28.2322, Review: Pragmatics; Sociolinguistics: Bianchi, Gesuato (2016)

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Subject: 28.2322, Review: Pragmatics; Sociolinguistics: Bianchi, Gesuato (2016)

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Date: Thu, 25 May 2017 11:29:23
From: Dongmei Cheng [dongmei.cheng at tamuc.edu]
Subject: Pragmatic Issues in Specialized Communicative Contexts

 
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/27/27-3098.html

EDITOR: Francesca  Bianchi
EDITOR: Sara  Gesuato
TITLE: Pragmatic Issues in Specialized Communicative Contexts
SERIES TITLE: Utrecht Studies in Language & Communication
PUBLISHER: Brill
YEAR: 2016

REVIEWER: Dongmei Cheng, Texas A&M University

Reviews Editor: Helen Aristar-Dry

SUMMARY

Pragmatic knowledge, an important component of language knowledge, deals with
how utterances, sentences, and texts are related to language users’
communicative goals and contexts (Bachman & Palmer, 1996).  Following this
definition of pragmatic knowledge, this edited collection presents the
application of pragmatic analysis in a wide range of communicative settings,
including interpreting, scholarly discourse, scripted conversations, and
classroom contexts. To benefit practitioners in the field, the contributors
also highlight the relevance of pragmatic analysis to second/foreign language
pedagogies. 

The book is divided into four parts, with each part focusing on one general
category of communicative context. Part 1 (Chapter 1-3) addresses challenges
faced by interpreters when handling different communicative goals in
interpreter training, healthcare interpretations, and talk show
interpretations. Beginning with a discussion on the notion of “Pragmatic Dark”
(i.e., interpreters’ failure to manage pragmatic devices while trying to
translate  a given speech), Chapter 1 by Emanuele Brambilla presents examples
from the translations of ten speeches by David Cameron, as well as a model for
interpreter training, which focuses on argument schemes. Brambilla argues that
more pragmatically accurate interpretations can be achieved by training
interpreters to pay close attention to argument schemes used in political
speeches. Chapter 2 by Federico Farini uses conversation analysis to examine
the coordinating role of interpreters in healthcare communication between
doctors and foreign patients. Results showed that interpreters are actually
active participants in healthcare communication and influence the way foreign
patients are treated by their doctors, depending upon whether or not their
emotions are heard by the doctors through the interpreters. Farini urges all
training programs to consider including awareness training of interpreters in
health care institutions to better accommodate foreign patients’ emotional
needs. Chapter 3 by Eugenia Dal Fovo outlines a training course for talk show
interpreters. Given the uniqueness of talk show interpretations, the
interpreters need to be aware of their specific role and behavior, including
treating each talk show interpretation as a performance, serving as discourse
resources for entertaining purposes by allowing host and guests to pick on
their verbal and nonverbal behaviors, as well as adjusting to their multiple
discourse identities. The trainees in this course also participated in a
role-play experiment, in which they simulated the interpreters’ roles in a
talk-show interview and discussed their own performances in a follow-up
analysis. 

Part 2 (Chapter 4-6) investigates the pragmatic issues in scholarly contexts,
including TED talks, archaeology book reviews, and email requests made by
faculty and students. Chapter 4 by Antonio Compagnone compares pragmatic
features of TED talks with those of university lectures found in the Michigan
Corpus of Academic Spoken English (MICASE). Findings showed that TED talks
utilize different pragmatic features compared to university lectures in that
they place more emphasis on establishing the speakers’ credentials through an
audience-exclusive first person pronoun ‘we’ and mental verbs like ‘see’ and
‘know’. Results from this case study shed light on the pragmatic devices used
in a web-mediated spoken academic discourse, a new genre that has rarely been
examined in previous pragmatic studies. Chapter 5 by Daniela Cesiri evaluates
praise and criticism in archaeology book reviews published in a renowned
journal. Corpus analysis results indicated a balance between praise and
criticism demonstrated by archaeologists in composing book reviews, with
negative appraisals often mitigated. The discipline of archaeology has rarely
been studied in previous linguistic analyses; therefore, conclusions about the
rhetorical structures used by archeologists can be useful to both students and
teachers in English for Archeology. Chapter 6 by Phoenix Lam is a case study
on academic email requests, comparing features of such requests made by
faculty and by students from a Hong Kong university. While faculty members are
shown to use more standardized request forms, students utilize a range of
choices in terms of formality, sentence structures and word choices. Lam
proposes a data-driven approach at the end of the chapter to raise students’
awareness in making more appropriate email requests in academic settings. 

Part 3 (Chapter 7-8) explores the function of film dialogues in learners’
development of pragmatic abilities. Chapter 7 by Silvia Bruti discusses a
multimodal approach in using audiovisual texts from films in an EFL classroom.
Two conversational routines, namely compliments and insults, were focused in
analyzing different film clips. The author argues for the benefits of
incorporating nonlinguistic channels (e.g., camera shot descriptions, 
kinesics and proxemics) in analyzing conversational routines. Through such
multimodal analysis of film transcripts, the author hopes to highlight the
importance of both pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic aspects of the two
conversational routines. Chapter 8 by Chiara Zamborlin analyzes the comical
techniques used by Italian comedian and movie director Roberto Benigni in
teaching intercultural humor to students in a Japanese university. Survey
results from students showed that humor appears to be operationalized
differently in Italian and in Japanese culture. While humor in Italian is more
universal and permeates people’s daily lives, it is only believed to be
handled well by professionals in Japan.  Contexts were also shown to be
different in the utilization of humor in the West and in Japan. While humor is
widely used in different aspects of Western society, including politics, it is
an untouched subject in some domains in Japan (e.g., jokes about the Imperial
Family do not exist.)

Part 4 (Chapter 9-10) targets pragmatic instruction in foreign language
classrooms. Through an investigation of textual pragmatic markers in three
languages utilized by students in a multilingual classroom, Chapter 9 by Sofía
Martín-Laguna provides evidence for pragmatic multicompetence, meaning that
learners can transfer useful pragmatic knowledge from one language they know
to another through establishing relationships among multiple languages in
their linguistic repertoire.  Such positive transfer in pragmatics lends
support to the importance of multilingual education.  In Chapter 10, Thorsten
Schröter describes an undergraduate course in a Swedish university and shares
information on the teaching of pragmatics in a college EFL classroom. A small
research assignment from this course was described, with the following
pragmatic features examined in detail: expletives as a solidarity signal
(e.g., swearwords), humor and gender, as well as perceptions of non-standard
usage. Classroom observation report like this offers useful pedagogical
information for classes in other similar contexts.  

EVALUATION:

The articles in this volume have covered a range of communicative contexts.
This wide scope, especially the inclusion of the interpreting contexts, which
are rarely covered in previous pragmatic studies, will be welcomed by
researchers in pragmatics, applied linguistics, and other related fields.
Another highlight of this book is the inclusion of pedagogical implications at
the end of each chapter. The importance and usefulness of pragmatic
instruction has long been recognized in the field (e.g., Cohen, 2008; Jeon &
Kaya, 2006; Kasper & Roever, 2005; Kasper & Rose, 1999, 2002; Rose, 2005;
Takahashi, 2010a, 2010b; Taguchi, 2011, 2015); however, the application of
pragmatic theories is still rarely seen in teacher education programs
(Ishihara & Cohen, 2010). A great contribution of this book is that in
addition to its research focus on contextualized pragmatic analysis, it also
provides teachers in English as a Second/Foreign (ESL/EFL) programs and
English for Specific Purposes (ESP) programs with concrete and research-based
materials to use in delivering pragmatic instructions. 

Each of the four parts of the book offers helpful suggestions for
practitioners in different content areas. Part 1 connects pragmatic theories
with the field of interpretation. The famous Chinese translator Yan Fu
established the triple translation criteria, namely faithfulness, fluency and
elegance. While literal translation undoubtedly fulfills the criterion of
faithfulness, it often lacks fluency and elegance since these two criteria are
more difficult to achieve due to their close relation to sociopragmatic
knowledge or knowledge of the target culture (Chan, 2004). To become
successful interpreters, one must not only know the literal translation of the
source text but also comprehend the pragmatic devices used in the original
text and their alternatives in the interpreted texts. Moreover, pragmatic
markers that carry emotions and discourse structures that have
culturally-embedded knowledge are both important for successful delivery of
meaning in interpretations. In addition to interpreting contexts, academic
contexts also require pragmatic knowledge, as illustrated from the three
chapters in Part 2. Each of the three studies in this part makes its own
contribution to the study of academic communication. Understanding the
pragmatic features used in TED talks is beneficial for both teachers and
students who are interested in presenting spoken academic discourse through
web media. The rhetorical structural model provided in the archeological book
reviews is a useful tool for students and trainee teachers in ESP programs; it
helps with successful preparation of postgraduate courses in archeology or
careers of young archeologists. Comparing email requests made by students with
those made by faculty in university settings has useful pedagogical
implications as well, as students can learn from the professional email
request models presented by their faculty members. Films are naturally
embedded with pragmatic information of targeted cultures, and are therefore
ideal materials in pragmatic instruction. The two studies presented in Part 3
both provide helpful insights on foreign language teaching through using film
dialogues. In examining film clips, linguistic cues are shown to be not the
only features learners should pay attention to, as nonverbal cues such as the
camera angles and body movements are equally important in delivering pragmatic
meanings. Also, foreign films are natural resources for cultural comparisons
if shown to language learners, as seen from the intercultural humor example
presented in Chapter 8.  Both studies in Part 4 have direct impact on
pragmatic instructions in foreign language settings. The study on the usage of
textual pragmatic markers by multilingual learners provides positive evidence
on the transfer of pragmatic abilities from one language to another. Teachers
of multilingual learners, therefore, can use this information to direct
learners in acquiring pragmatic knowledge in another language. Finally, the
report on teaching pragmatics in an undergraduate course at a Swedish
university supplies useful resources for pragmatic teaching in a college EFL
classroom. It would be interesting to see if pragmatic instruction is done in
similar or different ways in other global contexts. 

Despite the fact that this collection includes a wide range of communicative
contexts and different pragmatic issues, it lacks a variety of language
backgrounds in empirical investigations. Among the eight empirical studies
reported in this book (excluding Chapter 4 and 5, which are corpus studies),
only four studies recruited participants from areas outside of Italy (i.e.,
Hong Kong, Japan, Spain, and Sweden). Given the wide scope of the
investigations covered in this book, it would be more relevant to a global
audience if more languages and cultural backgrounds were included. 

Another shortcoming of this collection falls in the teaching applications and
methods presented in some chapters. Although including a section of teaching
application at the end of each chapter makes the entire collection seemingly
coherent, some teaching applications are unclear or difficult to implement. In
Chapter 5, while discussing the pedagogical implications of evaluation in
archeology, the author presents some concrete ideas on how the genre-based
approach used in this study can be continued in future projects in Italian
universities. However, the descriptions of these future projects are so
context-dependent that it is difficult to see how they can be applied in
different settings outside Italy for non-Italian readers. Moreover, the
multimodal analysis presented in Chapter 7 in teaching pragmatics through
films is a concept that is hard to implement for students who are not majoring
in film studies. The focuses on nonverbal elements, such as shot descriptions,
kinesics and proxemics might be easy to explain from the instructors’
perspective; however, they are much more difficult to describe to learners who
have limited English proficiency. Also, it creates another challenge to
transfer the knowledge of the targeted two speech acts, compliments and
insults, from films to real-life situations. In addition, the method presented
in Chapter 9 on exploring textual pragmatic markers in a multilingual
classroom context is missing significant details. The author stated the task
and topic equivalence used in the study as they “were pilot-tested in a group
of learners that did not participate in the final study to ensure they were of
similar difficulty, elicited the target pragmatic issue, and aroused the same
amount of interest in the students” (p. 201). This is a rather bold statement,
as the author did not include any details on the pilot test. Unless
statistical evidence is presented, there is no proof for task and topic
equivalence, given the fact that three tasks, nine topics, and three languages
were incorporated in this study. Another issue with the findings of this study
is generalizability. Two of the three languages investigated (i.e., Catalan
and Spanish) are fairly similar languages in terms of typology, which can
naturally result in more positive pragmatic transfers. However, whether the
same positive transfer can be found among other languages in other contexts is
an empirical question that still remains unanswered.  

The volume starts with an introductory chapter written by Sara Gesuato, who
raised some thought-provoking questions at the beginning: “What things do
people do with language? Why and what for? How do people signal and recognize
what they are doing? And once researchers have found out, what can they do
with the newly acquired knowledge? Who would it be relevant to?” (p. 1). 
These are all fundamental questions in pragmatics that motivate research
pursuits demonstrated throughout the volume. Although Gesuato provides us with
general answers to these questions at the end of her introduction, it would be
better if her answers were expanded in a concluding chapter by adding more
empirical evidence drawing from the different studies in the book. A
concluding chapter would also have helped with connecting the different parts
and chapters together in a more coherent way. 

Overall, Pragmatic Issues in Specialized Communicative Contexts is a book
worth reading by researchers and practitioners who are interested in the
advancement of pragmatic knowledge in real world communicative settings.
Selected chapters from this volume can be especially enlightening for
professionals in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) programs, such as
interpretation, archeology, and film studies. 

REFERENCES

Bachman, L. F. & Palmer, A. S. (1996). Language Testing in Practice: Designing
and Developing Useful Language Tests. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. 

Chan, T. L. (2004). Twentieth-century Chinese translation theory: Modes,
issues and debates. Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 

Cohen, A. D. (2008). Teaching and assessing L2 pragmatics: What can we expect
from learners? Language Teaching, 41, 213-235. 

Ishihara, N. & A.D. Cohen (2010). Teaching and learning pragmatics: Where
language and culture meet. Harlow, UK: Pearson Longman. 

Jeon, E. H. & T. Kaya (2006). Effects of L2 instruction on interlanguage
pragmatic development. In N. John & L. Ortega (eds.), Synthesizing research on
language learning and teaching. Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 165-211. 

Kasper, G., & C. Roever (2005). Pragmatics in second language learning. In E.
Hinkel (ed.), Pragmatics in language teaching and learning. Mahwah, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum, 317-328. 

Kasper, G., & K. Rose (1999). Pragmatis and SLA. Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics, 19, 81-104. 

Kasper, G., & K. Rose (2002). Pragmatic development in a second language.
Oxford, UK: Blackwell. 

Rose, K. R. (2005). On the effects of instruction in second language
pragmatics. System, 33, 385-399. 

Taguchi, N. (2011). Teaching pragmatics: Trends and issues. Annual Review of
Applied Linguistics, 31, 289-310. 

Taguchi, N. (2015). Instructed pragmatics at a glance: Where instructional
studies were, are, and should be going. Language Teaching, 48, 1-50. 

Takahashi, S. (2010a). Assessing learnability in second language pragmatics.
In A. Trosborg (ed.), Handbook of pragmatics (vol.7). Berlin: Mouton de
Gruyter, 391-421. 

Takahashi, S (2010b). The effect of pragmatic instruction on speech act
performance. In Martínez-Flor, A. & E. Usó-Juan (eds.), Speech act
performance: Theoretical, empirical and methodological issues.
Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 127-144.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Dongmei Cheng is an assistant professor in Applied Linguistics at Texas A&M
University-Commerce. As a sociolinguist, she is primarily interested in
interlanguage pragmatics, especially the acquisition of speech acts from
second language learners. Another research interest of her is second language
writing, which is resulted from her years of composition teaching to students
from different cultural backgrounds and experiences in TA training. As a
previous technology coordinator and an instructor of a two-series
graduate-level CALL courses, she is also interested in adapting new
technological tools in language teaching and teacher training programs.





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