16.223, Review: Applied Ling/Ling Theories: Coffin et al (2004)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-16-223. Mon Jan 24 2005. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 16.223, Review: Applied Ling/Ling Theories: Coffin et al (2004)

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1)
Date: 24-Jan-2005
From: Sara Laviosa < saralaviosa at tiscali.it >
Subject: Applying English Grammar: Functional and Corpus Approaches 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2005 17:27:09
From: Sara Laviosa < saralaviosa at tiscali.it >
Subject: Applying English Grammar: Functional and Corpus Approaches 
 

EDITORS: Coffin, Caroline; Hewings, Ann; O'Halloran, Kieran
TITLE: Applying English Grammar
SUBTITLE: Functional and Corpus Approaches
PUBLISHER: Arnold Publishers (distributed in US by Oxford University Press)
YEAR: 2004
Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/15/15-2778.html


Sara Laviosa, Facoltà di Lingue e Letterature Straniere, Università degli 
Studi di Bari, Italy

This edited volume comprising both newly commissioned  and previously 
published papers is most welcome in so far as it brings together in a 
novel way two approaches to English grammar, namely the systemic 
functional approach and the corpus linguistic one, both of them becoming 
increasingly relevant to the empirical description of language use and the 
study of how language transmits values, identities, and ideology. The book 
is divided into three self-contained parts each being preceded by an 
introduction which usefully sets out the aims of each section. Part 1 
introduces the principal theoretical tenets and methodologies underlying 
the systemic functional and corpus linguistic perspectives to English 
language studies. Part 2 presents further studies carried out within the 
functional and the corpus linguistic frameworks with a view to comparing 
and contrasting different text types. The focus of Part 3 is Critical 
Discourse Analysis (CDA), which has recently begun to draw on corpus 
linguistics giving rise to what is known as corpus-based CDA. 

Part 1 Chapter 1 by Elena Tognini-Bonelli outlines the basic principles 
and the main issues pertaining to the corpus linguistic approach, starting 
from the very notion of corpus and ending with the different uses of 
corpora in descriptive and applied studies, including translation. Part 1 
Chapter 2 by Ronald Carter reports on an empirical study aimed at 
highlighting some important grammatical patterns that distinguish spoken 
from written discourse. In Part 1 Chapter 3 Douglas Biber and Susan Conrad 
present a comparative study of the lexico-grammatical features of four 
registers: conversation, fiction, newspaper writing, and academic prose. 
Part 1 Chapter 4 by Jim R. Martin explains some fundamental differences 
between structuralist approaches to grammar, with their focus on part-
whole structure of grammatical units, and systemic functional grammar, 
which is concerned with showing the relation between structure and 
meaning. In Part 1 Chapter 5 M. A. K. Halliday illustrates and discusses 
some typical difficulties presented by scientific writing, which he groups 
under seven closely related headings: interlocking definitions, technical 
taxonomies, special expressions, lexical density, syntactic ambiguity, 
grammatical metaphor, and semantic discontinuity. 

Part 2 Chapter 1 by Ann Hewings and Martin Hewings investigates how the 
anticipatory it functions in two contrasting collections of academic 
prose, i.e. student and published academic writing, demonstrating intra-
register variation with regard to one grammatical structure. Part 2 
Chapter 2 by Hilary Hillier examines the clause and noun phrase structures 
that characterize two versions of Charles Dickens' Bleak House, namely the 
original nineteenth-century novel and a simplified Guided Reader version 
written by Margaret Tarner aimed at learners of English. The analysis 
finds its place within the functional framework but uses mostly 
traditional grammatical labelling. Part 2 Chapter 3 by Ann Hewings and 
Caroline Coffin combine a quantitative corpus-based analysis with a 
functional analysis of university students' on-line conference 
discussions -- a variety of Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) -- and 
essay writing, with a view to ascertaining the extent to which the former 
genre is closer to speech or written academic prose. In Part 2 Chapter 4 
Clare Painter describes, within the theoretical framework of systemic 
functional linguistics, the speech development of a growing child and 
unveils not only specific aspects of the developing linguistic system but 
also the speaker's use of the system as a means of making sense of the 
world. Part 2 Chapter 5 by Gill Francis and Anneliese Kramer-Dahl reports 
on a comparative examination of Oliver Sacks' clinical tales vis-à-vis a 
case report published in a professional journal of neuropsychology. 

In Part 3 Chapter 1 Andrew Goatly starts his investigation by assuming 
that English grammar normally structures reality according to a Newtonian 
view of the world. He then proceeds to investigate the representation of 
nature in The Times vis-à-vis Wordsworth's The Prelude using the 
theoretical framework of systemic functional grammar and a corpus-based 
methodology. In Part 3 Chapter 2 Veronika Koller and Gerlinde Mautner 
examine the advantages of combining the use of concordancing programs with 
CDA's traditional qualitative analyses, illustrating the points made with 
two case studies. The first is the role of personal pronouns in newspaper 
editorials in the construction of social identities and social relations, 
the second is the role played by the lemma federal in the British debate 
on the European Union. Part 3 Chapter 3 by Peter White provides a 
framework for investigating what it might mean for a media news report to 
be neutral and value free and how to distinguish between objective and 
subjective texts whose positive or negative evaluations might influence 
the reader's view about the people, events, and states of affairs depicted 
in the text Part 3. Chapter 4 by Michael Stubbs is an analysis of the 
expression of causativity in ergative constructions and modality in 
projective that-clauses in two school textbooks on physical and human 
geography vis-à-vis a written corpus of English with a view to unveiling 
the different ideological stances expressed in the school books. Part 3 
Chapter 5 by Kieran O'Halloran and Caroline Coffin illustrates the ways in 
which, thanks to corpus-based techniques, the analysis of reader 
positioning to accept a particular point of view can be rendered more 
rigorous by reducing over- and under-interpretations of a given text such 
as the news report in a tabloid newspaper.

Aimed primarily at undergraduate students, this volume is part of a course 
entitled English Grammar in Context run by the Open University. Highly 
readable and clearly organized into self-contained sections, it provides 
an up-to-date theoretical and methodological framework for the analysis of 
the English language as it is used today. The glossary compiled by Sarah 
North gives clear definitions of key terms helping the reader to follow 
with ease the contents of each article. The novelty of this work lies in 
having shown the distinct possibility of integrating two different 
approaches to English grammar and exploring the potential for cross-
fertilization of these two areas of study. 

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Sara Laviosa was Head of the Italian Section of the School of Languages at 
the University of Salford, UK, where she lectured in translation practice 
and theory. She is now a Research Fellow in English Language and 
Translation at the Dipartimento di Lingue, Letterature e Tradizioni 
Culturali Anglo-Germaniche, University of Bari, Italy. Her main research 
interests are in Corpus-based Translation Studies. She has designed the 
English Comparable Corpus (ECC) and the Commercial Italian Corpus (COMIC) 
and has contributed to the development of the Translational English Corpus
(TEC). She has published articles and collected volumes on Translation 
Studies and Language Teaching Methodologies. She has authored the volume 
Corpus-based Translation Studies: Theory, Findings, Applications.





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