Educational metaphors on the web. A corpus-based analysis of Italian and English/Irish university...

Educational metaphors on the web. A corpus-based analysis of Italian and

English/Irish university websites.

RaAM 10 conference

Marco Venuti

[email protected]

Chiara Nasti

[email protected]

Cagliari, 20-23 June 2014

Outline

� Research project at Federico II

� Context

� Previous work

� Corpus

� Some findings

� Concluding remarks

� Future steps

Research project

� Multidisciplinary project on ‘internationalisation’ of

the European university system at the Università di

Napoli Federico II

Research project



Napoli Federico II

� University governance: analysis of institutional and

regulatory process

� Economics: analysis of effects of competition within a

general regulatory framework

� Linguistics: analysis of European university websites

Research project



Napoli Federico II

� University governance: analysis of institutional and

regulatory process

� Economics: analysis of effects of competition within a

general regulatory framework

� Linguistics: analysis of European university websites

� University of Bologna in Forlì

� AcWaC-Eu

� Institutional academic English (as opposed to disciplinary

genres)

Context

� European Higher Education Area (Bologna Process)

� Attractiveness of EU universities across the world

� Standardisation of EU University system

� e.g. European Credit Transfer System

� Standardization of the information provided

� Universities accommodate the information provided to

the needs of their international audience

� Marketization of university discourse also via the use of

ELF

Previous work

• Marketization of University discourse

� Fairclough (1993); Mautner (2005); Morish and

Sauntson (2013); Swales (2004).

• Metaphors in Educational discourse

� Cameron (1999, 2003); Deignan et all (1997);

Browne, Hiers, and Quinn (1995, 1998);.

Previous work

• Corpus linguistics

� Biber (2006) – academic and institutional genres

[catalogues, course syllabi, handbooks, programme web

pages]

• ELFA in academic domain

� Mauranen (2010) – English as a Lingua Franca in Academic

Settings

• Academic Web-as-Corpus

� Bernardini, Ferraresi, Gaspari (2010), Vigo, Bernardini,

Ferraresi, Gaspari and Venuti (2012), Bernarini, Ferraresi

(2012, 2013), Nasti and Venuti (2013)

Corpus

• “acWaC-Eu” (an acronym for “academic Web-as-

Corpus in Europe”),

• nearly 90-million words of web pages in English

crawled from the websites of European universities.

• Bernardini and Ferraresi (2013): 8th Web as Corpus

Workshop (WAC-8)

acWaC-Eu

• To compare native and ELF textual practices across

EU countries

• To establish practices for the creation of Web-as-

Corpus ELF corpora

• To provide resources for writers/translators

http://mrscoulter.sslmit.unibo.it/acwac/acwac-eu.html

Irish/UK and Italian sub-corpora

1,806,4993,275ELFItaly

3,945,8316,236NativeIreland

41,911,27761,465NativeUnited Kingdom

wordsN. of textsstatusCountry

Aims

� Compare Italian universities and English/Irish

universities’ use of movement metaphors on their

institutional websites.

� Examine to what extent Italian universities tend to

use the conceptual frame of movement.

� Whether Italian universities are boosting the

implementation of the European Higher Education

Area (interdisciplinary approach)

Nasti/Venuti 2013

Keyword analysis between Native and ELF corpora

� native websites:� Marketisation

� Promotional language� User oriented (linguistic markers and choice of content)

� More dialogic nature� Genre conscious communication

� ELF websites:� More monological nature

� Institution oriented (linguistic markers and choice of content)

� Lack of web-communication features� ELF?

‘Movement’ metaphors

� Conceptual frame describing the students’

experience as a ‘path’

� Displaying both a spatial and a temporal dimension

(beginning, stages, final achievement)

� A conventional metaphor: ample evidence of

linguistic realisations in both English and Italian

educational discourses

� How is it conveyed in native and Italian university

websites?

Keyword analysis

� Comparison between corpora

� Identification of possible linguistic realisations of

‘path’ metaphors

� Corpus-assisted analysis of candidate terms (literal

and non education related meanings omitted)

� Comparison of distribution

Movement metaphors in native

3078TOTAL3904417170COMPLETE827

1726740ENTRANTS131880553528EXPLORING666

80263501INITIAL131551562251PATHWAYS658

91274000BACKGROUND1240104614596COMPLETING622

2603011423COMPLETED1152174677644COMPLETION558

60312659EXPLORES1119218739600STAGE507

54332386BACKGROUNDS10652299710082PROGRESS370

120335298FORWARD1053731063192PATHWAY337

27351172GATEWAY102737312316419DESIGNED278

24371035COMMENCING97565353428744ENTRY39

pMwKeyFreq.Key wordNpMwKeyFreq.Key wordN

Movement metaphors in non-native

901TOTAL

333260PATHS1151

433578REACH1128

8949161POINT1034

12651227ENTRANCE1022

127116228MISSION799

107132192GOALS758

90140162PATH739

159217287CARRIED630

127329229ORIENTATION548

pMwKeyFreq.Key wordN

‘Paths’ in native websites

� Beginning

� entry, stage*, commencing, backgrounds, background,

initial, entrants

� Middle

� designed, pathway, progress, stage*, pathways, exploring

gateway*, forward, explores

� End

� stage*, completion, completing, complete, gateway*,

completed

‘Paths’ in Italian websites

� Beginning

� orientation, entrance, point*

� Middle

� orientation*, carried (out), path, mission, point*, reach,

paths

� End

� goals, point*

Concluding remarks

� Differences in terms of:

� Range of linguistic realisations

� Frequency (and distribution)

Concluding remarks




� Disclaimer:

� Keyword analysis highlights differences

� Some similarities may have been overlooked

Concluding remarks




� Disclaimer:

� Keyword analysis highlights differences

� Some similarities may have been overlooked

� Disclaimer 2:

� Translation practices (?)

Concluding remarks

� Internationalisation / integration of a common

European Higher education system:

� ELF websites display lack of awareness of effective

communication

� Compliance to regulations

� Need to improve web mediated communication

� Need to improve communicative competence in ELF

Future steps

� Analysis of other strategies used in Italian websites

to compensate for lack of ‘path’ metaphors

� Integration with results from colleagues in other

disciplines (CADAAD 2014)

� Refinement of the available corpora

� Integration of native Italian web-pages (when

available)

Educational metaphors on the web. A corpus-based analysis of Italian and English/Irish university...

Documents

Transcript of Educational metaphors on the web. A corpus-based analysis of Italian and English/Irish university...