Local Culture in Global English:

Transcription

1 Local Culture in Global English: a case study of Kultur in Sprache / Sprachwissenschaft in Kulturwissenschaften Josef Schmied Chair English Language & Linguistics Chemnitz University of Technology josef.schmied@phil.tu-chemnitz.de

2 language+culture - local/global*josef Schmied 2 1. Context 1.1. Kritische Fragen: Standortbestimmung in der Anglistik ohne Sprachwissenschaft? muß Anglistik durch neue Module reformiert werden, oder Gegenstand, Methode und Perspektive anpassen? lassen sich Standortbestimmung und Ö ffentlichkeitswahrnehmung nicht mehr durch gesellschaftsrelevante Forschungsbeiträge sichern als durch interne Diskussionen?

3 language+culture - local/global*josef Schmied Paradoxon: deutsche Kulturwissenschaft vs. www? Google Websites for language / literature + culture (3/4/03) search term hits in,000 + English language and culture literature and culture culture and language culture and literature culture in language culture in literature.77.42

4 language+culture - local/global*josef Schmied 4 2. Introduction to the language & culture interface 2.1. General theories : * linguistic relativity (Sapir-Whorf) weak form: culture is encoded in language, language signals/reflects culture, etc. * linguistic universals (Anna Wierzbicka) cultural kinds: not non-arbitrary, discrete fields

5 language+culture - local/global*josef Schmied Linguistic features with cultural significance Cline with examples: * lexicon (clearly): semantic field differentiation, loans * pragmatics (often unaware!): modality, address forms * grammar (rarely): modal verbs, passive linguistic levels signalling individual/cultural differences: pronunciation intonation

6 language+culture - local/global*josef Schmied 6 3. English and English-speaking cultures 3.1. General circles of the English language (e.g. Kachru): * English as a native language * English as a second language/ New Englishes * English as an international language Does English fall apart into unintelligible subvarieties?

7 language+culture - local/global*josef Schmied Innovations in New Englishes * loanwords/-phrases (from first languages) * semantic shifts in traditional English lexemes (in context) * more flexible collocations ALL can be attested in large corpora and text collections!

8 language+culture - local/global*josef Schmied 8 4. Local culture in global English: a case study using WebPhraseCount = use the www as a domain-specific frequency dictionary work in progress! search options: * multi-phrase search: default.uk (Table 1) * multi-domain search: e.g. up to 10 countries compared (Table 2) * complex/multidimensional search with various presentation styles (Table 3)

9 language+culture - local/global*josef Schmied 9

10 language+culture - local/global*josef Schmied 10 Table 1: Multiphrase search for East African food terms (3/4/03) search term hits % chai piripiri pilipili dagaa bajia githeri maandazi

11 language+culture - local/global*josef Schmied 11 Table 2: Multidomain search for East African term mitumba (= Gebrauchtkleidung ) (3/4/03) domain hits total number intra-domain inter-domain of sites 1 % %.tz ke ug za uk English web pages measured in Google occurrences of the

12 language+culture - local/global*josef Schmied 12 Domain Cook Boil Grill Fry Bake Total Sites.uk % 0.82% 1.93% 1.79% 0.56%.ie % 0.30% 0.26% 0.39% 0.19%.au % 0.51% 0.43% 0.84% 0.39%.nz % 0.28% 0.35% 0.4% 0.36%.ca % 0.48% 0.49% 1.07% 0.62%.ke % 0.25% 0.24% 0.22% 0.05%.ng % 0.04% 0.18% 0% 0%.tz % 0.10% 0.10% 0.035% 0.069%.in % 0.22% 0.13% 0.24% 0.14%.my % % % % %

13 language+culture - local/global*josef Schmied Critical issues 5.1. Frequency as indicator? quantitative intra-language differences: way of life or conceptualisation?... or only L2conceptualisation? * English use and usage only in formal contexts * underdifferentiation in ESL varieties? (less explicit: hypernyms instead of hyponyms?)

14 language+culture - local/global*josef Schmied Conceptual limitations lexical * spelling errors / conventions * polysemy/homonymy authorship * publish on other webpages * quotations domains: not specific enough (.us,.com) frequency: www too small? NB: the digital divide different communicative functions of the web in ESL

15 language+culture - local/global*josef Schmied Web-specific limitations the web is not a reflection of reality the web is not a corpus - but a text collection machine-readable but not stratified!! lack of oral language but: possibly from more oral parts of the internet like s and chats general characteristic of the web: public! even private homepages are exhibitionistic - and culture-specific

16 language+culture - local/global*josef Schmied Outlook language & culture research in progress at Chemnitz: * WebPhraseCount: - partial ontologies in ENL and ESL varieties - expansion of lexical terms in the East African e.g. limits of food items like ugali (Tz,Ke), nsima(za), nshima (Zi) * multimedia ICE-East Africa annotated on-line