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Number 88 Spring 2008 British Association for Applied Linguistics Registered charity no. 264800 Promoting understanding of language in use. http://www.baal.org.uk News
Transcript

Number 88 Spring 2008

British Association for Applied LinguisticsRegistered charity no. 264800

Promoting understanding of language in use.

http://www.baal.org.uk

News

THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION FOR APPLIED LINGUISTICS

The aims of the Association are to promote the study of language in use, to fosterinterdisciplinary collaboration, and to provide a common forum for those engaged in thetheoretical study of language and for those whose interest is the practical application of suchwork. The Association has over 750 members, and awards an annual Book Prize.

BAAL web page: http://www.baal.org.uk

BAAL e-mail list: [email protected]

To subscribe, go to

http://lists.leeds.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/baalmail

CLIE (Committee for Linguistics in Education) e-mail list:[email protected]

To subscribe, send the message subscribe edling email address to

[email protected]

without a subject or signature

BAAL postgraduate e-mail list:[email protected]

To subscribe, send the message join baalpg firstname surname to

[email protected]

without a subject or signature

BAAL postgraduate information: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/baalpg.html

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EditorialEditorial

Dear All,

Welcome to the Spring 2008 issue of BAALNews.

As preparations for the 2008 BAAL Conference move on apace, this issue ofBAALNews contains a number of notices of importance and relevance to allmembers interested in attending or otherwise supporting this event.

The Spring issue also contains details of this year’s round of BAAL/CUP Seminars,together with reports on two highly successful BAAL/CUP Seminars that were stagedlast year. As well as making stimulating reading in themselves, I am sure that thesereports will encourage many of you to make it a priority to attend at least one of theforthcoming seminars this year.

Finally, you will find within this issue book review articles on topics as diverse asWord Grammar and Forensic Linguistics, as well as another first-rate piece of tongue-in-cheekery from our resident satirist Michael Swan.

I trust that 2008 is getting off to a good start for all of you, and I do hope you willenjoy reading this, the 88th issue of BAAL’s in-house publication.

Nick

Nicholas GroomNewsletter Editor

Centre for English Language StudiesUniversity of Birmingham

EdgbastonBirmingham B15 2TT

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BAAL Executive CommitteeBAAL Executive Committee

Members of BAAL ExecutiveCommittee 2007-2008

Officers:

Chair (2006/7 – 2008/9)Susan HunstonDepartment of EnglishUniversity of BirminghamBirmingham B15 [email protected]

Secretary (2007/8 – 2009/10)Paul ThompsonDepartment of Applied LinguisticsSchool of Languages and EuropeanStudiesThe University of ReadingReading RG6 [email protected]

Treasurer (2006/7 - 2008/9)Richard BadgerSchool of EducationUniversity of LeedsLeeds LS2 [email protected]

Meetings Secretary (2007/8 - 2009/10)Erik SchleefLinguistics and English LanguageThe University of EdinburghAdam Ferguson Building40 George SquareEdinburgh EH8 [email protected]

Membership secretary (2007/8 - 2009/10)Lynn ErlerDepartment of EducationUniversity of Oxford15 Norham GardensOxford OX2 [email protected]

Publications Secretary (2006/7 – 2008/9)Veronika KollerLecturer in English LanguageDepartment of Linguistics and EnglishLanguageLancaster UniversityBailrigg, Lancaster LA1 [email protected]

Web Editor (2007/8 - 2009/10)Valerie Hobbs41 Rustlings RoadSheffieldS Yorks S11 [email protected]

Newsletter Editor (2007/8 - 2009/10)Nicholas GroomCentre for English Language StudiesUniversity of BirminghamEdgbastonBirmingham B15 [email protected]

Postgraduate Development andLiaison Officer (2007/8 – 2008/9)Dawn KnightSchool of English StudiesUniversity ParkUniversity of NottinghamNottinghamNG7 [email protected]

Special Interest Groups Officer(2006/7 - 2008/9)John Field (SIG Co-ordinator)54 Belsize Park GardensLondon NW3 [email protected]

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BAAL/CUP seminars co-ordinator(2007/8 – 2008/9)Caroline CoffinCentre for Language andCommunicationFaculty of Education and LanguageStudiesWalton HallMilton Keynes MK7 [email protected]

Ordinary Members (2006/7 – 2007/8)Gibson FergusonDepartment of English Language andLinguisticsUniversity of Sheffield5 Shearwood RoadSheffield S10 [email protected]’tope OmoyiniSchool of ArtsRoehampton UniversityRoehampton LaneLondon SW15 [email protected]

(2007/8 – 2008/9)Lynne CameronCentre for Language andCommunicationFaculty of Education and LanguageStudiesWalton HallMilton Keynes MK7 [email protected]

Alice DeignanSchool of EducationUniversity of LeedsLeeds LS2 [email protected]

Sheena GardnerSchool of EducationUniversity of BirminghamEdgbastonBirmingham B15 [email protected]

Co-opted Member (2007/8 only)Catherine WalterSchool of Culture, Language andCommunicationInstitute of Education, University ofLondon20 Bedford WayLondon WC1H [email protected]

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Chair’s ReportChair’s Report

Report from BAAL Chair September2007 to January 2008

My activities since September havemainly involved liaising with otherbodies of various kinds.

Academy for the Social SciencesA nomination was made in December2007 (the result is not known at the timeof writing) and preparations are in handfor another nomination in June 2008.We are entitled to make up to 10nominations a year, so BAAL membersare encouraged to put forward names tome (by email directly, not viaBAALmail).

AILA/NEALThe Network of European AppliedLinguistics Associations (NEAL) has anumber of proposed initiatives, whichBAAL is supporting while taking stepsto avoid compromising memberconfidentiality. One is an on-linejournal to be published byMouton De Gruyter. The other is aquestionnaire designed to discoveropinions and practices among appliedlinguists in Europe. I havecommunicated to Karlfried KnappBAAL’s support of both initiativesbased on voluntary participation bymembers.

Charities CommissionI have responded on BAAL’s behalf tothe Charities Commission’s proposalsfor requiring charities to report ‘publicbenefit’ every year. They will becarrying out more consultations inFebruary 2008 (including specificconsultation with fee-chargingorganizations) and the new rules will

come in during 2009.

Home Office / ImmigrationI have responded on BAAL’s behalf tothe Home Office consultation on pre-entry language tests for spouses,expressing doubts about their efficacy.

Press listAt the EC meeting in January it wasagreed that we should investigategetting the services of an advisor withthe aim of raising BAAL’s profile in thepublic arena. This is in hand.

Research issuesA number of activities since Septemberhave related to research assessment andfunding. These are: response the Impactof Research Survey run by researchersat the LSE; response to the consultationon the Research Excellence Framework(essentially, the next RAE); response onthe European Research Index for theHumanities (ERIH). All these initiativesrelate to current government concernsabout (a) how valuable our research isto the country, in either financial termsor by affecting policy, or improving thecultural life of the community; and (b)how research should be measured /assessed. I felt it would be useful forBAAL to have a more consideredposition on these and similar issues. Atthe EC meeting in January 2008 it wasagreed to set up a working party to drafta consultation paper.

Susan Hunston, January 2008

Conference updatesConference updates

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BAAL 2008 SWANSEA (11th – 13th

September)

BAAL 2008 will be held in Wales’second city of Swansea, situated on theSouth Wales coast. The conferencetheme is “Taking the Measure ofApplied Linguistics”. This theme isdeliberately intended to be inclusiveand might include papers whichtake stock of Applied Linguisticsgenerally, consider attempts to quantifylanguage and language learning whichis one important element of AppliedLinguistics, or make the case that non-quantified language descriptions can beequally valid and useful in linguisticapplications. Plenary speakers areCharles Alderson (LancasterUniversity), Ben Rampton (King’sCollege London), and Alison Wray(Cardiff University).

The local organising committeeincludes representatives of all areas ofapplied linguistics at SwanseaUniversity. Tess Fitzpatrick and JimMilton are the local organisers. Furthermembers of the LOC include NuriaLorenzo Dus, Geoff Hall, Paul Meara,Chris Shei and Cornelia Tschichold.

The University campus is located incoastal parkland, between the five-mile-long beach of Swansea bay and 100acres of parks and gardens. The citycentre is within reach of the campus byfoot or by bus. The nearest airport,outside Cardiff, is served by regularflights with low-cost airlines from citiesacross Britain and Europe, includingBelfast, Glasgow, Newcastle,Edinburgh, Cork, and Dublin.

BAAL 2009 NEWCASTLE (3rd -5th

September)

BAAL 2009 will be held at NewcastleUniversity. Newcastle’s School ofEducation, Communication andLanguage Sciences is a dynamicresearch centre, and has had along association with BAAL. TheUniversity campus is located in the citycentre close to a wide range of cultural,culinary and shopping attractions, andwithin easy reach of railway and busstations. We are confident that it willprovide an inspiring conferenceexperience too.

Erik SchleefMeetings Secretary

1 February 2008

BAAL Poster Prize

The BAAL executive committee ishappy to announce that the 2008conference in Swansea (11-13September) sees the return of the BAALposter prize. This prize is awarded toone of the posters accepted for display,and actually displayed at, theconference. Two judges will assess theposters in terms of structure andappearance. The winner receives £50and can choose a title from the bookssubmitted for the BAAL book prize.

The deadline for poster abstracts is 31 March.

Looking forward to your contributions,

Veronika Koller(on behalf of the BAAL executivecommittee)

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The Chris Brumfit International Scholarship 2008

Following the sad loss of Professor Chris Brumfit in 2006, Many BAAL membersindicated a wish to donate to a fund in Professor Brumfit's name. Accordingly, TheChris Brumfit International Scholarship was established with the aim of providing anaward for an Applied Linguist from outside Britain to attend the BAAL AnnualMeeting. As our Meetings Secretary Erik Schleef noted in his most recent Report (seeBAALNews 87), the first Scholarship was duly awarded last year, to Huamei Han ofthe University of Toronto.

We hope to be in a position to make an award this year as well, and so wouldwelcome any donations, large or small, from the BAAL membership. If you wish tosupport the Chris Brumfit International Scholarship, please send a cheque for anamount of your choosing to

Jeanie TaylorThe Chris Brumfit International ScholarshipBAAL Membership AdministrationPO Box 6688London SE15 3WB

Cheques and money orders should be made payable to 'BAAL'. If you wish to pay bycredit card, complete the credit card payment form below and send/fax it to JeanieTaylor at the above address. The website is not secure so we would prefer that it wasnot used to make donations.

If you are a UK tax payer we can reclaim the tax on your donation. Please considerallowing us to claim Gift Aid tax relief on this. Just complete the Gift Aid Declarationform included with this issue of BAALNews and return it to Jeanie Taylor at theaddress given above.

We would be grateful if you could send any donations by the end of May 2008.However if you are not able to make a donation before this your donation will beincluded in the fund for the conference in 2009.

Thank you!

International Scholarship 2008International Scholarship 2008

Donation to the Chris Brumfit International Scholarship AppealTotal amount: £ (sterling)

Type of card: VISA / Access / Mastercard

(we are unable to accept American Express cards)

Card number:

Expiry date:

Card security number (see

reverse of card):

Name as displayed on the

card (PLEASE PRINT):

Signature:

Date:

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BAAL/CUP Seminar ReportsBAAL/CUP Seminar Reports

This year was a bumper year for proposals. In total twelve were submitted on a widerange of topics. A maximum of three seminars can receive BAAL / CambridgeUniversity Press funding each year, so the selection process was difficult. Twelveproposals were received and ranked and rated by 5 raters – myself, Lynne Cameron,Alice Deignan, Gibson Ferguson and Sheena Gardner. In cases where referees weremembers of a proposing committee or were named as part of a proposal, ratings wereprovided by an experienced 6th rater, Richard Kiely. Our recommendations werethen put forward, discussed and ratified by the full membership of the BAALexecutive. It was decided that three seminars should receive funding. Each will beoffered a £450 grant and a £500 repayable float.

Brief information about the 2008 seminars is given below (details are also availableon the BAAL website: http://www.baal.org.uk/seminars.htm. All BAAL members arewelcome to attend the seminars. Contact details of the organizers are included below.

Caroline CoffinBAAL/CUP Seminars Coordinator

[email protected]

Integration and Achievement in aMultilingual Europe: Languages forLearningand Life

Proposed by: Dr. Jean Conteh, SeniorLecturer, University of Leeds; Dr.Charmian Kenner, Lecturer,Goldsmith’s, University of London

Date: June 18-19 2008

Venue: Leeds University

Contact details: [email protected] of the seminar:

• To provide a forum whereresearchers, policymakers andpractitioners can come together todiscuss how discourses ofintegration interact with linguisticand cultural practices inmultilingual communities andschools in different Europeancountries

• To identify policies and practicesthat foster educational achievementfor children from minoritybackgrounds.

• To develop positive researchrelationships with researchers inUK and the wider Europeancommunity.

We will be considering these questions:

• What kinds of teacher trainingprogrammes enhance understandingof multilingual identities andlanguage development?

• What kinds of interculturalcurricula help develop multilingualidentities?

• How can bilingual learning be usedto access the curriculum?

• How can research into bilinguallearning be effectively used toinform policy and practice inspecific educational contexts?

Main speakers:

Professor Christine Helot, University ofStrasbourgProfessor Eve Gregory, Goldsmith’s,University of London

Conceptualising ‘Learning’ inApplied Linguistics

Proposed by: Prof Paul Seedhouse, DrSteve Walsh, Dr Chris Jenks, School ofEducation, Communication andLanguage Sciences, NewcastleUniversity.

Date: June 19th & 20th 2008

Venue: Newcastle UniversityContact details: [email protected]

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BRITISH ASSOCIATION FOR APPLIED LINGUISTICS

BAAL / Cambridge University Press Seminar Programme 2008

10

Objectives of the seminar:

• to explore and unpack the differentconceptions of 'learning' involvedin research into learning andteaching a language;

• to develop awareness of howdifferent conceptions of 'learning'originate in different paradigms,methodologies and epistemologies;

• to develop awareness of howconceptions of 'learning' varyaccording to the particular aspect oflanguage or communication whichis being learnt or taught;

• to produce a conceptualisation oflearning to which members ofdifferent schools of SLA will beable to subscribe;

• to apply this conceptualisation oflearning to a range of datainvolving learning and teaching alanguage;

• to explore notions of learning innon-institutional settings.

Themes which are expected to emergeinclude:

• Why do conceptions of 'learning'vary in research into learning andteaching a language?

• How do different conceptions of'learning' relate to differentparadigms, methodologies andepistemologies?

• Which conceptions of 'learning' aremost appropriate to learning whichaspect of a language?

• Is it possible to produce aconceptualisation of 'learning' towhich members of different schoolsof SLA will be able to subscribe?

• New perspectives and approachesto 'learning';

• How can conceptions of 'learning'be applied to data?

• What happens when differentconceptions of learning are appliedto the same data?

Applied linguistics: what do primaryteachers need to understand?Developing an applied linguisticscurriculum for pre-service primaryschool teachers.

Proposed by: Sue Ellis, Childhood andPrimary Studies Department; ElspethMcCartney, Speech and LanguageTherapy Division; Jill Bourne,(Incoming) Dean of the Faculty ofEducation, University of Strathclyde.

Date: 2 x one-day conferences, Marchand September 2008

Venue: University of Strathclyde

Contact Details and Objectives of theSeminar: TBA

1. Spoken Online Learning EventsThe Open University, 22nd – 23rd June 2007

Organisers: Jim Coleman and RegineHampel (Department of Languages,INTELLECT Research Group) andPeter Scott (Knowledge MediaInstitute),

BAAL/CUP two-day seminars aredesigned to allow intensive discussionamong about twenty of the most activeand innovative researchers in aparticular domain, and this objectivewas fully met. Two features made theseminar unique, however. One was thepublic access to discussion offered bysimultaneous and deferred webcasting,and the possibility of input bysimultaneous webchat and email. Theother was the use of the latestcommunication technologies to reflectthe topic of the conference. Thus,the first plenary was delivered using theOpen University’s own enhancedvideoconferencing software, FlashMeeting,and encompassed live presentationsfrom Cynthia White at MasseyUniversity (Palmerston North, NewZealand) and Yuping Wang (GriffithUniversity, Brisbane, Australia) and livediscussion with those presentat the Open University.

The seminar objectives were

• To develop a shared understanding of a new disciplinary area drawingon a range of domains

• To address major issues for orallearning of languages and culturesonline

• To address the limitations ofexisting pedagogical parameters forspoken online learning and teaching

• To re-evaluate theoreticalparadigms underpinning research inspoken interaction

• To examine and extend therepertoire of analytical tools andmethodologies

• To bring together scholars insynchronous online interaction,online discourse, spoken interactionat a distance, communicationstudies, multimodality and thespoken mode, and online pedagogy

• To establish networks of sharedinterests

• To open up avenues of investigationand provide a stimulus for newresearch projects

• To involve early career researchersby offering two student bursariesand by webcasting all discussions.

Spoken interaction is key to successfullanguage learning in both a cognitive-interactionist and a socio-culturalparadigm, and new technologies arebeginning to make available robustenvironments for multi-participantonline spoken interactions. The OpenUniversity, which has for a decade

Reports on Previous SeminarsReports on Previous Seminars

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developed, piloted and researched thenew pedagogies appropriate to onlinelanguage learning at scale, has to someextent set the research agenda. Thisembraces methods of collection andanalysis of the ‘fractured’ discoursewhich makes up multimodal corpora(spoken and written text, audio, video,graphic elements, human-computerinterface) – not least how to interpretonline silences; the social, cognitive,affective and strategic aspects of learnerbehaviour; teacher and learner beliefsand styles, and the professionaldevelopment of tutors; the facilitativeand debilitative facets of anonymity,online presence and new identitiesadopted in virtual learningenvironments.

White’s impressive opening plenaryreviewed the theoretical andmethodological challenges facingresearch into the affordances andconstraints of online spoken interaction,and suggested research questions,methods and tools which might informboth research and practical pedagogy,including assessment. Wang’sdiscussion of Collaborative CyberCommunity contained the first ofseveral allusions to the highdemands which managing multipleaudio, video and text resources as wellas the learning process place on theteacher.

The use of other new digitaltechnologies to bring speaking into theonline language class was addressed by

Fernando Rosell-Aguilar (podcasts),Gary Motteram and Dhafir Kasassbeh(Breeze, now Adobe Connect) and ChrisJenks (Skype), who raised issues such aspronunciation, mediation, interculturalcompetence and social presencein online learning environments. NeseCabaroglu reported on a sophisticatedlanguage-and-culture project linkingtrainee teachers of English in Turkeywith a native-speaker teacher trainer inthe UK.

Primary research findings involvingfine-grained analyses of spokeninteractions in audiographic environmentswere presented by Maud Ciekanski andThierry Chanier (Besançon –collaborative writing tasks), andCarolyn Batstone, Ursula Stickler,Annette Duensing and Barbara Heins(OU – collaborative speaking tasks),highlighting social presence and thecontinuous negotiation of the norms ofthe learning space. Regine Hampel andUrsula Stickler evaluated a five-weekpilot of FlashMeeting in a Moodle-based course: visual contact adds furthercomplexity to earlier studies which havebrought out the importance of taskdesign, tutor style, and social andaffective factors.

Dorothy Chun, from the University ofCalifornia, Santa Barbara, USA, was theonly keynote speaker who wasphysically present at the OpenUniversity. Her presentation examineddifferent ways of using online resourcesto improve students’ oral proficiency.

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This included using tools on the WorldWide Web to improve learnerpronunciation and prosody (throughspeech recognition, for example), andgetting learners to communicate withnative speakers in telecollaborativeprojects to improve their communicativeand intercultural skills.

Glenn Stockwell joined the seminarfrom Waseda University, Japan. Hisclosing plenary summarised theconference themes and reviewed theparameters and pedagogies of spokenonline learning events in the area oflanguage teaching. He firmly remindedthe audience that the learner has to bethe focal point, and that technologiesand “gadgets” have to take second placeto the objectives of the learningevent.

The simultaneous webcast was watchedby a global online audience in Europe,North America, Asia and Australasia,who also participated in the livevideochat. This enabled questions to beput from the USA or Germany andanswered by speakers who werephysically or virtually present. Theseminar importantly provided anopportunity for home postgraduates, andthe PhD bursar Dong Ye fromSouthampton University, to participateacademically and socially in a high-level conference in an atmosphereless intimidating than larger-scalesymposia. Everyone present felt that theunique combination of intimatediscussion and global participation

offered an environmentally andacademically friendly model for futureresearch-based events. Participantsagreed that the extensive discussionshelped to redefine the dimensions ofresearch into the spoken elements ofvirtual language learning, and should bepublished soon in written form.

In the meantime, the entire seminar(including plenary speaker abstracts)can be viewed at http://www.open.ac.uk/baal-cupseminar2007-sole/.

Plenary abstracts

Theory, Research and Practice inSpoken Online Learning Events:Towards New Understandings Cynthia White

Research into spoken online learningevents has entered its second decade,and we now have a clearer sense of theaffordances and constraints of differentonline mediums for developing spokeninteraction. How we now think aboutlanguage teaching and learning, and theactivities, experiences and processeswhich support the development ofinteractive competence have also beentransformed by virtual learningopportunities. In this paper I identifypredominant research paradigms anddirections in online spoken interactionand critically evaluate what we havegained and what we may haveoverlooked in using such approaches.Key challenges include reducing thedistance between research and

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pedagogical practice, identifying waysof enhancing the research-practicenexus, and developing a research agendabased on such ongoinginterrelationships. I then propose anumber of questions, methodologies andresearch tools aligned with that agenda.In the latter part of the paper I alsoexplore three diverse ‘problems’ inspoken online learning - curricularcongruence and articulation,intercultural competence, andassessment - to illustrate how newapproaches to research and teacherdevelopment can bring together theworlds of theory, researchand practice. To conclude I argue thatwhile a number of factors work againstthe development of links betweenresearch and practice, closing the gapbetween them is valuable for allparticipants in spoken online learningevents - researchers, teachersand learners - as a means of developingan informed understanding of what wethink we may know, what we may needto know and what we do.

A Tall Order for SOLE: Expectationsranging from enhanced oral proficiencyto cross-cultural understandingDorothy M. Chun

As noted in a recent special issue ofLanguage Learning & Technology on"Oral Language Development" in 2005,research on the uses and effects oftechnology for developing andimproving oral proficiency is in itsinfancy. Earlier studies have

shown, for example, that synchronouswritten chat sessions were moreeffective in preparing learners forwhole-class oral discussion thanasynchronous discussion or small-groupand pair-work activities in a F2Fclassroom (Abrams, 2003). Payne andWhitney (2002) found that thespontaneous production of text in achatroom seemed to develop the samecognitive mechanisms underlying L2speech. With the rapid advances andwidespread availability of asynchronousonline voice boards, as well assynchronous audio conferencing (e.g.,(Hampel & Hauck, 2004; Hauck &Hampel, 2005) and videoconferencing(Wang, 2004), the new researchquestions revolve around whethervirtual F2F interactions have beneficialeffects on developing L2 oralproficiency. In this presentation, I willfirst revisit the underlying principles ofinteractionist SLA and then discuss howthe interaction that takes place in audioor video conferencing is similar to, yetdifferent from, F2F encounters. As Barret al. (2005) and Volle (2005) suggested,of interest are which aspects of L2 oralskills, ranging from articulation andpronunciation to pragmatic anddiscourse levels of engaging inmeaningful communication, can best beaddressed by spoken online learningtools and programs. Time permitting, Ihope also to examine the possible rolethat virtual F2F conversations mightplay in developing L2 learners’intercultural communicative competence(Byram, 1997), while also questioning

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the assumption that they wouldautomatically lead to cross-culturalunderstanding (Kramsch & Thorne,2002).

Designing Pedagogies in Spoken OnlineLearning EventsGlenn Stockwell

The widening accessibility of onlinecommunication technologies hasresulted in a diversification of ways inwhich language learners engage intechnology-based oral tasks. As is oftenthe case when new technologies emerge,preliminary work tends to place moreemphasis on the features of thetechnology itself, as opposed to thedevelopment of sound pedagogieswhere the most appropriate technologiesfor achieving specified learning goalsare selected (Stockwell, 2007). Thisphenomena is also evident in recentSOLE research, and in order to makesound judgements as to howtechnologies for speaking can best beused teachers need to be aware of thespecific features of the availabletechnologies and the learningenvironment, such as the synchronicityof the communication, the nature of theparticipants, the learning goals, and theplace of the online learning event withinthe overall environment. An event maybe synchronous, as in audio- or video-conferencing (e.g., Wang, 2004), orit may be asynchronous, as in studiesdescribed by Volle (2005) and Felix(2003). Participants may all be learnerswithin a single class, or learners may be

paired with native speakers who may ormay not be aware of the languagelearner status of the participants (seeColpaert, 2006). Alternatively, theparticipants may be communicatingwith partners who are not human at all,such as a pronunciation tutor (e.g.,Carey, 2004) or a chatbot (e.g., Fryer &Carpenter, 2006). The role assigned totechnology will also differ depending onthe nature of the language learningenvironment. In a predominantly face-to-face environment, technology maytake on a more peripheral role where it isused as a support for in-class activities(e.g., Levy & Kennedy, 2004), while ina distance learning environment,technology may become the main forumfor oral interaction (e.g., Hampel &Hauck, 2004). Each of the factorsdescribed here is important in defininghow technologies are used in orallanguage development, and in thispaper, I will explore some of theconsiderations that need to be kept inmind when designing pedagogies inspoken online learning events whichreflect the many complexities involved.

2. Communicative CompetenceRevisited: Multilingual, Multiculturaland multidisciplinary perspectivesJune 25th , 2007.

Organiser: Jean-Marc DewaeleDepartment of Applied Linguistics,Birkbeck, University of London

This one-day seminar was organised inorder to evaluate the concept of

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Communicative Competence (CC) froma multilingual, multicultural andmultidisciplinary perspective and toexplore the relevance and applicabilityof the concept in an age of globalisationand fast changing information-communication technology. Metho-dological issues in the study of CC inapplied linguistics and other relateddisciplines were discussed. The seminarbrought researchers from differentbackgrounds together and allowed thecreation of a network for future researchprojects on CC.

There were ten contributions: two forty-five minute keynote talks, and eightpaper presentations lasting twentyminutes each. Three of the presenterswere postgraduate students: Yan Jiang(Newcastle University), Ping Ping Liu(University of Southampton) and JoséAguilar (Sorbonne Nouvelle). Theseminar was opened by a shortpresentation by Professor Li Wei on theissue of CC. He thanked BAAL andCUP for their generous support for theseminar. He also made a few concludingremarks after the end of the generalround table discussion. Thirty-sixparticipants attended the seminar,including Dr Martin Edwardesrepresenting the BAAL ExecutiveCommittee.

A wide selection of recent bookspublished by CUP were prominentlydisplayed in the room.

The keynote speakers were Professor

Mick Perkins (University of Sheffield)and Professor Constant Leung (King'sCollege London). Both speakersconsidered the concept of CC fromdifferent perspectives, with reference tomonolinguals and multilinguals.Professor Mick Perkins focussed oncommunication breakdown inconversational interactions of amonolingual English child. Hedemonstrated how disparate areas oflanguage such as syntax, lexis anddiscourse structure are integrallylinked, and also dependent on non-linguistic factors such as memory,attention, auditory perception and eye-gaze. He made a methodological pointthat to understand the extent of theintegration, the contributions of both thechild and his interlocutor need to betaken into account. He argued againstthe common assumption that anatypical communicative behaviour is adirect reflection, or symptom, of aspecific underlying deficit. Instead, heproposed that compensatory adaptationplays a key role in all communicationdisorders, and that CC is the complexoutcome of interactions betweenlinguistic, cognitive, motor andperceptual processes, both within andbetween communicating individuals –i.e. it is an ‘emergent’ phenomenon.

Professor Constant Leung addressed thecriticism that despite the original claimsthat the notion of CC is grounded in theethnography tradition, in practice itoften poses a decontextualizedidealization of language use. He

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proposed a situated theory of CCthat supports the notion of an abstractedideal with a wide range of non-staticlocal manifestations. The constitutivesignificance of speaker authority/intention,content selection and socioculturalcontext was examined. He illustrated hisargument with references to work onacademic discourse, with particularreference to written discourse andEnglish as a lingua franca. Theoreticaland pedagogic implications ofthis pluralist view were explored withreference to language norms,speaker/writer identities and curriculumbenchmarks.

Two paper presentations focused oncommunication among children:• Amelia Church (Universities of

Southampton and Melbourne)explored four-year-old children’sCC in context of spontaneous verbaldisputes with peers. Using aconversation analysis approach, shefound that adversative discourseshows that markedness is indicativeof outcome. Explicitly, preferred orunmarked turns shapes (ie turns thatare short, direct and producedwithout delay) elicit continuingopposition in disputes. Mitigation(ie markedness) proves essential ifdisputes are to be brought to amutually acceptable close.

• Yan Jiang and Zhu Hua (Birkbeck)considered the development ofintercultural CC among 11 year-oldchildren in a multi-cultural summercamp. The researchers focused on

the linguistic strategies childrenfrom different cultural and linguisticbackgrounds use to communicatewith each other when there isdisparity in the proficiency of theirshared language (in this case,English). Children were found toemploy a range of communicativestrategies (e.g., code-switching,questioning, translation) tounderstand the rules of theactivities and negotiate and achieveagreement on action despite thediversity in their linguistic abilities.

The focus of the following paperswas on CC in L2 instruction:• Jose Ignacio Aguilar Rio

(Université de Paris 3, SorbonneNouvelle) found that during EFLlessons in Paris and Glasgowteachers shifted from their roleas L2 experts to that of participants,in charge of presenting learners withL2 communicative models. Theseshifts lead to momentary tensions inthe classroom, which may influencethe learning process.

• Ping Ping Liu (University ofSouthampton) argued that CCcannot be achieved withoutreference to the larger social worldin which L2 learners live and usethe language for social purposes.She looked at how the knowledge ofthe target culture affects L2learners’ opportunity for learning ina study-abroad context. The data ofthe study came from six NS-NNScasual conversations recorded in

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naturalistic settings. She found thatthe sociocultural knowledge gapbetween the two groups hadinfluenced the extent to which theChinese NNS created andresponded to the opportunities toachieve conversational involvement.

• Christine Raschka (University ofEast Anglia) asked whether NNSneed to be syntactically competentto be communicatively competent.She used a single case study of ahighly communicatively competentbilingual Chinese/English speakerwho acquired this competence notthrough formal learning but in thecontext of everyday socialinteractions. She argued that it is notthe grammatical knowledge but theway in which this and pragmaticknowledge are used in realsituations that matters.

• Jean-Marc Dewaele (Birkbeck)investigated the question whetherthe knowledge of more languages islinked to increased levels of selfperceived CC. Using a databaseconstituted through an on-linequestionnaire with open and closedquestions, to which of 1,459multilinguals contributed, he foundthat pentalinguals, quadrilingualsand trilinguals (in decreasing order)scored significantly higher onperceived CC in all their languagescompared to bilinguals.

• Penelope Gardner-Chloros(Birkbeck) looked at code switchingthrough the lens of CC. She pointedout that in plurilingual settings,

audience design often meansadapting to an interlocutor whoserelative competence in the relevantvarieties differs from the speaker’s.She argued that the relative neglectof the accommodative function ofcode-switching, springs from abroader neglect of intra-individualvariation in code-switching: codeswitchers do not always combinetheir languages in the same way indifferent circumstances.

The last paper, by David Block (Instituteof Education), was more theoretical innature. He revisited Hymes’s earlydiscussion of CC, relating it to some ofHymes’s other views, for example, thosehe held about possible future directionsfor sociolinguistics research. Despite theaccepted view of CC today, namely, thatit is multidimensional, he argued thatCC still seems to be bound very stronglyto the notion that language and its‘appropriate’ use are whatcommunication is by and large about.There is a need to move beyond thislanguage-centric approach to CC, toreorient the construct so that it can takeon board a broader moremultimodal/semiotic view ofcommunication.

Participants Members of staff andresearch fellows from Birkbeck: DrBenedetta Bassetti, Dr Angelica Bonci,Dr Malcolm Edwards, Professor Li Wei,Dr Maria-Elena Placencia, Dr LuciaRottava, Penny Sewell. Members ofstaff from other universities: HelgaAdams (The Open University), Dr

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Martin Edwardes, Dr Gibson Ferguson(Sheffield), Dr Margaret Nicolson (TheOpen University), Dr GaellePlanchenault (Simon Fraser University,Vancouver), Dr Müge Satar (The OpenUniversity). Postgraduate students from Birkbeck:Seonaid Bell, Mariana Bono, LeilaChargui, Marcin Lewandowki, Gong Li,Heather McDowell, Jennifer Sia, AlissraSinclair-Knopp, Margreet van Koert.Postgraduate students from otheruniversities: Dr Alessia Cogo (King'sCollege London), Chao-Jung Wu(Newcastle University).

Full list of papers:Professor Mick Perkins: Whatcommunication disorders can tell usabout communicative competence: Anemergentist account Amelia Church: Closings in youngchildren’s disputesYan Jiang & Zhu Hua: Children’sinteractions in a multicultural settingJose Ignacio Aguilar Rio: Developinglearners’ communicative competence:L2 teachers’ search for complicityPing Ping Liu: ‘I don’t know what totalk about with native speakers’ –Redefining the cultural boundary of L2learning at a discoursal level in a study-abroad contextDavid Block: CommunicativeCompetence: Revisited or reoriented? Christine Raschka: What iscommunicative competence in amultilingual setting?Jean-Marc Dewaele: The impact ofmultilingualism on self-perceived

communicative competencePenelope Gardner-Chloros: Code-switching and CommunicativeCompetenceConstant Leung: Communicativecompetence in English as anAdditional/Second Language: beyondreification

OutcomesWe are considering a special issue in aninternational journal with a selection ofpapers presented at the seminar.

Implications for Applied LinguisticsWe have brought the topic ofCommunicative Competence back ontop of the agenda. It is clear that thisconcept remains fundamental in a widearea of subdomains within appliedlinguistics, including research oncommunication disorders, foreignlanguage learning and teaching, andforeign language use.

I am delighted to announce that Prof Alison Wray has been elected as anAcademician of the Academy of Social Sciences, following nomination by BAAL. (Ifyou would like to see the names of other Academicians, please go tohttp://www.acss.org.uk/about5.htm.) Congratulations, Alison.

Susan Hunston

Dr Katie Scott has joined the Applied Linguistics section of the School of Education,Communication and Language Sciences at Newcastle University as Lecturer inApplied Linguistics and TESOL.

Paul Seedhouse

Other NewsOther News

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‘What do you read, my Lord?’ Somereflections on the role of literature inlanguage teaching

If language learning is an‘epiphenomenon of communicativeinteraction’ (Smith & Halibut 2003: iv),then the nature of that interaction mustnecessarily play a central role indetermining learning outcomes. Onekey parameter, widely discussed sinceOtto Gabalunzie’s seminal paper(1984), is that of transparency. Broadlyspeaking, the more clearly specified andobjectively interpretable the input towhich learners are exposed, the morenarrowly their possible responses areconstrained. Conversely, the more theinput lends itself to multipleinterpretations, and the less learners arein a position to adjudicate between suchinterpretations, the broader theirresponse-potential. In other words, inputtransparency is inversely proportional tocommunicative freedom, without whichthere is no scope for stretched outputand consequent interlanguagerestructuring (Gummiband & Carambo1998). At one extreme, where the inputconsists primarily of the highly artificialand over-specified discourse samplesfound in the typical languagecoursebook, learner output ‘mayeffectively be reduced to nothing morethan repetitive crypto-regurgitation’(Frikadeller 2003: 19, 23, 26, 42, 89,121, 342, 706). At the other end of thescale, well-chosen literary texts canprovide precisely the level of inputsubjectivity which, by fosteringmaximally unconstrained output, offersoptimal potential for interlanguagedevelopment.

Every poem is a dialogue to whichthe reader is invited to bring at leastas much as the writer. When thepoet says that the evening mistrising from the fields reminds himof lost love, the reader enriches thepoem with a memory of city busstops in April. When the poetdescribes his early deflowering in aWorcestershire cowshed, the reader,brought face to face with hisunbearable failure to pay off hismortgage, goes and hangs himself.Truly, the artist bears a heavyresponsibility. (Bunnahabhain 1993:960)

Drama, with its multiple levels ofdiscourse, is particularly rich in itsprovision of opportunities for individualinterpretation, as Arapaho & Bejasusargue persuasively in their discussion ofHamlet (2001: 19).

The play’s centre – its ‘still turningpoint’ – is the moment whenPolonius asks ‘What do you read,my Lord?’ and Hamlet replies‘Words, words, words’. Here wehave the clearest possible statementof the hyperdimensionality ofdrama: of the instantiation of itslogos at one and the same time in arepresentation of an action, themimetic process which embodiesthat representation, the text whichencodes that process, and theintersecting reflections andrefractions of all three. There areindeed at this point no less than fivesuperimposed discourses: Polonius’internalisation of his own utterance,Hamlet’s internalisation ofPolonius’ utterance, Hamlet’s

Tongue-in-Cheek

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internalisation of his reply,Polonius’s internalisation ofHamlet’s reply, and our, theeavesdroppers’, distinct andseparately valid internalisations ofthe verbal interaction. Now, withPolonius’ multiply ambiguousresponse: ‘What is the matter, myLord?’, …

In responding to literary texts, thelanguage learner in fact enjoys a uniqueadvantage (Vachercher 2000).Unconstrained by built-in linguisticpreconceptions, a non-native reader isopen to interpretations which pass thenative speaker by, and which canenhance the intrinsic opacity of a text inrich and unpredictable ways, Somestriking examples are reported byPinbottom (2003) in his account of anaction research project carried out with aclass of Samoyedic bus conductors,during which his 15 intermediatelearners worked through a range ofEnglish classics. One of Pinbottom’ssubjects, for instance, perceived the‘two vast and trunkless legs’ of Shelley’sOzymandias as belonging to an obesetraveller named Stone who had lost hisluggage. (How much more productivethis response is, as a platform for task-based discussion or creative writing,than the standard ‘Booking a hotelroom’ or ‘At the lost propertyoffice’ scenario.) Another student,confusing Ophelia with Othello,produced a novel and grippinginterpretation of Hamlet which wasfurther enhanced by her belief thather tutor’s mention of the hero’s ‘tragicflaw’ referred to the flagstones in theElsinore chapel.

The linguistic creativity oftenmanifested in literary texts also serves toliberate learners from the notion thatthere are fixed ‘norms’ on which theirown production must converge. Ascorpus research is making increasinglyclear (Petersilie et al 2005), the dividingline between formulaic and constructedlanguage is neither clearly defined norstatic, and strategic phraseologicalcompetence can be greatly enhancedby appropriate consciousness-raisingactivities. Shadrach and his colleagues(2007) report interesting results from astudy in this area, in which they tookShakespeare’s creative imagery as aplatform for metaphor-generation byadvanced non-native-speaking accou-ntancy students. Some of their subjects’more valuable contributions to theEnglish phraseological lexicon includedthe expressions to nail one’s trousers tothe mast, as happy as a yoghurt pot, tojump off the rainbow, wind-surfing in thebath and she farts like a trooper.

Although there is general agreement onthe value of having a significant opacityquotient in input material, opinions onthe question of total incomprehensibilityare somewhat divided. While textswhich cannot be understood at all offermaximum scope for individualisedpersonal response, the exclusive studyof such material is seen by somescholars as having certaindisadvantages, well summarised byZippo (2000). One is the fact thatlearners’ processing of the input maymove them towards the development ofidiosyncratic and impenetrable ‘litlects’(Pif 1998; see also Swan& Walter 1982 for a similar problemarising in other circumstances). On the

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other hand, as Angst & LaTrouille pointout (2004), the ‘referential white-out’characteristic of impenetrable textsrenders them ideal as vehicles forexploring aspects of morphosyntax.Dylan Thomas’s work, for instance, canusefully be mined for aspects of adverbformation:

Altarwise by owl light in thehalfway housethe gentleman lay graveward withhis furies

or -ing forms:On field and sandThe twelve triangles of the cherubwindEngraving going.

Article use in maximally opaque textscan be particularly illuminating forlanguage learners. Consider for examplethe following well-known lines fromEliot’s Burnt Norton:

Garlic and sapphires in the mudclot the bedded axle tree. The trilling wire in the bloodsings below inveterate scarsappeasing long-forgotten wars.

Here the poet uses the definite article –the grammatical signal that interlocutorsare on common referential ground – as away of counterfeiting shared experience,subliminally fooling the reader intobelieving that he or she knows just whatmud and axle-tree, which trilling wireand whose blood are under discussion.Language learners. of course, arechronically in the position of having topretend that they are on common groundwith their speech partners, when in factthey may have no idea at allof what is being talked about. Todiscover that one of the most eminent oftwentieth century poets operates onprecisely the same lines as they do (and

furthermore, to identify at last apractical use for the definite article) isenormously empowering.

Conventional approaches to teachingcan easily give learners a negative viewof the gap between their own private,intramental language worlds, and thesocial, intermental interpretations anduses sanctioned by native speakers. Alltoo often they are told that they have‘misunderstood’ what they hear or read,or are made to feel inferior because theirown utterances are interpreted in variedand contradictory ways by theirinterlocutors. Literature-based languagework can help learners to see thecommunicative nexus in a different andaltogether more positive light. Throughstudy of this kind they come to realisethat they are in principle in exactly thesame position as other language users,from the supermarket shelf stacker to thegreatest names in the history ofliterature. They belong by right, that isto say, to a vast linguistic and culturalcommunity, no two members of whichunderstand, or are understood, in thesame way, to the extent indeed that theyunderstand anything at all. Literature, asone of Shadrach et al’s subjects mighthave put it, is a level golf course.

References

Angst, Z. & J–J. LaTrouille. (2004) TheMeaning of Non-meaning. Beddgelert:Tombstone Press.

Arapaho, J. & W. Bejasus. (2001) ‘WasFalstaff Prince Hal’s Father?’ ZagrebJournal of Shakespeare Studies 17/6:241–287.

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Bunnahabhain, M. (1993) Through aGlass Lightly: Literary and OtherDigressions. Great Malvern: AlbatrossPress.

Frikadeller, H-C. (2003) ‘What DoSyllabus Designers Know?’Pedalinguistics 1/1: 17–31.

Gabalunzie, O. (1984) The Reader OverMy Other Shoulder. Didcot: DidcotAcademic Press.

Gummiband, B. & Z. Carambo. (1998)‘Syntactic Constraint Accretion: aProcess View.’ Publications of theAtlanta Society for the Preservation ofEndangered Ideas, Vol. 6.

Pif, O. (1998) ‘Causal Factors inCommunicative Breakdown: aQuantitative Study.’ Ways WithAlgorithms 17/1: 24–31.

Petersilie, B., J. Salbei, M. Rosmarin &F–J. Thymian. (2005) Digging Up theCorpus. Birmingham: Magic MushroomPublications.

Pinbottom, L. (2003) ‘Trampolining onLiterature.’ Visions and Revisions 12/1:19–43.

Shadrach, I., K-K Meshach and A.Bednego. (2007) ‘Creative Warm-UpActivities.’ in Two Stops Short ofBarking: Working Papers of theUniversity of Upton Park.

Smith, J. & F. Halibut. (2003) Learningto Talk or Talking to Learn? BognorRegis: Last Resort Publications.

Swan, M. & C. Walter. (1982) ‘The Useof Sensory Deprivation in ForeignLanguage Teaching.’ ELT Journal 36/3:189–195.

Vachercher, J-P. (2000) ‘Do AcademicReaders Actually Look Up All theReferences, or Do They Just Scan theList for Their Own Names?’ Methods ofProcedure 19/4: 133–135.

Zippo, F. (2000) ‘What the Hell isHaruspicating? Some Problems withIncomprehensible Input.’ TontineQuarterly 38: 114–119.

Michael [email protected]

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Language Networks: the new WordGrammar. By R.A. HudsonOxford: Oxford University Press. xii +275 pp. 2007.

Language Networks is an ambitiousbook. It starts from the premise thatlanguage is basically a lexical network,and explores some of the areas that openup when we take this metaphorseriously. The argument put forward isthat the network metaphor is much morepowerful than people usually take it tobe, and that a number of syntactic,morphological, semantic andsociolinguistic features of English andother languages can be accounted for ina very parsimonious way by simplenetwork models. Specifically, inChapter 2, Hudson argues that regularmorphology can easily be described interms of networks, and that thesedescriptions provide natural accountsfor irregular morphology as well.Networks provide a natural andeconomical way of describingderivation and inflection in manylanguages, compounding in English,morphological structures, speech errorsand clitics. In Chapter 3, networks areused to describe agreement, dependencytypes, and some problems arising fromelliptical forms in English. Chapter 4provides an elegant account of whygerunds in English are both noun andverb forms. Chapter 5 examines networkapproaches to semantics andsociolinguistics - notably, aspects of thebehaviour of quantifiers, politenessforms and code switching phenomena.

This brief description will probablyleave most readers gasping. How can asimple network approach explain so

many problems which have baffledlinguists for many years, and how canthey all fall to the same elementarystructural analysis? The answer is thatthe solutions offered by LanguageNetworks are not quite asstraightforward as they appear to be atfirst sight. The main problem is that theunderlying structure of the networks israther difficult to pin down. At first, itlooks as though the networks we areworking with are essentially lexicalnetworks, with words as nodes joinedtogether by arcs which represent a smallset of fundamental semanticrelationships - perhaps as few as half adozen. "Spreading activation" is whatmakes these networks deliver: activatingspecific nodes causes other nodes in thenetwork to become active as well, andthe result is - well, it's not at all clearwhat the result is. The activation spreadsuntil it dissipates, so presumably theoutput of the network is a sequence ofnodes which have become temporarilyactivated by the initial activation. Theproblem is how we interpret thesesequences, and relate them to observablephenomena.

My own experience with writingcomputer programs that model thebehaviour of networks suggests thatthey are much more tricky to handlethan you would expect. Put together aset of 50 nodes, link each node to just acouple of other nodes, and you alreadyhave a network whose behaviour is fullof surprises. Build a network of severalthousand nodes, allow very denseconnections of several different typesbetween each node, and you have amodel whose real properties are almostimpossible to predict in any meaningful

Book Reviews

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sense. Most models of this type areinherently unstable, and the way theyperform is full of unexpected, emergentbehaviours - systematic high-levelproperties that appear spontaneouslyfrom the interactions that take placebetween low-level units in the network.It would be very difficult to build a largescale model which showed only thesimple network relationships thatLanguage Networks illustrates. Add tothis a seriously underspecified spreadingactivation principle, and we have amodel which is not sufficientlyconstrained to be really useful.

Worse, the networks described inLanguage Networks turn out to be muchmore complex than our initialdescription implies. The networks arenot just lexical nodes connected by arcsthat correspond to semantic primes. Wealso have nodes which are temporary,nodes which are created on the fly,nodes which correspond to abstracttheoretical constructs, nodes whichreflect sentence structure, nodes whichreflect the status of speaker and hearer,nodes which correspond to thephonological segments of words and soon. The result is that the elegantsimplicity which is promised in theintroduction is seriously compromised.Language Networks’ analysis ofFARMERS, for example, containseleven abstract nodes and fifteendifferently labelled arcs, and takes uphalf a page, as well as the expectedlexical and morphological nodes. I'mstill not sure whether this is really anelegant account of the relevantmorphology, but I am sure that scalingthis network up to cover a relativelysmall vocabulary of, say, only a

thousand words would spawn a monsterlexicon of humungous proportions. It'snot surprising that the networks used asillustrations in Language Networks arepartial and particular: the realcomplexities arise when we attempt tojoin these partial solutions into acomprehensive network that is notlimited to just a single problem.

I am quite sure that the language asnetwork metaphor is fundamentallycorrect. However, what is lacking in thisbook is a consideration of how youmight set up computational modelswhich would make these ideas work inpractice. In a sense it's very easy torepresent a problem as a network onceyou start thinking in these terms, andsince there are few constraints on whatcan serve as a node, and even fewerconstraints on the types of arc which canconnect these nodes, it is not difficult toget to a "solution" for any specificproblem - especially when you are ableto choose the problems that you get tosolve. But really this is going aboutthings in the wrong way. What I wouldlike to see is a more constrained type ofmodelling which put less emphasis ontop-down solutions, and worked in amore bottom-up, suck-it-and-see kind ofway. Language Networks frequentlyrefers to L1 acquisition data, so why notset up a network model which contains acouple of hundred word-nodes, linkedby a small number of arc types, and seewhat it does? Never mind thecomplexities of gerund constructions inEnglish: can a model this simple doanything interesting at all? If not, whatadditional complexities would we needto build in before the network started tobehave in a "realistic" or "interesting"

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way? How would spreading activationwork in a network of this type? Whatbehaviours would it generate? Questionsof this sort imply a very spare andminimalist approach to modelling whichis seriously lacking in the analysespresented here.

In short, Language Networks issomething of a tease. It promises a lot,but only offers you tantalising glimpsesof a much larger whole. Don't let thisreview put you off reading it, though.The glimpses, brief though they are, arewell worth the effort.

Paul MearaUniversity of Wales Swansea.

Forensic Linguistics: An introductionto Language, Crime and the LawBy John Olsson. London: Continuum2004. ISBN: 0-8264-6109-3. £21.99(paperback).

Although the term ‘forensic linguistics’was originally coined in 1968 by JanSvartvik, after his analysis of statementsmade by the executed ‘killer’ TimothyEvans led to his posthumous pardon,little happened in this field until workcarried out by the acknowledged fatherof forensic linguistics, MalcolmCoulthard, in the early 1990s.Coulthard revealed the extent to whichlinguistics could be of service to the lawby helping those who had sufferedinjustice, in particular the eventualpardon of the unjustly hanged DerekBentley. Since then forensic linguisticshas developed into several disciplinesand sub-disciplines. The author, aformer student of Coulthard’s, points outhow any text or item of spoken language

is potentially forensic evidence, addinghow theoretically not only a will or athesis but also a parking ticket might bea cause for examination. In practice,however, the forensic linguist will dealwith a limited type of text includingforged wills, plagiarised texts and falsestatements.

Areas dealt with in this title includeauthorship identification, whichobviously seeks to discover who wrotewhat and how much of it. Less obviousis mode identification which works onascertaining whether a text wasproduced by speech, writing or somecombination of both, e.g. part self-written, part dictated, perhaps underduress. Forensic Linguistics also looksat the analysis of transcribed verbalstatements in order to assess levels ofcompleteness and bias, as well asstatement analysis for veracity, andforensic phonetics which looks intospeaker identification. Other areas suchas language rights and courtroomdiscourse are, for reasons explained,ignored.

Before discussing the author’s treatmentof any lines of inquiry we perhaps needto know who might be a forensiclinguist. The answer is almost anyonewho deals with language, apparently.Voice identification might appeal tophoneticians, while emergency hoaxcalls might be of interest to theconversation analyst. Those with abackground in psychology might beconcerned with discovering what it isthat separates genuine from simulatedtexts, while a foreign language specialistmight be required to analyse an Englishlanguage forensic text produced by

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speakers of that foreign language.Teachers of young language learnersmight be involved in studyingchildren’s response to adult questions,what their answers might mean and theirdegree of reliability as witnesses.

The author has a specialist interest inforensic investigations stemming fromhis own postgraduate studies into thecase of Derek Bentley, a tragedy referredto often in detail throughout thisintriguing book, the first six chapters ofwhich deal largely with authorship, themost central topic in forensic linguistics.Chapter one looks at previous authorshipstudies, including disputes overShakespearian and biblical works.It details early scientific and statisticalanalyses before moving onto the use ofcomputational linguistics in the 1980s inwhich powerful computers were firstused to attempt to locate authorshipalgorithms and individual styles. Theauthor draws on work by McMenamin(1993) and the ‘Mrs Brown’ caseconcerning attributing authorship of aquestioned diary in a murder inquiry toshow how examinations of punctuation,misspellings and the use of profanitiesrevealed the true identity of thediarist.

Although referred to above, the authordevotes chapter two to dispelling whathe feels is little more than popular mythabout the possibility that each of us hasthe potential to produce a linguisticfingerprint with which our texts might belocated. He states of what he terms ‘asyet unproven ideas’: “..the proof of itsexistence is notable for its absence.” Thethird chapter outlines briefly how courtsin various countries perceive expert

evidence, ranging from interpretation ofthe Daubert criteria in the USA andthe related acceptance of evidence byexperts only if they have academicstature, to countries such as Englandand Wales where since the Woolf reportin the 1990s ‘the calling of expert-evidence should be under the completecontrol of the courts.

The general reader might like to jumpthe author’s rather technical outline inchapter three of how Popperian andBaconian philosophy might be used fordisproving theory, and move swiftlyonto authorship inquiry in the followingchapter, one which is much more likelyto concern and interest the languageteacher. In this, the author demonstrateshow he approached a case involvingattribution in which the presidentand other senior committee members ofa dog club in the mid-west of the USAhad received vicious anonymous letters.Examination of several potentialorthographic markers, such assupernumerary punctuation items, ledthe investigation to believe the treasurerwas responsible for the text.

Later chapters look at sampling andauthorship and then single textinquiries, both of which involve morethan just a little quantitative analysesand hypothesis testing using standarddeviation. Beyond this ForensicLinguistics begins to deal with the muchmore interesting matter of puttingtogether an author profile by analysingtexts such as those stemming from theanthrax scare in 2001 following terroristattacks on targets in the USA, anddetecting plagiarism, a sin, according tothe author, even Martin Luther

King Jr was apparently very often guiltyof.

Chapter nine on analysing andcategorising witness statements in orderto assess the degree of veracity would beof immense value to studies in discourseanalysis, and it is here that examinationof the statement made by Derek Bentleyreveals the mixture of register whichpointed to the likelihood that the accountwas not fully his own, butmingled with that of the arrestingofficers too. Chapter ten is concernedwith investigative linguistics and texttypes such as emergency calls, ransomdemands and other threateningcommunications, suicide letters, finaldeath row statements plus confessionsand denials by public figures.

Forensic Linguistics is a timely text;until recently few courses in this areaexisted. It is intended for undergraduateand postgraduate students, as well asnon-specialists involved in lawenforcement, such as solicitors,barristers and magistrates. As this is atextbook for students, prior to dealingwith other more specialist topics likestatement analysis and plagiarism, theauthor suggests working through theseveral exercises in each chapter, foreach of which model answers arehelpfully provided at the end of thebook.

Wayne TrotmanIzmir Institute of Technology

[email protected]

References:McMenamin, G.R. (1993) ForensicStylistics. Amsterdam: Elsevier.

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The following books have been receivedfor review. If you would like to reviewone of these books, please contact DrGuoxing Yu, the Reviews Editor, [email protected] (GraduateSchool of Education, University ofBristol, 35 Berkeley Square, Bristol,BS8 1JA).

De Bot, K., Lowie, W. & Verspoor, M.(2005) Second Language Acquisition. Anadvanced resource book. London:Routledge.

Farrell, T. (2007). Reflective LanguageTeaching: from Research to Practice.London:Continuum.

Fox, J. et al. (2007). Language TestingReconsidered. Ottawa: University ofOttawa Press.

Griffiths, P. (2006) An Introduction toEnglish Semantics and Pragmatics.Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Hancock, C. (2005) Meaning-CenteredGrammar. London: Equinox PublishingLtd.

Hyland, K. (2005) Metadiscourse.London: Continuum

Jackson, H. (2007) Key Terms inLinguistics. London: Continuum.

Jaworski A. & Coupland, N. (Eds)(2006, 2nd edn) The Discourse Reader.London: Routledge.

Kirkpatrick, Andy (2007) WorldEnglishes: Implications forInternational Communication andEnglish Language Teaching.Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress.

O’Keeffe, A. McCarthy, M. & Carter, R.(2007). From Corpus to Classroom:Language Use and Language Teaching.Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress.

Swan, M. (2005) Grammar. Oxford:Oxford University Press.

Tatham, M. & Morton, K. (2006)Speech Production and Perception.Hampshire: Palgrave MacMillan.

Oxford Flashlight Series 1 Teacher’sand student’s book, workbook andworksheets. (2007). Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press.

Publications ReceivedPublications Received

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NotesNotes

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NotesNotes

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Below is a summary of available BAAL funding to help promote Applied Linguistics.For more details and application forms, see http://www.baal.org.uk/funding.htm .

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THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION FOR APPLIED LINGUISTICS

MembershipIndividual Membership is open to anyone qualified or active in applied linguistics.Applied linguists who are not normally resident in Great Britain or Northern Irelandare welcome to join, although they will normally be expected to join their localAILA affiliate in addition to BAAL. Associate Membership is available topublishing houses and to other appropriate bodies at the discretion of the ExecutiveCommittee. Institution membership entitles up to three people to be full membersof BAAL.

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British Association for Applied Linguistics

c/o Dovetail Management Consultancy LtdPO Box 6688, London SE15 3WB

[email protected]

ISSN 0965-5638

ContentsContents

Editorial 1

BAALExecutive contact details 2Chair’s report 4Conference updates 5The Chris Brumfit International Scholarship 2008 6

BAAL/CUP seminar reports 8Reports on previous seminars 11

Other News and Notices 20

Tongue-in-cheek 21

Book ReviewsLanguage Networks: the new Word Grammar 25by R.A. Hudson. Reviewed by Paul Meara.

Forensic Linguistics: An introduction to Language, 27Crime and the Law by John Olsson. Reviewed by Wayne Trotman.

Publications received 30

Information for contributors 31

BAAL funding summary timetable 34

How to join BAAL 35

BAAL Application and Registration form 36


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