29.596, Review: Catalan-Valencian-Balear; Applied Linguistics; Language Acquisition; Pragmatics: Jungbluth, Fernández-Villanueva (2016)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-29-596. Mon Feb 05 2018. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 29.596, Review: Catalan-Valencian-Balear; Applied Linguistics; Language Acquisition; Pragmatics: Jungbluth, Fernández-Villanueva (2016)

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Date: Mon, 05 Feb 2018 12:32:30
From: Sahar Ahmadpour [Sahar.ahmadpour33 at gmail.com]
Subject: Beyond Language Boundaries

 
Discuss this message:
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/27/27-3454.html

EDITOR: Marta  Fernández-Villanueva
EDITOR: Konstanze  Jungbluth
TITLE: Beyond Language Boundaries
SUBTITLE: Multimodal Use in Multilingual Contexts
PUBLISHER: De Gruyter Mouton
YEAR: 2016

REVIEWER: Sahar Ahmadpour,  

REVIEWS EDITOR: Helen Aristar-Dry

The book “Beyond Language Boundaries: Multimodal Use in Multicultural
Contexts” attempts to elucidate the ways that language users in multilingual
situations advance their personal varieties in their communications; this, in
turn, illuminates the concepts of code switching and multimodal dynamic
co-development of real-life grammar use. This book examines the connection of
multimodality and language production of multilingual speakers. Initially, the
theoretical models are presented and discussed followed by reporting a number
of empirical studies investigating the Catalan, German and Spanish languages
functioning as a first language (L1), second language (L2) or foreign language
(FL). These languages are overviewed in an attempt to inter-relate the verbal
and gestural modalities with grammar explanation or to look into actions as
bases for gestures, which would nonverbally reflect the argument in German
dynamic motion verbs. Other chapters emphasize the positioning in interviews,
lexical access examinations, or proxemics in greetings and farewells. The
contributions secondly attend to the verbal aspects of the use of Croatian,
English, Italian, Brazilian-Portuguese and Polish in multilingual contexts;
this usage is connected to self-representation and co-development of identity
through code-switching, deixis or argumentative reasoning in distinct
communicative environments  . 

In the first part on Multimodal Language Use’, there are six chapters all
sharing the same theme. This first part starts with Alturo, Clemente and
Payrató’s contribution about the ‘Notes for a Multilingual and Multimodal
Functional Discourse Grammar’ from pages 3-33. In this chapter, Alturo,
Clemente and Payrató focus on how Functional Discourse Grammar can serve as an
effective model for the clarification of the grammatical issues related to
language users’ multilectal and multimodal communicative competence. The
authors have provided different arguments to back the Functional Discourse
Grammar model in order to emend the model’s psychological/cognitive and
discourse/pragmatic functions. Their work indicates that the distinction
between primitives, that is the specificities of the languages, and the levels
of representation, that is the multilingual and multimodal grammar, are
promising areas to research in grammatical descriptions. The next chapter
attends to ‘Actions as Sources of Gestures’ had written by Tessendorf from
pages 34-54. As the name of chapter implies, the attention is on the use of
hand gestures as daily or basic actions with a particular focus on the
pragmatic and recurrent gestures that have a fixed form-meaning relation. This
chapter centres around the ease of discovering the structural relations when
beginning with the purposes of gestures and classifying them according to
common themes. The third chapter in the first part is the, ‘Argument Structure
Shift for German Dynamic Verbs gehen and kommen in Situated and Embodied
Communication’ (pp. 55-72) written by Yepes. This chapter looks into variation
in motion events in in both situated and embodied communication from a
multimodal perspective. The argument is that the situated and embodied
communications are both worthwhile and significant for analysed oral language
use, lending support to the communicative approach in language teaching. This,
however, does not overlook the importance of non-verbal language use. In the
next chapter, ‘Proxemics of Greetings and Farewells in Spanish and German’,
Schmidt intends to exhibit the cultural differences between German and Spanish
populations in terms of the degree and kind of physical contacts in contexts
of greetings and farewells. The purpose was to approve the hypothesis put
forward by Hall regarding the existence of ‘contact’ and ‘non-contact’
cultures. Results of this study reveal an inclination towards touching
behaviours in contexts of greeting and farewell. Schmidt calls for more
empirical research to investigate the cultural differences with respect to
non-verbal communication. Chapter 5 is entitled, ‘Gestures and Lexical Access
Problems in German as Second Language’ (pp. 93-113) Isaeva and
Fernández-Villanueva. This study uses an interactional approach to investigate
the relation between gestures in oral language use in German as a second
language and the accompanying lexical access challenges. The findings clearly
showed the existence of lexical access problems with emphatic gestures that
have discursive purposes. Next and final chapter in the first part, ‘Analysing
German Teachers’ Identities through Multimodal and Multilingual Use’ by
Puigdelliura and Fernández-Villanueva highlighted the usefulness of multimodal
and multilingual clues in inspecting the identity in discursive interaction
due to the fact that they permit speaker positioning above the verbal and
monolingual language use. They report the significance and potential of
multimodality and multilingual discourse engagement in leading to a deeper and
an in-depth analysis in identity work. 

The second part: Language Use in Multilingual Contexts draws on the
contributions on language use in multilingual environments and consists of
seven chapters. The first chapter in the second part, ‘Co-Constructions in
Multilingual Settings’, written by Jungbluth overviews the different ways that
the term co-construction is used in the literature on language use, speakers
and interlocutors. This is totally dependent upon the object of the study and
there is a need to gain a common understanding of the term by conducting
further research. In the second chapter, ‘Deictic Strategies as Expression of
Identity’, Da Milano carried out two case studies in order to examine the
expression of personal deixis which is confused with the spatial and temporal
deixis. Da Milano demonstrated the sensitivity of multilingual language to the
activities and social context in which it occurs, the expectations of the
language users, and their rights and compulsions. The third chapter talks
about the ‘Use of Connectives and Argumentation in Catalan Parliamentary
Debate’ presented by Mestre and Cuenca from pages 162-178. The investigation
of the binary connectives employed in a corpus of parliamentary discussions
illuminated the fact that the frequency of binary connectives is way higher in
Spanish than in Catalan. On the contrary, the causal connectives are greater
in Catalan while consecutive connectives are used more often in Spanish. The
conclusion is that although there are differences in the two languages
considered, it is the individual style that plays a significant role in the
construction and development of discourse in terms of binary connectives.
‘Language Attitudes and Identity Construction’ is the title of the next
chapter, developed by Peters (pp. 179-199). Peters refers to the ways that
multilingual and multicultural L1 attritors’ perceptions and beliefs are
articulated with regard to their language production and how they can develop
their identities according to their perceptions. The contribution by Rhobodes,
pages 200-220, is entitled ‘Crossing and Blurring the Language Borders’. This
chapter intends to suggest an innovative model that integrates the theory of
language borders into language analysis in an attempt to attain
interdisciplinary views about the examination of structural features of
language mixing The results of this study pinpoint the process-oriented and
dynamic specificity of languages which are consistently prone to permanent
modifications and development. Cultural mixing is a phenomenon of cultural
resource and articulation of creative language. The theory of the border
presents an innovative approach by helping us combine the phonetic,
morphological and syntactic features of language in the investigation. “Yes we
can! – Sí se puede!” by Haid is the title of the next chapter which tries to
provide an insight into the things that might happen between a speaker and the
audience while there is code switching in political language use. Haid
analyses the speech of United States, German and Russian politicians
addressing a foreign audience in order to focus on the pragmatic use of code
switching strategy to promote inclusion in political contexts. This study
shows that code switching can become a communicative strategy for establishing
solidarity and sympathy with the speaker’s interests and opinions. The last
chapter in the second part extends from page 221 to 234, examining ‘Global
English and Multilingual Luxembourg’. The writer of this chapter, Collins
considers the degree to which the native-like use of the language can be a
hurdle to second language learning of English given its prevalence and global
and international status today. The results indicate the negative impact of
the English language dominance on the second language learning prospects of
the four Irish learners.

The book ends with an index. 

EVALUATION

This book is a very good resource for how the traditional language limitations
can be overcome in multilingual communities. The book integrates theoretical
and empirical evidence from the different languages such as Catalan, Spanish,
English, Croatian, German, Italian, Brazilian, Portuguese, and Polish as the
first language, second language or foreign language. The findings obtained
from the studies in the book necessitate considering a conception of grammar
description with implications also relevant for the conceptualization of
deixis, for second or foreign language learning and language teaching
policies. An eye-catching advantage of this book is its division of
theoretical and empirical evidence into different parts. However, although a
number of European and Latin languages are taken into account in the studies
presented in the book, other important languages, such those belonging to
Asian and African continents, are completely absent from the analysis. This
makes understanding of the multilingual and multimodal contexts comparatively
difficult for the Asian and African readers. The book also needs a conclusion
by the editors at the end of the second part to summarize the main points
emerging from the studies and recommendations for how to move this line of
enquiry forward. On the whole, for those interested in multimodal
communication specifically in the multilingual European context, the book is a
helpful resource providing a variety of language use forms in different
contexts.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

I am Sahar Ahmadpour MA in TESL/TEFL. I have been teaching English for 16
years now. I enjoy teaching and research on EFL/ESL learners of English and
discourse analysis along with bilingualism and multilingualism studies.





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