Riassunto esame Lingua e traduzione inglese, prof. Guido, libro consigliato Mediating Cultures, Guido

Introduction

Scope and focus

Intercultural communication is also meant to be inclusive of communication asymmetries in: power relations, social, institutional, or professional status, as well as age, gender and religion, all of which influence pragmatic uses within the boundaries of the same community. All such asymmetries often make social interactions difficult because the interacting people have not developed common conceptual, “experiential” system allowing them to view and interpret communicative situations in the same way. The underlying theoretical assumption is a view of discourse focused on the socio-cognitive nature communication, emphasizing contextual and conceptual aspects of meaning which are not only determined, but also challenged and renegotiated by the social relations and identities of the participants in intercultural communication.

Theory and method

Particularly influential in the development of this rationale has been the cognitive-functional dimension of Halliday’s view of language as “social semiotics”, assuming that all discourse is the socio-cultural outcome of an interaction between “ideational” (cognitive) and “Interpersonal” (communicative) functions. On the other hand, Langacker’s notion of a “Cognitive grammar” that is “generative” in an “experiential” way, meant as a creative adaptation to the experiential constraints and pressures of its own particular circumstances. The notion of “discourse” as people’s pragmatic achievement of meaning in reference to a whole range of socio-cultural and psycho-physical contexts explains the widespread need for the acquisition of a standardized language variety recognized as a shared international “lingua franca”.

Language acquisition concentrated on morpho-syntactic, lexico-semantic and phonetic patterns of a standardized language variety. These patterns remain the basis of English language knowledge. A “critical view” of discourse analysis is how semantic and syntactic choices in the construction of discourse may actually influence its interpretation. “Tasks” to engage students in a critical evaluation of “what is said and how it is said” in such texts. Students are encouraged to give reasons for their critical evaluations based on an identification and description of relevant syntactic, semantic and pragmatic features. The focus is on critical discourse awareness as a basis for effective social action.

Module 1: Language, mind and social interaction

Definition of linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of human language and it regards the ways in which members of a particular discourse community conceptualise their experience, encode it into a linguistic form, and then use that code in social interaction. Language conditions all our thinking about social problems and processes. This explains why the systematic study of language necessarily regards both cognition and communication. As we acquire language during childhood, we also discover:

• Our identity as individuals;
• Our identity as social beings.

Linguistics has a significant impact on different disciplines (sociology, cognitive psychology…).

Synonyms

A synonym is a word that is similar in meaning to another word. Synonymy expresses a sense relation of equivalence between the meanings of two lexical words.

Theory: focus on language as cognition

In Chomsky’s Transformational-Generative Grammar the aim (obiettivo) of Linguistics isn’t simply to focus on how language is structured. Every language has rules that govern different aspects. This means that languages differ from each other only at the level of their surface structure, but their deep structure is the same, reflecting the general rules of a universal linguistic system typical of the human species. This universal linguistic system is a genetic endowment (donazione) of all human beings. Chomsky defines it as an innate Language Acquisition Device (LAD) genetically programmed in the human brain. The LAD provides a series of common grammatical principles, or Universal Grammar (UG), and their realization as variable parameters to be adapted to the varying “setting” of the different languages. The presence of the LAD in the human brain would explain why language development in children occurs so easily and spontaneously. In Chomsky’s perspective, language is a cognitive, abstract knowledge developing in the human mind completely detached from the social contexts in which it is used. This represents another way of looking at language (that is a socially motivated system developed to allow social communication).

Antonyms

An antonym is a word that is opposite in meaning to another word. Antonymy expresses a sense relation of opposition between the meanings of two lexical words.

Theory: focus on language as communication

In Halliday’s Systemic-Functional Grammar, the purpose of Linguistics is concerned with the study of language as social semiotic. Halliday intends language as a socio-cultural evolution prompted (provocata/suggerita) by the human beings’ need to communicate with each other within their own communities. This means that language has evolved within a specific community in such a way that it fulfills (realizza) three main functions:

• The Ideational Function, concerned with people thinking with language in order to interpret experience;
• The Interpersonal Function, concerned with people acting with language in order to achieve interpersonal communication;
• The Textual Function, concerned with the linguistic organization of a message.

These functions are realized differently in different languages because they are coded into semantic and syntactic structures that reflect the different “social semiotic” of different communities. Within each community, this semantic and syntactic code allows the expression of the social behavior of people using it in various situational contexts. Tithing the grammatical resources of their code, people are free to choose those structures that best convey their expressive and communicative intents.

The experientialist perspective

To Cognitive-Functional linguists, language is systematically grounded in the human cognition since it is a conceptual system that emerges from people’s everyday experience of their own physical and sociocultural environments.

Module 2: The embodiment of English sounds

Synchronic and diachronic studies of language

Theory: Saussure vs. Sweetser

Language is species-specific because it has evolved only in human beings to (a) represent our views of the external world to our mind (cognition), and (b) communicate our views to other people (communication). The two principal trends in linguistic studies are:

• Synchronic linguistics. It studies the present state of a language. It ignores language evolution and supports the concept of arbitrariness. The Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure maintains that words are only arbitrarily associated with the real things they refer to. This is demonstrated by the fact that different words in different languages indicate the same thing. Saussure asserts that “an auditory image becomes associated with a concept”. This view brought Saussure to formulate his theory of the sign that “results from associating a signified with a signifier”, “the bond between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary”.
• Diachronic linguistics. It studies the evolution of a language over time and maintains that the sounds of languages are originated from a non-arbitrary “common root” reproducing people’s initial physical experience of the world through the 5 senses (hearing, touch, taste, smell, and sight).

The nature of English phonetics

An experiential view of speech sounds

Saussure believed such an association is totally arbitrary. In contrast with this view, Experientialism would take as an example of non-arbitrary image-schemata the case of onomatopoeic words. These are words that reproduce the sound of the thing or action they stand for, so that they evoke first an auditory schema of that thing or action and, then the mental image, or visual schema, of that very thing or event. English is a typical onomatopoeic language. The cognitive and communicative advantage of onomatopoeic sounds is that they require a minimal mental effort for:

• The speaker to represent in his/her mind the thing s/he indicates by pronouncing a word;
• The hearer to perceive and understand the meaning of that word.

This onomatopoetic quality of the English language can even help interlinguistic communication (the meaning can be deduced by their sounds). Examples are in the language of advertisement, but also of comic strips.

English phonetics

Phonetics is the area of Linguistics that studies the articulatory and acoustic properties of the sounds of a language (how such sounds are produced by speakers and perceived by hearers). Phonetics is therefore at the basis of cognition and communication through language. There are specific graphical symbols used to represent the sounds of any language, but there are some problems with the English language. These problems may be summed up in:

• A single letter of the alphabet is used to represent different sounds.
• A single sound is represented by different letters of the alphabet.
• Gaps between written and pronounced words. There are:
  • Homophonic words (written differently but pronounced in the same way)
  • Homographic words (written in the same way but pronounced differently).

To solve these kinds of problems, linguists have elaborated the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) that contains one symbol for each sound or phoneme. It is adopted to transcribe the sound of every word in every language, and these transcriptions are usually placed after each entry-word in the dictionary. The way in which phonemes are used to transcribe the sounds of today’s spoken English is in the Received Pronunciation or Standard English, represented by phonemic symbols graphically enclosed in oblique strokes //. Allophones are different realizations of the same phoneme, depending on the different varieties of the same language. Allophones are graphically enclosed in square brackets [].

Consonant allophones

In Linguistics, there is a conventional distinction between:

• The phoneme, representing the idealization of a sound;
• Its allophones, representing various realizations of the same sound.

Chomsky and Halle notice that this distinction between an idealized representation of a sound and its actual speech realizations are connected with Chomsky’s distinction between competence (an idealization of language) and performance (the actual use of language). We consider this distinction in the light of Halliday’s Functional theory of language, as a way of:

• Representing speech sounds to our mind in terms of phonemes (reproduced by using slashes //), as an expression of the ideational function of English, developed as part of the social semiotic of this language.
• Analysing speech sounds as actual uses of language in terms of allophones (transcribed by using square brackets []). As such, they are an expression of the interpersonal function of the English language.

Allophones are present:

• Within the same variety of the language. This happens when the same phoneme is pronounced slightly differently when it is surrounded by different phonemic sounds.
• Between different varieties of the same language.
• Between different languages when different acoustic sounds are coded as distinct phonemes in one language and as allophones of the same phoneme in another.

Module 3: Language in socio-cultural contexts

Language as social identity

Diatopic and diastratic variations

Language variation is classified in:

• Varieties are general variations occurring within the code of the same language (British and American varieties of English);
• Dialects are local, regional varieties that differ from the standard language code in relation to morphology, lexicon, syntax and phonology;
• Accents are regional varieties of language that differ from the standard code only in relation to phonology. Variation in accent has also a social dimension, and this is often defined in terms of social status and prestige of the speakers. In Britain the prestige accent is the Standard English (spoken only in the South-East of England London, Oxford and Cambridge). Standard English is also called Received Pronunciation and codified in the phonemes of the International Phonetic Alphabet.

Language variation can be summarized into two main types:

• Diatopic Variation, depending on the place where it occurs.
  • English spoken as the first, native language (England, Scotland and Wales);
  • English spoken as a second language in the ex British colonies;
  • English spoken as a second language within communities of immigrants living in English-speaking country;
  • English spoken by people living in non English-speaking countries, who use or learn it as a foreign language or as a lingua franca.
• Diastratic Variation, depending of the social status of its speakers.

Allophones mark the speaker’s identity, because they reveal the human group the speaker belongs to. Our pronunciation reveals a complex system of social meanings that we acquire in the course of our life. A spoken language can be perceived as refined or vulgar depending on different socio-cultural contexts that reflect specific social values and roles. The called Cockney pronunciation in British English, used by the working classes of London is normally perceived in Britain as low-status and vulgar. Foreign accents are perceived instead as Diastratic variations that signal the social status of these speakers within the community in which they use that foreign language.

Pidgin and creole varieties

Another source of Diastratic assessment of social status on Diatopic basis is represented by the pidgin and Creole varieties of English. These are varieties spoken by people from the ex British colonies. A pidgin variety is a simplified version of a non-native language that developed in colonial contexts and is used by indigenous populations in situations of trade or official/bureaucratic contacts. A Creole variety is a language developed from a pidgin by acquiring a more complex grammar. Pidgin and Creole speakers refuse to conform to the standard language variety, preferring instead pidgin and Creole varieties. Nigerian pidgin dialect is marked by many grammatical deviations from the standard variety of English. The characteristics of the Krio (Creole) dialect are reproduced both lexically (transcription of compound verbs as if they were unique words) and syntactically (use of the past tense pre-verbal).

Language acculturation and socio-ethnical passing

Many educated people from the ex British colonies of India and South-East Asia are generally very eager (entusiasti) to drop their local-English accent and acquire a Standard-English pronunciation. Schumann defines this phenomenon as Acculturation. Acculturation is the process by which people get adapted to a new culture by “internalizing” its system of thought and beliefs together with its system of communication through its language. People who acculturate to a new language have an integrative motivation, which involves their use of language to mark them as members of the particular social group they want to belong to. Acculturation processes may become real fixations for people who feel the urge to identify themselves with the dominant culture for economic and social reasons. Acculturation is part of a larger phenomenon called Passing, which occurs when people represent themselves differently from the way they actually appear to be.

Module 4: Grammar dimensions of present simple and perfect

Dimensions of the verb grammar: semantics, syntax and pragmatics

Grammar reflects the mental categorization of the experience of the world developed over time by a specific community of people. This mental, internal grammar is externalised through language as external grammar every time the same community of people needs to use it in social interaction. In the discipline of Linguistics, the sub-fields of Semantics, Syntax and Pragmatics are conventionally regarded as the fundamental dimensions of Grammar, accounting for both its internal and external structures.

Semantics is the area of Linguistics that explores the internal grammar of a language. Semantics is the study of how sense relations are organized into mental propositions which conceptualise linguistic microstructures (sentence structures) and textual macrostructures (text grammars). It focuses on the cognitive dimension of language.

Syntax is the area of Linguistics that studies the way the internal grammar is actualised into language structures. Syntax is the study of how sentences are linguistically structured into their component parts (clauses and phrases) and, then, connected with each other into a text to express the underlying mental sense relations. Syntax focuses on the structural dimension of language.

Pragmatics is the area of Linguistics that investigates the social, external grammar of a language. Pragmatics is the study of what people mean when they actualise sentence structures into utterances and a whole text into a discourse in actual contexts of social life. It focuses on the communicative dimension of language. Semantics is at the basis of Syntax. Semantics and Syntax are at the basis of Pragmatics. These are the three components of a language Grammar which is informed by the Social Semiotic Schemata developed within the native speech community using that language as the first language. A semantic proposition is at the basis of a syntactic sentence which at the basis of a pragmatic utterance:

Verb semantics: present tense and simple/perfect aspects

Since the concern of Verb Semantics is with the mental representation of experience, we will ascribe it to the Ideational Function of language.