only Latinism which appears in more than one shape. Among other examples, we can find “caveat” (4 different versions in Spanish texts and 3 in the Greek ones), “in extremis” or “status quo” (3 different versions in both languages). It is also worth noticing that in the case of “arguendo” and “ultra vires”, some of the Spanish versions do not contain these phrases (and/ or their equivalents, definitions, etc.). In general, it can be observed that in both languages there is a tendency to present different solutions for each of the phrases. Therefore, it is possible to ascertain the second hypothesis of the present study, stating that Latin phrases are introduced in the EU documents in different ways: not only in the original language, but also with the aid of other solutions, like translations or definitions which are frequently not the same in shape.
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Concluding remarks The present chapter comprised a brief analysis of 16 Latin phrases which appear in the official documents of the European Union, in English, Spanish- and Greek-language versions. In the first place, the analysis on the expressions was aimed at finding out how they are integrated into the syntactic structure of the sentences in which they appear. In the analysis we followed the four degrees of textual integration described by Kurzon (1987) and we added another degree, related to phrases which are not directly linked with the syntax of the sentences. The Latinisms were analysed only from the linguistic point of view and the legal adequacy of their definitions or equivalents was not taken into account. The study was aimed at checking the correctness of two hypotheses. The first one stated that it would be possible to find more Latinisms in the Spanish-language versions, as Spanish syntax and vocabulary are deeply rooted in Latin. For their part, in the Greek versions there would be more translations or definitions of Latinisms, or they would be introduced as technical terms, due to the fact that the Greek language has a much longer history than Latin and it has been developed independently from it. The second hypothesis assumed that the legal principles expressed with Latinisms may appear in the documents in different forms: as translations, definitions, etc., and that the same Latinism may take distinct shapes in the documents. The results of the analysis confirmed both hypotheses: there were slightly more Latin phrases in the Spanish-language versions, which may be explained by the ancient Roman roots of Spanish. In the Greek versions, it was found that Latinisms appear in 30% of the texts, which means that there is a general tendency towards translating or explaining Latin phrases, and omitting their original language. As for the second hypothesis, the analysis proved that there are, indeed, numerous ways of introducing the same Latinism in different documents. In eight cases out of 16, the number of distinct linguistic solutions provided for a particular Latin phrase was equal to the number of the texts in which the phrase appeared; in the rest of the cases, it was almost the same. From the above results it can be concluded that legal principles which are commonly known in Latin should be expressed only in this language. Another solution could be to use Latinisms as technical terms introduced in brackets after their explanation. In this way, many misunderstandings or inaccuracies in the application of particular laws could be avoided; it is particularly important in cases when the same legal document has to be drafted in various languages, like in the legislation of the European Union
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or other international communities. The Latin language has been linked with the European legal tradition since the ancient times. Latin phrases are concise, unambiguous and flexible, which makes it possible to integrate them into modern languages in many ways. At this point, we shall mention Sturm’s paper Lingua Latina fundamentum et salus Europae (Sturm 2002) in which the difficult linguistic situation within the European Union is described and Latin as its sole official language is proposed. According to this scholar, Latin may be a remedy to the current problems of the European Union, such as enormous expenditure for interpreters and translators, delays in interpreting parliamentary debates or lack of suitable equivalents for some technical terms. In the first place, the author states that a return to the Latin language as a lingua franca of Europe would also mean a come-back to the roots of our culture (law being a part of it) and it would put an end to the AngloAmerican domination (ibid.: 319). Next, from the practical point of view, the European Union would save billions of euros on interpretation and translation services. Finally, Latin would also help to unify the legal terminology which differs among various modern languages. However, Sturm fails to describe any disadvantages which would result from this situation. In spite of the fact that Latin should not be considered as a “dead language”, as it contains words which denominate parts of the modern reality, its dominant position in today’s Europe would, certainly, lead to some difficulties. First of all, parliamentary debates would still remain a problem, since Latin has already lost the role of a spoken language; it would take a long time to be fluent in Latin again, let alone to discuss international affairs in this language. Moreover, numerous terms which are related to business, commerce and finances do not have their Latin equivalents, and again, we would need years to create a univocal terminological system. Also in terms of the policy of diversity, promoted by the European Union, Latin would constitute an obstacle. Being a language no longer connected with a particular modern society, it would lead to a situation which no European nation would feel special and equal to the other ones. The cultural and linguistic diversity would be threatened, and the nations whose language comes from Latin could feel more privileged than the other ones which do not have a direct link with the ancient Roman language and culture. To sum up, it can be underlined that in the European legislation there exists a need for special rules as far as Latinisms are concerned, in order to minimise the risk of possible misunderstandings and to unify the existing legal terminology. All the laws in force should be available in all the official languages of the Community, yet when it comes to Latin phrases,
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they should be always kept in their original language, without any explanations in modern languages, or introduced in brackets as technical terms, which would summarise and clarify the ideas expressed in modern languages.
Bibliography Batten, D. (Ed.) (2010) Gale Encyclopedia of American Law (3rd edition). Vol. 14: Dictionary of Legal Terms. Detroit etc.: Gale, Cengage Learning. Biel, à. (2007). Translation of Multilingual EU Law as a Sub-genre of Legal Translation. In D. Kierzkowska (Ed.), Court Interpreting and Legal Translation in the Enlarged Europe, 2006. Warszawa: Translegis, 144-163. Emanuel, L. (1999). Latin for Lawyers. The Language of the Law. Larchmont, NY: Emanuel Publishing Corp. European Union Law. http://eur-lex.europa.eu (accessed 31 August 2014). Gibová, K. (2009). EU Translation as the Language of a Reunited Europe Reconsidered. In M. Ferenþík, J. Horváth (Eds.), Language, Literature and Culture in a Changing Transatlantic World. International Conference Proceedings (April 22-23, 2009). Prešov: Prešov University, 145-153. Hertog, E. (2009). Legal Interpreting and Translation in the EU: Justice, Freedom and Security through Language. In Baigorri, J. & Campbell, H. J. L. (Eds.), Reflexiones sobre la traducción jurídica, 2009. Granada: Comares, 13-24. Krimpas, P. G. (2009). ȃȠȝȚțȒ ȠȡȠȜȠȖȓĮ IJȠȣ ǻȚțĮȓȠȣ IJȘȢ ǼȣȡȦʌĮȧțȒȢ DzȞȦıȘȢ ıIJȘȞ ǼȜȜȘȞȚțȒ, IJȘȞ ȁȚșȠȣĮȞȚțȒ țĮȚ IJȘȞ ȁİIJIJȠȞȚțȒ: Ƞ ĮȞĮȜȠȖȚțȩȢ țĮȞȩȞĮȢ, Ș ȠȡȠȜȠȖȚțȒ ȚıȠįȣȞĮȝȓĮ țĮȚ IJĮ ıȤİIJȚțȐ ȝİIJĮijȡĮıIJȚțȐ ȗȘIJȒȝĮIJĮ. In ǼȜȜȘȞȚțȒ īȜȫııĮ țĮȚ ȅȡȠȜȠȖȓĮ. ǹȞĮțȠȚȞȫıİȚȢ 7Ƞȣ ȈȣȞİįȡȓȠȣ, 2009. ǹșȒȞĮ: ȉǼǼ/ǼȁǼȉȅ, 372-383. Kurzon, D. (1987). Latin for Lawyers: Degrees of Textual Integration. Applied Linguistics 8, 233-240. Martin, E. A. (2003). Oxford Dictionary of Law. Oxford etc.: Market House Books Ltd. Sturm, F. (2002). Lingua Latina fundamentum et salus Europae. The European Legal Forum (E) 6-2002, 313-320. Wild, S. E. (2006). Webster’s New World Law Dictionary. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
PART III DICTIONARIES: PAST AND PRESENT
CHAPTER SIX ONLINE ARABIC-ENGLISH-ARABIC SPECIALISED DICTIONARIES REIMA AL-JARF
Introduction Internet dictionaries are becoming increasingly popular among learners and teachers. More than 70% of students interviewed at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University use e-dictionaries more often than traditional bulky paper products (Lan, 2005). Faculty members at the English Department, King Saud University use printed dictionaries the most, followed by online dictionaries, electronic device dictionaries, and dictionaries on CDs. Monolingual dictionaries were found to be more accessed than multilingual dictionaries, mini-dictionaries were more accessed than encyclopedic dictionaries, and multi-field dictionaries were more accessed than singlefield dictionaries. Meaning and textual information were the most obtained information in online dictionaries (Abouserie, 2010). Compared to hard-copy dictionaries, Internet dictionaries are characterised by ease of access and quick searching. They are regularly and easily updated. They are useful in areas where there is rapid terminological growth because new words can be added to them faster than hard-copy dictionaries (Storrer & Freese, 1997). EFL Learners, teachers and translators can effortlessly access a wide variety of electronic dictionaries well suited to a multiplicity of lookup operations (RizoRodriguez, 2010). Despite the uncountable number of Internet dictionaries in all languages and subject-areas, a review of the literature has shown few studies that focused on Internet dictionaries. For example, Rizo-Rodriguez (2010) gave a concise description of the treatment of syntax and semantics in online English monolingual dictionaries. De Schryver (2003) reviewed, listed and compared 182 dictionaries for 117 African languages available on the Internet.
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Like other languages, a multitude of specialised Arabic-English-Arabic dictionaries compiled by Arabic organisations, academies, Arabisation centers, and individuals are available online. Such dictionaries are of ultimate importance for students majoring in Arabic-English-Arabic translation at the College of Languages and Translation (COLT), King Saud University, Saudi Arabia who take 6 interpreting courses and 18 translation courses in 18 subject areas: Engineering, medicine, physical sciences, media, Islamic studies, business, military, humanities, sociology, commerce, education, politics, agriculture, literature, petroleum, computer, security, law, in addition to a translation project. The students always face challenges with new English and Arabic terms that are being coined and rapidly spread through the media and Internet as a result of technological, scientific, social, economic and political developments. Results of an exploratory study with 187 students majoring in translation at COLT showed that students have difficulty understanding words that they hear on satellite TV such as depleted uranium, privatization, federal and confederal governments, money laundering, Polisario, technocrats, genocide, mass graves and ethnic cleansing. They feel frustrated when they cannot find a new term, when a new meaning is not included or when an inaccurate equivalent is given by the dictionary. They ask their instructors to recommend a good online dictionary where they can find accurate equivalents to emerging technical terms. To help both translation students and instructors evaluate currently available specialised online dictionaries and provide information on the usefulness of such dictionaries for translation, the present study aims to examine a sample of online Arabic-English-Arabic specialised dictionaries to identify their entry design, entry components, breadth of coverage, how up-to-date they are, i.e., whether they include the most recent terms, accuracy of translational equivalents and inclusiveness of meanings given.
Dictionaries: Definitions and Types According to the Webster's Online Dictionary, a dictionary is: (i) A reference source in print or electronic form containing words usually alphabetically arranged along with information about their forms, pronunciations, functions, etymologies, meanings, and syntactical and idiomatic uses; (ii) a reference book listing alphabetically terms or names important to a particular subject or activity along with discussion of their meanings and applications; (iii) a reference book listing alphabetically the words of one language and showing their meanings or translations in another language. The first definition applies to general dictionaries, the
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second applies to specialised dictionaries and the third applies to bilingual dictionaries. Bergenholtz, Duva & Tarp (1995) classified specialised dictionaries into: (i) Multi-field dictionaries that broadly cover several subject fields such as business (covering economics, accounting, management and others together); (ii) Single-field dictionaries that narrowly cover one particular subject field such as engineering; (iii) Sub-field dictionaries that cover a single field such as educational technology, idioms or constitutional law. As for online dictionaries, there are three types: (i) Hand-held; (ii) dictionaries on CD-ROM, and (iii) dictionaries on the Internet. Internet dictionaries are also categorised into: (i) Dictionaries available by subscription, (ii) dictionaries in the public domain because they are out of copyright or are unfinished products such as Webster’s and Roget’s Thesaurus, and (iii) collaborative projects in the process of construction by contributing users (Nesi, 1998).
Data Collection and Analysis The present study examined the content of 6 Internet (online) specialised Arabic-English-Arabic dictionary hubs: (i) The Arabization Center in Morocco; (ii) Arabic Language Academy in Cairo; (iii) Saudi Terminology Databank (BASM); (iv) School Arabia; (v) Dictionary Bay; and (vi) Babylon. A sample of English and Arabic terms such as aphasia, globalization, system, technique, technical, confederal, federal, fighters,ˬΔϳΪϫΎόΗ ˬΔϳΩΎΤΗ ΔϟϭΩ ˬΕϼΗΎϘϣ ˬεΎηέ ϊϓΪϣ ˬήϴθϣ ˬΓΩϭΪΤϣ ΔϴϟϮΌδϣ ΕΫ Δϛήη ˰ΔπΑΎϗ Δϛήη ήΑΎϘϣ ˬϲϗήϋ ήϴϬτΗ . ϲϨϘΗ ˬΔϧΎϘΗ ˬΔϴϨϘΗ ˬΔϴϗήϋ ΔϳΩΪόΗ ˬΔϴϋΎϤΟ was looked up in each. The following aspects were examined: Entry design, entry components, whether the term is available, number of meanings given, accuracy of equivalents, contexts, domain, pronunciation, grammatical information given, derivatives and their meaning, explanatory equivalents, illustrative examples, typographical, linguistics and spelling errors and how up-to-date the content is. Results of the analysis are reported qualitatively below.
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Results Dictionaries of the Arabization Center in Morocco The Arabization Center in Morocco 1 was established by the Arab League Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (ALESCO). It hosts 35 dictionaries covering Linguistics, general and nuclear physics, math and astronomy, music, chemistry, health and human body, history and archaeology, biology, geography, business and accounting, renewable energy, vocational and technical education, humanities (philosophy, sociology, education and anthropology), law, petroleum, environment, mechanical engineering, fine arts, communication, journalism, educational technology, meteorology, tourism, seismology, hydrology, information technology, remote sensing, marine sciences, electronic war, food technology, genetics, pharmacy, civil engineering, anatomy and civilisation (home economics). In addition, 9 specialised dictionaries are currently in progress: General lexicon, educational policies, semiotics, adult education, special education, curriculum and instruction, early childhood education, physical education, and educational administration. The dictionaries are not regularly updated. Two of those dictionaries were compiled in the 1980’s, 21 in the 1990’s and 10 after 2000. The typical dictionary has 2828 terms, with a range between 846 and 8846 terms. The dictionaries are trilingual: Arabic-French-English. The entries are arranged in tables with 4 columns for the domain, Arabic term, English term and French term respectively. Headwords are listed in the rows. When an Arabic term is entered, equivalents are given without a context and the meaning is not explained in Arabic, English or French.
Dictionaries of the Arabic Language Academy The Arabic Language Academy 2 in Cairo hosts a collection of specialised Arabic-English-French dictionaries in more than 20 subjectareas. Headwords are displayed in a bulleted alphabetical list, with equivalents given in the second row, and an explanation or definition given in the third row. Entries are color-coded: headwords are marked in blue, equivalents in red and definitions in grey. When multiple equivalents are given, the search engine does not tell in which dictionary, nor which discipline it is used. We found 18 English equivalents for "ΔϴϨϘΗ, i.e. 1 2
http://www.arabization.org.ma/Standarddesdictionnaires.aspx http://www.arabicacademy.org.eg
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technology”. However in each of the 18 equivalents, ΔϴϨϘΗ was confused with “technical” and was mistranslated as “technique” not ‘technology”. We did not find other derivatives such as ‘ΔϧΎϘΗ’. Terms are given in phrases or compounds that show the contexts in which the term is used as in ϲϧΎϤϠϋ ΔϴϧΎϤϠϋ ΔγέΪϣ ˬΔϴϧΎϤϠϋ ΔϴόϤΟ ˬΔϴϧΎϤϠϋ ΔϟϭΩ ˬϢϴϠόΘϟ. However the contexts given are not inclusive. We did not find common expressions as Ϟϴλ΄Θϟ & ϡϮϠόϟ Ϟϴλ΄Η ϲϣϼγϹ. There are some errors such as “ΕΎϴϧΎδϠϛ” not “ΕΎϴϧΎδϟ, i.e. linguistics”; “ΕΎϴϣϮϠόϣ” not “ΔϴΗΎϣϮϠόϣ” as an equivalent to “informatics”. Although, the dictionaries cover multiple disciplines, the coverage is limited. Recent derivatives of some Arabic terms are not given.
The Saudi Terminology Databank (BASM) The Saudi Terminology Databank is a multilingual Arabic-EnglishFrench-German specialised terminology databank that contains 460,000 terms in 214 sub-fields created by King Abdul-Aziz City for Science and Technology in Riyadh. The BASM 3 dictionaries can be either independently searched by selecting the domain in the searching page or can be all concurrently searched. Terms and equivalents are listed in tables with 6 columns for the Term code, domain, Arabic term, English, French, German equivalents. Headwords are listed one per row. BASM specifies the domain and context in which each equivalent is used. However, equivalents are sometimes given in one language and missing in others and meanings are given in some domains and missing in others. The gaps might be due to ongoing additions to the database. As for coverage and accuracy, BASM gives the equivalent to ϙήΤϣ "ΚΤΑ, i.e. search engine" in GIS but not Internet search engines. ‘System’ has 181 contexts with Arabic equivalents given in medicine, nutrition, biology and zoology, but not those used in computer science and physics. Some equivalents are also inaccurate. Like the Arabization Center and Language Academy dictionaries, BASM confuses techniques, technical & technological. There are spelling mistakes such as ΔϳϭϮϨϟ ΔϗΎτϟ ΕΎΌθϨϣ instead of ΕθϨϣ.
3
http://basm.kacst.edu.sa/
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Glossary from School Arabia School Arabia 4 is a web-based knowledge establishment based in Jordan. It is a hub for a comprehensive Chemistry, Computer and Meteorology sub-field glossaries. Each glossary has an Arabic and an English alphabetical term index. When a letter is clicked, all terms beginning with that letter appear in a list. Clicking on a term, 2 entries appear per page. Each includes the source term, its equivalent, and an encyclopedic definition. Headwords and their equivalents are color-coded.
Dictionary Bay The Dictionary Bay hosts 16 specialised dictionaries5. Terminology in each dictionary is accessed and searched independently by clicking the dictionary of interest. Only equivalents used in one domain are given. Searching for ‘Aphasia”, the equivalent term is displayed without definitions, synonyms or compounds showing contexts and domains. Coverage is too limited. Equivalents to many terms such as “field marshal, genocide, mass graves, εΎηέ ϊϓΪϣ ˬΔϴϋΎϤΟ ήΑΎϘϣ ˬϲϗήόϟ ήϴϬτΘϟ ˬϞΑΎϨϗ ΔϓΫΎϗ” are lacking. Some equivalents are inaccurate. “Fighter” was translated as "ϞΗΎϘϣ ˬϝΎΘϗ ήΎρ”, not "ΕϼΗΎϘϣϭ ΔϠΗΎϘϣ”. Other equivalents of “fighter” such as “ϼΜϣ νήϤϠϟ ϡϭΎϘϣϭ ˬϓΎϜϣ" are not listed.
Babylon Babylon 9 6 is a commercial Translation Software that features 75 languages and over 2,000 dictionaries among those Arabic-English-Arabic dictionaries in dentistry, economics, auditing, Bible names, currency codes, countries, a glossary of birds and an automotive glossary. Babylon dictionaries have an alphabetical letter index. When a letter is clicked, all the terms beginning with that letter are listed. Clicking on a term, Arabic equivalents are given together with synonyms, a definition and/or an explanation and the dictionary where each equivalent can be found. Babylon also provides the part of speech, plural form, and uses diacritics to show pronunciation. Related compound terms are also
4
http://www.schoolarabia.net/kemya/general_chemistry/glossary/index.htm http://www.dictionarybay.com/milit_ea_e.aspx 6 http://translation.babylon.com/english/to-arabic/English-to-Arabic-MedicalDictionary/ 5
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displayed in the same page as sub-entries that show the domain and context in which the term is used, together with their Arabic Equivalents. A term can be also looked up using the Babylon translation software, where it is entered in the left window and after selecting the language pairs, the equivalent appears in the right window together with a definition of the term in the target language. Unlike the dictionary, only one equivalent is displayed. No synonyms and compounds are given.
Discussion The present study revealed several shortcomings of online ArabicEnglish-Arabic specialised dictionaries such as limited coverage, inaccuracy and inclusiveness of some meanings. Findings are consistent with other studies in the literature conducted with hard-copy dictionaries. For example, Mansour (2010) found that some of the Arabic translations of appraisal adjectives in Arabic-English-Arabic dictionaries are misleading, as they do not reflect the full information of the word. Fareh & Moussa (2007) reported that English-Arabic dictionaries were a potential source of error for Arab learners while translating English metaphorical expressions into Arabic, as those offer inadequate help to translators in terms of providing equivalents to metaphorical expressions. A dictionary also posed problems of syntactic complexity, idiomaticity and cultural specificity for EFL learners due to inappropriate explanations and examples (Amritavalli, 1999). Similar shortcomings were also reported by English Department faculty in Saudi Arabia which included: Ignoring new terms, required illustration, incomplete information, limited coverage, false information, not being up-to-date and inaccessibility (Abouserie, 2010).
Concluding remarks To help translation students and instructors access all kinds of online specialised Arabic-English-Arabic dictionaries, the study recommends that all single-field specialised dictionaries be conglomerated in a single location, as in the OneLook Dictionaries. A team of subject-area specialists, lexicographers and linguists should collaborate to constantly update the content and make sure equivalents are accurate and inclusive. Collaborative and interactive dictionaries can be also created to ensure a fuller, more accurate coverage. An alphabetical term index can be added. All compounds, derivatives, parts of speech, an encyclopedic definitions
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should be included in the entries. These improvements would increase the usefulness of online dictionaries to translation students.
Bibliography Abouserie, H. (2010). Evaluating online dictionaries from faculty prospective: A case study performed on English faculty members at King Saud University. ERIC Document No. ED514314. Amritavalli, R. (1999). Dictionaries are unpredictable. ELT Journal 53 (4), 262-69. Bergenholtz, H., Duva, G. & Tarp, S. (1995). (Eds.). Manual of specialized lexicography: The preparation of specialized dictionaries. John Benjamins Publishing Company. Boguslavsky, I., Cardeñosa, J. & Gallardo, C. (2009). A novel approach to creating disambiguated multilingual dictionaries. Applied Linguistics 30 (1), 70-92. de Schryver, G. (2003). Online Dictionaries on the Internet: An overview for the African languages. Lexikos 13, 1-20. Fareh, S. & Bin Moussa, M. (2007). Practicality and usefulness of English-Arabic dictionaries in translating English metaphors. Babel 53 (1), 32-47. Lan, L. (2005). The growing prosperity of on-line dictionaries. English Today 21, 16-21. Mansour, S. (2010). Appraisal emotional adjectives in English/Arabic translation: A Corpus linguistic approach. UCCTS Conference Proceedings. Edge Hill University, UK. Nesi, H. (1998). Dictionaries on computer: How different markets have created different products. Symposium on Language Learning and Computers. Chemnitz University of Technology. Rizo-Rodriguez, A. (2010). Syntactic and semantic specifications in online English learners' dictionaries. Indian Journal of Applied Linguistics 35 (1), 25-43. Storrer, A. & Freese, K. (1996). Wörterbücher im internet. Deutsche Sprache 24 (2), 97-153.
CHAPTER SEVEN GENERAL REMARKS ON THE CHALLENGES OF INTEGRATING SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL WORDS IN GENERAL DICTIONARIES ISABEL BALTEIRO AND JOSÉ RAMÓN CALVO-FERRER
Introduction Dictionary compilation has been differently described depending on the describer’s personal and subjective point of view; the lexicographer’s task has been viewed by some as exciting or enjoyable, whereas for others it may be tedious or dull (Samuel Johnson himself used dictionary-making as an example of the meaning of the adjective “dull”). What there is agreement about is that dictionary making implies a number of challenges for the compilers which may be solved more or less successfully depending on the decisions and subsequent actions that may be carried out. These challenges comprehend all types of dictionaries, regardless of their size, scope, subject matter, language or languages, purpose, etc., especially if the compilers’ goal is, as it should, to help the intended users avoid or overcome oral and written communication translation problems. So far and until quite recently, many pages have been written on dictionaries and on lexicography. However, it seems that comparatively less theoretical attention has been paid to specialised reference works such as dictionaries, glossaries or terminological databases compiling the language of scientific and technical fields. In fact, numerous works of this kind (dictionaries and glossaries) may nowadays be found on the internet, all of them having one aspect in common, that is, an overall lack of (either any linguistic or lexicographic) criteria, probably because some of those glossaries have been compiled by domain professionals, not by linguists. Even less attention has been paid to the bridge between professional languages and the common language provided by general language
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dictionaries especially when these include scientific and technical terms. Paying attention to this question and its challenges is precisely our main objective, which will also allow us to contribute to the already mentioned ‘gap’ in the studies on lexicography and terminology. To begin with, we will, firstly and very briefly, outline the differences between specialised dictionaries and general language dictionaries and, secondly, we will focus on the study of the common points between these two types, that is, the inclusion of specialised terms in the general language dictionary: what material is included, how it is done, why, the challenges it implies, and what the results are.
Specialised (Scientific and Technical) Dictionaries versus General Dictionaries It is a well-known fact that every scientific or technical field uses its “own language”, that is, its specific terminology, which contributes to making it different from all the others. In spite of this “exclusive” character of specialised languages, some of them may share not only certain general characteristics but also, and most importantly, terms (though these may be semantically different). Moreover, these languages (usually professional languages, also called “languages for specific purposes” or LSP) are apparently only needed by their users in some specific moments of their activities. Being to a certain extent so restricted and exclusive, these languages are difficult to understand and rarely used by those belonging to the general language community. However, as we shall see, due to the advances and development of society some specific items are filtered from the scientific and technical fields into the general language (due to a process known as determinologization; see Meyer and Mackintosh 2000) and are used by the general and more or less educated language user. That being the case, reference works are called for in order to solve difficulties that either the specialist or the layman may have in dealing with language, finding a term for a concept or simply understanding or decoding a word or phrase. In a way, dictionaries (perfectly) fulfil that role. Nevertheless, as the needs of the specialists and the layman are obviously not the same, different types of dictionaries are also required. Thus, among many others, a distinction is made between specialised dictionaries and general ones, depending on the dictionary’s scope of coverage by subject. The distinction is usually favoured by publishers, who address different user “markets”. It is probably unnecessary to remind the reader that specialised dictionaries focus on language for special purposes, that is, on lexical
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items that are used to describe concepts in specific subject fields, such as those belonging to science, technology, and other professional and academic situations. These specialised lexical items, that is, lexical units belonging to a specific and specialised area, are typically referred to as terms, unlike common words in the general language, which are known as, simply, words and which are the objective of general dictionaries (on this see also Lara, 1999: 54; Bower, 2003: 154). Apart from that, specialised dictionaries are often and quite pessimistically regarded as poor, both linguistically and lexicographically speaking, because they apparently present serious deficiencies as regards lexicographic techniques in the organisation of their entries, inappropriate definitions, use of hyperonyms which may be grammatically inappropriate, heterogeneity and nonuniformity in definitions, vicious circles in their cross-references (see Pardos, 2000: 38), etc. The problem seems to be in the compilers’ background knowledge. While specialised dictionaries are often made by scientists without grammatical and lexicographic education, general language dictionaries are compiled by lexicographers or linguists, and therefore they do not generally seem to present such problems. All this leads scholars to speak of abysmal differences between one type and the other, especially because scientific and technical language is very different from general language in many respects and so is, consequently, its treatment in dictionaries. Scientific and technical language mainly denotes very precise and unambiguous objects and concepts (but also actions)1. It uses quite lengthy terms (of even four or more elements) whose meanings tend to change quickly with the evolution of the (given) science or technique and also tend to be definable only by words that are also scientific and technical, apart from being organised in taxonomies or by degrees of specialisation. Moreover, and as regards the treatment of these terms (80% of the terminology of a special field is composed of noun groups, according to Baudot and Clas, 1984: 49), in specialised dictionaries, unlike general ones, the meanings of polysemous items should be separated in different entries, as some authors put it: “no recurrir a la construcción de un signo complejo que represente varios signos, reunidos por el método lexicográfico en una forma canónica’” (García Palacios, 2002: 42; Lara, 1992: 8). For further details on this, also see Béjoint (1988). General dictionaries, on their part, apparently concentrate on general or common language. However, as said above, they may also include specialised fields because new and specialised terms, usually those 1
Picoche (1977: 71) says that they have no 'contextual semes', only 'nuclear semes'.
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belonging to science and technology, are often being constantly incorporated to the general language. These dictionaries, unlike specialised ones, usually provide information on the form, pronunciation, and spelling possibilities or variants of the lexical unit, its functioning (grammatical information, category), use and usage, and its meaning (semantic information, definition). Moreover, they not only include words but also elements above and below word level, that is, idioms, on the one hand, and prefixes and suffixes, on the other. The latter (prefixes and suffixes) are really important for their contributions to the understanding and comprehension of other lexical units that may not be included in the dictionary. Specialised Dictionaries Specialised language (Specialised) terms Long items (even four or more element items) Mainly nouns Non-linguistic approach Highly precise language and definitions Denotative and objective language (nuclear semes) Non-metaphorical extensions Absence of ambiguity and monosemy Polysemous cases occupy different entries (Mainly) classical bases (but also Germanic ones)
General Dictionaries General language (Common) words Not very lengthy items All word classes Linguistic and lexicographic approach Non-precise language Denotative and connotative language (contextual semes) Metaphoricity Ambiguity Polysemous cases are included in one entry Germanic bases (but also classical ones)
Table 1. Differences between specialised dictionaries and general dictionaries As shown in Table 1, the differences being so great between not only one type of dictionary and the other, but also between the language or lexical units which are the object of their study, it would appear that there is no possibility that (specialised) terms should enter the general dictionary and common words the specialised one. As briefly underlined above, term and word may be said to be distinguished pragmatically by their users, by the situations in which they are used, by the topic they denote or refer to and by the type of discourse in which they appear. Thus, terms are apparently used only by professionals of every single specialised field to which they are restricted, make reference to a concept related to a given
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specialised field, and appear in specialised texts of an objective character. Words, on their part, are said to be used in very different situations by language users in order to deal with any topic of daily life in general texts. However, matters are not so clear-cut in practice. As already mentioned, sometimes terms may modify or not their traits of meaning and/or senses and even lose precision so that they may become part of the general vocabulary of a language through a process known as determinologization (Meyer and Mackintosh 2000). That is the case of, for example, anorexia, which at some stage exclusively belonged to the specialised domain of medicine but is now recognised and used also in the general language, and may be then eligible for either its integration in the specialised dictionary and/or in the general one. Unlike this, other terms may be used either in a specialised context or (with a different or more general meaning) in the general/common language but without losing their denotative value in specialised contexts. Thus, they may simultaneously appear in both the specialised dictionary and the general one but, of course, with a different degree of specialisation. In the latter case, a term may either be included with the general or common language meaning or, if it may also be considered as relevant for the potential educated user, with the specialised meaning. That is the case of elements such as hardware, for example, which besides their general meaning, have a specialised one, in computer science. Therefore, as we have just suggested, some terms are eligible to appear either in specialised dictionaries and/or in general ones. This is important if we consider, as García Palacios and Fuentes Morán (2002: 126) do, that general dictionaries should not only be addressed to an educated user but they also should provide answers to the chemist, the philosopher, the architecture student, the teacher, the jurist, and the plumber. Then, does this mean that the difference between term and word no longer holds? It is not our aim in this work to solve this question, but to describe how general dictionaries include and treat specialised terms in the general dictionary. As we shall see below, it may be suggested that a gradient should be considered, at one end being terms and at the other words. Should they be treated according to the ‘rules’ imposed by the general dictionary or should they be treated differently as they are also special units? Or rather, should there be a special and combined treatment half-way between the specialised treatment and the linguistic one? Furthermore, would that mean a ‘threat’ to the uniformity of the general dictionary?
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Integrating Scientific and Technical Terms in the General Language Dictionary: Analysis and Discussion Taking into account what we have just argued, it seems that we should probably abandon the dilemma or complete separation between specialised dictionaries and general ones, as well as the opposition between scientific and technical terms versus general or common words. Instead, we believe that they (scientific and technical terms, on the one hand, and common words, on the other) should be seen as the two poles of the same gradient or scale in which some middle positions may also occur. In these middle positions words such as anorexia would be located. That is, some common interests to both types of dictionaries are possible or, to put it simply, some terms would be eligible candidates for both types of dictionaries due to either their specialised and non-specialised uses or their de-terminologisation. Therefore, the incorporation of scientific and technological terms in the general dictionary is to be expected2 and, moreover, it should be seen as a desirable occurrence. However, for obvious reasons, this view also considers that not all scientific and technological terms are to be or can be adopted or integrated in the general language. Thus, those terms that may be said to be at one of the ends of the gradient or at the top of the scale, with a high degree of specialisation and without application or usefulness for the expected potential or intended language user should be left out and only included in the specific and specialised dictionary concerning the language field or subject to which they belong. However, in addition to this, it cannot be disregarded that most dictionaries are nowadays compiled on the basis of a corpus which determines most, if not all, the lexical units or entries of the dictionary. Then, if the corpus has been adequately compiled, it also contributes to the exclusion of excessively specialised terms. In the light of the preceding statements, it seems that both common words and specialised terms which have extended their uses to the common language or less specialised contexts, may coexist within the same general language dictionary without problems, though they should probably be ‘marked’ in a way. Field labels may help the user to identify the professional, scientific or technological area to which the entries belong. For this reason, there seems to be nothing special in the fact that between 25 and 40% of the lexical items contained in general language 2
It seems that their presence in general dictionaries, in England and in France, is an older tradition than is generally supposed. In England, the tradition dates back at least to Bullokar's An English Expositor, published in 1616 (see Hayashi 1978).
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dictionaries should come from various specialised domains (data from Bower, 2003: 156). Unlike the view defended here, which we will try to corroborate with real data using the printed version of the Collins Cobuild English Language Dictionary (1992; henceforth, Collins); The Concise Oxford Dictionary (1999, henceforth Concise), and The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (2007, henceforth Shorter), some authors show a rather different approach. Béjoint (1988: 354), for example, claims that scientific and technical words constitute a ‘threat’ to the homogeneity of both the macrostructure and the microstructure of general dictionaries. Quite similarly, Rey and Delesalle (1979: 23) believe that scientific and technical words in general dictionaries generate particular problems for the lexicographer. In order to either confirm or disregard these statements, we will now analyse the challenges and consequences (if any) of integrating scientific and technical entries for both the macro- and microstructure of the general dictionary, but also the differences in treatment of similar or identical lexical items in the two types of dictionaries. Though general dictionaries are our main source, some specialised dictionaries are also used in order to establish similarities and contrasts in the treatment of scientific and technical words. However, before we come to grips with this, we should bear in mind that dictionary-making implies taking some previous decisions before the compilation itself that will determine not only the objective but also and mainly the results and their coherence. Such decisions concern the users to whom the dictionary is aimed, the material, the methodology for data collection, the layout of data, etc. However, as said above, with the present day tendency to use corpora as databases for the compilation of dictionaries many of these decisions are predetermined by the corpus itself, mainly, by the material used to compile it. Therefore, resorting to linguists’ intuitions, as used to be the tradition in older dictionaries, is quite limited nowadays. In spite of this, sometimes the combination of the two (corpora and intuitions) is the norm. As explained in the introduction to Concise, the use of both a large quantity of data from different corpora as well as the decisions to condense some entries and omit others “allows the inclusion of many words and meanings in current use which are less familiar, especially those belonging to specialist and scientific fields”. The Collins Dictionary, for example, following this well-established trend in Lexicography, is based on a large corpus of spoken and written English texts which provides word frequencies so that the inclusion or not of entries in the dictionary is based on such criteria. As explained in the Guide to the dictionary,
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In fact, the editor in the Introduction suggests that “If you need a lot of technical terms, you can find them in the many specialised dictionaries that are compiled by experts in each field”. (Introduction, Collins, 1992: xx). However, the dictionary includes scientific and technical words but only those “which are regularly used in the central vocabulary – words like hearsay, gynaecology, debug” (Introduction, Collins, 1992: xix). Thus, out of 40,000 words included in the dictionary, it includes some “many hundreds of words which are technical in origin” (Introduction, Collins, 1992: xix). Though the number is not precise, it is definite enough as to conclude that the number of scientific and technical words does neither overcome the number of general words nor is equivalent to half the amount of common words. Therefore, the balance is apparently the appropriate one. In our opinion, however, there seems to be an imbalance between simple specialised terms, either complex, multi-word elements or acronyms, and units below the word such as prefixes and suffixes or, using a wider concept, ICFs (Initial Combining Forms) and FCFs (Final Combining Forms) 3 . Such scarcity is also present in most general dictionaries, especially learners’ dictionaries, but for the Concise (1999). Thus, none of the following specialised ICF or FCF have been recorded in the Collins dictionary, despite the importance for the users’ decoding and encoding of meaning: anthro(po)- (though the words anthropoid, anthropology, anthropomorphic, and anthropomorphism have been included), bronch(o)- (though the words bronchial, bronchial tube have been included), cephal(o)-, cyt(o)-, derm(o)-/derm(a)- (though dermatitis has been included), encephal(o), schiz(o)-; -cephalic, -chondrion, -ectasia, -ectomy, -emia, -mania (this appears as a word in itself and no reference is made to any specific field). In fact, out of the prefixes we have looked up, only bio- and micro- have been recorded, as below: bio- is used at the beginning of nouns and adjectives that refer to life or to the study of living things. EG …biography… …biology… …biophysicist … …biomedical. (Collins)
3
Note it may be discussed whether they may be prefixes or ICFs, on the one hand, or suffixes or FCFs, on the other (on this distinction see Prüiü 2005 and 2008).
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Unlike Collins, Concise, also based on large corpora and other computerised evidence, includes not only all the prefixes we have looked up but also all the suffixes, as below. The differences between Collins and Concise (as concerns information provided) are quite remarkable. -phone Ɣ comb. form 1 denoting an instrument using or connected with sound: megaphone. 2 denoting a person who uses a specified language: francophone. See word-formation panel. DERIVATIVES -phonic comb form in corresponding adjectives, phony in corresponding nouns. ORIGIN from Gk phǀnƝ ‘sound, voice’. (Collins)
Unlike bound forms, there seems to be an adequate representative balance of simple, complex and multi-word items; most of the specialised lexical units being either simple or complex (compounds and derivatives are included). As regards simple word items, either words with a more scientific or technological meaning or common words, which may also have specialised meanings, have been recorded. Among scientific or technical words which have entered the common language, medical terms, which refer to well-known or popular illnesses such as anorexia and AIDS, may be mentioned: anorexia /ޙænԥޖreksܼԥ/ is an illness in which a person has an overwhelming fear of becoming fat, and so refuses to eat properly and becomes thinner and thinner. [grammatical information included N UNCOUNT on the right margin] (Collins) anorexia /ޙænԥޖreksܼԥ/ Ɣ n. lack of appetite for food, in particular (also anorexia nervosa) an emotional disorder characterized by an obsessive desire to lose weight by refusing to eat. ORIGIN C16: via late L. from Gk., from an- ‘without’ + orexis ‘appetite’. (Concise) AIDS /eܼdz/ is an illness which completely destroys the natural system of protection that the body has against disease; an abbreviation for ‘acquired immune deficiency syndrome’. (Collins)
As can be observed in the example above, the entries for anorexia provide general definitions and are, as expected, addressed to the general user. However, they do not go into more scientific or medical details such
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as symptoms or psychological issues, even though Concise specifies that it implies some kind of “emotional disorder” but it does not explain further. Similarly, in the case of the headword AIDS the definition is quite simple, but are these definitions useful for the general dictionary user, or in the case of Collins, for the learner? More importantly, in the light of these examples and many others which have not been included here, in Collins scientific and technical words do not follow the general layout of the dictionary as there is, for example, neither grammatical information nor examples. Exceptionally, in some cases such as anorexia, some information on word-class and subtype is included in Collins, while information on etymology and derivatives is always included in Concise. Therefore, it may be said that scientific and technical words do not interfere in the macrostructure of the work in which they appear but their microstructure is most often different from the general words’, as can be seen in the examples below. AI /eܼ aܼ/ is an abbreviation for artificial intelligence and ‘artificial insemination’. (Collins) artificial intelligence is the study of how to make computers work in an intelligent way, to do things that humans do, especially in the areas of language, vision, and movement. [grammatical information included N UNCOUNT on the right margin] [= AI] (Collins)
As above, it is noticeable that in some cases both the acronym and the word itself appear as headwords in the dictionary, which seems quite useful for the general user. This, however, may also imply that probably some words may be overtreated while others, like prefixes and suffixes, however, are missing. Apart from those terms from a given special field, which have entered the common language, common words which later acquired specialised meanings have also been recorded, e.g. hardware or neck. In the case of hardware, the technical meaning appears after the most common or general one, which is perfectly adequate for frequency reasons. Similarly, in bar, the specialised legal meaning appears in the third position within the entry (see bar1 from Concise below). However, we wonder why these specialised meanings do not have an entry of their own, similarly to artificial intelligence, or rather, why not include artificial intelligence with intelligence?
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hardware /ޖha:dweԥ/. Hardware is 1 tools and equipment for use in the home and garden, for example saucepans, screwdrivers, and garden tools. EG Ask in a hardware shop for clear enamel paint. 2 the machinery of a computer as opposed to the programs that are written for it: compare software. EG Computer technology in all its phases from hardware to software has become less expensive. 3 machinery that is used in war, for example tanks, aircraft, or missiles. EG The biggest spenders on military hardware are the two super-powers. (Collins)
Unlike these, some other common words which have acquired meanings do not include them. Thus, as regards neck, frequency reasons may explain that the specialised meaning “the strangulation of a pipe” (used in architecture and plumbing) has been left out but also the assumption that a/the intended common language user may not need to know its meaning even when dealing with any plumbing situation in his or her home, for example. neck /nek/, necks, necking, necked. 1 Your neck is the part of your body which joins your head to the rest of your body. EG She threw her arms around his neck and hugged him … The cat had a blue collar round its neck … He splashed his face and the back of his neck with water. 2 The neck of a shirt, dress, jumper, or other garment is the part which goes over your shoulders and round or below your neck. EG …a long dress with a lace neck… His shirt was open at the neck. 3 Neck is meat from an animal’s neck. EG …neck of lamb. 4 The neck of something such as a bottle or a violin is the long part at one end of it. EG He picked up the violin carefully by the neck. 5 A neck of land is a long, narrow strip of land which has the sea on both sides of it. EG The cottage was on the neck of the little peninsula. (Collins)
So far and in the light of the examples just seen, we may argue that general dictionaries, at least the Collins Dictionary, present some deficiencies as regards the integration of scientific and technical words. Thus, while some words like AI and artificial intelligence are somehow “overtreated”, others, which may probably be more frequent and, hence, useful for the general language user or learner, are missing or left out. Two reasons may be put forward to justify this: first, the already mentioned frequency reasons, and, secondly, the general language user or learner may not or is not expected to actually look specialised words up in general dictionaries. Apart from that, if we now analyse the definitions provided for scientific words, we notice that the arrangement of meanings within entries
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follows frequency criteria which also implies that common meanings and uses appear first and more specialised ones in the second place in order of importance (see hardware in Fig. 9). Moreover, as expected, the definitions are quite simple and not as specific and detailed as in specialised dictionaries, as the potential user is only thought to need the current and most common use or meaning, that is, as they are used “in ordinary English” or, as stated in the Introduction to the Collins dictionary, “highly specific meanings are not really accessible to anyone who does not know the subject” (Introduction, Collins, 1992). Therefore, encyclopaedic information is also left out. Then, the information that general language dictionaries provide about these specialised terms is shallower or less complete than the information that a specialised dictionary provides (see amalgam below) and sometimes even circular (see anorgasmia below). amalgam /ԥޖmælgԥm/ amalgams. An amalgam of two or more things is a mixture of them, EG …a simple amalgam of previous doctrines. [grammatical information included N COUNT on the right margin] (Collins) AMAޖLGAM. (from ȐȝĮ, together, and ȖĮȝȑȦ, to marry.) A compound of any metal with mercury. When two or more metals, neither being mercury, are mixed together, the compound is termed an alloy, but when mercury enters into the composition it is called an amalgam, and its derivation has been supposed to be from ȝȐȜĮȖȝĮ, or ȝĮȜįııȦ, to soften, which derivation appears to be more correct than that of Johnson, and lexicographers generally. (Dictionary of Geology and Mineralogy, 1843) anorgasmia /ޙano:ޖgazmܼԥ/ Ɣ n. Medicine. Persistent inability to achieve orgasm despite responding to sexual stimulation. DERIVATIVES anorgasmic adj. (Concise)
In spite of this, it may be argued that general language dictionaries do not offer incomplete information as their purpose is not primarily the specialist, who tends to resort to dictionaries of his/her field of knowledge. Unlike the preceding examples, Concise sometimes offers a specialisedlike definition. Thus, compare Black’s and Concise entries below, such as those for torture or bar (especially interesting are senses 3, 5, 6 in bar1 from Concise). torture, n. The infliction of intense pain to the body or mind to punish, to extract a confession or information, or to obtain sadistic pleasure. – torture, vb.
Integrating Scientific and Technical Words in General Dictionaries “By torture I mean the infliction of physically founded suffering or the threat immediately to inflict it, where such infliction or thereat is intended to elicit, or such infliction is incidental to means adopted to elicit, matter of intelligence or forensic proof and the motive is one of military, civil, or ecclesiastical interest” James Heath, Torture in English Law 3 (1982). (Black’s Law) torture Ɣ n 1 the action or practice of inflicting severe pain as a punishment or a forcible means of persuasion. 2 great suffering or anxiety. Ɣ v. subject to torture. DERIVATIVES torturer n. ORIGIN ME: via Fr. from late L. tortura ‘twisting, torment’, from L. torquere ‘to twist’. (Concise) bar, n. 1 In a courtroom, the railing that separates the front areas, where court business is conducted, from the back areas, which provides seats for observers; by extension, a similar railing in a legislative assembly < the spectator stood behind the bar >. 2 The whole body of lawyers qualified to practice in a given court or jurisdiction; the legal profession, or an organised subset of it < the attorney’s outrageous misconduct disgraced the bar >. See BAR ASSOCIATION. [Cases: Attorney and Client 31. C.J.S. Attorney and Client §§8-9]. integrated bar …. specialty bar …. unified bar …. voluntary bar …. 3 A particular court or system of courts …; 4 BAR EXAMINATION …; 5 A barrier to or the destruction of a legal action or claim …; 6 A plea arresting a lawsuit or legal claim ….; 7 Patents … 8 Trademarks … (Black’s Law) bar1 Ɣ n 1 a long rigid piece of wood, metal, or similar material, typically used as an obstruction, fastening, or weapon > a sandbank or shoal at the mouth of a harbour or an estuary. > Brit. a metal strip below the clasp of a medal, awarded as an additional distinction > Heraldry a charge in the form of a narrow horizontal stripe across the shield. 2 a counter in a public house or café across which alcoholic drinks or refreshments are served. > a room in a public house, restaurant, or hotel in which alcohol is served … 3 a barrier or restriction to action or advance: a bar to promotion > a plea arresting an action or claim in a law case. 4 Music any of the short sections or measures into which a piece of music is divided, shown or a score by vertical lines across the stave. 5 (the bar) a partition in a court room, now usually notional, beyond which most people may not pass and at which an accused person stands. > Brit. a rail marking the end chamber in the Houses of Parliament. 6 (the Bar) the profession of barrister. > Brit. barristers collectively. > N. Amer. lawyers collectively. Ɣ v. (barred, barring) 1 fasten with a bar or bars. 2 prohibit from doing something or going somewhere. > exclude from consideration. > Law
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Chapter Seven prevent or delay (an action) by objection. 3 mark with bars or stripes. Ɣ prep. chiefly Brit. except for. > Brit. Horse Racing except the horses indicated (used when stating the odds) PHRASES bar none with no exceptions be called (or go) to the Bar British be admitted as a barrister. be called within the Bar. British be appointed a Queen’s Counsel. Behind bars in prison DERIVATIVES barred adj. ORIGIN ME: from OFr barre (n), barrer (v), of unknown ORIGIN. (Concise) bar2 Ɣ n. a unit of pressure equivalent to a hundred thousand newtons per square metre or approximately one atmosphere. ORIGIN C20: from Gk baros ‘weight’ (Concise)
Important is also the fact that specialised dictionaries, unlike general ones, include scientific or technical words in the definitions themselves. In abortion, for example, words like foetus, womb or pregnancy, appear in the specialised dictionary, unlike the general one, despite the fact that these words have already entered the general language, as in the examples that follow: abortion /ԥޖbo:ԥn/, abortions. If a woman has an abortion, she ends her pregnancy and loses her baby, usually deliberately: compare miscarriage. EG Abortions are offered to women who need them … …the campaign for abortion on demand. [grammatical information included N COUNT/UNCOUNT on the right margin] [=termination] (Collins) abortion 1. The expulsion of a human fetus from the womb by natural causes, before it is able to survive independently; this is sometimes called a miscarriage (q.v.). 2. The deliberate termination of a human pregnancy, most often performed during the first 28 weeks of pregnancy. 3. The termination of development of an organ, such as a seed or fruit. (A Dictionary of Genetics - 1968, ed. 2006)
Apart from the already mentioned difference in the treatment of common word entries and specialised ones within the general dictionary, neither equivalents nor synonyms, antonyms or examples are provided in the Collins for scientific and technical words, unlike common words. Although this may look as a quite relevant deficiency because the reader
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may probably be less familiarised with them than with the general language words, however, and paradoxically, the non-inclusion of examples also makes sense. Scientific and technical words are merely denotative and their usage and grammar is quite straightforward; therefore, examples may be thought of as rather unnecessary and synonyms rarely exist. Unlike examples, thematic labels to classify or identify specialised words are expected. While both Shorter and Collins do not include them, Concise does. anorexia /anԥޖreksܼԥ/ n. 116. [Late L f. Gk, f. an-5+ orexis appetite: see –ia1.] Med. Absence of appetite; pop. spec. anorexia nervosa (see below) anorexia nervosa /n3:’vousԥ/ chronic anorexia induced by emotional disturbance. anorexiant a. & n. (a drug) producing anorexia m20. anorexic a. & n. (a) adj. = anorectic a.; (b) n. = anorectic n. 2: m20. anorexiޖgenic a. producing anorexia m20. (Shorter)
It seems then, on the one hand, that different dictionaries adopt different solutions (see above, anorexia in Collins and Shorter) and, on the other, that even the same dictionary may vary from one word to the other (see, for example, amalgam vs. anorexia, the former includes information on the plural), probably for its Latin origin. Apart from the preceding, it seems that general dictionaries are, at least apparently, quite inconsistent as regards grammatical information, spelling and inflection (see, for example, amalgam vs. any other example above) and subject labels, even within the same dictionary or piece of work. Thus, it has been observed that in Concise, for example, lexical units such as anorexia, torture, etc. have not been labelled as belonging to Medicine or Law while anorgasmia includes its subject label, Medicine. We believe that although this may appear as an inconsistency, it is perfectly justified if we consider the fact that the former two are nowadays perfectly integrated in the common or general language but the last one is still restricted to specialised medical contexts.
Concluding remarks In our view, specialised and general dictionaries should not be considered as two independent, competing and opposite entities but as
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complementary. Specialised dictionaries should be looked up for more detailed, specialised (that is, scientific or technical), encyclopaedic explanations while general dictionaries should be used to get a general idea of what the word means or denotes. Moreover, unlike what is generally thought, it seems that scientific and technical words do not alter the macrostructure of the dictionary in general as their number is appropriate or even less numerous than expected, though the high degree of specialisation is sometimes unexpected, e.g. ligula (see Concise). However, as regards the microstructure, as said, it strikes us that, in general, only in some scientific and technical words there is grammatical and phonological information, but neither examples nor synonyms are provided. This being the case, the treatment of specialised terms may be said to be rather different from that of general words in the given dictionaries (with some exceptions and also disregarding the exceptional information provided by Concise on etymology and derivation). Even though the selection of items may have been a very careful one in order to make the corpus representative, the lexicographer “runs the risk of ending up with a selection of words that constitute a 'patchy', or even unfair, coverage of each domain in particular and of sciences and techniques in general” (Rey & Delesalle, 1979: 16). However, this study concludes that scientific and technical words, thanks to the use of corpora, are perfectly integrated in the macrostructure of the general dictionary. Apart from that, if different general language dictionaries are compared, as above, we may say that there is no unanimity as to labelling of word entries with thematic fields nor as to the incorporation of examples, collocations, pronunciation, equivalents, grammatical information on use and usage, etc. Moreover, in general, it may also be said that dictionaries are not systematic and that though scientific and technical words are naturally different from common words, there should be a similar treatment as regards examples, grammatical information, etc. so that they perfectly fit in the dictionary. In language teaching, especially in the teaching of language for specific purposes, the learner will necessarily need to make use of the two types of dictionaries, the specialised ones (to obtain further information on a topic or concept or simply to clarify it) and the general ones in order to know not only how to use a word or term, but also its grammar, semantics, pragmatics, look at examples, equivalents, etc. It may then be questioned whether this is actually a desirable situation because the learner has to use and, therefore, purchase two dictionaries, basically for the same thing. If one of the reasons is that specialised dictionaries do not offer sufficient information for successful usage, this could be satisfied with a rather
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elaborated and encyclopaedic word list. However, it seems to be the other way round: the learner of general English or the general user will not need to resort to the specialised dictionary as the information contained in the general one is sufficient to identify or understand the concept that the term or word represents.
Bibliography Ahumada, I. (2001). Problemas de la definición enciclopédica en las palabras especializadas. In M. Bargallo et al. (Eds), Las lenguas de especialidad y su didáctica. Actas del Simposio Hispano-Austríaco. Tarragona: Universitat Rovira i Virgili, 59-68. Arntz, R. (1996). Language description and LSP teaching. In H. Somers. (Ed.), Terminology, LSP and Translation. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 109-124. Asher, R.E. & Simpson, J.M.Y. (Eds). (1994). Languages for Specific Purposes (LSP). In Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, Vol. 4. Oxford: Pergamon, 2010-2015. Bargallo, M. (2001). La información grammatical en los diccionarios especializados. In M. Bargallo et al. (Eds.), Las lenguas de especialidad y su didáctica. Actas del Simposio Hispano-Austríaco. Tarragona: Universitat Rovira i Virgili, 81-90. Baudot, J. & A. Clas. (1984). A Model for A Bilingual Terminology MiniBank. Lebende Sprachen 2, 49-54. Beattie, N. (1973). Teaching Dictionary Use. Modern Languages 54 (4), 161-168. Beaugrande, R. de. (1987). Special Purpose Language and Linguistic Theory. In ALSED-LSP Newsletter 10/2. Béjoint, H. (1999). Compound Nouns in Learners’ Dictionaries. In T. Herbst & K. Popp (Eds.), The Perfect Learners’ Dictionary (Lexicographica Series Maior 95). Tubingen: Max Niemeyer, 80-99. Béjoint, H. (1988). Scientific and Technical Words in General Dictionaries. International Journal of Lexicography 1 (4), 354-368. Bergenholtz, H. & Tarp, S. (1995). Manual of specialized lexicography: the preparation of specialized dictionaries. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Bergenholtz, H. & Mugdan, J. (1985). Linguistic Terms in English and German Dictionaries. Lexicographica 1, 2-23. Bergenholtz, H. & Tarp, S. (1995). Manual of Specialised Lexicography. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
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Bergenholtz, H. & Kaufmann, U. (1997). Terminography and Lexicography. A Critical Survey of Dictionaries from a Single Specialised Field. Hermes. Journal of Linguistics 18, 91-125. Bower, L. (2003). Specialised lexicography and specialised dictionaries”. In P. Van Sterkenburg, (Ed). A Practical Guide to Lexicography. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 154164. Collins Cobuild English Language Dictionary. 1992. García Palacios, J. & Fuentes Morán, M.T. (2002). Los diccionarios de especialidad y el traductor. In G. Guerrero & M.F. Pérez, Panorama actual de la Terminología. Granada: Comares, 117-136. García Palacios, J. (2002). El artículo lexicográfico en el diccionario de especialidad. In Diccionarios y Lenguas de Especialidad. V Seminario de Lexicografía Hispánica. Jaén: Universidad de Jaén, 21-47. Garner, B.A. (Ed.) (1999). Black’s Law Dictionary. USA: Thomson West ed. (1st edited in 1891). Hayashy, T. (1978). The Theory of English Lexicography 1530-1791. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Humble, W. (Ed.) (1843). Dictionary of Geology and Mineralogy. London: Henry Washbourne. King, R.C., Stansfield, W.D. & Mulligan, P.K. (2006). A Dictionary of Genetics. (7th ed). Oxford: OUP. Lara, L. F. (1992). El discurso del diccionario. In G. Wotjak (Ed.), Estudios de lexicología y metalexicografía del español actual. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1-12. Lara, L.F. (1999). Término y cultura: hacia una teoría del término. In A. de Irazazábal & L.F. Lara (Eds.), Terminología y modelos culturales. Barcelona: Institut Universitari de Lingüística Aplicada-Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 39-60. Meyer, I. & Mackintosh, K. (2000). When terms move into our everyday lives: An overview of de-terminologization. Terminology 6 (1), 111– 138. New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on CD-Rom. (2007). Pardos, F. (2000). El lenguaje científico en un diccionario de lengua general: el caso del DRAE. Panace@ 1/2: 37-40. Pearsall, J. (Ed.) (1999). The Concise Oxford Dictionary. Oxford: OUP [10th ed.]. Picoche, J. (1977). Précis de Lexicologie Francaise. Paris: Nathan. Prüiü, T. (2005). Prefixes versus Initial Combining Forms in English: a Lexicographic Perspective. International Journal of Lexicography 18 (3), 313-334.
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—. (2008). Suffixes versus Final Combining Forms in English: a Lexicographic Perspective. International Journal of Lexicography 21 (1), 1-22. Rey, A. & Delesalle, S. (1979). Problemes et conflits lexicographiques. Langue Francaise 43, 4-26.
CHAPTER EIGHT GENTYLL ON-LINE GLOSSARIES: PROFESSIONAL TITLES OF WOMEN AND MEN IN A SERIES OF FIELDS OF ACTIVITY MERCEDES BENGOECHEA, MARÍA ROSA CABELLOS AND JOSÉ SIMÓN
Introduction The aim of this paper is to present a series of glossaries in Spanish and English which have been elaborated within the research project “Neuter, world-view and sexed translation: From theory to strategies”1. They can be queried online at http://gentyll.uah.es/glossaries.html. The creation of these glossaries comes in the wake of women’s struggle to achieve a fair and equitable representation in language (Pauwels 1998, 2003, Hellinger and Bußmann 2001-2003), and thus they follow the recommendations for non-sexist usage issued by various institutions, agencies and scholars.
Rationale behind the Gentyll Glossaries Most terminology data bases which have proved very efficient for translation purposes were created with very little consideration for matters of social gender (Bowker 2001). Some on-line dictionaries have also ignored social changes and feminist criticism, i.e. Vargas et al. (1998), Lledó Cunill (2004); Kramarae (1992), Hidalgo Tenorio (2000). Such neglect is responsible for the fact that androcentric thought and sexist language prevail in most resources available in the Web, both dictionaries 1
Research project FEM2009-10976 funded by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación. We are also grateful to the mobility grant awarded by Caja Madrid to one of the authors.
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and glossaries, as shown below by focusing only on theoretically symmetrical dual terms2. In entries for women’s professional titles, English monolingual dictionaries on-line seem to ignore the long battle for neutral titles and the denunciation of ‘special’ female titles (i.e. with ‘special’ derivational morphemes for the feminine term) as sexist. For instance, the suffix ‘-ette’ has been denounced because: “Transposed to English … this suffix signifies only three things: small size, as in kitchenette; imitation, as in leatherette; or, when applied to a person, a female imitation of the ‘real thing’, as in farmerette and majorette.” Accordingly, avoiding professional titles ending with ‘-ette’ has been strongly recommended (Miller & Swift 1995: 138-9). Investigation has revealed that English female-exclusive terms are being abandoned in favour of gender-neutral ones (Pauwels 1997). However, in the following entry not only are male ushers ‘officials’, whereas females are just ‘assistants’, but there is no reference to the widespread idea that this type of feminine suffixes makes the professional title become “a non-standard variation, an aberration” (Miller and Swift 1995: 135): usher. 1. an official who shows people to their seats, as in a church, 2. a person who acts as doorkeeper in a court of law. usherette. a woman assistant in a cinema, who shows people to their seats. (Collins on-line3)
When bilingual dictionaries translate terms which can be applied to both women and men, the woman’s term is frequently not provided in Spanish: (EN) managing director / (ES) director administrativo (EN) CEO / (ES) el presidente
(Reverso.net4)
Or, if the term for women is provided, it is inaccurate. In the example that follows, ‘socio’ is the masculine term and ‘socia’ the feminine, in spite of which, ‘socio’ is offered for the masculine and feminine:
2
All quotes from online resources were first consulted in October 2011, when this paper was first drafted and our project started. Since them, probabaly due to (our and others’) criticism, some of the definitions in the dictionaries have been changed. 3 http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english 4 http://dictionary.reverso.net/english-spanish
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(EN) managing partner / (ES) socio (m/f) gerente (Reverso.net)
Some other times the feminine noun does not agree with the adjective: (EN) managing director, chief executive officer / (ES) consejero/a delegado (Reverso.net)
This is also the case in virtually all bilingual, trilingual or multilingual terminology banks available for translation into Spanish. These tend to subsume women to men by providing the masculine term for person denomination. That occurs in glossaries such as the following, which ignores that most caregivers are women: (EN) caregiver / (ES) cuidador (Cruz and Gómez-Polledo 2003)
One of the terminology banks which our research team has analysed in depth is 32 léxicos trilingües de deportes y medios de comunicación para los Juegos Olímpicos y Mediterráneos, a very comprehensive glossary in three languages of sport terminology which unfortunately did not keep up and did not pay attention to the guidelines for non-sexist English or Spanish. In the examples that follow note the androcentrism that pervade the three languages (e.g. men are ‘jueces’ [judges], not ‘jueces masculinos’ [male judges], whereas women are ‘female judges’). Also note the sexist French and Spanish terms: e.g. they are not ‘juezas’/‘juges’ [judge-she], perfectly standard terms, but ‘jueces femeninos’/‘juges féminins’ [feminine-he judge-he], in the masculine. (EN) female judges / (ES) jueces femeninos / (FR) juges féminins (EN) judge / (ES) juez /(FR) juge (Ordoño Múñoz 2004, Vol. 1 [English-Spanish-French], 16.Karate)
Failure to provide the feminine is a problem for translators, given the complexity of the gender morphological construction in Spanish 5 , and lexicographers’ long-lived rejection of women’s professional terms (Vargas et al 1998; Lledó Cunill 2004). That might be the reason why some terminology banks that ignored gender matters a couple of years ago 5 For an introduction to the sociolinguistic complexity of gender morphological construction in Spanish, Alfaro, Bengoechea & Vázquez (2011: 91-9) or Instituto Cervantes (2011) can be consulted.
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are now gradually updating their data bases. Sometimes they have done so in an irregular way. Such is the case of TERMCAT6, which in some fields has incorporated the female term for Catalan, but not for Spanish or French. These examples belong to the subject area “Financial markets” (displayed as “mercats financers” under “Societat i cultura”): (CAT) accionista majoritari -ària, n m, f / (ES) accionista mayoritario / (FR) actionnaire majoritaire / (EN) majority shareholder (TERMCAT)
Aims Having in mind the shortcomings of internet resources that we have pointed out above, the Gentyll team decided to prepare and publish English-Spanish glossaries of specialised terms for men and women covering various subject areas. After analysing existing English-Spanish terminological bases in depth, our team set out to propose modifications which complement them with gender perspective. By gender perspective we mean to acknowledge sexual difference and expressly provide the term for men AND for women in Spanish, whereas conversely, for English, to neutralise sexist naming by providing terms in common use considered sexist together with the neutral term, where applicable. The gender-aware terminology is wishfully expected to be applied to non-sexist translation of the designation of men or women who act professional/expert roles in different activities.
Design We selected the areas we wished to cover (in a first stage, sports and leisure/tourism) and analysed existing glossaries focusing on the terms to be used for human beings on those areas, whilst paying attention to their macro and micro structures. Next we profiled structures for our glossaries and compiled a list of headwords and a list of sub-areas for each of the areas selected (e.g. athletics, basket, fencing, etc. for sports). In designing and compiling our repositories we consulted, in addition to those dictionaries which are widely regarded as normative, other existing glossaries (among them, those of the translation services of the European Union, IATE, TERMCAT, Spanish Translator Services ...) as well as a number of well-known reference works, such as Ordoño (2004), 6
http://www.termcat.cat/es/Diccionaris_En_Linia/
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Castañón (2004, 2005) and Teruel (2007) for the sports sector, and Collin (1994), Alcaraz et al. (2000) and Deltoro (2000) for the field of leisure and tourism. We reviewed the translations and we extended, amended or updated them as we thought appropriate. The novelty –and main contribution–of our glossaries is that they provide in Spanish the feminine form of every term, and not just the masculine form as most of the existing glossaries do. Ours do so by consistently following the non-sexist recommendations issued by gender equality agencies for Spanish and other languages. We designed a microstructure that, together with a powerful indexing system, allowed for suitable queries. See Figure 1 for the search ‘censor de cuentas’. #
Activity
1
Mgmt.
2
Mgmt.
3
Mgmt.
Woman La censora de cuentas La censora de cuentas
Man El censor de cuentas El censor de cuentas
La censora El censor de de cuentas cuentas
Sp Usage -
Woman
Man
The auditor
The auditor
The chartered accountant The certified public accountant
The chartered accountant The certified public accountant
Eng Usage -
Figure 1. Gentyll>Tourism and Leisure>‘censor de cuentas’ As for English, they also offer non-sexist variants that have gained ground in recent decades to replace former denominations that are now considered sexist, i.e. ‘postal carrier’, ‘postal worker’, ‘mail carrier’, ‘post person’, for Spanish ‘cartera’ in Figure 2: # 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Activity T&L T&L T&L T&L T&L T&L T&L
Woman
Man
La cartera La cartera La cartera La cartera La cartera La cartera La cartera
El cartero El cartero El cartero El cartero El cartero El cartero El cartero
Sp Usage -
Woman
Man
The postal carrier The post person The mail carrier The postal worker The letter carrier The mailwoman The postwoman
The postal carrier The post person The mail carrier The postal worker The letter carrier The mailman The postman
Eng Usage 1 2 3
Usage notes (English terms): 1. Chiefly in the USA. 2. Chiefly in the USA. Sex-specific terms with woman or man are less and less frequent, being substituted by terms that do not specify sex (which are more comprehensive, more accurate and more consistent). Avoid the use of sex-specific terms (singular or plural) as indefinitie, sex-inclusive
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occupational titles. 3. Sex-specific terms with woman or man are less and less frequent, being substituted by terms that do not specify sex (which are more comprehensive, more accurate and more consistent). Avoid the use of sex-specific terms (singular or plural) as indefinitie, sexinclusive occupational titles.
Figure 2. Gentyll>Tourism and Leisure>‘cartera’ Additionally, we have paid special attention to alternative spellings (quiosquera, kioskera; season-ticket holder, season ticket holder). The English spelling we have taken as standard is British-oriented, as Figure 3 illustrates: # 1
Activity Viajes
Woman
Sp Usage
Man
La viajera El viajero discapacitada discapacitado
-
Woman The disabled traveller
Man The disabled traveller
Eng Usage 1
Usage notes (English terms): 1. traveller in the USA.
Figure 3. Gentyll>Tourism and Leisure>‘viajera discapacitada’ As Figure 2 shows, some terms include usage notes that we believe respond to common questions about sexist language usage. The sources for our notes are Frank & Treichler (1989), Maggio (1997), Miller & Swift (1995), the MLA (2003), Schwartz (1995) and the United States Department of Labor (2010-2011) for English. See in Figure 4 the information retrieved for ‘acomodadora’: # Activity 1
T&L
Woman La acomodadora
Man El acomodador
Sp Eng Woman Man Usage Usage The usher The usher 1
Usage notes (English terms): 1. usherette is considered to be sexist.
Figure 4. Gentyll>Tourism and Leisure>‘acomodadora’ The sources of our notes for non-sexist Spanish are the publications of the Instituto de la Mujer (Lledó Cunill 2006; Alfaro, Bengoechea & Vázquez 2011) and other equality agencies (Guerrero Salazar 2007), together with the Instituto Cervantes (2011), which we have tried to reconcile with the latest guidelines from the Spanish Academy.
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Occasionally two variants are provided for the Spanish term. This is consistent with a language undergoing a process of transformation in gender matters, in which two or more terms or inflectional morphemes coexist during a certain period, often one for historical reasons, another because of a social move. If this is the case, a note of usage accompanies the terms, as in the search for ‘líbera’ (Figure 5): # Sport
Woman
Football Foot2 ball Foot3 ball Hock4 ey Hock5 ey Volly6 ball Volley 7 -ball Volley 8 -ball
La líbera /libero La líbera /libero La líbera /libero La líbera /libero La líbera /libero La líbera /libero La líbera /libero La jugadora líbera /libero
1
Sp Usag e
Man
Woman
Man
Eng Usage
El líbero
1
The freeback
The freeback
-
El líbero
2
The libero
The libero
-
El líbero
3
The sweeper
The sweeper
-
El líbero
4
The single full-back The single full-back
-
El líbero
5
The sweeper
The sweeper
-
El líbero
6
The libero
The libero
-
El líbero
7
The specialised defensive player
The specialised defensive player
-
El jugador líbero
8
The libero player
The libero player
-
Usage notes (Spanish terms): 1. Cualquiera de las dos formas indistintamente. 2. Cualquiera de las dos formas indistintamente. 3. Cualquiera de las dos formas indistintamente. 4. Cualquiera de las dos formas indistintamente. 5. Cualquiera de las dos formas indistintamente. 6. Cualquiera de las dos formas indistintamente. 7. Cualquiera de las dos formas indistintamente. 8. Cualquiera de las dos formas indistintamente.
Figure 5. Gentyll>Sports>‘líbera’
Implementation So far we have completed two of the intended glossaries that can already be queried online: one referent to the area of sports, with over 2,900 entries, and another referent to the area of leisure/tourism, with some 2,000 entries. A series of other glossaries on medicine, politics, education, security, economy and finance, science, technology, and legal and
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administrative world are currently in preparation. Moreover, we intend to expand new and existing glossaries with translations into other languages. In the compilation of the glossaries we have stuck to the integrity principles stated by Kierzkowska (1993: 280). Accordingly, we have carefully seen that the terms: do not contradict each other; do not coincide; do not exclude each other. The glossaries were first compiled by means of an ad hoc tool developed on Microsoft Access. The tool included routines for spelling, consistency and circularity checking as well as a series of cross-checking functions to make revision easier. Once the glossaries were fully compiled and double-checked they were migrated to a mySQL database on a Debian-Linux server. The first testing query interface was developed entirely in PHP. The prototype was later replaced by a far more efficient client-server application that makes use of AJAX technology: SQL + PHP on the server side, complemented with scripts on the client side. Since our main concern was to make feminine names visible, unlike other dictionaries and glossaries, our system searches masculine or feminine forms indistinctively and displays both of them in separate columns. To make searching even more efficient and simpler, the system retrieves all the terms that contain the key string (be it a whole word or just a few characters) in either the masculine or the feminine fields in any of the two languages. See in Figure 6, for instance, the first four records retrieved by ‘centr’: # Activity 1 Basket 2 Basket Basket 3 4
Basket
Woman
Man
La pivot La pivote
El pívot El pivote
La central
El central
La árbitra del El árbitro del centro del campo centro del campo
Sp Woman Usage The centre The centre The central defender The trail official
Man The centre The centre The central defender The trail official
Eng Usage -
Usage notes (English terms): 1. center in the USA. 2. center in the USA.
Figure 6. Gentyll>Sports>‘centr’ Finally, to prevent failed searches and mismatches due to spelling problems (words containing vowels with tildes, ‘ñ’ or other such characters are difficult to type on non-Spanish keyboards) or hyphenation, the indexes have been normalised through a soundex-like algorithm which allows the system to yield results even when the search string does not
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exactly match the contents of the database. Thus, ‘arbitra’ will retrieve ‘árbitra’ and ‘acompanante’, ‘acompañante’. Despite the care we have put into checking translations, no human work is complete or error-free. We systematically record the results for every query key in order to detect errors or omissions, but that is not enough. Users are allowed (and kindly requested) to let us know of any errors they might detect or any better alternative translation they want to suggest by means of an online form included in the resources page. Also, users willing to contribute any suggestion on how to improve the glossary or the query software are encouraged to drop us an email to the project address: [email protected].
Bibliograhy Alcaraz Varó, E., Hughes, B., Campos Pardillos, M. A., Pina Medina, V. M. & Alesón Carbonell, M. A. (2000). Diccionario de términos de turismo y de ocio. Barcelona: Ariel. Alfaro, É., Bengoechea, M. & Vázquez, B. (2011). Hablamos de Deporte. Madrid: Instituto de la Mujer. Bowker, L. (2001). Terminology and gender sensitivity: A corpus-based study of the LSP of infertility. Language in Society 30, 589-610. Castañón, J. (2004). Diccionario terminológico del deporte. Gijón: Trea. Castañón, J., Tomás García, E., & Loza, E. (2005). Términos deportivos en el habla cotidiana. Logroño: Universidad de La Rioja. Collin, P. H. (1994). Dictionary of Hotels, Tourism and Catering Management. Teddington, Middlesex: Peter Collin Publishing. Cruz, A. & Gómez-Polledo, P. (2003). Glosario de demencias (I): enfermedad de Alzheimer. Panacea, IV (13–14,: 227-238. http://www.medtrad.org/panacea/IndiceGeneral/n13-14_tradytermdemencias.pdf (accessed 4 September 2014). Deltoro, C. (2000). Diccionario Turístico Inglés-Español. Barcelona: Laertes. Frank, F. W. & Treichler, P. A. (1989). Language, Writing and Professional Writing: Theoretical Approaches and Guidelines for Nonsexist Usage. New York: MLA. Guerrero Salazar, S. (2007). Esbozo de una bibliografía crítica sobre recomendaciones y guías para un uso igualitario del lenguaje administrativo. In A. M. Medina Guerra (Coord.), Avanzando hacia la igualdad. Málaga: Diputación de Málaga, 109-122. Hellinger, M. & Bußmann, H. (2001-2003). Gender across Languages: The Linguistic Representation of Women and Men. Amsterdam: John
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Benjamins. Hidalgo Tenorio, E. (2000). Gender, Sex and Stereotyping in the Collins COBUILD English Language Dictionary. Australian Journal of Linguistics 20 (2), 211-230. Instituto Cervantes. (2011). Guía de Comunicación No Sexista. Madrid: Instituto Cervantes. Kierzkowska, D. M. (1993). Polterm system of unified legal terminology. In Translation the vital link. Proceedings of the XIII FIT World Congress, 6-13 August. London: Institute of Translation ad Interpreting, vol. I, 277-281. Kramarae, C. (1992). Punctuating the dictionary. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 94, 135-154. Lledó Cunill, E. (Ed.). (2004). De mujeres y diccionarios. Evolución de lo femenino en la 22ª edición del DRAE. Madrid: Instituto de la Mujer. Lledó Cunill, E. (2006). Profesiones de la A a la Z. Madrid: Ministerio de Trabajo y Asuntos Sociales. Instituto de la Mujer. Maggio, R. (1997). Talking about People: A Guide to Fair and Accurate Language. Phoenix: Oryx. Miller, C. & Swift, K. (1995). The Handbook of Non-Sexist Writing (3rd edition). London: The Women’s Press. MLA. (2003). Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (6th ed.) J. Gibaldi, (Ed). New York: Modern Language Association of America. Ordoño Muñoz, A. (2004). 32 léxicos trilingües de deportes y medios de comunicación para los Juegos Olímpicos y Mediterráneos, 3 volumes. Almería: Asociación de Prensa de Almería and TCI. Pauwels, A. (1997). Of handymen and waitpersons: A linguistic evaluation of job classifieds. Australian Journal of Commnication 24(1), 58-69. —. (1998). Women Changing Language. London: Longman. —. (2003). Linguistic Sexism and Feminist Linguistic Activism. In J. Holmes & M. Meyerhoff (Eds), The Handbook of Language and Gender. Oxford: Blackwell, 550-570. Schwartz, M. (1995). Guidelines for Bias-Free Writing. Bloomington: Indiana UP. Teruel, A. (2007). Vocabulario del fútbol. Gijón: Trea. United States Department of Labor. (2010-2011). Occupational Outlook Handbook 2010-2011. http://www.bls.gov/oco/ Vargas, A., Lledó Cunill, E., Bengoechea, M., Mediavilla, M., Rubio, I., Marco, A. & Alario, C. (1998). Lo femenino y lo masculino en el Diccionario de la Real Academia Española. Madrid: Ministerio de Trabajo y Asuntos Sociales. Instituto de la Mujer.
CHAPTER NINE THE DICTIONARY OF RICHARD PERCYVALL’S BIBLIOTHECA HISPANICA (1591): STRUCTURE AND COMPOSITION DAVID CARRASCOSA CAÑEGO
Introduction During the sixteenth century Europe was living the awakening of the didactics of vernacular languages, but it was in its last decade when four English Hispanists started to publish their materials, mainly grammars and dictionaries, for the teaching and learning of Spanish in England. These authors are John Thorius, Richard Percyvall, William Stepney and John Minsheu. They probably were pushed to undertake this important enterprise because of the continuous confrontation in the so-called AngloSpanish War (1585-1604), originated by their political, economic and religious differences. Thus, it was essential for Englishmen to learn Spanish in order to come to know the secret plans and intentions of their enemies. In this way, they were able to understand and interpret their texts, many of which were thought ideologically dangerous for the English society. Besides, this increasing interest in everything coming from Spain made them become aware of all the cultural expressions that were taking place in the Peninsula in that period. This situation meant the birth of a certain English Hispanism, which struggled in a dichotomy grounded on the alternation of hatred and love towards the Spanish civilisation. The Spanish Grammer (1590) by John Thorius is just a mere translation into English with some minor adaptations from the Reglas gramaticales (1586) by Antonio del Corro, written originally to teach Spanish in France. As a novelty, this work includes a small unimportant vocabulary of near 1,000 words taken from the leading grammar and ordered alphabetically next to their English equivalents. For this reason,
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we claim that our author should be considered the pioneer in the didactics of this Romance language in England1. Richard Percyvall 2 (1550-1620) was a successful administrator and politician. For some years he was a spy at the service of William Cecil (Lord Burghley), Secretary of State and Lord High Treasurer for Queen Elizabeth I. His labour consisted, essentially, in translating and deciphering awkward documents related to the project of the Invincible Armada (1588). Before this activity he spent four years in Spain, where he had the opportunity to come into contact with its population and, above all, with its language. Although he did not devote much time of his life to its promotion in the British Ile, he bequeathed us his Bibliotheca Hispanica (1591), which contains a Spanish grammar 3 and a monodirectional trilingual Spanish, English and Latin dictionary. According to Ungerer, this work became “[…] the most popular primer to be published in the last decade of the sixteenth century” (1965: 203). Since that date it has not been printed again. The same year of the publication of Percyvall’s manual William Stepney released The Spanish Schoole-master (1591), which is composed of a short grammar and a series of dialogues, proverbs and prayers. His author also added a nomenclature of around 1,800 vocabulary entries classified into several lexical and semantic fields. Finally, at the very end of the sixteenth century John Minsheu wrote A Dictionarie in Spanish and English, A Spanish Grammar and Pleasant and Delightfull Dialogues in Spanish and English (1599). These three works were published in the same volume following the aforesaid order. In 1623 a new edition appeared showing similar features. Both the grammar and the dictionary are mainly based on the ones written by Percyvall, but, as Minsheu recognises, some of the contents have been corrected and enlarged. The most remarkable changes, which he enumerates, have to do 1
It is appropriate to remark that there was a short antecedent in the didactics of Spanish in England in the mid-sixteenth century with the publication of two anonymous small works: The Boke of Englysshe and Spanisshe (1554?) and A very profitable boke to lerne the maner of redyng writyng & speakyng english & Spanish (1554). They consisted, respectively, of a bilingual nomenclature (English-Spanish) of some more than 600 headwords and a bilingual vocabulary (English-Spanish) of around 1,800 entries without alphabetical order. Curiously, this fact coincided with the royal wedding between Philip II and Mary Tudor in 1554. 2 All this information has been obtained from the Dictionary of National Biography (Beazley 1895: 374-5). 3 See our article “La gramática de Bibliotheca Hispanica (1591) de Richard Percyvall: estructura y contenidos” (Carrascosa: 2010) in order to know more about Percyvall’s grammar.
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with the increase of the irregular verbal conjugation in the grammatical treatise, or the omission of the Latin forms and the addition of an EnglishSpanish part in the lexicographical one. As a result, this lexicon became the first bidirectional bilingual dictionary with these two vernacular languages. We have deeply compared both authors’ works and we definitely conclude, contrary to what some scholars point out, that Minsheu’s grammar and dictionary are not second editions of those by Percyvall, but new ones, since there are new materials from other sources 4 for the inclusion of contents and examples and also for the considerable enlargement in the number of vocabulary entries5. Before starting the analysis of Percyvall’s dictionary, we must note that this has its own title page and preface, written in English and translated into Latin. Here he explains the way it must be used to make the most of it. His macro and microstructural choices for its compilation are mentioned in the principal preface for the whole Bibliotheca Hispanica, where he admits the influence of Cristóbal de las Casas and Antonio de Nebrija, from whose works6 he took most of the entries, except 2,000 words which he assigns to himself. He also refers to the participation in his project of two war prisoners from the Invincible Armada: don Pedro de Valdés and don Vasco de Silva, who were introduced to him by his friend Master Richard Drake and with whom he revised the dictionary twice 7 . Lastly, he acknowledges the advice and conference of Dr. Thomas Doyle8 for the 4
See Steiner 1970: 39-40. The number of vocabulary entries in Minsheu’s dictionary amounts to 46,973 (27,492 in the Spanish-English part and 18,170 in the English-Spanish one) (Guerrero and Pérez 2000: 19-20). 6 Steiner points out that Percyvall had had accesse to the Vocabulario españollatino by Nebrija (1495?) and the Spanish-Italian part of the Vocabulario de las dos lenguas toscana y castellana (1570) by Casas (1970: 20). 7 Apparently, these two prisioners were his only oral sources although occasionally he might have been helped by various English Hispanists of that time with whom he had the opportunity to contact, since “Percyvall must have had entrée into the various circles of antiquarians and lexicographers and translators who were interested in things Spanish” (Steiner 1970: 23). 8 “Thomas D’Oylie was born in Oxfordshire about the year 1548, and entered Magdalen College at Oxford in 1563. At this institution Lyly became his colleague six years later. Leaving Oxford in 1571 to study abroad, D’Oylie proceeded to Basle, where he obtained his doctorate in 1581. Thence he travelled to the Low Countries, practising his profession, and returned to London in 1585, becoming a fellow of the College of Physicians. D’Oylie had been at Oxford when the most distinguished of the translators from the Spanish had been in attendance at the university” (Underhill 1899: 331-2). 5
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additions of the Latin correspondences. Percyvall met him when he had his work ready for the press and Doyle had just begun his. This fact urged him to yield our lexicographer this part. His work, which was never published, also included a Spanish grammar and a monodirectional trilingual Spanish, English and Latin dictionary. By reckoning all these data, we may deduce diverse facts, as for example that the corrections made by the prisoners took place before the insertion of the Latin forms. Furthermore, we wonder if our author only took advantage of this classical language 9 or also of the Spanish and English ones. In the words of Wiener, referring to the 2,000 words exclusively introduced by Percyvall, “[…] no doubt part of them came out of Calepine’s stupendous dictionary, which contained also a Spanish column, and which Doyle had excerpted” (1899: 4). This assertion is revealing that, supposedly, our lexicographer took several Spanish entries from Doyle’s dictionary too. Another possibility is the one provided by Steiner, who affirms that “[…] almost half are derived forms or expressions […]. Percyvall may have developed these forms by applying some of the principles expounded in the grammar part of his work” (1970: 22), that is, the linguistic rules about morphological derivation that he offers in the nominal and prepositional sections, where he names several Spanish suffixes and prefixes.
The Macrostructure of Percyvall’s Dictionary Concerning this dictionary’s layout, the established order of languages and a lack of an English-Spanish part prove that “[…] Percyvall was primarily concerned with the needs of the native English speaker who wished to read Spanish” (Steiner 1970: 35). Indeed, this is fully understandable due to the aforementioned situation of conflict between these two European countries. The typeface of the three languages is different, as the Spanish one appears in Roman character, the English in Gothic and in bold, and the Latin forms are in italics starting with a capital letter. In its 184 pages there are 12,729 vocabulary entries distributed into two columns per page. They are arranged alphabetically following their first two initials. In very few cases we find some of them embedded inside others on which they depend (e.g. dexar en blanco in respect to blanco). In addition to this, the organisation of the entries under each two-letter 9 “[…] Percyvall finds Latin glosses in Dr. D’Oylie’s manuscript, in Nebrija’s dictionary, in the English-Latin dictionaries, and perhaps in one of the Estienne French-Latin dictionaries […]” (Steiner 1970: 25).
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combination is frequently irregular from the fourth or fifth one, given that “[…] the three methods of ordering words – topical, etymological, and alphabetical – seem to so conflict in Percyvall as to render his order inconsistent” (Steiner 1970: 32). This mostly happens when there is a group of derivative words, such as in the sequence auditorio, auditor and audiencia. Then, we will see the process carried out by our lexicographer in the selection of the Spanish lexis from Nebrija and Casas. First of all, we must comment that this latter also took into account Nebrija’s Vocabulario español-latino (1495?) to elaborate the Spanish-Italian part of his Vocabulario de las dos lenguas toscana y castellana (1570). Ungerer’s opinion is that Percyvall’s dictionary is not “[…] an original enterprise [but] a painstaking transcription of Nebrija’s academic vocabulary” (1965: 202-3). From our viewpoint, this statement is not entirely true, since Casas’ influence is also present in many of the vocabulary entries, and “despite Percyvall’s reliance on Nebrija, it is on Las Casas that he depended for the basic framework of his word list”10 (Steiner 1970: 21). This information is completed with Nieto’s contribution, who, after having studied the coincidences and divergences of these three dictionaries, comparing the entries that start with the letters a and b, demonstrates that Percyvall “[…] toma la macroestructura y una buena parte de sus entradas […], y vuelve a Nebrija para recoger numerosas entradas más no tenidas en cuenta por Las Casas” (1994: 358). Once we have reconfirmed this lexicographical filiation and theorised about our author’s modus operandi, we will explain his criteria to insert the entries. Notice first that the Vocabulario by Nebrija has around 22,500 entries, whereas the second part of the one by Casas amounts to 10,500. Steiner states that “[…] many times Percyvall composed one vocabulary entry based upon more than one vocabulary entry in Nebrija” (1970: 20). He truly declares this idea in his dictionary’s preface assuring that he has purposely avoided the repetitions of the same word that Nebrija uses to express the sense of the Latin words. In fact, he was able to accomplish this decrease of entries without affecting too much to their different clarifications and specifications because he had the possibility of gathering the same meanings in one or both of the two target languages. Another procedure was the elimination of certain feminine forms from Nebrija (e.g. alfereza) (Guerrero 1992: 467-8). These methods justify the significant 10
“Many times both Las Casas and Percyvall will omit the same words from Nebrija […] and many times both Las Casas and Percyvall will enter words not listed by Nebrija […] and usually these words are listed in the same sequence” (Steiner 1970: 21).
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reduction of almost 10,000 entries in respect of the lexicographical treatise of this latter. Regarding the introduction of the various lexical units, Percyvall mostly opted for the use of simple headwords, but in many cases he decided to include expressions represented by a large range of morphosyntactic structures. The commonest ones are those formed by a noun plus a prepositional complement, mainly with the preposition de (e.g. brocal de pozo), a verb plus a noun (e.g. enlizar la tela), a noun plus an adjective (e.g. cereza tiesta) or an adjective plus a noun (e.g. ahusada figura). Apart from this, in lots of entries we have explicit grammatical information, such as the accent mark to know their pronunciation. Anyway, we have detected several mistakes of accentuation, above all in many verbs ending in ear and iar (e.g. devanéar, hermoséar, agráviar or apréciar) and in some other terms (e.g. bofétada or pélea). Furthermore, he sometimes provides us with some conjugated forms in several verbs, chiefly in the first person singular of the present simple indicative (e.g. gemir, gimo) although there exist other verbs with a wider conjugation (e.g. poner, pongo, puse). Syntax and semantics find also their place here in a veiled way through some of the examples (e.g. cesto, coger agua en cesto) and brief definitions (e.g. cloque, garfio de nave) that are adduced in very few cases next to the Spanish headword. Actually, these serve to contextualise and elucidate their sense. There are also some linguistic labels spread throughout this lexicographical treatise, written in Spanish, English or Latin, which give us some morphological information (e.g. cabe, impersonale). Percyvall’s dictionary is presented very complex from the etymological and semantic points of view. So, a polysemic term may appear under the same form in different vocabulary entries with its senses distributed (e.g. descuento, satisfaction, satisfactio and descuento, the rebatement, the allowance, subductio), or even in singular and plural at the same time (e.g. chapa, a plate of mettall, bractea, lamina and chapas, an instrument of musicke made of two plates, instrumentum musicum, crotalum, crepitaculum). On the contrary, an homonymous word may have its meanings gathered in the same entry (e.g. cuento, a number, a poale, ten hundred thousand, a post to beare up a wall, a tale, an historie, numerus, contus, millies mille, fulcrum, historia, narratio) instead of unlike ones as it should be. There are two methods to introduce the numerous variants of the same word or the synonyms with similar meanings although they are not always marked (e.g. febrero and hebrero or golpear and herir). Very frequently they are indicated by means of cross-references with the Latin words vide
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or idem (e.g. col, vide berça), and sometimes in the same entry using punctuation and/or conjunctions, such as commas (e.g. esportica, esportilla), a copulative conjunction (e.g. colgajo y colgadizo), a disjunctive one (e.g. alquiler o arrendamiento) or combining both ways (e.g. calle, y calleja or laguna, o lagunajo). In very few cases we find nothing in between (e.g. barbaria barbariedad). Some of the terms in these multiple entries may be repeated again in new ones (e.g. empuxar in respect to empellar, empuxar). While the number of variants of the same word reveals us the existing great orthographic instability of the Spanish language at the end of the 16th century, the abundant synonymy shows us its lexical wealth. Since Percyvall took most of his vocabulary entries from Nebrija and Casas, we may conclude that the collected terminology is, in general, conservative. This fact denotes that there is a clear absence of avant-garde or innovative terms pertaining to the period in which Bibliotheca Hispanica was published. In spite of this, it is significant to highlight that there is a small sum of around 530 headwords that had never been documented before in any dictionary and they appear here for the first time in the history of Spanish lexicography. Even, as Santoyo points out, “aunque muchos son comunes en la actualidad, y conocidos en su mayoría por un hablante de cultura medio, no habían aparecido en forma escrita con anterioridad […]” (1974: 96). Some illustrative examples of new documentations are aburrido, bardar, brinco, carpa, escabeche, desgajar, eternizar, frenar, gango, látigo, muralla, recopilar, sarao, torrijas or villancico. This vocabulary may be widely classified into different lexical and semantic fields, most of which were relevant topics in the whole Europe at that time. For this reason, we agree with Steiner when he declares that here “[...] the interests of the Renaissance man in subjects such as natural history, law, and medicine find their place […]” (1970: 25). On our behalf, we would specify a little bit more and we add that this terminology has mostly to do with ships, human, animal and plant diseases, names of insects, animal sounds, professions, and so forth. Actually, by paying attention to these words, we may get an approximate idea about how the English society was, as they portray its customs, worries and likings. Lastly, as regards onomastics, we have located just a very reduced group of proper nouns. Among them, there is a pair of anthroponyms (e.g. Macías and San Pablo), one place name (e.g. Çocodover) and some “[…] nombres de cuerpos celestes y relacionados con la astronomía cuyo origen está, por lo general, en los vulgares […]” (Alvar Ezquerra 2002b: 65). In fact, they are names of constellations (e.g. Sagittario). It is worth noting that we have not found any example of a demonym.
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The Microstructure of Percyvall’s Dictionary Broadly speaking, the microstructure is quite simple and uniform. The majority of the lexicographical articles, which occupy more or less the same extension, are brief and concise. Seeing as this is a work without encyclopedic orientation and mainly for didactic and traductological uses, it seems quite normal and reasonable that Percyvall does not go into complex questions. This is why we do not find many complementary explanations. There are two different types of English and Latin correspondences according to the way they are expressed. These are the single-word equivalents and the definition phrases. While the equivalents, which can be more than one, translate the vocabulary entry (e.g. aceñero, a miller, molendinarius), the definitions are in the end short explanations, descriptions or clarifications (e.g. cañutillos, the space betweene knots in a cane, internodia). These latter are less frequent and they are normally used “[…] as makeshift substitutes for an equivalent he does not know […]” (Steiner 1970: 27). There is also a minor group of articles with a definition plus an equivalent in English. In the words of Alvar Ezquerra, Percyvall takes from Nebrija some cases in which “[…] la forma de la entrada va acompañada de la definición en la misma lengua, y del equivalente en la otra” (2002a: 103). Therefore, he just translates into English the definitions (e.g. sandía, a kinde of melon, melonum genus from Nebrija’s sandía especie de melón. melo indicus). Occasionally, we have observed certain incoherence among the three languages with regard to the grammatical number (e.g. escolta, scouts, excubiæ or tascos, towe, tomentum) and gender (e.g. cordera, a lambe, agnus) as well as some traductological imbalances. In this way, different parts of speech of the same lexical family, such as a verb and its noun, do not contain the same number of meanings (e.g. entablar, to boord, to plancke, to pant as flesh of beasts new killed, contabulare, palpitare and entablamiento, bourding, contabulatio). Moreover, our lexicographer uses the same Latin term to translate a neutral noun and its diminutive (e.g. hevilla, a button, a claspe, fibula and hevilleta, a little button, fibula). Finally, we will discuss the role of the Latin correspondences in this treatise. According to Steiner, this “[…] is a monodirectional, one-part, single-alphabet bilingual dictionary with Latin glosses added” 11 (1970: 11
Steiner is strongly convinced that “[…] to the Renaissance man the Latin language could serve as a control and a guide in much the same way that the already familiar languages of the Rosetta Stone aided the early translators of the hieroglyphics” (1970: 22).
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28). His arguments, which we will explain right after, are based basically on the form and the function of this language in comparison with English, and probably also on the fact that at the beginning of his project our author did not conceive the idea of including this part, which was granted to him as a last resort by Doyle, as we have already mentioned. We totally disagree with this statement, since we consider that this is a trilingual dictionary to all effects and not a bilingual one at all, as we will prove through diverse examples that support that English and Latin show similar linguistic patterns and render the same services inside the lexicographical article. First of all, Steiner declares that Latin “[…] provides information as to the part of speech of the vocabulary entry because of possible greater familiarity with the Latin word than with either the English or the Spanish word […]” (1970: 27). This is completely true. For instance, if we observe the frequent use of the term genus, we may guess that the headword is a noun. Besides, there is explicit grammatical information through the declension of some nouns (e.g. limaduras, the filings, scobs, bis). Apart from this, Englishmen could also come to know the pronunciation of many of the Spanish words if they were derived from Latin, as the general rule is that they have the accent on the same syllable. Having said that, we find similar features in the English language through the use of the preposition to before verbs, the inclusion of the definite and indefinite articles (the, a or an) before nouns, or the recurring definition patterns, such as a kind of for nouns and that may be, belonging to or pertaining to for adjectives. Steiner reinforces his opinion explaining that “[…] as an exceptional service, the Latin gloss must perform all the work when the English gloss is missing […]” (1970: 28). In fact, we have scarcely detected a set of ten vocabulary entries in which there is a lack of the English correspondences. In these cases the Latin language has carried out the task of replacing these traductological holes12. On the contrary, we have also located very few cases in which we do not have the Latin forms (e.g. pradillo, dim. a prado, a little meadow). At times this situation has been supplied by the expressions vide or idem (e.g. arda, a squirrel, vide harda). Lastly, Steiner states that this classical language “[…] provides a Latin version of an English definition […]”, adding that “[…] it translates the English equivalents of a series of glosses, sometimes each one and in the same sequence […]” (1970: 27). These two new arguments confirm us that 12
Stein affirms that “one might assume that Percyvall did not know the corresponding English item and for names of plants and animals such an explanation seems quite plausible” (1985: 356).
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both languages are also similar in form. In sum, after these brief reflections, we are in good conditions to assert that this is a trilingual dictionary and not a bilingual one, as Steiner and other scholars assure.
Concluding remarks As we have seen, the role performed by Percyvall, thanks to the publication of his Bibliotheca Hispanica, was not only fundamental for the origins of the didactics of Spanish in England, but also for the establishment of the Spanish and English lexicographical tradition in a moment where the diplomatic relations between these two countries were very fragile because of their political, economic and religious differences that resulted in the Anglo-Spanish War. Although he had access to and used reliable sources, his evident inexperience in compiling a real dictionary with Spanish, English and Latin as well as the need of an exhaustive and developed methodology made him commit several mistakes and incongruities, some of which we have already highlighted here. However, we cannot deny the courage that he shew to cope with a task of this magnitude. Thus, we strongly appreciate his effort to bequeath us this work, in which he dared to describe and put into comparison, as much in his grammar as in his dictionary, numerous linguistic aspects of these two vernacular languages and also Latin. Therefore, the Bibliotheca Hispanica must be considered as a milestone in the history of Spanish teaching and learning as a foreign language and as a magnificent testimony of the relations between Spain and England at the end of the sixteenth century.
Bibliography Alvar Ezquerra, M. (2002a). De antiguos y nuevos diccionarios del español. Madrid: Arco Libros. —. (2002b). El diccionario de Richard Percyvall. In C. Saralegui & M. Casado (Eds.), Pulchre, bene, recte. Estudio en homenaje al profesor Fernando González Ollé. Navarra: Universidad de Navarra, 49-71. Anonymous. (1971 [1554?]). The Boke of Englysshe and Spanisshe. Menston: The Scolar Press Limited. Anonymous. (1971 [1554]). A very profitable boke to lerne the maner of redyng writyng & speakyng english & Spanish. Menston: The Scolar Press Limited. Beazly, C. R. (1895). Perceval, Richard. The Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 44, 374-5.
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Carrascosa, D. (2010). La gramática de Bibliotheca Hispanica (1591) de Richard Percyvall: estructura y contenidos. Interlingüística 21, 621631. Casas, C. de las. (1988 [1570]). Vocabulario de las dos lenguas toscana y castellana. Madrid: Ediciones Istmo. Corro, A. del. (1586). Reglas gramaticales para aprender la lengua Española y Francesa, confiriendo la vna con la otra, segun el orden de las partes de la oracion Latina. Oxford: Ioseph Barnes. Guerrero, G. (1992). La lexicografía bilingüe desde Nebrija a Oudin. In Euralex ’90: Actas del IV Congreso Internacional. [Benalmádena (Málaga), 28 agosto-1 septiembre 1990]. Barcelona: Biblograf, 46371. Guerrero G., Pérez M. F. (2000). El Diccionario español-inglés, inglesespañol de Iohn Minsheu (Londres, 1599). Iohn Minsheu, A Dictionarie in Spanish and English. Málaga: Universidad de Málaga, 5-22. Minsheu, J. (1599). A Dictionarie in Spanish and English, first published into the English tongue by Ric. Perciuale […] Hereunto for the further profite and pleasure of the learner or delighted in this tongue, is annexed an ample English Dictionarie […]. London: Edm. Bollifant. —. (1599). A Spanish Grammar, first collected and published by Richard Perciuale Gent. […]. Hereunto for the yoong beginners learning and ease, are annexed Speeches, Phrases, and Proverbs […]. London: Edm. Bollifant. —. (1599). Pleasant and Delightfull Dialogues in Spanish and English, profitable to the learner, and not unpleasant to any other Reader. London: Edm. Bollifant. Nebrija, E. A. de. (1989 [1495?]). Vocabulario español-latino. Madrid: Real Academia Española. Nieto, L. (1994). Coincidencias y divergencias entre los diccionarios de Nebrija, Las Casas y Percyvall. In Escavy, R. & Hernández, M. & Roldán, A. (Eds.), Actas del Congreso Internacional de Historiografía Lingüística: Nebrija V Centenario. [Murcia, del 1 al 3 de abril de 1992]. Murcia: Universidad de Murcia, 3, 351-366. Percyvall, R. (1591). Bibliotheca Hispanica. Containing a Grammar; with a Dictionarie in Spanish, English, and Latine, gathered out of divers good Authors: very profitable for the studious of the Spanish toong. London: Iohn Iackson for Richard Watkins. Santoyo, J. C. (1974). R. Percyvall y el primer diccionario español-inglés. ES: Revista de Filología Inglesa 4, 75-108.
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Stein, G. (1985). The English Dictionary before Cawdrey. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag. Steiner, R. J. (1970). Two Centuries of Spanish and English Bilingual Lexicography. Paris: Mouton. Stepney, W. (1591). The Spanish Schoole-master. Containing seven Dialogues […]. London: Iohn Harison. Thorius, J. (1590). The Spanish Grammer: With certaine Rules teaching both the Spanish and French tongues […]. London: Iohn Wolfe. Underhill, J. G. (1899). Spanish Literature in the England of the Tudors. New York: Macmillan et Cª. Ungerer, G. (1965). The Printing of Spanish Books in Elizabethan England. London: The Bibliographical Society. Wiener, L. (1899). Spanish Studies in England in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. The Modern Quarterly of Language and Literature 2(5), 3-10.
CHAPTER TEN FIRST ANGLICISMS IN THE SPANISH PRESS: TREATMENT GIVEN BY THE ROYAL SPANISH ACADEMY DICTIONARY MARÍA VÁZQUEZ-AMADOR AND M. CARMEN LARIO-DE-OÑATE
Introduction According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) an anglicism is a “word or phrase borrowed from English into a foreign language”. The Dictionary of the Spanish Royal Academy (Diccionario de la Real Academia Española, henceforth, DRAE) defines anglicisms as: 1. m. Giro o modo de hablar propio de la lengua inglesa. 2. m. Vocablo o giro de esta lengua empleado en otra. 3. m. Empleo de vocablos o giros ingleses en distintos idiomas.
One of the most quoted definitions of anglicisms is that of Pratt (1980: 115) “Un anglicismo es un elemento lingüístico, o grupo de los mismos, que se emplea en el castellano peninsular contemporáneo y que tiene como étimo inmediato un modelo inglés.” Pratt’s definition has been adopted by many researchers, due to distinction he draws between words with an English origin and words from other languages entering the recipient language through English. That would be the case of many gallicisms which are rather considered anglicisms. There are different classifications of anglicisms according to several aspects (formal typology, level of language affected, frequency of use and extra linguistic criteria). The anglicisms of this study have been classified by their degree of orthographical modification.
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x Anglicisms which maintain the same spelling as the English word of origin (e.g. sloop). x Anglicisms adapted to the Spanish language while maintaining foreign elements (e.g. milady from my lady). x Anglicisms which have been Hispanicised (e.g. ponche from punch). Although anglicisms began appearing in Spanish following the Second World War, Rodríguez González (1999) states that the languages made initial contact between the 18th and 19th centuries when English culture became influential in Spain. In the 18th century and even more so in the first half of the 19th century, the influence of English literature and social and cultural life in Britain had its first impact in Spanish intellectuals. In the second half of the 18th century English started to be taught at some schools, the first English grammar and the first bilingual dictionary were published in Spanish and the first translations from English into Spanish were done by well-known literary persons such as Cadalso, Jovellanos and Moratín (Rodríguez González 1999: 104).
Beginning with the mechanisation of the textile industry in the late 18th century, the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain was a major turning point in human history. The Royal Navy’s victory at the Battle of Trafalgar (1805) heralded the rise of Britain’s Imperial power. British political, military, and technical dominance led to Britain becoming the world’s first true power and English became a global influence. As English became an international lingua franca (Seidlhofer 2005), media spread anglicisms around the globe. According to Rodriguez Medina (2003), it was the press that first introduced anglicisms to Spain. Mass media is the lens through which language is observed diachronically. Newspapers are a gateway through which English words enter the Spanish language, which reflects society. Newspapers by their very nature are transitory and ephemeral, but nonetheless are an important tool for documenting the life and times of the people who produced them (Chabrán & Chabrán 1993: 360).
Anglicisms are commonplace in media today and used. However, some authors (Azorín, 2007; Martínez de Sousa, 2002; Pratt, 1990) agree that there is a gap between the language used in the press and the words registered in Spanish dictionaries. According to Balteiro (2011), lexicographers must decide whether to bridge the gap or reject certain words altogether:
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An important decision in dictionary design is the treatment given to borrowings or foreign words, that is, whether they should be included in cases of widespread usage (following a descriptive perspective), or rejected because the lexicographer considers that they are undesirable (from a prescriptive approach) (Balteiro, 2011: 277).
The criteria of acceptance of anglicisms adopted by the Spanish Academy (Real Academia de la Lengua Española, RAE) is the need of use, the lack of a Spanish equivalent and/or the impossibility to express the concept or idea with a Spanish word, as explained in the Diccionario Panhispánico de Dudas: Todos los idiomas se han enriquecido a lo largo de su historia con aportaciones léxicas procedentes de lenguas diversas. Los extranjerismos no son, pues, rechazables en sí mismos. Es importante, sin embargo, que su incorporación responda en lo posible a nuevas necesidades expresivas y, sobre todo, que se haga de forma ordenada y unitaria, acomodándolos al máximo a los rasgos gráficos y morfológicos propios del español.
Various authors (Alcoba, 2006; Azorín, 2007; Aleza Izquierdo, 2008, Giménez Folqués, 2012; Degerstedt, 2013) have researched anglicisims in Spanish dictionaries extensively. However, specific studies on the first words of English origin in newspapers are not so common. Throughout the analysis of the corpus of anglicisms collected from the Spanish press before the 19th century, which words were included by the DRAE and why, will be debated and discussed.
Methodology x The analysis of newspapers published between 1758 and 1800 from the Digital Periodical Library (Hemeroteca Digital) was the main basis for the anglicisms study. The library offers publications to be searched by title, date of publication, place of origin, and specific words. In our study six newspapers were selected: four general and two business ones all published for a decade or more. Diario Noticioso, Curioso, Erudito y Comercial Público y Económico (1758-1781) is the first Spanish newspaper founded by Francisco Mariano Nipho. Despite its title, it was a four-page non-specialised daily publication featuring business, articles translated from French newspapers, poetry and public notices. x Semanario Económico (1765-1778) is considered the first Spanish business newspaper. An eight-page weekly, Semanario Económico’s
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focus was innovation related to agriculture and industry. It also featured science, arts and trade. El Censor (1781-1787) was a seminal newspaper recognized for its portraits on the Enlightenment. Gazeta de México (1784-1835) was a Mexican newspaper covering European topics for Spaniards living in the former Spanish colony. Mercurio de España (1784-1830) was a general, 100-page monthly newspaper for intellectuals, covering national and international news. Diario Curioso, Erudito, Económico y Comercial (1786-1876) was a renewed version of its predeccesor, Diario Noticioso, Curioso, Erudito y Comercial Público y Económico, in the same format and structure. Correo Mercantil de España y sus Indias (1792-1808) was one of the best early business newspapers. Written for merchants interested in trading with the colonies, it was an eight-page publication featuring news about commerce, agriculture, technology and innovation, and sea trade.
Stage one included reporting and analysis on anglicisms found in 63 general newspapers and 20 business papers. The next step was to look up each anglicism in all editions of the DRAE and to register relevant spelling information. The Nuevo Tesoro Lexicográfico de la Lengua Española aided our research. This is a compendium of dictionaries compiled by the Spanish Academy, comprising a wide selection of significant lexicographic works by different authors including the different editions of DRAE since 1726. Spanish lexis from the 16th to 20th centuries is covered in these indispensible volumes. Words can be searched across all dictionaries published by the Spanish Academy since 1726. Anglicisms were listed according to which edition(s) of the DRAE each appeared in, along with definitions and etymological information such as language and origin. DRAE editions available online are specified in Appendix 1.
Data Analysis Anglicisms A corpus of 29 anglicisms was compiled from the newspapers. The first anglicisms found, bill, lady, milady, milord, paquebot, sloop and yacht, appeared in the Spanish press in 1784; the anglicisms alderman, milor and ponche in 1785; guardacostas, miss and whiskey in 1786; tory in 1787; cuter in 1790; club, dollar, lord, mister and wigh in 1792; comité, rom and vovedo in 1793; baronet, telégrafo and yate in 1794; brik and
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yeomanry in 1798; and budget in 1799. These anglicisms represent transportation, courtesy titles, politics, food, business and public services. Maritime transport had the highest number of anglicisms from shipping supply lists, such as the excerpt below. El día 28 entró el Paquebot la Purísima Concepción, procedente de Málaga, de donde salió el 12 de Octubre último al cargo de su Maestre D. Ramón de Murrieta, con la siguiente carga: 885 barriles de Vino, 20 barriles y 10 pipas de Vinagre, 2350 botijas de Aceyte, 100 caxitas, 300 portones y un barril de Pasas, 660 quintales de Acero […] (Gazeta de México, 11/1/1791: 2).
The anglicisms linked to courtesy titles, were principally found in British Parliament reports: Todavía ignoramos la fuerza que tendrá el bill del Sr. Pitt, esperado con tanta impaciencia. Su primera lectura se hizo el 16 de Enero: los debates fueron muy vivos: y la sesión duró hasta el 17 por la mañana, en que el Lord Spencer hizo una moción que fue aprobada (Mercurio de España, Vol.03/1784: 57).
Consequently, there seems to be a correlation between anglicisms and the context in which they appear, anglicisms related to maritime transport, commerce and food show up in shipping lists; anglicisms related to politics and courtesy titles are usually linked with the British Parliament.
Anglicisms admitted to the Academy Dictionary The anglicisms were looked up in all the editions of DRAE including the current one (2001). The search was carried out first using the spelling that appeared in the press, then using more hispanicised versions. For example, the anglicism lady was registered in DRAE as ladi in the 1927 edition, and maintained this spelling in the dictionary until 1984, although the current edition (2001) accepts lady. As figure 1 illustrates, the number of anglicisms studied that were admitted to the Academy Dictionary is quite high, and even higher in previous editions than in the current one (2001). It is also noticeable that the anglicisms were admitted mostly with the same spelling found in the press.
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Figure 1. Percentage of anglicisms admitted to the DRAE Sixteen of the twenty nine anglicisms (55.2%) were accepted by the DRAE with the same spelling found in the press, bill, club, comité, cuter, guardacostas, lord, milor, milord, miss, mister, paquebot, ponche, telégrafo, tory, yacht and yate. Most of these anglicisms frequently appeared in the press and were modified somewhat arbitrarily.Some maintained English spellings (e.g. yacht) whereas others were hispanicised with foreign spellings removed (e.g. yate from yacht). All of them, except the anglicism bill, which was only admitted in 1936, are still present in the current edition. La Junta del examen de comercio de Negros continúa tomando decisiones diariamente. El señor Dolben, conociendo lo mucho que se retrasará la decisión de este asunto pidió licencia, el 5 de Marzo, para presentar un Bill a fin de continuar conforme al que se aprobó el año próximo pasado para arreglar el tráfico de esclavos (Mercurio de España, Vol. 04/1790: 45).
Three of them underwent a change in the spelling in subsequent editions: milor, registered as milord from 1869; paquebot, as paquebote from 1852 and yacht as yate from 1884. Curiously, while miss was accepted in 1927, the Academy Dictionary recorded the spelling mis in 1989. However, the alternate spelling did not last as the 2001 edition of the DRAE simply recognizes miss. Club is an anglicism that frequently appeared in Spanish political texts such as the excerpt below: El famoso club de los wighs está a punto de disolverse. La proposición que se hizo en la última sesión de esta sociedad, de hermanarse con los Irlandeses Unidos, escandalizó a todos, por lo que los miembros más distinguidos de ese club han tomado el partido de retirarse (Mercurio de España, Vol.01/1797: 68).
Six (17.2%) of the anglicisms were admitted in previous editions of the dictionary with more hispanicised spellings: brik as bricbarca; dollar as
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dólar; lady, as ladi; milady as miladi; rom as ron; and whiskey as güisqui or whisky. As can be noticed in their spelling, these anglicisms contain orthographically unacceptable linguistic traits, it seems that the Academy modified their spellings in an attempt to make the anglicisms more widely accepted. All of the aforementioned anglicisms are present in the 2001 DRAE with hispanicised spellings except miladi which is no longer accepted; ladi reverted back to its original spelling, lady. The seven remaining anglicisms were not accepted in any edition of DRAE including any alternate spellings: alderman, baronet, budget, sloop, vovedo, wigh and yeomanry. None of these examples appeared in the press with any frequency and all maintain foreign spellings except for vovedo, which is hispanicised.
Dates of admission of the anglicisms The 29 anglicisms studied were mostly admitted to the DRAE and registered in the majority of cases with the same spellings as they appeared in the press. The corpus spans three centuries (18th-20th) over a dozen editions of the dictionary with an even sampling. See table below. Date 1737 1803 1832 1837 1843 1869 1884 1889 1914 1927 1936 1984
Same spelling ponche paquebot guardacostas milor telégrafo Lord Club Cuter milord yacht Yate comité Miss mister Bill -
Different spelling rom
milady brik dollar lady whiskey
Table 1. Dates of first admission of anglicisms in the Academy’s Dictionary
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The sixteen anglicisms admitted to the DRAE with press spellings were registered in different editions. In the 18th century the Academy Dictionary only accepted two anglicisms, both in 1737, ponche and paquebot. Although there was no mention of word origin at the time, ponche was defined as having a Persian origin in 1889 and later (1899) as having both an English and Persian origin. From 1956, the etymological information changes to “from English from the Sanskrit language”, whereas in the current edition, Hindi becomes the ultimate etym. Paquebot, on the other hand, is defined as an “English voice” in 1737, though no mention of an English origin is made in subsequent editions until 1884, in which it is forwarded to a more hispanicised version of the anglicism, paquebote, which is defined as a “word coming from English”. The etymology was changed to French origin in 1984, which the 2001 edition maintains. In the 19th century nine anglicisms were admitted in the dictionary. Three of them, guardacostas, milor and telégrafo in 1803; lord, in 1832; club and cuter in 1837. These six anglicisms were accepted less than fifty years after their appearance in press. With the exception of lord, the rest of the anglicisms had hispanicised spellings. Milord, yacht and yate, admitted in 1869 and 1884 respectively, took more than half a century to be registered. The anglicism milor was first accepted in the dictionary, defined as “manner of addressing given in England to noblemen” and registered with this spelling until the 1852 edition. From 1869, the same definition applies, but the dictionary accepts the spelling milord. In 1899, a new definition is added in the dictionary, referring to a type of horse carriage. There is also a change in the definition from 1936, in which milord is defined as “title given in Spain to lords or people from nobility”. The definition of the 1992 edition is as follows, “Hispanisation of the English title my lord given to the lords or people from nobility”. The anglicism yacht was admitted to dictionary in 1869, as “name given to leisure boats in England and Holland, where they are very common”, whereas the hispanicised yate was registered in 1884. Though yacht is found in the dictionary till 1989, from 1927 it is defined as “yate, embarcación de recreo”. The following five anglicisms were not registered in the dictionary until the 20th century, requiring more than a hundred years to be officially recognized: comité (1914), mister and miss (1927); bill (1936); tory (1985).Comité was accepted in 1914, specifying that it had an English origin, though French had acted as an intermediary language. Mister and miss were registered in 1927, both with a similar definition, “title given to .
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an English gentleman” and “name given to ladies in England”. Auxiliary definitions were added to mister in the 2001 edition, broadening its definition to also include: “winner of a beauty contest” and “sport coach”. Miss was also defined as “winner of a beauty contest” beginning with the 1984 edition. Bill only appears in the 1936 edition. Tory appeared in 1985 and remains today while its adversary, whig, was never accepted. Anglicisms registered in the DRAE with modified spellings also appeared in different editions. The four from the 19th century are as follows: ron (1803), miladi (1843), brigbarca (1884), and dollar (1899). Registered in 1803 in less than half a century, ron, which comes from rom, had no prior mention of origin until 1884 when its etymology was defined as “from the English word rum.” Taking almost a century to be accepted, milady was admitted as miladi in 1843 as “title given in England to a lady of nobility.” In the 1936 edition, milady is defined as a courtesy title given in Spain to the ladies or people from the nobility, although in 1950 it reverts back to its original definition. Brik was registered as brigbarca in 1884. Fifteen years later, its spelling was updated to bricbarca (1889) which remains today. The anglicism dollar admitted as dólar in 1899 has seen several definitions: firstly it was defined as “silver coin from the United States which is worth five pesetas and forty two cents”. From 1936, the countries involved broadened to Canada, Cuba and Liberia. In 1956, Cuba was omitted in the definition. In 1984, the exchange rate is not mentioned anymore, and from 1989 “other countries” are included in the definition. Anglicisms with alternative spellings admitted to the DRAE in the 20th century include ladi (1927) and whisky (1984). Ladi was defined as a“title given in England to women of nobility”. The current 2001 edition maintains this definition while the spelling lady is also recognised. In 1984, whiskey was registered as whisky and later its hispanicised spelling güisqui was also accepted. It is remarkable that a widely recognized anglicism took such a long time to be recognized by the dictionary. In the light of these results, it is evident that the Academy generally tries to adapt the spelling of anglicisms so as to conform to conventional spelling, abiding by the standards of Spanish orthography. Nine of the 16 anglicisms accepted in the DRAE with the same spelling found in the press did not contain foreign traits in their spellings, and are still present in the current edition. The remaining seven anglicisms contained foreign traits. Bill has been omitted while paquebot and yacht were replaced by hispanicised spellings. (Miss also took a hispanicised spelling although it did not succeed.) Tory and milord were the only two to maintain their native spelling. All six hispanicised anglicisms conformed to Spanish
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orthographic rules. Several anglicisms with original English spellings were accepted in later editions of the DRAE. Two examples are milord and lady. Originally accepted as milor and ladi respectively, lady remains in the current edition. The etymological information provided also suffered some changes throughout the different editions, the same as the meaning of some of the anglicisms, which, as a general rule broaden their meanings (e.g. milord, miss, mister or club).
Concluding remarks This study confirms that the appearance of anglicisms in the Spanish language is not such a recent phenomenon, since they have been entering into the Spanish press for more than four centuries. Although few in number, they are representative of the period in which they were introduced in Spain such as the emergence of the British Empire following its military and naval success, the Industrial Revolution, and, consequently the increased trade between the British Isles and other countries. The highest percentage of anglicisms found in the press before the 19th century was related to maritime transport due to the merchant relationship between both countries. Courtesy titles and forms of address among nobility and political parties produced the second most anglicisms Other English loanwords dealt with trade and goods mainly. This finding shows that most anglicisms were new words that needed to be introduced into the Spanish lexicon. The influence that English language has exerted on Spanish started those days due to the contact of both languages mainly for economic, political and social reasons. Most of the anglicisms found in press in the late 18th century were admitted in the different editions of the Royal Spanish Academy Dictionary; more than half maintain the original native spelling with which they were found in the newspapers analysed while a smaller percentage are hispanicised with modified spellings that satisfy conventional Spanish spelling. The majority of the anglicisms are still registered in the current 2001 edition of DRAE. A significant number of anglicisms admitted in previous editions of the DRAE came from concepts only present “in England or America” at that moment. The current edition of the DRAE refers to these words as coming “from English.” Despite their foreign origin, anglicisims are an integral part of the Spanish lexicon today. All in all it can be said that anglicisms have taken a rather long time to be admitted in the DRAE. As evidenced by its objective, the Academy maintains a reluctant attitude to embrace
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new anglicisms as its objective is to “velar porque los cambios que experimente la Lengua Española en su constante adaptación a las necesidades de sus hablantes no quiebren la esencial unidad que mantiene en todo el ámbito hispánico”.
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Appendix 1: DRAE editions available online REAL ACADEMIA ESPAÑOLA, Diccionario de la lengua castellana, en que se explica el verdadero sentido de las voces, su naturaleza y calidad, con las phrases o modos de hablar, los proverbios o refranes, y otras cosas convenientes al uso de la lengua [...]. Compuesto por la Real Academia Española. Tomo primero. Que contiene las letras A.B. Madrid, Imprenta de Francisco del Hierro, 1726. REAL ACADEMIA ESPAÑOLA, Diccionario de la lengua castellana, en que se explica el verdadero sentido de las voces, su naturaleza y calidad, con las phrases o modos de hablar, los proverbios o refranes, y otras cosas convenientes al uso de la lengua [...]. Compuesto por la Real Academia Española. Tomo segundo. Que contiene la letra C. Madrid, Imprenta de Francisco del Hierro, 1729. REAL ACADEMIA ESPAÑOLA, Diccionario de la lengua castellana, en que se explica el verdadero sentido de las voces, su naturaleza y calidad, con las phrases o modos de hablar, los proverbios o refranes, y otras cosas convenientes al uso de la lengua [...]. Compuesto por la Real Academia Española. Tomo tercero. Que contiene las letras D.E.F. Madrid, Imprenta de la Real Academia Española por la viuda de Francisco del Hierro, 1732. REAL ACADEMIA ESPAÑOLA, Diccionario de la lengua castellana, en que se explica el verdadero sentido de las voces, su naturaleza y calidad, con las phrases o modos de hablar, los proverbios o refranes, y otras cosas convenientes al uso de la lengua [...]. Compuesto por la Real Academia Española. Tomo quarto. Que contiene las letras G.H.I.J.K.L.M.N. Madrid, Imprenta de la Real Academia Española, por los herederos de Francisco del Hierro, 1734. REAL ACADEMIA ESPAÑOLA, Diccionario de la lengua castellana, en que se explica el verdadero sentido de las voces, su naturaleza y calidad, con las phrases o modos de hablar, los proverbios o refranes, y otras cosas convenientes al uso de la lengua [...]. Compuesto por la Real Academia Española. Tomo quinto. Que contiene las letras O.P.Q.R. Madrid, Imprenta de la Real Academia Española, por los herederos de Francisco del Hierro, 1737. REAL ACADEMIA ESPAÑOLA, Diccionario de la lengua castellana, en que se explica el verdadero sentido de las voces, su naturaleza y calidad, con las phrases o modos de hablar, los proverbios o refranes, y otras cosas convenientes al uso de la lengua [...]. Compuesto por la Real Academia Española. Tomo sexto. Que contiene las letras S.T.V.X.Y.Z.
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Madrid, Imprenta de la Real Academia Española, por los herederos de Francisco del Hierro, 1739. REAL ACADEMIA ESPAÑOLA, Diccionario de la lengua castellana compuesto por la Real Academia Española. Segunda impresión corregida y aumentada. Tomo primero. A-B. Madrid, Joachín Ibarra, 1770. REAL ACADEMIA ESPAÑOLA, Diccionario de la lengua castellana compuesto por la Real Academia Española, reducido a un tomo para su más fácil uso. Madrid, Joaquín Ibarra, 1780. REAL ACADEMIA ESPAÑOLA, Diccionario de la lengua castellana compuesto por la Real Academia Española, reducido a un tomo para su más fácil uso. Segunda edición, en la qual se han colocado en los lugares correspondientes todas las voces del Suplemento, que se puso al fin de la edición del año de 1780, y se ha añadido otro nuevo suplemento de artículos correspondientes a las letras A, B y C. Madrid, Joaquín Ibarra, 1783. REAL ACADEMIA ESPAÑOLA, Diccionario de la lengua castellana compuesto por la Real Academia Española, reducido a un tomo para su más fácil uso. Tercera edición, en la qual se han colocado en los lugares correspondientes todas las voces de los suplementos, que se pusieron al fin de las ediciones de los años de 1780 y 1783, y se han intercalado en las letras D.E. y F. nuevos artículos, de los quales se dará un suplemento separado. Madrid, Viuda de Joaquín Ibarra, 1791. REAL ACADEMIA ESPAÑOLA, Diccionario de la lengua castellana compuesto por la Real Academia Española, reducido a un tomo para su más fácil uso. Quarta edición. Madrid, Viuda de Ibarra, 1803. REAL ACADEMIA ESPAÑOLA, Diccionario de la lengua castellana por la Real Academia Española. Quinta edición. Madrid, Imprenta Real, 1817. REAL ACADEMIA ESPAÑOLA, Diccionario de la lengua castellana por la Real Academia Española. Sexta edición. Madrid, Imprenta Nacional, 1822. REAL ACADEMIA ESPAÑOLA, Diccionario de la lengua castellana por la Real Academia Española. Séptima edición. Madrid, Imprenta Real, 1832. REAL ACADEMIA ESPAÑOLA, Diccionario de la lengua castellana por la Real Academia Española. Octava edición. Madrid, Imprenta Nacional, 1837. REAL ACADEMIA ESPAÑOLA, Diccionario de la lengua castellana por la Real Academia Española. Novena edición. Madrid, Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández, 1843.
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REAL ACADEMIA ESPAÑOLA, Diccionario de la lengua castellana por la Real Academia Española. Décima edición. Madrid, Imprenta Nacional, 1852. REAL ACADEMIA ESPAÑOLA, Diccionario de la lengua castellana por la Real Academia Española. Undécima edición. Madrid, Imprenta de Don Manuel Rivadeneyra, 1869. REAL ACADEMIA ESPAÑOLA, Diccionario de la lengua castellana por la Real Academia Española. Duodécima edición. Madrid, Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando, 1884. REAL ACADEMIA ESPAÑOLA, Diccionario de la lengua castellana por la Real Academia Española. Décimatercia edición. Madrid, Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y compañía, 1899. REAL ACADEMIA ESPAÑOLA, Diccionario de la lengua castellana por la Real Academia Española. Décimocuarta edición. Madrid, Imprenta de los sucesores de Hernando, 1914. REAL ACADEMIA ESPAÑOLA, Diccionario de la lengua española. Décima quinta edición. Madrid, Calpe, 1925. REAL ACADEMIA ESPAÑOLA, Diccionario de la lengua española. Décima sexta edición. Madrid, Espasa-Calpe, 1936. REAL ACADEMIA ESPAÑOLA, Diccionario de la lengua española. Décima sexta edición. Madrid, Espasa-Calpe, Año de la Victoria [1939]. REAL ACADEMIA ESPAÑOLA, Diccionario de la lengua española. Décimoséptima edición. Madrid, Espasa-Calpe, 1947. REAL ACADEMIA ESPAÑOLA, Diccionario de la lengua española. Décimoctava edición. Madrid, Espasa-Calpe, 1956. REAL ACADEMIA ESPAÑOLA, Diccionario de la lengua española. Décimonovena edición. Madrid, Espasa-Calpe, 1970. REAL ACADEMIA ESPAÑOLA, Diccionario de la lengua española. Vigésima edición. Madrid, Espasa-Calpe, 1984, 2 tomos. REAL ACADEMIA ESPAÑOLA, Diccionario de la lengua española. Vigésima primera edición. Madrid, Espasa-Calpe, 1992. REAL ACADEMIA ESPAÑOLA, Diccionario histórico de la Lengua Española. Tomo I.— A. Madrid, Imprenta de Librería y Casa Editorial Hernando, 1933 REAL ACADEMIA ESPAÑOLA, Diccionario histórico de la Lengua Española. Tomo II.— B-Cevilla. Madrid, Imprenta de Librería y Casa Editorial Hernando, 1936 REAL ACADEMIA ESPAÑOLA, Diccionario manual e ilustrado de la lengua española. Madrid, Espasa-Calpe, 1927. REAL ACADEMIA ESPAÑOLA, Diccionario manual e ilustrado de la lengua española. Segunda edición. Madrid, Espasa-Calpe, 1950.
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REAL ACADEMIA ESPAÑOLA, Diccionario manual e ilustrado de la lengua española. Tercera edición revisada. Tomo I. A-Capachero. Madrid, Espasa-Calpe, 1983. REAL ACADEMIA ESPAÑOLA, Diccionario manual e ilustrado de la lengua española. Tercera edición revisada. Tomo II. Capacho-Divo. Madrid, Espasa-Calpe, 1983. REAL ACADEMIA ESPAÑOLA, Diccionario manual e ilustrado de la lengua española. Tercera edición revisada. Tomo III. DivorciadoIncógnita. Madrid, Espasa-Calpe, 1984. REAL ACADEMIA ESPAÑOLA, Diccionario manual e ilustrado de la lengua española. Tercera edición revisada. Tomo IV. Incógnito-Papel. Madrid, Espasa-Calpe, 1984. REAL ACADEMIA ESPAÑOLA, Diccionario manual e ilustrado de la lengua española. Tercera edición revisada. Tomo V. Papelamen-Sake. Madrid, Espasa-Calpe, 1985. REAL ACADEMIA ESPAÑOLA, Diccionario manual e ilustrado de la lengua española. Tercera edición revisada. Tomo VI. Sal-Zuzón. Madrid, Espasa-Calpe, 1985. REAL ACADEMIA ESPAÑOLA, Diccionario manual e ilustrado de la lengua española. Cuarta edición revisada. Madrid, Espasa-Calpe, 1989.
PART IV NEW CHALLENGES, NEW APPROACHES
CHAPTER ELEVEN SWINGVERGÜENZAS A CONTRA BLUES: A STUDY ON CREATIVE CODE MIXING IN SPANISH MUSIC PAULA LÓPEZ RÚA
Introduction Code switching is a widespread and profusely studied phenomenon in bilingual communities. Corpus-based analyses have provided evidence that the process cannot simply be taken as a symptom of corruption or linguistic decline, or a sign of ignorance or lack of proficiency on the part of the speakers; on the contrary, it has been widely demonstrated that it responds to identifiable motivations and exhibits both universal and language-specific constraints. This study focuses on the type of code switching commonly known as code mixing. The margins of code mixing and the borderline between code mixing and borrowing will therefore be examined by analysing a peculiar corpus of lexical items and phrases that combine English and Spanish. This analysis, which comprises both the devices resorted to for the creation of the items and their possible motivations, illustrates the convenience of using the continuum as a descriptive tool in order to acquire a deeper knowledge of the phenomenon. By way of an introduction to the topic, the section that follows offers an overview of the characteristics of three related phenomena which are commonly associated with the contact of two or more languages in a community. Code switching is a superordinate term often described as the simultaneous use of two codes in the same communicative exchange. Following Myers-Scotton (1992), who in turn takes the terms from Joshi (1985), in this study the two codes will be labelled ‘embedded language’ (EL) and ‘matrix language’ (ML). The terms will be used to refer to the donor language and the recipient language respectively, the latter being the code which provides the morphosyntactic frame.
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Code mixing vs. code switching Within the general process of code switching, Apple and Muysken (1987: 118) put forward a common distinction between ‘tag-switches’ (exclamations, tags or parentheticals in the EL), ‘inter-sentential switches’ (switches ‘between sentences’), and ‘intra-sentential switches’ (switches ‘in the middle of a sentence’). Consider the examples underlined below in English and Spanish: x
Tag-switches:
Me siento más happy, más free, you know … (‘I feel happier, freer, you know’). Source: Moreno (1998: 269). Come on! Ya tú puedes empezar a dansar (‘Come on! You can already start dancing’). Source: Riquelme (1998: 53).
x
Inter-sentential switches:
It’s on the radio. A mí se me olvida la señal (‘I forget the station’). Source: Moreno (1998: 269).
x
Intra-sentential switches:
Yo no estoy proud of it (‘I’m not proud of it’). Source: Moreno (1998: 269). Me siento más happy, más free. Source: Moreno (1998: 269). Después yo hacía uno d’esos concoctions (‘Afterwards I prepared one of those concoctions’). Source: Moreno (1998: 268).
It is the last type, which Appel and Muysken describe as ‘intimate switching’, that is commonly known as ‘code mixing’. However, they also point out that this tripartite distinction is not always easy to draw. One of the characteristic features of the third type is that those switches are more demanding for the speakers: they entail a higher degree of linguistic competence because they must respect syntactic constraints in both languages. This study is mainly concerned with the type of intra-sentential switch which consists in the insertion of a single EL item in the ML (see the last two examples above). The feasibility of drawing a clear-cut borderline between such code-switched items and borrowings in the first stage of transfer is discussed in the following subsection.
Code mixing vs. borrowing There are two positions as regards the description of code mixing in contrast with borrowing. For some authors, the parameter of integration is
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determinant to establish a difference between them: Moreno (1998: 267), for example, illustrates the classical view that morphological and phonological adaptation clearly characterise borrowing in contrast with code mixing: ‘si ha habido una adaptación parcial o total, difícilmente se podría sostener que se están alternando dos lenguas’. However, Apple and Muysken (1987: 172) point out two reasons why such a distinction is problematic in individual cases: firstly, because there may be different degrees of adaptation, and secondly, because adaptation is not compulsory for borrowings. Moreover, they quote Poplack and Sankoff’s (1984) study on Spanish-English code switching among Puerto Ricans in New York. In this study the authors conclude that the integration of English borrowings into Puerto Rican Spanish (that is, the change from code switching to borrowing) is in fact a gradual process which depends on four parameters: frequency of use, displacement of native synonyms, grammatical integration, and the speakers’ acceptability. On the grounds of the analysis of two corpora gathered in Kenya (Swahili-English) and Zimbabwe (Shona-English), Myers-Scotton (1992) provides further evidence that the distinction between the two processes (which she calls ‘code switching’ and ‘borrowing’) is also difficult to draw in all cases. Considering structural criteria (morphosyntactic and phonological integration, as used by Poplack, 1980) and quantitative criteria (the parameter of frequency), she discusses the status of EL forms occurring in the recipient language. As regards frequency, she notes the general absence of predictability as a feature of code-switched forms (‘CS forms’): in contrast with borrowings (‘B forms’), they are not recurrent, although repetition may gradually turn CS forms into B forms. Frequency is therefore not fixed but subject to change in time. On the other hand, CS forms do not exhibit phonological integration, while most B forms do; however, not all B forms are integrated (thus the parameter is not entirely reliable): for example, the EL form may be kept unchanged if it carries ‘socio-economic prestige’ or if speakers practise ‘elite-closure’ (1992: 31). Morphosyntactic integration does not allow a clear-cut distinction either: Myers-Scotton notices that EL ‘islands’ (multiword items only composed of EL morphemes) do not integrate, but items consisting of EL lexemes and ML morphemes do show morphosyntactic integration, and a large number of them are nevertheless categorised as code switching. She concludes that ‘both established B and single CS forms do show morphosyntactic integration into the ML (1992: 33). Myers-Scotton’s remarks that B forms tend to show ‘more integration’ than CS forms and that ‘both also show incomplete integration in some cases’ (1992: 33) support the view of integration as a gradual feature. It is important to
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notice that semantic integration is not explicitly mentioned as a criterion, although the author does remark that CS forms belong to the mental lexicon of the EL whereas B forms ‘have entries as ML lemmas and, accordingly, more accessibility to recurrence’ (1992: 37). Keeping in mind Haugen’s (1953: 373) remark that ‘borrowing always goes beyond the actual “needs” of language’, it is useful to draw a distinction between two types of necessity, systemic and non-systemic, although both types will be covered by the superordinate notion of ‘communicative necessity’. In general, communicative necessity refers to a need related to any element in a communicative situation, i.e., a need of the participants, the message, the code, the channel or the context. Systemic, structural, or strictly linguistic necessity particularly refers to a need of the language as a system (i.e. a need of the code), whereas nonsystemic necessity refers to a need whose origin is not the system but any other element in the communicative process. In principle, the more necessary a term is for a system (for example, because it contributes to filling in a lexical gap), the more likely it is that it will be incorporated as a borrowing. However, on many occasions a term does not enter the system to fulfil a linguistic need but as a result of other types of motivations. The pressure of advertising or the influence of mass media may contribute to the popularisation of an item, increase the frequency of use and eventually force the term into the system, with or without a restructuration of the conceptual space: for example, the brand name kleenex is currently used in Spanish to refer to any paper handkerchief instead of the longer phrase ‘pañuelo (de papel)’. Likewise, a foreign item may be introduced because the speaker ignores the native synonym (for example, marketing in Spanish), because he/she wants to show off his/her linguistic skills by using the technical term in the original language (for instance, English stand instead of Spanish puesto, caseta, pabellón, or spot instead of anuncio), because the term is shorter than the native equivalent and thus enhances speech economy (spray vs. vaporizador, atomizador, pulverizador, aerosol), because the borrowed term is more popular than the native equivalent and is thus used for communicative cooperation (E. marketing vs. Sp. mercadotecnia), or simply because an item in a foreign language whose meaning may not be completely grasped can successfully perform a euphemistic function and avoid disgusting or too explicit allusions (váter – ‘WC’ – instead of retrete; lifting instead of ‘estiramiento de piel’, literally ‘skin stretching’). Lastly, the use of an EL term in the ML, particularly when the item undergoes some type of orthographic, phonological and morphological adjustment, may also indicate the participants’ wish to establish or
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reinforce group bonds by emphasizing their common mixed identity: this situation is illustrated by ‘Spanglish’ terms used by Puerto Ricans in New York (such as troca: E. truck: Sp. camión, or lonchar: E. lunch: Sp. almorzar. Source: Riquelme, 1998: 54). As will be shown in the paragraphs that follow, this study agrees with the conception of the defining features as variable and graded, and also suggests the use of the continuum as a descriptive tool.
The continuum code mixing-borrowing In line with the points that have been made so far, this subsection looks further into the possibility of regarding the two phenomena discussed above (code mixing and borrowing) as continuous categories susceptible to parameter-based descriptions. The features of integration, frequency and communicative necessity can complement one another to account for central and peripheral items from both categories (code mixing and borrowing) while providing a location for a set of marginal items of difficult ascription (‘pseudo-anglicisms’ such as Los Sundayers, which will be fully discussed later). The proposal draws on other studies with also resort to the notion of the continuum (Poplack, 1980; Gómez Capuz, 2000) and puts forward that borrowed items in the first stage of adaptation (infrequent foreign words with no integration or popularity) are in fact very similar to code-mixed forms, which could justify the expansion of the continuum so as to comprise code-mixed items. Code mixing (centre)
Code mixing (periphery)
Pseudoanglicisms
Borrowing (periphery)
Borrowing (centre)
- FREQ
- FREQo+
+/- FREQ
- FREQo+
+ FREQ
-INTEG
-INTEGo+
+/- INTEG
-INTEGo+
+ INTEG
- COM NEC
- COM NEC
+/- COM NEC +/- COM NEC + COM NEC
presentar un paper (present me siento más a paper: Los Flaps, Los happy (I feel presentar una Sundayers happier) ponencia / comunicación)
handicap, customizar
Figure 1. The continuum code mixing-lexical borrowing
walkman, qüisqui
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Figure 1 offers a schematic representation of the continuum code mixing-lexical borrowing which takes into account the occurrence of peripheral and in-between cases. The example of peripheral code mixing ‘presentar un paper’ (and, in general, the use of the English term paper) is relatively recurrent in colloquial speech in university circles I am going to focus on the transitional area between the borderline of borrowing and the borderline of code mixing by analysing the features of a group of items which will be called ‘pseudo-anglicisms’ due to their peripheral status with respect to both categories. On the whole, they could be regarded as very marginal instances of code mixing, although their degree of integration and relative frequency, together with non-systemic necessity, may occasionally turn some of them towards the area of influence of borrowings.
Creative Pseudo-Anglicisms in Spanish Music: An Account of the Evidence The following section will be devoted to the analysis of the items gathered in the corpus, whose particular features motivate their location in the borderline of both code mixing and borrowing. One important feature of the items is that, contrary to what happens in typical instances of code mixing, they are not the result of direct contact between two codes (in this case, English and Spanish); in other words, they are not an outcome of language use in a bilingual community. They are rather the result of what López Morales (1993: 163) calls ‘contacto diferido’ (‘indirect contact’), a term that he applies to lexical borrowings which enter a language via books, mass media, etc. These pseudo-anglicisms are a group of items which exhibit some kind of morphological, phonological and semantic irregularities which can be directly or indirectly related to the process of code mixing. Besides, they belong to a specific field (which limits their popularity and therefore their frequency) and exclusively respond to non-systemic needs: they convey humour or irony, reassert local identity and are often purposely created to draw attention to their deviant form. The corpus consists of 150 names of Spanish and Latin American singers and bands who follow alternative musical trends and combine English and Spanish in their denominations. The items were analysed by considering the contributions by outstanding scholars in the field of inflectional and derivational morphology, from seminal works to updated revisions, particularly Quirk et al. (1985), Matthews (1991), Adams (2001) and Plag (2003). The corpus was gathered from both printed and on-line
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sources (see Appendix). These sources provided glossaries of bands and singers which were duly revised so that a subgroup of items combining English and Spanish could be compiled for further analysis and classification. The subsections that follow are devoted to the description of the different types of code mixing registered in the corpus, from phrasal (Pechuga Band) and orthographic/phonological (Inthecisos) to code mixing through word-formation devices (i.e. morphological code mixing): affixation (Los Sundayers), compounding (Trujamán), conversion (Los Petersellers), reduplication (Hermanas Sister), blending (Swingvergüenzas) and initialisation (Shit S.A.). As will be seen, humour or irony arise from shocking semantic contrasts and from semantic or morphological deviation in the combination of codes. Sources of humour are also literal translations which are perceived as such by the speakers of the ML while they make no sense in the EL, as well as the awareness of any attempt to anglicise an item or to imitate the Spanish realisation of an English item, since the Spanish realisation is typically associated with a laughable lack of knowledge.
Phrasal code mixing There are quite a few instances of regular code mixing within the limits of the phrase. They consist in the combination of unaltered words from the two languages, for example Suicidio (‘suicide’) Project, Lovely Luna (‘Moon’), Basura (‘rubbish’) Feelings, Surfin’ Bichos (‘bugs’), or Pechuga (‘chicken breast’) Band. The last examples illustrate how semantically deviant word combinations are used as a source of humour. Note how the English word order (modifier + noun) is respected, so that English may be said to function as the inner ML; although the adjective + noun word order is also possible in Spanish, it is semantically restricting, as noted by Appel and Muysken (1987). However, in La Trueke Band (Sp. trueque: E. barter) it is still the English noun and not the Spanish determiner that imposes the syntax, and this seems to break the constraints of code switching as predicted by Doron (1983) and Myers-Scotton (1992), since it is the determiner (another active system morpheme) that should impose the syntax on the noun phrase (thus The Trueke Band or La Banda Barter). The mixture of codes is often confined to the combination of an English noun with the Spanish determiner, or the English determiner with the Spanish noun or nominalised adjective, since band names are usually composed of an article (either in English or in Spanish) plus a plural noun
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or a plural nominalised adjective (also originally English or Spanish), for example, Los Flaps, Los Rumps, Los Sinners, The Endrogaos (‘The drug addicts’), The Capaces (‘The capable’), The Vagos (‘The idle’). However, while the structure Spanish determiner + English noun is an acceptable switch, Spanish being the ML, the reverse structure breaks the restrictions on code mixing. In other cases the starting point is a well-known phrase or sentence in the ML (Spanish) which is slightly modified with the insertion of an English term: A Contra Blues (‘a contra luz’: ‘against the light’).
Phonological code mixing: anglicisation and nativisation This type of code mixing can affect words or higher level units. The anglicised respelling of single words or words within phrases or sentences is one of the most common forms of code mixing registered in the corpus. It must be remarked that changes in spelling may be resorted to for business reasons, that is, in order to avoid problems with copyright. However, on most occasions the change in spelling is a source of word play and therefore of humour, or a way of calling attention to the form of the item. Different cases of respelling were identified and classified into two types depending on whether the switch involved only graphemes or entire words. In all cases respellings are based on the homophony or near homophony of the items involved in both English and Spanish.
Respelling of graphemes Respellings involving minor changes in the original item affect single graphemes. For instance, one of the possible realisations of the English cluster