The Swansea Applied Linguistics Journal Issue 5 (Summer, 2022)

The

Swansea Applied Linguistics Journal No 5, Summer 2022 Photography by Yen Lim

Illustrations by Martin Lee-Paterson

This issue is dedicated to the memory of our friend Lukáš Kliment.

Welcome Croeso

H

ello and welcome to the 2022 edition of the Swansea Applied Linguistics Journal, both to our regular readers and to those discovering us for the first time. If you’ve just opened up this issue, chances are you are a linguist. That is, a student, an academic, an enthusiast, or maybe your interest has just recently been piqued. The Swansea Applied Linguistics Journal is made up entirely of work by students from Swansea University, and it aims to be a readable and enjoyable experience for everyone.

This issue brings you a wide range of essays. From more established fields in English language studies we have Celyn Davies’ essay on the history of the English and Ellie Dickinson’s fresh considerations on English Language teaching. We also have work on newer areas like Shawn Lee’s essay on language and power in legal proceedings, Josh Richardson’s stylistic analysis of Ernest Hemingway and Toni Morrison, and Rebecca Geddes’ work on the representation of Indian and Jamaican English in film.

Whilst this academic year marked a return to normality for many of us, the year was not without its challenges for students. However, we students have learned to adapt to change and grasp its potentials. It is encouraging that even in difficulty we strive for the best. I hope you enjoy this issue and if you’d like to get in touch about any of the work published in the journal, e-mail us at lingjournalswansea@gmail.com or contact us via Twitter @SwanseaApplied.

Daniel Strogen Editor

The Editorial Team Editor Daniel Strogen Assistant Editors Chloe Williams Martin Lee-Paterson Proof-readers Courtney Gillingham Valeria Cescato Judy Yung Ross Evans Photographer Isaiah Yen Lim Illustrator Martin Lee-Paterson Staff Advisor Dr Alexia Bowler Write to us If you have any feedback, ideas, views, or questions please write to us using the contact details above to the right. We welcome all suggestions by our fellow students!

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Contact us E-MAIL lingjournalswansea@gmail .com

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Join us We welcome all students at Swansea University with an interest in the English language to join our editorial team. Please contact our editor if you would like to join us. e: lingjournalswansea@gmail .com

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Contents 01 English on the shores of Britain Celyn examines the history of the English language

12 Language Teaching Methodology Ellie looks at some key considerations in teaching in the English learning classroom

23 Representation of Indian and Jamaican English in Film Rebecca examines the representation of two varieties in film

39 Research Methods for ELT Vicky looks at fresh research methods for ELT

47 Isolation and Chaos: The Stylistics of Hemingway and Morrison Joshua offers a stylistic analysis

62 Mythbusting: Monolingualism and Endangered Languages Martin questions a common myth

Turn page for more…

73 Language and Power in Law Shawn asks: What is the relationship between power and language in law?

89 McLanguage: Language as Evidence Josh describes the role of language as evidence

101 Chavs in the News Daniel examines the representation of the working class in news editorials

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English on the shores of Britain Celyn Davies, 2nd Year: A History of the English Language

In 1783, a scholar in Oriental culture named Sir William Jones ventured to a city in India called Calcutta. Two years after his return, he began to read ancient documents from the fourth and sixth centuries AD which were written in Sanskrit - an ancient Indian language (Baugh & Cable, 2002). Upon reading, Jones realised that the documents' vocabulary, grammatical structure, and systematic sound relationships were very similar to the European languages of Latin and Greek. Jones later delivered the Third Anniversary Discourse to the Asiatic Society in 1786, where he suggested that the languages of a large part of Asia and a large part of Europe were at one time identical. These languages had cognates, meaning words that had a common root, and shared strong similarities in the forms of grammar (Jones, 1786). Thus, the concept IndoEuropean (IE) was born. However, this term was not coined until 1814 by a man named Thomas Young. Its definition derives from ‘Indos’, meaning India, and ‘European’ referring to the continent. This essay focuses on the descent of the English language, and its eventual arrival on the shores of Britain.

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Although Indo-European is a correct and vastly used word to describe this group of languages, Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is preferred by many linguists.

PIE is the name of the hypothetical parent language from which it is assumed Indo-European stems. Due to languages such as Latin and Greek sharing similarities with Sanskrit, August Schleicher thought that there must be many more languages that share similarities. This led him to create a hypothetical family tree model, more specifically the Proto-Indo-European Family Tree model in 1863. However, there is no written record of this language, making it hypothetical. Schleicher ultimately based his model on linguistic reconstruction. He collected common characteristics of the languages he studied which had similarities, and then reconstructed the hypothetical ProtoIndo-European parent language (Bynon, 1986). Schleicher’s use of linguistic reconstruction can be seen in Schleicher’s Fable The Sheep and the Horses. The 1868 publication is comprised of short narrative tales of reconstructed IndoEuropean words that he found applicable from his day (Mallory & Adams, 2006). It gave a suggestion of what Proto-Indo-European may have looked and sounded like.

Schleicher’s research into this field led to further developments in IndoEuropean research. One of these was the Centum-Satem Division. The word ‘centum’ comes from the Latin word for hundred and is pronounced with a k-

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sound. Many languages such as French use this pronunciation for words like ‘cent’, pronounced ‘kent’. The word ‘satem’, however, derives from the word ‘hundred’ in the ancient Iranian language of Avestan (Baugh & Cable, 2002).

Instead of the k-sound, the satem languages would use an s-sound. For example, the word ‘cent’ would be pronounced as ‘sent’. The K vs S sound divided the western and eastern Indo-European languages; however, the k-sound was thought to be the original PIE form. This means that the IE languages more than likely all used the centum pronunciation at one point. It is believed that the s-sound was a later development.

Jacob Grimm, one of the Grimm brothers, formulated Grimm’s Law, also known as the First Germanic Sound Shift in 1822. His idea for this law came following a suggestion from the Danish linguist, Rasmus Rask, who demonstrates the historical origin of the umlaut (Antonsen, 1962). From Rask’s suggestion, Grimm composed an explanation that accounted for the nine correspondences between some consonants in the Germanic languages and those found in languages like Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit (Baugh & Cable, 2002). These correspondences in consonants include a p in Indo-European languages such as Latin, which was changed to an f in the Germanic languages.

For example, the Latin word pēs is foot in the Germanic languages. This pattern is not solely seen with p and f, however. The voiceless stops p, t and k

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were changed to the fricatives f, h and þ. The latter letter is an extinct runic letter, equivalent today to the th-sound. An example of this change is the difference between the Latin centum (pronounced with a k-sound), and the English hundred. The final group of consonants that were changed were the original voiced stops b, d and g. These changed to voiceless ones in the Germanic languages. This then meant that Latin words like cannabis were changed to the English hemp. This change also highlights the aforementioned shift of k to h (Baugh & Cable, 2002).

Although Grimm’s Law was a widely accepted one, it did have counterexamples. Karl Verner came up with what is called Verner’s Law in 1875. He theorised that the reflex of a voiceless stop in Proto-Indo-European is not always a voiceless fricative in the Germanic languages, but is sometimes a voiced plosive (Noske, 2009). Voiceless fricatives were voiced in Germanic when the IE accent was not on the vowel that came before. Simply put, Germanic retains p, t and k after an s, and these same letters are unchanged after a voiceless stop. For example, t remains unchanged after the voiceless stop k. Verner’s Law was a great exception to Grimm’s Law. It helped solidify his claim with further evidence. Around the time of Grimm and Verner, it was believed that the sounds of the ProtoIndo-European languages occurred solely in these languages. A hypothesis by Ferdinand de Saussure in 1879 disproved

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this original belief when he discovered that the ancient language of the Hittite people shared similar sound patterns to PIE. More specifically, the sound pattern that de Saussure believed to occur in Hittite as much as it did IE was called a ‘laryngeal’ (Baugh & Cable, 2002). There is no distinctive evidence as to where in the mouth laryngeals are pronounced. However, it is possible that they were pronounced very far back in the throat. The sound is made by closing your larynx in the middle of a sentence. The discovery of the laryngeal, and both laws discussed above proved to be revolutionary to the birth and realisation of Indo-European.

Aside from the laws and processes of the birth of PIE, there are many theories of the origins of the PIE language that the Indo-Europeans spoke. One theory came from Lithuanian-American archaeologist Marija Gimbutas. One of the original theories was that the Indo-Europeans had originated from the Aryan people, but Gimbutas disproved this theory. Gimbutas linked the speakers of Proto-Indo-European to the Kurgan burial mounds in the Pontic Steppes north of the Black Sea (Pereltsvaig & Lewis, 2015). Many believed the IndoEuropeans to be heroes, but Gimbutas associated them as savage, patriarchal warrior bands, thus making them villains. However, Gimbutas’ original association proved to be incorrect following excavations of Neolithic villages in south-eastern Europe. In the villages where the Indo-Europeans were said to

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have lived, it was discovered that the culture was peaceful and almost genderegalitarian (Pereltsvaig & Lewis, 2015). Gimbutas (1974) describes this society as female-centred and goddess-worshipping. They also lacked any offensive weapons, making them a defensive society.

An opposing view of Gimbutas’ includes that of Colin Renfrew (1990).

Renfrew’s Processual Language Change believes that there are three processes in which languages come to be spoken in a particular region. These processes include initial colonization, replacement, and continuous development. Initial colonization begins with a previously uninhabited region. Humans will move into this region, making it their own. These humans will bring their language to this newly inhabited region making it the new, official language of the region. The second process, replacement, is when a language spoken in a region is displaced by another language. This process can occur due to a different, possibly adjacent regions moving into another region. This is a familiar process in recent centuries. Renfrew uses the example of the languages of Europe spreading across Australasia and the Americas. The final process Renfrew describes is continuous development. This process includes many factors.

Continuous development can be when a language is continued due to education about its techniques. It can also be due to religion. Most religious texts often remain unaltered through time, meaning people can continue the

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development of a certain language through these religious texts. These factors help stabilise a language.

The opposite tendencies of the ones just spoken of are called innovation. This can include borrowing and inventing new words which will become new grammatical forms. Renfrew tells us that stability and innovation can be contrasted by divergence and convergence. Divergence arises randomly in isolation, whereas convergence arises through interaction, meaning the languages of neighbouring areas increasingly become more common. This can go as far as two languages morphing into one, which in turn can create a creole language.

The Indo-European family tree has many branches of languages that stem from it. English is one, and it belongs to the Germanic branch. Like PIE, Germanic has derived from the hypothetical parent language of Proto-Germanic. ProtoGermanic was much easier to reconstruct than PIE was. Its daughters languages, such as English, had only been diverging for a short period before being recorded (Ringe, 2017). Although Proto-Germanic itself is a branch, it has three main branches: West Germanic, North Germanic, and East Germanic.

Every language from the East Germanic branch is extinct, and there is no record of any of the languages, apart from Gothic. It is the oldest written

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language of the Germanic family tree, and its record can be found in the Codex Argenteus, a Bible translation from the 4th century (Lambdin, 2006). The Codex Argenteus was revolutionary in the linguistic reconstruction of other Germanic languages, simply because it was documented. North Germanic, however, contains languages still spoken today, like Danish and Norwegian. Of these Germanic branches, English belongs to the West Germanic branch, alongside languages like German and Dutch.

All the laws and processes previously mentioned led to the eventual arrival of English on the shores of Britain. However, far before the English known today, came Old English. Preceding the arrival of Old English, the Celts inhabited Britain with languages like Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, and Irish Gaelic. When the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Frisians arrived in Britain in 449AD, the Celts were ambushed, forced to flee to regions like Wales and Brittany, and even intermarried with these tribes (Crystal, 2004). Their arrival to Britain supports the replacement process in Renfrew’s Processual Language Change hypothesis.

These four tribes arrived in Britain individually, bringing over languages and dialects of their own from across Europe. Although their languages were not identical, it is possible that they were mutually intelligible. The tribes are likely to have originated from the same place, or in proximity of each other in Europe (Baugh & Cable, 2002). This meant that they could more than likely

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understand and communicate with each other. The amalgamation of their languages and dialects, plus their movement across Britain resulted in the beginning of the creation of Old English.

To conclude, English’s journey to the shores of Britain was certainly a prolonged one. Without the discovery of the Proto-Indo-European family tree and the Anglo-Saxons’ arrival and invasion of Britain, the English as we know it today may never have existed. If it was not for the many laws and processes discussed above, the origin of English may never have been discovered. Our understanding of why English is the way it is may be unknown if it were not for Grimm’s Law, Verner’s Law, and Laryngeals. Every one of these events, processes, and laws had knock-on effects on each other which led to the eventual creation of English. It is safe to say that without even one of these events, the current state of the language would be very different, perhaps even non-existent.

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References Antonsen, E. H. (1962). Rasmus Rask and Jacob Grimm: Their relationship in the investigation of Germanic vocalism. Scandinavian Studies, 34(3), 183194.

Baugh, A., & Cable, T. (2002). A history of the English language (5th ed.).

Routledge.

Bynon, T. (1986). August Schleicher: Indo-Europeanist and General Linguist.

Studies in the History of Western Linguistics. In Honour of RH Robins.

Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 129-149.

Crystal, D. (2004). The history of English. Text prepared for the BBC Voices project website.

Gimbutas, M. (1974). The gods and goddesses of old Europe: 7000 to 3500 BC myths, legends and cult images (Vol. 4). University of California Press Jones. (1786). – Sir William Jones and the Third Anniversary Discourse to the Asiatic Society, 1786 Lambdin, T. O. (2006). An introduction to the Gothic language. Wipf and Stock Publishers Mallory, J. P., & Adams, D. Q. (2006). The Oxford introduction to protoIndoEuropean and the proto-Indo-European world. Oxford University Press on Demand.

Noske, R. (2009). Verner's law, phonetic substance and form of historical phonological description.

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Pereltsvaig, A., & Lewis, M. (2015). The vexatious history of Indo-European studies. In The Indo-European Controversy: Facts and Fallacies in Historical Linguistics (pp. 17-52). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9781107294332.002 Renfrew, C. (1990). Archaeology and language: the puzzle of Indo-European origins.

CUP Archive.

Ringe, D. A. (2017). From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic (Vol. 1). Oxford University Press

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Language Teaching Methodology Ellie Dickinson, 1st Year: Language Teaching Methodology 1

Introduction

When planning activities that aim to improve learners’ speaking skills, Nation and Newton (2009, as cited in Newton, 2016) have observed that achievement is dependent on three main conditions: (1) the activity is meaning-focused to replicate real-life conversation, (2) learners work with known vocabulary and language structures, and (3) there is appropriate support and encouragement from teachers. With this in consideration, this essay will attempt to outline and justify the first step of Scrivener’s route map: Familiarising yourself with the activity in relation to the attached learning activity. There are multiple considerations within the activity that a teacher should be aware of, but the focuses of this essay will be: seating arrangements, learner language level, and instructions. Language learning activities can play a pivotal role in the promotion of Global Englishes, yet current methods of English language teaching have been criticised for not adequately doing so (Galloway & Rose, 2018). As a result, there will be a discussion arguing that the extent to which the attached activity contributes to Global Englishes is poor.

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Scrivener’s Route Map

2.1

Learner Orientation

This activity is one that is dependent on pair-work. Achmad and Yusuf (2014) find that pair-work is exciting and reduces learners’ boredom because studenttalking-time dominates the activity, instead of the monotony that teachertalking-time can create. Moreover, pair-work maximises opportunities for learners to practice their English. Although creating a vibrant atmosphere for learning is beneficial, it also presents some potential problems that can undermine the success of the activity. For instance, once the activity is underway it is impossible for the teacher to supervise every utterance produced by learners, meaning that speech errors may go uncorrected, or students may choose to communicate in their first language if they are struggling with their English-speaking skills (Ur, 2012). Boers (2014, as cited in Nation, 2016) reinforce this idea in their research by observing that adult learners tend to rely more on verbatim imitation than complex and accurate expressions in their conversations. To overcome this, teachers should consider adopting a monitoring role, only helping learners that are anxious about speaking, or

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providing helpful hints about picture differences in pairs who are not engaged in meaningful conversation.

The passive role of the teacher is reinforced by how the broad skill the activity is focused on is accuracy. Hence, a teacher should gauge their level of error correction in relation to the activity. Andrewes (2003, as cited in Achmad & Yusuf, 2014) maintains that an appropriate level of error correction invokes a sense of encouragement to confidently use the target language (TL) of the activity, which students benefit from. The TL should not be unfamiliar, but teachers should remind learners what they should focus on whilst completing the activity, in this case it is prepositional phrases, “there is”, and”there are”.

With this in consideration, preparing and completing a set of choral responses that will be performed collectively, with the support of a visual aid (e.g., flashcards that require learners to repeat a TL word/phrase after the teacher) creates repetitive practice of the TL, helping learners to be grammatically accurate in their speech (Brown & Nation, 1997; Ur, 2012). Furthermore, demonstrating how the activity should be performed between the teacher and a learner they know is confident in their speaking skills provides a model or example that all learners in the classroom can aspire to achieve. Generating motivation and giving learners an incentive to speak English for themselvescan negate the possibility of misbehaviour (Harmer, 2015; Scrivener, 2011). It is

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also vital to set a time limit to maintain learners' individual motivations, but the limit should be guided by how quickly the majority of pairs complete the activity, so that learners do not become bored.

This activity may be linguistically demanding to some learners since it requires both grammatical and lexical knowledge of English. Some learners may even become overwhelmed to the extent that they experience a cognitive overload (Brown & Nation, 1997). The difficulty of the activity owes to the fact that learners have to distinguish between singular and plural forms, while also using appropriate and grammatically sensical prepositional phrases. Examples of linguistic errors learners may make include: *there is two plants *there are a clock, *the magazine is in the table. Also, the activity assumes that learners have a secure understanding of the relevant vocabulary. Teachers should review the vocabulary before giving instructions, whether through a topical discussion, by drawing a brainstorm on the board, or by asking learners for contributions.

This ensures learners have the required knowledge to be successful (Scrivener, 2011; Ur, 2012). In a similar manner, there may be an information gap among learners that teachers should consider. Student A’s completion of the activity is dependent on Student B being able to answer their questions. This may seem daunting to some learners, which is why completing choral responses and a helpful demonstration can help ease them into the activity.

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Predicting the information gap is useful as it replicates real-life communication whereby learners have the opportunity to practise extended speaking; specifically interactional and transactional communication, as well as selecting the appropriate register, intonation, pronunciation etc (British Council, n.d.).

It seems that adequately preparing learners for the activity empowers them to be successful.

2.2

Instructions

The clarity of instructions delivered by the teacher determines the success of an activity. Consequently, it is necessary that teachers consider the proficiency of the learners and grade their language suitably when giving clear and concise instructions, so learners understand what it is they must do (Scrivener, 2011).

Also, instructions should be given before the learners are divided into pairs and before materials are distributed, so as to avoid them becoming distracted by talking to one another (in their first language or English) or looking at the pictures (Ur, 2012). Once instructions are delivered, teachers may consider using elicitation. Elicitation maintains a learner-centred classroom and can help check the learners‘ understandings (British Council, n.d.). This language technique also helps to eliminate misunderstandings, such as comparing

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pictures instead of finding out the differences between them, and will facilitate smooth running of the activity.

Another significant aspect in the preparation of activities is the age of the learners. In the attached activity, adults are being taught. Generally, adults prefer to use more sophisticated learning strategies, such as making lists of vocabulary (Ur, 2012). Therefore, the teacher should be careful in the formatting of their instructions and how they lead-in to the activity so that learners do not feel patronised. Despite this, when compared to child learners, adults are more disciplinedwhen learning English and do not give up easily despite challenges (Harmer, 2015). Their determination is compounded in pairwork. Hence, teachers should not rush into error correction if a learner is not grammatically correct in their speech utterances but contemplate whether the interruption is worthwhile because the flow of communication will be disrupted (Brown & Nation, 1997). Moreover, teachers should think about the internal discourse that an adult may experience in the classroom. Their inability to express themselves as fluently and authoritatively as they can in their first language may make it challenging for them to accept the role of a student (Ur, 2012). The age of a learnerhas an impact on the activity; therefore, a balance must be struck between incorporating linguistic knowledge and considering individual characteristics.

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2.3

Relevance to Global Englishes

The paradigm of Global Englishes promotes the “pluricentricity of English, how it functions in today's globalised world, and how it has a global ownership” (Galloway & Numajiri, 2019: p.120). Ur (2012) contextualises this idea in commenting that English is often perceived by many students as a tool that is necessary to operate effectively in contemporary society. The issue of implementing Global Englishes ideals into language learning activities has been debated within the field of Applied Linguistics, and the following section will describe how the activity does and does not align with its principles.

Perhaps most significantly, the activity does not encourage learners to consider linguistic variation within the English language, they are instead corrected on their errors to fit within ‘standard’ English conventions (Galloway & Heath, 2018). Even though this implies there is a standard way to speak English, such a standard English is implausible since English is inherently unstable (Widdowson, 2015). Language is shaped by those who use it, and the prominence of non-standard dialects must suggest that ‘standard’ users of English no longer possess sole authority, resulting in its globalisation. This suggests that the inflexibility of speech utterances which learners can produce

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hinders learners’ awareness of Global Englishes. Furthermore, when learners are practicing pronunciation and intonation, they use an audiolingualism method, which teaches them that ‘native-like’ pronunciation is one of the most important aspects of language proficiency (Brown & Nation, 1997). Global Englishes also encourages learners to be dynamic with language, but the activity teaches that certain prepositional phrases that are grammatical and to be ungrammatical means that learners will misunderstood (Galloway & Numajiri, 2019). The teaching of standard grammar will make it more difficult for learners to communicate across the world where they will come across a diverse range of speakers who do not adhere to ‘standard’ English.

The task does align with some elements of Global Englishes, mainly that learners are encouraged to use English as a lingua franca. They are learning to communicate with a diverse group of English speakers, all of whom will have individual strategies to assist them in the learning and utilization processes.

Potentially, the activity could encourage learners to question and alter their perceptions of the ‘nativism’ of English, by believing that alternative models of English are just as legitimate as ‘native’ speakers of the language (Galloway & Heath, 2018). Subsequently, learners may feel more confident in speaking English with other users of English. It should be acknowledged that there are practical limitations to the implementation of Global Englishes including, but

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not limited to: a lack of diverse materials and teacher recruitment practices that reinforce ‘nativism’ (Seargeant, 2016). Still, teachers can promote Global Englishes in the classroom by acknowledging assumptions learners may have about English or seeking materials which avoid stereotypes, for example.

2.4

Conclusion

This essay has analysed the attached learning activity and examined its relevance to Global Englishes. Teachers familiarising themselves with the activity is undoubtably essential because there are potential issues that need resolving, language assumptions that need to be addressed and instructions that must be planned. It could be one of the most instrumental steps of Scrivener’s route map because the success of the activity is determined by the degree of preparation. The ideals of Global Englishes are complex, and difficult to include in the activity because they contrast with the ‘standard’ English learners are told they should aspire to sound like when speaking. As a relatively new area of interest, further contributions analysing the relationship between teaching speaking and Global Englishes will be interesting to witness.

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References Achmad, D., Yusuf, Y.Q. (2014). Observing Pair-Work Task in an English Speaking Class. International Journal of Instruction, 7(1), 152-164. https://dergipark.org.tr/en/download/article-file/59700 British Council & BBC. (n.d.). Teaching English. https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/ Brown, R.S., Nation, P. (1997). Teaching Speaking: Suggestions for the Classroom. https://jalt-publications.org/old_tlt/files/97/jan/speaking.html Fang, F., Ren, W. (2018). Developing students’ awareness of Global Englishes.

ELT Journal, 72(4), 384-394. https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccy012 Galloway, N., Heath, R. (2018). Incorporating Global Englishes into the ELT classroom. ELT Journal, 72(1), 3-14. https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccx010 Galloway, N., Numajiri, T. (2019). Global Englishes Language Teaching: Bottom-up Curriculum Implementation. TESOL Quarterly 54(1), 118145. https://doi.org/10.1002/tesq.547 Harmer, J. (2015). The practice of English language teaching (5th ed.). Pearson Education Limited.

Newton, J. (2016). Teaching language skills. In G. Hall (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of English Language Teaching (1st ed., pp. 428-440). Routledge.

Scrivener, J. (2011). Learning teaching: the essential guide to English language teaching (3rd ed.). Oxford Macmillan Education.

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Seargeant, P. (2016). World Englishes and English as a Lingua Franca: A changing context for ELT. In G. Hall (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of English Language Teaching (1st ed., pp. 13-25). Routledge.

Ur, P. (2012). A course in English language teaching (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press.

Widdowson, H. (2015). ELF and the pragmatics of language variation. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca (4)2, 359-372. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/jelf2015-0027

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Representation of Indian and Jamaican English in Film Rebecca Geddes, 2nd Year: World Englishes 1

Introduction

Indian and Jamaican English are significant English varieties for historical and sociolinguistic reasons. India has roughly 330 million English speakers (Bolton, 2008), a sharp rise from a 1971 consensus of 25 million second-language speakers (Mehrotra, 1998). On the other hand, Jamaica is the most anglophonic nation in the Caribbean (Schneider, 2020). The presence of a large number of English speakers in contemporary India and Jamaica confirms its significance.

The historical significance is that they both emerged from colonialism. India was under British control from 1600-1947 and Jamaica was also a colony from 1655-1962 (Schneider, 2020). A combination of different motives and colonisation at different times resulted in various kinds of colonies (Schneider, 2020). These historical grounds lead to sociolinguistic considerations meaning different colonisation types have created “specific communicative settings” (Schneider, 2020, p. 49). Films as means of representation can exemplify these settings. Therefore, a speech analysis of the films Finding Fanny (2014) and The

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Harder They Come (1972) demonstrate how historical events led to sociolinguistic practices and thereafter, both varieties will be discussed.

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Indian English

If colonisation affects linguistic settings, it is worth investigating the background of each variety. India was a trade colony where merchants came for exchanges (Schneider, 2020). However, colonial control grew, and India became an exploitation colony serving to advantage the “mother country” for economic betterment by exploiting resources (Schneider, 2020, p. 49). This enhanced English influence, which was subsequently pushed through education (Mufwene, 2001). English influence was left embedded in postcolonial India. Post-independence, English was mostly for high-status individuals and the educated (Schneider, 2020). This idea is captured by Gupta (1997) who claims India has “multilingual scholastic English” (p. 55). This English functions as a second language but is used among other languages and is acquired during school years. However, some low-class groups accessed English through “natural acquisition” and some education (Schneider, 2020, p.

160). Thus, in today’s India, some English conversations are possible in most streets (Pingali, 2009). Two phenomena account for this English expansion,

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Grassroots English and nativisation. These processes are noteworthy as they contribute to the growth and thereafter, written coverage.

Grassroots English denotes English acquired by the underprivileged mostly through natural communication (Schneider, 2016) and nativisation, English is used in a native-like manner (Mesthrie & Bhatt, 2008). With this, India became the “third largest English language publisher” globally (Sen, 2009, p. 4).

Nonetheless, Indian English (IE) has not received adequate written coverage.

Pingali (2009) reports of no IE vocabulary dictionary and Sen (2009) suggests IE anthologies are not obtainable in the USA. This may be because IE is viewed as inaccurate because of a standard deviation. As argued by Schneider (2007) this is the accepted notion of one “monolithic” accurate form (p. 8). An example of ‘deviation’ is found in Finding Fanny at [1:36:02] with I’ll wait only. Only is a frequently used “Indianism” (Mehrotra, 1998, p. 143). It deviates because, unlike most varieties, it stresses words to its left and has an incidental meaning (Schneider, 2020). A question worth investigating is the extent of this ‘deviation’ within Finding Fanny.

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Jamaican English

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Jamaica became a British plantation colony involving settlement to produce agricultural goods (Schneider, 2020). A subsequent population influx comprised groups such as West African slaves and the British Isles brought upper- and lower-class workers such as “soldiers” and “indentured laborers” (Schneider, 2007, p. 228). Through these interactions, a linguistic continuum emerged involving a basilectal creole and Standard Jamaican English (JE) (Schneider, 2020). The basilect is the furthest from the colonisers’ language with creole characteristics (Hickey, 2014). This is Patwa, the Jamaican creole.

The standard JE, also known as acrolect, is closer to the ‘standard’ English and has a higher status (Irvine-Sobers, 2018). Besides these and for various reasons, an intermediate language emerged. This is the adapted mesolectal form with creole characteristics, however, is recognisable as English (Schneider, 2020).

Some argue the creole aligns to the lexifier language, the language during the colonial period contributing to pidgin and creole creation (Hickey, 2014).

Pressure from this language contributes to this decreolization process (Aceto & Williams, 2003). Considering this, the creole’s origin should be investigated.

Much research states creole and pidgin emergence originate from language contact (Hickey, 2010; Mesthrie & Bhatt, 2008; Schneider, 2007). “Language contact” is a situation e.g., invasion causing individuals with different tongues to interact (Hickey, 2014, p. 173). The question is whether Patwa links to the

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English lexifier. For creolists this is a debate between “superstrate, substrate and universals” (Mesthrie & Bhatt, 2008, p. 188). A superstrate relates to target forms such as British or American English (Mesthrie & Bhatt, 2008). A substrate receives grammatical input from West African languages (Schneider, 2020). Another possible source is the universalist hypothesis (Hickey, 2014).

Creoles are naturally predisposed to determining the way language is formed which aligns with Universal Grammar theory, in other words, genetic endowment (Chomsky, 2005, p. 1). Therefore, creoles could be adopting inherent patterns. A more probable theory is the superstrate and substrate contributed to the creole’s creation through a feature pool. This is where speakers can select features because of various contributions, which then determines linguistic forms (Mufwene, 2001; Schneider, 2007). If both contributed, it seems reasonable to draw links between the features in The Harder They Come and of the superstrate and substrate.

4

Results

Finding

Lexis

Fanny (2014): IE

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11:22

“A good day to you, Auntie”: addressing a woman elder to oneself.

30:08

“For what yaar?”

Familiar addressing form translating as friend or mate.

Instance of code-switching (Pingali, 2011).

48:52

“Haaa so then nothing to worry about”.

Yes marker: instance of code-switching (Pingali, 2011).

Finding

Phonological features

Fanny (2014): IE

19:00 -

“What’s this for?” /v/-/w/ merger: /v/ and /w/ spoken the same as labiodental approximant /ʋ/.

51:41 -

“I can’t really tell”: t changes place of articulation from alveolar to retroflex - /t/ = /ʈ/.

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1:13:40 –

“Stupid” - /stupɪd/ palatal approximant /j/ is omitted unlike in British English /stjuːpɪd/.

Finding

Grammar

Fanny (2014): IE

49:15 -

“Show show”: reduplication for emphasis

1:04:16 -

“Mad, he’s become or what?”

Topicalisation – also for Welsh English

Several lexical features were salient in Finding Fanny. These were auntie, yaar and haa. Auntie but also uncle have extensive use to refer to older generations (Pingali, 2009). Yaar for friend and haa for yes are noteworthy for IE. This is because these are code-switching cases and are commonly found among Hinglish (Hindi & English) speakers as Pingali (2011) suggests.

Specifically, code-switching is shifting within sentences or phrases between languages (Hickey, 2014). These may be cases of adopting an indigenous

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identity and a western one as Schneider (2020) reports is the case for codeswitching in Africa.

As for IE phonology, three features were found to be noticeable. Swan and Smith (2001) report there is a single phoneme between /v/ and /w/ consonants in South Asia. Accordingly, the /ʋ/ labiodental approximant is the merging of two sounds which in Received Pronunciation (RP) English is distinguished (Pingali, 2009). RP is an important comparison as it is considered a standard English variety (Kowalska, 2018) so IE seems to be diverging.

Alveolar /t/ becomes the retroflexed /ʈ/ (Swan & Smith, 2001). For this consonant, the tongue is pushed to the hard palate rather than the alveolar ridge (Pingali, 2009). Though, it may be misleading to generalise IE by claiming this sound feature is universal. Pingali (2009) argues non-standard IE utilises retroflexed /ʈ/ (Pingali, 2009). Finally, the missing palatal approximant /j/ is not addressed by research but it is interesting considering it is commonly found among British English speakers as in “tune (/tjuːn/)” (Beal et al., 2020, p.

493). Thus, IE has shifted from the colonialist linguistic norms.

Some unique grammatical patterns were observed for IE. Firstly, reduplication has an emphasising function but is typical of non-standard IE (Pingali, 2009). If so, it has this in common with the Jamaican creole because reduplication is common among pidgins and creoles (Hickey, 2014). For topicalisation, a sentence feature is stressed by shifting it to utterance

30

beginnings (Hickey, 2014) which is an IE pattern says Pingali (2009). This is not only present in IE, but it also exists in Welsh English. Alternatively known as “focus fronting” the typical SVX order is shifted to XSV in Welsh English (Paulasto et al., 2020, p. 98).

The Harder They Come (1972): JE

Lexis

18:54

“Not too bad, sir”: Extensive use of address forms (sir/ma’am).

7:47

“Don’t ask me any faastie question”: Rude question

The Harder They Come (1972): JE

Phonology

14:57

“I can do anyt’ing”: dental fricative /θ/ replaced by alveolar plosive /t/

17:14

“What you doin there?”

Velar nasal /ŋ/ becomes alveolar nasal /n/

The Harder They Come (1972): JE

Grammar

24:41

“I wanna know why”: Tocontraction

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24:49

“Him is a man”: Object pronoun extension into subject position.

Turning to JE, sir and faastie were interesting lexical cases. There is little consideration of sir use among literature, but the frequent appearance in JE texts as found in Lalla and D’Costa (2009) suggests its prevalence. Interestingly, JE shares this with IE since address forms are commonplace in India (Pingali, 2009). As for faastie, Cassidy (2005) claims “/fiesti/” signals rudeness (p. 178).

Despite this, literature does not explain its origin, therefore, an investigation by etymologists is required.

Among the phonological features, the alveolar plosive /t/ and alveolar nasal /n/ are replacing other sounds. This also occurs in West African languages because of fewer consonants (Swan & Smith, 2001). Therefore, this is possibly a West African phonological transfer. The latter is now found in RP English and other British dialects as Beal (2010) reports. Dobson (1957) as cited in Beal (2010) suggests evidence for this is from around the 17th century. This is the period the British arrived in Jamaica therefore a correlation is possible.

However, because alveolar nasal exists in both the superstrate and substrate the origin is not clear.

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Regarding grammar, to-contraction for wanna is a combination of want and to (Broadbent & Sifaki, 2013). This feature may be adopted as prepositions are usually excluded in JE (Schneider, 2020). As for the object pronoun extension, him is used as a subject because in JE one pronoun holds multiple functions (Schneider, 2020). Wanna may have a superstrate connection because it is reported in British English (Broadbent & Sifaki, 2013). Overall, the connections made are notable, but are not conclusive since their origins are unclear.

5

Discussion Having discussed the different colonial settings of India and Jamaica, a brief

discussion of their differences is required. As addressed, IE is a multilingual scholastic English, however, JE is categorised as a “monolingual contact variety”, a variety learnt through informal interaction and that adopts more non-standard creole forms through language contact (Gupta, 1997, p. 54). Note the word ‘monolingual’ because it denotes linguistic singularity therefore JE should have ENL classification. This is “English as a native language”, the language is the majority’s tongue (Schneider, 2020, p. 31). This is JE’s case having passed through many generations and spread throughout the population (Gupta, 1997). However, research does not always acknowledge this.

To exemplify, Kachru’s Three circles model suggests both Jamaica and India have Outer Circle status. This consideration is important since the model addresses how English was spread, acquired and the way it functions (Bolton, 2006). Thus, this status is partly because of a colonial background (Bolton, 2006). The Outer Circle, according to Schneider

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(2020), correlates with ESL, English as a Second Language. ESL is for multiple domains such as political and educational matters, but utilised in conjunction with other languages (Schneider, 2020), as in India’s case. As mentioned, Jamaica is largely anglophonic and therefore lacks multilingualism. It seems appropriate for Jamaica to join the Inner Circle or gain ENL recognition. For any classification to be settled, there is a call for further investigation to discover whether both ends of the linguistic continuum are English.

The significant difference between IE and JE is of language number within their countries. IE is surrounded by multiple languages as at least a few hundred have been recognised by linguists (Brass, 2004). As for JE, the main linguistic variation ties to the linguistic continuum as described by Schneider (2020). These linguistic environments cause certain features to be salient as shown in the appendix and tables. The labiodental approximant /ʋ/ and alveolar fricative /t/ are notable cases because they show that IE and JE are deviating from the standard of the former colonialists and are projecting phonological norms of South Asia for the former and of West Africa for the latter (Swan & Smith, 2001).

6

Conclusion To recapitulate, both India and Jamaica were subject to British invasion.

An English footprint was implanted in these communities and thereby, unique varieties emerged. IE is mostly considered scholastic yet multilingual and JE is a variety produced by contacts (Gupta, 1997). Considering IE has a multilingual setting, indigenous languages influence lexical, phonological, and grammatical change to English which was found in Finding Fanny (2014). In Jamaica, the superstrate and substrate contacts caused a linguistic continuum that involves a

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basilect on one side and an acrolect on the other side (Schneider, 2020).

Overall, these varying linguistic environments equated to the birth of new English varieties. Nonetheless, future research needs to acknowledge the grassroots phenomenon in India and the anglicisation across Jamaica to allow adequate representation and classification.

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References Aceto, M., & Williams, J. P. (2003). Contact Englishes of the Eastern Caribbean. John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Adajania, H. (Director). (2014). Finding Fanny [Film]. Maddock Films.

Beal, J. C. (2010). An introduction to regional Englishes: dialect variation in England. Edinburgh University Press.

Beal, J. C., Sen, R., Yáñez-Bouza, N., & Wallis, C. (2020). Endjuring tunes or mature Dukes? Yod-coalescence and yod-dropping in the EighteenthCentury English Phonology Database. English Language and Linguistics, 24(3), 493-526. DOI:10.1017/S1360674320000258 Bolton, K. (2006). Varieties of World Englishes. In B. B. Kachru, Y. Kachru & C. L. Nelson (Eds.), The Handbook of World Englishes (pp. 289-312).

Blackwell Publishing.

Bolton, K. (2008). English in Asia, Asian Englishes, and the issue of proficiency.

English Today, 24(2), 3-12. doi:10.1017/S026607840800014X Brass, P. (2004). Elite interests, popular passions, and social power in the language politics of India. Ethnic and racial studies, 27(3), 353-375. https://doi.org/10.1080/01491987042000189187 Broadbent, J. M., & Sifaki, E. (2013). To-contract or not to-contract? That is the question. English Language and Linguistics, 17(3), 513–535. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1360674313000142

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Cassidy, F. G. (2005). Jamaica Talk: Three Hundred Years of the English Language in Jamaica. University of the West Indies Press.

Chomsky, N. (2005). Three factors in language design. Linguistic Inquiry, 36(1), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1162/0024389052993655 Gupta, A. F. (1997). Colonisation, migration, and functions of English. In E. W. Schneider (Ed.), English around the World: Volume 1 General Studies, British Isles, North America Studies in honour of Manfred Görlach (pp. 47-58). John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Henzell, P. (Director). (1972). The Harder They Come [Film]. International Films Inc. Hickey, R. (2010). The handbook of language contact. Wiley Blackwell.

Hickey, R. (2014). A dictionary of varieties of English. Wiley Blackwell.

Irvine-Sobers, G. A. (2018). The acrolect in Jamaica: The architecture of phonological variation. Language Science Press, 1-190. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1306618 Kowalska, M. (2018). The accent of BBC radio presenters. Acta Universitatis Lodziensis Folia Linguistica, (52),111-121. https://doi.org/10.18778/02086077.52.08 Lalla, B., & D’Costa, J. (2009). Language in Exile: Three Hundred Years of Jamaican Creole. University of Alabama Press.

Mehrotra, R. R. (1998). Indian English: Texts and interpretation. John Benjamins Publishing Company.

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Mesthrie, R., & Bhatt, R. M. (2008). World Englishes: The study of new linguistic varieties. Cambridge University Press.

Mufwene, S. S. (2001). The ecology of language evolution. Cambridge University Press.

Paulasto, H., Penhallurick, R., & Jones, B. A. (2020). Welsh English. De Gruyter Mouton.

Pingali, S. (2009). Indian English. Edinburgh University Press.

Pingali, S. (2011). Hinglish: code-switching in Indian English. ELT Journal, 65(4), 473–480. https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccr047 Schneider, E. W. (2007). Postcolonial English: Varieties around the world.

Cambridge University Press.

Schneider, E. W. (2016). Grassroots Englishes in tourism interactions: How many speakers acquire ‘grassroots English’ in direct interactions, and what this may mean to them, and perhaps to linguists. English Today, 32(3), 2-10. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0266078416000183 Schneider, E. W. (2020). English around the world: An introduction (2nd ed.).

Cambridge University Press.

Sen, S. (2009). Con| Text/Foreword. Literary Review, 52(3), 4-6, 221-222.

Swan, M., & Smith, B. (2001). Learner English (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press.

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Research Methods for ELT Vicky Hansly, MA: Research Methods for ELT The gap between the English language classroom and TESOL research can often times seem too wide to bridge. By synthesizing real life ELT classroom experiences with relevant research literature, the relationship between these two sides of TESOL becomes much more cohesive. Through my observing a live English language classroom, I witnessed multiple corrections by the instructors on incorrect pronunciation, as well as an activity focused on teaching students more accurate pronunciation and fluency between English words. These classroom exercises relate directly to TESOL research concepts, such as the effectiveness of pronunciation training, what it means to be nativelike, and diversity and inclusion in the English language teaching space. While conducting my observations, I witnessed three separate instances of mispronunciation of English words by the students that were then verbally corrected by the instructor. The words that were mispronounced in these occurrences were island, pronounced as ice-land, difficulty, pronounced as difficultly, and labyrinth, pronounced as lab-inth. For all of these mistakes, the instructor verbally corrected the student’s error, by saying the words correctly and explaining the difference between what the student said, and what the correct pronunciation of the word is. Also, during the lesson there was an

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entire activity devoted to the pronunciation of English words and the fluidity between words. The instructor explained that in order to sound more fluent, a word starting with a vowel can take on the sound of the final consonant in the previous word, so “two apples” would sound more like “two wapples”, and “four oranges” would sound closer to “four roranges”. These classroom activities, particularly the fluency activity, are efforts to make a language student sound more native like in their speaking. However, making native like speaking a goal in the English language classroom is controversial in the TESOL community, and requires the considerations of its efficacy, its implications on culture, and what being a “native like” speaker truly means.

When examining the pedagogy of pronunciation, we must confront the issue of the native speaker model. Davies (1991) defines a native speaker as being a speaker of their L1, intrinsically linked to childhood development and their first exposure to language. Regardless of L2s, or a native speaker’s later dissociation with their L1, they will always hold the title of native speaker in their respective language (Cook, 1999). Traditionally in the field of TESOL, it has been thought that the goal of an English language learner should be to become as native like as possible, to speak English that sounds as close to that of a native speaker as possible. However, this type of teaching ideology is a very shallow view on the English language, given the many dialects, accents, and

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colloquialisms of English all around the globe. Pronunciation training in the English language classroom walks a fine line between functional language training and placing this narrow definition of the “native speaker” above the language learner. Pronunciation training can tend to favor the monolingual perspective, rather than the multilingual perspective, which should be the priority in a language classroom (Cook, 2016). This being said, the efficacy, cultural impact, benefits, and possible negative effects of teaching pronunciation in the English language classroom requires precise analysis and examination.

Saito & Lyster (2012) investigated the impact of form focused instruction and corrective feedback on the pronunciation development of 65 adult Japanese intermediate level English speakers. The study focused mainly on the /ɹ/ sound, as previous research has found this to be particularly difficult for Japanese L1 learners to grasp. The experiment group was given four lessons over the course of two weeks of form focused instruction, centralizing the acquisition of the target form, /ɹ/. The participants were given 3 pretests and posttests to measure their acquisition of the target form, as well as an acoustic evaluation to measure their enunciation and phonological use of the /ɹ/ sound more precisely. The results found that through communicative instruction, an improvement on L2 pronunciation can be developed. Saito and Lyster’s study found this

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improvement in pronunciation accuracy not only in controlled speech, but also in spontaneous speech, displaying some improvement in accurate implicit knowledge of English pronunciation. Yeldman & Choy’s 2021 study took a similar approach, examining the effects of pronunciation instruction within a task-based language teaching curriculum. The participants included lowintermediate to intermediate level L2 English speakers, residing in Hong Kong, all with Cantonese as their L1. The target forms of pronunciation were long vowel/diphthong sounds, /t/ and /d/ sounds in the final syllable position, and fricative consonants. Similarly to Saito & Lyster’s work (2012), these target forms were intentionally selected as L1 Cantonese speakers tend to struggle with this particular aspect of English phonology. The participants were given a pretest and posttest between the instructional sessions consisting of read aloud speaking exercises featuring the target forms. The results of the study found that the experiment group, the group given explicit pronunciation instruction and feedback, significantly outperformed the control group in all three of the target forms, particularly within the long vowel/diphthong form, and /t/ and /d/ sounds in the final syllable position (Yeldman & Choy, 2021). Kissling (2018) suggests that pronunciation instruction in second language education could reap benefits that extend further than just accurate speaking skills.

Kissling investigated the effects of pronunciation instruction on 116 beginner Spanish L2 university students in the United States. The target pronunciation

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features of the study were segmentals and suprasegmentals. The participants were enrolled in a two-semester long course and were given a pretest at the start of the course and a posttest at the course’s conclusion. Kissinger (2018) found that the experimental group given explicit pronunciation instruction performed the target forms more accurately than the control group. In addition to this, the results point to the possibility that pronunciation instruction could benefit a learner’s L2 listening and processing skills. The results showed the experiment group also scored higher on comprehensibility than the control group. This pattern suggests a possible link between pronunciation training and accurate processing skills of L2 learners, however, the author recognizes the need for further research into this potential link before making any solid conclusions (Kissling, 2018). It is also important to note that Kissling’s study was not conducted in an EFL classroom, it was conducted on L1 English speakers learning Spanish as an L2, so the validity of these findings in TESOL should be investigated.

Given these studies, it could be argued that pronunciation instruction is beneficial to L2 speech development and potentially could assist in other areas of language development. However, despite these benefits, the goal of striving for a learner to be as native speaker-like as possible remains controversial. The concept of the native speaker is extremely limited; with the ideal being white,

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monolingual, and usually British or American. This strict image of the ideal English speaker has significant consequences, affecting hiring processes for English language teachers, and setting standards for exams such as IELTS and TOEFL (Schreiber, 2019). Schreiber (2019) studied the perspectives, differences, and relationship between nonnative speakers and native speakers through the online interactions of Sri Lankan MA TESOL students and undergraduate university students in New York, as well as English language use in their respective surroundings. The Sri Lankan students commented on the diversity of accents within the group of New Yorkers, such as the Brooklyn accent, or African American Vernacular English. Further, nonstandard linguistic choices in the urban New York dialect such as replacing “were” with “was” struck the Sri Lankan students as something they had never before seen in the English language. The American students were struck with the formality and decorum of the Sri Lankan student’s speech and writing (Schreiber, 2019). In the discussion forum exercises, the American students regularly used casual language such as contractions, informal expressions, and frequent grammatical errors, whereas the Sri Lankan students were much more formal, well edited, and academically focused on their posting. Within these circumstances, the Sri Lankan group outperformed the American group in traditionally correct English writing (Schreiber, 2019). This performance poses an interesting contradiction to the pervasive concept of native speaker superiority. The

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English language classroom and the TESOL research space can often feel like two different worlds. By contextualizing real life classroom experiences through research literature, the gap between the two areas can be minimized. During my time in the classroom, I observed multiple corrections and a classroom activity on English pronunciation. While the efficacy of pronunciation instruction cannot be denied, as seen through various studies, the concept of ideal pronunciation and the native speaker must be handled with care, by respecting multilingualism, diversity, and prioritizing the language learner.

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References Cook, V. (1999). Going beyond the native speaker in language teaching.

TESOL Quarterly, 33, 185–209. doi:10.2307/3587717 Cook, V. (2016). Where Is the Native Speaker Now? TESOL Quarterly, 50(1), 186–189. https://doi.org/ 10.1002/tesq.286 Davies, A. (1991). The native speaker in applied linguistics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Pp. x 181. Language in Society, 22(2), 313316. doi:10.1017/S0047404500017231 Kissling, E. (2018). Pronunciation Instruction Can Improve L2 Learners’ Bottom-Up Processing for Listening. The Modern Language Journal (Boulder, Colo.), 102(4), 653–675. https://doi.org/10.1111/ modl.12512 Saito, & Lyster, R. (2012). Effects of Form-Focused Instruction and Corrective Feedback on L2 Pronunciation Development of /ɹ/ by Japanese Learners of English. Language Learning, 62(2), 595–633. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9922.2011.00639.

Schreiber, B. (2019). “More Like You”: Disrupting Native Speakerism Through a Multimodal Online Intercultural Exchange. TESOL Quarterly, 53(4), 1115–1138. https://doi.org/10.1002/tesq.534 Yeldham, & Choy, V. (2021). The effectiveness of direct articulatory– abdominal pronunciation instruction for English learners in Hong Kong.

Language, Culture, and Curriculum, 1–16. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/07908318.2021.197847

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Isolation and Chaos: The Stylistics of Hemingway and Morrison Joshua Richardson, 3rd Year: Stylistics

1

Introduction

This portfolio will inspect prose extracts Cat in the Rain by Ernest Hemingway (text B) and The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (text D). For text B, Hemingway’s use of stylistic choice to generate a sense of grim isolation will be explored. For text D, the sense of chaos and relief that Morrison builds within the narrative will be the focal point. The format of the following sections follows Short’s (2013) stylistic analysis structure, which has been useful in constructing a systematic overview of features, possible meanings, and stylistic interpretations.

2

Stylistic Analysis: Hemingway

The following section covering Text B will focus firstly on foregrounding, detailing examples of repetition, parallelism, and deviation, moving onto examples of speech, thought, actions, and politeness, exploring how Hemingway generates an isolated atmosphere, and how the American wife is

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often rendered a lonely unfamiliar within the narrative through Hemingway’s stylistic choices.

2.1

Foregrounding: repetition, parallelism, and deviation

Gregoriou (2014, in Burke, 2014) and Simpson (2004) were consulted for an understanding of foregrounding elements for this section; namely lexical repetition drawing attention to thematic elements; internal and semantic deviation the writer violates to create effect; opposite and inverted parallels; and also elements of schema theory, specifically how the reader is given a schema of the wife’s behaviour that infers meaning of her marriage with George (Emmott et al, 2014, in Burke, 2014). Throughout, Hemingway positions reader attention toward important elements through lexical repetition:

“Italians came from a long way off to look up at the war monument. It was made of bronze and glistened in the rain. It was raining. The rain dripped from the palm trees. Water stood in pools on the gravel paths.

The sea broke in a long line in the rain and slipped back down the beach to come up and break again in a long line in the rain.”

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Even though weather conditions are inferred from “glistened in the rain”, the narrator mentions it outright in the next sentence, ultimately foregrounding the rain as the more important element over the popular war monument.

Additionally, the choice to use “water” instead of “rain” indicates an internal deviation from the repetition of “rain”, helping the force of the rain to stand out in contrast (Simpson, 2004). Hemingway extends this precipitous presence toward the sea as a supernatural process, the rain “breaking” the sea into “a long line” twice, extending not only the repeated lexeme “rain” but also the repetitious property of its apparently inescapable relentlessness. Even against other natural forces such as the sea, the rain “breaks” it, interpreting it as some great power and highlighting deviation of the “semantico-syntactic” (Short, 2013, pp.19-22) variety. The mention of “rain”, “water”, and “the sea” are conceptually similar lexemes, conforming to a lexical group, bringing the weather to the foreground as an inescapable, surrounding force (Short, 2013).

This foregrounding enhances the inescapable atmosphere, clearing a once apparently popular square, again repeated to emphasise the rain’s power: “The motor cars were gone from the square by the war monument. Across the square in the doorway of the café a waiter stood looking out at the empty square.”

Repetition is also used to foreground the state of the American couple’s relationship through the wife’s idolisation of the Italian hotel-keeper. Schema theory suggests these idolisations infer what George lacks - rather than the

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writer directly addressing his inadequacies - creating a parallel between George and the hotel-keeper, allowing for extrapolation of the American couple’s relationship. The reader learns about the marriage through the wife’s desires, and leads to violation of the reader’s socio-cultural schema of being faithful to one’s partner, disturbing the stereotypical social role of the wife that the reader may presuppose (Emmott et al, 2014, in Burke, 2014):

“The wife liked him. She liked the deadly serious way he received any complaints. She liked his dignity. She liked the way he wanted to serve her. She liked the way he felt about being a hotel-keeper.”

Above, Hemingway draws an opposite between the wife’s admiration for the hotel-keeper and her husband through grammatical or syntactic parallelism, with each sentence similarly structured (subject + verb + object / action) but featuring a different thing the wife enjoys about the keeper (Gregoriou, 2014, in Burke, 2014). Further, the wife rejects any help the husband offers throughout, meanwhile enjoying the way she is “served” by the hotel-keeper, thus providing further invitations to infer a frictional marriage: “‘I’ll do it,’ her husband offered from the bed. ‘No, I’ll get it. The poor kitty out trying to keep dry under a table.’” The wife is seen desiring both a cat and the hotel-keeper, her yearning for something that current events (the weather) prevent. It is

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inferred that the rain and husband are one of the same, both preventing her from her desires - whether that be a quest to save the animal, or her feelings surrounding the hotel-keeper. This aids in drawing attention away from their simple holiday and toward the wife’s feelings of loneliness: “The padrone made her feel very small and at the same time really important. She had a momentary feeling of being of supreme importance.” As Simpson (2004) notes, Hemingway’s reluctance to use adjectives is a choice uncommon for literature of the time, enabling a significant form of deviation to be observed when this norm is violated. Throughout, most sentences remain brief unless describing something important to the narrative, in which case adjectives are used as internal deviations from the plain style of the author; for example, to foreground the wife’s yearning outward interests in another man or stimulus (the cat) to infer her dissatisfaction: “She liked his old, heavy face and big hands.” 2.2 Types of speech, thought, actions, and politeness Regarding speech, thought, and action, Short (2013), Simpson (2004), Bousfield (2014, in Burke, 2014) were consulted for a wider understanding specifically for how the narrator can use certain reporting techniques to generate emphasis. Grice’s Cooperative Principle (Lambrou, 2014, in Burke, 2014) and its subsequent maxims were also useful in identifying “conversational implicature” (p.143) to generate meaning within a character’s actions and speech. The Narrative Report of Thought (NRT) and Action (NRA) (Simpson, 2004, Bray, 2014 in

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Burke, 2014) are used to create emphasis; that is, the wife’s feelings for the hotel-keeper that extend past her communications with him and into her actions, his attractiveness becoming a temporal part of her being: i.e., when opening the door:

“Liking him she opened the door and looked out. It was raining harder.”

Additionally, this repetition of her liking him diminishes previous details of why the wife liked the hotel-keeper, reemphasising not his features or qualities, only that she likes the hotel-keeper altogether. The final comparative adjective “harder” might then indicate a significant relationship between the hotelkeeper and the rain observed by the wife, that the rain worsens when she experiences yearning.

This sense of desolation and the alien quality of their surroundings is enhanced through the use of the Narrator’s Representation of Speech Acts (NRSA), which “distances” (Short, 2013, p.298) the American wife so her actions can be observed from afar: “‘Yes, –’ she said, ‘under the table.’ Then, ‘Oh, I wanted it so much. I wanted a kitty.’ When she talked English the maid’s face tightened.”

Although the reader knows what the wife said, Hemingway simplifies it into one act: talking English. This diminishes the conversation so that the reader might relate to the maid’s position in the dialogue: someone who prefers Italian in her homeland, Italy. The narrator’s addition of an NRA - her face

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tightening - compounds both the negative connotation that speaking English carries and the wife’s preadolescent behaviour, rendering the wife’s childlike plea for the kitty in English as unwelcome, the maid distancing herself from the unfamiliar American, enhancing the wife’s isolation:

“‘Oh, I wanted it so much. I wanted a kitty.’”

The wife flouts Grice’s maxim of manner due to her ambiguous and implied directive for the maid to get the cat for her; thus, this expressive locution is an inappropriate direct speech act given the professional occupation of the maid who is likely keen to serve and receive more direct requests (Lambrou, 2014, in Burke, 2014). Regardless, it is clear the maid understands the illocution of this scenario contextually, asserting an authoritative stance with the imperative “come” - likely deviant language for a maid of service. Additionally, the maid brings the rain back into focus, a reminder that the wife’s desires are not immediately achievable under given circumstances (Bousfield, 2014, in Burke, 2014). This generates the perspective that the hotel staff have a parental-like power (rather than submissive servant roles) over the American guests, acting as gatekeepers to the outside world. Relying on the reader’s socio-cultural schema for traditional adult-child relations, a parental dynamic is emphasised by the maid using the pronoun “we” in “we must go inside” - implying they are both

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proximal - yet it is only “you” - the wife - that is affected by the rain (Emmott et al, 2014, in Burke, 2014): “‘Come, Signora,’ she said. ‘We must get back inside.

You will be wet.’”

3

Stylistic analysis: Morrison

The following section covering Text D will focus on foregrounding, moving onto points of view within the narrative, analysing how Morrison creates a contrast between two perspectives, generating a chaotic literary experience.

3.1

Foregrounding: repetition, parallelism, and deviation

Morrison foregrounds a spiral of literary chaos through an external deviation of prototypical grammatical rules across the three repetitions of the introductory paragraph, whereby punctuation and spaces are gradually foregone to instil a progressive sense of disorientation:

a) “Here is the house. It is green and white.” b) “Here is the house it is green and white” c) “Hereisthehouseitisgreenandwhite”

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It generates a perspective of a younger child or someone of low literacy due to the elementary syntactic structure, to a much younger age or of little literacy, then finally to a lexical stream that graphologically deviates through the absence of spaces, creating a visual wall of words that resembles fast-flowing panic. The phonetic impossibility in pronouncing everything in a single breath exhausts the reader, generating a desperate and confusing read. Additionally, the internal deviation that is performed at the beginning of each repeated paragraph - straying away from each established format - dismantles reader “expectations” (Short, 2013, p.12) of what should happen grammatically and graphologically, increasing disorientation within the reading experience.

Within the first paragraph of the excerpt, repetition, syntactic parallelism, and congruent adjective use are used to drive symbolic literary elements:

“Here is the house. It is green and white. It has a red door. It is very pretty. Here is the family. Mother, Father, Dick, and Jane live in the green-and-white house. They are very happy. See Jane. She has a red dress.”

To emphasise a happy scene, the narrator presents parallel syntactic structures with slightly differing orthography between the house and the family to infer that these two similar elements are harmonious; that their states of being are

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comparable. Similar patterns can be observed for “pretty” and “happy”: both are gradable, positive adjectives that paint the family and the house in a positive light, particularly through the adverb “very”.

However, with “See Jane”, we are given a directive to see her versus an inviting introduction of the house and family. There is an internal syntax deviation with the introduction of an imperative “see” versus “here is Jane”. Jane’s introduction is different, drawing attention to her. Jane is also not designated an adjective after her introduction; thus the writer violates the syntactic parallel of including a description of each introduced element, inferring that her state (for example, the pretty house, the happy family) is not comparable with previously introduced items.

Morrison instead draws attention to the colour of her dress parallel with the colour of the door, red. Additionally, the graphological addition of dashes amid “green-and-white” draws attention also to the colour of the house, conjoining the words, the second repetition of this characteristic bearing greater permanence. These repetitions of colour suggest symbolic, literary relationships that place Jane and the house in vibrant contrasting colours as important elements that stand separate from the family. Overall, although something different is inferred about Jane, the hopeful descriptions throughout are at odds

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with the deviation in grammatical and syntactic norms that eventually take precedence, capturing the reader’s attention through the three increasingly chaotic repetitions. Further on, extreme internal deviation of syntactic, graphological, and grammatical types, away from the above chaos, is observed:

“Quiet as it’s kept, there were no marigolds in the fall of 1941. We thought, at that time, that it was because Pecola was having her father’s baby that the marigolds did not grow.”

This reintroduction of prototypical syntactic and grammatical rules reorients the reader toward a conventional and structural “genre norm” (Short, 2013, p.59) within prose, foregrounding the chaos that is initially created. However, even here these prototypical rules do not fully conform, as the entire latter section consists of italicised graphology which gives it a handwritten effect; and stressed words such as “why” and “how” are reversed in non- italicised font for greater graphological symbolism, inviting the reader to think more deeply, suggestively, or creatively about the surrounding events (Simpson, 2004):

“There is really nothing more to say—except why. But since why is difficult to handle, one must take refuge in how.”

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3

Point of view

The Fowler-Uspensky model (Uspensky, 1973 and Fowler, 2013 in Simpson, 2004) focusing mainly on temporal and psychological points of view, was explored to help locate narrator positions, along with Genette’s (1980, in Neary, 2014) theories on heterodiegetic and homodiegetic narrative representation; i.e., whether the narrator operates within or externally to the story, and how this affects approachability within the text. Additionally, modality and positive and negative shading were useful in deciphering if a narrator or character exposes their viewpoints to a degree where the reader is confident in the narrator’s authenticity within a given scene (Neary, 2014, in Burke, (2014)). In the three repeated paragraphs, Morrison deploys the thirdperson narrator to describe a family and their house, but takes the route of treating the reader as if they are familiar with elements in the scene using definite article “the”, generating a viewpoint that is more intimate than using indefinite articles (Short, 2013, pp.258-269):

“Here is the house.”

“Here is the cat.”

“Here is the family.”

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Although the narrator assumes a personal viewpoint, the elementary, almost child-like language, coupled with the chaotic deviance of genre norms as the paragraphs repeat, challenges the author-to-reader relationship and the narrator’s cognisance (Short, 2013, p.260). This suggests a “restricted omniscience” (Simpson, 2004, p.27) where the thirdperson narrator may not be fully aware of events. However, what further challenges this is the narrator interacting with characters in the scene through use of pronouns and directives:

“Come and play. Come and play with Jane.”

“Mother, will you play with Jane?”

“Father, will you play with Jane?”

This deviates from typical third-person narrator behaviour, who here assumes a shifting identity and presence, muddied by no punctuation or speech marks when interacting with characters, making it a very “analeptic” (Simpson, 2004, p.79) scene. Because they appear to assume both heterodiegetic and homodiegetic viewpoints, this leaves the reader questioning the narrator’s locutions, uncertain who is telling the story and from which viewpoint or timeframe. The instilling of eeriness and disorientation is then heightened because it is unclear whether this scene is coming from inside the narrator or outside; i.e. the “reflector of fiction” (Simpson, 2004, p.28) or assuming the

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“narratorial mode” (Neary, 2014, p.182 in Bousfield (2014, in Burke, 2014)).

Later in the excerpt, Morrison contrastingly and suddenly deploys the often unreliable “I-narrator” (Short, 2013, pp.257-258) who uses a different linguistic apparatus:

“It was a long time before my sister and I admitted to ourselves that no green was going to spring from our seeds. Once we knew, our guilt was relieved only by fights and mutual accusations about who was to blame.

For years I thought my sister was right: it was my fault.”

Due to the chaotic opening paragraphs, the newly introduced I-narrator becomes more reliable than the third-person narrator due to their increased coherence and reliance on “positive shading” (p.124), but also because of it being a psychological perspective which is relatable and human-like. Their homodiegetic perspective aids this, offering the reader less chaos and greater trustworthiness.

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References Burke, M. (Ed.). (2014). The Routledge handbook of stylistics. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.

Short, M. (2013). Exploring the Language of Poems, Plays and Prose.

Routledge.

Simpson, P. (2004). Stylistics: A resource book for students. Psychology Press

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Mythbusting: Monolingualism and Endangered Languages Martin Lee-Paterson, 1st Year: Mythbusting: Belief and Truths about Language At the LSA Endangered Languages symposium of January 1991, linguist Michael E. Krauss famously predicted that 90% of the world’s languages would be dead or doomed within a century (Hale et al., 1992). This grim prediction, if it comes to pass, will have wide-reaching consequences - the mass extinction of smaller languages would confine vast corpora of media and culture at best to the domain of experts, and at worst, for those languages without sufficient documentation, to obscurity.

Some years on from Krauss’s portent, his concerns appear well-founded.

Harmon and Loh (2010) report that global linguistic diversity declined by 20% during the thirty-five year period spanning 1970 to 2005. Simons and Lewis (2011) find in their own response to Krauss that of even the languages still living, 19% are not being taught to children, putting them at risk. It is because of this that the position of languages with mainly multilingual speakers is of interest to so many. There are a variety of circumstances that can lead to a

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language being spoken mainly by multilinguals. In places such as Wales, local languages are promoted and used as languages of instruction in schools but must coexist with locally and internationally dominant languages such as English. In places such as China, school instruction takes place mainly in a more widely spoken national language, with local dialects more often spoken in informal contexts such as the home. In this essay, I seek to evaluate the view that having few monolingual speakers puts a language in an inherently precarious position.

Many believe languages with few monolingual speakers are under threat because they are often regional but must compete with more popular linguas franca. For example, in Chinese cities such as Guangzhou, it is necessary to speak Mandarin as well as one’s local dialect to communicate with a large population of workers and visitors from elsewhere in China (Zhou, 2001).

Furthermore, educational institutions in China are legally mandated to teach in Mandarin (Sautman & Xie, 2021). Thus, there is a widespread belief, particularly amongst Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong, that the Cantonese language has been marginalised in Guangzhou, and that Guangzhou’s Cantonese speaking population is in decline (Sautman & Xie, 2021).

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However, the assumption that Cantonese is suffering due to these circumstances is not necessarily founded in evidence. Sautman and Xie’s (2021) research shows that despite immigration from outside the Cantonese speaking Guangdong province, the number of Cantonese speakers in Guangzhou remains stable at greater than 78%. The same research also shows that Cantonese is still being learnt by young people. Krauss’s (Hale et al., 1992) prediction attributed the mass-death of languages to them no longer being passed on to children, as do Simons and Lewis (2011) in their follow-up, but this is clearly not what is happening to Cantonese. In fact, Sautman and Xie (2021) find that even the children of newer settlers are being taught Cantonese as their first languages, a far cry from the stereotype of regional languages in competition with linguas franca as as-good-as-dead.

Another example of a local language in competition with a national one is that of Catalonia. For a great deal of its history, language in education and state policy has played a major role in the marginalisation of the Catalan language (Xavier Vila, 2008). Of particular note is how the introduction of compulsory education affected language use in the region, allowing the state much more power to impose a national language. One must also remember the impact of regimes such as that of military dictator Francisco Franco, whose policies further entrenched the Castilian Spanish (“Castilian” for the purposes of this

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essay) language’s hegemonic position in Spain. By the 1950s, monolingual Catalan speakers had disappeared almost entirely.

According to Fabregat (1984), as of 1984 two languages were dominant in Catalonia - Catalan and Castilian. Despite the same speakers using different languages in different contexts, a phenomenon known as coordinate bilingualism, Catalan people of the time were generally only literate in Castilian. However, circumstances have changed in Catalonia since then. 1983’s introduction of the Linguistic Normalisation act and a 1994 Constitutional Court ruling have allowed a vast increase in Catalan language schooling, to the point where over 90% of primary schools and 50% of secondary schools in Catalonia use Catalan as their medium of instruction. In fact, as of 2003, 95% of 15-29 year olds in Catalonia are able to speak Catalan, and 94% can write in it (Xavier Vila, 2008).

While the differences between China and Catalonia’s situations are obvious, both are nonetheless still examples of the stable coexistence of languages and widespread coordinate bilingualism. While economic and political pressures to learn national and international languages do exist, regional languages are not inherently threatened by the existence of more popular linguas franca. In fact, studies exist demonstrating using statistical models that language coexistence is

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possible, including Yun et al. (2016) which shows that languages of comparable strength can even codevelop instead of forcing each other out. Seoane et al.

(2019) produced similar findings, modelling the relationship between Castilian and Catalan and finding that coexistence between the two will likely continue for several generations at least. While it is obviously difficult to predict the outcomes of volatile political situations as seen in China and Spain, or their effects on language use, being affected by complex political issues is not something unique to languages with few monolingual speakers.

Coexistence isn’t just exclusive to languages of comparable popularity. The Welsh language is an example of a minority language, less spoken than the dominant English, but also of one that has undergone a revival in recent times the 2001 decennial census in Wales showed a general upturn in Welsh speakers (Coupland and Aldridge, 2009). However, 2011 census data shows that Welsh is most popular among the young, with an astonishing 40.3% of the 5-15 age bracket able to speak Welsh (StatsWales, 2011). Krauss’s (Hale, 1992) symposium speech draws the line between endangered languages and moribund ones by whether or not they’re being taught to children, and the Welsh Government’s (2011) technical report on Welsh language growth from 2011 to 2050 projects consistent growth. This indicates that despite its small

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population of speakers and the near-complete lack of monolinguals within that population, Welsh is unlikely to die out any time soon.

It’s also possible that it is precisely Welsh’s largely bilingual population that has made it so resilient. At least in South Wales, perhaps the Welsh language has been able to coexist so effectively with English is specifically because they’re not in competition at all - Welsh is spoken by choice amongst a smaller population of speakers not just for reasons of utility, but also for its sentimental value and its standing as an important piece of cultural heritage in both modern and historical contexts. The Welsh language speaking community is also exceptionally welcoming to new speakers. Perhaps it is because Welsh can’t be outcompeted on the grounds of utility that it’s been able to make its recent comeback.

A comparison can be made to the constructed language of Esperanto. By virtue of being a “planned language,” invented in 1887 by one Ludwig Zamenhof (Gobbo, 2017), Esperanto began with no speakers, no local communities, and thus, no real utility. In the modern day, on the other hand, it has an estimated two million speakers (Wandel, 2015; Corsetti, 2012), and the Esperanto language version of Wikipedia contains over 300,000 articles as of January 2022 (Wikipedia, 2022). Zamenhof’s vision of an international auxiliary language,

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not intended to compete with or replace local languages but to become a universal second one, (Corsetti, 2012) was obviously a failure, as only a fraction of a fraction of the world’s population has even heard of the ambitious project.

However, the language is by no means dead, and even to this day its community continues to grow and produce its own literature (Corsetti, 2012) without the need for monolingual speakers. In my opinion, this growth can be attributed to three major factors: First, its status as a planned language means that Esperanto is necessarily fully documented. Even without a local community to learn with, all the relevant information can be accessed in text form, and an Esperanto speaking community can be built essentially from scratch where one would not otherwise exist. Second, there is a charming novelty to the language, with its big ambitions, international community, and macaronic vocabulary. Potential learners may be drawn to the idea of helping build a new community. Thirdly, and most importantly, the advent of the internet has made Esperanto learning and communities widely accessible to the general public. Because services such as Duolingo make language lessons available for free, and a new speaker can easily communicate with others online, the initial time and money investment required has decreased dramatically, and the potential benefits of learning have increased immensely

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too, making the second language-only model far more viable in 2022 than it would have been in Zamenhof’s time.

To sum up, I disagree with the idea that being predominantly spoken by multilinguals is a death sentence for all languages. History has shown that a variety of cultural, educational, and even political factors can cause a language’s speakership to wax or wane, and that even similar actions like choosing a certain language of instruction for schools, can have drastically different effects from country to country. Furthermore, the way languages are used continues to evolve, and existing languages can take on different roles as time goes on, like Welsh as a language of cultural significance or Esperanto as the centerpiece of a hobbyist community.

Rather, I think the key indicator of a language community’s safety is not size, geography, or multilingualism, but instead its capacity to be passed on and secure new learners. It is because of this that the conservation of minority languages is such important work. While languages such as Cantonese or Catalan may not be at risk at the moment, and languages such as Welsh and Esperanto are enjoying a renaissance, this is specifically because an effort has been made to promote them. Many primarily second language or otherwise multilingual speaking communities are at risk of dying out, as are monolingual

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ones, and myths like this one can oversimplify that issue, cause complacence, and distract from necessary work. On top of making education more accessible, I would also like to encourage the enthusiastic participation in and creation of new media for at-risk language communities. As the above case studies have shown, a language community’s current state has little to do with its prospects, just as long as the right steps are taken to maintain it.

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References Corsetti, R. (2012). The Movement for Esperanto: Between creolization and the Report Grin. Interlingvistikaj Kajeroj.

Coupland, N., & Aldridge, M. (2009). Introduction: A critical approach to the revitalisation of Welsh. International Journal Of The Sociology of Language, 195(-).

Fabregat, C. E. I. (1984). Ethnocentricity and Bilingualism in Catalonia: The state and bilingualism. International Journal Of The Sociology of Language, 1984(47).

Gobbo, F. (2017). Beyond the Nation-State? The ideology of the Esperanto movement between neutralism and multilingualism. Cogitatio, 5(4).

Hale, K., et al. (1992). Endangered Languages. Language, 68(1).

Xavier Vila, F. (2008). Language Education Policies in the Catalan Language Area. AILA Review, 21(2008).

Seoane, L., et al. (2019). Is the Coexistence of Catalan and Spanish possible in Catalonia? Nature, 5(139).

Simons, G. F., & Lewis, M. P. (2013). The World’s Languages in Crisis. In E. Mihas, et al. (Eds.), Responses to Language Endangerment (pp. 3-20). John Benjamins Publishing Company.

StatsWales. (2011). Welsh Speakers by Local Authority and Broader Age Groups, 2001 and 2011 Census. StatsWales. https://statswales.gov.wales/Catalogue/Welsh-Language/Census-WelshLanguage/welshspeakers-by-la-broaderage-2001and2011census

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Wandel, A. (2015). How Many People Speak Esperanto? Or: Esperanto on the Web. Interdisciplinary Description of Complex Systems, 13(2).

Welsh Government. (2011). Technical Report: Projection and trajectory for the number of Welsh speakers aged three and over, 2011 to 2050. GOV.WALES. https://gov.wales/sites/default/files/publications/2018-12/welsh-speakerestimates-2011-to-2050-technical-report.pdf Wikipedia. (n.d.). Vikipedio. Retrieved January 5, 2022, from https://eo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikipedio: Ĉefpaĝo Yun, J. et al. (2016). The Possibility of Coexistence and Co-Development in Language Competition: ecology–society computational model and simulation.

SpringerPlus, 5(1).

Zhou, M. (2001). The Spread of Putonghua and Language Attitude Changes in Shanghai and Guangzhou, China. Journal of Asian Pacific Communication, 11(2).

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Language and Power in Law Shawn Lee, 3rd Year: Forensic Linguistics The study of power in discourse revolves around ‘powerful participants controlling and constraining the contributions of non-powerful participants’ (Fairclough, 1989, p. 46). Language is at the core of constructing and maintaining the power asymmetry in legal proceedings (Cotterill, 2003).

Legal professionals are trained to employ linguistic strategies with ‘specialised institutional functions and pragmatic effects’, often leaving laypersons at a great disadvantage in institutionalised contexts (Johnson & Coulthard, 2010, p.

8; O’Barr, 1982). This study will first introduce two main legal contexts and how power is unequally organised within them. Then, three linguistic tactics frequently used in legal processes will be discussed; they are questioning strategies, lexical choices, and complex linguistic devices. Finally, previous cases will be mentioned as examples to demonstrate the subjugation of laypersons and vulnerable witnesses.

Turkel writes, ‘in modern society, law combines with power... in ways that expand patterns of social control, knowledge, and the documentation of individuals’ for institutional purposes (Turkel, 1990, p. 170). The institutionalised setting is an unequal encounter as authority and control are

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conferred on institutional users through situational and linguistic factors (Olsson & Luchjenbroers, 2014; Fairclough, 1989). In a courtroom, the attorney has complete flexibility to freely move, speak, interrupt, and interpret, whereas the layperson does not (Olsson & Luchjenbroers, 2014). Legal interactions are characterised by a series of questions and responses between institutional users and laypersons, with legal practitioners always being prescribed as questioners (Cotterill, 2003, p. 144; Coulthard & Johnson, 2007).

The statements made by witnesses during police interviews are recorded and submitted as evidence later in a court proceeding. While laypeople may be oblivious to the importance of their language use in institutionalised settings, institutional participants understand that a layperson’s statement may be used against them. The caution is an institutional framework that characterises the police interviewing process in England and Wales. The caution represents how the judicial system interprets silence and speech; speech ‘may be given as evidence’, whilst silence may be construed as a ‘choice of the dishonest’ (Rock, 2012, p. 314). This pre-planned situational inequality in legal proceedings not only disadvantages laypeople, but also empowers legal players to exercise linguistic dominance, as discussed further in this paper.

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‘Orders of discourse... are shaped and constituted by relations of power’ (Fairclough, 1989, p. 43). Police interviewers and lawyers are endowed with institutional and discursive power to control courtroom interactions and elicit the narratives of witnesses (Coulthard & Johnson, 2010). Consequently, this often leads to witnesses’ accounts being influenced and overridden, which impacts trial outcome. O’Barr (1982) points out that legal participants are skilled at employing linguistic devices with pragmatic implications as courtroom tactics to attract the attention of the jury. The following section will study three linguistic mechanisms used manipulatively by legal participants: questioning strategies, lexical choices with inferential value, and complex linguistic devices both syntactically and lexically.

In regard to questioning strategies, lawyers commit to using ‘closed and controlled’ declarative questions as well as conjunctions to solicit confirmation and make connections (Cotterill, 2002, p. 149). Lawyers, especially crossexaminers, commit to the strategy of employing closed declarative questions to prompt a ‘brief, incisive, non-elaborative answer’, which most of the time is either a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ response (O’Barr, 1982, p. 77). In doing so, legal professionals inhibit the witness's narrative by breaking the story down into fragments. As a result, the witness loses control over their own narrative in the supposedly collaborative process with the lawyer (Coulthard & Johnson, 2007).

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In essence, this backs up Gibbons’ (2003) assessment of the main aims in legal interactions – first, to elicit information; and second, to validate the speaker’s version of the story. While crossexaminers prefer fragmented answers to constrain witness testimony, and direct examiners prefer long-form answers, both use questioning to confirm their pre-arranged version of the narrative (Cotterill, 2003).

With this said, lawyers are trained to prevent witnesses’ contributions – whether in the form of long answers or denials – from interfering with their developing narrative (Coulthard & Johnson, 2010). As experienced individuals who are familiar with legal settings, lawyers know how to accommodate a listening jury (Cotterill, 2003). There are instances where laypeople will try to rebut and deny allegations made by lawyers, or even present longer accounts when possible (Fairclough, 1989; Coulthard & Johnson, 2010). Legal professionals tend to ignore or interrupt these attempts to ‘control the contributions’, before proceeding with their own narrative, and repeating their allegations against the defendant, as seen in Extracts 3-6 (Benneworth, 2010, pp.

143-5; Fairclough, 1989, p. 45).

Declarative questions are also effective in suggesting alternative interpretations for the benefit of the jury (Coulthard & Johnson, 2007, p. 99). During a rape

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trial cross-examination, a lawyer progressively constructed his narrative, assigning guilt and responsibility to the victim, along with other incriminating inferences in the form of ‘closed’ declarative questions used to organise a ‘narrative of blame instead of victimhood’ (Coulthard & Johnson, 2007, p.

115). This led the jury away from the original narrative, leaving the alleged victim at a disadvantage as she didn’t share the same discursive power necessary to challenge the lawyer's dominant voice in the courtroom (Coulthard & Johnson, 2007). In legal contexts like this, Jacquemet (1996) explains the occurrence of dramatic power inequality as "notions of truth and credibility [are] communicatively impacted by groups in positions of dominance" (Jacquemet 1996, p. 297). A questioning process that would start off as a collaborative narration would switch intermittently to challenging, interrogative questioning with inferential value (Coulthard & Johnson, 2007).

Another linguistic device frequently incorporated into legal questioning are conjunctions. Conjunctions are powerful linguistic tools that provide cohesion while also reflecting the dominant narrative voice in the question(s) (Gotti, 2012). Conjunctions often embed the speakers’ pragmatic implications, demonstrating either their interpretation of the events or a rejection of the witness’ narrative (Antaki et al., 2015; Coulthard & Johnson, 2010). In Extract 5.10, the rape trial lawyer uses the ‘and’ conjunction to infer an interpretation

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of blame by connecting unrelated events such as the witness not wearing any coat and the month being January (inferring that it is cold) (Coulthard & Johnson, 2007, p. 114). In extract 5.11, the link between the number of sexual partners and her current age was constructed by the lawyer to present inferential values (Coulthard & Johnson, 2007, p. 114). Similarly, throughout Shipman's trial, many of the crossexaminer's and-prefaced questions were employed to imply the crossexaminer’s doubt and implausibility (Coulthard & Johnson, 2007, pp. 103-5).

Conjunctions are also regularly used in police interviews where officers ask interrogative questions to reduce inconsistencies (Antaki et al., 2015). Antaki et al’s (2015) study examined how the interviewer’s use of conjunctions implied disbelief and disapproval of the victim’s account. For instance, a question such as ‘if X was the case, how was Y possible?’ and "so, how did X happen?" would ‘pragmatically [imply] plausibility’ and reflect the speaker’s disbelief (Antaki et al., 2015). This use of conjunctions not only implies fault in the interviewee but discredits their logic and undermines the accounts of witnesses and/or alleged victims (Antaki et al., 2015; Coulthard & Johnson, 2010).

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Johnson (2002), in contrast to the power asymmetry analysis, claims that the use of conjunctions can be beneficial in child witness interviews to introduce topic continuity, transition and development (Holt & Johnson, 2010).

However, connectives have been more frequently employed by institutional players to develop and change witnesses' narratives, which has had more detrimental repercussions (Coulthard & Johnson, 2010). This is typically accomplished using reported speech, in which legal participants attempt to repeat witnesses' past remarks and insert their own interpretations using conjunctions. In Extract 10, for example, after hearing the witness’ account, the interviewer’s question began with ‘so’, incorporated a reporting clause (‘you say’) and included a summary of what the witness had previously mentioned (Holt & Johnson, 2010). This summarising strategy was discovered by Holt and Johnson (2006) to be a useful method for including the questioner’s interpretation of events that were absent from the suspect’s testimony.

Returning to the earlier point where police interviews serve both investigative and evidential purposes, the officer’s summary may endanger the witness in later trials (Holt & Johnson, 2010). This goes on to show that while the incrimination of witnesses may not be intentional, the institutional users' language has the authority to infer culpability from the witness (Coulthard & Johnson, 2010).

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Secondly, adding to the courtroom power imbalance, lawyers’ lexical choices can cast the defendants or witnesses in a different light (Cotterill, 2003; Eades, 2008). Legal training promotes the use of ‘themes and labels’ (also known as ‘lexical items’) to communicate meanings and interpretations to the jury; this is due to the fact that ‘how [lawyers] characterize things will influence how others perceive them’ (Mauet 2000, p. 510; Eades, 2008, p. 124). In O.J. Simpson's trial, both the prosecution and the defence's lexical choices represented the ‘actor and actions in [either] positive or negative ways’ (Coulthard & Johnson, 2007, p. 99; Cotterill, 2003). To portray Simpson as violent and capable of murder, the prosecution used words like ‘prejudice, problems, risks, hazards’ (Cotterill, 2003, p. 80). The defence, on the other hand, used ‘neutral and positive semantics’ to rebut the prosecution’s accusations (Cotterill, 2003, p. 80). This shows how institutional users might characterize witnesses by ‘orienting the jury towards their side’s version of the trial narrative’ (Cotterill, 2003, p. 90). Similarly, in the Shipman trial, the opening statements were juxtaposed; the defence referred to Shipman positively as ‘doctor’ and stressed his ‘care of his patients’, yet the prosecutor would address his ‘patients’ as ‘ladies and victims’ (Coulthard & Johnson, 2007, p. 100). This has occurred outside of opening statements as well, Eades (2008) reports. In the Pinkenba case, the lawyer ‘constructed his version of events’ and referred to Aboriginals and their actions as ‘louts’, ‘gangs’, ‘prowling’, and

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‘looking for mischief’ during courtroom questioning (Eades, 2008, pp. 128, 138). According to Eades (2008), this was due to the ongoing discrimination against Aboriginals outside of the courtroom which impacted the language used against the defendants. As a result, the language of the institutional user depicted Aboriginal boys as criminals to the listening audience. To make matters worse, the defendant accepted the lawyer’s description of them as ‘louts’ due to his low proficiency in English, which placed him at a great disadvantage (Eades, 2008, p. 128). The exploitation of Aboriginals' low linguistic skills is another linguistic strategy that will be explored more thoroughly.

Another strategy for wielding linguistic power is the use of complex language.

This is a manipulative approach typically employed to confuse the listener, constrain their understanding, and solicit agreement (Eades, 2008; Cotterill, 2002). Eades (2008) discovered numerous lexical and syntactic complexities employed against non-native English speakers. In the Pinkenba court case, Eades (2008) witnessed institutional power abuse against the Aboriginals, where the judge repeatedly used formal institutional language and unfamiliar phrases, despite the witnesses’ lack of language competency (Eades, 2008, p.

122). The witnesses struggled with words and phrases such as ‘circumstances of that', 'residing', 'describe' and more (Eades, 2008). As aforementioned, the

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witness's limited understanding of English caused him to accept the examiner's negative interpretation of himself (Eades, 2008). Despite the linguistic struggle, the lawyers would continue their bullying tactics with regular shouting and pressure, making the witnesses more susceptible to gratuitous concurrence (Eades, 2008).

Brennan (1994b) outlines a similar treatment of young child witnesses where crossexaminers use ‘over-aggressiveness and the unfair use of complex questioning’ (Coulthard et al., 2016, p. 97). According to Brennan’s (1994a, 1994b) research, children in courtroom trials are frequently abused and ‘revictimized by hostile questioning’ (Coulthard et al., 2016, p. 97).

Brennan (1994a) demonstrated how lawyers’ ‘strange language’ and negative rhetorical questions are intended to be unanswerable to children. For example, ‘now you had a bruise, did you not?’ and ‘but she was in the house when you went to bed was she not?’ (Brennan, 1994a, p. 207; Coulthard et al., 2016, p. 113). This deliberately created uncertainty in the child for the lawyer to highlight to the jury that the witness was uncertain, untrustworthy, and less credible (Coulthard et al., 2016, p. 113).

Some of the cases above involved vulnerable and intimidated witnesses, as defined by the English and Welsh criminal justice systems to be minors, rape

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victims, physically disabled persons, and people with learning difficulties (Luchjenbroers & Aldridge, 2013; Olsson & Luchjenbroers, 2014, p. 269). The legal system has made attempts to balance the power inequality in courtrooms by offering ‘better access to the law’ through techniques such as 'the use of screens in court and the use of intermediaries and communicative aids’ (Luchjenbroers & Aldridge, 2013, p. 293; Olsson & Luchjenbroers, 2014).

However, even with special measures in place, there are other variables that complicate a vulnerable witness’ case. For instance, institutional users hold numerous social biases and prejudices towards rape complainants and child witnesses (Luchjenbroers & Aldridge, 2013). According to Luchjenbroers and Aldridge (2013), there is bias against young witnesses due to the social perception that children often lie. Additionally, legal users would address children as adults, imposing adult expectations on them and concluding that they can make their own decisions, despite being young, uninformed minors (Luchjenbroers & Aldridge, 2013, p. 308). These perceptions are often interwoven into an officer’s questions, along with doubt and scepticism, which work against the complainant (Luchjenbroers & Aldridge, 2013).

In conclusion, this paper has discussed how judicial proceedings can be unfair towards ordinary people, both situationally and linguistically. Three linguistic strategies that have been discussed and demonstrated are: questioning strategies

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(closed questioning and the use of conjunctions), officers’ inferencing lexical choices, and the use of complicated language in court. As Fairclough states, ‘discourse is the site of power struggles’ (Fairclough, 1989, p. 74). Despite efforts to balance power relationships in judicial proceedings, institutional power abuse against laypeople continues to persist, and the delivery of justice is therefore obstructed.

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References

Antaki, C., Richardson, E., Stokoe, E., & Willott, S. (2015). Police interviews with vulnerable people alleging sexual assault: Probing inconsistency and questioning conduct. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 19(3), 328–350. https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12124 Benneworth, K. (2010). ‘Negotiating paedophilia in the investigative interview: the construction of sexual offences against children’ in Coulthard, M., & Johnson, A. (Eds), The Routledge Handbook of Forensic Linguistics (Routledge Handbooks in Applied Linguistics) (1st ed., pp.139-154).

Routledge Brennan, M. (1994a). ‘Cross-examining children in criminal courts: child welfare under attack’. In J. P. Gibbons (Ed.), Language and the Law (Language In Social Life) (1st ed., pp. 199–216). Routledge.

Brennan, M. (1994b). The discourse of denial: Cross-examining child victim witnesses. Journal of Pragmatics, 23(1), 71–91. https://doi.org/10.1016/0378-2166(94)00032-a Cotterill, J. (2002). Language in the Legal Process. Palgrave Macmillan.

Cotterill, J. (2003). Language and Power in Court. Palgrave Macmillan.

Coulthard, M., & Johnson, A. (2007). An Introduction to Forensic Linguistics (1st ed.). Routledge.

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Coulthard, M., & Johnson, A. (2010). The Routledge Handbook of Forensic Linguistics (Routledge Handbooks in Applied Linguistics) (1st ed.).

Routledge.

Eades, D. (2008). Courtroom Talk and Neocolonial Control. De Gruyter.

Fairclough, N. (1989). Language and Power (1st ed.). Longman Group UK Limited.

Gibbons, J. (2003). Forensic Linguistics: An Introduction to Language in the Justice System (1st ed.). Wiley-Blackwell.

Gotti, M. (2012). Text and Genre. In P. M. Tiersma & L. M. Solan (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Language and Law(1st ed., p. 52). Oxford University Press.

Holt, E. J., & Johnson, A. J. (2006, May). Formulating the facts: Questions and repeats in police/suspect interviews. International Conference on Conversion Analysis, Helsinki.

Holt, E. & Johnson, A. (2010). ‘Socio-pragmatic aspects of legal talk: police interviews and trial discourse’ in Coulthard, M., & Johnson, A. (Eds), The Routledge Handbook of Forensic Linguistics (Routledge Handbooks in Applied Linguistics) (1st ed., pp. 21-36). Routledge.

Jacquemet, M. (1996) Credibility in Court: Communicative Practices in the Camorra Trials. Cambridge University Press.

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Johnson, A. (2002). ‘So . . . ? pragmatic implications of so-prefaced questions in formal police interviews.’ In Cotterill, J. (Eds.), Language in the Legal Process (pp. 91–110). Palgrave Macmillan.

Johnson, A., & Coulthard, M. (2010). Introduction: Current debates in forensic linguistics. In M. Coulthard & A. Johnson (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Forensic Linguistics (1st ed., pp. 1-16). Routledge.

Luchjenbroers, J., & Aldridge, M. (2013). Do You Kick a Dog when it’s Down?

Considering the Use of Children’s Video-Recorded Testimonies in Court. Law and Language, 15, 292–319. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199673667.001.0001 Mauet, T. A. (2000) Trial Techniques. 5th ed. Aspen.

O'Barr, W. (1982) Linguistic evidence: Language. power, and strategy in the courtroom. Academic.

Olsson, J., & Luchjenbroers, J. (2014). Forensic Linguistics (3rd ed.). Bloomsbury Academic.

Rock, F. (2012). The caution in England and Wales. In P. M. Tiersma & L. M. Solan (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Language and Law (1st ed., pp. 312– 325). Oxford University Press.

Turkel, G. (1990). Michel Foucault: Law, Power, and Knowledge. Journal of Law and Society, 17(2), 170–193. https://doi.org/10.2307/1410084

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McLanguage: Language as Evidence and Defining Linguistic Authorship Joshua Richardson, 3rd Year: Forensic Linguistics This essay will explore linguistic methods of determining authorship, analysing their methodological effectiveness and shortcomings particularly within the law, highlighting specific cases, and how linguistic evidence can support a criminal trial.

Discovering the true authorship and origin of a text can be a necessary task in proving one’s innocence or guilt in modern courts, calling upon linguists with a skillset that readily adapts to the ever-changing idea of authorship. Indeed, as society’s dictate for administration, record-keeping, and self-expression shifts simultaneously with technological advance, specific linguistic analysis is increasingly called for. The wider challenges linguists must face involve writing style and genre, their sociocultural influences, context, and choice; as well as more modern issues of who owns spoken or written language (Olsson & Luchjenbroers, 2014). Authors - individuals, groups, or companies - can form patterns of “recurrent” (McMenamin, 2010, p.488 in Coulthard & Johnson, 2010) language choice through their exposure to wider linguistic norms within sociocultural contexts, in turn assuming their own stylised, linguistic identity

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through conforming to or deviating from the established linguistic structures acceptable within a community. Authorship then appears to be a complex, multifaceted product of one’s community and identity, and that author attribution requires reliable and robust approaches to determine, for example, a suspect’s idiolect or written identity to then use as evidence in court; or, to aid in assigning ownership of trademarks, slogans, or lexemes.

Alas, like any other piece of evidence, linguistic evidence is naturally supplied in tandem with other forms of evidence to build a greater picture; but linguistic evidence can still present to be a tipping point for legal cases. For example, style markers within stylistic analysis are minute linguistic traits that can be useful in determining idiolect through construction of an author profile and the author’s exclusive typical written patterns and habits. This method can utilise corpus linguistics and can naturally be processed through the aid of a computer to determine the likelihood of an author’s attribution to a text through compared “consistency and distinctiveness” (Coulthard et al, 2017, pp.157-158); i.e., deviations from a pre-established linguistic standard or personal style that can then be presumed to be evidence of authorship. This includes errors or non-standard linguistic deviations, particularly if the errors are consistent (Coulthard, 2010).

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However, while stylistic analysis can aid authorship attribution, linguists must often deal with written or transcribed evidence that varies widely in length thus affecting corpus reliability; be given little comparative content; or find themselves being dripfed texts from police force during long-term investigations or searches which uncover new material as time goes on, ultimately hampering any progress made as new comparative data is introduced. Additionally, the nature of handwritten evidence may mean an additional step of digitisation is required, which also increases the duration of an analysis and puts greater time pressures on linguists who must work within the timeframes of how long suspects or prisoners can legally be held for (Cotterill, 2010, in O’Keefe & McCarthy, 2010). This ultimately leaves stylistic analysis open to qualitative analysis from the forensic linguist as they are left with little headroom, especially when there may be few linguistic databases to consult due to the limited nature of the data (Chaski, 2005). Additionally, owing to the relationship between authorship and genre within society - that genre is a reactive force in the wake of sociocultural events, appearing transient and unfixed - it appears difficult to use perceived differences “between authors’ works” (Olsson & Luchjenbroers, 2014, p.49) as a benchmark of strict stylistic consistency. In essence, genre affects changes in authorship, and authorship affects changes in genre - which makes stylistic analysis appear more open to interpretation.

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The sensitivity of qualitative authorship attribution can be observed clearly within the 1953 case of Derek Bentley, where corpus techniques were first observed within a legal context. The case resulted in Bentley’s execution before the guilty verdict was posthumously overturned due to disputed linguistic evidence. This evidence proposed inconsistencies pertaining to dual authorship, where Bentley’s answers to police questions were transcribed as statements and were ultimately misinterpreted. It affected both the series of events and the semanticity of Bentley’s answers, particularly regarding what was inferred by him. In this case, it was the response to a policeman’s line of questioning regarding the gun, which was used as evidence to convict Bentley on the basis that he knew of the gun but not a gun - a mere shift in article. Through later comparative corpus analyses of witness and police statements and dictionaries, it was deemed that Bentley’s syntactic usage, frequency, and placement of words such as then did not correspond with his typically spoken style, nor many typical spoken usages of then. Instead, Bentley’s statements matched the utterance frequency and syntactic placement within institutional register of trained police officers, implying authorship interference during the transcription or interrogation process (Coulthard et al, 2016).

The above highlights the importance of recorded oral evidence, as analysing transcribed statements can lead to misappropriated convictions, even if delivered through institutional agents such as the police. Indeed, prior to and

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shortly after the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (1984), which enforced mandatory tape recordings during police interviews. Officers had been seen to construct “dramatisions” (Coulthard, 2002 in Cotterill, 2002, p.23) during cases based on interview notes and memory in attempt to project authority and assume control of the narrative by portraying a friendlier atmosphere, especially where the suspect might have appeared unreasonable in the face of fabricated police warmth. Without recordings, both linguists and the jury would have left with transcribed discourse that is of questionable authorship.

However, comparative concordancing shows that there is a defined difference between institutionally trained, “top-down” (Olsson & Luchjenbroers, 2014, p.78) language and casual, typical speech style markers; and, in the case of Derek Bentley, justice could have been served more appropriately if greater linguistic resources were allocated to fully verify the authorship of statements through these stylistic markers.

When linguists are presented with a more content to analyse, Grant (2012) stresses the emergent importance of stylometric analysis versus stylistic analysis.

This is more of a statistical approach that encompasses differences “between authors than within authors” (p.470); i.e., a quantifiable, frequency-based analysis through having a larger background population sample, but one that may not necessarily be more accurate or “well defined” (p.471) as features are discovered rather than preidentified, and the approach harbours potential

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biases that inherently exist within larger populations. This is the alternative to creating a stylistic profile using only one writer’s text(s). Overall, stylometric approaches mostly consist of lexical counts and frequencies, meaning linguistics - analysing phrasal verbs, grammatical habits, syntactic order, etcetera - mostly takes a backseat (Chaski, 2005). Corpora-like approaches can still be used within stylometric analysis, even if count methods appear somewhat superficial. But the absence of linguistic explanation and elaboration within the approach can mean it is less explainable in court, and thus can have less demonstrable usage or influence in legal settings (Wright, 2014).

Grant (2012) sought to combine stylistic and stylometric methodology by using pairwise correlations instead of larger populations to determine the difference between two different authors’ SMS messages - those of Amanda and Christopher Birks - during the Birks murder case. Additionally, any selection biases were mitigated, meaning all words were input into the concordancer to produce a “replicable process” (p.476) where similarities or deviations would be correlated statistically between two authors, rather than being matched based on personal linguist intuition or interpretation. By performing non-parametric Mann-Whitney U tests, the null hypothesis - that there was no significant difference between the Birks’ authorship - was successfully rejected and thus a replicable process was discovered.

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However, the author acknowledged the inability to display with full confidence that Christopher had produced messages on Amanda’s phone (to confuse authorities) because the two corpora that were devised contain messages from each of their phones. This is problematic, as due to the statistical nature of the analysis, it was deemed that some of Amanda’s composed messages on the day of her death correlated with the stylistic choices of Christopher. Additionally, when compared to an “independent corpus” (p.486) of a larger population’s text messages, the pairwise approach is no longer viable because it is not known how many people share Christopher’s or Amanda’s style and whether this aspect is statistically relevant to the wider case. Further, while author style was an explanation of the orthographical differences between message compositions, context may also have been an influencing factor that is inherently difficult to measure in terms of linguistic impact. For example, the style marker of textual kisses may have varied due to a differing “relationship with the recipient” (Grant & MacLeod, 2018, p.91). In other terms, the evidence garnered in this approach is chance based rather than being of great linguistic interpretation or conviction, and still requires some elaboration regarding ambiguous pairs, especially when concerning timestamps of messages before and after the murder where authorship is certainly unclear.

Thus, this evidence is instead used to support the case rather than to strongly determine its outcome. In the least, it is somewhat reliable even if its linguistic

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strength is questionable when dealing with “authorship disguise and imitation” (Olsson & Luchjenbroers, 2014, p.78).

While stylistics and stylometric approaches aid authorship cases involving murder and can also influence capital punishment outcomes, trademark linguistics explores litigation cases where businesses feel as if their intellectual property or brand has been threatened due to authorship disputes. This includes breaches concerning orthography, phonetics (including accent and pronunciation, case outcomes of which can differ between nations), and semanticity; where spellings, pronunciations, and connotations of words are seen to “act as psycholinguistic agents for distinguishing the trademark” (Butters, 2010, p.355) that can then lead to a confusion of brand awareness.

Specifically, the linguist must verify real possibilities of “trademark dilution” (Butters, 2007, p.508) through research of mark awareness and prominence across wider society, generating a measurement of frequency and quantity of disputed terms. This leads to the question of use, as excessive usage of trademarks can and has led to “genericide” (p.514) amongst brands (such as Kleenex), resulting in a detachment between a company and its product, ultimately rendering the mark fit for universal application to other similar products. Qualifications for the criteria of genericide can include proper noun to mass noun conversion through a dropping of capital letters; and noun to verb conversion, where the term is used for actions rather than an exclusive

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item. Ultimately, courts use linguists to expedite the designation of “weak” and “strong” (Shuy, 2012, p.450 in Tiersma & Solan, 2012) marks across a scale, where stronger marks are protected by law, but weaker ones are not. These classifications rely on clinical linguistic analyses, or testimonies where linguistic expertise can verify, for example, whether homophones may dilute trademarks due to dialectal or regional phonetic homogeneity (Tiersma & Solan, 2002).

Some ethical risks surround trademark linguistics, such as the institution of law and its subsequent courts dictating who or what can or cannot use terms or marks, which may naturally affect the course of language shift on a sociocultural level (Shuy, 2012, in Tiersma & Solan, 2012). On an ownership level, questions must also be asked as to whether the state is utilising the linguist to reinforce unfair or oppressive cases for institutional gain, which may cause the linguist to question their own moral compass (Butters, 2007). These challenges become realised when courts call for linguist impartiality during difficult trademark dispute cases.

In the 1988 McDonald’s (restaurant) vs Quality Inn (hotel chain) case, McDonald’s utilised authorship attribution to assert ownership of the Mc prefix through their demonstrating of collective morphological rules that were present in the names in their main product line: Mc + lexeme. Due to the popularity and reputation of McDonald’s, their great presence in the market

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dictated that Quality Inn could not utilise the prefix Mc to market their own products, namely due to the possible syntactic and pragmatic connection between restaurants and hotels which customers might conceive; as well as McDonald’s coining their own McLanguage concept for product awareness purposes (Lentine and Shuy, 1990). Quality Inn utilised corpus linguistics to locate usage of Mc outside of hotel and restaurant chains, with a defence that insisted the prefix Mc had a wider, more established meaning that implied good value across different industries. Nevertheless, it proved fruitless against market research which dictated McDonald’s was at the commercial forefront of Mc associations, and thus genericide was implied to be a direct risk to the company’s products (Coulthard, 2005).

In conclusion, linguistic evidence can tilt a case in some ways - for example the Birks murder case - but it can also be wildly misinterpreted by authorities, as demonstrated in the unwarranted execution of Derek Bentley. Further, even if linguistic evidence appears strong in theory, courts must listen to both sides in any given case, as in McDonald’s vs Quality Inn; and, like the cases dealing with loss of human life, authorship attribution of marked lexemes or phrases is not a perfect endeavour, instead acting only as a supporting element of any given legal defence or construction. In essence, linguistic approaches to authorship attribution can offer alternative perspectives to the courts, but viewing it in an absolute manner is clearly a questionable route for juries to take.

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References Butters, R. R. (2007). A linguistic look at trademark dilution. Santa Clara Computer & High Tech. LJ, 24, 507.

Butters, R. R. (2020). Trademark linguistics: Trademarks: language that one owns. In The Routledge handbook of forensic linguistics (pp. 364-381). Routledge.

Chaski, C. E. (2005). Who’s at the keyboard? Authorship attribution in digital evidence investigations. International journal of digital evidence, 4(1), 1-13.

Cotterill, J. (2010). How to use corpus linguistics in forensic linguistics. In The Routledge handbook of corpus linguistics (pp. 578-590). Routledge.

Cotterill, J. (Ed.). (2002). Language in the legal process. Springer.

Coulthard, M. (2005). The linguist as expert witness. Linguistics and the Human Sciences, 1(1), 39.

Coulthard, M. (2010). Forensic Linguistics: the application of language description in legal contexts. Langage et société, (2), 15-33.

Coulthard, M., & Johnson, A. (Eds.). (2010). The Routledge handbook of forensic linguistics (pp. 473-486). London: Routledge.

Coulthard, M., Johnson, A., & Wright, D. (2016). An introduction to forensic linguistics: Language in evidence. Routledge.

Grant, T. (2012). TXT 4N6: method, consistency, and distinctiveness in the analysis of SMS text messages. JL & Pol'y, 21, 467.

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Lentine, G., & Shuy, R. W. (1990). Mc-: Meaning in the marketplace. American speech, 65(4), 349-366.

Olsson, J., & Luchjenbroers, J. (2014). Forensic linguistics. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Tiersma, P. M., & Solan, L. M. (Eds.). (2012). The Oxford handbook of language and law. OUP Oxford.

Tiersma, P., & Solan, L. M. (2002). The linguist on the witness stand: forensic linguistics in American courts. Language, 221-239.

Wright, D. (2014). Stylistics versus Statistics: A corpus linguistic approach to combining techniques in forensic authorship analysis using Enron emails (Doctoral dissertation, University of Leeds).

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Chavs in the News Daniel Strogen, 3rd Year: Language in the Media

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Introduction and Background

This assignment will analyse the use of representations of working-class people in the case of the kidnapping of Shannon Matthews in 2008, by examining the discourse as shown in news editorials. Eight articles written and published in the year 2008, four taken from The Sun and four from The Guardian will be analysed. The general proposition is that – in line with research undertaken on class representation in British newspapers (Pearson, 1975; Tyler, 2008; Finn & McCahill, 2010; Kelsey, 2015) – one can expect generally negative representations of working-class people, and especially in the right-wing newspaper, The Sun. Seemingly, the findings of this assignment support this proposition. The negative representation of the working class constitutes consonance (Bednarek & Caple, 2012) with public stereotypes of working-class people, and accounts partly for the story’s newsworthiness.

The kidnapping of Shannon Matthews, and the subsequent media coverage, has been a topic of academic and popular discourse since it’s occurrence in 2008. At the time some in the media criticised the lack of

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coverage of the case, contrasting it neatly with the widespread coverage given to the disappearance of Madeleine McCann in the previous year (see Greenslade’s 2008 article ‘Why is missing Shannon not getting the same coverage as Madeleine?’). In such articles, it was the class difference between the two girls that was underlined: Gerry and Kate McCann (the parents of Madelene McCann were both middle-class medical professionals, whilst Karen Matthews (the mother of Shannon Matthews) was unmarried, unemployed, and claiming state welfare. However, it was not until Karen Matthews was charged with child neglect and perverting the court of justice in April 2008 (BBC News, 2008) that the socioeconomic class of Karen Matthews was really used as a central tenet for her vilification. “Benefits scrounging”, “lazy”, “sex-mad”, “the world’s worst mother” (see Appendix 1) and an explosive proliferation of similar descriptions were attached to Karen Matthews. Her family, friends, and neighbourhood were famously described as like “Beirut only worse” and “a real-life version of TV’s Shameless” by The Sun (see Appendix 1). However, it was not long before the media coverage was called into question once again. Owen Jones described it as part of the “demonization of the working class” (Jones, 2011, p. 25). Karen Matthews, and those around her, were represented as the perfect example of the feckless, disgusting, and benefit-claiming underclass of ‘Broken Britain’ (Tyler, 2008). Such media representation has been captured in significant publications like The Sun, and The Daily Mail, whilst public discussion of the coverage can

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be found in The Guardian, The Independent, The New Yorker and even in TV dramas like The Moorside (Rees, 2017).

This article aims to analyse the use of representations of working-class people by the examination of eight news articles. The analysis of representations used in news editorials of the kidnapping of Shannon Matthews will make it possible to evaluate to what extent there is a difference between editorials from The Sun and The Guardian. Seemingly, the handling of socioeconomic class as a legitimate analytical category within Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is limited. It has been suggested that there is a direct relationship between the decline of socioeconomic class in CDA and the popular discourse of class decline (Tyler, 2008). That, for the most part, traditional notions of class in the UK have been displaced by a discourse of an emerging underclass separate from the ‘old’ working class (Haywood & Yar, 2006). This contemporary discourse is perhaps best embodied in the popular figure of the ‘chav’ (Haywood & Yar, 2006). This narrative is reflected within CDA. It is important to note that the Shannon Matthews case has not been neglected by academia. Barrett (2010) focusses on the way Karen Matthews’ sex and status as a mother were represented in the British tabloids in 2008. Barrett (2010) only touches upon the implications for socioeconomic class, however.

There is some analysis that looks at class representation in the British tabloids that mentions or briefly looks at the Karen Matthews case. This includes

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Paprota (2015) and Tyler (2008), who closely examine socioeconomic class and more specifically the figure of the ‘chav’. However, in terms of their CDA this is limited. Paprota (2015) takes a mostly quantitative approach, using AntConc software to argue that the negative representation of state welfare claimants is used to undermine the legitimacy of a welfare state.

This assignment will draw from Paprota’s (2015) methodological and analytical framework, as well as from Van Leeuwen’s (2008) network of the representation of social actors in news articles. This assignment will quantitatively analyse and compare the representation of working-class people in editorials from The Sun and The Guardian, pulling out similarities and differences where appropriate. Finally, it will also discuss how such representation is used to construct consonance with popular stereotypes of working-class people: namely, ‘the chav’.

If it is evident that representations of the working class are negative and used as such, then one could argue that news media language has exacerbated the spread of a forced dichotomy; a homogenous and harmful view of workingclass people: that they have either become middle-class or have descended into an underclass.

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Methodology

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This study aims to outline the representations of working-class people in two mainstream British newspapers. As such, the research material comes from newspapers that would take opposing stances to the issue at hand, The Sun and The Guardian. The Sun is well known as a politically right-wing newspaper with a majority working-class readership (Kelsey, 2015).

This contrasts with The Guardian, which is often seen as a politically leftwing newspaper with a majority middle-class readership (Kelsey, 2015). The selection of the editorials was thus made in an effort to draw comparisons and contrasts between the two newspapers. Importantly, it is well-established that conservative-leaning newspapers generally propagate negative representations of working-class people, whilst more left-leaning papers would take a more neutral stance (Kelsey, 2015). This study will examine this assumption by looking at it within the Shannon Matthews case. Will articles from The Sun show more examples of consonance with public stereotypes of working-class people than articles from The Guardian? To investigate this a corpus was collated.

The corpus is made up of newspaper articles taken from the Nexis database, accessed via the Swansea University library website. The corpus is comprised of eight articles; four from The Sun and four from The Guardian, from 1 January 2008 to 31 December 2008. Therefore, this would include articles from the entire timeline of events in the Shannon Matthews case

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(Shannon Matthew’s disappearance, the search for Shannon Matthews, her recovery, as well as the revelation that Karen Matthews was involved in the kidnapping and the subsequent trial). Articles with the phrases “Karen Matthews” or “Shannon Matthews” were searched for the database. This ensured that the articles were topical and useful to the study. The corpus is made up of 9,905 words.

The eight texts were analysed quantitatively with the AntConc software, and similarities and differences between the two groups of texts were noted. As stated, the methodological framework applied in the analysis is drawn primarily from Paprota (2015) and Van Leeuwen (2008). Paprota (2015) used a similar method to examine the representation of state welfare claimants, and Van Leeuwen (2008) used it to look at the representation of immigrants in the UK. However, this study parts from Paprota (2015) by avoiding the direct mapping of Van Leeuwen’s (2008) network of categories describing ways in which social actors are represented on to the corpus results. Instead, this study will only follow some of Van Leeuwen’s proposed categories. The selected stereotypes of the working-class as well the discussion of the representation of an 'underclass' is primarily drawn from other studies including sociological studies, Watt (2006) and Haywood and Yar (2006).

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Results and Discussion

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The editorials from The Sun displayed more instances of negative representation of working-class people than those from The Guardian. This can be seen in four main areas of investigation. The first three are drawn from Van Leeuwen’s (2008) network of the representation of social actors: 1) Genericization/Specification; 2) Functionalization/Identification; 3) Inclusion/Exclusion; and finally; 4) Stereotypes of the Working-class. For each area of investigation particular linguistic features were assigned. This was according to Van Leeuwen’s (2008) analysis, Paprota (2015), or Bednarek and Caple’s (2012) news values.

1) Genericization/Specification Specification is referring to someone as an identifiable individual (Van Leeuwen, 2008). This is measured by the use of a social actor’s name, e.g. “Mr Justice McCrombe”, “Detective Superintendent Andy Brennan”, “Karen Matthews” etc. In contrast, genericization is when a social actor is referred to as a class (Van Leeuwen, 2008). This was measured by the use of the plural, e.g., “detectives”, “neighbours” or “defendants”.

Van Leeuwen (2008) suggested that in working-class leaning newspapers, working-class individuals are more likely to be referred to specifically; however, in middle-class newspapers working-class people are genericized whilst government officials and experts are specified. Arguably, this is reflected within

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the data. In The Sun articles, there are many more specifications of workingclass individuals (n = 188) than other individuals, including government officials, police officers etc. (n = 17). The Sun (n = 188) outperforms The Guardian (n = 123) in number of specifications for working-class individuals; whilst The Guardian (n = 51) outperforms The Sun in number of specification for other individuals (n = 17). A table below illustrates the number of specification found in both The Sun and The Guardian for working-class individuals and other individuals.

Number of Specifications WC

The Sun

The Guardian

(Total = 200)

(Total = 174)

188

123

17

51

(Total = 306) Other (Total = 68)

In terms of genericizations, both newspapers show a higher number for working-class people than other individuals. Also, The Guardian seems to genericise working-class people more than The Sun.

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Number of Genericizations WC

The Sun

The Guardian

(Total = 23)

(Total = 34)

17

26

6

8

(Total = 43) Other (Total = 14)

The results imply that Van Leeuwen’s (2008) suggestion is evident for The Sun. Therefore, on the surface, it could be argued that The Sun is displaying more representation for working-class people that The Guardian. However, is this representation positive?

2) Functionalisation/Identification Throughout all of the articles Karen Matthews is identified by both her function: what she does, and by her identification: what she is. At this point, Van Leeuwen (2008) offers vague definitions. However, examples of functionalization include when the verb was emphasised within a sentence (e.g., “lazed around”, “played computer games”, “guzzled lager” etc.). In contrast an identification includes when a noun is formed from a verb through suffixation (e.g., “scrounger”, “kidnapper”), or when a noun denoting a generalised

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category (e.g., “woman”, “youngsters”) is used. Seemingly, this area is the most explicit in denoting stereotypes of working-class individuals. This is discussed below.

3) Inclusion/Exclusion Van Leeuwen (2008) defines the inclusion/exclusion dichotomy as the basic inclusion (or exclusion) of particular social actors. The inclusion of workingclass people in the stories is visible in the above tables displaying their specification/genericization. However, arguably most interesting is the exclusion of authority figures. This is particularly glaring when one considers that social deprivation is a major topic in many of these articles. The below tables show the inclusion of the particular words “council”, “social services” and “police” throughout the articles. Interestingly, there was no mention of “government” or “parliament” etc., throughout any of the articles. Exclusion is what Van Leeuwen (2008, p. 39) describes as “suppression… and backgrounding”; when the figure in question is de-emphasised. Linguistically, this is passive agent deletion (e.g., “concerns were expressed”) or when nonfinite clauses are used in as a grammatical participant (Van Leeuwen, 2008).

The below tables illustrate the quantification of these in The Sun and The Guardian. There are more inclusions of official authorities in The Guardian than The Sun.

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In The Sun texts

“council”

Included

Excluded

(Total = 24)

(Total = 13)

3

4

8

5

13

4

(Total = 7) “social services” (Total = 13) “police” (Total = 17)

In The Guardian texts

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“council”

Included

Excluded

(Total = 39)

(Total = 24)

5

10

1

0

33

14

(Total = 15) “social services” (Total = 1) “police” (Total = 47)

4) Stereotypes Claiming state welfare References to Matthews’ status as a claimant of state welfare: the verbs “raking”, “milked”, and “grabs” were both in the top 10 collocates for the word “benefits”. These verbs are particularly interesting as they connote a sense of ‘theft’, or ‘taking’, placing Matthews as not only a claimant but as an undeserving claimant. Another word referring to her status as a claimant was “scrounger” which the adjectives “warped”, “immoral” and “lost” were also within the top 10 collocates for the word. This was further highlighted by the

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inclusion of numbers: “£350” and sarcastically relating it to the word “wage”.

Other important words relating the stereotype of the feckless ‘scrounger’ included “LAZED” (note the use of capital letters). As stated above, this relates to Karen Matthew’s characterisation by both what she is, and what she does: Matthews is a “scrounger” who lazes and consumes. These are prominent stereotypes of the ‘chav’ (Paprota, 2015; Watt, 2006). As shown in the tables above, these stereotypes are present more in The Sun than The Guardian.

Sex-mad Matthews is explicitly described as “sexmad”, there also many references to Matthews “lovers”, which emphasis on the number of different individuals there were, with the words “last”, “latest”, “ex” and “next” appearing in the word’s collocate list. These all appear in The Sun. The age of Matthew’s exboyfriends is also emphasised throughout the articles – highlighting the age differences between Matthews and her partner: “Eddie Clayton, 63”; “her 22year-old live-in lover”. This is especially true in terms of highlighting Matthews as the elder in the relationship. In fact, “young” is high in the collocate list of the word “lover”. Again, this is a major stereotype of the ‘chav mum’ (Barrett, 2010; Tyler, 2008).

The Neighbourhood

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“Council estates seem to be particularly prone to these narratives: ‘virtually everywhere older tenants speak of a golden age when their estate “used to be lovely”’ (Ravetz, 2001, p. 177, seen in Watt, 2006). This narrative is arguably reflected within the corpus, although not explicitly. In fact, The Sun uses the descriptions of Matthews (and her accomplices) (for example: “neighbour from hell”, “weirdo”, etc.) to feed into this narrative. The Sun uses many such quotes from many neighbours of Karen Matthews. Interestingly, this is also closely related to a stereotype of the ‘problem tenant’ and ‘neighbourhood decline’ (Tyler, 2008).

The Sun also positions the other working-class individuals as ‘opposite’ to Matthews, including her family, friends and neighbours. For example, “Julie severed contact with Matthews, of Dewsbury Moor”. Why does the article emphasise Matthew’s neighbourhood when declaring that her sister has cut contact with her? It can be argued that this is an example of positioning Matthews as a member of the ‘underclass’ and her family, friends, and neighbours as not. The Sun uses Karen Matthews as an emblem of the supposed ‘underclass’. The Sun articles show more examples of negative representation of working-class people than The Guardian articles. Arguably, this reflects similar results in Critical Discourse Analysis – that right-leaning newspapers will characterise the working-class in a more negative light (Pearson, 1975; Tyler, 2008; Finn & McCahill, 2010; Kelsey, 2015).

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4

Conclusion

In conclusion, from my analysis, I have identified four main areas of representation of working-class individuals in these news articles. On the face of it, The Sun shows more representation of working-class people (by giving them more specification and inclusion within the news articles), however, it heavily genericises and stereotypes working class people. It does this primarily by employing ‘the Underclass’ concept and using Karen Matthews as the emblem of this. It does this by emphasising particular stereotypes of the ‘Chav Mum’: as an underserving claimant of social welfare, sexually promiscuous, and in opposition to her ‘old’ working class neighbourhood. Overall, one could say that in The Sun, working-class representation is extremely harmful. The Guardian’s representation of working-class people is also negative. They tend to genericise working-class people and specify middle-class people and officials.

The Guardian also fails to include authority figures in the discussion of social deprivation, albeit to a lesser extent than The Sun. It could be argued that working-class representation within The Guardian is more positive, as they do not employ (nor exaggerate) the same stereotypes of working-class people as The Sun.

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Van Leeuwen, T. (2008). The Representation of Social Actors. In C. R. CaldasCoulthard, & M Coulthard, (Eds.) Texts and Practices: Readings in Critical Discourse Analysis. (1st ed., pp. 32-71). Routledge.

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DOI:10.1111/j.1468-2427.2006.00688.x

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