LINGUIST List 9.1166

Tue Aug 18 1998

Qs: American Eng, Translation, Book by Hawkey

Editor for this issue: Martin Jacobsen <martylinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Chang-Bong Lee, Capitalism in American English
2. Geoffrey S. Nathan, Translation
3. Lyndra S. Givens, Seeking Book (Hawkey)

 Dear linguists,

 I have been interested in the phenomena of the interaction of
language and culture being a language teacher with a linguistic
background. I recently have been interested to find as a student of
English as a second language that there are a great deal of
expressions in everyday American English that have captitalistic
roots. I have been able to collect a decent size of these kinds of
data some examples of which are presented as follows.

 I just want to throw my two cents in this discussion.
 I bet you will enjoy it.
 I don't buy that argument for a second.
 The Bulls cashed in on that play.
 You will pay for this. (with the feeling of revenge)
 The bottom line is ---.
 etc.

The above examples are surely culture-specific, and it is impossible
to convey the speaker's intended meaning in discourse context by
making word-by-word translation into another language. For instance,
if I am requested to translate the above sentences into my native
language, Korean, I will have to be content to paraphrase them using
some of my own culture-specific expressions.

My observations at this point are of course at an informal and sketchy
level. I will be very interested to get some feedback from you
linguists about this topic. Specifically, I will appreciate it if you
can provide me with advice on the following questions.
 
 (1) Do you know of any previous research on this topic?
 (2) Can you think of some more insightful examples of
 this kind as native speaker of American English?
 (3) To make this line of research academically strong,
 what do you suggest me to look at in terms of background
 literature?

Please respond individually to my address below and if there is enough
interest on this topic, I will post a summary.

 Thanks in advance.

 Chang-Bong Lee
 Korean lecturer
 Columbia University
 e-mail: cl379columbia.edu

A colleague not on LINGUIST is looking for a translation of the
following words, which she believes are not Arabic (I have no easy
access to either Arabic or Urdu speakers, or whatever else these might
be).

1	Zu'lkadah
2	Zu'lhijyah

Any assistance would be appreciated. You can reply directly to me.

Thanks.

Geoffrey S. Nathan
Department of Linguistics
Southern Illinois University at Carbondale,
Carbondale, IL, 62901 USA
Phone: +618 453-3421 (Office) FAX +618 453-6527
+618 549-0106 (Home)

I'm an interlibrary loan librarian (linguistics on the side) at Texas
A&M International University in Laredo, TX. A patron doing an MA
thesis in (I think) bilingual education is looking for information on
the subdiscipline of "English for Special Purposes."

1. He's looking for a particular book, "English for Special Purposes"
by Hawkey, published by British Council English Teaching Centre,
London, 1978.
 It may be part of something called "ELT documents." I don't have a
first name for the author, though I know there are other works with
the same title. (He has at least one of them!) Anyone who knows
anything whatever about this work, the author (or editor) or publisher
or anything, please email me!!

2. Can anybody interested in this field email me privately? I'd like
to help him develop a really good reading list for his thesis. Also
of course I want the best bibliographic citations possible to speed up
getting them.

Thanks very much!
Lyndra S. Givens, librarian for fun and profit, linguist on the side
=======================================================
Lyndra S. Givens, reference / interlibrary loan librarian
Texas A&M International University, Laredo TX
109A Sue & Radcliffe Killam Library, 5201 University Blvd., Laredo TX
	78041
phone (956)326-2119 / fax (956)326-2120 / email lgivenstamiu.edu
=======================================================