Language in Educational and Cultural Perspectives (Second Language Learning and Teaching) 3031387775, 9783031387777

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Second Language Learning and Teaching

Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk Marcin Trojszczak   Editors

Language in Educational and Cultural Perspectives

Second Language Learning and Teaching Series Editor Mirosław Pawlak, Faculty of Pedagogy and Fine Arts, Adam Mickiewicz University, Kalisz, Poland

The series brings together volumes dealing with different aspects of learning and teaching second and foreign languages. The titles included are both monographs and edited collections focusing on a variety of topics ranging from the processes underlying second language acquisition, through various aspects of language learning in instructed and non-instructed settings, to different facets of the teaching process, including syllabus choice, materials design, classroom practices and evaluation. The publications reflect state-of-the-art developments in those areas, they adopt a wide range of theoretical perspectives and follow diverse research paradigms. The intended audience are all those who are interested in naturalistic and classroom second language acquisition, including researchers, methodologists, curriculum and materials designers, teachers and undergraduate and graduate students undertaking empirical investigations of how second languages are learnt and taught.

Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk · Marcin Trojszczak Editors

Language in Educational and Cultural Perspectives

Editors Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk Department of Language and Communication University of Applied Sciences in Konin Konin, Poland

Marcin Trojszczak Department of Language and Communication University of Applied Sciences in Konin Konin, Poland

ISSN 2193-7648 ISSN 2193-7656 (electronic) Second Language Learning and Teaching ISBN 978-3-031-38777-7 ISBN 978-3-031-38778-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-38778-4 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023, corrected publication 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Paper in this product is recyclable.

Introduction

The contributions presented in this volume are a fruit of the conference Contacts and Contrasts 2021 (C&C2021), which was organised during 18–20 October 2021 in Konin, Poland, by the Department of Research in Language and Communication of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Applied Sciences in Konin. The present volume comprises seventeen chapters divided into two parts: Language in educational contexts and Language in cultural contexts. The contributions featured in the first part of the book focus on applied linguistics, in particular language education, second language learning and translator training. In turn, the second part of the book features chapters devoted to a range of issues at the intersection of semantics, historical and contact linguistics, anthropology, as well as literature. The first part Language in Educational Contexts includes eight chapters. It ´ atek from University of Economics and Social starts with the chapter by Adam Swi˛ Sciences in Warsaw, Poland. In his comprehensive contribution, the author investigates gender expectations of Polish students of secondary school and English philology towards their teachers including, among others, their individual knowledge, classroom management and even physical appearance. By taking such a perspective, he attempts to paint the picture of the teachers Polish students wish to have in the twenty-first century. While the first chapter focuses on the beliefs of students, the second chapter directs the reader’s attention to the beliefs of future language teachers. Yevheniia Hasai (University of Hamburg, Germany), who is the author of this contribution, takes a closer look at how future teachers view a range of issues connected with multilingualism including crosslinguistic pedagogy, code-switching and code-mixing. Her research shows that they have expressly positive attitudes towards multilingualism and crosslinguistic pedagogy yet remain sceptical about some aspects of code-switching and mixing as well as some further pedagogical changes.

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In the chapter “Methodological Proposal for the Teaching, Learning and Evaluation of Syntax in Secondary School in Bilingual Contexts”, Antoni Brosa-Rodríguez (Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain) and María José Rodríguez-Campillo (Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain) address the complex issue of teaching syntax in bilingual areas. The authors provide a set of guidelines to improve the teaching of syntax in bilingual schools in Catalonia and investigate the implementation of their proposal. Compared to traditional methodology, their proposal, which emphasises bilingualism and comparison between languages, turns out to be more beneficial for secondary school students. The chapter “Teaching English Linguistics During the Pandemic: Online Group Project Work for Millennials”, written by Mariavita Cambria (University of Messina, Italy) focuses on the process of online language learning in the context of the COVID19 pandemic which has marked the entire world let alone language education. The author provides a detailed report on Online Video Project for second-year university students at the University of Messina. Besides presenting all technical aspects of the project, which undoubtedly facilitate its further application in other contexts, it also discusses the students’ progress and their feedback. In the chapter “Collaboration and Crowdsourcing Applications”, Frieda Steurs (KU Leuven, Belgium; Dutch Language Institute in Leiden, the Netherlands) and Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk (University of Applied Sciences in Konin, Poland) discuss yet another general trend which impacts language education as well as linguistic research, that is, the growing importance of collaborative practices and crowdsourcing applications. The authors show how online collaborative spaces, mostly based on cloud technology, increasingly become the venues where language and knowledge acquisition take place, which have important consequences for both language teachers and scholars. Moving from the general to granular level, the chapter by Abdelali El Fakir (Ibn Tofail University in Kenitra, Morocco) and Hind Brigui (Ibn Tofail University in Kenitra, Morocco) addresses second language acquisition in the context of learning verb-preposition collocations by Moroccan EFL Learners. The authors investigate the effect of the frequency of occurrence on their acquisition by looking both at their reception and production. The study demonstrates that the receptive knowledge of selected collocations is much wider than their productive one. Furthermore, it shows that the more frequently presented collocations are easily acquired. Both of these findings have pedagogical implications discussed by the authors. The chapter “Benefits of Cultural Translation for Advanced Undergraduate EFL Learners” by Noelia Ruiz Ajenjo (Independent Researcher, Spain) and Andrés Canga Alonso (University of La Rioja, Spain) discusses the issue at the intersection of language education and translation. The authors explore the benefits and challenges of cultural translation in the context of foreign language teaching and learning by tasking students with various translation activities and surveying their opinions. The study shows that translation activities foster learning new specific cultural vocabulary and are viewed positively by EFL learners. The final chapter of this part of the volume is a contribution by Chiara Astrid Gebbia (University of Agder, Kristiansand, Norway), who focuses on the issue of

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metaphor translation competence of BA translation students. The author analyses translation strategies used by students to deal with metaphorical puns and shows that both the novelty of metaphors and their textual distribution influence the task completion rates. Moreover, the chapter shows a problematic character of metaphorical puns as indicated by students’ self-reports which have some pedagogical implications for translator training. The second part of the volume Language in Cultural Contexts includes nine chapters. It begins with the chapter “Embodied Lexicon: Body Part Terms in Conceptualization, Language Structure and Discourse”, authored by Iwona Kraska-Szlenk (University of Warsaw, Poland). This contribution discusses the significance of body part terms in various languages which results in their excessive polysemy and various disambiguation strategies to reduce it. Another key characteristic of body part terms discussed in this chapter is their simulation effects which have important discursive implications. The cognitive semantic perspective is also taken by Krzysztof Kosecki from University of Łód´z, Poland. The author analyses the lexicon of Nigerian Pidgin English and shows that it owes its conceptual richness and creative character to metonymy. By identifying fifteen metonymic patterns, he shows that this creole language is fully expressive both in handling abstract and complex concepts as well as context-driven communication, which challenges the dogma of creole exceptionalism. The chapter “Semitic Calques in Biblical Greek: The Case-Study of Formulaic Participial Clauses” by Edoardo Nardi (University Gugliemo Marconi of Rome, Italy) redirects the discussion towards language contact in the historical context of Biblical literature. The author discusses a nominal construction known as “participial clause” often found in Biblical Greek and argues that its considerable increase in usage frequency in various Biblical sources vis-à-vis other Greek varieties is the result of calque from Semitic languages of Old Testament. In their exploration of cultural contact, Kathryn Hudson (University at Buffalo, US) and John Henderson (Cornell University, US) focus on indigenous annotated books, manuscripts and documents from colonial Mexico and Central America. The authors discuss three types of illustrative literary cases in order to shed light on different agendas and strategies of Spanish and indigenous contributors. By doing so, they provide insights into the dynamics of their cultural and linguistic interactions. Another historical example of language contact is discussed in by W. Juliane Elter from University of Mannheim, Germany. By analysing the Middle English corpus data, the author argues that the ambiguity between cognate phonological forms found in Old English “rísan” and Old Norse “reisa”, “rísa” during contact resulted in structural ambiguity between valency constructions in Middle English “risen” and “reisen”. This, in turn, demonstrates that copying of cognates can serve as a source for structural change because, not despite, of linguistic closeness. The changes in the lexicon of English due to historical language contact are also addressed by Irina Gvelesiani (Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University, Georgia). The author focuses on the lexical domain of Legal English, in particular trust-related terminological units. The analysis based on the manuscript materials and several

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dictionaries demonstrates how Old Low Franconian and Old English influenced the development of Middle English trust-related vocabulary through borrowings as well as derivatives. In her chapter, Nika Zoriˇci´c (University of Zadar, Croatia) also touches upon the issue of language contact. However, this contribution focuses on more recent language changes caused by the widespread use of English as a means of intercultural and computer-mediated communication. The author analyses the prevalence of English loanwords in Croatian and Russian with special emphasis put upon their integration in word formation processes in these two Slavic languages. The chapter “Polish and Russian in German Rap: A Corpus Study on Language Contact and Social Semantics” by Aleksei Tikhonov from Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany, offers a more synchronic perspective on language contact. By analysing the lyrics of selected German rappers with Polish and Russian backgrounds, the author attempts to quantitatively investigate language contact tendencies. Moreover, the study explores the semantics and stylistics of the lyrics in a contrastive way by focusing on the connotations of selected concepts such as Germany as well as by measuring the linguistic distance between songs. The second part of the volume comes to an end with a contribution focusing on cultural contact and literature by Lucia La Causa (University of Catania, Italy). In her chapter entitled “Arabic-English Intercultural and Interlingual Contacts in Ahdaf Soueif’s Novels: A Case of WEs ‘Contact Literature’ in the Expanding Area”, the author discusses various instances of culture-bound references, code-switching, lexical borrowing and language transfer found in Soueifs’ novels, which reflect “contact” character of this literature spanning Arabic and English cultural spheres. By bringing together the timely issues of language, education and culture in their various, often unexpected shapes, it is believed that the present volume will contribute to furthering future intercultural and interlingual research. Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk Marcin Trojszczak

Contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Language in Educational Contexts Gender Perceptions of EFL Teacher Among the Contemporary Secondary School and English Philology Students . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ´ atek Adam Swi˛

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Future Teachers’ Beliefs About Multilingualism in Language Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Yevheniia Hasai

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Teaching English Linguistics During the Pandemic: Online Group Project Work for Millennials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mariavita Cambria

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Methodological Proposal for the Teaching, Learning and Evaluation of Syntax in Secondary School in Bilingual Contexts . . . Antoni Brosa-Rodríguez and María José Rodríguez-Campillo

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The Impact of Frequency of Occurrence of Verb-Preposition Collocations on Their Acquisition by Moroccan EFL Learners . . . . . . . . . Abdelali El Fakir and Hind Brigui

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Collaboration and Crowdsourcing Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 Frieda Steurs and Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk Benefits of Cultural Translation for Advanced Undergraduate EFL Learners . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 Noelia Ruiz Ajenjo and Andrés Canga Alonso Creativity and Metaphor Translation Competence: The Case of Metaphorical Puns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 Chiara Astrid Gebbia

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Contents

Language in Cultural Contexts Embodied Lexicon: Body Part Terms in Conceptualization, Language Structure and Discourse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 Iwona Kraska-Szlenk Cognitive Semantics Against Creole Exceptionalism: On the Scope of Metonymy in the Lexicon of Nigerian Pidgin English . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199 Krzysztof Kosecki Semitic Calques in Biblical Greek: The Case-Study of Formulaic Participial Clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223 Edoardo Nardi Integration of Cognate Loan Verbs in Contact Between Closely Related Languages Effecting Valency Changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237 Wiebke Juliane Elter Intercultural and Interlingual Contacts in Colonial Mesoamerican Manuscripts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259 Kathryn Hudson and John Henderson Language Contacts and Trust-Related Terminological Units . . . . . . . . . . . 277 Irina Gvelesiani English Loanwords in Russian and Croatian and Their Integration Into the Word-Formation Processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295 Nika Zoriˇci´c Polish and Russian in German Rap: A Corpus Study on Language Contact and Social Semantics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317 Aleksej Tikhonov Arabic-English Intercultural and Interlingual Contacts in Ahdaf Soueif’s Novels: A Case of WEs ‘Contact Literature’ in the Expanding Area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341 Lucia La Causa Correction to: Integration of Cognate Loan Verbs in Contact Between Closely Related Languages Effecting Valency Changes . . . . . . . . Wiebke Juliane Elter

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Language in Educational Contexts

Gender Perceptions of EFL Teacher Among the Contemporary Secondary School and English Philology Students ´ atek Adam Swi˛

Abstract This paper aims to present how contemporary Polish learners view their teachers in a modern school environment. The author conducted empirical research on what 148 Polish students of secondary school (grades 1–3) and 168 students of English philology (94 students of B.A. studies, years 1–3 and 74 students of M.A. studies, years 1–2) expect from their teachers in terms of such factors as classroom management, individual knowledge, or even physical appearance, among others. The author collected data using a questionnaire as well as individual and collective interviews. As a result, the present study familiarises the reader with the profile of the teacher that the modern students wish they had in the classroom of the 21stcentury education, and implies that the expectations of both secondary school learners and English philology students constitute a complex framework of a plethora of simultaneously-working features. Keywords Teacher · Expectations · Globalisation · Profile

1 Introduction According to Thomas Carruther’s proverb, “a teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary”. Sophisticated as it sounds, the growing impact of contemporary reforms in Polish education seems to be redefining language teaching methodology. In other words, rapid technological advancements and the development of metaphorical discourses among students require the teacher to modify the way they communicate with students, often for communication to exist at all. Students have become more dependent on their teachers, thus requiring constant assistance and guidance, even though educational authorities expect them to be given more autonomy and freedom in order to make teachers progressively unnecessary and enrich students’ individual competencies. ´ atek (B) A. Swi˛ University of Economics and Human Sciences in Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk and M. Trojszczak (eds.), Language in Educational and Cultural Perspectives, Second Language Learning and Teaching, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-38778-4_1

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The aim of this paper is to establish a new understanding of what secondary school learners and university students expect from their contemporary teachers in the ongoing era of digitalisation and globalisation of society in terms of a multitude of individual aspects, such as gender differences, knowledge and education, features of personality, or even physical appearance, among others. As a result, this paper consists of two parts, and it begins with a theoretical section devoted to a description of how numerous researchers have defined the teacher over the last 35 years as well as how their roles have been modified due to the changing demands of the educational sector. The following, empirical part of this paper describes the research conducted by its author to establish the profile of the desired secondary school and academic teacher, as declared by the respondents of this study. In consequence, the empirical part has been divided into two specific sections, i.e., the secondary and academic sectors of education, which are then contrasted and discussed in order to find similarities and differences between both groups of respondents as well as to determine how expectations change when proceeding from one level to another.

2 The Teacher and Their Roles Substantial as the role of the teacher is, it seems to be vital to understand who the teacher truly seems to be and how their role in education has changed over the last 35 years. To start with, Wright (1987) defines the teacher as a facilitator of the learning process, whose major goal is to support students and enable them to develop their language skills by providing them with the most suitable learning conditions and selecting the tasks that constitute a valuable learning experience. Additionally, the teacher needs to constantly observe the course of actions in the classroom and introduce changes and modifications on a regular basis. On the other hand, Ur (1991) develops a much wider perspective as regards the teacher’s profession and pinpoints the fact that the teacher is in charge of developing particular skills of their students, mainly by means of raising their language awareness and therefore developing and verifying individual and collective hypotheses as well as constructing individual systems of skills that they might find useful in their future lives. Ur’s (1991) view closely corresponds with Brown’s (2000a, 2000b) position, who maintains that the teacher is in charge of guiding their learners through particular tasks and providing help and support ranging from explaining instructions to evaluating students’ activities and progress. Important as it is, the teacher needs to do everything that is possible to expose their learners to new knowledge and allow them to absorb it by creating a stimulating environment and fostering language learning conditions. In 2007, Douglas-Brown developed this explanation and added that teachers need to constantly raise their qualifications by attending courses and trainings aimed to remain up-to-date with the latest, innovative methods and techniques of teaching languages. One of the most well-known definitions came from Harmer (2001), who described the teacher as a certain kind of class leader, who is supposed to play eight essential

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roles in the classroom and thus become a controller, organiser, assessor, prompter, resource, tutor, participant, and observer. In other words, the teacher needs to manage the entire learning process taking place in the classroom by providing support to their learners and allowing them to make use of the teacher’s knowledge and experience when necessary. Crookes and Chaudron (2001) indicate that the teacher is the socalled decision-maker in the classroom, whose major task is to choose the most appropriate approaches, methods and techniques for working with learners in the classroom, thus aiming at effective completion of the intended tasks and raising and sustaining the efficiency of the learning process over a long period of time. Another interesting definition comes from Komorowska (2002), who refers to the teacher as a multitasker, i.e., a person whose tasks and duties go much beyond what someone might think could be done on a regular, simultaneous basis. To start with, the teacher needs to organise the learning process and then control it by providing support to their students and monitoring their performance, at the same time taking further decisions regarding what should be done next, solving conflicts of interests and motivating students to maintain their involvement and efforts. Furthermore, being an expert in the field of foreign languages, the teacher needs to be constantly ready to answer their learners’ questions about the subject of a class, thus not being allowed to make mistakes or become uncertain about particular aspects of L2 knowledge. That is why, apart from delivering knowledge to students, the teacher needs to adopt the role of a metaphorical, multifunctional language teaching resource responsible for all the above-mentioned processes. Figarski (2003) maintains that the teacher is a student-dependent entity, whose existence and functioning in a school environment without the other, teacherdependent entity, i.e., students, is impossible. Zawadzka (2004) adds that the teacher is also a researcher and implementor of effective practices, whose task is to evaluate which approaches work best in particular groups of learners. Concomitantly, the teacher is supposed to determine the least favourite and efficient approaches and gradually remove them from an individual repertoire of classroom techniques. Furthermore, Lewicka (2007) asserts that the teacher is an important member of the language teaching process and therefore the most significant source of information for students. However, Lewicka (2007) places the student at the primary position, which makes them constitute the core component of the foreign language (L2) pedagogy process rather than the teacher themselves. Wi´sniewska (2009, p. 290) also adds that the teacher is a certain kind of researcher and therefore a subject of the scientific perspective in terms of the student–teacher dichotomy. Finally, Werbi´nska (2009) claims that the teacher is a person possessing a relatively stable and solid system of individual values, which are socially respected, admired and trusted, such as responsibility, empathy or morality, among others. One of the most recent concepts regarding teachers is the concept of teacher immunity, introduced by Hiver and Dörnyei (2017, p. 412), who claim that the teacher is a person who, apart from teaching and delivering knowledge to students, possesses the so-called immunity system, a metaphorical term understood as “a protective mechanism that develops in response to exposure to adverse experiences”. In consequence, life experiences allow teachers to reach conclusions and affect the immunisation of their identity. Dörnyei

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(2018, p. 2) also defines the teacher as “a transformational leader as well as the engine of a transformational drive aiming to infect the students and to generate in them an attractive vision of language learning”. Finally, Dörnyei and Muir (2019, p. 8) claim that “language teachers are group leaders and as such they determine every facet of classroom life”. There are also different leadership styles, i.e., autocratic, democratic, and laissez-faire, which seem to be responsible for distinct outcomes in terms of effective teaching and the amount of freedom given to students. In consequence, in the autocratic style, the teacher controls every activity in the classroom and takes all the decisions regarding the progress of the target class. In the democratic leadership style, the teacher gives some freedom to their learners and allows them to take control over the course of certain actions taking place in the classroom, thus making students able to decide how to complete particular actions. Finally, in the laissez-faire style, the teacher controls very little in the classroom and therefore gives students a lot of freedom and a chance to take control over their own course of actions, thus making them leaders and allowing to decide for themselves. The students are supposed to appeal for help only in case an obstacle or a controversy appears. Various as they are, the above-mentioned definitions and descriptions contain multiple pieces of information as regards how the teacher’s profession and therefore duties have been approached over the years, including the changing times and therefore reality as well as technological and civilisational progress. However, these definitions focus on the issue of how a plethora of academic researchers have defined the teacher over the last 35 years. It is therefore worth mentioning that various research projects have been carried out to contrast the academia’s definitions from professional literature with real-life expectations in particular settings, i.e., by Kyridis et al. (2014) or Hafsah (2017), as well as Camargo and Camargo (2019), whose research attempt was one devoted to secondary school students. However, referring to other research attempts, Khang (2016) carried out a study aimed to define a good academic teacher in terms of an array of orientations, i.e., personality or expertise, among others. Clement and Rencewigg (2020) presented research on how English philology students view their ideal teacher in terms of communication skills, student–teacher relationship, negative aspects, or major qualities that facilitate the teacher’s effectiveness. Ruzgar (2021) provided an overview of how English Philology students, referred to as pre-service teachers, view their ideal teacher from the perspective of personal traits, such as adaptability or creativity, as well as mentoring or challenging students. Finally, Ilgan et al. (2022) conducted a research attempt as regards how English philology students perceive their ideal teacher’s desired features, such as being interested in a student’s privacy, caring for students, allocating time for them, etc. However, all those research attempts were based on limited groups of academic rather than secondary school students, and mostly focused on the use of interviews to investigate what students had to say. Therefore, none of these or any other research attempts focused on the contrastive nature of research among secondary school and English philology students’ expectations regarding their ideal teacher, adding gender differences to make it even more valuable and detailed.

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Having discussed how professional researchers and academics have developed the concept of the teacher over the last 35 years, it is therefore necessary to focus on students, who constitute an essential part of the entire process of education, by referring to the major aim of this paper and highlighting how they view their ideal secondary school and academic teachers. It is also vital due to the fact that moving from the secondary level to the academic stage is often understood as transferring from the legally obligatory system of education to the voluntary one, selected on an individual basis, which most often stems from the learner’s willingness to selfdevelop, become highly qualified and therefore raise their chances in the future job market.

3 The Research 3.1 Aims and Research Questions The present study was guided by the following questions: ● What do contemporary students, highly influenced by the rapid spread of digital technologies and globalisation, expect from their secondary school teachers and academic lecturers? ● Do the expectations change when shifting from the secondary to academic level of education? ● How do secondary school learners and English philology students depict their contemporary mentors? On the basis of the above-mentioned questions, the conducted research, both qualitative and quantitative in its nature, aimed at establishing a new understanding of what secondary school learners and university students expect from their contemporary teachers in the ongoing era of digitalisation and globalisation of society. The other major goal was to reveal how expectations change over a single educational year and the fact that obligatory education transforms into voluntary, depending only on the students and their willingness to attend classes and self-develop. As far as the choice of proper methodology is concerned, the author decided to make use of the following research methods: ● the individual case analysis method (Hajduk, 2001; Williams, 2007), which aimed at analysing each subject’s individual answers and extracting their vital aspects (using a qualitative and quantitative investigation, the author analysed individual students’ scores and responses, created statistics, counted average results, etc.), ● the comparative method (Williams, 2007), applied in order to contrast all subjects’ responses and thus find similarities and differences between them (using the qualitative approach, the author compared students’ individual and collective scores, established and determined the most corresponding factors, etc.).

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Additionally, the author conducted collective and individual interviews with the subjects, which aimed at obtaining supplementary explanations and thoughtprovoking conclusions regarding the questions contained in the questionnaire. In order to create detailed profiles of both the secondary school teacher and academic lecturer according to students’ expectations, the author investigated a myriad of aspects that might be responsible for and therefore reflect students’ increased interest in language classes and willingness to develop individual language skills resulting from the individual attractiveness of the teacher. That is why the elements investigated in this research ranged from substantive qualities to even physical aspects and included: ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

gender and gender differences; age and age differences; physical appearance; knowledge and education; features of personality and traits of character; functions and roles at an educational institution; work experience; skills and abilities; unwanted features and forms of behaviour; educational preferences; preferred forms and types of classes; technology-related matters.

3.2 Data-Collection Tools and Procedure For the purpose of this study, the author designed a questionnaire consisting of 16 specific questions regarding all the features mentioned in the previous section of this paper. Most of the questions were of the so-called open-ended nature, which means that the subjects had to elaborate on the aspects they mentioned when giving particular responses. Some of the questions, however, were of the multiple-choice nature, and the students had to choose the answers that suited them best in specific cases (often more than one). Additionally, the author made use of a supplementary research tool, i.e., collective and individual interviews with the subjects, which aimed to provide more detailed research data, i.e., further argumentation, justification, or even explanation regarding the issues mentioned by the subjects in the interviews. They also allowed the author to ask supplementary questions in case of doubts or uncertainties, which is clearly impossible when, for instance, ranging answers from 1 to 5 on the Likert scale. All of them were considered invaluable in terms of the final results and conclusions concerning the major purpose of this paper. As far as the procedure is concerned, the author divided the conducted research into 3 stages. As a result, at the initial stage, the questionnaire was distributed in order to gather the vital information for this study. The amount of time necessary to fill in the questionnaire was not determined by the author, which allowed the

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participants to provide complete answers and explanations. This stage was followed by collective and individual interviews aimed at adding certain information and developing certain ideas mentioned in the questionnaires. This stage allowed the subjects to be even more specific in terms of what they had written at the initial stage, while for the author this was an additional opportunity to add supplementary questions and decipher the subjects’ intentions even more thoroughly. The final stage was entirely devoted to a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the obtained data (analysing and comparing individual and collective responses, extracting major differences between the subjects, counting individual and average scores, developing and presenting statistics) and therefore reaching the major goal of this study, i.e., establishing the profiles of the desired secondary school and academic mentors that the subjects wished they had in their educational institutions.

3.3 Participants When it comes to the subjects of this research, 316 students agreed to participate in the present empirical study. There were 148 secondary school learners (46,8% of all participants), of whom 77 were females (52%), while 71 were males (48%). Their age ranged from 15 to 20. As far as English philology students are concerned, there were 168 of them (53,2% of all participants), divided into 105 females (62,5%) and 63 males (37,5%). In terms of their age, this factor ranged from 19 to 43. Altogether, there were 182 females and 134 males participating in this research. It is also worth noticing that the academic sector was clearly dominated by female participants, as opposed to the secondary one, whose gender was almost equally balanced. Finally, when considering the secondary school subjects, all of them represented the general comprehensive school, and there were 39 subjects (26,4%) from the first grade, 68 subjects (46%) from the second grade and 41 subjects (27,6%) from the final, third grade. As far as the academic participants are concerned, they were all students of English Philology. There were 31 (18,5%), 48 (28,6%) and 15 (8,9%) students representing the first, second and third years of B.A. studies, respectively, as well as 41 (24,4%) and 33 (19,6%) students representing the first and second years of M.A. studies. Therefore, this study provides a description of the profiles of the desired mentors on the basis of a wide range of responses obtained from students of all the grades and years of both secondary school and English Philology, thus restraining from limitations and possible gaps resulting from a lack of opinion from a particular stage of the entire educational process.

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4 Data Analysis 4.1 Part 1: Secondary School Teacher To start with, the author asked the participants to declare their preferences in terms of the teacher’s gender and then explain their choice in greater detail. As a result, 69 secondary school learners (46,6%) participating in this study pointed out that they preferred to work with women rather than men, as declared by 60 subjects (40,5%). As far as the remaining 19 subjects (12,9%) are concerned, they had no preferences regarding the teacher’s gender. Furthermore, when considering females and males separately, 34 female students (44%) claimed that they preferred men as their teachers, while 32 of them (41%) declared women as their favourite teachers. Only 11 females (15%) had no preferences as regards the gender of the teacher. When it comes to the male participants only, 37 of them (52%) declared females as their favourite teachers, while 26 of them (37%) maintained that males were more effective in terms of teaching. Finally, 8 subjects (12%) had no clear preferences and therefore did not pay attention to the teacher’s gender. When it comes to further explanations, female subjects claimed that women shout more often and tend to be less patient. They are also stricter and more demanding. As far as male teachers are concerned, according to females, they are more willing to talk about problems and get on better with students. They also deal with problems faster and tend to be more trustworthy as well as remain cold-blooded in various stressful situations; there are also too few of them. Male subjects, on the other hand, claimed that female teachers are less resistant to stressful school situations, and they are more likely to impose their viewpoints. They are also more difficult to compromise. As far as male teachers are concerned, according to males, they are more serious and communicative as well as open to students’ problems. They are also more likely to keep promises and act faster than women. Complex as the issue is, the research reveals that secondary school students seem to have no clear preferences in terms of the teacher’s gender and work effectively both with men and women. The second factor investigated in this research, age, allowed the author to obtain another set of valuable data, however, this time clearly indicating the subjects’ preferences. As a result, 115 secondary school learners (77,7%) preferred young teachers, i.e., those aged 24–29. In consequence, the remaining 33 subjects (22,3%) declared their preference for the teachers aged 30–35. None of the students declared readiness to work with the teachers above the age of 35. However, when considering both sexes separately, 66 females (86%) declared that they preferred the teachers aged 24–29, while only 11 of them (14%) chose the second age group, i.e., 30–35. As far as males are concerned, 49 subjects (69%) declared willingness to work with younger teachers, while only 22 students (31%) chose the other, older group of teachers. Both males and females participating in this study maintained that the teachers aged 24–29 understand students better, and it tends to be easier to negotiate various

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things with them. Furthermore, they know how to talk to students and seem to be open to students’ suggestions, such as trips and competitions of various kinds. They are also fond of using new technologies and tend to be less strict. Younger teachers seem to be more friendly and more willing to talk about controversial issues. Finally, classes are usually less stressful, and there is no generation gap as in the case of older teachers, usually possessing a solid and stable system of views, which is less prone to changes and therefore students’ suggestions. As far as the other age group of teachers is concerned, they already know a lot about the school environment and tend to be even more effective in dealing with problematic situations, which is an outcome of a particular amount of teaching experience. The third factor focused on the issue of the teacher’s physical appearance (including clothes). Controversial as it tends to be, this variable turned out to be significant for 111 secondary school students (75%), while only 37 of them (25%) rejected the importance of this aspect in the educational process. Furthermore, when considering only female participants, 63 of them (82%) provided a positive answer to this question, while only 14 of them (18%) rejected the importance of the teacher’s physical looks. When it comes to male students, as many as 48 of them (67%) confirmed the role of this aspect in the learning environment, while 23 of them (33%) did not consider this feature essential. The subjects maintained that proper physical appearance allows them to focus on their classes, since the teacher ought to be a role model for them and thus set trends at school. Some of the subjects maintained that teachers are educated people and therefore wear elegant clothes, which, to some extent, reflect their professional position. Some of the participants mentioned exactly what they expected from their teachers, i.e., trousers, shoes and a shirt for a man, while a dress or a skirt and blouse as well as high heels for a woman. However, sports or loose style is also acceptable if the teacher feels comfortable (clothes need to be yet well-matched). In terms of physical appearance, both males and females ought to be tall and slim as well as have short or long hair, respectively. On the other hand, those who rejected this factor claimed that teachers need to be nice for students and possess extensive knowledge on the subject they teach. Apart from that, the teacher needs to feel comfortable, while personality is a much more important issue. One of the major factors investigated in this study was the subjects’ opinion regarding their desired teacher’s knowledge and education. As a result, all of them, i.e., 148, declared that this factor is essential for them. However, 77 secondary school learners maintained this aspect as a priority, while 71 of them treated this element as very important, but not crucial. When it comes to the students’ gender, 35 females (46%) considered this to be a priority, while 42 of them (54%) claimed this feature to be of great importance. As far as males are concerned, 42 of them (59%) maintained this aspect as a priority, while the remaining 29 considered it to be very important, but not vital. When asked for an explanation, those subjects who treated their teacher’s education and knowledge as a priority claimed that well-educated teachers allowed them to pass their exams better, mainly due to the fact that the teacher was able to explain everything properly and had no doubts regarding the discussed topic. Furthermore,

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the teacher seemed to be able to help their students develop in a variety of fields and influenced their choices, thus constituting a role model and a certain kind of authority for them. Some of the subjects claimed that they did not have to worry about their future because they knew they could rely on their trainer and ask about almost everything. Finally, a well-educated teacher guaranteed their students to progress and develop personally. On the other hand, those who maintained this factor as an important one, but not vital, maintained that the teacher’s attitude was a priority, while education and knowledge mean that the trainer develops individually and thus knows how to solve students’ problems or diminish their effects. Some of them also claimed that personality is more important than knowledge, since the teacher knows how to approach their learners. Personality and character, another aspect the subjects were asked about in this study, turned out to be important in terms of establishing and maintaining proper relationships between students and teachers as well as making progress in the educational process. As a result, according to females, a secondary school teacher ought to be responsible, self-confident and helpful as well as calm, patient, polite, wellorganised and full of energy. Additionally, the teacher ought to motivate their learners to work as well as smile and possess a good sense of humour. Males, on the other hand, described their favourite teacher’s personality and character as fair, open to technological novelties and creative. However, it is also important that the trainer remains ambitious and reliable as well as cooperative and consistent in their actions. As a result, it is possible to conclude that males expect the teacher to have a stronger, dominating personality and be able to make use of modern technologies and innovations, at the same time becoming the leader, who clearly knows what to do in their classes. Therefore, helpfulness and support count most, while strong features and clear dominance are rather undesired. This again reveals that, for secondary school learners and therefore mostly for females, the teacher themselves counts more than the use of technologies or any other aspect of the educational process. When it comes to functions and roles at an educational institution, according to 89 secondary school learners (60,1%), both males and females, the teacher ought to primarily adopt the didactic function and thus focus on conducting classes and sustaining the continuity of the educational process. Furthermore, 25 subjects, i.e., 16,9%, declared the organisational function as another important aspect, while 18 students (12,2%) appreciated the presence of the managerial function, both of them allowing the teacher to know how to organise and manage events, trips and education itself. Finally, 16 subjects (10,8%) appreciated the supportive role and thus the possibility of relying on the teacher in every situation. Nobody declared the promotional function to be of any importance to them. When it comes to teacher roles, 145 (97,8%) and 132 (89,2%) subjects, respectively, maintained the priority roles of the resource and then language model, which enable students to rely on the teacher and trust their skills and knowledge. Furthermore, 86 (58,1%) and 77 (52%) students, respectively, declared the roles of motivator and prompter to be of great importance for them. They claimed that the teacher ought to constantly motivate their learners to work and develop their skills as well as only prompt when an obstacle occurs rather than taking control over the course of actions

Gender Perceptions of EFL Teacher Among the Contemporary … Table 1 Teacher functions and roles according to the gender

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Function

Females

Males

Didactic

52 (68%)

37 (52%)

Organisational

14 (18%)

11 (16%)

Supportive

8 (10%)

8 (11%)

Managerial

3 (4%)

15 (21%)

Promotional

0 (0%)

0 (0%)

Role

Females

Males

Resource

74 (96%)

71 (100%)

Language model

70 (91%)

62 (87%)

Listener

50 (65%)

22 (31%)

Participant

50 (65%)

15 (21%)

Motivator

38 (49%)

48 (68%)

Prompter

37 (48%)

40 (56%)

Controller

27 (35%)

32 (45%)

Assessor

24 (31%)

24 (34%)

Organiser

18 (24%)

4 (5%)

Tutor

10 (13%)

21 (29%)

Observer

5 (7%)

6 (8%)

in the classroom. Other important roles included the listener (72 subjects–48,6%), participant (65 subjects–43,9%), controller (59 subjects–39,9%) and assessor (48 subjects–32,4%). The fewest students, i.e., 31 (20,9%), 22 (14,9%) and 11 (7,4%), declared the importance of the roles of tutor, organiser and observer, respectively. As far as detailed results for particular sexes are concerned, the table below illustrates the subjects’ responses and therefore preferences (Table 1). In the following part of the questionnaire, the author asked the participants about the importance of the teacher’s experience. As a result, 106 subjects (71,6%) confirmed that experience plays one of the major roles in their education, while only 42 of them, i.e., 28,4%, did not consider this factor significant. As far as gender is concerned, 48 females (62%) declared the positive answer, while 29 of them (38%) did not consider this factor vital. On the other hand, as many as 58 males (81%) confirmed that the trainer’s experience mattered for them, as opposed to only 13 of them (19%), who did not appreciate this factor. When asked for an explanation, females declared that the teacher’s experience made them more self-confident and they knew that they could count on them. They could also get help in every situation since the teacher knew exactly what to do and reacted in a different way than the inexperienced teacher. Furthermore, experience also allowed students to observe that the teacher already possessed a particular teaching style and attitude to students. Those females who did not consider this feature important maintained that this aspect did not guarantee any personal success,

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or it was too abstract for them. Males, on the other hand, found this factor more significant and maintained that extensive teaching experience facilitated new knowledge absorption among teachers, often necessary to properly determine what approach, method and technique to choose for a particular group of learners and therefore raise the effectiveness of their teaching. Furthermore, a more experienced teacher gives students more freedom and independence when learning, while students seem to be able to understand their teacher’s reactions and behaviour. Those who did not agree with this aspect of the conducted study maintained that some of the teachers possessing extensive experience may have a less positive attitude to teaching, and it changes the teacher in a negative way. Another step of this study focused on skills and abilities that the teacher ought to possess when working in a school environment. As a result, according to secondary school females, the teacher ought to possess advanced interpersonal and problemsolving skills, mainly due to the specific character of the educational field. Furthermore, the teacher needs to know how to adapt to any, often unexpected situation and thus be able to keep promises and remain cold-blooded in order to make clear predictions about the future time. When it comes to language matters, the teacher needs to know how to explain complex grammatical issues in a simple way as well as accept criticism and suggestions from students. Finally, the teacher is supposed to know how to operate and therefore make use of the latest technological novelties. As far as males are concerned, they also listed most of the above-mentioned skills, but they added that the teacher ought to adjust their language to individual students and thus treat every learner in a unique way. Additionally, males expect their teacher to cope with stress effectively and cooperate with different people and institutions in order to raise the attractiveness of education in the long-term context. The following step of this research, which focused on unwanted features and forms of behaviour, enabled the author to contrast this section with the previous one. In other words, having become familiar with what students expect from their teachers, it was worth investigating the features that students wished their teachers did not have. Therefore, when it comes to females, they did not appreciate sarcastic forms of behaviour and nervous reactions. Furthermore, the students did not seem to enjoy favouring particular students and limited willingness to negotiate with the teacher in different situations. However, the aspects that seemed to be particularly stressed by the females were the feeling of superiority imposed by the teacher as well as a lack of empathy, being too strict, shouting at students and conducting classes in a traditional way, i.e., in a stepwise, exercise-by-exercise fashion. When it comes to males, they seemed to reveal little appreciation for a lack of willingness to find a solution to a problem, or unclear and ironic answers to questions. Furthermore, male learners also did not enjoy a lack of empathy and using a complicated language to express views and ideas. However, one of the major unwanted factors was the issue of a lack of openness to new technologies and not allowing students to express their opinions, thus imposing the teacher’s viewpoint. Preferred forms and types of classes constituted another issue investigated in this research. As a result, 86 subjects (58,1%) declared that they favoured the use of discussions and debates since they had an opportunity to express their own ideas

Gender Perceptions of EFL Teacher Among the Contemporary … Table 2 Secondary school students’ preferences for a class layout according to the gender

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Forms of classes

Females

Males

Discussions and debates

55 (72%)

31 (44%)

Role-plays and simulations

22 (28%)

41(57%)

Laboratories

19 (24%)

5 (7%)

Presentations

7 (9%)

30 (42%)

Lectures

2 (2%)

9 (12%)

Types of classroom arrangement

Females

Males

Pair work

62 (81%)

30 (42%)

Group work

50 (65%)

19 (27%)

Individual work

35 (45%)

45 (64%)

and views, usually without any limitations. This, in turn, provided students with a certain degree of freedom and the feeling of being listened to by both the teacher and their friends, which seems to be important at this age. Furthermore, 63 subjects (42,6%) enjoyed the use of role-plays and simulations, which allowed them to become someone else or find oneself in an unexpected situation and observe their own reactions. Some of them, i.e., 37 students (25%), also preferred presentations, which gave them an opportunity to speak on a given topic and thus develop individual speaking skills. Finally, other answers included laboratories, selected by 24 students (16,2%), and lectures, chosen by only 11 subjects (7,4%), thus becoming the least favoured options. When it comes to forms of work, 92 subjects (62,2%) maintained the importance of pair-work, while 80 of them (54%) still supported the idea of an individual analysis of a classroom problem or task. Finally, 69 students (46,6%) also seemed to be fond of working in groups. The following table presents detailed results for preferred forms and types of classes as regards the subjects’ gender (Table 2). The above-presented scores reveal that females clearly prefer to work in pairs and groups, which means that they are keen on cooperation and common problem-solving rather than individual work, which gives less pleasure and the feeling of solitude. Males, on the other hand, display a completely different attitude and enjoy working on their own, while the teacher’s attention and involvement ought to be limited to an absolute minimum. This, however, does not mean that the other forms of classroom arrangement ought to be eliminated, since one of the major goals of any teacher is to provide students with a variety of exercises and forms of work in the classroom to avoid boredom and encourage students to work even harder. When it comes to one of the most contemporary priorities of education, i.e., technology-related issues, the author asked the subjects about their opinions regarding the use of a multitude of interactive platforms and applications as well as social networking sites in the classroom. Due to the fact that at this age, and yet in the ongoing era of globalisation and technological progress, young people are much more willing to use modern technologies, and this factor seemed to be one of the

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most interesting issues in this research. As a result, 135 subjects (91,2%) described modern technologies as a contemporary educational priority, while only 13 students (8,8%) did not consider them essential. The following preferences, including genderrelated scores, have been declared by all the 148 secondary school learners (Tables 3 and 4). Table 3 Secondary school learners’ technological preferences Interactive platforms and applications

All students’ preferences

YouTube

136 (91,9%)

Kahoot

117 (79%)

Quizzlet

105 (70,9%)

Memrise

74 (50%)

Duolingo

37 (25%)

Busuu

10 (6,8%)

Lang 8

3 (2%)

Pixton

0 (0%)

VoiceThread

0 (0%)

TopHead

0 (0%)

Social networking sites and media

All students’ preferences

Facebook

136 (91,9%)

Instagram

111 (75%)

Snapchat

55 (37,2%)

Table 4 Secondary school learners’ technological preferences in terms of gender Interactive platforms and applications

Females

Males

YouTube

76 (98,7%)

60 (84,5%)

Kahoot

68 (88,3%)

49 (69%)

Quizzlet

65 (84,4%)

40 (56,3%)

Memrise

57 (74%)

17 (23,9%)

Duolingo

34 (44,2%)

3 (4,2%)

Busuu

10 (13%)

0 (0%)

Lang 8

3 (3,9%)

0 (0%)

Pixton

0 (0%)

0 (0%)

VoiceThread

0 (0%)

0 (0%)

TopHead

0 (0%)

0 (0%)

Social networking sites and media

Females

Males

Facebook

77 (100%)

59 (83,1%)

Instagram

69 (89,6%)

42 (59,2%)

Snapchat

46 (59,7%)

9 (12,7%)

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When investigating the target phenomenon, the author asked the subjects to declare whether the level of the teacher’s education determines the perception of their teacher. As a result, 119 secondary school learners (80,4%) claimed that this factor does not determine how they approach their teacher. Therefore, only 29 students (19,6%) maintained that this factor might be important for them and therefore changes their perception of both the teacher and their lessons themselves. As far as gender differences are concerned, 18 females (23%) considered this factor important as opposed to 59 of them (77%), who did not treat this aspect as a prerequisite of their education. Males presented a very similar position, since only 11 of them (16%) considered this aspect vital; therefore, as many as 60 males (84%) rejected the importance of this feature. Those females who supported this issue claimed that they respected the teacher more, and it meant that the teacher was hard-working and wanted to do a lot with their students. Those who were against this issue maintained that education does not change the way students treat their teacher, and they were not interested in titles and degrees. The females claimed that they had to meet the teacher to form an opinion, while the teacher’s attitude is a more serious issue in the student–teacher relationship. Finally, some of the students claimed that high education is not always connected with extensive knowledge on the topic. When it comes to males, the only positive aspect related to the teacher’s education was the fact that the students had an impression that they worked with a professional. Those who rejected this idea claimed that they had to meet and talk to the teacher before they judged them. In other words, the males admitted that they do not always recognise what titles and degrees mean, which leads to the assumption that they have to judge their opinions regarding the teacher on the basis of their experience with the instructor, while titles and degrees are not always everything. Finally, they stated that perception of the teacher is subject to change and stimulation, while education and lessons give an immediate, sometimes false impression only. In order to complete this part of the conducted research, the author asked the participants whether they would like to be teachers in the future and whether they thought they had at least one ideal teacher at the schools that they attended at the time of this study. As far as being a teacher is concerned, only 25 subjects (16,9%) provided the positive answer, which means that 123 students (83,1%) did not consider developing a career in this profession. When considering gender differences, only 20 females (26% of them) and 5 males (7% of them) responded positively, while 57 females (74%) and as many as 66 males (93%) did not aim at working as schoolteachers. When asked for an explanation, the female participants claimed that they admired teachers for their hard work and their parents were also members of this profession; thus, they aimed at continuing a family tradition. Furthermore, this profession allowed them to have a feeling that they might give something to others, who can then benefit from this knowledge. When it comes to the negative answers, the females maintained that this job might be too difficult for them, and they were afraid of public speaking. They also mentioned that they would not come back to school anymore, and they would probably not be able to manage young minds and their moods. Finally,

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the females declared that they lacked interpersonal skills and there seem to be too little social respect for this job, which means that they did not want to be a part of it. As far as the male subjects are concerned, they maintained that they enjoyed working with people and sharing their knowledge with them. However, since a large majority of them provided the negative response, they maintained that they would not be patient enough, since people tend to be too difficult in social relationships. They also had different plans, including their salaries, which they considered much too low. They also claimed that they would not be ready to explain anything to their learners, and it is rather a job for women. Finally, the males stated that this job is too complex, responsible and stressful, and it requires the instructor to be constantly in the center of attention, which is rather not for them. In order to sum up this part of the conducted research, the author asked the participants to declare if they had at least one ideal teacher in their schools. As a result, 83 learners (56,1%) provided a positive response, while 65 of them (43,9%) denied that fact. However, it is worth noticing that there were significant discrepancies between females and males. Therefore, 61 females (79%) declared at least one ideal teacher, while 16 of them (21%) denied having any ideal teacher in their lives. On the other hand, 49 males (69%) also denied working with any ideal teacher and thus only 22 of them (31%) confirmed that they had at least a single teacher who embodies all the above-described features.

4.2 Part 2: University Lecturer As far as the teacher’s gender is concerned, academic learners revealed distinct tendencies. As a result, 77 students (45,8%) revealed no preferences and regarded this factor as insignificant in terms of higher education. However, as many as 72 students (42,9%) declared that their desired academic lecturer ought to be a man, while only 19 students (11,3%) preferred female lecturers. When considering gender differences, a significant gap was noticed. Therefore, the female participants clearly preferred male lecturers, which was declared by a majority of them, i.e., 61 (58%). Furthermore, 39 females (37%) had no preference at all, while only 5 of them (5%) declared a female as their ideal lecturer. Males, on the other hand, did not express a specific preference. In other words, 38 of them (61%) did not consider the lecturer’s gender vital, 14 students (22%) preferred females, while only 11 of them (17%) expressed satisfaction when working with males. The above-presented results reveal that English philology students do not consider the teacher’s gender significant, thus prioritising different aspects, to be discussed in the following sections of this paper. This, however, applies mostly to the male subjects, since a majority of the females clearly maintained that they preferred to work with male lecturers. When asked for an explanation, the female respondents claimed that women are less resistant to criticism, and they easily reveal dissatisfaction when an obstacle appears. Furthermore, they are more willing to show a lot of empathy, which is not always a positive aspect of proper classroom interaction. Men, on the

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other hand, are more communicative and, most importantly, tend to separate personal life from work, which seems to be crucial in terms of the school ground. They are also more authoritative and often have higher expectations due to tougher characters. Finally, men are less emotional. When it comes to the males, on the other hand, they claimed that female lecturers are better-organised, however, they compromise more easily, which does not always have a beneficial impact on learners. They also tend to be more emotional. As far as male lecturers are concerned, they are more willing to discuss more controversial topics, and they tend to be more consequent in their actions. They also set clearer requirements and more realistic goals and expectations. Finally, they tend to be more humorous and admit their mistakes more willingly. When it comes to age and age differences, tendencies among English philology students seem to be distinct from secondary school learners. As a result, a majority of the subjects, i.e., 87 of them (51,8%), claimed that they preferred to work with the teachers aged 30–35. Furthermore, 40 students (23,7%) declared their preference for those aged 36–40, while 31 of them (18,5%) maintained that they benefitted most when working with the teachers within the age range of 41–45. Finally, there were 5 students (3%) who preferred the teachers above the age of 56 as well as 5 students (3%) who supported the youngest academic teachers aged 24–29. When it comes to gender preferences, 55 females (52% of them) declared their support for the teachers aged 30–35, 33 of them (32%) for those aged 36–40, while only 17 females (16%) preferred to work with the lecturers aged 41–45. As far as males are concerned, age preferences were more widespread. As a result, 32 of them (50%) focused on the lecturers aged 30–35, 14 of them (22%) supported those aged 41–45, while 7 students (11%) preferred the lecturers within the age range of 36–40. The remaining 10 students were divided into two equal group, which means that 5 students (8,5%) were keen on the lecturers above the age of 56, while the other five (8,5%) supported the youngest academic teachers, i.e., those aged 24–29. When asked to explain their choices, the female students claimed that those aged 30–35 are more energetic and therefore willing to work and conduct classes with their learners. Furthermore, they get on better with students and tend to be open to new experiences and knowledge. They are also more technologically-efficient, thus preparing their classes in various ways and being more involved in them. Finally, they are more understanding and often allow their students to get a second chance in the case of an unsuccessful completion of a particular task or test. Those aged 36–40, on the other hand, are still motivated to learn and willing to self-develop by attending various forms of trainings. They also do not reveal the so-called routine approach yet and thus attempt to use a variety of teaching approaches. There is still little distance between the lecturer and their learners, while finding a common language is not problematic. Finally, they already possess certain experience, and thus they know how to modify their approaches in case some of them become less effective. When it comes to the lecturers aged 41–45, they usually possess extensive knowledge on the target topic, while their views still remain subject to suggestions and possible modifications. They also remain prone to innovations and technologically-active. As far as the males’ views are concerned, those who preferred the lecturers aged 30–35 maintained that they are open to new methods and techniques, thus presenting a

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‘fresh approach’ to teaching. They also do not have a tendency to conduct classes in a form of long monologues, but they rather attempt to talk to their learners and exchange views and ideas. Finally, they seem to understand students better. When it comes to those aged 36–40, they already possess certain experience, which makes them more self-confident. They also care more about their students. Those aged 41–45, on the other hand, are the lecturers who balance between experience and innovation as well as already possess individual teaching styles. Finally, the respondents who selected the other two age groups did not provide any arguments why they preferred those groups. The issue of physical appearance turned out to be significant for 93 English philology students (55,4%) participating in this research. Therefore, the remaining 75 respondents (44,6%) did not consider this factor vital, which means that the results were almost equally balanced. When it comes to gender choices, the results were balanced only in terms of the females. As a result, 55 of them (52%) supported the issue discussed in this paragraph, while 50 of them (48%) rejected its importance. Males, on the other hand, were a less balanced group, since 38 of them (61%), i.e., a majority, claimed this issue to be of great importance to them, while only 39% of them, i.e., 25 respondents, did not consider this aspect to be vital in education. When explaining their positive choice, the females maintained that physical appearance reflects the position of the lecturer and allows them to express themselves in a particular way. Furthermore, proper appearance arouses respect and tends to be a certain kind of role model for students, however, not only. Finally, it shows aesthetics. Those females who opposed this issue maintained that it is an individual matter and the teacher’s knowledge is a much more important factor. Finally, it does not guarantee the effectiveness of teaching. As far as the males’ opinions are concerned, they maintained that physical appearance reveals the lecturer’s attitude to teaching and their students, thus becoming a role model for them. Furthermore, it allows students to treat their instructor seriously. Those who opposed this aspect maintained that only knowledge matters and ought to be treated as a priority at all stages of one’s process of education. As far as clothes are concerned, English philology students (both males and females) did not specify any particular items. However, they stated that the lecturer ought to be elegant and always dressed appropriately to the situation, thus excluding extravagant and sports combinations. When asked about the importance of the lecturer’s knowledge and education, 80 respondents (47,6%) declared this aspect as a priority for them, while the remaining 88 students (52,4%) considered this to be very significant. As far as gender differences are concerned, 38% of the females (40 students) described it as a priority, while 62% of them (65 respondents) as a very significant point of their education. On the other hand, 40 males (61%) found it a priority, while 25 of them (39%) a very important feature of their process of individual development. Treating education as a priority, the females maintained that the lecturer’s knowledge and education show their passion for the subject and influence students’ individual development, willingness to learn and therefore the future. Furthermore, the lecturer is more reliant and easily builds trust and authority, thus motivating to work. Those females who treated it as an important factor claimed that both elements enable

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students to extend their individual knowledge and reveal the teacher’s positive attitude to work and self-development, thus influencing students and encouraging them to work harder. They also enable the lecturer to correct students’ mistakes effectively and provide the feeling of comfort and security. However, when asked about why they did not consider this factor a priority, the females maintained that these two factors are very important to them, but they are not enough to ensure a complete effectiveness of education and thus they have to be combined with other individual aspects, such as personality or character, to be discussed in the following paragraph. As far as the males’ opinions are concerned, the lecturer’s knowledge and education enable students to feel secure and ensure the teacher’s progress and ability to answer all questions and solve all problems. Due to these two factors, the teacher also becomes a role model for their students. Taking into consideration the abovementioned points, the males then treat the teacher’s knowledge and education as a priority. When considering this factor as a very important one, the males highlighted the facts that they make work easier, while knowledge can be compared to money, i.e., by working hard, a student increases their ‘individual capital’ and thus benefits from the lecturer’s assets. However, they claimed that knowledge and education may sometimes give a false impression and ought not to be treated as a priority but rather a very important factor. When explaining their choice in greater detail, the males provided similar arguments to the ones given by the females. The following section focused on the teacher’s personality and character, thus strictly correlating with the section of this paper provided above. As a result, the female students clarified that their academic lecturer ought to be self-confident, open and agreeable as well as punctual, empathic and polite. Furthermore, in order to work even more effectively with their learners, the teacher needs to be communicative, creative and patient as well as friendly, helpful and well-organised. However, academic learners provide a much wider range of desired features and add that their lecturer should be fair, energetic, willing to compromise and admit to potential mistakes as well as possess a good sense of humour and understand the value of individualism. When it comes to the males’ opinions, they provide a similar set of features; however, they also add such aspects as being ambitious, decisive, authentic and honest as well as reflective, pragmatic and even unconventional. When considering the teacher’s functions and roles at an educational institution, the author found out that 68 subjects (40,5%) and another 60 of them (35,7%) clearly declared the importance of the supportive and didactic functions, respectively. Furthermore, 25 students (14,9%) maintained the beneficial character of the organisational function, while only 9 subjects (5,4%) and then 6 of them (3,5%) treated the promotional and managerial functions, respectively, as essential. As far as teacher roles are concerned, as many as 148 subjects (88,1%) prioritised the role of the resource and thus a possibility of relying on the teacher in terms of their knowledge and support. Furthermore, 127 subjects (75,6%) and 122 of them (72,6%) maintained the importance of the roles of motivator and prompter, respectively, which seems to be connected with the above-mentioned role of a resource, whose major task is to support students by providing advice in a variety of situations. Further choices included the roles of the language model (106 subjects–63,1%), organiser

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22 Table 5 Teacher functions and roles according to the gender

Function

Females

Males

Supportive

47 (45%)

21 (34%)

Didactic

30 (29%)

30 (48%)

Organisational

20 (19%)

5 (7%)

Promotional

8 (7%)

1 (2%)

Managerial

0 (0%)

6 (9%)

Role

Females

Males

Motivator

88 (84%)

39 (62%)

Resource

85 (81%)

63 (100%)

Prompter

85 (81%)

37 (59%)

Organiser

68 (65%)

37 (59%)

Language model

58 (55%)

48 (76%)

Tutor

58 (55%)

10 (15%)

Participant

55 (52%)

34 (53%)

Controller

44 (42%)

18 (29%)

Assessor

37 (35%)

30 (47%)

Observer

14 (13%)

11 (18%)

Listener

14 (13%)

14 (22%)

(105 subjects–62,5%), participant (89 subjects–52%), tutor (68 subjects–40,5%), assessor (67 subjects–39,9%), controller (62 subjects–37%), listener (28 subjects– 16,7%) and observer (25 subjects–14,9%). On the other hand, when analysing gender differences, the following results ought to be considered: Table 5 reveals that there are certain discrepancies between the choices made by the students. As a result, females seem to be more focused on the supportive function of the lecturer in terms of their assistance during the classes. The females also explained that this gives the feeling of working in a supportive environment, where no difficulties or obstacles remain unsolved. They also count on the teacher’s didactic and organisational skills, which give them a possibility of relying on their instructor and thus ensuring a proper knowledge transfer. When. It comes to the other two roles, i.e., promotional and managerial, females do not require their instructors to be skillful in terms of them. They explain that these functions do not correlate too much with their classes and thus seem to be useful to the institution they work at rather than the students themselves. Males, on the other hand, expect their lecturer to be good at didactics rather than supporting their learners, who aim at more independence and therefore less reliance on the teacher. However, support still seems to be necessary since more than a quarter of the respondents declared this function to be still essential when conducting classes. Finally, males do not expect any other roles and thus their impact ought to be diminished to an absolute minimum; they also explained that the remaining ones do not influence them and thus seem to be useless to them, which is also complimentary to what the females expressed.

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When it comes to teacher roles, females expect their instructor to be much more multifunctional and multifaceted. In other words, they expect multiple roles to be played on a simultaneous basis, especially those of the motivator, resource, prompter, organizer and language model, which then correlate with the supportive function. The least desired ones are those connected with a more passive participation in the classes, i.e., the observer and listener, which is yet another piece of evidence that females see their instructor as an active participant of their classes. Men, on the other hand, treat their instructor as a source of knowledge and information, and thus they stress the roles of the resource and language model. However, they still appreciate when their lecturer motivates them to work and, to some extent, assists them by giving directions and thus becoming the organiser. The least desired roles strictly correlate with the females’ choices; however, males explain that they do not want the instructor to get too much involved in their activities, at the same time adding that they do not enjoy teachers who become listeners and observers in order to only conduct classes and then go home. Therefore, a passion for job is what seems to be vital in this profession. When comparing English philology students to secondary school learners, one can easily observe that there are significant differences regarding the preferred roles and functions. As a result, English philology students highly appreciate the supportive function of the teacher (45%), as opposed to secondary school learners (10%), who do not need much support from their teacher and thus prefer independence in their work. On the other hand, secondary school learners (68%) highly value the didactic function of the teacher, while students of English philology (29%) do not especially consider this function necessary. As far as the other research functions are concerned, the organisational function (English philology students–19%, secondary school learners −18%) seems to be equally important for both groups, whereas the promotional and managerial functions are almost or completely unimportant for both of them. When it comes to the investigated teacher roles, both groups have different expectations, which clearly shows that there is a vital shift in students’ approach regarding what roles they would like their ideal teacher to adopt in the classroom. As a result, English philology students highly appreciate the teacher being a motivator (84%), resource (81%) and prompter (81%) for them, which means that they simply expect professional guidance from the teacher in order to learn effectively and make progress in their language education. Secondary school learners, on the other hand, claim that their teacher must be a language model (91%) and a good listener (65%); however, they seem to appreciate the role of a resource even more than English philology students (96%). All the other roles seem to be almost equally important for both groups, apart from the role of a listener, which is much more appreciated by secondary school learners (65% compared to only 13%). This probably stems from the fact that secondary school learners experience a deep psychological need to be listened to carefully by their teacher, and to be understood and given guidance in order to succeed in what they do. It is also worth remembering that secondary school is for most learners the difficult period of a rebel against social and school rules and norms, as well as hormonal, physical and mental changes, which means that being listened to by the teacher can be a vital issue at this age.

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Another factor investigated in this study referred to the teacher’s experience and its importance to students. As a result, 108 subjects (64,3%) provided a positive answer, while the remaining 60 of them (35,7%) did not consider this factor essential. When it comes to gender differences, as many as 75 females (71%) treated this aspect as an essential feature, while only 30 of them (29%) considered it less important than other aspects of their desired instructor. As far as the males are concerned, the answers were more balanced, since 33 respondents (52%) found this feature vital, while 30 of them (48%) did not treat it as seriously as their friends. When asked for an explanation, those females who maintained the positive answer stated that experience makes the lecturer more patient and involved in their classes. Furthermore, an experienced teacher knows what to expect from their students and how to enforce it as well as tends to be more understanding. Other arguments included the knowledge of how to work with all student types and learning styles as well as better cooperation skills, possession of practical and theoretical knowledge and the ability to avoid certain mistakes. On the other hand, those females who did not consider it significant maintained that experience does not always decide about successful teaching. Furthermore, everyone needs to gain experience somehow and therefore deserves a chance to learn. That is why not all teachers can be experienced immediately, especially when they are about to start their careers. The males maintained that experienced teachers know how to satisfy students’ needs due to a variety of approaches they are able to adopt. They are also more self-confident and seem to easily adjust their teaching methods to students, basing their judgments on experience. Furthermore, experience is important since it allows to draw conclusions and use them to improve an individual teaching style. Finally, those who opposed this aspect claimed that experience diminishes motivation and the positive attitude to teaching, thus bringing routine to the classroom. As a result, when considering the role of experience in academic education, females tend to value it much more than males. However, all of them provide a multitude of valuable conclusions, which can be useful when approaching this issue in the educational sphere. As far as a comparison between English philology students and secondary school learners is concerned, it becomes clear that this factor is almost equally vital for both groups (71,6% for philology students and 64,3% for secondary school learners). However, when referring to the issue of gender, discrepancies have only been observed among males, which means that secondary school males (81%) tend to value experience much more than those in academic education (52%). Females, on the other hand, valued this factor almost equally in both groups (71% in academic education and 62% in secondary school). Skills and abilities constituted another factor investigated by the author of this paper in terms of the desired academic lecturer. As a result, the females claimed that the lecturer ought to be interpersonally skilful and therefore able to work with different age groups. Furthermore, the teacher ought to know how to work in a group and then express readiness to talk about any topic suggested by their learners. Finally, the lecturer needs to be able to operate modern technologies and deal with stress and

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stressful situations. Males, on the other hand, provided a more complex picture of the teacher’s skills and abilities and listed such elements as: ● the ability to encourage and motivate students to work; ● the ability to simplify the way knowledge is verbalised (an ear-catching way appreciated); ● the ability to turn problematic situations into jokes; ● the ability to get students involved in their classes; ● the ability to solve any problem and signal possible corrections and improvements; ● the ability to manage time effectively; ● the ability to think critically and reach conclusions. Additionally, the males expected the lecturer to self-present properly, mainly in terms of appearance, personality, etc., all of them being discussed in the initial sections of this part of the presented paper. When referring to the so-called unwanted features and forms of behaviour manifested by their lecturer, the females highlighted such issues as sarcastic forms of behaviour, a lack of sense of humour, empathy, organisational skills and clear criteria of assessment as well as creating a nervous ambience when conducting classes with students. Furthermore, they criticised the feeling of superiority imposed by the lecturer and conducting classes in the form of monologues. Finally, the females did not enjoy such issues as a lack of flexibility when discussing various topics with students and therefore respect for their viewpoints and opinions. Being too routine and serious were yet another two issues mentioned by the female English philology students. As far as the males are concerned, they criticised the lecturer’s lack of agreeableness and being too strict and phlegmatic in terms of the pace of conducting classes. Furthermore, the males were also not keen on such issues as a lack of a proper attitude to students, i.e., little or no openness to their suggestions and therefore reflection on the teaching process. Finally, they mentioned that a lack of willingness to change something or implement innovations constitute yet another two unappreciated features. When asked about their favourite forms and types of classes, most academic respondents, i.e., 127 of them (75,6%) maintained that they preferred discussions and debates, since they allowed them to express themselves, i.e., their opinions and viewpoints, and then contrast them with the other students’ positions on particular topics. Apart from that, they maintained that these forms of classes enabled them to satisfy their needs in terms of freedom of speech and the possibility of experiencing new and unexpected situations, often resulting from the course of action of a particular discussion and debate. Furthermore, 97 subjects (57,7%) were likely to give presentations, while 93 of them (55,4%) enjoyed the opportunity to participate in simulations and role-plays. These choices clearly supported the previous choice made by the respondents, i.e., discussions and debates, mainly due to the fact that they were connected with speaking and thus developing the most essential skills, according to the respondents. In other words, it is speaking that English philology students find crucial in terms of their individual language development and therefore clearly opt for the activities that enable them to speak as frequently as possible.

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26 Table 6 English philology students’ preferences for a class layout according to the gender

Forms of classes

Females

Males

Presentations

75 (71%)

22 (35%)

Discussions and debates

71 (68%)

56 (88%)

Simulations and role-plays

48 (46%)

45 (72%)

Lectures

44 (42%)

34 (53%)

Laboratories

7 (6%)

15 (24%)

Types of classroom arrangement

Females

Males

Pair work

86 (82%)

47 (75%)

Group work

44 (42%)

20 (31%)

Individual work

31 (29%)

12 (18%)

The least favourite choices were lectures (78 subjects–46,4%) and laboratories (22 subjects–13,1%), whose purpose English philology students admitted having often been unclear to them. When considering the forms of work, the respondents clearly maintained the importance of pair work, as declared by 133 students (79,2%). The other forms of classroom arrangement did not gain so much interest, since group work was declared by 64 students (38,1%), while individual work was selected only by 43 subjects, i.e., 25,6% of them. These results indicate that a large majority of students prefer to cooperate with another peer, which, according to them, raises their effectiveness as well as allows to complete tasks faster, often by considering particular issues from two distinct viewpoints, which gives a wider perspective. As far as gender differences are concerned, the following choices were made by the academic respondents (Table 6). Comparing English philology students and secondary school learners, the author discovered that philology students clearly prefer discussions and debates (75,6%), which seems to similar to secondary school learners, who also enjoy being given an opportunity to speak on an array of topics (58,1%). However, it is worth observing that the author also found a similarity between both groups, i.e., willingness to participate in role-plays and simulations (55,4% for philology students and 42,6% for secondary school learners). All the other features seem to have revealed different tendencies, which means that presentations were more appreciated by philology students (57,7%) rather than secondary school learners (25%), whereas lectures were only accepted by philology students (46,4%), who seem to be familiar with this phenomenon, as opposed to secondary school learners (7,4%), who have no experience with this kind of classroom participation and lectures still seem to be an abstract term for them. Laboratories were equally unappreciated by both groups (13,1% for philology students and 16,4% for secondary school learners). Gender differences, on the other hand, revealed that females studying philology seem to be more eager to give presentations (71%) rather than participate in discussions and debates, which were more popular among males (88%). A completely opposite tendency has been observed among secondary school learners, with 42% of the males willing to give

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presentations (9% for females), whereas 72% of the females ready to participate in discussions and debates (44% for males). As far as the other forms of classes are concerned, both groups of males enjoyed role-plays and simulations as well as lectures more than the females. Finally, in the case of laboratories, the tendency was completely opposite, i.e., secondary school females (24%) were more eager to participate in them than females in higher education (6%); a completely different contrast has been found between the males, which means that secondary school males (7%) were less eager to attend laboratories than males in higher education (24%). Finally, when it comes classroom arrangement, identical results have been obtained within the course of this research as regards pair work. In other words, in both sectors of education the subjects found pair work (79,2% for philology students and 62,2% for secondary school learners) as the dominant form of classroom arrangement. Different tendencies have been discovered when referring to group work and individual work, since philology students prefer group work (38,1%) to individual work (25,6%), as opposed to secondary school learners, who seem to value individual work (54%) more than group work (46,6%). When it comes to gender differences, secondary school males clearly enjoy individual work (64%) over the other forms of classroom arrangement, whereas English philology male students selected pair work (75%) as their favourite form of classroom arrangement. Females, on the other hand, have identical preferences in both sectors of education, which means that they prefer pair work (82% for philology students and 81% for secondary school learners). However, it is worth mentioning that group work also seems to be quite valuable for secondary school learners, as 65% of them declared readiness for this form of classroom arrangement.In the following part of this research, the author asked the respondents to declare whether their perception of the lecturer changes with the teacher’s growing level of education and therefore obtaining scientific degrees and titles. As a result, 65 respondents (38,7%) provided a positive answer, while 103 of them (61,3%) rejected this issue. As far as gender differences are concerned, only 43 females (41%) considered this factor essential, while the remaining 62 of them (59%) did not find this issue vital. When considering the males’ preferences, the choices were similar, since only 22 respondents (35%) provided a positive answer, which means that the other 41 of them (65%) claimed this aspect to be of little importance. When asked for an explanation, the females maintained that this aspect is important because it allows the lecturer to be given more and more respect and admiration. Furthermore, the instructor makes a better impression on their students and tends to be highly involved in self-development, which can be useful to their learners. Those who did not support this issue maintained that high education and scientific degrees lead to more stress and widen the distance between the teacher and their students, while titles and degrees do not reflect knowledge and attitude to students. They also added that behaviour is more important, and everyone deserves respect, not only those possessing high degrees and titles. The males, on the other hand, claimed that this feature adds prestige. Since there were more students who opposed this issue, they highlighted the fact that high education is the last thing they pay attention to, while numerous teachers attend an array of trainings on a private basis, which do not give them titles but make them more knowledgeable about a multitude of issues.

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Finally, attitude to students is more valuable, and it is more important who a person truly is or becomes, thus diminishing the role of professional titles and privileges that come together with them. Analysing the differences between English philology students and secondary school learners, both groups agreed that the teacher’s level of education is not a priority for them, as explained in the previous sections of this article. In other words, only 19,6% of the secondary school learners participating in this study, compared to 38,7% of the philology students, admitted that this factor plays a major role in their everyday education and thus determines how they perceive their teacher. Therefore, 80,4% of the secondary school learners and 61,3% of the philology students rejected the importance of this issue. As far as gender differences are concerned, 77% of the secondary school females also rejected this idea, which represents a similar attitude to what female philology students expressed in this part of the presented study, since 59% of them also did not consider this aspect of the teacher to be vital in their classes. A similar, almost identical approach was maintained by the males participating in this research, since 84% of the secondary school males clearly rejected the importance of this issue, which also corresponds with the male philology students, since 65% of them did not find this issue relevant in their everyday classes. At one of the final stages of this research, the author investigated the importance of technology-related issues in terms of interactive platforms, applications and social networking sites that the respondents would like to make use of in the classroom. As a result, 120 subjects (71,4%) maintained the primary character of this feature of education, while only 48 students (28,6%) did not consider it significant and thus rejected it. As far as gender differences are concerned, 71 females (68%) supported this issue, while only 34 of them (32%) rejected its importance. When it comes to the males, 49 of them (77%) treated it as an important element of their education, while 14 respondents (23%) declared this aspect to be of little meaning to them. When considering more specific choices, the academic respondents selected the following platforms, applications and social networking sites (according to the degree of popularity) (Table 7). Gender differences, on the other hand, bring certain changes in the results declared by the respondents, which means that the following percentages ought to be taken into consideration. The results mentioned in Table 8 reveal that English philology students use a much wider range of applications and platforms than secondary school learners, which might be connected with an individual, voluntary search for various sources of learning. This may not always be related to secondary school students, whose priorities and lifelong goals seem to be in the shaping phase and thus remain subject to frequent change at the secondary stage of education. Furthermore, students of English philology tend to aim at developing their language skills even outside the classroom, usually by means of using such applications as Duolingo, Memrise or Lang 8, which is especially valuable in terms of searching for native speakers of the target language and having regular conversations with them. However, there are still certain platforms that seem to be characteristic for both secondary school learners and English philology students, and their value seems to be enormous.

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Table 7 English philology students’ technological preferences Interactive platforms and applications

All students’ preferences

YouTube

151 (89,9%)

Kahoot

132 (78,6%)

Quizzlet

123 (73,2%)

Memrise

93 (55,4%)

Duolingo

84 (50%)

Pixton

83 (49,4%)

Busuu

62 (36,9%)

Lang 8

49 (29,2%)

VoiceThread

42 (25%)

TopHead

16 (9,5%)

Social networking sites and media

All students’ preferences

Facebook

116 (69%)

Snapchat

80 (47,6%)

Instagram

61 (36,3%)

Table 8 English philology students’ technological preferences in terms of the gender

Interactive platforms and applications

Females

Males

YouTube

92 (88%)

59 (94%)

Kahoot

80 (76%)

52 (82%)

Quizzlet

69 (66%)

54 (86%)

Memrise

60 (57%)

33 (52%)

Duolingo

57 (54%)

27 (42%)

Pixton

44 (42%)

39 (62%)

Busuu

36 (34%)

26 (41%)

VoiceThread

31 (29%)

11 (17%)

Lang 8

22 (21%)

27 (42%)

TopHead

12 (11%)

4 (6%)

Social networking sites and media

Females

Males

Facebook

75 (71%)

41 (65%)

Snapchat

62 (59%)

18 (29%)

Instagram

46 (44%)

15 (23%)

The final stage of this research focused on two important issues related to both the current and future situation in the educational market, i.e., becoming a teacher in the future and possessing at least a single ideal teacher at an educational institution. When it comes to the former one, 81 subjects (48,2%) declared their willingness and readiness to become teachers in the future and thus choose teaching as an optimal career path. However, as many as 87 students (51,8%), i.e., more than a half of them,

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did not claim to be interested in this profession and thus rejected it immediately. More specific results allow to conclude that 64 females (61%) declared to be willing to becomes teachers, while 41 of them (39%) had already selected or become interested in different career opportunities. Males, on the other hand, were much less willing to choose this career and thus only 17 of them (27%) considered this career worth trying. This means that as many as 46 of them (73%) maintained that teaching was not for them. When asked for an explanation, the females claimed that they were open to people and enjoyed helping others. They also admired teachers for how much they must do, while any school or university seems to be a motivating environment. For some of them, teaching was a dream, which posed numerous challenges and allowed to be a participant of the world of the youth. Furthermore, they claimed every day in this profession is different, and it is a job of the so-called public trust. Finally, teaching allows to influence individual units and shape young minds. It also teaches creativity and patience. Those females who opposed this profession highlighted the facts that it is a difficult and tiring career path, and they did not know how to approach people properly, which often requires sacrifices. Finally, they stated that they lacked patience, which seems to be the essence of this profession. When it comes to the males, those who considered choosing this career maintained that it gives a lot of satisfaction and enables to build relationships with people by helping them in a variety of ways. The males who did not consider teaching as a career option pinpointed that they were not good role models, and they did not like working with people. Furthermore, this job involved too much responsibility and they would not manage it mentally. The results presented above allow to maintain the common public opinion that the teaching profession is still mostly considered by females, who seem to be much more willing to be involved in teaching and thus working with different age groups, ranging from kindergarten to university. The females participating in this study added that women often feel like mothers, who can learn how to manage young people, experience numerous difficulties and obstacles, and then avoid certain mistakes or situations when they already become mothers themselves. Males, on the other hand, still tend to choose technical professions rather than the humanistic ones and do not seem to be fond of becoming young minds’ managers and mentors. Finally, the financial factor ought to be taken into consideration, since the females did not consider it the primary feature of their career paths, thus counting on satisfaction and lifetime assets. The males, on the other hand, opted mainly for better-paid professions and considered this aspect to be one of the major issues in their career paths, mainly to become good husbands, who know how to take care of their families and satisfy their needs. To sum up, 143 students (85,1%) claimed that they had at least one teacher that they would consider possessing the desired features, thus defining them as ideal. In consequence, only 25 subjects (14,9%) rejected this factor and did not define any of their instructors as a truly ideal mentor. Furthermore, when considering gender differences, 96 females (92%) provided the positive answer, while only 9 of them (8%) pinpointed that there were no teachers who deserved to be called ideal. When

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it comes to the males, they provided similar answers, which means that 47 of them (74%) agreed with the question, while only 16 of them (26%) rejected this issue and did not call any of their lecturers perfect.

5 Discussion When discussing the outcome of the presented research, the present part of this paper addresses the research questions explicitly. ● What do contemporary students, highly influenced by the rapid spread of digital technologies and globalisation, expect from their secondary school teachers and academic lecturers? ● How do secondary school learners and English philology students depict their contemporary mentors? As far as secondary school learners are concerned, the above-presented data show that secondary school learners have a clear understanding of what they expect from their teacher in terms of physical appearance and the way they ought to be dressed on a daily basis. However, some of the aspects seem to be related to the age of the students and the ongoing process of maturation and therefore changes in one’s hormonal balance, which is usually responsible for the fact that they come to classes to enjoy the teacher, not the classes themselves. It also becomes clear that both males and females at this age attempt to identify teachers with their true idols, even if they do not want to admit that they have ones, and therefore search for those features in their teachers. That is why appearance still counts at this stage of education, which may not be the case at the university level. Furthermore, the results also reveal that secondary school students appreciate both the teacher’s attitude and knowledge, which means that establishing a good rapport between the teacher and their learners becomes the major aspect of effective cooperation in the classroom. Males also reveal different expectations as regards their teacher’s functions and roles in the classroom. In consequence, they do not expect the trainer to become the listener and, even more importantly, participant in a class, but rather assistant and motivator, whom they can ask for help, if necessary. However, they still expect the trainer to be a resource and language model they can rely on in terms of the language and all of its features that pose difficulties or become unclear to them. Females, on the other hand, seem to enjoy depending on the trainer to a wider extent and therefore contrasting their opinions and views with their instructor. Therefore, males tend to expect to be given more independence and less involvement of their teacher than females. The other roles seem to correlate with each other in terms of students’ expectations. When it comes to functions, the major difference refers to the fact that females prefer their teachers to be mostly responsible for didactics and therefore conducting classes and transferring knowledge in a proper way, while males expect them to be yet managers, who know how to organise and thus manage

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not only classes but also other aspects related to learning in order to make education a unified and cohesive process consisting of an array of elements. Another issue that needs to be raised in this discussion is the fact that secondary school learners are already familiar with a number of specific applications and platforms and tend to use them on a daily basis. Furthermore, they make extensive use of various social networking sites and media, which constitute an essential part of their daily lives. However, some of the applications and types of software still remain unknown to them since they are only connected with learning, which means that they do not have an option allowing students to socialise in various communities. In that case, students often consider such applications useless since Internet popularity and therefore socialisation comprise the major contemporary issues for young people. Finally, females know more platforms and applications and use them much more often than males, who mostly rely on the most popular types and do not feel the need to discover technological novelties. Females also tend to use social networking sites more often, thus sharing more information and pictures related to various fields of their daily lives, such as travelling, fashion, etc., which is usually not the case of males. The answers provided by secondary school learners allowed the author to visualise the teacher that the students wished they had in their schools. However, it is worth emphasising that many of them still maintain that they have at least one person who seems to embody the characteristics of their desired teacher, which means that there are numerous teachers whom students admire and consider very important in their school environments. When it comes to university students, their opinions and viewpoints reveal that both males and females share certain points in terms of what they expect from their academic lecturers. However, it is still important to point out that a large group of English philology students already reprioritise their expectations and thus focus more on their education rather than the lecturer that they are supposed to have their classes with. Finally, it is also worth noticing that the role of males in the academic sector is undoubtedly important and tends to be gradually higher. That is why the results of this study reveal that there are discrepancies between males’ and females’ expectations as regards their desired teacher’s age. In consequence, female students prefer younger teachers and easily provide arguments why they prefer a particular age group, while males tend to have a more balanced opinion, which means that the teacher’s age does not play such a significant role. However, when discussing particular age groups, both males and females provide similar arguments, which means that they appreciate a closely related set of features. Significant as it is, English philology students and secondary school learners have completely different expectations in terms of their instructor’s physical appearance. As a result, English philology students do not find this issue crucial and seem to come to classes not for the teacher themselves but to gain new knowledge and therefore self-develop, which can be different in the case of secondary school learners. In other words, secondary school learners easily list the pieces of clothing that they would like their teachers to wear, while English philology students seem to experience a rapid

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transformation of their interests and attitude to what they expect from an educational authority. Comparing English philology students to secondary school learners, it is possible to observe that their expectations and viewpoints are, to some extent, similar and wellbalanced since both groups expect their instructors to possess extensive knowledge on the subject that they teach. This, in turn, reveals that, even though there is often a wide age difference between students, the teacher and therefore their knowledge allows students to adopt or modify their attitude to education at any of its multi-faceted stages. ● Do the expectations change when shifting from the secondary to academic level of education? When analysing the data provided by English philology students and then contrasting them with the data obtained from the secondary school learners, it is possible to conclude that English philology students have much wider expectations from their instructors. In consequence, they enumerate more features and therefore create a more complex picture of their ideal teacher’s personality and character. Secondary school learners seem to have different priorities and do not yet look at their education through the prism of their teachers, who undoubtedly shape their minds and prepare them for their future careers. Furthermore, it is worth noticing that English philology students prefer lighter features of character, while the strong ones are rather undesired or appreciated in particular situations. English philology students expect to talk and negotiate with their instructor as well as to work in a calm and supportive ambience rather than being imposed strict conditions and deadlines. They also expect the teacher to show energy and interest in their students rather than coming to the classroom just to complete their classes and earn money. As a result, English philology students expect a certain degree of reflectivity from their instructor in order to implement modifications when certain approaches, methods or techniques do not bring the expected results, thus providing some unconventional solutions and rejecting authoritative features, which often bring the opposite outcome. That is why when considering the respondents’ answers, it is possible to conclude that both English philology students and secondary school learners have wide expectations as regards their lecturer’s and teacher’s skills and abilities, respectively. However, both groups have similar needs and thus provide an array of common elements that they wish their lecturer had when working in a particular educational environment. This, on the other hand, reveals that certain skills and abilities are invaluable for students at any age and therefore irreplaceable. Finally, when commenting on the undesired elements mentioned by both secondary school learners and English philology students, it is worth noticing that expectations change with students’ age. This might be connected with the fact that students’ personalities and characters develop, since experience and conclusions reached by students shape their viewpoints and therefore tolerance for particular aspects. In consequence, some things still remain undiscovered by secondary school learners, and thus they might not yet know about certain issues, which are characteristic for the academic level.

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6 Conclusions To conclude, certain expectations seem to be shaped by the past experience and thus facilitate students’ decisions regarding their career choices (one of the females participating in this research maintained that she had difficult relationships with her father and thus preferred to work with female teachers). Furthermore, some of the results related to differences in viewpoints and opinions among the sexes may also result from the attractiveness of the opposite sex, which may be an important issue why students willingly attend their classes, both in terms of secondary school and university education. However, some of the discrepancies may also result from psychological differences between males and females. The research revealed that females expect more dependence on the teacher, while males are rather keen on freedom and independence of their instructor. Females also expect teachers to be more effective and efficient in terms of mentoring students, while males expect more in terms of the technical stuff. When it comes to the era of globalisation, both sexes seem to be equally influenced by technology-related issues, while the impact of modern technologies seems to be constantly growing, thus becoming more and more popular among students at all levels of education. However, secondary school students tend to pay attention to the teacher’s individual characteristics more than university students, who seem to focus more on the teacher’s knowledge and experience. With age, students’ preferences change and tend to be more focused on educational benefits rather than the person itself. University students also think more about the future time, while secondary school learners are more likely to live according to the so-called here-and-now rule. That is why students’ expectations still constitute a complex framework of a variety of valuable features, whose investigation allows researchers to come to numerous conclusions and then facilitate the implementation of an array of improvements aiming at developing the teaching profession. Summing up, as globalisation and technologies are constantly spreading, students expect their teachers to make use of numerous technologies to enrich their regular classes, thus rejecting the traditional chalk-and-board teaching and becoming a fully modern and up-to-date instructor.

References Brown, H. D. (2000a). Principles of language learning and teaching. Longman. Brown, H. D. (2000b). Teaching by principles. An interactive approach to language pedagogy. Pearson Higher Education. Camargo, C. A. C. M., & Camargo, M. A. F. (2019). The good teacher of gigh school in the representation of the students body. Open Access Library Journal, 6, 1–12. Clement, A., & Rencewigg, R. (2020). Qualities of effective teachers: Students’ perspectives. International Journal of Advances in Engineering and Management, 2(10), 365–368.

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Crookes, G., & Chaudron, C. (2001). Guidelines for language classroom instruction. In M. CelceMurica (Ed.), Teaching English as a second or foreign language (pp. 29–42). Heinle & Heinle Thomson Learning. Dörnyei, Z. (2018). Motivating students and teachers. In J. I. Liontas (Ed.), The TESOL encyclopedia of English language teaching (pp. 4293–4299). TESOL. Dörnyei, Z., & Muir, C. (2019). Creating a motivating classroom environment. In X. A. Gao (Ed.), Second handbook of English language teaching (pp. 1–18). Springer. Figarski, W. (2003). Proces glottodydaktyczny w szkole. Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego. Hajduk, Z. (2001). Ogólna metodologia nauk. Wydawnictwo Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego. Hafsah, J. (2017). Teacher of 21st century: Characteristics and development. Research on Humanities and Social Sciences, 7(9), 50–54. Harmer, J. (2001). The practice of English language teaching. Pearson Education Limited. Hiver, P., & Dörnyei, Z. (2017). Language teacher immunity: A double-edged sword. Applied Linguistics, 38(3), 405–423. Khang, N. D. (2016). Characteristics of a good teacher: a case study at University of Gda´nsk. In S. Fr˛ackowiak, P. Łaga, M. Mielewczyk, M. Pi˛eta, A. Ploetzing, & M. Rukstełło (Eds.), Wyzwania i kierunki rozwoju nauk społecznych (pp. 313–342). Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Gda´nskiego. Ilgan, A., Osman, A., & Omer, S. (2022). Professional and personal characteristics of excellent teachers. International Journal of Curriculum and Instruction, 14(1), 947–971. Komorowska, H. (2002). Metodyka nauczania j˛ezyków obcych. Fraszka Edukacyjna. Kyridis, A., Avramidou, M., Zagkos, C., Christodoulou, A., & Pavli-Korre, M. (2014). Who is the ideal teacher? Greek pre-service teachers express their views about the characteristics of the “perfect” teacher. Journal for Educators, Teachers and Trainers, 5(2), 143–159. Lewicka, G. (2007). Glottodydaktyczne aspekty akwizycji j˛ezyka drugiego a konstruktywistyczna teoria uczenia si˛e. Oficyna Wydawnicza ATUT, Wrocławskie Wydawnictwo O´swiatowe. Ruzgar, M. E. (2021). A descriptive analysis of good teaching and good teachers from the perspective of preservice teachers. Inquiry in Education, 13(2), 1–18. Werbi´nska, D. (2009). Dylematy etyczne nauczycieli j˛ezyków obcych. Fraszka Edukacyjna. Williams, C. (2007). Research methods. Journal of Business and Economic Research, 5(3), 65–72. Wi´sniewska, D. (2009). Dialog jako przestrze´n mi˛edzy badaniem, poznaniem a rozwojem nauczyciela. In J. Nijakowska (Ed.), J˛ezyk, poznanie, zachowanie: perspektywy i wyzwania w studiach nad przyswajaniem j˛ezyka obcego (pp. 283–298). Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego. Wright, T. (1987). Roles of teachers & learners. Oxford University Press. Ur, P. (1991). A course in language teaching. Practice and theory. Cambridge University Press. Zawadzka, E. (2004). Nauczyciele j˛ezyków obcych w dobie przemian. Oficyna Wydawnicza Impuls.

´ atek Ph.D., is a lecturer at the University of Economics and Human Sciences in Adam Swi˛ Warsaw, Poland, where he teaches subjects related to foreign language (L2) pedagogy. His interests include language aptitude, individual differences in language learning, teacher identity, and technologies in education. In 2016 he published a book on the verbal aptitude and perlocutionary acts. His recent research focuses on students’ expectations regarding the concept of a good online and regular academic teacher in different cultures.

Future Teachers’ Beliefs About Multilingualism in Language Education Yevheniia Hasai

Abstract Multilingualism in educational settings has been actively promoted in the last decades. Multilingual pedagogy recognizes the value of multilingualism and encourages the use of all languages, including minority languages. The present study investigates the pre-service teachers’ beliefs about multilingualism, their perceptions regarding monolingual and multilingual classroom practices, as well as their attitudes towards code-switching and code-mixing in educational settings. The female teacher candidates (n = 20) enrolled in teacher education programs at the University of Hamburg took part in our online survey. They indicated on a Likert scale whether they agreed with certain statements or would find the use of a certain teaching methodology useful. We revealed that our study participants have overwhelmingly positive attitudes towards multilingualism, they understand the value of previous linguistic knowledge for language teaching and learning; however, they are more hesitant about the actual use of languages other than TL, code-switching, and code-mixing in the classroom. This is explained by the lack of workshops, resources, and successful examples of implementation of multilingual teaching in the school context. Keywords Multilingualism · Language education · Metalinguistic awareness · Code-switching · Code-mixing

1 Introduction In the modern world, the value of speaking more than one language is becoming increasingly important, “it is just a normal requirement of daily living that people speak several languages: perhaps one or more at home, another in the village, still another for purposes of trade, and yet another for contact with the outside world of wider social or political organization” (Wardhaugh & Fuller, 2021, p. 210). Y. Hasai (B) University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk and M. Trojszczak (eds.), Language in Educational and Cultural Perspectives, Second Language Learning and Teaching, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-38778-4_2

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International migration, as well as advancements in technology and transportation, can be regarded as a major factor in bringing people from various linguistic and cultural backgrounds together. Undoubtedly, multilingualism is also on the rise in Germany, as it is one of the most popular countries for international migration in the world (Brinkmann, 2016). What concerns the school-aged population, figures show that about 40% of children between 6 and 10 years old, 38% of children between 10 and 15, and about 34% of children and young adults aged 15 to 20 had a migration background in 20181 (Autorengruppe Bildungsberichterstattung, 2020). Clearly, a large proportion of them uses the language of the country of origin (their heritage language) at home and German in formal situations, such as at school and with their peers.2 In Hamburg, the second biggest German city, almost half of all people below the age of 18 were first-, second-, or third-generation immigrants seven years ago (Autorengruppe Bildungsberichterstattung, 2020, state of 2016). Due to the ongoing globalization and international immigration, we can assume that this number is likely to be even higher today. One can describe this situation in urban neighborhoods as super-diversity: waves of migration create “extreme linguistic diversity” (Blommaert, 2013, p. 7) where an “intriguing mix of languages, scripts and modalities” can be observed (Rubdy, 2013, p. 43). Home languages are quite often passed down to the younger generation. As a result, thousands of German school children are being raised with more than one language. This means that these young language learners communicate with their relatives in their native tongue (quite often, in addition to German) while using German at school. Thus, this situation creates unusual circumstances for English language teachers—some of their school pupils are German monolinguals, while others are bilinguals or even multilinguals who learn English as their foreign language. All these versatile learner groups attend the same English classes at school.3 This situation can be quite challenging for English language teachers who are supposed to know the modern teaching methods suitable for diverse learner groups and create a supportive atmosphere for everybody. Knowledge of pre-service teachers’ beliefs is central to understanding the methodology used in the classroom. In the language classroom, code-switching and code-mixing can serve as the main examples of crosslinguistic interaction, as they occur in multilingual settings where speakers share more than one language. Still, there is the need for language teachers “to understand the necessity for learner code-switching (changing languages during speech) to accommodate cognitive processing of new concepts for memory reinforcement and comprehension” (Hobbs, 2016, p. 164). It helps educators and bilingual/ 1

These reports are issued with some time lag; taking into account the general trend and the last developments, one can assume that the number of school pupils with migration background is higher today. 2 Unfortunately, there is no census data on other languages than German used at home, but we can assume that a significant part of the migrant population are heritage language speakers. 3 One should not forget about the fact that English is used by the native English-speaking residents of Germany, too (see, i.e., Fuller, 2015; Heyd & Schneider, 2019; Mair, 2019).

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multilingual learners transmit and explain their knowledge in effective communication. Thus, this paper investigates the teacher candidates’ views regarding multilingualism, multilingual teaching practices, code-switching, and code-mixing as examples of multilingual pedagogy. Finally, the study makes some recommendations for potential changes to teacher training programs.

2 Terminology: Monolingualism, Bilingualism, Multilingualism, L1, L2, L3 As there is no agreement about the use of the terms which describe the languages of a person (De Angelis, 2007, p. 8), let us briefly define the crucial terms of this paper. We agree that researchers “shall adhere to the practice of using monolingualism for the knowledge of one language, bilingualism for the knowledge of two languages, and multilingualism for the knowledge of three or more languages, recognizing that the degree of proficiency in each language can vary” (Hammarberg, 2010, p. 92). Furthermore, “Most people understand a multilingual person to be an individual familiar with three or more languages to some degree of fluency, and a bilingual an individual familiar with two languages, also to some degree of fluency” (De Angelis, 2007, p. 8). Thus, German native speakers who have been raised with one language and learn English as their foreign language are seen as bilinguals; those of them who learn other foreign languages (for example, French) are multilinguals. Heritage speakers of Turkish, for instance, are seen as multilinguals (they know Turkish, German, and English; some of them learn other foreign languages). As there is still no consensus over the question of how much language knowledge is sufficient for it to be considered for the description of language repertoire (De Angelis, 2007, p. 6), there may be debates over these terminological decisions, but it is beyond the scope of the current study. Nevertheless, we believe that these labels represent the least ambiguous definitions for the description of the linguistic situation in our study (English language learners in the German educational context). A closely related problem that requires our attention is the definition of the terms L1, L2, and L3. Prior research in the field of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) has given us an understanding that there are differences between the acquisition of the native language (L1 acquisition) and the acquisition (learning) of a non-native language (L2 acquisition) (De Angelis, 2007, p. 4). One of the most important factors for a language to qualify as an L1 is the age of acquisition. It is often assumed that for a language to qualify as a native language, it should be acquired naturalistically during infancy. However, this understanding of L1 is complicated by the fact that there is a large number of bi- and multilinguals who typically have a migration background and often reach the same level of proficiency in the dominant language of their new country.

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Due to various factors, no classification of languages is generally accepted in the field. First of all, L2 and L3 are typically marked depending on the order of acquisition; however, these labels do not always work well: “the common practice of labelling a multilingual’s languages along a linear chronological scale as L1, L2, L3, L4 etc., is shown here to be untenable, being based on an inadequate conception of multilingualism” (Hammarberg, 2010, p. 91); furthermore, “the linear model” (Hammarberg, 2010, p. 93) may not work well in our societies where individual mobility is common, several languages can be acquired simultaneously or language dominance and proficiency may change over time due to interrupted learning. Moreover, there is no clear indication whether little linguistic knowledge has to be considered in the description of language repertoire. In third language acquisition and multilingualism research, L3 is quite often understood as the language that is being acquired, the language that is in the focus of research (e.g., Bardel & Lindqvist, 2007; Hammarberg, 2010; Lorenz et al., 2021). Within this logic, L2 is understood as a non-native language that has been acquired after the native language (L1). De Angelis (2007) favours the term “third or additional language acquisition”, because it “refers to all languages beyond the L2 without giving preference to any particular language” (p. 11). It is worth mentioning that the relationships between languages of the bi- or multilinguals in our study should be addressed from the balance/dominance perspective. “The claim of balance or dominance then stems from a comparison between the individual’s proficiencies in the two languages” (De Angelis, 2007, p. 9). It is stated that “a language cannot be dominant per se but only in relation to other languages in the mind” (De Angelis, 2007, p. 10). Thus, the heritage speakers of minority languages are typically unbalanced bilinguals. “Broadly defined, heritage speakers are child and adult members of a linguistic minority who grew up exposed to their home language and the majority language” (Montrul, 2010, p. 4). In our study, we use the label L1 to refer to the language (or languages, for that matter) that has (have) been acquired naturalistically during infancy. The terms L2, L3, Ln refer to non-native languages, they can still be actively learned; the number in the label refers to the order of the beginning of language learning.

3 Code-Switching, Code-Mixing Users of more than one language often use elements of several languages in conversation. As there is no agreement over the question of what should be seen as codeswitching and code-mixing, the next paragraphs briefly present our understanding of these phenomena. Code-switching is usually understood as an alternation of two or more linguistic codes (languages, language varieties, dialects). According to Gumperz (1982, p. 59), it is the “juxtaposition within the same speech exchange of passages of speech belonging to two different grammatical systems or subsystems”. As there have been

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numerous attempts to study code-switching (Auer, 1998; Muysken, 1995; MyersScotton, 1989; Wei, 1998; Zhu, 2008, to name a few), we mention here those papers that are the most relevant for our research. According to Poplack’s categorization of code-switching (1980, p. 605), it can occur in a form of tag-switching, intersentential switching, and intra-sentential switching. Tag-switching (it is also called emblematic switching) is understood as the use of tags (for instance, next, right, I mean, as you know, etc.) in sentences that are completely in another language, their insertion does not violate syntactic rules. Intersentential switching occurs outside of clause or sentence boundaries, an entire clause or sentence is in one language, but a subsequent clause or sentence is in another language. Finally, intra-sentential switching occurs within the same sentence. Intersentential and intrasentential code-switching reflect higher language proficiency than tag-switching. What concerns the differences between code-switching and code-mixing, some scholars use these terms more or less as synonyms. Bokamba (1989), however, discerns these two labels: “Code switching is the mixing of words, phrases and sentences from two distinct grammatical (sub)systems across sentence boundaries within the same speech event (…) code mixing is the embedding of various linguistic units such as affixes (bound morphemes, words, phrases and clauses from a cooperative activity, where the participants in order to infer what is intended, must reconcile what they hear with what they understand” (p. 281). Summing up the functions of language mixing in the classroom, Hobbs (2016) states that it helps learners to “(a) achieve understanding; (b) reinforce information; (c) facilitate discussion abilities; (d) reinforce identities; (e) increase motivation” (p. 164). In this paper, we understand code-switching as an alternation of elements from two or more linguistic codes; it is represented by tag-switching, intersentential, and intrasentential code-switching. Clear examples of code-mixing are represented by cases where morphological elements from different languages are combined in one lexeme. As our research studies the pre-service teachers’ attitudes towards codeswitching and code-mixing as prominent examples of crosslinguistic interaction in the language classroom, the survey that we used did not discern these two phenomena.

4 The Role of L1 During L2 Learning The phenomenon that the acquired linguistic knowledge and skills that a language user possesses can be helpful to the development of corresponding skills in the subsequent language has been observed by researchers. In the late 1970s, Cummins (1979) proposed the Linguistic Interdependence Hypothesis. It states that academic proficiency in one language can positively influence L2 competence: “the development of competence in a second language (L2) is partially a function of the type of competence already developed in LI at the time when intensive exposure to L2 begins” (p. 222). It assumes that language learners can transfer their knowledge from a previously acquired language during learning of another language. Furthermore,

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the Linguistic Interdependence Hypothesis claims that language skills (for instance, literacy) from one language are helpful for the development of such skills in other languages. A crucial point here is that L1 should be sufficiently developed to facilitate L2 learning. In general, language learning and skills development is seen to be a complex and interconnected process. By learning the ways in which languages can influence one another, education practitioners can enhance language learning. His research suggested Cummins discern between two kinds of skills—BICS and CALP. Cummins (1980) stated that BICS (Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills) is the conversational fluency that is important for everyday context-embedded situations and typically takes place outside of the educational context, face-to-face. Children learn BICS through interaction with mother-tongue speakers; BICS is supported through non-verbal signs and serves language users at the surface level. On a deeper level, CALP (Cognitive/Academic Language Proficiency) is important for decontextualized and more demanding tasks which often are carried out in the classroom. CALP is necessary for language use as a tool for learning, it enables children to reason, build hypotheses, problem-solve, or imagine situations they have never encountered. Cummins states that L1 plays a crucial role in the development of CALP; CALP, in turn, is a prerequisite for overall academic achievement. Cummins (1981) offered a theoretical framework which accounts for BICS and CALP and is known as CUP (Common Underlying Proficiency). It postulates that there is one internal device in the human brain that supports both L1 and L2 learning. Thus, proficiency in cognitively demanding tasks (CALP) is transferable across languages. The later research on the performance of minority language students (Cummins & Corson, 1997) demonstrated that teaching through the minority language does not hinder students’ academic achievement in the majority language. Teaching should support additive bilingualism through the development of skills in both L1 and L2, not replacing L1 with L2. Cummins (2013) states that language learners should be aware of their linguistic resources, “teachers [should] explicitly draw student’s attention to similarities and differences between their languages and reinforce effective learning strategies in a coordinated way across languages” (p. 298). Thus, the activation of the whole linguistic repertoire enhances the result of language learning.

5 Metalinguistic Awareness Bi-and multilingual language learners are known to have advantages over monolinguals in language learning; one of the factors that explains it is metalinguistic awareness. Let us have a look at this notion, which is often defined as “the ability to think about and reflect upon the nature and functions of language” (Pratt & Grieve, 1984, p. 2). Metalinguistic awareness is known to be “a factor that sets multilingual learners apart from monolingual learners, providing the former with a strategic advantage for further language learning” (Bono, 2011, p. 30). A common understanding of metalinguistic awareness is that it is the ability to focus on linguistic

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form and meaning, classify words into parts of speech, and understand the difference between form, function, and meaning of linguistic units (Jessner, 2008). Broadly speaking, metalinguistic awareness is the capacity to concentrate on language as an object and to think abstractly about it. Bi- and multilingual speakers, as they have experience operating more than one language, have increased structural knowledge about linguistic systems (Jessner, 2006). The advantages which bi- and multilingual users have over monolinguals are also known as the multilingualism factor (M-factor), it is believed to lead to “an enhanced level of metalinguistic awareness and metacognitive strategies” (Jessner, 2006, p. 35). Thus, the M-factor encompasses both language aptitude and skills of biand multilingual learners. Understanding how languages function is significant for the increase of metalinguistic awareness. Knowledge of additional languages helps in recognition of differences and similarities between them.

6 “Multilingual Turn” and Monolingual Norms in Education The last decades have seen the rise of multilingualism in educational settings. The positive outcomes of crosslinguistic interaction have demonstrated that building on prior linguistic knowledge increases metalinguistic awareness (Jarvis, 2009; Jessner, 2017; Maluch et al., 2016) and fosters language learning, as perceived similarities can help to infer characteristics of the subsequent languages (De Angelis, 2007). This effect manifests itself predominantly between typologically related languages (De Angelis & Selinker, 2001; Rothman, 2011). A growing body of research promotes classroom multilingualism and a “multilingual turn” in education (May, 2013). It highlights the role of previously acquired languages as a precious tool for teaching and learning. Thus, researchers argue for support of multilingualism and pedagogical translanguaging in educational settings (Cenoz & Gorter, 2020a; Cenoz & Santos, 2020b). It should help language learners “to maximize understanding and achievement” (Creese & Blackledge, 2015, p. 26) and to overcome the monolingual principle that hinders language practitioners from making connections to the already existing knowledge of language learners (Canagarajah, 2013; Cummins, 2007; García & Kleyn, 2016; Slaughter & Cross, 2021). Previous research has demonstrated that users of two or more languages can experience advantages over monolinguals when learning new languages, as “Explicit comparison of languages, e.g., metaphors, or the relation of sound and script, seem to dock well on cognitive and linguistic dispositions of bi- or multilingual learners” (Bonnet & Siemund, 2018, p. 3). Furthermore, it is indicated that the presence of multilinguals in foreign language classrooms fosters language acquisition of all learners, not only multilinguals (Hesse & Göbel, 2009).

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Nevertheless, “researchers and practitioners having embraced the new paradigm are still faced with the widespread assumption that language classrooms should be restricted to exclusive target language (TL) use” (Woll, 2020, p. 1). Even though there have been some attempts to foster multilingualism in the school context (see i.e., Langer, 2014), the education system nevertheless implements a monolingual syllabus, and the indicators of a monolingual habitus are omnipresent; use of other languages is restricted and stigmatized (Lorenz et al., 2021). Thus, as Cummins (2017) points out, language teaching is still shaped by the perception of languages as separate entities; teaching practices still rely on the monolingual approaches which see no need in referring to learners’ other languages. Additionally, although language practitioners tend to support multilingualism, they often lack the knowledge on how to promote it in the classroom. The lack of concrete examples is thus one of the main issues in the implementation of crosslinguistic pedagogy. “It is thus crucial to provide concrete examples of what such approaches could look like and how they contribute to additional language learning” (Woll, 2020, p. 9). Therefore, one of the tasks of the education system is to help teachers meet the needs of the different learner groups.4

7 Multilingual Pedagogy and (Pre-service) Teachers’ Beliefs The implementation of multilingual pedagogies depends not only on future teachers’ knowledge of the pertinent methodology but also on their capacity to modify their practices to meet societal demands, implement the right teaching methods in the classroom, and verify their own beliefs and attitudes. Language teachers have the option of incorporating prior language knowledge into the classroom, ignoring it, or even punishing students who use non-target languages. Essentially, language practitioners “play a crucial role in deciding whether multilingualism in the FL classroom will be just another fad or whether it will change FL teaching and learning in a sustainable way” (Bonnet & Siemund, 2018, p. 24). Unfortunately, teachers’ beliefs about multilingualism often do not translate into changing teaching practices. For example, in her study on 176 secondary school teachers’ beliefs about the role of other languages and the support of multilingual practices with immigrant children, De Angelis (2011) used a questionnaire shared among the Austrian, British, and Italian teachers. The findings can be briefly summarized as follows: the study participants in the three countries are supportive of the home language use outside of the classroom; the teachers believe that the immigrant 4

We should keep in mind that language background is not the only factor that can influence the process and outcome of language learning; one can name, for instance, age, gender, socioeconomic background, motivation, affinity towards learning foreign languages, and many others (see for example Bonnet & Siemund, 2018; Cenoz, 2001; Dörnyei, 2005; Kempert et al., 2016; Kultusministerkonferenz, 2021; Muñoz, 2008; Van der Slik et al., 2015; Wallace & Leong, 2020).

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children should focus on learning the majority language. Moreover, they believe that one should be familiar with the culture and language of the migrants’ children to refer to them in the classroom; that is one of the main reasons why many teachers do not practice it. In a study on 233 Polish pre-service and in-service English teachers’ beliefs and practices, Otwinowska (2014) reports that experienced in-service teachers have an increased awareness of the use of multilingual practices in the classroom. In comparison, pre-service teachers are less optimistic about them. Furthermore, individual multilingualism positively correlates with the support of multilingual teaching. It turned out that the increase in teachers’ L3 proficiency shapes the level of awareness. Nevertheless, in general, the teachers in the study of Otwinowska (2014) prefer not to use other languages than English in the classroom. Language teachers’ beliefs about multilingualism and the use of a multilingual pedagogical approach in L3 classrooms have been studied by Haukås (2016). With the help of focus group discussions with 12 foreign language (French (n = 4), German (n = 2), and Spanish (n = 6)) teachers, it has been revealed that the study participants perceive multilingualism as potentially beneficial resource. However, they do not believe that multilingualism is necessarily helpful for language learning.

8 The Study 8.1 Aim and Tasks The current study examines pre-service language teachers’ perceptions of crosslinguistic pedagogy as well as code-switching and code-mixing as the most prominent applications of this pedagogy in school settings. By showing pre-service teachers’ perspectives on the best teaching practices, it sheds light on their beliefs about the best techniques for language classrooms. The study aims to reveal the participants’ perceptions of crosslinguistic teaching methods because “beliefs are often deeply-rooted and not easily accessed when directly addressed” (Woll, 2020, p. 3). The research questions guiding this study are the following: (1) What are preservice teachers’ beliefs about multilingualism? (2) What are the students’ perceptions regarding monolingual vs. multilingual classroom practices? (3) What are the participants’ attitudes towards code-switching and code-mixing in educational settings?

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8.2 Methodology 8.2.1

Participants

20 female teacher candidates (aged 21–35, median 24.5 years old) from the University of Hamburg who are enrolled in teacher education programs were asked to participate in the study. Their responses were collected in December 2020. All participants were majoring or minoring in linguistics or languages, including English, German, French, and Spanish.

8.2.2

Instruments

The instrument used was an online questionnaire (consisting of 77 questions) in English. This questionnaire served as a useful tool for eliciting the beliefs of preservice teachers. Firstly, the participants answered 15 open-ended questions about their background, including age, gender, and mother tongue(s), as well as their educational level and semester during the study, the subjects they would like to teach in the future, their language use, etc. The respondents were then asked to indicate on a Likert scale ranging from 1 (totally disagree/not useful at all) to 5 (absolutely agree/very useful) whether they agreed with certain statements (for instance “It is important to know several foreign languages” and “I would not allow my students to speak their home language in class”) or would find the use of a certain methodology useful. This part of the questionnaire included 62 Likert-scale items. The questions looked at pre-service teachers’ attitudes on multilingualism, the value of previously learned languages for future language teaching and learning, attitudes toward using languages other than TL, code-switching, and code-mixing in the language classroom.

8.3 Results After collection of the responses, all the relevant data were copied into the Excel spreadsheet. We went through the answers to the questionnaire to accurately assess the pre-service teachers’ perceptions of multilingualism, monolingual vs. multilingual classroom practices, as well as their attitudes towards code-switching and code-mixing in educational settings. A short summary about the participants’ age, language, educational background, the subjects they are going to teach in the future, and their teaching experience are shown in Table 1. The study’s findings indicate that the majority of the participants (75%, 15 students) speak three or more languages, indicating that they are multilingual. It

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Table 1 Participants’ age, language, educational background, teaching experience Participant Age Native Foreign Degree level ID language(s) languages

Teaching subjects

Teaching experience

P1

28

German

English, French

Complementary English, French Studies

3 years

P2

24

German

English, Spanish

Master

English, sports

4 years

P3

23

German

English, French, Italian

Master

English, religion, German, mathematics

2 years

P4

25

German, Bosnian

French, English

Master

English, French

1.5 years

P5

24

German

English

Master

English, apprenticeship, general science

1 month

P6

23

German

English, French, Spanish

Master

English

3 months

P7

23

German

English, Spanish, French, Finnish

Bachelor

English

1 year

P8

23

German

English, French, Spanish, Sign Language

Bachelor

English

P9

26

German

English

Master

German, English

P10

23

German, Hebrew

English, French, Spanish

Bachelor

English, biology 2 weeks (internship) 5 years (tutoring)

P11

29

German

English

Master

English, economics, business studies

3 years (tutoring)

P12

29

Thai

English, German

Master

English, mathematics

2 years (tutoring)

P13

35

Spanish

English, German

Master

English, Spanish some months

P14

21

English, German

State examination

English, German, social studies

P15

25

Uzbek, Kyrgyz, Russian

Master

Multilingualism 1 year

German, English

7 classes

3 years (tutoring)

(continued)

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Table 1 (continued) Participant Age Native Foreign Degree level ID language(s) languages

Teaching subjects

Teaching experience 3 weeks (internship), tutoring

P16

34

German

English, French

Master

German, religion

P17

25

German

Spanish, English

Master

Mathematics, 3 internships German, history at school

P18

21

English, German

English, German

State examination

English, German, Social studies

3 years (tutoring)

P19

24

German

German, English

Master

German, visual arts

Internships during studies

P20

28

German

English

Master

English, German

3 months (teaching assistant)

is hardly surprising that they have predominantly positive attitudes toward multilingualism and subsequent language learning. For instance, 80% (n = 16) of the study participants agreed with the statement “The more languages one knows, the easier it is to learn new languages” (see Fig. 1). Furthermore, they appear to be mostly optimistic about the general value of crosslinguistic teaching—i.e., 95% (n = 19) of the respondents agreed that relying on students’ L1/L2 knowledge when teaching L2/L3/Ln is a valuable teaching strategy (see Fig. 2). They believe that some use of other languages than the target language can be allowed for providing explanations, translation, teacher-to-student and student-to-student communication, making references, etc. However, only 45% of the participants (n = 9) were able to respond in the affirmative when asked whether the textbooks they had used included exercises that required students to draw on prior knowledge, such as examining language similarities and differences or considering which learning techniques can be transferred from L1 to L2/L3/L4 or vice versa. Code-switching and code-mixing tend to be viewed favorably by the teacher candidates. Only one participant, for instance, said that using code-switching and code-mixing in the classroom is a sign of incompetence, and nobody agreed that it is a sign of laziness (see Fig. 3). According to the questionnaire, pre-service teachers are aware of some of the aforementioned functions of code-switching described by Hobbs (2016). For instance, 70% of the study participants (n = 14) agreed that code-switching and code-mixing make it simpler to explain new vocabulary. 75% of study participants (n = 15) said that code-switching and code-mixing help students feel comfortable (see Fig. 4). However, it was revealed that some participants would permit their pupils to use several languages with some restrictions. For instance, 60% of respondents said

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The more languages one knows, the easier it is to learn new languages (1- totally disagree, 5 -absolutely agree) 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 1

2

3

4

5

Fig. 1 Assessment of the statement “The more languages one knows, the easier it is to learn new languages” by the study participants

To what extent do you think it is useful to draw on students' knowledge of L1/L2 when teaching L2/L3/Ln? Please indicate on the scale from 1 (not useful at all) to 5 (very useful) 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 1

2

3

4

5

Fig. 2 Responses to the question “To what extent do you think it is useful to draw on students’ knowledge of L1/L2 when teaching L2/L3/Ln?”

they would allow code-switching and code-mixing in peer-to-peer communication, and 50% said they would allow it in teacher-to-student communication. Only one teacher candidate said that she would tolerate code-switching and code-mixing in written assignments, compared to 40% of the pre-service teachers who would allow it in oral communication. Interestingly, one research participant, who was in her

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Use of code-switching and code-mixing is a sign of laziness (1- totally disagree, 5 -absolutely agree) 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 1

2

3

4

5

Fig. 3 Code-switching and code-mixing are not seen as a sign of laziness

Code-switching and code-mixing make pupils feel comfortable (1- totally disagree, 5 -absolutely agree) 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 1

2

3

4

5

Fig. 4 Assessment of the statement “Code-switching and code-mixing make pupils feel comfortable” by the study participants

first master’s semester and had two years of teaching experience prior to the study, mentioned in her comment at the end of the survey that “If it is an English class, I will not allow other languages to be spoken other than English but if it is mathematics, then yes”. Finally, 75% of the study participants stated that they had read about multilingual practices in the classroom; 60% of the participants reported using multilingual

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language practices. 77.8% of individuals who have used them in language classes expressed interest in learning more about the subject and getting practical skills (taking part in a workshop, for example). 85.7% of participants who had not previously employed multilingual language practices indicated that they would like to learn more about them and get some practice. A summary of results (depending on the statement topic) is reported in Table 2. Table 2 Teachers’ ratings about multilingualism, multilingual teaching practices, code-switching, and code-mixing Statements

Strongly disagree (%)

Moderately disagree (%)

Neither agree not disagree (%)

Moderately agree (%)

Strongly agree (%)

Positive attitudes towards multilingualism

1

5

23

23

48

Negative attitudes towards multilingualism

20

30

40

5

5

Positive attitudes towards multilingualism in the classroom

0

0

10

47.5

42.5

Positive attitudes towards multilingual teaching practices

3.75

8.75

27.5

42.5

17.5

Negative attitudes towards multilingualism in the classroom

46.7

25

16.7

8.3

3.3

Positive attitudes towards code-switching and code-mixing

5

12.5

26.75

27.25

28.5

Negative attitudes towards code-switching and code-mixing

31.7

18.35

28.35

15.8

5.8

Readiness to use code-switching and code-mixing in the classroom

14.2

12.5

30.8

24.2

18.3

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Y. Hasai

9 Discussion Understanding pre-service teachers’ beliefs is crucial for the development of their teaching skills and the enhancement of their teaching practices in the future. Twenty pre-service teachers took part in an online questionnaire and shared their beliefs about multilingualism and multilingual pedagogy, as well as code-switching and code-mixing in the German educational context. Let us have a look at the main findings of this study. First, the participants of our study have demonstrated their awareness of some advantages of being bilingual or multilingual. Future teachers believe that multilingualism is beneficial for language learning. This supports the conclusions of previous studies that positive attitudes towards multilingualism prevail among (pre-service) educators (Angelovska et al., 2020; De Angelis, 2011; Haukås, 2016; Woll, 2020). Second, the majority of the respondents believe that relying on students’ previous linguistic knowledge when teaching subsequent languages is a valuable strategy. They assume that several languages can be used for giving explanations, translation, and discussions. However, the target-language-only ideology seems to be still popular among pre-service teachers—as one study participant with a rich teaching experience mentioned, during her English classes, the only language to be spoken should be English. This is in line with what Haukås (2016) stated—educators often have positive attitudes about multilingualism in general but may not necessarily practice multilingualism with their students. What concerns the attitudes towards code-switching and code-mixing in the German educational context is that they tend to be viewed positively by the teacher candidates; our study participants are aware of the potential functions of language alternation in the classroom. Nevertheless, code-switching and codemixing, according to the results of the survey, are approved for use in oral communication and should not be used in written assignments. The respondents are more in favor of language alternation in peer-to-peer than in teacher-to-student communication. This is in line with the statement of Angelovska et al. (2020) that “the monolingual approaches are still ingrained in the TCs [teacher candidates’] views on language teaching and learning” (p. 202). The teacher candidates’ observation that their textbooks do not offer enough support or that they need to learn more and observe more successful examples of the new methodology can (at least in part) account for this. We want to note here that such materials should incorporate not only the majority language (in the context of our study, German) but also other home languages (Turkish, Arabic, Polish, etc.). This can increase the chances for academic success of minority language school children.

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10 Conclusions This study reveals that despite the generally favorable attitudes toward multilingualism, the multilingual teaching methods are not regarded as being as effective as the TL-only use in the classroom. It appears that pre-service teachers still hold strong opinions about language instruction and learning that are deeply ingrained in the monolingual approach. The somehow contradicting beliefs demonstrate that language teaching is moving away from the TL-only approach towards the use of several languages in the language classroom. This emphasizes how crucial teacher education is in facilitating this change by equipping educators with the essential competencies. We can draw some conclusions from these findings regarding how to incorporate multilingualism into language theory and practice. Firstly, future language teachers should gain a thorough understanding of how different languages interact in the multilingual mind. This could be covered in classes on applied linguistics, language acquisition, teaching theories, and (language) teacher education. Moreover, teacher candidates should be provided with in-depth information about how to apply multilingual pedagogies in the classroom. Teacher training programs should help preservice teachers succeed in their future careers by offering them workshops, learning resources, and successful examples of the use of multilingual teaching strategies in educational settings. An example of a successful project on competence and skill development of the pre-service teachers is described by Schroedler and Grommes (2019). It aimed at equipment of the future teachers with necessary skills for dealing with multilingualism in the German educational context. Course participants learned about societal multilingualism, the fundamentals of contrastive theoretical linguistics, language development, and methods for language-sensitive teaching. Furthermore, to enhance multilingual awareness, educators can use the European Language Portfolio (ELP).5 It is one of the best-known tools in the European context that helps language learners to record their language learning and cultural experiences and provides a framework for assessment of language competences (as of March 2023, it is available in Bosnian, Croatian, Czech, English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Lithuanian, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish). Teachers can use ELP to assist their students in becoming more independent in language learning and use.

5

https://www.coe.int/en/web/portfolio/home.

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Yevheniia Hasai a Ph.D. student at the Institute for English and American Studies, University of Hamburg (Germany). Her research interests include language acquisition, multilingual development, psycholinguistics, bilingualism, multilingualism, lexical transfer, language education, and corpus linguistics. The current research project she works on focuses on lexical transfer in a longitudinal learner corpus MEZ (Multilingual Development: A Longitudinal Perspective).

Teaching English Linguistics During the Pandemic: Online Group Project Work for Millennials Mariavita Cambria

Abstract The paper reports on the progress made by second-year university students enrolled in the Foreign Language degree course at the University of Messina as regards their use of online tools when exploring specialised video genres, in particular journalistic genres that disseminate scientific information. Through first-hand experiences undertaken with students using the OpenMWS platform (http://openmws. itd.cnr.it/), for the construction of video corpora, the paper describes the ways in which participation in the 2020 OVP (Online Video Project) has proved beneficial for the students in terms of acquiring textual competences and creating interactive communities during the 2020 lockdown. Keywords Multimodality · Web genres · English linguistics · Group project work

1 Introduction The Covid pandemic forced educational institutions to take full advantage of IT technologies, using all their advantages to ensure the educational process. The verb forced is not used light-heartedly. The crisis caused by the coronavirus quickly changed established patterns, habits and procedures in our lives and, at the same time, introduced new and different needs for the general public in terms of information in crisis situations. Italy’s first Covid-19 patient was detected on February 21st 2020 in a small town near Milan, in the northern region of Lombardy, with the first deaths on February 22nd. On January 31st, the Italian government declared a state of emergency and in February, eleven municipalities in northern Italy were identified as the centres for the two main Italian clusters and were placed under quarantine. The majority of positive cases in other regions traced back to these two clusters. On March 8th, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte extended the quarantine to the whole of Lombardy and 14 other northern provinces, and on the following day to the whole of Italy, placing more M. Cambria (B) University of Messina, Messina, Italy e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk and M. Trojszczak (eds.), Language in Educational and Cultural Perspectives, Second Language Learning and Teaching, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-38778-4_3

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than 60 million people under lockdown. On March 11th, Conte prohibited nearly all commercial activity except for those relating to supermarkets and pharmacies. On March 21st, the Italian government closed all non-essential businesses and industries, and restricted people’s movement. In May, many restrictions were gradually eased, and on June 3rd, freedom of movement across regions and other European countries was restored. In March 2020, people were obliged to change their habits almost overnight, with media overwhelming the public with war-like images: army trucks transported piled-up coffins out of Bergamo, camouflaged vehicles went around towns to check if the lockdown was being respected and so on. Overnight, the media submerged the public in a war-like lexicon which lasted for several months and created a shocking and dramatic atmosphere: “it is like wartime”, “we have to fight an invisible enemy”, “it is important to stand close as a nation”. Overnight, impossible things for the notoriously slow Italian bureaucracy were made possible (Amato & Salza, 2021). In this context, Education had to re-invent itself. The only way to reduce contact and contagion, during the prohibition measures prescribed by those responsible for the protection of the Italian Republic’s health, which had to be respected almost militarily by its citizens, was online learning. The educational process was not stopped, regardless of the fact that it took place in completely different conditions, online, and quite unlike traditional classroom teaching. Communication between teachers and students took place only through online platforms, with no presence of face-to-face communication. Many factors posed significant challenges for both students and teachers. Amidst confusion and fear, Education had to find a way to finish the school and university year and give people an illusory sense of normality. Lockdown Education was thus characterized by a common, sometimes clumsy, sense of adapting to the new “reality”. The quality of teachers and their knowledge of the subject remained the same, the quality of students and their interest in learning a particular subject, and its contents, also remained the same. Indeed, educational authorities’ interest remained the same and no record of rapid curriculum change ever emerged. The only thing that changed, together with a general common sense of fear, was the communication channel and it suddenly became clear how enormous and significant a factor it is. Together with its other limitations, the Covid pandemic has left people working in the field of Education with a compulsory duty to check the availability of resources and has tested the extent to which academic staff and students are willing to adopt and use technological resources during online learning (Allam et al., 2020). Most universities have opted for blended teaching, i.e., a combination of traditional and online teaching. Online teaching was the solution and the new “normality” for the educational process. New communicative models emerged and became the normal state of mind without any in-depth collective reflection on the effects that this completely different state of mind might have on Education (Babi´c et al., 2021). Reflection on this state of affairs needs to be carried out to ensure a state of emergency does not become a perpetual state. This paper reports on OVP (Online Video Project) which was undertaken during the 2020 lockdown as a form a resistance to the collective obligation to turn our lives upside down and access new forms of teaching, studying and living. It tackles issues

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concerning the way in which millennials access online resources related to English linguistics and forms of sociability. The aims of the current study are thus twofold. On the one hand, it seeks to look at the impact that the use of online teaching had on language students during the lockdown. On the other hand, it aims to investigate how the use of online videos leads to an understanding of the concepts of cohesion and coherence among students of English linguistics. After a curriculum overview in the context of the second-year course in English linguistics in the University of Messina’s language degree course in Sects. 2 and 3 describes the step-by-step procedure used in OVP, while Sect. 4 discusses the results, followed by some conclusions.

2 Teaching English Linguistics During the Pandemic The English Language and Linguistics (second-year) course is part of the language degree course at the Dipartimento di Civiltà Antiche e Moderne at the University of Messina where students choose between the L11 “Language and Literature” and the L12 “Mediation” course, where translation and interpreting are taught. A stalwart belief that language competence cannot be separated from an extensive awareness of linguistics lies at the heart of the degree course in languages. Teachers in general share the idea that a theoretical approach to language and linguistics underpins a good knowledge and understanding of the linguistic mechanisms enhancing an informed approach to texts and textuality. For this reason, the degree syllabus contains three exams for each language (one per year of study, students have to choose two languages among Arabic, English, French, German, Russian and Spanish), all of which include both language and linguistics in their official denomination (e.g., English Language and Linguistics I, English Language and Linguistics II and English Language and Linguistics III). Specifically, the English Language and Linguistics second-year syllabus contains the following learning goals: Students will learn the appropriate tools to elaborate on a metapragmatic reflection on English linguistics. In particular, the main aim of the course is to finetune the interpretative and inferential resources of the English language as a system at the meso-level (clause), in its syntactic components, and at the semantic level, together with the elements useful for the recognition and interpretation of suprasegmental phonetics (i.e. the prosodic features). Students will be able to use their language skills in a variety of communicative contexts corresponding, but not overlapping with or limited to, the B2 level of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (Cambria, 2020).

As for the course syllabus, the contents are as follows: The course will portray the English language from multiple perspectives providing students with the necessary grounding in linguistics to encourage independent investigation especially in sentence structure. Key concepts such as cohesion and coherence, grammar and grammaticality will be introduced. Students will be brought to the centrally important core texts with a focus on the production of language and on how texts are built and understood. Particular emphasis will be placed on the several semiotic resources used in the production of “static” (i.e. printed) and “dynamic” (i.e. websites, movies etc.) texts in English. The

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M. Cambria following B2 grammar contents will be investigated: habitual behaviour; frequency adverbs, used to and would; be used to, get used to, used to; indirect questions; gerunds and infinitive; comparisons; articles; so and such; past tenses and time expressions; obligation, necessity, permission; too and enough; defining and non-defining relative clauses; present perfect; future and time linkers; the passive; conditionals; so, neither and nor; the future and time linkers; modal verbs of speculation; reported speech and phrasal verbs (Cambria, 2020).

The English Language and Linguistics second-year exam includes a written and an oral test so, at the time when this paper was written, the language students had 4 written and 10 oral sessions for their exams during any given academic year. The written test is a CEFR B2 exam, its format being made up of: 1. Use of English; 2. Reading comprehension 3. Listening comprehension and 4. Written production. The oral test revolves around the course’s topics which are mainly cohesion and coherence in English. The 2019–2020 English Language and Linguistics course had 54 h of lectures and 100 h of language classes. Most of the lecture hours were scheduled during the second semester (36 h), while the language classes were equally divided into the two semesters (50 h each). As clearly emerges from the syllabus, the main aim of the course is to allow students to have a direct approach and contact with different types of texts. The theoretical framework for this course is deductive in nature, encouraging ideas and principles to be derived directly from texts. This is done primarily via hands-on text work in class but also via group work. By going online, it was thus pivotal to: 1. select texts that were of interest for the students and 2. stimulate group work. For this reason, students were asked if they wanted to take part in online project work that meant a step-by-step approach to course content. The choice of a step-by-step procedure was also made so that students could focus their attention on small, short-term objectives which helped their emotional status during the lockdown. As part of their course assignment, 2019–2020 students were thus asked to create small study groups (3–5 people in each group) and select YouTube videos on a specific topic. The first online-lesson was entirely dedicated to the illustration of the project and, specifically, to the selection of the topic. After detailed discussion, the students decided they wanted to acquire information on how the Covid situation was handled in the British Isles. For this reason, they selected the topic “The Covid Pandemic in the British Isles”. The details of the step-by-step procedure adopted in OVP are described in the following section.

3 The Online Video Project’s Step-By-Step Procedure 3.1 Aim and Research Questions The Messina OVP project started during the 2020 lockdown but is not an isolated project. It is strictly connected to a number of research projects using the OpenMWS platform for the construction of video corpora, co-designed by Davide Taibi and

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Anthony Baldry, and implemented by Davide Taibi at ITD-CNR, Palermo (Baldry & Thibault, 2020; Baldry et al., 2020; Taibi, 2020). One of the basic functions of OpenMWS is to allow any YouTube video to be repurposed as part of online video corpora by students in their very first years of university study (on the use of corpora for language learning and teaching see, among others, Jablonkai & Csomay, 2022; Pole, 2018; for details about the rationale of the projects see Baldry et al., 2022; Coccetta, 2022; Cambria, 2023). In this paper the focus will be on the collaborative nature of the project and how it helped the students cope with the news bombarding them during the lockdown. Specifically, there are two Research Questions at the heart of this paper: 1. Did group project work and a step-by-step procedure help in a moment of crisis? 2. What learning mechanisms related to English linguistics did group project work trigger?

3.2 Participants 72 students divided into 17 groups constructed the “The Covid Pandemic in the British Isles” video corpus (see Table 3). As stated, after having selected the topic and having created the groups, each group was asked to choose a group leader so that communication would be quicker. The project was divided into five stages; accordingly, folders, functioning as students’ “pigeon holes”, were created in a Google Drive for each group’s five-stage task of creating an online multimodal transcription of their selected video (Vasta & Baldry, 2020) and an oral presentation thereof. Each stage was presented during a meeting with the teacher, and students were given a precise deadline for each stage which was then followed by the teacher’s feedback and assessment. A total of 8 teacher-group meetings were held during the fourmonth project (March-June). This step-by-step procedure allowed the students to be monitored in their work and prompted group discussions around the problems that arose at each individual stage. It was also a way to create group cohesion and group discussion with the students being assessed both for their individual and group work (details below in Sect. 4). Working entirely online, students followed the step-by-step procedure for each of the OVP stages and undertook activities that exercised their digital and linguistic skills in relation to three types of online tools: a. Microsoft Teams for real-time teacher-group, student–student and group–group interaction; b. Google Drive for sharing and handing in the different stages of the work; c. YouTube for access to videos and autogenerated transcriptions. Students were also asked to use word processing and spreadsheet tools during the stages leading to the final oral presentation in which each group presented and discussed its video during a seminar. The project work required each group of students to record metadata for the video they had selected in a shared file accessed via a group folder in the project’s Google Drive that contained all the information about that video. The project also required students to master digital skills in keeping with CFRIDiL proposals (Sindoni et al., 2019) in that knowing the

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basics of software packages was an essential requirement that the project exercised to the full.

3.3 Data Collection and Analysis Data were gathered through the documents students uploaded in the folders functioning as students’ “pigeon holes”. Each group was given a deadline for each step and the teacher corrected and gave each group the feedback on each step so that students could continue their work by going on to the next step. Each group was given an evaluation table on the mistakes made in each step followed by a short comment on the type of errors. To answer Research Question 1, Stage 5 (see below) “comment” Section was qualitatively analysed together with notes taken during the teacher-group meetings while for Research Question 2 the number and quality of “comment” in English was accounted for during the 5 stages and the oral presentation. Data were gathered manually via direct observation during the project.

3.4 The project’s Step-By-Step Procedure The manuals created by Baldry and Kantz (2022) in the initial stages of the development of OpenMWS were adapted by the author to the needs of the Messina OVP Project. The five stages of the project were: ● ● ● ● ●

Stage 1—Initial Steps “Video Selection” Stage 2—Downloading a transcript and turning it into a table Stage 3—Dividing into sequences Stage 4—Using columns and tags Stage 5—Analysing the language.

Each stage was introduced in an online group meeting and students were sent the manuals and invited to read them carefully. The names of each stage give a clear indication of the nature of manuals. The manual accompanies students in a step-by-step procedure which allows them to: a. avoid panicking over a task which may seem impossible to achieve and b. acquire specialized lexis in context. The second point is particularly relevant for second-year students, especially in terms of understanding how collocation works. In Stage 1 “Initial steps” (see Fig. 1), students were asked to select the video and divide it equally among the group members so that, for example, a 20 min-video was divided into 4 items each lasting 5 min. They were given precise instructions on how to carry out their Stage 1 tasks and had to cope with choosing an appropriate video (average length is 20–30 min), understand what some specific terms meant (e.g., YouTube video “.short identifier”) and use them appropriately.

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In Stage 2, after having selected their videos, students were asked to download YouTube’s auto-generated transcripts. They were asked to open the link to the video and activate the auto-generated transcripts. Having activated the auto-generated transcripts, they were asked to copy and paste the text into a Word document. This produced a text with basically no punctuation. At this point, they had to check that the transcript corresponded to the video soundtrack, which involved intensive listening and viewing skills. They also had to add some basic punctuation. With this step they gained a general idea of how and why automatic transcription generated by YouTube may well be wrong and, concomitantly, acquired a sense of coherence in a video text. Figure 2 reproduces the first sentence in the Stage 2 manual which provides much-needed encouragement: an example of how significant interpersonal relations (Halliday’s tenor in Halliday & Hasan, 1976) are in manuals as regards giving credit to the work already done and in preparing what is to come. In Stage 3 “Dividing into sequences”, students were introduced to the idea of sequence and what a video sequence is from an analytical standpoint (Baldry & Thibault, 2006). This is an extremely complex task described as a “mechanical” one, i.e. students are asked to divide the text they have into coherent sequences. However, it is also a stage which involves a series of choices to be made as regards the definition of ‘sequence’ discussed in meetings with the teacher. In Stage 4 they had to ‘unpack’ and recognize the different semiotic resources used by filling in the columns in Table 1. As shown in Table 1, the students had at their disposal columns for oral discourse, sounds, written discourse and visual sequencing. Stage 4 introduced tags and

Fig. 1 Below is a sample of the manual created for Stage 1. Adapted from Baldry and Kantz (2022)

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Fig. 2 Extract from stage 2 manual. Adapted from Baldry and Kantz (2022) Fig. 3 a Screenshot from video “Coronavirus outbreak: UK health official says spread of Covid-19 not accelerating” (FR1). b Screenshot from video “Coronavirus outbreak: UK health official says spread of Covid-19 not accelerating” (FR2). Source https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=3eg DMUbrA98

Table 1 Columns for stage 4 Group

Sequence

Time point

Time span

Oral discourse

Sounds

Written discourse

Visual sequencing

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metacharacters to be used for dedicated search procedures and concerned with understanding how the various semiotic resources involved interact in the meaning-making process. More specifically, the students were invited to recognise the different semiotic resources deployed such as, for instance, oral vs written discourse. This stage was the one that required a particularly large amount of discussion since tags and metacharacters imply an abstract, metatextual level which, while empowering undergraduate students, is, nevertheless, a testbench for their analytical skills. Table 2 shows examples taken from a video, a BBC news “Coronavirus outbreak: UK health official says spread of Covid-19 not accelerating”, in which a male speaker (the Chancellor) first introduces an expert who was there to explain recent data about the virus. In the Oral Discourse Column for Sequence 2, the tag ONMS stands for ONscreen Male Speaker, while the written discourse indicates that there is a caption indicating global news and signage (what is clearly visible on doors, equipment and other objects). As can be seen in Fig. 3a, b, in the case of this sequence, signage with the warning message “Stay home, Protect the NHS, Save lives” is to be seen on the back of the lectern. The Sounds Column indicates that there is first some whispering and then a rustling of papers. Sequences 5 and 6 do not present changes in the Written Discourse column, while there is a change in the visual sequencing where there is a movement from front Shot 1 (Tag FR1) with the Chancellor in the conference room standing behind one lectern (see Fig. 3a), to front Shot 2 with Prof. Angela McLean standing behind the other lectern (see Fig. 3b). Sequences 5 and 6 are also characterized by a shift in the oral discourse which is marked both by the fact that Prof. Angela McLean is at first off screen and then onscreen. Table 2 shows that the students have decided to give prominence to the Oral Discourse and Sounds columns when dividing up the video into the sequences. Stage 5 is the language analysis stage. It is the stage which is directly related to English linguistics as it contains a general comment on aspects of cohesion and coherence designed to develop metalinguistic skills. In this stage, students were asked to comment on lexical and grammar cohesion and to reflect on how specific items contributed to creating meaning. Specifically, students were asked to comment on: 1. auto-generated subtitles and their transcription; 2. grammar and lexical cohesion i.e. co-referential pro-forms (e.g., they, this or there), substitution (which covers grammatical placeholders, e.g., one, do or so), ellipsis, conjunctions (which can be realised by simple grammatical means e.g., or, and or but or by more complex lexical expressions, e.g., as a result) and also repetition, synonymy or hyponymy and collocation through lexemes that typically co-occur in texts; 3. lexical elements in terms of morphology, word-formation processes etc.; 4. the verb system in terms of tense, aspect, modality and voice; 5. the video’s use of oral (accent, pronunciation, elements of conversation) and written discourse. They were also asked to add their personal comments on the project.

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Table 2 Sequences 4–6 video “Coronavirus outbreak: UK health official says spread of covid-19 not accelerating” Sequence Oral discourse

Sounds

Written discourse

Visual sequencing

04

ONMS chancellor: Angela, we’re Ambient going to present your slides first sound: whispering, rustling papers

CAPTION: global News SIGNAGE: stay home, protect the NHS, save lives

FR1: chancellor in a conference room, standing behind a lectern. In the background there are two flags of the UK

05

OFFS Prof. Angela McLean: Ok, for me ONMS Chancellor: perfect! ONFS Prof. Angela McLean: I wanted to start by showing this data which is a record of how much … uhm.. we’ve acted together to reduce how much we contact each other

Ambient sound: camera shutter sound

SIGNAGE: stay home, protect the NHS, Save lives CAPTION: global news

FR1: Chancellor in a conference room, standing behind a lectern. In the background there are two flags of the UK FR2: Angela McLean in a conference room, standing behind a lectern

06

ONFS Prof. Angela McLean: so, Ambient what’s shown here, is footfall at sound: rustling 17 stations across the country, paper counting how many people pass through the month of March. And at the end of March footfall was down 94% compared to the first week of March

SIGNAGE: stay home, Protect the NHS, Save lives; CAPTION: global news

FR2: Angela McLean in a conference room, standing behind a lectern

4 Discussion Students followed the step-by-step procedure of the Messina OVP stages and undertook activities that exercised their digital and linguistic skills in various ways leading up to the final PowerPoint presentation in which each group presented and discussed their video during a seminar. Alongside the Stage 5, the seminar was probably the moment in the project where group work emerged at its best and it became possible to see what types of mechanisms the group followed in preparing their oral presentation. They were given a total of 15–20 min for each oral presentation and were free to decide how to organize their contents, with each student required to present for at least 4 min.

5

4

5

904

905

906

Coronavirus: Italy has extended emergency measures nationwide—BBC News

Coronavirus: Uk announces school closures-BBC News

Coronavirus outbreak: UK health official says spread of COVID-19 not accelerating

WnDSEDkVe8Y

uHZUsgBbgXY

3egDMUbrA98

aN5yPMzp_o4

4

903

Coronavirus Vocabulary| How to talk about the Coronavirus in English

Coronavirus rMRvQatiCBE Explained: why the UK COVID-19 lockdown won’t be lifted yet

3

902

Film link

Video title

Item

Group

22:43

22:43

26:45

19:21

16:40

Duration

Table 3 The “Covid Pandemic in the British Isles” corpus

The Sun

Promoting organisation

General public

General public

English citizens

Mini-lecture

Interview

Type of film

BBC news

BBC News

19.03.2020

08.04.2020

14.03.2020

09.04.2020

Date

Video sharing 10.03.2020 news

Newscast

Global News Conference

Students of English English Language Level Up

Citizens of England

Target audience

BBC news

BBC news

Global news

English language level up

The sun

Produced by

(continued)

England, UK

England, UK

England

England, UK

England, UK

Place

Teaching English Linguistics During the Pandemic: Online Group … 67

Coronavirus: how DSuwaZEF9ZY bad is the situation in Europe?

Coronavirus: is Britain ready? Documentary

Boris Johnson 9EZJnBYMrtQ reveals coronavirus plans—as disease spreads in UK

Coronavirus explained: UK COVID-19 outbreak could see pubs shut until december

Coronavirus: will life under lockdown teach us all to be kinder?—BBC

4

5

4

3

5

908

909

910

911

912

nvLy2q8YrYo

_4qDsAMX9ds

ZBOwFBu05c8

AS1m0lmtDQI

Coronavirus, the basics

4

Film link

907

Video title

Item

Group

Table 3 (continued)

28:04

14:25

23:54

24:53

22:10

20:27

Duration

General public

General public

UK Citizens

General public

General public

General public

Target audience

The BBC

The sun

Channel 4 news

Channel 4 news

BBC

Ali Abdaal

Promoting organisation

Topical debate

Talk radio program

News

Documentary

Breaking news

Vlog

Type of film

10.04.2020

20.04.2020

03.03.2020

14.02.2020

20.03.2020

07.03.2020

Date

The BBC

The sun

Channel 4 news

Channel 4 news

BBC

Ali Abdaal

Produced by

(continued)

UK, England

England, UK

England, UK

England, UK

England, UK

England, UK

Place

68 M. Cambria

Coronavirus: US records highest death toll in single day—BBC News

4

4

4

4

913

914

915

916

AiNNjml4v6w

Eji5EXsQNn4

Film link

Coronavirus: ‘Hundreds of thousands of UK tests within weeks’—BBC News

2TCKKVPwUj8

Coronavirus & Me: Y-GB9EYqAGM Ben Kavanagh’s journey—from quarantine in Wuhan to Wirral

Coronavirus outbreak: UK officials provide update on COVID-19 response

Video title

Item

Group

Table 3 (continued)

24:04

21:52

25:17

22:36

Duration

General public

General public

General audience

General public

Target audience

BBC news

Channel 4 news

Global news

BBC news

Promoting organisation

News

Vlog (Video Blog)

Conference

All-NEWS

Type of film

01.04.2020

13.02.2020

21.03.2020

08.04.2020

Date

BBC news

Ben Kavanagh, channel 4 news

Global news

BBC News

Produced by

(continued)

Downing St, London, UK

Leeds, UK

United Kingdom

England, UK

Place

Teaching English Linguistics During the Pandemic: Online Group … 69

Coronavirus: how afraid should we be? Question Time-BBC

6

4

917

918

Coronavirus update from the first minister: 20 March 2020

Video title

Item

Group

Table 3 (continued)

29:34

30:36

v= iCyOEOIbwLw

Duration

dCZaeLDDeBo

Film link

Scottish population

General audience

Target audience

Scottish Government

BBC

Promoting organisation

Conference

Extract of a TV program

Type of film

20.03.2020

06.03.2020

Date

Scottish Government

BBC

Produced by

Conference room

United Kingdom

Place

70 M. Cambria

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As mentioned above in Sect. 3.2, 17 groups constructed the “The Covid Pandemic in the British Isles” video corpus. Table 3 provides a compact presentation of the corpus. Students were able to consistently approach the topic by choosing videos aligned with “Covid Pandemic” and “The British Isles” from the point of view of the general public. This is in keeping with the demands of period during which the project was carried out, a period in which everyone was looking for information on the effects of Covid via strategies adopted by other countries. The Promoting Organization column reveals a high level of awareness about the reliability of sources: 14 of the 17 videos in the corpus were created by accredited or at least recognized news organizations; two videos are educational videos and one is from an official source, the Scottish government, confirming the students’ desire to draw on as much information as possible from reliable sources. The Type of Film column is particularly interesting from a genre-analysis standpoint since one of the goals of the course was to work on students’ textual awareness, particularly the linguistic elements creating cohesion and coherence. To this extent, their focus on the meaning-making mechanisms leading to the identification of the various features creating a genre is essential so that students may link a specific type of register used for a specific genre (Cambria et al., 2012). The labels used to describe the textual types and their level of delicacy show that second-year language students were not only able to understand what was going on in the video but also that they were aware of the features that characterised a genre but also differentiated one genre from another. This type of genre-awareness also emerged in the oral presentation where students illustrated the genre in detail, often by showing screenshots taken from their videos. In order to explore the first Research Question, i.e., “Did group project work and a step-by-step methodology help in a moment of crisis?”, it is important to clarify the assessment system used during the OVP assignment. Students were given marks for their individual contribution and for the group work in written and oral tasks which meant a total of 4 marks for each student. The final mark was the result of the average of the 4 marks. This type of marking system was made possible thanks to the use of the Drive and the deadlines, as students knew that their individual work was evaluated independently of the group work. They also knew that their individual contribution was essential to obtain a final positive mark in the written language analysis and in the oral presentation where they were assessed both for their individual performance, and as a group for the general content organization of the presentation. The assignment results showed an alignment between the individual marks and the group marks. Only in 6 cases out of 72 was there any significant difference between individual and group performance. As a whole, group project work seems to have helped the students during the Covid crisis, as emerges from the following comments: (…) we enjoyed doing this task, since we had the opportunity to work together and to create a real team, even without the possibility of meeting each other. It was a way to stay in contact and to put into practice what we had already studied. (Group 907)

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M. Cambria Another positive aspect about the project is that we have had video calls almost every day so we have become friends because, in addition to study, we have got the opportunity to know each other better and that’s also why it has been a very complete experience. (Group 908) (…) it was a project that kept us close despite being far apart. (Group 916)

The topic of the corpus also helped students to feel less lonely as they discovered that it was a shared situation: The struggle against this virus has been and still is very difficult not only in Italy but all around the world, in spite of the different approaches to it. Obviously, there are similarities but each country has taken its own restrictions to save its inhabitants. (Group 907) A thing that surprised us is that the video starts with a question and ends in the same way without giving an answer. This video was also exciting because it shows and explains us the situation of this strange period in another country. In this way we understood that in all over the world the coronavirus is a real problem and that only together we can cope with it. (Group 909)

Students also commented on the lockdown: The lockdown worked, many lives were saved and […we…] faced all this because it was a very particular moment for all of us that caused changes and indecisions around the world and sacrifices were made to try to overcome this bad period and start over. This quarantine taught us also the importance of living the people we love, not taking them for granted, to appreciate small things like having breakfast together, or watching a movie together. The video has been interesting because it listed many aspects of the moment we are living. It has pointed out the importance of social media, which are useful to communicate but also for give support to the people. Furthermore, it has explained how difficult was to maintain the routine at the beginning, and about the effort made to keep in contact with people. The particular period we are experiencing must be valued in many aspects. Some of them, especially those relating to abstract elements such as mental health, are often put aside, but greater importance is needed. We had to learn to respect the strict rules, both outside and inside the house, to help those who were in serious difficulties, to be away from those who are dear to us, to face economic difficulties; more or less, for the first time, we all found ourselves in the same situation. Did all this really contribute to being more cohesive, careful and kind? (Group 912)

With regard to Research Question 2 “What learning mechanisms related to English linguistics did group project work trigger”, both the oral presentations and the written language analysis revealed an informed use of terminology when applied to texts, a link between theory and practice: It has been a very interesting initiative because it has allowed us to face a different reality and a particular learning technique we did not know before. We have discovered a new world, we have got even closer to the English language since we have been studying English for about 15 years but always in a more theoretical way. This experience has been useful for the development and the consolidation of our language skills and abilities. (Group 908)

Students also noticed an improvement in their listening abilities and an increase in their awareness about English linguistics:

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We think this project has been very useful for our university career since it has helped us to improve our listening skills, or our pronunciation; we have learned how to work on texts, we know how to identify semantic fields, to analyse them at morphological, lexical and grammatical levels, we are able to recognise all linguistic phenomena. (Group 912) Furthermore, working on a text extrapolated from a video has been interesting and stimulating as we have deepened the analysis of elements that usually do not capture our attention. It has given us a different perspective. (Group 916)

All the groups commented in an appropriate way on lexical and grammar cohesion: We noticed a persistent usage of the following personal pronouns: “we” which creates a sense of community because we all are involved in this dreadful situation since it is a global pandemic; “we” also refers to a specific social context, in this case the British one; “they” is used when they mention several social groups like elderly people, employees, students etc. “I” when doctor Hilary wants to give his personal point of view on different matters. As far as deixis is concerned, there are several place deixis such as “here” and “there” which point out the British context where the virus is spreading over despite the lockdown; other deictics like: “this”/”these”/“that”/ “those”/”the” are frequently used. (Group 911)

5 Conclusions This last comment is a living proof of how it is not only possible but also desirable and beneficial to be able to relate the use of a specific grammar category to more general discourse and genre features. The ability to relate an individual category to ways of organizing and controlling discourse is an indication of a developing critical awareness about text and textuality which is one of the main aims of teaching linguistics. It may give students a key to decipher text and contexts and to understand how meaning-making strategies are at work in media. The use of group project work has also proved valuable in helping students understand the strength and positive outcomes of being together, of trusting others in a period when the world was calling for a desperate isolation.

References Amato, P., & Salza, L. (2021). La fine del mondo. Il Glifo e books. Allam, S., Hassan, M., Mohideen, R., Ramlan, A., & Kamal, R. (2020). Online distance learning during Covid-19 outbreak among undergraduate students. International Journal Academic Research Business Sociology Science, 10, 642–657. Babi´c, Ž, Muhi´c, E., & Tica, D. (2021). Coronavirus discourse of uncertainty in the guise of reassurance: We stand together only when we do not stand apart. The Journal of Teaching English for Specific and Academic Purposes, 9(3), 409–420. Baldry, A., & Kantz, D. (2022). Corpus-assisted approaches to online multimodal discourse analysis of videos. In V. Bonsignori, B. Crawford Camiciottoli, D. Filmer (Eds.), Analyzing multimodality in specialized discourse settings. Innovative research methods and applications (pp. 1–22). Vernon Press.

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Baldry, A., & Thibault, P. (2006). Multimodal transcription and text analysis. A multimedia toolkit with associated on-line course. Equinox. Baldry and Thibault, 2020Baldry, A., & Thibault, P. (2020). A model for multimodal corpus construction of video genres: Phasal analysis and resource integration using OpenMWS. In N. Vasta & A. Baldry (Eds.), Multiliteracy advances and multimodal challenges in ELT environments (pp. 159–173). Forum Editrice. Baldry, A., Coccetta, F., & Kantz, D. (2022). What if? Healthcare simulations, online searchable video corpora and formulating hypotheses. In A. F. Plastina (Ed.), Analysing health discourse in digital environments (pp. 126–146). Cambridge. Baldry, A., Kantz, D., Loiacono, A., Marenzi, I., Taibi, D., & Tursi, F. (2020). The MWSWEB project: Accessing medical discourse in video-hosting websites. Lingue e Linguaggi, 40, 433– 472. Cambria, M., Arizzi, C., & Coccetta, F. (Eds.). (2012). Web genres and web tools. Ibis. Cambria, M. (2020). Lingua Inglese II a.a. 2019/2020 Course syllabus. Retrieved March 23, 2023 from https://archivio.unime.it/it/didattica/offerta_didattica/_offerta/2019/10015/2015/ 9999/3898/N0 Cambria, M. (2023). Learning about schools in the British Isles through a video corpus: Reflections on an online project for digital literacy and multimodal corpus construction. Journal of Elementary Education, 16, 117–135. Coccetta, F. (2022). Multimodal corpora and concordancing in data-driven learning. In R. Jablonkai & E. Csomay (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of corpora in English language teaching and learning (pp. 361–376). Routledge. Halliday, M. A. K., & Hasan, R. (1976). Cohesion in English. Arnold. Jablonkai, R., & Csomay, E. (Eds.). (2022). The Routledge handbook of corpora in English language teaching and learning. Routledge. Poole, R. (2018). A guide to using corpora for English language learners. Edinburgh University Press. Sindoni, M. G., Adami, E., Karatza, S., Marenzi, I., Moschini, I., & Petroni, S. (2019). The common framework of reference for intercultural digital literacies. https://www.eumade4ll.eu/wp-con tent/uploads/2020/02/cfridil-framework-linked-fin1.pdf Taibi, D. (2020). Analysis D: Shaping digital identities through group study: A simulated case study using online tools and videos to explore animal-human interactions. In N. Vasta & A. Baldry (Eds.), Multiliteracy advances and multimodal challenges in ELT environments (pp. 190–195). Forum Editrice. Vasta, N., & Baldry, A. (Eds.). (2020). Multiliteracy advances and multimodal challenges in ELT environments. Forum.

Mariavita Cambria (M.Phil, Ph.D.) is Associate Professor in English Language and Linguistics at the University of Messina (Italy). Her research interests include critical discourse analysis, multimodality, Irish studies, genre analysis, corpus linguistics and contemporary varieties of English (Irish English). She has published extensively on discourse analysis, multimodality, online newspapers, corpus linguistics and Irish English. She is on the editorial board of the international journals Im@go. The journal of the social imaginary and K Revue trans-européenne de philosophie et arts and is in the board of Directors of the International Research Centre “LinE—Language in education” (https://languageineducation.eu/en/). She has published three books and has coedited Web Genres and Web Tools (2012) and Unrepresenting the Great War. New Approaches to the Centenary (2018).

Methodological Proposal for the Teaching, Learning and Evaluation of Syntax in Secondary School in Bilingual Contexts Antoni Brosa-Rodríguez and María José Rodríguez-Campillo

Abstract The teaching of syntax is typically a complex and controversial issue in secondary school classrooms. Moreover, in schools in bilingual areas, the problem is aggravated. Students usually feel confused between two languages. As we believe bilingualism benefits linguistic knowledge, in this paper, we propose a set of guidelines to improve the teaching of syntax in bilingual schools (in our case, in Catalonia, Spain). Subsequently, we show how the implementation of our proposal has developed. The data obtained from our study guarantee that greater coordination between teachers of different languages and a more proficiency-based perspective improves students’ results. We also provide data detailed by gender, level of proficiency in the two languages as L1 and educational profile (humanistic or scientific). In all three distinctions, an education with a bilingual emphasis and comparison is more beneficial than the traditional methodology, which has continued to be used in the control group of our study. Keywords Syntax · Methodology · Bilingualism

1 Introduction Syntactic knowledge is one of the most salient aspects in language classes in the Spanish education system. The topic is introduced in a general way in elementary education. Subsequently, in secondary education, different aspects are worked on each year so that pupils become familiar with the syntax of their language (Spanish in our case). In the first four years, the aim is usually to master the simple sentence and, in the last two years, to master complex sentences. A. Brosa-Rodríguez (B) · M. J. Rodríguez-Campillo Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain e-mail: [email protected] M. J. Rodríguez-Campillo e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk and M. Trojszczak (eds.), Language in Educational and Cultural Perspectives, Second Language Learning and Teaching, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-38778-4_4

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However, syntax is often quite problematic for students and teachers. Most students never master syntax with certainty (although syntactic analysis is repeated every year) and have an aversion to syntax. Syntax is considered boring, and most teachers tend to take a traditional approach when teaching it. In the Spanish educational context, the teaching of syntax has evolved from traditional to contemporary practices. In bilingual areas of Spain, such as Galicia, Basque Country, Navarre, Catalonia, Valencia, and the Balearic Islands, the challenge is amplified, as the same content must be taught in both Spanish and the regional language. Therefore, a Galician student, for example, must demonstrate proficiency in the syntax of both Spanish and Galician equally. As more time is devoted to teaching in these regions, and content is repeated, there is a greater willingness to innovate and adopt a more contemporary approach. This approach emphasizes the active participation of students, encouraging them to create sentences and justify their choices. In fact, in many bilingual regions, the assessment of competencies is now required to ensure a fair evaluation of the different skills that students acquire, rather than solely focusing on syntactic labelling. The traditional approach is based on getting to know syntax through the systematic analysis of sentences. Therefore, the most recurrent image is a photocopy with 50 or 100 sentences that must be labelled. Each day a certain number of these sentences are analysed and corrected. This practice makes syntax perceived as useless and boring. Moreover, pupils tend to experience more confusion between the two languages in bilingual areas. Lack of proficiency leads to confusion. Nowadays, many aspects of language teaching (L1 or L2) are being adapted to new methodologies. Generally, these new approaches (such as cooperative learning, task-based learning or problem-based learning, for example) make the content more attractive to the learner. In addition, the aim is for the learner to play a leading and active role in the whole teaching–learning process. The activities carried out are more varied, authentic, and flexible to be useful for students’ learning, in accordance with “personality factors in learning” (Ausubel et al., 1978, pp. 391–415). In the case of syntax, we are also gradually seeing attempts to propose such change (López Valero et al., 2017). However, it is more complicated to implement. Most of the innovations come from Spanish as a Foreign Language methodologies. Syntax is not usually worked on explicitly in these classes, as it is not viewed as relevant content. We believe that the knowledge of more than one language should not be detrimental to learners. On the contrary, it is beneficial for grammatical knowledge. Moreover, this also means that more hours are spent on teaching language content. Therefore, the first aim of this study is to detect problems related to the teaching of syntax in bilingual contexts (Catalonia). Subsequently, we want to propose methodological changes to improve the learning process. Then, we will try to implement our proposal in a specific context. Finally, we will evaluate the positive and negative aspects of our implementation.

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2 Syntax, Bilingualism, and Teaching Although the explicit teaching of syntax in each country is different and depends on the tradition of each country, it is an aspect that should always be considered. Many studies have shown that a greater knowledge regarding the functioning of syntax has a positive influence on other language skills. In the case of bilingual speakers, mastering it grants an even broader knowledge. As an example, the recent study by Sohail et al. (2022) shows how explicit syntactic knowledge in bilingual speakers improves their reading comprehension. Many monolingual regions are trying to create a similar environment to take advantage of these benefits. In the case of Spain, we can mention the region of Madrid. In this region, only Spanish is spoken, but many of the schools have a bilingual model with English, comparable to that found in dual-language regions. Several studies that have been carried out to assess the suitability of this approach show positive results. For example, Madrid and Corral (2018) show the results of a comparative study between students in the bilingual plan and students who have received the same content in a monolingual mode. In general, it can be observed that language skills and knowledge are higher when it comes to bilingual students. Some authors relativise these results. In the case of Thordardottir et al. (2015, pp. 440–443), it is evident that working linguistically in a bilingual mode versus a monolingual mode is more beneficial, but not drastically so. The significant change, according to them, can be seen in vocabulary. The improvement in syntax exists, but it is not very pronounced. We should not ignore the negative aspects of knowing deeply more than one language. Although in this study, we did not assess how much transfer there is, especially in close languages, several experiments show how syntax is affected. For example, Hatzidaki et al. (2011) offer 4 different experiments that review these contaminations. Other research, such as that of Golestani et al. (2006), also shows the different problems that appear in the syntax of bilingual speakers but not native ones (or not with a deep knowledge of one of the two languages). Another critical aspect of the literature is bilingual speakers’ shared syntactic knowledge base. Beyond general considerations already known from generativism, different studies investigate what is known as syntactic prime (Hartsuiker et al., 2004). These authors develop the assumption that basic syntactic knowledge is shared and demonstrate it with an experiment on bilingual Spanish and English speakers. Therefore, if we accept this proposal as valid, our methodology, designed to highlight the benefits of cross-linguistic comparison of official languages in a territory, will allow us to reinforce the content of both languages. However, language or linguistic results in different external tests (PISA or university access exam, for example) show that bilingual territories in Spain, for example, perform worse than most monolingual territories (Ministry of Education and Vocational Training, 2022).

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2.1 The Spanish Education System Although Spain is a multilingual country, until 1978, education was mainly in Spanish. As Huguet (2004) points out, from the constitution of that year onwards, two aspects were safeguarded: the security of teaching in Spanish throughout the territory as an integrating language and the guarantee of the teaching of regional languages. In addition, educational competencies were transferred to the different regions. Therefore, each region decides what methodology to use and how to teach. In the case of Spain, there is a tendency towards learning through “linguistic immersion”: content is taught in the less predominant language, and, in addition, there is explicit grammatical teaching of both languages. This means that the same linguistic content is repeated in both languages. In the case of Romance languages such as Galician or Catalan, this explanation will be very similar. This proximity favours the comparison between languages. On the other hand, in the case of Basque, an isolated language, there are fewer points in common, and the differences must be emphasised. Many authors have long commented on the lack of consensus in Spanish classrooms (Castellà Lidón, 1994). Although they have been widely analysed, these traditional problems have not been solved. The two official languages of each region are still taught in Spanish bilingual classrooms in isolation and independently.

2.2 Methodological Innovations in Teaching Syntax In addition to analyses denouncing this more traditional tendency in the teaching of syntax, various proposals also appear in the literature that attempt to update the teaching of syntax in Spanish (Bosque & Gutiérrez-Rexach, 2011; Delicia, 2016). These innovations mainly focus on proposals to adapt to a more competency-based model. The most notable aspect is the change in the typology of activities. In recent years there have been many proposals (such as cooperative learning, task-based learning or problem-based learning, for example) which recommend more challenging activities for students. In addition, the motivational aspect of the students is also considered. Little by little, these types of activities are being implemented in classrooms, although this is not a general rule. There is not much emphasis on the aspect of comparison between languages in bilingual territories. The proposals are likely intended to be more general and do not focus so much on specific contexts. There is no evidence of implementing these proposals in the literature. To confirm this, we have analysed the situation of a specific school as an example.

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3 Analysis of How Syntax is Taught Once we had reviewed the literature, we decided to conduct a face-to-face study in a secondary school by direct observation. The main objective is to characterise syntactic teaching in the different languages of the secondary school. Our goal is to identify areas for improvement so that we can propose actions to strengthen syntactic teaching. In this school in Tarragona (Spain), Catalan, Spanish, English and German are taught. Catalan and Spanish are taught as native languages, and each language is taught 3 h per week. All other subjects are taught in Catalan. English is taught, on average, 2 h per week. The level of teaching is between A2 and B1. Lessons are conducted in a mixture of English and Catalan. German is taught as an optional subject in the final years (2 h per week). The level is A1, and is taught in Catalan language. Grammatical content (and literature) is worked on in the Catalan and Spanish classes. In English and German classes, the approach is more communicative. In the Catalan and Spanish subjects, the content is the same. In other words, the grammar topics taught are duplicated in both languages equally. The proximity between the two languages means that the importance given to the different aspects is the same. The textbooks used in all courses are from the same publisher (in both languages). As far as syntax is concerned, only information on the simple sentence is provided in the first three years. In the fourth year, aspects of the complex sentence are introduced. Complex syntax is worked on in the remaining two years (preparation for university). Since there are different courses, we decided to focus on the second year because they have already been able to work on some syntactic aspects, but they still must learn more.

3.1 Syntax in Spanish in the Second year The syntactic content appears in the central part of the textbook. Syntax is spread over different units; it is not concentrated. The following functions are covered: complemento directo (direct object), complemento indirecto (indirect object), atributo (attribute), oraciones pasivas/complemento agente (passive sentences/ agent), complemento de regimen verbal (prepositional object), complementos circunstanciales (circumstantial complements), complemento predicativo (predicative). In all cases, a brief theoretical definition is given. Afterwards, there are some examples. Then, there is a list of exercises. There are always between 6 and 8 exercises. Most of the exercises ask students to analyse sentences thoroughly. The first exercises ask students to analyse only the underlined parts. Occasionally, an exercise presents a series of sentences, and the learner is asked to identify content of all the sentences with a specific function.

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There is no explicit explanation of the criteria to be followed to identify a particular function. Nor is there any mention of what happens in other languages. There is no link between syntax and other language modules. Nor is there any link between the usefulness of syntactic knowledge and its impact on and benefits for the language. The sentences used as examples are all quite general, of little significance to learners, and open to criticism from a gender perspective. For example, one of the sentences that students are asked to analyse is “Ana did not remember to wash the trousers”. The teaching of syntax is not only based on the coursebook. Teachers also provide students with a photocopy of 50 sentences to analyse. A complete analysis, including morphological analysis, is required. Typically, the photocopy is analysed after looking at the syntax in the coursebook. It is used as homework for practice at home. The sentences are taken from the Internet, and some are further modified or added. A random student goes to the board to write an analysis of one of the sentences they had as homework. The teacher then corrects it and discusses the results with the rest of the class.

3.2 Syntax in Catalan in the Second year The syntactic content appears in the central part of the textbook. Syntax is spread over different units; it is not concentrated. The following functions are worked on: objecte directe (direct object), objecte indirecte (indirect object), atribut (attribute), oracions passives/complement agent (passive sentences/agent), complement preposicional (prepositional object/complement), complements circumstancials (circumstantial complements). There is no mention about the predicative complement. It should be noted that the nouns used are different from those used in Spanish, even though there are also some nouns in Catalan that are the same as in Spanish. In all cases, a brief theoretical definition is given. Subsequently, some examples of this complement are given. There are also examples of how this complement can be substituted pronominally (if it can be). Finally, we can find the exercises. The number of exercises is irregular, depending on the topic. Most of the exercises ask students to analyse sentences in their entirety. The first exercises ask them to analyse only the underlined sentences. There is also an exercise that asks them to replace the underlined syntagm with an appropriate pronoun in some cases. Occasionally, an exercise presents a series of sentences, and the learner is asked to identify all the sentences with a particular function. There is no explicit explanation of the criteria to identify a particular function, except for pronominal substitution. Nor is there any mention of what happens in other languages. No link is made between syntax and other language modules. Nor is the usefulness of syntactic knowledge linked to its impact on and benefits for the language. The sentences used as examples are all quite general, of little significance to learners, and open to criticism from a gender perspective in some cases. Syntax teaching is not only based on the textbook; teachers dictate some sentences to the students to do as homework. Syntactic but not morphological analysis is

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required. The sentences are taken from the Internet, and some are further modified or added. A random student goes to the blackboard to write an analysis of one of the sentences they had as homework. The teacher then corrects it and discusses the results with the rest of the class.

4 Proposal for Bilingual Contexts In general, we have seen a rather classical approach to learning syntax. The main interest is in analysing sentences (Gumiel Molina, 2014). The role of the student is passive. There is no coordination between departments. Therefore, we will propose some changes to work on syntax in a coordinated and more meaningful way in a bilingual environment. We hypothesise that, with these changes, students will show a greater mastery of syntax. Firstly, terminology should be unified. Two languages as close as Catalan and Spanish, which have the same terminology, to avoid unnecessary confusion among students. It has been decided to adopt the word “complement” instead of “object” because it applies to more situations. We have also opted for “prepositional complement” because it is more transparent for learners than “verbal regime complement”. Whenever it is impossible to equate labels, the differences between languages should be emphasised. The techniques used to teach syntax should also be unified. It is confusing for students to work with different methods to obtain the same result in syntax. In short, each school should adopt a common position on any existing ways of analysing a sentence, assess their positive and negative points and use one of them as the approach that students will see. Secondly, the same content should be explained at the same level. Therefore, we propose that the predicative complement should also be explained in Catalan, even if it does not appear in the textbook, to avoid confusion among students. In the same way, a plan should be agreed upon to extend the content if necessary, so as not to work at different paces. Thirdly, grammatical content should be explained in both languages simultaneously. In other words, we propose to explain in Spanish class what the direct complement is like in Spanish and Catalan. This fact forces the teacher to constantly compare the two languages to make it clear to the students what points there are in common and what differences there are. We believe that some comparisons with English should be made. For example, in the case of explaining passive sentences, it is always necessary to mention the agent complement and what form it takes. It will constantly be introduced by a preposition, which will not change, thus allowing its identification. In this case, it is easy to indicate that this preposition will be “por” in Spanish, “per” in Catalan, and “by” in English. The relationship with languages that are less like Spanish but which they can also know helps solidify the linguistic knowledge that these students have, as they must make the cognitive effort of abstraction (Cifuentes Honrubia, 2012).

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Fourthly, explanations must also be unified. In other words, the same resources for identifying a grammatical function must be offered in both languages. In the case of Spanish, no resources are usually offered from a formal perspective. In the case of Catalan, only pronominal substitution is offered. We propose that in both languages, students should work on identifying syntagms correctly using tools such as pronominal substitution and concordance. Providing students with objective tools to understand the syntax of a sentence should also be done in monolingual schools (Mangado Martínez, 2002). However, we could see that it was not practised in the school where the observation of classes took place. Fifthly, we believe that the competences sought in the activities should change. The goal always tends to be parsing, which should be understood as a simple identification of labels. More exciting and cognitively challenging aspects, such as justification or creation, are not usually expected. Therefore, we propose that each of the activities be consistent with Bloom’s taxonomy’s updated proposal (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001). In other words, one should start with identification exercises, as is already done, but there should be more stringent requirements, such as the justification of the choice (Lozano Jaén, 2012). In addition, the sentences that teachers should create for themselves to work on should be more original and linked to the reality of the students (Bianchi & de los Ángeles, 2014). This small change can help to improve teenagers’ motivation. Subsequently, learners should be asked to create sentences containing certain functions or structures themselves, also known as reverse analysis (Bosque & Gallego, 2016). They should also be asked to justify why they have chosen that a certain syntagm is performing a specific function. This justification should always include a reflection by the teacher (or learners) on whether the situation is the same in the other language they know or how it would be different (Cantero, 2008; Gómez Torrego, 2012). In activities which are also recommended, such as minimal pairs of sentences, comparisons can be made between the two languages. In other words, the aim is to reinforce knowledge of one’s language by comparison with the other known language. In fact, in many of Spain’s bilingual regions, such as Catalonia, it has been compulsory for a few years now to assess competences (Departament d’Ensenyament de la Generalitat de Catalunya, 2017, 2018; Sanmartí, 2010). In other words, the different skills that we want to work on with the students in the exercises must be qualified for an exam. In this way, the assessment will be fairer as the students will have done exercises on different competencies that will then be assessed and not just on syntactic labelling.

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5 Implementation of the Proposal Once we have seen the proposal we plan to work with syntax in bilingual classrooms, we are going to see the suitability of the proposal through its implementation in a specific school. To do so, we present the following methodological design, from a quantitative approach.

5.1 Research Questions The main objective of the pilot study conducted in a specific school is to determine whether an innovative methodology, as described above, can enhance the syntactic and linguistic knowledge of students. However, we also aim to investigate whether this methodology is particularly advantageous for a specific group of learners. To achieve this, we pose the following questions: ● Is this approach to syntax equally effective for boys and girls? ● Is this approach to syntax equally beneficial for individuals who have learned the language later in life? ● Is this approach to syntax equally positive for students with a stronger preference or background in science or humanities? While our initial hypothesis suggests no significant differences between the two groups, we will verify this through various tests.

5.2 Participants This proposal has been implemented in a secondary school in the city of Tarragona (Spain), in the region of Catalonia, where both Catalan and Spanish are official languages. The research was conducted with second-year students. The duration of the implementation of our proposal (the time span between the pre-test and the posttest) was 1 month. The research has been possible thanks to the participation of 2 groups. One of the groups was randomly selected as the study group, and the next group was the control group. Therefore, the proposal was implemented in the first group, and both groups’ starting point, evolution, and endpoint have been compared. Both groups have similar characteristics and are demographically similar. Students in this year’s class are 13 and 14 years old (except for two teenagers who are 15 years old, one in each group). The two classrooms are composed of 28 students. The experimental group class (or class 1) consists of 12 girls and 16 boys. The control group class (or class 2) consists of 13 girls and 15 boys. In class 1, there are 22 students born in Catalonia (therefore, they are always schooled in a bilingual system). 2 teenagers come from another part of Spain and, therefore,

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have had to learn Catalan afterwards. 4 students come from outside Spain: 2 from Morocco, 1 from China, and 1 from the UK. In class 2 there are also 22 students born in Catalonia. There is 1 teenager from another part of Spain. 5 students are from outside Spain: 3 from Morocco, 1 from Senegal, and 1 from Germany. In class 1, there are 13 teenagers with a humanistic profile and 15 with a scientific profile. In class 2, there are 16 students with a humanistic profile and 12 with a scientific profile.

5.3 Procedures Given the risk that a sample of 56 subjects could be considered small, we follow objective criteria for the significance of the sample. To ensure that the results can be extrapolated to other contexts and are not caused by chance, we have set a significance level (p < 0,05) that allows us to avoid sampling errors. Results with a p-value above this threshold will be deemed inconclusive. Firstly, we will carry out a pre-test to obtain quantitative and objective data on the starting point of the two groups. Secondly, we will follow up during the month of implementation to obtain data on the implementation carried out. Finally, we will conduct a post-test to obtain quantitative and objective data on the margin of improvement of the two groups depending on the methodology used. The pre-test was designed considering the knowledge worked on in the previous year. The students were not asked about activities related to more cognitively demanding competencies because they would not be able to give an adequate response to them. Likewise, the post-test design has been made considering the activities related to competencies that both groups (experimental and control) know. For example, it would be false and would distort the results to ask for a reverse analysis. The experimental group would have worked on it in class, while the control group did not. Therefore, the content of the final test is based on aspects that both groups have worked on during that month. Since the implementation has been carried out in the Catalan and Spanish subjects, half of the test corresponds to one language and the other half to the other language. The test contains 10 exercises of 1 point each. The first exercises ask students to identify the underlined syntagm’s function correctly. In the last exercises, a complete sentence analysis is required. In other words, the requirement is the same as the activities in the coursebook that are typically used.

5.4 Findings The results obtained will be presented divided into the variables in question.

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General Results

The overall data comparing the pre-test and post-test of the experimental and control groups shows that our proposal offers significant improvements. The mean of the pre-test in the experimental group is 3,75. The pre-test mean of the control group is 3,89. The mean of the post-test in the experimental group is 7,71. The mean of the post-test in the control group is 5,42. The difference is below the set threshold (p < 0,05); therefore, these data are not random and they actually show significance. These means are summarised in Table 1. As can be seen in Figs. 1 and 2, the dispersion in the 4 tests is very similar. In the case of the pre-tests of the two groups, the dispersion is shared, ranging from 0 to 7 points. However, the post-test shifts the results from 4 to 10 points in the experimental group. In the case of the control group, the result ranges from 2 to 9 points. On the vertical axis, there is the number of students who obtained a specific result. On the horizontal axis, there are different possible results obtained in the test. As can be seen, the starting point between the two groups is similar. Both start from the same knowledge. Apart from the slight difference in the mean, the dispersion is the same. It is also important to note that the most common result in both pre-tests Table 1 Overall mean

Fig. 1 Pre-test & post-test results in the experimental group

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5,42

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is a 4. This mark means that most students would fail a hypothetical exam. It should be remembered that the contents asked about are contents they worked on in the previous year. Therefore, the previous way of teaching syntax presents problems. In the case of the post-tests, the difference between the two groups is evident. The experimental group shows noticeable (and statistically significant) improvements. These improvements mean that the change of the teaching method is beneficial for the students. The control group also shows improvements, but they are much lower. Then, the usual methodology is not as effective. The most common post-test score of the experimental group is 8, whereas in the post-test of the control group it amounts to 5. Furthermore, few people fail the test in the case of the experimental group, while there are still quite a few failures in the group with the traditional methodology. Not only can most students demonstrate much better knowledge, but students with more difficulties can improve their results. It is also important to remember that the object of study of the post-test is the same as that of the pre-test. This means that, although the experimental group has worked in a more varied and demanding way, the level of demand for the test has not changed. The questions are of the same nature as those of the pre-test. In summary, the proposed proposal offered in this study has been successful. However, we should not forget that the sample is small and therefore we should check in the future whether the results are extendable to other contexts.

5.4.2

Gender

The first social variable considered is gender. The main reason is to check whether the proposed methodology and the traditional methodology tend to benefit one of the two genders more or not. The mean pre-test of the boys in the experimental group is 4,06. The mean pre-test of the girls in the experimental group is 3,33. In the pre-test of the control group, the boys obtained an average of 3,66, and the girls obtained an average of 4,15. In the experimental group’s post-test, the boys obtained an average score of 7,68 and the girls 7,75. The boys in the control group scored 5,26 on average, while the girls scored 5,61 on average. These data are summarised in Table 2. The differences between social groups are not statistically significant. Therefore, it is not sure that this development has significant differences. The detailed data and the dispersion can be seen in Figs. 3, 4, 5 and 6. Table 2 Gender

Group

Pre-test

Post-test

Experimental Boys

4,05

7,68

Experimental girls

3,33

7,75

Control boys

3,66

5,26

Control girls

4,15

5,61

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Fig. 5 Pre-test & post-test results in the control group (boys)

Girls - Control Group 5

0 0

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Fig. 6 Pre-test & post-test results in the control group (girls)

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There are no significant differences between the two groups in the experimental group. In both cases, in the pre-test, the most common result is a score of 4 points, and in the post-test, 8 points. The observable trend is the same, and there are no differences. It is noteworthy that the girls in this group start with a lower score in the pre-test, and, on the other hand, in the post-test, they can match the boys’ score (or even slightly surpass it). In the case of the control group, there are no notable differences between the two groups either. In this case, the most frequent is to go from a score of 3–4 points to 5 points. The dispersion is the same. The results are balanced and homogeneous.

5.4.3

Proficiency

The most crucial social variable is the proficiency difference between speakers who have known the two languages since childhood and immigrant students. Our proposal is based mainly on the help that a second language can offer to reinforce knowledge of the target language. Therefore, it is interesting to see if there are differences in those teenagers who have learned these two languages later. For this purpose, we show the data collected in Figs. 7, 8, 9 and 10. We also provide beforehand Table 3, in which the averages of all groups are shown. First, it should be mentioned that, as can be seen on the vertical axis, the sample is tiny, especially in the case of bilingual learners as L2. The aspect that is perhaps

Proficiency L1 – Experimental Group 10 5 0 0

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Fig. 7 Pre-test & post-test results in the experimental group (proficiency L1)

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Fig. 8 Pre-test & post-test results in the experimental group (profifiency L2)

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Proficiency L1 – Control Group 10 5 0 0

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Fig. 9 Pre-test & post-test results in the control group (proficiency L1)

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Fig. 10 Pre-test & post-test results in the control group (proficiency L2)

Table 3 Proficiency

Group

Pre-test

Post-test

Experimental L1

3,81

8

Experimental L2

3,5

6,66

Control L1

3,81

5,68

Control L2

4,16

4,5

most striking and clearly shows a trend is a comparison between bilingual learners as L2 between the experimental and control groups. This analysis aimed to check whether our proposal based on the simultaneous teaching of syntax in several languages also helped learners who acquired these languages later (and in some cases, not as deeply). It can be seen from the comparison in Figs. 7 and 8 that all the students in the experimental group improved their results equally. The trend is the same. Therefore, the methodology is also helpful for learners who know Catalan and Spanish as L2. On the other hand, the data in Figs. 9 and 10 show that this is not the case for the control group. In the case of L1 learners, most of them show improvement after 1 month of working on syntax with the usual methodology. On the other hand, only 1 of the L2 students manages to improve after this month. The rest of the students do not improve their results.

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Profile

Traditionally, syntax has been considered one of the most accessible and attractive aspects for students with a scientific profile (Chomsky & Gallego, 2020). Therefore, we decided to investigate whether students with a scientific profile show better results in the pre-test. We also want to check whether they show better results in the post-test and, therefore, a better evolution. We first review the experimental group and then the control group as well. The results can be seen in Figs. 11, 12, 13 and 14. Also, we attach Table 4, in which the averages are shown.

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Fig. 11 Pre-test & post-test results in the experimental group (humanistic)

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Fig. 12 Pre-test & post-test results in the control group (humanistic)

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Fig. 13 Pre-test & post-test results in the experimental group (scientific)

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Scientific – Control Group 8 6 4 2 0 0

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Fig. 14 Pre-test & post-test results in the control group (scientific)

Table 4 Profile

Group

Pre-test

Post-test

Experimental humanistic

4,15

7,3

Experimental scientific

3,4

8,13

Control humanistic

4,43

5,68

Control scientific

3,5

5,08

5.5 Discussion In general, as shown in the figures, gender did not have a significant impact on the results. None of the groups showed a significant change that could lead to such a conclusion. However, it could be said that the proposed methodology helps to homogenise the results of the experimental group and to bridge the previously existing differences. As seen, girls had lower results in the pre-test, but in the post-test, they can slightly outperform the boys. However, in the case of the control group, this tendency is not so pronounced. The more central and balanced results in the control group case indicate a lower evolution in both girls and boys. In short, given the small sample we have and the not very different results, it is impossible to draw any definite conclusions about the different impact of this methodology on genders. Although we can highlight trends, they are not sufficiently clear. Therefore, we must state that this methodology positively influences both boys and girls equally. There is no gender distinction. According to our data, it appears that our proposal is beneficial for students who acquire bilingualism later. Furthermore, we must emphasize that our proposal was successful, especially considering that the control group did not experience the same benefits. However, we would like to remind readers that the sample size is small, and therefore the results are not definitive. These findings should be compared with other samples in the future. It should be noted that it is evident that students with a humanistic profile perform better than students with a more scientific profile in the pre-test. However, the results are not very different. This, together with the sample size, means that it is not possible to state with certainty that there is a clear correlation. The trend is also

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worth mentioning: the best results were always found in the students with a humanistic profile in the experimental group. On the other hand, most of the highest marks are produced by students with a scientific profile in the final test. In contrast, in the case of the control group, the results are more homogeneous, and there is less dispersion. Moreover, in this case, in both tests, students with a more humanistic profile are the ones who obtain better results. In summary, we tend to see how the methodology used for 1 month benefits students with a scientific profile. However, these data are not very radical and, therefore, it is simply a trend that can be seen.

6 Conclusions In conclusion, the present study has demonstrated that the traditional approach to teaching syntax in bilingual contexts has much room for improvement. Our analysis revealed that the lack of variety in skills taught and the resulting monotony are significant issues in the current educational approach. Moreover, the bilingual context of regions like Catalonia leads to additional problems, including confusion between languages due to the lack of a unified and integrated approach to teaching. To address these issues, we proposed a series of changes to the methodology of teaching syntax in language subjects, specifically designed for a bilingual context. Our proposed changes aim to unify the syntactic terminology in all the languages of the school, explain the same content at the same level in all the languages, teach syntactic content in both official languages simultaneously, base explanations on objective identification criteria, constant comparisons between languages, emphasize exceptions, and analyze different examples. Additionally, we recommend offering students a single system of syntactic analysis and creating varied activities with different cognitive demands based on competencies. To evaluate the effectiveness of our proposed changes, we implemented them in a real bilingual school in Tarragona and monitored their impact. We divided the school into two groups, with one group serving as the experimental group and the other as the control group. We administered an initial test and a final test to both groups to collect data for analysis. The results show that the group that followed our proposed changes obtained significantly better results than the control group. The experimental group’s average score increased from 3.75 to 7.71, while the control group’s average score increased only from 3.89 to 5.42. These findings suggest that the proposed changes are beneficial for students, and we recommend that teachers consider these guidelines in their teaching methodologies. Furthermore, we investigated whether success was cross-sectional or specific to a particular group by analyzing different social variables. The data revealed that our proposed changes were equally beneficial to boys and girls, bilingual students as L1, and pupils who are bilingual as L2. The changes also helped students with a more humanistic profile and those with a more scientific profile. However, we observed a

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slight tendency for the changes to be more helpful for girls and students with a more scientific profile, particularly when compared to the control group. Although the data support the suitability of our proposed changes, there is still room for improvement. We acknowledge that implementing changes involving different teachers and levels requires a great deal of coordination and involvement. Additionally, it would be ideal to evaluate the results of students at all levels after having studied with this methodology. Therefore, we recommend conducting a more extended analysis over time, taking into account all the courses, to evaluate the school’s overall approach. We believe that secondary schools should make a greater effort to have very clear guidelines that all teachers should follow, regardless of their background or subject area. These agreements or consensuses in the linguistic field could even be made public, facilitating coordination between teachers and ensuring a more effective and integrated approach to teaching. Moreover, we recommend conducting a follow-up study after a few months to determine whether the benefits observed in the post-test are lasting or fade over time. We believe that by using the bilingual factor as an advantage for the pupils, we can achieve even better results. Although the data shown support the proposal’s suitability and, therefore, we recommend it, some aspects could be improved. We are aware that a proposal of this kind, where different teachers or levels are involved, requires a great deal of coordination and involvement. Moreover, it would be ideal to see the results of these students after having studied at all levels with this methodology. For this reason, our prospects are to try to carry out a more lasting analysis over time, taking into account all the courses. In this way, the school’s approach could be evaluated. We believe that if we can already see positive signs in such a concrete intervention, by using the bilingual factor as an advantage for the pupils, the results would be much better. To this end, we believe that secondary schools need to make a greater effort from an organisational point of view. We believe that it is necessary for each school to have very clear (and agreed) guidelines. These should be followed by all teachers, no matter who they are. These agreements or consensus in the linguistic field could even be made public. In addition, we are also aware that a study of these students is necessary after some time. For example, it would be interesting to carry out another test after 6 months to check whether the benefits observed in the post-test are lasting or, on the contrary, fade away over time.

References Anderson, L., & Krathwohl, D. (2001). A Taxonomy for learning, teaching and assessing: A revision of Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives. Longman. Ausubel, D., Novak, J., & Hanesian, H. (1978). Educational psychology: A cognitive view. Hold, Rinehart & Winston. Bianchi, M., & de los Ángeles (2014). ¿Para qué sirve la gramática?, Textos de Didáctica de la Lengua y de la Literatura, 67(1), 1–10.

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Bosque, I., & Gallego, Á. (2016). La aplicación de la gramática en el aula. Recursos didácticos clásicos y modernos para la enseñanza de la gramática, Revista de Lingüística Teórica y Aplicada, 54(1), 63–83. Bosque, I., & Gutiérrez-Rexach, J. (2011). Fundamentos de sintaxis formal. Akal. Cantero, M. T. (2008). Enseñanza dinámica de la sintaxis I. Castalia Didáctica. Castellà Lidon, J. M. (1994). ¿Qué gramática enseñar para la escuela? Sobre árboles, gramáticas y otras formas de andarse por las ramas. Textos de Didáctica de la Lengua y de la Literatura, 2, 15–24. Chomsky, N., & Gallego, Á. (2020). La facultad humana del lenguaje: Un objeto biológico, una ventana hacia la menta y un puente entre disciplinas. Revista Española De Lingüística, 50(1), 7–34. Cifuentes Honrubia, J. L. (2012). Atribución y sus límites: Atributo, predicativo y complemento de modo. ELUA, 26, 89–144. Delicia, D. D. (2016). Desarrollo de la sintaxis, argumentación y orientaciones en la enseñanza de la lengua. Forma y Función, 28, 135–153. Departament d’Ensenyament de la Generalitat de Catalunya. (2017). El currículum de l’Educació Secundària Obligatòria. Curs 2017–2018. Àmbit Lingüístic. Retrieved from: http://xtec.gencat. cat/web/.content/curriculum/eso/curriculum2015/documents/ANNEX-3-Ambit-lingueistic.pdf Departament d’Ensenyament de la Generalitat de Catalunya. (2018). El currículum competencial a l’aula: Una eina per a la reflexió pedagógica i la programació a l’ESO. Retrieved from: http:// xtec.gencat.cat/web/.content/curriculum/eso/orientacions/20180302ProgramacionsESO.pdf Golestani, N., Alario, F.-X., Meriaux, S., Le Bihan, D., Dehaene, S., & Pallier, C. (2006). Syntax production in bilinguals. Neuropsychologia, 44, 1029–1040. Gómez Torrego, L. (2012). Análisis sintáctico: Teoría y práctica. SM. Gumiel Molina, S. (2014). Las relaciones entre léxico y sintaxis: planteamiento e implicaciones didácticas. Linred, 12. http://www.linred.es/monograficos_pdf/LR_monografico12-articulo2. pdf Hartsuiker, R. J., Pickering, M. J., & Velkamp, E. (2004). Is syntax separate or shared between languages? Psychological Science, 15(6), 409–414. Hatzidaki, A., Branigan, H. P., & Pickering, M. J. (2011). Co-activation of syntax in bilingual language production. Cognitive Psychology, 62, 123–150. Huguet, Á. (2004). La educación bilingüe en el Estado español: Situación actual y perspectivas. Cultura y Educación, 16(4), 399–418. López Valero, A., Encabo Fernández, E., & Jerez Martínez, I. (2017). Didáctica de la lengua y la literatura en ESO, innovación e investigación. Síntesis. Lozano Jaén, G. (2012). Cómo enseñar y aprender sintaxis (modelos, teorías y prácticas según el grado de dificultad. Cátedra Lingüística. Madrid, D., & Corral Robles, S. (2018). La competencia escrita de alumnos de programas bilingües y no bilingües de educación secundaria. Revista Mexicana De Investigación Educativa, 76(23), 179–202. Mangado Martínez, J. J. (2002). Un modelo de análisis sintáctico paso a paso. Contextos Educativos, 5, 41–56. Ministerio de Educación y Formación Profesional. (2022). PISA. Retrieved from https://www.edu cacionyfp.gob.es/inee/evaluaciones-internacionales/pisa.html Sanmartí, N. (2010). Avaluar per aprendre: l’avaluació per millorar els aprenentatges de l’alumnat en el marc del currículum per competències. http://xtec.gencat.cat/web/.content/alfresco/d/ d/workspace/SpacesStore/0024/fc53024f-626e-423b-877a-932148c56075/avaluar_per_apr endre.pdf Sohail, J., Sorenson Duncan, T., Wee Koh, P., Deacon, S. H., & Chen, X. (2022). How syntactic awareness might influence reading comprehension in English-French bilingual children. Reading and Writing, 35, 1289–1313.

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Thordardottir, E., Cloutier, G., Ménard, S., Pelland-Blais, E., & Rvachew, S. (2015). Monolingual or bilingual intervention for primary language impairment? A randomized control trial. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 58, 287–300.

Antoni Brosa Rodríguez is a Martí i Franquès Researcher at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili (Tarragona, Spain), where he also teaches in the Department of Romance Languages. He belongs to the research group in Computational Mathematical Linguistics GRLMC. He has completed his bachelor’s degree (Hispanic Philology) and master’s degree (Language and Literature Didactics) at the same university. From 2018 to 2020 he has been a professor of Spanish language at the University of Lodz. He is currently working on his doctoral thesis in formal linguistics. His research has been carried out especially in the fields of innovation in language teaching and the gender perspective in philology. However, at present, his most prominent line of research concerns language universals and, in particular, in the field of fuzzy logic and computational linguistics. María José Rodríguez Campillo is Professor at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili (Tarragona, Spain) as Lecturer Serra Hunter. She belongs to the research group in Computational Mathematical Linguistics GRLMC. She is a specialist in Spanish Literature of the Golden Age and the Middle Ages. The use of linguistic methods for literary analysis is a constant feature of her articles, published in journals and monographic volumes. She is also interested in the gender perspective and its inclusion in teaching. She has participated in teaching innovation projects such as the “Creation of interactive online material for the integration of knowledge in language, literature and communication” and currently in the project entitled “Good practices for the introduction of the gender perspective in university teaching of language, literature and Spanish as a foreign language”. Her main lines of research are Spanish Medieval Literature, Spanish Literature of the Golden Age, Women’s Theatre of the Golden Age, Literature written by women, Sociolectal Analysis and Historical Discourse Analysis.

The Impact of Frequency of Occurrence of Verb-Preposition Collocations on Their Acquisition by Moroccan EFL Learners Abdelali El Fakir and Hind Brigui

Abstract Research on collocations has witnessed a significant development during the last decades. A great deal of SLA research on vocabulary has dealt with EFL learners’ collocational knowledge as well as factors that affect its acquisition. The current study attempts to investigate Moroccan EFL Learners’ (MEFLLs) acquisition of Verb-Preposition collocations. It analyses their reception and production of these collocations, and then explores the effect of frequency of occurrence on their acquisition. Seventy (70) MEFLLs participated in this study. Thirty-five (35) 1st-year BA and thirty-five (35) 2nd-year MA students took two tests: a receptive test (acceptability judgment) and a productive test (gap filling). The results have shown the following: (1) a statistically significant difference exists between the participants’ receptive and productive knowledge of verb preposition collocations. Their receptive knowledge is wider than their productive one; and (2) Frequency of occurrence plays a significant role in the acquisition of verb-preposition collocations as the targeted highly frequent Verb-Preposition collocations are easily acquired by MEFLLs, whereas the less frequent ones are not. The study suggests some pedagogical implications for EFL practitioners. Keywords Verb-preposition collocations · Frequency of occurrence · Receptive knowledge · Productive knowledge

1 Introduction Vocabulary is all about words: knowledge of words, their forms, meanings and uses. It is also about their status in spoken or written discourse and, most importantly, their acquisition as well as the way these words co-construct the basis for language competence. Milton (2009) summarizes the central role that words play in language as follows: “words are the building block of language and without them there is no A. E. Fakir (B) · H. Brigui Ibn Tofail University, Kenitra, Morocco e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk and M. Trojszczak (eds.), Language in Educational and Cultural Perspectives, Second Language Learning and Teaching, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-38778-4_5

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language” (p. 3). As a matter of fact, any sort of language teaching/learning process must primarily target its vocabulary. Despite the centrality it proves to gain, vocabulary teaching/learning witnessed—for ages—a significant neglect in the realm of language study. Focus was immensely put on various aspects of grammatical competence, phonology and syntax, at the expense of vocabulary acquisition (Decarrico, 2001). The primary motive for this research is to provide a better understanding of MEFLLs’ knowledge of collocations. For a long period of time, the teaching–learning process of foreign languages has focused on grammatical structures. This neglect of vocabulary knowledge learning/acquisition has resulted in EFL learners’ failure to achieve native-like competence. Unlike native lexical competence, EFL learners’ competence seems insufficient to achieve high proficiency levels and use language as it naturally occurs in native use. Therefore, being a significant aspect of vocabulary knowledge, collocations seems to play an important role in improving, enriching, developing as well as naturalizing EFL earners’ lexical receptive and productive competence. In the Moroccan EFL context, a research gap in this field has to be filled for studies investigating MEFLLs’ knowledge of different types of collocations are still insufficient if not very rare. The current study contributes to collocations research as it attempts to explore MEFLLs’ knowledge of verb-preposition collocations, its significance, features as well as factors that influence this aspect of non-native lexical competence. Durrant and Schmitt (2010) assert that L2 mastery has to depend much on vocabulary earning. In other words, possessing a sufficient knowledge of L2 cannot be well achieved if no priority is given to vocabulary knowledge. Wilkins (1972, p. 10) straightforwardly concludes: “Without grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed” Among a number of studies conducted within the field of vocabulary research, the study of formulaic language (i.e., word combinations) has received much attention during the last decades. In fact, lexical combinations are widely present in the speech of natives as well as L2 learners (e.g., Fellbaum, 2007; Nattinger & Decarrico, 1992; Wray, 2002; cited in Bagci, 2014). Collocations, which are a subcategory or formulaic language, attracted researchers’ attention to explore this notion and delve into the way words/lexical items collocate in L2 discourse in comparison with natural native speech. Firth (1957a, 1957b) was the first to introduce the term collocation in the field of vocabulary research. Firth’s (1957a, 1957b) popular argument summarizes the extent to which collocations prove to be at the heart of vocabulary study: “You shall know a word by the company it keeps”. Accordingly, and since the native-like use of word combinations is an important element of proficient language use, vocabulary learning-teaching need to target the way L2 learners successfully acquire knowledge of collocations. Stressing the importance of collocations, McCarthy (1990, p. 12) adds that collocation is “an important organizing principle in the vocabulary of any language”. Despite this, collocation teaching is still neglected in the EFL classroom, which, as a matter of fact, creates the problematicity of collocational knowledge for EFL learners. Generally speaking, EFL learners, including advanced ones, often fail to produce proper collocations. Their collocational knowledge is, and cannot be, similar to

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that of native speakers. They often tend to produce inappropriate or unacceptable collocations (McCarthy, 1990). In other words, they cannot put words together in the way native speakers do even when they have a sufficient L2 vocabulary size (Phoocharoensil, 2011). Despite the significant number of lexical items that L2 learners memorize, their collocational knowledge remains inadequate, which represents a challenge even for learners at advanced levels (Bahns & Eldaw, 1993; Nesselhauf, 2003). Like most of EFL learners, Arabic-speaking learners of English do face the same challenges in acquiring English collocations (Al-Zahrani, 1998). Studies on the collocational knowledge of Arabic-speaking EFL learners have confirmed that unfamiliarity with collocation structures as well as negative transfer from Arabic are primary factors that hinder a proper acquisition of authentic native-like collocations (Hussein, 1990). Studying collocations cannot be achieved without a deep investigation and analysis of the nature of such kind of vocabulary knowledge. According to Nation (2001), this knowledge involves knowing the form, meaning and use of the word. Moreover, knowledge of words can be classified into two main dimensions: receptive and productive (Nation, 2001). There exists a body of research on the issue of productive versus receptive vocabulary knowledge as the latter represents an important element in L2 vocabulary (e.g. Fan, 2009; Laufer, 1988; Webb, 2008). Therefore, there is still much need to investigate the receptive knowledge of collocations. The poor collocational knowledge that EFL learners demonstrate is believed to have worthy reasons. L2 collocational development is often affected by several factors. Some of these factors include: frequency of occurrence, syntactic structure, semantic transparency, and congruency with learners’ first language (e.g., Dörnyei et al., 2004; Fitzpatrick, 2012; Gitsaki, 1999; Kurosaki, 2012; Nesselhauf, 2003, 2005; Zhong, 2011). The current study represents an attempt to investigate the dimensions of collocational knowledge that a sample of Moroccan EFL learners possesses. The study analyses, compares, and then discusses the receptive and productive collocational knowledge of two groups of MEFLLs with different levels of English language proficiency. It also tries to explore the acquisition of a specific type of grammatical collocations, namely verb-preposition collocations.

2 Literature Review 2.1 Defining Collocations There seems to be no consensus among researchers/scholars regarding the definition of the term. In attempting to better understand the phenomenon of word collocates, various approaches have been adopted and different definitions of the term collocation have been given. Among the views that have adopted different definitions are two

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basic traditions: The first one is the “statistically oriented approach” or “frequencybased approach” (e.g., Moon, 1998; Sinclair, 1991; Stubbs, 1995). The other is called the “significance-oriented approach” or the “phraseological approach” (e.g., Cowie, 1994; Hausmann, 1989). Advocates of frequency-based definitions of collocations see them as units consisting of co-occurring words at a certain distance from each other, and a distinction are often made between frequently and infrequently co-occurring words (Nesselhauf, 2005). Firth (1957a, 1957b), who is considered to be the pioneer in collocations, was the first to introduce a definition of the term. Firth’s perception of collocation is summarized by his majestic proclaim: “You shall know a word by the company it keeps!” (1957a, 1957b, p. 179). In other words, Firth sees that collocations represent the way in which a word’s meaning can be obtained. Aiming to develop Firth’s theory on lexical meaning, other linguists (known as Neo-Firthians), have confirmed that a collocation depends on the statistically significant frequency of co-occurrence of its lexical items (Halliday, 1966; Sinclair, 1966). Similarly, Nation (2001) sees collocation as “words that often occur together”. Duan and Qin (2012) regard collocations as lexical items that frequently co-occur by chance; they are arbitrary. Another general definition is provided by Nattinger and Decarrico (1992) who believe that collocations are strings of particular words “that co-occur with mutual expectancy greater than chance” (p. 36), such as “rancid butter & curry flavor”, which are arbitrary collocations. Along the same lines, Lewis (2000) defined collocations as naturally co-occurring lexical items in statistically important ways. Benson et al. (1986, p. 324), as well, define collocations as “closely structured groups whose parts frequently or uniquely occur together.”; they are “fixed, identifiable, non-idiomatic phrases and constructions”. Woolard (2000) defines collocation as “the co-occurrence of words which are statistically much more likely to appear together than random chance suggests” (p. 29). To conclude, all of the definitions suggested above, agree on the belief that collocations designate two or more lexical items that co-occur in a variety of contexts (Gitsaki, 1999; Hsu, 2002; Sung, 2003; Zhang, 1993). Contrary to the frequency-based approach, the phraseological tradition, which is mainly adopted by lexicographers, is more interested in “formulaic language in terms of transparency and substitutability” (Durrant & Schmitt 2010, p. 122) and less concerned with the statistical significance of collocates’ frequencies. Phraseological approaches view collocation as “a type of word combination, most commonly as one that is fixed to some degree but not completely” (Nesselhauf, 2005, p. 12). Additionally, from a phraseological point of view, collocation is better defined through distinguishing it from idioms and free combinations. This distinction is based on semantic transparency, for at least one lexical item that a collocation may consist of should have a literal meaning. Lexical elements of an idiom, on the other hand, are “non-literal” and “non-compositional” (Cowie, 1981, 1994; Hausmann, 1989).This approach also views collocation items as being semantically dependent or independent. Consider, for example, the word collocate: do favor. The lexical item do is dependent as it should be determined by favour, which is autonomous.

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2.2 Classification of Collocations Collocations can be classified in different ways. Following are the common basic types of collocations (word combinations).

2.2.1

Idiomatic Combinations

Also known as fixed combinations or frozen expressions are strings of words the meaning of which cannot be predicted from individual items. The meaning of “kick the bucket” for example, as an idiom that connotes “to pass away”, has no relation to the meanings of the single words “kick” or “the bucket”.

2.2.2

Non-idiomatic Combinations

These can be free or restricted. Aisenstadt (1981, p. 59) defines free collocations as “combinations of two or more words with free commutability within the grammatical and semantic framework of the language”. They are the vast majority of collocations in the language. Restricted collocations are expressions whose meanings can be predicted from the meanings of the individual words. “They are used frequently, spring to mind readily, and are psychologically salient (as opposed to free combinations)” (Bahns & Eldaw, 1993, p. 102). Restricted collocations can be grammatical or lexical. According to Benson et al. (1986), a grammatical collocation consists of a noun, an adjective, or a verb plus a preposition or a grammatical structure such as an infinitive or a clause. Lexical collocations consist of nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs (Table 1). Table 1 Grammatical collocation types according to Benson et al. (1986) Types

Examples

G1

Noun + preposition

Apathy towards

G2

Noun + to + infinitive

A pleasure to do

G3

Noun + that clause

We reached an agreement that she would represent us in the court

G4

Preposition + noun combinations

By accident, in advance, to somebody’s advantage, in agony …

G5

Adjective + preposition combinations

They were angry at everyone

G6

Predicate adjective + to +

It was necessary to work. She was ready to go

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2.3 Receptive Knowledge of Collocations Receptive knowledge, passive knowledge, and vocabulary size have been used to denote breadth of knowledge of vocabulary; ability to recognize words or the number of words learners know (Ramadhan, 2017). Similar to general vocabulary knowledge as a whole, receptive collocational knowledge denotes the learner’s ability to understand all aspects of collocations’ meaning. The significance of receptive collocational knowledge lies in the fact that learners’ receptive knowledge can provide a reliable indicator of their linguistic proficiency (Milton, 2010). Moreover, receptive collocational knowledge can correlate positively with learners’ productive knowledge (Mehrpour et al., 2011).

2.4 Productive Knowledge of Collocations Terms such as productive knowledge and active knowledge have been used to refer to depth of vocabulary knowledge (e.g., Melka, 1997; Milton, 2009); how well learners know words and their uses in written and spoken forms in real contexts (Crowther et al., 2002, as cited in Ramadhan, 2017). As far as Nation (2001) is concerned, productive collocational knowledge refers to the ability to combine words appropriately. In other words, learners should know what lexical items acceptably co-occur with words under focus. According to this view, learners’ productive knowledge of collocations can be observed through quality of use as it reflects depth knowledge of vocabulary. There exist several factors that affect L2 learners’ knowledge of collocations. Plenty of previous studies investigated L2 learners’ collocational knowledge in relation to a variety of factors. These can either facilitate or hinder their acquisition. One key factor that has received much attention from researchers interested in the study of collocational knowledge is the frequency of occurrence.

2.5 Factors Influencing Collocational Knowledge As far as vocabulary research is concerned, it is widely believed that “learners tend to know high frequency lexical items better because they encounter them more often.” (Fernández & Schmitt, 2015). Numerous studies were conducted to investigate the role of lexical items’ frequency in the acquisition of collocations. Webb (2007, cited in Fernández & Schmitt, 2015) exposed 40 learners to nonwords in reading texts once, three times, seven times, and 10 times. He found that 10 exposures led to significant gains in both receptive and productive knowledge of collocation. Schmitt and Redwood (2011, cited in Fernández & Schmitt, 2015), examined the effect of frequency of occurrence on the collocational knowledge of phrasal verbs.

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The study discovered positive correlations between the frequency scores and the given tests. Generally speaking, higher frequency phrasal verbs were found to be learned by a greater number of participants than lower frequency ones. In their study on Frequency of input and L2 collocational processing, Wolter and Gyllstad (2013) concluded that advanced L2 learners are highly sensitive to frequency effects for L2 collocations, which seems to support the idea that usage-based models of language acquisition can be fruitfully applied to understanding the processes that underlie L2 collocational acquisition. Durrant and Schmitt (2010, as cited in Wolter & Gyllstad, 2013), concluded that “any deficit in learners’ knowledge of collocation is likely to be the result of insufficient exposure to the language” (p. 182). This suggested that L2 learners are sensitive to frequency effects through exposure to significantly repeated lexical items in language. Another study conducted by Durrant (2014) explored the effect of corpus frequency on the collocational knowledge of L2 learners. The results showed “positive correlations between collocational frequencies and learner knowledge of collocations across a range of tests of collocational knowledge” (Wolter & Yamashita, 2017).

2.6 Empirical Studies of Arabic-Speaking Learners of English The difficulties Arab learners experience with the acquisition of English collocations has motivated a number of empirical studies. Generally, some of the reasons for these difficulties are unfamiliarity with English collocational structures, negative transfer from Arabic, fewer opportunities to encounter collocations in their daily input (Hussein, 1990) and learners’ being accustomed to learning individual words rather than collocations (Farghal & Obiedant, 1995). Hussein (1990) carried out empirical research on 200 Jordanian university students. The study found that the participants’ knowledge of collocations proved to be insufficient. Collocations that are frequently used in everyday conversations were an exception. Some of the reasons for the subjects’ low performance were: (1) emphasizing the teaching of grammar structures at the expense of vocabulary learning; (2) L1 positive/negative transfer, and (3) learners’ unfamiliarity with collocations as well as overgeneralization. In an attempt to explore the collocational knowledge of EFL Arab learners, Zughoul and Abdul-Fattah (2003) showed the relationship between their use of collocations and their overall proficiency. Besides, the study discussed several strategies used by Arab learners in the production of English collocations as well as the role played by Arabic-English linguistic differences; i.e., how words are differently combined in both languages. Two groups of students (38 graduates versus 32 undergraduates) took two different tests (a free translation task and a multiple choice test). Avoidance, paraphrasing, literal translation, assumed synonymy, overgeneralizations and analogy, substitutions and imitation of the literary style were found as strategies

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used by the subjects. Furthermore, the study’s findings showed the difficulty that even EFL advanced learners had with collocations. Mahmoud (2005), investigated the productive collocational knowledge of university learners. Data from 42 English essays were analysed to show the participants’ low collocational proficiency. The majority of errors made by the subjects of the study were due to L1 negative transfer. Along the same lines, Al-Amro’s (2006) study concluded that the productive and receptive collocational knowledge of Saudi advanced English (male) learners was significantly weak as shown by data gathered from collocational tests. Contrary to previous research on collocational knowledge, the study found that the subjects’ productive knowledge of collocations was much better than their receptive knowledge. According to Al-Amro (2006), the high frequency of items tested in the productive test was a primary reason for such a significantly positive performance. Thus, the study attributed the learners’ low collocational performance to the neglect of lexis teaching in EFL classrooms. Shehata’s (2008) study investigated the influence of L1 (Arabic) on the reception and production of two types of lexical collocations (verb-noun & adjective-noun). Two groups belonging to two different learning environments (ESL versus EFL) took two different tests. The findings of the study supported the following hypotheses: (1) L1 strongly interfered in the reception & production of collocations; (2) Recognition & production of verb-noun collocations were easier for the subjects than adjective-nouns collocations. (3) Learners’ receptive knowledge was broader than their productive knowledge of collocations. (4) ESL learners’ collocational knowledge was significantly better than its EFL counterpart. Generally speaking, the study revealed that the collocational knowledge of Arabic-speaking EFL learners proved to be poor. According to Shehata (2008), this insufficient knowledge of collocations was attributed to the learning environment. In other words, EFL students needed much exposure to native use of English compared to ESL students. The study concluded that the EFL classroom should devote much time and concern to the teaching of collocations. It was also advisable that L1 similarities and differences between English and Arabic could be positively invested by TEFL classroom practitioners. As far as the above studies are concerned, it could be noted that Arabic speaking EFL learners tend to have an insufficient knowledge of collocations. Such knowledge, be it receptive or productive, is empirically proved to be affected by various effects among which are L1 interference and frequency of occurrence.

3 The Study 3.1 Objectives The present study investigates the acquisition of Verb-Preposition Collocations by Moroccan EFL Learners (MEFLLs). It aims at:

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– Discovering whether MEFLLs’ recognition of Verb-Preposition collocations differs from their production of these categories. – Exploring the association between frequency of occurrence and MEFLLs’ knowledge of Verb-Preposition collocations.

3.2 Participants Generally, the current study investigates the (productive & receptive) collocational knowledge of MEFLLs. It examines a significant factor that is assumed to affect MEFLLs’ overall knowledge of verb-preposition, namely collocation frequency of occurrence. Two groups of university students (N = 70) voluntarily participated in the study. The first group (n = 35) represents 1st-year BA level students, whereas the second (n = 35) consists of 2nd-year MA level students. All participants have studied at the Faculty of Education Sciences in Rabat.

3.3 Procedures 3.3.1

Data Collection Instruments

The study works on verb-preposition collocations. A number of collocations were selected from previous literature (Sridhanyarat, 2018), whereas others were developed by the researcher. Forty verb-preposition collocations were targeted in two tests: a gap filling test and an acceptability judgment test. The first test aims at examining the subjects’ productive knowledge of collocations whereas the second aims at investigating their receptive knowledge. Four of these collocations were repeated in both tests to compare the participants’ performance in their reception and production. The targeted collocations were developed according to the following criteria: (a) availability in English dictionaries and (b) high frequency versus low frequency collocations. The following table consists of the collocations targeted in both tests (Table 2). The selection of collocations was done with the assistance of: 1. The BBI combinatory dictionary of English (Benson et al., 1997) & The Online Oxford Collocation Dictionary for Students of English (Oxford, 2002): to check the availability of the tested collocations. 2. The British National Corpus (BNC): to identify the collocations’ frequency of occurrence. 3. The researcher, Moroccan EFL instructors and a Moroccan ESL Ph.D. researcher in an Australian university: to check the right/wrong Moroccan Dialectal Arabic translations of the targeted collocations.

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Table 2 Receptive and productive tests’ targeted collocations with and without potential L1 influence and their frequency Productive test

Receptive test Deal with 6072

Die of 241 apologize for 224

Work on 4252

Fight for 679

Depend on 2163

Seek for 30

Work for 2886

Ask about 267

Comment in 1338

Laugh at 348

Know about 2389

Argue with 263

Participate on 1141

Protest against 377

Depend on 2163

Collide with 44

Account for 1912

Dream of 710

Comment on 1338

Object to 567

Appeal to 1862

Subscribe to 197

Participate in 1141

Consent to 510

Care for 1567

Complain about 127

Pay for 3105

Arrive in 328

Believe in 1523

Hide to 83

Worry about 1815

Stare at 303

Think of 3639

Suffer from 874

Believe in 1523

Aim at 174

Contribute to 1503

Elaborate on 66

Search for 1996

The above table consists of the VP collocations used in the productive and receptive tests. For the receptive test collocations, two types were included: high frequency collocations and low frequency collocations. Some of the items were repeated in both tests so as to compare between the participants’ performance at the level of their reception and production. All of the given collocations are accompanied with BNC frequency rates. The classification according to collocations’ frequency rate is meant to examine the frequency effect on the collocational knowledge by comparing between the mean scores of high and low frequency items. For the sake of achieving the aforementioned objectives, the following instruments were designed: (a) A gap-filling productive test; and (b) an acceptability judgment receptive test. The data gathered from both tests were scored correct (1pt.) or incorrect (0pt.) as the context in which the target collocations were used allowed one possible answer. The unfilled blanks (in the productive test) or un-ticked columns (in the receptive test) were also considered incorrect answers (0pt.).

3.3.2

The Productive Collocation Test

A number of verb-preposition collocations were selected from Sridhanyarat (2018). Other collocations were developed by the researcher relying on the aforementioned dictionaries in addition to the (BNC) website. The goal of the gap-filling test was to investigate MEFLLs’ productive knowledge of verb-proportion collocations. The participants had to fill in the blanks with the preposition that better and correctly suits the given restricted context. The meant collocations were categorized according to their frequency. Ten (10) collocations are highly frequent, whereas the other ten are considered less frequent. The purpose of

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such a classification was to test the effect that the collocations’ frequency of usage may have on MEFLLs’ collocational knowledge.

3.3.3

The Acceptability Test

Collocations for the acceptability judgment test were selected following the same procedure. The aim of this test was to examine the participants’ receptive knowledge of verb-preposition collocations. The participants had to judge whether the collocations that are used in different contexts were acceptable or not. Similar to the former test, the first ten underlined collocations were highly frequent, whereas the second ten were less frequent. The reason for identifying the frequency of collocations is to measure the effect that frequency of occurrence may have on students’ receptive collocational knowledge.

3.3.4

Data Analysis

The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) 20 for Windows software package was used to analyse the gathered data. The dependent variables were: the scores which participants got in both tests. The independent variables were: (a) the subjects’ academic level, and (b) the frequency effect. Two paired samples t-tests were run so as to answer the previous research questions: – A paired samples t-test: to discover the differences between the participants’ production and reception of collocations. – A paired samples t-test: to explore the extent to which frequency of usage affects the participants’ acquisition of Verb-Preposition collocations. The test was run in order to compare between high frequency verb-preposition collocations’ mean score and low frequency verb-preposition collocations‘ mean score. In other words, the purpose of this test was to confirm that the mean score of high frequency verb-preposition collocations was statistically significantly higher than low-frequency verb-preposition collocations.

4 Results 4.1 Receptive and Productive Test Results As far as the first research question is concerned, a paired samples t-test was run in order to compare between participants’ performance on receptive and productive tests. The analyses performed showed that there is a statistically significant difference

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between the two tests’ mean scores. Below are the results obtained from paired samples t-tests for both groups (BA & MA) (Tables 3, 4, 5 and 6). The above tables show that the participants’ performance (of both groups) in the receptive test was statistically significantly better than their performance in the productive test. Generally speaking, the receptive knowledge of verb-preposition collocations seems wider than the productive one. Table 3 The descriptive statistics for 1st year BA receptive and productive tests Mean

N

Std. deviation

Std. error mean

Receptive test scores

12,8000

35

3,12,297

,52,788

Productive test scores

8,6000

35

3,05,055

,51,564

Table 4 The statistical difference between 1st year BA receptive and productive tests Paired samples test Paired differences Mean

Std. Std. error 95% confidence deviation mean interval of the difference Lower

Pair 1 receptive 4,20,000 2,91,850 test scores Productive test scores

,49,332

t

df

Sig. (2-tailed)

Upper

3,19,746 5,20,254 8,514 34 ,000

Table 5 The descriptive statistics for 2nd year MA receptive and productive tests Mean

N

Std. deviation

Std. error mean

Receptive test scores

18,0286

35

1,54,322

,26,085

Productive test scores

16,8571

35

1,47,813

,24,985

Table 6 The statistical difference between 2nd year MA receptive and productive tests Paired samples test Paired differences Mean

Std. Std. error 95% confidence deviation mean interval of the difference Lower

Pair 1 receptive 1,17,143 2,09,321 test scores Productive test scores

,35,382

t

df

Sig. (2-tailed)

Upper

,45,239 1,89,047 3,311 34 ,002

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Table 7 The descriptive statistics for low versus high frequency mean scores in the receptive and productive tests taken by 1st year BA participants Mean

N

Std. deviation

Std. error mean

Receptive high frequency scores

7,23

35

1,629

,275

Receptive low frequency scores

5,57

35

2,062

,349

Productive high frequency scores

5,63

35

1,816

,307

Productive low frequency scores

2,94

35

1,781

,301

However, it should be noted that the difference between 1st year group’s receptive and productive performances was clearly bigger than the difference between 2nd year MA performances in the same tests.

4.2 Frequency Effect The second research question explores the extent to which frequency of usage affects MEFLLs acquisition of VP collocations. Paired samples tests were run so as to show if the mean scores of high frequency VP collocations were statistically significantly higher than mean scores of low frequency VP collocations. The following tables show the statistical results obtained from both groups on both given tests

4.2.1

Frequency Effect for 1st BA Group

See Tables 7 and 8. The above results show that high frequency VP collocations’ (e.g., depend on 2163; believe in 1523; deal with 6072; care for 1567) mean scores (M = 7.23, SD = 1.62; M = 5.63, SD = 1.81) were higher than low frequency VP collocations’ (e.g. elaborate on 66; collide with 44; stare at 303) mean scores (M = 5.57, SD = 1.81; M = 2.94, SD = 1.78) in both receptive & productive tests respectively. These findings demonstrate that the 1st year BA group performed better on high frequency than low frequency VP collocations. This confirms the assumption that highly frequent collocations were easier to recognize and produce for BA participants than less frequent ones which seem to be more challenging in reception as well as production.

4.2.2

Frequency Effect for 2nd year MA Group

See Tables 9 and 10. Concerning the MA group, the results show that high frequency VP collocations’ (e.g. depend on 2163; believe in 1523; deal with 6072; care for 1567) mean scores

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Table 8 The statistical difference between high frequency collocations’ mean scores and low frequency collocations’ mean scores in the receptive and productive tests taken by 1st year BA participants Paired differences Mean

Std. deviation

Std. error mean

95% confidence interval of the difference Lower

Upper

t

df

Sig. (2-tailed)

Receptive high frequency scores—receptive low frequency scores

1,657

2,127

,360

0,926

2,388

4,608

34

,000

Productive high frequency scores—productive low frequency scores

2,686

2,011

,340

1,995

3,377

7,900

34

,000

Table 9 The descriptive statistics for low versus high frequency mean scores in the receptive and productive tests taken by 2nd year MA participants Mean

N

Std. deviation

Std. error mean

Receptive high frequency scores

9,71

35

,519

,088

Receptive low frequency scores

8,37

35

1,374

,232

Productive high frequency scores

7,94

35

1,413

,239

Productive low frequency scores

9,11

35

,867

,147

Table 10 The statistical difference between high frequency collocations’ mean scores and low frequency collocations’ mean scores in the receptive and productive tests taken by 2nd year MA participants Paired differences Mean

Std. deviation

Std. error mean

95% confidence interval of the difference

t

df

Sig. (2-tailed)

Lower

Upper

Receptive high frequency scores—receptive low frequency scores

1,343

1,474

,249

,836

1,849

5,389

34

,000

Productive high frequency scores—productive low frequency scores

−1,171

1,886

,319

−1,819

−,523

−3,674

34

,001

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(M = 9,71, SD = ,519; M = 7,94, SD = 1,41) were higher than low frequency VP collocations’ (e.g. elaborate on 66; collide with 44; stare at 303) mean scores (M = 8,37, SD = 1,37; M = 9,11, SD = ,867) in both receptive & productive tests respectively. The findings demonstrate that 2nd year MA group performed better on high frequency than low frequency VP collocations. This confirms the assumption that highly frequent collocations were easier to recognize and produce for MA students than less frequent ones. Although the differences between high versus low frequency collocations mean scores for this group were not as big as was the case with the BA group, the statistics obtained did confirm the significance of these differences. The aforementioned results provide strong evidence that frequency of use plays a central role in the EFL learners’ reception as well as production of collocations.

5 Discussion 5.1 Moroccan EFL Learners’ Receptive and Productive Knowledge The first research question concerns the extent to which Moroccan EFL Learners’ receptive knowledge of Verb-Preposition differs from their productive one. Accordingly, H1 stated that Moroccan EFL learners’ receptive knowledge of VP collocations would be significantly different from their productive knowledge of the same category. This hypothesis implied that MEFLLs’ receptive knowledge would be wider than their productive knowledge of VP collocations. The t-test that was run in order to compare between the participants’ mean scores in the receptive and productive tests showed a statistically significant difference between the two tests’ mean scores. The participants’ performance (of both groups) in the receptive test was statistically significantly better than their performance in the productive test. The statistical analyses confirmed the hypothesis that MEFLLs’ reception is significantly different from their production of VP collocations. In other words, learners do well when it comes to the understanding and recognition of collocations, whereas they find it challenging to produce these collocations. In fact, the study’s first finding supports previous studies which investigated the same issue. For example, Shehata (2008) found that advanced Arabic-speaking learners of English’ receptive knowledge of collocations was broader than their productive knowledge of collocations: – The present study indicated that the participants in the two groups were able to judge the correctness and incorrectness of the given collocations on the receptive test, but they encountered difficulties in producing the correct collocations on the two productive tests (Shehata, 2008. p. 94).

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The findings of the present study, as well as previous studies mentioned in the literature review section provided strong evidence in favour of the belief that L2, thus EFL, learners tend to perform better on receptive than productive tasks. It must be noted that this is generally supported by the fact that the receptive knowledge of collocations is believed to be easier and less challenging to develop than the productive collocational knowledge.

5.2 Frequency Effect The question of the current research sought to investigate whether MEFLLs were sensitive to L2 frequency effects. It was then hypothesized that frequency would play a significant role in Moroccan EFL learners’ acquisition of Verb-Preposition collocations. Highly frequent VP collocations were assumed to be more easily received and produced than less frequent ones. Statistical analyses revealed the extent to which both groups of participants performed better on high frequency VP collocations than low frequency ones. The findings of the study confirmed the statistically significant difference between mean scores of low versus high frequency collocations for both groups in both tests. The highly frequent items proved to be easier for MEFLLs in reception as well as production. The less frequent items were more challenging for MEFLLs to recognize, and produce. For example, mostly all participants’ answers for VP collocations like “depend on” or “deal with”, which have a frequency record of 2163 and 6072 respectively, were correct in the productive as well as the receptive tests. Contrarily, a great number of answers for VP collocations like “subscribe to” with a frequency of 197, were incorrect. Moreover, it can be noted that 1st year BA students’ test scores were more affected by collocations’ frequency compared to 2nd year MA students. Mean scores differences between low and high frequency collocations for 1st year BA students were strongly more significant than the same scores for 2nd year MA students; especially in the productive tests (see Tables 7 and 8). The findings of the current study concerning the effect of frequency on EFL learners’ collocational knowledge are consistent with the growing body of evidence that indicates that language learners are indeed sensitive to frequency effects in the L2 (Wolter & Gyllstad, 2013). Fernández and Schmitt (2015), found that the participant knowledge of collocation demonstrates a moderate correlation with corpus frequency (0.45). Fernández and Schmitt (2015) found that although frequency of occurrence is not an adequate predictor of formulaic language acquisition, it still has some moderate impact. Schmitt and Redwood (2011) investigated the learners’ productive and receptive knowledge of phrasal verbs and the effect of their frequencies on this knowledge. The study concluded that—higher frequency phrasal verbs were clearly learned by a greater number of participants than lower frequency phrasal verbs. Along the same lines, Wolter and Yamashita (2017) investigated whether three groups of participants were sensitive to collocation-level frequency, namely intermediate and advanced Japanese EFL leaners plus English native speakers. The findings

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of the study confirmed the fact that all three groups demonstrated sensitivity to both word-level and collocation-level frequency. It was also found that advanced Japanese learners just like English native speakers, showed higher sensitivity to frequency compared to intermediate learners. Another study conducted by Wolter and Gyllstad (2013) investigated the impact of frequency effects on the processing on incongruent and congruent collocations and showed that advanced learners are highly sensitive to frequency effects for L2 collocations, which “seems to support the idea that usagebased models of language acquisition can be fruitfully applied to understanding the processes that underlie L2 collocational acquisition” (Wolter & Gyllstad, 2013, p. 451). The study also concluded that high-proficiency learners showed higher sensitivity to frequency effects. Due to space limitations the growing body of research on frequency effect on collocational knowledge cannot be discussed in more detail. In brief, suffice it to confirm that the effect of frequency had a significant influence on the knowledge and development of collocations: higher knowledge was associated with collocations of higher frequency, and lower knowledge was accompanying collocations of lower frequency (Ramadhan, 2017).

6 Pedagogical Implications Similar to previous body of research, the findings of this empirical study can serve the EFL learning process through the following number of pedagogical implications. First, the teaching of collocations in EFL classrooms should be encouraged at early stages of language learning. EFL teachers have to raise their students’ awareness of the importance of learning, recognizing and using collocations in authentic speech. Implicit as well as explicit instructions are both recommended in order to increase learners’ collocational knowledge as early as possible. Students need to be excessively exposed to authentic language inside and outside the classroom. Learners should be encouraged to get in touch with collocations as used in authentic English. In this regard, teachers should use meaningful materials that can foster their learners’ collocational knowledge to reach a level that can be approximately similar to the level of natives’ lexical competence. There also needs to be enough learner engagement during explicit instruction on collocations. Explicit instruction on collocations plays a central role in raising students’ awareness of those significant dimensions that make up vocabulary L2 knowledge. Second, there seems to be a consensus on the fact that EFL learners’ productive knowledge lags far behind their receptive knowledge of collocations. As a matter of fact, much use of collocations should be encouraged in order to help learners develop their speaking and writing skills. Students should take advantage of the formulaic items they may encounter in authentic native use so as to produce acceptable appropriate language chunks. By including more speaking and writing activities during the lessons, learners are offered opportunities to overuse collocations. This necessitates that teachers integrate receptive and productive tasks to effectively boost students’ collocational knowledge. Third, as far as the significance of frequency effect is concerned, frequent collocations that are functionally

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more useful and salient for L2 learners seem to be easily acquired than infrequent ones that have less function in authentic use of language. Thus, students need to be more exposed to frequent collocations which they may likely encounter in real life spoken (and written) language than those which have less communicative function and are restricted to limited contexts. However, this does not mean that low frequency items should be ignored, especially more challenging collocations that can be used in academic contexts.

7 Conclusions, Limitations and Directions for Further Research Despite the interesting findings that were achieved, the present study could not have been conducted without limitations. No proficiency test preceded the population selection so as to categorize both groups of participants into basic versus higher academic level. Besides, participants belong to the same academic institution (Faculty of Educational Sciences). It could have been preferable to include participants from different universities. Due to practical restrictions, it was a bit challenging to take that into consideration. One type of instrumentation was used, namely offline receptive and productive tests. To better measure and analyse the collocational knowledge of the participants, other online tests could be used in order to gain a broader understanding of the processes and mechanisms behind such a dimension of vocabulary acquisition. Only one type of collocations (i.e., Verb-Preposition collocations) was explored in the present study. Including more types and attempting to compare between participants’ performance on them could yield additional interesting results. Besides, the number of the targeted VP collocations seems insufficient, which may disallow a meaningful and comprehensive analysis thus understanding the collocational competence of Moroccan EFL learners. The study was not piloted. As a matter of fact, this could raise validity and reliability issues. The generalizability of the study may not be guaranteed as the number of the sample was no more than 70 participants (35 per each level group). This piece of research is cross-sectional. This can also affect generalizability. Undertaking this research in a longitudinal manner may generate different results. Moreover, it is believed that more vocabulary research is needed in order to understand the acquisition of all types of English collocations. Accordingly, the current empirical study is believed to add some value to collocational research in the Moroccan EFL context. Yet, the present study can be replicated with: (a) a varied heterogeneous sample of population, i.e. a higher number of participants with different proficiency and academic levels, (b) as many types of grammatical and lexical collocations as possible and (c) a variety of measurement tests with more collocational items. Further investigation is needed with respect to practices involved in the teaching of collocations in the Moroccan EFL classroom. The benefits of explicit versus implicit teaching of collocations need to be explored. Besides, the

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field of collocations research has often focused on written production. So, promising studies should be conducted in order to investigate EFL learners’ use of collocations in oral production.

References A-Amro, M. (2006). Saudi learners’ knowledge and its relationship to their vocabulary size and writing quality. Unpublished thesis, Colorado State University, Colorado. Al-Zahrani, M. (1998). Knowledge of English lexical collocations among male Saudi college students majoring in English at a Saudi university. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania. Aisenstadt, E. (1981). Restricted collocations in English lexicology and lexicography. ITL—International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 53, 53–61. Bagci, N. (2014). Turkish university level EFL learners’ collocational knowledge at receptive and productive levels. Published thesis. The Graduate School of Social Sciences, Middle East Technical University. Bahns, J., & Eldaw, M. (1993). Should we teach EFL students collocations? System, 21(1), 101–114. Benson, M., Benson, E., & Ilson, R. (1986). The BBI combinatory dictionary of English. John Benjamins. Benson, M., Benson, E., & Ilson, R. (1997). The BBI combinatory dictionary of English: A guide to word combinations. (2nd Edn.) Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Cowie, A. P. (1981). The treatment of collocations and idioms in learners’ dictionaries. Applied Linguistics, 2(3), 223–235. Cowie, A. (1994). Phraseology. In R. Asher (Ed.), The encyclopedia of language and linguistics (pp. 3168–3171). Pergamon Press. Crowther, J., Dignen, S., & Lea, D. (2002). Oxford collocations dictionary for students of English. Oxford university press. Decarrico, J. (2001). Vocabulary learning and teaching. In M. Celce-Murcia (Ed.), Teaching English as a second or foreign language (pp. 285–300). Heinle & Heinle. Dörnyei, Z., Durow, V., & Zahran, K. (2004). Individual differences and their effects on formulaic sequence acquisition. In N. Schmitt (Ed.), Formulaic sequences: Acquisition, processing and use (pp. 87–106). John Benjamins. Duan, M., & Qin, X. (2012). Collocation in English teaching and learning. Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 2(9), 1890–1894. Durrant, P., & Schmitt, N. (2010). Adult learners’ retention of collocations from exposure. Second Language Research, 26, 163–188. Durrant, P. (2014). Corpus frequency and second language learners’ knowledge of collocations: A metaanalysis. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 19, 443–477. Ebrahimi-Bazzaz, F., Samad, A. A., bin Ismail, I. A., & Noordin, N. (2014). Verb-noun collocation proficiency and academic years. International Journal of Applied Linguistics & English Literature, 3(1), 152–162. Fan, M. (2009). An exploratory study of collocational use by ESL students—A task based approach. System, 37(1), 110–123. Farghal, M., & Obiedant, H. (1995). Collocations: A neglected variable in EFL. IRAL, 33(4), 315–331. Fellbaum, C. (Ed.). (2007). Collocations and idioms: Corpus-based linguistic and lexicographic studies. Continuum. Fernández, B. G., & Schmitt, N. (2015). How much collocation knowledge do L2 learners have? International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 166(1), 94–126.

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Firth, J. R. (1957a). A synopsis of linguistic theory, 1930–1955. In E. Palmer (Ed.). (1968). Selected Papers of J. R. Firth (pp. 1–32). Basil Blackwell. Firth, J. R. (1957b). Papers in linguistics 1934–1951. Oxford University Press. Fitzpatrick, T. (2012). Tracking the changes: Vocabulary acquisition in the study abroad context. The Language Learning Journal, 40(1), 81–98. Gitsaki, C. (1999). Second language lexical acquisition: A study of the development of collocational knowledge. International Scholars Publications. Halliday, M. (1966). Lexis as a linguistic level. In C. Bazell, J. Catford, M. Halliday, & R. Robins (Eds.), In memory of J.R. Firth (pp. 148–162). Longman. Hausmann, F. (1989). Le dictionnaire de collocations. In F. Hausmann, O. Reichmann, H. Wiegand, & L. Zgusta (Eds.), Wörterbücher: Ein internationales handbuch zur lexicographie. Dictionaries, dictionnaires (pp. 1010–1019). De Gruyter. Hussein, R. (1990). Collocations: The missing link in vocabulary acquisition amongst English foreign learners. In J. Fisiak (Ed.), Papers and studies in contrastive linguistics. The Polish– English contrastive project (pp. 123–136). Adam Mickiewicz University. Hsu, J-Y. (2002). Development in collocational proficiency in a workshop on English for general business purposes for Taiwanese college students. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Kurosaki, S. (2012). An analysis of the knowledge and use of English collocations by French and Japanese learners. Doctoral dissertation, University of London. Retrieved from https://repository.royalholloway.ac.uk/file/d65f4c4b-8bac-d738-373583b5e5e0 31a7/8/Shino_K._Thesis_20121015.pdf Laufer, B. (1988). What percentage of text-lexis is essential for comprehension? In C. Lauren & M. Nordmann (Eds.), Special language: From humans thinking to thinking machines (pp. 316–323). Multilingual Matters. Lewis, M. (2000). There is nothing as practical as a good theory. In M. Lewis (Ed.), Teaching collocation (pp. 10–27). Language Teaching Publications. McCarthy, M. (1990). Vocabulary. Oxford University Press. Mehrpour, S., Razmjoo, S. A., & Kian, P. (2011). The relationship between depth and breadth of vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension among Iranian EFL learners. Journal of English Language Teaching and Learning, 2, 97–127. Melka, F. (1997). Receptive versus productive aspects of vocabulary. In N. Schmitt & M. McCarthy (Eds.), Vocabulary: Description, acquisition, and pedagogy (pp. 84–102). New York: Cambridge University Press. Milton, J. (2009). Measuring second language vocabulary acquisition. Multilingual Matters. Milton, J. (2010). The development of vocabulary breadth across the CEFR levels. In Communicative Proficiency and Linguistic Development: Intersections between SLA and Language Testing Research (pp. 211–232). EUROSLA Monographs Series 1. Moon, R. (1998). Fixed expressions and idioms in English: A corpus-based approach. Clarendon Press. Nation, I. S. P. (2001). Learning vocabulary in another language. Cambridge University Press. Nattinger, J. R., & Decarrico, J. S. (1992). Lexical phrases and language teaching. Oxford University Press. Nesselhauf, N. (2003). The use of collocations by advanced learners of English and some implications for teaching. Applied Linguistics, 24(2), 223–242. Nesselhauf, N. (2005). Collocations in a learner corpus. John Benjamins. Phoocharoensil, S. (2011). Collocational errors in EFL learners’ interlanguage. Journal of Education and Practice, 2(3), 103–120. Ramadhan, J. M. (2017). The influence features of collocations on the collocational knowledge and development of Kurdish highschool students: A longitudinal study. Ph.D. Thesis. The University of Exeter.

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Schmitt, N., & Redwood, S. (2011). Learner knowledge of phrasal verbs: A corpus-informed study. In F. Meunier, S. De Cock, G., Gilquin & M. Paquot (Eds.), A taste for corpora: In honour of Sylviane Granger (pp. 173–208). John Benjamins. Shehata, A. (2008). L1 Influence on the reception and production of collocations by advanced ESL/ EFL Arabic learners of English. Published thesis. The College of Arts and Sciences of Ohio University. Sinclair, J. M. (1966). Beginning the study of lexis. In C. E. Bazell (Ed.), In Memory of J. R. Firth (pp. 410–430). Longman. Sinclair, J. M. (1991). Corpus, concordance, collocation. Oxford University Press. Sridhanyarat, K. (2018). Thai learners’ acquisition of L2 collocations: An interlanguage perspective. GEMA Online Journal of Language Studies, 18(1), 1–21. Stubbs, M. (1995). Collocations and semantic profiles: On the cause of the trouble with quantitative studies. Functions of Language, 2(1), 23–55. Sung, J. (2003). English lexical collocations and their relation to spoken fluency of adult non-native speakers. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania. Webb, S. (2007). The effects of repetition on vocabulary knowledge. Applied Linguistics, 28, 46–65. Webb, S. (2008). Receptive and productive vocabulary sizes of L2 learners. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 30, 79–95. Wilkins, D. A. (1972). Linguistics in language teaching. Edward Arnold. Wolter, B., & Gyllstad, H. (2013). Frequency of input and L2 collocational processing: A comparison of congruent and incongruent collocations. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 35, 451– 482. Wolter, B., & Yamashita, J. (2017). Word frequency, collocational frequency, L1 congruency, and proficiency in L2 collocational processing. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 40(2), 395–416. Woolard, G. (2000). Collocation: Encouraging learner independence. In M. Lewis (Ed.), Teaching collocation: Further developments in the lexical approach (pp. 28–46). Language Teaching Publications. Wray, A. (2002). Formulaic language and the lexicon. Cambridge University Press. Zhang, X. (1993). English collocations and their effect on the writing of native and nonnative college freshmen. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania. Zhong, H. (2011). Learning a word: From receptive to productive vocabulary use. The Asian Conference on Language Learning Official Proceedings (pp. 116–126). Osaka, Japan. Retrieved from http://iafor.org/offprints/acll-splitoffprints/ACLL2011_0102.pdf Zughoul, M., & Abdul-Fattah, H. (2003). Collocational strategies of Arab learners of English: A study in lexical semantics. Babel, 49(1), 59–81.

Abdelali El Fakir is a second-year Ph.D. candidate at Ibn Tofail University of Kenitra, Faculty of Languages, Arts and Letters, Morocco. Mr. EL FAKIR is also an EFL State Highschool Educator. His research focuses on Applied Linguistics & ELT. Hind Brigui holds a Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics & ELT. Currently, Dr. Brigui is an associate professor at Ibn Tofail University, Morocco. She has been teaching for about two decades. Her research focuses on applied linguistics, ELT and pedagogical issues. She has been presenting and publishing studies locally and internationally. She is currently lecturing on issues related to applied linguistics & ELT. She is also a supervisor of many doctoral theses at the English Studies research lab of Ibn Tofail University, Morocco.

Collaboration and Crowdsourcing Applications Frieda Steurs and Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk

Abstract The paper addresses an investigation of the area of collaborative practices and crowdsourcing applications, in particular those that contribute to vast linguistic data/repositories collection, i.e., data on sociolinguistics, lexicography, as well as terminology and translation. The concept of crowdsourcing is defined in terms of collaboration practices such as various types of innovation and industry, and primarily of linguistic applications. A lexicological analysis of language forms, in their dialectal and social variations and the tools relevant for the crowdsourcing activity (TAALRADAR) developed at the Dutch Language Institute in Leiden are demonstrated and discussed. Linguistic research, language and translator training are identified as the areas benefitting from the collaborative and crowdsource tasks and collected data. Their consequences aiming to contribute to current methodological vistas in linguistics and language/terminology acquisition will be presented by showing evidence of how creation of a common collaborative space, typically in terms of cloud technology at present, for linguists, language learners, translator trainees and other specialists, can work and contribute to the development of language proficiency, enrichment of language use techniques and terminology acquisition, as well as the quality of language product. The competences focusing on these techniques, particularly those related to how crowdsourcing applications lead towards a more general phenomenon which involves collaborative knowledge acquisition and Internet-based task sharing, are presented and their position in language and knowledge acquisition is discussed. Keywords Collaboration · Crowdsourcing · Innovation · Knowledge-sharing · Lexicography · Terminology · Translation

F. Steurs (B) KU Leuven; Dutch Language Institute in Leiden, Leuven, Belgium e-mail: [email protected] B. Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk University of Applied Sciences in Konin, Konin, Poland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk and M. Trojszczak (eds.), Language in Educational and Cultural Perspectives, Second Language Learning and Teaching, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-38778-4_6

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1 Introduction The concept of crowdsourcing has its roots in the open source movement of the early 2000s, connected with the creation and distribution of software through a community of software developers rather than a single company. This collaborative approach paved the way for the expansion of crowdsourcing to other domains. Crowdsourcing generally refers to the practice of outsourcing labour or information gathering to a large group of people, often through an online platform. One of the earliest and most well-known examples of crowdsourcing is Wikipedia, which relies on volunteers to create and edit content on a massive scale but long before, in the late 1800s, the Oxford English Dictionary was also created through public co-operation of ‘crowdsourcing’, although obviously not in digital form. The OED editors reached out to the public for contributions of words and definitions (Winchester 20,023), making it one of the largest crowdsourcing initiatives of its time. A few hundred volunteers were rectuited to read texts and record quotations. At present, as technology continues to improve, we can expect to see even more innovative and impactful crowdsourcing initiatives in the future. From 2017 till 2021, a large European Network was built with the purpose to investigate crowdsourcing applications, in particular those that contribute to vast linguistic data and repositories. CA16105—European Network for Combining Language Learning with Crowdsourcing Techniques (EnetCollect) aimed at unlocking a crowdsourcing potential available for all languages and at triggering an innovation breakthrough for the production of language learning material, such as lesson or exercise content, and language-related datasets such as, among others, NLP language resources. Five different Working Groups co-operating on crowdsourcing techniques investigated different facets of the area. WG 3 focusing on User-oriented design strategies for a competitive solution of which both present authors were members, was of special importance. WG3 aimed at creating design strategies fostering the user-orientation of an online language learning solution and ensuring its capacity to attract and retain a crowd. The present paper aims at investigating this objective by reviewing existing solutions and users’ expectations and engagement in various facets of crowdsourcing, most importantly in language applications.

2 What is Crowdsourcing? Crowdsourcing involves co-operative work, obtaining information, knowledge, or opinions from a group of people who respond and submit their data by the Internet and social media. The work is typically performed voluntarily by amateurs rather than professionals in the field. It is important to distinguish between crowdsourcing and crowdfunding. Crowdsourcing usually involves taking a large job and breaking it into many smaller jobs that

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a crowd of people can work on separately. While crowdsourcing seeks information or work product, crowdfunding seeks money to support individuals, charities, or startup companies. People can contribute to crowdfunding requests with no expectation of repayment, or companies can offer shares of the business to contributors.

3 Crowdsourcing and Other Collaborative Practices Crowdsourcing was getting in use by numerous prior collaborative practices, which was particularly made possible by the development of Web 2.0. culture and popularity of social media (Tai-Li Wang, 2016), which produced a number of instances and shades of traditional boundaries blurring. Apart from the overlaps between the private and public cultures, formal and colloquial language, spoken and written discourse to mention just a few (see Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk, 2021 for details), there was one of the most significant transformations that has been taking place. It refers to the transforming of the traditional one-to-one and one-to-many communication types, as well as the author versus audience dichotomies, into what is dubbed a produser (the form coined from producer and user) type of communication (cf. Toffler, 1980 for the original source of the concept) in terms of the many-to-any communication format, with the roles of news producers and receivers blurred and interchanging. Crowdsourcing usually involves cooperation concerning several collaboration types observed in the web space, from some industrial applications to fan translation and crowdsourcing initiatives in archeological sites. For instance, in the year 2010 British Petroleum successfully called up a crowdsourcing initiative to find out ways how to clean a large oil spin on the Deepwater Horizon rig, which appeared as a result of an explosion (Acar, 2019). Jimenez-Crespo (2016) distinguishes between “translation crowdsourcing” and “online collaborative translation”. The former can be defined as collaborative translation processes performed through dedicated web platforms that are initiated by companies or organizations and in which participants collaborate with motivations other than those strictly monetary. The definition of crowdsourcing includes the principle that its models can involve a range of payments in their crowdsourcing efforts, from small phone all the way to professional payments in crowdsourcing business models that offer the possibility of what is known as “selected or specialized” crowds of selected or certified specialized translators. The second, “online collaborative translation” can be defined as “processes in the web initiated by self-organized online communities in which participants collaborate with motivations other than monetary”. (Jimenez-Crespo, 2017, p. 25). In this case, collectives of Internet users organize themselves to translate any content that motivates communities to participate, such as TV series, videogames, etc. Some of the crowdsourcing initiatives are more directly relevant to our interests, such as the application of crowdsourcing to language tasks such as lexicography, dialectology, and, as mentioned above, to translation.

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4 TAALRADAR: A Linguistic Tool One of the most effective instruments of linguistic type is TAALRADAR—a software application that offers the possibility to perform a lexicological analysis of language forms in their dialectal and social variations. TAALRADAR is a crowdsourcing application of the Instituut voor de Nederlandse Taal (INT) (Dutch Language Institute), enabling speakers of Dutch to contribute to the knowledge about the Dutch language. The application is based on PyBOSSA (see further in Sect. 5). To learn about and possibly use the TAALRADAR application, one can address the following link: https://taalradar.ivdnt.org. In order to monitor contemporary Dutch, the INT creates large text collections, also known as text corpora, as for example, a corpus of relevant Internet pages. Such a corpus contains a large amount of information about how Dutch is used in practice, and researchers can automatically extract example sentences from it to use as material, for example for language learning. The disadvantage of a collection of web texts is that it can also contain inappropriate language (e.g., obscene language). Crowdsourcing collaborators can help to clean up text collections using TAALRADAR, by identifying texts with inappropriate language and marking it in the texts. As mentioned above, TAALRADAR is also used in projects focusing on language learning. Oefenen.nl is a collaborative partner there, which is looking into the possibilities of using crowdsourcing to create material for language learning. TAALRADAR was also used to investigate language blended forms (e.g., preferendum, meaning ‘a referendum offering a choice of several options’), as well as new words and language variations. The crowdsourcing instrument, generally popular for such tasks, might better map out, through these activities and the INT and oefenen.nl management, how language is used in practice, in order to raise the quality of language materials for dictionaries and other applications.

5 Tools for Crowdsourcing Surowiecki stated in his book The wisdom of crowds (2004) that large groups of people are smarter than an elite few, no matter how brilliant. Together, they are better at solving problems, fostering innovation, coming to wise decisions and even predicting the future. It is clear that crowdsourcing has become increasingly popular in the last decades. We can distinguish between a large number of tools for crowdsourcing. In this chapter we will limit ourselves to tools that are relevant for language and linguistic research and data handling. Some of the general crowdsourcing platforms are used widely for all kinds of applications such as TxtEagle, Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT) https://www.mturk. com/. The tool made by Amazon is quite well known: AMT is a crowdsourcing website for businesses to hire remotely located “crowdworkers” to perform discrete on-demand tasks that computers are currently unable to do. Employers post jobs

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known as Human Intelligence Tasks (HITs), such as identifying specific content in an image or video, writing product descriptions, or answering survey questions. Boston-based TxtEAgle https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/978-3-642-02767-3_50 is a system that enables people to earn small amounts of money by completing simple tasks on their mobile phone for corporations who pay them in either airtime or MPESA (mobile money). Tasks include translation, transcription, and surveys. In the language industry Crowdin https://crowdin.com/, Lingotek https://lingotek. com/ and Lingohub https://lingohub.com/, are well known platforms. Crowdin is a cloud-based localization technology and services company. It provides software as a service for commercial products, and it provides software free of charge for noncommercial open source tasks and educational projects. Lingotek is a cloud-based translation services provider, offering translation management software and professional linguistic services for web content, software platforms, product documentation and electronic documents. Lingohub is a platform for localization activities and translation management. Translating software and apps can be done by a team. Related to these crowdsourcing platforms is Trommons: an open-source, webbased platform administered by The Rosetta Foundation (see https://kato.translato rswb.org/Translators—Translators Without Borders). The Rosetta Foundation’s aim is to eradicate the information gap faced by communities who do not have access to products and information due to the lack of commercial localization. The foundation used crowdsourcing to make information accessible in the languages of those communities. The EU-funded TraMOOC (Translation for Massive Open Online Courses) www. tramooc.eu project aims at providing machine translation solutions for the educational content available in MOOCs, thus enhancing access to online education. The content varies from video lecture subtitles, slides, assignments, and quiz texts to course discussion forum texts. Given that the source language is English, in-domain trained and tested translation engines are built for 11 European and BRIC target languages (Bulgarian, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Dutch, German, Greek, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, and Russian). A large multilingual corpus of online course material was developed manually in eleven languages via crowdsourcing. Other applications are widely used for audiovisual translation: Amara https:// amara.org/about-amara/ is a web-based non-profit project created by the Participatory Culture Foundation that hosts and allows user-subtitled video to be accessed and created. It uses crowdsourcing techniques to subtitle video as well as having a paid service for professionally created subtitles. Users are subtitlers in, among others, Netflix and TED talks. Another application for audiovisual subtitling and translation is TED global communication platform (https://www.ted.com/), where people from all over the world interact with each other creating, sharing, exchanging and commenting on content within a virtual community and several networks. At TED unpaid volunteers translate audiovisual content into 100 languages, within the framework of an online translation project: the Open Translation Project. TED’s Open Translation Project (Technology, Entertainment and Design) brings TED Talks beyond the English-speaking world by offering subtitles, time-coded transcripts and the ability

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for any talk to be translated by volunteers worldwide. The project launched with 300 translations in 40 languages, and 200 volunteer translators. A platform that also works for specialized translation is Pootle https://pootle.tra nslatehouse.org/, more specifically for localization of applications’ graphical user interfaces. The TAALRADAR too (see Sect. 4) has been developed in Pybossa https://pyb ossa.com/, which itself was also designed using crowdsourcing. Pybossa is a free, open-source, crowdsourcing and micro-tasking platform. It enables users to create and run projects that use online assistance in performing tasks that require human cognition such as image classification, transcription, geocoding and more. PyBossa can help researchers and developers to create projects where anyone around the world with some time, interest and an Internet connection can contribute. A number of language learning apps have been developed using crowdsourcing. Duolinguo https://apps.apple.com/pl/app/duolingo-language-lessons/id570060128? l=pl is the most well-known. On its main app, users can practice vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation and listening skills using spaced repetition. Duolingo offers over 100 total courses across more than 40 languages. The company uses a freemium model with over 500 million registered users. There is also a premium version available. Finally, other crowdsourcing applications that relate to linguistic tasks are WIKI-oriented. The first one is TermWiki https://pro.termwiki.com/, social learning network that allows users to add, share and store personal terminology and glossaries in many domains in more than 90 languages. It is all about collaboration, with a forum, a question/answer module, messaging features that encourage user interaction, and discussion pages on each term. In the same way there is OmegaWiki http://omegawiki.org is a collaborative project to produce a free, multilingual dictionary for every language with lexicological, terminological and thesaurus information. And Wikipedia created Wiktionary https://www.wiktionary.org/ a multilingual, webbased project to create a free content dictionary of terms (including words, phrases, proverbs etc.) both in natural languages and in a number of artificial languages.

6 Collaboration in Amateur Translation One of the activities particularly popular in the web is amateur translation. It is a type of collaborative translation of a non-professional type, implying a voluntary collaborative practice between members of groups of internet users, collaborating towards a particular aim of translating a given text—literary, specialized (Garcia, 2009), gaming discourse, comics etc. Connected with amateur translation is fan translation, often threatened with copyright infringement (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_translation#cite_ref-:4_ 8-0), as it involves unofficial translation, often subtitling (called fansubbing in such contexts), produced by amateur volunteer translators, particularly interested in audiovisual products such as films, particularly Japanese anime, videogames, comics (especially manga, the activity called scanlation in such contexts).

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In another type of fan translation called rom hacking (O’Hagan, 2009), players adapt games they like to play to a specific culture for other gamers to enjoy the play more. The localization of the game goes much further than in the ordinary fansubbing cases though, as the rom hackers alter the texts, dialogues, or advance the stories to a larger extent than in other crowdsourcing translation types, in the processes of transcreation or carte blanche (Mangiron & O’Hagan, 2006). In the paper by Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk and Bogucki (2016), the authors investigated the extent to which the amateur attempts have been functioning as a starting point and trigger in collaborative knowledge acquisition. Evidence from a cooperation between American and Polish students was presented in creating a common collaborative space, to contribute to the development of the English to Polish translation product based on the essays authored by American students, peer-reviewed by the Polish students and translated into Polish as a result of joint discussions and terminology clarification. Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk and Bogucki (2016) point to the implication of such a state of affairs for new models of knowledge acquisition and translation product.

7 Crowdsourcing and Challenges Although the field of crowdsourcing activities seems not to officially exist yet, general influence of web-based activities on professional practices, addressed by several scholars (Cronin, 2010; Díaz-Cintas & Mu´noz Sánchez, 2006; Mu´noz Sánchez, 2006; O’Hagan, 2009, etc.,) shows an extent to which presumptive practices of web communities influence traditional profession-based products. As remarked in an essential paper by Fernández Costales (2013), such practices produce a significant shift from the fan-based Internet activities into the cultural mainstream activity, as first observed by Jenkins (2006, p. 142), visible in most influential types of collaborative translation which exist today. There are typically two facets of the Web-based collaborative work of the crowdsourcing types. Notwithstanding some beneficial sides of part of the crowdsourcing activities, also outside the Web (as e.g., Médecins Sans Frontières, mentioned before, which provides medical humanitarian assistance to save lives and ease the suffering of people in crisis situation https://www.msf.org/), there are some disadvantages connected with this kind of action. The latter emphasizes the loss of the work quality and a sheer intention on the side of companies to cut costs and bring profits (Bogucki, 2009), criticised mostly for its ethical implications. In connection to this distinction, Alberto Fernández Costales (2013) and other scholars posit a distinction between collaborative translation—which they see as a voluntary activity, and crowdsourcing—considered as a hierarchically imposed unpaid work. However, as seen from the general use these two terms, crowdsourcing in many cases is used precisely to indicate a voluntary and amateur, albeit unpaid, activity performed according to the subject’s interest and preference.

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Thus, we would rather propose to continue applying the term collaboration as a possible technique used in any type of professional, or amateur activity, hierarchically imposed or not, paid or unpaid, performed by and among a group of people, pursuing a particular work objective, while crowdsourcing would be considered a type of amateur activity, performed on a voluntary basis towards fulfilling a particular aim, in which payment is typically not a primary incentive.

8 Conclusions A number of activities performed with the help of crowdsourcing are considered success. TAALRADAR has been designed using Pybossa in the framework of the European Network for Combining Language Learning with Crowdsourcing Techniques (EnetCollect) funded by the COST agency.1 The application has been used for the first time to elicit information from the crowd as to the recognition of blends. This was a success, people enjoyed using TAALRADAR to give their opinion as to particular blends in Dutch. Another success was a presentation on Pybossa: “When to use Pybossa? Case studies on crowdsourcing for Dutch” at a relevant COST workshop in Gothenburg. New experiments were done using TAALRADAR for the recognition of neologisms and the collection of dialect words. TAALRADAR remains a tool that can be used for more experiments to elicit information from the crowd, both for linguistic research and for language learning. In 2019, a Crowdfest took place in Brussels (23–25 February 2022) and there the TAALRADAR was also presented in the project ‘Crowdsourcing corpus cleaning for language learning’. Apart from the crowdsourcing tools used to collect the Dutch language resources, other languages too are collected on a similar scale as e.g., in the case of the Luxembourgish language, the app “Schnëssen” is used to collect crowdsource data in various social situations. Users participate in large-scale recording tasks and surveys (https://european-language-equality.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/ELE_ __Deliverable_D1_24__Language_Report_Luxembourgish.pdf). Crowdsourcing is also used in a number of interesting ongoing informal projects as e.g., in Akhlaghi et al. (in press), who organised an international consortium and used an open source LÄRA (Swedish ‘to learn’, acronym for ‘Learning and Reading Assistant’) platform https://lara-lms.com/en/, used and developed extensively in the enetCollect Action CA 160,105 to create multimodal annotated editions of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Le petit prince in multiple languages (French, English, Italian, Icelandic, Irish, Japanese, Polish, Farsi and Mandarin). What is also particularly worthwhile, #LARA versions of the book including integrated audio and translations and besides automatically generating lemma-based concordances, are freely available online. 1

https://www.cost.eu/actions/CA16105/.

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The platform is used for a number of particularly significant applications. Branislav Bédi, the EnetConnect consortium project manager, has been engaged in numerous activities involving the #LARA platform. Bédi has been working on the Old Norse language and used crowdsourcing techniques for creating interactive textual content. Recent extensions to this open-source platform (Bédi et al., 2022) support visually and phonetically annotated texts, also used in relation to endangered and archaic languages. The examples in this study are derived from the revived Australian language Barngarla, Icelandic Sign Language, Irish Gaelic, Old Norse manuscripts and Egyptian hieroglyphics. While the use of crowdsourcing for such applications as above is particularly valuable in linguistics, the influence of crowdsourcing practices on professional translation is still a matter of continuous scholarly dispute (Mandelin, 2016; O’Hagan, 2009), although most of their merits are particularly worth emphasizing. Collaborative translation influences also the translation industry, e.g., Google, Microsoft etc. rely on crowdsourcing in the translation of their websites and most of their applications used by enormous numbers of Web-users.2 Linguistic research, language and translator training are identified as the areas benefitting from the collaborative and crowdsource tasks and collected data. Their consequences aiming to contribute to current methodological vistas in linguistics and language/terminology acquisition show evidence of how creation of a common collaborative space, typically in terms of cloud technology at present, for linguists, language learners, translator trainees and other specialists, can work and contribute to the development of language proficiency, enrichment of language use techniques and terminology acquisition, as well as the quality of language product. The competences focusing on these techniques, particularly those related to how crowdsourcing applications lead towards a more general phenomenon which involves collaborative knowledge acquisition and Internet-based task sharing, have been indicated and their position in language and knowledge acquisition emphasized. Furthermore, as emphasized by Li (2016) in connection with the future of crowdsourcing and its embracing further and further territories: “The enterprise needs to use crowdsourcing to improve open innovation process, and network public use crowdsourcing to enrich their lives and works. Crowdsourcing will continue to optimize the efficiency of the enterprise service and the efficiency of the society” (p. 199). This in fact is being done. Crowdsourcing and Open Innovation (OI) are proceeding in tandem, attracting growing interest both from scholars and from practitioners (Cricelli et al., 2022), towards optimizing the efficiency of the society. However, how more exactly the crowdsourcing techniques and applications are likely to augment the work of single translators in different types of their job, and to what extent such amplifications are worthwhile and desirable, remains to be seen. Acknowledgements The study has been conducted during an STSM study period at the Dutch Language Institute in Leiden of Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk in July 2021, granted by COST 2

Fernandez Costales (2013) quotes the data concerning LinkedIn which sent an e-mail in 2009 to more than 41 million users with a survey asking about their availability and willingness to translate online content on a voluntary basis.

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Action European Network for Combining Language Learning with Crowdsourcing Techniques (enetCollect) CA 160105.

References Acar, O. A. (2019). Product development—Why crowdsourcing often leads to bad ideas. Diversity. Harvard Business Publishing. https://hbr.org/podcasts Akhlaghi, E., B˛aczkowska, A., Bédi, B., Beedar, H., Chua, C., Cucchiarini, C., Habibi, H., Horváthová, I., Maizonniaux, C., Ní Chiaráin, N., Paterson, N., Raheb, C., Rayner, M., & Yao, C. (in press). Using the Lara platform to crowdsource a multilingual, multimodal little prince. Beyond Philology. Bédi, B., Beedar, H., Chiera, B., Ivanova, N., Maizonniaux, C., Ní Chiaráin, N., Rayner, M., Sloan, J., & Zuckermann, G. (2022). Using LARA to create image-based and phonetically annotated multimodal texts for endangered languages. In Proceedings of the Fifth Workshop on the Use of Computational Methods in the Study of Endangered Languages (pp. 68–77). Association for Computational Linguistics. Bogucki, Ł. (2009). Amateur subtitling on the internet. In J. Díaz-Cintas & G. Anderman (Eds.), Audiovisual translation: Language transfer on screen (pp. 49–57). Palgrave Macmillan. COST-workshop.: Crowdsourcing related to corpus examples for language learning (2019). Cronin, M. (2010). The translation crowd. Revista Tradumática, 8. Cricelli, L., Grimaldi, M. & Vermicelli, S. (2022). Crowdsourcing and open innovation: A systematic literature review, an integrated framework and a research agenda. Review of Managerial Science, 16(5), 1–42. Dekker, P., & Schoonheim, T. (2018a). Recognizing blends: First experiments with Pybossa. In Enetcollect workshop, Leiden Dekker, P., & Schoonheim, T. (2018b). When to use PYBOSSA? Case studies on crowdsourcing for Dutch. enetCollect workshop. In Learning materials through crowdsourcing: Teachers, perspectives & scenarios. Gotenburg. Dekker, P., Zingano Kuhn, T., Šandrih, B., Zviel-Girshin, R., Arhar Holdt, Š., & Schoonheim, T. (2019). Corpus filtering via crowdsourcing for developing a learner’s dictionary. Presentation at “op e-Lex 2019 Smart lexicography”. Díaz-Cintas, J., & Mu´noz Sánchez, P. (2006). Fansubs: Audiovisual translation in an amateur environment. The Journal of Specialised Translation, 6, 37–52. Fernández Costales, A. (2013). Crowdsourcing and collaborative translation: Mass phenomena or silent threat to translation studies? Hermeneus, TI, 15, 85–110. Garcia, I. (2009). Beyond translation memory: Computers and the professional translator. The Journal of Specialised Translation, 12, 199–214. Li, G. (2016). The application and innovation of crowdsourcing in the internet age. Open Journal of Social Sciences, 4, 199–204. https://doi.org/10.4236/jss.2016.43025 Jenkins, H. (2006). Fans, bloggers, and gamers: Exploring participatory culture. New York University Press. Jimenez-Crespo, M. A. (2016). Mobile apps and translation crowdsourcing: The next frontier in the evolution of translation. Revista Tradumàtica, 14, 75–84. Jiménez-Crespo, M. A. (2017). Crowdsourcing and online collaborative translations. Expanding the limits of translation studies. John Benjamins. Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk, B. (2021). Współczesna komunikacja internetowa na tle komunikacji tradycyjnej. In P. Stalmaszczyk (Ed.), J˛ezyk w czasie i przestrzeni (pp. 11–34). Lodz University Press.

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Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk, B., & Bogucki, Ł. (2016). Volunteer translation, collaborative knowledge acquisition and what is likely to follow. In Ł. Bogucki, B. Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk & M. Thelen (Eds.), Translation and meaning, Pt 2 (Vol. 2, pp. 37–46). Peter Lang. Mandelin, C. (2016). Legends of localization: Fan translation: Does it help or hurt getting professional work?. Legends of Localization. Retrieved December 18, 2022, from https://legendsof localization.com/ Mangiron, C., & O’Hagan, M. (2006). Game localisation: Unleashing imagination with ‘restricted’ translation. Journal of Specialized Translation, 6, 11–21. Mu´noz Sánchez, P. (2006). Electronic tools for translators in the 21st century. Translation Journal: Translators and Computers, 10, 4. https://aclanthology.org/www.mt-archive.info/TranslationJ2006-Munoz-Sanchez.pdf O’Hagan, M. (2009). Evolution of user-Generated translation: Fansubs, translation hacking and crowdsourcing. The Journal of Internationalization and Localization, 1, 94–121. Surowiecki, J. (2004). The wisdom of crowds: Why the many are smarter than the few and how collective wisdom shapes business, economies, societies, and nations. Doubleday & Co. Toffler, A. (1980). The third wave. William Morrow. Winchester, S. (2003). The meaning of everything: The story of the Oxford English dictionary. Oxford University Press.

URLs http://www.multi-lingua.hu/news/Open-Translation-Project/ https://ivdnt.org/?s=taalradar https://nl.termwiki.com/ http://www.omegawiki.org/ https://www.msf.org/. Médecins Sans Frontières. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_translation#cite_ref-:4_8-0

Crowdsourcing Tools https://lara-lms.com/en/ https://european-language-equality.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/ELE___Deliverable_D1_24_ _Language_Report_Luxembourgish_.pdf Wiktionary. https://www.wiktionary.org/ TermWiki. https://pro.termwiki.com/ Duolinguo. https://apps.apple.com/pl/app/duolingo-language-lessons/id570060128?l=pl Pybossa. https://pybossa.com/ Pootle. https://pootle.translatehouse.org/ TED. https://www.ted.com/ Amara. https://amara.org/about-amara/ TraMOOC (Translation for Massive Open Online Courses). www.tramooc.eu https://kato.translatorswb.org/Translators Crowdin. https://crowdin.com/ Lingotek. https://lingotek.com/ Lingohub. https://lingohub.com/ TxtEAgle. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/978-3-642-02767-3_50 https://taalradar.ivdnt.org

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Frieda Steurs is Full Professor at the KU Leuven, Faculty of Arts. She works in the field of terminology, language technology, specialized translation and multilingual document management. She is a member of the research group Quantitative Lexicology and Variation Linguistics (QLVL). Her research includes projects with industrial partners and public institutions. Since 2016, she has been the head of research of the INT, the Dutch Language Institute in Leiden. In this capacity, she is responsible for the collection, development and hosting of all digital language resources for the Dutch Language. In 2018, she was elected Secretary-General of CIPL, the international committee of linguists. Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk is Full Professor of English and Applied Linguistics at the University of Applied Sciences in Konin. She researches primarily cognitive semantics and pragmatics of language contrasts, corpus and cultural linguistics, media studies and their applications in translation studies, lexicography, FLT and online discourse analysis. Over the years she has been invited to read papers at various international conferences and to lecture and conduct seminars at the universities in Europe, Asia and Americas.

Benefits of Cultural Translation for Advanced Undergraduate EFL Learners Noelia Ruiz Ajenjo and Andrés Canga Alonso

Abstract This paper explores whether cultural translation can favour English as a foreign language teaching (EFLT) and learning (EFLL), to raise students’ awareness of cultural diversity among different linguistic communities. More specifically, this research aims to test whether (1) students usually translate from the foreign language into their mother tongue; (2) the activity is a challenge for the students; (3) it has helped them to learn new culture-specific vocabulary, and (4) participants consider translation a useful tool in their process of learning a foreign language. A translation activity was carried out by a group of undergraduate students who had an advanced English level and were enrolled in a subject devoted to direct and reverse translation from Spanish into English. They were asked to translate two texts from South African and Indian English into Spanish and answer a questionnaire on their reflections about the activities. Our findings revealed that the task has benefited students’ learning of new specific cultural vocabulary from South African English and Indian English varieties. Our data also evinced that translation activities could be implemented in EFL classrooms as a beneficial teaching technique to foster EFL learning. Keywords Cultural translation · Pedagogical translation · Foreign language teaching (FLT) · English as a foreign language learning (EFL) · Foreign language learner (FLL)

N. R. Ajenjo (B) EFL Teacher in Logroño, Logroño, Spain e-mail: [email protected] A. C. Alonso University of La Rioja, Logroño, Spain e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk and M. Trojszczak (eds.), Language in Educational and Cultural Perspectives, Second Language Learning and Teaching, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-38778-4_7

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1 Introduction The 21st century is the era of globalization and, consequently, there is a constant need to bring people together to understand and collaborate in many fields of life: economics, politics, negotiations, leisure activities, simple conversations, or transactions. Thus, language favors globalization, as it is the main tool for communication. People also need to be acquainted with other languages and cultures in order to understand each other, and translation seems necessary to promote this interaction. What is more, cultural translation brings individuals from different backgrounds, cultures, and languages together, so it should be part of foreign language teaching (FLT) programs (Ulvydiené, 2013). However, Translation Studies (TS) have not been considered positively regarding English as Foreign Language Learning and Teaching (EFLT). In fact, translation has been long treated as a threat for second or foreign language students: the L1 crosslinguistic influence on L2 has been widely considered as negative transfer, and this caused translation to be banned in EFLT. This negative tendency has been changing lately and translation has been progressively recovering its value for pedagogical purposes in language teaching (Carreres et al., 2018; Cook, 2010; González Davies, 2018; Laviosa, 2014; Leonardi, 2010; Leonardi & Salvi, 2016). Thus, the interest of the present paper is to consider cultural translation as an efficient and functional tool in foreign language teaching (FLT) to raise students’ cultural awareness. Considering that English is the most globalized language in the world, its linguistic varieties are influenced by regional features, their purposes of communication, as well as the number and the type of languages which coexist with it in a certain territory. Consequently, language varieties can be of great interest to the foreign language learner (FLL) in order to improve their communication skills and to be aware of the richness of the languages and their cultures (González Davies, 2020; Laviosa, 2014; Leonardi & Salvi, 2016). An example of these linguistic peculiarities are specific terms belonging to two different varieties of English: South African English and Indian English, which are the focus of our research. The present paper reviews the theoretical framework surrounding pedagogical translation and its benefits for EFL together with the role of the cultural translator and the techniques and strategies needed to translate a cultural text. The methodology followed in the study and its main findings are, then, presented and discussed. Finally, we point out some lines for further research in order to overcome the main limitations of the present study.

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2 Theoretical Framework 2.1 Pedagogical Translation There has always been a great controversy over whether to use translation as an efficient, effective, and beneficial tool for teaching a second (L2) or foreign language (FL). The central debate was mainly on the role of the mother tongue, seen as the source of negative transfer in the process of learning a foreign language and therefore preventing the progress in the acquisition of the L2 (House, 2016). Pedagogical translation has been somehow related to the Grammar-Translation method (GTM), which faced the rejection of many FLT scholars, such as Gouin (1880) or Viëtor (1882) (cited in House, 2016, p. 122). These methodologists posited that translation led to a great interference of the L1 with the L2/FL. For this reason, they considered that the Direct Method or the Series Method was the best strategy to teach a FL mainly through the spoken language, thus refusing the use of translation or any kind of intervention of the mother tongue. Lado (1964, as cited in Leonardi & Salvi, 2016, p. 333), Beardsmore (1982), Krashen and Terrell (1983), Lott (1983) and Ellis (1997) also rejected translation as a tool for FLL since “[p]sychologically the process of translation is more complex than, different from, and unnecessary for speaking, listening, reading, or writing” (Leonardi & Salvi, 2016, p. 333). Lado claimed that the intervention of the L1 while learning caused interference with the L2. Notwithstanding, Skinner (1985) advocated that only using the L2 could prevent important neural connections in the students’ brains. Despite these negative views on GTM, it is still being widely used in Spanish secondary school education. This method can be beneficial for both students— providing them with confidence and fulfilment—and teachers, whose knowledge of the L2 is, to a certain extent, limited (Cook, 2009). At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Reform Movement disapproved of translation for reasons such as setting aside the spoken language, misconceiving the term of equivalence, and working with sentences instead of contextualized texts (Howatt, 1984). Krashen and Terrell (1983) rejected translation in FLT advocating that students should learn as naturally as possible, similar to the way in which the mother tongue is acquired. Translation could not take place in the field of FLL, as it would be conscious and done mostly in written form, while they always encouraged the spoken language. Withal, innovation is constantly needed and occurring in education, which has provoked translation to be both rejected and implemented in FL classrooms depending on the teaching methods preferred at a particular moment. The tendency favoring the application of translation has been adopted by different turns: (a) the multilingual turn in education (May, 2014), (b) the plurilingual turn (González Davies, 2018), and (c) the translation turn (Carreres et al., 2018). The multilingual turn was a critical movement in education against monolingual tendencies in language teaching, rejecting the use of the mother tongue and advocating that the native speaker of the FL was the best instructor (May, 2014, p. 1). Besides, this

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approach highlights “the connected view of learning processes that fosters interaction between languages and cultures” thus, “translation is implemented following socio-constructivist pedagogical practices as an efficient strategy to advance not only language learning, but also plurilingual communicative competence” (González Davies, 2018, p. 125). Finally, the translation turn aims to research the potential that translation has as a positive tool for pedagogy and its didactic use in FLT (Carreres et al., 2018). These three turns insisted on studying translation as a tool for FLT but from a different perspective, leaving aside its traditional relation with the GTM (Pintado Gutiérrez, 2018). The discussion on whether translation can be a beneficial tool for FLL is still going on. As explained by House (2016), teachers usually considered translation as an opportunity to achieve linguistic competence and as a technique for illustrating and explaining grammar. Moreover, they also have used it to check their students’ comprehension and prepare a wide range of activities to test learners. In this sense, the sole focus of using translation activities was the examination of linguistic correctness. However, these concerns do not exploit translation as a “complex cross-lingual activity” (House, 2016, p. 124) as it can be used as a technique which provides pragmatic equivalences by relating the linguistic forms to their communicative functions, and therefore this tool would be highly convenient to achieve communicative competence. This tendency has changed gradually from the almost complete rejection of translation for FLT, to a more positive consideration towards this discipline. As Leonardi (2010, p. 18) asserts, translation has been lately perceived as a tool that can “enrich rather than harm learners’ competence and performance”. Many scholars advocate for translation as an efficient and functional tool for FLL; the benefits they acknowledge will be studied in the next section.

2.1.1

Benefits of Pedagogical Translation

Cook (2010, p. 20) states that translation is “a major aim and means of language learning, and a major measure of success”. He coins the term ‘Translation in Language Teaching’ (TILT) referring to translation as “an integral part of the teaching and learning process as a whole” (Cook, 2010, p. 20) and suggests the use of translation focusing on form to observe better the difficulties of the students in the foreign language grammar, lexicon or pragmatics. This technique relates to the Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis, i.e., the behaviorist procedure favoring L1-L2 comparison. While the Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis is more concerned with conditions conducive to predicting or identifying and explaining L2 student errors (Laviosa, 2014), Levine (2011) claims that the new language cannot be separated from their mother tongue since the L1 is a cognitively and socially dominant language, which is why it would be unreasonable to ban it from the L2 pedagogy. In this vein, House (2016, p. 128) considers that translation is an “excellent tool” to assist students in realizing how to convey the same meaning in different ways within the same language and transferring it from one language to another.

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Likewise, according to Danchev (1983), translation is a natural process that compares the source (SL) and the target language (TL) favoring the recognition of difficulties in learning the TL. Many scholars acknowledge Danchev’s opinion, maintaining that learners cannot avoid naturally translating the L2 into their L1, hence translation should be recognized as the fifth skill in FLT (Canga-Alonso & Rubio-Goitia, 2016; Cook, 2007, 2010; Danchev, 1983; Leonardi, 2010; Leonardi & Salvi, 2016; Stibbard, 1998; Widdowson, 2003). The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages Companion Volumen (CEFR) (2020) also pursued the reimplementation of translation in FL classrooms, considering that translation, within the notion of mediation, as part of the five basic language skills. The CEFR claimed that students should achieve plurilingual competence, meaning that they should be able to communicate with reliance on all their linguistic resources, including the L1 (Pym & Ayvazyan, 2018). Nonetheless, some scholars are not totally convinced of using translation as a tool for FLL, but do not deny some of its benefits. Sweet (1964) advocated for the use of translation for FLT to a certain extent: only by advanced students, as the learner should be highly skilled in the L2. Besides, translation could be used as aiding understanding and economy in the L2. In this respect, House (2016) suggested that translation can clarify some FL items as long as studies in a larger context. Cultural translation which is of particular interest for this study has been defined by Shuttleworth and Cowie (1997, p. 35) as “any translation which is sensitive to cultural as well as linguistic factors”, adding to Pym’s (2014) idea that cultural translation is “a general activity of communication between cultural groups” (Katan, 2018, p. 32). Regarding these definitions and considering the practice of translation and cultural translation, its importance does not lie only in linguistic aspects of the L1 and L2, but also in the culture of both linguistic contexts. As stated by Laviosa, translation, considered cross-cultural communication, promotes “sensitiveness not only for the lexico-syntactic features of the two languages in contact, but also for their socio-cultural differences” (2018, p. 575). In this sense, Edwards (2010) regards as crucial to study not only the language itself, but also the cultural background of its linguistic community. This acknowledgement develops in the learner a new awareness of the other and oneself: language reflects the culture of a linguistic community, its traditions, beliefs, and its own unique way of expressing concepts. In this way, the student would be able to understand the world better by familiarizing herself or himself, through translation, with those aspects that influence the use of a language. Likewise, Laviosa claims that language is essential “in the exchange among people belonging to different cultural groups in a given society or between nationalities” (2014, p. 51). Hence, translation functions as a vital tool for those who have no knowledge on the SL of a text in order to grasp the meaning of a given utterance in their mother tongue. Concerning the abovementioned unconscious and natural connection students make between L1 and L2, they are able to create multiple associations and distinctions between both languages, as well as involuntarily translate the new language into their mother tongue. This process helps with their understanding of the FL, making

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the students aware of the similarities and differences between both languages and, therefore, their cultures, somehow provoking an interest in the reasons for those linguistic peculiarities. According to Schäffner (1998), translation helps the learner to understand how the L2 works and to comprehend its structures. Besides, the learner recognizes the cultural distinctiveness between L1 and L2 contexts and is able to relate to the previously unknown environment (L2 and L2 culture). Leonardi and Salvi (2016) also argue that using translation as a tool for FLL shows difficulties and misunderstandings in the students’ knowledge of L1 and L2 linguistic and cultural contexts. In this case, the teacher and the student can work on relieving and mitigating those difficulties and thus, make progress in learning the FL. Along these lines, Leonardi and Salvi conclude that thanks to translation activities “the language learner develops “effective communication’ and becomes ‘a mediator between cultures” (2016, p. 335). In this context, the learner will need to develop specific skills to deal with the tasks and provide an as adequate translation as possible; those skills are beneficial for the students, as elaborated in this section, and will help them in their process of FLL, so that the learner will become a “competent plurilingual speaker” (González Davies, 2020, p. 434). Overall, translation can be a great tool with which students, by also using their mother tongue, will be able to recognize the areas in which they have more difficulties. Similarly, the teacher will perceive the most problematic fields for the students and will be able to redirect the teaching method to improve these aspects. Considering cultural translation, students will be able to develop their intercultural competence, which will encourage and motivate their interest in learning more about languages and their cultures, to foster a sense of self-awareness of their own linguistic and cultural contexts, as well as of those of other English-speaking communities. In conclusion, introducing and implementing translation in FLT seems reasonable, therefore some suggestions on how to proceed will be examined in the next section.

2.1.2

Pedagogical Translation as a Tool for Foreign Language Learning (FLL)

The interest of the study is now focused on how this type of activities can be more appropriately applied in a real classroom context. Regarding the type of student to apply a translation activity to, House (2016) and Sweet (1964) conclude that tasks can be conducted with advanced learners who are already sufficiently qualified and familiarized with the L2 to depict associations and distinctions between the FL and the mother tongue. It seems reasonable to consider that the student needs to have a strong L2 proficiency to face the translation almost completely on their own, without much external aid. In this sense, Widdowson (2014) considers that the result of the activity does not need to be perfect as long as the process of learning is activated. Regarding the role of the instructor when applying translation to a FL classroom, Lamb et al. (2016) argue that, when preparing a lesson, the teacher should check their own knowledge of both linguistic contexts and their personal values and ideas. According to Case and Selvester (2000), instructors should consider their knowledge

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of L2 culture in which the translation activity is developed, and how it affects the language. In this sense, instructors should go through a process of reflection prior to starting the translation task and, later, introduce the students into the cultural context of L2. Likewise, they should bear in mind that their own assumptions and values are likely to influence the final translation. Lamb et al. (2016, p. 8) propose different stages for the instructor to consider— after their own self-reflection—when applying a translation activity in the foreign language classroom: (1) contextualization, (2) students’ self-reflective contextualization, (3) active recontextualization. In the first stage, the instructor guides the students along the discovery of their own assumptions and ideas of the practice. The second aims to drive the learners into self-reflection about the similarities and distinctions between the ST and the TT. The third stage aims to rethink the task, taking in account their assumptions and previous knowledge, and justifying their own translation. This critical process aims to help students improve their knowledge about L2, and its culture. Hence, translation activities are considered to promote autonomy and self- reflection on learners when they start being aware of the reasons and ways in which they learn the FL (Canga Alonso & Rubio Goitia, 2016). Students should self-reflect on their own work, which helps them evaluate their mistakes and strong points in order to progress on their learning. The teacher’s role is to encourage learners’ self-reflection to promote their autonomy, rather than giving them directly the feedback on their performance (Canga Alonso & Rubio Goitia, 2016). In accordance with this idea, Holz-Mänttäri holds that the teacher should encourage these skills on their students to let them work autonomously in order to take the responsibility that the activity requires (1984, as cited in Kiraly, 1995, p. 21). Translation is also widely used in FL classrooms as a quick and efficient way to teach the meaning of new vocabulary as well as a theoretical task that promotes language learning. In addition, the students, being limited and determined by the ST, cannot elude certain linguistic elements they usually avoid in other contexts: they have to face the aspects they find more complex about the L2 (Cook, 2009). Thus, the teacher should encourage the students to cope with the difficulties they usually come across, while students should struggle to overcome these problems to improve their competence in the FL. Having examined how translation can be applied in FLL and its benefits for the learner, it seems sensible to implement this kind of activities in the FL classroom despite the still continuous debate regarding this issue. The next section will deal with the role the students take as translators when working on the task, and the benefits for their learning.

2.2 Pedagogical Translation and the Cultural Translator Regardless of the type of text to translate, the role of the translator is crucial. Their knowledge of the SL, the TL, and their cultural background influence the final

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product. Thus, a translation can be considered the result of the translator’s own decisions on the ST and the way in which its meaning and purpose are reflected in the TT. It is generally held that a perfect translation does not exist: one of the main goals in order to achieve an adequate translation is to train professionals properly so they can develop their linguistic abilities and cultural knowledge from both linguistic backgrounds. By the implementation of pedagogical translation in the classrooms, the FLL will develop, to some extent, those skills of a good translator. The translator has the power to render the ST into the TT as he or she considers more adequate, influenced by their previous knowledge of the languages and cultural backgrounds. Nonetheless, the translator also has power over the reader of the final product. Depending on the translator’s decisions during the process of translation, the target reader will interpret and grasp information differently. As Oittinen (2002, p. 52) stresses, “[a]s adult parents, authors, illustrators, translators, (…) we are authorities over children” and “have the power to decide”. As a translator, the foreign language learner can develop awareness of this issue: students must understand the power their decisions have on the way the target reader will grasp the information of their translation. Central to translation and especially, cultural translation, is the fact that both learners and translators deal with two languages and their cultures. Thus, language and culture are strongly intertwined and influence one another, providing students with an increasing intercultural competence. As explained by Armstrong, even the vocabulary of a language “should convey cultural reference, given that words, quote obviously, convey meaning, both in denotation and connotation” (2015, p. 181). Language names every component of a culture and combines those linguistic elements to convey the meaning necessary so that its society can communicate. What is more, each culture is unique in the way in which it expresses itself through language. In order to encourage students’ intercultural competence, translation activities must promote considerable contrasts and comparisons between the two cultural contexts for a greater result (Byram, 1991). Therefore, Byram considered the use of L1 in FLT and created a learning model applying contrastive analysis between both L1 and L2 cultural contexts. Consequently, a great and increasing knowledge of the SL and the TL, as well as of their cultural background, will be developed by FLL. Another important question related to the role of the translator is that of the globalization that has taken place during the last decades. Pool addresses this issue as a possible cause for the loss of languages and therefore provokes a monolingual world, advocating that “translators, those who regularly mediated between literary and global varieties, would naturally be the main participants in the definition and maintenance of global varieties.” (2010, p. 79). This possible future would signify the continuity of diversity as well as integration through language. Consequently, Pool’s ideas can be reflected in pedagogical translation as a tool for FLL: students, working as amateur translators for the sake of learning a FL, will become mediators between cultures and languages, familiarizing themselves with the linguistic and cultural contexts of both the SL and the TL and promoting diversity as well as integration. The

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comparisons, associations, and distinctions that may be developed in the student’s mind during a translation activity will enrich their linguistic and cultural knowledge and widen up their perspective on the world itself and how it works depending on the geographical origins, culture, and the way in which communication is carried out. It is also claimed that imagination and creativity are necessary skills for the translator. According to Chomsky’s definition of linguistic creativity, this ability can be a consequence of the “infinite productivity of language”, meaning that the translator has the potential to create and produce different variations of the TL according to the SL meaning and function (as cited in Boase-Beier, 2011, p. 54). This aspect is of great benefit for the FLL. Students, playing the role of the translator, develop and improve their linguistic creativity during the translation activity as they must find the most suitable variant in the TL for the task. It is almost certain that an activity in which advanced language learners have to take the role of the translator can be potentially beneficial for FLL since students realize their power over the translation and the target reader’s interpretation; create an awareness of the similarities and distinctions between the SL and the TL as well as of their cultural contexts; enrich their knowledge about them, gaining a wider perspective on the otherness and oneself; and promote and develop their linguistic creativity in both languages. Therefore, the benefits of pedagogical translation for FLL seem clear, as well as the use of translation activities in the advanced FL classrooms. In order to carry out an adequate translation, professionals and FLL usually apply some specific and well-known strategies for the TT (Molina and Hurtado, 2002). These techniques will be examined in the following section. As the present paper focuses on cultural translation, this section will explore the translation strategies which are more specifically related to this field of TS: namely foreignizing and domesticating. Schleiermacher (1838, as cited in Venuti, 2004, p. 20) proposed the dichotomy between domesticating (or “naturalizing”) and foreignizing (or “exoticizing”). The domesticating method attempts to bring the ST towards the target-language culture, whereas foreignizing aimed to differentiate the linguistic and cultural aspects of the ST. Schleiermacher preferred foreignizing translation, in which the target readers can familiarize with the otherness that surrounds the ST (e.g., its culture, traditions, and beliefs). Schleiermacher offered these two options to the translator because he considers that the final product cannot be effectively adjusted to the ST. In recent times, Haywood et al. (2009) claimed that the exoticizing strategy brings the target reader towards the SL culture (e.g., maintaining cultural terms and ideas), while by using the domesticating strategy the ST is the one brought towards the reader (e.g., describing those cultural terms in the TT), being more familiar and understandable, but, at the same time, with less specific cultural elements from the SL. Therefore, the professional can choose between the exoticizing strategy and the domesticating one while translating, but bearing in mind how each of them will work on the final product. Thus, the translator needs to choose the method that they consider most appropriate for the result to be adequate and faithful to the ST meaning and purpose. The function of the ST, then, determines the strategies to be used by

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the translator, and the professional (the learners in the present study) has the power to decide and provoke a certain interpretation on the target reader. After having carried out a review of translation and its benefits as a tool for FLT, the main goal of this work is to design and implement a task for advanced students to show whether translation can be an efficient and functional resource for FLL. The following section presents the main features of the study.

3 The Study 3.1 Research Questions The present study, tries to find answers to the following questions: (1) do students usually translate from the foreign language into their mother tongue?; (2) has the activity been a challenge for students and have they learnt something new out of it?; (3) has the activity helped students to learn new culture-specific vocabulary and context?; (4) do students consider translation an adequate tool in their process of learning a foreign language?

3.2 Participants The case study was carried out at the University of La Rioja (Spain) with a group of advanced EFL (B2 ± C1 from the CEF). They were in the third year of the Degree in English Studies, and enrolled in a subject devoted to translation called “Spanish– English/English–Spanish Translation” during the academic year 2020–21. Thirteen students were asked to do the task and answer the questionnaire, but only four of them completed it (30.77%).

3.3 Data Collection Instruments and Analysis Data were collected in a two-hour session in May 2021, so the participants had already acquired some key notions in regard to translation strategies and cultural translation. In its first part, they were asked to translate a text from South African English into Spanish and, then to work with a text written in Indian English. These are two of the most influential varieties of English due to their large number of speakers and the richness of their cultural terms and expressions, which usually attract students’ attention. Finally, a questionnaire composed of fourteen questions was provided to observe students’ own reflections on the previous activities.

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Concerning the texts selected for this task (see Appendix A), the objective was to find pieces of writing which were adequate to the students’ level of English. In this case, the extracts were selected and adapted from pieces of news published in two online newspapers: All Africa and India Today. The texts included a considerable number of cultural terms and expressions belonging to the aforementioned English varieties. The tasks implied a level of complexity for the students, so that the cultural translation activity could be a challenge for them. Both pieces of writing contained specific vocabulary related to religious traditions, celebrations, food, and customs from these linguistic communities (e.g., “daltjies”, “Labarang”, “maankykers”, “boeka”, “vaisakhi”, “panth”, or “vatree). Regarding the grammatical category of these terms, most of them were nouns. As for the questionnaire (https://forms.gle/M8bB12AoecsCrxau9, adapted from Orozco Jutorán, 2012), it was used as a tool for students’ self-reflection on their previous work. Its aims were to gather the students’ opinion on, mainly, the difficulties and challenges the translations had posed for them and why, and to prove whether the activities had been positive for their foreign language learning. Thus, the questionnaire is not only useful for this research, but especially for investigating the students’ awareness of how they learn a foreign language. As illustrated in https:// forms.gle/M8bB12AoecsCrxau9, the items from the questionnaire are, mostly, based on yes-or-no questions, 5-type-likert-scale, and open answers. The questionnaire was proposed as an online activity. They had to answer all the questions anonymously, and they could not edit their answers once they were sent. The statements based on a Likert scale were analyzed quantitatively by means of percentages whereas open answers were scrutinized qualitatively. Once we have described the study, the following section presents its main findings.

4 Results Students’ answers to the first item of the questionnaire (Do you sometimes translate from English into Spanish when you are studying, reading, or learning new vocabulary?), evinced that they tended to translate into the mother tongue to understand the meaning of different text chunks. Replies to questions two (Did you find any difficulties when translating the texts?), four (Did you have to use any dictionary or resource to help you with specific vocabulary in English?) and five (Did you have to use any dictionary or resource to help you with specific cultural terms?) showed that the activity has posed a challenge for the students, especially in terms of lexicon. Our informants’ answers demonstrated problems with specific vocabulary due to its complexity, as there were words which denoted specific facts from South African and Indian culture. This fact made the texts difficult to be translated without the help of dictionaries or internet resources, as acknowledged by the participants. Their responses to item three (Where did you find more difficulties when translating the texts: reading, comprehension, lexicon, or grammar?) revealed that the

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challenge lies in the translation of cultural vocabulary from two varieties of English that students are not used to studying. One of the students also admitted having trouble with the grammar. Figure 1 illustrates these findings. As for question number six (Did you find difficulties when translating terms such as “barakat”, “vatrees”, or “gurdwaras”), our outcomes showed that three of the students found troubles with cultural terminology (“barakat”, “vaitrees”, and “gurdwaras”), while the other reported no difficulties. These findings are illustrated in Fig. 2. The answers to item number 7 (What techniques or strategies have you used to solve the problems that you encountered when translating?) purported that the participants had to reflect on the strategies and think about the one/s which would work better to achieve an adequate translation. All the students surveyed were familiar with the different strategies for cultural translation (foreignizing and domesticating strategies). Two of the students maintained some of the cultural terms appearing in the extract because of their cultural meaning; another student made use of amplification in order to explain the meaning of some specific vocabulary; the remaining informant consulted dictionaries, the teacher, and also rephrased some ideas.

Fig. 1 Percentages for item (3) (Where did you find more difficulties when translating the texts: reading comprehension, lexicon, or grammar?) Fig. 2 Percentages for item (6) (Did you find difficulties when translating terms such as “barakat”, “vatrees”, or “gurdwaras”?)

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The answers to items eight (Do you think that you have learnt new vocabulary with this translation activity? What kind of vocabulary have you learnt?), nine (Do you think that you have learnt something new about South African and Indian cultures? Please justify your answer), and ten (Do you think that you have learnt something new about South African English and Indian English? Justify your answer) support another important aim of this translation practice, which was to provide the students with pieces of writing of a certain complexity in order to present a challenge to encourage their learning progress on specific linguistic and cultural elements Their responses to these items also proved that by translating the texts, they have all learnt new vocabulary and cultural aspects about South Africa and India. In this vein, they asserted that they have learnt: (1) new English vocabulary; (2) English vocabulary related to religious ceremonies; (3) cultural terms related to places, food, religion or of cultural significance (e.g., “daltjies”, “Labarang”, “maankykers”, “boeka”, “vaisakhi”, “panth”, or “vatrees”). As for item 11 (Has the activity been a challenge for the students and have they learnt something new out of it?), the students were asked to rank the level of difficulty of the tasks in a scale from 1 to 5, being number 1 “very easy” and number 5 “very difficult”. The results (see Fig. 3) purported that three of the students found the activity “difficult” one, while the remaining informant found it average in terms of difficulty. These findings revealed that the task has been complex for students, to a certain extent, so it meets our expectations when we selected the texts. Item 12 inquired into the participants’ reason for perceiving the tasks as difficult. They recognized they have mostly found troubles with unknown terms, vocabulary related to the topics of the excerpts, and their lack of knowledge about South Africa and India. They also reckoned that these difficulties have improved their linguistic and cultural knowledge about both countries. According to students’ answers to item 13 (Do you think these translation activities have been useful for your learning), the proposed translation task was considered a functional, beneficial, and useful practice for their foreign language learning and,

Fig. 3 Percentages for item (11) (Choose the level of the difficulty these translation activities have meant for you)

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Fig. 4 Percentages for item (13) (Do you think these translations activities have been useful for your learning)

thus, a great tool to be used in foreign language teaching. These reflections seem to support the abovementioned benefits of cultural translation (Fig. 4). Finally, their responses to item 14 (If you consider the activities useful: Why is it?) proved that they considered the tasks useful for their learning on a threefold basis: (1) they can widen and improve their knowledge on cultural lexicon; (2) they like the challenges translation can entail, because it is then that they believe they learn the most; and (3) they are interested in learning new vocabulary.

5 Discussion Regarding the first research question of this work (RQ1: Do students usually translate from the foreign language into their mother tongue?), our data showed that students tended to translate into the mother tongue to understand the meaning of different text chunks since translation is a natural process that compares the SL and TL favoring the recognition of difficulties in learning the TL. This outcome also concurs with previous research which showed that FLLs tended to translate into their mother tongue when learning a foreign language, even unconsciously and despite their advanced level of English (B2 ± C1) (Canga Alonso & Rubio Goitia, 2016; Cook, 2007, 2010; Danchev, 1983; Leonardi, 2010; Stibbard, 1998; Widdowson., 2003). In regard to RQ2 (Has the activity been a challenge for students and have they learnt something new out of it?), our findings showed how a practice on cultural translation can be carried out differently depending on the translator’s interpretation of the ST and how he or she decides to render information into the language of the TT. These outcomes are in accordance with Boase-Beier’s (2011) contention that a translator must make decisions about how the source text is to be understood as every translation involves interpretation by the translator. Thus, the translator is a reader, and texts are open to different readings by different readers. Our data seems to also support Leonardi and Salvi’s (2016) claim that carrying out a translation activity is

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an opportunity for students to demand more effort of themselves, check doubts, solve problems, and learn new terms and structures in the foreign language. As for RQ3 (Has the activity helped students to learn new culture-specific vocabulary and context?), it was demonstrated that students’ benefitted from the task by learning new vocabulary from Indian and South African English. In this way, our results seems to concur with Laviosa (2018) who claims that translation activity promotes sensitiveness for the lexico-syntactic features of the two languages in contact, and their socio-cultural differences. This sensitivity may foster the participants’ intercultural competence and awake a sense of self-awareness of their own linguistic and cultural contexts, as well as of those of other English-speaking communities. In regard to RQ4 (Do students consider translation an adequate tool in their process of learning a foreign language?), our informants were able to establish connections between their L1 and the FL. Besides, as purported by Schäffner (1998), they seemed to understand how the L2 works and could establish associations and connections between both languages. These outcomes agree with previous literature (Cook, 2010; Laviosa, 2014; Leonardi, 2010; Leonardi & Salvi, 2016; Carreres et al., 2018; González Davies, 2018) that have reported the benefits of pedagogical translation for EFL learning.

6 Conclusion The present work has attempted to support the use of translation as a tool in FLL and FLT although the issue has caused great controversy in recent decades. The study shows that students, who are used to translating from the foreign language into their mother tongue, consider translation a functional, useful, and beneficial tool for their learning process. In addition, cultural translation can be seen as providing a different and rich input from the foreign language, as it seems to develop a sense of awareness of the different varieties of English and their specific cultural terms as well as to broaden cultural knowledge about other communities and cultures around the world. In this particular case, the four students recognized that they have learnt new culture-specific vocabulary and traditions belonging to two linguistic and cultural contexts, namely South African and Indian English. Given that, it seems sensible to use translation as a tool for FLT and FLL. Nonetheless, it is important to remember that the research carried out in the present chapter has been limited by the low number of students who completed the translation activities. For that reason, further studies should be conducted with a larger FL learner groups to better investigate the ideas presented in this work.

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Appendix A: Translation Tasks Task 1. South Africa: ‘Barakat’ Holds Cape Muslim Culture up to the Light Directed by Amy Jephta and told in Afrikaaps, the film is a layered, intimate and infinitely human story about family that provides a powerful counter-narrative to Muslim stereotypes. As children, our mothers would pack small plates of food and send us off to deliver them to our neighbours. Savouries like samoosas and daltjies, sweet things or anything we were eating that night, would be shared. This offering is referred to as a barakat, originating from the word barakah, which means blessing in Arabic. Amy Jephta’s new film takes its name from this communal tradition. The film centres on Muslim humanity and is one of the first to depict the Cape Muslim community in all its rich diversity, heritage and culture. Set during Ramadan, the film’s release was timed in South Africa for the day of Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of Ramadan. The story was personal for Jephta, who has Muslim ancestry. Celebrations of Labarang (Eid) with her aunts and uncles are fond recollections. The film celebrates Cape Muslim diversity and culture in layered ways. “There’s just so many nuances and so much about living Muslim in Cape Town specifically that people don’t understand.” The film depicts the traditional maankykers (moon watchers) ritual that the Crescent Observers’ Society holds annually on the Sea Point beachfront for the new moon sighting and Eid announcement. Sensitivity and being as accurate as possible to the lived experience of the Cape Muslim community was important for the filmmakers. This includes details inside the house, the food that is eaten and the words that are used. The production team worked closely with the community and cultural advisers to create authenticity, detailing prayers and boeka (fast-breaking) among other aspects. Adapted from: Khan (2021). South Africa: ‘Barakat’ Holds Cape Muslim Culture Up to the Light, Atiyyah Khan. AllAfrica, [online]. Accessed: 24th May 2021.

Task 2. More Than 800 Indian Sikhs Reach Pakistan to Mark ‘Vaisakhi’ Festivities at 16th Century Gurdwara Over 800 Indian Sikhs arrived in Pakistan’s Lahore on Monday to attend the 10- day harvest festival of ‘vaisakhi’ at a 16th Century gurudwara in Punjab province, among other historically important shrines in the country. Also known as ‘baisakhi’, ‘vaisakhi’ is a spring season harvest festival for Sikhs and Hindus. It marks the Sikh new year and commemorates the formation of Khalsa panth (saint-warriors) under Guru Gobind Singh in 1699.

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Officials of the Evacuee Trust Property Board (ETPB) and the Sikh Gurdwara Parbhandhik Committee greeted the pilgrims at the Wagah border. “A total of 815 Sikh ‘yatrees’ arrived from India via Wagah border on Monday to attend ‘baisaki’ rituals at Gurdwara Panja Sahib, Hassan Abdal,” ETPB spokesperson Amir Hashmi told PTI. He said the ‘yatrees’ were served with langar (food) as per Sikh tradition at the Wagah border. Gurdwara Panja Sahib in Hassan Abdal, about 350 km from Punjab province capital Lahore, is believed to have the handprint of founder of Sikhism, Guru Nanak. “After necessary immigration clearance, they were taken to Gurdwara Panja Sahib, Hassan Abdal by bus. Main function will be held at Panja Sahib on April 14. They will be taken to all important and historical Gurdwaras in Pakistan during their 10-day stay and will return to India on April 22,” Hashmi said. The Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi had issued visas to over 1,100 Sikh pilgrims in connection with the ‘vaisakhi’ festival. Under the framework of the Pakistan-India Protocol on Visits to Religious Shrines of 1974, many pilgrims from India visit Pakistan to observe various religious festivals and occasions each year. Adapted from: Press Trust of India Today. More than 800 Indian Sikhs reach Pakistan to mark ‘vaisakhi’ festivities at 16th century gurdwara, [online] Accessed: 22nd May 2021.

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Noelia Ruiz Ajenjo holds a degree in English Studies and an MA in Teaching Compulsory Secondary Education and Baccalaureate, Vocational Training and Language Teaching. She is currently working in an educational centre in Logroño (La Rioja) as a Secondary Education and Vocational Training EFL teacher. Andrés Canga-Alonso (Ph.D.) is tenured Associate Professor of English Studies at the University of La Rioja (Spain). His current research focuses on young learners’ cultural vocabulary in EFL. He has published on EFL learners’ cultural, receptive, and productive vocabulary in national and international peer-reviewed journals.

Creativity and Metaphor Translation Competence: The Case of Metaphorical Puns Chiara Astrid Gebbia

Abstract To counterbalance the scholarly attention that professional and conventional metaphors have attracted in Descriptive Translation Studies, this task-based study sets out to describe the strategies adopted by students when translating a specific type of creative metaphors: metaphorical puns in tourist texts. This product-oriented analysis is also combined with a retrospective verbal report that can shed light on the cognitive bearing these metaphors may have on translation. The analysis of the strategies adopted by 73 BA students revealed that the task completion was impeded by the nature of the metaphors and by their textual distribution. Moreover, the predilection of micro-strategies like literal translations and deletion suggests that appropriate creative solutions are disregarded in favor of source text faithfulness. Lastly, students did not show awareness of the metaphorical nature of the expressions they reported as problematic in the retrospective self-assessment report. This study therefore points out some pedagogical implications for including Metaphor Translation Competence in Translation Pedagogy by exploiting the bold nature of figurative puns. Keywords Metaphor translation competence · Cognitive translation studies · Humor research · Creativity

1 Introduction The prefixes in ‘metaphor’ and ‘translation’ both evoke the image of carrying something across (Jabarouti, 2016). However, metaphor and translation share more than a similar etymology. If on the one hand translation research has shed light on the multifaceted nature of metaphor, on the other hand the way the latter is translated has revealed the complex conceptual synergies at play when crossing languages and cultures. C. A. Gebbia (B) University of Agder, Kristiansand, Norway e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk and M. Trojszczak (eds.), Language in Educational and Cultural Perspectives, Second Language Learning and Teaching, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-38778-4_8

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Moreover, several metaphors have been used to describe translation, which has been labeled, perhaps too simplistically, as transfer or transportation, as a bridge or a conduit (Guldin, 2010; Martín De León, 2010; St. André, 2017) more creatively as a mirror, and more recently as movement and replacement (St. André, 2017). In turn, translation has served as a valuable observatory for metaphor theory and, at the same time, as an efficient laboratory for its empirical inquiry. Following the major developments in Translation Studies, metaphor has been investigated as word-level equivalence in linguistic approaches, for its function or skopos in pragmatic views (Hani´c et al., 2016) and, only marginally, as a textual feature (Dorst, 2016). Traditionally, metaphor has been treated in terms of its transability in prescriptive approaches (Newmark, 1988; van den Broeck, 1981), and therefore as a prospective problem, or in descriptive ones, and therefore as a solution in retrospection (Schäffner, 2004). While the former were mostly theoretical and not based on real examples, the latter were corpus-based and product-oriented analyses which inevitably overlooked the cognitive processes underlying the translation act (Rosa, 2010). It is only with the cognitive turn that metaphor was brought into the limelight of the translation research paradigm, providing fruitful ground for investigating the translators’ mind (Schäffner, 2004). Influenced by the seminal work of cognitive linguists engaged in investigating language as a mental phenomenon (e.g., Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, 1999), metaphor became a matter of thought and translation research gradually disengaged from the purely linguistic level to firstly extend to the text as a whole (functionalist approaches) and to finally expand to external variables (e.g., cognitive processes) (Samaniego Fernández, 2011). From such a vantage point, metaphor can be investigated as a dual phenomenon: locally, within the linguistic instantiations of the microlevel, and globally, as a pattern of the macro, conceptual one. In turn, translation is now conceived of as an interlingual phenomenon where asymmetries are solved in a dynamic process of remapping, of reorganizing correspondences between two conceptual systems (Massey & Ehrensberger-Dow, 2017). Pioneering subsequent studies, the first scholar to investigate the translation of metaphors as a conceptual process was Mandelblit (1995), who distinguished between Similar Mapping Conditions (SMC) and Different Mapping Conditions (DMC), where the latter result in conceptual shifts and higher cognitive load. Building upon this scheme, Al-Zoubi et al. (2006) stressed that even within Similar Mappings Conditions, different linguistic realizations can occur and should not be overlooked in translation. The bulk of studies that cognitively describe the translation of metaphor, however, have mostly addressed professionals’ behavior and conventional metaphors (e.g., Hewson, 2016; Jabarouti, 2016; Kalda & Uusküla, 2019; Mandelblit, 1995; Newmark, 1988; Prandi, 2012; Rizzato, 2021; Sjørup, 2013). The few ones that compare translators at different levels of experience have stressed that only a high level of translation competence, gained mostly by expert translators after ten years of experience, can lead to a predilection of renditions that preserve the original metaphor. In contrast, young professionals prefer to paraphrase using different metaphors, while preservice translators tend to delete them (Jensen, 2005).

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Likewise, Massey (2016) found that a higher level of experience and training are correlated to better outcomes in the translation of conceptual metaphors. Additionally, he noticed that BA students exploit external resources, while MA students and professionals favor internal ones. This might be an indicator of a higher degree of reflectiveness, possibly linked to stronger awareness of both textual and cultural factors. A triangulated study on pause times later showed that MA students tend to pause more than BA ones, probably because they resort more extensively to cognitive capacities before translating (Massey & Ehrensberger-Dow, 2017). As the investigation of student translators’ behavior is still in its infancy (Nacey & Skogmo, 2021), this study attempts to fill this gap by combining the theoretical framework of Descriptive Translation Studies with cognitive approaches to metaphor research. In so doing, it can contribute to an emerging field by investigating the way students translate a specific type of living metaphors: metaphorical puns.

2 Metaphorical Puns Cognitive theories of metaphor postulate that it is firstly an essential conceptual way of understanding and referring to a concept in terms of another one, before being a matter of words (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). As a consequence, the creativity that gives birth to ad-hoc metaphorical productions indented to seduce, persuade, entertain, amuse, or produce any other effect on the receiver has been vastly overlooked in Translation Studies (Samaniego Fernández, 2011). Despite their idiosyncrasy, novel metaphors represent a cognitive and linguistic feature as prominent as conventional ones and (student) translators are bound to be confronted with them. The difference between conventional and novel metaphors is still a matter of debate. According to the first generation of cognitive linguists (e.g., Lakoff & Johnson, 1980), conventional metaphors, lexicalized and documented in dictionaries, are as living as novel ones and deliberate bursts of novelty in metaphor production are rare (Deignan, 2005; Nacey, 2013). A fundamental assumption guiding this line of work is that novel metaphors are reorganizations of conventional ones, and it is only through the latter that the former is conceivable of (Thibodeau & Durgin, 2008). The main difference between conventional and novel metaphors could also lie in the way they are processed by the reader or recipient. According to the extant literature, conventional metaphors are thought to be understood automatically, while novel metaphors must be interpreted first, thereby requiring greater cognitive effort (Smit, 2012). For this reason, novel metaphors generate pleasure when the recipient solves the puzzle they pose and discovers what features of the two concepts are foregrounded in the metaphor (Boeynaems et al., 2017). In other words, living metaphors generate a conflict in the mind that must be resolved, whereas conventional metaphors are consistent with the expectancies and commonalities through which a language/culture refers to a specific concept (Prandi, 2012).

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For instance, Emily Brontë’s verse Winter pours its grief in snow is a novel metaphor that creates a friction of concepts, as winter has to become a living being to pour its emotions in a container: snow. However, conflictual metaphors can be based on conventional mappings as well. In the sentence They sleep, the mountain peaks, a living metaphor is personifying the apex of a mountain as a sleeping entity (Prandi, 2012) by exploiting a conventional way of personifying a mountain, which also motivates the phrase the foot of the mountain. Throughout translation, even conventional metaphors like to spend time can become conflictual. Despite the fact that the conceptual metaphor TIME IS MONEY is present both in English and in Italian, in the romance language time cannot be spent, unless a bizarre calque is generated when translating. In contrast, whenever a possible direct transfer of conceptual mappings and of their linguistic realizations is possible, like in the case of to waste time, no conflictual interpretation arises in the target text (Rizzato, 2021). These examples show that conflictual metaphors can pivot on either similar mapping conditions, namely on expressions that have a counterpart in the TL, or on different ones (Hong & Rossi, 2021), which are not consistent with the target conceptual system (Prandi, 2012). In the question “Thought you’d reached peak smugness by squeezing in your five a day?” in Text 2 (see Appendix), both reached peak and squeeze in have a counterpart in Italian. Yet, whilst in the former a fossilized metaphor regains life by giving the peak the name of a feeling (smugness), in the latter the metaphoricity lies in the unconventional way of exploiting the image of squeezing fruit to refer to finding a figurative space for the new smoothie produced by froosh. The above mentioned are instances of metaphorical puns, a form of languagebased creativity that takes advantage of the powerful features of metaphor to give birth to memorable linguistic productions. We can broadly define a pun as a specific form of humor that exploits the structural characteristics of a language system “to bring about a (…) confrontation of two (or more) linguistic structures (…)”. These linguistic structures have “more or less different meanings” triggered by “more or less similar forms” (Delabastita, 1996, p. 128): rarely paronymy (similar sounds); usually homonymy (same sound and spelling), and more commonly homography (same spelling), rather than homophony solely (same sound, different spelling) (Vandaele, 2011). We can also distinguish between near, syntagmatic puns, where two meanings are triggered by the phonological, sometimes visual, resemblance of two forms, and exact, paradigmatic puns, based on the homonymy activated by one form (Delabastita, 1996; Partington, 2009). In sum, for some scholars the prerequisite of a pun is its lexical ambiguity achieved through formal cues (either visual, phonological or syntactic) to the point that all puns could be ultimately considered “a play on sounds” (Partington, 2009, p. 1795). However, as we will see in the next paragraph, a play with words is not necessarily a play on words (Vandaele, 2011). Moreover, ambiguity can be easily found in other types of linguistic elements and the essential features of a pun are rather their deliberateness and contradicting meanings (Partington, 2009). It would be advisable, then, to resort to the notion of duality and conflict.

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As stated, puns trigger a confrontation, a conflict in the recipient’s mind that requires to be solved. Psycholinguists have proved that the comprehension of puns comprises a reorganization of discourse knowledge (Coulson & Severens, 2007) through two phases: the first one in which both meanings (surface and deep ones) (Gan, 2015) are co-present, and the second one in which the most salient meaning is selected. However, in most cases, the deeper meaning is not utterly suppressed (Attardo, 1994).1 While homographs are easier to decode because they require a revision of the interpretation of a subordinate meaning competing with a dominant one (Jared & Bainbridge, 2017), in homophones the reader has to detect and resolve an incongruity (Attardo, 1994; Jared & Bainbridge, 2017), which in turn is more evident to the mind. Homophones are indeed easier to identify for their different spelling like in this example where the word we would expect to find, meet, is substituted with meat: “The butcher was very glad we could meat up” (Jared & Bainbridge, 2017). As metaphor is about connecting two different but similar enough concepts, many puns are metaphorical in nature (Dore, 2015; Dynel, 2009). Moreover, if we consider metaphor a highly viable form of meaning extension (Johnson, 1989), puns are likely to resort to metaphors since one of the meanings of the expression will tend to be motivated by a metaphorical mapping.2 Just like conflictual metaphors, punning is based on clashing constituents, on divergences from rules. This is what makes a pun cognitively interesting—or among the most resistant items to comprehension and translation. Furthermore, depending on the degree of entrenchment of its meanings and form, the disambiguation process might not be as automatic for non-native speakers (Lundmark, 2005). Both metaphors and puns are widely used in specific discourses such as the tourism one. In fact, it has been highlighted that the tourist lexicon presents one of the highest percentage of puns. Here metaphor aims at influencing the reader’s opinion about a certain product (usually a possible destination) by directing their attention to certain characteristics rather than others. Conversely, a play on words seeks to capture the user/consumer’s attention, arouse their interest, and leave lasting impressions in their mind (Djafarova, 2017; Djafarova & Andersen, 2008; Khan, 2014).

1

According to the Incongruity-Resolution model, the resolution of the incongruity is first noticed and then partially resolved (Dore, 2015; Dylen, 2009). 2 It is important to note that not all puns are metaphorical. In the sentence “Eiffel in love in Paris”, no metaphor justifies the pun, which is in fact based on the substitution of the paronymic grammatical phrase I’ve with the famous Parisian monument (Djafarova, 2017).

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3 The Study 3.1 Aims and Research Questions The main objective of this study is to discuss how metaphorical puns are translated and whether they are perceived as problematic. It also aims at verifying to what extent and how translation students naturally deal with the metaphorical nature of deliberate, living metaphors in the form of metaphorical puns. In other words, a major goal is to gauge their implicit metaphor translation competence (Sjørup, 2013). Task-based experimental research into metaphor translation is still scant and most studies are product-oriented (Hong & Rossi, 2021; Massey & Ehrensberger-Dow, 2017). Moreover, the investigation of translation students’ behavior, especially when dealing with creative metaphors, is still in its infancy (Jensen, 2005; Massey, 2016; Massey & Ehrensberger-Dow, 2017; Nacey & Skogmo, 2021). This study can then further contribute to shedding light on the processes underlying translation through the elicitation of retrospective decision making, thereby gauging possible cognitive overload caused by the translation of the metaphors. In so doing, a productoriented analysis, aimed at describing the student translators’ decisions, is combined with a process-oriented investigation of the underlying processes occurring in the respondents’ minds.

3.2 Participants The sample examined is composed of 73 Italian students of a translation course at university level (Bachelor’s degree). Their specialization was translation of tourist English texts into Italian, their mother tongue. At the time of the experiment, the participants possessed an intermediate level of English proficiency. It is important to stress that to investigate how the students would naturally translate the metaphors they were exposed to, no cognitive-oriented explicit training on metaphor translation was provided.

3.3 Data Collection Instruments and Analysis Considering the specialization of the sample, the material used in this study consisted of 5 short tourist texts taken from Easy Jet’s inflight magazine Traveller, which were purposely selected for being highly metaphorical in nature. In other words, the metaphors of the texts represented the main translation challenges (Nacey & Skogmo, 2021). The texts used were also selected for presenting various types of metaphorical puns: homonyms, both homophonic and homographic (N = 16), extended (N = 2)

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and altered idioms (N = 5). By means of an example, Feeling blue? There’s a cheese for that (Text 3) is an extended idiom, used in its original phraseology but explained by a commentary which has the purpose of guiding the conflictual meaning-making triggered in our mind. In other cases, the polysemy is triggered by an alteration in the structure of a word (Lundmark, 2005). This is the case of ‘take it cheesy’ (Text 3) stemming from the paronymic ‘take it easy’. By contrast, the homonyms in the texts selected present themselves in the form of single or compound words (e.g., arms race; bottle; big cheeses), collocations (e.g., reach peak) and phrasal verbs (e.g., kicks off ; dishing out; rolls into). While idiom-based puns might reveal their bold nature, homonyms like arms race or jam-packed are more disguised and could lead the most attentive of the readers to think of themself as the only ones able to spot the pun (Bartezzaghi, 2017).3 This chapter will then focus on the latter, which might be easier to render in translation, but more difficult to identify as they are not signaled by any phonological alterations (Jared & Bainbridge, 2017).

3.4 Procedure Metaphors were identified through MIP (VU) (Steen, 2010), a standardized identification procedure that aims at providing objectivity to metaphor analysis. A metaphor is marked as such if the most concrete conventionalized meaning, that we find in the dictionary (i.e., MacMillan English dictionary online), has substantial differences and evident similarities with the contextual meaning. Additionally, we measured the Moving Metaphoric Density (MMD) of the texts selected (Nacey, 2019). In this cumulative frequency procedure (Cameron & Stelma, 2004; Pollio & Barlow, 1975), the number of metaphorical words is divided by the arbitrary number of 20 (the interval) and multiplied by 100 (Turner, 2010). The MMD is then marked on the midpoint of each interval, which becomes longer (1.20; 2–21; 3–22; etc.) as the analysis progresses: in the first interval the midpoint is the 10th word; in the second interval the midpoint is the 11th word, and so on and so forth. A cluster is thus identified as a sudden increase in the MMD (> 30%) (Littlemore et al., 2014). When visually displayed, this procedure showed significant bursts of metaphors (Cameron & Stelma, 2004) occurring at the beginning of Text 1 and 2. To retrospectively classify the translations adopted by the students, MIP (VU) was also adapted to the Italian translations by using appropriate dictionaries for the target language (i.e., Treccani). The strategies used in the target text were therefore labelled through Toury’s framework (Roush, 2018; Toury, 2012): 1. Metaphor into same metaphor (M = M) 2. Metaphor into different metaphor (M-M2) 3. Metaphor into non-metaphor (M-NM) 3

This feeling of uniqueness is intended to establish an intimate relationship between the magazine and the reader (Zawada, 2006).

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4. Metaphor into zero (complete omission) (M-Ø) 5. Non-metaphor into metaphor (NM-M) 6. Zero into metaphor (addition, with no linguistic motivation in the source text) (0-M).4 This framework stems from a bottom-up study but is implemented here as a topdown methodology. It has the potential benefits of taking into account metaphors created by the translator where there is no metaphor in the ST (see strategies 5 and 6) (Toury, 2012). Moreover, to discuss whether the students managed to preserve the metaphorical pun, the strategies were further classified through Delabastita’s guidelines (1993): 1. PUN > PUN: the pun is translated if its polysemy and homonymy are preserved; 2. PUN > PUNOID: the pun is rendered into a pseudopun by using another rhetorical device (e.g., rhyme, alliterations, repetition, or irony); 3. PUN > NPUN: the pun is omitted. As a compensation for the loss in the latter two strategies, a translator can resort to two types of addition (NONPUN > PUN or ZERO > PUN) (Delabastita, 1993), maybe by permutation in previous or subsequent segments of the text (Holst, 2010). Unfortunately, neither Toury’s nor Delabastita’s guidelines provide information about students’ awareness of the metaphorical nature of the expressions, namely about how and why translation choices are made (Maalej, 2008; Nacey & Skogmo, 2021). Therefore, this study was designed as follows: 1. During the first 2 h session, the students were instructed to complete the translation task by using both offline and online tools, like dictionaries or search engines. 2. Two days after, they were asked to self-assess the challenges faced. They were instructed to reread the texts, report the words or phrases they considered difficult and to provide a reason for the challenges faced. Retrospective verbal reports (Norberg, 2014; Pietrzak, 2019) can enrich the data collected on the product (multiple translations of the same metaphor) with processoriented information, offering online evidence on what is involved in the minds of the translators. In so doing, not only will the analysis focus on what translators do, but it will also provide possible reasons for translation choices. Following Nacey and Skogmo (2021), the main goal of such an approach is unraveling cognitive processes underpinning translation, thereby verifying whether and how student translators perceive metaphorical puns. When investigating translators’ minds, this approach proves to be more solid than solely the analysis of corpora (Nacey & Skogmo, 2021).

4

Complete omission differs from literal translation as the metaphor leaves no traces of its presence. Therefore, omission produces more condensed texts.

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4 Findings and Discussion The types of puns taken into consideration for this analysis are homonyms (same spelling and sound) in which two meanings, one literal and one metaphorical, are virtually present to exert a witty and catchy effect. Puns from (1) to (10) in Table 1 are based on conventional metaphors, as both the literal and figurative meanings are recorded in the dictionary. This is not the case for puns (11)–(16), which can be considered “pure” puns based on novel metaphorical extensions of words/phrases with just one lexicalized meaning (Samaniego Fernández, 2002). The first category of puns, purposely chosen for their double semantic nature, are as living and deliberate as the ones in the second group, because the conventional mappings on which they are based are brought back to life in the punning. This is especially relevant in the translation process, where the transfer should not be as automatic and subdued to a thoughtful creative act. By means of example, in Text 1 (see Appendix) the COMPETITION for the biggest ski resort is compared to WAR (arms race) or to a SPORT event (kicks off , face-off ), which usually involve the BODY PARTS used in the expressions. The metaphors from (1) to (3) could be then considered a polysemous play with words, as they are polysemous expressions, and on words, as the use of the lexemes arms, kicks and face are motivated by the Table 1 Percentage distribution of adopted translation strategies M-M

M-M2

M-NM

M- Ø

19.17

2.73

76.71

1.36

Puns based on conventional metaphors Text 1

Text 2

(1) Arms race (2) Kicks off

12.32

9.58

73.97

4.10

(3) Face-off

41.09

6.84

52.05

1.36

(4) Reach

52.05

0.00

16.43

31.50

(5) Peak

56.16

0.00

10.95

32.87

8.21

10.95

5.47

75.34

17.80

2.73

6.84

72.60

(6) Turbocharge (7) Feeding Text 5

(8) Dishing out

12.32

10.95

69.86

6.84

(9) Uncover

84.93

6.84

4.10

4.10

(10) Juicy

76.71

9.58

10.95

2.73

Puns based on novel metaphors Text 2

Text 4 Text 5

(11) Bottle

94.52

0.00

5.47

0.00

(12) Pack

95.89

4.10

0.00

0.00

(13) Squeezing in

13.69

4.10

8.21

87.67

0.00

8.21

79.45

12.32

(15) Big cheeses

10.95

46.57

34.28

8.21

(16) Jam-packed

4.10

79.45

13.69

2.73

(14) Rolls into

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underlying metaphor. In doing so, the competition is not a mere arms race, but also a race where to use one’s arms. By the same token, in Text 5, the story of a theft of oranges is narrated by juxtaposing the semantic domains of CRIME and FOOD. This unusual combination forms a novel conceptual mapping that infuses several metaphorical instantiations like ‘uncover a juicy crime’ or ‘jampacked vehicles’. Although not conventionally used to talk about crimes neither in the source nor in the target language, (10) juicy is a play with words, encompassing two meanings: one literal, referring to making juice from fruits, and one metaphorical, indicating something interesting. Similarly, jampacked was probably preferred for its etymological origin comprising the images of pressing objects together, in this case oranges into a preserve container (see Hoad, 1996, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology). In view of these premises, all the puns in Table 1 can be considered conflictual metaphors as they generate a friction of concepts in our mind. However, while most of them are based on Similar Mapping Conditions, the phrasal verb (14) rolls used in the following extract from Text 4: (14) “The annual Ost Festivalen (…) rolls into the Münchenbryggeriet building in Stockholm”

Could be considered as the most problematic metaphor to translate since there is not an immediate counterpart in the TL that could reproduce the image of rolls of cheese, while conveying the idea of something arriving in large amount. As the literal meaning and the metaphorical ones are virtually present in this pun, it is not surprising that this complex, dual metaphor was rendered literally by the majority of the sample (79.45%). The only attempt to preserve the metaphor was by changing it: in Italian, approdare (8.21%) means “to lend or dock a ship”. In contrast, puns (15) and (16) are based on partially SMC. The source metaphor big cheeses has two correspondences in Italian: pezzo grosso (backtranslation: big piece), which conveys the idea of importance without entailing the image of a piece of cheese, and pesce grosso (backtranslation: big fish), which changes the metaphor departing from the topic of the text (CHEESE) to enter the semantic domain of ANIMALS. Both translations maintain the conceptual metaphor IMPORTANCE IS SIZE, but they do so by exploiting different vehicles: a general piece of something and a fish substitute the source text image of a piece of cheese. For this reason, they were marked as the second type of strategy (M-M2), as they preserve the polysemous charge but change the original metaphor. Likewise, 79.45% of the respondents rendered jampacked as stracolmo (backtranslation: full to the edge) by changing the metaphor, as the Italian adjective conveys the idea of a very full CONTAINER, neglecting the image of the jam. Aside from this, 6 of the puns reported in Table 1 were translated metaphorically, maintaining the original metaphor (M-M). In the first group, involving the puns based on conventional mappings, reach peak smugness was rendered by the half of the sample as “raggiungere il picco del compiacimento” (backtranslation: reach the peak of smugness). In spite of altering the structure by adding the determiner il and explaining the pun, this translation partially preserves the original metaphorical

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charge. By the same token, uncover a juicy crime was mostly translated as “scoprire un crimine succulento/succoso”, where scoprire conveys the image of taking off the lid of a CONTAINER and succulento e succoso both refer to something tasteful. The 6.84% of the participants opted for scovare, which in turn refers to a lair of animals and therefore changes the metaphor (M-M2). As for the second group, involving pure puns, the verbs (11) bottle and (12) pack posed no challenge and were preserved in the translation process. While conventional metaphors are essentially polysemous words or expressions that look backwards, novel metaphors are contextual, idiosyncratic, creative acts with no historical record. In novel, living metaphors the words maintain their meaning, but their contextual use is so creative that it gives rise to a tension in our mind (Prandi, 2012). Therefore, not changing the contextual meanings was probably sufficient to reproduce the tension. This was accomplished by using the transitive Italian verbs imbottigliare and impacchettare in conjunction with the abstract objects karma and sentimenti (backtranslation: feelings). These promising findings might initially suggest that students tried to preserve the metaphorical nature of these expressions, which revealed their presence in the texts. However, the predilection for the strategy M-NM used for the metaphors (1)–(3) might reveal the opposite. Despite the fact that a figurative counterpart was easily accessible in the TL, (1) arms race, (2) face-off , (3) kicks off and (8) dishing out were translated literally. For (1) arms race the more general lexeme competizione was preferred to corsa agli armament/alle armi (19.17%). Here, only the latter conveys the idea of gaining an advantage on the opponent, stemming from the semantic field of WAR. Similarly, kicks off was rendered as inizio (73.97%) despite the presence of calcio di inizio, preferred by only 12.31% of the students. In Italian, inizio indicates the beginning of any type of action, while the phrase calcio di inizio refers to the first kick that signals the start of a football mach. Likewise, face-off was translated as confronto/scontro (52.05%) which, differently from faccia a facia (41.09%), refers to an unspecific confrontation, not stemming from the semantic field of SPORT. Lastly, in the text referring to the cheese competition (Text 3), the phrasal verb in ‘dishing out medals to the best’ was rendered as consegnare (69.86%). This verb does not exploit the literal image of delivering food on a dish which is in turn involved in servire (12.32%). By choosing these more general terms, the students opted for literal translations (M-NM). Consequently, their productions sounded more neutral (Baker, 2011) and, while they preserved the informative nature of the source texts, they did not reproduce neither their catchy effect nor the interconnectedness of the metaphorical expressions. Not venturing into possible creative solutions might reveal then their unwillingness to depart too much from the source text. This is proved by the fact that the last two strategies in Toury’s and Delabastita’s frameworks that indicate an enrichment of the target text with new metaphors are not represented in the data. Moreover, these findings might show that students did not try to compensate for the loss of metaphoricity or humorous effect with permutation strategies (Holst, 2010). More than to the fact that the texts are short, this inclination might be related to students’ resistance to changing the source text. This is in line with Atari (2005), who suggested

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that students prefer language-based strategies at the expense of more demanding knowledge-based ones where an accurate, deliberate, inferencing process should precede the translation act. Likewise, Jensen (2005) stressed that non-professional translators tend to choose strategies with less cognitive overload. On the contrary, novel metaphors, and therefore the puns used in this study, require a greater awareness of the tension between the literal and figurative meanings and a more conscious interpretation (Pistol, 2018). The predilection for the literal meaning, which was not necessarily the first accessible one in the resources used, might be due to a negative form of lexical priming (Jared & Bainbridge, 2017) that hindered the translation outcome. Partington (2009) suggests that all puns are decoded through semantic priming: prior contextual cues influence which elements of the combined concepts will be paid attention to (Estes & Glucksberg, 1999). For instance, the compound ski resort in the title of Text 1 might prime the literal meaning of arms race as a type of race of arms. However, while for native speakers the figurative meaning of idioms is more salient than its literal counterpart (Giora, 1991), priming of the literal meaning could be more influential when translating into L1. This influence is greater if the L2 pun has no immediate one-to-one correspondence in the L1 (Saygin, 2001). According to Saygin (2001), who piloted a translation task involving metaphors taken from the Turkish Airlines’ inflight magazine Skylife, non-professional translators with no prior training show greater levels of comprehension competence when translating from their L1. The form of detrimental priming here evidenced might be then adduced to interpretation and inference problems which did not occur naturally and impeded the successful completion of the translation task. It is surprising that although the texts were selected for being highly metaphorical, their figurative charge was not reported as the main challenge to complete the task. In other words, although the scope of the study was not revealed to the informants, the puns did emerge in the self-assessment questionnaire, but the majority of the students did not provide reasons concerning their metaphorical, creative, and ambiguous nature. They instead explained that they found the puns difficult to translate for not finding the correct contextual meaning (47.94%) or for not finding the meaning in the dictionary (26.02%).5 On these assumptions, it could be argued that the conflictual metaphors translated adopting the strategy M-M might simply arise from direct transfer (Holst, 2010) or automatic processing (Hewson, 2016) which, in the case of similar mapping conditions, naturally generates metaphors in the target language. It is also worth noting that (4) reach and (5) peak present a higher percentage of deletion strategies (respectively 31.50% and 32.87%) if compared to the previous metaphors (between 1.36 and 4.10%). The collocation “to reach the peak of something” is conventionally used to talk about abstract entities, like careers, also in Italian: raggiungere l’apice del successo (backtranslation: reach the peak of success) is based 5

Nacey and Skogmo (2021) found the opposite: student translators retrospectively discussed the importance of metaphor in the horoscopes they were requested to translate and tried to preserve them in most cases. Moreover, omission only occurred when the metaphor was not relevant to the context and conventional in nature.

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on the concrete image of raggiungere l’apice della montagna (reach the peak of the mountain). Here, the play with words is also a play on words since the absence of the definite article (the) nominalizes smugness as the fictional proper name of the peak. Considering that smugness is not capitalized, it might be argued that the personification was not intended. Yet, such a stance might not be favoured by the idea behind highly disguised homonymic puns, that is of conveying a feeling of uniqueness in the reader that spots them. The predilection for omission extends to the subsequent metaphors, (6) turbocharge and (7) feeding. In these cases, the entire paragraph, highly metaphorical in nature, was translated as follows: Thought you’d reached peak smugness by squeezing in your five-a-day? What if you could turbocharge that glow by feeding your conscience too? (S12) Avevi pensato di raggiungere il massimo del compiacimento mangiando tutte le tue 5 porzioni di vedure giornaliere? (backtranslation: Did you think you reached the peak of smugness by eating all your 5 portions of vegetables?) (S22) E se potessi nutrire anche la tua coscienza? (backtranslation: What if you could feed also your conscience?) (S27) E se potessi mettere il turbo anche alla tua coscienza? (backtranslation: What if you could turbocharge your conscience?) (S43) E se potessi raggiungere il limite delle 5 porzioni giornaliere più velocemente?” (backtranslation: What if you could reach your five-a-day faster?).

These renditions provided by students 12, 22, 27 and 43 exemplify the overall predisposition of the sample to omit the verbs (6), (7) and (13) that resulted in condensed and paraphrased texts (Holst, 2010). While direct or literal translations are indicators of translations that remain close to the source text, omission, condensation and paraphrase are generally considered more creative strategies (Ageli, 2020; Holst, 2010; Nugroho, 2003). By contrast, in this study they might represent a form of compensation for the high moving metaphoric density of the selected texts that hampered the interpretation process. Translating freely, or creatively, is in fact subdued to a deep, cognitive analysis of the source text and of its skopos (Ageli, 2020). These findings therefore represent another case in point to the importance of explicit inferencing skills when translating. Lastly, it is interesting to note that a pun is maintained if its polysemy and homonymy are rendered too (Delabastita, 1996). Accordingly, Table 2 elucidates how translations that disregard the metaphoricity disregard the pun as well. As shown, for puns based on homonymy and SMC (1–13), preserving the metaphor results in preserving the pun as well. This does not seem the case for puns based on partially similar (15–16) and different mapping conditions (14), where preserving the polysemy and not the form generates a PUNOID. Explicit training on metaphor translation competence can therefore represent a good starting point in developing the mentioned inferencing skills necessary to approach puns in translation.

164 Table 2 Predominant strategies in the translation of metaphors and puns

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M Text 1

Text 2

Text 5 Text 2

Text 4 Text 5

PUN

(1) Arms race

NM

NPUN

(2) Kicks off

NM

NPUN

(3) Face-off

NM

NPUN

(4) Reach

M

PUN

(5) Peak

M

PUN

(6) Turbocharge

Ø

Ø

(7) Feeding

Ø

Ø

(8) Dishing out

NM

NPUN

(9) Uncover

M

PUN

(10) Juicy

M

PUN

(11) Bottle

M

PUN

(12) Pack

M

PUN

(13) Squeezing in

Ø

Ø

(14) Rolls

NM

NPUN

(15) Big Cheeses

M2

PUNOID

(16) Jam-packed

M2

PUNOID

5 Creativity and Metaphor Translation Competence: Pedagogical Implications This study set out to delve into the strategies adopted by student translators when dealing with a specific type of creative metaphors, namely metaphorical puns. It then went further and combined a descriptive offline analysis of translation choices with a retrospective investigation of the online processes triggered by the translation task. The findings showed that the students did not possess an adequate level of implicit metaphor translation competence. Despite the fact they could have been helped by the directionality of the translation task, they preferred to opt for microstrategies (Holst, 2010; Nugroho, 2003), namely literal and neutral translations. Such an approach, mostly semantic rather than communicative, was perhaps triggered by the fear of departing from the source text. In giving predominance to information over creativity, the sample seemed prone to render only one of the meanings co-present in the pun and to neglect the polysemy on which metaphorical puns pivot. Conversely, when omission was adopted probably as a compensation strategy, it resulted in condensed, freely rendered productions at the macrolevel (Schjoldager, 2008). These strategies tone down the deliberate metaphoricity (Pistol, 2018) of the texts and fail to reproduce their skopos. Despite this, a small portion of students (N = 4) managed to find a translation solution to the most challenging puns, showing a certain degree of creativity in completing the task. Students 26 and 67 managed to translate (1) arms race as braccio di ferro; student 34 rendered (15) big cheeses as pezzi grossi (di formaggio),

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explaining the pun by extending it6 ; and (16) jam-packed was translated by student 4 as ripieni di marmellata, which preserves the image of the jam in the double meaning of ripieno, indicating something extremely full and the stuffing used in desserts. For those students who were not able to successfully deal with metaphors nor were aware of their presence, cognitive-oriented pedagogy of metaphor translation has been proved fruitful for preserving metaphors successfully (Hani´c et al., 2016; Hastürko˘glu, 2018). It has been shown that while prior to cognitive training students tended to maintain metaphors only in the case of SMC, they were more inclined to adopt target-oriented strategies in post-training conditions (Hastürko˘glu, 2018). However, approaches based solely on the Conceptual Theory of Metaphor (CMT) proposed by), like in the case of Jabarouti (2016), cannot encompass the multifaceted nature of metaphorical puns which requires pragmatic modes of translation. Both in metaphors and punning, a conflict is settled mostly through the context. A pun weight is thus both textual and contextual, and its interpretation is contingent on pragmatics element (Vandaele, 2011). For instance, an analysis of (1) arms race, (2) kick off and (2) face-off in terms of source and target domain might shed light on the interaction of the semantic domains COMPETITION and SPORT, on the one hand, but it would not reveal the pragmatic, communicative effects of its interconnected linguistics realizations in the context, on the other hand (Rizzato, 2021). Additionally, not all puns can be explained as a matter of concrete-abstract mapping: some puns are based on conceptual metaphors, but the more concrete domain cannot be easily identified (e.g., COMPETITION IS WAR in arms race); some on the juxtapositions of semantic fields (e.g., CRIME and FOOD in uncover a juicy crime), and others on image-schemas (e.g., CONTAINER in jampacked). In view of these considerations, translation competence is not the only factor that might have a bearing on the translation of metaphorical puns which, as novel and creative linguistic productions, are positively related to metaphor competence (Danesi, 1992; Littlemore & Low, 2006) and to creativity as well. Creativity has been treated almost exclusively as a literary phenomenon in Translation Studies and rarely in Translator Pedagogy. A reason for this could stem from considering translation as a form of constrained production (Hewson, 2016). This revelation leans on the assumption that creativity is not born in a vacuum and is a specific linguistic phenomenon, bound to the possibilities that the source/target languages and cultures entail (Zawada, 2006). A possible misconception that underlies these stances is that creativity is an innate quality. While for some scholars creativity can be trained and improved with experience (Reilly, 2008; Rojo & Meseguer, 2018), for others experts are more prone to resort to automatic solutions rather than to creative ones. The problem is that creativity is a nebulous concept and cannot be easily measured. In a more cognitive vein, creativity has been related to problem solving, flexibility, divergent thinking, intuition, and emotional intelligence. Rojo and Meseguer (2018), for instance, measured 6

Extension facilitates the comprehension of the most intricate puns. It is a common mechanism that could be a useful form of compensation when there is no immediate counterpart in the target language (Lundmark, 2005). The idiom reported on page 7 is an example of extended pun.

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the creativity employed in solving problems regarding the translation of literary play on words and found that both creative and non-creative students tend to render them explicitly (i.e. through notes) instead of seeking creative solutions. According to Hewson (2016, p. 20), with the intent of training future translators to “produce unpredictable micro-level translation solutions” that are coherent with the macrolevel, the proper creative act should take place in the last stages of the translation process, in the revision one. A conflict-based and pragmatics-oriented curriculum could be therefore designed as follows: 1. Preparation: identification of the problem(s) through deep analysis/inferencing process; 2. Translation act: accomplishment of the translation task; 3. Evaluation: revision and possible, more creative rewriting of the translation product. Whether it is conceived of as a skill or a solution, creativity as (re)production of tensions in translation is subdued to the development of an adequate competence in metaphor translation, more generally, and in metaphorical pun translation, more specifically. Most of all, students firstly need to feel comfortable at departing from the source text and making informed, creative choices. After an incubation period (Kussmaul, 1991), consisting in prior training on how metaphorical reasoning involves the interaction of two concepts, in showing how it is exploited in punning and in stressing how metaphorical puns are always functional, the identification phase should follow these lines of thought:

The core of the analysis, concerning the inferencing process, could then unfold through these steps: 1. Is the pun based on a conventional metaphor? Can you find two meanings (one literal, one metaphorical) in the dictionary? 2. What are the two semantic domains creating a conflict in this context? 3. Can you preserve the double meaning by preserving at least one of the semantic domains used in the source metaphor? 4. Can you preserve the form too? If not, can you change the pun by substituting it with an altered or extended idiom? Differently from approaches based on conceptual metaphor theory, the analysis should therefore be designed in terms of conventional vs. novel metaphors and of

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interacting semantic domains, rather than abstract and concrete ones. Additionally, it would be useful to shed light on what the author “chose not to say” (Hewson, 2016: 20), namely in the unrealized possibilities shadowed by the linguistic choices made. Because creativity as a product follows creativity as a process (Hewson, 2016), a deep and scaffolded inferencing aimed at fostering creativity in translator training (Hewson, 2016; Prandi, 2012; Rizzato, 2021) could be then a promising starting point. Consequently, metaphor translation competence (Sjørup, 2013) could be fostered in the classroom by improving students’ reflective competence (Massey & Ehrensberger-Dow, 2017), fundamental for developing textual analysis skills (Hong & Rossi, 2021). If it can be agreed that translation is an act of interpretation first, the translation of puns can be an intriguing, stimulating and challenging task that can encourage students to undertake a deep analysis of how meanings are constructed in single and large units of text. As in a pun the literal meaning is brought to the fore, students can easily manipulate the motivated relation between the meanings (Paivio, 1983) and give birth to reflective inferences (Pistol, 2018). While metaphors might trigger a somehow automatic process of decodification in native speakers (Pistol, 2018), this process needs to be consciously guided in translation learners who might not possess the same encyclopedic and lexical knowledge of native speakers.

6 Conclusions Metaphors, play with and/or on words are all declinations of a universal creative mechanism that takes several linguistic and cultural forms. Despite their heterogenous nature, the notion of their (un)translatalability is not inherent to their complex essence, but to linguistic, cultural and/or textual restrictions to which the translation process is bound (Hong & Rossi, 2021). However, translation as an act is virtually always possible. If conventional metaphors are the residues of the creative mechanisms of a language, novel ones represent the creativity that fuels its autopoiesis as a living system (Maturana & Varela, 1991). Despite its supposedly ephemeral nature, creativity enriches our cultural and linguistic system to the point that if conventional metaphors stand to langue, living metaphors stand to parole (Delabastita, 1993). For this reason and especially because they might pose a translation problem, creative metaphors deserve as much attention in translation as conventional ones. Being evident representatives of a specific typology of creative metaphors, metaphorical puns are to be treated as figures of speech, as supposedly deliberate metaphors (Steen, 2015) that, if neglected, result in a loss of the appreciation of the metaphorical pun. This appreciation lies in identifying the pun, before finding the congruous in the incongruity (Dynel, 2009). In this type of metaphors, it is the tension, the indirect request for an act of interpretation of complex, clashing constituents that should be preserved when translating (Rizzato, 2021; Tirkkonen-Condit, 2002).

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When dealing with the translation of metaphors, translation competence seems positively related to metaphorical competence meaning that, without any prior knowledge on the way metaphor works, translator students cannot always implicitly opt for the most appropriate translation strategy. In some cases, a mere reconceptualization is sufficient (Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk, 2010), but in others a transcreation is needed (Brunello & Muller, 2016). If translating “requires knowledge of norms, but also sensitivity to deviation from such norms” (Rizzato, 2021, p. 2), the translation of puns can foster students’ sensitivity because understanding how rules are broken is an implicit interiorization of how they work. Wordplays have a metalinguistic function (Kullmann, 2015), they present students with problems that have many possible solutions (Vandaele, 2011). The investigation of both new uses of conventional metaphors and of contingent instances of living ones can shed light on how metaphorical mappings work, besides revealing the power of linguistic and conceptual creativity. This quest is fruitful in translation pedagogy as a starting point for the interpretation of a text prior to the translation act itself (Rizzato, 2021). This study is therefore a call for explicit cognitive instruction on the translation of metaphorical puns (Ageli, 2020). Although the present findings should be corroborated by more in-depth online investigations, perhaps to relate metaphor translation competence to the level of education (see Massey, 2016), a major question Cognitive Translation Process Research has yet to answer is how to motivate future translators to find answers not in the resources they use, but in the way they can creatively use them. Future studies could therefore test the possible advantages of the conflict-based approach tentatively proposed in this chapter.

Appendix Text 1. How to Win the Ski Resort Arms Race This season’s competition to be the biggest territory proves that size matters. It might be all twinkling snow on the slopes, but behind the scenes of Europe’s ski resorts there’s a rumbling, as the biggest arms race in history kicks off. This season, the competition is on for the title of Europe’s largest skiable territory in a ‘mine’s bigger than yours’ face-off. Austria’s Arlberg made the first move with its new Flexenbahn cableway linking eight ski areas. “Size matters”, says Caroline Melmer, of Ski Arlberg. “We didn’t build the lift to make a profit, but to be on that all-important list of the biggest ski zones”. For François Badjily, of Alpe D’Huez, it’s all about status: “Having the most kilometers of pistes gets us noticed”. So what’s in it for us? With access to more varied terrain, all on one ticket—plus new super-sized après ski scenes the size of Greenland (nearly)—we ain’t complaining.

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Text 2. How to Bottle Really Good Karma Thought you’d reached peak smugness by squeezing in your five a day? What if you could turbocharge that glow by feeding your conscience too? Swedish smoothie maker froosh might be able to help. Its latest range comes in eco-friendly cans made from paper (karma hit 1), sourced from responsibly managed forests (karma point No 2). And half the fruit in froosh’s bottles comes from developing countries (karma point No 3). Boom. “It’s part of the DNA of our company to get our hands dirty and find out how fruit trading can change people’s lives”, says Brendan Harris, CEO of froosh, which gives new meaning to ‘away day’, prising staff in Stockholm, Oslo, Copenhagen and Helsinki away from their desks to dig holes and plant trees in Malawi, Ethiopia and Peru. Who knew you could pack so many good feels into 150 ml?

Text 3. It’s Time to Take It Cheesy FEELING BLUE? THERE’S A CHEESE FOR THAT. HERE’S WHERE TO GET A SLICE OF THE ACTION THIS MONTH. The vegan one. Go nuts for cheese, whatever your dietary requirements, with vegan cheese expert Cashewbert. Its Berlin shop sells cashew-based cheeses and make-your-own kits, but this month (on the 16th) you can take a workshop run by the company in Madrid, and learn how to curdle plant-based milks and mould-ripen ‘cheese’ made with nuts. Because plant-based people deserve toasties too. Fly to Berlin or Madrid.

Text 4. The Massive One Swedish turophiles—that’s your official title, cheese fiends—will be going absolutely emmental at the annual Ost Festivalen, which rolls into the Münchenbryggeriet building in Stockholm on 15–17 February. As well as producers’ stalls, tastings, and wine and beer matchings, a panel of industry big cheeses will be dishing out medals to the best. Fly to Stockholm.

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Text 5. Spanish Robbers Take the Pith COPS WHO FLAGGED down a trio of cars in Seville weren’t expecting to uncover a juicy crime, so imagine their surprise upon discovering 4,000 kg of oranges nicked from a nearby warehouse. The vehicles were jam-packed with the local crop, but, despite being caught orange-handed, the thieves will no doubt (wait for it) get off on a-peel.

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Saygin, A. P. (2001). Processing figurative language in a multi-lingual task: Translation, transfer and metaphor. In Proceedings of corpus-based & processing approaches to figurative language workshop. Corpus Linguistics 2001, Lancaster University. Samaniego Fernández, E. (2002). Translators’ English-Spanish metaphorical competence: Impact on the target system. Elia: Estudios de Lingüística Inglesa Aplicada, 3, 203–218. Samaniego Fernández, E. (2011). Translation studies and the cognitive theory of metaphor. Review of Cognitive Linguistics, 9(1), 262–279. Schäffner, C. (2004). Metaphor and translation: Some implications of a cognitive approach. Journal of Pragmatics, 36(7), 1253–1269. Schjoldager, A. (2008). Understanding translation. Academica. Sjørup, A. C. (2013). Cognitive effort in metaphor translation: An eye-tracking and key-logging study. Ph.D. thesis. Copenhagen Business School. Smit, T. C. (2012). Conventional and novel/creative metaphors: Do differing cultural environments affect parsing in a second language? Journal for Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences (JSHSS), 1, 93–98. St. André, J. (2017). Metaphors of translation and representations of the translational act as solitary versus collaborative. Translation Studies, 10(3), 282–295. Steen, G. (Ed.). (2010). A method for linguistic metaphor identification: From MIP to MIPVU. John Benjamins. Steen, G. (2015). Developing, testing and interpreting deliberate metaphor theory. Journal of Pragmatics, 90, 67–72. Thibodeau, P., & Durgin, F. H. (2008). Productive figurative communication: Conventional metaphors facilitate the comprehension of related novel metaphors. Journal of Memory and Language, 58(2), 521–540. Tirkkonen-Condit, S. (2002). Metaphoric expressions in translation processes. Across Languages and Cultures, 3, 101–116. Toury, G. (2012). Descriptive translation studies: And beyond. John Benjamins. Treccani. Vocabolario Italiano Online. https://www.treccani.it/vocabolario/ Turner, J. (2010). Investigating figurative language in EFL learners’ writing across levels of proficiency. MA thesis. University of Birmingham. Vandaele, J. (2011). Wordplay in translation. In Y. Gambier, & L. van Doorslaer (Eds.), Handbook of translation studies (Vol. 2, pp. 180–183). John Benjamins. van den Broeck, R. (1981). The limits of translatability exemplified by metaphor translation. Poetics Today, 2(4), 73–87. Zawada, B. (2006). Linguistic creativity from a cognitive perspective. Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, 24(2), 235–254.

Chiara Astrid Gebbia received a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the Universities of Palermo and Catania, Italy. Her main research interests cover the application of metaphor research to translation and second language acquisition. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Agder where she is investigating translators’ self-concepts as indicators of adaptive expertise and as transferrable skills in translator training. She is also conducting research on the conceptualization of emotion regulation and thought suppression with Dr. Marcin Trojszczak.

Language in Cultural Contexts

Embodied Lexicon: Body Part Terms in Conceptualization, Language Structure and Discourse Iwona Kraska-Szlenk

Abstract The chapter focuses on the relation between embodied cognition and the “embodied language”, represented by terms coding parts of the human body. It is argued that the embodied lexicon is ideally suited for investigating regular patterns of semantic change, due to a remarkable cross-linguistic convergence in body part terms’ transfer and meaning extension onto various target domains, such as, emotions, reasoning, social interactions and values, grammaticalization, and external domains of objects, plants, landmarks, etc. These tendencies are discussed from the perspective of embodied experience, universal cognitive processes and shared culture. In addition, studies of the bodily lexicon demonstrate a significant role of culture and usage criteria in shaping particular conceptualizations and language cultural models. Body part terms also provide valuable linguistic material for observing strategies used by different languages for the purpose of polysemy reduction. Several of such mechanisms are analyzed, such as lexical replacement, compounding and morphological derivation. The final part of the chapter discusses the issue of co-simulation effects from sensorimotor systems in the processing of the embodied lexicon which enhances this kind of lexicon to be used in discourse as powerful stylistic devices. Keywords Body part terms · Conceptualization · Cultural models · Embodied cognition · Polysemy

1 Introduction This contribution focuses on the lexicon denoting parts of the human body as a fertile area of research within Cognitive Linguistic studies. Body part terms (BPTs) belong to the “embodied lexicon” which has special properties with respect to language usage and processing. Major BPTs often serve as source domains for target concepts in various other domains. Many of their extended meanings get conventionalized in I. Kraska-Szlenk (B) University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk and M. Trojszczak (eds.), Language in Educational and Cultural Perspectives, Second Language Learning and Teaching, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-38778-4_9

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language usage and thus BPTs tend to be highly polysemous. Patterns of conceptualizations via the human body and polysemy of BPTs constitutes an interesting area of research because semantic extensions can be investigated from a perspective of universal tendencies vis-à-vis language-specific cultural models. At the same time, it can be observed how languages cope with excessive polysemy of BPTs and use various disambiguation strategies to reduce it. Thus, BPTs contribute not only to research on polysemy, but to general studies on lexical semantics and the issue of the relation between the meaning and the form. Beside the issue of conceptualization via the human body and its parts, the “embodied lexicon” is worth investigating from a perspective of language processing, because of simulation effects associated with the situated cognition and the connection between language and the sensorimotor systems. These effects turn out to be extremely important in discourse and framing strategies, providing purely linguistic evidence for embodied cognition. The remaining parts of this chapter are organized as follows. Section 2 presents lexicons of BPTs from a cross-linguistic perspective and in the context of research on embodied cognition. Typical conceptualization patterns of BPTs and directions of their polysemy are discussed in Sect. 3, while the following Sect. 4 focuses on possible differences among languages caused by cultural influences and usage criteria. Section 5 presents morphological and lexical means which reduce polysemy of BPTs in various languages. Section 6 is devoted to the important function of BPTs and the “embodied language” in general in discourse and framing. Conclusion summarizes the results.

2 Embodied Lexicon and Embodied Cognition A considerable number of publications support the claim that major BPTs occur in all languages of the world1 (e.g., Andersen, 1978; Brown, 1976; KoptjevskajaTamm, 2008; Wierzbicka, 2007). They are likely to have simplex, monomorphemic forms and are relatively stable in the lexicon, although we occasionally find exceptions, such as, for example, the lexeme ‘head’ in Indo-European languages which underwent lexical replacements by words meaning a ‘cup’ or a ‘bowl’ (G˛asiorowski, 2017). Major BPTs also tend to be highly polysemous which will be discussed in the subsequent section. By contrast, small body parts are designated by more complex terms, often consisting of metaphorical expressions, cf. English roof of the mouth and its Spanish and Polish respective equivalents as: cielo de la boca lit. ‘sky of the mouth’ and podniebienie lit. ‘(something) under the sky’ (derived from the prepositional phrase pod niebem ‘under the sky’). Perhaps even more often, small parts of the body are coded by compounds, including those which combine terms denoting more 1

Rare claims to the contrary seem problematic, cf. discussions in Wierzbicka (2007), Kraska-Szlenk (2014b, pp. 16–17).

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conspicuous parts, cf. English breastbone, Uyghur put-barmaq (lit. foot-finger) ‘toe’ (Pattillo, 2019, p. 129), or Thai níw-hˇua-mâeae-tháaw (lit. finger-head-motherfoot) ‘big toe’ (Pattillo, 2019, p. 128). In some cases, naming of small parts of the human body seems to be more language-specific and triggered by cultural needs. For example, Lao has a special term for the rim of the eyelid where mascara is worn (Enfield, 2006, p. 183). In other cases, however, it is not immediately obvious, why certain small parts have their own terms in some languages, while they do not in others. Thus, many languages have just one term for ‘neck’, while others differentiate the front part of the neck and the nape part, cf. Hebrew tsavar ‘neck’ (front part only) and oref ‘back of the neck’ (Deutscher, 2010, p. 16). A striking example is that of Jahai which has simplex terms for such small parts as ‘upper lip’, ‘frontal tuber’, or ‘molar tooth’, (Burenhult, 2006, p. 167). Within the linguistic “partition” of the human body, even major BPTs do not necessarily correspond to each other in one-to-one fashion, and it may happen that a term in one language surpasses its own “territory” with respect to an equivalent in another language. This situation is largely caused by the fact that in some languages a BPT may be used metonymically in reference to a proximate part or to a larger part, while in other languages such metonymic extensions may not be possible. Therefore, a language like English strictly differentiates hand and arm, as well as foot and leg, while many other languages use only one term in the two meanings of each of these pairs. Likewise, although less commonly, languages may have only one term for ‘eye’ and ‘face’, ‘mouth’ and ‘face’, ‘finger’ and ‘hand’, etc. (cf. Kraska-Szlenk, 2020b). It is also possible to use the metonymies part for proximate part and part for whole optionally, as many languages do in the case of head for hair, so that expressions such as, to comb/wash/cut the hair literally translate as ‘to comb/wash/ cut the head’ (cf. Kraska-Szlenk, 2019b). Other common examples include using of the word ‘body’ for ‘trunk’ (or vice versa), as in the case of English body, ‘breast’ for ‘chest’, as in Polish pier´s, or optional use of the aforementioned metonymies. The metonymies mentioned above can be observed from a perspective of a diachronic change, as well, as illustrated by the following examples from Polish (cf. Kraska-Szlenk, 2020b). The part for proximate part metonymy caused a gradual change in the meaning of the BPT tył from the original ‘nape’ (back of the neck) towards ‘back’ and ‘buttocks’, preserved in the modern language only in the grammaticalized phrase z tyłu ‘behind, at the back’ and in the diminutive form tyłek ‘buttocks’. The part for whole metonymy affected the word noga which originally meant ‘claw’/‘foot nail’ and which is used now in the meaning of ‘foot’ or ‘leg’. The example of palec represents a generalization from the original meaning of ‘thumb’ to that of any ‘finger’ which can be treated either as a case of the metonymy specific for generic or, alternatively, as part for proximate part(s), given the adjacency of the thumb to other fingers. Terms denoting major body parts (like head, hand, leg, heart etc.) can be grouped together with other high-frequency words which refer to basic actions or sensations performed or felt by the body (e.g., to walk, to drink, hot, smooth). I will refer to this joint category as embodied lexicon in order to single out their corporeal meaning, but

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also to signal special properties of this kind of lexis in the connection to the question of embodied cognition. In neuroscience and psychology, embodied cognition, also referred to as grounded or situated cognition, means that memory and knowledge are based on bodily experience, therefore, have a multimodal brain representation.2 This view derives from experimental evidence which demonstrates that language processing and other cognitive tasks involve brain simulation effects coming from sensorimotor systems. The embodiment theory was introduced into Cognitive Linguistics by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) with a similar assumption which, however, underlines the experiential basis not only of human knowledge, but also of conceptualization patterns and linguistic structures reflecting them. This thought was later developed in many subsequent works, including those which focused on universal characteristics of embodimentlanguage relation, as well as those which underlined socio-cultural aspects of it (e.g., Frank et al., 2007; Gibbs, 2006; Johnson, 1987; Kövecses, 2000, 2005; Lakoff & Johnson, 1999; Ziemke et al., 2007). Lakoff and Johnson go as far as saying that “human physical, cognitive, and social embodiment ground our conceptual and linguistic systems” (1999, p. 27). At present, embodiment has many different interpretations (cf. Rohrer, 2007), but the basic idea that the human body constitutes a source domain for other concepts still lies in the center of it. Looking from the other angle, it is also true that, as Bernd Heine observes, “the human body provides one of the most salient models for understanding, describing, and denoting concepts that are more difficult to understand, describe, and denote” (Heine, 2014, p. 17). The following section will focus on conceptualization through the vehicle of strictly embodied lexis, that is, terms denoting parts of the human body.

3 Conceptualization Patterns and Polysemy of Body Part Terms While the linguistic literature on embodiment has been growing rapidly since 1980s, the topic of BPTs as source domains in conceptualization and their semantic extension into polysemous lexical categories has become a popular research topic in recent years, as well. There have appeared numerous articles, several published monographs and a few unpublished doctoral dissertations dedicated to BPTs in particular languages, as well as multi-authored cross-linguistic studies. For the sake of space, only the latter will be mentioned here, starting with the early volumes, such as Enfield and Wierzbicka (2002), which concentrated on the target domains of emotions, and Sharifian et al. (2008) devoted to inner organs and their conceptualization patterns. These works inspired subsequent cross-linguistic studies conducted mostly in the Cognitive Linguistics framework which comprised analyses of various

2

Barsalou (2010) presents a brief history of research on this topic. Co-simulation effects in language processing will be discussed in more detail in Sect. 6 of this chapter.

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BPTs from multiple languages of the world, such as, Maalej and Yu (2011), Brenzinger and Kraska-Szlenk (2014), Kraska-Szlenk (2020a), as well as volumes focused on specific BPTs, such as Kraska-Szlenk (2019a) on the ‘head’, Ba¸s and KraskaSzlenk (2021) on the ‘eye’, Baranyiné Kóczy and Sip˝otz (2023) on the ‘heart’, or Pattillo and Wa´sniewska (2023) on the ‘face’. A sub-area of cross-linguistic studies which has been researched more extensively than any other is the grammaticalization of BPTs, with important general works, such as, e.g., Heine (1997, 2014), Heine and Kuteva (2002) or Svorou (1994), not to mention numerous contributions devoted to grammaticalization in specific languages or language families or areas. In general, the corpus of literature on the subject of BPTs is sufficiently extensive to draw some generalizations as to their polysemy and directions of semantic change, from synchronic and diachronic perspectives. Cross-linguistic data demonstrates that BPTs’ extensions tend to fall within several target domains,3 briefly summarized below. The first type of mapping is based on perceptual and sometimes also functional resemblance between the source domain of the human body and its particular part(s) and target domains which include animals, plants, various objects or landmarks. Some of such mappings are cross-linguistically very common, so that we can easily find exact equivalents of English phrases as, for example, leg of the table, head of the cabbage, mouth of the river, eye of the needle, heart of the city, etc. In general, the more attributes are shared by the source concept and the target concept, the greater chance that a particular mapping will be found in multiple languages. For example, the designate of the concept ‘leg of the table’ and the human ‘leg’ share a number of perceptual features, such as being long, thin and vertical, and, in addition, both serve a similar purpose of providing a support for the rest of the ‘body’. Therefore, it is not surprising that we find this particular extension in many languages of the world. Similarly, round objects or round endings of protruded objects are often called ‘heads’, small, round and shiny objects, as well as small holes, tend to be called ‘eyes’, openings or edges of objects may be called ‘mouths’, while inner parts ‘hearts’ or ‘stomachs’, etc. None of these tendencies has a power of a strict rule, because these conceptualization patterns operate with varied productivity in each language; in Turkish, for example, even big parts of very large objects (as pieces of furniture or a bridge) may be referred to as ‘eyes’. There are also differences as to consistency in conceptualization patterns. In English, a table has legs, but no other “body parts”, while in other languages the mapping may be more wide-ranging; for example, in Valley Zapotec, in addition to ‘legs’, a table has a ‘face’, (the top surface), a ‘mouth’ (the edge part) and the ‘stomach’ (the area beneath) (cf. Lillehaugen, 2003). Parts of the human body are oriented in space, with the head up, the feet down, the arms at the sides, the heart inside, etc. The straight-up posture of the human body often serves as a model for spatial orientation of objects and their parts, so that we can talk about the ‘face’ or the ‘back’ of the car/the house, or about the

3

More discussion and cross-linguistic examples can be found in Kraska-Szlenk (2014a, 2014b, 2020).

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‘foot’ of the mountain. Such uses of BPTs often lead to their further grammaticalization toward spatial markers, and, subsequently, toward temporary markers or even more abstract grammatical concepts, cf. Wolof ginnaaw ‘back’ (body part), ‘behind’ (spatial), ‘after’ (temporal), ‘since/because’ (subordinating conjunction), cf. Robert (1997). Grammaticalization of BPTs may also proceed in other directions, including target domains of reflexive pronouns, classifiers, instrumental prefixes, or numerals. All these paths of semantic extension are very productive and well documented in the literature, together with the observed language-specific or areal tendencies. For example, Uto-Aztecan languages tend to derive reflexive pronouns from the term ‘body’ and Caucasian languages from ‘head’ (Schladt, 2000, p. 108), while the transfer of various BPTs into spatial markers is particularly common among languages of Sub-Saharan Africa (e.g., Heine, 2011, p. 696). While the above-mentioned target domains, whether concrete or abstract, are strictly separated from the source domain of the human body, many other extensions are metonymically motivated in the sense that there is a conceptual link between a specific body part and an extended meaning within the same or adjacent domain. Due to the fact that multiple metonymies chain together, the eventual outcome of such conceptualization processes may lie in a target domain which is no longer directly connected to that of the human body itself, but is associated with abstract domains of social interactions and values, kinship relations, emotions, intellect, and other aspects of people’s lives. In addition, metonymic chains of this kind often co-occur with metaphors which help to organize, strengthen and further develop conceptualization patterns, as the following examples illustrate. Certain body parts as e.g., ‘womb’ (‘belly’) and bodily fluid ‘blood’ are metonymically associated with giving birth, and consequently, with being related through kinship. This leads to linguistic uses in which terms of this kind stand for a kinship relation, as in English we are of the same blood, or for a related person, as in he is my blood. Such expressions help to build a metaphor kinship relation is body (part) sharing, or, in more general terms: family is one body. Even though this conceptualization pattern is found in many languages, it seems to be particularly well entrenched in cultures in which family ties are greatly appreciated. In this case the above-mentioned metaphor is not only congruent with the existing conventionalized expressions, but it triggers creation of novel linguistic ways of conveying the same metaphorical message, as illustrated for Swahili by Kraska-Szlenk (2014c). While damu ‘blood’ and tumbo ‘belly, womb’ are conventionally found in Swahili figurative expressions of kinship, a wide range of other BPTs is used in proverbs and in creative language in general. In a similar vein, the metaphor knowing is seeing (Sweetser, 1990) gradually develops from the metonymic basis through chained metonymies and pragmatic strengthening so that the eyes are conceptualized not only as an instrument of seeing/looking at things, but also as an instrument of analyzing and knowing (eyes for seeing for looking at for watching for judging/thinking for knowing). The development of the above metaphor and metonymies crucially depends on people’s experience of simultaneous looking at things and mental

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processing of what they can see. As illustrated by the following English expressions, these associations may go even further than ‘knowing’, cf. to keep an eye on [something, somebody] (watching or looking after), to have an eye [for something] (being a good judge of), to have an eye [on something] (wanting). The metonymy head for person is used in many languages with various contextual modifications, including conventionalized expressions, as English redhead, or Sumerian saŋ gig ‘Sumerian person/people’ (lit. ‘black head’). The cross-linguistic abundance of this pars pro toto synecdoche is well understood, since the head is an extremely important and salient part of the human body. But if, as it happens in many languages, the word ‘head’ is used in the meaning of a ‘leader’ or a ‘smart person’, or the expression ‘to lose the head’ is used in the sense of ‘losing life’, ‘losing the position’ or ‘losing reason’, further metonymies and metaphors come to play which profile specific aspects of the ‘head’ and its correlation with experience, as: important is up, container for contained (head for brain for mind), controller for controlled, etc. Cognitive mechanisms of metonymy and metaphor, often operating in combination, lead to conventionalization of figurative uses of major BPTs so that their lexical representations are highly polysemous. This is reflected in dictionaries and lexical databases, even though they do not mention all possible senses. For example, the Wordnet database4 distinguishes as many as 33 different senses of the noun head, 13 of the noun face, 11 of the noun foot, 10 of the noun heart, 9 of the noun leg, and 5 of the noun eye. With cross-linguistic evidence, it can easily be observed that many of the senses found in English have their equivalents in other languages. For example, among 33 senses of head very few do not find such equivalents (e.g., “a membrane that is stretched taut over a drum”, “oral stimulation of the genitals”), and in the case of the face lexeme, only one such sense can be distinguishes (“a specific size and style of type within a type family”). BPTs are also very productive as a constant source domain for constructing novel senses which is mostly due to the strong metonymic link between the human body and other domains. This reason makes creative uses of BPTs salient and understood even without a context. It also facilitates the process of calquing embodied expressions from one language to another, cf. Polish motyle w brzuchu ‘butterflies in the stomach’, recently calqued from English.

4 Different Cultural Models While the previous section has focused on cross-linguistic similarities with respect to conceptualization processes and polysemy of BPTs, possible differences among languages can be divided into qualitative and quantitative ones. With respect to the former, we can distinguish conceptualization patterns which differ among languages but which, nevertheless, contain a certain common schema and therefore, co-occur 4

Accessed on 30th June, 2022, at: https://wordnet.princeton.edu.

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as variants. The metaphor knowing is seeing discussed in the previous section occurs in many languages of the world, e.g., Indo-European (Sweetser, 1990) or Swahili (Kraska-Szlenk, 2014b). But it has a counterpart in the metaphor knowing is hearing, with the ears being a figurative channel of transmitting knowledge, which is particularly popular in linguistic conceptualizations in Australian languages (Evans & Wilkins, 2000). Another example of such parameterized differences among languages is related to the conceptualization of reasoning and emotions. We find either a dualistic model where reasoning and emotions are separated and metaphorically “contained” in two different body organs, like in English head and heart, respectively, or an integrated model where both these faculties reside in one organ, for example, the heart, the stomach, or the liver (Sharifian et al., 2008). In addition, there are truly culture-specific conceptualizations, as those associated with peoples’ customs, beliefs, or social norms (cf. the English expression to be born with a silver spoon in the mouth), as well as those which are preserved in idiomatic expressions and lack full transparency (cf. English to cost an arm and a leg). Whatever the source of a particular semantic extension is, whether of a more universal character or more culture-specific, it is language usage which determines how strong a given sense is in a mental representation of a particular BPT and how deep-rooted and productive the relevant conceptualization is. Corpus studies provide useful means to evaluate this kind of entrenchment by measurements of frequency of senses and collocations of BPTs; quantitative analysis may also take into account how diversified phrasal expressions of a given sense are or how often they occur in proverbs and other texts which are culturally important. The following discussion provides illustrative examples of a Swahili-Polish comparison (Kraska-Szlenk, 2005, 2014b, 2023) and Chinese-English (Yu, 2020). In many languages, the ‘heart’ is conceptualized as a locus of emotions and metonymically stands for love and other positive emotions. It may also stand for a ‘dear person’ or for the ‘inner self’. But the ‘heart’ is also associated with other domains and concepts, such as ‘courage’, ‘memory’ or ‘center’ (‘inner part’). All of the above conceptualizations characterize Swahili moyo ‘heart’ and, with the exception of ‘memory’, also Polish serce ‘heart’. But the significant difference between these two languages lies not in fact that Polish lacks the ‘memory’ domain and Swahili has it, but in frequencies with which these different domains occur. In language usage, Polish serce ‘heart’ almost exclusively occurs in contexts associated with emotions, especially positive ones, while in Swahili, different domains of moyo ‘heart’ are more evenly distributed, with strongly pronounced domains of ‘courage’ and ‘inside’, as well. Another striking difference between these two languages is observed with respect to lexemes denoting ‘hand/arm’: Swahili mkono and Polish r˛eka. Both have abstract extensions based on the conceptualization of ‘hand/arm’ as an instrument of giving (helping, supporting) and as well as instrument of taking (keeping, possessing, ruling), but in Swahili the former are very well entrenched and not the latter, while in Polish it is just the opposite. Hence, in corpus studies, Swahili shows a high frequency of expressions, such as ku(m)pa (mtu) mkono ‘to give a hand’ or kuunga mkono ‘to support’ lit. ‘to join a hand’, etc. while Polish shows a high frequency of expressions,

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such as mie´c/trzyma´c (kogo´s) w r˛eku ‘to have power (over someone)’ (lit. ‘to have/ hold (someone) in hand’), etc. Many languages metonymically associate ‘honor’ (‘prestige’, ‘dignity’) with ‘face’, as illustrated by the English expressions to lose/save face. But the difference between a cultural model of this conceptualization in English and, for example, in Chinese, is enormous, as shown by Yu’s (2020) study. The two Chinese words for ‘face’ (li˘an and miàn) have much higher corpus frequency than English face and much higher occurrence in figurative senses associated with the ‘social face’. Chinese words also occur in multiple compounds or suffixed forms which serves to code and differentiate various shades of ‘social face’, impossible to render lexically in English. There is also a significant difference between Chinese x¯ın ‘heart’ and English heart. The former occurs with the frequency of six times higher than the latter and is often associated with contexts pointing not only to emotions, but also to character traits and important aspects of human cognition and social life. As the above examples show, a complete picture of a semantic network of a BPT may arise only when qualitative and quantitative analyses are combined. The interaction of all the above criteria shapes distinct “cultural models” reflected in languages. As a result, each language is quite unique even though the differences may not be immediately obvious due to shared conceptualizations and similar linguistic expressions.

5 Polysemy and Disambiguation Strategies 5.1 Disambiguation by Grammatical Means The discussion in the previous section has shown that BPTs have an extreme ability to create a rich array of polysemous meanings. While this kind of “natural” polysemy, that is such which is cognitively transparent and easy to learn, can be seen as a desired, economical quality of a lexical word, it may become a burden when potential extended meanings are too many and linguistic usage might call for a greater precision in some contexts. We can observe that various disambiguation strategies help to reduce BPTs’ polysemy, depending on typological features of specific languages. The simplest strategy of all involves adding of obligatory or optional modifiers. This option is commonly found in languages of various typological structures and we can find such examples in languages of the isolating type, cf. English mouth of the river, heart of the matter, foot of the bed, eye of the needle, in agglutinating languages, cf. Swahili jicho la ua ‘bud (lit. eye) of the flower’, uso wa ukuta ‘surface (lit. face) of the wall’, moyo wa mti ‘core (lit. heart) of the tree’, as well as in inflectional languages, cf. Polish, cf. oko cyklonu ‘eye of tornado’, serce puszczy ‘heart of woods’, noga stołu ‘leg of the table’, etc. Compounding provides another common strategy. In such a case, a base word typically carries the meaning of a physical body organ, while a compound is used

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figuratively,5 as illustrated by Kurdish BPT sk ‘belly/stomach’ and the compound nawsk (naw ‘inside’) used in metaphorical meanings (Nosrati, 2020). Compounding is found in languages of various types, but with particular intensity in isolating languages, cf. Chinese examples in (1), as well as in incorporating/polysynthetic languages, cf. examples from Dene S˛ułine (Athapaskan) in (2). (1)

Chinese compounds (Yu, 2020, pp. 20, 27)

a.

t˘ımiàn (body-face) ‘dignity; prestige’

b.

li˘anpí (face-skin) ‘feelings; sense of shame’

c.

liángx¯ın (good/fine-heart) ‘conscience’

d.

héngx¯ın (constant-heart) ‘perseverance; persistence’

(2)

Compounds in Dene S˛ułine (Rice, 2014, p. 90, 93)

a.

dene-tthí-aze (person-head-dim) ‘postage stamp’ (lit. ‘little human head’)

b.

yoh-tthí-lá (house-head-hand) ‘roof (peaked)’

c.

dene-ke-tł’á (person-foot-butt) ‘sole’

d.

eb˛a-dzaghe-jer-e (rounded-ear-rotten-nmlz) ‘mushroom’ (lit. ‘rotten rounded ear’)

Finally, languages with rich morphology may use their derivational capacities in order to disambiguate different senses of a potentially polysemous BPT. As illustrated by the examples in (3), one BPT (with optional modifiers) in Swahili has several different words as semantic equivalents in Polish. Although all these equivalents are derived from the base BPT by means of suffixation (and possibly prefixation, too), they constitute autonomous lexical items with their specific meanings. In Swahili, on the other hand, all these meanings are semantic extensions within one lexical category. (3) a.

b.

5

modifier versus derivation (Kraska-Szlenk, 2020a, p. 91) Swahili

Polish

kichwa

głow-a

‘head’

kichwa (cha kebeji)

głów-k-a (kapusty)

‘head (of cabbage)’

kichwa (cha habari)

na-głów-ek

‘headline’

kichwa (cha nyuklia)

głow-ic-a (nuklearna)

‘nuclear head’

mkono

r˛ek-a

‘hand/arm’

mkono (wa sufuria)

r˛acz-k-a

‘handle (of a pot)’

mkono (wa shati)

r˛ek-aw

‘sleeve (of a shirt)’

(kazi ya) mkono

r˛ecz-n-a (praca)

‘manual (work), adj.’

An interesting case along similar lines is a phonological split, as observed in the Polish word ‘forhead’, cf. na czole ‘on the forhead’ versus na czele ‘in front’. The latter form is older, preserved only in this expression, while the former resulted from paradigm leveling (cf. Kraska-Szlenk, 2007, p. 33). The fact that the predictable meaning is found in the regularized, innovative form is reminiscent of Kuryłowicz’s “fourth law of analogy” (cf. Kraska-Szlenk, 2007, p. 6).

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If affixes are used for the purpose of narrowing polysemy of BPTs, they usually “make sense” in that they contribute their own meaning into the overall meaning of the derived word. However, among morphological strategies used for the purpose of meaning disambiguation, we also find such which are by no means obvious, but rather quite puzzling. One example of a non-obvious strategy is found in the domain of paired BPTs. While typically the plural number (or dual, if present) is used with such terms in their bodily meanings, e.g., English to close/open the eyes, we can observe that there is a strong tendency to use the singular number of such terms for figurative uses, cf. to have an eye [on/for something], to keep an eye on [something, somebody], to turn a blind eye, to catch [somebody’s] eye, etc. Similar examples can be given from Swahili, cf. kutupa jicho ‘to throw an eye’, kwa jicho baya ‘with a bad look’ (lit. ‘eye’), kupatwa na jicho ‘to be bewitched’ (lit. be gotten by an eye), or kumwonea mtu jicho ‘look at someone with [an envious] eye’. In Polish, we can even find close minimal pairs in which a plural/singular distinction correlates with literal/figurative meaning, e.g., zmru˙zy´c oczy ‘to close/narrow the eyes’ and bez zmru˙zenia oka ‘without closing the eye’ i.e., ‘in cold blood, without mercy’, zamkn˛ac´ oczy ‘to close the eyes’ and przymkn˛ac´ [na co´s] oko ‘to close an eye [to something]’, i.e., ‘not to pay attention’ or ‘to pretend not to know’. It remains as a question for further research how general this tendency is from a cross-linguistic perspective. Similar “unusual” strategies may also have a language-specific character, as in the following example from Polish which demonstrates how a diminutive suffix has developed its special function when attached to BPTs. The general descriptions of the diminutive suffix-(e)k in Polish grammars mention as its main function smallness and/or affection, and, in addition, possible ironic or pejorative connotations (e.g., Nagórko, 2006, p. 220; Szymanek, 2010, p. 208)6 However, corpus studies of frequencies and collocations demonstrate differences in usage patterns of BPTs and their respective diminutives based on other features. Specifically, diminutives tend to be used in figurative meanings within a domain of objects shaped like a relevant body part, while BPTs in their base form avoid this domain. The differences turn out to be most spectacular in the case of the BPT głowa ‘head’ and its diminutive główka, as found in a study conducted on a random sample of c. 1300 corpus occurrences of głowa and c. 1500 of główka by Kraska-Szlenk and Wójtowicz (2023). In the case of the diminutive, as many as 31,98% concordances point to the target domain of “objects” (e.g., główka sałaty ‘head-dim of lettuce’); in addition, as many as 36,54% concordances of this lexeme point to the domain of “manner” (e.g., skaka´c do wody na główk˛e ‘to jump into water with [your] head-dim first’). No occurrences of similar uses have been found among the concordances of the base noun głowa ‘head’. Moreover, even if a designated object is of a relatively big size, the diminutive form is

6

To my knowledge, only Sarnowski (1987, 1991) mentions certain lexicalization patterns of diminutives which is in line with the discussion further in this section; however, he does not specifically talk about diminutives of BPTs and the function of the-(e)k suffix in this category of words.

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used, as confirmed by the corpus data, such as e.g., du˙za główka sałaty ‘big head-dim of lettuce’.7 A similar effect was found in a study on the Polish ‘eye’ lexeme, conducted on c. 500 concordances of the base noun and the same number of the diminutive form (Kraska-Szlenk, 2021). For the sample occurrences of oko ‘eye’, only 0,40% of concordances were found in the domain of “objects” (e.g., oko cyklonu ‘eye of tornado’), while in the case of oczko ‘eye-dim’, as many as 42,86% fell into this domain (as in the meaning of ‘eye’ of a potato/ a plant/ a dice, ‘gem (in the ring)’, mesh’ of a net, etc.). As in the previous case of the ‘head’, there have been cases of the modifier ‘big’ co-occurring with the diminutive form, e.g., du˙ze oczka ‘big eyeletsdim’. The graphs in (Graph 1) illustrate differences between the semantic networks of the Polish lexemes ‘head’ and ‘eye’ and their respective diminutive forms. In both of these studies, the results have also been additionally corroborated by examining of collocations of the BPTs and their diminutives. Diminutives of other BPTs in Polish show similar lexicalization patterns, where in addition to the predictable meaning of a body part with a specific connotation (small size, affection, irony, etc.), a meaning of an object (a part of an object) is likewise possible, cf. nos ‘nose’ and nosek ‘nose- dim’; front part of a shoe’, r˛eka ‘hand/arm’ and r˛aczka ‘hand/arm-dim’; handle’, noga ‘foot/leg’ and nó˙zka kurczaka ‘chicken leg-dim (as food)’. It should be noted, however, that each BPT shows its own specific pattern; in some cases, only diminutives occur with reference to objects, while in other cases, a base BPT may also be used, although to a lesser extent. The above examples of distinctions in language usage involving singular versus plural or the base versus the diminutive demonstrate that in some cases the pressure for greater salience of meaning and morphological autonomy of a lexical word may enforce solutions which do not follow the regular logic of language grammar. At the same time, in both these examples figurative meanings are marked by unusual morphological forms, which are not only different from those of the base BPTs, but even come to a conflict with general grammatical rules.

5.2 Disambiguation by Lexical Replacement In pursue of Humboldt’s Universal “one meaning, one form”, disambiguation may also be achieved by lexical means. Within the language history it may happen that other lexemes with the meaning of BPTs start to be used along the original term. A new lexical item, which can originate as a foreign loanword, or as a metaphorical expression, replaces the old BPT in some of its uses, while retaining the original word in other uses. Due to the fact that the two lexemes typically occur in a 7

The BPT głowa also has a derivative głowica with the suffix -ica which in this case points to resemblance of the designate of the derivative and the base noun, cf. koza ‘goat’ and kozica ‘chamois’, i.e. an animal resembling a goat. The word głowica is used in the meaning of ‘missile head’ or in reference to parts of specialized machines.

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60%

70% 60%

50%

50% 40% 40% 30% 30% 20%

20% 10%

10%

0%

0%

Głowa

Główka

oko

oczko

Graph 1 Corpus frequencies of Polish BPTs and their diminutives

complementary fashion rather than in free variation, this kind of lexical replacement provides a disambiguation strategy between some senses versus others which were originally expressed by one polysemous lexeme. Such cases of BPTs with largely complementary distributions have been reported, among others, for the two German lexemes, Haupf versus Kopf ‘head’ (Siahaan, 2011), Turkish ba¸s versus kafa ‘head’ (Ba¸s, 2018), or Ancient Greek kephale´¯ versus kar¯a (G˛asiorowski, 2017, p. 103). The following discussion illustrates a case of Russian oko versus glaz ‘eye’. The Russian lexeme oko goes back to the Proto-Slavic origin and has cognates in similar form in other Slavic languages. The innovative term glaz (pl. glaza) started to be used in the meaning of ‘eye’ as late as the end of the 16th century, although its origin is not quite certain. According to some researchers it is a loanword from Old High German glas ‘glass bead’ (cf. English glass) which in Germanic originally meant ‘burning stone’, i.e. amber exploited from the Baltic sea, cf. Lat. glaesum ‘amber’ (cf. Ba´nkowski, 2000, p. 434).8 In contemporary Russian, glaz is used in most contexts: in the meaning of the physical body part(s), in the senses associated with seeing, as well as in figurative meanings. As observed by Timberlake (1999), the old lexeme oko was used as a “poetic” variant in the 19th century Russian literature. Nowadays it is preserved in some fixed expressions, for example, oko za oko, zyb za zyb ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth’, v mgnovenie oka ‘in a blink of an eye’, cvet oqeủ moix ‘apple (lit. light) of my eye’. It is also productively used in rendering various metaphorical concepts, as demonstrated by the Russian translation

8

See https://vasmer.slovaronline.com/2575-GLAZ for some criticism of this hypothesis and other possibilities of cognates within Slavic and Germanic languages. Interestingly, the respective lexeme in Polish głaz has a different meaning of ‘huge stone, rock’.

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of English literary texts in (4)9 ; another interesting case is that of London Eye also translated with oko, not glaz. (4) a.

But, madam, you have taken the Rajah’s Diamond-the Eye of Light, as the Orientals poetically termed it—the Pride of Kashgar! Ho, cydapynᴙ, vy zabpali Almaz PadЖi—“Oko [oko] Cveta”, kak ego poЭtiqecki okpectili na Boctoke, “Clavy Kaxgapa” (The Rajah’s Diamond by Robert Louis Stevenson)

b.

Not that I complain, sir, of the eye of business being distrustful; quite the contrary Я otnЮdь ne ЖalyЮcь, cЭp, na to, qto oko [oko] delovyx otnoxeniЙ podozpitelьno,—covcem nappotiv (Bleak House by Charles Dickens)

c.

Langdon’s first thought was for the Great Seal on the one dollar bill—the triangle containing the all seeing eye UqenyЙ pepvym delom vcpomnil bolьxyЮ peqatь na dollapovoЙ kypЮpe—tpeygolьnik c zaklЮqennym v nem vcevidᴙwim okom [okom] (Angels and Demons by Dan Brown)

The partial replacement of the old BPT with a new lexical word, as in Russian and other examples mentioned earlier, has an advantage of preserving salient cues for different ranges of meanings. Naturally, this advantage is lost if the new lexical item replaces the old one in all of its senses and eventually eliminates it from use.10

6 Embodied Language in Discourse and Framing Embodied cognition implies that processing of expressions of the embodied form is correlated with sensorimotor activation via simultaneous brain simulations. This claim is supported by experimental evidence (e.g., Barsalou, 1999, 2008, 2012; Bergen et al., 2010; Casasanto, 2016, 2017; Gibbs, 2006). By assumption, the more embodied the form is, the greater the impact from bodily systems. Thus, co-activation effects from the motor system are observable in the case of action verbs, such as punch or kick, while perception or sensory verbs activate brain areas associated with visual, auditory or olfactory systems, respectively (e.g., Bergen et al., 2010; Fuchs, 2016; Pulvermuller & Fadiga, 2010). Co-activation effects are particularly strong in the case of linguistic expressions related to emotions. For example, it has been found that English embodied insults, such as, bonehead, numbskull or pinhead are 9

The examples come from Yandex (https://translate.yandex.com/, accessed 2 Sept 2019). G˛asiorowski (2017) discusses an interesting case of this sort: the loss of the inherited BPT ‘head’ within Indo-European languages and its replacement with words denoting containers, such as ‘cup’, ‘bowl’, etc.

10

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perceptually more salient (felt as more offensive) and generate greater neuroelectrical signals (observable as EEG records) than non-embodied ones like idiot (Benau & Atchley, 2020; Siakaluk et al., 2011). While experimental evidence provides a direct argument for co-simulation effects from sensorimotor systems in the processing of BPTs and other embodied words, in some cases linguistic structure per se can be used as an indirect argument. Highly expressive constructions, those which immediately appeal to our emotions, often have an embodied form, cf. English expressions, as for example, to get under one’s skin, flesh and blood, pupil of my eye, butterflies in the stomach, to cost an arm and a leg, etc. Structures of embodied forms are also consciously or unconsciously used as discursive strategies and stylistic devices, as discussed further in this section. Neural simulation of bodily experience as feedback to language processing has been analyzed in the context of literary imagery and a reader’s “resonance” and “embodied empathy” (e.g., Esrock, 2004; Kimmel, 2009), a concept similar to Edmund Husserl’s term “passive synthesis of association” in phenomenology (Behnke, 2011). Kimmel proposes a term contour words which he describes as follows: expressions that alert us to the specific manner of an event over time. Some words give rise to a rather detailed imagination of something as extended, punctual, iterative, rising, falling, changing, etc. (…) To provide a simple example, compare “the door was thrown open” with “the door opened”. The former has a qualitative richness in the mental imagery that the latter lacks, and it creates a focus on the manner of action over time (quick, forceful, accelerating, coming to a sudden halt). Phenomenologically, this richness of quality has a tendency of making the reader simulate the action, rather than processing it more propositionally. In particular, quite ordinary descriptions of bodily actions or experiences lend themselves to simulation by the reader (Kimmel, 2009, p. 176).

Kimmel’s examples of expressions which lead to “simulation by the reader” include those of non-metaphoric character, e.g., the horses plunged and broke suddenly into a furious canter; in her trembling embrace, as well as metaphorical, e.g., struck me dumb in a moment; exhaustion stealing over her (Kimmel, 2009, p. 177). As we can see, most of these expressions have embodied forms. Because simulation effects of embodied language are a universal fact, we expect that similar strategies will be used as stylistic devices in literatures written in languages other than English. The following two examples come from Polish and Swahili, respectively, demonstrating the role of embodied language in general, but with a special focus on BPTs. The passage in (5) is excerpted from a Polish novel by Szczepan Twardoch entitled Królestwo ‘Kingdom’ (2018). Frequent terms denoting body parts are shown in bold, but there also appear other expressions of the embodied form, marked in italics. Some of them refer to people and are non-metaphorical, as for example, the adjective zm˛eczone ‘tired’ or the verb wzi˛eli ‘they took’; others are used metaphorically, as for example, the transitive action verbs kuli ‘shrinks’, przyci˛aga ‘draws’, or the intransitive verb rozgl˛ada (si˛e) ‘looks around’—all of them referring to strach ‘fear’. The cumulative effect of so many embodied expressions in this relatively short fragment of the novel leads to a powerful simulation on the part of the reader

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who can identify with the protagonists and their dreadful fear of death. The use of embodied imagery and the embodied lexicon in the description of the fear provides much more moving, efficient cues than if the writer used other stylistic means, for example, abstract adjectives, such as, great, dreadful, horrible, etc. (5)

A Polish language excerpt from Królestwo (2018, p. 168) Niektóre matki i niektórzy ojcowie, widz˛ac, z˙ e ich dzieci zm˛eczone s˛a długim marszem, wzi˛eli je na r˛ece i dzieci nawet zasn˛eły w ich ramionach, jednak strach wypełniaj˛acy rodziców przenikał w dzieci˛ece serca jakby przez osmoz˛e, jakby kortyzol i adrenalina przes˛aczały si˛e z jednego krwiobiegu do drugiego, jakby matki wcale nie przerwały kiedy´s p˛epowin. Jorg widział ten strach ju˙z z daleka. Strach kuli ludzi, przyci˛aga ramiona do siebie, opuszcza głowy, szeroko otwiera oczy, głowy si˛e kr˛ec˛a, kiedy strach si˛e rozgl˛ada, by oceni´c, sk˛ad, z którego kierunku nadejdzie zagro˙zenie. ‘Some mothers and fathers, seeing that their children were tired of the long walk, took them in their arms and the children even fell asleep in their arms, but the fear that filled their parents was penetrating the children’s hearts as if through osmosis, as if cortisol and adrenaline were seeping from one bloodstream into the other, as if the mothers had never cut their umbilical cords. Jorg saw this fear from far away. The fear shrinks people, draws their shoulders one to another, lowers their heads, opens their eyes wide, heads turn as the fear looks around to judge from which direction the threat will come from.’

While embodied language in expressing emotions is presumably common to all languages, it particularly suits this purpose in cultures which value indirect and figurative speech in general, and in speaking of emotions in particular. Swahili represents such a culture11 and the next example comes from a novel written in this language by Zainab Alwi Baharoon, entitled Mungu Hakopeshwi ‘God does not grant credit’ (Dar es Salaam, 2017). The relevant excerpt illustrates how embodied language is used to construe another strong emotion, that of anger. One of the protagonists is talking to his adult son about discrimination toward families of the Arab descent, which is also the case of their family. Even though the father does not express his anger and frustration directly, the stylistic means used in the structure of the text clearly point to these strong emotions. Embodied expressions are frequently used not only by the character (the father), as illustrated with a few examples in (6), but also by the narrator. Therefore, although embodied language is not used to describe emotions per se, it has a strong emotive effect. As in the previous examples, BPTs are marked in bold and other embodied expressions in italic. (6)

Swahili language examples from Mungu Hakopeshwi (2017, p. 10)

a.

hatuli cha mtu sisi, ni jasho letu wenyewe ‘we do not exploit anybody (lit. ‘eat of anybody’), it is our own effort (lit. ‘sweat’)

b.

11

Riziki ya mtu hailiki, jua siku moja itakutokea puani

This issue has been touched upon in some of my other papers, including Kraska-Szlenk (2018).

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‘Someone else’s profit cannot be taken (lit. ‘eaten’), know that [otherwise] it will come out through your nose’ c.

Basi mtu asijivishe juba lisilomfaa litamuangusha ang’oe meno! Na uso unapofikia chini (…) ‘So nobody should wear a “juba” that does not fit him, [otherwise] it will knock him down [and] he will have his teeth ripped out! And when [his] face reaches the floor (…)’

d.

Tokea mapinduzi tumekuwa tunatizamwa kwa jicho la chuki ‘Since the revolution we have been looked upon with an eye of hatred’

e.

tupo mguu ndani mguu nje ‘we are inside with [one] foot and outside with [another] foot’

Embodied language with its simulation effects provides a perfect tool for framing in political discourse, too. The concept of ‘framing’ goes back to Fillmore (1976), but one of the commonly adopted definition of it is that of Entman (1993), cf. the following quotations: particular words of speech formulas, or particular grammatical choices, are associated in memory with particular frames, in such a way that exposure to the linguistic form […] activates in the perceiver’s mind the particular frame – activation of the frame, by turn, enhancing access to other linguistic material that is associated with the same frame (Fillmore, 1976, p. 25) [to frame is] “to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation for the item described” (Entman, 1993, p. 52)

In Cognitive Linguistics, framing is a key concept and has been used in extensive research on political and economic discourse (e.g., Lakoff, 2004, 2006; Musolff, 2004, 2019). Embodied language used as part of framing immediately activates the emotional, empathetic side of a reader/listener. A brief illustration comes from the Inaugural Address by President Joseph R. Biden, Jr., January 20, 2021, in which the word heart is mentioned five times, with little of semantic content, as shown in (7). (7) a.

I thank them from the bottom of my heart

b.

Take a measure of me and my heart

c.

We can do this if we open our souls instead of hardening our hearts

d.

Let me know in my heart

e.

And, devoted to one another and to this country we love with all our hearts

Another set of examples with the same BPT heart shown in (8) illustrates the metaphor of nation as body and comes from interviews with language consultants representing different varieties of English (after Musolff, 2020).

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(8) a.

The brain and heart [of my nation] don’t always agree with one another (…) (UK, 22, F)

b.

The heart of the nation is the American people. (USA, 21, F)

c.

The heart of the Australian nation is found in the working class (…) (Australia, 24, M)

d.

New Zealand listens to its heart more than its brain. (New Zealand, 19, M)

In addition to ‘heart’, other BPTs are equally well used in the imagery of the political discourse, as in the following example from Polish. While initiating a new political formation in July of 2020, Szymon Hołownia used this strategy which was immediately noticed in the media coverage of the event.12 The excerpt from Hołownia’s inaugurating speech on the 31st July, 2020, quoted in (9), demonstrates how the politician explains the metaphor. (9) Je˙zeli jest głowa i serce, a nie ma r˛ak, to nie ma funkcji, to nie działa. Ale je˙zeli s˛a same r˛ece, bez głowy i serca, one s˛a martwe, nic nie zrobi˛a. ‘If there is the head and the heart, but there are no hands, there is no function, it does not work. But if there are only hands, without the head and the heart, they are dead, they will not do anything.’

As this section has shown, BPTs, by being as much embodied as no other lexical items, play an important role in discourse and artistic work due to their ability to involve a listener/reader in an empathetic co-feeling of communicative emotions and experiences.

7 Conclusion Ubiquity of BPTs in lexicons of all languages and their tendency to become source domains for other concepts, make them a unique material for research in Cognitive Linguistics. Observed regularities in BPTs’ extensions and typological patterns of embodied conceptualization contribute not only to understanding the role of cognitive mechanisms, such as metaphor and metonymic chains in polysemy, but provide insights to emerging cognitive universals. Due to the fact that BPTs are very basic and concrete concepts, while their extensions are often abstract complex concepts, research on BPT may also add to hypotheses on language origin and evolution; for 12

For example, the portal oko.press used the following title: Najpierw “głowa i serce”, potem “r˛ece” ‘First “the head and the heart”, then “hands”; a similar phrase was also repeated in the lead of the article (source: https://www.tokfm.pl/Tokfm/7,103087,26174062,holownia-zainaugurowaldzialalnosc-polski-2050-tworzac-nowy.html).

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example, how BPTs metonymically associated with sensations and their display, like ‘heart’ or ‘face’, might have evolved into abstract concepts of emotions. While comparative data of BPTs in multiple languages allows for finding resemblance among various languages, it also helps to determine differences due to sociocultural settings, as well as variation determined by polysemy-reducing strategies and typical paths they take in pursuing the goal “one meaning, one form”. High frequency of embodied conceptualizations in certain domains and pragmatic contexts, especially those related to emotions, provides linguistic evidence for embodied cognition. The embodied language is correlated with sensorimotor activation via brain simulation, therefore it enhances the processing of concepts. This leads to frequent occurrence of BPTs in linguistic usage and their important discourse function based on co-simulation effects. In general, the research on BPTs, by its connection to the embodiment theory, provides insights to various aspects of linguistic studies, including issues of conceptualization and categorization, and language-culture interdependencies. It also contributes to general research on human cognition.

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Kraska-Szlenk, I. (2014b). Semantics of body part terms: General trends and a case study of Swahili. LINCOM Europa. Kraska-Szlenk, I. (2014c). Swahili embodied metaphors in the domain of family and community relations. In I. Kraska-Szlenk & B. Wójtowicz (Eds.), Current research in African studies: Papers in honour of Mwalimu Dr. Eugeniusz Rzewuski (pp. 163–174). Elipsa. Kraska-Szlenk, I. (2018). Address inversion in Swahili: Usage patterns, cognitive motivation and cultural factors. Cognitive Linguistics, 29(3), 545–584. Kraska-Szlenk, I. (Ed.). (2019a). Embodiment in cross-linguistic studies: The ‘head’. Brill. Kraska-Szlenk, I. (2019b). Metonymic extensions of the body part ‘head’ in mental and social domains. In I. Kraska-Szlenk (Ed.), Embodiment in cross-linguistic studies: The ‘head’ (pp. 136– 154). Brill. Kraska-Szlenk, I. (Ed.). (2020a). Body part terms in conceptualization and language usage. John Benjamins. Kraska-Szlenk, I. (2020b). Towards a semantic lexicon of body part terms. In I. Kraska-Szlenk (Ed.), Body part terms in conceptualization and language usage (pp. 77–98). John Benjamins. Kraska-Szlenk, I. (2021). Polish oko ‘eye’ and its (quasi) diminutive oczko: semantic extensions and usage patterns, In M. Ba¸s & I. Kraska-Szlenk (Eds.), Embodiment in cross-linguistic studies: The “eye” (pp. 93–116). Brill. Kraska-Szlenk, I. (2023). Polish serce ‘heart’: Usage patterns and cultural conceptualizations. In J. Baranyiné Kóczy & K. Sip˝otz (Eds.), Embodiment in cross-linguistic studies: The ‘heart’. Brill. Kraska-Szlenk, I., & Wójtowicz, B. (2023). Derivation and semantic autonomy: A corpus study of Polish głowa ‘head’ and its diminutive główka. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 28(1), 1–27. Królestwo, S. T. (2018). Wydawnictwo Literackie. Lakoff, G. (2004). Don’t think of an elephant! Know your values and frame the debate. The essential guide for progressives. Chelsea Green. Lakoff, G. (2006). Thinking points. Communicating our American values and vision. Farrar, Strauss and Giroux. Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. The University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1999). Philosophy in the flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to western thought. Basic Books. Lillehaugen, B. D. (2003). Syntactic and semantic development of body part prepositions in Valley Zapotec languages. In J. Castillo (Ed.), Proceedings from the Sixth Workshop on American Indigenous languages. Santa Barbara Papers in Linguistics, 14, 69–82. Maalej, Z., & Yu, N. (Eds.). (2011). Embodiment via body parts. John Benjamins. Musolff, A. (2004). Metaphor and political discourse. Analogical reasoning in debates about Europe. Palgrave Macmillan. Musolff, A. (2019). Metaphor framing in political discourse. Mythos-Magazin: Politisches Framing, 1, 1–10. Musolff, A. (2020). Political metaphor in world Englishes. World Englishes, 39, 667–680. Nagórko, A. (2006). Zarys gramatyki polskiej. PWN. Pattillo, K. (2019). From head to toe: How languages extend the head to name body parts. In I. Kraska-Szlenk (Ed.), Embodiment in cross-linguistic studies: The ‘head’ (pp. 124–135). Brill. Pattillo, K., & Wa´sniewska, M. (Eds.). (2023). Embodiment in cross-linguistic studies: The ‘face’. Brill. Pulvermuller, F., & Fadiga, L. (2010). Active perception: Sensorimotor circuits as a cortical basis for language. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 6, 576–582. Rice, S. (2014). Corporeal incorporation and extension in Dene S˛ułine (Athapaskan) lexicalization, In M. Brenzinger & I. Kraska-Szlenk (Eds.), The body in language: Comparative studies of linguistic embodiment (pp. 71–97). Brill. Robert, S. (1997). From body to argumentation: Grammaticalization as a fractal property of language. Berkeley Linguistics Society, 23S, 116–127.

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Rohrer, T. (2007). Embodiment and experientialism. In H. Cuyckens & D. Geeraerts (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of cognitive linguistics (pp. 25–47). Oxford University Press. Sarnowski, M. (1987). Leksykalizacja deminutiwów w j˛ezyku rosyjskim i polskim. Slavica Wratislaviensia, XLIV, 59–70. Sarnowski, M. (1991). Quasi-deminutiwa w j˛ezyku rosyjskim i polskim. Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego. Schladt, M. (2000). The typology and grammaticalization of reflexives. In Z. Frajzyngier & T. S. Curl (Eds.), Reflexives: Forms and functions (pp. 103–124). John Benjamins. Sharifian, F., Dirven, R., Yu, N., & Niemeier, S. (Eds.). (2008). Culture, body, and language: Conceptualizations of internal body organs across cultures and languages. Mouton de Gruyter. Siahaan, P. (2011). Head and eye in German and Indonesian figurative uses. In Z. Maalej & N. Yu (Eds.), Embodiment via body parts (pp. 93–114). John Benjamins. Siakaluk, P. D., Pexman, P. M., Dalrymple, H.-A. R., Stearns, J., & Owen, W. J. (2011). Some insults are more difficult to ignore: The embodied insult Stroop effect. Language and Cognitive Processes, 26(8), 1266–1294. Svorou, S. (1994). The grammar of space. John Benjamins. Sweetser, E. (1990). From etymology to pragmatics: Metaphorical and cultural aspects of semantic structure. Cambridge University Press. Szymanek, B. (2010). A panorama of polish word-formation. Wydawnictwo KUL. Timberlake, A. (1999). The semantics, culture, and cognition of body parts (A cautionary tale). In J. L. Mey & A. Bogusławki (Eds.), E pluribus una: A special volume for Anna Wierzbicka (pp. 47–58). Wierzbicka, A. (2007). Bodies and their parts: An NSM approach to semantic typology. Language Sciences, 29(1), 14–65. Yu, N. (2020). Linguistic embodiment in linguistic experience: A corpus-based study. In I. KraskaSzlenk (Ed.), Body part terms in conceptualization and language usage (pp. 11–30). John Benjamins. Ziemke, T., Zlatev, J., & Frank, R. M. (Eds.). (2007). Body, language and mind. Volume 1: Embodiment. Mouton de Gruyter.

Iwona Kraska-Szlenk is Professor at the University of Warsaw, where she teaches courses on general linguistics and Swahili language and literature. Her research interests focus on embodiment and language-culture connection, lexical semantics, phonology-morphology interface, and usage-based methodologies. She has authored several books, including: Analogy: The Relation between Lexicon and Grammar (LINCOM 2007) and Semantics of Body Part Terms: General Trends and a Case Study of Swahili (LINCOM 2014), and edited a number of multi-authored volumes, including: The Body in Language: Comparative Studies of Linguistic Embodiment (with Matthias Brenzinger, Brill, 2014), Embodiment in Cross-Linguistic Studies: The ‘Head’ (Brill, 2019), Body Part Terms in Conceptualization and Language Usage (Benjamins, 2020) and Embodiment in Cross-Linguistic Studies: The ‘Eye’ (with Melike Ba¸s, Brill, 2021). She has published articles in Cognitive Linguistics, Language Sciences, Studies in African Languages and Cultures and other international journals.

Cognitive Semantics Against Creole Exceptionalism: On the Scope of Metonymy in the Lexicon of Nigerian Pidgin English Krzysztof Kosecki

Abstract One of the claims of creole exceptionalism is that speakers of creole languages, because they have poorer cognitive abilities, use grammars and lexicons that reduce the possibility of expression, thus making it difficult to handle abstraction and complex semantic domains. Such ideas were challenged on structural grounds, but much less attention has been paid to conceptual systems underlying creoles. Building on the insofar research into such systems based on the principles of cognitive semantics, the paper challenges the above-mentioned claims by analysing the lexicon of Nigerian Pidgin English/NPE, an English-lexifier creole of West Africa. It focuses on metonymy as one of the fundamental processes of human cognition, whose broad and systematic character makes it indispensable for the creation and retrieval of meanings in language use. It is argued that NPE lexicon owes its conceptual richness and creative character to patterns of metonymy-based construal as diverse and complex as those used by speakers of English. The 15 identified metonymic patterns include such common conceptual relations as part-whole, cause-effect, category and its members, etc. They all allow NPE speakers to express abstract and complex concepts and adjust to context-driven communicative needs in efficient ways, thus contributing to the creole’s rich expressivity and reflecting fully-fledged cognitive abilities of its users. Keywords Conceptualization · Creole · Creole exceptionalism · Expressivity · Lexicon · Metonymy

1 Introduction: Creole Exceptionalism 19th century philology, neo-Darwinian biology, and 20th century views of language evolution contributed to the formation of various hypotheses jointly known as creole exceptionalism. Its main claims are that (a) simplified creole grammars and lexicons K. Kosecki (B) University of Łód´z, Łód´z, Poland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk and M. Trojszczak (eds.), Language in Educational and Cultural Perspectives, Second Language Learning and Teaching, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-38778-4_10

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are evidence for lesser cognitive abilities of their creole users, who show little intelligence and lack sufficient expressive potential; that (b) speakers of creole languages belong to a different evolutionary level and, relying largely on native resources, they can approximate the structures of their lexifiers only to a small extent; that (c) primitive structure of creoles is a reflection of brain organization of primitive people; that (d) creoles are primitive languages that represent new linguistic phyla because they develop in ways different from regular languages (DeGraff, 2005). Such views were opposed as early as they were formulated. Already in the first half of the 19th century, it was argued that people engaged in any kind of language contact employed the same mental processes as in the formation of their first languages. Creole exceptionalism was, however, most directly and definitely challenged from the Cartesian-uniformitarian perspective, which argued that language change follows “universal psycholinguistic mechanisms” (DeGraff, 2005, p. 6) and that the process of language acquisition must have been “essentially the same” over the last several millennia (DeGraff, 2009, p. 895). The development of creoles is only triggered by cognitive and socio-pragmatic factors; to claim that such needs motivate it would result in “the unwarranted implication that the language was previously structurally or otherwise insufficient” (Migge, 2003, p. 108). As Mufwene (2002) says, “the inventors of pidgins have sophisticated modern minds, which have evolved far beyond the mental capacities of our hominid ancestors” (as cited in DeGraff, 2005, p. 12).

2 Nigerian Pidgin English/NPE Nigerian Pidgin English/NPE is—together with Ghanaian Pidgin English/GPE and Cameroonian Pidgin English or Kamtok (Sebba, 1997, p. 126)—a variety of West African Pidgin English. It developed as a result of the 18th century European trade along the West African coast, but since then has moved from the old ports of Calabar, Port Harcourt, and Warri to the area of the lower Niger and from there to other Nigerian towns and cities (Ativie, 2022, p. 1; Sebba, 1997, p. 127). NPE is mainly lexified by English, but it also has some Portuguese and French expressions. Most African words come from such local languages as Efik, Erei, Hausa, Igbo, and Yoruba (Mensah, 2012, p. 2; Ugot et al., 2013, p. 225). NPE gradually developed from a simple to a stabilized and expanded pidgin (Ativie, 2022, p. 1), and today it is a creole language with various dialects spoken by about 30 million people, including those who speak it as their first and second language in southern and central Nigeria. As a result of attempts to standardize it, the creole was given the name Naija ‘Nigeria’, which reflects its integrating function in an otherwise multilingual country (Fr˛ackiewicz, 2015, p. 5). NPE’s lexicon reflects not only the lexifier influence of English, but also Nigeria’s linguistic diversity. As Ativie (2022, p. 2) argues, the diversity “enriches, to a large extent, the lexicon of the language which is enhanced by the many new words and expressions from the majority and minority languages”. As a result, the transfer of semantic patterns is creative in that it involves not only European elements, but also

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distinctively Nigerian usage and attitudes (Ativie, 2022, p. 2; Bamgbose, 1995, p. 21). The processes of lexical borrowing, coining, reduplication, compounding (Faraclas, 1996), as well as the creation of euphemisms and neologisms, frequently involve figurative patterns.

3 Cognitive Semantics Cognitive semantics assumes that language is a major source of evidence for the structure of human conceptual system (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, p. 3). Most concepts— strongly motivated by bodily and cultural experience (Evans & Green, 2006, pp. 176– 205; Johnson, 1987; Lakoff, 1987, pp. 5–90; Lakoff & Johnson, 1999, pp. 3–44; Sharifian, 2017; Sharifian et al., 2008)—are figurative, that is, they are based on such mental strategies as metaphor and metonymy (Kövecses, 2006, pp. 97–133). These strategies, in turn, involve mappings of mental representations of conceptual categories based on structures at various levels of complexity (Kövecses, 2006, pp. 63–75). Whereas in the case of metaphor the categories can be represented in terms of typological distinction between primary and compound mappings (Grady, 1997), in the case of metonymy they involve a diversity of conceptual vehicles and targets, as well as such relations as chaining (Fass, 1997; Hilpert, 2007) or multilevelled hierarchies of mappings (Barcelona, 2002; Brdar, 2000, 2017; Panther & Thornburg, 2007; Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez, 2000). As the two strategies cannot be strictly separated, several patterns of metaphor-metonymy interaction are possible (Geeraerts, 2002; Goossens, 1990).

4 Methodology Some insofar cognitive-oriented studies of creoles show that conceptual patterns present in such languages follow those underlying their European lexifiers. Thus, Nordlander (2007) presents metonymy-based extensions in Krio, a creole of Sierra Leone; Mensah (2011, 2012) and Idegbekwe (2015) illustrate figurative processes underlying the grammar and lexicon of NPE; Osei-Tutu and Corum (2013, 2021) focus on metonymic conversions in Ghanaian Pidgin English; Corum (2016, 2021) describes metonymy- and metaphor-based expressions in Atlantic creoles grown from African substrates and argues for a necessity to focus on neural aspects of creole-based communication and “processes inherent to the human mind that assist in the creation of any form of communication” (Corum, 2016, p. 60). As he further discusses, “cognitive semantics for creole linguistics draws on empirical data to support the argument that creole languages are not exceptional languages” and that speakers of such languages “utilize the creative capacities shared by all humans when faced with the task of constructing a language” (Corum, 2016, p. 61).

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Building on these findings, the present analysis assumes that a fundamental form of language-internal change is analogy or generalization, in which “an existing element […] is extended from a relatively restricted domain to a larger domain to serve closely related functions” (Migge, 2003, p. 108). Metonymy, one of the forms of generalization, is a within-domain mapping whose function is mainly referential (Kövecses, 2002, pp. 147–148; 2006, pp. 98–99). In a typical case, one conceptual entity, called the vehicle, provides access to another conceptual entity, called the target (Radden & Kövecses, 1999, p. 21). For example, in the expression (1)

The room needs a change of wallpaper,

the whole—the room—provides access to its parts, that is, the walls. It is selected as a metonymic vehicle because of its perceptual salience (Radden & Kövecses, 1999, pp. 30–31, 47–48). Though the walls contribute to the overall perception of the place, the room as a whole forms a better gestalt—that is why it used to refer to them.1 The paper aims to illustrate the broad scope of metonymy in NPE. It argues that the creole relies on cognitive and systematic character of the mechanism as an indispensable tool for creative coding-decoding of meaning in diverse communicative contexts (Panther & Thornburg, 2007, p. 236). The fact that it employs richly expressive metonymic strategies is put forward as another argument for the view that cognitive capacities of meaning construal and lexicon expansion used by its speakers are the same as those employed by speakers of English.

5 Results NPE expressions discussed below come from handbooks by Fr˛ackiewicz (2015) and Sebba (1997), electronic dictionary by Naijalingo (2022), as well as papers by Ativie (2022), Estrada (2004), Mensah (2011, 2012), Ofulue (2010), and Ugot et al. (2013). They have been arranged according to 15 metonymic vehicles. In each category the examples of expressions follow the alphabetical order.

5.1 Linguistic Forms Formal metonymy underlies various patterns of reduction and modification of the structure of linguistic sign (Bierwiaczonek, 2013, p. 61). Some of them affect only the form of the sign, leaving the meanings unchanged; others also modify the meanings of the signs. They can be divided into clippings, abbreviations, and reduplications.

1

The sharp distinction between metonymies and active zones, which is advocated by some linguists (e.g., Paradis 2003, 2011), is not adopted in the analysis.

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Clippings

The following examples illustrate the process of clipping: (2)

aircon ‘air conditioning’ (Naijalingo, 2022)

(3)

(c)aff ‘cafeteria’(Fr˛ackiewicz, 2015, p. 61; Naijalingo, 2022).

In both cases a part of the form provides access to the whole of it; the semantic content of the expressions remains unchanged (Radden & Kövecses, 1999, p. 36).

5.1.2

Abbreviations

Abbreviations are a more complex case in that they combine the formal metonymy with various content-related metonymies: (4)

Jjc Johnny just come ‘stranger or somebody new’ (Naijalingo, 2022)

(5)

nfa no future ambition ‘jobless person’ (Naijalingo, 2022)

(6)

nysc now your suffering continue ‘National Youth Service Corps’ (Naijalingo, 2022).

In example (4), the cause—the person’s fresh presence in some place—provides access to the effect, that is, them being a stranger. For a contrast, examples (5) and (6) access the person and the organization by means of the likely effects—joblessness reduces ambitions and service causes suffering. 5.1.3

Reduplications

Since linguistic expressions can be viewed as containers for meaning (Reddy, 1993), any increase of the quantity of form means an increase of the quantity of semantic content (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, pp. 127–128). The metonymic relation in which more of form stands for more of content underlies both simple cases of the process, for example (7)

bado ‘bad’ → badoo ‘very bad’ (Naijalingo, 2022),

and the whole array of reduplications: (8)

bifo-bifo before-before ‘long time ago’ (Fr˛ackiewicz, 2015, p. 30)

(9)

chóp chóp ‘gluttonous’ (Mensah, 2011, p. 220)

(10)

fear fear ‘scared to death’ (Naijalingo, 2022)

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(11)

láf láf laugh laugh ‘absurd, comical’ (Mensah, 2011, p. 220)

(12)

looku looku look look ‘be looking at something for a long time’ (Naijalingo, 2022)

(13)

plenti plenti plenty plenty ‘a lot, abundant’ (Naijalingo, 2022)

(14)

talk talk ‘quarrelsome’ (Mensah, 2011, p. 220)

(15)

wáka wáka walk walk ‘roamy’ (Mensah, 2011, p. 220)

(16)

wélu wélu well well ‘very well’ (Mensah, 2011, p. 219)

(17)

winchi winchi witch witch ‘witches’ (Naijalingo, 2022).

Examples (8), (12), (13), and (16) intensify the meanings of adverbs, verbs, and quantifiers. Examples (9), (10), (11), (14), and (15) represent derived adjectives, some of which reflect extreme degrees of the respective properties. Finally, in example (17) reduplication yields the plural form of a noun. Some reduplications create entirely new concepts, for example in the following expressions: (18)

broda-broda brother-brother ‘nepotism’ (Fr˛ackiewicz, 2015, p. 34)

(19)

doti-doti dirty-dirty ‘rubbish’ (Fr˛ackiewicz, 2015, p. 43)

(20)

fren fren know know friend friend ‘favouritism’ (Naijalingo, 2022)

(21)

sabi sabi know ‘person who knows better than others’ (Naijalingo, 2022)

(22)

shame shame ‘shy person’ (Naijalingo, 2022)

(23)

waka waka walk walk ‘prostitute’ (Naijalingo, 2022).

Persons stand for more intensive social relations in examples (18) and (20); in example (19) increase of a salient property provides access to the entity which is likely to represent it; in examples (21), (22), and (23) typical behaviours serve to access the persons who engage in them to a more extreme degree.

5.2 Linguistic Expressions Linguistic expressions as wholes can provide access to concepts other than those that they literally represent. For example, the formula (24)

Thank God, it’s Friday (Radden & Kövecses, 1999, p. 36)

is commonly used to refer to the weekend or the time to enjoy oneself. NPE is not different in this respect, as the following examples show: (25)

Ajuwaja as you were ‘serving member of the Nigerian Youth

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Service Corps’ (Naijalingo, 2022) (26)

Ghana must go ‘plastic bag, bribe given in it’ (Estrada, 2004; Mensah, 2011, p. 232)

(27)

I beta pass my nebor I had better pass my neighbour ‘power generating set used at home during power supply outages’ (Mensah, 2011, p. 226)

(28)

jangilova jingle over ‘see-saw’ (Naijalingo, 2022).

Expression (25) is a command given to NYSC members, which is equivalent to English ‘At ease!’. In the present case, the linguistic expression stands for the organization in which its use is a common practice. Example (26) is a slogan related to the expulsion of over one million Ghanaians from Nigeria in the early 1980s. Because they used cheap plastic bags as containers for their scanty luggage (Estrada, 2004; Mensah, 2011, p. 232), the expression came to represent such bags. Later it was extended to refer to bribes given in them—the new sense is an instance of metonymy chaining in which the slogan represents the container and the container represents its contents. Expression (27) takes its meaning from the situation in which not every neighbourhood can afford a power generating set, so the device becomes a status symbol (Mensah, 2011, p. 226). It emphasizes the necessity to use it only for one’s own needs, so the expected behaviour stands for the object to which it is related. Finally, example (28) derives from a nursery rhyme “Jingle over, like a motor (…)”, which is sung by children when they go up and down on a see-saw (Quora, 2022). The linguistic behaviour thus provides access to the object on which it is practiced.

5.3 Body Parts Scripting the body to express abstract concepts is common in numerous typologically unrelated languages (Majid et al., 2006). African languages are no exception— body-based concepts in Atlantic creoles can be traced back to them (Huttar et al., 2007). Most NPE body part concepts2 derive from English, but some have sources in substratum languages, especially Efik and Yoruba. The discussion of body part expressions below generally follows the top to bottom orientation of the human body. 5.3.1

Eyes and Ears

References to the eyes and ears provide access to perception and instruments related to it: (29)

pour ai pour eye ‘keep looking’ (Fr˛ackiewicz, 2015, p. 75)

(30)

sharp ai sharp eye ‘be careful/attentive’ (Fr˛ackiewicz, 2015, p. 75)

(31)

útóñ ear ‘mobile handset’ (Mensah, 2012, p. 169).

2

Cameroonian Pidgin English also extensively relies on body parts to access other concepts. Belly, head, heart, and hand are used in ways similar to NPE (Todd & Mühlhäusler, 1978, pp. 8–15).

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In expressions (29) and (30), eyes refer to vision and attention. Example (30) involves interaction of metonymy and metaphor—the initial element is the source domain of the metaphor which represents perceptual intensity as sharpness. In the Efik expression (31), ear stands for a mobile phone, which highlights the fact that the body part is used in the operation of the instrument. The expression is thus also indirectly related to perception. 5.3.2

Mouth

Used in speech production, the mouth provides access to various forms of phonic communication. In expressions (32)

bad mouth ‘speak maliciously about somebody’ (Naijalingo, 2022)

(33)

get maut get mouth ‘talkative’ (Fr˛ackiewicz, 2015, p. 75)

(34)

mek maut make mouth ‘boast’ (Fr˛ackiewicz, 2015, p. 75)

(35)

sharp mouth ‘loquaciousness’ (Ofulue, 2011, p. 223)

(36)

smel maut smell mouth ‘use offensive words’ (Fr˛ackiewicz, 2015, p. 75)

(37)

switmaut sweet mouth ‘art of sophistry, flattery’ (Ativie, 2022, p. 8).

Some expressions again combine metonymy with metaphor. In example (35) sharp represents the intensity of talking as ability to cut or pierce, hence in a negative way. In expression (36) smel represents offensive language in terms of unpleasant olfactory experience—as offensive is bad, it is also stinky (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999, p. 50). Finally, in example (37) swit renders the pleasant quality of speech in terms of pleasant taste.3

5.3.3

Throat and Abdomen

The length of the throat corresponds to capacity for absorbing large amounts of food in expression (38)

longatrot long throat ‘glutton, greedy’ (Mensah, 2011, p. 223; Sebba, 1997, p. 93).

A salient property thus provides access to the gluttonous person, but the interpretation of the expression in terms of the part for the whole relation is also possible. In diverse languages the abdominal area is not only the locus of digestive processes, but also the seat of emotions (Gaby, 2008; Sharifian et al., 2008; Siahaan, 2008). NPE also employs this pattern of conceptualization:

3

Corum (2016, pp. 76–77) discusses the use of this metaphor in African-Caribbean creoles lexified by English.

Cognitive Semantics Against Creole Exceptionalism: On the Scope …

(39)

bad belle bad belly ‘jealousy, envy, malice’ (Fr˛ackiewicz, 2015, p. 75; Naijalingo, 2022)

(40)

get liver ‘have courage’ (Fr˛ackiewicz, 2015, p. 75)

(41)

gudbele good belly ‘kind-hearted’ (Sebba, 1997, p. 92)

(42)

hold belle hold belly ‘prevent or endure hunger’ (Naijalingo, 2022).

207

Whereas in example (42) the belly represents the feeling of hunger that is normally experienced in it, examples (39), (40), and (41) use it and the liver to access positive and negative emotions located in them according to the prevalent cultural model.

5.3.4

Head and Heart

The head is commonly regarded as the locus of mental and intellectual functions. Thus, in expressions (43)

coconut head ‘dunce’ (Mensah, 2011, p. 223)

(44)

head scatter ‘confuse, disorganize’ (Mensah, 2011, p. 224)

(45)

trong hed strong head ‘stubborn’ (Fr˛ackiewicz, 2015, p. 75)

it stands for the intellect or the mind. In example (43) coconut presupposes hardness, which represents durability and further presupposes the qualities of resilience and imperviousness (Corum, 2016, p. 80). Being “slow at learning” (Hawkins, 1987, p. 199) is thus metaphorically represented as having a head which cannot absorb ideas. Example (44) combines the metonymy with the metaphor which represents attentional self-control as being in one place—lack of such control is being scattered over various places (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999, p. 276). Finally, example (45) maps strength into durability (Corum, 2016, p. 79) and also represents lack of docility as resilience and imperviousness. In contrast to the head, the heart is the locus of emotions in diverse languages (Siahaan, 2008). NPE expression (46)

heart cut ‘shock’ (Mensah, 2011, p. 224)

also reflects such conceptualization. The intense emotion is accessed as a feeling of the organ being hurt or even destroyed, hence in terms of a physiological symptom.

5.3.5

Hands, Legs, and Buttocks

We use the hands to manipulate objects in the external environment, hence also to deal with money. In expression

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K. Kosecki

back hand ‘bribe’ (Mensah, 2011, p. 227),

the body part stands for its invisible contents, that is, the money transferred as a part of an illicit and secret transaction. The element back functions as the source domain of the common metaphor which maps lack of vision onto lack of knowledge. We move thanks to the legs—that is why they are also used to access various concepts related to motion: (48)

legediz benz Mercedes Benz ‘person without a car who walks on their legs’ (Naijalingo, 2022)

(49)

legxus Lexus ‘person without a car who walks on their legs’ (Naijalingo, 2022)

(50)

legz legs ‘shoes’ (Naijalingo, 2022).

In examples (48) and (49), legs stand for the prototypical activity of walking. Both expressions are plays on words related to luxury car brands Mercedes Benz and Lexus. They modify the names of the brands so that the element leg makes up their parts, and thus represent persons without cars in a humorous way. In expression (50) legs provide access to what is usually worn on them, that is, shoes. NPE refers to sex by means of both English and native African expressions: (51)

bottom power ‘sexual right (of women) for favouritism’ (Mensah, 2011, p. 227)

(52)

yansh man ass man ‘homosexual’ (Mensah, 2012, p. 169).

In example (51) the euphemistically defined body part serves to access its sexual functions. In expression (52), whose first element comes from Yoruba, the body part refers to the manner of sexual contact between homosexual males.

5.4 Events and Their Parts Events or scenarios can be viewed as wholes that consist of distinct parts. As a result, it is possible to access whole events by means of their initial, central, or final subevents, which become salient for perceptual or cultural reasons (Radden & Kövecses, 1999, pp. 32–33). Initial subevents of the whole scenarios are highlighted in expressions (53)

enter ‘have sex’ (Naijalingo, 2022)

(54)

I wan ease myself I want to ease myself ‘pee’ (Naijalingo, 2022)

(55)

shake body ‘shift to create space for somebody’ (Mensah, 2011, p. 227).

Because they refer to sex and physiological processes, examples (53) and (54) are euphemisms. Central subevents function as metonymic vehicles in expressions

Cognitive Semantics Against Creole Exceptionalism: On the Scope …

(56)

do runs ‘be a prostitute’ (Mensah, 2012, p. 170)

(57)

joinbodi join body ‘meeting, fight’ (Fr˛ackiewicz, 2015, p. 75)

(58)

ste togede stay together ‘contact’ (Ofulue, 2010, p. 5)

(59)

tumble ‘fight’ (Mensah, 2012, p. 174).

209

Examples (57), (58), and (59) access events that involve physical contact between people. Final subevents in expressions (60)

carry and go ‘caught stealing’ (Naijalingo, 2022)

(61)

clap for yourself ‘well done’ (Naijalingo, 2022)

access the scenarios of theft and good performance of some action which calls for applause. Also events as wholes can provide access to various concepts. The following expressions illustrate it: (62)

ride ‘any flashy car’ (Naijalingo, 2022)

(63)

trafficate ‘use indicator lights’ (Naijalingo, 2022).

Example (62) accesses its target concept by means the whole of the experience possible thanks to it. In expression (63) the whole event of traffic represents only one of its major aspects, so the example is based on the metonymy whole for part.

5.5 Categories and Their Properties Categories can stand for their members and, conversely, members can provide access to whole categories (Radden & Kövecses, 1999, pp. 34–35). In such expressions as (64)

cubes ‘sugar cubes’ (Fr˛ackiewicz, 2015, p. 65)

(65)

machine ‘motorcycle, new car’ (Mensah, 2011, p. 217)

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(66)

K. Kosecki

officer ‘policeman, member of any other law enforcement body’ (Naijalingo, 2022).

(67)

system ‘hi-fi system’ (Fr˛ackiewicz, 2015, p. 43),

each category represents only one of its possible members. The reversed conceptualization is present in expressions (68)

Amebo village headmaster in a Nigerian soap opera ‘gossip’ (Naijalingo, 2022)

(69)

biro Biro ‘ball-point pen’ (Fr˛ackiewicz, 2015, p. 22)

(70)

maclean Macleans ‘toothpaste’ (Naijalingo, 2022)

(71)

mineral ‘any non-alcoholic drink’ (Fr˛ackiewicz, 2015, p. 66).

Because Amebo in example (68) is a fictitious character with a like for gossiping, it also functions as a paragon of the category (Lakoff, 1987, pp. 87–88). Biro and maclean both derive from the trademark names of the products, so they also function as eponyms. Since properties can be viewed as parts of categories, they often provide access to those categories and, conversely, the categories provide access to their properties (Radden & Kövecses, 1999, pp. 35–36). In expressions (72)

olofofo nosey ‘gossip’ (Fr˛ackiewicz, 2015, p. 10)

(73)

pikin small ‘child’ (Fr˛ackiewicz, 2015, p. 34)

(74)

wotapruf waterproof ‘plastic covering, raincoat, plastic bag’ (Ofulue, 2010, p. 5),

which are cases of nominalization, properties serve to access the respective categories. Example (72) comes from Yoruba and is a case of semantic shift in which a stereotypical property represents a category of persons. The property in example (74) provides access to a more inclusive category than in English.

5.6 Visual Perception As an ability that facilitates much of human interaction with the surrounding world, perception provides metonymic access to diverse concepts (Radden & Kövecses, 1999, p. 38). In expression (75)

sho bele show belly ‘half top worn by women’ (Naijalingo, 2022),

the object of perception provides access to the item of clothes allowing one to see it. It is also possible to interpret the example in terms of the metonymy in which

Cognitive Semantics Against Creole Exceptionalism: On the Scope …

211

effect—showing one’s belly—provides access to the item of clothes which causes it. The expression (76)

sight ‘see’ (Fr˛ackiewicz, 2015, p. 57)

employs perception itself to refer to the process making it possible. Sight or thing perceived can also be interpreted as an effect of the process causing it.

5.7 Substances Matter, material, or substance constitute ‘substance-things’—unbounded entities that can be thought of as bounded objects (Radden & Kövecses, 1999, p. 32). In expressions (77)

carton ‘carton box’ (Fr˛ackiewicz, 2015, p. 22)

(78)

enamel ‘pail, bucket’ (Fr˛ackiewicz, 2015, p. 43)

(79)

glas glass ‘glass container’ (Fr˛ackiewicz, 2015, p. 65)

(80)

nylon ‘plastic bag’ (Naijalingo, 2022).

(81)

tap leather ‘play ball’ (Fr˛ackiewicz, 2015, p. 57)

(82)

zink zinc ‘roof’4 (Naijalingo, 2022),

the materials constituting the respective objects are used to refer to them. In example (81) only the element leather serves as the vehicle of metonymy; the expression as a whole can be viewed as a central subevent of the activity of a game in which a ball is used.

5.8 Things and Their Constituent Parts We regard things and their parts as conceptually autonomous but interacting with one another (Radden & Kövecses, 1999, p. 30). As a result, various kinds of whole-part relation play a prominent role in human cognition. In expressions (83)

batcher ‘wooden house’ (Fr˛ackiewicz, 2015, p. 61)

(84)

moto motor ‘car’ (Fr˛ackiewicz, 2015, p. 23)

(85)

up stair ‘one-storey house’ (Fr˛ackiewicz, 2015, p. 61),

4

NPE also has a non-metonymic expression ruf roof ‘roof’ (Fr˛ackiewicz, 2015, p. 42).

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K. Kosecki

parts of the respective entities are used to access the wholes. Example (83) refers to a house made of batches of wood or wooden planks joined together. The reversed relation underlies such expressions as (86)

compound ‘fence, house’ (Fr˛ackiewicz, 2015, p. 43)

(87)

koti court ‘police officer, any other uniformed officer’ (Naijalingo, 2022).

In example (86) it operates only in the first sense. Example (87) may as well be interpreted in terms of the metonymy which uses the name of the institution to refer to its employees.

5.9 Causes and Effects The cause-effect relation is one of the central and most inclusive principles of human cognition. Its complementarity (Radden & Kövecses, 1999, p. 38) and “breadth and inclusive nature” (Norrick, 1981, p. 41) give rise to numerous metonymies. Causes serve to access effects in expressions (88)

belle full belly full ‘not able to eat more’ (Naijalingo, 2022)

(89)

booze man ‘drunkard’ (Naijalingo, 2022)

(90)

harmatan dry wind blowing form the Sahara Desert ‘dry season’ (Fr˛ackiewicz, 2015, p. 30).

Example (88) employs a physiological condition as a subcategory of cause. In examples (89) and (90), respectively, booze causes drunkenness and the presence of the dry wind causes the weather to change to dry. Effects serve to access causes in expressions (91)

cover slap ‘hard slap with the whole hand or fingers’ (Naijalingo, 2022)

(92)

face me I face you ‘(ghetto) house’ (Naijalingo, 2022)

(93)

fear face respect (Mensah, 2011, p. 224)

(94)

find my trouble ‘annoying, getting on my nerves’ (Naijalingo, 2022)

(95)

go slow ‘traffic jam’ (Fr˛ackiewicz, 2015, p. 61)

(96)

man no die ‘amullette (protective medicine)’ (Mensah, 2011, p. 233)

(97)

yu go wound you go wound ‘dangerous, harmful’ (Naijalingo, 2022).

In all examples but (91), the metonymic vehicles represent effects as actions or conditions related to places, behaviours, objects, and properties. Physiological and medical symptoms function as a subcategory of effects that provide access to various conditions causing them in expressions (98)

bow leg ‘childhood disease’ (Naijalingo, 2022)

Cognitive Semantics Against Creole Exceptionalism: On the Scope …

(99)

cary belle carry belly ‘get pregnant’ (Fr˛ackiewicz, 2015, p. 34)

(100)

empti belle empty belly ‘defecate’ (Ugot et al., 2013, p. 228)

(101)

purge ‘diahorrea’ (Naijalingo, 2022),

213

or to diverse emotions in examples (102)

big eye ‘greedy’ (Naijalingo, 2022)

(103)

eye red ‘serious or desperate over something’ (Naijalingo, 2022)

(104)

openai open eye ‘aggressive’ (Sebba, 1997, p. 92)

(105)

no shaking ‘no problem’ (Naijalingo, 2022).

In expression (102) the metonymy interacts with the metaphor in the element big, which involves the mapping of size onto force (Corum, 2016, p. 74). In example (103) the element red reflects heat produced by an intense emotion (Lakoff, 1987, p. 382).

5.9.1

Locations

Locations involve geographically, politically, and architecturally defined areas (Norrick, 1981, p. 60). They provide access not only to occupants, but also to institutions, activities, events, and goods associated with them (Radden & Kövecses, 1999, p. 41). The following expressions reflect it: (106)

backyard ‘house garden’ (Fr˛ackiewicz, 2015, p. 43)

(107)

inwáñ farm ‘foolish person’ (Mensah, 2012, p. 169)

(108)

maket market ‘business, trade’ (Fr˛ackiewicz, 2015, p. 127)

(109)

lap ‘carry on one’s lap during a car ride’ (Naijalingo, 2022).

In examples (106) and (108), locations, respectively, provide access to a cultivated area and activity taking place within their premises. Expression (107) comes from Efik—the location refers to its stereotypically defined inhabitant. Expression (109) converts the noun describing the area formed by the thighs of a seated person into the verb by means of the relation of location standing for action.

5.9.2

Products

Products frequently serve to identify their producers, as well as actions, instruments, sources, and places used in the process of production (Norrick, 1981, pp. 87–90; Radden & Kövecses, 1999, pp. 39–40). In expressions

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(110)

faya fire ‘cooker’ (Fr˛ackiewicz, 2015, p. 43)

(111)

light ‘electric power’ (Naijalingo, 2022)

(112)

tori man story man ‘journalist’ (Fr˛ackiewicz, 2015, p. 27),

they, respectively, provide access to the instrument that is used to produce fire, a form of energy used in the production of light, and the person whose profession is to write news for the media. The range of metonymic vehicles and their targets shows that production is “a particularly salient type of causal action” (Radden & Kövecses, 1999, pp. 39–40).

5.9.3

Containers

The contiguity-based relation between containers and their contents is widespread in human cognition (Norrick, 1981, pp. 57–58). The expression (113)

brown envelope ‘bribe’ (Mensah, 2011, p. 227)

is based on it and reflects the dominant tendency to focus interest on the contents and access them by means of the containers (Radden & Kövecses, 1999, pp. 41). 5.9.4

Actions

Actions can provide access to other related concepts, such as participants, instruments, or even results (Radden & Kövecses, 1999, pp. 37–38). The following expressions reflect such relations: (114)

bend down boutique ‘used clothes for sale, usually spread on a mat for passers-by’ (Naijalingo, 2022)

(115)

cut and sew ‘tailor’ (Fr˛ackiewicz, 2015, p. 26)

(116)

kwat nkpe scratch and pay ‘prostitute’ (Mensah, 2012, p. 169)

(117)

pay as you go ‘prostitute’ (Mensah, 2011, p. 227)

(118)

walkabout ‘one who enjoys walking around or aimlessly’ (Naijalingo, 2022).

In example (114) manner of selling provides access to things offered for sale. Expression (115) is a nominalization which refers to the profession by means of its prototypical action. The same pattern of derivation underlies the remaining three expressions, in which actions refer to persons engaged in them. Examples (116) and (117) are euphemisms.

Cognitive Semantics Against Creole Exceptionalism: On the Scope …

5.9.5

215

Instruments

Instruments can refer to agents, actions, as well as their results, including products (Radden & Kövecses, 1999, pp. 37, 40). Expressions (119)

bluetooth ‘send something invisibly’ (Naijalingo, 2022)

(120)

yahooze ‘internet fraud’ (Mensah, 2011, p. 227)

both involve the relation in which instruments provide access actions. If example (119) is used to refer to other similar instruments, the metonymic relation of a salient member of a category representing the whole category (Radden & Kövecses, 1999, pp. 34–35) is also present in it. In example (120) the instrument refers to the result of the action undertaken by means of it.

5.9.6

Scales and Numbers

Scales and various scalar units, such as dimensions, values, and numbers, reflect the preponderance of mathematics in everyday life. It is evident in the tendency to quantify and number entities and phenomena. That is why various scalar expressions and numbers can function as metonymic “shortcuts” (Littlemore, 2015), especially if the underlying conceptual associations are well-entrenched. It is the case of the following expressions: (121)

419 ‘advance-fee fraud’ (Mensah, 2011, pp. 231–232)

(122)

kost cost ‘expensive’ (Fr˛ackiewicz, 2015, p. 67)

(123)

mental ‘mentally unstable’ (Naijalingo, 2022)

(124)

prais price ‘bargain, haggle’ (Naijalingo, 2022)

(125)

number six ‘intelligence, common sense’ (Naijalingo, 2022)

(126)

shine yua 32 shine your 32 [teeth] ‘smile widely’ (Naijalingo, 2022).

Example (121) is motivated by the number of the article of the Nigerian Criminal Code which determines the punishment for this crime (Mensah, 2011, pp. 231–232). It involves chaining of metonymies in which the number accesses the article and then the article accesses the crime. In examples (122) and (123), whole scales are used to refer, respectively, to their upper and negative ends. In expression (124) the whole scale refers to the related actions, but interpretation in terms of the part for whole relation is also possible. In expression (125) number is used to refer to what is sometimes called “the sixth sense”. Finally, example (126) is based on two metonymies: the number provides access to the teeth and the effect provides access to the cause. The second metonymy is a higher-level one because it functions on the level of the whole expression.

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6 Selection of Metonymic Vehicles Language users select metonymic vehicles following a number of cognitive and communicative principles (Langacker, 1993, p. 30; Radden & Kövecses, 1999, pp. 44–45). For example, the principle of human over non- human motivates the use of the proper name of the product to refer to the product in the English expression (127)

I’ve got a Ford.

The same principle operates in NPE, where the proper name provides access to the toothpaste (70)

maclean Macleans ‘toothpaste’ (Naijalingo, 2022).

Numerous expressions that involve body scripting reflect the principle of concrete over abstract. The principle of initial or final over middle is evident in some event-related metonymies, for example in expressions (55)

shake body ‘shift to create space for somebody’ (Mensah, 2011, p. 227)

(61)

clap for yourself ‘well done’ (Naijalingo, 2022).

The first one focuses on the initial subevent of the scenario; the second one highlights the final subevent. NPE also uses typical members to represent categories, for example in the expression (69)

biro Biro ‘ball-point pen’ (Fr˛ackiewicz, 2015, p. 22),

so the principle of typical over non- typical is also present. Finally, there are also cases of some principles being overridden—the sex-related euphemistic expression (53)

enter ‘have sex’ (Naijalingo, 2022).

violates the communicative rule of clear over obscure to achieve the socialcommunicative effect of minimizing offence. NPE speakers thus select metonymic vehicles following the same principles as speakers of English.

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217

7 Further Research The present analysis of the scope of metonymy in NPE is certainly not exhaustive; nor does it make use of the whole potential of cognitive linguistic contribution to challenging the notion of creole exceptionalism. A study of the range of conceptual metaphors or a detailed analysis of various patterns of metaphor-metonymy interaction should follow. Though works like Corum’s (2016, pp. 64–80) description of conceptual structure of body scripting expressions in various Atlantic creoles or Ponsonnet’s (2017) analysis of the language of emotions in Kriol, spoken in Barunga, northern Australia, certainly contribute to the understanding of the use of figurative language in creoles, holistic analyses of such patterns in whole lexicons of individual creoles still have to be conducted. They are more likely to reveal the full scope of figurative conceptualizations than analyses focusing on selected parts of the respective lexicons. The presence of figurative patterns in creole grammars—be they related to constructions or cases of grammaticalization—is another issue that calls for analysis. Some insofar studies, for example Mensah (2012), Osei-Tutu and Corum (2013), or Tung (2014), seem to show that patterns common in lexifier languages are also present in creoles.

8 Conclusions Concepts that can function as metonymic vehicles in NPE include linguistic forms, linguistic expressions, body and its parts, events and their parts, categories, visual perception, substances, things and their constituent parts, causes and effects, locations, products, containers, actions, instruments, as well as scales and numbers. The list is in all likelihood not exhaustive. As metonymic vehicles, they provide access to an equally broad range of targets, some of which include crime, money, medical conditions, objects, events, professions, and time. Some vehicles have multiple targets—for example, body parts provide access to money, objects, and medical conditions; effects refer to a variety of causes. NPE has both conventional and creative uses of metonymy. The former include, among others, expressions based on body scripting; the latter include expressions that come about in response to specific economic or political conditions, for example scarce supply of electricity in some parts of Nigeria or the events in Ghana in the 1980s. Both kinds of metonymies reflect the fact that the expressive capacity of NPE is comparable to that of major languages—the creole’s lexicon is “loaded” (Evans & Green, 2006, pp. 10–11) and its users can interrelate vehicles and targets to create new mental images and new meanings. NPE has numerous individual metonymic expressions, but complex metonymic relations are also present. They involve both chaining of metonymies and higher-level metonymic structures. Selecting metonymic vehicles, NPE speakers also employ the

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same cognitive and communicative principles as speakers of major languages, such as English—its main lexifier. Muysken (1988, p. 300), one of the supporters of the Cartesian-uniformitarian approach to creole genesis, said: “The very notion of a ‘Creole’ language from the linguistic point of view tends to disappear if one looks closely; what we have is just a language” (as cited in DeGraff, 2005, p. 15). From the cognitive linguistic perspective, the scope of conceptual metonymy in NPE is another argument against treating creoles as a sui generis class of languages (DeGraff, 2005, p. 10). With respect to the scope of metonymic construal, NPE is just another language.

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Fr˛ackiewicz, O. (2015). We sabi am: Kurs Nigerian Pidgin English [We sabi am: A course in Nigerian Pidgin English]. University of Warsaw. Gaby, A. (2008). Gut feelings: Locating intellect, emotion and life force in the Thaayorre body. In F. Sharifian, R. Dirven, N. Yu, & S. Niemeier (Eds.), Culture, body, and language: Conceptualizations of internal body organs across cultures and languages (pp. 27–44). Mouton de Gruyter. Geeraerts, D. (2002). The interaction of metaphor and metonymy in composite expressions. In R. Driven & R. Pörings (Eds.), Metaphor and metonymy in comparison and contrast (pp. 435–468). De Gruyter Mouton. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110219197.3.435 Goossens, L. (1990). Metaphtonymy: The interaction of metaphor and metonymy in expressions for linguistic action. Cognitive Linguistics, 1(3), 323–340. Grady, J. E. (1997). Theories are buildings revisited. Cognitive Linguistics, 8(4), 267–290. Hawkins, J. M. (Ed.). (1987). Oxford paperback dictionary. Oxford University Press. Hilpert, M. (2007). Chained metonymies in lexicon and grammar: A cross-linguistic perspective on body-part terms. In G. Radden, K.-M. Köpcke, T. Berg, & P. Siemund (Eds.), Aspects of meaning construction (pp. 77–98). John Benjamins. Huttar, G. L., Essegbey, J., & Ameka, F. K. (2007). Gbe and other West African sources of Suriname Creole semantic structures: Implications for creole genesis. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages, 22(1), 57–72. Idegbekwe, D. (2015). Anthropomorphisms and the Nigerian Pidgin proverbs: A linguistic conceptual metaphorical analysis. EBSU Journal of Social Sciences Review, 5(2), 71–84. Johnson, M. (1987). The body in the mind: The bodily basis of meaning, imagination, and reason. Chicago University Press. Kövecses, Z. (2002). Metaphor: A practical introduction. Oxford University Press. Kövecses, Z. (2006). Language, mind, and culture: A practical introduction. Oxford University Press. Lakoff, G. (1987). Women, fire, and dangerous things: What categories reveal about the mind. Chicago University Press. Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago University Press. Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1999). Philosophy in the flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to western thought. Basic Books. Langacker, R. W. (1993). Reference-point constructions. Cognitive Linguistics, 4, 1–38. Littlemore, J. (2015). Metonymy: Hidden shortcuts in language, thought and communication. Cambridge University Press. Majid, A., Enfield, N. J., & van Staden, M. (Eds.). (2006). Parts of the body: Cross-linguistic categorisation. [Special issue] Language Sciences, 28(2–3), 137–360. Mensah, E. O. (2011). Lexicalization in Nigerian Pidgin. Concentric: Studies in Linguistics, 37(2), 209–240. Mensah, E. O. (2012). Grammaticalization in Nigerian Pidgin. Íkala, Revista de Lenguaje y Cultura [Íkala, Review of Language and Culture], 17(2), 167–179. https://www.scielo.org.co > scielo. Migge, B. (2003). Creole formation as language contact: The case of the Surinam creoles. John Benjamins. Mufwene, S. (2002). What do pidgins and creoles tell us about the evolution of language? Paper presented at the conference Origine et Évolution des Languages: Approches, Modèles, Paradigms [Origin and Evolution of Languages: Approaches, Models, Paradigms], Collège de France. Muysken, P. (1988). Are creoles a special type of language? In F. Newmeyer (Ed.), Linguistics. The Cambridge survey. Vol. 2: Linguistic theory: Extensions and implications (pp. 285–301). Cambridge University Press. Naijalingo. (2022). The Nigerian Pidgin English dictionary created by you for you! http://naijal ingo.com

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Nordlander, J. (2007). The metonymic element in Krio conceptualization: The cases of BIF and BUSH. In K. Kosecki (Ed.), Perspectives on metonymy: Proceedings of the International Conference “Perspectives on Metonymy”, Held in Łód´z (pp. 271–287). Peter Lang. Norrick, N. R. (1981). Semiotic principles in semantic theory. John Benjamins. Ofulue, C. I. (2010). Towards the standardization of Naija: Vocabulary development and lexical expansion processes. In Proceedings of the “Conference on Nigerian Pidgin”, University of Ibadan (pp. 1–9). National Open University of Nigeria. Osei-Tutu, K., & Corum, M. (2013). Metonymic reasoning in Ghanaian Pidgin: A focus on noun to verb conversions. In Creolization and commonalities: Transgressing neo-colonial boundaries in the languages, literatures and cultures of the Caribbean and the rest of the African diaspora: Proceedings of 16 Annual Eastern Caribbean Islands Conference “The Islands in Between: Languages, Literatures and Culture of the Eastern Caribbean” (pp.66–77). https://www.resear chgate.net/publication/316860327 Panther, K.-U., & Thornburg, L. L. (2007). Metonymy. In D. Geeraerts & H. Cuyckens (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of cognitive linguistics (pp. 236–263). Oxford University Press. Paradis, C. (2003). Where does metonymy stop? Senses, facets, and active zones. The Department of English in Lund: Working Papers in Linguistics, 3, 1–15. Paradis, C. (2011). Metonymization: A key mechanism in semantic change. In R. Benczes, A. Barcelona, & F. J. Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez (Eds.), Defining metonymy in cognitive linguistics: Towards a consensus view (pp. 61–88). John Benjamins. Ponsonnet, M. (2017). Conceptual representations and figurative language in language shift: Metaphors and gestures for emotions in Kriol (Barunga, Northern Australia). Cognitive Linguistics,28(4), 631–671. Quora. (2022). What means “Janglover” in Nigerian English & what is the etymology? https:// www.quora.com. (What-means-Janglover-in-Nigeria…). Radden, G., & Kövecses, Z. (1999). Towards a theory of metonymy. In K.-U. Panther & G. Radden (Eds.), Metonymy in language and thought (pp. 17–59). John Benjamins. Reddy, M. J. 1993 [1979]. The conduit metaphor: A case of frame conflict in our language about language. In A. Ortony (Ed.), Metaphor and thought (pp. 164–201). Cambridge University Press. Rotimi, O. (2017). A dictionary of Nigerian Pidgin English: With an introductory survey of the history, linguistics and socio-literary functions. Createspace. Sebba, M. (1997). Contact languages: Pidgins and creoles. Palgrave Macmillan. Sharifian, F. (2017). Cultural linguistics. Etnolingwistyka [Ethnolinguistics], 28, 33–59. Sharifian, F., Dirven, R., Yu, N., & Niemeier, S. (2008). Culture and language: Looking for the ‘mind’ inside the body. In F. Sharifian, R. Dirven, N. Yu, & S. Niemeier (Eds.), Culture, body and language: Conceptualizations of internal body organs across cultures and languages (pp. 3–23). Mouton de Gruyter. Siahaan, P. (2008). Did he break your heart or your liver? A contrastive study on metaphorical concepts from the source domain organ in English and in Indonesian. In F. Sharifian, R. Dirven, N. Yu, & S. Niemeier (Eds.), Culture, body, and language: Conceptualizations of internal body organs across cultures and languages (pp. 45–74). Mouton de Gruyter. Todd, L., & Mühlhäusler, P. (1978). Idiomatic expressions in Cameroon Pidgin English and Tok Pisin. Papers in Pidgin and Creole Linguistics, 1, 1–36. Tung, C. (2014). Grammaticalization in Tok Pisin. https://ejournals.bc.edu/index.php/lingua/article/ download/…/5029 Ugot, M., Offiong, O. A., & Oyo, O. E. (2013). Nigerian Pidgin variations in the Ikom-Ogoja axis of Cross River State, Nigeria. International Journal of Applied Linguistics & English Literature, 2(2), 223–231.

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Krzysztof Kosecki earned his MA degree in English literature (1989), PhD degree in English linguistics (1995), and DLitt degree in English linguistics (2007) from the University of Lodz, Poland, where he is an Associate Professor of English in the Institute of English Studies. He is the author of On the Part-Whole Configuration and Multiple Construals of Salience within a Simple Lexeme (2005, Lodz University Press) and Language, Time, and Biology: A Cognitive Perspective (2008, Higher Vocational School in Włocławek Press), the editor of Perspectives on Metonymy (2007, Peter Lang), and co-editor of Cognitive Processes in Language (2012, Peter Lang), Time and Temporality in Language and Human Experience (2014, Peter Lang), and Empirical Methods in Language Studies (2015, Peter Lang). Since 2019 he is Deputy Chairman of Polish Cognitive Linguistics Association.

Semitic Calques in Biblical Greek: The Case-Study of Formulaic Participial Clauses Edoardo Nardi

Abstract This contribution addresses the construction called “participial clause” in Biblical Greek, which is a nominal clause with a participle as main predicate. As compared with other Greek varieties, the participial clause in Biblical Greek exhibits a considerable increase in usage frequency, and a fairly consistent number of participial clauses individuated in the corpus constitute calques of formulaic expressions typical of the Old Testament. A couple of these formulae have long been regarded by scholars as calques of equivalent Semitic patterns; one of these goes even beyond the boundaries of the Biblical literature and occurs in non-literary papyri. Other formulaic expressions have not received as much attention, but it will be shown that they also find clear formal and structural models in the Semitic Old Testament. Keywords Participial clause · Biblical Greek · Formulaic expression · Old Testament · Calque

1 Introduction This paper addresses the construction called “participial clause” in Biblical Greek (on this label, see Sect. 2); by participial clause, we refer to a nominal clause with a participle as main predicate (examples (1) and (2)).1 (1)

κα`ι

παντες ´

oƒ

¢δελϕoι`

αÙτîν

πα´ιζoντες,

and

all.nom.pl

art.nom.pl

brother.nom.pl

3pl.gen

play.ptcp.prs.act.nom.pl

κα`ι

™πoι´ησεν

αÙτou` ς

συναναβÁναι

μετ’

™κε´ινων

1 The passages from the New Testament and the Semitic Old Testament are translated according to the English Standard version (ESV) and the Jewish Publication Society (JPS) version, respectively; for the other texts, the translation is specified each time.

E. Nardi (B) Guglielmo Marconi University, Rome, Italy e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk and M. Trojszczak (eds.), Language in Educational and Cultural Perspectives, Second Language Learning and Teaching, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-38778-4_11

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E. Nardi

and

make.aor.act.3sg

3pl.acc

go.up.together.inf

with

dem.gen.pl

‘And all their kindred were making merry, and he made them go up along with them.’ (1 Esdras 5:3; trans. Glenn Wooden)

(2)

κα`ι

„δou`

γυνη`

καταβα´ινoυσα

¢π`o

τÁς

and

behold

woman.nom.sg

go.down.ptcp.prs.act.nom.sg

from

art.gen.sg

ÑρεινÁς,

κα`ι

εỉπšν

μoι· […]

mountain.gen.sg

and

say.aor.act.3sg

1sg.dat

‘And look! A woman was coming down from the mountain, and she said to me: […]’ (Protevangelium Iacobi 19:1; trans. Mattison)

The peculiar characteristic of the participles in participial clauses is their functional equivalence to finite verbal forms: if πα´ιζoντες and καταβα´ινoυσα were replaced with the imperfect forms ἒπαιζoν ‘they were playing’ and κατšβαινε ‘he/ she was going down’ respectively, the meaning of the sentences would hardly change. The participial clause in Ancient Greek is a marginal construction: bar the concise note made by Schwyzer (1950, p. 408), the pattern generally goes unnoticed in Homeric and Classical Greek grammars (among others, see Adrados, 1992; Crespo et al., 2003; Rijksbaron, 1994; Smyth, 1920), but is addressed in some details in Guiraud’s study on nominal clauses (Guiraud, 1962, pp. 145ff.). However, the participial clause exhibits a considerable increase in usage frequency in the JudaeoChristian literature,2 and, as a result, a wider attention is given to the construction, especially in New Testament grammars (among others, see Moulton, 1906, pp. 222ff.; Mussies, 1971, pp. 324ff.; Robertson, 1923, pp. 1132ff.; Thompson, 1985, pp. 67–69; Viteau, 1893, p. 200).

2

In the examined corpus (on the composition of the corpus, see below in the main text), participial clauses are about 6 times more frequent than in Guiraud’s (1962), which consists of Homer (including the Hymns), Hesiod, Pindar, Theognis, Herodotus and the tragedians (the two corpora are approximately the same size).

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The scrutinized corpus consists of the whole New Testament, a few books of the Greek Old Testament, i.e. the LXX,3 and about 75 texts belonging to the noncanonical Judaeo-Christian literature.4 About 18% of the participial clause occurrences found in this corpus (28 out of 152) appear in formulae or idiomatic expressions that are typical of the Semitic Old Testament (on formulae, see Sect. 2). Two of these expressions have long been regarded by scholars as calques of equivalent formulaic patterns found in Semitic languages (Hebrew and/or Aramaic); by contrast, other formulae found in the corpus have not received as much attention, but they clearly find a model in the Semitic Old Testament. This contribution aims to thoroughly examine the individuated formulae with special attention to those that have not been systematically investigated yet, in order to clarify their structural and semantic similarity to the Semitic model. Before addressing the expressions in details (see Sect. 3), two theoretical issues should be briefly discussed, namely, the label “Biblical Greek” and the borrowing of formulae in light of the contemporary studies on language contact.

2 Biblical Greek and Formula Borrowing The label ‘Biblical Greek’ refers to the linguistic variety used in the LXX, the New Testament and the related non-canonical Judaeo-Christian literature, which is linguistically and stylistically dependent on the canonical literature (the expression ‘nonBiblical Greek’ will be used to refer to any Ancient Greek variety that is to some extent different from Biblical Greek: e.g., Homeric Greek, Classical Greek, etc.); in particular, the imitation of the model represented by the LXX is a pervasive feature in the whole Judaeo-Christian literature,5 and a peculiar trait of Biblical Greek (Dalman, 1902, pp. 17ff.; Dorival & alii 1994, pp. 270, 280ff., 316ff.). Strictly speaking, though, the language of the LXX is not exactly the same as the New Testament language6 : 3

Namely: 1 Esdras, 3–4 Machabaeorum and Psalmi Salomonis. Namely: Acta Andreae—Acta Andreae et Matthiae—Acta Barnabae—Acta Iohannis—Acta Matthaei—Acta Pauli et Theclae—Acta Petri—Acta Petri et Andreae—Acta Petri et Pauli—Acta Philippi (and Hypomnemata Philippi)—Acta Pilati A & B—Acta Thaddaei—Acta Thomae—Acta Xanthippae et Polyxenae—Anaphora Pilati A & B (and Paradosis Pilati)—Apocalypsis Baruch— Apocalypsis Esdrae—Apocalypsis Henoch—Apocalypsis pseudo-Iohannis—Apocalypsis Mosis— Apocalypsis Pauli—Apocalypsis Petri—Apocalypsis Sedrach—Ascensio Isaiae—Epistulae Abgari et Iesu Christi—Epistula Barnabae—Epistula Polycarpi ad Philippenses—Epistulae Ignatii— Evangelium Nicodemi—Evangelium Petri—Evangelium Thomae A & B—Iohannis Liber de Dormitione Mariae—Iosephus et Aseneth—Martyrium Andreae A & B—Narratio Iosephi— Oracula Sibyllina—Passio Bartholomaei—Passio Petri et Pauli—Passio Pauli—Protevangelium Iacobi—Quaestiones Bartholomaei—Testamentum Abrami A & B—Testamenta Duodecim Patriarcharum—Testamentum Iob—Testamentum Salomonis—Vitae Prophetarum. 5 Vorster (1990, p. 221) argues that the influence of the LXX on the New Testament (and, thus, on the whole Judaeo-Christian literature) should be viewed in terms of “convention”, rather than imitation or direct influence. 6 On the LXX language, see Janse (2002, pp. 338ff.), Horrocks (2010, pp. 106ff.). 4

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among other differences, for example, New Testament Greek is widely acknowledged to have a more vernacular character than LXX Greek (Horrocks, 2010, pp. 147ff.). However, the varieties found in the LXX, the New Testament and the non-canonical literature share a number of syntactic and lexical-stylistic traits that distinguish them from non-Biblical Greek, and such that we can jointly refer to them, by and large, as to a homogeneous variety. Essentially, Biblical Greek can be defined as a form of Koινη´ Greek imbued with a Semitic coloring due to the interference of Hebrew and Aramaic (LXX Greek in particular is sometimes termed—not without criticisms—‘Semiticized Greek’).7 The Semitic influence mostly affects the syntax, the lexicon and the style. While the former aspect is widely discussed, inasmuch as it is often difficult to establish to what extent the Semitic syntax really interfere with that of Greek (cf. Voitila, 2016), the lexical and stylistic aspects are relatively plain: Biblical Greek shows many lexical ´ ´ ‘amen’, etc.) or “genuine Greek words used borrowings (πασχα ‘Passover’, ¢μην in new ways” (De Lange, 2001, p. 642), that is, semantic calques (e.g., ¥γγελoς ´ σoι [in greetings] ‘peace to you’; on semantic calques, see Gusmani, ‘angel’, ε„ρηνη 1981, 1983). As for the style, the calques of formulaic expressions are an evident outcome of Semitic interference: one of the clearest examples, which is also found in the corpus (see §3), is (κα`ι) „δou´ ‘(and) behold’ followed by a verbal form, which reproduces the Biblical Hebrew formula ‘(w@)hinnêh + participle/finite form’.8 The path of diffusion of these formulae is fairly clear: they were part of the language of the Semitic Old Testament, and first passed into (Biblical) Greek through the LXX; later, by imitation of the major linguistic model represented by the LXX, these patterns spread in the secondary Jewish literature, the New Testament and, eventually, the non-canonical Christian literature (cf. Wifstrand, 2005, pp. 28–29). By ‘formula’, we refer to an expression that is semantically and formally fixed, or subject to minimal, hardly-relevant variation (on formulaic language in general, among others, see Wray, 2002, 2008; Wood, 2015): for example, the Homeric poems are imbued with formulae, such as the epithets (e.g., π´oδας çκuς ` ’Aχιλλεuς ´ ‘swift-footed Achilles’, trans. Murray) or formulaic verses (e.g., Ãμoς δ’ ºριγšνεια ´ ´ ϕανη ·oδoδακτυλoς Ἠως ´ ‘when the early-born, rose-fingered Dawn appeared’, trans. Murray). It is well-known that formulae represent highly borrowable patterns (Aikhenvald, 2007, p. 17; Matras, 2009, pp. 32–33), which is a characteristic that is facilitated by their conceptual compactness (cf. Aikhenvald, 2007, pp. 31–32): albeit formed by multiple words, formulae are interpretable as conceptual units. Also, formulaic patterns usually have a particular cultural and/or religious prominence:

On the relation between the Koινη´ and Biblical Greek, see Moulton (1906, pp. 2ff.), Robertson (1923, pp. 76ff.), Blass and Debrunner (1961, pp. 1ff.), Dorival et al. (1994, pp. 223ff.), Horrocks (2010, pp. 106f.; 147ff.), Spolsky (2014, pp. 47–48); on the Semitic interference in Biblical Greek, see Dalman (1902, pp. 17ff.), Blass and Debrunner (1961, pp. 3–4), Dorival et al. (1994, pp. 229– 231), De Lange (2001, pp. 641–642), Joosten and Kister (2009), Coulter (2010, pp. 268–272), Spolsky (2014, pp. 48ff.). 8 On the Hebrew construction, see Waltke and O’Connor (1990, p. 625), Joosten (2012, pp. 100, 105–8); on its Biblical Greek equivalent, see Moulton (1906, p. 11), Coulter (2010, p. 275). 7

Semitic Calques in Biblical Greek: The Case-Study of Formulaic …

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“the more culturally important the pattern is, the more it is diffusible” (Aikhenvald, 2007, p. 17). In light of the crucial importance that the LXX—the Sacred Scriptures—and its language had in the Judaeo-Christian milieu, the spread of the formulaic expressions at issue is not difficult to account for. Alongside formulae, as is well-known, “constructions used for marking pragmatic functions” (Aikhenvald, 2007, p. 26), such as focus, and interjections in general are also particularly vulnerable to being borrowed (Aikhenvald, 2007, pp. 26–27; see also Matras, 1998, 2009, pp. 161–162). Considering also the high borrowability of formulae, „δou´ covers a particularly privileged position, as it is an interjection with focus function that occurs in a formula: the „δou-construction, ´ therefore, exhibits several characteristics that contribute to enhance its borrowability, and it may be not a coincidence that, as we will see immediately below, this is by far the most frequent formulaic pattern found in the data.

3 Calques of Semitic Formulae in Biblical Greek The scrutinized corpus totals 28 occurrences of Greek formulaic expressions calqued on the model of Semitic equivalents. The most frequent is the pattern with „δou, ´ which will be termed ‘„δou-construction’ ´ and appears in 16 instances (ca. 57%); basically, this formula type is a participial clause introduced by the particle „δou´ (or κα`ι „δou) ´ and has the function of focusing the attention on an event or generally emphasizing it, for example (see also examples (2), (7) and (11)): (3)

κα`ι

ἒστησαν

™ν

τù

τ´oπὠ

τoà

σπηλα´ιoυ,

and

stand.aor.act.3pl

in

art.dat.sg

place.dat.sg

art.gen.sg

cave.gen.sg

κα`ι

„δou`

νεϕšλη

ϕωτεινη`

´ ™πισκιαζoυσα

and

behold

cloud.nom.sg

bright.nom.sg

overshadow.ptcp.prs.act.nom.sg

τ`o

σπηλαιoν ´

art.acc.sg

cave.acc.sg

‘And they stood in front of the cave, and behold, a bright cloud overshadowed the cave.’ (Protevangelium Iacobi 19:2; trans. Mattison)

Scholars widely agree that the „δou-construction ´ is the reproduction of a structurally and functionally identical Biblical Hebrew pattern, very common in the Old Testament and made up of the combination of the particle (w∂)hinnêh ‘(and) behold’ plus a participle (in both Biblical Hebrew and Biblical Greek, the interjection also frequently occurs in combination with finite forms), for example (see also examples (8), (12), Gen. 15:12; Ex. 2:6; Neh. 5:5; etc.): (4)

wayyaggidu¯ ¯ and.tell.ipfv.3pl

l∂da¯ wid ¯ ¯ to.David

lêm¯or

hinnêh

p¯ @lištîm

to.say.inf

behold

Philistine.pl

biq’îl¯ah

w∂hêmm¯ah

š¯osîm

in.Keilah

and.3pl

plunder.ptcp.act.pl

’et-haggor¯an¯ot ¯ ¯ obj-det.threshing.floor.pl

nilh.a¯ mîm fight.ptcp.act.pl

228

E. Nardi

‘And they told David, saying: «Behold, the Philistines are fighting against Keilah, and they rob the threshing-floors.»’ (1 Sam. 23:1)

Actually, the interjection „δou´ was not unknown to Classical Greek, wherein it was especially frequent in the drama; rather than in combination with a participle,9 however, it occurs either alone, with a general exclamatory nuance (e.g., Aristophanes, Nubes, 825), or in combination with verbs in the indicative or imperative (e.g., Sophocles, Trachiniae, 1079; Euripides, Orestes, 143). The presence of a pattern with similar function in non-Biblical Greek probably facilitated the integration of the Semitic expression in Biblical Greek.10 The second most frequent formula type occurring in the corpus (8/28 instances: ca. 28%) is the so-called ‘precative clause’, which is a peculiar usage of Biblical Hebrew (Waltke & O’Connor, 1990, p. 134; Joüon & Muraoka, 2011, p. 530),11 but totally unknown to non-Biblical Greek; for example (also Deut. 28:4–5; Ruth 4:14; etc.): (5)

b¯aruk ¯ ¯ bless.ptcp.pass.sg

haggeber ¯ det.man

’˘ašer rel

yib.tah. ¯ trust.ipfv.3sg

baYahweh in.det.Yahweh

‘Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord.’ (Jer. 17:7)

The precative is a sort of desiderative, used to express blessings (and curses: e.g., Gen. 9:25; Deut. 27:15; etc.); in Biblical Hebrew, the precative clause selects the passive participle and exhibits predicate-subject word order, which is uncommon in Biblical Hebrew participial clauses.12 The corpus shows several instances of participial clauses with precative function (example (6)), which are clear replicas of the Semitic construction. (6)

εÙλoγημšνη

σu`

™ν

γυναιξ´ιν,

κα`ι

bless.ptcp.prf.pass.nom.sg

2sg.nom

in

woman.dat.pl

and

εÙλoγημšνoς

Ð

καρπ`oς

τÁς

bless.ptcp.prf.pass.nom.sg

art.nom.sg

fruit.nom.sg

art.gen.sg

κoιλ´ιας

σoυ

womb.gen.sg

2sg.gen

‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.’ (Lk. 1:42)

An instance of „δou-construction ´ with a participle is found in Classical Greek (Aeschylus, Agamemnon, 1269–70: „δou` δ’ ’Aπ´oλλων αÙτ`oς ™κδuων ´ ™μἐ χρηστηρ´ιαν ™σθÁτ(α) ‘look, Apollo himself is stripping me of my prophetic garb’; trans. Smyth), but it is a hapax (data taken from Thesaurus Linguae Graecae). 10 On the facilitation of borrowing due to structural and/or functional parallelism, see Aikhenvald (2007, pp. 32–33). 11 Participial clauses with precative function are also attested in Old Aramaic (e.g., Dan. 3:28), and not limited to Biblical texts (see Greenfield, 1969, p. 202). 12 On the syntactic order of subject and participle in Biblical Hebrew participial clauses, see Joosten (2012, pp. 230ff.). 9

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In addition to example (6), the other precative participial clauses are found in Apocalypsis Mosis 37, Psalmi Salomonis 5:19; 8:34, Protevangelium Iacobi 11:1 and Iosephus et Aseneth 15:12, wherein 2 instances occur. All of them are both formally and functionally identical: they select the perfect passive participle of εÙλoγšω ‘I bless’ and display predicate-subject order. Another calque of a Semitic formulaic expression appears in the following passage: (7)

ε„ δἐ

σu`

™πιμšνεις

τÍ

βoυλÍ

σoυ

If ptcl

2sg.nom

remain.prs. act.2sg

art.dat.sg

decision. dat.sg

2sg.gen

ταuτn ´

τÍ

πoνηρᾷ,

„δou`

αƒ

·oμϕα‹αι

¹μîν

dem.dat.sg

art.dat.sg

evil.dat.sg

behold

art.nom.pl

sword.nom.pl

1pl.gen

™σπασμšναι

™ν

τα‹ς

δεξια‹ς

¹μîν

™νωπι´ ´ oν

σoυ

draw.ptcp. prf.pass.nom.pl

in

art.dat.pl

right.dat.pl

1pl.gen

in.front.of

2sg.gen

‘But if thou continuest in thine evil counsel, behold, our swords are drawn in our right hands against thee.’ (Iosephus et Aseneth 23:13; trans. Brooks)

This expression, the sword(s) drawn in somebody’s hand, finds several parallels in the Old Testament, for example (see also Num. 22:23; 22:31; etc.): (8)

wayyi´ss´a¯

‘ên¯aiw

wayyar

w∂hinnêh-’îš

and.lift.ipfv.3sg

eye.his.pl

and.look.ipfv.3sg

and.behold-man.sg

l∂ne¯gd¯o

w∂h.arb¯o and.sword.his.sg

š∂lu¯ ¯ pa¯ h

b∂y¯ado¯ ¯ in.hand.his.sg

opposite.him

draw.ptcp.pass.sg

‘¯omêd ¯ stand.ptcp.act.sg

‘And he [sc. Joshua] lifted up his eyes and looked, and, behold, there stood a man over against him with his sword drawn in his hand.’ (Josh. 5:13)

In the Old Testament, this expression always selects the passive participle of the verb š¯ala¯p ‘to draw’ (literally, draw.pfv.act.3sg) and is always referred to an angel of the Lord, mal’ak-Yahweh (indeed, the’îš ‘man’ in Josh. 5:13 turns out to be a ¯ s´ar-s.∂ba¯ -Yahweh ‘commander of the army of Yahweh’ in Josh. 5:14). ¯ Another case of replication of an Old Testament formula occurs in the following passage: (9)

κα`ι

Ãν

Ἅννα

πρoϕÁτις,

θυγατηρ ´

Φανoυηλ ´ ,

™κ

and

be.iprf.3sg

Anna.nom

prophet.nom.sg

daughter .nom.sg

Phanuel(.gen)

from

ϕυλÁς

’Aσηρ ´

αÛτη

πρoβεβηκυ‹α

™ν

tribe.gen.sg

Asher(.gen)

3sg.nom

go.forward.ptcp. prf.act.nom.sg

in

¹μšραις

πoλλα‹ς, […]

day.dat.pl

many.dat.pl

‘And there was a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher; she was advanced in years [lit. ‘was advanced in many days’], […]’ (Lk. 2:36)

The expression ‘to be advanced in days’, which occurs in a copular clause in Lk. 1:7 (κα`ι ¢μϕ´oτερoι πρoβεβηκ´oτες ™ν τα‹ς ¹μšραις αÙτîν Ãσαν ‘and both were

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advanced in years [lit. ‘in their days’]’),13 is paralleled in several Old Testament passages, in which old age is expressed as ‘to be come in the days’, for example (also Gen. 24:1; Josh. 13:1; etc.): (10)

w∂’abr¯ah¯am ¯ and.Abraham

w∂´sa¯ r¯ah

z∂qênîm

b¯a’îm

bayy¯amîm

and.Sarah

old.pl

come.ptcp.pl

in.det.day.pl

‘Now Abraham and Sarah were old, and well stricken in age [lit. ‘come in the days’].’ (Gen. 18:11)

The expression ‘to be come in the days’ is always rendered in the LXX with an indicative or participle perfect form of πρoβα´ινω ‘I go forward’ directly followed by ¹μšρα ‘day’ in the genitive or dative plural: e.g., πρoβεβηκ´oτες ¹μερîν (Gen. 18:11), πρoβšβηκα τα‹ς ¹μšραις (Josh. 23:2).14 In Luke, by contrast, the perfect form of πρoβα´ινω is followed by the indirect complement ™ν (τα‹ς) ¹μšραις ‘in (the) days’, which conveys a metaphorical state: the fact that ™ν (τα‹ς) ¹μšραις is the exact replica of Hebrew bayy¯amîm15 suggests that Luke imitated and/or translated directly from that language (cf. Turner, 1955, p. 101), rather than drawing from the LXX.16 It is also worth noting that, although the expression bayy¯amîm encodes definiteness (‘in the days’, see footnote 15), definite and indefinite equivalents are indifferently found in both the LXX (see above and footnote 14) and Luke (see above): this alternation suggests that the Greek translator(s)/writer(s) did not regard definiteness as a salient trait of the formula. Another formulaic expression calqued from the Semitic Old Testament is the following: (11)

13

κα`ι

εỉδoν,

κα`ι

„δou`

τ`o

¢ρν´ιoν

and

look.aor. act.1sg

and

behold

art.nom.sg

lamb.nom.sg

ἑστ`oς

™π`ι

τ`o

Ôρoς

∑ιων, ´

κα`ι

μετ’

stand.ptcp.prf. act.nom.sg

upon

art.acc.sg

mount .acc.sg

Zion

and

with

αÙτoà

ἑκατ`oν

τεσσερακoντα ´

τšσσαρες

χιλιαδες ´

Among the synoptic evangelists, Luke is widely acknowledged as “the most flagrant Semitiser” (Wifstrand, 2005, p. 29): it is probably no coincidence that Luke’s gospel exhibits the majority of the formula types discussed in this paper („δou-construction, ´ precative participial clause, examples (9) and (13)); for a discussion on Luke’s language and its relation with the LXX, see Wifstrand (2005); cf. also Drinka (2011, pp. 43ff.). 14 The other occurrences are the following: πρoβεβηκως ` ¹μερîν (Gen. 24:1), πρoβεβηκως ` τîν ¹μερîν (Josh. 13:1), πρoβεβηκως ` τα‹ς ¹μšραις (Josh. 23:1), πρoβεβηκως ` ¹μšραις (1 Kings 1:1). 15 The syntagm bayy¯ amîm is analyzable as b∂- ‘in’ (= ™ν) + y¯amîm (plural of y¯om ‘day’ = ¹μšρα); the a-vocalism taken by the preposition b∂- and the geminated -y- indicate definiteness (= Greek article). 16 This instance constitutes an exception to the general stylistic tendency shown by Luke, who “does not rely on Hebrew directly as a model, but on the semiticized Greek of the LXX” (Drinka, 2011, p. 44).

Semitic Calques in Biblical Greek: The Case-Study of Formulaic …

231

3sg.gen

one.hundred

forty

four

thousand.nom.pl

ἒχoυσαι

τ`o

Ôνoμα

αÙτoà

κα`ι

τ`o

have.ptcp.prs. act.nom.pl

art.acc.sg

name.acc.sg

3sg.gen

and

art.acc.sg

Ôνoμα

τoà

πατρ`oς

αÙτoà

γεγραμμšνoν

™π`ι

name.acc.sg

art.gen.sg

father. gen.sg

3sg.gen

write.ptcp.prf. pass.acc.sg

upon

τîν

μετωπων ´

αÙτîν

art.gen.pl

forehead.gen.pl

3pl.gen

‘Then I looked, and behold, on Mount Zion stood the Lamb, and with him 144,000 who had his name and his Father’s name written on their foreheads.’ (Rev. 14:1)

The structure of this expression can be schematized as ‘subject1 looks, and (behold,) subject2 is standing somewhere’ (the latter clause is often introduced by „δou). ´ This formula is common both in the New Testament (e.g., Rev. 7:9; Acts 1:10) and in the non-canonical literature,17 but finds an evident, earlier model in the Old Testament (example (12); see also example (8), Gen. 18:2; Dan. 8:3; etc.). (12)

wattêre

w∂hinnêh

and.see.ipfv.3sg

and.behold

hammelek ¯ det.king.sg

‘¯omêd ¯ stand.ptcp.act.sg

‘al-h¯a’amm¯ud ¯ on-det.pillar.sg

kammišp¯a.t, […] according.to.det.rule.sg ‘And she looked, and, behold, the king stood on the platform,18 as the manner was, […]’ (2 Kings 11:14)

The last case of calque (example (13)), which will be referred to as ‘answered-andsaid’ type, is found in a non-literary papyrus and is particularly interesting from the sociolinguistic viewpoint. The document at issue is included in the Babatha Archive (Papyri Yadin), which is a collection of papyri belonging to a Jewish milieu (southern Judaea, first half of the II cent. ce: see Hartman, 2016, pp. 7ff.; Lewis & alii, 1989, pp. 3ff.). (13)

Öς19

δἐ

¢πoκριθoàσα

’Ioυλ´ια

Kρισπ‹να,

rel.nom.sg

ptcl

answer.ptcp.aor. pass.nom.sg

Julia.nom

Crispina.nom

λšγoυσα

τα`

ν´oμιμα

τoà

κρατ´ιστoυ

say.ptcp.prs. act.nom.sg

art.acc.pl

rule.acc.pl

art.gen.sg

excellent.gen.sg

¹γεμ´oνoς

τÍ

δικαιoδoσ´ιᾳ

ε„ς

∏šτραν

¢πηρτισα, ´ […]

´ For example: κα`ι Ðρᾷ Ð Πλατων ¥ντικρυς την ` θαλασσαν ´ æς ¢π`o σταδ´ιων ἑπτα, ´ κα`ι „δou` Ãν ` ™π`ι τÁς θαλασσης Ð Mατθα‹oς ἑστηκως ´ ‘and Plato sees the sea opposite about seven furlongs off, and behold, Matthew was standing on the sea’ (Acta Matthaei 26; trans. Walker). 19 The pronoun Öς here occurs in sentence-initial position and functions as a kind of connective, rather than a full-fledged relative pronoun. The relative Óς, ¼, Ó was disappearing in late Koινη´ Greek, being replaced with the indeclinable form πou, ´ which is still used in Modern Greek (cf. Gignac, 1981, p. 179), and it often showed fluctuating or irregular usages also in the New Testament (cf. Blass & Debrunner, 1961, pp. 152–155; Robertson, 1923, pp. 710ff.). 17

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E. Nardi

governor.gen.sg

art.dat.sg

judgement.dat.sg

to

Petra.acc

fulfill.aor.act.1sg

‘Julia Crispina replied, saying: “I have carried out the legal formalities for the judgement of his Excellency the governor in Petra, […]”’ (P.Yadin 25:24–26; trans. Lewis)

This formula, used to introduce a direct speech, is found elsewhere in the same papyrus (line 13 = line 45) and in another document of the same collection (P.Yadin 26:11) with the indicative aorist ¢πεκρ´ιθη ‘answer.aor.pass.3sg’20 in the place of the participle ¢πoκριθoàσα. This expression, which exhibits some formal variation,21 is very frequent in the canonical gospels (e.g., Mt. 21:29; Lk. 15:29; Mk. 7:28; etc.) and in the non-canonical literature22 ; remarkably, the fact that the pattern even appears “where no explicit question has preceded” (Dalman, 1902, p. 25; e.g., Mt. 11:25; Lk. 14:3) significantly confirms its rigidified formulaic status. Scholars widely agree that this expression is a calque of the frequent Old Testament formula shown in example (14) (also Gen. 24:50; Ex. 4:1; 1 Sam. 1:17; etc.; among others, see Dalman, 1902, pp. 24–25; Moulton, 1906, p. 14; Blass & Debrunner, 1961, p. 217; Lewis & alii, 1989, p. 14)23 : (14)

wayya’an

’abr¯ah¯am ¯ Abraham

wayy¯omar

hinnêh-n¯a

h¯o’altî

and.answer.ipfv.3sg

and.say.ipfv.3sg

behold-now

take.upon.pfv.1sg

l∂dabbêr ¯ to.speak.inf

’el-’˘ado¯ n¯ay ¯ towards-Lord

w∂’¯an¯okî ¯ and.1sg

‘¯ap¯ a¯ r

w¯a’ê¯per

dust.sg

and.ash.sg

‘And Abraham answered and said: “Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord, who am but dust and ashes.”’ (Gen. 18:27)

This instance represents a singular case, because the formula breaks through the boundaries of the Biblical literature and penetrates into profane writings: P.Yadin 25 and 26 are documents of juridical character, both written by the same scribe (Γερμαν`oς ’Iouδoυ ´ ‘Germanos, son of Judas’). The formula is probably so rooted in the writer’s cultural (Semitic) background, that he finds it natural to employ it in non-religious, non-literary texts, but with the same pragmatic function as in the Old Testament (that is, the pattern introduces a direct speech).24 This case seems to Note that the form ¢πεκρ´ιθη is formally passive, but functionally active (‘he/she answered’). The meaning ‘to answer’ of ¢πoκρ´ινω, which literally signifies ‘separate, distinguish’, is proper to the middle voice (¢πoκρ´ινoμαι), but it was extended to the future and aorist passive (¢πoκριθησoμαι ´ and ¢πεκρ´ιθην, respectively). 21 The most diffused variants are ¢πoκριθε`ις εỉπεν and ¢πεκρ´ιθη κα`ι λšγει, but others are also possible. 22 For example: ¢πoκριθε`ις δἐ κα`ι Θoμας ˜ εỉπεν ‘and Thomas also answered and said’ (Liber de Dormitione Mariae 20; trans. Walker); ¢πoκριθε´ις Ð ∏ειλατoς ˜ ἒϕη ‘Pilate answered and said’ (Evangelium Petri 11; trans. James). 23 It is discussed whether the model language is Hebrew or Aramaic, but this is irrelevant to the present purposes. 24 It might be objected that similar expressions, both semantically and/or formally and with the same pragmatic function, are also found in Archaic and Classical Greek, such as the common Homeric formula τ`oν δ’ ¢παμειβ´oμενoς πρoσšϕη π´oδας çκuς ` ’Aχιλλεuς ´ ‘in answer to him 20

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provide further confirmation—if needed—of Aikhenvald’s (2007, p. 17) claim that “the more culturally important the pattern is, the more it is diffusible”.

4 Conclusion This paper has focused on a number of formulaic expressions that occur in Biblical Greek and take the syntactic configuration of participial clauses. All these formulae happen to be calques of structurally and semantically identical formulaic expressions found in the Semitic Old Testament. Two of these formulae have long been considered calques of Semitic equivalents (namely, the „δou-construction ´ and the “answered-and-said” type), and are also the most widespread calqued expressions, among those examined, in the JudaeoChristian literature. The ‘answered-and-said’ type is even so frequent and pivotal in the Jewish-Christian culture, that, as shown, it goes beyond the limits of the sacred literature and appears in non-literary papyri. As for the other individuated formula types, which are less common, it has been shown that these Biblical Greek formulaic expressions find model formulae in the Semitic Old Testament, to which they conform both formally and semantically.

References Adrados, F. R. (1992). Nueva sintaxis del griego antiguo. Aikhenvald, A. Y. (2007). Grammars in contact: A cross-linguistic perspective. In A. Y. Aikhenvald, & R. M. Dixon (Eds.), Grammars in contact. A cross-linguistic typology (pp. 1–66). Oxford University Press. Blass, F., & Debrunner, A. (1961 [1896]). A Greek grammar of the New Testament and other early Christian Literature—A translation and revision of the Ninth-Tenth German Edition incorporating supplementary notes of A. Debrunner by Robert W. Funk. Cambridge University Press. Coulter, H. G. (2010). Jewish and Christian Greek. In E. J. Bakker (Ed.), A companion to the Ancient Greek language (pp. 267–280). Wiley-Blackwell. Crespo, E., Conti, L., & Maquieira, H. (2003). Sintaxis del griego clásico. Dalman, G. (1902). The Words of Jesus considered in the light of Post-Biblical Jewish writings and the Aramaic language—Volume I: Introduction and fundamental ideas. Clark. De Lange, N. (2001). Jewish Greek. In A. F. Christidis (Ed.), A history of Ancient Greek–From the beginnings to Late Antiquity (pp. 638–645). Cambridge University Press. spoke swift-footed Achilles’ (Iliad I:84; trans. Murray) or ¢πoκριν´oμενoς εỉπε ‘he spoke in answer’ (Plato, Protagoras, 314d; trans. Lamb), and, as a consequence, there is no need to attribute the usage of the formula at issue to the scribe’s Semitic background. However, it seems unlikely that professional scribes in Roman Palestine, who wrote documents such as P.Yadin 25 and 26, were so well-educated to show a polished knowledge of the Greek literature and consciously insert echoes of Homer or Plato in their writings (on the educational condition of scribes in Roman Palestine, see Hezser, 2010, pp. 478–479).

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Dorival, G., Harl, M., & Munnich, O. (1994 [1988]). La Bible grecque des Septante. Du judaïsme hellénistique au christianisme ancien. CERF. Drinka, B. (2011). The sacral stamp of Greek: Periphrastic constructions in New Testament translations of Latin, Gothic, and Old Church Slavonic. Oslo Studies in Language, 3(3), 41–73. Gignac, F. T. (1981). A grammar of the Greek papyri of the Roman and Byzantine periods. Volume II: Morphology. Cisalpino-La Goliardica. Greenfield, J. C. (1969). The “periphrastic imperative” in Aramaic and Hebrew. Israel Exploration Journal, 19(4), 199–210. Guiraud, C. (1962). La phrase nominale en grec d’Homère a Euripide. Klincksieck. Gusmani, R. (1981). Saggi sull’interferenza linguistica. Volume primo. Le Lettere. Gusmani, R. (1983). Saggi sull’interferenza linguistica. Volume secondo. Le Lettere. Hartman, D. (2016). Archivio di Babatha—Volume I: Testi greci e ketubbah. Paideia. Hezser, C. (2010). Private and public education. In C. Hezser (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of Jewish daily life in Roman Palestine (pp. 465–481). Oxford University Press. Horrocks, G. (2010). Greek. A history of the language and its speakers. Wiley-Blackwell. Janse, M. (2002). Aspects of bilingualism in the history of the Greek language. In J. N. Adams, M. Janse, & S. Swain (Eds.), Bilingualism in ancient society: Language contact and the written text (pp. 332–390). Oxford University Press. Joosten, J. (2012). The verbal system of Biblical Hebrew. A new synthesis elaborated on the basis of classical prose. Simor. Joosten, J., & Kister, M. (2009). The new Testament and rabbinic Hebrew. In R. Bieringer, F. García Martínez, D. Pollefeyt & P. J. Tomson (Eds.), The New Testament and Rabbinic literature (pp. 333–350). Brill. Joüon, P. P., & Muraoka, T. (2011 [1991]). A grammar of Biblical Hebrew (2nd ed.). Gregorian & Biblical Press. Lewis, N., Yadin, Y., & Greenfield, J. C. (1989). The documents from the Bar Kokhba period in the cave of Letters—Greek papyri: Edited by Naphtali Lewis. Aramaic and Nabatean signatures and subscriptions: Edited by Yigael Yadin and Jonas C. Greenfield. Israel Exploration Society/ The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Matras, Y. (1998). Utterance modifiers and universals of grammatical borrowing. Linguistics, 36(2), 281–331. Matras, Y. (2009). Language contact. Cambridge University Press. Moulton, J. H. (1906). A grammar of New Testament Greek. Volume I: Prolegomena. Clark. Mussies, G. (1971). The morphology of Koine Greek as used in the Apocalypse of St. John: a study in bilingualism. Brill. Rijksbaron, A. (1994). The syntax and semantics of the verb in Classical Greek. An introduction. Gieben. Robertson, A. T. (1923 [1914]). A grammar of the Greek New Testament in the light of historical research (4th ed.). Hodder & Stoughton. Schwyzer, E. (1950). Griechische Grammatik: Vervollständigt und herausgegeben von Albert Debrunner - Zweiter Band: Syntax und Syntaktische Stilistik. Beck. Smyth, H. W. (1920). A Greek grammar for colleges. American Book Company. Spolsky, B. (2014). The languages of the Jews: A sociolinguistic history. Cambridge University Press. Thompson, S. (1985). The apocalypse and semitic syntax. Cambridge University Press. Turner, N. (1955). The relation of Luke I and II to Hebraic sources and to the rest of Luke-Acts. New Testament Studies, 2(2), 100–109. Viteau, J. (1893). Études sur le grec du Nouveau Testament. Le verbe: syntaxe des propositions. Bouillon. Voitila, A. (2016). Septuagint syntax and Hellenistic Greek. In E. Bons & J. Joosten (Eds.), Handbook of the Septuagint. Volume 3: The language of the Septuagint (pp. 109–118). Gütersloher Verlagshaus.

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Vorster, W. S. (1990). Bilingualism and the Greek of the New Testament: Semitic interference in the gospel of Mark. Neotestamentica, 24(2), 215–228. Waltke, B. K., & O’Connor, M. (1990). An introduction to Biblical Hebrew syntax. Eisenbrauns. Wifstrand, A. (2005). Luke and the Septuagint. Wifstrand, A. Epochs and Styles—Selected writings on the New Testament, Greek language and Greek culture in the post-classical era. Edited by Lars Rydbeck and Stanley E. Porter. Translated from the Swedish Originals by Denis Searby (pp. 28–45). Siebeck. Wood, D. (2015). Fundamentals of formulaic language. An introduction. Bloomsbury. Wray, A. (2002). Formulaic language and the lexicon. Cambridge University Press. Wray, A. (2008). Formulaic language: Pushing the boundaries. Oxford University Press.

Edoardo Nardi has a BA in Classics (University of Florence, 2015), an MA in Linguistics (University of Pisa, 2019), and a Ph.D. in Historical Linguistics (Guglielmo Marconi University, 2023). Currently, he is Adjunct Professor of Ancient Greek Language at Guglielmo Marconi University.

Integration of Cognate Loan Verbs in Contact Between Closely Related Languages Effecting Valency Changes Wiebke Juliane Elter

Abstract In contact between closely related languages like Old Norse (ON) and Old English (OE), higher similarity between units of the languages in contact can favour integration of loans as selective copies (Johanson, 2002). This can result in the copying of cognates like Middle English (ME) reisen ‘to raise’ ( tinderašica, lajkaˇc > lajkaˇcica, etc. (3) Volite svoje obline, ali i modu? Ovih 8 fashionistica moglo bi vas inspirirati (Grazia.hr, 20.06.20) ‘Do you love your curves, as much as you love fashion? These 8 fashionistas [ f.] might inspire you.’ (4) Trendi hlaˇce koje su osvojile sve trendsetterice! (Fashion.hr, 11.02.20) ‘Trendi trousers that have conquered all trendsetters [ f.]!’

5

For a more detailed discussion on the adaptation of English loanwords during the phase of primary adaptation (see, e.g., D’jakov, 2012; Filipovi´c, 1986, 1990; Filipovi´c & Menac, 2005; Koriakowcewa, 2018a; Marinova, 2013, 2014; Nikoli´c-Hoyt, 2005; Radˇcenko & Pehar, 2009). For a more general discussion regarding the adaptation of loanwords during borrowing processes (see, among others, Grant, 2020a; Haspelmath & Tadmor, 2009; Haugen, 1950; Poplack & Sankoff, 1984, Poplack, Sankoff & Miller, 1988; Stolz, Bakker & Salas Palomo 2008; Van Coetsem, 1988; Weinreich, 1968 [1953]; Wichmann & Wohlgemuth, 2008; Winford, 2003; Wohlgemuth, 2009).

English Loanwords in Russian and Croatian and Their Integration Into …

303

Additionally, in both languages previously adapted English loan verbs may serve as a basis for the formation of deverbal nominal derivatives with the Russian suffix -nij(e) and the Croatian suffix -nj(e). Eg.: Rus.: svajpanie, fejkovanie, frikovanie, hajpovanie, blogirovanie/blogovanie, etc. (5) Glavnoe ne zabyvat’ postojanno menjat’ algoritmy svajpanija (Dzen.ru, 25.09.19) ‘The most important thing is to not to forget to change constantly swiping algorithms.’

Cro. bluranje, blendanje, selfanje/selfiranje, scrollanje/skrolanje, bloganje, lajkanje, hajpanje, etc. (6) Ta jedna moja prijateljica zna sve o tome kako treba šarmirati muškarca, zna sve o tome kako se treba ponašati prilikom whatsappiranja, viberiranja, instagramiranja, story seenanja, zna kada treba zatopliti a kada zahladiti komunikaciju sa žudenim frajerom (100posto.hr, 05.03.19) ‘That friend of mine knows everything about how to charm a man, she knows exactly what to do while being on Whatsapp, Viber, Instagram, she knows everything about story viewing, about when to warm up and when to cool down a conversation with the guy she wants.’

It is important to note, however, that, on the basis of the analysis of the collected corpus, the formation of deverbal nouns with the abovementioned suffixes is more frequent in Croatian. A possible explanation for this discrepancy between the two Slavic languages could lie in the fact that in Russian, as highlighted in recent studies (see, e.g., Koriakowcewa, 2016, 2017, 2018a, 2018b; Raciburskaja, 2018; Radˇcenko, 2018), especially in the language of contemporary mass media, it is possible to find a growing number of hybrid processual nouns, coined by adding to Russian stems the English suffix -ing and typically used with ironic or polemical intent. Given the fact that in Croatian, on the contrary, similar hybrid derivatives appear to be still a relatively limited phenomenon,6 it seems reasonable to ascribe the higher tolerance towards English loanwords with the suffix -ing in Russian at least partially to this tendency, considering that it may have largely favored and accelerated the morphemization of the type of loanwords in question (on this specific issue see also Koriakowcewa, 2016, pp. 85–86). Moreover, especially as far as language use in CMC is concerned, it is possible to observe numerous instances of nominal derivatives formed by adding Russian and Croatian polyvalent suffixes which can, in specific contexts, convey, on the one hand,

6

The same could be observed as far as the English derivational formatives -gate and -holic are concerned (on this issue see also Radˇcenko, 2018, p. 62), with the former referring to media scandals and the latter expressing a rather ambiguous, negative and/or ironic evaluation of someone’s addiction to something/someone. Namely, none of the mentioned suffixes is particularly productive in Croatian, while, conversely, they both occur not infrequently in combination with Russian stems. For a more detailed discussion on the use of these English derivational suffixes in Russian and for a comparative analysis of their productivity in other Slavic languages see, e.g., Koriakowcewa (2016, 2017, 2018a, 2018b), Raciburskaja, (2018), Radˇcenko (2018).

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evaluative and pejorative meaning, therefore expressing, e.g., irony, disdain, denigration, humiliation or disapproval, on the other hand, augmentative and diminutive meaning. In the first case, the most frequently used suffixes are the Russian suffixes -šˇcin(a), -š(a), -uh(a), and the Croatian suffixes -aroš, -uš(a), -ar(a), -ulj(a), -aˇc(a). In the second case, the following suffixes are most frequently found: Rus.: -išˇc(e), -ik, -eˇcek/iˇcek, -išk(a)/-ušk(a); Cro.: -ˇcin(a), -i´c. E.g.: Rus. blogeršˇcina, blogerša, frikuha, hajpišˇce, selfuška, bložik, etc. (7) Blogerša hotela popiarit’ instagram, a vyšla antireklama. (Medialeaks.ru, 12.08.20) ‘The blogger [ f, pejor.] wanted to do some PR on Instagram, but it turned out to be an anti-ad.’ (8) Instagramšˇcina “Maski-šou”: kalužane versus koronavirus (Kaluga-news.net, 07.04.20) ‘The Instagrammer [m, pejor.] of the “Mask-show”: Kaluga residents vs. coronavirus.’ (9) Gde luˇcše vesti ujutnyj bložik (Linux.org.ru/forum, 27.03.18) ‘Where is it better to keep a cosy blog [dim.]?’

Cro. lajkaroš, blogeruša, trešara, frikulja, kripˇcina, selfi´c, etc. (10) Razotkrivaju instagramuše: Ovako izgledaju u stvarnosti, bez Photoshopa (Index.hr, 31.07.20) ‘Instagrammers [ f , pejor.] uncovered: this is how they look in real life, without Photoshop.’ (11) A izbor se pokazao kao dobar, od 2600 lajkaroša tek njih petnaestak je (možda) shvatilo (Forum.hr, 08.02.17) ‘And the choice has proved to be a good one, of the 2600 people that liked [pejor.] it [the post], only about fifteen of them (maybe) understood it.’ (12) Djevojke, ja mislim da smo mi ipak malo pretjerale …pogledajte samo ovaj selfi´c (Forum.hr, 25.02.15) ‘Girls, I think we’ve overreacted a little…take a look at this selfie [dim.].’

(b) Adjectival derivatives As far as the formation of adjectival derivatives is concerned, the following suffixes are particularly productive: Rus.: -n(yj), -ov(yj); Cro. suff. -av, -(ov)sk(i). Furthermore, the Russian suffix -ebel’n(yj)) and the Croatian suffixes -iˇcan, -abilan may also be used, although less frequently. E.g.: Rus. instagramnyj, njudovyj, trešovyj, hajpovyj, fejkovyj, instagramebel’nyj, etc. (18) Harizmatiˇcnaja tiktokerša special’no dlja zritelej “MUZ-TV” rasskažet o samyh hajpovyh i trendovyh trekah iz cˇ ellendžej platformy (Cosmo.ru, 04.12.20) ‘The charismatic TikToker, just for the audience of MUZ-TV, will talk about the hypiest and trendiest tracks from the challenges on the platform.’ (19) A kakie, kstati, bary s „instagramebel’nymi” koktejljami ty znaeš’? (Gq.ru, 17.05.18) ‘– By the way, what bars with Instagrammable cocktails do you know?’

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Cro. frikav, fejkav, influencerski, hajpovski, instagramiˇcan, instagramabilan, etc. (20) Ostanite uvjereni. Živite u tom vašem frikavom uvjerenju (Teen385.dnevnik.hr, 22.02.14) ‘Stay confident. Keep living in your freaky belief.’ (21) Najinstagramiˇcnije zagrebaˇcke lokacije za modne selfije (Elle.hr, 01.06.20) ‘The most Instagrammable locations in Zagreb for trendy selfies.’

Nevertheless, the comparative analysis of the collected data shows that the formation of similar derivatives is much more frequent in Russian. As a matter of fact, in Croatian the use of English analytical indeclinable adjectives (like, e.g., cool, nude, hot, oversize, casual, stylish, statement, etc.) is particularly widespread. Moreover, despite the absence—given their indeclinability—of synthetic comparative degree forms, these analytical adjectives are regularly attested in their synthetic superlative form, coined with the prefix naj- (e.g. najcool, najseksi, najtrendi, najcreepy, najstylish, najhot, etc.). It should be noted, however, as Marinova (2014, p. 70) observes—which in turn is also confirmed by the examples gathered in the corpus—that currently even in Russian the number of English indeclinable adjectives belonging to the relatively recent group of analytical adjectives with high syntagmatic potential is rapidly spreading. E.g.: Rus.: ˙ (22) Etim letom sovetuem sdelat’ stavku na modeli svobodnogo kroja i nosit’ ih s topom v rubˇcik, odnotonnoj futbolkoj ili že belosnežnoj rubaškoj oversajz (Glamour.ru, 09.06.20) ‘This summer you should bet everything on loose-fit jeans and wear them with a crop top, a monochromatic T-shirt or a snow-white oversize shirt.’ (23) Ideal’naja formula stilja kežual predpolagaet naliˇcie kapsul’nogo garderoba, kotoryj sostoit iz bazovyh vešˇcej (Cosmo.ru, 24.12.19) ‘The ideal formula for casual style presupposes the creation of a capsule wardrobe, composed of basic items.’ (24) Otkažis’ ot privyˇcnogo sinego denima v pol’zu novoj kežual-klassiki - cˇ ërnyh džinsov (Cosmo.ru, 22.10.20) ‘Say no to the ordinary blue denim in favour of a new casual classic—black jeans.’

Cro.: ˇ (25) Naš Goran Cižmešija fotkao je stylish doktoricu znanosti u najtrendi ljetnom outfitu (Diva.Veˇcernji.hr, 24.07.20) ˇ ‘Our Goran Cižmešija took a photo of the stylish Doctor of Philosophy in the trendiest summer outfit’ (26) Medutim, vizažisti su ove godine klasiku zamijenili trendom koji c´ e nositi u velikoj mjeri, a radi se o dramatiˇcnom, odnosno statement eyelineru (Gloria.hr, 15.04.19) ‘However, make-up artists this year replaced classic style with a trend that will become very popular. We’re talking about the dramatic or statement eyeliner.’

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(27) ‘Želim te posvojiti’ – zvijezda serijala o Harryju Potteru doživjela najcreepy upad fana ikad (Teen385.dnevnik.hr, 15.11.18) ‘“I want to adopt you”—the Harry Potter series star experienced the creepiest fan intrusion ever.’

(c) Verbal derivatives Imperfective/biaspectual verbal derivatives of English origin are currently primarily coined by adding the Russian verbal suffix -i(t’) (less frequently -ova(t’) or -a(t’))7 and the Croatian verbal suffix -a(ti) (less frequently -ira(ti)), while perfective verbal derivatives are formed with the Russian suffix -nu(t’) and the Croatian suffix -nu(ti). E.g.: Rus.: bljurit’, hejtit’, hajpit’ (also: hajpovat’), fejkovat’, fejsbuˇcit’ (also: fejsbukat’), lajkat’, trešanut’, cˇ eknut’, etc. Cro.: selfati/selfirati (se), hajpati, fejkati, lajkati, hendlati, blurati, hejtati, svajpnuti, etc. In addition, perfective English loan verbs may also be coined through prefixation, both by adding lexical, and superlexical prefixes implying thus quantificational interpretation (e.g. accumulation, saturation, exhaustion, inception, delimitativity, etc.). E.g.: Rus. otfotošopit’, naselfit’(sja), rashajpovat’(sja), nafejkovat’, zafollovit’, zabljurit’, prosvajpat’, etc. Cro.: polajkati, nahajpati, isfejkati, izselfirati (se), preskrolati, izblendati, izblurati, etc. Rus.: (32) Kakoj motiv dvižet ljud’mi, kotorye reguljarno sozdajut negativnye posty ili ”hejtjat” drugih pol’zovatelej? (AiF.ru, 26.09.19) ‘What motivates people to constantly write negative posts, spreading hate towards other users?’ (33) Nataša Koroleva rešila”trešanut’” i snjala klip s mužem i mamoj (Cosmo.ru, 10.11.18) ‘Nataša Koroleva decided to “do something trashy” and recorded a video clip with her husband and her mother.’ 7

As far as Russian is concerned, as K. Pertsova (2016) points out—and as the examples collected in the corpus show—in the formation of English verbal derivatives it is possible to observe an interesting change in the verb-class assignment. Namely, while older loan verbs predominantly belong to the -ova- class, the majority of recent loan verbs belong to the -i- class, i.e., are assigned to the 2nd conjugation class, which represents a rather particular pattern, since it entails that stems ending in dental and labial consonants should be subject to palatalizing alternations in the 1st person singular non-past form and, additionally, in certain derivational relatives—if attested-, i.e., in past passive participles, secondary imperfectives and, although less frequently, in nominalizations or adjectival forms (for further discussion on this issue see Pertsova, 2016, pp. 8, 23–24).

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(34) 15 twitter-akkauntov, kotorye stoit zafollovit’ rekruteram (Hrpro.news, 18.06.20) ‘15 twitter accounts that recruiters should start following.’ (35) Prosvajpav paru minut, ja ostanovilas’ (Glamour.ru, 02.10.18) ‘After swiping for a couple of minutes, I stopped.’ (36) Poˇcemu ne zapuskaetsja Ubuntu i kak pofiksit’? (Ru.stackoverflow.com, 07.11.20) ‘Why is Ubuntu not starting and how to fix that?’

Cro.: (37) Zagušeni feed na Instagramu znaˇci da korisnici lajkaju manje nego ikad prije (Index.hr, 17.07.19) ‘An Instagram feed clogged with ads means that users are liking posts less than ever before.’ (38) Svatko tko je imalo sposoban može hendlati i ljubav i karijeru (Dnevnik.hr, 10.09.18) ‘Anyone who is even slightly competent can handle both love life and career.’ (39) Nanesite malo proizvoda na vrat i sve dobro izblendajte jer je u tome kljuˇc prirodnog izgleda osunˇcanog tena (Fashion.hr, 01.05.17) ‘Apply a small amount of product on your neck and blend it nicely and evenly. That is the key to a natural face tan.’ (40) Cijela moja ekipa razoˇcarana zbog ove situacije oko Spaladiuma. Sve nas je nahajpao koncert u Zagrebu (Forum.hr, 08.01.23) ‘All my friends are disappointed with this situation about the Spaladium [arena]. We were all overhyped by the concert in Zagreb.’

It should be underlined, however, that, especially as far as the derivation of perfective resultatives in Croatian is concerned, the collected prefixed loan verbs are mostly attested in CMC, while in the language of electronic media unprefixed biaspectual loan verbs are predominantly used. In this regard, in order to explain the high level of biaspectuality among loan verbs in general, and given the fact that Croatian prefixes seem to retain their original spatial meaning and that, in other words, it seems to lack a sufficiently abstract, i.e., grammaticalised perfectiviszing prefix, it has been pointed out that the Croatian system of perfectivisation follows primarily the principle of subsumption, according to which perfectivising prefixes are selected on the basis of the degree of correspondence between the meaning of the prefix and the meaning of the source verb (for a more detailed discussion see Dickey, 2005, 2012; Grickat, 1957; Šari´c, 2011, 2013). In this regard, Dickey (2012) observes that Croatian appears to be “aspectually a very conservative language, both in terms of aspectual usage and the morphology of its aspectual opposition” (p. 92). More generally, the comparative analysis of the most recent nominal, verbal and adjectival derivatives coined on the basis of English loanwords shows that in both Slavic languages from specific Anglicisms have been derived—with rare gaps— particularly complex derivational families (see Hathout & Namer, 2019), i.e., sets of

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derived lexemes all directly or indirectly interconnected and characterised by similar meaning and form relations.

4.2 Integration of English Loanwords Into the Word-Formation Processes: Compounding A more detailed analysis of the collected data shows that, especially as far as the language of the media is concerned, English loanwords are more and more frequently used as premodifying nouns in the formation of new lexemes by compounding. Namely, constructions consisting of two nouns, where the right constituent is the head, while the left undeclined constituent is the modifier, are more and more frequently attested in written media texts. These non-Slavic structures—usually analyzed as compounds or semi-compounds—are traditionally considered a contactinduced phenomenon, initially mainly favored by the contact with languages like German and Turkish. Today, however, it is spreading with unprecedented intensity primarily due to the influence of English (Doleschal, 2015, p. 192; Drljaˇca Margi´c, 2009, p. 63; Horvat & Štebih Golub, 2010, p. 9; Starˇcevi´c, 2006, pp. 651–652). Similar constructions are characterised by compactness, conciseness and expressiveness. Their meaning is determined on the basis of contextual and encyclopaedic knowledge, as well as of the specific semantic relation between the two constituents (which is manifold and cannot be always unequivocally determined). They usually denote, among other things, purpose, instrument, location, typicality, content, material, target group, affiliation, characteristic, constituents, possessiveness and naming. Due to their specificity, various terms and definitions (e.g.: Rus. kompozity, složenija, appozitivnye soˇcetanija; Cro. polusloženice, složenice, jukstapozicije, hibridne sintagme), as well as different approaches to the analysis of similar structures have been so far proposed. As a matter of fact, given the attributive characteristics of the preposed undeclined nouns, these elements are usually analysed as a conversion of nouns into indeclinable adjectives. However, especially when these constructions indicate possessiveness or naming, the classification as noun phrases with an appositive noun to the left has also been suggested, as a possible interpretation (see Doleschal, 2015, pp. 192, 198–201; Drljaˇca Margi´c, 2009, pp. 58–59; Horvat & Štebih Golub, 2010, pp. 9–14, 17; Koriakowcewa, 2016, pp. 119–120, 125; 2017, pp. 129–131; Kotova, 2001, pp. 68–69; Marinova, 2010, pp. 629; Plotnikova, 2017, pp. 311–314; Radˇcenko, 2014, pp. 76; 2018, pp. 63–64; Soˇcanac, 2010, pp. 94; Starˇcevi´c, 2006, pp. 649–651). The analysis of the collected data shows that specific English loanwords, in the role of the undeclined left constituent, can form entire new series of (semi-) compounds in both Slavic languages. Similar structures mostly occur in media texts on business and economy, as well as on computer science and technology. However, they are more and more frequently attested, among others, also in articles dedicated to beauty and fashion.

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In this regard, particularly productive is, e.g., the English word b’juti- / beauty. E.g.: Rus.: b’juti-privyˇcka, b’juti-usluga, b’juti-sredstvo, b’juti-pravilo, b’juti-sekret, b’juti-ritual, etc. (40) Sotri eto nemedlenno: 6 b’juti-ošibok, kotorye mešajut tvoemu kar’ernomu rostu V našej podborke šest’ populjarnyh „b’juti-prokolov”, kotorye zaprosto mogut pomešat’ tvoemu voshoždeniju po kar’ernoj lestnice (Cosmo. ru, 03.05.2020) ‘Remove that immediately: 6 beauty mistakes that can interfere with your career path In our selection we included six popular “beauty fails” that can simply impede you to move up the career ladder.’

Cro. beauty savjet, beauty rutina, beauty preˇcica, beauty struˇcnjak, beauty tajna, etc. (41) Beauty cˇ arolija - Fantastiˇcnih 5 beauty proizvoda za glamurozno uživanje u zimi. Stoga vam donosimo najbolje beauty preparate za ovu sezonu s kojima c´ ete se osje´cati prekrasno i zamamno (Jutarnji.hr, 26.11.2018) ‘Beauty magic—5 fantastic beauty products to enjoy the winter glamorously We present you the best beauty preparations for this season that will make you feel beautiful and seductive.’

Similarly, although to a slightly lesser extent, in both Slavic languages (semi-) compounds with the English loanwords f˙ešn-/f˙ešen-/fashion- // fashion, stritstajl- // street style and mejkap- // make-up are very frequently coined. E.g.: Rus.: f˙ešn-podarok, f˙ešen-hronika, f˙ešen-priëm; stritstajl-geroinja, stritstajl-obraz, stritstajl-zvezda; mejkap-instrukcija, mejkap-fanat, mejkap-hudožnik, etc. (42) K tomu že Seul zarekomendoval sebja krupnym centrom mody naravne s Tokio, Parižem i N’ju-Jorkom. Ne veriš’? Posmotri na obrazy f˙ešen-blogerov iz stritstajl-hroniki (Cosmo.ru, 27.08.20) ‘Besides, Seul has already proved itself to be a major fashion centre, on a par with Tokyo, Paris and New York. You don’t believe it? Take a look at the pictures of the fashion bloggers from the street style chronicles.’ (43) Dress-code v makijaže: 4 mejkap-instrukcii na vse sluˇcai žizni (Cosmo.ru, 31.05.20) ‘Dress-code in make-up: 4 make-up instructions for every occasion.’

Cro.: fashion muza, fashion publika, fashion zajednica; street style inspiracija, street style zvijezda, street style priˇca; make-up rutina, make-up struˇcnjak, make-up savjet, etc. (44) Sve što zasad znamo o Amazonovoj luksuznoj fashion platformi (Elle.hr, 14.09.20) ‘Everything we know so far about the Amazon luxury fashion platform.’

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(45) Za tisu´ce ljudi u izolaciji street style fotke zamijenili su selfiji ispred ogledala, dok je poslovni outfit dobio sasvim novo znaˇcenje (Gloriaglam.hr, 20.03.20) ‘For thousands of people in isolation street style photos are being replaced by selfies in front of the mirror, while the concept of business outfit has taken on a whole new meaning.’ (46) Danas imamo jednu novu make-up lekciju iz školice Kardashian-Jenner. Nadamo se da ste spremni za još jednu make-up mudroliju, bez ikakve ironije (Cosmopolitan.hr, 03.06.20) ‘Today we have a new make-up lesson from the Kardashian-Jenner school. We hope you’re ready for another make-up trick, no irony intended.’

5 Concluding Remarks From the above discussion it seems clear that, in an increasingly globalised and interconnected world, the pervasive presence of English in the media worldwide has necessarily and inevitably a significant impact on language practices. As Hjarvard (2004, p. 75) observes: The linguistic effects of the media are not limited to spreading English; the media themselves also give rise to new uses of the language. The media represent a material and social infrastructure for communication among people, and as a consequence, their characteristics quite naturally have an imprint on language.

In this regard, the comparative analysis conducted in the present paper and aimed at investigating in greater depth the most frequent patterns according to which neologisms on the basis on recent English loanwords are typically coined in Russian and Croatian web editions of newspapers and magazines, as well as in online chatrooms, blogs and comments sections clearly shows not only, that the number of neologisms coined by suffixation and compounding is constantly increasing, but also that there is the need for more detailed analyses of the tendencies concerning the integration of English loanwords into the word-formation processes. As a matter of fact, issues highlighted in the previous sections like, e.g., the gaps in the derivational families, the productivity of specific suffixes, the biaspectuality of verbal derivatives and their assignment to specific conjugation classes, the constructions with undeclined premodifying nouns deserve further investigation.

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Nika Zoriˇci´c works at the Department of Russian Studies, University of Zadar, Croatia. She is in the final stage of her Ph.D. at the Doctoral School of Humanities (Linguistics). Her main research interests include language contact, borrowing processes and code-switching, English as a lingua franca and its influence on Slavic languages (primarily Russian and Croatian), word-formation processes, language use in the media and in computer-mediated communication.

Polish and Russian in German Rap: A Corpus Study on Language Contact and Social Semantics Aleksej Tikhonov

Abstract According to public opinion, multilingual diversity in German rap music (Deutschrap) has been marginalised since the 1990s (Caglar, 1998). Recently, rap has become a frequent topic of discussion in the media, mainly due to the high streaming and sales statistics of the genre. Above all, the German-Ukrainian-Russian rapper Capital Bra has drawn much attention to rap in Germany after making 13 number one chart hits in 12 months. While the public and scientific discourses on Deutschrap are dominated mainly by topics such as financial success, drugs, and sexism, the research on the diversity of languages, the political and religious aspects, as well as the identity-creating function of these songs has yet to be conducted. This paper will specifically deal with the lyrics of 507 songs by both male and female German rappers with Polish and Russian language backgrounds. The study statistically evaluates the languages used in the lyrics to determine the language contact tendencies. With corpus linguistics methods, this study also explores questions about how Germany, the respective countries of origin, and the concept of the homeland are connotated in the songs. In addition, a statistical experiment contrasts the lyrics’ stylistics and measures the linguistic distance between the musicians’ songs. Keywords Language contact · German · Polish · Russian · Turkish · Arab · Corpus linguistics · Stylometry · Rap · Hip-hop

1 Introduction ‘Komm’ mit Bras aus der Heimat, Bras, die ausrasten, Bras, die für gut Geld gut auf dich aufpassen, A. Tikhonov (B) Humboldt University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany e-mail: [email protected] University of Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk and M. Trojszczak (eds.), Language in Educational and Cultural Perspectives, Second Language Learning and Teaching, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-38778-4_16

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Aber ich bin Ukrainer, ᴙ ubьЮ za brata, No tiho edexь, dalьxe budexь, govorit mne mama, Trotzdem brauch’ ich Para, Brechen aus, Räuberleiter’1 The quote is from the song ‘Was 2? Hol’ 10!’ (Why two? I’ll get ten!) (2017) by German rapper Capital Bra. A person who wants to understand the lyrics must understand at least three languages-German, Turkish and Russian. The phenomenon of language contact is not only present in the lyrics of Capital Bra, but also in the lyrics of many current German rappers. Capital Bra is a concise and representative example because the musician is not only the most successful rapper in Germany but also the most successful musician in Germany in the 21st century. He uses a neologism in his mainly German lyrics-Bra, the short form of the East Slavic lexeme Bratan (Bro, Brother), which does not exist in the East Slavic languages but is a new formation in the language of Deutschrap. At the same time, Capital Bra shows a creative language behaviour and makes statements that can be traced back to his origin and socialization. The seven lines reveal that he sees himself as a Ukrainian who raps in German, Russian, and Turkish. As one of the most successful genres of music, rap can be seen as a mirror of the opinions of young people. Significantly when the musicians themselves are affected by social processes, these processes become the subject of their songs. Therefore, lyrics by Capital Bra and five other German rappers with Russian and Polish language backgrounds—as two of the most used Slavic languages in German rap—are the focus of the analysis in this article. The consecutive study will consider the current developments as they arise and not analyse a trend that is already over in retrospect. In Deutschrap, language contact and multilingualism is a particularly critical topic. Here not only the factor of such a language behaviour plays a role, but the general marginalization of the music genre, its artists, and its audience since the 1990s, especially in the Turkish-German context: “German-Turks’ liminal and marginal state of being, which has been pathologized as’being torn between two cultures’ for a long time in the discussions of their cultural and identity formations” (Caglar, 1998, p. 245). Until the early 2010s, the main focus of the debate about the language contact in Deutschrap, the use of German language, and the arising phenomena of multilingualism in rap lyrics were about Turkish and Arabic (Chemeta, 2013; Dietrich & Seeliger, 2014; Loentz, 2006; Scharer, 2007; Simpson, 2020; Zboˇrilová, 2016). Since the beginning of the 2010s, German rappers with a Slavic background have become more popular. The reason for the time lag between the popularization of Turkish in German rap and the mainly East Slavic languages in German rap is the time of immigration to Germany. While migration from Turkey to (West) Germany started in the 1960s, migration from the former socialist states of Eastern, Southeastern, and 1

‘I come along withGerman brosMLNL from my homeland,German // BrosMLNL * who freak out,German // BrosMLNL who take care of you for good money,German // But I am Ukrainian; I will kill for my brother,Russian // But my mom says—a little patience goes a long way,Russian // Nevertheless, I needGerman moneyTurkish , // We break out, giving a boostGerman ’ [* Multilingual Neologism]

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Central Europe began in the 1980s. The gap of 20 years is also reflected in the spread of languages in Deutschrap. The case study analyses the use of multilingual resources in the lyrics of the six most listened German rappers with a Polish or Russian language background and is based on the DRaKoSlav (Deutsch-Rap Korpus Slavic Edition) corpus, which I have compiled since the end of 2019. After three updates, the present study explicitly deals with version 0.4, containing over 286,165 tokens. The study compares the lyrics of the musicians with corpus linguistics and Digital Humanities methods, such as precise semantic KWIC-analysis in Sketch Engine and stylometric clustering in R (Eder et al., 2016). In the context of musicians’ Russian-speaking background, it is essential to note that being Russian-speaking does not mean that the musicians identify themselves as Russians or are from Russia. The only objective reference here is the language they use. In the article, the musicians’ origin and the conditions of their socialization will be discussed in more detail. Already at this point, it can be stated that one musician was born in Russia (Capital Bra), one in Ukraine (Olexesh), and one in Kazakhstan (Antifuchs). The study’s primary focus is the projected relationship of the musicians to the country of their origin, Germany, and the concept of Heimat (homeland). In addition, the proportion and use of the Slavic languages in contrast to languages as English, Turkish, and Arabic are analysed in more detail. The study extracts the linguistic, social, and cultural connections in the lyrics for a better understanding of the role of rap in today’s multicultural society in Germany. One of the central questions that the study answers is whether the mono- and bi-ethnic identity concepts apply to the examined constellation of languages in Germany.

2 Relevant Research In 2016 Loentz discussed the role of Kanak Sprak,2 which plays a significant role in Deutschrap. The Kanak Sprak and its current variation ‘Kiezdeutsch’ (Hood German) are referred to as migrant-specific youth languages and represent nothing more than the German language with lexical, morphological, and syntactic phenomena which differ from standard language, although there are similar grammar phenomena in German dialects (Cano˘glu, 2012; Wiese, 2012). As a result, the term migrantspecific is inappropriate in this context. Chemeta’s paper transforms the discourse on multilingualism into a discourse on German rap, language, identity, and politics. He refers to rap lyrics and their function as the “voice of migrants” (Chemeta, 2

The term Kanake has at least three meanings: (i) native Polynesia and the South Sea Islands, (ii) colloquial, pejorative, often a swear word for foreigner, foreign worker, especially Turkish people, and (iii) colloquial, pejorative, someone uneducated, simple-minded, a fool. In the article, meanings (ii) and (iii) are relevant. Therefore, Kanak Sprak is the code that people use. The term can be understood in a discriminatory and racist way, as it assumes that it is a primitive and incorrect way of using German. In the multilingual communities themselves, the expression can be used ironically as a self-designation (https://www.dwds.de/wb/Kanake Last Access: 22 June 2022).

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2013, p. 38) and compares German rappers with Hispano- and Afro-American rappers. According to his research, there are parallels between rappers from the US and Germany. A unique role is assigned here to the sub-genre Gangsta rap and Street Rap (Chemeta, 2013, p. 39), in which the question of identity and the use of language is not only a tool of communication and expression, but a symbol of power and a way of identity formation (Chemeta, 2013, p. 40). The first German rapper of Slavic origin whose multilingual behavior in lyrics was dealt with is Schwesta Ewa (Bifulco & Reuter, 2017). The language aspect the authors discussed in the context of sociology, gender, and media studies referred to the Polish title of her first album Kurwa3 (ibid. 70). Cotgrove (2018) was the first researcher who extensively examined the multilingual practices in Deutschrap in the 21st century in consideration of Slavic languages. In addition to a detailed description of how multi-ethnolects in Germany developed under the influence of Turkish and Arabic (Cotgrove, 2018, p. 72), he also takes nine rappers of different origins into account (Cotgrove, 2018, p. 74). One of the nine artists has a Slavic migration background—Capital Bra. Slavic languages among German rappers of non-Slavic origin are also a topic of research in the meantime. In 2019, the Russian parts of the lyrics of one of Germany’s best-selling rappers, Kollegah, were analyzed. The rapper not only uses individual words and phrases, but full quotes from the former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev can be found in his songs (Derecka, 2019, p. 65), through which the musician expresses his sympathies with the MedvedevPutin regime. Tikhonov’s pilot study (2020) focused on German rappers with a Slavic background. He analyzed lyrics by the above-mentioned Schwesta Ewa (SE) and Capital Bra (CB) but added Olexesh (OL) and Krime (KR). The study compared Polish influences (SE & KR), Russian influences (CB & OL), and identity models in German rap. Like Cotgrove (2018), Tikhonov concluded that hybrid identities are formed through language behavior. One of the main findings was the frequent contextualization of international politics in the artists’ lyrics with Ukrainian and Russian backgrounds, while the rappers with a Polish background were revealed as apolitical and hardly relating to Poland as their homeland. CB sympathizes with Putin, yet at the same time criticizes the war in Ukraine. 2020 Derecka presented in detail the analysis of emotional semantics in the lyrics by the German rapper Haftbefehl, who is of Kurdish-Turkish origin, where she could observe Croatian(Shtokavian-) German language contact. In her Ph.D. thesis, Derecka (2020) pointed out, among other things, word forms and phrases from Russian and South-Slavic languages (Bosnian/Croatian(/Shtokavian)). In some cases, the Slavic loan words are adapted to German morphology. The next section describes which six artists were chosen for the analysis and why, and which aspects of their language biographies are relevant for this case study.

3

In addition to the meaning given by the authors—prostitute—the Polish lexeme has at least four other meanings—(i) a woman who has many sexual partners, (ii) the expression Damn!, (iii) a woman [similar to the use of the lexeme bitch in English hip hop] (iv) a person who puts greed above morality (https://sjp.pwn.pl/szukaj/kurwa.html Last Access: 22 June 2022).

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3 Artists’ Language Biographies See Table 1.

4 Methods and Data 4.1 Selection of the Artists Seven main criteria are necessary to ensure that the songs have a broad audience so that the semantic values can act as mechanisms of social influence and reflection and are a significant example of language contact processes in the German cultural sphere today (Table 2).

4.2 Corpus Design The 0.4-version of the DRaKoSlav (Deutsch Rap Korpus Slavic Edition) corpus consists of lyrics of 507 songs from official albums, mixtapes, and EPs by the six artists. With regard to the distribution of the lyrics per artist, the corpus is composed as follows (Fig. 1). The varying quantity of songs per artist may give the impression of unbalanced data; for example, if the lyrics of 204 songs by Olexesh and 53 songs by Antifuchs are included in the corpus, there is a large contrast. However, the corpus still is representative. DRaKoSlav 0.4. contains lyrics of all songs released under the present artists’ pseudonyms since the beginning of their careers in the early 2010s and up to December 2021. This compilation method guarantees the absolute accuracy of the data. The exact size of the corpus is 286,165 tokens, 226,932 words, and 2503 sentences. The number of the used lemma is 20838, including 3711 unique word forms as non-words or unknown words. The data was annotated as German txt-files on the SketchEngine platform with the RFTagger on the syntactic and morphological level (Schmid & Laws). The assignment of the word forms to certain POS classes is based on the automatic evaluation of the common suffixes and lower and upper-cases. Since the tagger was trained and evaluated on standard language texts, lexicon of the substandard falls into the category of unique word forms or unknown words. These are expressions such as Bratans (‘BrotherRussian + sGerman plural masculine affix nominative ’) or Kurwas (‘BitchPolish + sGerman plural feminine affix nominative ’), which are not yet considered standard German, but are still recognised by the tagger as nouns. So, if Bratans or Kurwas occurs often enough, is capitalised, and includes the plural inflection affix , it is counted as a noun following German grammar.

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Table 1 Artist’s language biographies Artist (real name)

Birth info

Time of migration (area of socialisation)

Capital Bra (Wladislaw Balowazki)

* Siberia4 (Russia) in 1994

– The second half of the 1990s: – 1.8% of the district’s Russia → Dnipro, formerly population is equal to the Dnipropetrovsk,5 in Ukraine citizenship of one of the – The beginning of the 2000s: countries of the former Dnipro → Berlin (socialised in Soviet Union (Amt für the district Statistik Lichtenberg-Hohenschön-hausen) Berlin-Brandenburg, 2021, p. 8)

Olexesh (Olexij Kosarev)

* Kyiv (Soviet 1994: Kyiv → Darmstadt Ukraine) in 1988 (socialised in the district Kranichstein)

Antifuchs (Emilia Reichert)

* Taraz6 (Soviet Kazakhstan) in 1989

4

Additional comments

– On his childhood in Kranichstein: ‘Suddenly there were Arabs, Moroccans, Turks, Pakistani, Afghans, all kinds of skin colours. Of course, I wanted to play with them, I was a foreigner myself ’ (Sternburg, 2020, p. 54)

– 1990/1991: Taraz → Flensburg – On her use of language: (socialised in Flensburg) ‘My roots somehow are also very fluid. […] I let it flow into my language usage because that is how I grew up. We have developed our own language, something like ‘Get the telewcka’ or ‘Close the xolodilьnik’ […]’ (Melikov et al., 2021, 0:34:40) (continued)

The exact place of birth is not publicly available. The city was renamed in the course of decommunization in 2016. 6 One of the Soviet forced relocation regions for Soviet citizens of German origin (Brown; Apendiyev et al.; Sanders)). 5

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Table 1 (continued) Artist (real name)

Birth info

Schwesta Ewa (Ewa Malanda)

* Koszalin Born in Poland; 1987: Koszalin (Poland) in 1984 → Kiel; 2004: Kiel → Frankfurt am Main

Time of migration (area of socialisation)

Additional comments – On her childhood: ‘I wasn’t good at German. Especially with grammar and spelling, […] I came to Germany from Poland with my mother as a child and grew up in a women’s shelter. And then we lived in Kiel in an asocial settlement where only foreigners lived. So my vocabulary isn’t that great to this day’ (Rosendorff, 2015)

* Freiburg KRIME (Germany) in (Kevin Wrzesi´nski) 2001 or 2002

Born in Germany (socialised Germany & Poland)

– On his identity: ‘I’m Krime, I’m sixteen, I’m Polak, I do street rap’ (Krime ‘JAV’, 2018)

Brodnica Kronkel (Poland) in the Dom early 1980s (Dominik Paszkowski)

Born in Poland; at the age of 6: Brodnica → Dortmund (socialised in Brodnica & Dortmund)

– On his childhood: ‘I came to Germany alone with my mother when I was 6. We speak Polish to each other to this day, so I would definitely consider myself bilingual. […] I was first and foremost influenced by Polish culture because whether it’s food or holidays, we live very traditionally or, let’s say, try as best we can. Through many friends—Turkish, Arab, Russian, or German—I gradually got to know all nationalities and cultures better. I don’t make any categories based on origin anyway’ (Tikhonov, 2019)

The search in the corpus works in various ways. Users can search for specific word forms, phrases, (sub-)clauses, grammatical categories (tags or combinations of tags), lemmas, or keywords combinations for a specific topic. For example, in the present article, the topic of the homeland was analysed. For one of the musicians (Olexesh) it might be Ukraine, because it is his birth country. The complication is that spellings

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Table 2 Artist’s relevance criteria Criteria No

Criteria Description

(i)

The artist belongs to the German rap sub-genre Street Rap or Gangsta Rap7

(ii)

The artist/one of her/his parents have Polish or Russian language migration background

(iii)

The artist is under contract with a major label or a sub-label of a major label

(iv)

An official account represents the artist on YouTube and Spotify

(v)

The artist has at least one video on YouTube with at least 1 million views

(vi)

The artist has at least one song on Spotify with at least 250,000 streams

(vii)

The lyrics are available at genius.com

Fig. 1 Structure of the DRaKoSlav 0.4 data

of the country’s name can differ-Ukraine is the standard German spelling, Ukraina ist he latinised Ukrainian spelling, which the musician also uses. Corpus Query Language (CQL) enables the combined and simultaneous search query, including both lemmas: [lemma=‘Ukrain.*|ukrain.*’]. This search query includes all word forms that start with and and continue with any number and combination of letters. This method ensures the counting of the name even if it is not capitalised, which may happen, for example, due to an unintentional mistake in the transliteration of the lyrics. The concordance results presentation on SketchEngine includes all found keywords with left and right contexts, the tracking of the original song file in the corpus, the absolute number of hits, the relative number of hits in 7

Excluded sub-genres are Battle, Conscious, Emo, Entertainment, and Hipster rap, Horrorcore, hybridisation of Pop and Rap, Right-wing and Left-wing rap, R’n’B, Porno rap, and Black metal rap (author’s update of the categorization by Ruge, (2015)).

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instances per million tokens (i.p.m.), and the percent of the whole corpus. DRaKoSlav 0.4 and its previous versions8 are already freely available under certain conditions.9

4.3 Categories and Choice of the Keywords In the present article, the first step of the analysis encompasses twelve keywords in context (KWICs), which show the connection between the countries of the presumable origin and Germany in the lyrics and opinions the artists convey to their audience throughout their songs. The topic areas of (i) Countries and (ii) Homeland will be explored by selecting the KWICs concerning the following principles to reveal the required information with the methods of corpus linguistics: – Under (i) Countries, seven countries or historical states are examined here because they are the birth countries of the musicians or their parents or it is Germany as the birth country or the country of socialization: Kasachstan (Kazakhstan), Polen (Poland), Russland (Russia), Sowjetunion (Soviet Union), UdSSR (USSR), Ukraine (Ukraine), and Deutschland (Germany). – Lexemes that are related to (ii) Homeland are derived from the associations and the collocations from the DWDS corpus (Digital Lexical System of the Academy by the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences (www.dwds.de)) and the frequent contexts in the analyzed lyrics: Geburtsland (birth country), Heimat (home(land)), Heimatland (homeland), Herkunft (origin), and Vaterland (fatherland). After zooming in on the corpus data and analyzing single KWICs, the linguistic examination of the lyrics zooms out to inspect relationships between the lyrics and their style. The stylometric clustering is the second step of the case study. The final step is the analysis of the used languages. The ten most frequently used languages will be determined, as well as the number of lyrics per musician in which these languages occur.

8

DRaKoSlav 0.1 (East & West Slavonic) (2019/2020): lyrics from the albums of Capital Bra, Olexesh, Schwesta Ewa & Krime, 137.798 tokens, presented at the Sheffield Postgraduate Conference in Linguistics: Linguistic Variation and Identity 2019, University of Sheffield, published in Tikhonov (2020). DRaKoSlav 0.2 and 0.3 (East & South Slavonic) (2021): lyrics from the albums of ´ Capital Bra, Olexesh, Celo & Haze, presented at the LTS Conference 2021: Responding to Conflict, Crisis and Change, University of Nottingham. The corpus is still under construction. For access to the intermediate versions on https://www.sketchengine.eu contact the author of the article via e-mail. 9 Many European universities have acquired a license for SketchEngine, which means they have free access to the DRaKoSlav corpus series. In order to get access, interested parties would have to contact me by e-mail. Within a couple of days, they would have full access to the version of the corpus they wish to analyse.

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Table 3 Seven KWICs in the category Countries and their frequencies in DRaKoSlav 0.4 KWIC

Kasachstan

Polen

Russland

Sowjetunion

UdSSR

Ukraine

Deutschland

Fabs 10

3

10

2

11

0

15

29

10,48

34,94

6,99

38,44

0

52,42

101,34

Frel

11

Table 4 Seven KWICs in the category Countries and the evaluation of their semantic connotation in DRaKoSlav 0.4 Fabs

Positive

Neutral

Negative

Deutschland

29

16 (55%)

7 (24%)

6 (21%)

Ukraine

15

9 (60%)

4 (27%)

2 (13%)

Sowjetunion

11

0

11 (100%)

0

Polen

10

2 (20%)

5 (50%)

3 (30%)

Kasachstan

3

1 (33,3%)

2 (66,66%)

0

Russland

2

1 (50%)

1 (50%)

0

UdSSR

0

0

0

0

Total

70

–

–

–

5 Results 5.1 KWICs of Deutschrap The results of the analysis of KWICs are shown and discussed below in the two categories (i) Countries (7 KWICs) and (ii) Homeland (5 KWICs). (i) Countries Seven lemmas associated with the countries of the presumable origin appear in their collocations or are conspicuous in the lyrics, as in Sect. 4.2. They are subsequently examined as KWIC in DRaKoSlav 0.4. Their absolute and relative frequency indicated in the corpus will be presented (Table 2) and discussed in this section (Table 3). In the following step, the KWICs will be sorted according to their frequencies and annotated with the number of positive, neutral or negative statements (Table 4). Whilst none of our artists mention the lemma UdSSR (USSR). The most mentioned country is Germany, with 29 hits and about 41% of all results in this category. The majority (55%) of hits are positive connotations. A representative example is a quote from KRIME ‘ich bin im besten Label Deutschlands’ (I’m in the best label of GermanyGerman ) (K_Geld Geld Geld.txt). The (Polish-)German rapper connotes his label as the best label in Germany and Germany as a vital rap market. KRIME’s 10 11

Absolute frequency in instances in the corpus. Relative frequency in instances per million tokens (i.p.m.).

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label colleague (Ukrainian-)German rapper Olexesh supports the statement. He expands the label network by Azzlackz (the music production company of those mentioned above (Kurdish-)German rapper Haftbefehl). Although, he equates their commercial unity with the Wu-Tang Clan—a US rap band that contributed significantly to the global popularization of rap music in the 1990s: ‘Crew AzzlackDeutschlands Wu-Tang Clan’ (The Azzlack crew-Germany’s Wu-Tang ClanGerman ) (OL_2014NED16.txt). From these connotations, there is a possible semantic derivation that the label network around KRIME and Olexesh plays one of the central roles in Germany, claiming rap and aligning Germany with the USA. There are also negative connotations of Germany here, which almost exclusively (four out of six) come from Capital Bra. One of the most extreme examples is ‘Putin ist King, fick mal die Amis, Deutschland den Deutschen, fick mal die Nazis’ (Putin isGerman KingEnglish , fuck the Americans, Germany the Germans, fuck the NazisGerman ) (CB_2016KUKU16.txt). In the song, Capital Bra not only places Germany in a context in which he equates the Germans and the Nazis but also shows his keen sympathy for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his intense dislike for the US. Another song explains his relationship with Germany more precisely: ‘Ich wohn’ in Berlin und nicht in Deutschland’ (I live in Berlin and not in GermanyGerman ) (CB_ 2016KUKU7.txt). In the line, the rapper contrasts the German capital with the rest of Germany, expressing that only Berlin is worth living in for him. Antifuchs, Kronkel Dom, and Schwesta Ewa have no statements about Germany in their lyrics. 87% of the statements about Ukraine are positive (60%) or neutral (27%). Seven out of nine positively connoted positions have the same semantic value: ‘Capital aus Ukraine und nicht Drake aus Kanada’ (Capital from Ukraine and not Drake from CanadaGerman ) (CB_2019CB1.txt). In this quote, repeated seven times, Capital Bra positions itself in a competitive relationship with Canadian hip-hop artist Drake (one of the world’s most popular hip-hop/R&B musicians) while emphasizing that he is from Ukraine. Another positive example is Olexesh’s lyrics: ‘Wenn sie mich jagen, dann mach’ ich in die Heimat Fliege, Geliebte Ukraine, Slawe steht auf mein’ Papieren’ (If they hunt me, then I’ll fly home, beloved Ukraine, Slav is on my papersGerman ) (OL_2016MAK3.txt). In these lines, Olexesh shows that Ukraine is his home, for which he has loving feelings. At the same time, he adds that his papers, meaning his Ukrainian passport, state that he is a Slav. A Ukrainian passport does not contain such information, but the musician obviously wants to emphasize his selfidentification as a Slav first and only then as a Ukrainian. The negative statements about Ukraine can be understood as negative childhood memories of the country. In this context Olexesh raps: ‘Ukpaina-Sowjetunion, Gopody cpacibo! PocciᴙSowjetunion, Ulica-Kpiza, Durchgeknallter Fahrstil Stadtgebiet, Kiew, Ukpaina, Wo der Hass auf den Straßen liegt’ (UkraineRussian –Soviet UnionGerman , Thanks to the city!Russian RussiaRussian –Soviet UnionGerman , StreetRussian –CrisisUkrainian , Crazy driving style in the urban area, KyivGerman , UkraineRussian , Where the hate lies on the streetsGerman ) (OL_2014NED6.txt). The negative connotation of Ukraine is expressed in the quote through the hate on the streets of Kyiv. In the lines, the musician points out that Ukraine, Russia, and the Soviet Union are one country from his point of view. He makes this statement

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in Russian, Ukrainian and German and uses an individual German borrowing in Ukrainian. Only Olexesh mentions the Soviet Union, and ten out of eleven mentions are of the quote already described. However, one of the lines is from another song of his: ‘Wie in Moskau WTO, Slawische Sowjetunion—Landebahn für UFOs’ (As in Moscow World Trade Organization, Slavic Soviet Union—a landing strip for UFOsGerman ) (OL_2014NED12.txt). With these lines, the musician emphasizes the importance of the Soviet Union to him. For him, the historical state structure continues to exist at the emotional level as a unit of Slavs, by which probably not all Slavs are meant, but Ukrainians and Russians. The fact that the USSR had enormously large population groups that were not Slavic (e.g. Balts, Kazakhs, Tatars, Uzbeks etc.) does not seem to play a role for the musician here. Half of Poland’s contexts are neutral; for example, they name the origin of the musicians or indicate a travel destination. The three negative mentions are from Schwesta Ewa’s lyrics, and in all three cases, it is about the same line: ‘Diese Hure kommt aus Polen, tickt mit Dope’ (This whore is from Poland, she deals withGerman dopeEnglish ) (SE_2018AY2.txt). For her former job, the rapper does not choose a neutral (sex worker) or less derogatory term (prostitute), but the lexeme whore. Considering the use of the lexeme and the broader connotation of drug dealing, the context about Poland here is negative. The two positive contexts come from Capital Bra’s lyrics and have the same semantic value: ‘Risiko von Bratans aus Polen’ (The Risk ofGerman BratansRussian-German from PolandGerman ) (CB_2017MAKO10.txt). The line was classified as positive because Bratans (brothers) is a positive relational attribution. There is only a question of interpretation here due to the lexeme Risiko (risk), whether the risk comes from the brothers from Poland, so they represent a danger to the rapper’s lyrical self. The other interpretation would be that the brothers from Poland risk something for the rapper, which would be classified as positive. Olexesh and Antifuchs do not mention Poland. Kazakhstan is mentioned twice by Antifuchs—both times neutrally as a geographical indication or as a description of the landscape. In Capital Bra, Kazakhstan occurs once, in a phrase that has already occurred to him in a similar context: ‘Ich komm’ mit ein’m Babaclan, mit Kurdis und Arabern, Russen, Tschetschenern und Bratans aus Kasachstan’ (I come with aGerman BabaTurkish/Kurdish clanEnglish , with Kurds and Arabs, Russians, Chechens andGerman BratansRussian-German from KazakhstanGerman ) (CB_2016KUKU13.txt). In this context, Capital Bra ascribes the property of being his brothers to three post-Soviet population groups (Chechens, Kazakhs, Russians) and two others (Arabs, Kurds), which is intended to express a close friendship and possibly business relationship. The interpretation is reinforced by the Turkish-Kurdish-English compound Babaclan (The BossTurkish-Kurdish ClanEnglish ). Russia appears twice in all lyrics. A connotation by Olexesh is a neutral indication of the geographic location of St. Petersburg. The second quote is from a Capital Bra song and shows his affection for the Russian Federation: ‘Bring dir ein Kilo im Trikot von Russland’ (I bring you a kilo in the jersey of Russia) (CB_2017MAKO5.txt). The jersey of Russia means the jersey of the Russian national football team, in which

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the song’s protagonist transports drugs. The fact that the lyrics deal with the national team’s jersey shows an emotional connection to Russia. (b) Homeland Five lemmas associated with the term Heimat (Homeland) appear in their collocations or are conspicuous in the lyrics, as in Sect. 4.2. They are subsequently examined as KWIC in DRaKoSlav 0.4. Their absolute and relative frequency indicated in the corpus will be presented and discussed in this section (Table 5). In the following step, the KWICs will be sorted according to their frequencies and annotated with the number of positive, neutral or negative statements (Table 6). The patriotic expression Vaterland (Fatherland) scored no hits in the corpus. The expression most frequently mentioned, on the other hand, was Heimat (Heimat/ Homeland). 11 out of 14 negative contexts come from the lyrics of Capital Bra. In 2016 he addressed the war in Ukraine with the following words: ‘Ihr macht Politik, während Blut in meiner Heimat fließt, Bruder’ (You are doing politics while blood is flowing in my homeland, BrotherGerman ) (CB_2016KUKU11.txt). On the same album, he talks about the poor conditions in which he lived in Ukraine: ‘Weil in meiner Heimat hatt’ ich nur Matratze und Brot’ (Because in my homeland I only had a mattress and breadGerman ) (CB_2016KUKU9.txt). Two years later, he returned to the subject of poverty in his homeland: ‘Schick’ Bitches nach Hause und Geld in die Heimat’ (I’m sending bitches home and money to my homelandGerman ) (CB_ 2018ALLEIN5.txt). Schwesta Ewa similarly connotes her homeland (Poland) in three places in the same song: ‘Ich schwöre, der Knast war entspannter als Heimat’ (I swear, the jail was more relaxed than my homelandGerman ) (SE_2018AY16.txt). Nevertheless, things are different for Olexesh who associates his homeland with nostalgic feelings and homesickness: ‘Wie geht’s Babuschka Olja? Ich vermisse meine Heimat.’ (How isGerman Babushka OlyaRussian ? I miss my homelandGerman .) Table 5 Five KWICs in the category Homeland and their frequencies in DRaKoSlav 0.4 KWIC

Geburtsland

Heimat

Heimatland

Herkunft

Vaterland

Fabs

19

22

1

6

0

Frel

66,4

76,88

3,49

20,97

0

Table 6 Five KWICs in the category Homeland and the evaluation of their semantic connotation in DRaKoSlav 0.4 Fabs

Positive

Neutral

Negative

Heimat

22

4 (18%)

4 (18%)

14 (64%)

Geburtsland

19

0

18 (95%)

1 (5%)

Herkunft

6

5 (83%)

1 (17%)

0

Heimatland

1

0

0

1 (100%)

Vaterland

0

0

0

0

Total

48

–

–

–

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A. Tikhonov

(OL_2015M9.txt). In the lyrics, he wants to ask how his grandmother is doing and uses a Russian lexeme for grandmother. He also states that he misses Ukraine. He similarly expresses his relationship to Ukraine in three other contexts, e.g., ‘Die Heimat zu weit weg’ (The homeland too far awayGerman ) (O_2015SC2.txt). In the example, however, he forms the phrase entirely in German but omits the verb. The four neutral contexts in the category (ii) Homeland refer to travel or geographical indications of the origin of weapons or people. The DRaKoSlav corpus does not contain Geburtsland (country of birth) as a lexeme with its paradigm, but other lemmas with this meaning can be found— the verb form (to be) born. 17 out of 19 results correspond to this case. Most of these mentions are of a neutral character. The lyrics contain metaphorical statements about Antifuchs being born with a microphone in hand (A_2015WIF6.txt) or direct statements about Olexesh being born in the big city, which he explicitly means Kyiv (OL_2016MAK16.txt), which his music video (filmed in Kyiv) for the song confirms. Among other things, Schwesta Ewa addresses the birth of her daughter (SE_2020A10.txt). The only negative context is also from Olexesh’s lyrics: ‘Jede Bewegung wird abgehört, Die Wände haben Augen und Ohren, Wir sind für die Zelle geboren’ (Every movement is observed, Walls have eyes and ears, We are born for the prison cellGerman ) (O_2015SC35.txt). With the lines, the lyrics express that the lyrical self and its social environment are criminals by birth or were born to be arrested. KRIME and Kronkel Dom have not made any statements about their country of birth. Herkunft (origin) is the only search term that has predominantly positive connotations in category (ii) Homeland. Five out of six quotes were found in one song of Antifuchs. Her hook12 is in the song: ‘Es kommt nicht an auf deine Herkunft, Sondern was du tust, Doch ich vergess’ nicht, wo ich herkomm’, Back to the roots’ (It doesn’t depend on your origin, but what you do, Nevertheless, I don’t forget where I come fromGerman , Back to the rootsEnglish ) (A_2021ZIF5.txt). In the song, the rapper deals in detail with the topic of origin. The awareness of origin is seen here as something positive, not in a patriotic or nationalistic sense, but in the liberal-progressive sense of multicultural society, as the text continues: ‘Denn Olga, Ali, Achim, Ezra, Peter und auch Fatim, Jeder Stolz auf seine Herkunft, aber keiner ist ein Nazi, Euer Hass hat kein’n Platz!’ (Because Olga, Ali, Achim, Ezra, Peter and Fatim too, everyone is proud of their origins, but nobody is a Nazi, Your hate has no place here!German ). Olexesh once refers to his origin in a neutral way: ‘Meine Herkunft-Ukraine, jeder Satz passt perfekt’ (My origin—Ukraine, every sentence fits perfectlyGerman ) (O_ 2012AA9.txt). Again, as noted above, Olexesh omits the verb of the sentence here. The other four rappers have not made any statements on the subject of origin. The verbatim mention of Heimatland (Homeland) occurs only once in the corpus. Capital Bra raps: ‘Guck mal, was mein Nachbar macht, er kokst die ganze Nacht, Und fickt mein’n Kopf mit der Musik aus seinem Heimatland’ (Look what my neighbor does, he does cocaine all night and fucks my head with the music from his homelandGerman ) (CB_2016KUKU4.txt). In this context, the protagonist complains about the neighbor who listens to loud music at night. It is music from the neighbor’s 12

Refrain in Rap-culture.

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homeland, not the protagonist’s (Ukraine or Russia), and it is not music from Germany. The quote is about a conflict between neighbors, in which the unnamed homeland of the neighbor appears. Therefore, the context is assessed as negative.

5.2 Clustering Deutschrap In regards to clustering, the linguistic proximity and the distance should be explored statistically. The semi-automated comparison is intended to extract knowledge from the examined data that remained hidden during the qualitative KWIC analysis and its interpretation. The calculation and visualization of various distance measures applied to DRaKoSlav 0.4 are intended to break down the relationships between the lyrics and the artists, thus enabling the answer to the question: • What influence do the used languages, the cultural, linguistic, and geographical context of the socialization and social gender have on the lyrics and their style? In the language biographies in Sect. 3, a tendency was noticed that the artists were socialized in three specific regions of Germany: (i) the North, (ii) the West, or (iii) in Berlin. Berlin is geographically in the North-East of Germany, but it can be seen as an independent social and geographical unit because of its status as the capital and the largest city in Germany and the EU, with a population of around 3.7 million. What the female artists had in common was that they were socialized mainly in the North of Germany. In contrast, Capital Bra is the only rapper who was born in Russia and socialized in Ukraine and Berlin. KRIME is the only rapper born in Germany. The aspect of the artist’s gender is another area of possible data influence. Thus, the two most commercially successful male artists and one commercially most successful female artist were deliberately selected for this study. These three areas (birthplace, socialization place, social gender) are to be questioned with the statistical investigation. The stylo package (Eder et al.) for the statistics software R plays a decisive role here. Various distance measures show the stylistic relationship between texts and whether the style or, for example, gender, mother language, the epoch, or other factors play a role in the clustering. Since the texts are clustered most precisely from around 5,000 tokens per file (Eder), the lyrics from each release were combined into one txt-file, so that the clustering data set-up consists of 28 txt-files. In order to make the results unbiased through relying on one statistical analysis only, the lyrics were clustered using three methods—horizontal tree, bootstrap consensus tree, and the bootstrap consensus network. The following horizontal clustering tree is the result of measuring 2 g of the tokens with Eder’s Delta distance. With a few exceptions, the following tendencies in the clustering are noticeable: 1. The closeness of Antifuchs (red) and Schwesta Ewa (purple) 2. The almost isolated positioning of Olexesh (yellow) in the middle of the diagram and his overlap with Schwesta Ewa (purple)

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3. Schwesta Ewa (purple) shows as well a slight overlap with Kronkel Dom (black) 4. KRIME’s lyrics (blue) are building one tight sub-cluster with Capital Bra (green), in which lyrics by Schwesta Ewa (purple) (2018) and Kronkel Dom (black) (2018–2021) are building a neighbouring sub-cluster 5. Antifuchs (red) and KRIME (blue) demonstrate the longest distance The next clustering is the bootstrap consensus tree, in which 2 g of tokens were also measured with the Eder’s Delta distance between the analyzed albums. Figure 3 confirms most of the observations from Fig. 2. In addition, there is a closer overlap between Olexesh and Schwesta Ewa. She frames Olexesh. Kronkel Dom acts here as a slight interlude among the lyrics by Schwesta Ewa. Antifuchs and KRIME belong to different sub-clusters here and are separated from Olexesh. Capital Bra forms a dominant role in this chart, forming three sub-clusters of its own that do not overlap with anyone. However, they are adjacent to Antifuchs and Schwesta Ewa. The final step is a bootstrap consensus network. The network is the setup of the 1 g of the graphemes measured with Eder’s delta distance. In Fig. 4, the position of Kronkel Dom (light orange) becomes more evident between Olexesh (dark green) and Capital Bra (sky blue). The central position of KRIME (dark orange) in the network and his overlap with other artists (especially with Olexesh (light green), Capital Bra (sky blue)), and Schwesta Ewa (light green) also becomes more evident here. The unique position of Antifuchs (dark blue) becomes more evident, too. Comparing the different vectors of various n-grams and distance measures in all three figures, these quantitative tendencies must be combined with qualitative results from the KWIC analysis. In all three clustering analyses, Schwesta Ewa’s lyrics showed the most diverse positioning and overlapped with several artists. Antifuchs and KRIME formed the two extremes of all three clusterings. The long-distance may be due to their socialisation in Northern Germany (Antifuchs) and Southwest Germany (KRIME). Nevertheless, there is a special closeness between the lyrics by Schwesta Ewa and Olexesh. Likewise, the geographical proximity and the start of the career in Southwest Germany also seem to be a driving factor here. In addition, Capital Bra is building almost independent extremes of the clusterings. In Fig. 4, Antifuchs performs as an almost independent sub-network but also shows a short distance to Schwesta Ewa. In all three figures, it was observed that Capital Bra and Olexesh form two separate sub-clusters that could also be counted as opposite poles. Although both musicians were partly socialized in Ukraine, often using Russian lexicon and phrases, the next possible distinguishing factor is the content of their lyrics. Taking the KWIC analysis into account, the following content profiles of the two musicians can be created: Capital Bra and Olexesh both have a different and very individual understanding of their homeland. Capital Bra identifies as Ukrainian, although he was born in Russia and uses Russian in his lyrics. For him, self-identification as a Ukrainian and sympathy for Putin and Russia are not contradictory, although, in his lyrics, he refers to Russia’s war against Ukraine, which began in 2014. So it is questionable what kind

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Fig. 2 Horizontal clustering tree of the DRaKoSlav 0.4 data

of peace Capital Bra wants when he criticizes the war. He sees peace after Putin’s victory. Olexesh, on the other hand, does not make any connections with Putin. Not only does he identify as Ukrainian, but he expresses his feelings on several occasions, which vary between worry, homesickness, and family ties. However, Olexesh also identifies himself as a Slav, most likely referring to the intensive connections of East Slavs in the USSR. The fact that the USSR no longer exists is not clear from his lyrics, which can lead to the interpretation that he wishes the USSR back without going into the politics of Russia since 2014. Some statements can also be made here about the connections between rappers of Polish origin. Since the distance between Schwesta Ewa and Kronkel Dom is very short in Figs. 2 and 3, and since all three musicians (incl. KRIME) form a straight line in Fig. 4, it can be assumed that three factors play a role: (i) The Age of the musicians

334

Fig. 3 Bootstrap consensus tree of the DRaKoSlav 0.4 data

Fig. 4 Bootstrap consensus network of the DRaKoSlav 0.4 data

A. Tikhonov

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335

100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 Antifuchs (A) Capital Bra (CB)

Krime (K)

German

English

Kronkel Dom Olexesh (O) Schwesta Ewa (KD) (SE) Slavic L1/L2

Fig. 5 The three most used langages in the DRaKoSlav 0.4 data

or belonging to a generation (Schwesta Ewa & Kronkel Dom). At first, KRIME is distant from both of them. (ii) The start of the music career in South-West Germany (all three). (iii) The apolitical content of their songs and the weakly developed theme of the homeland. Finally, two artists need to be discussed in more detail—Capital Bra and Antifuchs. They both performed relatively independently in the KWIC and statistical analysis. Capital Bra attracted attention with very polarizing and contradictory statements. Antifuchs, on the other hand, remained relatively neutral to liberal-progressive in their statements. As an example, she did not comment on Germany. Capital Bra took a radical position, equated Germans with Nazis, and presented all regions except Berlin as unlivable. Capital Bra repeatedly expressed his identification as Ukrainian. Antifuchs only mentioned Kazakhstan in passing. The two musicians are also from opposite poles in that Capital Bra is the only musician from Berlin and Antifuchs is the only one who was not only socialized in northern Germany but also lived into adulthood for a long time.

5.3 Used Languages English, and the respective Slavic L1/L2.13 Below are the comparative statistics on which rapper uses each language and how often (Fig. 5).

13

Slavic first learned language (L1) or second or simultaniously (with German) learned language (L2).

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The most used language is German. All six musicians use them in 100% of their lyrics. Two musicians use English more often than their Slavic L1/L2—Antifuchs and KRIME. The reason for this may be that KRIME is the only one born in Germany, and Antifuchs came to Germany at the age of an infant and has not had direct contact with her country of birth since then. All other musicians use their Slavic language either just as often as English (Kronkel Dom) or much more often (Capital Bra: approx. 91% of the lyrics; Schwesta Ewa: approx. 70% of the lyrics, on the other hand, English: Capital Bra: approx. 60% of the lyrics, Schwesta Ewa: about 38% of the lyrics). Olexesh uses English in about 98% and Russian in about 79% of his songs. The seven other languages that did not make it into the TOP 3 most used languages are Spanish, Polish (among musicians of Russian language background), French, Japanese, Turkish, Arabic, and Russian (among musicians of Polish language background) (Fig. 6). Without going into too much detail about all languages, it is noticeable in the overview that rappers with a Polish-speaking background tend to use Russian, and the rappers with a Russian-speaking background are less open to Polish. It is also noticeable that all musicians except Antifuchs and Kronkel Dom often use Turkish and Arabic in their lyrics. Particularly striking are Capital Bra, Schwesta Ewa, and KRIME. Capital Bra uses Turkish in around 52% of its songs, Schwesta Ewa in 59%, and KRIME in around 28%. Arabic was found in 39% of Capital Bra’s songs, 45% in Schwesta Ewa, and 17% in KRIME. The label structures of the musicians most likely form the basis for this. While Schwesta Ewa’s label is headed by German rapper Xatar of Iranian-Kurdish origin, KRIME is signed to 385i—a label run by German-Bosnian 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 Spanish

Polish Antifuchs (A)

French

Japanese

Capital Bra (CB)

Kronkel Dom (KD) Olexesh (O)

Turkish

Arabic

Krime (K) Schwesta Ewa (SE)

Fig. 6 Positions 3–10 among the ten most used langages in the DRaKoSlav 0.4 data

Russian

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´ rapper Celo and German-Moroccan rapper Abdi, who have friendly-business relations with the Kurdish-Turkish-German rapper arrest warrant maintains. Although signed to his label, Capital Bra has had numerous past and present featurings with German rappers from Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic, and Lebanese backgrounds, far more often than rappers from Slavic backgrounds.

6 Conclusion In the 2010s, rappers with Polish and Russian language backgrounds garnered notable success in regards to streaming statistics, thus gaining chart hits in Germany. Furthermore, the most successful rapper in Germany since the year 2019 is Capital Bra, born in Russia and raised in Ukraine and Germany. In this process, the respective languages, mainly Polish and Russian in this case, became part of Deutschrap’s multilingual language practices. In the early 2020s, the Slavic languages became an integral part of the lyrics in commercial rap. The consecutive study considered the current developments as they arise(d). The aim of the study was not to analyze a trend that is already over in retrospect. Their lyrics bring not only new linguistic influences into Deutschrap, but also differing views on society, identity, and languages. In this study, the lyrics of the six most famous street and gangsta rappers in Germany with Russian and Polish language backgrounds were examined in order to answer the question: How the linguistic behavior (language contact, loanwords, code-switching, concrete semantic values) in the lyrics can give access to the understanding of the relationship between language(s), identity, and the birth country of the rappers or their parents in the lyrics of these six rappers? The semantic investigation revealed that rappers with a Russian language background who came to Germany as older children or teenagers (Olexesh and Capital Bra) have an intense emotional relationship to the concept of the homeland. Their concept also includes contradictory ideas about history, society, and politics. Capital Bra associates his ancestry with friendly-business relations with unnamed Bratans (brothers), identifying himself as Ukrainian while probably being a supporter of peace under the Russian flag. Above all, Olexesh associates family and nostalgic feelings with Ukraine and takes no position on Russia but repeatedly addresses a vague concept of a Slavic Soviet Union. Opposed is Antifuchs, who came to Germany as an infant. In her lyrics, she hardly goes into the origin, and if she does, then she would like to discuss liberal-progressive values constructively and oppose them to the conservative discourses of German society. The rappers with a Polish linguistic background behave neutrally to negatively towards Poles. In the case of neutral statements, it is usually about naming their origin and thus self-identification as Poles. In the case of negative statements, similar to rappers with a Russian linguistic background, the difficult social and economic conditions in their homeland are discussed. They mainly refer to the time when they

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left the country as children. On the other hand, KRIME, born in Germany, does not even take such positions. Regardless of their background, all musicians did not address the patrioticnationalistic concept of ‘Vaterland’ (Fatherland); thus, their relationship with the respective countries and Germany is relatively moderate. One exception is Capital Bra’s relationship with Germany, and his relationship with Germany has negative connotations; he sees Germans as Nazis and can only imagine his life in Berlin, not in the rest of Germany. The result is that the family’s language or country of origin does not play a significant role in the interrelations of the lyrics. The place of birth and the gender of the artists also appears to have almost no effect on the style of their lyrics, as the clustering has shown. Instead, the areas of socialization and the professional/social environments are decisive. The lyrics tend to a North German (Antifuchs) and SouthWest German continuum (Olexesh, Schwesta Ewa, Kronkel Dom, KRIME). Capital Bra—from Berlin—uses geographically all-encompassing lyrics, which could be one of the reasons for his popularity. His lyrics include links to different linguistic settings (for example lexis from Arabic and Turkish). The same situation is with the lyrics by Schwesta Ewa, who is the most popular female German rapper with a Slavic background. Another finding was that the age of moving to Germany could make a difference. The older the rappers were when they came to Germany, the more likely they use the Slavic L1/L2 in their lyrics. Rappers who came to Germany as teenagers or at about ten years or older (especially Capital Bra) use the Slavic L1/L2 in an average of 50% of the lyrics. Rappers born in Germany or who came to Germany as babies (especially Antifuchs and KRIME) use their Slavic L1/L2 in about 16% of their lyrics. The multilingual language behavior or translanguaging appears in most cases to be organic in the lyrics. From a structural point of view, the statements form complete syntactic constructions. In one syntactical construction combined languages could be German and Russian, German and English, or Turkish-Kurdish and English. However, language diversity in the syntactical and morphological constructions is not limited to one, two, or three languages, but crosses language boundaries and produces hybrid text passages in which the hierarchies between so-called prestigious or majority languages (in this case German) are either flat or can be described as not given. In most cases, however, the combination of the languages used in one line corresponds to the pattern German + A [+ B + C + …]. The variables A, B, C, and so on correspond to other languages from the artists’ family, professional or social environment.

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References Amt für Statistik Berlin-Brandenburg. (2021). Statistischer Bericht A I 5—Hj 2/20: Einwohnerinnen und einwohner im Land Berlin am 31. Dezember 2020. Grunddaten. https://download.statistikberlin-brandenburg.de/fa93e3bd19a2e885/a5ecfb2fff6a/SB_A01-05-00_2020h02_BE.pdf Bifulco, T., & Reuter, J. (2017). Schwesta Ewa – Eine Straßen-Rapperin und ehemalige Sexarbeiterin als Kämpferin für weibliche Unabhängigkeit und gegen soziale Diskriminierung? (M. Dietrich & M. Seeliger, Hrsg.; Bd. 50, S. 61–88). Transcript Verlag. https://doi.org/10.14361/ 9783839437506-003 Caglar, A. S. (1998). Popular culture, marginality and institutional incorporation: German-Turkish rap and Turkish pop in Berlin. Cultural Dynamics, 10(3), 243–261. https://doi.org/10.1177/092 137409801000301 Cano˘glu, H. D. (2012). ‘Kanak Sprak’ versus ‘Kiezdeutsch’—Sprachverfall oder sprachlicher Spezialfall?: Eine ethnolinguistische Untersuchung / Hatice Deniz Cano˘glu. Frank & Timme. Chemeta, D. (2013). Deutsche Identität, Kultur und Sprache im deutschen Rap/German identity, culture and language in German rap-music. Zeitschrift Fuer Ethnologie, 138(1), 37–54. Cotgrove, L. A. (2018). The importance of linguistic markers of identity and authenticity in German Gangsta Rap. Journal of Languages, Texts and Society, 2, 67–98. Derecka, M. (2019). Der deutsche Rap – das Sprachrohr der deutschen Minderheiten oder eine Rechtfertigung der mangelhaften Sprachkenntnisse? Linguistische Treffen in Wrocław, 15, 59– 68. https://doi.org/10.23817/lingtreff.15-5 Derecka, M. (2020). Haben Gangsta-Rapper positive Gefühle? Code-Switching als Ausdrucks- und Gefühlsträger in den Songtexten von Haftbefehl. Linguistische Treffen in Wrocław, 17, 65–77. Dietrich, M., & Seeliger, M. (2014). Deutscher Gangsta-Rap: Sozial- und kulturwissenschaftliche Beiträge zu einem Pop-Phänomen/herausgegebenvon Marc Dietrich, Martin Seeliger. transcript. Eder, M., Rybicki, J., & Kestemont, M. (2016). Stylometry with R: A package for computational text analysis. The R Journal, 8(1), 107–121. Krime (2018). JAV. Genius. https://genius.com/Krime-jav-lyrics Loentz, E. (2006). Yiddish, Kanak Sprak, Klezmer, and HipHop: Ethnolect, minority culture, multiculturalism, and stereotype in Germany. Shofar, 25(1), 33–62. Melikov, H., Boxler, J., & Menua, A. (2021). 32—Der lachende Mittelfinger: Zu Gast Antifuchs [X3 Podcast]. https://open.spotify.com/episode/6oLBph7QKhby2jSamaU3iF?si=264c8e c3f2994a0f Rosendorff, K. (2015, Februar 26). Schwesta Ewa: Wie eine Ex-Hure den Deutschrap entjungfern will. DIE WELT. https://www.welt.de/regionales/hessen/article137881089/Wie-eine-Ex-Hureden-Deutschrap-entjungfern-will.html Ruge, L. (2015). Die 153 Elemente des HipHop: Das Deutschrap-Periodensystem. Bayerischer Rundfunk. https://www.br.de/puls/themen/popkultur/deutschrap-periodensystem-100.html Simpson, P. A. (2020). Gendered identities and German islamophobias. Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 28(1), 57–69. Sternburg, J. (2020). Das ist Germania: Die Größen des Deutschrap über Heimat und Fremde. Droemer. Tikhonov, A. (2019, August 21). Kronkel Dom: Vom kleinen Jungen aus Polen zum grossen Deutschrapper. osTraum Journal. https://ostraum.com/2019/08/21/kronkel-dom-vom-kleinenjungen-aus-polen-zum-grossen-deutschrapper/ Tikhonov, A. (2020). Multilingualism and identity: Polish and Russian influences in German rap. Multiethnica: Journal of the Hugo Valentin Centre, 40, 55–66.

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Wiese, H. (2012). Kiezdeutsch Ein neuer Dialekt entsteht Heike Wiese. Verlag CHBECK Literatur - Sachbuch - Wissenschaft. Zboˇrilová, S. (2016). Hass, Wut und Konfrontation in der deutschsprachigen Rap-Music und HipHop-Music. Univerzita Pardubice. http://hdl.handle.net/10195/64483

Aleksej Tikhonov is a researcher of the Department of Slavic and Hungarian Studies at the Humboldt University of Berlin. He completed his Ph.D. on the linguistic author identification of Czech Rixdorf manuscripts in summer 2020 and defended his dissertation in spring 2021. His research interests are East and West Slavic languages, corpus linguistics, digital humanities, (semi-)automatic text recognition, Slavic languages in German popular music in the 21st century, linguistic integration of minorities, and multilingual language contact in urban areas. Since spring 2021 Aleksej Tikhonov is working as PostDoc of the UK-German Collaborative Research Project “The History of Pronominal Subjects in the Languages of Northern Europe” between the Humboldt University of Berlin (head: Roland Meyer) and the University of Oxford (head: David Willis). In his habilitation project he is working on Slavic-German language contact und multilingual practices in German rap in the 21st century.

Arabic-English Intercultural and Interlingual Contacts in Ahdaf Soueif’s Novels: A Case of WEs ‘Contact Literature’ in the Expanding Area Lucia La Causa

Abstract Historically, “[s]everal genres of so-called ‘contact literature’ have arisen in the Outer Circle English” (Bennui & Hashim, 2014, p. 80, see also Kachru, 1986). Today, “contact literature” is emerging in some Expanding areas as well, such as in Egypt (Albakry & Hancock, 2008; Hassanin, 2012; Lebœuf, 2012), as a new domain where English is creatively used. This article, which is part of a wider research project, aims at investigating the phenomenon of intercultural and interlingual contacts in the Egyptian writer Ahdaf Soueif’s novel In the Eye of the Sun (1992). In the novel, the author uses English, rather than Arabic, her mother-tongue, for creative expression and as a tool to relate about post-colonial Egypt, which leads to a continuous use of culture-bound references, literary code-switching, lexical borrowing, and linguistic transfers from Arabic. In the footstep of Albakry and Hancock’s (2008) study, this paper’s methodology is based on a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the occurrence and typology of literary code-switching, lexical borrowings and all transferred discourse strategies (Kachru, 1965/2015) present in the novel focusing on the cultural and (socio)linguistic consequences of using them in an “Expanding literature” as the Egyptian-English one. Keywords Anglophone Arab literature · Interculturality · Interlingual contacts · Code-switching · Soueif · Ahdaf

1 Introduction The term ‘contact literature’ refers to “literatures in English written by the users of English as a second language to delineate contexts which generally do not form part of what may be labelled the tradition of English literature” (Kachru, 1986, p. 161). Contact literature, characterized by a mixture of cultural and linguistic systems L. La Causa (B) University of Catania, Catania, Italy e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk and M. Trojszczak (eds.), Language in Educational and Cultural Perspectives, Second Language Learning and Teaching, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-38778-4_17

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(Condon, 1986), brings two languages and two cultures in contact leading to “an altered context of situation” (Kachru, 1986, p. 164). For this reason, it can be referred as ‘intercultural and interlingual literature’, in which the cultural and linguistic references are used and mixed according to the transcultural bilingual creativity defined indeed as “the purposive and artful reproduction within one language of features from another language” (Scott, 1990, p. 75, as cited in Bamiro, 2011) and as “the result of a textual and contextual blend of two literary and cultural canons—that of the ‘native’ language and culture and that of the ‘other’ tongue” (Kachru, 1965/2015, p. 73). Since authors’ points of view are influenced by multiple linguistic knowledge and by different cultural spaces (Condon, 1986), contact literature presents a mixture of linguistic systems (Condon, 1986) and of cultural elements and, specifically, interculturalism and interlingualism in contact literary works “is rendered through the continuous use of culture-bound references, literary code-switching, lexical borrowing, and linguistic transfers from the mother-tongue, as well as through “speech-functions related to figurative language, proverbs, modes of reference, modes of address, loan translations, prayers, invectives, ritual communication, panegyric, idiomatic expressions, and kinship terms” (Bamiro, 2011, p. 2). By so doing, authors acquire the privilege to be intermediaries between two languages and two cultures, and by emphasizing certain values that are characteristic of a specific culture they are also able to develop empathy (Blioumi, 2015) and intercultural and interlingual knowledge in readers, usually reinforcing positive tolerant attitudes towards the foreign community, shortening the linguistic differences, and promoting the cultural exchange. Contact literature has developed in post-colonial times when “[s]everal genres of so-called “contact literature” have arisen in the Outer Circle English” (Bennui & Hashim, 2014, p. 80), as for example in India, Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, giving us a rich corpus of post-colonial writings whose distinct linguistic features are discussed in a large number of empirical studies (Bennui & Hashim, 2014) even in terms of nativization and acculturation (Bolton, 2003) with the consequent understanding that “the generally held view that the ‘mother tongue’ is the main medium for literary creativity is only partially true” (Kachru, 1986/2015, p. 59). Today, “contact literature” is also emerging in some Expanding circles where such post-colonial writing did not develop but where, due to the current “unprecedented world-wide uses of English” (Kachru, 1986, p. 159), and the increase of English bi-/multilingualism in the globe among both native and non-native users, a “bilingual’s creativity” (Kachru, 1986, p. 159) is emerging and literature is becoming a new local domain where English is creatively used. Researchers have individualized this intercultural and interlingual phenomenon in Thailand (Bennui & Hashim, 2014), China (Zhang, 2002) and Egypt (Albakry & Hancock, 2008; Hassanin, 2012; Lebœuf, 2012) where English has started to be used by non-English authors, especially in novels, implying a move towards the inclusion of Expanding literature in the WEs framework (Bennui & Hashim, 2014, p. 80; Widdowson, 2019). Specifically, in Egypt, contrary to what happened in many colonized countries, a postcolonial literature did not develop since the anti-English feelings and attitudes during and after colonial times, and the high social, cultural, and religious values of Arabic, the language of the Muslim holy book, the Quran, and of Arabic authenticity

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(Bassiouney, 2012) and identity, prevented English language to take over in high creative genres, so that “English has yet to become a significant literary language in Egypt” (Schaub, 2000, p. 234). However, more recently, English has started to gain ground in Egyptian literature as well, especially with the advent of the novel in the twentieth century (Büchler & Guthrie, 2011), and with the publications of Ahdaf Soueif’s (1950-) works, the first example of Egyptian writer using English in literary works, rather than Arabic, her mother-tongue, as the language for creative expression, for this reason considered as “a path-finder in the wave of Arab writers in English of the last two decades of the twentieth century” (Nash, 2007, p. 65) allowing English in Egypt to acquire some imaginative/creative function (Kachru, 1992, p. 58). On a par with Albakry and Hancock’s (2008) study, in which it has been demonstrated that in Soueif’s novel The Map of Love there are numerous cases of code-switching from English to Arabic, this article, which is part of a wider research project, aims at investigating the phenomenon of intercultural and interlingual contacts in Soueif’s other successful novel In the Eye of the Sun (1992), in which she equally uses English, rather than Arabic, as a tool to relate about post-colonial Egypt, very frequently mixing it with culture-bound references, lexical borrowing, and linguistic transfers from Arabic which create “a ‘new English’, a language between two languages” (Albakry & Hancock, 2008, p. 233) as well as “hybrid perspectives” (Lebœuf, 2012, p. 2) which allow “her narratives constantly bring[ing] the West and the Arab world into contact” (Lebœuf, 2012, p. 5, see also Malak, 2005) becoming an intermediary between the two cultures (Blioumi, 2015). This would prove the factual placing of Egypt among the few cases of WEs contact literature in the Expanding area (Bennui & Hashim, 2014). After carefully reading the novel, following the example of Albakry and Hancock’s (2008) study, a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the occurrence and typology of culture-bound references, literary code-switching, lexical borrowings, and all transferred discourse strategies (Kachru, 1986/2015) present in the first two chapters of the novel is held. This analysis, which is based on Kachru’s (1986, 1987) framework on contact linguistics, largely modified and adapted to the purpose of this study, will produce a database of all Arabic terms, translated expressions, loanwords and idioms which refer to the Egyptian culture, history, traditions, and beliefs, as well as of structural and lexical innovations due to the encounter between the two languages, English and Arabic. Data have been manually collected, coded, and classified according to different typologies, largely proper names, surnames, and nicknames; traditional common names, honorific titles, and terms of respect; toponyms, places, cultural buildings, institutions and odonyms; references to typical Egyptian beliefs, social and religious practices, customs and tradition; references to typical Egyptian food and drinks; references to typical Egyptian physical features and fashion style; socio-historical and political references; references to the Egyptian economy and business; Arabic code-switching/mixing, lexical borrowings, and lexical transfers; translational transfer and idiomatic expressions.

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2 Ahdaf Soueif: The First Egyptian English Writer 2.1 Ahdaf Soueif’s Life: Between Egypt and England Ahdaf Soueif is a contemporary Anglo-Egyptian novelist, essayist, and translator (from Arabic into English). She was born on the 23rd of March 1950 in Cairo, the daughter of an academic and intellectual Muslim family (Shanneik, 2004), she was brought up in Egypt, but she moved to England when she was only four (until she was seven) following her mother who was a Ph.D. student there and who later became Professor of English language and literature and an English-Arabic translator. Soueif was educated in Egypt where she graduated from the University of Cairo obtaining a BA in English literature in 1971 and a MA in English and American literature in 1973 (Nash, 2007). Then she continued her university career in England, where she studied for a Ph.D. at the University of Lancaster (British Council: https://litera ture.britishcouncil.org/writer/ahdaf-soueif), presenting a doctoral work in Literary Stylistics (Nash, 2007). After her Ph.D. she firstly moved to Cairo again where she lectured for six years and then to Saudi Arabia (Nash, 2007). She currently lives in Cairo and London. Soueif is the author of two collections of short stories, Aisha (1983), her first publication, and Sandpiper (1996), but she has become well-known thanks to her two novels, In the Eye of the Sun (1992), which is her first novel (Çırçır, 2020; Malek, 2005), and The Map of Love (1999), which was short-listed for the Booker Prize in 1999, in which she uses literary modern strategies combined with typical old Arabic literature techniques (Nash, 2007). She also wrote a story collection I Think of you and an essay collection Mezzaterra: Notes from the Common Ground. Soueif is also a political and cultural commentator, and she often writes for The Guardian, in London (ahdafsoueif.com: http://www.ahdafsoueif.com/). Soueif is “one of a number of Arab authors who emigrated to Western Europe in the second half of the 20th century and who, from their adopted homes, attempt to describe their encounters with cultural otherness” (Shanneik, 2004). For this reason, hers is defined ‘immigrant literature’ (Shanneik, 2004) and she is considered an “Arab diasporic writer in the postcolonial context” who writes “from within the society of Egypt’s former colonizer, Great Britain” (Lebœuf, 2012, p. 1) about post-colonial Egypt. “The duality of her English and Egyptian experiences” (Nash, 2007, p. 65) is reflected in her narrative through a cultural and linguistic mixture that creates hybrid positionalities (Lebœuf, 2012) and contexts, by presenting characters divided between the western and the Egyptian cultures “perpetually engaged in negotiating relationships across cultural boundaries” (Albakry & Hancock, 2008, p. 222) which has earned her the definition of “transcultural writer” (Bolton, 2010, p. 460). For example, in The Map of Love the narrator, Amal, is an Egyptian woman who has lived in the west for a long time, and then she has gone back to Cairo, or, in In the Eye of the Sun, Asya, the main character, is an Egyptian woman studying in England. This leads to a continuous socio-cultural exchange showing a high level of interculturality due to the contact between the English and the Arabic cultures rendered through a

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series of culture-bound references but also, linguistically, through lexical borrowings and transfers (Albakry & Hancock, 2008) which create both interculturalism and interlingualism. Hence, her literature can be definitely categorized as ‘intercultural literature’ and put within the framework of contact literature (Albakry & Hancock, 2008).

2.2 Ahdaf Soueif’s Linguistic Choices One of the main issues of intercultural literature is the use of language. Authors are puzzled about what language they should use in their creative works, whether their mother-tongue or their additional or foreign language, mainly English. Generally, the language choice is mainly concerned with feelings of identity and group belonging, but it can also have political motivations as it occurred during colonial times when Western language and culture were imposed on natives of ex-British colonies of the Outer Circle, a fact that led to certain bilingualism and forced writers into a crisis of identity (Bassnett, 2014), or for economic reasons since writers could feel ‘forced’ to use English, “the language of hegemonic power” (Bassnett, 2014, p. 40) for acquiring a major success and visibility all around the world. As she herself stated during some interviews, Ahdaf Soueif freely chose to write in English instead of using her mother tongue and for this reason she is “commonly known as the Egyptian author who writes in English” (Attalah, 2010). During an interview with Salil Tripathi at the Hindustan University, India, in 2015,1 during another interview with Paula Burnett, at Brunel University, London, in 2000 (transcribed in Soueif, 2008), and during still another interview by Samia Mehrez, Professor of Arab and Islamic civilizations and director of the Translation Studies Center (Attalah, 2010), she claimed that this is not a simple conscious “choice”. She explained: when I started to write I surprised myself by writing in English (…). It wasn’t a plan (Soueif, 2015).

And: Well, it was not a choice. (…) I had assumed that I would write in Arabic. And I didn’t. The sentences kept coming in English (Soueif, 2008)

Ahdaf Soueif seems strongly to identify with the Arabic culture and language, her mother-tongue, but she still surprisingly opted for the use of English for her narrative. She claimed: I surprised myself by being unable to write narrative in Arabic. My Arabic continues to be good for writing a report, or a letter, but it was clearly not doing what I wanted it do when it came to writing fiction. (Attalah, 2010)

1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGMyqJF8owg (last access 18.06.2022).

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She added: I could read Arabic perfectly and I could write Arabic well enough to write a report or even a piece of criticism, but I couldn’t access it to the degree that you need if you are going to actually create art, create fiction, create effects in your reader through language. (…) “being in Egypt during the revolution I was invited to write a column in the most progressive daily Arabic language edition (…) and I resisted that for a while because I was convinced that I couldn’t do it, that I couldn’t actually write a column in Arabic. (…) It was difficult”. “It became too difficult for me to put into Standard Arabic, which is what you have to write in, and so I find myself just skipping that particular idea, because I just do not how to do it. (Soueif, 2015).

According to Soueif, who reflects on the reasons for her own language choice, her tendence to write in English depended on (…) several reasons. But one is that I was in England when I first learned to read. So, when I was five, or whatever, and started reading, I read in English first. And though I learned Arabic and learned to read in Arabic when I was eight, I continued to read in English a lot more than I read in Arabic. (Soueif, 2008)

Her linguistic tendence thus mainly depends on the fact that English is the language in which she has been educated but also the language of the place, London, where she has spent most of her lifetime. In addition, Soueif principally read in English also because she attended schools and university in England where she studied English literature. This has been significant because, by so doing, she could develop a double linguistic identity and she ended up with Arabic as her living-in language and English as her literary language (Soueif, 2015). English has thus become for her the main linguistic tool to express her emotions in narrative, meaning that English has already acquired such a high value as much as to become the means to express even the deepest feelings and ideas. Interestingly, “Soueif’s literary style consisted of thinking out her dialogues in Arabic and writing them in English” (Shanneik, 2004). In Soueif’s words: What was happening was that dialogue came to me in Arabic, but narrative came in English. After a while of this I just gave up and decided that the stories were coming in English and there we were. What would happen would be that I’d write in English, and then when it came to a bit of dialogue, the dialogue would be happening in my head in Arabic, and I’d be typing it out in English. I don’t know why this happened. (Soueif, 2008)

In other words: When the scene was a dialogue, if the characters were Egyptian or Arab, I could hear them speak in Arabic in my head and hence there was a beat for translation. It’s an automatic process. I didn’t think about the translation strategies in theoretical terms. I was writing a story and those characters were speaking. They needed to be sounding authentic, real and alive and that was what I was trying to do. (Attalah, 2010)

This mental uncontrolled translating process (Bassnett, 2014) can be termed selftranslation and it occurs when the artists write the novels in one language with the other running through their head (Bassnett, 2014) which is typical for bilingual or multilingual writers. Interestingly, this is also what occurs, not only in Soueif’s head,

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but also in her bilingual (Arabic/English) readers who reported that when they read the characters’ dialogues in English, they can hear them in their heads in Arabic (Shanneik, 2004). However, being literature a “symbol of the cultural tradition” (Condon, 1986, p. 155), “though Soueif has chosen English as the medium of her creative expression, English alone might be inadequate or inappropriate to reflect her bicultural experience or describe the geographical conditions and cultural practices of her native homeland” (Albakry & Hancock, 2008, p. 223) so that, although her creative writing may be written in English, its syntax and discourse patterns, as well as its lexical patterns inevitably reflect the first language of the community concerned (Kachru & Nelson, 2006) and while writing in English, she also introduces many Arabic words (Hassanin, 2012) and references to the Arabic culture in her novels resulting in an interesting linguistic and stylistic effect which “enable her to participate in both worlds” and to “preserve [her] cultural identity and capture its flavor while at the same time writing about it in the dominant language” (Albakry & Hancock, 2008, p. 233). This creates a strong intercultural and interlinguistic atmosphere in Soueif’s novels.

3 Ahdaf Soueif’s Narrative as a Case of WEs ‘Contact Literature’ in the Expanding Area 3.1 Interlingual and Intercultural References in Ahdaf Soueif’s Novel in the Eye of the Sun In the Eye of the Sun is a quasi-autobiographical novel (Malek, 2005) that Soueif chose to write in English, rather than in Arabic. It tells about the emotional, sexual, and academic journey (Çırçır, 2020) of a young Egyptian Arab Muslim woman, Asya, defined as “a multilayered hybrid” (Malek, 2005, p. 130) character, who studies English literature and goes to the UK to pursue a Ph.D. (Attalah, 2010) later becoming a Professor of English Literature in England and Egypt. The story is set against repressive political climate and key events in the history of modern Egypt (British Council) and, while telling Asya’s life in Egypt and England, for which it has been defined ‘The Great Egyptian Novel about England’ (Ahdaf Soueif’s official webpage: https://www.ahdafsoueif.com/Books/in_the_eye_of_the_sun.htm), “it chronicles the history of Egypt between the years 1967 and 1980” (Çırçır, 2020, p. 13) for which it has also acquired the label of ‘The Great English Novel about Egypt’ (Ahdaf Soueif’s official webpage: https://www.ahdafsoueif.com/Books/in_the_eye_ of_the_sun.htm). The novel shows a certain cultural and linguistic hybridity (Çırçır, 2020) which creates a mixture of perspectives (Lebœuf, 2012) constantly bringing the West and the Arab worlds into contact (Lebœuf, 2012; Malak, 2005). This is demonstrated by the continuous intrusion of Arab linguistic words and expressions or of Egyptian

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cultural references, and especially of proper names, toponyms, places, institutions and odonyms, traditional common names, honorific titles, and terms of respect, references to typical Egyptian customs, traditions, beliefs, social and religious practices, references to typical Egyptian food and drinks, references to typical Egyptian physical features and fashion style, references to typical Egyptian artistic/architectonic style and monuments, socio-historical and political references, references to Egyptian economy and business and other Arabic code-switching, borrowings, and lexical transfers, which are highlighted throughout the book with the use of the cursive Latinate script (Franko language) and which never appear in the Arabic alphabet. In addition, Soueif provides her English readers with a glossary of many of the Arabic words used in her novel at the end of the book. In the novel, some cases of grammatical transfers, translational transfers and idiomatic expressions have been detected as well. Examples taken from the first two chapter of the novel are listed in the database below. (1) Typical Arabic proper names, surnames, and nicknames In the novel, male and female characters have names and surnames with Arabic (or Hebrew) origins that are predominantly and typically used throughout the Mediterranean region and the Arab world, or they are given nicknames by using an Arabic term, such as: Proper names and surnames Nadia (p. 3)/Nadia Mursi (p. 9) Ismail Mursi (p. 4) Hamid Mursi (p. 5) Asya (p. 5)/Asya al-Ulama (p. 9) Kareem (p. 5) Deela (p. 6) Soraya (p. 6) Fadeela al-Nabulsi (p. 7) Lateefa (p. 7) Saif (p.18) Muhsin Nur-el-Din (p. 24) Zeina (p. 35) ‘Abd el-Hadi (p. 36) Muhammad al-Fadl (p. 37) Zayid (p. 37) Salih (p. 50) Haniyya (p. 52) Ibrahim (p. 54) Deeb (p. 57) Zakariyya Muhyi-d-Din (p. 62) El-Manzalawi (p. 68) Ne’ma (p. 69) Meedo (p. 68) Nicknames Zuku (p. 28)

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(2) Traditional common names, honorific titles, and terms of respect There are many examples in the text of the use of common names, honorific Arabic titles and terms of respect such as: Common names Khalu (p. 3)

In Arabic : maternal uncle, sometimes replaced by the English term ‘uncle’ throughout the novel as in uncle Sidki (p. 19)

Tante (p. 6)

In Arabic

Mama (p. 6)

In Arabic

: grandmother

Geddu (p. 38)

In Arabic

: grandfather

’Am (p. 45)

In Arabic : literary paternal uncle, used colloquially as title of respect for older man

: aunt

Honorific titles : an old Persian title given to the emperors and kings of Iran

Eternal Shah (p. 17)

In Arabic

Sheikh (p. 28)

In Arabic : an honorific title in the Arabic language which commonly designates a chief of a tribe or a royal family member in Arabian countries

Dada (p. 35)

In Arabic : a “polite middle-class title for nanny, nurse or other serving-woman” (Soueif, 1992, p. 787)

Sayyida (p. 51)

In Arabic : an honorific title denoting people accepted as descendants of the Islamic prophet Muhammad

Pasha (p. 68)

In Arabic

Sett (p. 70)

: lady. “This title is mostly used in modern and contemporary In Arabic, Egypt to address higher-status women (akin to the colonial concept of English Lady)” (Albakry & Hancock, 2008, p. 227)

: a higher rank in the Ottoman political and military system

Terms of respect Sidi (p. 6)

In Arabic

: my master

(3) Toponyms, places, cultural buildings, institutions and odonyms The novel is rich of references to Egyptian cities and regions, Egyptian places, institutions and cultural buildings, and name of streets. Examples are: Toponyms : two

Port Said and Ismailia (p. 5)

In Arabic and cities in the north-east of Egypt

Alexandria (p. 5)

: a port city located on In Arabic the Mediterranean Sea in the northern Egypt and one of the major Egyptian cities

Sidi Bishr (p. 6)

In Arabic, : a neighbourhood in the Montaza District of Alexandria, Egypt

Cairo (p. 10)

In Arabic

: the Egyptian capital city (continued)

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(continued) Damanhur (p. 26)

: a city in Lower Egypt, In Arabic located 160 km northwest of Cairo

Beheira Province (p. 26)

: a coastal In Arabic governorate in Egypt whose capital is Damanhur

Abu-Rdeis (p. 34)

: a city in South Sinai In Arabic Governorate, Egypt

Zamalek (p.34)

In Arabic

Suez Canal (p. 49)

In Arabic : an artificial canal running north–south across the Isthmus of Suez in Egypt connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea

Heliopolis (p. 50)

‘City of the Sun’, one of the most important ancient Egyptian cities

Giza (p. 50)

: the second largest city of In Arabic Egypt after Cairo

Abassiya (p. 51)

In Arabic

District of Bein es-Sarayat (p. 51)

A district of Giza, next to Egypt’s Cairo University

Al-’Arish (p. 56)

: the capital and largest city In Arabic of the North Sinai Governorate of Egypt

Khan Younis (p. 56)

In Arabic Gaza Strip

The Nile Valley (p. 65)

In Arabic the River Nile flows

: a district of western Cairo

: a neighbourhood in Cairo

: a city in the southern : the valley on which

Places The City of the Dead (p. 28)

Also referred to as the Qarafa, in Arabic: : a vast Islamic-era necropolis and cemetery in Cairo, Egypt

The Qasr (p. 37)/Qasr el-‘Eini (p. 38)

:a Qasr El Eyni, in Arabic public hospital which hosts the medical school of Cairo University

Cairo International Airport (p. 49)

In Arabic international airport of Cairo

Mazallat (p. 50)

In Arabic

’Arish Airport (p. 56)

In Arabic near Al-’Arish

: the main

: a Metro Station in Cairo : an airport

Midan el-’Ataba-l-Khandra (p. 64–65)/’Ataba The site of Cairo’s largest fresh food market (p. 65)/’Ataba Market (p. 67) The Place of Green Threshold (p. 64)

Another way to refer to the market (Ataba means ‘threshold’)

Station at Ramses (p. 65)

In Arabic station of Cairo

: the main railway

Cultural buildings and monuments (continued)

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(continued) Sphinx (p. 17)

It refers to the Great Sphinx of Giza, a monumental statue representing the mythical creature of a Sphinx

Nawwaz Pasha’s mausoleum (p. 28)

A graveyard built as family mausoleum in which the tomb of Nawwaz Pasha is situated

Gardens of al-Tahira Palace (p. 59) Tahira presidential palace (p. 60)

Located in Cairo, it is a palace in Italian style built for Princess Amina, daughter of Khedive Ismael and mother of Mohammed Taher Pasha

High Dam (p. 63)

The Aswan High Dam, the largest artificial Dam built across the Nile, Egypt

Mida nel-Opera (p. 65)

Theatre in Cairo

Citadel of Salah-u-din (p. 65)

: a medieval In Arabic Islamic-era fortification in Cairo, Egypt, built by the first sultan of Egypt, Salah ad-Din

National Theatre (p. 65)

Located in Cairo, it is one of the most important cultural buildings in Egypt and considered as one of the masterpieces of the world

Institutions Cairo University (p. 24)

In Arabic : the most important and ancient public university in Egypt

Ein Shams University (p. 28)

: a public In Arabic university located in Cairo, Egypt

Odonyms Hassan Pasha Sabri Street (p. 34)

A street in Cairo which takes the name after the Egyptian politician Hassan Pasha Sabri

Shagaret al-Durr Street (p. 36)

A street in Cairo which take the name after the sultana Shajarat al-Durr, in Arabic , who ruled Egypt in 1250

Shari’ al-Azhar (p. 65)

One of the most important and historical streets in Cairo city centre

Shari’ Farouk (p. 65) Farouk Street (p. 66)

To be noticed, Soueif sometime uses the Arabic word Shari’ which means ‘street’, while other times she translates it into English, using both terms interchangeably, as in the case of Shari’ Farouk ad Farouk Street

More examples of odonyms are: Shari’ Muhammad ‘Ali (p. 65), Shari’ Klut Bey (p. 65), Shari’ Adli (p. 65), Shari’ Sarwat (p. 65), Shari’ ‘Abd el-’Aziz (p. 65), Shari’ el-Geish (p. 67), all famous streets in Cairo. (4) References to typical Egyptian beliefs, social and religious practices, customs and tradition The book contains many references to Egyptian religious beliefs and practices, superstitions, and social behaviours, as well as references to customs and traditions such as local music and literature. Some of these references include:

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Beliefs and superstitions evil-eye (p. 6)

There is a reference to the evil-eye in the Islamic doctrine. Muslims are generally superstitious and use amulets or talisman as a means of protection against the evil-eye

Religious practices and references “it will be time for evening prayers before I’ve done the sunset ones” (p. 7) “prays the sunset prayers” (p. 23) “every morning he rises at daybreak, washes and prays the morning prayers” (p. 27)

The Islamic religion imposes five prayer times daily, which are determined by the position of the sun in the sky. These are: the sunset prayer (Mahgrib), the evening prayer (Isha), the twilight prayer (Fajr), the noon prayer (Zuhr), and the afternoon prayer (Asr)2

Ramadam (p. 17)

In Arabic : it is the nineth month of the Islamic calendar during which Muslims do not eat or drink between dawn and sunset

Qur’an (p. 21)

In Arabic

Shahada (p. 37)

In Arabic : literary ‘statement of witness’ (Soueif, 1992, p. 790). It is the statement of Muslim Creed

: Islam’s holy book

Social behaviors “[…] Asya, she could not be persuaded by her parents to wait till she had finished college before she married” (p. 25)

This sentence is a reference to the Egyptian patriarchal domesticity, marriage tradition, and family values (Shihada, 2010, p. 158)

“the General Certificate of Secondary Education: the Thanawiyya ‘Ama. Your performance in this exam, taken at the age of seventeen, determines which college and which University you get into. And therefore, it is very likely to determine the whole course of your future life and status in this world” (p. 33–34)

This statement gives some information about the Egyptian higher school system, with a subtle reference to the elitist and selective nature of education in Egypt, where people who can afford school and University’s fees have more opportunities to improve their social status

“She is permitted the initiative in lunch-table conversations much more now that she is studying for the Thanawiyya ‘Ama” (p. 35)

This utterance alludes to Arabic turn-taking rules according to which sex and social rank of interlocutors are important aspects (Ajaaj, 2014). Usually, male interlocutors have much more predominance than females in holding the floor, as well as a high-rank person is more committed in speech (Ajaaj, 2014)

Cultural references Sheikh Imam (p. 28)

Imam Mohammad Ahmad Eissa, in Arabic: (1918–1955) was a famous blind Egyptian composer and singer singing political songs, mostly in favour of the poor oppressed classes (continued)

2

https://www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/students/97to98/exhibits/pg_prytm.htm (last access 18/06/2022).

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(continued) Son’allah Ibrahim (p. 28)

In Arabic: (1937) is an Egyptian novelist and short story writer

The smell of it (p. 28)

In Arabic (1996) is Son’allah Ibrahim’s first book. Set during the rule of Gamal Abdel Nasser, is about a young Egyptian writer who had been a political prisoner who once released, takes a look at the street life in his country

Muhammad Hassanein Heikal (p. 43)

Muhammad Hassanein Heikal (1923–2016) was an Egyptian journalist, editor-in-chief of the Cairo newspaper Al-Ahram and was a commentator on Arab affairs for more than 50 years

Cleopatra (p. 51)

Egyptian queen in 52 B.C

Fayda Kamel (p. 52)

Faida Mahmoud Kamel is an Egyptian singer who worked in cinema as well

Ahmad Sa’eed (p. 52)

Chief Broadcaster on Voices of the Arabs (Soueif, 1992, p. 52)

Voices of the Arabs (p. 52)

In Arabic: , is one of the first and most prominent Egyptian transnational Arabic-language radio services

Al Akhbar newspaper (p. 57)

In Arabic newspaper

Cairo Radio (p. 57)

One of the most popular online radio stations in Egypt

Ummu Kulthoum (p. 62)

, born F¯at.ima ‘Ibr¯ah¯ım In Arabic: es-Sayyid el-Belt¯agˇ ¯ı was an Egyptian singer, songwriter, and film actress

: a daily Arabic language

(5) References to typical Egyptian food and drinks The novel presents some references to typical Egyptian food and drinks, such as: Food ta’miyya (p. 51)

In Arabic : “small fried cakes made of ground beans” (Soueif, 1992, p. 791)

Arabisco biscuits (p. 51)

‘Arabisco’ is how biscuits are called in Egypt

Corona chocolate in faded red and tallow wrappers (p. 51)

Corona is the oldest confectionery and chocolate company in the Egyptian market

Rocketa chewy chocolate (p. 54)

A Corona milk chocolate bar with a chewy filling which is well-known in Egypt (continued)

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(continued) Drinks Spathis (p. 52)

Egypt’s first Soda

Sherbet (p. 43)

; is an Iranian drink common In Persian: in the Arab world

(6) References to typical Egyptian physical features and fashion style The book contains a lot of references to typical Egyptian look, make up, dress and typical clothing accessories. Physical features “Ismail Mursi’s eyes had been black black: deep and shining and looking as though they were lined with kohl—like Nasser’s. Typical Upper Egyptian eyes” (p. 4) “[…] slim, dark-skinned, brown-eyed, specifically Egyptian-looking young man with crinkly hair and a pleasant smile” (p. 31) Clothes and accessories Tahra (p. 7)

“length of chiffon—usually in either black or white—worn as a loose headcovering by women” (Soueif, 1992, p. 791)

Hijab (p. 17)

In Arabic

: headcovering worn by Muslim women

Make-up Kohl (p. 4)

Black powder used for lining the inner rims of the eyelids (Soueif, 1992, p. 789)

(7) Socio-historical and political references In the novel, Soueif makes extensive references to the colonial and imperial history of Egypt (Çırçır, 2020). Indeed, “In the Eye of the Sun is a heavily political novel and it draws attention to post-colonial issues” (Çırçır, 2020, p. 12) and being a post-colonial novel (Çırçır, 2020; Lebœuf, 2012), it is inevitably full of historical references to the recent Egyptian events with the name of Egyptian politicians, names of political plans, reference to political and social movements and revolutions, information about historical events: Political figures Nasser (p. 4)/ cAbd el-Nasser’s speeches (p. 17) Gam¯al cAbd al-N¯as.ir H.usayn, Egyptian politician who served as the second President of Egypt from 1954 until his death in 1970 cAbd el-Kareem Qassem (p. 16) Iraqi Army brigadier and nationalist who came to the power during the 14th July Revolution and was overthrown and executed during the Ramadan Revolution in 1963 (continued)

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(continued) Sadat (p. 17)

Egyptian President from 15th October 1970 until his assassination by fundamentalist army officers on 6th October 1981

Marshal cAbdul-Hakim cAmer (p. 43)

In Arabic: (1919–1967) was an Egyptian military officer and politician

Defence Minister Shams Badran (p. 43)

; (1929–2020) In Arabic: was an Egyptian government official. He served as minister of defence of Egypt during Gamal Abdel Nasser’s era

cSalah al-Hadidi (p. 63)

“commander of the Army in Cairo” (Soueif, 1992, p. 63)

Salah Nasr (p. 63)

Salah Nasr (1920–1982), Egyptian politician and head of the General Intelligence Directorate from 1957 to 1967. Imprisoned and then released by Sadat in 1974

Political and social movements and revolutions Islamic groups (p. 17) Arab Unity (p.17) The “movement” (p. 25) National Democratic League (p 25) Left-wing underground organizations inspired by liberal intellectual ideas (p. 25) Mabahith (p. 29): the Egyptian secret service, used for domestic purposes (Soueif, 1992, p. 789) Muslim Brotherhood (p. 63) Socio-historical events and references “London and Washington have got Kuwaiti and Sudi and Gulf oil. Plus their own. Do they have to have Iraq’s as well?” (p. 17) The Palestinian Cause (p.17) The open-door economic policy (p. 17) US AID and bilateral peace with Israel (p. 18) Egyptian Higher Council for Family Planning’s policy (p.21, 23) Visual Aids Projects (p. 21) Egypt’s repressive climate (p. 25) “the United Nations Emergency Forces withdrawal (from Egyptian/Israeli boundaries” (p. 41) Egyptian troops on the Israeli frontier (p. 42) British Occupation (p. 63)

(8) References to the Egyptian economy and business In the novel, there are some references to the Egyptian economy. Examples are:

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Economy and business references Oil company (p. 8)

Egypt plays a significant role in global crude oil trade being the Suez Canal and the Mediterranean Sea two major routes for its transport

fallaha (p. 23): a peasant, literary a tiller (of the soil) (Soueif, 1992, p. 788) “He got what they [Egyptians] called ‘compensation’: seven thousand Egyptian pounds after nine years” (p. 11) agricultural Egypt […] dreaming up new systems of irrigation (p. 26–27)

(9) Arabic code-switching/mixing, lexical borrowings, and lexical transfers In contact literature, it is easy to find code-mixing and switching with the use of terms coming from the “total verbal repertoire available to a bilingual” (Kachru, 1986, p. 164). Soueif uses code-switching, specifically lexical borrowing and transfers from Arabic (Albakry & Hancock, 2008). Examples are: Lexical borrowings and transfers Tabliyya (p. 23)

Low round wooden table traditionally used for eating by the poorer classes (Soueif, 1992: 791)

bazaar (p. 38)

From the Arabic

Shishas (p. 54)

From the Arabic nargile)

: marketplace : waterpipe (Turkish

Shari’ (p. 65)

From the Arabic

: street

Zebiba (p. 66)

“a brown mark that appears on the skin of the forehead as a result of much praying” (Soueif, 1992, p. 791)

“Sheikh Zayid salaams him politely” (p. 66) to salaam is a verb referring to a common greeting in many Arabic-speaking and Muslim countries consisting of a low bow of the head and body with the hand or fingers touching the forehead Galabiyya (p. 68)

Long, loose gown worn by traditional men to relax or sleep in

Code-switching/mixing “This is the uterus—also known as the womb and home of the child “beit el-weld”.” (p. 20) Hashish-filled cigarette (p.54)

In Arabic:

, herb

(10) Grammatical Transfer Due to the “bilingual’s grammar” (Kachru, 1986, p. 163) it can also happen that the English grammatical structure is affected by L1 grammatical features, as in the following cases:

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Grammatical transfer black black (p. 4)

Reduplication of an adjective, rather than using the adverb very, for creating a superlative form

“I said that?” (p. 9)

Non-use of the auxiliary verb in the interrogative form due to the inexistence of the auxiliar verb in (Egyptian) Arabic

el-Prof (p. 28)

The use of the Arabic definite article

Shishas (p. 54)

Use of the suffix -s attached to an Arabic word to for the plural form

attached to an English word

(11) Translational transfer and idiomatic expressions As far as the nativization of rhetorical strategy (Kachru, 1986) is concerned, with the translational transfer of native similes, metaphors, and rhetorical devices, or with the translation of proverbs (Kachru, 1986, p. 167), it does not seem to be very used. The only simile found is the following: The girl Ne’ma stands up in stages like a camel (p. 69)

Conversely, there are numerous examples of culture-dependent speech styles (Kachru, 1986) with the almost literal translation of idiomatic expressions from the (Egyptian) Arabic language (Albakry & Hancock, 2008). Examples are: Idiomatic expressions “God in His wisdom has given each woman two ovaries. Each ovary with the grace of God produces an egg every eight weeks” (p. 20):

An almost literary translation of the Arabic expression Ma sha Allah, in Arabic , used to express impressment or beautifulness for an event. It is sometimes used to be protected from the evil eye

“by the will of God […]. If such be the will of God.” (p. 20):

An almost literary translation of the Arabic expression in sha’Allah, in Arabic: , meaning “God willing”

“God is generous” (p. 23)/“God preserve both A continuous invocation to God which is their families” (p. 29)/“God grant him typical in Arabic discourses patience” (p. 37)/“God has mercy on His worshippers” (p. 51)/“Praise God and thank Him” (p. 65)/“God have mercy on his soul” (p. 67) “We thank God” (p. 66)

The answer “We thank God” after the question “How’s Yorsi doing?” (p. 66): an almost literary translation from the Arabic expression Alhamdulillah, in Arabic: “thank God”

, meaning

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4 Discussion The quantitative and qualitative analysis has shown that Ahdaf Soueif’s novel In the Eye of the Sun is rich in Arabic-English intercultural and interlinguistic references. As for the former, it has been observed that the author makes an abundant use of culture-bound instances, from typical Arabic proper names to toponyms and odonyms, from traditional common names to honorific titles, from references to typical Egyptian customs and traditions to references to social and religious practices, from references to typical Egyptian food and drink to typical Egyptian physical features and fashion style, from socio-historical and political events to references to the Egyptian economy and business. As for the latter, it has been found that the novel is rich in literary code-switching, lexical borrowing and lexical transfers from the Arabic language. However, interlinguistic interferences do not only occur at a word level, but also at a grammatical level with some morphosyntactic transfers mainly ascribed to the natural bilingual tendence to introduce L1 features in the English structure. Another interesting although less frequent finding is at a rhetorical level with the introduction of figurative language such as Arabic proverbs, idioms and culturally-linked metaphors and expression literary translated into English. The use of culture-bound references and linguistic transfers from Arabic have two consequences. On the one hand, from a socio-cultural point of view, by reflecting the history, the culture, the customs, the beliefs and traditions of Egypt they inevitably bring to a nativization of contexts (Kachru, 1986) creating a foreignizing effect in the novel (Albakry & Hancock, 2008) which brings readers to virtually travel to Egypt. On the other hand, from a (socio)linguistic point of view, linguistic interferences make the language used in Soueif’s literature not to be ‘really English’ but a product of language contact, “a language between two languages” (Albakry & Hancock, 2008, p. 233). As such, Soueif makes a contribution in the creation of a “new English” (Albakry & Hancock, 2008, p. 233) allowing Egypt to become a new context where English is creatively employed on par with other Kachruvian Expanding Circle countries such as Thailand (Bennui & Hashim, 2014) and China (Zhang, 2002).

5 Conclusion This article has demonstrated that while writing her novel, In the Eye of the Sun, in English, as not so much expected by a non-English writer, Ahdaf Soueif makes frequent references to the Egyptian culture as well as an extensive use of linguistic transfers from the Arabic language, her mother tongue. The interesting combination of the two cultural and linguistic systems (Condon, 1986) makes Soueif’s novel to be categorized under the ‘contact literature’ label. By mixing the Arabic and English cultures, the author makes herself an intermediary between the two worlds (Blioumi, 2015) making a dialogue (Shanneik, 2004) and

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promoting a certain integration into the two societies (Shanneik, 2004) while by blending the two languages, she becomes the creator of a new mixed linguistic form used in literature for the writing of novels appearing above all in the form of “Artistic Codemixing” (Picone, 2002). The creation of an intercultural “Euro-Arab literature”, with its numerous interlinguistic elements, helps Egypt, still classified as an Expanding country, finally be included in the WEs framework (Bennui & Hashim, 2014; Widdowson, 2019), even if for Egypt to more deeply entering the WEs literature, further publications are needed offering major occasions of contact between the English and the Egyptian literary and linguistic tradition (Büchler & Guthrie, 2011).

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Lucia La Causa holds a Ph.D. in ‘Sciences of Interpretation’ at the University of Catania, in the Department of Humanities. Her research interests focus on English Variationist Sociolinguistics and in her Ph.D. dissertation she has investigated the variety of English spoken in Egypt considered a potential new variety. Her article ‘“Egyptian English” as an emerging glocal language’ is published in the review Currents. A Journal of Young English Philology Thought and Review and her article ‘Arabic-English code-switching in Egyptian rap music and social networks’ is published in the volume Language, Expressivity and Cognition: From Words to Emotions and back. London: Bloomsbury.

Correction to: Integration of Cognate Loan Verbs in Contact Between Closely Related Languages Effecting Valency Changes Wiebke Juliane Elter

Correction to: Chapter 12 in: B. Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk and M. Trojszczak (eds.), Language in Educational and Cultural Perspectives, Second Language Learning and Teaching, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-38778-4_12 The original version of the chapter was inadvertently published with the missed corrections, which have now been updated. The erratum book and the chapter have been updated with the changes.

The updated version of this chapter can be found at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-38778-4_12 © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk and M. Trojszczak (eds.), Language in Educational and Cultural Perspectives, Second Language Learning and Teaching, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-38778-4_18

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