16.1786, Review: Discourse: Moder et al. (2004) Revision of 16-1712

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LINGUIST List: Vol-16-1786. Mon Jun 06 2005. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 16.1786, Review: Discourse: Moder et al. (2004) Revision of 16-1712

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1)
Date: 06-Jun-2005
From: Manuela Wagner < manuela.m.wagner at uconn.edu >
Subject: Discourse Across Languages and Cultures 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Mon, 06 Jun 2005 22:51:02
From: Manuela Wagner < manuela.m.wagner at uconn.edu >
Subject: Discourse Across Languages and Cultures 
 

EDITORS: Moder, Carol Lynn; Martinovic-Zic, Aida
TITLE: Discourse Across Languages and Cultures
SERIES: Studies in Language Companion
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins Publishing Company
YEAR: 2004
Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/15/15-2904.html


Manuela Wagner, Foreign Language Education, University of 
Connecticut

[This is a revised version of the review of "Discourse Across 
Languages and Cultures" in issue 16-1712. --Eds.]

INTRODUCTION

"Discourse Across Languages and Cultures" edited by Carol Lynn 
Moder and Aida Martinovic-Zic provides topics as diverse as text 
linguistics, discourse marker use, interlanguage pragmatics, 
comparisons of descriptions of how people move, discourse and 
expression of culture in cooking shows in America and Japan, 
intertextuality in academic, journalistic and advertising discourse, 
genre and modality, and analyses of texts as image schemas, to name 
a few examples. As Moder suggests in the introductory chapter, these 
topics are investigated with various different types of analyses and 
research paradigms opening up the dialogue between these 
disciplines.

SYNOPSIS

Chapter 1: Introduction, by Carol Lynn Moder
In the introductory chapter, Moder explains the framework of the book 
by laying out the concepts that are central to the discussion of each 
topic. Moder claims that historically, we viewed culture from different 
disciplines without taking the step of conducting interdisciplinary 
research. Moder takes a look at the development of Contrastive 
Rhetoric, Rhetorical Typology, Discourse Analysis, and Translation 
Studies inviting the reader to a journey from the beginnings of the 
studies to current developments. She sees the current book as the 
beginning of the dialogue between these disciplines, in order to move 
from answering specific questions from a particular perspective to 
answering broader theoretical questions.

Chapter 2: Holistic textlinguistics, by Robert E. Longacre
In chapter 2, Longacre introduces textlinguistics "as the completion 
and fulfillment of linguistics" since it "knits up many loose ends left 
from morphosyntax" (p. 13). Longacre analyses the novel "The Final 
Diagnosis" by Arthur Hailey (1959) with regard to interrelationships of 
textual factors. The components of analysis are "text type and its 
template, constituents of text, constraints as constituents, and exit to a 
morphosyntax informed by?" the three latter components (p. 34), 
Longacre starts out with the narrative template from the "inciting 
incident" to the "mounting tension to climax" and finally to 
the "denouement" (p.14). He argues that higher level structures, such 
as the template, are tied in with the level of sentence, clause and 
phrase. The author shows that the narrative text and paragraph 
consist of "recursive units". At the microanalysis level, Longacre 
shows functions of adverbs as transition markers in narrative texts, 
explores dialogic paragraphs, explaining why they move the storyline 
further ahead, shows how dialogue is integrated with other types of 
presentation in the narrative, and reveals how paragraphs encode 
reflection. Through his analysis, Longacre demonstrates that different 
strands of the storyline are part of the main plot while others mainly 
provide additional information indicating the interrelatedness of 
morphosyntax and higher level structure in the novel. The author 
suggests that textlinguistics should be introduced to students of 
linguistics at an earlier point because of its explanatory power of 
issues in morphosyntax.

Chapter 3: Discourse effects of polysynthesis, by Wallace Chafe
In chapter 3, Chafe reports findings of comparative analyses of two 
languages, English and Seneca, the latter being a highly endangered 
Iroquoian language spoken in three separate reservations in western 
New York State. Chafe shows how these two languages differ in the 
concepts as well as in how these concepts, which he calls "ideas", are 
expressed. He differentiates between three different types of ideas: 
1) "ideas of events and states", 2) "ideas of people and things" which 
are called "referents", and 3) "larger chunks of information" which he 
calls "topics" (p. 39). We learn that Seneca does not have a copula or 
prepositions. By translating sentences from English into Seneca, 
Chafe illustrates that ideas are represented as intonation units in 
spoken language and that prefixes mark events with the perfective 
aspect as factual, expected to become a fact or as a possibility to 
become a fact. This example shows that Seneca speakers 
automatically relate any event to how it refers to reality, whereas in 
English we rather mark events within a timeframe. Another feature of 
Seneca is the presence of polysynthetic or holistic verbs, "holistic in 
the sense of including the participants within the same word" (p. 44) 
whereas English usually provides additional information about 
participants. Through his analysis, Chafe illustrates that the different 
characteristics in the morphologies of English and Seneca influence 
discourse patterns in both languages. 

Chapter 4: Prosodic Schemas: Evidence from Urdu and Pakistani 
English, by Rebecca L. Damron
In chapter 4, Damron investigates prosodic schemas, i.e. the form and 
function of prosody, in Urdu and Pakistani English. The questions 
addressed in the study are: "How is prosody used cognitively by the 
conversational participants?", "Do the participants rely on formulaic or 
schematic structures which are culturally determined, or do they rely 
on universal prosodic signals in the outline processing of language in 
interaction?" (p. 58). The two languages were chosen because of 
their differences in morphosyntax, although they are spoken in the 
same culture. Results were compared to work completed in American 
English prosody. The recordings in Urdu and Pakistani English were 
divided in intonation units. Analysis showed that Urdu used a higher 
mean number of words per intonation unit than Pakistani English. A 
comparison to results in Chafe's (1994) study also showed that 
Pakistani English used more words than American English, which 
Damron interprets as indication that there are factors other than 
morphosyntax influencing length of intonation units. Moreover, 
analyses showed that Urdu contained a high percentage of multi-
clausal units. Both Pakistani English and Urdu were characterized by 
level pitch at the end of intonation units and contained no regular 
nuclear accent. Pauses were used to define intonation boundaries. 
When analyzing the functions of the intonation units, Damron found 
that multi-clause intonation units contained more than one idea. This 
contradicts Chafe's (1994) One New Idea Constraint, stating that each 
multi-clause intonation unit contained only one new idea. Finally, 
Damron investigates topicalization issues and finds that in both 
languages contrastive topicalization is set up in a similar way. By 
comparing the current study to previous studies, the author presents a 
possible model of prosodic schemas in relation to cultural aspects and 
to short-term and long-term working memory.

Chapter 5: Rhetorical relations in dialogue: A contrastive study, by 
Maite Taboada
Taboada investigates 60 conversations between two speakers who 
were trying to complete a task consisting of either accepting or 
rejecting a date, 30 in Spanish and 30 in English. The author follows 
Rhetorical Structure Theory analysis, thereby applying rhetorical 
relations to spoken language. One presupposition is that the text, in 
this case the dialogue, is functionally and hierarchically organized. In 
the turn-by-turn analyses, the author shows that genre and politeness 
influence the rhetoric structure, creating repeated patterns in turns 
with the same purpose. The distributions of relations are very similar 
in the Spanish and English conversations. In the 'conversation-as-a-
Whole-Analyses' Taboada focuses on the main purpose of the 
conversations, from the macro-level moving toward the lower levels. 
The latter does not necessarily restrict analyses to the turn-by-turn 
analyses. Results show very similar relations in the English and 
Spanish conversations, except for one difference that illustrates that in 
the Spanish data previous utterances are more often repeated. 
Finally, the author explores the script of the conversations referring to 
Schegloff and Sacks's (1973) work. The stages found in the current 
data are initialization, task-performance, and closing. Analyses reveal 
that in Spanish conversations initializations and closings are longer 
than in the English conversations, while the structuring of the three 
stages is similar in both languages. The author shows that subject 
matter, aspects of different stages in dialogues, as well as politeness 
rules have an effect on rhetorical relations. Taboada wonders whether 
the rather small cross-linguistic differences might be due to the fact 
that the two language groups performed the task in the US.

Chapter 6: Interlanguage Pragmatics: Apology speech acts, by Euen 
Hyuk (Sarah) Jung
In chapter 6, Jung compares apology speech act performances of ten 
native speakers of English and ten advanced Korean learners of 
English as a Second Language. The apology strategies considered 
were Expression of Apology, Explanation, Acknowledgement of 
Responsibility, Offer of Repair and Promise of Non-recurrence. Data 
was elicited through role-plays using the two situations of not showing 
up to a friend's party and not showing up for an appointment with a 
professor in order to include factors such as social distance. The two 
language groups produced three types of apologies: native English 
apologies, non-native English apologies, and native Korean apologies. 
Analyses showed that the two groups used Expression of Apology 
similarly in quantity in both situations. However, Korean learners of 
English used different linguistic expressions, such as: "Can you 
forgive me?". Native English speakers and Korean speakers of 
English as a Second Language used the Explanation strategy to the 
same degree in both situations. 

However, differences occurred in how Korean learners expressed 
these Explanations in English. They used more words, which Jung 
interprets as indication of their confidence in their linguistic ability, 
while they might lack confidence in their communicative effectiveness. 
While both groups used the Acknowledgement of Responsibility 
strategy similarly in their L1 in both situations, Korean learners of 
English did not acknowledge their responsibility to the same degree in 
English when they apologized to their friend. Interestingly, Korean 
learners of English used this strategy when apologizing to their 
professor in English as much as the native English speakers. Another 
difference was that while Korean learners of English used the Offer of 
Repair strategy in their L1 in the first situation (apology to a friend) 
they did not use this strategy nearly as much in English in both 
situations. In the second situation this might be due to their lower use 
of this strategy in L1. Both groups made rare use of the Promise of 
Non-recurrence strategy in their L1 in the first situation (apologizing to 
a friend). Korean learners of English did not use this strategy in their 
L2 either. When apologizing to their professor, Korean learners of 
English used this strategy to a much a higher degree in their L1 than 
native English speakers. However, they used this strategy to the same 
extent as the native English speakers in their L2. Jung concludes by 
addressing the implications of this study for classroom practitioners.

Chapter 7: Discourse marker use in native and non-native English 
speakers, by Hikyoung Lee
In chapter 7, Lee investigates discourse markers in colloquial speech 
of Korean immigrants who were either first-generation speakers, 
having immigrated to the US after the age of 18, 1.5 generation 
speakers who immigrated to the US before the age of 18, or second-
generation speakers who were born in the US of ethnic Korean 
parents. Discourse markers that were used as hesitation markers or 
fillers, that had a grammatical function, or that occurred with very low 
frequency, were not included in the analysis. In contrast to prior 
studies, Lee did not find gender differences in the use of discourse 
markers. However, analyses revealed differences between 
generations. While all three groups showed an awareness of 
discourse markers, the 1.5 generation speakers used discourse 
markers most. Lee interprets this as possible overgeneralization of 
discourse marker use. The lower rate of first generation Korean 
speakers of English might indicate that English language learners are 
not yet aware of the pragmatics of this particular feature. Analyses of 
interactions of variables showed some different patterns, such as 
gender or generation differences, in the use of particular discourse 
markers.

Chapter 8: Discourse markers across languages: Evidence from 
English and French, by Suzanne Fleischman and Marina Yaguello
Fleischman and Yaguello examine the discourse marker "like" in 
English and "genre" in French with regard to their function. A 
description of the history of "like" and "genre" reveals that "like" 
1) has been dealt with in literature more, 
2) is more frequently used, and 
3) appears to be syntactically more flexible than "genre". 

Fleischman and Yaguello continue with an exploration of pragmatic 
functions of the two discourse markers in question. The functions 
include "focus", i.e. marking the information coming to the right of it as 
focal, "hedge", i.e. signaling that the information should not be taken 
literally, "elaboration, justification, explanation", "interpretative 
quotative" making segments "look like reported speech", "quoted 
thought", "quoted attitude", and "ironic quotation" (p.135). Next, the 
authors examine the development of the two markers in their 
respective languages, showing that the "quotative" function of the two 
discourse markers is "a natural extension" of the "focus" marker 
function. Fleischman and Yaguello claim that the current case study of 
the two discourse markers that have relatively similar functions, but 
have developed these functions independently, might leave room for 
hypotheses about the pathways of pragmaticalization for discourse 
markers across languages.

Chapter 9: Intertextuality across communities of practice: Academics, 
journalism and advertising, by Ron Scollon
In chapter 9, Ron Scollon describes three types of discourse-- 
academic writing, journalism, and advertising-- with regards to three 
characteristics: discourse representation, production formats, and 
stance within the community of practice. Discourse representation is 
used to refer to quotations, citations, or "representing discourse within 
discourses" (p. 151). For production format, Scollon uses Goffman's 
(1974; 1981) framework distinguishing between "author" (the one who 
produces wordings of a text), the "animator" (who produces the actual 
text as a physical entity), and the "principal" (who takes responsibility 
for what is said in the text). Scollon shows that while all three types of 
discourse represent discourse to some extent, there are differences in 
quantity and in the manner how the citations and quotations are used. 
Academic discourse, for known reasons, is concerned most with citing 
the correct sources. Scollon shows that, in journalism, citations are 
used more frequently but with fewer linguistic representations. In 
advertising discourse representation is a more complex issue. A look 
at the production format reveals that whereas there usually is a unity 
of author, animator and principal in academic discourse, this is usually 
not the case in journalism, and even less so in advertising practice. In 
journalism, journalists position themselves outside of the public 
discourse, whereas in advertising the author provides eight different 
scenarios of production format. The last aspect, i.e. stance within the 
community of practice, plays an important role in academic research. 
Researchers carefully position themselves as legitimate members of 
the academic community, whereas in journalism authors distance 
themselves from the text, and in advertising the ownership of the idea 
plays a minor role compared to the marketability of ideas.

Chapter 10: Genre as a locus of social structure and cultural ideology: 
A comparison of Japanese and American cooking classes, by Patricia Mayes
In chapter 10, Mayes conducts a cross-cultural comparison of 
Japanese and American cooking classes investigating the level of 
formality of languages, the content of talk, and the participants' 
reported reasons to take the cooking class. Mayes claims that these 
two situations represent comparable genres in that they have a similar 
exigence, i.e., "they are solutions to similar communicative problems" 
(p. 179). Mayes shows that in Japanese cooking classes participants 
used a more formal style which was mainly expressed in the different 
types of honorifics used by the cooking class instructors, thus creating 
a formal relationship between the participants and themselves. Since 
English does not have such a level of grammaticalization of social 
rules, Mayes claims that it is a more complicated matter to investigate 
the style used. The author uses patterns associated with informal face-
to-face situations, such as hedges, emphatics, amplifiers, 
contractions, demonstrative pronouns, and discourse particles. She 
found that these were used more frequently in American cooking 
classes, therefore implying that these classes were held in a more 
informal style. Mayes argues that this informal style was reinforced by 
the fact that more content that was not related to the task, such as 
personal anecdotes and gossip, was introduced in the American 
cooking classes, thus contributing to a more casual atmosphere. The 
author reports that in the Japanese classes the instructors focused 
exclusively on task-oriented language. This was also reflected in the 
students' reasons to participate in the class, which were primarily task-
oriented, whereas American students reported reasons such as 
meeting people and being entertained in addition to wanting to learn 
how to cook. In conclusion, Mayes shows that by comparing genres 
across cultures, "we can gather insights about culture as it is 
instantiated in social structure and reflected in language" (p.191.)

Chapter 11: How people move: Discourse effects of linguistic typology, 
by Dan I. Slobin
In chapter 11, Slobin presents findings of investigations of verbs and 
associated elements that describe how people move by 1) comparing 
a chapter of The Hobbit (Tolkien, 1937) in various languages that 
have been shown to be different in terms of their description of 
motion, 2) eliciting narrations of a story in response to a series of 
pictures, in this case "the frog story", 3) looking at newspaper stories 
reporting the same event in different languages, and 4) applying the 
methods used for the texts of the Hobbit to further novels in different 
languages. Slobin differentiates between verb-framed and satellite-
framed languages. The main element of motion is the PATH which is 
expressed by the verb in French and by particles such as "in" 
and "out", also called satellites, in English. Therefore, English 
represents a "satellite-framed language" whereas French is a "verb-
framed language". In his translation analyses, Slobin focuses on verbs 
that describe the MANNER of movement, like "run, crawl, stroll" and 
the like. Results indicate that satellite-framed languages have 
developed verbs that describe manner of movement in a more 
differentiated way than verbs in verb-framed languages. Slobin shows 
that translators have difficulties finding the right translation for these 
verbs in verb-framed languages, such as French and Spanish. 
Furthermore, the author explains how languages accommodate this 
phenomenon. Examples are neutralization and omission when 
translating from satellite-framed languages into verb-framed 
languages and addition of manner verbs when translating into satellite-
framed languages. Analyses of oral descriptions of the frog story 
reveal that speakers of different ages of verb-framed languages 
mainly used path verbs without a verb particle, whereas speakers of 
satellite-framed languages used manner verbs in combination with a 
verb particle, such as "out". A similar pattern of manner verbs and 
path verbs was found in the newspaper accounts in the different 
languages. In both, the narrations of the frog story and in the 
newspaper stories, satellite-framed languages had a higher repertoire 
of verbs than verb-framed languages. As a next step, Slobin applies 
the coding scheme used for the study of "The Hobbit" to analyze 
seven novels each in the satellite-framed languages Russian and 
English, and in the verb-framed languages Spanish and Turkish. 
Results clearly indicate that satellite-framed languages use a 
significantly higher number of manner verb types than verb-framed 
languages even when phrasal verbs were included. Finally, Slobin 
shows that these differences can also be found in corpora of English, 
Spanish, and Turkish conversations and in parent-child discourse. 
The results confirm Slobin's proposal that satellite-framed languages 
pay more attention to manner of motion than verb-framed languages, 
indicating that these languages underlie typologies that influence how 
speakers of these two types of languages conceptualize motion 
events.

Chapter 12: Why manner matters: Contrasting English and Serbo-
Croatian typology in motion description, by Jelena Jovanovic and Aida 
Martinovic-Zic
In chapter 12, Jovanovic and Martinovic-Zic investigate the two 
satellite-framed languages Serbo-Croatian and English according to 
their lexicalization of motion by analyzing the use of motion verbs in 
the frog story naturalistic data of three age groups (5 years, 9 years, 
adults) of Serbo-Croatian and American English speakers. The 
difference between the two languages is that English uses verb-
particles and Serbo-Croatian uses prefixes which are added to the 
verb root to encode path and direction in motion. Therefore, the 
authors call English "free-particle satellite-framed language" and 
Serbo-Croatian "prefixed satellite-framed language". The questions 
addressed in the study are: how structural/morphological and lexical 
differences in Serbo-Croatian and English contribute to manner of 
motion verb types and frequencies, and how grammatical aspect 
relates to the notion of manner in the two languages. Motion verbs 
were organized as follows: 1) 'bare motion verbs', 2) 'motion + path 
verbs', and 3) 'motion + manner verbs'. The authors found few 
differences between the variety and number of types of 'bare motion 
verbs' and 'motion + path verbs' in the two languages. More significant 
differences were found in the use of motion and manner verbs, with 
speakers of Serbo-Croatian using more types and tokens than English 
speakers. Thus, the hypotheses that Serbo-Croatian might have more 
tokens of 'motion + path verbs' than English and fewer types of 
manner of motion verbs were not confirmed. When examining aspect 
in manner of motion verbs, analyses revealed that Serbo-Croatian 
speakers produced more types of motion verbs marking aspect, and 
that verbal morphology marked aspect in various ways. Translations 
of manner of motion verbs showed that a number of motion verbs 
were not translatable from one language to the other. More frequently 
this was the case for English verbs. Qualitative analyses also revealed 
a higher amount of semantic clustering of manner of motion verbs in 
English than in Serbo-Croatian. While not all hypotheses were 
confirmed, the authors showed some differences within satellite-
framed languages in aspect-mediated motion.

Chapter 13: Episodic boundaries in Japanese and English narratives, 
by Mary Seig
Seig studied the episodic structure of narratives at the example of the 
picture book Frog, Where are you? by Mercer Mayer (1976). The 
main goals of the study were to examine 1) the linguistic devices used 
to mark episode boundaries and 2) the perception of production in 
Japanese and English in these two formats. The subjects consisted of 
fifty American and fifty Japanese university students who were either 
asked to tell the story from the book (book format) or by seeing the 
pictures on a long roll of paper (scroll format) in their first language, 
Japanese or English. Through coding each transcript for intonation 
units that would mark episode boundaries, analyses revealed similar 
patterns of the following aspects with regard to their relation in the 
episode: 1) intonation units, 2) the position of frontal adverbial 
clauses, 3) reference to the boy character, 4) reference to the dog 
character, and 5) reference to the frog character. Seig found eight 
linguistic devices indicating boundaries of episodes in her data. 
Differences between the book and the scroll formats were only found 
in the length of intonation units. In other words, both English and 
Japanese narrators used more intonation units in the book format. A 
measure of the number of words showed that, on average, English 
speakers used more words than Japanese speakers. In both 
languages books stories consisted of more words than scroll stories, 
and English scroll stories consisted of more words than Japanese 
book and scroll stories. In the analyses of typological variation, Seig 
found some similarities in the frontal adverbial clauses with regard to 
their "percentage-per-picture" and their "ratio of occurrence," 
providing further evidence for Slobin's "thinking for speaking" theory. 
English and Japanese narrators differed in their use of pronoun 
mention, subject ellipsis, and reference in subject position. Seig 
concludes that the variation of the format has an influence on the 
perception of the narrators. One example is that seeing all the 
pictures at once in the scroll format might influence segmentation 
processes, causing narrators of scroll stories to include fewer details 
per picture.

Chapter 14: Rhetorical influences: As Latin was, English is?, by 
William G. Eggington
In chapter 14, Eggington investigates the influence of English on 
international discourse. Through analogy with Latin and its influence 
on the development of English and the influence of Classical Chinese 
on the written rhetorical styles used by Korean and Japanese 
academic authors, Eggington claims that it is reasonable to assume 
that today's most used language for academic discourse has a similar 
influence on rhetorical patterns of contemporary languages. 
Furthermore, Eggington uses Swales' (1990) distinction between 
speech community and discourse community, claiming that being a 
competent member of the latter implies that one necessarily has to 
learn rhetorical aspects of discourse structure. This again is an 
argument for the influence of English on international discourse. As 
further evidence, Eggington cites studies, language policies, and 
anecdotes. Some examples are: 1.) in some universities and in many 
disciplines in countries, such as Sweden and Germany, most 
academic essays are written in English, 2) many countries have 
introduced strong policies concerning English as a Second Language, 
3) studies indicate that some linguistic features were changed by the 
influence of English, and 4) a Chinese physics professor reports that 
Chinese students seem to use Chinese patterns that are influenced by 
English even when they sound 'awkward'. Eggington concludes that 
further research in more languages is needed in order to study the 
influence of English on international discourse and to determine 
whether English will indeed be equal to Latin with regard to its impact.

Chapter 15: Contrastive discourse analysis: Argumentative text in 
English and Spanish, by Joanne Neff, Emma Dafouz, Mercedes Díez, 
Rosa Prieto, Craig Chaudron
Neff and colleagues report results from a study of developmental and 
cross-linguistic aspects in written argumentative texts produced by 
Spanish and English L1 journalists, first- and fourth-year Spanish 
university students writing in both Spanish and English, and US 
students of the same age writing in English by combining factors 
studied in contrastive rhetoric and methods employed in 
developmental studies. The variables consist of a) structural aspects, 
such as 1) words per T-unit, 2) words per clause, 3) finite and non-
finite clauses per T-unit, and of b) information-based aspects, such as 
1) types of subordinate finite and non-finite clauses to include 
background information, 2) the types of coordinate connectors per T-
unit, and 3) the types of verbs controlling the complement clauses. 
Results of analyses of the argumentative texts produced by 
professional writers in English and Spanish as their L1 revealed that 
Spanish texts had higher means of words per T-unit, words per 
clause, relative clauses per T-unit, participial clauses per T-unit, finite 
subordinate clauses per T-unit, and finite clauses per T-unit while 
English writes used more gerundival clauses per T-unit. Results of 
Spanish texts of first-year and fourth-year students and professional 
writers show that professional writers used more words and more 
participials per T-unit than either group of students. Moreover, data 
indicated that there was a development in Spanish writers from first-
year students to professional writers in the use subordinate clauses. 
Similar differences were found in the English group between 
professional writers and students, with the professionals using longer 
T-units, a higher number of participial clauses and of other types of 
subordinate clauses. When comparing the texts produced by English 
as L1 as opposed to L2, results showed that the group of English 
professional writers produced significantly longer T-units than the 
other groups. Development in length of T-unit and in syntactic 
complexity was observed in English as Foreign Language writers. 

Chapter 16: Academic biliteracy and the mother tongue: A case study 
of academic essays in Venezuelan Spanish and English, by Elizabeth 
Arcay Hands and Ligia Cossé
In chapter 16, Arcay Hands and Cossé examine three academic texts, 
two of which were written in Venezuelan Spanish, one by a 
monolingual author, one by a bilingual Spanish and English writer and 
one written in English by a monolingual English writer. The main 
question addressed is whether academic biliteracy influences L1 
academic writing, as has been indicated by results in a previous study 
by Arcay. The study employs a multidimensional approach, in that it 
addresses linguistic, cognitive, cultural and social dimensions, and a 
multidisciplinary approach in that it takes into consideration disciplines 
such as linguistics, sociology, and psychology. Only findings in the 
linguistic and cultural dimension are reported in the chapter. Results 
reveal differences and similarities between the texts produced by the 
monolingual and bilingual scholars. Aracy Hands and Cossé found 
that the text produced by the bilingual author showed a more 
homogeneous distribution of different types of sentences used and a 
higher use of coordination in sentence structure than the text 
produced by the monolingual Spanish scholar. Interestingly, the 
bilingual author and the monolingual English author showed a similar 
use of sentences with subordinated subordination, whereas the 
monolingual Spanish author used a much higher proportion of this 
sentence type. With regard to rhetorical organizations, the texts were 
generally similar in types and frequencies of basic rhetorical units of 
an argument, except for "concession" units, which were used less by 
the monolingual Spanish author, but to the same extent by the two 
other authors. Differences were also found in the total number of 
units, with the bilingual and the English author using the same number 
of units despite differences in the number of sentences per text. In 
conclusion, Arcay Hands and Cossé show that an analysis using this 
approach can illuminate the important question of L2 to L1 
transference processes which have so far not been studied 
extensively.

Chapter 17: Texts as image schemas: A cross-linguistic study, by 
Tânia Gastão Saliés
In chapter 17, Saliés reports results of a study carried out to 
investigate the image schema in institutional expository texts, 20 of 
which were written in Brazilian Portuguese and 20 in English. Saliés 
defines image schema in discourse as a fixed gestalt consisting of a 
variety of elements. More specifically, Saliés uses the notion of 
COMMUNICATIVE TEXT, elaborating on Lakoff's MOTION schema 
consisting of the elements SOURCE-PATH-GOAL-DESTINATION, 
each of which again consists of sub-elements. When language users 
use these elements and sub-elements simultaneously, they produce 
COMMUNICATIVE TEXT. The data was coded with regard to syntax, 
lexicon, and word-order effects according to cognitive and pragmatic 
constraints, and applying Cognitive Grammar (Langacker 1991). 
Analyses revealed significant differences in the organization of 
sentences and attention units between Brazilian Portuguese and 
English. Brazilian Portuguese writers used more words, more attention 
units per sentence, and a higher number of juxtaposed prepositional 
phrases than English writers. Analyses of the lexicon showed that 
English texts consisted of a higher lexical variety and density than 
Brazilian Portuguese texts. Qualitative analyses showed, for example, 
that English relied more on content types and less on lexical 
repetitions and grammar to cue meaning. Finally, the authors present 
image schemas for both languages showing the differences and how 
text production is linked to the grammar of the language and to the 
efficiency of cognitive processing of certain features.

Chapter 18: Genre and modality in developing discourse abilities, by 
Ruth A. Berman
In chapter 18, Berman investigates 256 Hebrew-language texts 
produced by 16 subjects of four different levels of schooling (grades 
four, seven, eleven and university graduate level), who each 
produced four different types of texts (one narrative and one 
expository, each produced in spoken and written form). The main 
aspects of text production studied are the structure and content of 
noun and verb phrases in the two different genres and the register 
used in spoken compared to written discourse across the different 
ages. Berman found the following genre differences in the use of noun 
phrases: 
1) a higher use of null subjects in narrative texts and a higher use of 
lexical subjects in expository texts, 
2) different discourse functions and syntactic contexts of null subjects 
in the two genres, with more impersonal constructions occurring in 
expository texts, and 
3) more personal pronouns in narrative texts as opposed to 
impersonal pronouns occurring more frequently in expository texts. 

Genre differences in the use of verb phrases include:
1) a higher number of "nominal" copular constructions, "without any 
overt verb on present tense" (p.342), in expository than in narrative 
texts, 
2) a higher number of lexical verbs in narrative texts, and 
3) a higher number of complex verb phrases and of nonfinite 
subordination subjects in expository texts. 

However, up to seventh grade subjects used mostly finite verbs in 
simple and subordinate clauses. Developmental analyses revealed 
that with age, subjects used more heavy noun phrases and more 
complex verb phrases. These complex verb phrases also differed in 
structure and content in the different age groups. Moreover, with age 
subjects tended to use null subjects that fulfilled discourse purposes 
rather than merely using null subjects when they were grammatically 
necessary. Nonfinite subordination mainly occurred in high school 
students and adults. Modality differences included a higher number of 
noun phrases and heavier noun phrases, and more subject omission 
with person-inflected verbs in written than in spoken language. 
Analyses of the use of register in spoken as compared to written 
language showed clear developmental trends. The youngest subjects 
produced texts that were mostly "anchored in speech", whereas 
seventh-graders showed some signs of distinguishing register of 
usage but displayed mixing of register. Ninth-graders seemed to be 
aware that different registers were required but were still not able to 
show consistent use within the texts and across the genres. Finally, 
adults showed consistent use of clear register distinctions. In her 
concluding remarks, Berman discusses implications for methodology, 
questions of developmental trends, form-function interrelationships 
and language typology.

EVALUATION

Moder and Martinovic-Zic's book is a refreshing and crucial 
contribution to the study of discourse. First, the different studies 
reported in this book provide a variety of topics within the bigger 
umbrella of discourse across cultures, bringing together the work of a 
number of influential scholars. The findings touch upon important 
questions that have not been dealt with so far and open up the 
readers' eyes to vital issues. These questions are crucial, not only 
within the fields of studies explored in this book, but also for fields 
such as education or language policy, just to name two examples. By 
investigating the influence of knowledge of a foreign language on the 
knowledge and performance in our first language we get closer to 
answering questions about cognition, as well as about the importance 
of studying foreign languages. Findings concerning different 
pragmatic skills and how they are influenced by linguistic and 
pragmatic aspects in one's first language can be employed by 
classroom practitioners. 

A further refreshing aspect is the variety of different contexts in which 
these studies are set. Inevitably, the reader is presented with diverse 
cultural and educational settings, finding out more about not only what 
role the factors of the language play with regard to linguistic features, 
but also considering the role of interaction with the cultural, political, 
sociological and historical background in the various settings. This in 
itself is a course in cultural sensitivity. Moreover, the studies make use 
of a plethora of methodologies, thereby providing examples for how to 
study the phenomena described in this book with inter- and 
multidisciplinary approaches. The chapters are organized in a way 
that the reader benefits from previous chapters when reading about 
similar methodology or findings that can be compared and built upon. 
Therefore, I believe that apart from being an excellent addition to the 
specialists' library in the various fields involved, this book would also 
be a great tool for courses dealing with discourse. While each chapter 
provides an introduction to the methodology applied in different areas 
of discourse studies, the topics are related enough that the students 
will be able to find out about the interconnectedness of the topics, 
while at the same time gaining a broader view of discourse across 
languages and cultures. In conclusion, the present book is a rich 
scholarly and educational source which is also very enjoyable to read.

REFERENCES

Chafe, W. (1994). Discourse, Consciousness and Time. Chicago: 
University of Chicago Press.

Schegloff, E., Sacks, H. (1973). Opening up closing. Semiotica 8: 289-
327.

Goffman, E. (1974). Frame Analysis. New York, NY: Harper and Row.

Goffman, E. (1981). Forms of Talk. Philadelphia: University of 
Pennsylvania Press.

Swales, J. (1990). Genre analysis: English in academic and research 
settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Langacker, R. (1991). Concept, image, and symbol: The cognitive 
basis of grammar. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. 

ABOUT THE REVIEWER:

Manuela Wagner is Assistant Professor of Foreign Language 
Education and Director of the Critical Languages Program at the 
University of Connecticut. Her research focus is on pragmatic 
development in first and world language acquisition.





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