ELF, aca:Demic writing, and the semanticization of thought

1. ELF, aca:Demic writing, and the semanticization of thought Peter Grundy, Durham University, UK

2. Seidlhofer (2011) Understanding English as a Lingua Franca, p.86 English as a lingua franca is a language of secondary socialization, a means of wider communication to conduct transactions outside one’s primary social space and speech community.

3. AmitavGhosh (2011) River of Smoke, p.183 Even though many Chinese spoke English with ease and fluency, they would not negotiate in it, believing that it put them at a disadvantage in relation to Europeans. In pidgin they reposed far greater trust, for the grammar was the same as that of Cantonese, while the words were mainly English, Portuguese and Hindustani – and such being the case, everyone who spoke the jargon was at an equal disadvantage, which was considered a great benefit to all.

4. ELF, aca:Demic writing, and the semanticization of thought Peter Grundy, Durham University, UK

5. Siesprechenabersehr gut Deutsch He spoke very good Czech

8. English: I don’t drink or smoke Language use, just like other forms of social behaviour, is interpreted by the actors involved. In the realm of social life in general, more or less coherent patterns of meaning which are felt to be so commonsensical that they are no longer questioned, thus feeding into taken-for-granted interpretations of activities and events, are usually called ideologies. (Verscheuren, 2000:450).

9. MSC: Do not smoke, do not drink alcohol Utterance-type-meaning .. is a level of systematic pragmatic inference based not on direct computations about speaker-intentions but rather on general expectations about how language is normally used. These expectations give rise to presumptions, default inferences, about both content and force. (Levinson, 2000:22).

10. I-inference (Br. Eng.): the speaker doesn’t drink alcohol I don’t drink or smoke M-inference: (Br. Eng.) the speaker thinks well of them-selves in this regard Do not smoke, do not drink alcohol

11. H: no (.) that's Newton Hall C: Newton Hall (.) yeah H: that's Jean Bell C: Jean <Bell > H: <but the> old lady at Chester-le-Street (..) I think I said to you bad chest (.) uh-huh uh-huh uh-huh= C: =oh yes= J: =yes @laughs@ C: <ah> H: <I >-think-she-will-go- to-her C: ah pragmatics has been something of a poor relation in the literature

12. H: no (.) that's Newton Hall C: Newton Hall (.) yeah H: that's Jean Bell C: Jean <Bell > H: <but the> old lady at Chester-le-Street (..) I think I said to you bad chest (.) uh-huh uh-huh uh-huh= C: =oh yes= J: =yes @laughs@ C: <ah> H: <I >-think-she-will-go- to-her C: ah This despite the indexical reflection of context together with the way in which this is signalled metapragma-tically being notable properties of spoken language and despite the fact that it’s relatively easy to demonstrate that ELF interactions construct contexts that reflect the nature of the intercultural communication events that constitute them.

13. H: no (.) that's Newton Hall C: Newton Hall (.) yeah H: that's Jean Bell C: Jean <Bell > H: <but the> old lady at Chester-le-Street (..) I think I said to you bad chest (.) uh-huh uh-huh uh-huh= C: =oh yes= J: =yes @laughs@ C: <ah> H: <I >-think-she-will-go- to-her C: ah metalinguistic no; distal that; ?metonymy?

14. H: no (.) that's Newton Hall C: Newton Hall (.) yeah H: that's Jean Bell C: Jean <Bell > H: <but the> old lady at Chester-le-Street (..) I think I said to you bad chest (.) uh-huh uh-huh uh-huh= C: =oh yes= J: =yes @laughs@ C: <ah> H: <I >-think-she-will-go- to-her C: ah echo + metalinguistic yeah

15. H: no (.) that's Newton Hall C: Newton Hall (.) yeah H: that's Jean Bell C: Jean <Bell > H: <but the> old lady at Chester-le-Street (..) I think I said to you bad chest (.) uh-huh uh-huh uh-huh= C: =oh yes= J: =yes @laughs@ C: <ah> H: <I >-think-she-will-go- to-her C: ah distal that with contrastive effect; elliptical

16. H: no (.) that's Newton Hall C: Newton Hall (.) yeah H: that's Jean Bell C: Jean <Bell > H: <but the> old lady at Chester-le-Street (..) I think I said to you bad chest (.) uh-huh uh-huh uh-huh= C: =oh yes= J: =yes @laughs@ C: <ah> H: <I >-think-she-will-go- to-her C: ah echo

17. H: no (.) that's Newton Hall C: Newton Hall (.) yeah H: that's Jean Bell C: Jean <Bell > H:<but the> old lady at Chester-le-Street (..) I think I said to you bad chest (.) uh-huh uh-huh uh-huh= C: =oh yes= J: =yes @laughs@ C: <ah> H: <I >-think-she-will-go- to-her C: ah metasequential but re-establishing relevant topic; topic marker (..) + hedged evidential I think I said to you; pidgin register: elliptical; reference modifier; (hence the) demonstration

18. H: no (.) that's Newton Hall C: Newton Hall (.) yeah H: that's Jean Bell C: Jean <Bell > H: <but the> old lady at Chester-le-Street (..) I think I said to you bad chest (.) uh-huh uh-huh uh-huh= C:=oh yes= J: =yes @laughs@ C: <ah> H: <I >-think-she-will-go- to-her C: ah ?response to evidential

19. H: no (.) that's Newton Hall C: Newton Hall (.) yeah H: that's Jean Bell C: Jean <Bell > H: <but the> old lady at Chester-le-Street (..) I think I said to you bad chest (.) uh-huh uh-huh uh-huh= C: =oh yes= J: =yes @laughs@ C: <ah> H: <I >-think-she-will-go- to-her C: ah ?response to demonstration (as @inappropriate@)?

20. H: no (.) that's Newton Hall C: Newton Hall (.) yeah H: that's Jean Bell C: Jean <Bell > H: <but the> old lady at Chester-le-Street (..) I think I said to you bad chest (.) uh-huh uh-huh uh-huh= C: =oh yes= J: =yes @laughs@ C:<ah> H: <I >-think-she-will-go- to-her C: ah marks recognition of topic completion

21. H: no (.) that's Newton Hall C: Newton Hall (.) yeah H: that's Jean Bell C: Jean <Bell > H: <but the> old lady at Chester-le-Street (..) I think I said to you bad chest (.) uh-huh uh-huh uh-huh= C: =oh yes= J: =yes <laughs> C: <ah> H:<I >-think-she-will-go-to-her C: ah hedged comment oriented to J's NNS status

22. H: no (.) that's Newton Hall C: Newton Hall (.) yeah H: that's Jean Bell C: Jean <Bell > H: <but the> old lady at Chester-le-Street (..) I think I said to you bad chest (.) uh-huh uh-huh uh-huh= C: =oh yes= J: =yes <laughs> C: <ah> H: <I >-think-she-will-go- to-her C:ah marks recognition of comment completion

23. Seidlhofer (2011) Understanding English as a Lingua Franca, p.7 I .. prefer to think of ELF as any use of English among speakers of different first languages for whom English is the communicative medium of choice, and often the only option.

24. Although the metapragmatic and metasequential features of writing resemble those of spoken interaction and, as in talk, function as constraints on interpretation, writing is not interactive in the way that talk is.

25. Seidlhofer (2011) Understanding English as a Lingua Franca, p.72 Their (sociolinguists’) identification of varieties is also inevitably based to some extent on idealization and the assumption of homogeneity. There are no varieties until linguists circumscribe them as ideal stable entities.. This convenient fiction divides up the language continuum and reifies languages and language varieties as separate entities or bounded units.

26. Writing is a public representation • which is codified and standardized • about the effective doing of which there is broad agreement • which may be 'corrected' by others when deficient • which involves a process of recursive drafting as writers attempt to satisfy standard ways of conveying the meanings they have in mind

27. Seidlhofer (2011) Understanding English as a Lingua Franca, p.66 But it is not a matter of native speakers generously conceding the right of non-native speakers to use and adapt the language as they think fit. Adaptation naturally happens as a consequence of the very process of appropriation. So English could not actually function as an international language at all if it were simply adopted rather than adapted.

28. Writing is a public representation • which presupposes agreed ways of putting things across a wide community of language users • in which it is expected that expert writers will set out to teach apprentice writers to understand genres, the institutional nature of writing and the power of the discourse community which determines whether a written text has readers

29. Seidlhofer (2011) Understanding English as a Lingua Franca, p.111 We need to be able to refer to a construct that can accommodate the dynamic and fluid character of ELF while also accounting for what its realizations across the globe, despite all their diversity, have in common: the underlying encoding possibilities that speakers make use of. It is these possibilities that we can (speculatively) call virtual language.

30. Seidlhofer (2011) Understanding English as a Lingua Franca, p.120 ELF users exploit the possibilities of the virtual language to their own ends.. What we see in ELF usage is the exploitation of encoding possibilities to produce linguistic forms that are functionally appropriate and effective.

31. Seidlhofer (2011) Understanding English as a Lingua Franca, p.196 The crucial point is that classrooms have to provide opportunities for learners to develop a capability in English that will enable them to make adaptive and actual use of the virtual language.

32. Slobin (1996) From “thought and language” to “thinking for speaking”, p.76 The expression of experience in linguistic terms constitutes thinking for speaking – a special form of thought that is mobilized for communication.. “Thinking for speaking” involves picking those characteristics of objects and events that (a) fit some conceptualization of the event, and (b) are readily encodable in the language.

33. Slobin (1996) From “thought and language” to “thinking for speaking”, p.91 Distinctions of aspect, definiteness, voice, and the like, are, par excellence, distinctions that can only be learned through language, and have no other use except to be expressed in language. They are not categories of thought in general, but categories of thinking for speaking.

34. Seidlhofer and Slobin Virtual language Thinking for speaking the underlying encoding possibilities that speakers make use of .. that will enable them to make adaptive and actual use of the virtual language. picking those characteristics of objects and events that (a) fit some conceptualization of the event, and (b) are readily encodable in the language.

35. The notion of adaptation is also problematic since varieties of writing represent agreed and, therefore, reified, and to some degree decontextualized, ways of mediating content that are recognized by discourse communities such as the academy who constitute their expectablereaderships.

36. These mediations make use of language specific default affordances that are not only syntactic but also pragmatic and represent ‘thinking for speaking’ categories (Slobin 1996) rather than the abstract concept of ‘virtual English’ (Seidlhofer 2011:120) that ELF users appropriate for their own purposes.

37. Slobin and virtual language Any utterance is a selective schematization of a concept – a schematization that is, in some way, dependent on the grammaticalized meanings of the speaker’s particular language (1996:75-6) The ‘bare past’ in Hong Kong English: • Last bus had departed • This section of the platform had been cordoned off • Sorry we were closed (Grundy & Jiang, 2001)

38. Thinking for speaking and thinking for writing If an utterance is ‘a selective schematization of a concept – a schematization that is, in some way, dependent on the grammaticalized meanings of the speaker’s particular language’, is a written text constrained to the extent that some thoughts are more readily expressed in the written code? And do different cultural groups favour different pragmatic modulations?

39. Selective schematizations in a letter to bank customers English MSC To enable the Bank to implement this initiative, the standard terms and conditions of the accounts you hold with ___ Bank or its subsidiaries will be changed accordingly. To go hand in hand with our Bank’s implementation of the above measure, the standard terms and regulations of the different accounts of the respected customer with the ___ Bank or our Bank’s subsidiary organizations will need to be slightly revised. • Small PD • More direct mode of communication (positive politeness) • (Grundy, 1998) • Large PD • More indirect mode of communication (negative politeness) • Nominalization

40. Selective schematizations in a letter to academics English MSC As you are aware, two recent disasters in China – the terrifying blast in Hunan and the disastrous earthquake in Yunnan – have claimed the lives of hundreds, leaving tens of thousands of victims desperately in need of help. I think you all know that recently Chinese compatriots in Hunan province and Shaoyang municipality of Yunnan province have suffered severe casualties as a result of the earthquake and blast accidents respectively. MSC text encodes larger P in being more indirectly directive and smaller D in being more verbal (Grundy, 1998)

41. Selective schematizations in an advertisement for life insurance Cheng and Grundy, 2007

42. Confirmed

43. Broadly confirmed

44. Broadly confirmed

45. Possibly confirmed but unsuitable data

46. No significant difference between texts

47. Not confirmed: if anything, the opposite is the case

48. Not confirmed: English texts are more nominal

49. Broad results: the deictic (indexical) and inferential affordances of the of the two languages appear to differ the propositional and discourse deictic affordances are not significantly different

50. But does this demonstrate.. only that different social contexts are encoded in the texts? or that different characteristics of the social event can be more readily encoded in the different pragmatic affordances of the two languages?