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 chemnitz.de/phil/ /phil/english/linguistlinguist [email protected] chemnitz.de 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 Öffentlichkeitswahrnehmung nicht mehr durch gesellschaftsrelevante Forschungsbeiträge sichern als durch interne Diskussionen?

2 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 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

3 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 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?

4 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! 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)

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

6 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 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 % % % % %

7 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?) 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

8 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 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