LINGUIST List 29.596
Mon Feb 05 2018
Review: Catalan-Valencian-Balear; Applied Linguistics; Language Acquisition; Pragmatics: Jungbluth, Fernández-Villanueva (2016)
Editor for this issue: Clare Harshey <clarelinguistlist.org>
Date: 22-May-2017
From: Sahar Ahmadpour <Sahar.ahmadpour33
gmail.com>
Subject: Beyond Language Boundaries
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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.
Page Updated: 05-Feb-2018