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 www.tu-chemnitz.de/phil/english/linguist josef.schmied@phil.tu-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 Ö ffentlichkeitswahrnehmung nicht mehr durch gesellschaftsrelevante Forschungsbeiträge sichern als durch interne Diskussionen?
language+culture - local/global*josef Schmied 3 1.2. Paradoxon: deutsche Kulturwissenschaft vs. www? Google Websites for language / literature + culture (3/4/03) search term hits in,000 + English language and culture 397 234 literature and culture 117 65 culture and language 92.8 37.5 culture and literature 30.3 12.9 culture in language 1.6 1.1 culture in literature.77.42
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
language+culture - local/global*josef Schmied 5 2.2. 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?
language+culture - local/global*josef Schmied 7 3.2. 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)
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 466000 98.1 piripiri 5680 1.2 pilipili 1660 0.3 dagaa 627 0.1 bajia 606 0.1 githeri 319 0.1 maandazi 248 0.1
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 8 5620 0.142 66.98.ke 7 14600 0.048 22.62.ug 2 9400 0.021 9.90.za 5 737000 0.001 0.47.uk 19 8070000 0.000 0.0 1 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 760000 66000 155000 144000 45200 8030000 9.46% 0.82% 1.93% 1.79% 0.56%.ie 11200 2850 2430 3640 1760 936000 1.19% 0.30% 0.26% 0.39% 0.19%.au 433000 21600 18300 35700 16500 4250000 10.19% 0.51% 0.43% 0.84% 0.39%.nz 210000 4050 5060 5720 5170 1430000 14.68% 0.28% 0.35% 0.4% 0.36%.ca 258000 23900 24500 50200 31100 4940000 5.22% 0.48% 0.49% 1.07% 0.62%.ke 179 38 35 32 8 14700 1.21% 0.25% 0.24% 0.22% 0.05%.ng 17 2 9 0 0 4900 0.34% 0.04% 0.18% 0% 0%.tz 29 6 6 2 4 5770 0.50% 0.10% 0.10% 0.035% 0.069%.in 2700 407 231 440 253 184000 1.47% 0.22% 0.13% 0.24% 0.14%.my 8970 3.85% 1070 0.46% 912 0.39% 1280 0.55% 933 0.4% 233000
language+culture - local/global*josef Schmied 13 5. 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 14 5.2. 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
language+culture - local/global*josef Schmied 15 5.3. 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 emails and chats general characteristic of the web: public! even private homepages are exhibitionistic - and culture-specific
language+culture - local/global*josef Schmied 16 6. 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