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VOLUME 10 ISSUE 1 2015
ii
Published by English Language Education Journals
488 Queen Street
Brisbane
Australia
Journal of English as International Language
A Division of SITE Ltd, Australia http://www.eilj.com
© Journal of English as International Language 2015
This book is in copyright.
No unauthorized photocopying
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying or otherwise, without the prior written
permission of the English Language Education Journals
asianefl@gmail.com
Publisher: Dr Paul Robertson
Chief Editor: Dr Sivakumar Sivasubramaniam
Production Associate Editor: Dr Su-Hie Ting
ISSN: 1718-2298
iii
JOURNAL OF ENGLISH AS AN INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE
CHIEF EDITOR
Dr Sivakumar Sivasubramaniam, University of the Western Cape, Republic
of South Africa
PRODUCTION ASSOCIATE EDITOR
Dr Su-Hie Ting, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, Malaysia
ASSOCIATE EDITORS
Dr Anita Pandey, Morgan State University, USA
Dr Murat Hismanoglu, European University of Lefke, North Cyprus
Dr Vijay Singh Thakur, Dhofar University Salalah, Sultanate of Oman
Dr Lingham Lionel Thaver, University of the Western Cape, Republic of
South Africa
EDITORIAL BOARD
Dr Abdullah Coskun, Abant Izzet
Baysal University, Turkey
Achilleas Kostoulas, The University of
Manchester, UK
Dr Amrendra K Sharma, Dhofar
University, Oman
Dr Joanne Rajadurai, Herriot Watt
University, Malaysia Campus
Sharon Clampitt-Dunlap, Inter
American University of Puerto Rico,
Puerto Rico
Dr Shirley Yangyu Xiao, The Hong
Kong Institute of Education
Assistant Professor Dr İsmail Fırat
Altay, Hacettepe University
Assistant Professor Dr Ayhan
Kahraman, Dumlupınar
University
SENIOR AND REGIONAL ADVISERS
Professor Dr Cem Alptekin, Doğuş
University, Turkey
Darren Lingley, Kochi University, Japan
Professor Jennifer Jenkins, University
of Southampton
Dr John Adamson, University of
Niigata Prefecture, Japan
Professor Dr Z.N. Patil, Central
Institute of English and Foreign
Languages
Hyderabad, India
Dr Suresh Canagarajah, Pennsylvania
State University
Pedro Luchini Universidad Nacional de
Mar del Plata, Argentina
Dr Phan Le Ha, Monash University,
Australia
Professor Robert Phillipson,
Copenhagen Business School,
Denmark
Dr Roger Nunn, The Petroleum Institute,
Abu Dhabi, UAE
Sandra Lee McKay, San Francisco
State University
iv
JOURNAL OF ENGLISH AS AN INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE
VOLUME 10 ISSUE 1 MAY 2015
World Englishes from a Citation Index Perspective
Beril T. Arik
Engin Arik
1
Nigerian English in Schneider’s Dynamic Model
C. U. C. Ugorji
20
English Language Education Situation in India: Pedagogical
Perspectives
Ramanujam Meganathan
48
Subtitling Cultural Expressions from English into Arabic
Saleh Majed Al Abwaini
67
An Investigation into Translation of English Adverbs into Persian
Shirin Khodadadi Shahivand
85
The Fallacy of an Epistemic Break: a Case for Epistemic Realism
Farid Ghaemi
Amin M. Mostajeran
92
v
Foreword
Welcome to the June 2015 issue of the Journal of English as an
International Language!
This issue is yet another avowal of EILJ’s unflagging commitment
to
nurturing a plurality of research issues and interests that underpin our
pedagogies and practices in the teaching of EIL. The papers
presented in
this issue signpost our authors’ bold attempts to propose and
disseminate
conceptualizations/routes of realization that are in keeping with EILJ’s
declared mission of
promoting locally appropriate, culturally sensitive and
socially aligned
methodologies and materials in EIL. It is our fond belief
that such on-going
endeavours and exercises would add particular impetus
to EILJ’s democratization and
dehegemonization of the use of English
across the cultures of Asia and farther
afield.
The joint paper entitled: World Englishes from a citation index perspective”
by Beril Arik and Engin Arik sets the tone and tenor for this issue as it
chronicles the rise and relevance of publications using world Englishes (WE)
cited in the Web of Science( WoS). Using a well-marked route of inquiry the
authors articulate their epistemic resolve to examine the dynamics and
outcomes of the increasing currency that WE have come to enjoy in
international scholarly publications and outputs. The ensuing “unpacking of
issues and insights” underlying WE citation index seen in the paper should
help debunk “the oft -touted notions of native speaker English” as the standard
form of the language as a non-negotiable in scholarly publications written in
English. In light of this, the paper examines some crucial implications that can
help us come to terms with the socio-cultural dimensions/sensibilities that
assume a particular prominence in the ways by which non-native speakers
of English make sense of their realities and experiences. In sum and spirit, the
paper is an edifying affirmation of the primacy and immediacy of WE and the
emergent heterogeneous global English speech communities that need to be
reckoned with as a result.
Ugorji’s paper, “Nigerian English in Schneider’s Dynamic Model” speaks to
the relationship between the formation and development of Nigerian English
and the phases proposed in Schneider’s Dynamic theory. The paper draws on
the central tenets of Schneider’s Dynamic theory to propose an investigative
paradigm for examining postcolonial varieties of English from the perspective
of contact linguistics. In light of this, the genesis and growth of Nigerian
English are examined and assessed with reference to the influence of the
contact theory in the evolution of postcolonial varieties of English. This draws
attention to the properties associated with Nigerian English within the
conceptualisation of the Model. By the same token, it focuses on the twin
conditions of sociolinguistic conditions and linguistic effects proposed in the
vi
Model for the phases iv and v, indicating areas which need to be updated.
Picking up on the five linear developmental phases that constitute a
benchmark for determining the scale and scope of the development of
individual varieties, the author is of the view that Nigerian English is shown to
have developed up to the 3rd phase- nativisation; and there are indications that
certain properties of its 4th phase- endonormative stabilisation, may be
discernible, but are not adequate enough to support any conclusive statements.
Notwithstanding the characterisations of Nigerian English as seen in
Schnider’s Dynamic Model, the paper argues for a more robust understanding
of the development of Nigerian English as a dynamic/fluid process and not as
one subject to the myth of maturation.
Ramanujam Meganathan’s paper, “English Language Education Situation in
India: Pedagogical Perspectives”, presents a critical assessment of the current
state of English language education in schools in India with reference to the
pedagogical policies and practices that permeate the very ecology of English
language teaching(ELT) across India. The author uses a broad-brush approach
to cover and analyse an impressive array of issues: different types of schools
in the different school systems and typologies of teaching situations, the ever-
complexifying nature of curriculum, syllabi, materials development, and the
concomitant issues of quality audit. Armed with a sound understanding of the
relevant critical perspectives and theoretical insights, the author examines and
explores a host of pedagogical as well as procedural implications in the paper
with the express intention of spelling out recommendations for stepping up the
standards and quality of ELT in schools via effective English language teacher
education(ELTE) programmes across the country. This, the author believes
would help India come to terms with its ever-increasing socio-economic
inequity and exclusion. Given that the prevalence and promotion of India’s
national cohesion is predicated largely on the prevalence and promotion of
English alongside its different regional languages, the issues and insights
voiced by the author should serve as a “wake-up call” to the current crop of
politicians and policy makers, who need to optimise their understanding of
how and why a well-formulated and implemented ELTE in India is vital to
safeguarding its socio-political, socio-economic as well socio-educational
well-being in its vibrant multilingual ecologies.
Saleh Majed Al Abwaini’s paper, “Subtitling Cultural Expressions from
English into Arabic” investigates into the problems that translators face when
subtitling cultural expressions from English into Arabic. The study reported in
the paper gives an engaging account of a translation test and a set of cultural
expressions drawn from three American movies. The sampling techniques as
well as the data analysis featured in the study have been handled with
particular adeptness and agility. These, undoubtedly contribute to the
narrative immediacy and primacy of the issues that the author deems are
central to his study. Pointing to the structural, lexical and semantic difficulties
vii
faced by the translators in the study due to interference from L1 into L2, the
author argues that the bilingual dictionaries consulted by the translators
yielded meanings in isolation rather than in context. Given this, the author
believes that the translators’ inability to use context-specific as well culture-
specific equivalents in their translation techniques could only result in
mistranslation and insufficient performance by the participants as evidenced
by the study. Further to this, the author contends that the current paucity of
research-based strategies for subtitling cultural expressions from English into
Arabic would only favour isolated, literal meanings in Arabic which would be
neither culture specific nor context-dependent. Such an outcome, the author
feels would belittle the quintessence of Arabic expressions and its linguistic
elegance and charm. In order to preempt such a situation, the author advocates
that any translation-teaching institution in the Arab world should accord top-
level priority to equipping their staff with an informed grasp of various
translation theories and how based on these theories appropriate strategies can
be deduced for building up a substantial repertoire of translatable expressions
unique to the culture of Arabic language and the contexts in which it is used.
Shirin Khodadadi Shahivand’s paper, “An Investigation into Translation of
English Adverbs into Persian”, directs attention and focus to the problems that
arise when English adverbs are translated into Persian. Pointing out the
dynamics and fall-outs of her investigation, the author leads her readership to
believe that while the students were able to translate all the adverbs they
learned in high school correctly, they did not know how to translate those
adverbs that they were unfamiliar with, especially when these appeared in
sentences. Further to this, the author feels that if the students are helped to
become familiar with a number of adverbs through targeted dictionary practice
along with a focus as to how the adverbs function in sentences, their ability to
translate English adverbs into Persian will improve to a great extent. As
students cross borders and boundaries when they translate meanings from one
language into another, the paper recommends that all teachers teaching
translations from English into Persian and vice versa should be trained in
adverb recognition strategies/methods as well as efficient use of dictionary. In
some respects, this paper comes across as a sequel to the previous one.
The joint paper entitled, “The Fallacy of an Epistemic Break: a Case for
Epistemic Realism”, by Farid Ghaemi and Amin M. Mostajeran proposes and
presents a critical view of the notion of an “epistemic break” from reliance on
West-centric- approaches and attitudes to knowledge, especially of the English
language. The authors argue that while some of the “breaks” are nothing more
than “things of the past”, some of “the breaks in the making” might run averse
to the ELT profession as they appear to be lacking in realism. Needless to say
that such a stance could espouse tendencies and trends that run counter to
EIL’s central tenets couched in the discourses of heterogeneous global English
speech community, the issues discussed in the paper appear to correlate the
viii
quintessence of EIL with the agendas of globalization. By the same token, the
paper states in no uncertain terms the power and promise EIL has for
synergizing and sustaining the interconnectedness and interdependence of
peoples and countries via a globalized world. Referring to a number of quite
often heard theoretical positions, the authors advocate a conciliatory approach
which could help EIL draw on a vast array of knowledge sources as well as
their attendant insights on competences, concepts and research acumen. Given
this, EILJ expects its global readership to make a judgment call on the issues
and insights presented in the paper.
In closing, I wish to applaud the courage and clarity with which the
contributing authors of this issue have showcased their alternate discourses
of current reckoning in EIL. Such endeavours are pivotal to EILJ’s
declared mission of creating ―a heterogeneous global English speech
community, with a heterogeneous English and different modes of
competence (Canagarajah, 2006, p. 211). Given this, I fervently believe that
the agendas and insights discussed in this issue would serve as a lamp to
all of us, who could otherwise be stranded in a methodological wasteland of
EIL. Read on!
Dr Sivakumar Sivasubramaniam
Chief Editor
1
World Englishes from a Citation Index Perspective
Beril T. Arik
Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA
Engin Arik
Dogus University, Turkey, Istanbul 34722 Turkey
Abstract
This study investigated the bibliometric characteristics of publications on
World Englishes (WE) covered in the Social Sciences Citation Index and the
Arts & Humanities Citation Index of the Web of Science (WoS) between 1975
and 2013. We found that there were 153 publications including 86 articles and
52 book reviews. WE was mentioned for the first time in 1989, but 96.07% of
publications on WE in WoS were published between 2005 and 2013,
suggesting a rapid increase in interest on the topic in recent years. The top
three research areas of WE publications were linguistics, education and
educational research, and literature. Out of 153, 129 of the publications
(84.31%) had a single author. The top five journals covering WE publications
were World Englishes (35.94%), TESOL Quarterly (7.84%), English World
Wide (7.18%), Anglia (3.92%), and Journal of Sociolinguistics (3.26%).
Publications came from a range of countries including the USA, England,
China, Australia, Singapore, Germany, and Brunei. A WE publication cited
33.84 publications and received 3.71 citations on average, but 90 publications
(58.82%) did not receive any citations. B. B. Kachru was the most frequently
cited author (190 times) followed by Jenkins (99 times) and Seidlhofer (81
times). We predict the number of WE publications will continue to increase in
WoS.
Keywords: Bibliometric analysis, World Englishes, Social Science Citation
Index, Arts & Humanities Citation Index, Applied linguistics
Introduction
“Publish or perish” is perhaps one of the most prominent mottos of present
day academia. An equally important motto can be “publish, get indexed, and
get cited.” Citation indices therefore provide comprehensive coverage and
storage of scientific publications from a single field to all fields of academic
disciplines. Publications, especially in prominent citation indices, and number
of citations received become a very important factor in job hunting for new
graduates, for those seeking tenure, and in applications for (inter)national
grants (see Lawrence, 2002, 2003, 2008 for a critique; Owens, 2013; Reich,
2
2013). Web of Science (WoS) is perhaps the most comprehensive and reliable
index to provide bibliometric information about timely published journals.
Those journals have referee systems with higher impact factors than those
outside of WoS coverage (e.g., Russ-Eft, 2008). World Englishes (WE) is a
relatively young field of inquiry and has been bourgeoning since the 1990s.
One of the purposes of the current study is to investigate some of the general
trends in the field of WE based on bibliometric data—more specifically, the
information WoS indices provide. Although WoS indices do not include all
the publications related to WE, they include publications that have high
quality and visibility.
Another advantage of indices such as the Social Sciences Citation Index
(SSCI) and the Arts & Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI) of WoS, is the
increased availability of bibliometric data that comes with them. This makes
bibliometric analysis especially appealing for researchers who are interested in
disciplinary trends and scholars who wish to publish in WoS journals alike.
While bibliometric analysis allows researchers to see, reflect on and, if seen as
necessary, change the trends in a field, it also provides a synthesis and/or
summary of increased amounts of information for decision makers.
Bibliometric analysis is especially informative for new members of the
community who might be less experienced about the practices of their
disciplines. Last but not least, this kind of meta-analysis makes comparison
with other disciplines and between different time periods within the discipline
possible.
The present study is the first to investigate bibliometric indicators of WE
in WoS. Research has shown that bibliometric studies are very relevant to the
social sciences and humanities, including language-related fields; one such
piece of evidence was by Nederhof et al. (1989), who investigated scientific
publications from the fields of social history, general linguistics, general
literature, Dutch literature and Dutch language, experimental psychology,
anthropology, and public administration, showing their importance as indices
for the social sciences and humanities. Another study (Nederhof & Noyons,
1992) was conducted on publications and citations in general linguistics and
general literature in A&HCI from a set of linguistics departments in the
Netherlands, Italy, and the USA. Results of this study showed that
bibliometric indicators are reliable to assess the research performance of
linguistics departments.
Some previous studies focused only on (general) linguistics. Nederhof
(2011) examined language and linguistics research outputs and found that
there were two types: Language and Linguistics publications and Literature
publications, the latter of which give more importance to publications
targeting the general public. He also suggested that both journal articles and
books should be considered when analyzing the bibliometric characteristics of
these fields. Another study (Arik, 2015) investigated bibliometric
characteristics of linguistics in SSCI between 1900 and 2013 and A&HCI
between 1975 and 2013. The authors found that there was an increase in the
3
number of linguistic publications in parallel to the expansion of WoS
coverage. They also found that linguistics is a prominent research area in both
indices. As for the Language Linguistics category of WoS, linguistics was
ranked about no. 63 in SSCI and no. 9 in A&HCI, whereas as the Linguistics
research area of WoS, it was ranked about no. 22 in SSCI and no. 8 in
A&HCI.
Some previous studies have focused on specific disciplines in language
sciences. Radev, Joseph, Gibson and Muthukrishnan (2009) analyzed the
bibliometric characteristics of the field of computational linguistics in
publications by the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL). Within
their analysis, they provided citation patterns such as the networks of paper
citations, author citations, and author collaborations. Another study (Arik,
2014) investigated scientific publications on sign languages in SSCI between
1900 and 2013 and A&HCI between 1975 and 2013, and showed that there
were 2,460 scientific publications, with the earliest appearing in 1902.
Nevertheless, 86.26% of the publications on sign languages appeared in WoS
very recently, between 1990 and 2013.
Some other studies investigated the characteristics of publications in
journals in language and linguistics. For example, Egbert (2007) discussed the
relevance of common journal quality factors such as citation patterns, rejection
rates, timely publication, and accessibility, focusing on the fields of Teachers
of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) and Applied Linguistics.
She then invited about 300 of the TESOL members to participate in a survey
about journal quality measures in TESOL and Applied Linguistics. Only 31
people responded. Results showed that, surprisingly, when it came to their
journal preference, participants considered “relevance to context” (21
mentions) followed by review process (8 mentions) and quality of articles (5
mentions), rather than bibliometrics (such as citation frequency; only 2
mentions) to be more important deciding factors.
Another study (Meara, 2014) investigated the bibliometric characteristics
of 201 articles on vocabulary acquisition published in the Modern Language
Journal between 1916 and 2010 (see also Meara, 2012). He focused on
citation patterns in these articles to identify some historical tendencies in the
field of vocabulary acquisition. On the basis of the findings from the citation
maps, he argued that this research area could be divided into four periods:
reliable word lists for modern language teaching (1916-1950), cognitive
psychological and sociolinguistic approaches to vocabulary acquisition (1951-
1980), start of modern research focusing mostly on reading research (1981-
2000), and a new approach influenced by Paul Nation’s work (2001-2010).
Following these works in closely related fields, the main goal of the
present study is to report some of the bibliometric measures regarding WE as
represented in WoS. In order to find out some general trends we examined
publications related to WE that were published in SSCI and A&HCI between
1975 and 2013 for two reasons: 1) A&HCI covers publications from 1975 to
present; and 2) there are no publications on WE before 1975 in SSCI. More
4
specifically, we examined the number of publications over the years, authors,
journals, and universities that publish WE publications, and research areas
and WoS categories that include WE publications. In addition, we looked at
the languages and countries of WE publications in SSCI and A&HCI. Finally
we investigated some of the citation patterns in WE publications indexed in
WoS.
Methods
In order to present a bibliometric analysis of WE as represented in WoS—
more specifically in SSCI and A&HCI—we applied the following procedure.
SSCI covers publications since 1900, whereas A&HCI covers publications
since 1975. We accessed WoS at http://apps.webofknowledge.com/ through an
R1 university library in the US on April 30th, 2014, and searched for articles
using the keyword “World Englishes”. In this way, we accessed scientific
publications that had “World Englishes” not only in their titles, but also in
their abstracts and keywords. There were no results for the time period before
1975; therefore, we set the time interval between 1975 and 2013. 2014 was
excluded because the records were not complete at the time of our data
collection. In order to further examine the change in the number of
publications over the years, we repeated the same search over eight five-year
periods: 1975-1979, 1980-1984, 1985-1989, 1990-1994, 1995-1999, 2000-
2004, 2005-2009, and 2010-2013. After compiling a list of WoS publications
about WE, we analyzed the data for number of publications, WoS categories,
research areas, authors, journals, conferences, universities, document types,
languages, and countries/territories. In addition, we investigated the citation
patterns that emerged from the data. For these, we exported the data to Excel,
including all information available in the WoS database, selected cited
references, and finally received citations for each publication before analysis.
We report our findings below.
Results
Number of Publications
We found that “World Englishes” was used as topic in 153 publications in
SSCI and A&HCI within the time period we investigated (1975-2013). The
distribution of these publications by five-year periods is given below. Table 1
shows that world Englishes was mentioned for the first time in a WoS indexed
publication in 1989. This article, by Bader (1989), was a book review on
Discourse across cultures: Strategies in World Englishes (1987), which was
published in the International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language
Teaching (IRAL), followed by only a few publications published between the
years 1995 and 2004. We observed an exponential increase in the number of
publications that focused on WE between 2005-2009 and 2010-2013. In these
5
time periods, 55 and 92 publications respectively appeared in SSCI and
A&HCI. This rapid increase in WE publications can be explained by the fact
that flagship WE publications such as World Englishes joined WoS in the
second half of the 2000s (See Table 6).
Table 1
Number of WE publications in WoS over the years
Year
Number of Publications
Percentage
1975-1979
0
0
1980-1984
0
0
1985-1989
1
.65
1990-1994
0
0
1995-1999
1
.65
2000-2004
4
2.61
2005-2009
55
35.94
2010-2013
92
60.13
SUM
153
100
WoS Categories
WoS categorizes scientific publications under a limited number of categories
such as linguistics, history, sociology, educational research, etc. The
distribution of the publications in the dataset according to WoS categories is
given in Table 2.
Table 2
Distribution of WE publications according to WoS categories
WoS Categories
Number of
Publications
Linguistics
128
Language Linguistics
108
Education Educational Research
30
Literature
14
Sociology
4
Communication
2
Cultural Studies
2
Humanities Multidisciplinary
2
Since the publications could be cross-listed under more than one category, the
sum of the publications in the table below exceeded the number of
6
publications in our list. The distribution of publications according to WoS
categories displayed an overwhelming preference for linguistic studies, with
236 publications in this category. Other frequent categorizations for WE
publications in WoS were literature (14) and educational research (30).
According to these findings, WE publications from communication,
sociology, or cultural studies perspectives were almost negligible.
Research Areas
A bibliometric measure closely related to WoS categories is research areas. In
our query, we looked at research areas that produced at least five WE-related
publications. The results are given in Table 3. Note that the publications could
be cross-listed under more than one research area. Parallel to the results
regarding WoS categories above, the top three research areas were linguistics
(138), education and educational research (30), and literature (14). In
accordance with the results of WoS categories, analysis of the research areas
showed that the WE framework has influenced and has been influenced by
three primary disciplines: linguistics, education, and, to a lesser degree,
literature.
Table 3
Research areas for WE publications in WoS
Research Areas
Number of
Publications
Linguistics
138
Education Educational Research
30
Literature
14
Authors
Out of 153 publications in the data set, 129 (84.31%) had a single author. One
publication (Horner, Lu, Royster, & Trimbur 2011) had the highest number of
authors, (4 authors) (Table 4). The author/publication ratio was 1.18 on
average: 1.25 for articles; 1 for book reviews; 1.4 for editorial material; and
1.6 for review articles. Note that one document was also considered as
Correction; therefore, we omitted it here.
7
Table 4
Author/publication ratio according to the document types
Document type
Number of publications
Author/publication
Article
85
1.25
Book review
52
1
Editorial material
10
1.4
Review article
5
1.6
152 (TOTAL)
1.18 (AVERAGE)
When we looked at the top 10 authors that made WE publications in
our dataset from WoS, we found that the most prolific WE authors in WoS
were: Deterding with seven publications, Collins with five publications,
Bolton and Seargeant with four publications each, followed by Gorlach,
Jenkins, Braj Kachru, Yamuna Kachru, Aya Matsuda, Paul Matsuda,
Phillipson, and Wee with three publications each (Table 5). Note that all of
Deterding’s publications were book reviews.
Table 5
The most prolific authors who publish WE publications
Rank
Author
Number of Publications
1
D. Deterding
7
2
P. Collins
5
3
K. Bolton
4
3
P. Seargeant
4
5
M. Gorlach
3
5
J. Jenkins
3
5
B. B. Kachru
3
5
Y. Kachru
3
5
A. Matsuda
3
5
P. K. Matsuda
3
5
R. Phillipson
3
5
L. Wee
3
Journals
We also examined the journals listed in SSCI and A&HCI that covered the
WE publications in our dataset. We chose journals that had at least three
publications about WE given in Table 6 below. Not surprisingly, around one
third of the publications in our list were from the journal World Englishes
(55). This journal was followed by TESOL Quarterly with 12 publications,
English World Wide with 11, Anglia Zeitschrift fur Englische Philologie with
8
six, and Journal of Sociolinguistics with five publications. Applied Linguistics,
Language and Education, and System with 3 WE publications between 1975
and 2013. Table 6 provides a list of these journals and information about their
publishers and impact factors according to the Journal Citation Reports 2012
via WoS http://apps.webofknowledge.com/, accessed through Purdue
University Libraries.
Table 6
Journals that publish WE publications
Conferences
Since conferences and conference publications are as important as journals for
being potential venues for WE scholars, we examined the conferences that
published WE publications in their proceedings listed in WoS. The conference
titles listed on the WoS website were the International Conference on World
Englishes, the Annual Meeting of the International Association for World
Englishes and the Symposium on Intelligibility and Cross Cultural
Communication in World Englishes.
Universities
We also examined the affiliations of scholars with WE publications. Our
findings showed that the top universities were City University of Hong Kong,
Journals
In WoS
since
Number of
Publications
Percentage
Publisher
Issue/
Year
(2013)
Impact
factor
(JCR
2012)
World Englishes
2008
55
35.94
Wiley
4
.333
TESOL
Quarterly
1967
12
7.84
Wiley
4
.792
English World
Wide
2009
11
7.18
John
Benjamins
3
.682
Anglia
Zeitschrift fur
Englische
Philologie
1975
6
3.92
de Gruyter
4
ns
Journal of
Sociolinguistics
2003
5
3.26
Wiley
4
1.087
Applied
Linguistics
1981
3
1.96
Oxford U.
Press
5
1.50
Language and
Education
2008
3
1.96
Routledge
6
.55
System
1982
3
1.96
Elsevier
4
.69
9
University of Illinois, and Nanyang Technological University with nine,
seven, and six publications, respectively.
Table 7
The affiliations of the scholars who published WE publications
Ranking
Universities
Country
# of Publications
1
City University of Hong Kong
PRC-Hong
Kong
9
2
University Illinois
USA
7
3
Nanyang Technological University
Singapore
6
4
National University Singapore
Singapore
5
4
University Brunei Darussalam
Brunei
5
4
University New South Wales
Australia
5
7
Open University
UK
4
8
Arizona State University
USA
3
8
Copenhagen Business School
Denmark
3
8
North West University
USA
3
Document Types
Of the 153 publications in our dataset, we found that 85 were articles, 52 were
book reviews, 10 were editorial materials, 10 were proceedings papers, five
were reviews, and one was a correction (Table 8). The results showed that
around half of the publications were articles and approximately one third of
the publications were book reviews. In other words, the most common types of
publications related to WE were articles and book reviews.
Table 8
Document types for WE publications
Document Type
Number of publications
Percentages
Article
85
55.56
Book review
52
33.99
Editorial material
10
6.54
Proceeding paper
10
6.54
Review
5
3.27
Languages and Countries
When we looked at the languages of the WoS publications in our list, we
found that with the exception of one article, which was in Spanish, all of the
WE publications were published in English (152). In addition to the languages
10
of the publications we also examined their countries of origin. Not
surprisingly, the USA was the leading country with 38 publications. It was
followed by England (17), China (14), Australia (12), Singapore (11),
Germany (8), and Brunei (6) (Table 9). The results illustrated that almost half
of the publications came from inner and outer circle countries according to
Kachru’s (1985) model, while the other half originated from expanding circle
countries like China. Below are the countries that contributed more than 5
publications to the list.
Table 9
Countries publishing WE publications
Country
Number of Publications
USA
38
England
17
China
14
Australia
12
Singapore
11
Germany
8
Brunei
6
Citation patterns
We also analyzed the data to investigate to what extent the WE publications
covered in WoS were cited by other publications by looking at the “total times
cited in” section in the WoS databases. Of the 153 scientific publications, 90
(58.82%) did not receive any outside citation. The publications that received
the two highest citation counts were a 106 times cited article by Pennycook
(2003) and a 93 times cited review article by Jenkins (2006). The average
number of citations each publication received was 3.71. If we omit those two
highly cited publications, the average number of citations would be 2.44.
Furthermore, we analyzed the data to investigate to what extent the WE
publications in WoS cited other publications. We found that the average
number of cited references was 33.84. The top 2 publications giving the most
references were review articles - Jenkins, Cogo and Dewey (2011) and Bhatt
(2001) - which both cited 170 publications.
Since these citation patterns fluctuated greatly depending on the document
type, we analyzed the data accordingly (Table 10). We found that for articles,
the average number of received citations (4.51) dropped to 3.30 when we
excluded the highest cited article, Pennycook (2003). In addition, the average
number of cited references (47.90) dropped to 47 when we excluded the
outlier, Kachru and Smith (2009), which referenced 124 publications. We also
found that book reviews did not receive any citations with the exception of
Todd (2008), which was cited once; conversely, book reviews cited 4.65
11
publications on average, or 4.23 publications when we excluded the outlier
Sandhu (2013), which cited 26 publications. An examination of the citation
patterns in editorial materials showed that they received 3.7 citations on
average. If we excluded Matsuda (2003), which was cited 14 times, editorial
material would have received 2.55 citations on average. The data also showed
that review articles received 29.2 citations on average. Yet, excluding Jenkins
(2006), which received the highest number of citations (93), this number
dropped to 13.25. The review articles referenced 118.8 publications on
average. If we excluded the review article which cited the least number of
references, Banerjee (2008) with 6, the number increases to 147 publications
cited on average.
Table 10
Received citations according to document types (except one Correction)
Document
types
Number of
publications
Author/
publication
Average
Received
citation
Received
citation
except
outlier(s)
Cited
references
Cited
references
except
outlier(s)
Article
85
1.25
4.51
3.30
47.90
47
Book
review
52
1
.01
0
4.65
4.23
Editorial
material
10
1.4
3.7
2.55
26.9
17.22
Review
article
5
1.6
29.2
13.25
118.8
147
TOTAL
152
1.18
3.71
2.44
33.84
32.03
When we examined the number of citations in the 153 WE publications,
we found that B. B. Kachru was the most frequently cited author (190 times),
followed by Jenkins (99 times) and Seidlhofer (81 times) (Table 11).
We then examined the scientific publications most frequently cited in the
publications covered by WoS (Table 12). Closer examination of the data
revealed that there were 22 publications cited 10 or more times. Among them,
the most frequently cited were Kachru (1992) (26 times), Kachru (1985) (24
times), and Jenkins (2000) (20 times). Among the 22 publications were 14
books, seven articles, and one book chapter. Note that in this analysis we
considered each publication with a single date and edition. For example, we
considered Crystal (1997) and Crystal (2003) as two different publications,
even though they were different editions of the same book. The same was true
with Jenkins (2003, 2006, 2009) and Kachru (1982, 1985, 1992). Moreover,
Seidlhofer (2001) appeared as Seidlhofer (2003) in WoS even though the
publications cited it as Seidlhofer (2001). The reason for this could be that the
issue in which Seidlhofer (2001) was published appeared in 2003 in WoS.
12
Table 11
The most frequently cited authors in the references
Rank
Author
Number of Citations
1
B. B. Kachru
190
2
Jenkins
99
3
Seidlhofer
81
4
Smith
58
5
Pennycook
52
6
Bolton
44
7
Kirkpatrick
42
8
Canagarajah
41
9
Y. Kachru
32
10
Graddol
28
10
Mestherie
28
Table 12
The publications cited 10 or more times in the scientific publications covered
by WoS
Rank
Author
Year
Times Cited
Type
1
Kachru
1992
26
Book
2
Kachru
1985
24
Book chapter
3
Jenkins
2000
20
Book
4
Jenkins
2006
18
Article
5
Kachru
1986
16
Book
6
Seidlhofer
2004
15
Article
7
Mesthrie and Bhatt
2008
14
Book
7
Seidlhofer
2003*
14
Article
9
Graddol
2006
13
Book
9
Jenkins
2003
13
Book
9
Jenkins
2007
13
Book
9
Kirkpatrick
2007
13
Book
9
Phillipson
1992
13
Book
9
Schneider
2007
13
Book
15
Crystal
1997
12
Book
16
Kachru
2005
11
Book
17
Seidlhofer, Breiteneder and Pitzl
2006
10
Article
17
Widdowson
1994
10
Article
17
Smith and Nelson
1985
10
Article
17
Platt, Weber and Lian
1984
10
Book
17
McKay
2002
10
Book
17
Bamgbose
1998
10
Article
13
We also expanded our examination to the number of publications that were
cited 5 or more times in the publications covered by WoS, finding a total
number of 59 publications. Of them, 32 were books, six were book chapters,
and 21 were articles (Table 13).
Table 13
Document types of the WE publications cited 5 or more times
Document type
Number
Percentage
Book
32
54.24
Article
21
35.59
Book chapter
6
10.17
Total
59
100
In addition to the bibliometric data in SSCI and A&HCI indices, we
also investigated the conference proceedings citation index for social sciences
and humanities (CPCI-SSH), finding 20 proceedings related to WE. Four of
the 20 proceedings received no citations by a WoS publication. The top 3 most
frequently cited conference proceedings were Jenkins’ (2009) English as a
lingua franca: interpretations and attitudes (cited 16 times); B. B. Kachru’s
(1997) World Englishes 2000: Resources for Research and teaching, (cited 14
times), and Seidlhofer’s (2009) Common ground and different realities: World
Englishes and English as lingua franca (cited 12 times). The 20 proceeding
papers were cited 103 times in total. For the conference proceedings, the
average citation per item was 5.15.
When we examined the Book Citation Index for Social Sciences and
Humanities in WoS, we found that there were 43 books about WE between
1975-2013. These 43 books were cited 208 times, but of the 43, 29 received
no citations. Average citations per item in the case of books were 4.84. The
top three books in terms of number of citations received were: World
Englishes: The Study of New Linguistic Varieties by Mesthrie and Bhatt
(2008) (74 citations); Johnson’s (2009) Second Language Teacher Education:
A sociocultural perspective (60 citations); and Kachru and Smith’s (2008)
Cultures, Contexts, and World Englishes (21 citations).
Discussion and Conclusion
In this study, we investigated WE publications as indexed in SSCI and
A&HCI. Considering the beginnings of WE in the 1980s, it is rather surprising
that the number of WE publications in WoS did not increase until 2005 (with
96.07% of publications on WE in WoS being published between 2005 and
14
2013). This presumably suggests an increasing interest in WE in very recent
years. Looking at the trend indicated by our data, it is reasonable to expect an
increase in the number of WE publications in the near future.
Our findings showed that most WE publications can be categorized as
linguistic, educational research, or literature publications, with an
overwhelming influence of linguistics. A more evenly distributed contribution
from disciplines other than linguistics might be more preferable since greater
multidisciplinarity may be more fruitful for WE. According to our findings,
the WE publications from communication, sociology, or cultural studies
perspectives were almost negligible. However, we predict that WE will have
more of an influence in these fields in the future.
The very recent increase in the number of WE publications is not only
related to the emergence of WE as a relatively new field, but also a result of
the expansion of WoS coverage. (Masked reference a) showed that SSCI, but
not A&HCI, have gradually increased over the years, especially from 2005
onwards. It is worth noting, however, that linguistics coverage in general has
also expanded in both SSCI and A&HCI, including the journal World
Englishes, which has published more than one third of all WE publications in
SSCI since 2008.
The number of publications about WE is still limited (153) compared to
other fields such as linguistics or sign languages. For example, (masked
reference a) showed that in the Linguistics research area, SSCI covered a total
of 109,469 publications while A&HCI covered a total of 193,619 publications
between 1900 and 2013. Additionally, (masked reference b) found that SSCI
and A&HCI covered 2,460 scientific publications on sign languages between
1900 and 2013; Comparatively, WE publications seem very scarce in number.
Our research also illustrated some of the most prolific WE scholars (such
as Deterding and Collins) and universities (the City University of Hong Kong
and the University of Illinois). In addition, we uncovered some of the most
WE-friendly publication venues for WE scholars (journals such as World
Englishes and TESOL Quarterly). The WE publications in WoS seem to be
predominantly written in English and from inner and outer circle countries
according to Kachru’s (1985) model.
We found that the most common types of WE publications in WoS were
research articles and book reviews, and were most of the time written by a
single author. Compared to natural science publications, publications in the
humanities tend to have fewer authors (Sula, 2012), and WE is not an
exceptional case. Sula (2012) suggested that when analyzing authorship
patterns in the humanities, acknowledgment sections of publications could
also be considered, because many authors acknowledge colleagues that may
have contributed to their work to some extent. Following this suggestion,
future research may take acknowledgments into account when investigating
scholar networks in WE.
We also found that publications which were cited 10 or more times
included 14 books, seven articles, and one book chapter. These citation
15
patterns have been already observed in the social sciences and humanities
(e.g., Hellqvist, 2010; Larivière, Archambault, Gingras & Vignola-Gagné,
2006; Linmans, 2010; Nederhof, 2006; Nederhof, van Leeuwen & van Raan,
2010), suggesting that an analysis of citation patterns in WE publications
should cover books and book chapters in addition to journal articles.
We hope our bibliometric analysis can be useful for WE researchers,
teachers, and students alike. However, it might be wise to not make hasty
generalizations based on these findings alone, since our study only focused on
WoS publications. This is a common limitation of bibliometric studies in the
social sciences and humanities (e.g., Archambault & Larivière, 2010). For
example, Georgas and Cullars (2005) analyzed citation patterns in linguistics
publications indexed in Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts (LLBA)
of ProQuest and found that they were similar to those in social sciences or
humanities or natural sciences. Therefore, analyzing WE publications covered
in LLBA might shed further light on the bibliometric characteristics of WE.
The past and present of the WE field can also be further examined by
closely investigating the specific journals that frequently publish WE studies
(such as World Englishes, TESOL Quarterly, and English World Wide) as well
as the authors that most frequently publish WE studies and are frequently cited
(such as B. B. Kachru, Jenkins, and Seidlhofer, among others). Another
potential venue for investigation is to look at future trends in WE publications
over time. For example, it would be interesting to examine if WE publications
could move from one research area or WoS category to another, if countries
other than the USA might take the lead in publication, if publications appear in
languages other than English, or if more journals publish WE studies to
overcome the language barrier (van Leeuwen, 2013).
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Note on Contributors
Beril T. Arik is a PhD candidate in the Second Language Studies/English as a
Second Language program at Purdue University. She has an MA from the
same program. Currently she is working on her dissertation, which explores
the interactions between identity and literacy practices in the graduate school
context. She is interested in ecological approaches to second language
acquisition and second language writing. Email: btezelle@purdue.edu
Engin Arik has a PhD in Linguistics from Purdue University. He is currently
assistant professor of psychology at Dogus University. He is interested in
language typology, including sign and spoken languages, expressions of
space-time, bibliometrics of social sciences, and current issues in higher
education. E-mail: enginarik@enginarik.com
20
Nigerian English in Schneider’s Dynamic Model
C. U. C. Ugorji
University of Benin, Nigeria
Abstract
This study addresses the relationship between the formation and development
of Nigerian English and the phases proposed in Schneider’s (2007) Dynamic
theory. In the present study, the propositions of the Model with respect to the
formation and growth of Nigerian English are examined and evaluated in the
perspective of the contact theory of the evolution of postcolonial varieties of
English. It draws attention to properties associated with Nigerian English
within the conceptualisation of the Model, focussing on the twin conditions of
sociolinguistic conditions and linguistic effects proposed in the Model,
indicating areas which need to be updated. The result critiques the theory and
suggests new dimensions for future meta-theoretical development.
Keywords: Schneider’s Dynamic Model; Nigerian English
Introduction
Research on Varieties of English continues to be stimulating, from the debates
on ideologies, to tools and to case studies of individual varieties. At the centre
stage is the concept of New Englishes, World Englishes or, in the model under
study, Postcolonial Englishes. An interesting outcome of the intellectual
debates associated with these concepts is that a new investigative paradigm of
synchronic English linguistics is constituted; and it has grown rapidly.
Schneider’s (2007) Dynamic Model belongs to this paradigm, and addresses
contact-induced changes as the basis of the developmental history of
Postcolonial Englishes (See also Schneider, 2003). Thus, culture contact
begins the history of these varieties of English. It correlates factors specifiable
in terms of contact intensity according to Thomason (2001). It is considered
that the structural effects of language contact depend on social conditions, and
history (external to language); and the fate of speaker communities may
induce linguistic changes as well. But the generalisations represent tendencies
and not rules, such that subjectivity may not be ruled out especially when
faced with applications to individual cases. In language contact ecology, a
“feature pool” is composed; and “competition of features” is inherent
(Mufwene, 2001, 2008). Which features are selected depend on a complex
imprecise equation of complex and contingent factors; but selected features
need time to stabilise (notwithstanding the continuing competition); and there
are stages intermediate between selection and stabilisation. The mechanisms
21
for the composition of the “feature pool” may be referred to as
“accommodation”; while “identity” may be the logical entity underlying the
mechanism (cf. Schneider 2007, pp. 26-27).
Further to the foregrounding we provide in this introduction, it may be
perceivable that an ever-present force in contact ecology is diffusion; and
language and culture boundaries are semi-permeable, permitting osmotic
forces. Diffusion might have vertical dimensions (from parents to offspring),
and horizontal dimensions (from speaker to speaker). Dynamism may be about
the changes which take place over time in both dimensions and with respect to
contact and associated factors. In such ecology, the following may be
considered major contributors: languages and/or dialects (with different
degrees of language contact intensity; communicative economics (needs and
demands); power/pressure – institutions and institutional bias to language
and/or language user, prestige and status, direction of social mobility, attitudes
– societal and institutional, etc.; and topography, demography and social and
cultural stratification. In general, there’s a priority of extra-linguistic
determinants in contact situations. Contact situation or contact ecology, for
linguistics, may therefore be made up of the totality of forms and variants
brought by individuals; the aggregation of forms and variants brought by
participating speaker communities; and, by implication, the totality and
aggregation of individual and community worldviews and experiences, the
cognitive minds. In such ecology, the number of participating language
communities, in principle, ranges from 2 to n. it is concatenating the inter-
determinisms, relationships, interplay and contributions of these complex of
factors (noted above) that the framework undertakes, and highlights
systematically the commonalities in the rooting and development of
postcolonial Englishes.
The present task is to evaluate the stipulations of Schneider’s (2007)
Dynamic Model, paying particular attention to the applications made of the
theory to the case of Nigerian English as well as the capacity of the theory to
offer universal explications to postcolonial Englishes and contact linguistics.
In this study, a synthesis of the proposed five phases is provided and effort is
made to examine the properties of each of the two conditions uppermost in the
scale, namely, “sociolinguistic conditions” and “linguistic effects” focusing on
phases 4 and 5. The study demonstrates how they are instantiated in the
Nigerian experience, and re-evaluates the positioning of Nigerian English on
the developmental scale suggested by the Model. The research is substantiated
drawing from documented sources and earlier research findings; and the
outcome, among others, updates Schneider’s submissions on Nigerian English
and redefines Nigerian English within his framework.
22
Nigerian English: Historical Foundation
For the concern of this study, it appears pragmatic to provide notes on the
historical foundation of Nigerian English. Such notes are important for two
main reasons, among others; namely, to highlight the nature of the early
contact situation that constitutes this New English and account for its
heterogeneity. This makes it easier to perceive a relationship between this
variety of English and the requirement for diversification enshrined in phase v
of the Dynamic Model. It also corroborates the Model’s standpoint on speech
community – defined along ethnic lines – as against country or nation (cf.
Schneider, 2003, pp. 242-243). More specifically, the Model does not target an
entire country, as in the “Circles” model proposed in Kachru (1990), among
others: also Kachru’s model does not exhaust the list of countries critical to
the theory and does not discuss the defining linguistic features.it is also noted
that the model “does not overtly position social and ethnic varieties” (Mesthrie
& Bhatt, 2008, p. 30).
Following archaeological evidence (Ogundele, 1995), people were already
living in the South-western region of Nigeria by 9000 B.C. and in the Eastern
region at some earlier date. They lived as independent states or autonomous
kingdoms. The early kingdoms include the Igbo kingdom, with Nri as its
centre; the Efik kingdom, with Calabar as its centre; the Yoruba kingdom,
with its centre at Oyo; the Benin kingdom, the Hausa-Fulani states, Nupe, and
Kanem-Bornu states. Each of these autonomous political entities had its own
culture and language, which form the early platform upon which early
European interest groups mounted – first, the Portuguese and later, the English
– marking the beginnings and foundations of new culture and language
contacts in what was then the Niger Area. Between the sixteenth and the
nineteenth century, Britain had effectively occupied this area; and during the
Scramble for Africa, the Berlin Conference of about 1885 had awarded it to
Britain; so, it became known as a British Protectorate. Thus, the independent
nations and kingdoms of Nigeria fell under the government of Britain. In
1914, these autonomous ethnic nationalities in the north and the south of the
Niger Area were fused into one polity – and called Nigeria – by the British
colonial masters. It is, thus, the amalgamation of the northern and southern
Niger Area that marks the assumption of the Nigerian polity. It attained
independence in 1960, and became a republic in 1963.
The early linguistic contact crucial to the formation of Nigerian English is
dated at about the sixteenth century, as may be noted from the above
paragraph. By this date Nigerian English was being founded. It evolved
through the contacts of Englishmen with Nigerians living along the coastal
regions, in respect to commerce, between European traders and Nigerians (see
also Jowitt, 2008); and later, evangelisation and education, etc. Spencer’s
(1971, p. 9, cf. Banjo, 1995) report on this early contact with Nigerian coastal
dwellers indicates that “as early as 1554 Africans were taken back to England
to learn English, in order to assist future trading expeditions as interpreters”.
23
It is notable that this early contact situation involved varieties of English,
not monolithic English: native and non-native varieties, as well as standard
and non-standard varieties were involved. Specifically, speakers of different
accents, such as London, Cockney, Yorkshire, Birmingham, Irish, etc. were
involved. Also involved are non-native speakers of English, such as Germans,
Dutch, French, Danish, Greeks, etc., who were missionaries, technicians,
doctors, sailors, traders, etc. (cf. Gut, 2004, Jowitt, 1991). In addition,
speakers of standard forms that might be the precursor to RP were involved.
There is therefore no doubt that the contact ecology was a complex one right
from its inception. The contact equation gets rather fiendishly complicated
when one considers the variables of the indigenous languages and their
numerous regional dialects. In general, more than 400 indigenous languages
are involved and contributing severally and corporately to the contact ecology,
which itself spans a land mass of close to 0.95 million km2; and the southern
regions being very densely populated. In general, these Englishes, these
ancestral languages, these factors, the participating variables in the formation
of the new contact linguistic ecology – do, no doubt, conspire in the
emergence, development and growth of what is now Nigerian English, the
official language of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. This brief sociolinguistic
history reveals a significant level of diversity in the Nigerian English
experience. It must be taken as sociolinguistic realism that the period between
the sixteenth and twentieth centuries in this experience is significant to
achieve distinctive dialects formation. In other words, this period is obviously
significant to give rise to sociolinguistically meaningful dialect differences.
However, one totally agrees with Schneider (2007, p. 2) that
what is perhaps even more interesting is that our virtual traveller will
encounter native speakers of English not only in Canada and New Zealand,
where this would be expected, but also in Nigeria and Singapore and many
more parts of the world in which English is not an ancestral language
[added emphasis]
Notes on the Dynamic Model
This section provides a synopsis of Schneider’s (2007) Dynamic Model,
highlighting the nature and structure of the framework, in two parts: first, an
overview and secondly, the developmental phases.
An Overview
Schneider (2007) discusses the development of postcolonial varieties of
English from the perspective of contact linguistics, and proposes a Dynamic
Model as an investigative paradigm and for their explication (see also
Schneider 2003). The theory is built around language contact induced change,
within which the structural effects of language contact are largely dependent
24
upon social conditions, conventional history, and the fate of speaker
communities, as earlier noted. The rationale for the Model is the belief that it
captures the processes which underlie the development and growth of varieties
of English, thus:
the model which I am proposing here is more ambitious in claiming that
there is a shared underlying process which drives their formation, accounts
for many similarities between them, and appears to operate whenever a
language is transplanted ... as is the very nature of the model, it is not
intended to account for all observable details, nor does it apply equally to
all individual instances of the process it describes. (Schneider, 2007, p. 29)
Even though the model makes no claims to the details of the development of
individual instances, it does provide a basis for more insightful investigation
of individual cases, with little modifications. In general, Schneider tries to
demystify the complexity of the eco-linguistic disturbances and the
correspondingly evolving of new equilibra by identifying the essential
parameters implicit in the new linguistic ecology which act as stimuli driving
the operation, construction and reconstruction of change; and scientifically
articulates the dynamics of the changes in accessible phases plotted in points-
in-time. Thus, as noted, he identifies the systematic commonalities in the
rooting and development of postcolonial Englishes, viewing the interaction
and interrelationship of the eco-linguistic parameters in terms of Mufwene’s
(2001) notion of “feature pool”, a population of linguistic patterns (cf. Van
Rooy, 2010). The Model does not only show capacity for explicating
Postcolonial Englishes, it is also predictive of the ecology of contact
linguistics in general: it indicates capacity to predict possibilities not
instantiated. For example, its predictive potential includes that each time a
language is transplanted the same processes might be expected to occur. The
processes, on their part, are unidirectional and non-reversible. How the
predictions may achieve precision appears a daunting challenge, which itself is
intrinsic to the nature of the phenomenon it investigates, especially because
the participating variables are rather numerous and the details of how they
interact in the ecology defy quantitative enunciations1. That the model does
not pretend this fact is obvious:
All generalisations in the area of language contact...are essentially
probabilistic in nature ...they are not firm rules ... whether as linguistic
predictions and/or structural effects, but would refer to or account for the
majority of observable cases. (Schneider, 2007, p. 22)
As noted, the standpoint of the Model is the speech community, not the
nation (cf. Schneider 2003, pp. 242-243), as in earlier models, such as the
more traditional ENL-ESL or the Circles model proposed in Kachru 1990,
among others. The concept of speech community is defined along ethnic lines.
25
This is important to the Nigerian case, not only because of its ethnic diversity
but because the contact experience can be shown to have occurred
approximately along such lines.
The Model promulgates five phases in the development and evolution of
Postcolonial varieties of English. These developmental phases are:
Foundation, Exonormative stabilisation, Nativisation, Endonormative
stabilisation, and Differentiation. The phases are linear or quasi-linear, such
that these varieties of English progress(ed) from one stage to the next, in
order, and on to the last phase – that is, Differentiation. Each of these phases is
associated with four components; namely, socio-political background, identity
construction, sociolinguistic conditions, and linguistic effects. The
components also suggest hierarchical ordering and are contingent; but within
each component, there are parameters; which, taken together, are like ‘bundles
of features’, unordered, at least explicitly. The Model views the achievement
or otherwise of the five phases as yardsticks or some form of indices for
estimating the developmental history of postcolonial Englishes as well as
assigning certain level of accomplishments to them in respect to their growth.
It is on account of this perspective that the framework emphasises that
Nigerian English is strongly nativised:
Both English and Pidgin have acquired first-language native speakers.
English is a family language, and thus becomes the mother tongue of
children born to these families... (Schneider 2007, p. 207) [added
emphasis]
In the section that follows, the highlights of the respective phases (and their
components) formulated in the model are outlined.
The Developmental Phases
The five developmental phases in the growth of Postcolonial Englishes,
according to the Model understudy, are presented in this section, outlining the
main characteristics of each, beginning with the earliest phase, Foundation.
Phase i: foundation
The Socio-political background of this phase include that a significant group
of settlers bring English to a new territory, which begins to be used in this
non-English speaking territory/country. This owes to the founding of military
forts and/or trading outposts or immigrant settlements, motivated by political
and economic forces at home. The initial migrant population may be small but
grow, especially as colonisation commences; and relationships between
immigrant and indigenous groups may fall somewhere between friendly to
hostile. Identity consciousness sets in, and both groups distinguish “us” and
“others”: while the immigrants see themselves as members of a British society
26
who are representing their homeland in a new territory, and may soon return or
would stay and replicate their homeland culturally; the indigenous group, on
their part, regard themselves as the only rightful occupants and owners of the
territory.
Then “a complex contact situation emerges” (Schneider, 2007, p. 34) as
settlers settle in a new territory where indigenous languages are spoken: the
first type is dialect contact involving the immigrant population who have come
from British dialect backgrounds. The second type arises from the interaction
of settlers within the indigenous community; slaves and labourers in plantation
colonies are as affected as the indigenous group. Communication between the
groups may remain exclusively utilitarian and restricted, while intra-group
communication thrives, due to the inability to understand each other; and
cross-cultural communication is only required in few contexts, such as trading,
or some topics, but only a few individuals are involved. Most members of the
settler group may not bother to learn the language of the territory.
Missionaries are exceptions to this. Instead, the task of learning the invaders
language is laid on the invaded indigenous group. Settlers may compel
indigenous groups to learn the settlers’ language; and may train them as
interpreters to use them for administration; and this may mark the emergence
of marginal bilingualism among the indigenous population; especially as some
items of the settler language begins to diffuse through daily contact and
natural L2 acquisition.
For the Linguistic effects, “...three processes are worth observing at
this stage are Koineization, incipient pidginization and toponymic
borrowing” (Schneider, 2007, p. 35). In the course of time speakers
will mutually adjust their pronunciation and lexical usage to facilitate
understanding – a process generally known as “koineization”, the
emergence of a relatively homogenous ‘middle-of-the road’ variety”
(Schneider, 2007, p. 35). Settlers’ language development at this initial
stage may tend towards linguistic homogeneity. An interdialect may
characterise this stage – and this shows in phonetic simplification, and
grammatical focusing – a stage involving largely informal oral
contexts. The process of koineization may be checked by the
involvement of higher status settlers whose adjustment towards
vernacular speakers may be minimal. A lingua franca is expected to
emerge with the newly emerging contact between people who do not
share a language. “Thus, in trade colonies, in particular, incipient
pidginization is an option” (Schneider, 2007, p. 36). In general,
indigenous languages may not influence the language of the settlers at
the early stage of contact; however, the names they gave to places are
borrowed, and such tend to stick even if the indigenous culture is
annihilated.
27
Phase ii: Exonormative Stabilization
At the Socio-political background or this phase, settlers/or colonies stabilise
politically, and their dominance begins to be asserted. English is formally
established as the medium of education, administration, law, etc. and is
regularly spoken in the new territory. In the course of time, geographical
expansion follows to accommodate the expanding economic prosperity of the
settlers and a growing number of natives seek to enhance their socio economic
fortunes. Also the settlers retain a consciousness of belonging elsewhere (i.e.
Britain) and not the new territory, with added consciousness of the difference
which their experience of being abroad brings between then and their
contemporaries in the homeland. “... it can be assumed that at this stage the
identity of the local British community expands to encompass something like
‘British plus’” (Schneider, 2007, p. 37) While they may retain Britain as
“home”, for example, an imagined “myth of return” has set in. Children of
mixed ethnic parentage are born, who naturally “develop a hybrid cultural
identity” (Schneider, 2007, p. 37) but children with only British parentage
align themselves with the culture of their place of birth. Within the native
group, things are no longer the same: their English-speaking/knowing locals
are enriched with new worldview which their new contact provides, and gives
them an edge over other locals, who may not be so “privileged”. Some feeling
of higher social status steps in, which may mark the beginning of
“segregational elitism” (Schneider, 2007, p. 37) between the English
speaking/knowing natives and other natives. Bilingualism begins to spread
among the natives, through increased contact with the settlers and through
education (especially in trade and exploitation colonies). The standard
linguistic norms of Britain are maintained in education; and the learners group
develop interchange characterised and enriched by indigenous vocabulary and
interchange patterns.
Core Linguistic effects indicate that cross-cultural language contacts begin
to add to vocabulary borrowing, syntax and morphological structures; and the
settler group gradually modify their spoken English to accord with local
realities. If the borrowing of names is taken to mean borrowing denotative
entities, this time linguistically meaningful words are borrowed, which marks
the “onset of linguistic transfer” (Schneider, 2007, p. 39). This begins with
adopting names for objects which the settlers encounter for the first time in the
new territory; a linguistic expression for their being “British plus”. It is such
borrowings that are characterised with ‘isms’, such as Americanism,
Nigerianism, and so on. Among natives who know English, structural
nativisation emerges slowly as they shift to a new language; and British
settlers may classify the speech of locals as “more or less ‘good’ or ‘broken’
depending upon its communicative effectiveness” (Schneider, 2007, p. 40).
28
Phase iii: Nativisation
Schneider (2007, p. 40) surmises that this phase marks “... the central phase of
both cultural and linguistic transformation.”
For settlers, this marks a phase of striving towards increasing cultural and
linguistic independence from Britain; that is, “when the ‘mother country’ is
gradually not felt that much of a ‘mother’ any longer, that the offspring will
start going their own ways, politically and linguistically ...” (Schneider, 2007,
pp. 40-41). Characteristically, political debates emerge as the wind of
independence – political and linguistic – gathers momentum. Parties that
welcome the change are pitched against the conservatives who would
campaign for a return to status quo ante.
In the former British Empire, this stage has found a conventional political
expression, useful to both sides and conforming to the perception of their
mutual relationship, in the form of the ‘Common Wealth of Nations’,
especially in its early phase Schneider. (2007, p. 41)
“The movement toward psychological, political, and economic independence
and its consequences significantly affects the identity constructions of parties
involved, resulting in a kind of ‘semi-autonomy’” (Schneider, 2007, p.41), and
the gap between settlers and natives reduces; while “differences in cultural
background, ethnicity, language, prosperity, and lifestyle ... are gradually
reduced in importance” (Schneider, 2007, p. 41). Thus, contacts between both
groups are common and regular, involving “significant portions of both groups
in various situations, roles, and contexts” (Schneider, 2007, p. 42); and certain
degree of accommodation is employed for effective or successful
communication. The labour of accommodation may be heavy on the
indigenous group – this occurs as acculturation for learner groups, essentially
those indigenous groups; and the degree of acculturation varies from person to
person, group to group and territory to territory. The pressure on natives to
accommodate increases, leading to widespread second language acquisition of
English; and, subsequently, to language shift. One consequence of this is the
attrition or even death of local languages. Among the settler group, those who
may be less conservative accommodate towards the English variety of the
native group – an innovative variety, which borrows indigenous language
vocabulary and other features. The conservative settler group may insist on
metropolitan norms, rejecting the innovations, but the metropolitan norm at
this stage is already clearly “an external one” (Schneider, 2007, p. 43).
Complaints about deviations from the ‘norms’ take the centre stage and
conflict of opinions arise over them - what was called “‘complaints tradition’
by Milroy (1985) – “the stereotypical statement by conservative language
observers that linguistic usage keeps deteriorating, that in the new country
‘corrupt’ usage can be heard which should be avoided ... in any case, in the
29
course of time, the readiness to accept localised forms gradually also in formal
contexts increases inexorably” (p. 43).
...This stage results in the heaviest effects on the restructuring of the
English language itself” as “the acts of identity’... are not only a matter of
perception, but they have formal realization in lexicalization, in syntax,
and in discourse, styles and genres ... it is at the heart of the birth of a new,
formally distinct PCE [Postcolonial English]. (Schneider, 2007, p. 44)
Changes are most conspicuous at the level of vocabulary “predominantly,
loans from indigenous languages” (Schneider, 2007, p. 44). “The speech of
indigenous groups show marked local accent, often identified as transfer
phenomena from the phonology of indigenous languages ... with proximity to
native speaker’s pronunciation forms increasing in correlation with status,
education, and frequency of interaction with them... In the course of
time...some local pronunciation forms are adopted more wisely and begin to
develop into a local form (not necessarily accepted as formal norm) of
pronunciation” (Schneider, 2007, p. 44). Changes in morphology and syntax
show constructions peculiar to a given territory (e.g., “instead of him to travel
home” used in Nigeria; “two’s bread” used in Fiji). “It is noteworthy that in
this process speakers are not merely passive recipients of linguistic forms
drawn from input varieties, exposed to processes of contact-induced change
such as interference; in contrast, they function as “language builders” actively
involved in the creation of something new. At this stage the gap between 1st
language and 2nd language forms diminish gradually. The early stage of
indigenisation may target modification of lexico-grammatical constraints;
lexical chunks or bundles are built with characteristic collocations which
include the emergence of phrasal nouns and phrasal verbs in the speech of
indigenous groups, especially. The innovation may include changes in the
pragmatics of language use, modifying cultural conventions of
communication, usually by borrowing from indigenous languages in such
contact situation. They may include “distinctive conventions for greetings, the
expression of politeness and status differences...” (Schneider, 2007, p. 47)
Mixing of codes occur not only as a marker of bilingualism as in
codeswitching, but as an identity carrier. “Mixed codes apparently originate
when native language of IDG strand [the indigenous group] is strongly rooted
in the community (and possibly receives official support) and English also
enjoys high prestige (but access to it is limited)” (Schneider, 2007, p. 48).
Phase iv: Endonormative Stabilisation
Typically this phase is marked with cultural self-reliance and associated new
identity construction sequel to political separation and political independence.
It presupposes political independence for a local linguistics norm to be
accepted also in formal contexts, as it is necessary that a community is entitled
30
to decide language matters as affairs of its own. At this stage also the settler
group perceives themselves as members of a newly born nation, which
includes the identity shared by the indigenous group. This new identity thus
emphasises the new territory and not historical background or settler history.
Ethnic boundaries in the new identity/territory are also de-emphasised. “In a
collective psychological sense, this is the birth of a new nation – [where nation
is a mental construct] – emphasising shared traits and ignoring internal
differences” (Schneider, 2007, p. 49). In multicultural young nations, this
marks a phase of “nation building”, often as an explicit political goal, which
the society shares in general but it might be optional for individuals. The
newly achieved psychological independence and acceptance of indigenous
identity correlates “locally rooted linguistic self-confidence” (Schneider, 2007,
p. 49) and gradual adoption and acceptance of local forms of English, as a
means of expression of that identity; and local norms, once stigmatised by
British norms, begin to gain acceptance even in formal usage, especially, with
vocabulary items, and hesitantly with syntactic elements. However, traces of
previous norms may remain, especially among more conservative groups; but
such reservations, including the “complaint tradition” take a minority position.
In terms of terminology, “English in x” is substituted with “x English”, x a
linguistic community. Following a high degree of cultural and linguistic
independence, there’s the emergence of “‘literary creativity’ in English, rooted
in the new culture and adopting elements of the new language variety”
(Schneider, 2007, p. 50). This is expressed in the emergence of new literatures
in English as a major development, for more than five decades. Many of such
writers have been extremely successful; and include Chinua Achebe, Wole
Soyinka, and a host of others, who have distinguished themselves in Nigerian
English literature and won various international prizes for their works. Also,
“It is characteristic of this phase that the new indigenous language variety is
perceived as remarkably homogenous, and that this homogeneity is in fact
emphasised” (Schneider, 2007, p. 57). The acceptance of new linguistic norms
implies codification “...it is a characteristic trait of this phase that dictionaries
of the respective PCEs are produced... once such a dictionary is out, it
strengthens the distinct national and linguistic identity, and also the forms used
to signal it” (Schneider, 2007, p. 52).
Phase v: Differentiation
At the background of this phase society evolves its own social categories in
respect to status, social groupings, etc. and these assume prominence. Such
internal stratification is perceived as a consequence of external stability, “the
absence of an external challenge” (Schneider, 2007, p. 53). There is a feeling
of secure self-existence of a young nation, which relies on its own strength –
having no need to be compared with any other(s). Also within this phase “The
citizens of a young nation no longer define themselves primarily as a single
social entity in relation to the former colonial power but rather as a composite
31
of subgroups, each being marked by an identity of its own” (Schneider, 2007,
p. 53). There is emphasis on internal heterogeneity. Internal diversity marked
by language use flourishes but masked by collective identities. Thus, in a
sociological light the internal heterogeneity is emphasised – as one which is
masked by umbrella-like “collective identities” (Schneider, 2007, p. 53).
There are social networks with which individuals strongly indentify; and such
predominantly determine their contacts and interaction, such that individuals’
communicative interchange is highest within their social networks. Thus, the
main sociolinguistic conditions may be indicated by the fact that “... an
individual’s contacts are strongly determined by the individual’s social
networks, within which the density of communicative interactions is highest”
(Schneider, 2007, p. 53). As a major Linguistic effect “New varieties of the
formerly new variety emerge, as carriers of new group identities within the
overall community: regional and social dialects, linguistic markers (accents),
lexical expressions, and structural patterns which carry a diagnostic function
only within the new country emerge” (Schneider, 2007, p. 54). “Irrespective of
whatever variation may have existed ...Phase v marks the onset of a vigorous
phase of new or increased internal sociolinguistic diversification” – a
development which could not be dated in practically all cases but “may have
been around earlier than we suspect...” (Schneider, 2007, p. 54).
It is earlier noted that the present study considers the Model a valuable tool
for understanding the foundation and development of postcolonial Englishes.
It also assumes that the account of the Nigerian case presented is insightful;
and tries to evaluate the theoretical modelling of Nigerian English in this
framework. Comments are therefore provided only on issues which do deserve
comments. For this purpose, effort is directed at the sociolinguistic conditions
and linguistic effects postulated for the two last respective phases, so as to re-
evaluate how they are instantiated in the Nigerian experience and update the
Model’s characterisation of Nigerian English. Thus, the two components –
sociolinguistic conditions, and linguistic effects, within the last two phases (as
shown in Figure 1) – constitute the main areas of focus in this study. The
arrows indicate the directions of advancement, as conceived by the Model, but
the componential elements apply contingently.
Endonormative stabilisation Differentiation
Figure 1
Directions of advancement according to Schneider’s (2007) model
Linguistic effects
Sociolinguistic
conditions
Identity construction
Socio-political
background
Linguistic effects
Sociolinguistic conditions
Identity construction
Socio-political background
32
The rationale for this focus is simply that they are the phases within which
there are issues which are not clearly decided with respect to Nigerian English.
The goal of this study includes examining them with a view to resolving them.
Within these, the distinguishing characteristics of the proposed stages crucial
to a better definition of Nigerian English may be most clearly evinced. From
this investigation, evidence for the Endonormative stabilisation of Nigerian
English and a systematic history of its development emerge, as well as
evidence for Differentiation. Such evidence indicates the nature of updates
required and provides materials essential to the purpose. It also invariably
questions the notion of linearity enshrined in the Model. These are discussed,
among other issues, in the sections that follow.
Discussion
The model and the Nigerian experience
Among others, the Model indicates phase by phase certain properties of
Nigerian English, based on its contact experience. It argues convincingly
about the developments that constitute the foundation of Nigerian English, its
exonormative stabilisation and nativisation. The arguments are expressed in
very clear terms and are strong, especially for the latter, and would deserve no
further comments here. In general, Nigerian English is shown to have clearly
achieved the first three phases noted above. The following remarks by
Schneider (2007) may therefore be noteworthy:
All the ...evidence indicates that English in Nigeria has progressed deeply
into phase 3, has nativized strongly, and is still gaining ground at rapid
pace. The obvious follow up question is therefore whether there are signs
that the country is moving onto phase 4. I believe that a number of such
indicators can be identified, though somewhat shakily; i.e. endonormative
stability has not yet been reached but it may be just around the corner. (p.
210) [but adds], one component of phase 4 is already reality in Nigeria:
Nigerian Pidgin and English have gained respectively by having been
employed in literary creativity, reflecting the African experience. (p. 212)
It thus follows from the above that, in addition to reaching phase 3, Nigerian
English shows indications of reaching phase 4 as well, only that the relevant
indicators are yet to be considered strong. The next section addresses this and
similar issues and extends the research to provide an update.
The nature of the Model suggests certain essential properties. These
include that the Model is linear or quasi-linear; its parameters are indexical
and they parallel features perceived to be implicitly binary; they are
unidirectional and developmental or incremental and may not be otherwise, as
conceived.
33
We do assume for this section that the Model’s account of the
development of Postcolonial Englishes, including Nigerian English, is quite
revealing. Comments are therefore provided only where necessary:
specifically, our remarks address questions regarding psychological
independence, which is coextensive with the achievement of local linguistic
identity; issues on codification; literary creativity; homogenisation, and
diversification - issues raised by the Model about Nigerian English, which
appear yet undecided in the framework or require updating. For this purpose,
our study examines the sociolinguistic conditions and linguistic effects
postulated for the respective phases, within which these parameters occur.
There is evidence for Endonormative stabilisation of Nigerian English, arising
from the survey, a systematic history of its development, as well as evidence
for differentiation. These, in general, appear to raise questions on the validity
of the notion of linearity enshrined in the Model. To proceed, we examine
each of the points which aim to characterise the two subcategories or
components listed under Endonormative stabilisation and Differentiation
respectively.
Endonormative stabilisation
Under this phase, we are concerned with the following aforementioned which
we reproduce here for emphasis (sociolinguistic conditions and linguistic
effects):
Sociolinguistic conditions. One main stipulation in this component of the
development is ideological. It is associated with the achievement of
psychological independence which expresses itself as acceptance of “locally
rooted linguistic self-confidence”; that is, indigenous identity; and correlates
gradual adoption and acceptance of local forms of English, as a means of
expression of that identity. There are indications that this stipulation should be
taken as accomplished in the development of Nigerian English. Evidence for
this might be enormous; but the following may suffice to substantiate the
point: the first president of the federal republic of Nigeria, Dr. Nnamdi
Azikiwe, expressed the Nigerian ownership of Nigerian English in terms of
“our own” – the inclusive “our” that stresses communal commonalities and
discriminates ‘others’’ with a near brutal blade. Kachru (1995, pp. vi –vii)
captures and underscores this as a mark of the Nigerian socio-cultural
ideology, as follows:
The story of English in Nigeria is not new in a chronological sense. There
is a long history of trade between Europe and Nigeria, essentially for
precious metal and ivory, and for slaves. It is claimed that there were
varieties of English used in Nigeria in the 16th century ... the newness may
be characterised in terms of recognition of the African canon in linguistic
and literary creativity by the ‘Inner Circle’. This has been slow in coming,
but it has finally come ... And more important [sic], there is newness in
34
terms of confidence in creativity and innovations. It is in this sense that
English writing in Nigeria has become ‘our national literature’ as claimed
by Nnamdi Azikiwe, the first president of Nigeria ... [added emphasis]
Furthermore, Professor Wole Soyinka underscores the cultural
achievement in respect to Nigerian English as a canon of African Englishes,
and points to the cultural aptitude underlying the development of Nigerian
English as some form of cultural reprocessing, thus:
black people twisted the linguistic blade in the hands of the traditional
cultural castrator and carved new concepts into the flesh of white
supremacy; the result is...the conversion of the enslaving medium into an
insurgent weapon. (Kachru, 1995, p. viii)
Similarly, the ideology of “one Nigeria” is vigorously pursued since the
70s; and the ideology of ‘unity in diversity’ predates it, being enshrined in the
old National Anthem, since the 60s. A relevant part of its first verse reads,
“...though tribe and tongue may differ in brotherhood we stand...”. Thus, “one
Nigeria” and “unity in diversity” corporately make an essential psychological
demand on the soul of the nation and its individual citizens to preserve the
shared brotherhood – understood to host the shared single bio-cultural route
expressed as a ‘family’ in the Nigerian cultures and worldview (cf. Wolff,
2007, Ugorji, 2009). Therefore, if national unity or stability fundamentally
refers to national ideology, there seems to be no ground to deny this as realism
for Nigeria. However, national conscience and consciousness must be
divorced from prejudice at the level of individuals here and there, which
nonetheless is attested in human societies in general. There is no doubt that, in
Nigeria, ethnic loyalties are strong but national loyalty is understood to derive
therefrom as an aggregation of such sub-loyalties; and much of the remaining
political tensions in contemporary Nigeria are about questions of justice and
governance, the global Islamic radicalisation apart.
We may turn next to the stipulation for the emergence of “literary
creativity” built on “a high degree of cultural and linguistic independence”.
Here, among numerous others, the works of Professor Chinua Achebe are
celebrated as being monumental. His foremost novel, Things Fall Apart, for
which he won prizes, was published in 1958. Also, Professor Wole Soyinka is
a Nobel Prize laureate. His works are celebrated; and they are Nigerian
English literature. He received his honour in 1986. These dates are
remarkable: whereas the stipulation requires five decades, these dates make it
obvious that Nigerian English exceeds this standard.
The complex cline of varieties and linguistic diversities which characterise
Nigerian English are no doubt evidence for internal heterogeneity; but there’s
a flourishing collective identity, which hosts a cognitive construct of
Nigerianness of the English, commonly expressed as ‘our own’; not to ignore
the individual conservative nostalgia for the status quo ante remaining here
35
and there; but this minority conservatism diminishes by day. Research
indicates the existence of several varieties of Nigerian English (see further
details elsewhere: Jowitt, 1991, Banjo, 1995, Ugorji, 2010). For social
Nigerian English varieties, for example, four or more typologies are identified.
(Regional varieties are a lot more). Four varieties are suggested in Brosnahan
1958 (see Angogo & Hancock, 1980); Banjo, 1995; Jibril, 1986, Jowitt, 1991),
to mention but a few. Banjo’s classification which is most popular among
scholars may specially be noted (cf. Ugorji, 2010):
1. mother-tongue based (associated with heavy mother tongue transfers
characteristic of the semi- educated, generally below post primary
education)
2. influenced by mother-tongue (shows mother tongue transfers and lack of
vital phonological distinctions, associated with speakers who may have at
least primary education)
3. close to RP (characteristic of some speakers with university education)
4. indistinguishable from RP (associated with speakers who may be more
highly educated and some who have some training in the Humanities and
phonetics)
Nigerian English is shown as a natural cline, ranging from the English
of the semi-literate (variety 1) to the variety 4 which is equivalent to RP
according to the analysis. As shown, variety 4 hardly differs from standard
British English. Variety 3 may refer to near-native or near-RP forms and 2 and
1 show various degrees of mother- tongue influence. Banjo (1995) and Eka
(1985), among others, further inform that varieties 2 to 4 are internationally
intelligible, but that intelligibility increases towards variety 4. Variety 1,
however, may not be intelligible abroad, and decreases in intelligibility the
farther one moves from its regional base. The standard variety by scholarly
consensus is estimated in Jibril’s account as “a union of Sophisticated Hausa
and Sophisticated Southern varieties” noting that there is pressure towards a
southern- influenced model, estimated closer to Banjo’s varieties 3 and 4. In
other words, while homogenisation very clearly exists, there are mother-
tongue influenced usage and L2 usage co-existing with it. The latter two host
ethnic and regional marks. Schneider (2003, p. 254) argues that this is also
characteristic of Englishes elsewhere: in New Zealand, Canada, Australia,
South Africa and Singapore.
In terms of terminology, “English in x” is substituted with “x English”.
Obviously, this stipulation is to be taken as part of the ideological
achievements with respect to the growth and subsequent recognition of the
independence of Postcolonial Englishes, in general. Kachru’s (1995, p. vi)
estimate suggests more than six decades for Nigerian English:
During the past 50 years – and much more before that – the achievements
of Nigerian English education have been impressive and multifaceted. The
36
West Africans have over time given English a Nigerian identity. ... The
authenticity and ultimate recognition of this canon were never in doubt,
particularly after the 1950s.
However, the terminology, “x English” as against “English in x” more clearly
belongs to the English linguistics of the 90s, and follows from the gains of the
ideological debates apparently championed by Braj Kachru and his associates
(cf. Kachru, 1985, 1990, etc). The award of the Nobel Prize in literature to
Wole Soyinka must be taken to imply world recognition for the authenticity of
Nigerian English. He became the first to win this prize from the Outer Circle
Englishes. “x English” formula has for decades been attributed to Nigerian
English apparently as part of the recognition. It also has accordingly been
reflected in (the titles of ) a host of research works, especially beginning from
the 1980s: Atoye, 1991; Awonusi, 1986; Bamiro, 1991; Banjo, 1995; Blench
2008; Eka, 1985; Gut, 2004; Jibril, 1986; Jowitt, 1991; Simo Bobda, 1995;
Udofot, 1997; Ugorji, 2010; Ugorji & Osiruemu, 2007. .
Linguistic effects
Here, the Model’s main stipulation is stated as “It is characteristic of this
phase that the new indigenous language variety is perceived as remarkably
homogenous, and that this homogeneity is in fact emphasised” (Schneider,
2007 p. 57).
This stipulation appears to follow from the recognition of the Nigerian variety
as an independent canon of world Englishes; and the appreciable research
efforts represented by journal articles and books which bear Nigerian English
as (part of) their titles indirectly evince homogeneity – a phenomenon
expressed in Nigerian English linguistics research as “convergence” or more
specifically ‘convergence of educated usage’ (cf. Bamgbose, 1995, Banjo,
1995). Educational goals target the convergence patterns as norms, in lieu of
explicit policy, conservatism preferences apart. One must also appreciate the
fact that the body of research that address this concern is rapidly growing.
Thus, it is not only the ideological convictions that attest to the existence of
Nigerian English; there are consistent patterns of structural and non-structural
properties of the language which are taken to be typical. Jowitt (1991), for
instance provides a glossary of Nigerian English lexical items; Igboanusi
(2002) shows a larger body of lexical elements in a mini dictionary.
Morphosyntactic materials appear in Bamgbose (1995), Jowitt (1991),
Igboanusi (2006); phonological materials appear in Gut (2004), Simo Bobda
(1995), Udofot (1997), Criper-Friedman (1990), Atoye (1991), and Ugorji
(2010). Studies that address non-structural patterns include Jowitt (1991),
Ugorji and Osiruemu (2007), Wolff (2007), Awonusi (1986), and Schneider
(2007). As earlier noted, homogenisation exists alongside lectal differentiation
in the Nigerian experience.
37
The requirement for codification appears fundamental and Schneider
(2007, p. 212) complains that not appearing to have achieved this leaves a gap
in the development of Nigerian English, “what is missing, however, is the
stabilization of a more homogenous concept of a standard Nigerian English,
i.e. an explicit codification.”
The requirement for codification is hinged on the development of
dictionaries. It is taken as a fundamental feature of this stage; and such
dictionaries play the all important role of strengthening a distinct national and
linguistic identity. He, however, notes Jowitt (1991), in particular, as one such
evidence of codification; but that more is required, central to which are
dictionaries. This requirement may, in the view of this study, be taken as
accomplished, if one considers not only Jowitt (1991) in general terms but also
in its inclusion of a glossary of lexical elements; and Igboanusi’s (2002)
dictionary of Nigerian English, in addition. But, more importantly, this
Nigerian English dictionary has been around for about eight years, even
though it might be regarded as a mini-dictionary. Others are under
construction, and include Blench (2008). Ugorji (2010, 2013) also belong to
the category of works critical to codification; especially as it characterises,
among others, phonological properties of the clines and a model for
pedagogical engagements. It is still possible to regard these achievements as
an early stage of or rudimentary to “explicit codification” relatively, and
glossed over, if the Dynamic Model conceptualises the stipulation in terms of
degrees, which may not be the case. Rather, the stipulated properties might be
binary valued, involving either presence or absence of a given feature or
property. This conviction is implied in the Model: in qualifying Canadian
English for “Differentiation”, for instance, what might be taken as incipient
lectal diversification is concluded as diversification indeed: it points out on
page 250 that, for Canadian English, “new regional dialect distinctions are
emerging” and cites Chambers’(1991, p. 99) hypothesis which states that “‘In
the course of time, one might expect that regionalisms will accumulate,
ultimately diversifying Canadian urban accents;’” it adds that “some of these
emerging regional markers are worked out by Boberg (2004, p. 360) and
Labov, Ash and Boberg (2006, pp. 220-224). The point then is that, since the
above account of emerging lectal diversification qualifies as diversification,
then, the conception might be regarded as simply binary valued – that is, a
given feature is either present or not present. This, therefore, leads one to
safely conclude that (since a marginal presence of lectal differentiation
qualifies Canadian English to participate in phase 5 category), Nigerian
English which does attest to codification, including dictionary development,
should be taken as codified2 and participate in Endonormative stabilisation
without further reservations. Considering these properties, it must be taken
that the crucial indices for Endonormative stabilisation – phase 4 – stipulated
in the Model are satisfied in Nigerian English. We may now examine
Differentiation also, the final stage proposed by the Model.
38
Differentiation
As in the preceding section, our main concern under this phase is with the
sociolinguistic conditions and linguistic effects:
Sociolinguistic conditions
“...At this stage an individual’s contacts are strongly determined by the
individual’s social networks, within which the density of communicative
interactions is highest...” (Schneider, 2007, p. 53). The possible indicators of
this condition are the closer social ties and interaction of the educated and elite
class across the country; they occupy higher positions in jobs and professions
and are associated with higher social status. At the sociolinguistic level, they
identify fundamentally with acrolectal patterns.
Linguistic effects
The core of the linguistic effects stipulated for this phase is that it “marks the
onset of a vigorous phase of new or increased internal sociolinguistic
diversification”, expressed in two dimensions – regional and social lects – and
observable in accents, lexical expression, and “structural patterns which carry
a diagnostic function only within the new country” (Schneider, 2007, p. 53). In
other words, the emergence and growth of lectal variants, at this stage, might
simply refer to a more conscious interpretation of the observed lects (social
and regional) and the assignment of sociolinguistic meanings to them – such
that they are cognised as items of acceptable norms and of appropriateness,
but bear meanings which call up social information, including speaker identity
– social and ethnic and regional backgrounds; and appropriateness is judged
with respect to cultural and sociological contexts. However, Schneider (2007,
p. 54) remarks that “....in practically all cases we simply do not have evidence
to tell when regional diversification may have started...” In view of this
remark, there is indication that the Nigerian case may not have been taken into
consideration, probably due to poor access to data. On the contrary, the
commencement of lectal differentiation in the Nigerian experience can be
specified. It is in fact demonstrable in the view of the present research. In
general, it may be shown to have commenced with earliest contact inceptions.
In particular, the Nigerian situation commenced on multiple culture contacts
(evidence for this is already discussed in earlier sections), involving variant
historical points in time as well; such that it appears rather more appropriate to
talk about diversity and not necessarily “diversification” from Nigerian
English foundations. The nature of the diverse cultures in the contact
formation may be recalled for the present purpose: The Nigerian contact
situation is such that while the northern contacts commenced with formal
education and standard or RP-like norms, the west started with trade contacts,
as well as the east. But while the eastern contacts involved speakers of Scots
and Irish Englishes, logically without a reference pattern and a reference
population to drive accommodation and acculturation (cf. Van Rooy, 2010),
39
the west had more of southern British speakers and professionals.
Furthermore, while the local group in the west contributed from Yoruba ethnic
background, the settler group provided more formal English predominantly.
The eastern local groups contributed from the ethnolinguistic strand
dominated by Igbo, and the settler group provided the ethnolinguistic stock of
Scottish English and Irish English. The local strand in the northern region
contributed ethnolinguistic entities dominated by Hausa and the settler group
contributed formal and standard British English. These multi-varied
foundations might therefore correlate the formation and emergence of regional
varieties of English in Nigeria3. Furthermore, contacts in the south (including
the west and the east) are dated from the sixteen century, and the north is dated
around early twentieth century. Gorlach (1998, pp. 126-127), for example,
specifies that by the 1840s English schools were already established in the
south but the first European school in the north came by 1909 in Kano; and
that English was adopted as a lingua franca in the south at a very early stage.
Within the periods under review, distinct varieties were born within the
distinct independent nation groups, prior to their amalgamation in 1914.
Considering also the vast land over which the Nigerian English is spoken, it
appears realistic to add that not only time but distance contributes to the
diversification as well – combining two factors – the near sporadic non-
contiguous founding and the geographical spread. Thus, if input materials
contribute to the formation and development of linguistic varieties, the
linguistic ecology described above must be taken to mark the formation of
lectal differentiation of patterns. The origin of regional lectal differentiation
therefore appears in general specifiable in Nigerian English; but the origin of
social lectal differentiation appears largely obscure even though the inceptions
of the contacts do imply social differentiation as well, especially when higher
education commenced with associated elitism or a more subtle social
stratification.
In view of these facts, the main characteristics of phase 5, diversification,
has been around much earlier than homogeneity which characterises phase 4,
and occurs at acrolectal levels, where it is often difficult to tell the regional
background of its speakers from their speech. If the stipulations of Schneider’s
Model should be taken strictly, then, both phases 4 and 5 may be assumed to
merge in Nigerian English; otherwise, it raises a question on the validity of the
claims on linearity. While we observe homogeneity of acrolectal norms,
differentiation remains, especially at regional levels in mesolectal norms and
lower levels. Differentiation, as noted, is taken as part of the early features of
Nigerian English; but homogeneity might be part of its 80s and 90s
developmental history. In addition to wider educational engagements, the
latter appears largely facilitated by the much larger number of university
graduates who take up teaching jobs in the north and across regions as well as
public service jobs and businesses. This is further facilitated by the National
Youth Service Corps scheme (among others) which, following the Civil War,
targeted national integration. The main linguistic evidence for this is
40
putatively the homogenisation of the English, achieved through a strong
pressure to accommodate towards a southern (acrolectal) model. Using
pronunciation as a guide, Jowitt’s (1991, p. 71) survey sums the situation thus:
There are three types of pronunciation used by Nigerians. One of them is
RP; the others are two different types of PNE [Popular Nigerian English] ...
Pronunciation everywhere in the country is influenced by the RP model,
which – as in Britain – has no geographical base. The development of
general proficiency in English tends to approximate to the RP standard...
Remarks on the tenets of the model
This section discusses some of the properties of the Dynamic Model which
border on its robustness as a theory of language change and its objective
operability. There are also ontological issues and meta-linguistic
considerations.
So far, we have assumed that the parameters proposed in the Model for
assessing the progress of postcolonial Englishes might be binary, permitting
presence or absence of a parameter. This is however not explicit in the model.
Instead, one gleans the binary possibility from comparing the applications of
such parameters from one case study to another. A case in point (already noted
above), for example, is with respect to diversification in Canadian English –
where certain emerging diversification still marks presence of diversification.
However true this is to the conceptualisation, it is not entirely consistent in
application; since we find that the parameter of codification might selectively
require scalar values, not binary values, when applied to Nigerian English, for
example. Similarly, the use of expressions such as “nativized strongly” and “a
high degree of cultural and linguistic independence”, among others, suggest
scalar values. The following questions therefore remain to be resolved: are the
defining features or components merely relative and therefore provide for
imprecision or subjectivity? Are they graduated, in degrees, and what degrees
qualify the presence of a particular parameter for inclusion or exclusion?
Could the features be quantifiable, in which case a certain percentage is to be
considered reasonable; and what percentage could that be? Or are the features
binary, suggesting only presence or absence of a feature, and therefore
comparable to “distinctive features” in Generative linguistics?
Also, the Model conceptualises that the essential properties of growth or
progression of postcolonial Englishes are linear or quasi-linear; that is, they
are directional, but only unidirectional – progressing from phase i to phase v.
They are also developmental or incremental and may not be otherwise, as
conceived. However, from the evidence so far considered with respect to
Nigerian English, it seems clear that phases iv and v might be
indistinguishable or may have merged. The ontological basis of the phases
therefore becomes questionable, especially when the parameters of
homogenisation and diversification cannot readily apply in any perceivable
41
linearity; instead, the order appears clearly reversed, but might be
simultaneous when the development of acrolectal norms and societal elitism
are considered. It is apparently in view of observations such as this that
Mesthrie and Bhatt (2008, p. 35) opine that Schneider’s Model remains to be
tested. Specifically, they remark that
it seems possible ... that a territory could move from phase 3 to 5,
bypassing phase 4; [specifying that] this could be a territory in which
English became nativized and substantially differentiated into sub-dialects,
without there being a commonly accepted endonormative standard; [and
that] varieties of English in West Africa appear to follow this route.
The issue may be addressed possibly by relaxing the linearity condition,
essentially by permitting parametric preferences; such that certain varieties of
English (or indeed of any language) may prefer certain routes in their
developmental processes. The other is for the Model to conflate the parameters
enunciated in phase 5 with 4, thereby eliminating 5, especially as it appears
rather redundant as shown in the Nigerian experience; and since the
parameters proposed in the Model are not hierarchical, no ordering may be
required in their operationalisation. Figure 2 shows a revised sketch of phase
4, as the new final phase, may be shown thus (all components being constant,
and only unordered parameters indicated):
Endonormative stabilisation
Figure 2
Revised model with phase 4 as the new final phase
Further to ontological issues is the conceptualisation of dynamism within
the Model. If the concept of dynamism is about changes which occur in a
given body, and brought about by forces in interaction, there is a clear sense in
which it applies to language change as the Model has shown. Dynamism
appears most practically observable in physical mechanics and related
systems; and may be describable in terms of both directionality and
dimensionality of change, which are usually measurable. Social phenomena
such as language present a difficult challenge; but the Model has tackled this
very elegantly: it indicates the changes which occur over-time to be
unidirectional, and not otherwise. This latter property appears too strong,
Codification
Differentiation
Homogenisation
Literary creativity
42
however, given the fact that the framework acknowledges the possibility of
radical changes, which may be occasioned by radical policies, citing the case
of Australia after the World War II. Schneider (2007) gives further instances
such as examples of wars, the outcome of social hostilities, a military coup by
some radical group, a major cultural re-orientation, etc. and emphasises,
“certainly such events would affect the attitude toward and hence the fate of
English in a given community, and might change, redirect or lift the drift
implied in the Dynamic Model” (cf. p. 57). If therefore the Model represents a
model of dynamism in a general sense, not providing for this must be
considered a gap in the theory, especially if its account of language
developmental histories and contact linguistics anticipates the future as well.
By considering more literally or broadly the ontological basis of dynamism
this might be fixed. It may mean making provision for a fuller assessment of
dynamism based on its potential to bring about change, any change, or to
make new things happen. Thus, it includes, as parts of its potential paths,
linearity and non-linearity, and bi-directionality; thereby providing not only
for progression but also for stagnation, retardation or regression: whereas
progression targets ‘incremental development’ or growth, regression targets
the opposite direction, which may be occasioned by forces of retardation or
inertia (illustrated in the model in terms of radical socio-political interventions
adverse to growth). Stagnation represents a half-way between the two. For
practical situations in general, progression may correlate language vitality –
expansion of use domains and user demography – occasioned by favourable
policies, favourable principles of sociolinguistic species selection and
diversification, favourable use economics, and so on; while regression may
correlate language attrition in use domains and user demography, and at its
extreme, linguicide.
Eco-linguistic dynamism might impact human languages, their birth,
growth, development, stability, vitality, decline, death and resuscitation. It is
thus mutation in the ecology that marks the starting point for changes which
introduce new properties into individuals, groups and any aggregations formed
by them. It may therefore be summed in general that a dynamic model would
provide for inertia, depression, growth, stability, etc and may identify short
and long term changes in the ecology. Since contact ecology is inextricably
tied to socio-cultural and linguistic variables, it would naturally involve a
multi-dimensional or multi-directional dynamism – linear, non-linear, and
haphazard. Variables may be complementary and interdependent. They
interact in quest for balance, and may seek new equilibra when changes occur,
introduced by contact with new variables and/or socio-cultural energy,
definable in terms of both individual and institutional or corporate cognition;
and spelt out as ideas, thoughts, emotions, values, technology, etc with
different intensities.
Eco-linguistic dynamism might then be shown to be an essential
investigative paradigm in the science of contact linguistics. Its concern is the
mutations occurring in contact ecology, the participating variables – cultural
43
and linguistic – institutions, power structures, social energy and intensity.
Others are factors which check, foster, destroy (or introduce catastrophes in)
the ecology; and factors which host resilience and stability, as well as the
mutual interactions of variables, the tensions and the competitions. If these
properties are taken into account, the Model may be given greater capacity.
Otherwise, it might be termed something like a “developmental transition
model”, if the entailments of the notion of ‘dynamism’ are not intended.
Notwithstanding the issues so far raised, the Model is insightful as an
investigative paradigm for contact-induced language change and for
postcolonial Englishes. The fact therefore remains that the purpose of the
Model, which is “to provide a uniform description of a set of processes that
have occurred independently of each other in reality – a generalization which
abstracts from many complexities and details” (Schneider, 2007, p. 55) is not
diminished (indeed, as Mesthrie & Bhatt, 2008, p. 31) state, “none of the
models are able to do justice to the intricacies of specific countries”). Instead,
the Model would be further enriched and made more robust, taking these
remarks into consideration.
Summary
Our study so far has examined the tenets of Schneider’s Dynamic Model and
re-evaluated its characterisation of Nigerian English to provide an update. The
Model is an investigative paradigm and a research tool for Postcolonial
Englishes from the perspective of contact-induced change. It proposes that the
growth of these varieties of Englishes (have) progress(ed) along five
developmental phases. The phases are linear, and constitute a yardstick for
estimating the extent of growth or development of individual varieties.
Nigerian English is shown to have achieved up to the 3rd phase, nativisation;
and there are indications that certain properties of its 4th phase, endonormative
stabilisation, may be noticeable, but are thought inadequate to merit any
conclusive statements. Such inconclusive statements and gaps motivate the
current research, which adduces research evidence to update the modelling of
Nigerian English in Schneider’s framework.
Following the survey of the foundations of Nigerian English and evidence
from its much later development, evidence for both its 4th and 5th
(Differentiation) phases do clearly emerge; however, not in the linear order
posited in the Model. Instead, the linguistic differences between phases 4 and
5 may be blurred with respect to the Nigerian experience. More specifically, it
is demonstrated that until 1914, there was no entity called Nigeria. There were
rather numerous ethnic nationalities living in the then Niger Area who spoke
different languages. These nationalities had contact with English at relatively
different points, times, and intensities. But when in 1914 they were merged
and called Nigeria, the varieties of English founded here and there and the
different culture ecologies were, as it were, merged; thus laying the foundation
for diverse Englishes. Since there were diverse Englishes already, what could
44
be expected is homogenisation and not diversification. Thus, following the
amalgamation of the northern and southern British Protectorates in the Niger
Area, the linguistic ecology with respect to English may be readily perceived
as lectal varieties. The national pedagogical enterprise, through its target at the
Received Pronunciation, undertook the task of homogenisation. The outcome
is the existence of a variety identified in Nigerian English linguistics research
as a convergence of educated English (usage/speech) – a development that
indicates homogenisation, if not equate it. In general, there is want of
specifiable evidence for a post-homogenisation diversification; but both
diversification and homogenisation are well attested.
As part of endonormative stabilisation, the requirement for indigenous
identity is evidently satisfied: English is ‘our English’, and literary creativity
and innovation express it in literary scholarship. Similarly, the requirements
for codification including dictionary development appeared evidently satisfied.
In general, if the parameters proposed in the Model are binary valued,
Nigerian English appears to make it on every count. If otherwise, there needs
to be clearly defined scalar values or so. If left as they are, then, their
inconsistency remains, and licence subjectivism; and they might be doubtful
altogether or simply remain in want of objective operationalisation.
While still sympathetic to Schneider’s (2003, p. 241) own emphasis;
namely, that
... even if in specific circumstances some details may have developed
somewhat differently and there may be apparent counterexamples to some
of the trends worked out ..., on the whole the process is real, and is robust.
It is convincing to conclude that certain characterisations of Nigerian English
in Schneider’s Dynamic Model need to be updated: following the evidence so
far examined and the discussions, it is on the part of realism to show
systematically that Nigerian English participates not only in Nativisation
(phase 3) but also in Endonormative Stabilisation (phase 4) and Differentiation
(diversification), if the two are not conflated as simply phase 4. It may also
need to be made more robust to account more adequately for contact-induced
language change and probably for language change in general, by considering
a broadened perspective of dynamism. Whatever growth or development
Nigerian English (or indeed any other variety) has achieved, whatever the
gains shown in research efforts and the updates provided, the fact remains that
we are dealing with a continuing process, without buying the myth of
‘maturation’ (cf. Anchimbe, 2009).
45
Notes
1Blythe and Croft’s 2009 recent proposal may be interesting for this purpose,
but its focus is not contact-induced change. Its account of language change
addresses mechanisms of language use and frequency of language tokens,
coordinated by variant selection mechanisms and fitness values.
2Codification remains a process, nonetheless.
3In fact, in view of Schneider’s 2003 emphasis on ethnolinguistic groups or
language communities (not nations) as the domain for the developmental
history of postcolonial varieties, it might be more revealing to investigate the
contact experiences of individual ethnolinguistic communities in the Nigerian
case.
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Eka, D. (1985). A phonological study of Standard Nigerian English.
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47
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Note on Contributor
C.U.C. Ugorji holds a PhD in English Linguistics and has several years of
experience in teaching and research in African linguistics and English
language at graduate and postgraduate levels, in Europe and Africa. He is also
a professional teacher, engaged in TESOL in schools. He has contributed
articles in several international academic journals, and books. He is at the
moment an Associate Professor of Linguistics and English language, in the
Department of Linguistics, University of Benin, Nigeria. Email:
dfugorgy@gmail.com
48
English Language Education Situation in India: Pedagogical
Perspectives
Ramanujam Meganathan
Department of Education in Languages, National Council of Educational
Research and Training (NCERT), New Delhi 110016
Abstract
This paper attempts to present a critical review of the current state of English
language education in schools in India in view of the prevalent pedagogical
policies and practices. Different types of schools in the different school
systems and typologies of teaching situations, the diverse nature of
curriculum, syllabi, materials development, and the related quality issues are
critically analyzed. Based on the critical perspectives and insights certain
pedagogically important implications have been explored and
recommendations made to improve upon the standards and quality of English
language education in schools in India.
Keywords: English language education, diversity and disparity, schools in
India, prevalent pedagogical policies and practices
English Language Education Today
English language teaching in India is a complex and diverse phenomenon in
terms of resources for teaching and learning of the language, the teacher,
pedagogical practices and the demand for the language. It is an ever-
expanding part of almost every system and stage of education in India
(Tickoo, 2004). Out of 35 states and Union Territories, 26 have introduced
English as a language from class 1, of which 12.98% are primary schools,
18.25% are upper primary schools and 25.84% are schools at the secondary
level (National Council of Educational Research (NCERT), 2007). A network
of secondary schools numbering more than 110,000, some 11,000 colleges,
universities (numbering 221 apart from 40 odd deemed universities) and other
institutions of higher learning and research whose numbers and reach keep
growing, offer instruction in and through this language at various levels and
under different arrangements. Table 1 shows the increase in the use of English
as a medium of instruction at the school level.
49
Table 1
English as a medium of instruction in Indian schools
Primary
Upper
Primary
Secondary
1
993
2
002
1
993
2
002
1
993
2
002
E
nglish as
medium
in %
4
.99
1
2.98
1
5.91
1
8.25
1
8.37
2
5.84
Source: Seventh All India School Education Survey- 2002 (NCERT, 2007)
The near-total achievement of universalization of elementary education has
intensified pressure on secondary and higher secondary education in the
country today. This is the stage when the English language attains greater
importance as it serves as an additional instrument for undertaking higher
education because 90% of higher education is through the medium of English.
English language education is marked by diversity and disparity in terms of
provision and resources for teaching of English as a second language as well
as a medium of instruction in school education. There are varieties of school
systems that exist in the country today: the state-run schools where the
medium of instruction is the state language or the vernacular; the English-
medium schools known as the “public schools”, which are actually private
schools where the medium of instruction is often English; the Kendriya
Vidyalayas, also known as Central Schools, where the children of central
government employees study; and a special category of schools known as the
Navodaya Vidyalayas set up as a follow-up to the National Policy of
Education-1986 for nurturing rural talents. The last two categories of schools
follow a mixed medium of instruction. Children learn Science and
Mathematics in English, and Social Sciences in Indian languages. There are
schools where one section in each class is English-medium. Mohanty (2010)
describes how this “mixed medium within a school and within a classroom”
works in these categories of schools.
English is used to teach ‘prestigious subjects’ like Mathematics and
Science, whereas, Hindi or other languages are used to teach the ‘less
prestigious’ subjects like History and Social Sciences. Hindi used to
be the second language subject in most of the non-Hindi states in
India. Now, it has been replaced by English and it is relegated to the
position of a third language subject in most states. (p.168)
English is a second language in all these categories of schools and the
systems of school education. It is also a standard medium of education for the
sciences and professional subjects at the university-level across the country
50
today (Ramanathan, 1999, p. 34). This presents a “huge linguistic gap” for
students who have attended vernacular-medium schools (Anderson, 2012).
Their learning English language often becomes a burden for students as they
are forced to learn English on their own (Sheorey, 2006, p. 70).
We can also find that the English language teaching situations within and
across the school systems present a mixed picture in terms of teacher
proficiency (TP) and the exposure of the pupils to the language in and outside
the school, i.e. the availability of English in the environment of language
acquisition (EE) (Nag-Arulmani, 2000 cf. NCERT 2005b). Kurrien (1997)
identifies four types of schools as follows:
a. ↑↑TP, ↑↑EE (e.g., English-medium private/government-aided elite
schools): Proficient teachers; varying degrees of English in the
environment, including as a home or first language.
b. ↑TP, ↑EE (e.g., New English-medium private schools, many of which
use both English and other Indian languages): Teachers with limited
proficiency; children with little or no background in English; parents
aspire upward mobility for their children through English.
c. ↓TP, ↓EE (e.g., Government-aided regional-medium schools):
Schools with a tradition of English education along with regional
languages, established by educational societies, with children from a
variety of backgrounds.
d. ↓↓TP, ↓↓EE (e.g., Government regional-medium schools run by
district and municipal education authorities): They enrol the largest
number of elementary school children in rural India. They are also the
only choice for the urban poor (who, however, have some options of
access to English in the environment). Their teachers may be the least
proficient in English among these four types of schools. (Position
Paper, Teaching of English-NCF - 2005- NCERT, 2005b, p. 2)
The difference in the teaching-learning situations, learners’ exposure to the
language outside the school and parental support further divides each category
of students. As Prabhu (1987) observes “typologies of teaching situations…
should thus be seen as an aid to investigating the extent of relevance of a
pedagogic proposal, rather than as absolute categories” (p. 3). The teaching
situation decides where a school stands. Most rural schools in India today fall
under the fourth category where we have children with almost no exposure to
the English language, where the teachers’ proficiency in English is in
question, and where the parents cannot support their wards in learning the
language.
Selvam and Geetha (2010) bring out the disparity in English language
education in the context of one of the south Indian states, Tamil Nadu from a
“class perspective” (p. 56). They describe the schools as type A, B and C in
terms of locations and resources. Type ‘A’ schools are located in big cities and
are attended by upper middle class children. English language proficiency of
both teachers and learners here are higher than all other categories of schools.
51
Type ‘B’ schools are also found in big cities and additionally in smaller towns,
and cater to the middle class which cannot afford to pay the high fees that type
‘A’ schools demand. Here the learners are not as confident and comfortable
with the English language as their peers in type ‘A’ schools. Type ‘C’ schools
are the ones located generally in small and mofussil towns, catering to rural
households that want their young to know English. “Neither the teachers nor
the students in these schools move in an English-speaking world in the way
that their counterparts in the cities do … But there is a greater anxiety about
learning English in these institutions” (Selvam & Geetha, 2010, p. 56)
The two categorizations above inform us that the prevalent diversity of
English language teaching situations even within a small town poses a serious
challenge for an effective planning and implementation of language education.
Also, there is a general dissatisfaction about the way in which the language is
taught in most of the schools, particularly the government schools run by the
states. The general view that India’s ELT methodology has been built all along
on borrowed methods taken directly from the native English-speaking world
or grafted arbitrarily on to whatever existed before is true to a large extent.
There are few indigenous (Indian) experiments like the Bangalore-Madras
Communicational language teaching project (Prabhu, 1987) which made an
equal impact in the Western and the Asian ELT scenario. However, such new
experiments have not impacted the existing English language curriculum and
the practice of English language teaching. Heavy reliance on the grammar-
translation and structural approaches, and teacher-centric teaching continues to
dominate in most of the school systems. Moreover, English as a school subject
is a major cause of students dropping out of schools at the end of class X.
Disinterested classroom transactions, lack of any meaningful teaching and
language proficiency of the teacher, and uninspiring methods and materials are
attributed as major reasons for the sad state of English language education in
schools (Govt. of India, 1993; Meganathan, 2014). “Incomprehensibility” of
the content as well as treating the language as “content” subject in terms of
materials and classroom transactions increase the burden on the learner. This
was recorded with concern by the Yashpal Committee Report, Learning
without burden (1993). The National Curriculum Framework 2005 (NCERT,
2005a) aims at reducing the burden on learners by suggesting methodologies
which would connect the classroom with the lives of learners. It believes that
the burden on children is a major hindrance in the learning of subjects as well
as the languages. Incomprehensibility of the language of the content subjects
(say Science, Mathematics or Social Sciences) and studying through a medium
that is not their mother tongue proves to be a double disadvantage for the
children. This is compounded when children either drop out of the school or
are declared as “the ones who can’t learn” (Jhingaran, 2005, p 48).
Introduction of English language without adequate resources, particularly
English language teachers, throws a much greater challenge when it comes to
the quality of education. The position paper on teaching of Indian languages
(NCERT, 2005c) rightly asserts:
52
Where qualified teachers and adequate infrastructural facilities are
available, English may be introduced from the primary level, but for the
first couple of years it should focus largely on oral-aural skills, simple
lexical items, or some day-to-day conversation. Use of the languages of
children should not be forbidden in the English class, and the teaching
should as far as possible be located in a text that would make sense to the
child. If trained teachers are not available, English should be introduced at
the post-primary stage and its quantum increased in such a way that
learners should soon reach the levels of their classmates who started
learning English early. (p. 38)
The lack of research inputs for evolving a methodology that would suit the
Indian situation is a major concern for researchers, teachers and those involved
in the design and development, implementation and evaluation of curricula. In
the 1970s, Tickoo (1971) argued that what is needed in India is a method,
which should grow from research and experiment within the country and in
the circumstances of an average schoolroom . To use Swan’s (1985) remark
here, “Defective language learning is often attributed to defective syllabus
design, the student does not learn the language properly because we do not
teach the right things or because we recognize what we teach is the wrong
way” (p. 77).
Planning and implementation of English language education in the diverse
Indian contexts calls for a flexible approach which suits the diverse needs of
the learners. Language education in India is not conceived holistically for it is
characterised by the many-fold fragmentations. Fragmentations in terms of
regional languages versus English, and within the space of Indian languages
the question of majority versus minority languages and tribal languages, has
greatly disadvantaged the learners. It is recorded in the Fourth Survey of
Research in Education (1983 -1988) conducted by the National Council of
Educational Research (NCERT) as,
Language teaching standards are divergent in different regions of the
country. One thing common to all is the consistently low standard of
achievement in languages as well as subjects. Instead of learning subjects
through languages subjects are used to learn languages. Therefore
students are poor both in subjects as well as languages. Minimum
competencies in language must be a pre-condition to the study of subjects,
which in turn enlarge the scale of language learning. (p 127)
The situation has not changed much even after two and a half decades.
(Meganathan, 2014). Efforts to implement mother-tongue-based
multilingualism where the child begins her education in the mother tongue and
moves on to add at least two more languages by the end of ten-year schooling
has not been successful. Multilingual characteristic of the Indian classroom
should be treated as a resource rather than a problem. The supplementary and
53
complementary roles of languages in learning have to be seen as an instrument
for facilitating learning. (NCERT, 2005; Meganathan 2014; Mohanty, 2010)
Denial of learning through one’s mother tongue and unwillingness to use
the languages of children as a resource for teaching-learning of languages as
well as content subjects is seen as one major reason for children not learning
in schools (Position Paper, “Teaching of English” and Position Paper,
“Teaching of Indian Languages”). The National Curriculum Framework –
2005 calls for multilingualism as a language policy in school education and for
using the languages of the children as a resource for learning.
Language Policy in Education and the English Language
In view of the National Language-in-Education-Policy for school education,
the three-language formula recommended by the National Commission on
Education 1964-1966, (GOI, 1968) was incorporated into the national
education policies of 1968 and 1986. Accommodating at least three languages
in the school education has been seen as a convenient strategy, but concerns
have also been expressed from various quarters about its unsatisfactory
implementation. India’s language policy in education emerged as a political
consensus in the Chief Ministers’ conferences held during the 1950s and
1960s. The Central Advisory Board on Education (CABE), which consisted of
Education Ministers of all the states, devised the three-language formula in its
23rd meeting held in 1956 with a view of removing inequalities among the
languages of India, particularly between Hindi and other Indian languages. It
recommended that three languages should be taught in Hindi as well as non-
Hindi-speaking areas of the country at the middle and high school stages, and
suggested two possible formulae as given below.
1. (a) (i) Mother tongue or
(ii) Regional language or
(iii) A composite course of mother-tongue and a regional language
or
(iv) A composite course of mother tongue and a classical language
or (v) A composite course of regional language and a classical
language.
(b) Hindi or English
(c) A modern Indian language or a modern European language
provided it has not already taken under (a) and (b) above.
2. (a ) As above
(b) English or a modern European language
(c) Hindi (for non-Hindi speaking areas) or another modern Indian
language (for Hindi speaking areas) (CABE 1956, Item 2)
54
The other major objective of the formula was to promote mother-tongue
based multilingualism, where the learner starts school education in the mother
tongue and at least two more languages are added (aiming at additive
bilingualism) by the time s/he completes ten years of schooling. The three-
language formula was simplified and approved by the Conference of Chief
Ministers, held in 1961, to accommodate the mother tongue or regional
language, Hindi, the official language (any other Indian language in Hindi-
speaking regions) and English. (GOI, 1962, p. 67) The CABE also deliberated
in details on the study of English as a compulsory subject as recommended by
the Education Ministers’ conference held in 1957:
1. English should be taught as a compulsory language both at the
secondary and the university stages so that students acquire
adequate knowledge of English so as to be able to receive
education through this language at the university-level.
2. English should not be introduced earlier than class V. The precise
point at which English should be started was left to each individual
state to decide (MOE 1957, quoted in Kumar and Agrawal, 1993,
p. 98).
A comprehensive view of the study of languages at school was undertaken
and concrete recommendations were made by the Education Commission
between 1964 and 1966 (NCERT, 1968). The Commission, having taken
account of the diversity of India, recommended a modified or graduated three-
language formula:
1. The mother tongue or the regional language
2. The official language of the Union or the associate official
language of the Union so long as it exists; and
3. A modern Indian or foreign language not covered under (1) and
(2) and other than that used as the medium of instruction (MOE
1966, p. 192)
The Education Commission went on to comment on the status and role of
English in education.
English will continue to enjoy a high status so long as it remains the
principal medium of education at the university stage, and the language
of administration at the Central Government and in many of the states.
Even after the regional languages become media of higher education in
the universities, a working knowledge of English will be a valuable asset
for all students and a reasonable proficiency in the language will be
necessary for those who proceed to the university. (MOE 1966, p. 192)
55
The English language’s colonial legacy has now been lost and the
language is seen as a neutral language, much in demand by cross sections
of the society. As Crystal (1997) remarks, “the English language has
already grown to be independent of any form of social control’ and ‘in 500
years’ time everyone is multilingual and will automatically be introduced to
English as soon as they are born”. (p. 139) The first part of the statement
has to be viewed with much apprehension since the language in the Indian
context has already perpetuated inequalities. The language has been out of
reach of millions of people who belong to the lower socio-economic strata
of the society. This has been recorded in the report of the National
Knowledge Commission (NKC). (GOI, 2007, p. 47) There is an irony in
the situation. English has been part of our education system for more than a
century. Yet English is beyond the reach of most of our young people,
which makes for highly unequal access. Indeed, even now, more than one
percent of our people use it as a second language, let alone a first language.
But NKC believes that the time has come for us to teach our people,
ordinary people, English as a language in schools. Early action in this
sphere would help us build an inclusive society and transform India into a
knowledge society.
India’s once deprived sections of the society (like the Dalits) now perceive the
language as an instrument for progress. The news of a temple for English
language in a village in the Hindi heartland (Pandey, 2011) tells its own story
and there is a demand for the English language and English medium education
for reducing exclusion. (Illaiah, 2013) Illaiah (2013) emphasises that it is the
right of the Dalits to be exposed to English,
Within 200 years of its introduction in India it (English) has easily become
the language of about 100 million people. Its expansion in future will be
several folds faster than earlier. It has become a language of day-to-day use
for several million upper middle class and rich people. The poor and the
productive masses have a right to learn the language of administration and
global communication. (p 5)
However, this notion of the empowering role of English language is
contested from the points of view of language endangerment and harmonious
development of learners. (Mohanty, 2010; Skutnabb-Kangas, 2000) Uncritical
promotion of English as a language and as the medium of learning in school
education has resulted in migration of learners to English medium from the
Indian language medium without even minimum requirements for English
language teaching. (Meganathan, 2010; NCERT, 2005) Pattanayak (1981)
argues how the education system in India has consistently weakened the
advantages of grass-root multilingualism that characterises the society. As
Illich (1981) suggests, we need to make every possible effort to empower the
languages of the underprivileged, and tribal and endangered languages.
56
Affirmative action is called for in this domain (NCERT 2005a). To quote
Pattanayak (1981, p. 38), “if participatory democracy has to survive, we need
to give a voice to the language of every child.” Macro level policy planning
calls for mother-tongue-based multilingualism where the use of two or more
languages as medium of instruction is seen as beneficial for all languages
(UNESCO, 2003). But the developments in the last three decades reveal that
the number of languages used as media of instruction in schools in 1973 was
67 (Third All India Educational Survey, NCERT, 1975); the number came
down to 47 in 1993 (Sixth All India Educational Survey, NCERT 1995; cf
Rao, 2008). While the promise of education in the mother tongue of the child
is made time and again, we notice that within a period of 20 years at least 20
languages were thrown out of the school system. Though linguistic diversity is
recognised at the policy level, its implementation is faulty. There appears to be
a language hierarchy, where English and the state languages get privileged and
the tribal/minority languages get neglected, often leading to a sense of
exclusion amongst its speakers. The language hierarchy could be depicted as
shown in Figure 1.
Figure1. Language hierarchy in the Indian context
The many of the tribal and minor languages have not found a place in
school even as a language, leave alone as a medium of instruction. The
promotion of English language as an instrument for upward mobility and
notions relating to development has to be seen from diverse perspectives. Even
within the English language education in practice shows the hierarchy as
discussed elsewhere above. (Meganathan, 2010)
This brief historical account of the evolution of the language policy in India
tells us how the apprehension about the dominance of English as a colonial
language has been naturally alleviated by the role which the language has
attained. This is in spite of the efforts (political and systemic) to contain its
English Language
Majority State
Language
Tribal /
Minor
languages
57
spread. Today, every child and parent understands the need of the language. It
is a compulsory second language in most of the states. The liberalisation of
Indian economy in the 1990s and the impact of globalisation have intensified
the spread of the language as an instrument for upward mobility and as a
language of opportunity.
The Demand for English language
While the diverse nature and quality of English language education in India
poses a serious challenge both in terms of access, resources and quality, the
demand for English language has been on the increase since independence.
The language, which was defined as “a library language” by the National
Commission on Education 1964-66, has broken the walls of the library and the
demand is so huge that every parent in India today wants to send his/her child
to an English medium school, whatever be its quality and resources for
learning. The national curriculum revision carried out in 2005 recognises the
growing demand for the language and the position paper of the National Focus
Group on Teaching of English for NCF – 2005 (NCERT, 2005b) makes this
clear when it addresses the English language question.
English in India today is a symbol of people’s aspirations for quality in
education and a fuller participation in national and international life. Its
colonial origins now forgotten or irrelevant, its initial role in independent
India, tailored to higher education (as a “library language”, a “window on
the world”), now felt to be insufficiently inclusive socially and
linguistically, the current status of English stems from its overwhelming
presence on the world stage and the reflection of this in the national arena
(p. 1).
The position paper also makes an attempt to find a space for English in
today’s context in India. Stating that “English does not stand alone”, the paper
argues that
it (English) needs to find its place (i) along with other Indian Languages
(a) in regional medium schools: how can children’s other languages
strengthen English learning? (b) in English medium schools: how can
other Indian languages be valorised, reducing the perceived hegemony of
English? (ii) In relation to other subjects: A language across the
curriculum perspective is perhaps of particular relevance to primary
education. Language is best acquired through different meaning-making
contexts and hence all teaching in a sense is language teaching. This
perspective also captures the centrality of language in abstract thought in
secondary education. (p. 4)
58
English today is a compulsory second language in the native/vernacular
medium schools and in English-medium schools and it is making a case to
gain the status of a first language, thus contradicting the spirit of the three
language formula.
Recognising the diversity and enormity of the demand, Graddol (2010) in
his English Next India brings out the divide in the demand-supply business of
the English language and the responsibility on the teachers. He says,
Throughout India, there is an extraordinary belief, among almost all
castes and classes, in both rural and urban areas, in the transformative
power of English. English is seen not just as a useful skill, but as a
symbol of a better life, a pathway out of poverty and oppression.
Aspiration of such magnitude is a heavy burden for any language, and for
those who have responsibility for teaching it, to bear. The challenges of
providing universal access to English are significant, and many are bound
to feel frustrated at the speed of progress. But we cannot ignore the way
that the English language has emerged as a powerful agent for change in
India. (Graddol, 2010, p.120)
The demand for English language education (both as a language and as a
medium of learning) is leading to the marginalisation of Indian languages. It is
believed that the English language acts as an instrument for exclusion of
Indian languages, particularly the minor and tribal languages, some of which
are yet to find a place in school education or have been thrown out of the
system. The English language acts as “a killer language” in these situations
(Mohanty, 2010, p. 77). Phillipson (2008) and Skutnabb-Kangas (2000, p. 66)
believe that there is an “uncritical promotion of English language in
education”. While the demand for English language and English medium
education from every quarter makes the English language a “neutral language”
in terms of ethnicity, religion, linguistic groups, region and ‘the language that
unifies India, but it has become a medium used to maintain inequalities in
society” (Baik & Shim, 1995, pp. 123-124).
As Anderson (2012, p. 44) asserts, “the language remains inaccessible to
those who are disadvantaged because of their economic situation, their caste,
or both.” There are also arguments that it is the state/regional languages,
which push the minor and tribal languages to the corner, not the English
language. The languages of many tribal communities in the states of Odisha
and Andhra Pradesh can be cited as illustrations where the state languages
dominate as medium of learning. This demands a relook at the language-in-
education policy both at the macro and the micro levels. Stating the policy in
terms of number of languages and provisions at the macro level policy
planning for mother-tongue-based multilingualism does not necessarily
achieve the objectives of promoting multilingualism. There is a need to
understand the learner needs and to foster a cognitively and pedagogically
sound language education for the harmonious growth of school children.
59
Though the governments at the central and state levels through their
schemes like the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) and Rashtirya Madhyamik
Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA) have made serious efforts to provide access to
education for all children, achieving quality becomes an illusion on many
counts. This starts with curriculum planning at the national and state levels to
ensuring quality teaching by the teacher who has to face many constraints.
Curriculum planning demands well-planned processes wherein people from
different areas of expertise come together to design a pedagogically sound
plan of action through curricular statements, defining objectives, suggesting
methodologies appropriate to the context and understanding the profile and
needs of the learner, chalking out assessment strategies that would support
teaching-learning.
ELT Curriculum, Syllabi and Materials
Curriculum and Syllabi
English language curriculum and syllabi which guide materials developers in
producing materials to support learners in English language learning and
teachers for providing opportunities for language use through interaction and
reflection has been a major concern of educational planners and implementers.
The development of a “considered” curriculum and syllabi by stating the aims
and objectives in comprehensible and meaningful terms for users, suggesting
methodologies and assessment procedures throws a big challenge. Ineffective
curriculum and materials add to the misery of the ill-equipped teacher
resulting in disinterested classrooms and examination-driven teaching
(Meganathan, 2010). Many Indian states develop syllabi and materials without
even making any curricular statements or vision meeting the national and
regional norms. It is assumed that the guidelines from the National Curriculum
Framework developed at the national level would be adopted as guidelines.
Meganathan (2014) finds in the context of Tamil Nadu that English language
teachers have not undergone any professional development activity for two
decades since their beginning as teachers. The process of curriculum
development and implementation (from design to evaluation) is highly
inadequate in the Indian context. The teacher is central to the process of
teaching-learning and has to do his/her job without clearly stated curricular
objectives.
India has in a way three models of curriculum (and materials) development
for English language education in schools. The first model is adaptation of the
national level curriculum developed by the NCERT and by the national level
boards like the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE). The second
model is the complete adaptation of the national curriculum by (some) state
boards like the Delhi Board. The third model is the states or other boards
developing their own curriculum taking into consideration the ideas of the
National Curriculum Framework (NCF) developed by NCERT (Meganathan,
60
2010). However, the approach to syllabus design could be stated mostly as
“Forward Design” (Richards, 2013, p. 31), starting from stated objectives and
moving on to stating the expected outcomes. Richards’ (2013) recent paper
describes the existing models of syllabus design. The national level model
syllabus based on the National Curriculum Framework-2005 developed by
NCERT could be stated as more of a “Central Design”.
Table 2
Comparison of the features of the three approaches to syllabus design
Forward design
Central design
Backward design
Syllabus
Language-
centred;
Content divided
into its key
elements;
Sequenced from
simple to
complex.
Pre-determined;
prior to a course;
Linear
progression.
Activity-based;
Content
negotiated with
learners;
Evolves during
the course;
Reflects the
process of
learning;
Sequence may be
determined by the
learners.
Needs based;
Ends-means
approach;
Objectives or
competency-
based;
Sequenced from
part-skills to
whole;
Pre-determined
prior to course;
Linear
progression
Methodology
Transmissive and
teacher-directed;
Practice and
control of
elements;
Imitation of
models;
Explicit
presentation of
rules
Learner-centred;
Experiential
learning;
Active
engagement in
interaction and
communication;
Meaning
prioritised over
accuracy;
Activities that
involve
negotiation of
meaning.
Practice of part-
skills;
Practice of real-
life situations;
Accuracy
emphasised;
Learning and
practice of
expressions and
formulaic
language.
61
Role of teacher
Teacher as
instructor, model,
and explainer;
Transmitter of
knowledge;
Reinforcer of
correct language
use.
Teacher as
facilitator;
Negotiator of
content and
process;
Encourager of
learner self-
expression and
autonomy
Organiser of
learning
experiences;
Model of target
language
performance;
Planner of
learning
experiences.
Role of learner
Accurate mastery
of language
forms;
Application of
learned material
to new contexts;
Understanding of
language rules.
Negotiator of
learning content
and modes of
learning;
Development of
learning
strategies;
Accept
responsibility for
learning and
learner
autonomy.
Learning through
practice and habit
formation;
Mastery of
situationally
appropriate
language;
Awareness of
correct usage;
Development of
fluency.
Assessment
Norm-referenced,
summative end-
of-semester or
end-of-course
test;
Assessment of
learning;
Cumulative
mastery of taught
forms.
Negotiated
assessment;
Assessment for
learning;
Formative
assessment;
Self-assessment;
Develop capacity
for self-reflection
and self-
evaluation.
Criterion-
referenced,
Performance-
based
summative
assessment;
Improvement
oriented;
Assessment of
learning;
Cumulative
mastery of taught
patterns and uses.
(Source: Richards, 2013, p. 31)
Materials Development
The three models which exist at the curriculum and syllabus development
levels are reflected at the materials development level too. However, there is
much to regret when it comes to materials development at the state level. Lack
of pedagogical understanding of “What should materials do?” (Tomlinson,
1995) and authenticity of materials and tasks remain in question (Meganathan,
2010). The reason for this is that materials development is not taken as a
professional activity though one can notice commercialisation of materials
62
development in India where private publishing houses also publish text books
and other materials in English for mostly English-medium schools run by
private agencies or individuals. An analysis of the textbooks at the primary
level reveals how textbook development at the primary level does not fully
recognise the recent development in pedagogy and our understanding of
language and language acquisition and learning (NCERT, 2010).
Conclusions, Implications, and Recommendations
English language education has come a long way in India and has, in a way,
lost its colonial legacy. It is being seen as a language for upward mobility and
has been accepted without much contestation. So it has become a neutral
language moving beyond boundaries across the states and regions, cross
sections of the society as a whole. But the major concern and worry is the way
the language is perpetuating inequalities among languages in the country and
inequalities within its own realm where the rich and elite get “good quality”
English language education and the poor and rural mass get the “not so good
quality English language education” (Mohanty 2010 p. 36). This “good
quality” (by whatever means we define it) is reflected firstly in the teacher as a
resource for learning English and then in materials and methods (strategies
and techniques which are adopted). As Graddol (2010) points out, the huge
responsibility of addressing the demand lies in the hands of people, teachers
who are in a way not so well-equipped. Adding to the problems is the
initiatives of the state governments to introduce English as a medium of
teaching in one section of each class. Teachers who are not well-equipped to
teach through English medium are now to teach in English the subjects such as
Mathematics and Social Sciences. These are the same teachers who teach the
subjects in the medium of Indian languages like Hindi, Urdu, Tamil, Bengali,
Punjabi, and so on. They are not oriented to teach the subjects in English. The
argument is the teachers have studied their subjects at the university level in
English medium and this makes them naturally suitable for teaching in English
medium. This needs to be understood in a pedagogical perspective of
language across the curriculum (LAC) and the role of language in learning any
subject. The subject teachers need to develop better awareness to understand
how ideas are covered and qualified when said in a language.
Research in ELT or language pedagogy is another area which needs
strengthening. While research is happening in English literature and
Linguistics as courses of study at the university level, ELT is the field which is
still shaping itself in India. One major reason is that there are very few
universities which run courses in ELT or English language education as
applied linguistics. So, classroom-based researches and research on curriculum
development and implementation are very limited. (Meganathan, 2014) The
following could be seen as areas which need attention and initiates both the
governments at the national and state levels, as also by NGOs and private
63
agencies and schools involved in the business of language education in general
and English language education in particular.
Professionalization of curriculum, syllabi and materials development:
There is an urgent need to develop teams of professionals in the vital areas
of curriculum, syllabi and materials development in India. The practice in
the states now is that curriculum development is a once-in-a-while activity
where a group of teachers, teacher educators, and other professionals come
together and do the activity of curriculum development and then it is
forgotten. There is no regular exercise of curriculum research and
professional training on curriculum development and evaluation at the
state levels. It is necessary to have curriculum and materials development
as part of both pre-service and in-service professional development
courses (Meganathan, 2008). This will have both short and long-term
implications.
Courses on English language teaching / education or language education:
A country which needs quite a huge number of English language teachers
does not have courses on English language education or language
education at the under- graduate or postgraduate level, except in few
higher education institutions. Specialised courses on language teaching
will equip the young graduates with an understanding of language
pedagogy and pre-service teacher education courses could shape them to
be able to deliver their lessons effectively when they join schools.
Teacher Development: Teacher’s continuous professional development
has not been recognised as a major component for quality improvement of
teaching in the classroom. Though many agencies like the NCERT,
SCERT, EFLU (English and Foreign Languages University, which was
CIEFL, i.e. Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages formerly),
RIEs (Regional Institutes of English), University Departments of
Education, NGOs conduct training and orientation programmes for
teachers and key resource persons, the content and methodology of such
courses remain a question in many institutions as to whether they really
address day-to-day problems and issues that arise in the classrooms. A
typical classroom teacher expects a training to equip him/her to enhance
classroom interactions and learner motivations and participation in
learning.
Research in ELT: ELT stakeholders in India should recognize the need for
classroom-based and teacher-initiated research to understand the
classroom problems and to address them at the levels of curriculum
revision, materials production, assessment and teacher training.
To sum up, the questions of quality will continue to persist in English
language education at all levels and regions in India, which pose serious
challenges and call for attention on research-based curriculum planning and its
implementation at the classroom level.
64
References
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learning: Insights from research, theory and pedagogy (pp. 169-187).
Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave.
Baik, M., & Shim, R. (1995). Language, culture, and ideology in the textbooks
of Two Koreas. In M. L. Tickoo, (Ed.), Language and culture in
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Centre.
Crystal, D. (1997). English as a global language. Cambridge: Cambridge
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Development, MHRD, Department of Education
Graddol, D. (2010). English next India. New Delhi: British Council.
Ilaih, K. (2013). Even if 10% dalit children got English education, India
would change . Times of India, Feb. 15, 2013. p 4
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tongue education. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Jhingaran, D. (2005). Language disadvantage: The learning challenges in
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Stage. Unpublished document.
Meganathan. R. (2008). Materials development in English as a second
language: An Indian experience. Folio, July 2008, pp.1-9.
Meganathan. R. (2010). Language policy in education and the role of English
in India: From library language to language of empowerment. In H.
Colemen (Ed.), Dreams and realities: Developing countries and the
English Language (pp.57-86). U.K.: British Council.
Meganathan. R. (2014). A critical study of teaching of English at the
secondary stage in Tamil Nadu. Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, Indira
Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), New Delhi.
Mohanty, A. (2010). Language policy and practice in education: negotiating
the double divide in multilingual societies. In T. Skutnabb-Kangas & K.
Heugh (Eds.) Multilingual education works. From the periphery to the
Centre (pp 122-148). Oxon: Routelege
Nag-Arulmani, S. (2005). Language attainments and learning opportunities:
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NCERT. (2005a). National curriculum framework – 2005. New Delhi:
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NCERT. (2005b) National focus group position paper on teaching of English.
New Delhi: NCERT.
NCERT. (2005c) National focus group position paper on teaching of Indian
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Note on Contributor
66
Ramanujam Meganathan was one of the members of the Curriculum Group of
NCERT, which coordinated the nation-wide exercise of developing the
National Curriculum Framework-2005 and was the team leader for the
textbook development exercise in English for classes VI to VIII for the state of
Rajasthan. He has conducted research and published on language education,
language policy and school management. The recent study is on the
implementation of three-language formula in Indian schools. Currently he has
undertaken two research studies, one on Multilingualism in school education
and curriculum implementation at the upper primary level in India. Email:
rama_meganathan@yahoo.com
67
Subtitling Cultural Expressions from English into Arabic
Saleh Majed Al Abwaini
Middle East University, Amman, Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan
Abstract
This study aimed at investigating the problems that translators faced when
subtitling cultural expressions from English into Arabic. To achieve this goal,
the researchers selected a convenient sample comprising 40 graduate and 40
undergraduate students who were enrolled in the English language programs
during the academic year 2012/2013 in Jordanian universities. A translation
test, which consisted of 10 cultural expressions selected from three American
movies namely, “Scent of a Woman”, “Erin Brockovich” and “Casino”, served
as the main instrument. Results revealed that translators encountered
structural, lexical and semantic difficulties which are triggered by interference
from L1 into L2. Also, results showed that translators lacked the ability to
identify these cultural expressions due; perhaps, to the bilingual dictionaries
they consulted which rendered meanings in isolation rather than in context.
Keywords: Translation, subtitling, cultural expressions, English/Arabic
Introduction
Nothing could be compared to watching a movie with your family or your
friends, but does it really matter or do we always understand what’s really
going on the screen? Do we sometimes try to make less effort to link these
actions with the subtitling shown on the television? These types of questions
are more than obligatory to the subtitlers because this type of translation is of
great challenge to these experts who work very hard in order to satisfy the
viewer around the Arab world that has become in the new millennium
crowded with all sorts of communication and technology.
Translation is rendering the meaning of a text into another language in the
same way the writer intended in the text. The aim is to communicate the ideas
of the text in the Source Language (SL) to readers of the Target Language
(TL) through a target text that has the same message and effect. Usually
cultural terms are thought to pose the most difficult problem in translation; the
problem has been overstated by many. One of the most challenging tasks for
all translators is how to render culturally-bound elements in subtitles into a
foreign language.
Subtitles are the most widely read after newspaper articles. It is calculated
that one hour of subtitled television adds up to about 30 pages of text, and
reckons that an adult watches one hour of subtitled television a week for ten
months a year. This adds up to about 1200 pages (40 hours of television times
68
30 pages). The numbers used are very modest, but it still adds up to three or
four novels a year, which is a lot more than the average person reads.
(Lomhein, 1998) The first subtitles in the late 1920s, which used what was
called (inter-titles or title cards), were seen in 1903 in “Uncle Tom's Cabin”.
These inter-titlers were written or painted on cards that were filmed, and then
placed between sequences of the film. At that time, translating was not a
problem. The inter-titlers would simply translate the cards and re-insert them
with the film. In 1927 came the invention of sound films, or “talkies” and with
it came the necessity to use other alternatives as subtitle or dubbing. The first
country to experiment subtitling was France. The subtitling process underwent
different stages; from the manual projection subtitles through the stage of
stamping titles until Denis Aboyer in Paris developed the laser subtitling.
The subtitling process nowadays involves several operations. Spotting or
cueing involves marking the transcript or the dialogue list according to when
subtitles should start and stop and then they calculate the length of the
subtitles according to the cueing times of each frame. After that, the translator
will take over and carry out the actual translation with the aid of the dialogue
list annotated for cueing. With cultural expressions, the meaning which lies
behind this kind of expression is always strongly linked to the specific cultural
context it aims to re-create. Sometimes, cultural expressions can be easily
rendered into the target language (TL) but in other kinds of terms it is often
impossible.
One of the most challenging tasks for all translators is how to render
subtitled language elements into culturally accepted expressions in the (TL).
Indeed the meaning which lies behind this kind of expression is always linked
to a specific cultural context where the text is originated or within the cultural
context it aims to re-create.
The purpose of this research is to investigate the problems that translators
face when they subtitle cultural expressions from English into Arabic.
There has been already an extensive research and investigations
concerning the subtitling process. However, not enough research has been
conducted regarding translating language expressions in subtitles within a
cultural context in the Arab world and the current study aims to fill this gap.
Howver, the findings of this study cannot be generalized to the whole
population due to the type and size of the selected sample and the instruments
used. The study was conducted in Amman, Jordan during the academic year
2012/2013.
Review of Literature Related to Subtitling and Cultural Expressions
The processes of subtitling or as referred to as “captions” are transcriptions of
film or TV dialogue presented simultaneously on the screen. Gottlib (1998)
assumes that “cinema subtitlers normally work from paper to paper,
translating dialogue from a post-production script, the end product being a list
of subtitles; these subtitles are then transferred onto the film by others” (p. 36).
69
Newmark (1988) comments on the cultural expressions where there is
culture focus; there is a translation problem due to the culture gap or distance
between the (SL) and (TL). He does not regard language as a component or
feature of culture. Language contains all kinds of cultural deposits, in the
grammar, forms of address, as well as the lexis which are not taken account of
in universals or translation. The more specific the language for natural
phenomena, the more it becomes embedded in cultural features, and therefore
creates translation problems. He adds that most cultural expressions are easy
to detect, since they are associated with a particular language and cannot be
literally translated, but many cultural customs are described in ordinary
language, where literal translation would distort the meaning and a translation
may include an appropriate descriptive-functional equivalent.
Newmark (1988, p103) categorizes the cultural expressions as follows:
a- Ecology: animals, plants, local winds, mountains, plains, ice,
etc.
b- Material culture (artifacts), food, clothes, housing, transport and
communication.
c- Social culture – work and leisure.
d- Organizations, customs, ideas, political, social, legal, religious,
artistic.
e- Gestures and habits (often described in 'non-cultural' language).
Ayoub (1994) shed light on Idiomatic Expressions (IEs) as a problematic
area when translating from Arabic into English and vice versa. The researcher
classified the linguistic and cultural problems that IEs present to the process of
translation and he also discussed and analyzed the problems and what caused
them, and finally he proposed some effective methods and strategies to be
used in solving such cultural problems of translating IEs from Arabic into
English and vice versa. The study results showed that:
- The IEs in Arabic and English are problematic to translators.
- The context where IEs occur is very important for determining their
intended meanings and translating them adequately and properly.
- Arabic and English IEs are more or less translatable into each other.
- It is very crucial and essential for the translator to be acquainted with the
language or culture he is translating from and/or into.
- Semantic and pragmatic aspect of IEs is of great importance in the process
of translation.
- There is a lack of bilingual dictionaries which deal with Arabic/ English
IEs.
- We use IEs as an outlet for our attitudes while we speak.
- It is almost impossible to have translational equivalence in the full formal
and functional sense of IEs.
70
- Arabic and English have conventionalized a diverse network of IEs to
express a variety of language functions.
Williams and Thorne (1999) describe how language learners benefit from
inter lingual subtitling training. It also shows that student’s communication
competence in both L1 and L2 improved while they simultaneously mastered
transferable skills. These language skills that were practiced during inter
lingual subtitling required these specific linguistic processes:
- Listen attentively: recognize and fully absorb the content of program/film.
- Read/view the screen for visual clues which place the language into
meaningful context.
- Translate: or interpret all of the above in an effective and natural manner
into TL.
- Edit the content in such a way that the original meaning will remain
intact.
- Consider the written language of the subtitles; subtitling involves
transferring spoken language into written language and this aspect needs
particular consideration.
- Create easy-to-read subtitles which enable the viewer to absorb the
program's meaning as effortlessly as possible.
- Display the target language version in an aesthetically pleasing, accessible
and consistent way on the screen, whilst keeping the syntactical units
intact and respecting punctuation conventions.
- Review subtitles with tutor and discuss the choices made.
While teaching subtitles to second language students of Welsh through a
two-day intensive induction course followed by a group session and also
tutorial sessions were also included on one-to-one basis, given after that an
independent study period of 3-4 hour per week, these problems occurred:
- Difficulties in understanding the spoken language in dramas, soap operas
and comedy programs.
- Gaps in vocabulary: as the students were required to generate subtitles for
up to 10 television programs across a wide range of genres, the range of
vocabulary required is exceptionally wide.
- Difficulties in summarizing content of TL into the L1: in order to reach
acceptable words per minimum reading rate, rather than simply omitting
individual words.
Dweik (2000) investigated bilingualism and the problem of linguistic and
cultural interference. The study aimed at identifying the phonological and
socio-cultural factors that impede or enhance the degree of bilingualism
among speakers of Arabic and English. The linguistic factors stemmed from
two sources, first, inter-lingual interference which occurs when linguistic and
71
cultural features of the native language are transferred into the system of the
target language; second, intra-lingual factors when the bilingual makes
overgeneralization of the target language rules. In his answer to the question,
what is necessary in order for us to compare two cultures?
Dweik states that (2000, p. 233):
a- We must have accurate understanding of each culture.
b- We must be able to eliminate the things we claim to do but actually don't
do.
c- We must make sure that we are able to describe practices accurately, not
ideally.
d- We must be able to describe the situations in which we do what we do.
Olk (2003) aimed to find out whether German readers would comprehend
transferred English terms based on bilingual dictionaries. For the purpose of
this study nineteen students of a British university (English native speakers)
who were either in their final B.A. year in German or had recently finished
their degree were asked to translate, in writing, an English article featuring a
high frequency of British Cultural References (CRs) for the aim of publication
in the well-known German newsmagazine Der Spiegel. The students were also
asked to think aloud while translating, and all participants were additionally
questioned about their approach in translating individual culture references in
the task. And at last additional data were collected to explore the use of
translation in the students' educational context.
The findings of the study were as follows:
- Lack of source-cultural knowledge: it is most surprisingly that students
lack familiarity with their native cultural concepts and consequently, had
difficulty rendering them for German readers.
- Insufficient knowledge of German source-culture terminology: a possible
factor that may have contributed to this is the student's unfamiliarity with
German common source-culture terminology due to the types of teaching
materials which had been used in their translation classes.
- Consideration of readership's source- cultural knowledge: the problem
about the students approach is the total reliance on the bilingual dictionary
to determine what German readers would probably know.
Samaker (2010) investigated and analyzed the strategies used in the
translation of culturally-bound elements presented in the English subtitle of
the Iranian film “The Lizard”, and he tried to point out the frequency that the
strategies of translation that were used. For the purpose of his study, data were
gathered from the film that was subtitled into English by viewing the film and
referring to the original transcripts. Then the researcher detected the
culturally-bound elements and compared them with those subtitled into
English. Finally the subtitle translation strategies were identified and the most
72
frequent was studied to find if it had conveyed the intended meaning. The
findings showed that the most frequent translation strategies used were the
paraphrasing strategy and the substitution strategy; other strategies were used
but not so frequent.
Suleiman (2010) investigated the obstacles that Jordanian graduate
students majoring in English language face when translating cultural
expressions. The researcher designed a 40 question translation test and it was
submitted to respondents of which 40 were collected. The second instrument
was informal open ended interviews; she interviewed four experienced
teachers of translation and five M.A. students whose major is English
language and literature. The results of the study showed that graduate students
face different kinds of difficulties when translating culturally bound
expressions. These difficulties are mostly related to:
1. Unfamiliarity with cultural expressions.
2. Achieving the equivalence in the second language.
3. Ambiguity of some cultural expressions.
The study also revealed that lack of cultural interaction with native
speakers, lack of courses that are revealed to culture, poor researching skills
and lack of knowledge of the proper use of translation techniques might stand
behind these difficulties.
Dweik and Abu Shakra (2011) investigated the problems in translating
collocation in religious texts from Arabic into English. The study aimed to
explore the problems students faced in translating specific lexical and
semantic collocations in three religious texts, namely, the Holy Quran, the
Hadith and the Bible. The sample of the study consisted of 35 M.A. translation
students enrolled in three different public and private Jordanian universities.
The method used in the research consisted of a translation test that comprised
45 relatively short sentences of contextual collocations selected from the
above-mentioned three religious texts and divided as 15 collocations per text.
Students were required to translate these collocations from Arabic into
English. The findings showed that students did not realize the disparities
between Arabic concepts and beliefs and Western ones, and should always
avoid literal translation by taking the context into consideration. The results
also revealed that translators encountered difficulties in lexical and semantic
collocations.
73
Method
Population and Sample of the Study
The population of this study consisted of graduate and undergraduate students
who were enrolled in the English language programs during the academic year
2012/2013 in Jordanian universities. A sample of 40 graduate students and 40
under graduate students was selected from Jordanian universities based on
availability.
The students’ general background included social data such as gender, age,
nationality, number of years they have worked in translation, and the number
of years spent in English speaking countries is illustrated in Table 1.
Table 1
Distribution of the participants' demographic and social data
Variables
Gender
Total
Male
Female
Age
20-24
12
26
38
25-29
10
18
28
30-34
0
6
6
35 and above
8
0
8
Educational
Level
B.A.
14
26
40
M.A.
16
24
40
Transl
ation
Exper
ience
None
20
38
58
1-5
4
8
12
More than 5
6
4
10
Period of
Living in an
English
Speaking
Country
None
20
42
62
1-5
10
4
14
More than 5
0
4
4
Nationality
Jordanian
30
40
70
Non-
Jordanian
2
8
10
74
Instruments of the Study
The researchers used one instrument, a translation test which comprised 10
cultural expressions taken from the original transcripts of different scenes of
three American movies namely, “Scent of a Woman”, “Erin Brockovich” and
“Casino”. The participants were asked to fill out the demographic data, and to
subtitle the highlighted cultural expressions in the translation test from English
into Arabic. The criteria for test making were:
a) Linguistic correctness
b) Cultural correctness
c) And finally the Juries' acceptance of the rendered translation.
Data Analysis
One instrument was used to collect data for this study, a translation test. In the
translation test, participants were asked to translate 10 cultural expressions.
The total score for the translation test was 60 marks:
1. Correct answer was given two points. The correct answer was considered
so if the subtitle of the given highlighted cultural expression was rendered
correctly.
2. The accepted subtitle that had some linguistic error that did not change the
meaning was given one point each.
3. If the participant failed in giving the suitable subtitle or committed
unaccepted linguistic errors the answer was given zero point.
The results of the translation test were tabulated using frequencies and
percentages followed by describing the cultural expression with their model
answer subtitles and the analyses of the original subtitles and the participant's
translation test results.
Results
Results of the participant's performance in the translation test are presented in
Table 2. In order to answer the question of the study, each item is discussed
separately to show the kind of difficulties and the results of participants and
examples of the correct, acceptable, and the wrong subtitles provided by them.
These answers were compared with the model subtitles that were confirmed
by the panel of experts and jury (See Appendix B). As shown in Table 2, items
2, 3 and 10 have the highest No Answer occurrence with the percentages
27.5%, 12.5% and 12.5% respectively.
75
Table 2
Students' subtitling performance in the translation test
Item
No.
Correct Answer
2 points
Acceptable
Answer
1 point
Wrong Answer
Zero
No Answer
Freq.
%
Freq.
%
Freq.
%
Freq.
%
1
26
32.5%
2
2.5%
50
62.5%
2
2.5%
7
20
25%
10
12.5%
46
57.5%
4
5%
8
14
17.5%
18
22.5%
44
55%
4
5%
2
14
17.5%
10
12.5%
34
42.5%
22
27.5%
9
34
42.5%
8
10%
34
42.5%
4
5%
5
14
17.5%
32
40%
28
35%
6
7.5%
3
24
30%
20
25%
26
32.5%
10
12.5%
6
22
27.5%
26
32.5%
26
32.5%
6
7.5%
4
44
55%
10
12.5%
24
30%
2
2.5%
10
32
40%
14
17.5%
24
30%
10
12.5%
Scenes from the 2002 American Movie 'Scent of a Woman'
Item One
HARRY: "How short are you?"
The model subtitle suggested by the jury panel was .
Results reported in Table 2 show that 26 participants, 32.5%, were
successful in subtitling this item correctly and in rendering the exact cultural
meaning as and " and 2 of them, 2.5%, provided acceptable
subtitling that would somehow provide the viewer with basic subtitle such as
. Nonetheless, 50 participants, 62.5%, provided wrong
subtitling because of using the literal translation (word by word translation)
strategy as in these examples " and " and 2, 2.5%, did not
provide any answer at all. Such a failure in rendering this item could be a
result of the unfamiliarity of translation strategies and the appropriate
manipulation of these strategies.
Item Two
ACE: "Who could resist? Anywhere else in the country, I was a bookie, a
gambler, always lookin' over my shoulder"
The model subtitle suggested by the jury panel was
.
Table 2 shows that 20 participants, 25%, were successful in subtitling this
item correctly and in rendering the exact cultural meaning as in, "
" and ". Also, 10 participants, 12.5%, provided acceptable
76
subtitling that would somehow provide the viewer with basic subtitle such as
" " and "". Yet, 46 participants, 57.5%, provided
wrong subtitling such as "" and "" and 4, 5%, did not
render this item. Such a result could be due to the participants' unawareness of
the metaphorical and cultural nature of the item. As a result, they rendered it
literally.
Item Three
DETECTIVE JOHNSON: "You know, he's gotta realize everything can't be a
home run that he does"
The model subtitle suggested by the jury panel was
.
Table 2 shows that 14 participants, 17.5%, were successful in subtitling
this item correctly, rendering the exact cultural meaning as in,
and " ". In addition, 18, 22.5%,
provided acceptable subtitling that would somehow provide the viewer with
basic subtitle such as
" and "
". On the other hand, 44 participants, 55%, provided wrong subtitling such
as "" and and 4 of
them, 5%, did not answer this item. This result could be due to the
participants' lack of researching skills which is a reason of not being able to
translate the item properly. Also, it could be due to the participants’ use of
paraphrasing technique in translation.
Item Four
FRANK SLADE: "even with students Aid plus the folks back home hustling
the corn nuts?"
The model subtitle suggested by the jury panel was
.
Table 2 shows that 14 participants, 17.5%, were successful in subtitling
this item correctly and in rendering the exact cultural meaning as in "
and 10 of them, 12.5%, provided acceptable subtitling
that would somehow provide the viewer with basic subtitle like "
". On the other hand, 34 participants, 42.5%, provided wrong
subtitling and failed to use reliable resources to extract the correct cultural
equivalent, such as
" and "
and 22 of them, 27.5%, did not provide any translation to this item. This result
can be explained due to the fact that they were not able to identify the
metaphorical nature of the item due to the disparity between the two
languages. Thus, they either rendered the item literally or left it without
translating it.
77
Item Five
GINGER: "I'm going to go powder my nose"
The model subtitle suggested by the jury panel was ""
Table 2 shows that 34 participants, 42.5%, were successful in subtitling
this item correctly and in rendering the exact cultural meaning as in, "
and "" and 8, 10%, provided acceptable subtitling
that would somehow provide the viewer with basic subtitle but it seems that
there was some shift in formality, such as in,
and "". Nonetheless, 34 participants, 42.5%, provided wrong
subtitling such as " " and " " and 4, 5%, left
the item unanswered. This result could be explained due to the participants’
manipulation of guessing the meaning of the item due to the lack of cultural
awareness.
Item Six
ERIN: "They took some bone from my hip and put it in my neck. I didn't
have insurance, so I'm about seventeen thousand in debt right now"
The model subtitle suggested by the jury panel was "".
Table 2 shows that 14 participants, 17.5%, were successful in subtitling
this item correctly and in rendering the exact cultural meaning as in
" and "".Similarly, 32 participants,
40%, provided acceptable subtitling that would somehow provide the viewer
with basic subtitle such as
" and ".
However, 28 participants, 35%, provided wrong subtitling which showed a lot
of cultural influence and using machine translation, such a result was
expected and and 6
of them, 7.5%, left the item unanswered.
Item Seven
GEORGE: "He's good-cop, bad copping us. He knows I'm Old guard. You're
fringe. He's going to bear down on me, soft soap you. Did he try to soft soap
you?"
The model subtitle suggested by the jury panel was"
".
As Table 2 shows, 24 participants, 30%, were successful in subtitling this
item correctly and in rendering the exact cultural meaning as in
" and ". In addition, Only 20 participants,
25%, provided acceptable subtitling that would somehow provide the viewer
with basic subtitle such as
" and " ". However, 26
participants, 32.5%, provided wrong subtitling such as "",
"" and "" and 10 of them, 12.5%, did not render
the item. Such a result could be due to lexical and semantic incompetency.
78
Item Eight
ERIN: "First of all, don't talk baby talk to your wife in front of me."
The model subtitle suggested by the jury panel was ".
Table 2 shows that 22 participants, 27.5%, were successful in subtitling
this item corectly and in rendering the exact cultural meaning as in "
" and " and 26, 32.5%, provided
acceptable subtitling that would somehow provide the viewer with basic
subtitle such as
" and " ". In contrast, 26
participants, 32.5%, provided wrong subtitling such as
and " " and 6, 7.5%, left the item
unanswered. Such a result can be explained in light of the use of literal
translation due to their unawareness of the basic translation techniques.
Item Nine
CHARLIE: "Hello. I don't know, Mrs. Rossi – I got the feeling I screwed up."
The model subtitle suggested by the jury panel was " ".
Table 2 shows that 44 participants, 55%, were successful in subtitling this
item correctly and in rendering the exact cultural meaning as ""
and "" and 10 participants, 12.5%, provided acceptable subtitling that
would somehow provide the viewer with basic subtitle such as "
" and " ". Yet, 24 participants, 30 %, provided wrong
subtitling by trying to guess the meaning such as "" and "".
Also, 2 of them, 2.5%, did not answer this item.
Item Ten
ACE: "I mean, without us, these guys, they'd still be shovellin' mule shit"
The model subtitle suggested by the jury panel was "
.
Table 2 shows that 32 participants, 40%, were successful in subtitling this
item correctly and in rendering the exact cultural meaning as in, "
" and " " and 14, 17.5%, provided
acceptable subtitling that would somehow provide the viewer with basic
subtitle such as
" and "". Meanwhile, 24 of them, 30%,
provided wrong subtitling such as " " and " "
and 10, 12.5%, left the item unanswered.
Discussion
Results related to the problems that the translators encountered in their
subtitling of cultural expressions indicated that most of the participants found
it difficult to render the cultural Arabic equivalent of the cultural expressions
used in the translation test many of them were not able to identify these
expressions since they are associated with the particular language and
79
therefore they translated them literally. The results agree with Newmark
(1988) who implies that where there is a cultural focus there is a translation
problem, he also adds that most cultural expressions are not easy to detect,
since they are associated with a particular language and cannot be literally
translated. The results agree with Ayoub (1994) who implies that idiomatic
expressions are problematic to translators because the context where they
occur is very important for determining their intended meanings. Also, it is in
line with Dweik & Abu Shakra (2011) who found that students did not realize
the disparities between Arabic concepts and beliefs and Western ones, and
should always avoid literal translation by taking the context into consideration.
The results also revealed that translators encountered difficulties in lexical and
semantic collocations.
Furthermore Arabic English dictionaries such as Al-Mawrid, Atlas, etc…
do not render the meaning contextually, instead such dictionaries give a list of
meanings in isolation. This result is in line with Olk (2003) who maintains that
the problem about the students’ approach is the total reliance on the bilingual
dictionary to determine what German readers would probably know.
The results also indicated inter-lingual interference among the participants
who were sometimes using the system of the TL in their subtitling to the
cultural expressions in the translation test. The results agree with Dweik
(2000) who identified inter-lingual interference which occurs when linguistic
and cultural features of the native language are transferred into the system of
the target language.
The results also indicated that lack of researching skills is a reason behind
not being able to get the needed information about an expression. This result
agrees with Williams and Throne (1999) and Suleiman (2010). Williams and
Throne (1999) discovered that the students lack knowledge in using research
tools. Thus, the researchers gave the students a two-day intensive induction
course. As a result students developed their research skills. Additionally,
Suleiman (2010) found that poor researching skills, lack of cultural interaction
with native speakers, lack of courses that focus on culture and lack of
knowledge in the proper use of translation techniques might stand behind the
difficulties that translators encounter.
Conclusions
The data obtained by means of the translation test indicated that translators
encountered many problems while translating cultural expressions such as the
translators’ inability to use the appropriate translation techniques in subtitling,
literal translation and linguistic and cultural interference which resulted in
mistranslation and poor performance. In addition, results showed that:
- Most of the participants found it difficult to render the cultural Arabic
equivalent of the cultural expressions. Many of them were not able to
80
identify these expressions since they are associated with the particular
language and therefore they translated them literally.
- Arabic English dictionaries such as Al-Mawrid and Atlas do not render
the meaning contextually. Instead, such dictionaries give a list of
meanings in isolation.
- Lack of researching skills is a reason behind not being able to get the
needed information about an expression.
- The implementation of different translation theories and education
theories in the various translation teaching institutes’ class rooms for
translators is preferred, in order that translators be aware of different
styles and abide by the most suitable to the written or spoken language.
References
Al-Mawrid a modern English – Arabic dictionary (35th ed.). (2001). Lebanon:
Dar El-Ilm Lil-Malayen.
Atlas encyclopedic English – Arabic dictionary (1st ed.). (2002). Egypt: Atlas
Publishing House.
Ayoub, Y. (1994). Some linguistic and cultural problems in translating
idiomatic expressions from Arabic into English and vice versa.
(Unpublished master's thesis). Yarmouk University: Irbid, Jordan.
Dweik, B. (2000). Bilingualism and the problem of linguistic and cultural
interference. In L. Al-harbi & H. Azar (Eds.), Arabic language and
culture in borderless world (pp.224-237). Kuwait University: Kuwait.
Dweik, B., & Abu Shakra, M. (2011). Problems in translating collocation in
religious texts from Arabic into English. The Linguistics Journal, 5(1),
5-41.
Gottlieb, H.(1998). Subtitling. In M. Baker & K. Malmkjaer (Eds.), Routledge
encyclopedia of translation studies (pp.244-248). New York: Routledge.
Lomheim, S. (1998). The writing on the screen – subtitling of television films:
Lomheim’s translation. (Unpublished Master’s thesis). Universitetet I
Stavanger: Norway.
Merriam-Webster's collegiate dictionary (10th ed.). (1993). Springfield, MA:
Merriam-Webster.
Newmark, P. (1988). A textbook of translation. London: Longman.
Olk, H. (2003). Cultural knowledge in translation. ELT Journal, 57(2), 167-
174.
Samaker, S. (2010). Translation of extra linguistic culture-bound elements in
Persian movies subtitled into English: A case study of 'the lizard'.
(Unpublished Master's thesis). University of Isfahan: Iran.
Suleiman, M. (2010). Difficulties that Jordanian graduate students majoring
in the English language face when translating cultural expressions.
(Unpublished Master's thesis). Middle East University: Amman, Jordan.
Williams, H., & Thorne, D.(2000). The value of teletext subtitling as a
medium for language learning. PERGAMON, 28(2000), 217-228.
81
Appendix A
Translation Test
Dear participants,
I am Saleh Al Abwaini an M.A. student in the department of English
Language and Literature at the Middle East University (MEU) Amman /
Jordan. I am doing my M.A. thesis on "Problems that Translators Face
When They Subtitle Cultural expressions from English into Arabic".
You are kindly requested to take part in translating the highlighted English
cultural expressions in the attached test. I would like to thank you in advance
for participating in the test.
The test includes 10 cultural-bound expressions, taken from three original
transcripts of three American movies namely, "Scent of a Woman", "Erin
Brockovich" and "Casino".
Best Regards,
Saleh Majed Al Abwaini
Email: salehabwaini_salti@yahoo.com
82
Translation Test
Dear participant
This test consists of two sections. The first section elicits demographic data
such as age, gender, and nationality. The second section is a translation test
which consists of 10 cultural expressions selected from three American
movies namely, "Scent of a Woman", "Erin Brockovich" and "Casino". You're
kindly requested to fill in the first section by putting an ( X ) next to your
chosen answer, And to translate in the second section the highlighted cultural
expressions from English into Arabic
Thank you so much for your cooperation,
The researchers.
Section 1
Demographic Data
Education level:
B.A. ( ) M.A. ( ) Other ( ) specify
_______________
University affiliation:
MEU ( ) Other ( ) specify
__________________________________
Number of years you have worked in translation:
None ( ) 1-5 ( ) More than 5 ( )
Number of years you have spent in a country where English is the first
language:
None ( ) 1-5 ( ) More than 5 ( )
Age:
20-24 ( ) 25-29 ( ) 30-34 ( ) 35 and above ( )
Nationality:
Jordanian ( ) Non-Jordanian ( )
Gender :
Male ( ) Female ( )
83
Section 2
Scenes from the 2002 American Movie 'Scent of a Woman'
1- HARRY: "How short are you?"
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2- FRANK SLADE: "even with students Aid plus the folks back home
hustling the corn nuts?"
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3- "GEORGE: "He's good-cop, bad copping us. He knows I'm Old guard.
You're fringe. He's going to bear down on me, soft soap you. Did he
try to soft soap you?".
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4- CHARLIE: "Hello. I don't know, Mrs. Rossi – I got the feeling I
screwed up
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Scenes from the 2000 American Movie 'Erin Brockovich'
1- ERIN: "They took some bone from my hip and put it in my neck.
I didn't have insurance, so I'm about seventeen thousand in debt right
now"
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2- ERIN: "First of all, don't talk baby talk to your wife in front of
me."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Scenes from the 1995 American Movie 'Casino'
1- ACE: "Who could resist? Anywhere else in the country, I was a
bookie, a gambler, always lookin' over my shoulder"
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2- DETECTIVE JOHNSON: "You know, he's gotta realize everything
can't be a home run that he does"
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3- GINGER: "I'm going to go powder my nose"
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4- ACE: " I mean, without us, these guys, they'd still be shovellin'
mule shit"
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
84
Appendix B: The model subtitle confirmed by the panel of experts and
jury
'Scent of a Women'
'Erin Brockovich'
'Casino' .
. . .
Note on Contributor
Saleh Majed Al Abwaini teaches at the Middle East University, Amman,
Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. In 2013, he received his MA in English
Language and his research interests focus on translation, sociolinguistics and
literature. Email: salehabwaini_salti@yahoo.com.
85
An Investigation into Translation of English Adverbs into
Persian
Shirin Khodadadi Shahivand
Sepehr Polymer Sepahan Complex, Esfahan, Iran
Abstract
This paper tries to analyze the problems arising in translation of English
adverbs to Persian. For this purpose, the researcher introduces all kinds of
English and Persian adverbs for familiarity with them and then asks some
translation students to translate some sentences (they are free to use a
dictionary). Two English translation teachers were the raters and sentences
were studied based on their translation. Correct, false translation and omission
of the sentence were calculated for each adverb. The results of this research
showed that the main problem in translating of the English adverbs is
unfamiliarity with them.
Keywords: Translation, Source language, Target Language, Parts of speech,
English adverbs, Persian adverbs
Introduction
Nowadays, our world is known as a global village, communication is more
important than before. The life of every person is related to people in other
countries and communication is not possible without knowing their language.
Translation is the replacement of textual material in one language (SL) by
equivalent textual material in another language (TL) (Catford 1965, p.1).
Millions of people around the world try to learn a foreign language. They
may not grow up in a bilingual community and suffer serious shortcomings of
current curricula of language teaching, and experience radically different
teaching methods, especially those who learn a foreign language only when
they go to high school. If both languages are similar, language learners may
have fewer problems but the situation becomes confusing, and even
embarrassing, when the two languages are completely different in alphabet,
sound system, and structure, like English and Persian. So, translation is needed
for communication to take place. Translation requires knowledge of the source
and target language and culture. This includes all aspects of language, such as
word and grammar (Mirhasani, 2000).
Adverbs are part of speech that can be added to a verb to modify its
meaning. Usually, an adverb tells you when, where, how, in what manner or to
what extent an action is performed. Very many adverbs end in “...ly” -
particularly those that are used to express how an action is performed.
86
Adverbs are such important parts in the sentence or clause that knowing them
is important to understand the concept of the text.
One of the most frequent mistakes in translations, experienced mostly by
young and inexperienced translators, is wrongly translating or omitting
adverbs as a result of unfamiliarity with English adverbs. Often a mistake in
the translation of one word can change the meaning of the whole sentence and
the mistranslation of a sentence can change the meaning of a part of the text.
A major challenge of English adverbs translation to Persian is
unfamiliarity. In the Iranian school, English is taught more in the field of
grammar and teachers do not teach translation. There are some difficulties in
the translation of English adverbs which are important parts of a sentence and
wrong translation can lead to the mistranslation of sentences. The adverbs
which are the subject of this study are so limited in the books taught in the
school; therefore, children are unfamiliar with most kinds of adverbs. When
they grow up and enter the university in the field of translation studies, they
cannot recognize kinds of adverb or they cannot translate them correctly.
Purpose of the Study
This article reports a study of the translation of English adverbs to Persian.
Some recommendations for the correct translation of English adverbs to
Persian are made. This study is directed based on the following research
questions:
1. What types of errors in the use of adverbs are more likely to be made by
English translation students?
2. Does learning affect the translation of English adverbs?
Theoretical framework of Study
Kinds of Adverb
The usual form pertaining to adjectives or adverbs is called the positive.
Formally, adverbs in English are inflected in terms of comparison, just like
adjectives. The comparative and superlative forms of some (especially single-
syllable) adverbs that do not end in -ly are generated by adding -er and -est (he
went faster; He jumps highest). Others, especially those ending -ly, are
periphrastically compared by the use of more or most (She ran more quickly) -
- while some accept both forms, e.g. oftener and more often are both correct.
Adverbs also take comparisons with as ... as, less, and least. Not all adverbs
are comparable; for example in the sentence He wore red yesterday, it does
not make sense to speak of “more yesterday” or “most yesterday”.
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According to Mirhasani (2000), adverbs in English include words, phrases,
and clauses that modify a verb, an adjective, another adverb, a determiner, a
preposition, and noun phrases. Frank (1993, p.141) believes:
It has been customary to include the most disparate elements among the
adverbs, frequently those that cannot be put into any part of speech
classification. Adverbs range in meaning from words having a strong
lexical content …. To those that are used merely for emphasis. They range
in function from close to lose modifiers of the verb …., single words,
prepositional phrases or clauses, to lose modifiers of the entire sentence.
Therefore, it is difficult to draw a clear-cut line between adverbs and other part
of speech. There are a large number of problems connected with the use of
adverbs; their similarities, and the position of adverbs because they are the
most mobile elements, and they should be discussed or studied in a manner
that covers their form, function, and position. Frank also believes that adverbs
are a complicated group of words, phrases and clauses which vary in form and
distribution (Mirhasani, 2000).
English adverb
There are eleven kinds of adverbs in English that are listed below:
1. Adverbs of certainty express how certain or sure we feel about an action or
event. Adverbs of certainty go before the main verb but after the verb “to
be”, with other auxiliary verb, these adverbs go between the auxiliary and
the main verb, sometimes these adverbs can be placed at the beginning of
the sentence. Certainly, definitely, probably, undoubtedly and surely are
adverbs of certainty.
2. Relative adverbs can be used to join sentences or clauses. They replace the
more formal structure of preposition + which in a relative clause. There are
three relative adverbs: where, when, why. “That's the restaurant where we
met for the first time” and “I remember the day when we first met” are
examples of this adverb.
3. Interrogative adverbs are usually placed at the beginning of a question.
They are why, where, how and when.
4. Viewpoint and Commenting adverbs tell us about the speaker’s viewpoint
or opinion about an action, or make some comment on the action. These
adverbs are placed at the beginning of the sentence and are separated from
the rest of the sentence by a comma. Commenting is very similar to
viewpoint adverbs, and often the same words, but they go in a different
position -- after the verb to be and before the main verb. These adverbs are
shown as follows: Frankly, theoretically, honestly, seriously,
confidentially, personally, surprisingly, ideally, economically, officially,
obviously, clearly, surely, undoubtedly.
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5. Conjunctive (connecting) adverbs are often used to show the relationship
between the ideas expressed in a clause and the ideas expressed in a
preceding clause, sentence or paragraph. The following are examples
ofconnecting adverbs:. Accordingly, additionally, also, besides,
comparatively, consequently, conversely, finally, further, furthermore,
elsewhere, equally, hence, henceforth, however, in addition, in
comparison, in contrast, indeed, instead, likewise, meanwhile, moreover,
namely, nevertheless, next, nonetheless, now, otherwise, rather, similarly,
still, subsequently, then, thereafter, therefore, thus, yet. For instance:
“Alice is a clever girl indeed”, “The chicken was baking in the oven.
Meanwhile, I peeled the potatoes.”
6. Comparative adverbs in general, comparative and superlative forms of
adverbs are the same as for adjectives: add -er or -est to short adverbs. For
example: “Lance runs fast but Matt runs faster” or “I feel worse than ever
now”.
7. Adverbs of degree tell us about the intensity or degree of an action, an
adjective or another adverb. These are usually placed before the adjective
or adverb they are modifying or before the main verb. Common adverbs of
degree are: Almost, nearly, quite, just, too, enough, hardly, scarcely,
completely, very, extremely.
8. Adverbs of time tell us when an action happened. They usually are placed
at the end of the sentence but some of them can be put in other positions to
give a different emphasis. Today, yesterday, later, now, last year, all day,
not long, for a while, since last year, sometimes, frequently, never, often,
yearly are adverbs of time.
9. Adverbs of place tell us where something happens. They are usually placed
after the main verb or after the object. Everywhere, away, up, down,
around, out, back, in, nearby, outside are some adverbs of place.
10. Adverbs of manner tell us how something happens. They are usually
placed after the main verb or after the object. You can see them as follows:
well, rapidly, slowly, quickly, softly, loudly, aggressively, loudly to attract
her attention, beautifully, greedily.
11. Adverbs of frequencyshow how often an action is performed. Adverbs of
frequency are often used with the present simple because they indicate
repeated or routine activities. They are placed before the main verb, after a
form of to be and some of them can go at the beginning of a sentence:
Always, constantly, nearly always, almost always, usually, generally,
normally, regularly, often, frequently, sometimes, periodically,
occasionally, now and then, once in a while, rarely, seldom, infrequently,
hardly ever, scarcely ever, almost never, never.
Persian adverbs
Adverbs are not formally distinct in Persian, but certain words function as
adverbs and correspond in use to English adverbs. Some nouns or words
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which are used as nouns, nouns combined with prepositions, and adjectives
can be used as adverbs. All of the adverbs, no matter which part of speech
they are, modify verbs, prepositions and so on. Persian adverbs are classified
in the same manner as the English ones to make the comparison easier, and
therefore, the difference can be observed better and more clearly. Adverbs
usually precede the words, phrases, or clauses they modify but are used in
other positions if they do not sound unnatural or strange (Mirhasani, 2000).
There are two Persian adverb structures:
1. Simple: these are not more than one word and cannot separate to
meaningful parts. They appear before what they modify and some of them
in initial position.
2. Compound: these include some meaningful parts. They are placed at the
beginning or end of the sentence. They are used in the same position as the
simple adverbs.
Methodology
Participants
The researcher asked two teachers of English translation at Feizoleslam non-
governmental institute of higher education to translate the samples.. Jahani
graduated with an M.A in translation studies from Islamic Azad University,
Khorasgan branch and Mr. Jahansepas graduated with an M.A in translation
studies from Isfahan University.
The researcher prepared a pre- and post-test including 33 sentences which
comprise three sentences for every kind of English adverb. These sentences
had been chosen from some English grammar books.
The participants were 33 students studying in semester four of translation
studies at Feizoleslam non-governmental institute of higher education. They
were between the ages of 19 and 26 and all of them were female.
Data Collection and Analysis Procedures
The researcher asked participants to translate 33 samples (including all kinds
of adverbs). After the treatment, they were again asked to translate the
sentences. Two English teachers were selected as raters and the researcher
used their translations a source for investigation. The translations of students
were collected before and after treatment.
The researcher studied all the translations of the 33 students based on the
translations of the two raters to identify correct, omitted or false translations.
Then the eleven kinds of adverbs were taught to the students and they were
asked to use dictionary during the translation of new test.
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Results
Pre-testing
Table 1 shows the results of the pre-test for eleven kinds of adverb before the
treatment. The results showed that 5.35% of the adverbs in the texts were
omitted, and 11.9% of the adverbs were mistranslated, meaning that the
translation of the adverb lacked the correct function that it had in the source
language.
Table 1
Pre-test results for eleven kinds of adverbs
Kind of adverb
Correct
False
Omitted
Adverb of certainty
83.33
13.33
3.34
Comparative adverb
89.99
3.35
6.66
Adverbs of conjunction
64.44
21.12
14.44
Adverbs of degree
67.77
12.24
19.99
Adverbs of frequency
88.88
11.1
0.02
Interrogative adverbs
98.88
1.11
0.01
Adverbs of manner
75.55
21.1
3.35
Adverbs of place
79.99
17.77
2.24
Relative adverbs
97.77
1.12
1.11
Viewpoint adverbs
65.55
6.68
27.77
Adverbs of time
97.77
1.12
1.11
Post-testing
Table 2 shows the results of the post-test for eleven kinds of adverb after the
treatment. The results of post-testing show that the percentage of correct
translations of adverbs has increased. This shows that learning was effective
and they could translate correctly after they were taught adverbs and advised
to use a dictionary.
Table 2
Post-test results for eleven kinds of adverbs
Kind of adverb
Correct
False
Omitted
Adverb of certainty
90.72
4.85
4.43
Comparative adverb
83.5
11.3
5.2
Adverbs of conjunction
95.47
1.2
3.33
Adverbs of degree
84.86
5.47
9.67
Adverbs of frequency
95.3
0
4.7
Interrogative adverbs
98.8
0
1.2
91
Adverbs of manner
87
1
12
Adverbs of place
87
10
3
Relative adverbs
98
0
2
Viewpoint adverbs
77
17
6
Adverbs of time
100
0
0
Conclusion
The study on adverbs revealed that the main problem of the students was
related to unfamiliarity with the English adverbs. It means that those kinds of
adverbs which were not taught to students in previous years are translated
wrongly or the students omit them more than other adverbs. The study also
showed that it is effective for students to learn adverbs with the help of a
dictionary because the amount of false or omitted translations decreased. The
students could translate better than before learning.
The interesting point is, nearly all the adverbs learned by the translators in
high school were translated correctly and were not omitted; however they did
not learn the kind of adverb that they encountered in the sentences. But in
other cases that required more attention and research, adverbs were translated
into unknown words or they were wrongly omitted. Some adverbs like frankly
are unfamiliar to the students and students did not try to use dictionary, so they
translated this adverb wrongly. Most of the students in this study translated
frankly to the name of a person (Franky). To avoid mistake, translators need to
understand what word is adverb and then recognize the kind of adverb.
Sometimes, incorrect translation is due to carelessness. Our advice for
beginner translators is introducing all kinds of adverbs to students and using a
dictionary during translation.
References
Catford, J. C. (1965). A linguistic theory of translation. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Frank, M. (1993). Modern English. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall Regents
Mirhassani, S. A. (2000). A contrastive analysis of Persian and English
adverb. Tehran: Tarbiate Modaress University.
Note on Contributor
Shirn Khodadadi Shahivand is a translator at Sepehr Polymer Sepahan
Complex, Esfahan, Iran. Her research interests center on translation studies
that focus on the translatability of English into Persian and vice versa Email:
Khodadadi.shirin@gmail.com
92
The Fallacy of an Epistemic Break: a Case for Epistemic
Realism
Farid Ghaemi
Department of English, Karaj Branch, Islamic Azad University, Karaj, Iran)
Amin M. Mostajeran
Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran
Abstract
The profession of teaching and learning English has taken on new
connotations in the past century. One such connotation has been read into it by
those professionals and scholars who suspect an imperialistic hidden agenda.
In this article we are going to take a critical view of the notion of “an
epistemic break” from dependency on Western-oriented or center-based
knowledge systems, which, it is claimed, “the teaching of EIL requires if it is
to successfully meet the challenges of globalism.” It is indicated, through a
concise review of the relevant literature, that some of the breaks have already
taken place and that other breaks are undesirable and would prove
counterproductive and detrimental to the profession of ELT because they are
based on unrealistic views of EIL and SLA. Finally, we argue that, in order to
meet the challenges of globalization and to realize emancipatory educational
dreams, what is required is a more conciliatory and unifying approach, which
appears to be more realistic.
Keywords: epistemic break, knowledge system, EIL, ELT, SLA
What does epistemic break mean?
Paraphrasing Foucault, Kumaravadivelu (2012, p. 14) defines episteme as “a
set of relations that unite, at a given period, the discursive practices that give
rise to formalized knowledge systems”. Arguing that these knowledge systems
impose constraints on disciplinary discourse, he strives to build a case for an
epistemic break, which, in his words, “represents a thorough re-
conceptualization and a thorough reorganization of knowledge systems.” He
admits that this epistemic break may not enjoy universal applicability, and
makes no mention of the long-or short-term benefits of this
reconceptualization. However, he proposes five epistemic breaks: that with
the native speaker episteme, that from terminologies, that from Western
knowledge production, that from centre-based cultural competence, and that
from centre-based methods.
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A break with the native speaker episteme
The first episteme that he advocates a break from is “the native speaker” and
the corollaries, because it has taken “an all-encompassing hold on almost all
aspects of English language learning and teaching” (Kumaravadivelu, 2012, p.
15). Nevertheless, it appears that the concept of native speaker has long since
lost its dominance in English as an International Language (from now on EIL)
and Second Language Acquisition (SLA) practice.
It is not difficult to see that many scholars now prefer term “expert user”,
which refers to “a proficient speaker of the language, regardless of whether it
is their first language or not (Thornbury, 2006, p. 140). Others have gone so
far as to disclaim native speaker ownership of English as it is used in the 21st
century. Widdowson (2003, p. 43), for instance, builds a convincing case for
the fact that … how English develops in the world is no business whatever of
its native speakers in England, the United States, or anywhere else. They have
no say in the matter, no right to intervene or pass judgement. They are
irrelevant.
Even in the area of teaching, native speakers no longer enjoy the
monopoly they once used to hold. “It appears the glory once attached to the
NEST has faded and an increasing number of ELT experts assert that the ideal
teacher is no longer a category reserved for NESTs” (Medgyes, 2001, p. 440).
One reason is that the native speaking teacher hasn’t learnt the language in a
classroom context, which is where many learners learn English and therefore
“are not as well- positioned to teach it” (Thornbury, 2006, p. 141).
So, contrary to what Kumaravadivelu (2012) states, the concept of native
speaker hasn’t been “an enduring episteme in EIL”, since the concept of EIL
cannot capture the idea of a group of speakers having custody over it because
“to grant such custody of language is necessarily to arrest its development and
so undermine its international status” (Widdowson, 2003, p. 43). However,
this position has opened up a new pedagogical debate in the field, namely,
what English should be taught in the classroom, which is an issue that renders
the notion of “break” entirely impracticable because no alternative is proposed
for the norm from which a break is encouraged.
One of the major uses of EIL is for interdisciplinary and interdisciplinary
communication i.e. among academics and professionals involved in various
academic and professional disciplines. This automatically raises the question
of what is the norm that enhances intelligibility in such a wide world.
Widdowson (2003, p. 55) addresses the problem of norm and convincingly
argues that:
... English has spread to become international by the exploitation of the
resources of the virtual language and that this has resulted in two kinds of
development. One of them is primary and local and takes the form of
varieties which are dialect-like in that they serve the immediate everyday
social needs of a particular community. The other is secondary and global
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and takes the form of registers associated with particular domains of
institutional and professional use.
The crux of the matter is that registers develop within global communities of
professionals and do not rely on communities of those who use it to meet
every day needs. This is the type of English that has given English its current
status. The key point here is that although Widdowson (2003, p. 55) asserts
that these registers have their own norm and “no need of native speaker
custodians,” he does not appear to be clarifying where the norms come from.
Anderson (1994) also explores the concept of norm and its potential
usefulness in deciding on the variety of English to be taught in EIL. She
argues that it is necessary to distinguish the situation in the Outer Circle, i.e.
countries such as Ghana and Bangladesh where English is used as a second
language, from that in the Expanding Circle, i.e. countries such as China and
Japan where English is taught as a foreign language (Kachru, 1997).The
studies that she cites into the question of intelligibility bear witness to the fact
that “our understanding of the acceptable norm must be expanded”, since it
implies specifying new norms for new situations. She also argues that
“keeping the native standard in the Expanding Circle does not seem to present
problems” and goes on to say that in this circle the paradigm includes “not just
one but several native varieties” (Anderson, 1994, p. 402), which makes
perfect pedagogical sense because there is no way to predict what variety the
EIL learners will have to deal with outside the class.
The ambivalence that is probably felt at this point can be resolved by
considering the fact that, although the concept of native speaker has lost
dominance in EIL and ELT, it cannot necessarily lead to the conclusion that
English, or any other language for that matter, can survive and evolve without
the native speakers. The reasons are many and varied. To begin with, it is not
difficult to think of failed attempts at spreading Esperanto, which had no
native speakers and no culture since “a language with no native speakers is
something of a conundrum” (Rajagopolan, 2012, p. 383). To see the reason, it
is crucial to consider the concept of virtual language, the term Widdowson
(2003) uses. He believes that language does not spread as a fixed code, but as
a pool of resources for making meaning, which allow new combinations that
will serve specific purposes and which will be different from the conventional
code; new words are coined, new grammar rules are invented and so on. When
these new forms are adopted as conventions, language diversifies into
varieties. It appears to us that, while it is true that a community of native
speakers cannot dictate what new meanings will be created, they would still be
the community where all the resources for making new meanings exist. The
reason is self-evident: the communities of native speakers use the language for
a much wider variety of purposes: it is the main communication tool in
everyday life, where feelings are expressed, relationships are formed, deals are
made and so on. Outside these communities, English is normally (although it
does not have to be) used in a far more limited number of contexts, most of
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which reduce communication to a mere exchange of information usually only
for survival. Furthermore, if any of these communities create new resources,
they will not become one of the resources of that language unless they are
adopted by all the communities involved, including the native speaker
community. This means that it is simply impossible to break with the native
speaker communities, create new resources that originated from other
languages, and call them the resources of the English (virtual) language. This
kind of change will create what is commonly known as Creole English, which
is of no international use.
Besides, as the word “international” implies, all nations, including English
speaking communities, are considered users of this virtual language or
registers, which are “patterns of the instantiation of the overall system
associated with a given type of context” (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004, p.
27). As can be seen from this definition, different contexts utilize the resources
that the system puts at their disposal. What follows is that these resources
cannot be created by contexts; they can only be used to meet situational
demands. Moreover, “ it is in these uses of the language as lingua franca that
the dynamism of international spread is to be found and as users of these
varieties, “all speakers of English, whether as a first, second or foreign
language are in the same Expanding Circle” (Widdowson, 2003, p. 55,
emphasis added).
Another fact that makes the notion of a break hard to justify is that the
EFL context is not taken into account. English is still a popular foreign
language, which is taken up for a much wider variety of purposes: as well as
extrinsic motivations such as emigration to English-speaking countries,
business correspondence and many others, intrinsic motivations such as the
love of the culture, literature, or even the sound of the language can still be
found among learners of EFL. Right or wrong, it seems that choice must come
first.
To conclude this part, EIL implies interdependence of communities and by
its very complicated nature it calls for more insightful and accommodating and
all-inclusive perspectives than a mere break. As Jenkins (2006, p. 173) argues:
“teachers and their learners, it is widely agreed, need to learn not (a variety of)
English, but about Englishes, their similarities and differences, issues involved
in intelligibility, the strong link between language and identity and so on.”
An Epistemic Break from Terminologies
One aspect of the epistemic break is independence from terminologies, which
Kumaravadivelu (2012) believes “have mainly contributed to the preservation
of the native speaker episteme” (p. 16). Among the neatly abbreviated labels
he disparages are WE (World English), ELF (English as Lingua Franca) and
EIL (English as an International Language). These raise a number of
questions.
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As he rightly points out: “there is no consensus in the field about any of
these labels”, which means they are open to interpretations and take on
different connotations. The question is how ambiguous and interpretable terms
can “dictate”, and how “we can become prisoners of labels” whose boundaries
are fluid. The fact that there is little consensus on the definition of these terms
means that they can easily be exploited to meet situational needs.
What is even more confusing is the solution Kumaravadivelu (2012)
offers: “Getting outside it (the picture that held us captive), in the context of
EIL, means not just changing the terms of the conversation but changing the
terms of the conduct of knowledge production” (p. 16). He does not specify
how the new terms will not add t “the terminological knots.” How can it be
guaranteed that these new terms will carry only one meaning, and will not
contribute to the preservation of another particular episteme?
Another objection Kumaravadivelu (2012) makes to “our fascination with
the name game” is that it made little or no contribution to “the central mission
of improving English language learning and teaching” (p.16).The very word
“improvement” brings up the question of norm which was discussed above. If
a skill is to improve, it must be moving towards an ideal or a model that is
supposed to possess the qualities that one is striving to achieve. Furthermore,
terms are not meant to make improvements: they are merely supposed to
facilitate communication among the scholars and practitioners, who coin and
exploit terms that will suit their own purposes.
It appears, therefore, that the so-called dependency on terminologies
cannot be a serious concern. Furthermore, as Rajagopalan (2012, p. 374)
argues, names do matter because “the appellation we choose often carries with
it associations and implications that have major consequences for the way we
approach the very phenomenon.” So, it can easily be seen that these names
and labels are not meant to impose a strait jacket on the way thinking
develops; rather they capture and encourage the variety that the field enjoys,
which appears to be more emancipating than imprisoning. If some are
imprisoned by these terms, it is their choice rather than an imposition from the
outside.
Breaking Dependency from Western Knowledge Production
Kumaravadivelu (2012, p. 17) also calls for “a reconceptualization of research
itself” since “the world view that characterizes most part of the studies in
second language acquisition has for long been premised upon notions such as
interlanguage, fossilization, acculturation, communicative competence,
intercultural competence, all of which are heavily tilted towards the episteme
of the native speaker.” Just a look at the definition of these terms in “An A-Z
of ELT” by Thornbury (2006) will make the statement sound somewhat
exaggerated. Take interlanguage for instance. . According to Thornbury (2006,
p. 109, emphasis added):
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Interlanguage is the term used to describe the grammatical system that a
learner creates in the course of learning another language. This
interlanguage is seen as an independent system in its own right and not
simply a degenerate form of the target language. It reflects the learner’s
evolving system of rules.
In a similar vein, White (2003) calls interlanguage “the proposal that L2
learners have internalized a mental grammar, a natural language system that
can be described in terms of linguistic rules and principles” (p. 19).
As is clear from these two definitions, interlanguage is not heavily tilted
towards the native speaker episteme; rather it is the learner’s developing
system that is under scrutiny and is treated independently from the target
language system.
As for fossilization, it is true that initially it carried negative connotations,
suggesting the learner’s interlanguage stops developing; however, as
Thornbury (2006, p. 86) points out “the concept of fossilization is viewed less
negatively because it is accepted that few if any second language learners
achieve native-like proficiency.” In fact, nowadays one never reads an article
or study in which native-like proficiency is set as the ultimate goal of language
learning.
Furthermore, a cursory glance at the SLA research in the past fifteen years
or so will show that researchers do not consider the native speaker as the only
criterion for L2 users. For instance, Cook (1999, 2005) proposes that a
bilingual is not the equivalent of two monolinguals in one brain and that an L2
user’s multi competence is more flexible than a monolingual native speaker,
and therefore, the norms of successful L2 users should be used. However, it is
essential to note that he does not propose a break from the native speaker and
believes that the native speaker is criterion against which the L2 user’s
language potential can be measured.
A quick look at the studies conducted in the past ten years will also
indicate that researchers in the field have been taking interest in a much wider
population and contexts of SLA. Ortega (2013) cites a number of studies
including those that cover a broad range of populations from heritage language
learners (Montrul, 2008; Valdes, 2005) to international adoptees (Fogel, 2012;
Hyltenstam, Bylund, Abrahamsson, &Park, 2009), and school-age minority
language learners (Ardasheva, Tretter, & Kinny, 2012).
Ortega (2013, p. 5) also discusses “the recent wave of empirical usage
based studies” that have given rise to a new methodology in SLA research.
She refers to innovation in developmental corpus analysis, dynamical systems
techniques for formally gauging variation-centered changes and computational
simulations.
Another sweeping wave that has reshaped SLA research is the
sociocultural/social constructivist approach to understanding second language
learning, which is characterized by the focus on the development of language
in a social setting and through social interaction. As Firth and Wagner (2007,
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p. 804) point out: “SLA research of the 1980s and 1990s was itself influenced
by this sociocultural turn – as witnessed by the steady increase in studies that
acknowledged, thematized and explored context and interaction.” Then, they
go on to discuss what has been happening in SLA research from 1997 to 2007:
Much SLA research that has been produced over the last decade bears
witness to a marked increase in the number of sociocultural and
contextual-interactional themes and concepts impacting upon SLA’s
research agenda….”An increasing number of researchers are thus
displaying a willingness to adopt emic perspective and explore and attempt
to develop cognitive social approaches to language learning.
These approaches, as they remind us throughout the article, are characterized
by the focus on use rather than on acquisition. Firth and Wagner (2007) also
talk about two major groups of researchers in the social-interactional domain:
The first group focuses on the classroom setting and other formal learning
environments and is centrally concerned with the theme of L2 learning-
though from an interactional perspective. … A second group to have
emerged over the last decade also deploys CA methodology and theory. In
this case the focuses are not so much on L2 learning, but more on trying to
understand and explicate the character of L2 and lingua franca interactions
or L2 use. (p. 805)
All this goes to show that SLA world view has not just been premised on
notions that “are heavily tilted towards the episteme of the native speaker”
(Kumaravadivelu, 2012, p. 17). But this is not his only objection; he calls for
two other major shifts, one of which will prove counterproductive and the
other will be of little use.
First, he believes that an epistemic break “requires a fundamental
reconceptualization of research itself” (Kumaravadivelu, 2012, p. 17). The
reason he presents is that “research is not innocent and… it occurs in a set of
political and social conditions” and that “most of the traditional disciplines are
grounded in cultural world views that are either antagonistic towards other
belief systems or have no methodology for dealing with other knowledge
systems” (p.17). What he does not clarify, though, is whether and how the new
re-conceptualized research will be innocent and politically impartial and how
this new system will benefit EIL.
The second requirement he calls for is “proactive research” that “involves
paying attention to the particularities of learning/teaching in periphery
countries” (Kumaravadivelu, 2012, p. 17). We agree that this proactive
research will be of particular local relevance and interest. However, it is highly
doubtful if this localized research will be of any global use. When dealing with
such a global phenomenon as EIL a more global approach is naturally more
appropriate.
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What is required therefore is not a break from current methods and
practices. Nor will re-conceptualization be of any use since it will end up
serving new political interests this time perhaps on a more local basis. Rather,
SLA needs to embrace a different world view which is now in existence: an
advocacy and participatory worldview, which is a position which rose in the
80s and 90s against post positivist assumptions. This view holds that “research
enquiry needs to be intertwined with politics and a political agenda”
(Creswell, 2009, p. 9). This view concerns itself with issues such as
empowerment, inequality, oppression, dominion and so on, which are issues
that have direct links to the sociopolitical aspects of EIL and SLA. Again, it is
our firm belief that this worldview will be of use if it is embraced globally,
which makes the idea of break decidedly self-defeating.
Another controversial issue in ELT, which also raises questions of power,
and dominion, is that of culture. One question that still fuels heated debates is
whether the culture of the target language should be taught in the language
classroom or the language can be taught independently from the culture of the
people who speak it. It appears that Kumaravadivelu (2012) advocates the
latter viewpoint, which is the rationale behind the next break he proposes.
Breaking Dependency on Center-based Cultural Competence
The first aberration i.e. denying the inextricable link between language and
culture, results in the second erroneous assumption that “the non-English
speaking world learns and uses English for communicational purposes and not
for cultural identity formation” (Kumaravadivelu, 2012, p. 19). He gives
examples of India where English is learnt “to meet educational and
institutional needs” and where it is kept “separate from their cultural beliefs
and practices.”
Having proposed a cultural break, he goes on to advocate cultural realism,
which … seeks the development of global cultural consciousness that results
not just in cultural literacy but also in cultural liberty. It requires willingness
and ability to learn from other cultures not just about them. Learning about
other cultures may lead to cultural literacy; it is learning from other cultures
that will lead to cultural liberty. (Emphasis in the original)
The reader cannot help noticing a contradiction here. What it boils down to
at this point is that one cannot learn from another culture if the language is
only used as a communicational tool, which is what Kumaravadivelu
advocates earlier on when he talks about Indians, Pakistanis and Turks: first,
he supports a culture-devoid English that is used to embody local values and
in the same breath he advocates learning from other cultures which will lead to
cultural liberty.
In our view, cultural liberty is what is badly needed is today’s world.
However, it cannot be achieved if a break happens and if EIL learners and
teachers insist on in Kumaravadivelu’s (2012) words “preserving and
protecting their own linguistic and cultural identities” (p. 20), for the simple
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reason that learning from other cultures should and will result in change in the
original identity. Therefore, enacting cultural liberty will involve in
dependency on all cultural resources and in creating more sources for learning
about other cultures on of which in an EIL context is textbooks.
Breaking the Dependency on Center-based Textbook industry
Having criticized the Western publishing industry for imposing particular
cultural knowledge on teachers and learners, Kumaravadivelu (2012) goes on
to state that “textbooks should reflect the lived experiences teachers and
students bring to the classroom because, after all, their experiences are shaped
by a broader social, cultural, economic and political environment in which
they grow up” (p. 21).
Again this raises the question of why? What is the point in repeating the
same experiences in the English classroom? This would mean depriving
students of learning from or at least about another culture, making cultural
liberty even more difficulty to accomplish. As Kramsch (1993) point out
knowing about a culture i.e. gaining cultural competence does not mean that
one has an obligation to behave in accordance with the conventions of that
culture. One of the advantages of learning another language, especially an
international one is broadening the learner’s horizons. Putting textbooks in the
control of local practitioners would not only mean a huge deprivation to the
learner, it would also provide local practitioners with yet another tool to
impose their own ideologies on the learners, although it appears that in ELT
this is too drastic a change and is doomed to failure. For instance, an analysis
by Kirkgöz and Ağçam (2011) of the cultural elements in 18 locally published
English textbooks used for Turkish primary schools following two major
curriculum innovations in ELT indicates that references to the source and
target cultures in textbooks published between 1997 and 2005 outnumber
international target cultural components. However, an analysis of textbooks
after 2005 shows a more balanced treatment of the target and local cultures.
This, in itself, demonstrates a failed attempt at breaking from other cultures,
probably because language learning, by its very nature, implies and involves
broadening cultural horizons as well.
Breaking the Dependency on center-based methods
Attractive as it sounds, the idea of post-method is not what it promises to be.
The aim here is not to write a critique of post-method, since there is an
abundance of criticism already out there. Suffice it to bear in mind that when
methods were devised, they were aimed to enable learners what they were
aspiring for: native-speaker competence. Now that goals have changed, for
better or for worse, and for whatever reason, they might appear to have lost
their usefulness. However, compelling teachers to forget methods would seem
as constraining as imposing a particular method and that is what post-method
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seems to be doing. After all, “methods are not dead, nor will they ever be”
(Bell, 2003, p. 334).What is needed is not a break, which would mean the
disposing of a substantial pool of our teacher resources but “understanding the
limitations of the notion of method and a desire to transcend those limitations”
(Bell, 2003, p. 334). If post-method is to move towards the realization of its
ambitions i.e. teacher and learner autonomy, it cannot afford to put such
constraints as a “break” on their freedom of choice; rather, it has to encourage
expanding the pool of resources that teachers and learners can draw on. If this
pool includes the native speaker, or western-based knowledge or whatever that
might be relevant in a particular context so be it. Those who find them
irrelevant in another context can re-think them and exploit them in the
interests of EIL learners and teachers.
Conclusions
In this article we tried to build a case against the notion of epistemic break,
proposed by Kuamaravadivelu (2012). The idea of epistemic break is
certainly not an appropriate response to the challenges of globalization. A look
at the definition on the website of the WHO
(http://www.who.int/trade/glossary/story043/en/) will show why:
Globalization, or the increased interconnectedness and interdependence of
peoples and countries, is generally understood to include two interrelated
elements: the opening of borders to increasingly fast flows of goods,
services, finance, people and ideas across international borders; and the
changes in institutional and policy regimes at the international and national
levels that facilitate or promote such flows. It is recognized that
globalization has both positive and negative impacts on development.
Although the advantages and drawbacks of globalization have been hotly
debated for decades, there appears to be widespread consensus on two key
elements: interconnectedness and interdependence. The very concept of EIL
bears witness to the need for a tool that unites and is the hallmark of this
interdependence. Obviously, what is required in the current global climate is
to conciliate different sources of knowledge, competences and ideas so that
researchers, teachers and learners will have a wider choice, which will
hopefully lead to more freedom and development in the ELT profession.
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Note on Contributors
Farid Ghaemi is Assistant Professor of Applied linguistics at Azad University,
Karaj Branch. Email: fghaemi@hotmail.com
