16.1712, Review: Discourse: Moder & Martinovic-Zic (2004)

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Subject: 16.1712, Review: Discourse: Moder & Martinovic-Zic (2004)

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1)
Date: 30-May-2005
From: Manuela Wagner < manuela.m.wagner at uconn.edu >
Subject: Discourse Across Languages and Cultures 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Mon, 30 May 2005 00:49:39
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

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, and analyses of text as image 
schemas. 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 
analysis, rhetorical typology, and translation studies. 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 the higher level structure such as the template is 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. 
His conclusion is 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). A 
few examples of what we learn about the differences between the two 
studied languages include 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 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), thus enabling conclusions about the influence of culture on 
prosody. The recordings in Urdu and Pakistani English were divided in 
intonation units. Analysis showed that Urdu used a lower mean number of 
words per intonation unit. 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 and 
that both, Pakistani English and Urdu, were characterized by level pitch 
at the end of intonation units and contained no regular nuclear accent 
whereas more pauses were used. Another finding contradicted Chafe's (1994) 
One New Idea Constraint stating that each multi-clause intonation unit 
contained only one new idea. More than one new idea was found in multi-
clausal intonation units in the current data. Finally, Damron investigates 
topicalization issues and finds that both languages contrastive 
topicalization is set up in a similar way. By comparing the current study 
to previous studies, the author presents a 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, following 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 showed that genre and politeness influence the rhetoric 
structure creating repeated patterns in turns with the same purpose. This 
was 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 showed very similar relations in the English and Spanish 
conversations, except for one difference that showed that in the Spanish 
data previous utterances were more often repeated. Finally, the author 
explores the script of the conversations referring to Schegloff and Sack's 
(1973) work. The stages found in the current data are initialization, task-
performance, and closing. Analyses revealed that in Spanish conversations 
initializations and closings were longer than in the English 
conversations. The author shows that subject matter, aspects of different 
stages in dialogues as well as politeness rules have an effect on 
rhetorical relations. Taboada concludes that 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 compared apology speech act performances of ten native 
speakers of English and ten advanced Korean learners of English as a 
second language. The second language learners all had studied English for 
a minimum of 11 years and had been studying at an American university 
between one and a half to three years. The apology strategies considered 
were expression of apology, explanation, acknowledgement of 
responsibility. 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. Analyses of the four aspects showed that the two groups used 
Expression of Apology similarly in quantity. However, they 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. Similarly, differences occurred 
in how Korean learners expressed these Explanations, i.e. using more words 
and how they promised non-recurrence. Korean speakers were shown to 
acknowledge their responsibility less than English native speakers in the 
situation in which they apologize in both situations. Another difference 
was that while Korean learners of English used the Offer of Repair 
strategy in their L1, they did not use it nearly as much in English. 
Interestingly, Korean learners of English did not use the Offer of Repair 
strategy as much in the situation in which they apologized to their 
professor in their first language. Consequently, the difference in their 
use of this strategy in English might be due to transfer from L1. 

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 to 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 most 
discourse markers. Lee interprets this as possible overgeneralization of 
discourse marker use when 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 and for longer than "genre", 2) is more frequently used 
than "genre", and 3) appears syntactically more flexible. 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 as 
literally, "elaboration, justification, explanation", "interpretative 
quotative" making segments "look like reported speech" (p.135), "quoted 
thought", "quoted attitude", "ironic quotation". 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 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, academics, 
journalism and advertising with regards to three characteristics: 
discourse representation, production formats, and stance within the 
community 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 whereas 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 discourse whereas in advertising the author provides eight 
different scenarios of production format. The last aspect, i.e. stance 
within the community practice, which plays an important role in academic 
research, in that the authors carefully position themselves as legitimate 
members of the academic community, whereas in journalism authors distance 
themselves from the text, and in advertising the author is not important.

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 exigency, i.e., "they are 
solutions to similar communicative problems". In doing so, Mayes showed 
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. Mayes uses patterns 
associated with informal face-to-face situations, such as hedges, 
emphatics, and amplifiers. 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 shows 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. Mayes 
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
Dan Slobin describes verbs and associated elements that describe how 
people move by 1) translating and comparing a chapter of The Hobbit 
(Tolkien, 1937) into 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", and 3) 
looking at newspaper stories reporting the same event in different 
languages. Slobin differentiates between verb-framed and satellite-framed 
languages. Slobin describes the main element of motion as 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 verb-framed languages have verbs that describe movement in a 
more differentiated way than English verbs do, which means that many verbs 
used in verb-framed languages are not available in English. Slobin shows 
that languages either assimilate or accommodate themselves to the source 
language. Analyses of oral descriptions of the frog story reveal that 
speakers 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.

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, as compared to the oral frog stories produced by the adult 
speakers of these languages. Results clearly indicate that verb-framed 
languages use a significantly higher number of manner verbs than verb-
framed languages. Finally, Slobin shows that these differences can also be 
found in conversations and in parent-child discourse.

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 frog story and naturalistic data 
of adult speakers of Serbo-Croatian and American English. The difference 
between the two languages is that English uses verb-particles and Serbo-
Croatian uses prefixes which are added to the verb root. Therefore, the 
authors call English "free-particle satellite-framed language" and Serbo-
Croatian "prefixed satellite-framed language". Motion verbs were organized 
as follows: 1) bare motion verbs, 2) motion and path verbs, and 3) motion 
and manner verbs. The authors found few differences between the number of 
types of bare motion verbs and motion and path verbs in the two languages, 
but some differences in the tokens of bare motion verbs, i.e. that English 
speakers used a higher number of bare motion verbs. More significant 
differences were found in the use of motion and manner verbs, with 
speakers of Serbo-Croatian using 8 more types and more tokens than English 
speakers. When examining the aspect in motion verbs, analyses revealed 
that Serbo-Croatian speakers produced more types of verbs marking aspect 
and that verbal morphology marked aspect in various ways. Translations 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 or motion verbs in English than in Spanish.

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 scroll of 
paper (scroll format). Through coding each transcript for intonation units 
that would mark episode boundaries, analyses revealed similar patterns 
with regard to their relation in the episode of the following aspects: 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. Differences between the book and the 
scroll formats were only found in the length of intonation units, that is 
that 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. English and Japanese narrators differed in their use of pronoun 
mention, 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 the development of Latin and 
its influence on 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 that 1) in some universities 
and in many disciplines in countries such as Sweden, most academic essays 
are written in English, 2) many countries have introduced strong policies 
concerning English as a Second Language. Eggington concludes that this 
must cause a change the patterns of languages influenced by English 
discourse structure, thus by an exolingual influence. The studies 
Eggington cites investigated the influence of English on Korean academic 
texts and found that indeed a new pattern had emerged.

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 combing contrastive rhetoric and methods employed in 
developmental studies. The variables consisted of structural aspects, such 
as words per T-unit, words per clause, finite and non-finite clauses per T-
unit, and of information-based aspects, such as types of subordinate 
finite and non-finite clauses to include background information and the 
types of coordinate connectors per T-unit. Results of analyses of the 
argumentative texts produced by professional writers in English and 
Spanish as their L1 revealed that Spanish writers had higher means of 
words per T-unit, words per clause, relative clause per T-unit, participal 
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 firs-year and fourth-year students and 
professional writers shows 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 of finite to non-finite 
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 but 
also revealed development in length of T-unit and in syntactic complexity 
in English as a Foreign Language writers as well as in the acquisition of 
forms not frequently used in Spanish.


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, Hands and Cossé examine three academic texts, two of which 
were written in Venezuelan Spanish, one by a monolingual Spanish 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 found 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 monolingual and 
bilingual scholars. Hands and Cossé found that the text produced by the 
bilingual author showed more different types of sentences that are a 
higher use of coordination in sentence structure than in the monolingual 
Spanish scholar and a similar use of some rhetorical typologies used in 
rhetorical organization. It is interesting to no significant differences 
were found with regard to sentence length and with regard to basic 
rhetorical units of an argument. In conclusion, Hands and Cossé show that 
an analysis using this approach can illuminate the important question of 
L2 to L1 transfer, which has 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 schemas in 20 institutional expository texts 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 consist of sub-elements. When language 
users use these elements they produce COMMUNICATIVE TEXT. The data were 
coded with regard to syntax, lexicon, and word-order effects according to 
cognitive and pragmatic constraints, and 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, attention units, and of 
juxtaposed prepositional phrased per sentence 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 on lexical items more 
because of morphology did not carry the same information as in English. 
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). Analyses of noun phrase structure include different 
classes of null subjects, personal and impersonal pronouns, and lexical 
noun phrases at four levels of complexity. Genre-based differences include 
the use of a lower number of null subjects in expository texts, a higher 
use of pronouns in narrative texts from 4th grade onwards. Developmental 
differences were found 1) in the discourse functions the subjectless 
clauses fulfilled, 2) the use of complex noun phrases, 3) sensitivity to 
the use of register. Finally, Berman discusses implications of the study 
with regard to methodological issues, showing that using two different 
text-types with different age groups provides advantages. Other important 
aspects are register in different languages, language background, as for 
example monolingual or bilingual contexts and schooling and level of 
literacy. 

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. Some 
examples are the influence of L2 on L1 development or the influence of 
genre combined with either developmental factors, or with native and non-
native influence. Another chapter enlightens us with a comparison of the 
highly endangered language Seneca with English, illustrating how languages 
influence the organization of discourse. Other topics include 
textlinguistics applied to a novel, showing its applicability to solving 
issues in morphosyntax, the comparison of apology strategies in English as 
a First and as a Second Language, a close examination of different text 
types, such as academic versus journalistic writing and advertising. 
Another author presents a theory of text as image schemas in Brazilian 
Portuguese and English. The list goes on. All 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. 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. 

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 
development 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. 

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., Sack, 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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LINGUIST List: Vol-16-1712